| From: | "Paul J. Adam" <Shadowtk@********.DEMON.CO.UK> |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Dawn Raid |
| Date: | Mon, 27 Jul 1998 22:02:01 +0100 |
>>>>>[Jesus, every time I fight the _invae_ I swear 'never again' and
every time they stick their chitinous heads up, I end up breaking my vow
to go kill them some more.
How lucky can one man be? For sure today was just luck.
+++++Command Network Transcript
M : SUNRAY (LCdr C F Mitchell)
CA: Squad Commander (MSgt R L Prentiss)
C2 - Spec-4 K L Huang
C3 - PFC R I A Agnis
C4 - Spec-2 A V Hobe
DA - Squad 2IC (Sergeant I Milne)
D2 - Spec-3 Wm Eklona
D3 - Corporal E Dawes
D4 - Spec-2 C C Linsia
C - Canis (OC, team ODIN)
T1 - Tiger 1 (attack drone)
T2 - Tiger 2 (attack drone)
T3 - Tiger 3 (attack drone)
T4 - Tiger 4 (attack drone)
R - Rover (scout drone)
S: "Starship" (Headquarters Station)
S: All drones online. Ready when you are, Sunray.
M: Roger. Milne, you'll cover us. Prentiss, we'll follow the drones in.
Starship, have Tigers Three and Four cover our backs. Usual drill.
S: Roger.
R:[Video footage of the scout drone advancing on the entrance to the
underground car park: the department store above it a blackened and
empty shell. The drone pauses at the bottom of the ramp, where the
subterranean darkness proves to be a blackout curtain: a manipulator
arm tugs at the cloth ineffectually, then cuts along the top with a
small laser. The curtain sags away from the cut, dropping in folds on
the stained concrete, and the drone rolls easily over it.]
S: Rover's inside. Tigers following.
M: So are we.
[Tactical map shows Charlie fireteam advancing behind the two Steel
Lynx drones, two pairs of troops cover-and-moving forward, and
Mitchell between and slightly ahead of them.]
R:[The car park had been about a third full, it seems, when fire swept
through it. Ruined hulks that once were cars squat in the parking
bays, and every surface is black with smoke: even Rover's powerful
lights make little impression on the gloom.]
M: Cover _there_ and _there_. Milne, get down here, secure this bay.
DA: Roger that.
[Tactical map shows Milne's fireteam moving around Charlie team,
careful not to foul their firing arcs, as they check every place big
enough to hide a threat. Tigers Three and Four wait, passive, at the
entrance, Rover and the other two drones at the ramp down to the next
level. As each area is cleared, it is seeded with motion detectors,
whose detection zones glow green in the map.]
DA: This level clear. Vehicle tracks, recent, multiple.
M: Yeah, I saw them. Rover, go.
R:[The drone tips over and rolls down the incline to Level 02. Rounding
the corner, it sees a cleared area, chrome and steel glittering in
the floodlights: two twenty-foot cargo containers, doors closed, with
a strange framework that looks like a hanging rack in front. As the
drone rolls closer, an oval of strange markings can be seen around
the rack, and rusty stains on the concrete beneath it.]
S: Bad news, Sunray. Some sort of weird magic going down. No contacts.
M: Roger.
[Tactical map shows the pair of Steel Lynx drones following the recon
drone in an arrowhead, weapons and sensors scanning for targets.]
R: [Rover pauses by the containers.]
M: Leave them. Secure access to the next level first. Canis, you okay?
C: Level 1 doors secured. Securing Level Two. Stairwell below feels...
bad. They're here. In force.
M: Hold position for now. We've got some things to check here.
C: <click click>
[The tactical map shows the same routine on this floor: the troops
search possible hiding places, leaving the small motion sensors in
their wake.]
S: Downramp's clear. Pheromone sensor reading big jump, and audio has
low-level broadband noise. No tonals yet.
M: Cover it for us. Milne, our back door. Prentiss, cover Rover.
[Mitchell moves out into the centre of the cleared area, studying the
inscription on the floor: etched in with some sort of power tool,
it's in a flowing script that looks Arabic. In the poor illumination
of helmet lights and the drones' floods and spots, the curling
characters seem to writhe and twist.With a visible shudder, he looks
away, stepping around the oval rather than cross it.]
M: Starbase, have Rover open the left-hand container.
R:[The drone stops by the container's door and lifts the latch, backing
away to swing the door open. The powerful flashlight on Mitchell's L7
probes inside.]
M: No movement. Huang, on me, watch my back. [Mitchell moves cautiously
up to the container, examining the row of plastic cocoons inside, all
hooked to some sort of cooling plant. Most are smashed open from the
inside, two are unbroken, and one has been torn open from the
outside: dark stains run from the shattered plastic, and the stump of
a chitinous limb hangs from the jagged hole. Moving closer, he sees
an insect pupa the size of a child, rent and bloody and well on the
way to decay.]
C2: What do you make of it, sir?
M: Like they were in cold storage. And they woke up. But this one was
killed. Don't know why...
C2: Back up and cover me... It's a queen, sir. There must have been two
queens. The first to wake, killed her rival. What about the two that
haven't hatched?
M: Get back...
<four shots, L7-class weapon>
C2: Dead. One worker, one warrior. Didn't survive hibernation.
M: I make it... seventeen that did and are unaccounted for. Presumably,
including a queen. Not good.
C2: No. That inscription's nothing I've seen before, either. This is...
unusual. I like this less than usual, Commander.
M: You need the bodies?
C2: The dead Queen. Not the others.
M: Get her out, then. Dawes! Thermite on these two fucks! Agnis, on me.
R:[The same procedure is repeated, opening the container's door. Inside
is an efficient field headquarters: computers, comms gear, weapon
racks, two double bunks, footlockers, microwave, water jerricans, a
chemical toilet. Everything that might be of forensic value is
thoroughly wrecked: thermal charges inside the computers, the comms
gear's encryption modules missing, the lockers burned out with
thermite, even a grenade dropped into the toilet.]
M: Guess someone lived here for a while. Why trash it, though, instead
of hauling it out?
C3: A semitrailer would be noticeable round here. And would _you_ want
to dick around loading this on a truck with that many bugs loose?
M: I guess... still seems wrong. Why no booby-traps?
C2: Bugs're smart enough to open doors. Might kill them instead of us.
M: Yeah. Okay, Rover, next level. Check it out. Canis, get set, we're
starting on the bottom level.
R: [Rover's lights pick out more melted, ruined cars, and more scorched
concrete: and, as it turns to look down the bay, glistening reddish-
white in the light a few feet ahead lies a bone of some sort, shreds
of flesh still clinging to it.]
DA: Oh, _shit..._
M: Get a closer look. Get Tigers One and Two down there, now. Everyone,
pucker up tight, it's about to hit the fan. Canis, hold position,
_hold_ position.
C: Understood. Holding on Two, covering Three. No movement, no noise.
S: Pheromone levels saturating sensor. Air temperature down here's three
degrees up, I have more noise as well. Can't see them, but I know
they're there...
R:[The drone picks up the bone, examines it carefully. It looks like a
thighbone, quite possibly human or metahuman, most of the flesh
missing. Marks on the bone suggest the meat was _sheared_ off, as if
by huge scissors.
Laying it aside, the drone scans around: advancing slowly, seeing
more bones scattered around, many identifiable as human, most still
with flesh adhering. A nine-foot-tall chitinous monstrosity, caught
in the glare of the lights, ignores them completely as it gnaws on a
severed arm. A poorly merged flesh form, its mutated jaws seem ill-
adapted to the task as it worries at the bicep, saliva dripping as it
works mouthfuls of flesh off the bone and swallows without chewing, #
oblivious to the drone passing it. It's the only being visible,
though there are far too many bones for it to have been alone.]
M: Fuck this. Prentiss, we're going down there. Put Hobe on point with
me. Starbase, get set for action.
C4: Where you want me, sir?
M: Stay close. I'll take point, you cover me, then when we get to the
bottom you flame the whole bay. Got it?
C4: Aye-firmative.
M: Canis, brace up.
<shot, L7-class weapon>
[The red contact marker for the worker spirit flares and dies.]
M: We're going hot. Hobe, torch the fucks. Canned air, everyone!
R:[The dronecam almost whites out as Hobe lays a blazing stream of
thickened gasolene across the car park, walking it across ruined cars
and into the corners and crannies. Suddenly, with a tearing crash,
several nightmare figures burst from the blazing cars, shrieking
horribly.
Hobe snaps his flamethrower onto them, dousing each with blazing fuel
as they thrash and writhe: both drones open fire, the banshee snarl
of their twin HV-LMGs drowning other sounds, Mitchell's L7 joins the
fray, the nearest blazing Ant spirit almost cut in half by a burst of
three HE rounds, as Hobe throws his empty flamer aside and brings up
his CAR-32, firing on full-automatic -]
[Tactical map shows Eklona's marker flashing urgently, followed a
second later by Linsia: both troops' lifesigns have suddenly
flatlined. Linsia managed to get two rounds off. The motion detectors
are flaring red all around Delta fireteam's position]
D2: BEHIND YOU!
<shots, L7 carbine-type weapon>
DA: <scream>
D4: THE WALLS! THEY'RE COMING OUT OF THE GODDAMN WALLS! <long burst, L7
carbine>
T3:[The Steel Lynx spins from its previous position as rearguard,
seeing Dawes staggering back away from the garage walls: huge gouges,
the exposed concrete almost white against the sooty blackness, show
where Ant spirits had burrowed into concealment and then been
plastered over. The scorched walls are suddenly proving to be almost
honeycombed with entombed monsters that are smashing their way out in
showers of rubble.
Both Tiger Three and Tiger Four cut loose with their HV-LMGs, a storm
of tracers and muzzle flash tearing at the nearer creatures. Dawes,
still screaming and raking the walls with his L7, is suddenly seized
from behind by a flesh-form warrior at least two feet taller than he,
whose mandibles shear cleanly through his arm just below the
shoulder: his weapon falls to the floor, as the mutated monster
buries its jaws in his neck.
CA: Huang! Agnis! Fall back toaaaaAGH!!!!
<automatic gunfire, L7-class weapons>
[Tactical map: Prentiss' life sighs flick to zero]
R: [Rover, unarmed and helpless to intervene, sees Charlie team beset
both without and within: as they kill flesh-forms emerging from their
crevices in the walls, two huge ants shimmer into existence amidst
them. Each over eight feet long, with the oversized jaws of warriors,
the true-forms fall on the fireteam at pointblank range.
Prentiss, caught completely by surprise, is bitten almost in half by
one, and the other ignores direct hits from Agnis' L7 - the HE rounds
bursting on its carapace in bright, almost ineffectual flashes - to
knock the Ork PFC sprawling: as Agnis tries to club at its head with
his rifle butt, the spirit's jaws snip off both arms at the elbow.
Agnis screams in horror, blood pumping from the stumps.
Huang screams something - a curse, a prayer, a _kiai_ shout? - and
bayonets the spirit precisely between the eyes. It jerks and
thrashes, distracted from finishing the maimed Agnis as Huang empties
her L7's carbine into its head, further shattering the carapace and
letting her pull the blade free. The spirit falls, jerking and
spasming, and dissolving into a foul black ichor as the energies that
bound it are dispelled.
The other spirit is turning to attack her (hindered slightly by its
six legs, it doesn't spin on the spot well) as the Specialist-4
snarls something: the huge ant is engulfed in hissing, smoking green
liquid: it shrieks and thrashes horribly as it dissolves like its
twin. Mitchell, who's been firing throughout, puts a precisely-aimed
HEAT round into the chest of a flesh-form warrior that was lunging at
Huang, blowing it backwards in a spray of blood.
M: On me! Get down here!
T3: [On Level 2, the dozen or so fleshforms that had burst from the
walls are depleted in number, hiding from the lethal fire of the two
drones. Dawes is dead, his head mostly severed from his body and
gruesomely hanging free, but the spirit that killed him lies
twitching next to him, riddled with HVLMG rounds. The drones roll
slowly forward, hunting out the remaining spirits.]
C2: Mitchell, the _ROOF_!
T1: [The drone's sensors elevate fast, snapping the view up to the
ceiling just as four or five more nightmare forms fall free in a rain
of rubble and plaster. Hobe, fatally, raises his arms for protection
against the debris, and one of the warrior fleshforms lands on him
with a bubbling snarl. Mitchell lashes at it with his L7, and the
warrior grabs the bayonet and _heaves_. Mitchell flies one way, the
assault weapon the other, as another warrior seizes Hobe in a clawed,
multi-limbed embrace.
Huang backpedals, raking the whole group with HE rounds on full-auto,
the detonations forming a stroboscopic tableau of torn flesh and
chitinous horror. She pauses to change magazines, as Mitchell rolls
to his feet (burning napalm clinging to his fatigues where he landed
in Hobe's still-blazing fire) and draws his Guardian automatic.
For several seconds the two black-clad soldiers probe the blackness
with the beams of their tactical flashlights, seeking targets.
Nothing moves.]
M: Jesus. We lost the whole damn squad.
C2: Not quite. But... fuck. Amos... Shit, buddy, I'm _sorry_...[Huang
pauses to look at Hobe: it's hard to know whether the insect spirits
or her HE rounds killed him].
M: Right thing to do. You know that, even if it sucks.
C2: Yeah. He was a buddy, sir... I show no more movement here.
S: Drones show clear upstairs. Fuck.
M: Canis, you okay?
C: _Verdamnte_... they tried a breakout. Six soldiers, one trueform, and
the Queen.
M: Any losses?
C: I say, they _tried_. We were ready. The Queen retreated, the others
are dead. No dead here, but Fohdytoo is hurt. We are waiting for the
fires to go out before we can pursue.
[Mitchell exchanges glances with Huang: the Oriental Spec-4 shivers,
but nods.]
M: We're going after her, Canis. Hold position in case she comes up at
you. Starbase, how many down?
S: I count thirty-nine bugs down. Queen still unaccounted for. There
seems to be new construction, a tunnel maybe, at the base of the
stairs. Shall I send Rover?
M: No. Send the Tiger with most ammo. Move Rusanov's team in to pick up
our casualties and make sure the dead bugs are really dead. Then
check the walls with imaging radar.
S: Uh... okay, wilco. Tiger Two is winchester, Three is skosh rounds,
but Four has two hundred and nine rounds left.
T4: [The drone moves to the stairwell door, passing Mitchell and Huang
to bash the doors open. Where before the stairs ended on the concrete
foundation, now there's a ragged hole: a tunnel, five feet high,
descending into the earth. The stairwell still smoulders and smokes,
flames licking sullenly over several monstrous corpses and visibilty
down to feet in the swirling smoke. Anyone without bottled air would
at best be choking, at worst dying... but the insect spirits don't
seem to breathe much..
Bumping and bouncing over the rough-hewn floor - the stubby ends of
steel reinforcing bars protruding every few inches, sheared or bitten
through - the concrete ends and the tunnel burrows through earth, the
drone's lights seeing little except smoke from the fires. The walls
seem to move away as it advances, into a larger, open area that's
less smoky -
The view falls sideways and shudders, the drone's guns firing wildly
and hitting nothing. In a judder of motion, the Steel Lynx is tossed
and shaken before the view breaks down to static-]
S: SHIT! I got a man down! Dump shock! We lost Tiger Four. You got hot
contact in there.
M: Fuck. [He turns to Huang, who checks the magazines in her L7:
Mitchell moves the selector on his Guardian to 'BURST'.] You up for
this?
C2: Payback's a motherfucker, Commander. And I'd walk a mile for a
payback.
M: You and me both, Kim. Canis,. we're going in. We don't come out,
you're in charge. Make sure that Queen doesn't get out of here alive.
C: _Scheisse_... you are crazy, Mitchell.
M: I know.
[He walks into the stairwell, the Guardian held left-handed: after a
moment's thought, he draws his SIG-Sauer from its discreet shoulder
holster too, thumbing back the hammer. The beam of the Guardian's
Sure-Fire tactical flashlight probes the smoky darkness, as do his
and Huang's helmet lights.]
M: <whispered> Sold my soul for rock and roll...
C: What?
M: Nothing. [Mitchell is already moving, Huang a few paces behind, down
the uneven tunnel and out into a larger, open area: turning and
jinking sideways, to avoid and target whatever might seek to ambush
him.
The cavern has been hollowed out of the earth, and is about ten
metres long by six wide and two high: Mitchell can barely stand
upright in it. The beaten earth of walls, floor and ceiling seems to
be reinforced somehow, with a plasticky cement that glitters in the
torchlight: pale, fibrous sacks, each the size of a crouched man,
line the sides of the chamber, catching the light as if they glow.
A few feet from the tunnel mouth lies a partly-dismembered Steel Lynx
drone, bright gouges in the metal showing where it was wrenched and
cut apart with enormous force. Several of the pale sacks ooze a
sticky fluid mixed with blood where its wildly-firing guns punctured
them, matching the purple hydraulic fluid oozing from the drone's
wounds.
All this you see in an instant, as Mitchell sees the huge form of the
Queen rearing up ahead of him, her carapace glittering and her jaws
wide -
He brings up both pistols, firing with desperate speed, the bullets
striking and ricocheting or punching small dark holes in the chitin
that ooze black ichor, the Queen hissing with pain or rage or hate
and lurching back as Mitchell drops the magazine out of the Guardian
and reaches for another -
The Queen flares with an eldritch glow as Huang arrives, a pulse of
sunlight seeming to illuminate her from within. The huge Ant screams
in agony, and Mitchell lets the slide snap forward on his Guardian
and fires a burst into her gaping mouth. Yellowish blood sprays from
ruptured chitin as one of the Queen's mandibles is blown clean away.
She lashes at Mitchell with a clawed foreleg, knocking him sprawling
and sending his next shots high and wide, but as she turns to spear
him with her one remaing mandble the sneezing reports and sharp
explosions of Huang's L7 boom around the small chamber, the HE rounds
delay-fused, burying themselves in her abdomen to explode
milliseconds later.
The Queen screams again, and Mitchell jams the Savalette automatic
into her maw and fires, blowing the back of her head apart: she
thrashes and jerks, tearing the weapon from his hand, as Huang rakes
her torn, bleeding abdomen with carbine fire. Mitchell disarmed, the
ant turns on Huang: the huge ant, oozing ichor from a dozen wounds,
staggering towards the Spec-4 as she changes magazines.
Mitchell comes, catlike, to his feet: and, catlike, he leaps, over
the Queen's bloated abdomen to land sprawled across her thorax:
ramming the spurs from his right hand into the wounds in the back of
her head, two, three, four times. The Queen rears, shrieking, and
Mitchell is shaken loose, but as he falls clear Huang pumps half-a-
dozen canister rounds (each round flinging nineteen tungsten
flechettes) into her thorax.
The Queen collapses, legs twitching. Huang advances, aiming and
firing: a blast of flechettes erase one eye, then the other. The
Queen doesn't react, as the Spec-4 shoulders the weapon and fires
into the Ant's head point-blank with a shout of "Prentiss!" Another
shot. "Hobe!" And again. "Agnis!"
Mitchell finds his Guardian and reloads it, then retrieves the
dropped SIG-Sauer and replaces the empty magazine in that, as Huang
continues to riddle the Queen's corpse to the roll-call of the unit's
dead. Slashing open one of the sacs, he's unsurprised to find -
surrounded by the thick, translucent amniotic fluid - an Elven
teenager, High Lord Killer tattoos still visible where his skin
hasn't been encrusted with chitin, in the process of metamorphosing
into a flesh-form spirit. The creature shudders slightly, eyelids
flickering, and Mitchell shoots it through the head.
Huang moves up beside him. "Job for the cleanup crew. I want to see
sunlight."
"You and me both." Mitchell nods. shuddering as the adrenalin
aftershock hits him. "We're out of here."
+++++end transcript
They were waiting for us. They're still learning, every tactic we use
they adapt to.
Us or them. It keeps coming back to that. It's us or them, this world
isn't big enough for both our species.
For sure it won't be "them" while I'm alive.]<<<<<
-- Mitchell <22:01:34/07-27-59>
