Gamma Nine (Book One)

by Christi Smit

  Locke paused before replying, the scene he was looking at explained exactly what the monsters on their doorstep smelt. “We know why...keep me updated Corporal,” Locke ordered Jay, switching channels to the squad radio the other Wolves were talking on. Locke caught the last part of what Rivers was saying.

  “...these are bullet holes. This was done by human hands, and there are no bite marks or cuts in the flesh of these bodies.” Rivers stood from where he had been crouching over a dead body, moving to the corner of the great hall were an old wooden desk stood. On top of the table was an emergency broadcasting station, lights glowing dimly as it repeated the recorded message over and over again. Rivers flipped a switch on the station’s side and the recording stopped moments before the lights went out.

  “How many do you see?” Locke asked the Wolves standing around the great hall.

  “At least fifty over here,” Xander replied.

  “The same here, maybe more,” Nathan added, standing next to his quiet brother, who had not said a word since they had found the scene before them.

  “More than a hundred in the hallway beyond the hall, and many more scattered everywhere” Pyoter said in a low and grim tone. “They were trying to flee from whatever was killing them.”

  “We know what was killing them!” Rivers yelled at the giant Titan, the anger in him breaking through his emotional defences. “It was him, and he needs to pay!”

  Pyoter did not respond, choosing to only nod at Rivers instead of punishing him for the outburst.

  “He will,” Locke said.

  “I count more than five-hundred dead, sir. No-one was spared.” Xander walked over to where a mother was clutching her daughter in her arms, both of them were ice cold, staring with dead eyes at the ceiling of the school’s grand hall. Xander closed their eyes with his armoured hand, and muttered curses under his breath as he moved to do the same with all of the bodies near him.

  Gunfire suddenly erupted from the east as Sabian’s men encountered the first monster clambering over the east walls of the school.

  “There are targets everywhere Captain Locke. They snuck up on us from the east. Your squad will be surrounded within moments. They are coming from all sides!” Sabian’s voice was strained, and gunfire could be heard in the background as he reported the situation from his position.

  “Can you make it to the vehicles?” Locke asked Sabian.

  “Aye, we can make it,” Sabian replied.

  “Mount up and move to the north side of the objective. Kill everything you encounter that looks unfriendly. The first objective is clear. No survivors to rescue.” Locke switched channels to the Wolves again before Sabian could reply - not that he needed to hear Sabian reply, he trusted the man completely. “Xander, make a hole. We are leaving.”

  Xander unclipped a device from his thigh as he moved to the north wall of the great hall, punching in a sequence of numbers as the red lights on the device started to flicker.

  The gunfire to the east died down slowly and Locke could hear the engines of the light escort vehicles growling into life, there was no need for stealth anymore. The hornet’s nest had been kicked and the mutants wanted to feed.

  “Here they come,” Pyoter announced from the window overlooking the stone courtyard Sabian and his men had been covering, the lull in gunfire had allowed the mutated humans to climb over the stone walls and were now almost on top of the Wolves. “Fifty meters and closing fast, sir.” Pyoter added, clipping his sword to his back as he drew his pistol, aiming it through the window, taking slow steps back towards the middle of the hall.

  Nathan and Christian stepped up beside Pyoter and readied their own weapons. They would need to protect the rear of the squad as soon as the device went off. The beasts would rush in and break through any gap they could find to reach the still living buffet inside. The Wolves would only have to hold them off for a few minutes while they waited for Sabian to clear a path to the north of them, but those few minutes would feel like a lifetime.

  The device Xander had so lovingly attached to the north wall went off with a muffled blast, directed outwards by the custom casing covering the device. The stone wall cracked and burst outward like a ripe boil, spewing stone everywhere, piercing the flesh of the monsters who had ventured close to the north wall. Concrete and stone shrapnel from the explosion tore a hole in the horde to the north, but it was not enough as more beasts stepped over the bodies of the dead, filling the gaps in their ranks within moments.

  Pyoter’s pistol echoed in the great hall as the first monster broke through the windows overlooking the courtyard. The shot took the head off the leaping monster in a fountain of blood, but another monster was right behind it to take its place.

  All of the Wolves fired at the beasts entering the hall from all sides; killing droves as the seconds ticked by before they could leave the relative safety of the great hall and make a run for the vehicles approaching from the east.

  Godwaker was bellowing from the distance, pulverizing mutated flesh with every shot. Jay was covering his new squad with expert precision, and he was living up to everyone’s expectations, for now.

  Locke dodged a fast moving mutant trying to dart into the hall from the hole Xander had blown there, but the creature’s attacks were clumsy and Locke dispatched the thing with a powerful punch to its face, leaving nothing but a bloody mess behind where the creature’s head used to be.

  Captain Locke drew his own rifle and sighted the hungry monsters rushing towards them, pulling the trigger as his bullets splattered brains and burst hearts. In the back of his mind he silently willed Sabian to hurry up. There were more monsters than he had seen in a long time, and he knew that Santor was not dying, it was dead.

  Soon, the Wolves, and everyone else still drawing breath, would see exactly how dead a city, and a planet, could truly be. Its death echo would haunt the sectors for decades to come, and its memory would forever be written in the minds of the people who saw it perish.

  Exactly thee minutes and fifty seconds later Sabian’s convoy arrived in a hail of gunfire, ripping everything in its path to shreds. High calibre fire peppered the monsters swarming over the school buildings while the Lancers inside the vehicles covered the flanks with their rifles, firing from slits in each troop carrier’s side armour, lending more weight to the onslaught the lightly armoured convoy was throwing around.

  Bullets impacted against the wall Locke was leaning against as he shouldered his rifle, firing and keeping the monsters away from the breach Xander’s explosive had made. If the beasts plugged their escape hole, then it would complicate their extraction and movement to the second objective.

  Xander was right next to his captain, throwing different kinds of smaller devices at the rushing horde, vaporizing anything within proximity to the deadly devices when they exploded. He unclipped a grenade shaped like a five pointed star from his looping belts, tossing it into the head of a bulky monster running for the breach. The grenade pinned itself in the forehead of the monster, and before it could take another step its head vanished in a spray of blood and gore. Its body slumping and falling forward as its momentum carried it forward. It finally came to rest in front of the breach, lifeless and leaking blood into the concrete below its ravaged body.

  But there was no time to admire Xander’s handy work as another beast, twice the size of the one that had just died, stepped over the dead bodies of its allies, casually trudging towards the breach with a hunched over posture. Locke emptied a clip into the creature, but it still kept coming. Head shots from Xander’s pistol just ricocheted off the beast’s skull, unable to penetrate its bony cranium.

  It was too close to use any explosives and bullets were not halting its forward movement. Locke turned his head for only a moment to see that the other Wolves were too busy with their own battles, which meant Locke and Xander would have to deal with the monster on their own.

  Rivers stood with his back against the wall not too far away from the breach. But his sho
tgun was pointed inward, firing slugs into beasts trying to overwhelm Pyoter and the Quinn brothers.

  Pyoter was engaged in a frantic melee battle with a large group of mutated humans, furiously swinging his giant blade as they attacked him from all angles. Pyoter was in his element though, and the giant Titan expertly parried every strike, relishing the battle anger his skill was feeding on. He swung his sword high and cleaved another monster in half from head to asshole, separating another beast’s head from its mutated body with the follow-up swing.

  Christian rammed his shield into the chest of sickly-pink monster that had jumped into the great hall from the broken windows overlooking the stone courtyard. The blow knocked the creature senseless, and it took a few struggling steps on wobbly legs towards Pyoter’s killing grounds. It never reached Pyoter; the sound of Nathan’s launcher from behind Christian felled the beast before it reached Pyoter. Nathan ejected the spent shell and reloaded one of his launchers, its barrel still smoking. The click and thump announced to Christian another shell was ready to be fired, and he charged the closest beast to set up another tag-team kill.

  The lumbering monster was almost upon Xander and Locke; its sheer size blocking any other monsters from sneaking into the breach. Its flabby body was only a few steps from the breach when thunder sounded Godwaker’s involvement in the fight.

  Locke and Xander took a step back, drawing their blades, but it would not be necessary. The monster’s body trembled as Godwaker fired three shots into its back. It stopped its slow trudge forward, turning to try and look behind it, not understanding where the sudden pain had come from. It never saw or heard the fourth bullet coming, dying instantly as Jay’s fourth shot went right through the creature’s heart, leaving nothing but a hole in the creature’s torso. Jay had used the first three shots to weaken the creature’s flesh, aiming the fourth shot to use that weakness to kill it.

  For a moment the creature stood as still as a statue, unmoving and frozen upright. Xander was the one to shoulder the monster in its fat belly, causing the dead mutant to fall backward, crushing two other beasts beneath its weight.

  Sabian’s request to leave interrupted Locke’s thought of commending Corporal Joshua on an excellent shot. “Can we leave now Captain?” Sabian asked over the radio.

  Locke did not reply, instead he turned to call his Wolves. “Our ride has arrived Wolves. Xander make sure we aren’t followed. Pyoter will take the lead. Nathan and Corporal Quinn cover the rest of us. Move out!” he ordered.

  Xander turned and immediately unclipped handfuls of devices from his belts, tossing them into the beasts and open spaces in the great hall. Pyoter finished his fight by removing the limbs off the closest monsters before falling back to the breach. Rivers and Nathan covered his retreat with a barrage of shotgun and launcher fire while Christian used his shield and blade to batter away anything following them.

  Pyoter broke into a run and jumped through the breach, lifting his sword high as he carved a path through the monsters disorientated by the gunfire from the convoy. Christian and Nathan were right behind him, shouldering and stabbing their way forward. Rivers had clipped his shotgun to his back and used his bare hands to smash heads into pulp as he pushed forward behind the other three. Locke was next to leave the great hall, firing his Kicker with one hand as he used his free hand to slap away anything trying to get close to him.

  Xander was the last to leave the great hall, running at full speed through the breach. He had left enough devices inside to make even him worried about the blast. He ran so fast he passed Locke and Rivers as he made for the convoy, and this in turn made everyone else run even faster.

  “There is a big boom coming. Get clear!” Xander yelled over the radio, picking up speed as he jumped on top of the lead vehicle of the convoy before anyone else. He had passed everyone with his stocky body at full tilt, dodging underneath Pyoter’s blade without losing any speed.

  “Boom time!” he screamed with relish as the last of the Wolves reached the lead vehicle.

  Xander pressed the activation button on his handheld custom detonator, smiling inside his helmet at the same time as the click of the detonator ignited the devices within the great hall.

  A blue light, more blinding that the death of a star, erupted from every hole and window in the school’s stone and concrete body. Silence hit the convoy as the explosion blotted out sight and sound.

  The convoy was already moving when the blue light erupted, the drivers of each vehicle gunning the engines as soon as the Wolves had latched onto the lead troop carrier. No-one was looking back at the blinding devastation of the first objective. No-one expect Xander of course, he had used his suit OS to shield and darken his visor, watching in creepy fascination at the explosion and its hungry destruction.

  They reached the street leading away from the first objective when a second explosion followed the blinding light, chaining the two together to wipe the entire school from the face of the planet, rocking the entire city with its raw power. The shockwave was felt as far as the city edges, by monster and enemy soldier alike.

  The two vehicles protecting the rear guard of the convoy were lifted into the air and slammed into a nearby building by the force of the blast. Luckily the Lancers inside and the vehicle itself were relatively unharmed, the light armour doing its job well enough to keep the vehicle operating.

  Locke looked at Xander who was standing on top of the troop carrier, looking back at the destruction. He slapped the Titan on the helmet with his armoured hand to draw Xander’s attention.

  Xander turned to his captain, lifting his shoulders and hands in a questioning gesture, saying nothing to accompany the action.

  Locke just shook his head in disbelief as the convoy raced away from what was only a smoking crater now, heading for the second objective.

  Hopefully there were people still alive at the hospital, and there would not have to be a repeat of what happened at the school.

  As they closed the distance towards the second objective, Christian scanned the city with his suit’s sensors. The maximum range for his suit’s scanner was only a few miles, but he still held on to his hope of seeing the beacon where Jessica was, popping up before everything went to hell in Santor.

  Chapter Six.Two

  Objectives

  “It is when we are surrounded by our enemies on all fronts that a human’s true personality shines through. The danger clears the cloudiness of the human soul and reveals what is hidden within. The strong stand firm in the face of peril, drawing strength from the terror clawing at their courage, and thus fuelling their resolve until nothing can break them. The weak, however, crack and crumble, scurrying to save their own lives before the monsters can get to them, and they drag anyone down with them, never stopping to consider the value of human life. These insects need to be stepped on by armoured boot, or broken over the knee of our heroes. Crush the weak, and feed them to our enemies so we may grow to hate them more.”

  -General Tolas Bastion, Self-proclaimed War Prophet, Counted among the lost after the disappearance of the Gravenstein, 2571 - 62 ASD

  Captain Gray’s calm exterior was solid in front of his bridge crew, but on the inside his nerves were raw.

  For hours he had pushed his beloved Hyperion to its very limits, dodging vessel after vessel trying to strafe the Hyperion or block its path. Luckily his ship was faster than most of the swarm chasing in the Hyperion’s wake. Gray’s cunning manoeuvres had saved his ship more than once, but the cat and mouse game could not go on forever - something would have to give, eventually.

  The Stygian Council was too slow to catch the Hyperion itself, so instead its commander had ordered its escorts to chase it down and cripple it. Vincent wanted Captain Gray alive and begging for his life at his feet. Only then would he kill the Hyperion while Gray watched, relishing the shock on the aging captain’s face as his crew and ship broke apart and perished in the cold, silent void.

  But Gray knew the black-haired bastard wanted
him to grovel and beg. That was the kind of man Vincent was, only happy when people feared him or asked for his glorious mercy. The man’s arrogance and haughtiness was disgusting, and Gray was not planning on giving the bastard what he wanted.

  No, Gray was going to draw Vincent out, and little by little force the man to make a mistake as the commander of the Stygian Council’s annoyance and anger with the chase grew. Gray understood the weakness of men like Vincent, the arrogance and anger growing until it overtook reason and clear thought. When that time came, Gray would be ready to pounce on whatever opportunity Vincent’s weakness would provide.

  Until then, however, he would draw on every ounce of skill he possessed, making sure that he kept his ship in one piece and of the reach of the Stygian Council’s killing grasp. Gray heard Remy yelling at him through his daze of piloting his ship and pondering the unknown.

  “Another bomber wing approaching!” Remy announced with a hint of fear in her voice.

  “I see it!” Gray replied, his voice straining to maintain the same strength it always had when addressing his crew. He took immediate evasive manoeuvres to try and shake the bombers approaching fast.

  An escort ship pursuing the Hyperion on its right flank was Gray’s chosen target. The ship was named the Duchess, a small but agile escort vessel, running alongside its target in hopes of blocking it somehow to allow the bombers to cripple the Hyperion’s engines. The Duchess lacked any significant firepower, its role within the fleet that of a light reconnaissance vessel, never tasked with any hostile operations. Its weapon bays were nothing but advanced reconnaissance equipment to survey and report findings directly to the Stygian Council. The Duchess was nothing more than a glorified camera with engines attached to it. But its captain, inexperienced and well out of his comfort zone, had his orders from Lord Vincent himself, and there was no wiggle room when his lord and commander made his wishes known. Block and disrupt the Hyperion, by any means necessary, meaning that if the Duchess had to be sacrificed, then that is exactly what would happen if Lord Vincent ordered it.