Joseph was stuck with the night watch again. Usually it was boring but tonight was pure chaos. Granted all the Na'vi patrolling the base now were meant to be a boon but some of them were messing around with the radios and nearly all of them had no interest in the instructions they had been given in order to patrol the area efficiently. Fortunatly a few pieces of junk left over from attempts to kill boredom around the base had livened things up.

"What d'ya mean pink and fluffy? If it's a teddy bear then you've just won last month's scavenger hunt." The voice on the other side mumbled something about mad sky people before it cut out. Life here had its perks.

Then he heard a faint beeping. He rolled over to the radar display on his office chair, it showed faint six contacts in high orbit descending quickly. They were too small and fast to be air craft so he dismissed them as comet fragments. That was until they didn't burn up and even slowed down. He tripped the alarm bringing the base to alert and used the computer to calculate the trajectory of the objects and displayed it on the main holo projector in the centre of the control room.

Zack burst through the doors looking annoyed that his sleep had been interrupted. "What's happened? What's going on? Have they sent shuttles down?"

"N,no sir. We're tracking six unknown objects through the atmosphere." Joseph explained.

"You woke me up for a few asteroids?"

"Of course not! There not asteroids, they should have burnt up by now, they slowed down and changed course several times." He taped furiously on the holo projector controls. It displayed the past and present trajectories of the objects. "Shit their heading right for us!"

Rookie checked his pods trajectory once more, making sure he was going to land near Victor and on level ground. He and Victor were fine but Micky was heading straight for a different area of the forest as was Romeo.

"All right people, I want this clean and quiet. As soon as we land stay hidden and meet up at the agreed rally point." Came Buck's voice over the com. The rally point was a group of disused mining vehicles that hopefully wouldn't attract too much attention and was close to the main facility at the same time. "We're not here to cause trouble so no shooting anyone except Romeo." A few excited chirps and squeals came down the com line. "Easy Victor, just because we're not shooting at them it doesn't mean they won't be shooting at us." There was only a low moan in response signifying the Hurgok's disappointment.

As their pods burnt through the atmosphere the surface of the planet became visible. It was a truly beautiful site, the large numbers of bioluminescent plants made up a network of teal light. "Dammed, I thought the light show was just the atmosphere." Micky piped in over the intercom.

"No shit Sherlock?" Romeo retorted. "Weren't you listening during the beefing or have you picked up sun shine's bad habits?" He said referring to Rokie's sleeping habits.

"Hay! I never heard of this Pandora place before; frontier colonist kid remember?" Micky shot back.

"Cut the chatter and eyes on the ground, prepare for impact." Buck ordered. He could only wonder how he got such an immature squad.

Hell's Gate came into view and a few seconds later they all hit the ground, activating their active camouflage as they left their pods.

Grace watched the footage in the command centre. They had caught one of the pods crashing into the ground on the edge of a CCTV camera near the old mine. It kicked up a lot of dust obscuring the view for a moment. As the dust settled part of the front of the pod blew off and a figure jumped out. He had black armour with an orange chest plate and a silver visor. He was crying some sort of rifle and had an alarmingly large green weapon on his back. The figure promptly disappeared as he began to walk off.

"Shit, they can drop in from orbit, turn invisible and now there are intruders in the base." Jake complained. They knew that they were now in the base because a group of hunters had tracked them, with considerable difficulty, to the base where a hole in the chain link fence had been cut.

"Easy buddy, we'll catch them. It's only a matter of time. We only found six pods after all; it's probably recon rather than invasion." Norm said trying to calm Jake.

"I hope your right." Grace said.

It was approaching dawn, Rocky and Victor had successfully planted a dozen Trojans in the bases main frame and uploaded its entire contents to Vicky in orbit. However they had discovered something rather strange. According to the bases calendar it was only 2161; the estimated time of the Alpha Centauri's disappearance.

Buck, Dutch and Micky were now heading for the base's garage and weapon storage area to leave some presents.

"So Dutch, you haven't said much so far. What do you think of all this?" Micky asked.

Dutch shrugged. "Not much to say really. If the old RDA was right, they were a bunch of xenophobic aliens not much different from the Elites when we first met. If the old transmissions are right we did some bad things hear we deserve what we got, just like the Elites." He answered blandly.

"Let's just get the job done and ether blow them up or make friends and then go home." Buck said. "I'd prefer the former but I'm not paid enough to think about it."

They turned the corner and almost ran into two three meter tall blue guys and a human trying to tell them a joke.

"So I said 'Why you looking so blue?' Ya get it? No you don't do you, you never…"

"Shhh, be quiet." The previously chatty marine became all business as the Na'vi spotted something.

The three ODSTs went tense, trying to remain as still as possible as the more you moved the more distorted the air became with active camo. Still it wasn't enough as one of the Na'vi swiped his bow through the air to be sure if something was there or not and hit Buck. He cursed as it hit his side before he could react, tossing him to one side.

Micky panicked a little but not so much he forgot not to actually shoot the assaulter. "Run!" He shouted as he sprayed a rough semi-circle of SMG fire around the three aggressors 'accidentally' shooting the guy who hit Buck in the foot.

They ran back down the hall to the air lock. Unfortunately the human guard was smart, thinking fast he hit the sprinkler system making the intruders more visible.

"Hay! Anybody by the garage? What the fuck is going on down there?" Came his radio.

"We got intruders! The fire sprinklers make them... less inadvisable. Send down a medic and lock down the air locks." He shouted back.

Little did they know a curtain AI had already infiltrated their communication network and was relaying useful and funny information to the ODSTs. "Boys, the guys up stairs have locked down your exit. I would open it myself but I don't want to show my cards yet. Wait... okay, Juliana has given authorisation to use the fireworks, have fun!"

"Right, thanks Vicky, good thing I bought this." Micky said as he hefted his rocket luncher to his shoulder to fire at the air lock. Each door easily disintegrated from a rocket each.

Alarmed sounded in recognition of the breach and additional troops came round the corner. Buck shot out any of the lights to throw off the 'enemy's' aim. Unfortunately it wasn't enough as Dutch's shields buckled under the barge and he got hit in the back of the leg. Another two shots grassed his side and even more rebounded off his armour.

"Dutch!" Micky called.

"Just go Guny, Micky! I'll be fine." They wanted to help but they were under orders not to kill anyone and they weren't killing Dutch so reluctantly they left, re-engaging their active camo as they went.

Dutch tossed his gun aside as a sign of surrender. His leg hung limp as he stood up. "So, hi there." One of the guards walked up to him and hit him round the head with the butt of his gun to knock him out. It rebounded off his shields. "You know, even if I didn't have shields, I'm wearing an impact resistant helmet."

A/N: Sorry it's been so long since the last update, I could make up some story about how my dog chewed through the power cables on my computer but that's not the story you're here for. Besides; I don't have a dog.

Reviews! (You may not actually remember them since I took so long. Sorry again.)

Thank you for the approval Major Simi, manatarms1989, shadow juubi overlord and Godzilla2. I hope you continue to enjoy my work and I continue to wright and eventually make lots of lovely money off some more original stuff.

Master of The Blood Wolves: Not sure what you're getting at with the marks thing but glad you're at least mildly enjoying it. I'll try to look out for more grammatical errors like that in future.

The Hidden Sith: Well I guess they ran out of scarier names on their bigger scarier ships. Seriously, there are some weird names for ships out there…

Tony (): Thanks for the support and no the humans won't be portrayed as evil though there will be a few nasty ones out there of course.