“What do you think they will look like?” Justin asks me, He was one of the newbies that didn’t pass out. “Intel says they will look like bugs. Didn’t you do your homework?” I replied. The recruit shrugged, “I thought the mines were a sure thing,” he says. The mines were a sure thing, which is why our mission is to explore the destruction and kill anything that’s still breathing. “The only thing for sure is one day we all die, aside from that nothing is for sure… and if I’ going to die brining down some alien scum is one surefire way to go about doing it,” Chev chimed in. “We think they are going to look like bugs but for all we really know they could look like Teddy bears, soft cuddly Teddy bears, hell they may look like something far worst… they could look like us,” Chev added. I look at both Chev and Justin and take a deep breath. What did I just sign up for?
“They are bugs,” I said, “as tall as humans but still bugs and what do you do when bugs infest your home,” I raised my eyebrow towards Chev, “you bomb them, call an exterminator and wipe them out!”
We were halfway to the rally point. We could see the ruins of the Skrav ships. It looked like a pile of spires stretching out across the sky, dragged like a dagger across the sky. Silent like a corpse. No human had witnessed anything like this before. We made first contact and we were ready to kill. The shadow of Mars was behind us and the light of the monring sun was rising.
Just a few miles out the Skrav ships filled the horizon. Breaking away our skiff landed straight into the dirt. Three of my men were killed including Justin. Poor kid, another volunteer and a pilot. In the distance a mushroom cloud hung out over where the Skrav ship use to be. They had activated a self-destruct.
“Who the hell blows up their own damn ship!” Chev yelled out. Half of the volunteers were already too close to the Skrav ship to be saved. The rest of us were stuck on the ground waiting for our weapons and gear to reboot from the blast’s EMP. This was the first time I saw a Skrav. The rose up from the ground. The must have buried themselves right after the crash. They were waiting for us, trapping us. Some were a foot taller then us but for the most part it seemed they were around our own height. Their armor was black and grey full of solid silver edges that outlined their chests, knees, and elbows. The armor covered their hand that varied from four to five fingers. They were bony, pointed like tortoise claws. Their helmets were pointed at the front with two sharp points flowing outward were the mouths should have been. They had two round spaces poking out where their eyes would, same place our eyes were. It seemed possible we could have worn armor similar to theirs. Our two species weren’t too different form one another at least in this context.
We were ambushed. Waiting for our weapons to reboot we dug in and took cover behind the broken marred skiff parts not buried in the ground. Lucky for us the Skrav weapons were also affected. Realizing this we watched as they came for us with only their strength. Two of my men were choked to death. Chev managed to use his speed and not get caught. I was lucky. I should have been dead but my prototype M17 rebooted faster then anyone else’s weapons. I was able to fire point blank upward at the Skrav who’s hands were wrapped around my neck. The blast tore through the stomach of his armor and past two smaller claw like arms and into its gut. Black blood poured out. ‘They bleed like bugs’ I thought aloud to myself.
I wish I could have shut my eyes. I watched as Devon Cross made first contact. First ground kill. He sprayed bullets like wildfire into and around every Skrav in sight. Thirty seconds a voice came over the COM issuing a retreat. Orders to fallback to a rally point under New Hope’s instructions fall on deaf ears as another voice comes through not a moment after. It is the voice of a female soldier and leader of another squad posted up a few hundred yards away near another crash site. A cry for help. At about forty seconds Chev’s gun reboots and he along with another newbie were running towards an open shaft leading underground taking the fight back to the Skrav.
Entering the darkness of the mine a flashlight at the end of the M17 comes on automatically. Chev follows behind as we jog at a steady pace for ten, maybe twenty minutes. The mine walls were light brown and stripped bare. Resources mined to terraform the moon. Taking point we find the female soldier. I wish I could recall her name, and her squad what is left of them. Of seven only four of them had survived. “Better then our three,” ICross said.
“We didn’t think anyone was going to come, we heard the retreat right before we sent our message. What the hell happened?” she asked. “They surprised us. I guess no one saw this coming,” I-Cross replied. Chev shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe they didn’t. Won’t know until the bullets start flying, maybe this is suppose to happen.” We agreed to head deeper into the mine hoping we could find some answers, maybe an escape close to the New Hope. We were wrong, very wrong. We proceeded in the wrong direction. The walls of the cave were widening. We should have known better but we didn’t. We were lost in a maze. My light flickered. If there was ever a reason for humans to be afraid of the dark this was it.
Chev checked the GPS on his wrist to make sure we were going in the right direction. It glowed green. Five white dots blip on the screen. Zooms out and two silver pulses appear that represent us while another, a giant white star appears to show us the location of our rally point and the location of the New Hope. I looked over Chev and read the ordinance. We were three miles away. When we fought the Skrav earlier the entire GPS flickered red. We wrote it off as a glitch because of the reboot or maybe some kind of interference. We weren’t even sure if the Skrav would show up on our radar or not. After all it wasn’t like we had a way to test the technology on an unknown alien species.
Chev took point. He had adjusted his light to shine over a wider area. Mine and everyone else’s was more focused and could reach out further. It was my light that startled the beast. If I didn’t see it with my own eyes, I would not have believed it. I was thankful for once that our suits had micro cameras recording everything that happened. We were attacked by what would later be known as an Eel.
Named after the eels in the oceans of Earth, the name was chosen for this creature by the soldiers rather then scientists (who probably would have called it something strange like wormus-ellipicus) hidden way in labs and bases. The name was chosen because the alien creature looked like just that… a giant eel. It was grey with small glowing blue veins, two giant white eyes and sharp pointed teeth. - The Eel was a native of the Myra, at least that was the world they originated on. We would learn this from ciphering data recovered from another Skrav ship who’s wreckage and bodies were recovered in ruins in orbit around Earth. Myra itself was a planet conquered by the Skrav. From what we learned, the Myra were once very similar to us in their way of life. Their world was full of humanoids who had integrated their technology with the environment and eco-system of the planet. The Eels were genetically altered weapons of destruction the Skrav had created from a species of wildlife on that planet. How or why we had no idea, but we did learn how they controlled it. They used pheromones. The Skrav wiped out the Myra hundreds of years ago and had integrated their technology for their own.
My light had startled the beast but it was Chev the Eel went after first. No sooner was it right in front of him as Chev squeezed off round after round into its gaping jaw. Blood stained its teeth. The bullets from Chev’s antique M16 ripped through its left eye socket. The creature was blinded. We ran and ducked behind some old mining equipment that littered the area. Wood planes, boxes, things of that sort were scattered about alongside drills, rock crushers, and cranes that stood thirty feet high rusted and forgotten. We soon found ourselves climbing the crane in an attempt to escape the creature as it attacked the ground like a feral child. The rusted equipment in the mine had become our Alamo.
The Eel slithered down the dark mining tunnel, shook in the dirt and began wailing with a sound that could only be compared to that of a myth, we called it the ‘wail of a banshee’. It threw up more and more mud as it thrashed around looking for us, seeking i
ts revenge. At this point we had already climbed half way up the side walls of the crane, doing anything we could to evade our aggressor. We were covering a lot of ground as quick as we could and in a matter of seconds Chev and I were already three quarters of the way to the top with the female squad leader and her teammates trailing close behind us. We had planned to reach the top and unload our grenades, bullets, anything and everything we had at the creature. Unfortunately we weren’t fast enough.
The Eel wrapped itself around the bottom of the crane and worked its way up the tunnel like an anaconda strangling its prey. It picked off the last soldier in line nearly swallowing him whole. The soldier couldn’t have been more then twenty years old; too young for this kind of fight and too young to die like that. The Eel carried what was left of him to the ground and disappeared below the soil surface.
I had been in many battles. FIghting secret wars between colonies against terrorists, pirates, and corporate greed. I had been a soldier (ICross had been a soldier) for a long time. This wasn’t the first time I watched a man die and it wouldn’t be the last but no matter what, every single time I had the same sick feeling inside my stomach. It was a man’s life, a human’s life that had been lost and that was something too horrible to never forget. The Eel finished its meal and began its mad dash back towards us from below the surface before slithering up the side of the crane. We were close enough to the top now to set up an attack. I loaded a grenade into my M17 and fired. Hell, I didn’t even take the time to aim. The grenade hit its mark dead center. The Eel’s head burst apart and its face looked like a crushed cantaloupe. The Eel fell backwards. The other male soldier that was now last in our line had the same problem. Falling. Instinctively he lifted his right hand and tried to cover his head to absorb the blow of the ground. He would have been fine. A fall like that wouldn’t kill someone wearing as much armor as we were but only seconds before he would have hit the soil a second Eel snatched him. The rest of us pressed our heads against the rusted metal and cringed in pain. The ringing in our ears let us know we were going to be deaf for awhile but we were comforted by the fact that we were still alive.
The first Eel bled out in pain. It was no longer alive but its body squirmed on the ground. We shot it again and again out of spite. The drill support began to buckle until finally it a few seconds later it broke. Metal scraped metal, parts of the crane simply fell to the ground rusted manacles and other like parts broken and forgotten. I hung there for a moment. When the dust from the collision settled I saw Chev and the girl were helpless buried underneath a pile of twisted metal. I was the only one able to make a stand. I dropped to the ground rolling and letting my suit absorb some of the blow. I grabbed my gun and fired. The second Eel was now only a few feet from us.
This time I didn’t run! I didn’t hide or climb or turn away. I fired until I was empty and then reloaded as fast as I could. The Eel stopped short only about a meter away from where I stood but it might as well have been inches from my body as far as I cared. I had killed it. My only regret was that I hadn’t gone head to head with it sooner. I fell to my knees crying. Both Eels were dead and it looked like they were the only two that were coming after us. Chev crawled his way out of the wreckage and together we were able to dig the girl out. She was in a lot of pain. Aside from a few fractured ribs, a sprained wrist, and a dislocated shoulder her legs were broken and bleeding. I took off my armor and ripped a piece of my pant leg free and using a few of the metal lines from the collapsed drill created two stints for her. She gripped my forearm like a woman in labor, the pain she was in must have been terrible enough to make her want to tear out of her skin. Each time we moved her she bucked from it screaming until Chev took out a vile of morphine from his backpack and handed it to me. I looked at her and she nodded without any hesitation. Quickly I bit off the top tab and plunged the needle into her leg just above her knee and squeezed. She let out one more scream as the tube compressed and expelled the liquid drop into her veins as I pressed my thumb from top to center. Her eyes became glossy and immediately she began to drift away to a pain-free paradise. As for her shoulder I didn’t think to try and set it. You see in movies some soldier with no medical care can just miraculously become an expert in bone setting, one twist here and a jerk there and walla the dislocated bone falls back into place. Sorry but not here.. Dislocated shoulder and broken leg or not we had no choice but to carry her the rest of the way.
The exo-suits we were wearing weighed over 75Ibs. Metal brackets and springs reinforced our armor so that it would help us carry all that extra weight but it was always difficult carrying someone else. Even without her armor she weighed at least 140Ibs. After going deeper into the tunnel we had to stop. Truth was we needed a break, our muscles were sore and we were going to pass out from exhaustion at the rate we were moving. I used that time to glue her torn flesh together and she stared silently at me giving me a face I will never forget. “Chev take her right side and be easy, on my count we lift… one, two, three!” I said as Chev and I lifted simultaneously moving the woman into the upright position. She gave out a horrid grunt as her teeth mashed together like a bear trap. Her eyes were shut tight as a sneer from the pain. “I know it hurts. I know it hurts really bad but you’ll be ok,” I-Cross Assured her,
“I have given birth to two children…” she blinked, “no medicine either. All natural and that is nothing compared to this,” she said as Chev and I continued to support her weight with our exo-suits.
“Tell me more about your family,” I said hoping that I could make her mind think about something other than the pain she was in.
“Luke and Mark.”
“Brothers? How far apart?”
“Twins actually,” she smiled.
“How old?”
“Four years last month.”
“Aren’t you lucky,” I said.
“I have a three year old named John,” I-Cross said.
“I want to see them again. I…” her words broke off and tears began to brim in her eyes.
“None of that now, we are not going to die here. We will see our families soon!”
We reached the end of the tunnel not a moment too soon. A working skiff waited for us at the exit. Command had heard everything that had happened monitoring our COM while we were inside the mines. They had sent a team of five including two medics to escort and help us make a safe return. They had even dropped EXO-mech suits on the ground for us. The EXO-mech suits were drone mechs we could control from either far away or manually if a pilot was inside (also helped if the signal became compromised). They were the perfect weapon for dealing with crowds or massacring alien pests in high numbers. Someone higher up had known me, Devon Cross too well, and knew that I liked my toys. They knew I had no intention of going back and neither did Chev. We put the girl on the skiff and ordered her back to the New Hope. Her only mission now was to reunite with her twins. The camera she had on her suit and the encounter with the Eel made her a huge priority as far as intelligence was concerned so I knew she would be in safe hands. Immediately the medics set her leg. It was amazing how fast they did it, they did after all have the proper training. The med-evac skiff was kicking up grains of dust as the engines made a flopping sound above our heads.
“Feel better now?” I said smiling at the woman.
“Clara. My name is Clara,” she said. I placed my hand on Clara’s arm to soothe her and she smiled and gave two slow blinks in assurance that everything was alright.
“Ok, Clara, you are going home to Luke and Mark. That’s worth the fight, you did great out there,” I said as she took my hand and clenched it then patted her chest just above her heart. “It is always worth the fight, just for the sake of being alive,” she smiled brighter then before. I wondered if the morphine was making her feel a little too relaxed. A minute later the skiff was ready for take off and the two of us parted ways. I realized then that after all that happened between us I had never given her my name. Not that it mattered. We were brother and
sister out here and the any one of us would have done the same. I’m nothing but an old man with a gun.
Evac Chev and I had become key players in the battle for Deimos. We could have easily been released from active duty and shipped away on that skiff but command already knew that the two of us would choose to fight. As a gift they sent down two military grade mech suits. The medics patched up our ears and we were ready to move forward with our new mission - eradicate a Skrav codenamed ‘Scar’.
We gathered ourselves together and began to look at our intel. ‘Scar’ was located four miles away outside the ruins of an old Deimos city that had been abandoned. With the EXO-meches with us this would be a walk in the park. At least it should have been…
Murphy’s law. Nothing is ever just a walk in the park. Over the first hill we hit more trouble then we bargained for. Scar, as it turns out was the leader behind a the Skrav remnant. He was the one that self-destructed the ship and planned the traps that had cost the lives of most of our soldiers on the front. Scar was tactical. Scientists believed he was somehow sending signals to all the surviving Skrav, either via their suits or some kind of telepathy. Either way he was the leader and he had to be cut down. Our EXOs were rigged to kill. Two ten foot tall suits of iron with two rocket launchers each on each shoulder and two mini guns that made up the arms. All we had to do was stand inside, in our safety harness and be ready to steer should the automated commands we had programed become lost. Three miles in that was exactly what happened. Murphy’s law, what can happen will happen or rather when something can go wrong it will.
Pull (Deep Darkness Book 1) Page 10