A/N: This is actually a short story I did for an assignment during school - I forgot all about it. This is fairly lame, seeing as my effort was next to nill because it was for school, and honestly, who tries for school these days? But whatevs, so enjoy.
A/N2: If anyone is in or knows someone who is in a branch of the Armed Forces, no offense is meant to any of them (Including the Air Force. One of my best friends is in the Air Force, so I don't mean any disrespect)
A/N3: Yes, as my reviewer so wonderfully informed me, Scorponok is dead. Duh. I'm not a complete moron. Obviously Scorponok was somewhere before Jetfire killed him, dumbass. Ante-mortem, God, think much?
I dove behind the tall stone pillar as the brilliant blue energy bolts slammed into the thick rock at my back. Bullets whistled past my head and the screams of the wounded and dying filled my ears. There was a metallic whirring to my left, followed by a moment of charged silence before a resounding crack! split the air. The warm stone at my back disappeared as I was launched screaming through the air like a rag doll, slamming into a pile of blackened sandstone rubble.
"Fuck!" I snarled, feeling the comm. slip from my ear, and the voices of my teammates disappeared with it. The silence was so strange; we were required to wear the comms. at all times, so we would be used to sharing thoughts with one another, able to function like a single organism in battle.
I lay there, stunned, alone, separated from my team, watching as the blue, blue sky spun above me like a pinwheel. The merciless, unforgiving sun beat down on the golden desert sand with her scorching rays, sending up rippling waves of heat that shimmered across the horizon. Shit, I thought, still staring at the sky, Is this the Light that all those Bible-thumpers are always talkin' shit about?
Another explosion - this one closer now, ever closer - shattered the silence clouding my ears and, desperate now, I attempted to scramble to my feet while at the same time pulling out my glossy black, lovingly maintained Beretta M-9/9mm pistol from the holster at my hip. Pain flared in my side with every ragged, gasping breath I took, and blood oozed from a dozen different slashes from all of the God-damn shrapnel in the air. Alarms flashed in front of my heads-up display, warning me that it would not be long before, if I kept getting my ass handed to me, I would be meeting my unmaker along with the rest of the boys on this hot, dry savanna.
The staccato strafing of machine gun fire to my right made me duck instinctively, and instinct that saved my life as a small - compared to the other fuckers like him - compact metal… scorpion sailed through the air where my head had been just moments before. "Holy shit!" I shrieked, thinking, Didn't a scorpion totally rape that team in Qatar two years ago? The things' razor-tipped tail slammed into the ground by my right shoulder, and I rolled to the side, my pistol slipping from numb fingertips as I continued to half-crawl, half-roll to an open crevice between two boulders.
A flash of silver in my peripheral vision alerted me to the danger and I leaped forward in a flurry of sand, my hands scraping painfully against the rough rock. The stone ground at my skin and my fingernails tore loose as I clawed my way into the small grotto.
The metal arachnid gave a high-pitched cry like nothing I had ever heard before as it attempted to claw its way into my safe haven.
A scream, rough and faltering, tore itself free from my throat, reverberating off of the stone as I lashed out with my foot at the creature's head, wincing as my ribs pulled. My heart was in my throat, my hands trembling in terror as the kick went wild, the steel toe of my boot glancing off of one of the metal plates framing the scorpions' eyes.
Aforementioned red eyes bored into my own as the metal creature stabbed downwards with its razor-sharp stinger, driving the finely honed metal through the thin cotton of my fatigues, through the leather of my boots, and into the muscle and bone and sinew of my calf.
I screamed again as the white-hot agony lanced through my body. The scorpions' optics shuttered at the piercing sound and it began to back away from my former cubby-hole, dragging me along with it.
The bright sunlight blinded me, and through the black spots dancing in front of my eyes I saw three Blackhawk helicopters inbound to the battlefield. Ah, good. The elitist dorks with their stupid silk ascots. About fuckin' time. Civilians were screaming and running in the opposite direction of the other humanoid metal creatures, their faces pale with fear. I could no longer see or hear the rest of my unit, and the bursts of M16 fire were rare now, cut off prematurely and often followed by a scream.
My leg throbbed as the weight of my body pulled against the metal aliens stinger. Black mist rose to cover my eyes, and I felt tired, ever so tired. Blood ran down my calf to my knee and stained the fabric of my pants a dark, wet, reddish brown. Something dug into the small of my back, and I twisted on instinct, scrabbling in the soft sand for a hand hold but instead coming away with a handful of sand and pebbles.
I cast a desperate glance around the ravaged space and a black glint caught my eyes. I focused and saw that it was my pistol, half-buried in sand and halfway across the God-forsaken open space. There was no chance of my getting free of the scorpion, and he was dragging me in the opposite direction that I needed to go. In a desperate, last-ditch effort, I dug my good foot into the sand and stretched. Another blast sent tremors through the earth, and the pistol rocketed through the air, landing two feet to my right. I lunged for it and snatched it out of the sand. Sliding my finger over the trigger, I twisted once again, bracing my good leg against the scorpions metal exoskeleton.
The metal was an alloy that I had never seen before, as was made obvious by the way it was completely impervious to our .223 caliber rifles. The weapons system in itself was like nothing I had ever seen before outside of a science fiction novel; the raw energy the cannons expelled was enough to level buildings.
But everything had a weakness and from the way this scorpion's metal visor snapped together over its eyes in very much the same way a sharks eyes would roll back into its head before it attacked, I had a good feeling that I knew this arachnid's.
The safety of the pistol was off, as it always was in a hot zone, and I screamed a defiant war-cry as I targeted the metal monster.
"Hoorah, you mother fucking tin can," I snarled, and pulled the trigger in a rapid-fire burst.
The scorpion released my leg to clap its pincers over its shattered optic, which was oozing some form of thick, pinkish blue liquid. It chattered angrily at me in a series of clicks and whistles that I didn't have to be a rocket scientist to understand were insults. Some form of cannon rose up from his back, glowing blue as it whirred to life.
I screamed again and fired my pistol, but this time he was ready and his visor snapped shut to shield his optic lenses. Over the soft purr of his cannons I could hear something else, a faint sound that sounded like… sounded like a helico-
Thwump! The sand next to the creature exploded in a shower of sand and flame. The scorpion let out a God-awful shriek and collapsed onto its side, its legs twitching sporadically.
I scrambled back on my hands and knees as the choppers circled above us. "Watch it, you air-headed pussies!" I yelled, but it was more of a garbled murmur. The dizziness was back, and I gaped at how quickly the tracer rounds pierced the scorpions armor when the SAW and M16 rounds had done so little. Swaying back onto the sand, I threw an arm over my eyes to shield them from the burning sunlight.
My hair - matted as it was with sweat and blood and sand - was tangled by the resulting breeze of the chopper landing. Cool hands were holding me down and I felt the stinging kiss of a needle against my wrist, and what little consciousness I had been holding on to began to slip away in favor of an inky dark blackness.
"We've got a live one over here - bring a gurney!" shouted a voice over the roar of the wind. "We need to get her out of her ASAP!"
Then someone was lifting me onto a hard plastic surface. Red optics glared out at me from beneath pointed optic plates, and a cruel sneer twisted the otherwise unmarred metallic face.
"This isn't over, fleshling," the voice hissed in sinister promise, "Oh, no. We have barely begun."
And I slipped off the edge I had been clinging too and fell into blackness.