Author's note: Behold! Chapter 2 has arrived. I hope you enjoyed the previous one, because this is better. I managed to touch up on parts of my writing style and am thinking of adding new characters and technology soon. I hope you enjoy chapter 2! :)
Cage stared at the open sky as the streaks of meteors flew past Heathrow Air Base, the forward operation base in Operation Downfall. The three meteors, flying in formation of a triangle, crashed into the earth, a booming sound that echoed around the land for miles, followed by two other ear-splitting sounds as the meteors landed on Earth. For a moment, the entire air base held its breath - in shock and surprise, in the return of the mimics. The defining silence was broken a moment later by a chorus of anger, disbelief and panic. However, panic was the most prevalent in the air base - obvious through the ripple of panic spreading through the ranks of the men standing in awe of the sights to behold. Someone had turned the siren off - the base had descended into its eerie silence yet again, as the men looked up in the sky, staring at the smoky trails of the meteors. Suddenly, as if a spell had broken over them, the men started rushing about as the officers around Cage barked out orders and called their superiors at the IUDF.
A different siren played - it was a code blue. That meant every single soldier on duty had to haul ass to the nearest hanger and get outfitted with their jackets. The engineers dropped their tools and sped over to the dropships, while pilots scrambled to get their helmets. The next twenty minutes passed in a flurry of activity, as the dropships took off in formation to the different crash sites, creatively named site A, B and requested to be airlifted with the team for site A, and had that request immediately rejected. "This is not a job for a public relations officer, Major Cage. I recommend you stay back as our team relays essential information for you to talk to the press. I'm sure the press will be very curious as to what is happening." General Brigham replied.
Cage signed - he forgot that General Brigham's impression of him was a cowardly man who had risen up the ranks only through the fact that no one else wanted to be in the public relations sector. The other General Brigham in his previous loop, instead, had the impression of a formidable warrior who helped the invasion force to win the mimic war. He glanced over at the strike teams, and there she was, the Angel of Verdun - Rita Vrataski. She stood with her elite squad, men she had personally picked and trained in every single way possible - fighting skills, aiming, patience and all that good battlefield senses. Their sign of an elite squad was the skull on their visors - normal soldiers had a clear visor, while the elite team had their black but translucent, with a skull and crossbones over it. How they managed to look through the design? No one ever knew.
However, the one who did strike out the most was the "Full Metal Bitch". With her red slashes of paint on her armour, riddled with bullets from friendly fire, gashed with claws (is that what they call it?) of mimics, for she had bested thousands of them in hand to hand combat, with her trusty sword. The sword had a biometric scanner, meaning that only she could pick it up with her hands. It was extremely lightweight, being fashioned from the finest blacksmith using titanium-magnesium alloy, leading to it's extremely light yet hard property. And that was just how Vrataski liked it, bashing every mimic in the face with her good ol' trusty sword. Vrataski had picked up hundreds of mimic kills in her current life. In total? Too many to count. She could have easily racked up millions of kills, from the practice she had when she still had the power.
"Major Cage! What are you standing there for? Get a move on, the press is demanding a reason for the uproar!" An official that was present at meetings but Cage never took note of was yelling at Cage. "Yea okay fine i'd move it" Cage mumbled under his breath, slightly pissed that he couldn't fight alongside Vrataski in the possible battle. Meanwhile, news on the mimics were already spreading across the net and television. The first wave of soldiers had to do some crowd controlling as the public and reporters swarmed the three crash sites, each about a kilometre from each other.
And then it happened.
With a loud crashing sound, all synchronised as if a giant mind was controlling all of them, (which of course was technically how it worked), the ground started sinking inwards, creating three giant sinkholes in the field it had crashed into. The soldiers on screen immediately stepped backwards, shouting to each other and to the onlookers to get the hell back. And as suddenly as it happened, the ground stopped moving. The earth was shaking, as if mother nature was waking up. Cage could feel the tremors from miles away from the base, and from the ground poured forth waves of mimics.
The soldiers instantly snapped into their battle stances, gunning mimics down as soon as they came out of the hole. Mimic bodies were thrown into the air as more and more mimics gushed out of the sinkholes as if a tap had been turned on. Mimic carcasses were thrown into the air, as mimics rose up from the sinkhole. The nearest onlookers died almost instantly, with the mimics able to shoot spikes from their backs. The soldiers closed ranks, some screaming, some gritting their teeth as they gunned down the mimics. Cage stood with fixated horror as he stared at the television in his quarters - how could this be? Did he not kill the omega? Why are there more mimics out there? Then it dawned on him when he remember something Dr Carter, one of the scientists that Vrataski said he could trust, had said. He hypothesised that there was not one omega, but there could be millions of them out there, on asteroids, just waiting to crash into a habitable planet, wait for the dominant species to attack, and boom. Total annihilation.
Cage rushed over to the hangers, called over a engineer to help me put his jacket on. The engineer was surprised, but overcame it quickly with a smile and asked Cage "What was it? Was't done with your girl? Too busy over the mags?" Cage did not reply, he just gave the engineer a cold look that made him shut up. Once suited up and with enough ammo, he got into a dropship and set a course for site A.
A while later, he could see the field was still swarming with mimics, and the public was nowhere to be seen. With the dwindling amount of soldiers and the unrelentless stream of mimics being poured out of the sinkholes, the soldiers of IUDF were dying quickly. Too quickly. Cage dropped out of the dropship, letting it crash and cover a sinkhole. It soon exploded, taking a few mimics out and burying the sinkhole for just a few minutes. Cage dropped on the back of a mimic, and before the mimic could react, he shot a single bullet into its head, a technique he realised was very effective he one could get behind a mimic. He used it very often, as mimics early turned their backs, or you usually get killed before you can get behind one.
Soldiers looked up in awe as their public relations officer smashed his way through ranks of mimics, killing them with single shots to the head, crushing their tendrils as he walked over them, using his heavy guns from the back of his jacket to shoot high velocity balls of plasma at the mimics, effectively tearing through the chitinous armour as though as it was paper. Adrenaline surged through Cage's veins as he tore into a mimic just by activating the jets on his boots and smashing through the body feet first. The blood of mimics sprayed over the battlefield, as bodies of mimics shuddered multiple times, almost convulsing, as they breathed their last on the putrid battlefield.
However, a single man against an army wasn't enough. For every mimic Cage killed, two replaced it. It was not long before the order to retreat sounded along the ranks of the soldiers, and as battle hungry Cage was, he knew better to continue fighting and be ultimately overwhelmed by the mimic horde. He pulled back along with the soldiers, the mimics lapping at their heels like hungry dogs. The soldiers, combined with the jackets, were able to run fast, but the mimics were faster. The mimics took down stragglers, as the screams of the dying echoed into the day.
"What the living hell was that?"
"Holy shit man did you see the way that mimic came out at me?"
"Oh god. Oh god. Oh god."
"Damn we were getting royally screwed in the ass till that PR guy came along. Who knew he could fight? Always thought he was some lowly coward."
The voices of soldiers were loud and stinging to Cage's ears, as the survivors took off their jackets in the hangers. The military base was on maximum lockdown and the defence perimeter was primed - they would know if mimics were coming. A line of soldiers still guarded the perimeter, serving as the first line of defence should the mimics decide to advance towards the base. As the soldiers filed in for debriefing, Cage was called by General Brigham to his office, and Cage knew he was really screwed.
"You weren't supposed to be in combat! No one ordered you to be there! You were supposed to deal with the press! Now i have additional work to do to cover for you, on top of the damn bullshit of the mimics coming back!" General Brigham roared. Cage did nothing, not even blink, as General Brigham paced his office, thinking of solutions to the current situation. "Look, I need you to obey us, your superiors, or the entire hierarchy would crumble." Brigham started. "I'm going to let you off the hook for once since i have too much on my hands, and you did a pretty good job out there. Next time, ask for permission. Do not jump straight into combat like that." Cage nodded, and with that, was dismissed by Brigham.
Cage left the office to see Vrataski pacing outside. "Rita? What are you doing here? Aren't you supposed to be preparing or something?" Cage was surprised by her suddenly appearance. "Look, you went crazy out there. Must have killed at least a hundred mimics with your bare hands. Next time, invite me to the party. I was too busy following orders." Vrataski talked with a friendly tone, but her eyes portrayed a different message. She wanted him to be more careful, should an alpha appear or should he be injured, therefore loosing the power. Cage smiled, saying "It's all good. I got this." At that moment, Cage's phone rang. He answered it, and snapped it shut a moment later. "We're required in the meeting room, we better hurry." Cage met Vrataski's eyes, and quickly hurried to the meeting room.
"We have been attacked by three waves of mimics - there were three meteors just like the first meteor that landed in Europe, starting the war. Firstly, we need our intel. Satellite imaging that was still intact from the war shows that the mimics has not advanced beyond the field, and we have successfully evacuated all civilians in a 10 mile radius." An officer was presenting, probably an intelligence gathering team. "We currently do not know their purpose, butt hey seem to be protecting those three sinkholes that were created just before combat. Do we have any ideas on what they could be protecting, and how can we end this?"
Cage stayed quiet, understanding that if he spoke up now, he would probably end in a psych ward or be dissected. "Does anyone have ideas?" The officer spoke up again, as the room descended into silence, each man contemplating what could the aliens truly be after on earth. "I have an idea." All eyes suddenly turned towards him, eighteen sets of eyes turned upon Cage. "I have a theory, that the mimics are like minions. They are controlled by a higher up organism, something like a biological hierarchy. This higher up organism, let's call it… the omega, has too many mimics to control, so it has other minions, but more powerful and between the drone mimic and the omega in terms of rank… So this special minion, let's call it the alphas, controls a group of drones, the basic mimics we see on the battlefield." Cage allowed his brain to say everything, but putting it in a way that it was a theory and not something that was true.
"So your theory is that there's the drones, the basic mimics, then the alphas, who control the drones, and the omega, who controls everything? So that means the three sinkholes mean… oh my god. Does that mean it could be three omegas? Doesn't that mean they are three separate factions, like different legions?" An officer twirled his pen and casually said. "Wait, we are just accepting this theory? A scientist piped up, his pen in the air. Cage looked at him in the eye and growled "Do you have a better idea?" The scientist looked as if he wanted to come up with a story, but decided against it. He lowered his pen in defeat, and nodded along.
"So, that leaves us with the question: What do the mimics want?"
Author's note: So i added a little fight scene in there, had a little fun depicting mimic biology. I'd probably be thinking up of more ideas for mimic biology, jacket classification, and maybe new vehicles. Thanks for reading!