Sam Wilson was brave enough, charging out to meet the aliens at the head of his soldiers. What he probably didn't realize was that the "civilian" lineup he'd left behind was something else entirely.
Bella. Natasha. Barbara. Heather. The Winchester father and son. 006. Reed Richards. Bumblebee and Sakura, both keeping low and waiting to shoot from cover. And finally, Hobbs Sawyer, whose arms were thicker than most people's thighs.
That roster wasn't going to topple Thanos, but it was more than enough to bury Stain General without breaking a sweat.
And now Sam had assigned all of them to rear support. Bella didn't object. Between herself, Natasha, the Winchesters, and 006, none of them wanted their abilities exposed. Playing the part of ordinary civilians and just riding it out was perfectly workable. They followed orders and began directing survivors toward the interior cabins.
Far across the water, the disc-shaped craft was slowly bearing down on the fleet.
The cargo bay opened. More than a dozen figures launched themselves from the ship's windows as if they had springs loaded in their backs, landing on the decks below.
The moment they touched down, they opened fire. In the space of a blink, dozens of civilians were dead from laser strikes.
The survivors hadn't been idle these past days. A handful of engineers among them, working alongside Stanford students, had strung rope bridges between the ships on their chains of steel cable—easily enough for eight or ten people to cross at a time.
Sam's squad had just crossed over, moving into their assigned defensive positions.
They had no warning about the enemy's spring-launch tactic. Some aliens landed ahead of the line. Some landed behind it. The formation broke apart instantly. Sam leveled his rifle, sighting in on a Xerun standing roughly fifteen meters out.
"Fire!" he roared. "Cut them down!"
The rattle of automatic fire erupted as soldiers opened up in unison. Those cooking-pot helmets looked impenetrably solid, so every muzzle swung to center mass—chest shots, all of them.
"Yeah! Kill 'em! Tear these bastards apart—!" It was Sam's first time commanding this many soldiers, his first time responsible for this many civilians, his first time coming face to face with actual aliens and putting them down. The pressure was enormous. He was running hot.
He threw himself into it, leading his soldiers in a close-quarters brawl with thirty-plus Xerun.
Less than a minute of shooting, and he'd already worked out the strengths and weaknesses on both sides.
The Xerun armor was formidable. But their movements were stiff and sluggish compared to a human.
Human soldiers, on the other hand, were incredibly fragile—one hit and they dropped. The enemy's weapons weren't as devastating as anything out of a sci-fi film, but a laser bolt to the body still punched a hole right through you.
The Xerun knew their advantages and played to them. Their tactics were sound, their formation disciplined. The human soldiers, by contrast, had gaps in their game. Green troops—they'd had a blast in the opening exchange, but as the Xerun numbers kept climbing, someone suddenly realized the fire distribution was completely wrong. Several soldiers scrambled to reload simultaneously, and the line of covering fire just... stopped.
The Xerun—lean and tall, the average one pushing two meters—raised their weapons and pressed forward hard. Three soldiers were down in seconds. Sam ordered a tactical withdrawal to regroup.
At the other end of the fleet, the civilians were under attack. The Xerun's strategy was straightforward: hit both ends at once, crush the survivors' resistance between two forces. Solid plan, cleanly executed.
And then they ran into a group of "civilians" who could have put Stain General through the floor and made him call them daddy.
Unlike Sam's well-equipped military squad, the weapons on the civilian side were a real mixed bag. Charlie and Samantha carried their standard-issue police Glocks. Natasha had been favoring the M9 lately. The Winchesters—father and son—had brought their hunting shotguns. And Hobbs Sawyer, a man built like a small tank, was packing a Chiappa Rhino revolver.
A Xerun—pot-helmeted, skeletal, knees bending the wrong way—dropped out of the air directly in front of them.
Without a moment's hesitation, it charged straight at 006.
Oh, are you KIDDING me, 006 thought furiously.
Every single person here was organizing the civilian evacuation—was the alien blind? Why him of all people? There were women right there—why not go after that particularly attractive one over there?
He had absolutely no intention of revealing what he was capable of. The difference between trained and untrained was obvious to anyone who knew what to look for, and he had no interest in standing out. So he turned and ran.
006 sprinted ahead. The alien chased him like he'd personally murdered its father.
Bella watched from a distance, utterly exasperated. She couldn't let a former subordinate blow his cover—not this close, with this many eyes around. She fired a Mind Blast across the gap, stunning the hydrocephalic alien in its tracks.
Dean Winchester—Sam's older brother, and a genuinely good-looking young man—had a clear head and fast reflexes. The moment the alien staggered, he put a round straight into its chest.
Bang. Bang. The others opened fire together. The Xerun went down without making a sound—torn apart in seconds.
"These things aren't really that scary, are they?" Dean gave a smooth wave to the ladies nearby.
"More incoming—engage!" Natasha dropped any pretense of hiding her skills. Both hands came up, an M9 in each, and she opened fire.
The Winchesters' survival instinct was caution above all else—and father-and-son teamwork that looked almost choreographed. John Winchester, face hidden behind a thick beard, hammered shots from the flank, then produced a hunting knife and drove it into the gap between an alien's chest armor and neck, twisting twice for good measure.
These "civilians" carried inferior weapons compared to Sam's regulars. But their adaptability was several grades above any ordinary soldier.
Everyone showed their own skills.
Bella wrenched a Xerun's head backward by brute force, then shot it through the neck where the armor didn't cover.
Natasha worked the same angle, but more elegantly—she jammed her stun baton into a gap in the enemy's armor plating, then shot it in the back of the skull.
The Winchesters used close-quarters grappling and their uncanny father-son coordination to dispatch five Xerun without looking like they were trying hard.
Barbara—every bit the elite operative Natasha was—was already showing hints of the future Mockingbird. She had no reason to hide her abilities here. Knife in the left hand, gun in the right, she put down two Xerun herself without taking a scratch.
Heather, at the far end, was working with her great-uncle. She used the chainsaw to sever the aliens' legs while he followed up with his gun, dropping two that way. When he ran dry on the third, he wrapped his massive arms around the Xerun's neck and squeezed—the motion eerily reminiscent of Captain America choking out Ultron. He was luckier than Cap, though. Alien necks had none of Ultron's structural integrity. He strangled it to death with his bare hands.