It must have taken us all no less than five minutes before we could begin to breathe normally and comfortably again. Just like what I had decided earlier, the first thing I did was to contact Commodore Quentin about the slaughtering attempt by new type of aliens.
I began by mentioning the hints of their nearby presence shortly after my last transmission, up to the point on how we managed to take them down with details. When I finished, it only took less than one minute before a responding blink and vibration occurred on my watch.
'What about the casualties?' The watch blinked and vibrated.
'None. All six of us managed to survive the ordeal.' I replied the message.
'Thank goodness.' The watch responded. 'We also have just finished reconnecting Billy's signal direction directly to the Commander General.'
'Thank you, Commodore.' I responded to the message, as I also showed Billy the good news.
'One more thing.' The watch still continued. 'With the confirmation of the attack by aliens, and a new type on that matter, our operation has now officially begun. You will have the codename 'Black Caiman', and 2nd Lieutenant Billy Mubarak will have the codename 'Golden Jackal'. I believe the Equipment Developments Chief have told you both earlier as well, Caiman. You will also to refer our HQ as 'Nest'.'
'Yes sir. Roger that sir.' I answered the message, ending my transmission to Commodore Quentin as well.
As I had finished my communications with Commodore Quentin, I saw Billy communicating with his watch as well, in a hurry. Apparently, there seemed to be rather a lot of events that the Special Forces Command had yet to inform to their Commander General.
I also noticed that once in a while, Billy seemed to be a little confused on how to explain the things he wanted to convey to the Commander General, as he seemed to be spacing out once in a moment before he buttoned his watch again in a rush. I only worried that he could convey the wrong message should he skipped one or few presses.
Since it could take Billy longer in conveying his messages, I finally decided to take a look in more details the physical appearance of the lifeless flying aliens. Two of the four soldiers seemed to also curious about the aliens, and thus they approached the creatures as well.
With each closer step to the flying aliens, I recalled the first moments I had experienced and felt back three years ago when I witnessed the appearance of the alien that I encountered the first time back in the sewers of Chicago. Both intrigued and terrified, curious and worry filled my feeling as I looked in details how the new creatures would look like.
All of the aliens we had encountered three years ago had considerably built bodies, either for the normal kind, the bulky ones, or even for the alien commander itself. That was, except for the technician counterpart inside their mothership that was not able to fight at all unless they had held their beam rifles at that time. The current flying counterpart however, not only had the absence of built bodies, but also seemed to not carry any sort of ranged weapons and had much shorter height.
The first thing that I noticed right away was the sight of the presence a black viscous liquid pool all over their bodies, staining the pebbles on the ground where they were lying lifelessly. At that moment, it was just another thing that further confirmed they were indeed another kind of an outer space living creature.
They had a significantly smaller heads, compared to the rest of their counterparts and even the technician ones, which suggested that they were less likely meant to experience heavy combats, at least not as extreme as the ones from three years ago could endure. Their heights were also most likely somewhere around seven to seven and a half feet, and with an extremely proportional body. I could be almost completely sure that the flying variant had the most proportional body compared to the other variants.
The next thing that I looked in details was none other than their specific body part that they used to fly – their wings. Luckily, two of the aliens lied on the ground face-down, and so I could see clearly that their wings were all attached to the middle part of their back. If they aliens had backbones, it would be most likely that their wings were exoskeleton that protruded out from their backbones.
They had three pair of wings, which would mean that they had approximately six wings in total. All of them were of uniform sizes, with the width of perhaps close to ten feet if they were to be spread from one end to the other. The strange thing was, the wings somehow resemble that of dragonflies', although it was only for the shape. Aside from that, there were also no visible wing vein lines whatsoever, unlike the dragonflies or any other insects as well in that matter.
The sight of the creatures' insect-like wings immediately reminded me that I had not looked in more details about their other physical features, including the face. I turned back to the rest of the others that were lying face-up to see how they looked like.
To the least of my expectations and much to my surprise, they had a face with a closer resemblance to human beings'. They had a couple of smaller and narrower fin-ears, as well as no longer having a couple of nostril holes on their foreheads.
Instead, they had a small protruding part on the middle section of their faces, and just below the very same part, were a couple of small holes, assumingly of same sizes. As for the rest of their facial features, they also had a grey skin, a narrow mouth and a pair of big eyes with deep red color.
When I finished with their facial features, I proceeded to look at their body features. Unlike their facial features, I had expected that they would most likely have both hands, as well as a pair of feet without any sort of gravity balancer on their ends.
I also looked at their hands and feet closer, and saw that like their other counterparts, each hand had five fingers. Strangely enough however, their feet were webbed very similarly to that of frogs'. I only assumed that it was their natural feature to help them move and possibly hunt on watery surface, or even to dive underwater.
The last thing that I looked at was their staff-like equipment each held tightly on their hands. In an instant, the equipment that they were holding tightly reminded me of the one held by the alien commander three years before. Perhaps I had not looked at the equipment more thoroughly back then, but the staff that I currently was seeing had a broader and larger end on both sides.
If I were to assume that whatever form of energy that was used to create a beam blade were stored inside the end parts, then it would mean that the current aliens used a double-ended spear-like weapons. If that was the case, then we would have to determine another weakness of them as those spears were not budged in the slightest when we fired our weapons against them.
There were nothing else to see aside from their facial features, body morphologies, their wings, and their spears, except for the violently scattered bullet holes all over their bodies. I did not notice where the rest of the others had aimed for back when they were underwater, but I remembered full well that I was aiming for the aliens' head just before I began opened fire.
Among ten aliens, only three of them had a gunshot wound on their heads. I also noticed that there were two others had countless gunshot wounds on their necks, while the rest of the others had a total of tens of bullet holes on their bodies, including the ones with a head and neck gunshot wounds.
"So, are you familiar with these creatures?" Billy said from behind me, no longer with a panting sound.
"Not in the slightest. They are completely a new kind that we have never encountered before." I responded to him as I turned to him for a moment, before looking back at the lifeless bodies.
"The black viscous… liquid?" Billy asked me, with a voice full of confusion and incomprehension.
"Yes. Exactly what made me believe that we now have another concrete proof that the village attack was done by extraterrestrial beings." I replied to him as I nodded twice.
After a little moment of staring the dead aliens, Billy suggested me that we both were to inform both Commodore Quentin and the Commander General about the aliens and all of their known features so far. Agreeing to him, the two of us did not wait any second before we began to transmit our messages through our watches. Shortly after that, the two of us received different responses.
Commodore Quentin asked me if I had any idea as to what the flying aliens' weakness was could be, to which I responded that aside from damaging their wings, I had yet to think about any other possibilities. The Special Forces Commander General asked Billy if he would be able to proceed to the village with the rest of the four men, to which he responded that he would suggest for them to regroup with the rest of the Alpha Team, but as for his own next specific tasks he would return it to the Commander General's suggestion.
In the end, after few more transmissions, my last received message was about Commodore Quentin sending me that he would discuss it with the Commander General as soon as the transmission was ended, to see if they could come up with any possible suggestions.
Billy's last received message was about the Commander General telling him that he should continue with the operation, while the four men would retreat and regroup with the rest of the Alpha Team.
Billy then asked if the two of us should accompany them, to which the Commander General sent him that they would be on their own since both he and I had yet to see the current condition of the attacked village. With the communications ended, the two of us informed the four men about the next step that had been decided.
All of them then stood up, and each of them personally thanked me for saving their lives, before they began to walk on the opposite direction of where both Billy and I would go, and we watched them gone further until they could no longer be seen.
"So much for the whole team…" Billy sighed as he was still staring at the direction where the four men had headed to.
"I suppose it was still not a really bad turnout since they made it out in one piece…" I responded to him as I turned to him.
"Yeah, I have to agree with that…" Billy replied, as he then looked down before he began to face at the direction we would have to head on.
He told me that with the current situations we were in, we had to go along the river shore in case we were to encounter any other invisible flying aliens along the way. With that being the case, it would take us around one to one and a half hour of walking, or rather light-hiking as there would be at least a couple more sloping surface along the way, and the distance of the village was still quite far from where we were standing.
I looked at my watch again, and saw that the time was then already 11.40 a.m., just twenty minutes before midday. I sighed once, before I nodded to Billy and began to head for our next destination, with a chilly mountain wind invading the skins of my legs through my pants for once in a while. Thankfully, I did not feel any chill on my torso area which perhaps was thanks to my special light armor. At least I should not worry if I could catch a cold in the middle of our hiking later on…