In the freezing cold of the Egyptian desert, the cloudless night sky glistens with what seems to be a thousand stars twinkling above the Earth and the windless evening was so tranquil and peaceful, you would never of known this was part of a combat zone.

 A combat zone that was expanding further across North Africa as Rommel's Afrika Corps pushed the British out of Libya into the realm of Egypt, where  the Western Desert Campaign was developing into a climax between the Axis Powers and the Allied Powers of who would triumph in the region once and for all. The British were in the process of developing defensive positions near El Alamein to outfox the Desert Fox or deal with the consequences of losing Egypt, the Suez Canal, and even the oil rich Arabian Peninsula. 

A lone British soldier stood sentry in the dark shivering from the coldness of the Sahara Desert, stands watch over a small camp seven kilometers west of El Alamein, where three American made British M3 Grant battle tanks made camp for the night. The tank crews were sleeping on the ground in makeshift tents, while a few tankers slept in their tanks, instead of dealing with the sandy desert ground. 

Suddenly, the desert still of the night was disturbed as the ground began to rumble and shake. The British sentry was trying to balance himself, but was knocked off his feet as the desert ground opened up with a storm of sand drenching the air. As the British sentry tried to clear the grainy sand out of his eyes, he heard a loud mechanical twirling sound and then his vision cleared with the image of a humongous cylinder shaped machine mounted with a high velocity still spinning drill. The British sentry was trying to understand what he saw before him. He did not fully comprehend what he saw, but the machine was a tank-like boring machine,  capable of drilling  deep down into sand, dirt, and stone called a Subterrene. 

Then another subterrene popped out of the ground and then another. The air was filled with swirling sand and earthen debris. One of the subterrenes had destroyed one of the Grant battle tanks with its high speed drill when the subterrene had burst out of the ground directly underneath the Grant battle tank causing a massive explosion and littering the camp area with metal fragments. All the subterrenes started to deploy tank treads of either side of the drilling vehicles to start moving on the surface. 

Each subterene was three stories high and almost a hundred feet long. They were each made out of steel and their black colored metal plates were painted with an ancient Roman gold colored symbol of power, the Fasces, a bundle of sticks featuring an axe, indicating the power over life and death, now the symbol of Italian National Fascist Party. Artillery pieces started popping out of the sides and tops of each subterrene. 

One of the British Grant tanks fired two of its artillery guns at one of the subterrenes and both shells hit the subterrene's hull and exploded, but in a bouncing direction away from their target. Each shell was unable to penetrate the subterrene's hull. Now all three subterrenes began aiming their guns at the Grant tank. As the Grant tank began reloading their guns, all three subterrenes fired all their guns dead on and the Grant tank jumped into the air from the gigantic explosions. The British Grant disintegrated away into fiery remnants. 

The third British Grant tank had already turned on its engine and was trying to make a run for it. In the sky there appeared several glossy black fighter planes  with ultra thin wings and a single rear propeller. The obsidian black phantom fighter planes started to chase down the last slow moving British Grant tank and launched a barrage of ground attack rockets blasting the tank to bits. 

The British sentry was sitting on the ground completely paralyzed watching this slaughter, but then he heard the screams and moaning of his dead and dying comrades, which woke him up from his temporary paralysis. He got up, dropped his rifle, threw off his backpack and helmet, and made a desperate dash into the dark. 

The British sentry stopped, stared in utter disbelief, then threw himself to the ground as a series of low level flying vehicles almost crashed into the British sentry if he wouldn't of hit the deck. He sat up and started to look behind him, where he saw a couple dozen of men hovering and zooming quickly in what looked like flying trash cans. These flying trash cans began hovering over the raging fires blazing above the former campsite. The British sentry observed on the front of each hover craft was a blue painted rectangle with a gold sword in front of a single gold wing and a silver star below the sword and wing. On both sides of the hover craft was a gold painted scorpion. These one man flying platforms had machine guns mounted on either side of the pilots cylinder and a single searchlight mounted on the top front of the cylinder. 

The British sentry stood up, turned around, and started to run again, but this time he was noticed. He heard the Italian language being spoke behind him and started to run faster. Several of the flying platforms started to chase him and opened up with their machine guns, which ripped the British sentry to pieces.

As the fires started to burn out and all the British dead stopped making noise, the humming of the subterrene engines started to shut down, and the sound of Italian voices vibrated through the area, there seemed to be new residents of the dead campground, new residents of the Dark Desert.