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As soon as Stevens heard the plan from Thorn, he knew it was a good one, knew that there was a boat coming over to get him and his crew off the ship. He had other questions he wanted to ask, like how long it would take for the dropship to reach them, but before he had the chance to open his mouth, the creatures had stormed the barracks.
One minute it had been calm, or as calm as it could be given the current situation: Evelyn was tending to the wounded Marines: those that had been lucky enough to face off against the nightmare creatures and survived, though there were many that had taken a raking claw to the face or chest in the battle, or a putrid stream of their acidic blood had seared their flesh to the bone. Having something to do had given Evelyn something to concentrate on, a task to focus on and keep her mind off the horrors of an alien creature's birth. JT, in the meantime, had rapidly sobered up and was going through the operation of one of the assault rifles with one of the Marines who had been lucky enough to escape the confrontations unscathed.
"You've done well," Thorn face on the screen of the operations console nodded his head slowly. "Kept your cool, despite the shit that's going on around you. And the less-than-perfect guidance you've been given by your commanding officer."
Stevens felt himself smirk. At least there were other people in the forces who thought Cray was an ass, and not just the grunts: Thorn as clearly not impressed with his actions, either.
"Clear a path to the shuttle bay, meet up with my men there. You can liaise with my Gunnery Sergeant there; together the two of you can work out the best course of action to take the ship back, get rid of whatever these things are. Cray will stay here."
Keeps the uptight shit out of my way, Stevens thought to himself, but didn't say anything straight away, simply grinning. He knew Cray would be there, watching the transmission, and he hoped he could see that Stevens was overjoyed by the fact he'd been called, more or less, incompetent.
The barracks were suddenly thrown into turmoil as the squeal of metal tearing apart sounded, and Stevens pivoted on his heel, turning to see a seething blanket of darkness seep into the room through a jagged gash in one of the panelled walls, a pair of nightmare creatures slinking in low and hissing as they lunged forwards. A third animal tumbled through the ceiling tiles as it negotiated the maze of overhead conduits and access tunnels, righting itself and hurling aside the shattered debris that surrounded it before screeching and lunging towards Stevens, a pair of clawed hands reaching towards him, talons glistening and thick mucus dripping from its salivating maw. Swinging his weapon around and firing his powerful shotgun, the alien stopped in its tracks as the hail of oversized buckshot slammed into its ridged body like a brick wall. It paused for a second, as if stunned from the blow, while the rest of the Marines opened up with their automatic rifles, spraying the malicious targets with soft lead slugs. The alien lifted its head skywards, screamed an inhuman, trumpeting bellow, then lunged again, forcing him to back away from the console. He fired again and again, using the momentum of the bucking weapon to aid in pumping the slide and pounding round after round into the advancing horde.
A handful of buckshot finally found their mark, smashing through the rictus grin of the demonic creature and rattling around in its armoured skull. It managed a high-pitched whine as it thrashed and dropped to its knees before a bullet from the other side of the room tore into the side of its extended head and smashed out the other, spraying caustic juices across the command console and killing the power as the acid chewed through power relays and circuitry essential to its operation. It quickly blacked out, effectively cutting of their communication with the Marine ship.
Stevens looked around to see his saviour, saw Dawes slip her smoking sidearm into her hip holster and give a slight nod. Stevens returned the gesture, a silent and quick way of acknowledging the fact she'd helped him out, then took a quick check of his situation.
Evelyn had retreated to JT's side, hiding behind him while he skipped the muzzle of his weapon from side to side, trying to pick his targets. He hadn't fired any shots yet, the glowing LED readout on the side of his weapon still showed "95", meaning he was being selective in his targets just as he'd been told. Someone with a rifle on full-auto could quite easily wipe out all the creatures in the room, but they could just as easily take out all the surviving Marines, too.
But the aliens were doing that fine by themselves.
The seriously injured Marines were the first to fall as another seven of the creatures poured into the room through the gaping hole in the wall, moving with an ethereal fluidity as they snared the more seriously injured men and women with talons and tails, pulling them from the room before returning to the fray and lunging at the men more capable of defending themselves with claws extended and snarling teeth, cutting them down with bloody malevolence, tearing open bodies and leaving them to bleed to death while moving on to their next target.
Already, more than half the Marines were gone or taken by the creatures, for whatever reason: Stevens guessed food, but didn't like the connotations behind that: his men being killed outright was bad enough, but being eaten alive was just unthinkable.
"Fallback," he shouted, screaming above the din of gunfire, screaming creatures and dying men. "Seal off the barracks, secure a path to the shuttle bay!"
Those that took their time to acknowledge the order quickly fell to the steel talons of the creatures, while those that continued to lay down overlapping fields of fire and retreat one step at a time stood a better chance of surviving. Stevens knew that the blast door behind him would lead to the corridor that would take him roughly in the right direction of the shuttle bay: it was a couple of levels down, but if they could put a few solid blast doors between themselves and the dark, demonic creatures it might just be enough to let them get to the shuttle bay without loosing too many more people and certainly help get some of the civvies to safety. Reaching the door, Stevens blindly slapped the control panel and waited as patiently as he could while unleashing a hail of buckshot into the advancing horde, the motor of the door groaning and whining as it cycled the barrier open. As soon as there was enough space for a person to fit, Stevens pushed Evelyn and JT through the opening first, then gave the order to his men to retreat.
Three of the Marines towards the front line of defence turned to run towards the door, and were instantly taken down by the creatures as more of them swarmed into the room, pulling themselves in through the gaping hole in the wall and dropping down through the flimsy ceiling tiles, a cacophony of hissing rasps and ear-piercing screeches as the creatures, each larger than a man, loomed ever closer to the Marines, shrugging off the soft-slug caseless rounds as they softened and flattened against their toughened carapaces. Another wave of creatures rushed into the room, a tsunami of needle-sharp teeth and razor-tipped claws that washed over the Marines and drowned them in a sea of their own blood.
"Get out," Stevens shouted over the din of gunfire, screaming creatures and gurgling death cries as he waved to the few remaining men left standing, and watching in desperation as the ceiling above him collapsed and more of the creatures poured into the room… or had some of the crowd flanked around behind them? He couldn't tell, didn't have time to count, and felt lost as he found himself cut off from the rest of the squad while the creatures effectively cut off his squad.
"Get out of here," came a call from the midst of the circling creatures, a voice he recognised as Dawes, snapping off shots with her handgun which seemed to have more affect than the anti-personnel rounds. Stevens lurched forwards, unleashing a salvo of thirty millimetre canister rounds into the backs of the creatures, finally tearing one apart as he opened fire at point blank range. The alien's torso toppled back and its legs fell forwards, twitching spastically, but the devastating shotgun blast hadn't marked its demise: twisting and thrashing on the floor, the legless torso arced its back and hurled its weight around, snapping its jaws as it hauled itself across the floor towards the man who had dealt such an incapacitating blow. Smooth, ice-cold hands wrapped their fingers around his trousers, the creature bringing with it an oily odour laced with rancid meat and bile, and even with its clear disability, the creature managed topple him, clawing its way up his body. He pulled up his shotgun and pushed it into the grinning, salivating jaws of the demonic visage, grimaced as the crystalline teeth of the creature clattered and scrapped the barrel, and pulled the trigger.
It clicked unresponsively: empty!
It batted the weapon away, found purchase on the battered body armour Stevens wore, and hauled itself up his body, the shattered stump of its torso spurting gouts of caustic acid that melted through the deck plates and would surely do the same to his legs, if he let it happen. He tried struggling with the thrashing torso, but its weight and strength were overpowering, and he knew that this was the end, without a doubt.
His life flashed before him in no particular order, scenes from his past that seemed frozen in time, as if he were looking a collection of photographs: summers at his father's beach house; his grandmother's homemade soup made with real ham, not that fake soypro crap; the time he lost his virginity to his high school sweetheart in the back of his brothers car; the time his brother kicked his ass for stealing his car; his first day in boot; his passing out.
He opened his eyes, looked around and saw JT in the open doorway, cradling his pulse rifle and pointing it at him: a quick end, better than letting some alien creature rip him to shreds of dissolve him from the feet up.
The weapon sounded with a thunderous roar, bullets smashing into the swaying head of the creature and smashing into Stevens' body, each impact a dull thump as the bullets rattled the bodies of man and creature alike. The animal hissed, lifted to one side, and Stevens felt hands wrap around the collars of his dented body armour, hauling him across the floor, out the door, then hurled against the corridor wall while the door was shut behind him. Someone was hunkering down by the door, the glowing white flare of a welding torch sputtering is melted the edges of the doorframe, binding it with the door as they hastily sealed it.
"Am I… am I dead?"
"Armour took the impact from the rounds," announced the welder, looking hastily over her shoulder: a face streaked with grime and dirt, a gash running down one side of her face an inch deep, seeping with bright red blood, the liquid almost as red as her now tattered hair. She shifted her weight as she balanced awkwardly on her knees, the legs of her trousers soaked in blood and the armour she wore pitted with scars and ridges that still smoked from their contact with the acid blood; he boots and clamshell greaves releasing the same noxious gas. "If we'd been using HEAP rounds, you'd be fragged: of course, if we'd been using HEAP rounds, a lot more of those fuckers would have went down first."
"Dawes," he murmured, running his hands over the shell of his body armour, gently poking the craters that had appeared in his own protective casing and hissing as his fingers found the flattened, scalding hot rounds that JT had peppered both the alien and Stevens with. He plucked one out, let it drop to the ground, then smiled. "I thought you were done for, thought you were surrounded by those things."
"I was," she spoke as she worked around the frame, methodically. " You blasting that one apart put a hole in the defence long enough to let me break through. I got injured," she said, waving vaguely to her face and legs, "Waded through a shit load of acid. But we got you out, me and the civs."
"No one else get through?"
"No," she muttered, shoulders slumping. "A couple nearly made it. Nearly."
Stevens pulled himself up onto his feet, shakily at first before testing his strength and giving an involuntary shake, more of the mushroomed rounds dislodging from his armour and toppling to the ground. He looked at JT who was looking glumly at the floor, trying his best to ignore the tortured screams inside the room that barely managed to come through the thick door.
"How'd you know my armour'd stop those rounds?"
"I didn't," he answered sullenly. "I just figured…"
"Better dead than food for them," Stevens agreed. "Or whatever they plan on doing with them. No need to explain."
A heavy thud sounded at the door, and both JT and Evelyn jumped back from the barrier, each bringing their weapons up to bear on the panel, while Stevens and Dawes barely flinched.
"Door's five inches of duralloy," Stevens shook his head. "It's a blast door, designed to contain explosions: a bunch of pumped-up creatures aren't going to break through that."
The ferocity of the thumping increased, became accompanied by frantic scrabbling sounds that turned into scratches, then a piercing squeal of metal rending, each noise accompanied by the terrifying roar of the trapped animals.
"I don't think anyone told them they can't get through," Dawes muttered, stepping back from the door and checking her weapon. A full clip in her weapon, two more secured to her webbing, and another two magazines for her handgun tucked into one of the stickro-fastened pockets of her trousers: the handgun seemed more effective at the moment, with the soft slugs practically ineffective against the creatures unless they could get a clear shot at its open mouth. Stevens quickly checked his own stock of weapons, found he had a handful of thirty millimetre rounds, but he'd lost his riot gun in his scuffle with the legless alien. He handed the rounds over to Dawes, indicating she should load up the underslung grenade launcher of her pulse rifle with them, before checking JT's own situation.
Other than the salvo of rounds he'd fired at Stevens and the disabled creature, he hadn't fired any rounds, so he still had a clip with close to eighty rounds, and another three clips. He'd also found the time to recover the leather holster and his own handgun to go in it, something he'd obviously done without Stevens knowing. He snatched the assault rifle from JT, knowing that the weapon would do more good if it was in his hands, then looked at Evelyn, at the small sidearm she held limply in her hands, and nodded towards it.
"You know how to use that?"
She nodded slowly. "I've had some training. A little."
"Better than nothing," Stevens said with a shrug. "Try not to hit me or Dawes here, we'll get on like a house on fire. Now, we've got to get out of here, quick. The shuttle bay's about half a mile that way that way, and a couple of levels down: the belly of the beast. Between here and there, there could be any number of those things, and just as many people working their duty shifts, and despite the manufacturers warranty, I don't think that door's going to hold out too long."
He dropped to his knees, pulled out a pair of small metal cylinders no larger than a roll of quarters, then set them on the deck plates, turning their caps a quarter of a turn before backing away from them.
"A little present in case they do escape," he explained, motioning for his group of survivors to follow him: the Bounding-Frags were anti-personnel mines that would launch two meters into the air if they were tripped, before showering the creatures with a spray of shrapnel. It might not be enough to stop them, but it would certainly slow them down.
He hoped.
"C'mon," he urged, skipping quickly away from the blast door as it finally started to bulge in the middle, the structure giving way under the continuous onslaught of the creatures. "I don't want to be here when those things go off, or if those creatures get out."
