by Michael Todd
She moved the right arm first, followed by the left, and tried to establish a familiarity with the suit while she waited for the other team members to wrap things up. It wasn’t entirely new as she’d been in hundreds of simulations, mostly out of curiosity since Pegasus were the ones to develop these training sims. To her surprise, she’d actually managed to get in deep even though she’d worked alone. This wasn’t a simulation, though, but at least this time, she had a team that would watch her back. Their contracts included a stipulation that if she didn’t make it out with them, they wouldn’t be paid. It wasn’t a popular measure but it certainly was effective. These men needed to understand that they worked for her now. They worked for the money that Pegasus offered them and they would risk their lives to ensure that she wasn’t left behind.
The upgraded Hammerheads thrust forward into the Zoo once they penetrated the outskirts and didn’t stop and force the team to continue on foot. Andressa breathed a discreet sigh of relief. She was religious about her morning calisthenics, of course, but that was different than a hike through one of the most dangerous places in the world.
“What’s the read in there?” one of the men asked and leaned toward the driver.
“It looks like they’ve stopped,” the driver replied as he followed the tracker planted in the Hammerhead that had driven out of the Heavy Metal Compound. “Three klicks into the Zoo. Things get pretty hairy out there and it’s virtually impossible to drive. I’ll head there but won’t go in any deeper with the Hammerhead than that either. There are critters past that point that can outrun the vehicle and stomp it and us into paste. I’d rather be on foot.”
They all turned to look at her and a small smile touched her lips when she realized that these hardened soldiers wanted her input. That said, she was more than willing to go with their judgment.
“It makes sense to stop where they did,” she conceded. “It’ll be easier to track them on foot anyway, right?”
“Roger that, ma’am,” the driver said and returned his focus to the way ahead. They formed a small convoy with three heavily armored Hammerheads, all altered to last longer in the harsh terrain inside the jungle, but there had been nothing that really prepared her for how dark it was. The trees created such an effective cover that spots of sunlight were rare. She could see the gentle blue glow of the goop where tiny smudges of light showed from between the porous bark.
She gripped the side of her seat as the vehicle stopped abruptly. Andressa looked around and tried to determine if there was any trouble from the faces of the men and women in the vehicle with her. The only expression she could see was the calm collectedness of professionals. She wondered if that would remain even if they were attacked.
“The Heavy Metal Hammerhead is dead ahead,” the squad leader advised the contingent of twenty-six men and women who had been recruited. “We’ll track them from here. No combat restrictions. Shoot on sight and shoot to kill. That goes for the monsters as well as the Heavy Metal assholes. Are we clear?”
A chorus of affirmatives issued from the team as they set off toward the Hammerhead parked a little way ahead. They all seemed, at first, to search for tracks. In the thick underbrush, it was hard to make out anything, even something like suits of armor that could weigh over a ton and a half. Andressa looked around and wondered if she’d made the right decision to come along. She couldn’t add value to any of the combat preparations, and she doubted that she could do much in combat either.
No, she reminded herself harshly, she’d decided to come here and make it happen herself. She didn’t intend to be a burden, so it was entirely pointless to beat herself up about it, especially since it was far too late to change her mind.
She pushed her thoughts aside as one of the men called his comrades and drew their attention to a single set of tracks that headed off into the east.
“I thought there were three of them,” Andressa said, a little confused.
“Yeah,” the team leader responded dryly. “I’d say that they might be expecting us out here. Stay frosty, boys. We’re heading out.”
The mercs fell in behind their team leader and they continued in the direction of the tracks. A couple more appeared here and there—lighter suits, like the kind Jacobs was known to use were visible in places—but mostly only the heavy, tank-like treads from Kennedy’s suit.
“Where are they headed?” Andressa asked. She disliked the idea of traveling blind.
“They could be in here for another Pita plant run,” the team leader replied. “The dossier provided says it’s the bread and butter of their little corporation. That said, we can’t put aside the possibility that we might be walking into a trap.”
“Shouldn’t we call for backup if that’s the case?” Andressa asked.
“Sister, there are three of them, and twenty-seven of us,” the man said with a chuckle. “We are the motherfucking backup.”
She smiled when she realized that he’d counted her among the number as well, but the satisfaction dissipated quickly. Her motion sensors seemed to go crazy and she scanned the area with a slight twinge of panic. After a few moments, she reminded herself that since motion was something to be expected in a jungle, she didn’t need to worry about it too much. Besides, none of the others looked anxious.
No sooner had she relaxed when she saw something she definitely recognized—the long barrel of a heavy assault rifle carried by someone in a heavy suit of armor.
“Get down!” Andressa yelled, and cursed when she realized that she had isolated her comm frequency to an unused channel. She switched it over quickly to the team leader’s channel. “Get down!”
It was too late. A single report split the muggy air, and the team leader’s head imploded as the armor-piercing round punched through his helmet and didn’t come out the other side.
Chapter Thirty-One
Andressa flung herself down as the jungle erupted into a roar of continued gunfire. The trained mercenaries organized quickly and laid down covering fire at the figure in the distance. It wasn’t that far away—less than a hundred paces—but in the darkness and completely reliant on heat sensors and motion sensors for any kind of visibility, it had been an impressive shot. The figure remained in position for another couple of seconds and fired a few more shots at the men, but when they returned fire, she ducked again quickly.
“That has to be Kennedy, right?” Covington looked around but none of the men answered her. They snapped orders and confirmed sightings as they pushed forward in the direction of the heavily armored woman. Cautiously, they followed her through the jungle while each man attempted to remain under the cover of the vegetation as much as possible.
Another rifle shot cracked. This was lighter and smaller and sounded like a faint clap from somewhere to the left. The men weren’t prepared to be flanked, and two of them dropped before the rest of the squad fell into formation and began the pursuit. More orders were delivered in sharp tones as they turned to engage the new threat.
Another threat soon became evident—one she’d half expected and fully hoped to avoid—and she turned as she drew her rifle out of the holster on her back. Her gaze scanned the underbrush that seemed to close in on them. The animals had been drawn to the sound of gunfire and now gathered on the perimeter. They remained out of the way of the battle but they seemed to grow more and more agitated as the gunfire continued.
Wait. Andressa froze as a disquieting thought struck her. Wasn’t the new metal in the armor supposed to deflect bullets, even the heavy ones fired from these massive rifles? She looked at her armor and suddenly felt a lot less safe about her position. With a slight quiver of panic now seated low in her belly, she fired a few rounds at the massive panthers that edged menacingly closer.
“No, don’t shoot the animals!” one of the men called and panic entered his voice as he reached over to try to stop her. His protest came too late. One of the panthers already lay dead a few yards away. She scanned the scene in an effort to determine what it was
that he was so worried about. The animals had begun to retreat—any idiot could see that. She had driven them back. With a wild laugh she couldn’t suppress, she squeezed the trigger again and hurtled forward to try to annihilate more of them. Did they think they could put her on the run? Did they really think that?
A proximity warning bleated on her sensors a moment before something landed on her shoulder. Her suit wheezed under the weight and she fell heavily as the panther that had attacked her from above bounded away. The remainder of the squad converged quickly and released a barrage of shots at the creatures that pushed toward her.
They backed away, and Andressa screamed. She wasn’t sure why, she realized as she scrambled to her feet. There had been a moment of sheer terror back there, but she had never thought of herself as someone who screamed in the presence of danger. Oh, well, you learned something new about yourself every day, right?
“Stay in the circle,” the new squad leader snarled at her, and she noticed that a couple more of the men had been downed in the effort to reach her. The animals now dragged the bodies away.
“What are they doing?” she asked before she could stop herself, and the man simply shook his head and cursed in a language she wasn’t familiar with. Before she could voice the automatic reprimand, he dropped and a couple of smoking holes appeared in his armor.
That was definitely not supposed to happen, Andressa told herself. These suits were supposed to be sturdier than tanks and able to withstand the power of an RPG without breaking. The squishable human inside wouldn’t fare as well, of course, but these bullets punched through armor that was supposed to be top-of-the-line.
What the fuck was happening? Something had gone disastrously wrong.
She dragged her focus to her surroundings and someone in lighter, sleeker armor who stood with a rifle and maintained a steady stream of bullets at the men who hadn’t taken cover. They were trying to protect her. That truth struck home as two more fell with hideous chest wounds and she reacted instinctively to return fire. The leaner suit was more difficult to hit, and she missed every single shot until the man dropped out of sight. That had to be Jacobs, she was sure of it.
She turned, her attention drawn by something that lumbered and thrashed through the underbrush. It was immense, taller than a human at the shoulder but about five or six meters long and with a massive tail that extended six more meters, at least.
It seemed to ignore the rapidly diminishing numbers of mercs and focused instead on another leaner, lighter suit of armor. The figure stood on the other side of them, so she knew that it wasn’t the same person. But that didn’t make sense. Gutierrez was supposed to use heavy armor. Why did she wear the light hybrid? She was no specialist.
Interestingly, the massive monster seemed to sneak up behind the figure that crouched and fired at the mercs as they tried to take cover. They had to now adjust their formation to deal with the fact that they were shot at from all sides and the reality that their armor simply didn’t work as promised.
But instead of the lethal attack Covington had expected, the figure turned to watch the monster approach. The rifle raised as if to shoot at it, but to Andressa’s surprise, it lowered almost immediately. The beast leaned in closer—like it somehow communicated with the figure—and suddenly, both turned to look at her.
Well, no, not at her precisely, she reassured herself, but in the direction of the mercenaries.
“No fucking way,” she gasped when the enormous creature completely ignored the armored figure and launched into a charge directed at her team. They were a larger target and so made more noise, but it should have been an easy kill. The monster should have demolished the figure and moved on. Instead, it simply looked past it and hurtled into the attack.
“Over there!” Andressa screamed and pointed at the massive beast that thundered closer. “Shoot that one. Shoot it!”
Her warnings came too late, even though she was sure that she had used the open channel this time. Nothing could alter the fact that the giant was on top of them before they could react. The immense tail lashed out, and Andressa shrieked instinctively in horror as one of the mercenaries was cut cleanly in half by the sheer force of it. Massive claws and teeth tore into her men to crunch and bite and savage them in an almost methodical onslaught. Bullets had no effect whatsoever, and she could only stand in frozen disbelief and terror as half her men were systematically decimated by the creature. Finally, a team member managed to launch a shoulder rocket at the beast.
Too much happened before she could react. A bright white flash illuminated the area around them and revealed the stark beauty of the jungle around them for less than a second before it plunged back into darkness. She gasped when something smacked her hand and knocked the rifle out of it. She stumbled and tried to break her fall but immediately felt the full weight of her armor impact on her suddenly unarmored hand.
Andressa screamed as a shaft of pain radiated into her arm. The armor had peeled cleanly away to leave only her hand, exposed and shattered.
“Fuck!” she screamed and clutched the injury protectively to her chest.
She looked up fearfully, as did the few men and women left in the squad. The whip-tailed creature backed away to lick its wounds from the shoulder-mounted rocket. It seemed impossible that it had survived with little more than what appeared to be surface damage to the tough hide.
An ominous whisper heralded the sudden arrival of hundreds of vines that seemed to appear from nowhere. They drifted and writhed relentlessly like tentacles of some monster from the depth of the oceans. Andressa screamed and fired wildly at the sinuous enemy. The squad joined in, clustered as close together as they could without losing too much cover.
Their frenzied defense achieved nothing. In fact, it seemed like the response had only irritated the tentacles further and they now attacked the almost defenseless mercenaries with a terrifying ferocity. Andressa shrieked and continued to pull the trigger on her side arm even when it clicked empty. Vines snaked around her legs and began to haul her upward as she struggled to find purchase on something solid with her uninjured hand to anchor herself.
“No, no…stop!” She flailed in terror and tried to kick to free herself from the tenacious grip of the tendrils. Her efforts only made them tighten around her and attracted others nearby. She was yanked up a little higher before a wash of pain swept through her as something grabbed her.
No…someone, she thought and twisted to see that a leaner, lighter hybrid suit of armor had grasped her broken hand. The figure gripped a long, machete-like blade in her free hand.
“I’m not here to save you, Covington,” Courtney said through the suit’s speakers. “I simply need your fucking hand. This is for my father, you fucking bitch!”
Andressa’s eyes widened as the machete rose briefly before it slashed in a blur to slice her exposed hand off with a single chop. She screamed and the agony briefly swallowed the terror as her captors swung her relentlessly upward into the trees.
Sal recoiled as an instinctive surge of horror rushed up his spine when the tentacles serpentined down from the trees attack the few mercs who were still alive. Their screams echoed on the comm channels for a few minutes, but as they disappeared into the trees, their distress faded one by one until there wasn’t much else to listen to except for the way that the jungle seemed to move toward them.
“We have what we came here for,” Courtney said. She held up a severed hand before she sealed it quickly into a containment bag and slid it into her pack. “We need to get out of here. These critters won’t wait around for us to beat a hasty retreat. Fuck, I forgot how much fun these trips can be.”
Sal nodded and narrowed his eyes at her. She had changed considerably but he could live with that. Where there had been a timid scientist, there was now a confident and slightly terrifying woman of power who was, he conceded, an entirely sexy surprise. Right now, though, they had the DNA they needed to crack the laptop and had to get the fuck out of Dodge.
/> They immediately initiated an orderly retreat in the direction from which they had come. Their small team fell into formation as they could see the Zoo monsters converge and ready themselves to attack them. This wouldn’t be as intense as most of the other battles they had survived, but there were still too many creatures for them to manage alone.
Sal glanced at Madigan and she nodded. He opened a channel and set it to broadcast as far as possible. It didn’t need to be a complicated message, merely a quick and simple delivery of three simple letters in Morse code.
S-O-S.
As one, the team broke into a run. He realized that even though he was now used to this, there simply wasn’t anything that could prepare a man to watch as an entire jungle seemed to coalesce into a united wave of ferocity. He drew his sidearm and kept it in his free hand to fire it intermittently to cover the moments of lull when his rifle needed to reload. He wondered if there were any options that could feed the rifles like they were miniguns—like a chain that would allow for hundreds of rounds to be fired before reloading instead of a couple of dozen.
Courtney retained her machete in hand and slashed at the hyenas that broke through the lines and harassed the four as they maintained a brisk pace.
“Heavy Metal,” Sal heard through his comm. “Do you boys need some help?”
“You’re damn fucking right!” he shouted when he saw that the name on the comm line was a familiar series of numbers. “Fuck, is that you Daniels?”
“That’s us, Heavy Metal,” Sergeant Daniels said, and he could actually hear the man grin. “It’s our turn to save your asses this time. Watch your fire to the southwest, would you? I’d hate to have to charge you for wounding my men.”
