The Last Marine

by Lord22

Chau Sara has fallen. And far from that battlefield, the zerg are victorious on other worlds. Everyone on your colony is dead, and the zerg have begun their infestation in full force. But you are alive. And you've no intention of selling your life cheaply. Or at all.

2. Vengeance and Rescue

Chapter Two: Vengeance and Rescue

It stretches before you on the cliff across the gorge.

A vast array of fleshy structures, bristling with zerg. They are everything, gathering like insects as fields. And upon those fields are eggs are tended by drones. What you killed earlier was only a small fraction of what lies before you.

And you have the feeling more of them will be created soon.

What hope is there against such vast numbers? What can you do against them?

But then your eyes turn to the gates of the fortress, standing there built into the rock. They have been wedged open before you. Inside there is only utter blackness, and zerg are patrolling outside of it.

They already entered the facility.

Everyone is probably dead. You don't have to go down there.

But there might be someone alive down there, and you have nowhere else to go. If you can save someone down there, you can form a resistance. Or escape.

You have to try.

That's why you lower a rope down the cliff in the darkness and slip down the cliffside. You wonder if the zerg will know it to be a sign of things to come. You aren't seen, however, and soon you reach the bottom.

Crawling as close as you dare, you wait for the zerg to move away. Then you sprint forward and leap into the darkness. As you do, you wonder if the zerg will waiting to cut you down.

But it does not matter.

You move forward down the passage into the earth as quickly as you dare. No zerg, but you notice several vents have been torn open from within. Which probably means they got in that way. So, you'll have to worry about more coming down.

For now, you find a side room and enter it. Scanning within, you see a computer console and an open vent. Shutting the door, you activate the lock once you confirm no one is there. Moving to the vent, you peer up it to confirm that nothing is there. Drawing up the broken grating, you set it across the vent. If anything comes down it, you'll be ready to respond.

Once done, you move over to the console and check it. Now you find a corpse, a man who had been sliced to pieces. There is blood all over the screen, and you do your best to wipe it off. You're already in, from the looks of things, and you quickly scan the console.

You check the camera footage, and you see corpses. Lots of corpses. There is a video feed of shelters as well. They are apparently to help rescue units. But those rooms have nothing but bodies and zerg. The auto defense turrets, from the looks of things, are inactive.

Apparently, they never even got a chance to set them up.

Well, at the very least, you could take out the zerg. You've come a long way down here to save dead people. You might as well get what vengeance you can. Your hand hovers over the activation button.

Then something occurs to you.

The moment you start slaughtering zerg, they are going to throw everything they have. You could climb out of the vent over by the far wall. Moving over to it, you check and verify there is no gray goo, which means that it must come out some distance from the facility.

Is there something you can do about the zerg colony, though?

An idea occurs, and you scan for general information. Apparently, this facility is powered by a massive nuclear reactor. The kind that created atomic detonations if blown up. An idea occurs, and you print out a map. Trying to memorize it, you decide to try for it.

What do you have to lose?

You active the defense turrets and let them rip. Then you rush for the door and open it, sprinting down the hall. Even as you do so, you hear the sound of gunfire all throughout the facility. Stepping over the bodies, you see zerg swarming toward auto-turrets. Moving down a set of steps, you slip by the onslaught, keeping to the shadows as best you can. A swarm of hydralisks moves past you as you wait and you delve deeper.

The lights are flickering as you go on, but you dare not use your flashlight. If someone notices you, you are dead already. Several times you walk down corridors where the zerg are being slaughtered. You wonder why it was doing so much damage.

The zerg likely were not aware of the threat.

So they made no preparation to deal with it.

For now, you, at last, get to the area with the nuclear reactor. It is right near the main lab, and you see an open console. With the areas secure, you check it on a whim, taking note of a vent nearby. Scanning the files, you see something you do not anticipate.

Log of Samir Duran;

Our research into xenomorphs is progressing well. We believe the creatures operate on a crude hive mind that allows coordination. While they are little threat to trained soldiers, their potential is great. Large numbers of them can be lured to isolated containment areas. From there, they can be destroyed.

Mar Sara and Chau Sara seem ideal choices for this. Given the rebellious sentiments of the populations there, they'd be of little loss. So long as the Old Families bet against the mining market before the battle begins. Then there should be no great loss. They can always be repopulated after the zerg are destroyed with loyal citizens.

In addition, propping the zerg up as a boogeyman would be excellent for social order—a good means of securing cooperation. Historically, wars are an excellent rallying point for culture, provided you win. And with our technology, victory would be all but certain.

You hope it's a joke.

Your friends.

All your family. They couldn't be that heartless, could they?

Of course, they could. You'd grown up on horror stories of Confederate attacks and brutality. Your colony had scraped by as a supply center for Confederate research bases. You weren't important at all.

Not anymore.

But that's why they killed you, wasn't it? Tie up loose ends.

You're angry. Very angry.

But you've got no time for it. So you head through the doors and get to the reactor. From there, you set the charges as best you can before setting a timer to ten minutes. By now, the sound of gunfire is dying down.

Starting the timer, you head back to the vent and slip through. As you do, your hand comes onto a trickle of goo.

There is creep above you.

Do you look for another vent?

You'd hardly have time; you can hear the zerg tearing at the zerg. Praying you are on the outskirts, you began to climb as quickly as you can. Sweat drips down your brow as you scramble to try and get up. As you climb, you look down and see the zerg scaling below you. Moving faster and faster, you notice a zergling coming after you.

Unslinging your gun, you wedge yourself between the walls and fire down, blinding. There is a scream, several screams, and you keep climbing. But it's much higher than you thought; the vents soon go diagonal, and you wedge yourself there. The zerg are climbing up behind you, and the clock is dicking, and there is more goo here. Drawing out a grenade, you toss it down the chute and start climbing. A massive explosion surges up behind you, and you feel the heat on the back of your neck as you get higher.

The clock is ticking.

In desperation, you scramble out and find yourself in the middle of the goo. The zerg hive is near, but there are few zerg. So you run, you run away, and pray the zerg aren't following you. You sprint with everything you have until you get off the cliffs, and still, you run. At last, when you can run no further, you throw yourself behind the crags and wait.

The world goes white.

There is a sound so loud that it knocks out your hearing hits you. The shockwave cracks the rock near you, and stones shatter against the wall. Gasping for air, you lie there, bruised, exhausted, and tired. You feel as though you are already dead, and perhaps you are.

You might as well be.

Little by little, it passes. You become more aware and look up. Before your eyes are a vast mushroom cloud, it rises up over the obliterated rockface where once the zerg had been. You'd killed them all, and while you were at it destroyed all evidence. Destroyed all the proof of what the Confederacy had done.

Not that it mattered.

Everyone was already dead anyway.

Slowly and surely, you sit up and pick out your canteen. Drawing it out, you drink the hot water. Then, you take out some rations and wolf them down. A few days ago, you'd have hated this stuff. Now it's heavenly.

You'll never eat Mom's home cooking again. You'll never talk with Dad about mechanics or history. You'll never finish that book you were halfway through.

Everyone and everything you know and love are dead.

You choke back sobs, and then you don't bother, sobbing uncontrollably. The most you can do is cap your canteen, and then you just cry. Eventually, you finish and look up at the destruction you've wrought. Vengeance has certainly been taken on the zerg.

But there are others.

There had to be. Other zerg who have set up their hives on your colony.

What do you do now?

You look at your gun, guns, actually. You consider just eating a bullet. It'd probably fix all your problems right out. God would understand if you did it, wouldn't he? There's nothing out here for you.

But you shrug it off.

There are still zerg out there. And there are also a lot of ruins—places where other survivors might be sheltering in fear. Maybe you can help them. And if you can't help them, you can at least avenge them.

You've destroyed two zerg hives.

You'll try to destroy at least two more before you are done.

So you walk on, further and further. You're not exactly sure where you are going, but you're careful to keep an eye out for zerg. Eventually, you come to a road. And the road has to lead somewhere, so you walk it.

Night comes on you, bitterly cold, and you rest in your bedroll beneath a tree. The stars are out and beautiful. You used to love watching them, but you'd never paid attention to astrology. One of your friends had, but you can hardly remember her name.

Had she even existed?

It didn't matter.

When you at last reach civilization, you know that you are too late. Whatever attack you might have stopped has happened. The town is ransacked and broken, and corpses line the streets. There's evidence of resistance; many zerg corpses are also about. Scouting around, you find that there was a bunker line where a stand was made.

Not that it did much more than delay the inevitable.

But there is also a siege tank. It lies abandoned; apparently, no one had a chance to man it. You've never piloted one of the things, but you wonder if you might be able to use it. First, though, you look for survivors.

None. Just bodies, men, women, and children. The zerg were very thorough in their purge.

Why would they hate humans so much? They hadn't torn up any of the wildlife? Had humans done something to them?

There weren't any answers.

But there were more questions. The explosion you created has apparently attracted a lot of attention. You see great flights of zerg flyers moving through the air toward the fading mushroom cloud. Scaling some cliffs north of town, you are able to see your enemy.

It turns out that there are two zerg colonies and a forward outpost with sunken masses of flesh on it. It sits by a bridge, so you guess that it is some form of defensive structure. The tank could be used to destroy it, of course. But there would be swarms of zerg going across that bridge soon, and you'd need some kind of support. Not to mention, your tank would have to be piloted, and you don't know how to do that.

The only good news was that the zerg apparently had no interest in town now that everyone in it is dead. So long as you remain out of sight, you should be able to survive.

But you don't want to survive. You want to win.

And the faster you destroy these creatures, the sooner you will be able to. So you examine the bridge. It leads over to a small island, which in turn leads over to the town. The ruins of structures are there, of course. But you doubt anyone is still alive there.

You can't win with just a tank or without a tank.

So, you need some kind of autopilot.

That's why you make a trip to the machine shop. You'd learned about auto-pilot systems. At one point, the Confederacy of Man had contemplated replacing human pilots. But the prototypes killed even more infantry than normal tanks. However, they were still occasionally utilized for maintenance. You pressed a button, and the tank came out to be serviced or whatever.

Also, auto turrets like those in the installation had a fairly common AI type. It was known to go on the fritz and shoot people. But these were often acceptable losses to the Confederacy, and you don't have anyone left to shoot. Getting mowed down might be a relief.

So you get to work.

You find several portable turrets. From here, you install them with an auto-fire function designed to shoot at anything that moved. After a few tests, you confirm they work. Once done, you get to work melding it onto the tank. You put three on the front and one on the back. It's a clumsy job, and you nearly burn your hand off at one point, but nothing happens during it.

You wonder why normal siege tanks don't have guns like this.

Then again, they had such a massive range that smart commanders never had them engage up close. Marines were supposed to do that. Once you do that, you spend a day or two using a simulator you find inside the tank. It's not perfect; the weapon is bested used with a crew. But you might be able to do it, provided the zerg are sloppy, and you are fast.

The bridge should be enough to tip the odds in your favor.

So, you fuel the tank with vespene from the gas station, start it and start moving. The ride is rough, and you're afraid you'll teeter off the edge into the water. But nothing of that kind happens. It isn't long before zerg emerge to attack you, however. The auto-turrets slaughter them quickly. Driving forward, you get the edge of the bridge and enter siege mode. The turret transforms into a full-blown artillery piece, and you fire.

The sunken structure explodes into blood, and another shot finishes it. Zerg course down across the bridge, only to be mowed down. A few more shots destroy the last structure, and you drive across. But you decide that a frontal assault is out of the question.

The zerg will quickly encircle and destroy you.

So instead, you scale up onto a nearby plateau via a ramp. Turning, so the guns are placed down, you activate the radar systems. Acquiring targets, you order the tank to fire at all enemies. Then, you set it on auto and pull yourself out, raising your gun. By now, the zerg are coursing out of the hives, and the machine is firing. The swarm up the ramp, only to be mowed down in droves. You, meanwhile, aim for the snakelike creatures.

Whenever they get close, they fire spines that seem to erode the armor of the tank. So you make a point of sniping them. The enemy clusters, rushing up the ramp in ever-increasing numbers. But they make no headway. Even so, flyers are coming in the distance, and the rear turret is put to use. The enemy buildings explode into the blood from the barrage one by one, and the tide of the enemy slows. Even so, the tank's armor is melting, one of the turrets has been torn down. And you suspect you can't keep this up.

The zerg colony is destroyed, but you have another to handle. And you don't think you'll succeed a second time. So you leave the tank in place and run. You see the zerg going after it, and you hope they assume destroying it means you are dead. It's a long run back the way you came, and you are exhausted by the time you do. The night is coming on, and you don't think you have until morning.

Going into the barracks, you rearm and have an idea.

Barracks are able to lift off and move, right? And they have to have an immense amount of power running through them to do that. So what if you filled a barracks with explosives, rigged it to blow, and dropped it on the enemy hive.

It seems worth a try, and you quickly begin grabbing all the explosives you can get from all over. Once you're done, you rig them up in vital areas, particularly on the nuclear reactor. Then, you consider that the barracks alone wouldn't be enough. So you do the same for the factory and the engineering bay. You also move everything from the armor other than explosives to the Command Center. Then you go to the movement process.

It turns out there actually is a protocol for sending an empty movable structure on a death run. They were useful decoys when you had to get away, given that often people would escape on them. So, you set things up, set a course for the remaining zerg colony, and set the timer to a minute.

Once done, you run out, spring to the command center, and arrange for it to lift off. Piloting it out to sea, you watch as the barracks floats toward the enemy hive. They fire at it with acid, burning away at it. But finally, it descends.

The explosion is truly massive and tears through the night sky. Three huge blasts fill the air, and you know that you've won your second battle. Now you just have to get somewhere to plan your next offensive...