by S. A. Lusher
Allan heard a distraction up ahead and was relieved.
Killing was tough, and he was disappointed with how good he’d had to get at it, but he took solace in the fact that he often ended up having to kill psychotic, alien monsters that seemed more animal than sentient.
Like the five-man squad of meat machines up ahead that were walking away from him, heading towards the other pod. These things were dead. Pretty much like shooting zombies...something he’d never actually gotten to do. Maybe it was stupid to think so, but honestly would have preferred being on Dis to being on Lindholm.
Allan lined them up and started opening fire, putting them down one by one. As he watched them pitch forward, he heard gunfire from somewhere nearby. Fuck, they weren’t the scouting party, they were back up. Cursing, he finished the squad off and ran forward, towards the sound of gunfire. Well, someone was putting up a good fight.
He finally hit a treeline and found himself at the edge of another clearing. A pod had smashed into the middle of it and one of Echo Team was hiding behind it, their only cover, fighting a losing battle with a half-dozen metal men. Allan shouldered his rifle and opened fire, squeezing the trigger steadily, popping out shot one after another. The metal men were faster this time and two of them whirled on him and opened fire. He grunted as something punched him in the gut. Two more shots whizzed past his head.
Allan dropped to one knee and kept up the fire. The other Spec Ops trooper, he couldn’t tell who it was yet, rallied at this sudden, unexpected help and added their own bullets to the mix. Within a few seconds, the squad of meat machines was taken down to nothing. The gunfire ceased and silence fell across the clearing.
“Thanks for the assist,” the armored figure said as Allan approached.
He realized that it was the smartass tech, Nelson. Some of his natural humor was mellowed and Allan realized he was leaning heavily on the escape pod.
“Are you hurt?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Nelson grunted. “Think I might’ve fucked up my leg in the landing, but I’m not sure if it’s broken. Either way, I can go on, the armor will help provide support.”
“Okay,” Allan said reluctantly, knowing he was right. They didn’t have time for triage. “How’s your pod?” he asked.
“Not sure, hold on.”
Nelson limped around to the front of the pod and stepped inside. A few more moments passed. Allan looked around uncomfortably, wondering if there were other patrols around. There had to be. Nelson stepped back out of the pod.
“Okay, good news and bad news. Comms are down, for whatever reason. Aren’t they always?” he muttered. “Good news, however, is that the radar is intact. There’s some structures nearby, about a kilometer from here.”
“Well, we’ve got our destination,” Allan replied. “Let’s get to it.”
CHAPTER 06
–Rally Point–
Callie felt her stomach roll over lazily as she continued cutting into the pallid flesh of the hideous cyborg thing before her.
It hadn’t really been a great day so far.
First off, she’d dropped her fucking rifle on the way to the pod and hadn’t been able to find it. Then, after punching out into the brilliant blue skies of this glorious unnamed world, hoping that she wouldn’t get blown to bits on the way down, she’d hit dirt and ruined her damned pistol in the landing somehow.
So she had no guns.
To make matters even fucking better, a patrol of metal freaks had shown up within a couple of minutes. She’d barely managed to hide among the trees of the insanely green jungle. Then she’d waited while most of them had headed into the surrounding area, no doubt searching for her, while one remained behind.
That’s when she’d grabbed her knife, snuck up on the fucker and stabbed it in the neck as many times as she possibly could. While most of the other uglies seemed to have weird, custom-made barrels fused into their flesh, this one had a shotgun grafted onto it and it looked mostly intact. That’s why she was cutting through the flesh, trying to get it out, because she needed a weapon, and quickly, before the others came back.
“Come...on!” she whispered harshly as she grabbed hold of the shotgun and started pulling. She stepped on the arm and yanked. With a sick, twisting snap, it was released. It came away sticky with flesh and gore, but it was intact. She quickly checked it over, found that it had eight shells loaded into it, then frowned, wondering where she was going to get more. She looked down at the body and sighed softly. Taking another look around, she confirmed that she was still alone, dropped back down into a crouch and began cutting.
She managed to find about a dozen shells in a strange tube running the length of the thing’s arm, inside of the actual meat. She cleaned them off to the best of her ability, pocketed them and then hurried over to her pod, figuring she was pushing her luck. Callie quickly checked over the radio and the comms unit.
The radar was busted, but the radio was functional.
“This is Ward to anyone, respond.”
There was a pause, then a static-laced response. “I’ve got your position, Ward. I hear you.” It was Morris, the obsessive demo expert.
“Good. Have you heard from the others?”
“No, but I saw several pods go down all over the area. I’ve got my radar working. There’s a structure about two kilometers north of here. I’ve also found the position of your pod, you aren’t that far away from me. I suggest we meet up and then head for the structure.”
“Affirmative. Where are you?”
“Head northeast for about a quarter of a kilometer and we’ll meet up.”
“Got it, on my way now.”
She tightened her grip on the shotgun and set off.
* * * * *
Allan lowered his rifle as he dropped the final member of the three-man patrol he and Nelson had come across.
It was the third patrol so far. They were getting closer to that outpost. Allan was worried, Nelson wasn’t doing too good. He was keeping up fairly well, but he could tell that it was costing the man an effort. He checked over the corpses, taking a little longer than he needed to, to give Nelson some time to get his breath back.
Damn, these things were ugly. And creepy.
What was distracting, however, was their surroundings. Everything was so viciously, vividly vibrant. It was like something had gone wrong with his vision filter, like the colors had been pumped up. It was kind of crazy.
“Looking for a date?” Nelson asked.
Allan snorted. “No, come on,” he replied.
He was finding it difficult to come up with anything to say. He was too distracted, and this environment made him nervous, put him on edge. Nelson followed as he set off into the dense foliage once more. They kept as quiet as they could. Allan had called out over the radio a few more times, but he’d stopped eventually, the feeling of being listened in on nearly overwhelming. Allan froze as he heard something up ahead.
Through the leaves and branches, he could see faded gunmetal gray.
They had reached the outpost.
“Okay,” Allan said softly, “let’s take a look. Then I’ll hit it, you’ll stay back and provide cover fire for me.”
Nelson seemed like he wanted to argue, but in the end he didn’t, figuring what Allan had figured: it was simply safer this way. They moved very slowly forward until they were just at the edge of the clearing the outpost was built into. It didn’t look like very much, just a half dozen rickety structures built out of simple metal building materials. It had a harsh, stark look and feel to it. There were at least eight meat machines walking around, going about their unknown tasks. Allan and Nelson got into position, splitting up a bit.
They initiated the first part of their plan.
Bullets began whispering out of the treeline, taking down the awful, metal-studded dead men one by one. Nelson was a great shot. The eight machines went down without any trouble, their heads snapping back or the side, depending on their relative position, sprays of blood a
nd oil misting out into the heavy air.
As the last corpse fell, becoming a real corpse again, and the silence resumed, broken only by the clicking of insects and the odd calls of other animals around, Allan suddenly realized something that had been bothering him for half an hour now.
This was too easy.
There had been a few close calls, but he’d managed to take down all the enemies he’d come across so far. It felt too easy and it made him nervous as hell.
“Watch my back,” he said quietly.
“Affirmative,” Nelson replied, all the humor gone from his voice now.
Well, at least he knew when to turn it off.
Allan headed into the clearing after double-checking to make sure they were still alone. He made his way towards the structures. All but one of them were simple, shack-sized buildings, the one that was larger resided in the middle and sported a big satellite dish on top. Communications. Perfect. Allan spent a few minutes slowly checking out the smaller structures, finding some of them curiously empty, others filled with stacks of unmarked crates. When he’d cleared the smaller buildings, he turned his attention to the central structure.
The feeling of apprehension hadn’t abated.
If anything, it had grown stronger.
Allan took a step towards the central structure, paused, took another step, paused again. What was he waiting for?
There was something on the air, a vague miasma of menace.
Allan raised his foot to take the next step, and that’s when it happened. The entrance to the central structure burst open in a spray of metal shards. Allan cried out, narrowly dodging the bulk of the door as it sailed right towards him. As he regained his footing, he saw that he was being faced with something a cut above the scrubs he’d been fighting so far. It was like the techno-terrorists were answering his worries.
This beast stood a solid eight feet tall.
It was covered in a strange patchwork of armor, and where he could see it, the pallid flesh bulged with thick, powerful muscle. Twin crimson orbs smoldered within its broad, flat face. Its mouth was a wide slash, stuffed with metal teeth. Its thick arms ended in short but sharp blades. The thing opened up its mouth and loosed a shrieking, electronic roar.
“Oh, fuck me,” Allan muttered.
It came right for him.
From somewhere else, he heard gunfire and that seemed to snap him back to the here and now. Here’s that challenge I was looking for, he thought bleakly as he raised his rifle, flipped to full auto and squeezed the trigger.
A spray of gunfire chopped through the air, slamming into the creature’s immense, broad chestplate. The bullets cut straight through it and red-black liquid spewed out. It would have been a great attack, if only he’d managed to attack it for more than two seconds. When the thing came for him, it was fast, and crossed the distance between them in hardly any time at all. He threw himself to the side in a full body dodge, slamming into the dirt, down among the dead he’d produced, and heard more gunfire from Nelson.
Allan listened to his combat senses and rolled, narrowly avoiding a huge boot that surely would have done some damage. It slammed into the earth, sending sprays of dirt flying. Allan kept rolling, gaining some distance, then, without getting up, aimed from where he lay and let fly again. This time he managed to hose the fucker down, putting a good five or six armor-piercing rounds through it before the magazine ran dry.
He began to scramble to his feet and to slap a fresh magazine in at the same time. It probably wasn’t the best decision, as, by the time he stood up, the creature was coming for him again. He managed to dodge the first slash of the blade it launched his way, something that would have decapitated him, but that just left him open for the second attack, which was, miraculously, not one that involved a blade.
No, all this one did was pick him up and throw him across the way as the beast basically backhanded him. Allan yelled, pain slamming through him as he smashed into one structures he’d been checking out just minutes ago. It was, mercifully, empty, but the whole thing came down on him. He was fighting furiously to free himself from the debris when, suddenly, it was ripped off of him and he saw the thing looming over him once more.
It was bringing one of its stubby blade hands down, right towards his chest.
Gunfire sounded, closer this time, and a solid, concentrated spray of lead smashed directly into the monster’s hideous face. By the time Nelson was done, the creature had practically been decapitated. It gave Allan a chance to get out from under it. He struggled to his feet, barely making it as the techno terror pitched forward, smashing into the remains of the shed. Allan looked around and found Nelson standing in the clearing with him.
“Thanks,” he said, getting his breath back.
“Happy to help,” Nelson replied. “Looked like you could use a little bit of it.”
“Uh-huh,” Allan said.
He straightened up after a moment and took a look over at the huge beast. He didn’t like it at all. Facing down these regular guys was bad enough, but this thing?
Nelson seemed to read his mind. “Makes you wonder what else they’ve got tucked away out here,” he muttered.
“Yeah,” Allan replied softly. “I’m sure we’ll have the pleasure of finding out sooner rather than later. Come on, plug us into the comms network, get us a secure connection.”
“On it,” Nelson said.
They headed for the central structure.
* * * * *
“This is Specialist Gray to anyone, do you copy?”
Callie froze up as she heard that. She and Morris had met and they’d been walking for a solid twenty minutes so far, having lucked into not running into any patrols. She’d been silently hoping to hear this message ever since she’d punched out and hit dirt.
“Allan, I’m here. I’m with Morris, where are you?” Callie asked, trying to control herself. Again, she was struck by how serious the relationship had become, how worried she’d actually been. Relief was flooding through her.
“I’ve got Nelson and I’m fine. Everyone sound off,” Allan replied.
Everyone else sounded off, except for Lang and the pilot. Callie sighed softly. Great, two missing, presumed dead, already.
“I’m not far from some kind of base,” Hollis reported. “I’m on a ridge overlooking it. We should make this our rally point. If we attack it and take it over, we should be able to plug into their network and get a better idea of what the hell we’re doing here.”
“Roger that,” Allan replied. “Hold on...okay, Nelson is using the comms array to feed you all some coordinates here in a minute. Get there as fast as you can.”
There were a string of affirmative replies. After all that was confirmed, the radio crackled again, and Callie knew that Allan had switched to a private channel.
“Are you okay?” he asked, sounding less professional, more human.
“I’m fine,” she replied. “Pod came down fine, though I had to snag a shotgun from the locals. Morris and I are doing well. We were already heading for the outpost, so we aren’t all that far away from it.”
“Perfect. I’ll see you when I get there. I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
He signed off and she suppressed a sigh. No time to spare, not on a mission. She and Morris set off once more into the violently green jungle, pushing past huge, wet leaves that sometimes clung to her armor.
“How’d you get into this business, Morris?” she asked, deciding that she needed something to take her mind off of the walk.
“Same as anyone else, I suppose,” he replied after a moment, as though considering his words. “It wasn’t easy, fitting in, and getting through combat training. Actually, I almost failed out. I was really just in it for the explosives.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. My one real passion in life. Making and setting off bombs. I never really figured out why, and eventually I stopped asking myself why and simply embraced it. I knew that if I didn’t find som
e kind of official job that let me use explosives, I’d end up doing something stupid and getting myself in trouble, or, worse, hurting some people. It’s why I signed up, really, so that I could safely learn how to do all this and have an outlet for it. My problem was that I wasn’t quite as good at other things. It took fifteen years, but I managed to get my shit together well enough to get into Spec Ops. That was five years ago.”
“Seen anything interesting?”
“Not much,” Morris replied, considering it. “We fought these like...giant beetle things way out on this newly discovered world about a year ago. They’d taken over a mining colony. Had to rescue the survivors and ended up sealing the whole thing. Fair amount of money got wasted by that mining corporation, since the beetle creatures lived beneath most of the surface of the planet, and they were obviously pretty lethal.”
“That must’ve been a bit of nightmare,” Callie murmured.
“Oh, to be sure. Fighting these two foot long beetles in poorly lit rock tunnels far underground. They had these snapping mandibles that could cut through armor. Really nasty fuckers. Lost half the squad to them.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, so am I. But that’s the most interesting thing I’ve seen in my career. Well, besides these...things we’re fighting now.”
He had a point.
Even as she thought this, Callie heard a sound that set her immediately on edge. It was a low, electric growling, tinged with an edge of static. It was coming from somewhere up ahead. She and Morris froze, raising their weapons. The sound persisted, deepened, fragmented, becoming many sounds. Callie felt ice filling her veins, slowly radiating out from her stomach. She swallowed hard, wondering just what the fuck it was that was coming towards them. And it was coming towards them, whatever it, or they, were.
Plants shifted, leaves shuddered in passing, twigs snapped.
