CHAPTER FIVE
It didn't take long, and Jim was soon satisfied what he needed to do.
"Alright, put together a team. I'll take 'em through, retake the command centre. If there's zerg, we'll flush them out with some of that anti-bio gas that Stetmann cooked up."
"It's risky, commander."
"So's breathing. Just get 'em together, some of them are itching for some more trigger practise. I'll be prepping the ship."
"Yes, sir."
Several marine squads that were selected for the assault teams were waiting on select positions, inside the massive, breathing tunnels - waiting for the rest of their detachment, engineers arriving by dropship, or to scout ahead on Raynor's orders. Mostly they were just there to fortify their landing positions, assuming that a massive zerg army could come crawling out of the massive organic tunnel at any moment.
There was atmosphere, but it was not at human norms, so everyone was in suits and using respirators. No-one wanted to breath in zerg atmosphere and have their lungs colonised.
Every dropship was a medivac these days, only efficient, but it was difficult to lose some habits. Raynor was making sure to brief each one personally. A lot of Raynor's best men had to be reorganised, without a Hyperion to spearhead the effort. But getting inside the massive super-colony had been oddly easy, like it didn't even know they were there.
They watched Raynor leave, while Cpl. First Class Miranda hid a speculative grin behind a hand.
"D'ya think he waxed it?"
"Ouch. Even Raynor has his limits." Said a good fellow to her right, wiping down the barrel of his gauss rifle, trying to avoid the useless but decorative stickies he fastened to it.
"Oh tell me about it," she said, rolling her eyes fetchingly, and shoving his shoulder with a free hand.
"Hurts right?" Another man spoke up, quite seriously. That man was in charge of counting their grenades, and doing so with good alacrity, the chrome cylinders juggling in the air. There was no danger of them exploding, not with Swann and his boys checking every safety factor.
"First time I tried it, I didn't even cry," the fellow replied. "Right away."
The sergeant happened to pick that moment to return from his personal collab with Raynor, and overheard them.
"Ladies, did we really come here to discuss your grooming habits?" he accused them.
The actual lady in the group coughed pointedly, but he ignored it.
"Hey man, don't knock morale," a marine he recognised as "McFly" said. "When we go to fight the Zerg, dya want it looking like shit or looking good?"
"Zerg don't care, man." Obviously the maverick of the group.
"Probably why they're so ugly, then. We're just keeping each other's spirits up, man." This he said directly to the sergeant, who was just trying to keep track of the conversation.
The sergeant smiled then and shrugged. "Aight then, carry on, men. But if I come back and you're braiding each other's hair, I'm kicking you straight out of the corps."
"Uh – yes sir…!"
A couple of them looked a little too shifty for his liking. He eyed them firmly as he left. When he got outside, he laughed to himself, and lit a cigarette.
The tent area was set up with a field generator, made its own atmosphere, 100% clean – so they didn't need their helmets here.
"Wonders never cease," he muttered to himself around the anticipatory unlit stub. "Bunch of divas in my corps." Then he frowned, seeing something beyond the metallic rim of the lighter. A flicker. The light from the flame was catching on something besides its container.
That ain't a good sign, he thought in that moment. The hairs raised on the back of his neck. Only for an instant. And then the neck those hairs were attached to, disappeared, gutted in a spray of gore, thick spinal chunks and body matter now redistributing amongst the already red mass.
No-one inside the barracks tent heard a thing. But that eerie wind continued to howl, from alien lungs deep inside the super-structure.