Laz, or the person Laz had become, didn’t sleep that night. Instead, he stayed at the wall with Marie and her company while things got going in the base. The walls started as nothing but stacked boxes of thick metal that were piled on each other, one after another and spread out as evenly as possible along the perimeter. Then came the engineers. They broke the boxes apart, worked some crazy magic and turned these boxes into walls that covered the entire perimeter in barely four hours. All through out the night, those flaming beasts would attack, but their power was noticeably weakened without a sun shining in the sky. Even with the low light of the triple moons, the moving flame beasts were easy to see and easy to beat back.

"By the time the morning came, we had a base and had order as headquarters went up. The base commander’s ship had been destroyed on landing along with his secondary commanders and the only one with any authority to make the landing safely was a field medic who had gone through command school while taking doctorate classes in emergency surgery. That was why the LZ was so chaotic as even he didn’t know he was in charge. Luckily he wasn’t an idiot and got things going according to the book which had been written with such disasters in mind. The biggest problem we now faced was trying to contact HQ for some sort of real commander and orders while the bastards outside were now fired up thanks to the return of the sun. What was worse, scout teams had found human shape Infernals that seems to be taking charge of the other side, meaning the attacks were more coordinated and much more dangerous," came the voice in Laz’s head.

Eating lunch at the wall, a massive group of beasts both small and large were seen charging the walls at both the North and South ends of the base. Laz’s wall position happened to be on the east wall and they were told to maintain position while others were ordered to support the defenders. Screams and shouts were heard for hours while Laz, Marie and her team could do nothing but standby and wait, signaling the all clear down the line of the east wall every ten minutes, hoping for another ten minutes of clam.

That happened until it didn’t. An all clear signal wasn’t given at around the third hour of the North and South Wall attacks. The spotter in the gunner tower yelled that beasts group were charging from the east now. With most of the forces set up on the north and south walls, the east wall was undermanned.

"It was hell. By the time reinforcements came from the west, Marie was dead, impaled by a beasts horn through her abdomen even as she brought a massive axe, her own personal weapon, down on it’s head, smashing it’s brain to mush. The guy Lanzo, who had reminded me to use the AoE shot had been stampeded to the ground before releasing his grip on his weapon, causing the energy gem to explode and take out everything within a couple hundred feet with him, including the wall. I could almost hear him apologizing while laughing about the mess as he died. The spotter had been dragged off by some flyers as all the others were killed, everyone but me and the gunner in the reinforced box. That bastard ended up with third degree burns over most of his body, but he never stopped firing. After the wall was cleared and he let go of the trigger, he died right then and there. I swear the minute a machine stopped firing, his body turned to ash and just drifted away in the breeze, leaving me the only one left," came the narration as Laz fought for breath, having lived the entire thing himself and knowing that he only got lucky because the others were much bigger targets than himself.

More and more drop ships came, as did a new commander, put in charge of the area along with new weapons. Laz had been placed in charge of a unit now as the only surviving member of the previous one even though he had never been assigned to it. Twenty new recruits were placed under his watch, fresh from their home planets that happened to be further away than his own. The Infernals attack never ceased, but with the arrival of the new ships came the arrival of new powerhouses as well, high level Ancient and even two Chaos gods arrived, following the info that humanoid Infernals were found on planet.

"Suddenly the situation turned around and we were pushing outward from the base, destroying Infernal nests, breeding grounds of lava and energy that these things were produced in. My team was assigned along with a dozen others as escorts during a forward supply run. The Infernals had a ’base’ on the other side of the planet and it was far to dangerous to try to approach with ships as they had their own in orbit and for whatever reason, weren’t trying to just flat out destroy the planet, so the ground game was where all the action was happening. During that run, scholars and scientists from the alliance wanted to come and study the breeding pits as we had been the first planet to had captured some of them during the push back, so our job was to get them there. Other planets had had similar luck and researchers had been sent to them, but ours arrived first. Things went fine at first, arriving at the pits and transferring the geeks to the front lines bases for protection. It was quick and precise, giving my fresh team a feeling of ease that made me itch on the inside and made me have to hold myself back from beating their asses myself. The problem came on our way out the door as fresh infernal beasts started emerging from the pits. The higher ups had said that without a breeder, the pit wouldn’t function and those fuckers weren’t wrong, they just never considered that breeders could hide within the pit and launch a surprise attack. They rushed out, several of the human like ones going for our scientists as we, the other escorts and the frontline fighters launched our attacks at the human like Infernals, only for all of them to fail miserably. As they broke apart our lines to get to them, those eggheads knew they were the target for capture and did the bravest thing I think any of us had ever seen. They offed themselves, one by one as fast as possible, putting down their equipment and taking weapons to their own heads. Sadly, the humanoids were faster still than some of them and managed to grab three of them. Before I could think better of it, I grabbed my personal weapon, a sword that my father had given to me before I joined the army and cut off the head of one of the scientists closest to me before aiming my long range weapon at another and firing. While the gem was designed to work against the Infernals, it was quite effective on flesh as well and a fist sized hole appeared in the middle of his head. The surprised Infernals dropped their guards for just that moment which allowed the final scientist to yell out ’thanks’ before she smacked herself in her forehead with her free palm, making it blow like a melon. Never ate another melon after that day again."

Enraged, the Infernals charged at Laz, but we had stalled for long enough for some of the ancient gods to arrive and fight them back as we pushed back the beasts. The cave and underground system was brought to a collapse by those ancient gods after the humanoid infernals retreated.

"When we got back, I was labeled as a hero and given a promotion while cheers erupted on base for having foiled their plans. Can you believe that? I killed two of our own people and was promoted for it. All because it stopped the enemy from getting their hands on our smart ones."

"Signals went out as soon as the report came in, but by the time my promotion was held, other groups of researchers that had been sent to other planets had been ambushed and taken, making our success seem bitter if anything. After that, the infernal race, as a whole, got smarter, both about our alliance and the peoples in it along with tactics and space travel. The advantages we had held in space flight and battle seemed to be wiped out overnight and Infernals became better killing machines, knowing who to target first and which ones were the bigger danger. That’s when we figured out a lot of things about them that had never been known before or so I was told. How they survived, how they became so strong so quickly and why history and ancient stories say that they were both the Omniverse’s greatest threat and greatest wonder. But even if we learned something, they had taken all that we had learned and used it against us. We were pushed out of universe after universe as lines collapsed and weapons were made obsolete."

Laz was reading a report as the grand commander walked in, getting the attention of all his lieutenants such as Laz.

"As one of the last forward planets in this universe, backup will be sent over soon. If this planet falls, we have nothing more in the area to stop them with until they hit the massive breadbasket planets of the Elysim. But if they reach that far, there will be no way to continue with food production and supply lines will crumple to dust from this sector on to the next seven. So we must hold, no matter what happens. Additional Chaos Gods and ships are on their way as we speak as we will push this planet to be our massive fortress and take over the entire thing," he said, addressing his command staff along with the several Chaos gods who were already present.

"If anyone has anything to say, now’s the time to say it as we will begin the attack as soon as everything and everyone arrives in a few days," he said, searching the faces of his men.

Only Laz spoke up, even if he didn’t want to.

"Sir. Considering the strength the Infernals have gained along with our own losses and the collapse of the lines around us, something is bothering me, a question I can’t help but pose as it seems the answer could be an indicator of what’s to come."

"Go ahead lieutenant. Your insights have proven valuable so far."

"Thank you sir. My question is this. Other planets had been overrun with our forces being forced to retreat within days of their pushes. So why, as the last planet in the sector, have we not seen a push? Why have we been fighting and dying at around the same amount that we did when we first arrived? Why has there not been so much as a massive operation that could be called a push when every other planet around us has already fallen? And since there hasn’t been that push to remove us... what does that mean about what they are doing here?"

There was silence at the table as even the normally aloof Chaos gods suddenly closed their eyes in thought.

The answer came five days later.