Falling World
As the Sons of Samak began their work in the hidden depths of their underground bunker, humanity's conventional forces were making their last, desperate stand on the surface. Across the ravaged planet, pockets of military resistance, fragments of shattered armies, fought with a ferocity born of desperation, a doomed defiance against an overwhelming enemy. Among these scattered forces were elite units, highly trained, fiercely loyal, tasked with missions of impossible bravery – rescue, reconnaissance, delaying actions, futile gestures against the tide of Nhjashj conquest.
Four of these units became almost legendary whispers in the fractured human networks – Saber Toad, Red Dragon, Slain Poison, and Side Back. These were not just soldiers; they were specialists, masters of infiltration, urban combat, and survival, the very best humanity could offer in its dying days. They were deployed into the most heavily contested zones, tasked with impossible missions: extracting civilians from collapsing cities, retrieving vital intelligence from fallen command centers, attempting to sabotage Nhjashj operations, knowing each mission was likely to be their last.
Saber Toad, a US-led team, were masters of urban warfare, moving through ruined cityscapes like ghosts, their advanced combat gear allowing them to briefly engage Nhjashj patrols, to create diversions, to buy precious minutes for civilian evacuations. Red Dragon, a Chinese special forces unit, were renowned for their stealth and infiltration skills, slipping behind enemy lines, gathering intelligence, planting sabotage devices, operating in the shadows where even Nhjashj sensors struggled to detect them. Slain Poison, a British SAS contingent, were masters of unconventional warfare, utilizing guerilla tactics, ambushes, and improvised weaponry to harass Nhjashj supply lines, to disrupt their logistics, to be a constant, irritating thorn in the enemy's side. Side Back, a multinational team drawing on the best from various European special forces, were the rescuers, the medics, the humanitarians amidst the carnage, pushing into the most dangerous zones to extract trapped civilians, to provide aid, to offer a flicker of hope in the face of despair.
These teams were constantly deployed, constantly in action, their missions blurring into a continuous, brutal cycle of combat, rescue, and loss. They achieved impossible feats of bravery, saved countless lives, inflicted minor, fleeting damage on the Nhjashj war machine. But it was never enough. Against the relentless, overwhelming technological superiority of the invaders, their efforts were ultimately futile, gestures of defiance in the face of inevitable defeat.
Weeks turned into a month. The fighting raged across the planet, a desperate, uneven struggle. Humanity fought with courage, with ingenuity, with a ferocity born of the will to survive. But courage and ingenuity were no match for energy shields and plasma weapons, for faster-than-light fighters and gravity-defying warships. Slowly, inexorably, Earth fell. Major cities became Nhjashj strongholds, human armies were decimated, resistance pockets were systematically crushed. The planet became a prison, humanity enslaved.
After four grueling weeks of fire and blood, the inevitable conclusion arrived. Earth was conquered. The Nhjashj banners, dark and alien, flew over once-proud capitals.
Enslavement camps began to spring up, grim processing centers for humanity's subjugation.
The survivors scattered, fled into the wilderness, went underground, clinging to the desperate hope of survival, the faintest whisper of resistance. And deep beneath the Atlantic, in a hidden, self-sustaining bunker, the Sons of Samak, humanity's last, impossible hope, began their long, arduous work, preparing for a fight that seemed already lost. The saviours had not come. Not now.