Dalton came awake to darkness and the knowledge that something was wrong.
Ari was already getting up. "Gunfire," she said, throwing the blankets back and leaping to her feet in a single lithe movement.
"Shit," he grunted, rubbing sleep from his eyes as he got up with her.
He could hear it now, muted but too close. Gauss Rifles firing, several of them.
Too many.
"It's happening," he said as he pulled on his shirt and then shoved his feet into his combat boots.
"It's happening," she replied grimly.
They were dressed in sixty seconds. He hesitated briefly at the door, as his armor was farther out in the building, while she was pulling hers on over her uniform.
"Go," she said.
He nodded. She was Frost again, and it was time to be Dalton. Perhaps for the last time. He'd seen those other outposts. The blood, the bodies, the shredded metal. If this truly was an invasion by the mysterious zerg, then they were almost certainly going to die. As he raced down an empty corridor, listening to the increasing gunfire and now the screams and the rending shriek of tearing metal, he knew there was only one way out.
Dalton slid to a halt and yanked himself into his room in the Armory by grabbing the door frame and pulling, letting his momentum carry him around the corner. Dix's locker stood empty. Good, he had his gear on already. He ran over and yanked his own locker open, stepped back into his armor and hastily sealed it around him. Booting up it seemed to take longer than usual, though he knew it was only because he was in a hurry. As soon as it would let him, he hurried over to his weapon's rack and snatched the Gauss Rifle up. His armored pockets were already stuffed with as much gear and ammo as he could manage. A flagrant violation of protocol, but he had expected this to happen.
Not at night, though. He'd feared that, but hoped they might wait for the day.
Something bugged him as he slipped back out into the empty corridor, and as he saw Frost running down the hallway towards him, he abruptly realized what it was: they were alone in the Armory. No one had come to get their gear.
Where was everyone else?
Neither spoke as he joined her in rushing towards the exit. As he activated his radio, a babble of voices immediately hit him.
Most of them were screaming for help.
He and Frost came to the entrance of the Armory and beheld bloody chaos.
The zerg had come to Gamma Seven, in force.
The broad, open space that comprised most of the outpost's interior was a thrashing riot of ataxic movement as men and women in suits of armor, and some without, fired into a veritable sea of leathery alien flesh as the hopping, scythe-armed creatures poured into the outpost through a ripped open gate and, even as he watched, holes in the outer wall.
"There are too many of them," Frost said, her voice flat, cold, almost dead. "We can't fight this. We have to evac, right now."
"Fuck!" Dalton snapped as an impotent rage swept over him, staring at the sea of creatures. There had to be over a hundred of them. He could feel panic coming on, wild and unstable and terrifying, and felt himself begin to freeze up in the face of such overwhelming horror.
"Dalton," Frost said, and she gripped his armored arm and gave him a shake.
For some reason he could not articulate, that seemed to cut through the panic. Something in her voice, her presence, spoke to him, to the deeper, more regimented parts of himself.
"I'm not leaving without Dix," he said flatly, "and we're going to save who we can. The only way out of here is the Motorpool. We can't outrun these things on foot."
Frost adjusted her Canister Rifle. "Then let us go."
"This is Sergeant Dalton, get to the Motorpool, that's a direct order! All personnel get to the Motorpool!" he screamed, trying to force some semblance of order on the chaos that had engulfed the outpost.
He moved into action, priming and tossing a pair of fragmentation grenades in the thickest clusters of the zerg creatures. As he finished tossing the second one, Frost fired an explosive round from her rifle, blowing the nearest zerg to bits. As the grenades went up, taking half a dozen of the creatures with them apiece, Dalton raised his rifle and began firing. He didn't bother with controlled bursts as the nearest creatures were rushing at him and Frost, shrieking and chirping madly as they reached with their scythe-arms.
Dalton emptied the entire magazine, the muzzle flaring wildly as it churned out dozens of rounds, blood flying on the air as the monstrous aliens came for them. Occasionally one of them would explode as Frost landed a shot. The gun thrummed in his gauntleted grasp, itself almost becoming a wild beast that he struggled to hold onto.
The Gauss ran dry four hundred rounds later and he immediately ejected the spent box and began slapping a new one in. There seemed to be a pause in the combat, a hesitation that rippled through the slaughterhouse the battlefield was, and he took the opportunity to press his point home.
"Motorpool! Evac!" he roared.
A familiar voice came onto the general comms line. "Get your asses in gear! Move!" Dix shouted, and somewhere ahead, he saw huge twin geysers of flame shoot out, roasting a few of the creatures.
"Go," Dalton said, and they began to run.
It was like running into a raging storm. Gauss Rifles chattered, a few Perdition Flamethrowers joined Dix's, roasting the hides of the chirping horrors. Dalton fired as he ran, smashing into the creatures with his armored shoulders where he could, punching bursts of bullets into their hardened carapaces. It must have been like this, he thought miserably, for the other outposts. How many? How many outposts were dead now?
How many had fallen in the Wasteland?
How many across Mar Sara?
Was this happening everywhere? He had no idea if this invasion was linked to this region, this planet, or even this system.
This felt apocalyptic.
He reached a cluster of Marines, recognizing Baker and Fish among them, firing wildly, shouting warcries, their big, bulky armor sprayed with blood.
"Motorpool!" Dalton snapped at them, turning and laying the rest of his bullets into the nearest cluster of creatures, chopping them up.
"Yes, Sergeant!" Baker replied. "Let's go people!"
Something of the training seemed to push through the panic then, and they reunified near the center of the encampment. Dalton's mind was whirling as he reloaded again, looking around, trying to figure out how in the hell they were going to perform search and rescue for anyone who might be in the Barracks or Command Center still.
He was almost to the Motorpool when he reluctantly admitted to himself that it wasn't happening. There were just too many of them.
Then he was there, crashing to a halt just inside the Motorpool, the garage doors on this side standing open. He saw a couple of figures inside, offering cover fire.
"Frost, get one of the rovers going! Baker, get the other! Fish, in the crawler! Everyone else, cover fire!" he yelled. "Dix! Dix!" he screamed as he spun on his heel and resumed fire on the oncoming horde of monsters.
"What!?" Dix snapped from somewhere nearby.
"Cover the side entrance!"
"On it!"
The big Firebat appeared briefly and then was gone again, moving around the exterior of the structure. A huge backdraft of flame appeared as Dalton heard several things screech. He shifted his attention back to the matter at hand and saw worryingly few terrans headed his way. Shouldering his rifle, he opened fire again.
This was going to be a really close call.
The next series of events seem to fly by with the manic ferocity that time took on in the heat of battle, if anything made worse by the fact that he was now battling an utterly inhuman foe. A few Marines came in. Two remained behind with him and the others who were keeping the ever-encroaching forces at bay.
Frost shouted that the vehicle was ready, and he sent three off to join her.
"Go!" he snapped. "Get the hell out of here!"
"Where am I going!?"
"North! I'm right behind you!" he replied.
Then Fish shouted that he was ready as Frost peeled out of there.
"Dix! Lock it up and get over here!"
"Goddamnit-hold on!" he called over the radio.
Dalton kept firing until he felt as much as heard an explosion that rocked the structure around him, then suddenly there was Dix, standing beside him. "Won't last long," he said.
"Everyone go get on the crawler now! Get the hell out of here!" he snapped.
The handful of personnel left helping him hold the line bolted the second he told them to, disappearing back into the Motorpool. They had bought themselves some time, clearing out the immediate area around them, and he could see a lot of the creatures engaged in ripping into the structures themselves, tearing at them with their claws.
"What the hell are they doing?" Dix muttered.
"No clue, but it looks like we've got some time, so let's go!" Dalton snapped, pulling out, priming, and tossing another fragmentation grenade at the nearest of them.
"Go, I'll cover you," Dix replied, raising his flamethrowers.
"No, get in the rover with me, that's an order," Dalton snapped.
Dix laughed. "We're the same rank."
"Dix!" He grabbed the man by the armor and yanked him closer. "I need you for what comes next. I can't do this by myself."
Dix stared at him from behind his blood-and-soot-stained visor, the gore flaking off as the system worked overtime to clean it. "Ah shit," he muttered.
The grenade blew. The two men ran.
There was no one left but Baker in the remaining rover. They bolted, making it to the rover and throwing themselves inside.
"Go!" Dalton snarled, but Baker was already punching it, following the other two vehicles out of the chaos.
The front gate was a shredded mess, already punched through by the departure of the others. Dalton glanced behind them, out the back window, past Dix's grim face. Beyond the cracked glass, Gamma Seven burned.
He saw no figures racing after them.
Then he heard Fish scream over the radio.
"Ah hell!" Baker snapped.
Dalton whirled around to the front and saw more horror awaiting them: there were even more creatures in front of the outpost. He saw a trail of them left dead or dying, and Frost's vehicle was now gone from sight, having no doubt whipped around by her expert handling to head north, but the crawler…
It was crashing, tipping over and being overrun by the creatures.
"Pull up beside them!" Dalton ordered, leaning out the window and firing. As they got closer, Dix joined him, setting half a dozen of the things aflame.
It was already too late. He could see even more of the creatures falling on a pair of Marines who'd fallen off the back, and yet still more of them disappearing around the side, where he immediately began hearing wild agonized wailing. One figure suddenly raced around from the front end, a medic rushing towards them, two of them hot on her heels. Forrester.
"In now!" Dalton screamed as he fired carefully past her, sending bursts of bullets into the creatures and forcing them back long enough for her to throw herself into the backseat besides Dixon, who was still frying everything.
Dalton began to give the order to go, because this situation was completely lost, when the driver's side door on the crawler flipped open. It was laying on its side, so the Marine that emerged from it had to crawl up and out. And from the way he was jerking and screaming and struggling, something had him from the bottom.
It was Fish.
The two men locked eyes briefly, Private Fisher staring down at him with eyes that were full of terror and utter desperation.
"Sarge, help!" he screamed, reaching as though he actually expected to cross the dozen-foot vertical gulf between them.
Dalton found himself getting the door open. "Fish!"
"Sergeant, don't leave me!" Fish shrieked.
A clawed arm snaked up behind him and sank into his shoulder, punching through the armor. He screamed.
"FUCK!" Dalton screamed, making a snap decision that he know he'd wrestle with for the rest of his miserable life.
He aimed and fired, eviscerating Fish's face in a humming cloud of bullets, snuffing out his suffering in an instant.
"Go!" Dalton roared, slamming the door shut and rolling up the window.
Baker was already punching it.
"W-where am I going, Sergeant?" he managed.
"North," Dalton replied, suddenly exhausted, his adrenaline collapsing into a sea of abject despair and shell-shocked horror. "North, Baker."
Nobody spoke a word as they drove on.
Dalton was still present enough to feel the distant call of anxiety over Frost's location. But for several minutes all he could see was Fish's face disappearing in a mist of bloody chunks. Hear his panicked pleas for salvation.
How many times had he heard that?
Too many didn't begin to describe it.
"Where am I going?" Baker asked finally, his voice unsteady.
"We need to find Frost," Dalton replied.
Almost without realizing it, as they had been driving across the moonlit wastes, he'd begun going through the process of calming himself down, grounding his mind, bringing sanity back around so that he could do what needed doing. Even now, in the face of gibbering, bloody alien horror he still had that.
"I'll get on the radio, everyone else, keep an eye out. Aim for Gamma Six."
"Yes, Sergeant," Baker muttered, gripping the steering wheel so tightly that he was probably doing it damage with his armor.
The visions of blood and death and shrieking, chirping things ripping apart his life were pushed aside. Not forever, he knew. But long enough for him to keep his shit together and guide them out of this hellstorm. It didn't take him long to pick up her signal, at least.
"I hear you, Dalton. Are you okay?"
"I...I'm uninjured. The rover is intact. I've got Baker, Dixon, and Forrester with me." He paused. "Everyone else is dead and the crawler is gone."
"Understood. We need to meet up."
"Where are you?"
"Don't these things have transponders?"
"...right. Yeah. Are you safe?" he asked, reaching out and activating the dashboard computer. This was one of the side effects of battle. Not that that had been so much a battle as a slaughter.
"Yes. We've stopped on a hill. Clear sightlines. No creatures around."
There was a ping.
"You got that Baker?" Dalton asked.
"I got it, Sergeant," the Corporal replied, adjusting their course.
"We'll be there in a few minutes."
"Good. We need to talk."
That snagged on his brain, bringing him further back to the present. That they needed to talk was something obvious, so her verbalizing it meant that it was something less obvious.
"Understood."
He looked out the window at the ghostly light of the moon and the stars, turning the grim, barren Mar Saran Wastelands into something out of a fantasy painting. He couldn't see any of the creatures around them, not even chasing them, but they seemed so fast it made him wonder how safe that truly made them.
And then, ahead, he saw a lone rover, waiting on a rise in the land, lights out.
Baker pulled up beside her and put the rover in park.
"Baker, stay in here, keep the engine going. Dix, Forrester, out and stay sharp. Reload. Forrester," he said, glancing back at her. He saw she only had a slugthrower. "I put a few Gauss Rifles and some ammo in the trunk. Gear up."
"Yeah," she replied quietly.
They got out and he walked over to Frost. He did a quick check of the faces she had with her, expecting to see Miller, but he wasn't there. He was almost certainly dead. He saw Privates Abner and Mulberry, and Lance Corporal Sullivan, a loud-mouthed young woman who enjoyed gambling and currently looked as pale as bleached bone and was uncharacteristically silent. And that was it. He was almost positive everyone else at his little home in the wastes was now dead. And, unless they'd escaped, he hoped they were.
Dalton saw a flash of that Command Center they'd blown to shit, all those bodies on the walls…
"Dalton."
He looked to the front of the other rover, saw Frost standing like a statue, silhouetted against the moonlight.
He joined her and she led him farther away from the pair of rovers, until they were out of earshot.
"Are you okay?" he asked.
"I'm fine," she replied. "And you were right. We should've done something yesterday. But it doesn't matter now."
"No," he muttered, "it doesn't. I want to stick to the plan."
"Gamma Six and then to Deadwood?" she asked.
"Yes."
"I have a different idea. Something I was going to wait to tell you until we were out here. There's somewhere else we can go. A secret Confederate installation. It's about halfway between here and Deadwood. The Harbinger Installation."
Dalton had been scanning the flats and dunes around them, but now he turned fully to face her. "Why were you going to wait?" he asked.
She stared back at him, as expressionless as ever behind her mask. "It's...complicated."
"Take your mask off," he said.
She hesitated for just a few seconds, then reached up and pulled it off. She almost looked like a real ghost in the moonlight.
"Tell me what's going on, Ari," he said when she didn't speak up. "Please."
She cast a quick glance at the others, then stepped closer to him. "Can I trust you, Erik? Really trust you?" she asked.
"Yes," he replied.
She swallowed, then a stony calm came over her, though it seemed different from the cold professionalism he was used to. "I'm leaving the Confederacy and going to the Sons of Korhal." She stared him in the eyes as she spoke, her voice barely above a whisper. "And I want you to come with me."
Dalton felt a lot of things suddenly click into place and all of it was laced with a sensation of anger and paranoia, like a dose of bad drugs, injected against his will. Because that's exactly what it was: the Confederate conditioning. But it was weak in him. It always had been, for some reason. But it had been months, almost a year now since he'd had any kind of real contact with the Confederacy 'adjustment' machinery.
But it made sense. Why she was here, why she was so extremely reluctant to admit to anything at all. The secrecy and hesitation.
She was completely right to hide that, because there were some people who would shoot her outright for saying something like this.
"I understand," he said, and her relief hardly showed on her face, but it did show.
"Thank you," she whispered. "...will you come with me?"
He hesitated, glancing back at the others. Dix was looking at him, but no one else was. Then he almost let out a bitter laugh. Even now, in the midst of a savage, bloody alien invasion, with a woman who might actually be a really good match for him, in a life that had seen far too few of those, he was thinking practically.
Dalton looked back at her. "I imagine there's conditions with this?"
Her expression soured, just a little, and she nodded. "Yes. There are." She sighed softly. "Aren't there always?"
Now he did let out the bitter little laugh. "Yep. What are the conditions?"
"I've got to pull data from the Harbinger Installation. Once I have it, they're supposed to give me a location to get the hell offworld. And then I start helping them...do what needs doing. And if you come with me, you'll have to do the same. But...we'd be together." Her face suddenly grew stony again. "Erik...I know I'm asking a lot. But I don't want you to say yes because you think we'll live happily ever after. I'm not...a romantic person. If we really do attempt a relationship, I'll try, but I've never had a relationship before, not really, not like that. And I can't get pregnant. We're sterilized as Ghosts, so that's off the table."
"You're really giving me the hard sell here, huh, Ari?" he asked.
"I'm just...being realistic. I respect you. You deserve that."
"I'm not exactly husband material myself."
"Yo, Dalton! What the hell are we doing?!" Dix called.
"Just a minute!" he called back. "Look, we can talk about the specifics of what a relationship might look like later. Let's just say...I have little in the way of delusions about my prospect for a happy ending, but I don't intend to just give up. And I have absolutely no love for the Confederacy, but I don't exactly trust the Sons."
"I don't either, but I distrust them less than the Confederacy."
He sighed. "You got me there. I'm willing to go, and I want Dix with me. He'll want to come. But the others? It's too much of a coin flip. So we get them somewhere safe, and then we can get the hell out of here."
"Deal," she said.
He started walking back over and she followed after him, slipping her mask back on.
"Let me handle the talking," he said.
"Mmm-hmm," she replied.
"Finally," Dix said as they approached, "thought you were making out over there."
"Dix, I'd absolutely love to see a big badass Firebat like you get brought to his knees by a Ghost, but we've got shit to do," Dalton replied.
He looked around, trying to take a measure of those who'd made it. Baker and Forrester seemed freaked but mostly there. The others seemed varying levels of shell-shocked. He hoped he wasn't coming off like a total asshole, cracking jokes after everything that had happened, but he'd seen what happened if you didn't break the tension at least a little in situations like this.
People flipped out, lost their shit, and someone wound up dead half the time.
"Guys, focus up," he said as he and Frost rejoined the group. "We've got a plan. We're gonna mount up and hit Gamma Six and see if there's any survivors or supplies there. From there...Frost knows about a secret installation between G Six and Deadwood. That's where we'll go next. Good chance we find help there."
"You really think they're gonna let us just walk in?" Dix asked.
"Don't much care," Dalton replied.
"I have proper clearance...I should be able to get them to at least talk," Frost said.
"What if they tell us to piss off?" Forrester asked.
"Then we'll piss off to Deadwood and take our chances there," he replied, wondering exactly how that would play out. "Now, is everyone good? No one's hurt, right? We're all geared up?" He heard the others sound off and trusted their answers, for the most part. He imagined the younger ones hadn't seen actual combat and...well, none of them had seen shit like this. "All right, mount up!"