The dropships zoomed through the sky as the occupants observed the forest. When they approached the town they saw wolves everywhere.

“Are those wolves?” 

“look at that one it's trying to get in the doorway” 

The troopers' conversation was followed by a bang. Sniper had opened the side door of the mechdropper. “get me to that tower in the middle of town. it looks like a church, I think.”

Sniper jumped on the tower and Jack's voice sounded over the comms “alright we're making this our problem. Clara, we're gonna need multiple evac's for the locals. troopers you get them near the open field behind the church our sniper is in. That will be the evac zone. I'll keep it clear of these creatures. speaking off…”

knives detached when the dropper flew over the field. while the dropship landed to let out several troopers. knives landed and grabbed the nearest direwolf. He started speaking like an announcer “welcome to the galaxy's worst show ever: yeet the pupper!” knives tossed the direwolf as hard as he could. “Nice, I got it over the fence.”

 “That was horrible jack.” Sniper said while he unloaded some shots on some direwolves.

Jack responded while pulling his swords in preparation for some approaching direwolves “the joke or the toss?”

“Can’t it be both?” Sniper just sighed and turned he had noticed someone was in the church he was in. in the belltower he found  a latch. Opening it up he saw 3 people being attacked by a direwolf. One man trying to fend it off with a pitchfork. Sniper aimed his rifle and shot the direwolf. The people were stunned and looked behind them. “if you understand me, you might wanna barricade the windows! not the front and backdoor!”

The people looked confused when the door opened letting 4 troopers in “we'll take care of these people Sniper!”. 

Sniper nodded to the trooper and closed the latch returning to his overwatch. a soldier with a patch indicating he was a medic approached the people. “Any wounded?”

“Sanie, do they even understand us?” a rifleman asked the medic. 

still shaken, the man with the pitchfork was the first to respond “um... yes... we understand you. Who are you?”

A stoic female trooper stepped forward “squad N, captain Natlee of the colonizer: navigator and you sir?”

“John uhm... from the farmhouse... I guess?”

“ok mr john. Are you the leader here?”

“uhm no that would be Antony but i have no idea where he is now.”

The other troopers were helping with the barricades on the windows when the door opened. A group of 4 more troopers brought in a few people from the outpost. Among them was Antony frantically talking to a trooper “I need to find my wife and daughter!”

“sir calm down.” Natlee approached him “are you the leader here?”

He turned to the woman in a strange uniform “yes. kind of. look I need to...”

“I heard you on the way in, can you give a description of your family and where you've last seen them.”

“well my daughter has pink hair past her shoulders and…”

“Hold on!” Natlee interrupted “average build? One second.” She pulled up a tablet “Clara, show me some footage of the girl we found near the ship.”

Clara's voice sounded from the tablet “fastest i can do is this image from squad h's dropship. you might need to explain some things though.”

on Natlee’s tablet was the image of paula strapped into a stretcher on a dropship. “That should work. thanks Clara.” showing the image to Antony “is this your daughter? she actually alerted us to your situation.” This would take some explaining.

***

as the sun set outside. The church was surrounded by bodies. A lot of them were direwolves after many of them had died at the blades of Jack's mech. Jack had put up some music because even though the wolves were numerous all they could do was scratch knives’s armor soon he saw other dropships arrive. “knives for dropships. approach my location for pickup. locals will be coming from the churchlike building.”

knives waved while it sliced the last direwolf of this wave. The other wolves had noticed that getting to this big creature was not a good idea. other direwolves had attempted to take out the new humans that had appeared only to be met with bullets. sniper directed where Clara would detect heat/bio-signatures that seemed human in nature. Slowly more squads arrived creating a perimeter around the church. a screen popped up in Snipers helmet. 

-“captain of squad n here. Can I request something Sniper?”- 

“Go ahead captain.”

-“This village's leader is not working with us. insisting we're kidnapping his daughter and preventing him from saving his wife.”-

“Sounds tough, want me to search for his family?”

-“just the wife. his daughter was the girl we spotted after the crash.”-

“That makes it easier. pass me the description and i'll check.”

-“a red haired middle aged woman should be somewhere towards the right side of town.”-

Sniper checked the indicated direction. “I see a few lifesigns... hold on... yep spotted a redhead looking through a second story window. sending images." 

A few seconds passed as Sniper kept an eye on the woman.  He noticed some wolves had spotted her and tried breaking into the house. 

Natlee responded -“target confirmed her name is maria.”- a sudden blast from the rifle rang. -“...did you just?”-

“you're gonna need to send a team there pronto. take knives along the area is crawling with these wolves.” sniper alerted jack to while repositioning. 

“Alright, I'm moving out ahead, send teams after.” said Jack turning his mech towards his next objective.