Yeesh. It took me an hour this morning to write just 165 words. Not a great start to the day...

They were on us before we knew they were there, and by then it was too late. The initial attack put us on the defensive, our mantles rendered completely rigid and almost entirely opaque, all of us momentarily trapped and immobile inside our protective individual shells, unable even to return fire. They disarmed us quickly, relieving us of our wrist-mounted projectors, and taking my cap-gun from its holster. By the time our mantles regained flexibility, we were surrounded, strange weapons trained on us. Our interlinks struggled to translate their archaic language, broadcast to us over the radio waves, but the dead sun circling overhead peppered their transmissions with static, so that we received only an incoherent string of hate and scorn.

But that was later, the end of one mission and the beginning of an other. It had started so simply, without incident, that I fooled myself into thinking it would all be that easy. I should have known it was too good to last.