Chapter Three:
Targets sighted
Emily Weller
"All right, listen up squad!" our captain called out over the roar of the V-22 Osprey's engines. "Our destination is right up ahead. Take a look, because that there is the Black Mesa Research Facility. At a little before ten hundred this morning, one of their experiments went wrong, and we're being sent in to help out however we can!"
"Sir! Do we have any more information beyond that, sir?" I asked in reply, sitting next to one of my best friends since junior high, Abby Calla, who was also our squad's medic. The captain looked over at me and nodded.
"We do indeed, staff sergeant, but it's ugly. Turns out that when that experiment I mentioned went wrong this morning, it brought in a whole host of aliens, and they are not friendly!" he answered, causing Bruce, our team's resident pyrotechnics expert, to lean forward in surprise. "Yes, you heard me right, sergeant Holier! Aliens! They're on our home turf and looking to pick a fight, so that's exactly what we're gonna give them!"
Suddenly, the captain raised a hand to cover his ear, and his eyes widened slightly in surprise. "Damn it…" he muttered, words I alone caught.
"Everything all right, captain?"
"No it ain't, Weller! We've just received intel from the brass that this was the plan of the science team all along! From what I've just been told, we have additional orders to silence the personnel there too, before they can bring anything bigger through with whatever kinds of witchcraft they pulled outta their asses this time!" he called back. "Command even gave us two special targets, Doctors Isaac Kleiner and Eli Vance!"
"What's so special about these two?"
"Apparently they were two of the head researchers creating something called an Anti Mass Spectrometer in Sector C, which supposedly was what they used to start this whole mess in the first place! Orders are to kill the other scientists, but the brass want these two alive for some reason!"
Abby stiffened next to me, and across from us, Erin, our sniper, narrowed his eyes, as did Kate. She, however, did so for a different reason, one that became quickly clear as she stood up. "What the hell is that?" she said, pointing out the open side door of the Osprey. I leaned over to get a better look, only to immediately pull my head back as a green flash of lightning screamed towards me from the ground and just barely missed my cranium.
"Christ, that was close! Guess that's one of the aliens you were talking about, boss!" I called out to our captain, who nodded and kneeled down next to the door with his M249 squad assault weapon in hand. I looked around to the rest of the squad. "Get ready for a hot LZ, everyone! Make sure you're locked and loaded, cause if you leave anything on the bird, there's no getting it back! Bruce, you've got radio duty!"
The others all nodded quickly, checking their magazines, guns, sidearms, and most importantly, our PCV vest charges as we felt the helicopter descend into the chaos below. I stepped out onto the desert ground right after our captain, my MP5 submachine gun in hand. Suddenly, before I even had a chance to blink, another bolt of energy came flying out of nowhere and blasted our captain straight in the jaw. He let out a shout as he fell to the ground, his body still twitching violently with green lightning coursing all around it as Abby stepped in to pull him to cover. Bruce and I fired off return volleys of bullets from our guns, and Kate and Erin covered the other side of the helicopter as our pilot was killed by weird buzzing insects flying at insane speeds, which pierced the bulletproof glass of the cockpit with ease.
I looked around for some cover, and my eyes fell on an open door with a man in a white lab coat flagging us down, a small handgun in his right hand pointed at the aliens and firing. Instinct bred from years of training kicked in, and I followed my orders to the letter with a bullet through the poor guy's head. "We've got to move, now!" I barked, stepping into my role as second in command of the squad. "Bruce! Help Abby move the captain to safety inside that door! Erin, Kate! You're with me! Let's show the enemy what we're made of! Weapons free!"
With great haste, we moved away from the Osprey and towards the dead scientist. I looked back to fire at a dull colored alien with three arms as it pulled more green lightning from thin air into its palms, if they could be called such. Barely two seconds after I had pulled the trigger, it fell to the ground, but our Osprey was also blown to pieces. I shook off the shock quickly, however, and turned around to walk backwards as I watched our enemies approach. "Come on, keep moving! Get inside!"
My squad and I backpedaled to get away from the advancing alien forces as our minds raced to keep up with everything that was happening. As I fired round after round into the eyeballs of cyclops-like faces, one of them pushed its hands together and formed a bright green orb. The creature then threw the orb in an all too familiar fashion, and I turned to my squad.
"Grenade! Get down, now!"
But perhaps as I should've expected after knowing him for so long, Bruce did the exact opposite of that. The muscular, six foot something African American set our captain on the ground, and I watched with my hands over my ears as he threw something at the orb. Whether by luck, good timing, some of both, or neither at all, whatever he had been thinking did something right. The blast incinerated the object he'd thrown, but it also directed the energy back towards our aggressors and vaporized them instantly. As I pushed myself to my feet and helped Erin and Kate up, I turned to Bruce.
"Nice to see you haven't lost your touch, but next time follow orders, wouldja? Now come on, reckless. Let's get everyone inside," I told him, lightly smacking his shoulder with a faint grin at his crazy antics. Bruce nodded with a smile and a raised eyebrow, and he walked behind me with his shotgun in hand. He let out a grunt as he slammed the door closed and jammed a nearby chair against the handle to keep it shut, while I kneeled down next to Abby and our motionless captain. "What's the news?"
She shook her head. "DOA," was all she replied, and I sighed, grabbing his gun and shouldering it next to my MP5. Dead on arrival at least meant he likely died quickly, so there was a little comfort. Not much though. I buzzed my lips quietly and turned to look around the room.
"Bruce, where's that radio? One hit from those things was enough to take out our captain, headshot or not. The brass underestimated the strength of these alien freaks," I asked, but he shook his head.
"Yeah, about that radio… It was the only big thing I could grab to try and knock that grenade away… so we don't have one anymore… Sorry, staff sergeant," he apologized.
I rolled my eyes and sighed. "Well, nothing we can do about it now, and I can't exactly fault you for probably saving our lives. I'll take one less radio over more dead marines any day," I said, turning around to see an open door, probably where that scientist had come from. "Let's check that door. See if any more of these crazy scientists are hiding around here."
Stepping towards the door, I felt someone pull on my arm lightly. I turned around to see Abby standing behind me. "Yeah, about that… Something just feels really off about this whole thing," she said, and I tilted my head to the side, walking over to the wall to rest against it. If the hellish less than five minutes we'd just been through was any indication, there wouldn't be much time for rest until we were back in our barracks.
"Okay, spill. What doesn't feel right?" I asked her, and she gestured towards the door behind which was the body of the dead scientist.
"Well for one thing, it looked like he was firing on the aliens, not us. And for another, this room was behind our bird when we landed. I doubt we would've seen it before being torn to shreds out there if he hadn't gotten our attention. And this certainly doesn't look like a trap or an ambush to me, certainly not compared to what's out there."
Erin, easily the quietest of our squad, nodded in agreement. "Now that you mention it, it did look like he was trying to help us." Kate stepped up next to him, her hands still gloved from welding Bruce's improvised doorstop securely in place.
"But still," she added. "One friendly scientist doesn't mean the entire base is on our side, especially if what command was telling us is true, and they meant to cause this mess."
"Yeah. I'm sorry Abs, but I'm with Erin and Kate on this one. Our orders are clear. We need to contain this invasion as much as possible and silence the facility personnel," I told her with a hand on her shoulder. "Much as I may not like gunning down civvies, that's what we have to do."
"Yeah, you're not the only one. We've only been here a few minutes, but my mum and pop both had missions start out like this when they were in the corp, and each of them ended up being a coverup operation, which tells me somebody's not telling someone everything," Bruce agreed. "But the Staff Sergeant is right. Like it or not, we've got to follow these orders, regardless of what we think about them. So, what's the plan, boss?"
I nodded my thanks to the man. Though I outranked everyone else in the squad after our late captain, Bruce was still the oldest of us all. According to him, he liked to act as the welcoming committee for new marine privates, and more importantly, potential future marines. To that end he'd asked to stay as just a sergeant, though everyone always treated him with great respect. Even I had often gone to him for questions for things I wasn't sure about.
"Okay. Kate, pull up that map. Let's plan out our route to Sector C and get to work. Odds are that'll be a good place to start looking for the good doctors."
A/N: And scene! Sorry for another short chapter, I wanted to make it a bit longer with Emily's squad encountering a bullsquid, but I just couldn't figure out a way to bring something after this from her perspective. Speaking of perspectives, we're going back to Will and JD next time for chapter four, but we'll see more of Emily and her squad pretty soon, so stay tuned! Hopefully after this we'll have some longer chapters!