[ WP ] aliens invade earth but what the do n't realise is that humans have been fighting each other forever and have become very good at it .

I should have realized how absurd the situation was becoming before I even broke orbit. The warning signs were there. Even the streaks of fire rising up to meet my landing craft would have been a decent point to back out, but no, all I was was all in. Now they ’ ve burned my ships and I ’ m stuck on this rock. 
 
 Honestly the signs were clear from the moment my fleet rose up out of quantum and I was blasted with the incessant radio transmissions of this world. 
 
 At first I thought there ’ d been a mistake. I thought my Brood Host had shunted me off toward another integrated world, an impossible to believe mistake, but I was grasping at straws those first few orbits. The number of individual signals was immense. The only thing like it to my knowledge was a brood world that had its units augmented through cybernetic adhesion. 
 
 I peered down at the world, and sure enough the surface was covered with a vast array of units in cities and towns, all over really, almost all of them broadcasting via some little piece of hardware. To my surprise, none I could see was directly linked to their devices. Most carried them in cloth coverings strapped to their sides. 
 
 I thought it was strange, again, another warning sign, but hey, aliens. What are you gon na do? If the local host didn ’ t like physical integration, who was I to argue? I was just here to conquer the planet. 
 
 I picked over the transmissions, there was zero cohesion. It was impossibly chaotic. I couldn ’ t believe it. My only explanation at the time was that the local brood was in some calibration stage of its digital overlay, weeding out faulty hardware or broken operating units. 
 
 It ’ s almost funny looking back. In that moment I thought I ’ d caught a lucky break. That much distortion in my opponent's mind? It was the perfect time to attack. 
 
 A weird rush of perspectives pulsed through me as the units I would use as my ground forces dropped out of cryostorage. 
 
 Millions of my eyes watched millions of my hands pick up weapons and armor. Millions of my feet hit the deck plating as they marched through berthing docks into landing craft. Preparations were made, targets surveyed and locked in, each the first strokes of a battle plan that would be all too easy with the enemy so unprepared. I even wondered if it would be bloodless, if I would land and just march through its cities flipping units over to my hoard without resistance. I had a million grins. 
 
 It was around this time I got my last warning. There had been a huge uptick in the radio chatter since my arrival, I figured some last ditch attempt to finish a calibration run, but it really went crazy when one of my ships collided with a primitive space station. I didn ’ t suffer any damage, the thing just snapped apart and spread into pieces, but wow, did the amount of broadcasting explode after that. Almost every unit down there was sending out signals on their hardware. 
 
 That was it, really. The single moment that was a huge red flag. I blew right past it though, just like my ships dropping through the clouds. It was nearly a month before I realized I wasn ’ t fighting a brood. Each of those little units was independent! It ’ s total chaos as far as I ’ m concerned. 
 
 Seems to work for them though. I mean, I burned their cities to the ground, scattered the little guys to the ends ot the planet, and they just keep coming back! They ’ re all different too. I mean one area keeps popping up with armored vehicles and planes, another keeps leaving bombs for my units to find, and another just waited for winter then bombed a couple of my divisions into a big crater. That ’ s just the ones that stand out. Everywhere I go, I ’ m running into opposition, frightening, creative, explosive opposition. It ’ s incredibly hard for me to keep track of every front, and it leads to a lot of simultaneous headaches. 
 
 None of it hurts as bad as those first streaks though. I was probably three quarters of the way through my landing when those little guys started nailing my ships in orbit with nuclear weapons. Nukes! Can you even imagine that? This world isn ’ t just packed with independent thinkers, they ’ re all insane nut jobs! 
 
 I mean sure, war is always a numbers game, but nukes? I mean come on, they just obliterate some units and then you have a spot on the planet you can never visit. Why would you do that when you could just throw a couple million units at someone? I mean, even a billion wouldn ’ t be unreasonable. After a trade like that it would only take me a couple planetary orbits to get my numbers back up, but these little guys seem to have a death wish. They have stockpiles of the things! 
 
 Anyway, my ships are gone. I salvaged a subwave transmitter, thus my message, and, uh, well actually this is a little embarrassing. I mean, I might even be the first to ask this, I certainly don ’ t know anyone else who has had to, but could one of you lend me a couple million hands with this planet? 

