Not much to say really except the level of swearing increases slightly, but only briefly. You'll understand why.
Chapter thirteen
Assault
"You're just reading me Biggs," replies Vasquez.
Biggs frantically turns his tracker towards the source of movement, dozens of white dots move on the screen, "No, no it aint you, uh…"
Vasquez's own motion tracker starts bleeping and she watches the white dots move on the screen, "Biggs may be right."
Biggs is shaking his head, eyes wide open, "I can't lock in man, I can't lock in… there's movement all over the place!"
"Get back in here now, lock and load people!" orders Beclem.
Biggs and Vasquez promptly return through the door and close it; Vasquez takes out her welder and starts to seal the door.
"Twenty metres and closing," informs Biggs.
They all raise their weapons; the predator presses a few buttons and his shoulder cannon comes to life. The vision mode in his mask has now changed. The background colours have converted from a blue and black background to a red and black. The marines also no longer stand out as colourfully as they used to; in fact they almost don't stand out from the red colour at all, only mild black shading makes them visible. His right index finger hovers above one of the computer's buttons, ready for action. Beclem nervously looks to his left at the predator and looks it up and down, then looks back to the door, shaking his head. Vasquez has just finished the welding of the door.
"Ten metres," calls out Biggs.
"Vasquez, Biggs gets away from the door! Remember short controlled bursts."
"Nine metres!"
"They're right on us!"
Biggs is beginning to sweat, "Eight metres… seven metres, six, wait a minute, they've stopped… what the heck is going on?"
"That can't be that's inside the room," mutters Paine.
"Well maybe you're not reading it right?"
"It's reading it right man, look!"
Yuna's eyes suddenly widen and slowly she looks up to the ceiling, the rest notice her and look up too.
"Oh geez, no way, you gotta be kidding me, no way man."
Beclem grabs a chair and stands on it with a torch and pulse rifle in hand; carefully he pushes up the ceiling panel. He turns around shining the torch in the direction of his vision, as he turns to face in the direction of the door, the light settles on a massive group of aliens who are holding onto the walls and ceiling. They suddenly start crawling, almost slithering towards him again. Beclem stumbles on his chair falls backwards, firing at the ceiling as he falls.
"Aaaaahhh! Oof! They're up there, they're in the ceiling!"
Suddenly the ceiling in front of the marines starts to collapse all over the place and aliens drop into the room.
"There they go! Get 'em!" shouts Biggs.
The group opens fire on them, the predator included. Flashes, explosions, smoke and screeches fill the air. An alien tries to run around their flanks but Yuna catches it in the corner of her eye, swings her gun in its direction and obliterates the creature.
As more and more of the creatures come flooding in the marines start to retreat to a door behind them, but in the chaos and noise they fail to notice a ceiling panel drop from behind them and an alien falls down. It swings its tail at Campbell whose chest almost explodes outwards in a hail of blood as the tail goes straight through him. He doesn't even have time to shout in pain as the alien pulls its tail out of his lifeless body. It looks to its left and screeches as the predator runs at it and smashes it against a nearby wall. As the alien tries to recover the predator gets out its razor sharp lance and swings it hard at the alien's neck, cutting clean through it. The predator dodges out the way as the acid spews out from the neck. Putting its weapon away it re activates its shoulder cannon and turns back the explosive chaos.
Biggs, saturated in his killing instinct, starts going into shooting and verbal overdrive.
"Die mother fucker! Bring it on bitch! Oh you want some of this? Fuck you!" and with each profanity he hurls, another alien falls, but still they keep coming.
In his blind rage he fails to notice an alien, who has managed to avoid getting shot at, move to the group's flank and pounces at Biggs, who doesn't have time to react as the alien wastes no time, firing its secondary jaws at Biggs's face. His body shakes violently, and then gradually stops. Rikku fires at the alien, killing it instantly.
"Fall back! Into this door, now!" orders Beclem.
He opens the door and jumps in, followed by the rest of the group, the rear being taken up by Vasquez, Elma and the Predator who are shooting furiously at the aliens. In the Predator's new vision mode all the bodies of the aliens stand out from the red background as glowing silver. Vasquez is the last to get through the door and Elma closes it. Vasquez quickly draws out her welder and starts to weld it shut from the center downwards. For a few moments a pregnant silence fills the room, save for Vasquez's welding, who is a short distance from the bottom of the door when a thumping noise sounds out from the other side of the door, two more thumps and a dent appears in the door.
"Geez these things are strong. Beclem the nearest exit door is welded shut and there is a strong possibility that those things are standing outside there waiting for us to re open it, we're going to need another way out of here," informs Vasquez.
"I have an idea, there is a large vent system here with an opening just down this hall, I remember now, and we can use it to get to the main access tunnel that leads to the reactor control station. Near to where the sentry guns are there is a lift that leads to the surface, we need to go there, now."
They run down the corridor and Beclem stops at a vent opening, it is large, big enough for a person, to walk down, so long as they bend over. Beclem shoots out the vent cover, pulls it off and gets in.
"Follow me and stay close!"
He is followed into the vent by Paine, Tidus, Yuna, Rikku and Elma. The predator begins to get in but he finds himself getting stuck. He comes back out and shakes his head at Bishop and runs in the direction of the exit.
"Vasquez lets go!" orders Bishop.
He gets into the vent and is closely followed by Vasquez who reverse-walks with her pulse rifle constantly pointing at the opening of the vent.
With one final bash the door splits open and the aliens flood in. Using their strong sense of smell they find the grating and follow the retreating marines.
Vasquez looks back to see the direction Bishop is going and looks back, only to see the aliens crawling on all four sides of the vent; she opens fire.
Yuna and Rikku are following Tidus, Paine and Beclem. They walk beneath a vertical vent shaft leading to higher levels, and Rikku is grabbed round the waist by an alien, which pulls her upwards, Rikku screams and thrashes about.
"YUNIE!"
"RIKKU!"
She watches, helpless, as the alien drags Rikku around a corner and disappears.
"NO, NOOOOO!" screams Yuna.
"Don't worry, we can find her with that proximity transmitter, but we've got to get out of here," yells Tidus and they continue down the vent.
The Predator runs around a corner, and stops dead in his tracks. The exit door has been completely broken away, and in the doorway stands one of the large praetorian guards. It hisses and bears its teeth; the predator in turn calmly gets out his lance. Roaring at the mighty creature he charges at it and the alien does the same, lowering its head. The armour plated crest shines in the red light.
Just as they are about to impact with each other the predator falls to his back and his momentum allows him to slide underneath the praetorian's head. As he goes under it, he hacks at one of the praetorian's legs, which are not armour plated, and the sharp blade slices cleanly through it at the knee. The praetorian stumbles, and roars as it hits the floor. The crippled animal tries to turn around by crawling but the corridor is not wide enough to accommodate its length. The predator puts away his spear and instead extends his wrist blades. He jumps onto the back of the praetorian and swipes at its neck, decapitating the beast. Acid blood shoots out in all directions and some splashes onto his mask, he reacts quickly and rips the mask off and watches it slowly disintegrate. He grabs the head of the praetorian and roars, his mandibles flaring. Then he proceeds to the exit and runs through the battered doorway.
Vasquez is still shooting at the relentless aliens, and then her ammunition runs out. She drops the gun and instinctively withdraws her pistol and proceeds to move quicker down the passage to catch up with the others. She passes one of the overhead vents leading upwards and catches a glimpse of an alien coming down it, she opens fire upwards and the alien tries to land on top of her, she deftly dodges to the side and the alien flops to the floor, she aims the gun right at the alien's head and fires at point blank range, the bullets easily pierce the skull of the alien, but acid splashes onto one of her legs and there is nothing she can do to stop it as it eats away at her leg.
"Ugh, oh no!" she grunts.
Bishop returns to find her trying to crawl her way towards him. He grabs hold of her and drags her along.
"Damn it Bishop! Leave me here you get out of here!" she growls.
"Not on your life! We're all going to get out of here, you got that?"
"Is that a doctor's order?" she smiles.
"Damn right it is!"
Suddenly one of the floor panels ahead of them starts to bend and buckle as one of the aliens tries to punch its way through, succeeding it sends the panel flying and starts to get out. Bishop retaliates with his pistol, sending the alien back down, but another one appears, he tries to fire but his pistol makes a clicking noise; it's empty.
"You come to save my ass and you don't have enough ammo to deal with the job? Damn it Bishop that was poor planning."
"You got anything?"
"Not really, except for this grenade."
She smiles at him deviously, and he returns it. They look to their left seeing the aliens close in, and then to their right, the other alien crawls out of the vent towards them. Vasquez presses the button on top of the grenade and holds it tight, Bishop follows suit.
"See you on the Farplane Bishop."
"Yeah you too Vaz," their faces wince slightly as the grenade gets closer to detonating.
The alien is about to bring out its secondary jaws when the grenade explodes in a large fireball.
The others stand close to the edge of the vent, which has a vertical shaft going down a couple of metres, the end of which is covered by a grating. The shock wave causes them to go off balance and Beclem falls down the shaft, back first onto the grating, the impact knocks the grating out and he falls to the floor with a thud.
"Beclem you okay?" calls out Paine.
"Yeah I'll be okay," he grunts, "Man that hurt. Okay you guys drop down one at a time, only I suggest you land on your feet."
"I'll try to keep that in mind," chuckles Paine.
Paine jumps down and is caught and steadied by Beclem as she hits the floor. She is followed up by Tidus, Yuna and then Elma.
"Right the elevator is this way, let's check the time and see how long we have," he glances at his watch, "They should be here pretty much now, let's move."
They round a nearby corner and happen on the elevator, Beclem presses a button and the lift door opens and they all get inside. The doors close and the lift moves up quickly. As they reach the top of the elevator well, the top of the well opens up and they reach the surface. The sky is still covered with clouds but it has stopped raining. They jump out of the lift and look around them. A hundred metres or so away from them is the Celsius. They don't think twice and sprint towards it with all they've got. They near the ship and its ramp lowers, Brother and Buddy stand at the top of the ramp waving them to get over to their position. They quickly reach the platform and start to walk up it when they notice that Buddy and Brother's expressions have gone from happiness to horror.
"What in Spira is that?" screeches Brother.
The group turn around to see the second Praetorian standing a short distance from them. It roars and gets ready to charge. The group waste no time and shoot it with what remains of their ammunition, but the pulse rifle's rounds are not enough to penetrate the armoured crest, they stare wide eyed and open mouthed as the praetorian hisses and begins to charge at them.
The disk seems to come out of nowhere, slicing the creature's tail clean off. The enraged Praetorian stops running and turns to the Predator who runs towards the ship. The unmasked Yautja stops running, catches and sheaths its disk, drops the praetorian head it claimed earlier and gets out its spear. The Praetorian tries to lower its head but stumbles forward, unable to use its tail to counter the weight of the crest. Realising the problem it stands as it normally would and charges at the predator anyway.
At the last second it lowers its head slightly so that it will hit the predator and use the impact to stay on its feet. The predator tries to hit it with his spear but it bounces off the alien and he takes the full force of the impact which knocks him senseless. Ever the veteran hunter, he gets back up, spear still in hand. The Praetorian charges again and the Predator places one end of the stick on the ground, and watches the Praetorian close the gap. Just as the alien is about to hit him, he brings the lower end of the spear upwards and his timing is perfect. The tip of the spear rises up underneath the Praetorian's head and pierces the Praetorians body. In one spectacular move the predator uses the praetorian's momentum to lift it up on the spear over his head and follow it through by slamming the monster on the ground behind him.
The Praetorian screeches and thrashes about, but the damage is done, the Elder walks around the alien and approaches it from the side. Standing behind the crest, he removes his spear from the Praetorians body; to the sound of its agonised howl. With a mighty swing it slices the head off of the alien, the spear allowing him to put enough distance between himself and the wound to not get splashed by the acid. He picks up his newly acquired head and runs over to the other one, picks that up, and runs over to the others. This is the first time that they all have seen him without his mask on and they look aghast at its face; the mandibles, the sharp pointy teeth and the mottled wrinkly head.
"You are one ugly mother fucker," they say in unison.
The predator gives a small shrug and walks past them with his two prises up the ramp.
Buddy and Brother look completely bewildered. The rest follow the predator in and they close the ramp. Brother then looks around the group.
"Rikku, where's Rikku?"
"Those other things captured her and we need to find her using this," she passes him the distance metre which reads 485m, "Buddy you and Brother steer this ship into the direction where the number decreases okay?"
"Okay gotcha. Brother lets fly this bird."
They run up the nearby stairs.
"I only hope we get there in time," says Yuna to herself.
"I think we will; that girl is too tough to die," reassures Beclem.
Yuna gives a small smile, suddenly the ship takes off and they stumble about.
"We'd better get to the control room and see where it is we're heading," states Yuna, steadying herself.
They all head up the stairs and into the Celsius' elevator, and Yuna selects 'Bridge'.
They arrive in the bridge to find the bow of the Celsius facing the main reactor building.
"I don't know what that building is exactly but that seems to be where Rikku is," points out Buddy.
"That's the main reactor. I wouldn't recommend going in there. Heck I think we should be getting out of here," Beclem declares.
Yuna turns on him, "I don't care Beclem we almost lost Rikku, we abandoned her for dead once, I'm not making the same mistake again. I'm going in there and I'm going to find her and if that means I die trying then that's fine by me."
"If you say so."
Tidus folds his arms, "Yeah and we're going with her," he says defiantly, holding Paine by the shoulder.
"Am I now?" asks the crimson eyed warrior, sarcastically.
"You got that right, sister!"
"Well it looks like I've been told," she grins.
"Well Gullwings this is your mission should you choose to accept it: Get in there and find Rikku!" announces Buddy.
"Mission accepted!" the three proclaim.
"Here I have a couple of extra magazines and a couple of grenades, you'll probably need them, though be careful with them, remember what kind of building you're in."
"Tidus and Paine can have those I have my guns upstairs with plenty of ammo for them."
"Hey Yuna," pips up Shinra, "I've got a little invention of mine here. It's called the Sunburst mine. The timer can be set to go off after a maximum of five minutes, and after that, it detonates and creates a swirl of scorching hot fire over a twenty metre radius. It doesn't last for very long but the effect is devastating, I would be amazed if anything survives it."
"Thanks Shinra. Gullwings lets find ourselves a Rikku!"
"Try to be quick you don't have much time!" informs Beclem, eyeing his watch.
