March 14, 2621.
"So, we left of with what you refered to as your first hunt."
Yeah thats where we left off, Ahhhhhh.
He sighs satisfied as he puff a cloud of smoke in the air.
Ill never forget my first mission, even of I live to be 10,000. The mission was on Talco, one of the moons of this planet, which was terriformed for the purposes of reasearching some of the Shadow's eggs and Facehugger specimens. Weyland had managed to capture a shadow queen, and use it as a sort of egg generator, so he wouldn't have to worry about loosing assets all the time, he'd still lose his st whenever it happened though.
Talco had had numerous outbreaks, they were always small things. Loss of power, ramdom mix-up, just a case of bad luck or one simple uncrossed t that lead to one or more scientists getting impregnated. They'd harvest the embryos, send em back to KJ147, clean up the mess, and then just bring in a few new egg heads. There were a few chestbursters that broke containment, a few adult drones, but the marines there always managed to take care of it.
At least until Hadrick got word from Weyland to go hunting bugs. Weyland didn't care much about the specimens on Talco. The assets of major importance were on KJ147. That's not to say Talco didn't have anything of interest, it had alot of reports, paperwork stuff, data, was all above my pay grade, heck I didn't even get paid, but eh, you get what I'm saying. Save the stuff, get any survivors out, and take the base back, so st can get back to work.
Hadrick then passed the word to his grunts, to get their st together cause we were going bug hunting. And yes I was one of them. Hardick knew how much I'd been wanting to go on a hunt. Told me the first chance he saw that'd he'd got he'd bring me with. I was where eager to go. Not to prove myself, I already did that two weeks prior, when I killed a full grown warrior with my bare hands. This was so I could get some pay pack on more Shadows. I still hate those things, and I'll always hate them. I'll never stop hating them. So once I got the news I was excited, but in a controlled manner, I didn't go jumping up and down like a kid who got what he wanted on Christmas, or that.
Everyone in the dropship were all a little anxious, others were more nervous. Some of these guys had been on some stand-up fights against the shadows, fewer had just barely made it. You could see it on the looks on their faces, and the scars too, God their scars! Most of the team was just newbies abunch of excited fire-pissing derilcts (Derelict is a term used by the marines to describe newbies that have never engaged in stand-up combat situations before) teens wanting some action. I wasn't exactly a teenager like alot of these guys were, although given my training exercise, my not quite adult Ooman tall stature, and my marine mentality, I practically was a teenager. All I needed to do know was pass puberty and I was their. A couple of these guys were nervous like the guys who'd actually had experience with the shadows. They didn't know what to expect, they had no idea what they'd be expecting. I didn't exactly know what I'd be expecting myself, but I had fought a xenomorph before, and I was still ten at the time. Everybody was decked out for a fight. Pulse rifles, Smart guns, Berettas, grenades, flame throwers, knives, acid proof suits, C-4, HEs, the works. I had been less suited up, but I didn't need everything the rest of the guys needed. I was already acid proof, so it'd just be unnecessary weight that'd be dragging me down. I had some armoron to protect my vital areas, I had a crotch piece just so I wouldn't lose anything extremely necessary, but I was packing pretty light on the armor department. I am pretty resilient, and durable on my own, and I'd need to invest in speed. Plus I was already weighted down as I was with my weapons and ammo as it was. I was one of the strongest grunts on the mission so they had me be ammo guy. I had a M41A pulse rifle which I'd modified before the fight that can hold smart gun drums, which hold 150 9mm rounds, as well as the standard 99 round magazine everyone else had. I'd modified the thing myself, with some help from Hardick himself of course. His grand dad was a warrior just like alot of male Schaefer's, but he was more creative. Hadrick had some creative bolts in his head to, and once the two met after Hadrick joined the core, Old great granddaddy Schaefer passed some of that creativity onto him. The two built a custom Deagle Magnum pistol that could shoot seven 500 SW Magnum rounds, ammunition that was designed to be fired by the SW 500, which is, arguably, the most powerful pistol in the world.
I was next in line to learn this knowledge, If I survived this trip, I'd learn more, and I did.
He smiles sarcastically.
I can easily fire a M41A pulse rifle easy, but since I was still growing, I'd need something a bit bigger in the near future. That allowed me to make the Smart gun drum modification, along with a few other mods, like interchangeable double grenade launchers, which could fire two grenades at once, which was just in case I'd need to take out something particularly tough, as well as interchangeable Lazer sight.
He holds the weapon up to show me a larger than normal pulse rifle with laser sighting, a smart gun drum with 150 rounds reading on the side of the firearm, and the double grenade launcher, which made the front of the weapon look very phallic.
Yeah I know it looks pretty phallic, but it serves its purpose.
"Why does it say the Sexual Tyrannosaurus on it? Did you name it that?"
No, I'm not the kind of guy who gives his weapons names and treats them like children rather than firearms. One of my friends made a comment about it looking very big, and phallic, with the two grenade launchers, which became a long running joke name for the thing, until I just said fk it and gave it the official name Sexual Tyrannosaurus. I don't like taking the Lord's name in vain so I just call it Sexual Tyrannosaurus. Along with ST here, I had two wrist blade gauntlets, a combi-stick, both of which I modified latter on, and uncle A'rgr-lo's smart disc.
Kj unsheiths the disc from a pouch on his hip, to show he still has it. He smiles as he looks down at it.
Once we got to Talco, we secured ourselves a perimeter around the outskirts of the research base, where the shadow's had reportedly been seen setting up a hive. Their were more research bases on Talco, and each one of them kept tabs on each other just for these sorts of things. That's how we managed to find out this place was overwhelmed. The day after we set up camp we brainstormed a plan on how we were going to go about eradicating the nest. The nest was fairly new, we didn't think it would be to big, but this wasn't the marines first rodeo with the shadows, so we devised a plan just in case it was something to major. First we'd secure the base itself, set up a perimeter, carefully check the base over, and secure any unmarked areas with guards and robot sentry turrets, then block off all ventilation access to the xenos in those areas so they'd come right to us, after that we'd work our way inside carefully, killing anything that wasn't human, and securing any survivors. If they were impregnated, but still had some time left, we'd set them up in cryo-chambers so they could have a chance of getting to surgery. If their wasn't enough time for them, we'd do the merciful thing and make it quick and painless. One in the head, then several in the abdomen, just to be sure the embryo inside didn't survive. Once we secured enough room for ourselves, we'd make a convoy with our APCs and hall every last bit of C-4 we had, all in one APC, with the others serving as support to make sure the payload in the one APC got to the queens chamber, which was in essence the heart of the entire hive. After that we set the timer, then run like hell back outside, hopefully in time to see the fireworks, an not be one of the fireworks. After that then we rummage through whatever is left for Weyland's reports and call it a day.
The next day we went about preping ourselves for the fight, loading the one APC with the explosives, checked our munitions, made sure everything was in working condition, then we checked the dropshipz over for bugs. We'd learned that little trick from a guy named Hicks. He was one of the guys who'd been on Acheoron. He was the only one of his team to survive that. One of the dropships they were going to use to GTFO off of LV426, after he and his team whooped, had a stowaway on it, and royally screwed their chances of escaping off the planet. We didn't let that happen a second time. After making sure our rides were safe, we rolled out.
The scene was an utter mess. The emergency lights were on keeping the place light, albeit very dimly. Fortunately we'd brought IR goggles, and I had my bio-mask, which also had night vision on it to. The place had messy barricades set up all over the hallways, I don't know what the scientists were thinking, because those barricades weren't strong enough to keep a regular Ooman out, let alone a xeno. Dried up blood, and mangled rotting bodies of scientists and marines filled the halls. One marine had his entire upper and lower half removed, the only thing keeping the wtwo parts together were the guys own intestines. His entire left cheek had been sliced open revealing the disgusting, and incredibly disturbing contents inside. If I hadn't had such a strong stomach, unlike my fellow marines, I'd have been puking my guts out. One derelict by the name of Michelle, a petite little thing no older than 19 years old, was crying her eyes out, while also puking up a storm. Upon looking at her name patch, and the dead marine's name patch we could see they had the same last name ,Roberts. This guy was her brother. Some of the other guys were like her, some of these people had been their friends, family, loved ones. They were heartbroken to see them dead, mangled and rotting away to nothing. Most of the other guys, weren't very sympathetic. Hadrick wasn't unsympathetic but he wanted his marines on their feet in case anything happened so he acted a little unsympathetic, telling em to just move on, or forget about em. If they didn't snap out of it in three minutes or less, he'd use more blunt measures. I knew this because he'd done it to me during boot camp. I could see his point, but these guys wouldn't work without a little sympathy. A couple few guys who were empathetic including myself, who went to comfort them. When I went to comfort Michelle, I told her I knew how she felt. She fought back stating, that I never knew her brother, and that he meant nothing to me personally, so I couldn't begin to understand how she was feeling. I calmly replied that she was correct in the first two statements, but she was wrong in then latter stamtement. I knew what it was like to lose a loved one to these shadow's. I told her that I'd lost Mom when I was only a seven year old suckling, and how emotionally traumatic it was for me. She was all I had at the time, I couldn't live without her. I told this to her, she shook some tears out from under her IRs, gagged a few more times, and she hugged me passionately. I clicked my mandibles in a tear jerking smile as she thanked me for my sympathy. I helped her up, and a minute of sniffling latter she was back in line with the rest of the group. Good thing to, she was five seconds away before I had to get Hadrick to use some of that blunt force.
Everything moved smoothly. To smoothly. I'd been briefed on shadow behavior in training, so I was anticipating they'd be letting us in just so they could ambush us. But as we went deeper and deeper in with no incidents reported by our buds, and no movement on our movement on our motion trackers, besides a few surviving marines, and scientists we'd found, their was nothing. That made me incredibly nervous. We found a few eggs in a couple of the hallways, a few accidental traps left behind waiting for something stupid enough to come inside. This wasn't actually a purposefully planned tactic on the shadows' part, but we perceived it as such. They were actually just eggs that had been set up willy nilly during the early stages of the infestation, before they made the finished project someplace else, and the eggs were just left about forgotten.
"Did anybody get ambushed by the facehuggers inside?"
Nah, we found most of em real easily, and any we discovered in places like closets or under desks we took care of pretty quickly. Although a couple of us got tagged by one of the little bastards every now and then. Luckily we marines managed to formulate a method of getting rid of the embryo before it reached the stomach, and began growing inside. Studies have shown that facehuggers, begin releasing a chemical inside that knocks the host out as the implantation process begins, Then they begin implanting the embryo soon after the host is immobilized. It takes a solid five seconds before you are knocked out, so what you do is you let the little arachnid fker latch onto you then you bite down on it's... ewh, probiscus, then after the face hugger pounces off, you trip your gage reflex, in case the facehugger was able to plant the embryo before the knock out chemical, which they do whenever they can't do it enough time before the host manages to wrench the bugger off. This allows you to essentially puke the embryo back out before it can begin to develop inside your stomach, and it works, most of the time. The only way it isn't able to is if you're to slow. One of our guys was and unfortunately he didn't make it during the surgical removal. Surgery is a second chance option which has alot less likelihood of survival. It's a fifty fifty shot of being able to remove the chestburster, although the survivability rate itself is lower than that, as the embryo inside creates a cancerous growth on the outside of itself that protects it while it develops inside the stomach. That is harder to remove than the chestbuster itself, with only a twenty-five percent success chance, thats also if their able to remove it early. Scientists are finding out now that taking certain medications can actually decrease the growths ability to develop inside of you, but if you ask me it's all bull.
"Have you ever had to preform this particular procedure on yourself before."
Yes, many times, a couple few close calls, but hey, I'm still on the right side of the dirt.
We secured the entire base all in that one day, and while doing so we ended up finding the remaining survivors, 15 of them. We had a medic check em, analyze their insides to make sure they didn't have an embryo in em, all of which turned up clean, and sent em off to the camp we'd set up a few clicks outside the research base. We may have needed the surviving marines for a little extra support, but our job was to make sure they got home to their wives and kids. To have them throw themselves back in the fire we were saving em from was almost completely pointless, especially when these guys were starving, and in great need of medical, and psyche evaluation. These guy's had been through enough they needed sleep, food, and a ticket back home. Before we did though, we got some pretty useful info out of them. Apparently, some of em had seen some drones coming out and hailing a few victims that were still alive into a secure basement area built underneath the complex. It was the perfect area for them to begin the setup of their hive, It was deep, dark, had some good heating in it, and was absolutely secure from any assault. I know that's where I'd go. If one had to come in, they'd have to come inside the tunnels, which would be more than loaded with xenomorphs. Perfect ambush tactic. Make your enemy come to you, through a gaurded choke point, then once they're where you want em, you grab em by the groin.
And given the fact that's where we had to go in order to take the shadows nest, we basically had no choice. It was underground so we couldn't nuke it from above, and we couldn't just cave it in either, because these things can dig. Even if you factor in oxygen shortage, and the darkness, just forget it. They don't need to breath at all, and their vision is pheromone based. They can tell there they are just by following one of their buddies scent trails. These things, while not the perfect organism if you ask me, they are undeniably the most adaptable species in the world. It doesn't matter what environment they're in, these things are just that good at making a home outta nothing. I'm sure they can even live in that to, seriously, these guys can even survive in space.
Yeah, I'll just let you sit and allow that thought to sink in for a momment.
"Were you at all scared by this?"
I'll admit I was alittle nervous myself, but I said myself a little prayer, like I always do now, before I go killing, and each time I feel a presence with me that lingers, telling me, "Hey, it's okay bud. You know what to do, just do it. You'll be alright, it'll all be alright. Don't worry." And yeah some of the guys looked at me like I was full of it at first, but after all was said 'n done they found themselves on their knees with their hands crossed. Michelle saw me, and began praying with me. I managed to catch a glimpse of this while I prayed. I can't really keep my eyes closed during prayer time, mostly just so I can keep my guard up. Michelle wasn't a religious girl, but she did have a lot of respect for others and their beliefs, I was beginning to like this girl, I made sure to include her along with the guys I hoped was going to make it outta this.
The we found the basement area, with the help of the surviving marines, and sure enough, what did we find down there, a tunnel, and what was in that tunnel, shadow secretion. Shadow drones literally vomit this stuff up, in and around the walls and ceiling itself, which then hardens to form a solid structure from which they built their nests off of. Pretty disgusting stuff. I've seen em do it.
The basement was mostly a storage/security room area, so it was pretty big. It had a loading door inside the garage, where the marines could carry stuff in, and park some vehicles. The thing wasn't a landing area, but it could fit three dropships, and a few APCs easy. The door could fold open to form a slope, that you could walk on, which was litteraly what it was for. I was a little impressed by the idea. It allowed us to move our convoy stationed outside the base, into the hive, After a quick equipment check, we rolled our butts down.
The walls around us were black with the goopy resin. We had flood lights shining all around us but even they didn't help when all we saw was black. That's just how the tunnel worked, not only was it a good chock point, but also one you couldn't see in ,either. The resin helped capture us in almost complete darkness, it didnt help that the environment was dark, but we were driving through one that was covered in black. If it wasn't for the reflective slime parts that hadn't hardened yet, I'd have been convinced that ,even if there weren't shadows down here trying to kill you, you'd be screwed just trying to find your way out of this place, even with a flash light. Thankfully though our IRs could help us see alot better, although the light coming off our APCs' flood lights really didn't help. It made everything look to bright.
We laid down some signal markers that we could track with our APCs' scanners, that way we wouldn't lose our trail. Even if we did lose our IRs and our APC's scanner, the signals themselves would flash a little red light every second, which you could follow. The light was also designed not to ruin your night vision, so that also helped. But vision wasn't our only problem.
Space was also a pretty big thing these tunnels were lacking. While these things were big enough for us to fit our APCs through, that was pretty much it. We were either scrapping our ass on one side of the walls, then as we tried to correct it, we'd be scrapping our ass on the other side. And do not even get me started with the turns. Luckily there was enough space for us to be able to get out through the doors, even if we had to squeeze through. The ceiling was also very merciful to us as it was reasonably high.
The first thirty minutes of our drive down were pretty uneventful, we had to drive pretty slowly if we even wanted to get in their at all, not to mention the amount of times we had to stop and leave a marker.
For most of the drive down we hadn't seen anything. No movement on our IRs, absolutely no help with our flood lights. Everybody began thinking they were so tough cause they hadn't seen nothing yet. I couldn't believe it. These guys were laughing, joking, all that. They talked big games like they'd been in stand-up fights before. The 'ultimate badasses' they called themselves. Ultimate dumbasses is what these guys were. These guy's had no idea what they were getting into, and they were just laughing! Did they even have a clue what they'd seen back at the complex? What these things had done? what these things could do to us, or even much worse? Sure this was different territory, but this was still their territory. We couldn't see Jack or his st to tell it from our own. Yet still these guys just laughed their butts off. One of the cocky gals in our squad, looked like a model, pretty face, smooth short hair, big boobs, big butt, nice thighs, just the most perfect body you'd ever seen, began stipping her armor off and showing her (cough cough) unmentionables to this one handsome mother fker, guy looked like he'd be one of the faces on a sexiest men in the world magazine. The guy was probably her boyfriend I didn't know, these guys weren't any of my bunk mates I'd ever trained with, but she was just stripping in front of him, telling him after it was over she wanted him. I knew stuff like this, I knew it before I even hit my puberty. I knew what these guys were up to. They wanted that bit of night time satisfaction you get with someone after you've just kicked all the ass in the world. I could condone them wanting to have sex after this was over, but for the merciful Master Jesus' sake don't make out like it's party time before we've even done anything.
Hadrick was barking orders for them all to shut the fk up, and for that girl, Stacy, to put her armor back on. For how intimidating Hadrick Schaefer was, with his look alone being able to put the fear of God into you, these kids were being plain idiots. It didn't matter that we were trying to sneak up on the shadows or anything like that. That wasn't our plan. The shadows already knew we were here. What urked us was that these idiotic fire-pissing derelicts were letting their guard down, treating this entire situation as if it were one big joke. I'd finally had enough of it and decided to help old dad out. I roared so loudly I managed to silence the APC's engine. I chastised these guys for making this entire operation, look like it was just a big comedy drama.
"This is war!" I screamed at them. "And I don't know if you know it or not, but we're in enemy territory right now with next to no visibility, and little to no space with which to see in either. Don't you have a clue what your doing. Strip-teasing, laughing joking, coking. I'd be fine with this once we're done and on our way back to KJ147, but right now is not the time to just drop your guard, or your armor and act like a bunch of clowns!" The one handsome guy ,Thompson, tried to couter my argument by saying that we haven't seen anything, since we got here. I retorted by telling him that was exactly why we were yelling at him. We came here expecting to fight something, and we knew it was here. We also knew it knew we were here to, but still it wasn't showing itself despite the fact we knew it was here anyway. I asked them if they had recognized any off this or if they'd payed attention to any of the briefings about the enemy we were about to face. I asked them this, heck I screamed at them right in each of their faces. Except for Michelle, she was listening. They just laughed at me to. The couldn't take the Marshmello paint on my bio-mask seriously.
But about fifteen seconds latter when a shadow pounced on the front of the APC, and Boy! you'd bet your sweet ass, they realized that st just got real. Several more followed after that, they were coming out of the walls, raining from the ceiling, surrounding us, swarming us. The APC in front of us swivled out of control, as did we. The APC behind us, the one all the explosives in it was blocked by our fat butts, and couldn't move, as could the other two APCs behind it. Stacy began putting her armor back on panickingly. The others quit their laughing and began screaming. All hell had just broken lose, and we were right in the thick of it. Everyone stupidly began running out of the APC. Probably hopping their would be time to escape. They were wrong the first one out was Thompson, immediately after opening the door a shadow on the roof of the APC grabbed him by his face and pulled him up, his screams muffled by the creature's black claw, Another joker, I don't know what his name was, he got pulled out by his arm. Stacy and Michelle, were trying to help this poor bastard out, pulling by his legs. He tried reaching over with his other free arm screaming "HELP ME! HELP ME! PLEASE! DON'T LET THEM TAKE ME! DON'T LET THEM TAKE ME!" I was over there in less than a second trying to help the girls with this guy, but it was no use, another two shadows got to him. One grabbed his head and the other took his other arm. I was with the girls trying to help fight this poor guy away from the shadows, when all we were doing was playing tug of war. Oomans make very poor ropes. The poor son of a bch was torn from his legs, and quickly vanished into the black hallway. A Shadow materialized in front of the door, and was on top of Stacy a second later. I managed to draw my wristblades in time to save her from having her head impaled by the xenos inner jaw. Acid blood spilled on me as I stabbed it in the side of it's head. It made a pitiful elephant scream as I did so. Luckily none of the acid got on Stacy. She looked down at the xeno terrified, then up at me. I grabbed her pulse rifle she'd dropped earlier, and yanked her up by her arm. I screamed at her, for her to make sure she had her armor on before she began to fight, and proceeded to helping Michelle with the xenos outside our APC. Giving the other guys the time they needed to get their stuff together. After clearing enough of an area for us to move out of, we all began scrambling ourselves out of our APC, as did the rest of the guys in all the other APCs. I had my backpack full of extra mags and my Pulse rifle, on my shoulders, my wrist blades on my wrists, my smart disc sheathed and at the ready, and my combi-stick in both of my hands. I began laying waste to every xeno that rushed into my blood circle.
That's the thing about a combi-stick, it may look like a simple double edged spear, but if your skilled with it, it can actually be a very proficient slashing tool too. The sides around the tip are designed in such a way where it can be used to cut an opponent when you swing it at them. It takes a while to get the hang of, and it may seem very unwieldy at first, but once you've figured it out, you practically become a tornado of blood and body parts.
I provided my buddies cover for them to begin setting up a perimeter. After the perimeter was formed, and everyone was out of the APCs, we began setting up our remaining sentries to help us hold the perimeter I dropped my back pack, sheathed my combi-stick, broke out Sexual Tyrannosaurus and let it rip. We were boxed in on both sides, with our APCs stuck preventing us from escape, and depriving us of precious fighting area. But we managed to hold them back. Three spent mags later and our sentries were firing blank clicks. That was bad, I thought at the time that, we couldn't continue this forever. Some of out guys were having problems holding their side of the line, and after finishing my third mag I dropped ST, broke out my combi-stick again, and began chopping up shadows. Our line held well, we only lost two guys in that entire ordeal, and because of the low number of xenomorphs their were, their numbers began to dwindle rapidly. I suppose we actually could keep this up forever. One stray grenade later and we spilled out into another chamber of the hive. It was big, bigger than we'd thought. A foul, bitter stench perforated our senses. It smelled like copper, and that of a shadow's egg, rotten and oily. But the stench was nothing compared to the visuals. This was the egg chamber where the xenos had taken their eggs and the hosts. Each of their corpses had a grizzly hole in their chest, and this perpetual look of terror as each of them met their untimely fate. The bio-mask wasn't really big to go off of other than that, but it was enough for our guys to see it with their IRs and begin to puke, some of them cried "OH GOD! OH GOD!" really whiney. I actually felt sorry for these guys, but I had no time to sit and dwell on sympathizing for these guys. That would come later during the psyche evaluation. I had a job to do. Everybody else saw what I'd seen, and were puking their guts out, everyone except for Hadrick, he'd been through st like this before, and was taking it well. I helped my fellow marines to their feet. "Walk it off, and be glad you aren't up their with em." I told em. As I was helping Michelle, I managed to catch movement out of the corner of my bio-mask's vision, and react just in time before a facehugger could latch itself onto her.
"OHH NO NO NO!" I said as I held onto the flimsy arachnid-like creature. I crushed it in my hands and threw it's boney husk away. And then I saw them. The rest of the xenomorph eggs. Only there were a lot of them, to many of them. Then I saw her. This had been bigger than we'd all thought. There sitting leisurely on her egg laying thing, whatever it's called, stood the queen. And standing right next to her were two preatorian gaurds.
Preatorians, if you are wondering what they are, are basically the royal guards of the hive, and have the duty of protecting the queen, if any are present to protect her that is. Warriors are able to morph into preatorians through the use of royal jelly, which don't ask me what it is or how they get. I don't know, nor do I want to. But at any rate they can also become queens if their queen dies, and if their is no royal egg present to produce another queen. It's essential a back up plan for a back up plan.
The Queen shrieked agitated by our presence. She began ordering warriors to surround us, her preatorians to prepare to attack, and the eggs to open up. Queens are able to do this through something called a hive mind. It allows members of the hive to communicate, something like telepathy, I don't know how it works. But it allows the queen to give orders to her subjects, and for them to relay info to each other over great distances.
I quickly responded by taking hold of someone's flamethrower, and I pointed it at the eggs. The queen recoiled, at the sight of it. Apparently there was one thing they did fear, fire. And I was going to milk that weakness for every bit of it's worth. I torched the few eggs that were opened, and threatened to do the same to the rest of her eggs. The queen looked at her preatorians, then at her warriors, and they all began to back up. But I could see the queen was formulating, deducing a plan for which she could ambush us somehow. I saw an egg open to one side. The queen was starring at it, then she starred at me intently. I knew what she was planning, and I wasn't having any of it. I wasn't birthing any Abomination any time soon. I clicked my mandibles in agrivation, and began torching the chamber. The queen screeched painfully as I began slaughtering her newborns.
The queen let her preatorians at me. The two charged me together intent on crushing me. I pushed Michelle and another marine out of the way, and took the hit so they wouldn't. Some of the remaining warriors joined them. They ignored the other marines and focused themselves on me. I was apparently the biggest threat to their matriarch, the marines were just pesky gnats, so it behooved them to do me in first. While I pulled distraction duty, Hadrick and the other marines took the opportunity to plant the C-4 in the chamber. The APC was stuck so they couldn't drive it in, they had to unload all of it and then set the charges. Their actions didn't go unnoticed however, as the queen had some of the warriors focus their attention on the marines. She had no idea what they were doing, and thus she still saw me as the bigger threat.
After taking that head butt from both of the preatorians, they began clawing the st out of me. The warriors held me in place as the preatorians opened up on me. A few painful seconds afterward, I had had it with these damn royal guards. I pulled one of the warriors holding my arm down, over me, and used it as a meat shield. The preatorians accidently tore into it for a second, until they found out they were killing one of their buddies, and batted the shadow out of my hand. The other warrior that had held my other arm, I swung into one of the preatorians, The large shadow hissed irritated, and it along with it's buddy picked me up, and held me to the wall, as the one I'd smacked in the head prepared it's inner jaw to impale me. I pulled my head back and head butted it before it could. I did it pretty hard too since it stunned it enough to let me go. Now I could attack it's friends. The other preatorian still had it's hold on me, and was about to impale me with its tail. I dodged, and brought my wristblades down on it's tail severing it. He did not appreciate that, I then brought my blades back up and punctured it's head crest. The thing screeched an elephant scream of it's own, as it let me go. Apparently these things are little bches just like the warriors are. The other one snuck up on me from behind and threw me to the other side of the chamber. I'll give em one thing though, they are really strong pitchers. I hit the wall hard, knocking the wind out of me. I managed to recover just in time to see a warrior try to sneak attack me from above. I moved out of the way, and with a swift motion I managed to decapitate it with my wristblades. I anticipated the preatorians would charge me again, and I let them. I jumped above the one just before it was about to connect. It's head smashed into the wall. I landed on it's back and cut it's tail off at the base. That mad it lose it's sense of balance, and fall. I then proceeded to open up on it. It's fellow preatorian however, came to it's aid and showered me in acid. The shower didn't effect me any, but it did distract me long enough for the preatorian I was on top of to kick me away. The one that had distracted me then charged. I charged to. As we were about to collide I slide underneath it's stride and severed it's left foot from it's leg. The preatorian tumbled to the ground and shrieked in pain as I'd just dismembered it's foot. I was about to finish it when the other charged me on all fours. I was batted away and hissed at hatefully.
The queen watched with interest. If she'd not been a lazy bch, and actually helped out, then maybe she would have won this fight.
It was at this point I began to understand the preatorian's tactics. One pulled distraction while the other draws the blow.
I felt a sharp pain on my side. I held it, and hissed painfully. The mother fker had fractured my ribs. I quickly pulled out a healing stim, an item that my species uses as a regeneration buster, allowing us to heal from wounds we sustain at a faster rate, and hold off more sever injuries until we have time to address them later, with our medicomps (Predator medkits are called medicomps). The stim boosts our adrenaline system, allowing us to fight without feeling the pain as much which allows us to continue for as long as we can after taking them.
It's effects began working through me instantaneously. The pain was no longer hurting as much as it once was. And like that I was back in the fight. The two preatorians stood next to each other studying me. "Come on you ugly sons of bches." I told them. One obeyed my taunt and ran after me on all fours like it had last time, it was because I cut itself tail of at it's base that it was assuming this posture. Their tails function in helping them balance when on two legs. Take that off, and they lose that balance forcing them to go on all fours.
I jumped over the creature as it was about to hit me, and charged the other one. It had not expected that. It was limping with the loss of it's foot, becoming a major inconvenience for it, so I managed to tackle it easily. While I was tearing into the creature with my wristblades, I managed to cleave part of it's left arm off at the elbow. The other was now charging at me again. I jumped over allowing it to trample it's buddy. That must have hurt. That preatorian was now assuming the posture it's friend had, and it charged after me. Even with two and a half functional limbs these guys are good at running. I was about to remedy that. I charged at it.
Expecting me to claw at it from bellow it kept it's head low in a pouncing position. I could read this thing like it was a book. I pounced as it did, grabbed ahold of it, and exhorting as much force as I could and body slammed the beast crushing it underneath me. It retaliated by wrapping it's tail around my throat, and chocked me. The other one took the initiative, and yanked my wristblades off before I could use them to free myself. I then remembered uncle A'rgr-lo's smart disc, and quickly unsheathed it and cut more of the tail off. I thanked A'rgr-lo and Hadrick for that one, and continued. The one that had ripped my wristblades off was now stampeding towards me ferociously. It was done with me, and I was done with it. I slide under it as it pounced over me. I really could read these things like books. I kept my attention locked on it, as the other one recovered behind me and prepared to charge. I knew this and just let them charge. They were expecting me to do something, either charge, slide, or pounce, but they didn't expect me to duck. They cracked their heads together with a crunchy crack. That sounded painful. I quickly took this opportunity to slice the one preatorian's head almost completely off. That one made an outstanding trophy. As I took it and mounted it on my back, the other one tried to sneak up on me from behind, but I anticipated the sneak attack, and drove A'rgr-lo's smart disc into it's skull with ease. The disc had punctured it's brain right as it shot it's inner jaw out. I didn't exactly expect that though. I was lucky that time to have reacted as quickly as I did. It stood over me paralyzed in what I would have assumed was momentary disbelief. I held it's paralyzed husk up, before ripping my smart disc out of it's face, and swung it back cleaving the top of it's head off. It fell to the floor dead.
"Fk you!" I told it as I gave it the middle finger.
The queen screamed outraged by this turn of events. Tearing itself off of it's egg generator. It stood towering and starred down at me, as I did too with my bio-mask starring back up at it with it's goofy Marshmello smile on it. It hissed at me angrily. I don't know what it was thinking, but if I had to guess, it was asking me how dare I could come into it's domain, and violate it's home like this. I gave it no answer. It roared as it charged after me. My fight with the queen was less spectacular than my fight with the preatorians, as it was shorter, and it consisted of me dodging it's attacks, and only drawing blood when I could. It caught me in it's claws at the end of our conflict. It was hesitant to kill me so quickly. It was mulling over whether to kill me or impregnate me. She never reached her decision as we both heard a loud annoying beep a couple seconds after she caught me.
I kicked her in the face allowing her to drop me, and make a run for it. I hit a sharp rock on the way down, and felt this overwhelming pain as I recovered. I'd broken my leg. The other marines were calling over to me trying to make me run faster, but since I'd just reduced my mobility, I was limping instead of running. Two warriors tried to halt me, but I slide under them, and cut open their abdomens where their stomachs would have been, killing them. Michelle and Stacy grabbed me by my arms and began dragging me to the only APC that was functional. The other ones had been damaged when the tunnel collapsed earlier.
Somehow, and don't ask me how, they managed to completely reverse the direction of this thing so we'd be driving forward with it rather than in reverse. I didn't ask and just thanked God for the one-up.
Just as the two girls began hoisting me forward, I felt something strong pull me away from them at my leg. It was the queen. She was stuck in the hole we'd opened up in her chamber. She knew what was about to happen, and she wasn't going to accept it, at least, not unless I'd be coming with. She gave me a pissed off glare. I removed my mask and roared back ferociously at her. She recoiled her head a little in surprise, but then opened her mouth and prepared to kill me with her enormous inner jaw. I looked around, saw a grenade on the ground, and picked it up. As she threw her jaw at me, I bent backwards dodging the attack by a hair, then returned the favor by pulling the pin on the grenade and shoving it in her inner jaw as she brought it back. I yanked myself out of her grasp as she stood their stupidly wondering what I'd just made her eat. I was about to make a run for it but then I remembered I'd dropped ST. It was stupid, but the thing had sentimental value to me. Me and dad had made it together. I cursed as I ran back for it. I guess I really didtreat this thing like it was my child, since I told it I was sorry for almost leaving it.
The grenade exploded in the queen's mouth and while it didn't kill her, I knew she was going to need more than a TUMS for that.
Hadrick and Michelle were hanging their hands outside the door of the APC, both of them calling for me to go faster so I could reach them. Im normally very fast on my feet, but with my broken leg I could only hubble. They were moving remarkably fast along the corridors of the hive, unlike before. I guess when you accidently set the timer on your C-4 to 10 minutes when it takes you thirty just to get down there, yeah you get a little anxious. Was the heat of the momment I guess. I quickly lost sight of the APC as they booked it faster and faster, away from me. The stim was losing it's effects, and I was beginning hurting just to move, my ribs were still crushed, and my leg was impaired. I'm just glad the bone wasn't sticking out, or I wouldn't have been running for my life at all. I had to basically will myself to continue running faster, and I was thankful to have made it as far as I did, Because soon after the tunnels began to light up. The C-4 had went off, and was now filling the area in fire. I honestly thought I was dead there for a second, but at the same time, what was I supposed to have expected it to do to me. The fire did nothing to me, I didn't feel pain, in fact I actually enjoyed the warmth of the fire. What I'm glad I actually managed to make it out of in time, was the cave in that followed. I'd just managed to escape being trapped in that tunnel forever. I walked the rest of the way back from their. Thankfully I'd managed to hold on to Mom's mask the entire time or I would have been both pissed, and lost in the dark. The marines looked a little forlorn like I had died. But I'd made it. They all light up once they saw my smoked mandibled face walking out of that hell hole alive.
Hadrick, Michelle, and a couple other marines came over to see if I was alright. I told em I was mostly fine, and planted myself down on a seat to catch my breath. I was breathing really heavily from that run. Hadrick asked me what the hell happened to me. I told him the story about the queen, and how I'd almost forgot the Pulse rifle. He gave me a stirn look that said "You seriously went back for the gun!" I just smiled back. He just walked away rolling his eyes as he did so. I quickly checked to make sure my preatorian trophy was safe on my back which it was, it was a little charred from the fire, but it was still in good condition. Michelle came to help assess my injured leg and ribs. She also thanked me for what I did to help her earlier when I helped sympathized with her after seeing her dead brother, and when I'd saved her a couple times during the fight in the tunnels. Aside from a few moments where she touched my leg after putting a splint on it, we spent the rest of the time we had on our way back to KJ147 getting to know each other well and we become friends. Was a damn shame though when she got transfered over to another complex soon after we got back. She held herself well and the Corps decided to transfer her to another facility that needed tough cadets like her. We managed to stay in contact though, and three years latter she came back. Stacy, eh, I said a few harsh things about her, but if I had to be honest she was, Okay. You can be sure though that I told her not to do what she did again, or I was going to cram my fist up her's and take her spine out. That got her attention good. She was also transfered and apart from one incident I never saw her again. Everybody else was sent back to their respective facilities, some of them transferring their grunts to other facilities, two of which came to fill in Michelle, and Stacy's shoes. The rest of us stayed, and that was that. I got a psyche evaluation, just like we all did. I was in good mental condition. My wounds were dressed, I was feed, and had a great night sleep.
So yeah that's my first hunt, not exactly one of my proudest moments like when I killed my first shadow, but eh, it's still one I remember fondly.
After some more talk, we finish the interview and set up our next meeting for next month.
Authors note: I'm sorry this one took so long to make, I was busy, and I couldn't spend much time on it when I could this week. And I had to be creative with the fight scenes. That wasn't the only problem too, I had to go back and edit some stuff that I hadn't noticed in the other chapters when I published them. Whoops. Also I heard someone comment saying their were a bunch of typos, which I don't know what are, and apparently the person also mentioned my incorrect spelling of the word Yautja. I purposefully made the spelling incorrect whenever KJon says the word, since he has a speech impediment, and can't pronounce some things correctly. It's kind of like when he says the word human, and it comes out instead as Ooman. Anyway, just thought I'd let you know, and thanks for the comment.