-Orbit around Tosev 3 (Earth) -

Fleetlord Atvar was looking again at the little hologram of the Tosevite, who was nothing more than a barbarian to his eyes. Not that the Tosevites were now civilized, but this hologram showed him an even more barbaric one, wearing pelts and a simply iron sword. The Tosevites his men were facing now were different, barbarians still, but different.

Who would have thought that something like this could ever happen, that a species could develop so fast. In the thousands of years the Race has traveled through outer space, they have conquered the world of the Rabotevs and the Hallesi, and both had developed at the same slow pace as the Race.

But the Tosevites smashed all their theories what kind of species would develop to become the dominant species of a planet, and also how fast they would evolve. Jet powered killercrafts, landcruisers, ships that were large enough to house an entire group of killercrafts, to act as a mobile base, they even were at the early stages of building explosive metal bombs, something they need to stop at all costs.

At the beginning of their conquest they were successful, really successful. The Race conquered nearly the entire southern hemisphere, and large parts of the northern one. But the Tosevites have been at war against each other while the Race invaded, so they had so large amounts of weapons, which, even while they were primitive, inflicted large losses to their stocks of landcruisers and troop-carriers and killed many of their brave males.

And now they have even united themselves against them. Just seven days ago the most powerful empires and not-empires have started to coordinate their attacks against their lines. They were still drawn back by the Race's forces, but at a much slower pace now.

Atvar's head hurt from even just thinking about this. Their losses were already going up in the millions, while during the previous conquests they did not even loose 100 males. It was just horrible.

He yawned, and looked at the hologram again. He had not been asleep the whole night, and instead watched the hologram or on occasions also the planet below him. From orbit he could not see the battlefields and somehow this soothed his stressed nerves. It all looked so peaceful and calm. If the Big-Uglies would have surrendered when he ordered the destruction of Berlin and Washington DC it would already be peaceful.

But it was not.

The sudden humming of the intercom interrupted his thoughts.

"What is it?" he snarled at the loudspeaker. His mood had been better. But that was a long time ago.

"My fleetlord. One of the shuttles with samples of Tosevite military technology arrived about one hour ago and we finished our first examination. The results are...frightening. Please...you have to see it for yourself."

He squinted his eye-turrets. It just seemed to get worse and worse.



- in the cargo bay of the Bannership in orbit around Tosev 3 -

"What do we have here?" He looked at a table with various weapons. They were attached with small straps so they would not fly around in the zero-G environment.

Ttomalss pointed at two bulky weapons. One was partly made of wood at the back, and had a long bent magazine, the other one seemed to be partially made of some sort of plastic. They were large, but that was normal, nearly every weapon that the Tosevites had was larger than their own ones.

"This one here" Ttomalss pointed at the one with the bend magazine "seems to be the new standard infantry weapon of the SSSR. It is...frightening, that much I can tell you. In the last few days we got more and more reports of Tosevites all over the SSSR and also other not-empires that border to the SSSR, were using this sort of weapon. The range is far greater than what they had before, the ammunition is larger and therefore much more powerful, it can penetrate the body armor of our soldiers with ease, and the cadence is something between 400 to 500 shots a minute, if there was a magazine that large. Until now we only have been able to catch a single Tosevite, who was using this weapon.

It may look similar to the Deutsche assault rifle 'Sturmgewehr 44', which we have seen been used by some Deutschlanders, but the soldier insisted that this 'Kalaschnikowa' was developed independently by their own engineers.

The other is the new standard weapon of the Deutschlanders. Of this weapon we don't even have an idea what they call it. The effective range is about three times as far as the one of previous weapons of them, and also like the other one has higher cadence and firepower.

I cannot explain this. These weapons...resemble our own ones much more than they should. Within just a few weeks the Tosevites seemed to have made a technological leap of several years maybe even decades. "

The fleetlord looked at the weapon cautiously, then he picket up a single bullet that was attached to the magazine at the side of the weapon.

"Can these bullets penetrate the hulls of our troopcarriers and landcruisers?" the fleetlord asked, looking at the bullet.

"Of the landcruisers, no. But we have reports of Tosevites using them as sniper rifles too, with very high effectiveness. We have lost dozens of landruiser commanders to these new weapons, because they were shot when they were looking for Tosevite resistance by looking out of their hatches. I suggest to prohibit this tactic from now on, we cannot risk to loose anymore commanders."

"What are these other weapons?" The fleetlord squinted his eye-turrets even more, looking at them with both his eye turrets. He already had an idea what they were for.

"My fleetlord this here is unfortunately a very effective weapon against our landcruisers and troopcarriers. It is a rocket propelled grenade with a shaped charge. Even while it cannot penetrate most parts of their armor, it is very effective by destroying their tracks and wheels, and also their sensors, which renders them useless until we can repair them.

The Deutschlanders and also the Americans have already started to simply built larger versions of their own anti-landcruiser rockets, which are even more effective than this counterpart here. The problem is, they also started to use them against our helicopters, which is a very successful tactic unfortunately. I would suggest to use the gunships only in areas we already pacified to suppress possible uprisings."

The Fleetlord still held the single bullets in his hand, watching it against the light above him, as if he could get to know how it was built.

"Any more 'good' news?"

The speech of Winston Churchill and the other leaders of Tosev 3 surprisingly had some effect around the entire planet. In many places where his radio broadcast had been heard people started uprising in the hope of total independence from any colonial reign. Thousands of small towns were now under control of the humans again, but only the towns, no big cities or their surroundings. Atvar had decided to leave them. Should they try to conquer more land, they would be crushed. He gave them a week at best before the would surrender again.

Ttomalss gulped down, and looked at his notes. Normally he could bring up the information from his memory, but there were so many changes lately that he could not keep track.

"We...we are getting in more reports that both the Deutsche and the Britainish have started to build more of their primitive jet-powered killercrafts. Even though they are primitive, in large numbers they could cause heavy damage to our troops.

There are also rumors of totally new landcruisers from all over Deutschland, the SSSR and the USA. From each not-empire we have a single report of Tosevite landcruisers luring smaller groups of our landcruisers into traps and...totally annihilated these groups, only five males from all three incidents managed to escape somehow.

They reported to have seen landruisers that are larger, faster, better armed and with much bigger guns than other types. Even though the groups resisted fiercely and destroyed many of them, they managed to destroy entire groups of our landcruisers. We got only this picture here of one of these Tosevite landcruisers."

Ttomalss handed the fleetlord a piece of paper with a blurred pic of a landcruiser. It seemed that is was made by a high flying killercraft. Sloped armor, large gun, and other traits that were not part of Tosevite landcruisers only a few weeks ago.

"And there are rumors of new Wonder-weapons the Deutsche Fuhrer has announced over radio to fight us. Some of our soldiers have shown first signs of anxiety to fight against them."

The fleetlord's tail-stump wagged in an angry manner. How in the name of the Emperor was this possible?

He looked at Ttomalss again, with just one eye-turret.

"Next time you find any trace of change in Tosevite technology you tell me immediately, no matter what day time or what I am doing. Don't examine it first, but tell me as soon as you got knowledge of it."

He moved out of the cargo bay and to the bridge of the ship, to look for any changes on the front-lines. The Tosevites were still resisting. Parts of Atvar could not help but to be impressed by their stubbornness.



-Somewhere in the Harz-mountains, Germany -

"Gentlemen...to be totally serious...I am impressed." the interdimensional visitor said.

He looked at the Leopard 1 tank and still could barely believe it. The German engineers truly managed to build a tank that was way beyond anything that has been built yet.

"Well, we would not have been able to build it without the blueprints you gave us. And still some things are not as effective as it should be, because of our limited capacity to build this sort of modern technology.

It is a marvelous machine. I still cannot understand though why we did wait so long after the war to build something so effective and beautiful."

"I already explained the time-line of my dimension two times to you, I will not do it a third time."

The nano-assemblers couldn't build anything that was beyond the year 1961, so it was decided that they would build now first the weapons they needed to hold the Race at bay, then build the best weapons that were possible to assemble, while the human engineers would start to build weapons and other technology that was beyond that date in the normal factories with the blueprints their visitor gave them, like the Leopard 1 or the M60 Patton.

All over the world the nano-assemblers have first build about several 10 million G3s, AK47s and other assaults rifles, and of course RPGs and similar anti-tank weapons and enough ammunition to build a mountain from it. Parts would be smuggled into Race held territory with submarines, but the most part will be teleported into towns and cities all over the planet by the visitor.

Behind him the assembly line rattled constantly with boxes full of ammunition and new weapons, ready to be used against the Race, and the flashes of the nano-assmblers lit up the cave.

"Have the first stocks of guided missiles reached their target?" the visitor asked.

"As far as we know yes. We already have several ME 262s, Glosters Meteors, F-86s and Mig 15s equipped with the first Sidewinder missiles. I hope we can destroy at least some jets of the lizzards with them. "

"Don't worry, even if we will not destroy as many as we hope to do, the fact that we have now guided missiles too, and we even have counter-measurements against their missiles, will shake their confidence. Believe me, we will win this war."



- Somewhere over North-West Germany -

Flight-leader Dreek looked at the scenery below him. He had just raided a Tosevite city again, and again his group did not experience any noticeable resistance. The two killercrafts that tried to intercept them did not even come close to them, they were simply shot down by his radar-guided missiles.

"And another victory for the Empire." he could here his wingmate say over the radio.

"True. To me it is unintelligible why those primitives did not already surrender to us."

"They do not because they are primitives. What did you expect from them? Besides this is much better that we can actually use our killercrafts in a real fight. Not like during the last conquest where the pilots were rarely used at all." Muzzel lamented over the radio.

"Again truth."

Suddenly he noticed four dots on his radar. They were fast, much faster than the previous machines they had shot down. But it was nothing to be afraid of, they would be go down as fast as the other ones.

"Muzzel, prepare for 'battle'." Dreek said, emiting a hiss, that was the equivalent of a Tosevite laugh, that to his ear-holes sounded like a bark of an animal he has seen here on Tosev 3. That would be nearly too easy.

Suddenly without warning he could hear the bleeping of the missile-warner over the radio.

"Flight-leader Dreek, I have something locked on me. Trying to evade."

They broke the formation and flew into different directions each. He could see the missile now. It was fast and coming directly from the group of Tosevite killercrafts. The first one missed, but he could already several more spots coming towards them.

"Flight-leader Dreek, several more missiles are on my tail-stump. I cannot shake them off, bailing out!" he yelled and just a second later he was outside his killercraft, which was hit by two missiles just a few seconds later.

Dreek snarled angrily as his wingmates killercraft went up in flames. He re-aimed his machine behind the enemy killercrafts and locked on all four machines with his missiles and shot them away.

White trails of smoke erupted from their tails as they moved towards their aims. In just a few more seconds all of them would be gone. But then, without warning three of the missiles changed direction and aimed to a point slightly below the hostile killercrafts and exploded there. The last missile hit one of the machines but he could see that the pilot was able to bail out too.

For the first time he could now see the machines clearly. The were primitive. Two jet engines attached to the underside of their wings, normal wings that were swept backwards, instead of modern delta wings. He could also see that the missiles they used were attached to the belly of their machines, and not to their wings. It simply did not look right to his eye turrets.

Again he locked his last two missiles on them and fired. While they flew towards their targets, he prayed that they would hit. He could see that the machines discharged something, it looked like metal dust or similar. And again the missiles changed their course and instead of hitting the machines they flew towards that metal dust and exploded without doing any harm to the Tosevite machines.

He tried to lock on tosevite killercrafts with his guns but suddenly they slowed down abruptly and he overshot the enemy group. Then he could hear the radar-warner in his own cockpit and he saw the missiles coming towards him, there were four of them. He pulled the lever and increased his speed to outmaneuver them.

Three missiles missed but the fourth missiles found its target.

The slam knocked the lizard nearly out, if felt like he flew straight on into a mountain. At first he did not know what happened. He thought the missile just scraped him, but when he looked at the left wing, he nearly catapulted himself out of the cockpit.

There was a missile sticking our of the wing. It has penetrated right from below and he could see sparks from the electronics that were hanging out of his machine, the head of the missile pointing at him directly. The missile obviously did now explode, but what if it did now? He could bail out now but he was over enemy territory.

After a few seconds of thought the decisions was made by the Tosevite machines when they started firing with their guns at the killercraft pilot. He noticed again that he was locked on, something that has never been happening before.

He pushed the lever and flew off at full speed, leaving the Tosevite machines behind him, the enemy missile still in its place in his wing.



- Race airbase in central Poland -

"Explain yourself. Why did interrupt your mission?"

Dreek somehow has managed to survive the flight without neither setting the machine on fire, nor did the missile explode.

He was still shacking from the stress during the flight, always the fear that the missile might explode any moment. And now he was even more stressed, not just because of the fact that he had to explain to his superior but also from the cold weather he had to endure. He was standing outside the hangar, where his machine and the Tosevite missile were examined and the cold weather of the Polish winter did not help him.

"Superior Sir. As I already said our mission was successful . We were able to destroy the Tosevite depots but on our way back we were intercepted by several Tosevite killercrafts. They were jet-powered and were even using guided missiles. My wing-mate was shot down as we tried to evade them. I fired back but the big-uglies were using some sort of counter-devices. How it works I don't know but it made the missiles change their course. I was barely able to fly back because of that missile in my wing..."

"...and you did a very good job in bringing your machine back to us." the pilot heard a very familiar voice saying. He turned around and saw a hologram of his fleetlord and instantly he lowered his eye-turrets.

"My fleetlord." He just said and held his eye turrets lowered.

"Thanks to you we have gained knowledge of this threat. Our scientists and engineers will now examine this missile so we can hopefully built our own counter-devices." The hologram looked at the commander of the base.

"Base commander, transfer this brave pilot to another base, somewhere with better climatic conditions, maybe Arabia. He truly deserves it."

The hologram vanished and the base commander just hissed at the pilot.

"You are lucky that the fleetlord showed his mercy to you, because I would have punished you for your cowardice, running away from the battle, instead of fighting the big-uglies."

He plodded away and left a pretty perplexed Dreek behind.

At least at his new base he would not have to deal with this base commander anymore.

The it struck him. Arabia? That peninsula, that resembled Home so much that it was nearly a copy of it? He could barely believe his luck.