“Come on!” Dane dove forward, grabbed a hold of Osgud’s elbow, and yanked him back from the thing as it was jackknifing and rolling itself over, proceeding to half-entangle itself still further.
“What is that thing!?” Osgud shouted, scrabbling to his feet as he and Dane separated, fanning out on either side. “It’s different than any of the other crawdads!”
“I don’t know what it is,” Dane muttered as the creature finally ripped through the shirts wrapped over its head. “But it doesn’t belong here.” He fired.
The laser hit the creature along the side of the flank, and it convulsed, running forward again. This time, Osgud fired, striking one leg as it threw itself at the two men.
“Break!” Dane found himself shouting, flinging himself backward as he fired again.
“Ach!” But his leg had gotten caught in something. One of the clothes rails. He hit the floor with a thump, and then the Exin creature hit him.
“Sssss-krargh!” The thing roared into Dane’s face as he suddenly felt the weight of it crush against his waist and legs.
My legs! There was the familiar flash of panic as Dane remembered another time when he had been unable to move his lower body. He flung his hands up to grab at the side of the thing’s head, just in time before it lunged downwards toward his own head—
“Rargh!” Dane roared with the effort, feeling the pistons and servos in his suit’s arms and shoulders tightening and exerting pressure as they tried to hold the creature’s biting jaws back.
It didn’t have any apparent tongue that Dane could see (and he had a fairly anatomical view right now) and neither did it appear to have any eyes, either. Instead, the thing had scaled nubs running along what might be its jaws or its brow, for all he knew. Its maw was three-part, each with rows of teeth. It looked large and strong enough to clamp entirely around Dane’s head inside of his Mech suit—and Dane didn’t want to find out if the thing could crush it.
“Get off!” Dane forced the head of the thing back with a violent shove. But as soon as his arms locked out, he couldn’t push it off him. The thing squirmed and attempted to get to his face once more.
“Shoot it! Osgud—for frack’s sake, shoot it!” Dane was shouting, pleading.
“I am!” came Osgud’s reply over the suit-to-suit speakers. Then Dane realized that his sensors had been trying to alert him to the glow of laser and thermal fire so close by, which he presumed was Osgud pounding the thing with the wrist laser…
And it still wasn’t even reacting.
“It’s too big!” Osgud was shouting.
“I can’t hold it much longer!” Dane’s arms, even assisted with all of the mechanical added strength, were starting to tire. They started to shake and lower toward his head…
“Argh!” Dane was roaring in anger and frustration, his arms shaking as the snapping head got closer and closer, inch by inch…
No. With a grunt, he put all of his strength into turning his arm, twisting it so that it punched straight into the mouth of the thing.
He felt the softness of the back of the creature’s gullet for a brief second. Then the crunch as the thing tightened its jaws around his arm. The grind and compaction of the metal plates.
He fired his wrist laser…
“SKRAKH!” There was an explosion as gobbets of sinew and green flesh splattered over Dane’s helmet, and he felt the alien body convulse and shiver.
“Is it dead!? Is it dead!?” he was shouting frantically as he threw his arms about his face.
And the thing’s immense bulk slid off him with a heavy roll to the floor. It gave off a gibbering, sighing sound as it hit the floor weakly, twitching.
“Holy frack, I think it is.” Osgud’s voice was barely more than a whisper. “I think you killed your first Exin!”
“Yay me,” Dane said with a groan, pushing himself up to stand to feel an electric spasm of pain in his legs.
No, please, not now… he thought, but the pain subsided quickly as his medical unit injected him with another wave of the doctor’s antigen.
“Thank heavens,” he muttered to himself. Perhaps it was only an echo of the pain that his body remembered from the first time.
“Damn right. That thing almost had you!” Osgud mistook his murmuring, stepping around the body to look at it in wonder.
It’s huge, about the size of a cow, Dane thought, and now that it had collapsed on its side, he could see clearly that high on its back was a large, nub-like, bony extrusion.
“It looks like some kind of spike,” Osgud murmured, stepping forward a little.
“Whoa…” Dane urged caution, but, as expected perhaps, Osgud ignored him, reaching forward to poke at it with one giant metal finger of his suit.
For the bone plate to suddenly twist, horribly organically, and there to exude a dirty brown mist—
“Eurgh!” Osgud jumped back, shouting half in revulsion, half in laughter. “That thing farts!”
>Warning! Biological Agent Detected!
Dane’s suit sensors flared into life. “Er, Osgud?” Dane was backing away, and now Osgud was, too, as his own suit was feeding him similar information.
>Biological Analysis: Exinase Compound, concentration 100%…
“Frack!” Osgud was a lot more eager to jump out of the way of the plume as it erupted from the thing’s back to billow as it hit the roof.
“Thankfully we’ve got the suits, but still…” the Acting Lieutenant was saying.
>Warning! Suit Bio-filters will be overwhelmed in T-minus 20 seconds…19…18…
“Move it!” Dane snarled, and both he and Osgud reacted instinctively, turning to run for the store entrance, and out of the way of the approaching, settling cloud.
“Control? Control!” Osgud was shouting into his comms. “This is Acting Lieutenant Osgud of Team Alpha, requesting Sergeant Lashmeier…”
It seemed that Osgud’s unwillingness to admit to difficulties did not extend to the crippling Exin virus, Dane thought. Their feet crunched out of the store, and Dane pointed toward the way out. To what he hoped was still the way out.
“This way!”
>Incoming Comms/Sgt. Lashmeier…
>Acting Lieutenant, we got a grade-A viral storm rolling in. Your suits will keep you protected in the short-term, but find cover. Secure your positions and await further orders!
The Sergeant’s voice was tight with controlled emotion, and Dane heard Osgud swear under his breath.
“Sarge—is it the Exin?” he was saying.
>What!? Of course it’s the Exin, Acting Lieutenant! Where do you think these storms come from, my ass!?
Not his ass, Dane thought—but it was clear that the sergeant didn’t know about this beast that they had just encountered. Dane broke into the open comms channel.
“Sergeant Lashmeier sir, this is Private Williams. We have had a direct contact with the enemy. The Exin enemy, sir. I think that it is producing the viral storms…” Dane said.
>What!? Repeat yourself, Private!
Dane took a breath to do just that, but then there was the crackle of shots and the glitch of static over the communicator, followed by the muffled swearing of the sergeant himself.
>Belay that order. Secure your positions. Eliminate the enemy.
The line cut, and Dane and Osgud had skidded to a halt to look at each other.
“They were in contact,” Dane breathed. “I bet a dollar…”
“Hmm,” Osgud nodded, glowering seriously. “I don’t know how the Exin got down here, or what that thing was exactly—but our fellow Marines are under attack,” he was saying, as their HUD started to wash with small orange arrows, indicating that if they chose to go to map view, they would see the tell-tale digital signatures of multiple contact events between Marines and… something else.
“We need to get out of here, find Varakis and Greene,” Osgud was saying, breaking into a run in the direction that Dane had been guiding them. “Then we work out how to get to them.”
Osgud didn’t answer.
20
Bazooka
“We’re picking up fire two-oh-five klicks due west-northwest of us,” Greene was saying when Osgud and Dane finally met up with them.
It had turned out that Dane’s directions had been right, and had eventually led them to a wide set of checkerboard marble stairs leading up to Lafayette Gardens. Another small square that once had raised, planted beds, but was now a lower depression in seas of accompanying tides of rubble.
“That’ll be Green Squad.” Osgud nodded, turning to look in the same direction. They had kept comms open with Varakis and Greene to coordinate with them here. They told them of the situation—and the creature that they had found.
“That thing made the Exin-virus,” Dane said in revulsion, disgust, and awe. “And it was sitting down there, under my city.”
“Save your anger for when it counts, Williams,” Osgud muttered matter-of-factly. “Okay. We’ve got arm lasers, but it took a whole heap of them to bring even one of those things down,” he was saying. “I say we head off to support Green Squad, then move off to Blue.”
It wasn’t a democracy, of course, but still Dane felt uneasy. Their detour through Watkin’s Plaza had taken them further east, the same direction that Heathcote’s blood had been going in and that the original life signs had been traveling in, as well…
We never leave anyone behind, Dane thought. That was one of the codes that the Federal Marines lives by, isn’t it?
“Heathcote,” he said, as Osgud started turning to look for the easiest direction out of Lafayette.
“Private?” Osgud glanced at him.
“Look, sir…” Dane tapped the side of his head, indicating the HUD face plate they all had. “Biological scanners,” he asked, and, in response, his screen was washed with a digital overlay, showing the green blips of the Marines around him, the distant, hazier green glows of Green Squad further out—and a smaller, much nearer collection of green dots…
“We’re still close, sir,” Dane said. “To our original mission—and I know this city, I can lead us in…”
Dane heard Osgud’s snarl of annoyance, turning physically one way and then the other as he considered his options. Support his fellow Marines, or get the mission done…
“The Sergeant said secure our positions…” Osgud growled.
“He also said eliminate the enemy, sir,” Dane pointed out. “And our original mission objectives are still standing,” he said, which was clearly obvious as they scrolled along the top of Dane’s HUD face plate. It hadn’t been updated.
In the end, it was perhaps obvious what Osgud would choose, Dane thought. Osgud wanted to prove himself. Just like I do, too.
“Red Squad splits,” he said abruptly. “Varakis and Greene—rendezvous with Green Team. Keep comms open and tell them you’re coming in. Coordinate your attacks with them as you approach,” Osgud said, before turning to look at Dane.
“And Private Williams? I hope you’re right about this,” he muttered.
“So do I, sir,” Dane said, and a little while later, they were moving off through the rubble.
“I thought you said you knew where you were going!?” Osgud barked at Dane as they crawled over a giant pile of rubble that rose between two high-rise buildings.
“I do. It just doesn’t help that an alien invasion happened,” Dane said as they crested the rise.
“Wait!” Dane breathed out.
The green blips of life flashed that his destination had been reached, and they were right on top of their targets…
“Down there, look…” Dane said, hunkering down to see where the giant drift of rubble rolled down toward what had once been a large boulevard in the middle of standing high-rises. The space was still clear in the middle, and it looked like it was being used as an unofficial landing port. There was a heavy drone copter sitting on the rounded bubble, and a group of people heading toward it…
But none of them were Doctor Heathcote. Dane blinked.
“Dane, you idiot! You’ve had us tracking looters this whole time!” Osgud was saying, turning to Dane where they were hidden.
“No—wait,” Dane checked the life signs once more. “I was registering five, now there are four…” he said in confusion. Where was the fifth? Was it Heathcote?
“Expand sensor range,” Dane ordered. Maybe Heathcote was inside one of the buildings. Maybe there was a lot of material in between Dane’s suit sensors and the doctor…
“I haven’t got time for this!” Osgud stood up. “My brothers are out there fighting for their lives—and you bring me here for this!?”
And at that point, as soon as Osgud had become visible over the rise of rubble, there was a shout from below.
“AMP!”
And it was followed by the sudden clatter of gunfire.
“Osgud!” Dane was shouting, as he rolled himself down the slide to where the acting lieutenant had landed, as the tirade of bullets and shells had pushed him off balance.
“You okay? What’s your medical!?” Dane was saying. Dane could see a whole spray of bullet marks, scratches and dents across his chest.
“I’m fine, goddammit!” Osgud was snarling, shoving Dane out of the way as he staggered back to his feet. “Those cheap, sons of…” he was muttering, scrambling up to the rise once again. “I’m in a damn AMP suit, and they think that they’re going to scare me with their pea-shooters!” he was shouting, as Dane broke into a scramble after him…
Osgud reached the rise first, a fraction of a second before Dane did.
For Dane to see one of the four life signs down there—people dressed in a motley collection of visors, armored jackets, and general emergency-responder gear—was raising a very nasty-looking tubular shape to his shoulder. He aimed it at the accommodating target that was himself and Osgud, silhouetted on top of the rubble, against the skyline.
“Bazooka!” Dane shouted, grabbing Osgud by the shoulders and jumping backward—
21
Hold Tight
Pha-BOOM!
The explosion took the entire top of the rubble slide with it, transforming at least some of it immediately into smoke, flame, and pulverized stone dust—but the vast majority it turned into hailstones of concrete and stone.
>Defensive Plate: Maximum Deployment…
Dane felt the world spin as he tumbled head over heels through the air, the force throwing his body faster, and making his jaws ache.
Wham! And then he hit the ground, and in turn was being hit by the deadly rain of boulders. Dane felt every shield plate that he had on his body extend to their maximum positions, and if he could see his form from outside, it would have looked like his shoulders and back had flared outwards like some kind of lizard in the heat, the mantle around his neck extending, hiding his head.
But it still hurts an awful lot, Dane had to admit. He tucked his knees and arms in, rolling, bouncing, and scrambling down the far side of the rubble layer.
“Urk…” He groaned as the roaring sound continued for a moment longer in his ears than it did outside his suit. When he could open his eyes, he saw that everything was an ochre haze around him, with just the deeper shadows of the buildings standing nearby.
They fired a goddamn bazooka at us. A bazooka!
“Osgud?” he croaked, checking his HUD readout.
>OSGUD, (Act. Lt.) …
>>Status: COMPROMISED
“Oh frack,” Dane groaned, seeing somewhere in the direction of his superior officer was the green neon tag of Osgud’s suit marker, even though he couldn’t actually see the officer himself. Or it should be green, anyway. Dane saw it flicker to orange, back to green, and then to steady orange once again.
He’s injured. Energy rushed through Dane’s body as he pushed himself to his feet, feeling another twinge of the electric pain sweep up through his legs as he did so. He ignored it, pushing o
n through the murk of pulverized dust and almost falling over the rubble until he saw Osgud’s suit.
One side of it was now almost entirely blackened, with several of Osgud’s defensive plates severely crumpled.
“Oh hell!” Dane crouched at the side of the man. “Osgud? Osgud, can you hear me?” He was saying, before hissing in agitation. His HUD screen was still tracking the looters, two of which were advancing toward them.
How the hell did we let people not in Mech suits pull this one on us!? Dane was growling.
“Marine Control,” he said out loud, knowing that his words would open a channel.
“This is Private Williams, requesting immediate evac and response on my location. Acting Lieutenant Osgud is down, repeat: Marine down…”
>Incoming Message/Marine Control…
>Private Williams, this is Marine Control. Request noted, and we have an evolving situation on the ground. We have Private Osgud’s signature already. Hold tight, Marine—we’ll get there. Out.
Hold tight, Dane thought, seeing the shapes of the two looters approaching on his scanners, but apparently at a slower rate, as they had to be climbing the far side of the bank.
“Can’t hold tight here,” Dane muttered, pretty much to himself. He came to a decision. He leaned forward, grabbed Osgud’s shoulders, and hauled him across the rubble field, dragging him backward toward the nearest of the buildings.
“We’d better pray that those mouth-breathers don’t have scanners on them…” Dane was muttering as he dislodged blocks and rubble. Finally, he felt his boots crunching on something much more solid, sliding across into the third-floor open wall of the office building that had sat here.
Mech Warrior: Born of Steel (Mechanized Infantry Division Book 1) Page 11
