~Jane~
She couldn't escape the screams of man and monster.
When they arrived it was to investigate the missing colonists, but in a short time she found her squad and herself fighting to survive from a monster that lay under the ground in the dark of night and far from the rescue shuttle's landing zone. Nothing in her training told of an alien creature that could burrow and that could take ever bullet without slowing.
First to go were the unlucky. Two were crushed under a fallen prefab unit's roof, weighed down by the satellite it supported. One of them, their squad leader, had survived but was pinned and others had tried to lift it up to free him, but, when the ground shook, the creature returned. Those who hadn't run or had the chance to drop what they were holding were lost to the sounds of screams. Jane is ashamed to say that she was too much of a coward to stay behind.
Another group found out too late that there were more than one creature buried under the surface of Akuze. As they focused their fire on one, another surfaced directly below their position and devoured them before anyone knew what had happened. Their absence was only noticed when they didn't respond to an order to move forward.
Second to be lost were the clumsy. They had found that if they found a prefab to climb onto while the thing was under the surface, they could confuse it into thinking it had lost them and they were safe until it resurfaced. The roofs had a short wall all around that they could crouch behind to give cover to shoot at it when it surfaced to attract its attention should a group need to move.
One private, she never had a chance to remember her name, tripped over a root as she ran with her group and her voice could be heard before it became muffled, then silenced, as she was dragged under. Another was lost when he stepped into a hole while running and broke his leg. Everyone had been running for so long that no one was strong enough to carry him. Jane regrets not standing up to her fellow soldiers and superior officer to not leave him behind.
The third group of soldiers to be lost consisted of the slow. Everyone found out too late that Akuze's night cycle lasted close to ten hours of its eighteen hour day. After running and fighting the horrors of the planet for nearly eight hours, some began to feel the fatigue overpower their waning adrenaline.
Over the night, the marines lost a total of fifteen people to the painful deaths of being plowed over, dragged under, or eaten by the monsters because they were simply slower than everyone else. Jane distinctly remembers a few fellow members using any means to create obstacles for others and she never spoke against it.
The last group was lost because they ran out of ammunition and explosives. By that time, Jane was left with leadership only fifteen of her fellow soldiers.
When word came of rescue, the arrival time was set for after daybreak, a little over an hour away. Jane and her remaining men had to find a way to divert the attentions of the monsters when that time came so they could escape without the fear of the rescue shuttle falling for the same trap they did.
One of the remaining soldiers was a tank engineer, Reynolds she thinks his name was, who devised a plan to automate one of the colony's drilling vehicle so that they could start it as rescue entered the atmosphere to lure the creatures away from the landing zone. The trick wouldn't last long as the things were so fast under the surface so they couldn't test the plan beforehand, so Jane decided to place the explosives on the vehicle's hull. The explosives were useless for anything other than distractions, they had found, unless someone managed to get them into the beast's mouths, which often ended in that person's death. With plan in mind, the marines held off the beasts, loosing another eight in their fight, until word came of the shuttle entering the atmosphere.
Ordering the remaining soldiers to give cover to Reynolds as he rigged up the driller, Jane believed the worst was over. She couldn't have been more wrong.
As the driller began its start-up protocol and slowly lurch forward, the explosives rigged to blow once it reached a big enough distance from Reynolds' Omni-Tool, she and the covering fire began to move closer to the extraction point. Given the hectic situation, she hadn't noticed Reynolds wasn't with them and was calling out that the explosives weren't responding to his Tool.
None of them expected the tremor that rocked the ground beneath their feet and it wasn't until after the fact that they realized it wasn't from the monsters in the ground. The explosives had been damaged sometime in the night and Reynolds had been distracted enough from the readings from his Omni-Tool that he hadn't put enough space between himself and the explosion. With six of them left, Jane had no choice but to order them to continue to hold out as planned and hope the vehicle was functional enough to distract at least one of the beasts.
One of the creatures seemed to have fallen for the distraction, but they were still left to face one with the knowledge that extraction had just gotten that much more dangerous. Rescue couldn't land with the creature still on the offense but it seemed to be wounded, if the blue liquid seeping from its mouth was any indication. Jane hoped that what little of their ammo was left would at least make it think they weren't worth the effort to try and turn into dinner.
As she and her remaining squad put everything they had into the beast, it let them know it had one more horror to inflict. Rearing its head back, thing throwing it forward, it unleashed an acid straight at the group.
The three soldiers it hit directly had their suits soaked through immediately, their agonized screams ringing in Jane's ears and the chemical smell of melting armor and flesh stinging her nose. The creature reared back again and everyone prepared to dodge the next attack.
As it spit, they all rushed into different directions away from it. As it hit the ground, it splashed and two soldiers were caught in it. One had it splash along her chest and neck, causing her to cough and choke through her shrieks of pain. The other was hit on his legs and collapsed as it ate through the plating, one long yell before shock took him.
There were only two of them left, Jane and a lieutenant named Jameson, when word came that the shuttle was coming in hot. Giving up every pretense of holding the beast off, the two took off running towards the extraction point. Jane's slightly lighter armor making her able to run ahead of Jameson but close enough to hear his huffs of breath. There was no way she would lose the last person this close to the end.
With the shuttle in sight, Jane felt the dreaded tremor of the ground that signaled when the horrid nightmare surfaced. Refusing to turn around and instead pushing her legs for what little was left, she called to Jameson to 'just push a bit more, almost there.' She would never have imagined the pain that came next.
Jameson had taken the brunt of the beast's hit and was downed immediately and too suddenly to even cry out before hitting the ground and going still. Because of his position right behind her, Jane was only hit with splash, but the pain was unimaginable as she stumbled right before reaching the shuttle. She didn't even feel when the hands that pulled her up or the shift in momentum as it rose up and out of the atmosphere.
Instead, she was overpowered by the smell of burning flesh and ceramic plating, the liquid burning slithering all along her back, the dark corners enclosing her vision, and the inhuman, anguished screaming escaping her lips.