Kjon's Audio Diary Log
March 14, 2621
A couple of months after I finished the shadow, and cemented myself as a colonial marine, I went on my first hunt. Weyland received word that some of the research bases on Talco had received a distress signal from another base that had been overrun.
Talco had numerous outbreaks all the time, but they were always small things. Loss of power, ramdom mix-up, case of bad luck, that sometimes 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 here and there, 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, Salmar, Wayend, and KJ147. Weyland could afford the loss. That's not to say Talco didn't have anything of interest to him, since the bases had a lot of reports, paperwork stuff, data, was all above my pay grade, heck I didn't even get paid since I'm was still "technically" Weyland Yutani property, but you get what I'm saying.
Hadrick then passed the word to his grunts, to get their sht together cause we were going bug hunting. I'd asked Hadrick if I could go on a mission a couple times before, and this time he approached me with the opportunity. I wasn't exactly eager to go into a dangerous situation, because I thought this would be fun, nor was it because I wanted to prove myself, which I'd already done, but I wanted to do this was so I could get some pay pack on the shadows. Yes I still hate them for killing Mom and I always will. When Hadrick came to me with the offer I took it.
We assembled outside at the dropships with our stuff in bag and in hand. I watched as a couple more dropships came over, and landed with us. Some of them were full of extra supplies, and the others had other recruits in them. We didn't know what the situation on the Talco moon base was and we weren't taking any chances, so we called in some backup from some of the other facilities, who gladly obliged. Some of Hadricks old buddies came out and shot the sht with him, while the rest of the grunts readied themselves next to us. I should point out that many of these guys were teenagers and young adults who'd never had combat experience outside of boot camp. A lot of these poor derelicts were just kids. Yeah the Colonial Marines have also had the unfortunate trouble of using children as soldiers. Although unlike the Spartans and the guerillas, we didn't simply take these kids from their homes. Most if not all of them were homeless, abandoned, run away orphans, who'd had some difficulty integrating in the colonies. These kids had no place else to go, no body else to turn to so we took them in. I know that sounds wrong, and I agree these kids shouldn't have had to go through this hell, but what else could we do with them. At least things here were better for them than what they had to go through in the colonies. I could sympathize with their situation since I was one of them. They were scared shtless.
Some of the more mature recruits were also worried, but a lot of them were just a bunch of stupid jokers, you know, guys who thought they were hot stuff because they survived boot camp. I could already tell I was going to hate those guys.
Everybody was decked out for the fight. We had knives, pistols chambered in every caliber, M41A Pulse rifles, M56 Smart guns, grenades, M240 Incinerator Units (flame throwers), acid proof suits, UA-571 Automated Sentry Turrets, C-4, the works. Again, we didn't know what we were up against and we decided to take safer, albeit more excessive measures. Hadrick and a couple of his Sergeant buddies who were also commanding their respective brigades had us move all of the ammunition and stuff into the APCs which were then driven into the dropships. After that Hadrick gave us the run down of our situation. He knew just about as much as we did, which was very little. We only knew a research base on Talco had been overrun and we needed to go and take out the infestation. He did explain that our orders from Weyland were to first secure the science reports, take out the shadows and then worry about survivors. Obviously we weren't going to follow the plan as Weyland wanted it. Screw his reports, lives were at stake, and we needed to get them out and bomb that bug nest before things got worse. After that if there was anything left, then we'd get Weyland's stupid paperwork.
After a quick supply inspection we loaded our butts into the dropship, and rolled out.
Each of us had our gear with us, and some extra just in case. Some of us carried twice as much stuff since we'd likely need the extra ammo. I was one of the guys who carried extra ammo and supplies since I was one of the stronger grunts. I packed light on armor since I didn't need to protect myself from the acid although I did keep some around my vital areas, as well as my crotch, because I wasn't losing anything else. I deliberately did this though, because I knew I'd need to invest in speed over needless durability.
As for my weapons, I had a M41A pulse rifle that Hadrick had helped me modify. Like all male Schaefers, they are very good warriors, but Hadrick was crafty, as was his grand dad, who also helped him modify his weapons. Together the two constructed a custom Desert Eagle Magnum, that could shoot different ammo types that were designed for other pistols. Since then he's been doing weapons modifications with many of his firearms. I was next in line to learn this knowledge.
I can easily fire a pulse rifle, 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 scope.
The only down side though is that it looks pretty phallic with the barrel, and the two grenade launchers. Because of this one of my friends jokingly kept naming it Sexual Tyrannosaurus, because of the look, and because of how big it is. No, I'm not the kind of guy who gives his weapons names and treats them like children rather than firearms, but my friend kept making the joke, until finally drew the name Sexual Tyrannosaurus on it. Along with ST, I had two wrist blade gauntlets, one of which I modified years afterward, a combi-stick, and uncle A'rgr-lo's smart disc.
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. The day after we set up camp Hadrick and a couple of the other commanding officers brainstormed a plan.
First we'd set up another perimeter closer to the base itself, then we'd check the base over, and secure any unmarked areas with guards and robot sentry turrets, then block off all ventilation access to the shadows in those areas so they'd come directly at us rather than sneak up on us. After that we'd continue working our way inside, killing any shadows we saw, and saving any survivors there may be. 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. We'd continue like this, and constantly update the plan if we needed to, until our job was done.
The next day we went about preparing ourselves for the fight, before checking the dropships over for bugs. We'd learned that little trick from a guy named Dwayne Hicks. He was one of the guys who'd been on Acheron mission. That had been the first time the marines had fought the xenomorphs, but they didn't know what they were up against at the time. Needless to say the mission quickly went to sht, and all of the marines died except for himself, Scott Gorman, Jenette Vasquez, and William L. Hudson. Later on they tried to bug out and nuke the sight from orbit, but when they'd been dropped down onto the planet a shadow had snuck on the dropship and destroyed it later as it went to pick them up. We didn't let that happen to us a second time. After making sure our rides were safe, we embarked.
The scene was an utter mess. The power had been cut leaving most of the place in complete darkness except for some emergency lights that did very little to help. Fortunately, we'd brought IR goggles, and I had my bio-mask, which also had night vision setting on it. 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, decaying viscera, and mangled rotting bodies filled the halls, leaving a deathly stink that caused some of us to gag. Even I could smell it through my bio mask.
One marine had his entire upper and lower half removed, the only thing keeping the two 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 Hispanic girl, 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.
Most of the other guys were unsympathetic to her, as were some of the Sergeants to those who couldn't handle the carnage in front of them. Michelle had lost someone dear to her, and although she had a reason to mourn I knew the Sergeants wouldn't give her any slack. Instead they'd try to snap us out of it, and motivate us by making us angry. Make us motivated to dish out some retribution. I knew this because Hadrick had done it to me during boot camp whenever I felt to bad about my Mom. I could see his point, but she wouldn't work without a little sympathy.
When I went to comfort Michelle, 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 statement. I told her how I'd lost Mom when I was only a seven years old, and how emotionally traumatic it was for me. She was all I had at the time, I couldn't live without her. After explaining this to Michelle, she shook some tears out from under her IRs, and she hugged me.
"Gracias." She said gratefully. That made me smile. I helped her up, and we continued the sweep.
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 motion trackers, besides a few surviving marines, and scientists we'd found, there was nothing. That made me worried. We found a few eggs in a couple of the hallways, under a few desks, and in some closets. Thankfully the things were so big we were able to find them pretty easily. 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 began to gestate inside us.
What you do is you let the little arachnid fcker latch onto you then you bite down on it's... ewh, proboscis, then after the face hugger pounces off, you trip your gage reflex. 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.
Surgery is a second chance option which has a lot less likelihood of succeeding. 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 from the body's internal defenses, while it develops inside the stomach. That is harder to remove than the chestbuster itself, with only a twenty-five percent success chance, that's also if their able to remove it early.
We secured the entire base all in that one day, and while doing so we ended up finding 15 survivors. We X-rayed them to make sure they didn't have an embryo inside of them, all of whom turned up clean, and we sent them off to the camp we'd set up 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 them from was counter intuitive and pointless, especially when these guys were starving, and in great need of medical and psyche evaluations. 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 them had seen some drones hailing a few victims that were still alive into a storage 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 almost any assault. It also implied that there was likely a queen.
We found the storage area, with the help of the surviving marines, and sure enough, we found a tunnel with shadow secretion in it. Shadow drones are the workers of the hive. They build the hives walls cocoon the hosts, and carry the eggs to other areas of the hive. When they build the hives they literally vomit this secretion, around the walls and ceiling, which then hardens to form a solid structure.
The basement was mostly a storage/security room area, so it was pretty big. It connected to this garage through a loading door, where the marines could carry stuff in, and park some vehicles. The door could fold open to form a slope, that you could walk on, which was what it was for.
With the thought that we were now up against a whole hive of these monsters, Hadrick and the others formulated a plan where we would load all of our high explosives into an APC, and truck it down to the hive, after we made it to the heart of the hive, presumably inside the queens chamber, we'd set the charges, and then run like hell. The plan was agreed upon and we began to set everything into motion.
I was a pretty nervous when we, but I said myself a little prayer, like I always do now before I go into a fight, and each time I feel this 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." Michelle saw me, and reverently joined 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 religious, but she did show respect to others beliefs. I was beginning to like this girl. After our set up was finished we rolled our convoy down the black hell hole.
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, even if you did have a light to see with. The resin helped capture us in almost complete darkness, it didn't 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 you'd be screwed just trying to find your way out of this place. Thankfully though our IRs could help us see, although the lighting coming from 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, not even on our motion trackers.
Some time during the drive down, some of the teenage grunts began tough talking again. One of them even turned on a small iPhone, which began playing Long Tall Sally by Little Richard. 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!
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 stripping her armor off and showing her (cough cough) unmentionables to this one handsome mother fcker named Thompson. Guy looked like he'd be on the cover of 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, 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 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, that was their business not mine, but Merciful Master Jesus.
Hadrick was barking telling for them to shut the fck 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. We didn't mind these kids goofing off, but what was urking us was that these idiotic fire-pissing derelicts were letting their guard down. I'd finally had enough of it and decided to help old dad out.
"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 move in either. Don't you have a clue what your doing. Strip-teasing, laughing, joking. 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!" Thompson, tried to counter my argument by saying that we haven't seen anything. 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 too, but it still wasn't showing itself despite the fact we knew it was here anyway. I asked them if they had recognized any off this. Hell I screamed at them right in each of their faces. Except for Michelle, she was listening. They just laughed at me too. The couldn't take the Marshmello paint on my bio-mask seriously.
About fifteen seconds later a shadow pounced out in front of the APC, and Merciful Master Jesus, you bet your sweet ass, they realized that sht just got real! Our motion trackers began erupting with signals that were coming from all directions creating an annoying, yet terrifying beeping noise. Several more followed after that, coming out of the walls, raining from the ceiling, surrounding us, swarming us. The APC in front of us swiveled out of control, as did we. The APC behind us, the one with all the explosives was blocked, and couldn't move, just as the other two APCs behind it couldn't. Stacy began putting her armor back on in a hasty panic. 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, who, immediately after opening the door was grabbed by a shadow on the roof of the APC. The creature caught him by his face muffling his screams as the creature tore him out of the vehicle. Another joker, I don't know what his name was, got pulled out by his arm. Stacy and Michelle, were trying to help the poor bastard out, pulling him 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 a brutal game of tug-o-war. The poor son of a btch 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 punctured by the monster's inner jaw. Acid blood spilled on me as I stabbed it in the side of it's head. Luckily none of the acid got on Stacy. She looked down at the shadow with a terrified expression, then up at me. I grabbed her pulse rifle that 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 help 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 marines. I dropped my backpack full of ammo on the ground, readied my wrist blades, brought out my combi-stick, and I began laying waste to every shadow that rushed into my blood circle.
I provided my buddies cover for them to begin setting up a perimeter. That gave them the time they needed to set up the robot sentries, which helped us insurmountably. After the sentries were set up, I moved inside the perimeter with everyone else, sheathed my combi-stick, and broke out Sexual Tyrannosaurus. We were boxed in on both sides, with our APCs stuck preventing us from escaping, 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 our 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 number of xenomorphs there were, their numbers began to dwindle rapidly.
One stray grenade later however, and we spilled into another chamber of the hive. It was big, bigger than we'd thought. A foul, bitter stench perforated our senses as we tumbled inside. It smelled like copper, and the smell of shadow eggs, rotten and oily. But the stench was nothing compared to the visuals. This was the egg chamber where the xenomorphs had taken their eggs and the hosts. Each of their corpses had a grizzly hole in their chest, and this perpetual look of pain and terror as each of them met their untimely fate. The night vision wasn't really big to go off of, but it was enough for us to see and begin to puke, and cause some of us to cry.
"OH GOD! OH GOD!" Another marine whined. I actually felt sorry for these guys, because this was very nasty, but I had no time to sit and dwell on sympathizing for them. That would come later during the psyche evaluation. We had a job to do.
"Walk it off, and be glad you aren't up their with them." I told them as I helped my fellow marines to their feet. 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 to many of them. Then I saw her. There sitting leisurely on her egg layer, stood the queen, and standing right next to her were two praetorians.
praetorians, if you are wondering, 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 praetorians through the use of royal jelly, which is secreted by the queen. I don't know how she does it, nor do I want to know. 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.
The Queen shrieked in agitation as she saw us. She began ordering warriors to surround us, and her praetorians to prepare to attack. She also ordered for the eggs to open up. Queens are able to command their subjects through something called a hive mind. It allows members of the hive to communicate over great distances, something like telepathy.
I quickly responded by taking hold of someone's Incinerator Unit, and I pointed it at the eggs. The queen recoiled, at the sight of it. Apparently there was one thing they did fear ,fire. 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 Praetorians, 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 a single egg open to the 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 clicked my mandibles in anger, and began torching the chamber. The queen screeched painfully as I began torching her newborns. The enraged queen then let her praetorians loose on me.
The two charged me together, with the intent on crushing me. I pushed Michelle and another marine out of the way, and took the hit. Some of the remaining warriors joined them, however most of the warriors went after the marines. The APC was already in position, but some of the charges had been damaged when the grenade blew us into the queens chamber. There were plenty of us left though and I had the task of distracting the praetorians, so we could still have this.
After taking that head butt from both of the praetorians, they began clawing the sht out of me. The warriors held me down as the praetorians opened up on me. A few painful seconds afterward, I pulled one of the warriors holding my arm down, over me, and used it as a meat shield, causing the praetorians to accidently tear into it. One of the larger shadows batted the smaller one away. The other warrior that had held my other arm, I swung into the other praetorians tail which it was about to use to impale me. The large shadow hissed irritated, and it along with it's buddy picked me up, and held me to the wall, as one of them prepared it's inner jaw to. I pulled my head as the creatures tongue shot out, before smashing my head into it's head, hard enough that it let me go. Now I could attack it's friend. The other praetorian still had it's hold on me, and was about to impale me with its tail again. 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, causing it to drop me.
The other quickly grabbed me and threw me to the other side of the chamber. I hit the wall hard, knocking the wind out of me causing me to gasp for air momentarily. I managed to recover just in time to see a warrior try to sneak attack me from above. I moved out of the way, decapitated it with my wristblades in a swift motion. I anticipated the praetorians 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. I then proceeded to open up on it. It's fellow praetorian 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 praetorian I was on top of to kick me away. The one that had distracted me then charged. I charged with it. As we were about to collide I slide underneath it's stride and severed it's left foot from it's leg. The praetorian 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, and was knocked away.
It was at that moment that I was noticing a pattern with the praetorians. One would serve as a distraction and try to do a much damage as it could, while the other made it's move.
I felt a sharp pain on my side. I held it, and hissed painfully. The mother fcker had fractured my ribs. Thankfully the injury was not as bad as it could have been. 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. It still hurt like a btch, but at least the pain was more tolerable. The two praetorians stood next to each other studying me.
"Come on you ugly sons of btches." I told them. One obeyed my taunt and ran after me. I hopped over the creature as it was about to hit me, and charged the other one. It had not expected that. It was on all four limbs since I'd cut off it's foot, so standing was next to impossible for it, Because of the loss of the leg that also allowed me to easily tackle it. While I was tearing into the creature with my wristblades, I managed to cleave it's right arm off at the elbow. The other charged to help it's friend and knock me off. I jumped over allowing it to trample it's buddy. That definitely had to have hurt. That praetorian reassumed it's position pressing it's stumped limbs on the ground. The praetorian ignored the lingering pain from and remained focused on me. The other praetorian that had ran it over stood next to it on both of it's hind legs and breathed heavily with anticipation. We stood there for a short moment before we roared at each other and charged. Even with two and a half functional limbs these guys are good at running. I was about to remedy that.
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 began panicking, trying to find a way out of my situation as the creature's continued mercilessly choking the life out of me. It was then that I remembered uncle A'rgr-lo's smart disc. I quickly unsheathed it and cut more of the tail off freeing myself. I thanked A'rgr-lo and Hadrick for that one, and continued the fight. 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 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. Their heads crashed together with a crunchy crack, that sounded painfully satisfying. I quickly took this opportunity to slice the one praetorian's head off with the smart disc. That one made an outstanding trophy. As I took it and mounted it on my back and put my wristblades back on my arms, 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. Time stood still for a moment as we starred at each other. 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 clean off. It fell to the floor dead.
"Fck you!" I told it as I gave it the middle finger.
The queen screamed in outrage. After tearing herself off of her egg generator, the queen stood towering over me, and starred down at me. I did the same 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 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 praetorians, as it was much shorter, and it consisted of me dodging it's attacks, or getting hit. I didn't even manage to give a scar to the btch. It caught me in it's claws at the end of our conflict, pinning my arms to my sides, and began crushing me in her grasp. It was hesitant to kill me so quickly though, I couldn't tell why. I guess she wanted me to suffer for having destroyed her kingdom. She was rudely interrupted when we both heard a loud annoying beep a couple seconds. Hadrick and the others were finished setting up the explosives and the timer was going.
I kicked the queen 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 I'd just broken my leg and could only limp to them. Assholes couldn't have came to help? Two warriors tried to halt me, but I slide under them, and cut open their abdomens vertically, 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 hook my leg and pull me away from them. 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, 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. The grenade exploded in the queen's mouth and while it didn't kill her, I knew that had to have hurt pretty bad. I quickly picked up ST, that I'd dropped earlier in the fight, and limped my hurting ass over to the APC.
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. I'm normally very fast on my feet, but with my broken leg I could only hobble. 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 to leave. I quickly lost sight of the APC as they booked it out of there, leaving me behind. I didn't actually hold any resentment for that. I could understand why they left me behind.
The stim was beginning to lose it's effects, and my pain intensified with each move I made. 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 braced myself for the flames to completely engulf me. To my surprise I didn't feel any pain. I wasn't burning. I hadn't realized that one of the enhancements I was given made me fire resistant. I didn't even feel any discomfort from the heat. As a matter of fact, the heat felt very very comfortable. The only thing that made me uncomfortable was the fire eating away at the oxygen around me, but the fire didn't last to long. What I'm really glad I actually managed to escape was the cave in that followed after the fire. I'd just managed to escape being trapped in that tunnel forever. I walked the rest of the way back from there. Thankfully I'd managed to hold on to Mom's mask the entire time or I would have been both pissed and lost. The marines looked a little forlorn like they were sad, Hadrick especially. They thought I was dead. But I'd made it. They all light up once they saw my smoking body limp out of that hell hole alive.
"Kj! Thank God your alright!" Michelle said with relaxed worry as she and Hadrick came to help me walk.
"I'm fine guys." I tried to calm them down.
"Boy you're burnt!" Hadrick told me.
"I know." I replied to him.
"Kj you're bleeding." Michelle told me with concern.
"I'll be fine ,Michelle. It's just a flesh wound." I replied nonchalantly.
"We thought you were dead." Hadrick replied sounding caring and serious.
"Surprise." I said with a sarcastic smile. Before he left I grabbed him by his pants leg and gave my father a caring smile.
"You did pretty good ,son." He complimented me.
"Thanks Dad." I lovingly addressed him.
"Don't call me, Dad." He told me trying to force back his smile. Hadrick never liked it when I called him Dad. He was always my instructor before anything else. I still respected him as such, but I also loved him as my dad.
After he left, Michelle and a couple other guys began working on my leg. "Mucho Gracias, Kj. Thank you for saving me back there." She thanked me.
"Any time Michelle."
We spent the rest of the time we had together having a pleasant conversation about ourselves, and what our interests were. We quickly became friends after that. Unfortunately she was stationed at another facility so we had to say goodbye. I was a little disappointed by that, but that wasn't the last time I ever saw her. Far from it. But I'll get into that later. It's a nice hot summer day out and the colonies still have shadow problems. I'm gonna go have me some fun.
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.