Bounty Hunter 2: Redemption

by Joseph Anderson

  The ground was clearer as the base was finally visible. Behind them Jack still saw the ground popping open in the same pattern that they drove, as if the aliens were inexplicably tracking their movements and were emerging only a few moments too late. With no ammunition left all Jack could do was stare impotently as they climbed out and chased after them. He slammed his hands against the frame of the buggy as if he could make it go faster.

  The base was close when the aliens finally hit their mark. A tunnel opened up under the buggy and swallowed the back portion of it. The wheels spun out uselessly and one of the Dross clung to the back end of the transport with both of its front claws deeply embedded in the metal. As it pulled itself up into the back of the buggy it snarled, flashing its rows of teeth dripping in saliva.

  Jack pulled on the release for the harness and fell on his feet. The alien scratched sparks along the floor of the buggy as it tried to catch hold of something to pull its entire body on to it. Jack tossed his rifle into the creature and ripped his side arm pistol out of its holster. He took one step forward and aimed directly between its four eyes as it scurried faster to latch on. The green blood sprayed out from the craters that were once its eyes and bubbled out near his feet.

  “Fucking get it off so we can move! Hurry!” Scott screamed.

  Jack took two steps forward and readied himself to kick the carcass from the back of the buggy. His foot was near connecting with the dead thing’s head when another tunnel erupted directly below them. The force of the alien and the ground breaking shot the buggy upwards and Jack with it. He was launched off the end of the transport like a spring board toward the base and landed flat on his back.

  He tried to get back on to his feet so fast that he almost tripped over himself. He reached for his gun but it was gone, knocked somewhere in the impact. He looked back at the buggy and saw the alien already tearing his way through its innards from below. Scott was still in the front seat, unable to get out with the state of his leg.

  “Run!” He shouted.

  “No!”

  Jack sprinted back toward the buggy trying not to think of how close the alien’s claws were getting to the back of Scott’s head. He was still screaming for him to turn around and run away. The ground opened up in front of Jack and he stopped one step away from falling into it. Alien tentacles whipped around the hole and he sprung backwards.

  “Fucking run!”

  “Fuck!”

  Jack spun around and sprinted to the base. The reinforced walls were colossal and imposing over the surrounding plain and cast a shadow so large that he was already caught in it. The gate was made as part of the wall that slid open only enough for transports to leave two at a time. When closed the two parts of the gate would slide together and interlock, completing the wall in such a way that you couldn’t tell there was a gate at all. As Jack ran closer he saw that it was already starting to close.

  Behind him the Dross was starting its chase. Jack didn’t dare look back and kept his eyes on the decreasing gap in the gate. He could swear he could feel the thing’s breath on his neck making his skin spasm in protest. A few paces from the gate he dived and felt something swipe in the air where his head had been an instant before. He landed in the base and heard the gate clamp behind him, followed by a sickening squelch that he saw was half of the alien’s head when he turned around.

  Jack knew that he needed to report in and that most of the other marines were staring at him after his entrance. He got up and, instead of walking to his commanding officer, went straight for the nearest ladder up the barricade on the inside of the wall. At the top he could see out over where they had crashed with the buggy. Soldiers lined the top of the wall with crates full of ammunition and extra rifles. They were prepared for the siege but had not yet begun to fire.

  Jack marched quickly to the nearest crate, picked up a long barreled rifle, and loaded it without even looking at any of his fellow marines. He looked down the scope at the buggy. He knew it was too late for Scott but he had to do something.

  “Sir, we haven’t been given the orders to fire at the Dross yet. We’re to wait until they get closer.”

  “I’m not going to fire at them,” Jack grunted back without taking his eye from the scope.

  Through the lens he saw more of the aliens than he could count. The number he had seen when the pounders were initially activated must have only been a small fraction. A storm of dust followed behind them and from this distance it looked like the aliens had become the ground, one green entity shifting toward them like a tsunami. He focused on the buggy and saw Scott still in the driver’s seat. He was dead and something was eating him.

  The front runners of the alien army were already around the buggy though the majority were still a few minutes away. At least three of the Dross were eating Scott with a few more tearing through parts of the buggy to get close enough to join in. Jack had to contain the sudden white hot rage that flared up in his chest. He carefully lined the cross hairs on the fuel tank of the transport, inhaled, and squeezed the trigger twice in succession.

  Even at the distance he was from the buggy, up on the wall, Jack’s face was still bathed in the orange and red light of the explosion. The aliens let out a different screech as they died, only slightly different, but he hoped it signified their pain. He put the weapon down where he found it and climbed back down the ladder.

  The wall of the base was made of six parts that made a hexagon barrier around the buildings and people within them. The main structure in the center of the base was a pounder not unlike the smaller ones that he had just returned from, excepting that it was many times larger and more powerful. It dominated the base as a tower of their operations and the beacon that would lead the majority of the aliens here. Jack hadn’t felt the vibrations from it yet but he saw that the massive metal cylinder was moving slowly upwards now, warming up to begin slamming into the ground.

  The walls, he knew, extended deep into the earth to protect them from underground assaults as well as attacks from above ground. He pictured it like a mechanical claw that dug deeply into the earth as if to scoop out a large crater worth of soil, but halted after clamping together. He had heard other soldiers talking that the barrier had a weakness in the center most point, and that the battle would be one against the time it took for the Dross to discover that flaw. Jack didn’t know what to believe.

  The tower had a secondary wall around it, standing nearly a dozen meters in the air as a last defense if the outer wall failed. Jack saw his commanding officer standing near the only open entrance to the secondary wall. He was clustered with other officers busily barking separate orders into their headsets for the multitudes of squads around the base. He nodded to Jack.

  “South side. Two spots on the wall. Your partner spots. You shoot.”

  “He can’t,” Jack stated simply with a firm set to his jaw.

  “Ah,” the officer closed his eyes while he nodded again. “In that case form up with the rest of them on the west side. Make them pay.”

  “I’ve already started,” Jack muttered and turned to the west wall. He picked up his pace when he got near the barricade and hastily scaled the ladder. He knew they would open fire soon and he didn’t want to miss any time shooting at what had killed Scott.

  There was an open space on the wall near the ladder and he knelt down behind it. There were two crates spilling with bullets and four spare rifles for him to share with the soldier to his right. He couldn’t help but mockingly laugh at how hopeful the planning of the operation must have been to think they would last long enough to go through it all. The rifle he picked was like the one he had lost on the buggy, and it was already loaded and scoped.

  This side of the base faced a different direction than the way he had returned. He looked out over the wall and saw a similar sized group that he had attracted bearing down on the base, only a short distance from firing range. He knew that a team like his had gone out to similarly placed pounders spaced outwards from thi
s wall of the base. The only difference was that there was no smoldering wreckage of a buggy for him to see on this side.

  “Prepare to fire in five, four, three,” a voice came through Jack’s helmet. He turned briefly to the soldier to his right and saw him reacting to the same orders. The line of marines were all readying their rifles in unison around the base.

  “Two.”

  Jack rested his arms on the top of the barricade and comfortably shouldered the rifle. For now, he knew, he was in no danger and had to take advantage of that to thin out as many as he could.

  “One.”

  He knew they would find some way inside but not yet. He lightly brushed the rifle’s trigger with his right index finger. Not yet.

  “Fire!”

  Bullets spewed out with a unifying clatter and rattle. The sound was loud and chaotic, but Jack was so focused that he barely noticed it. With the scope he had already scored two kills—the first with the closest Dross directly in front of him, and the second with the one that had tripped over the first corpse and took three shots to the head.

  Around the wall other soldiers were having similar results. A line of corpses was soon clearly visible on the battlefield, as if to mark exactly where the first creatures had been when the fighting began. On Jack’s side, the Dross were initially slowed by the unexpected obstacle of carcasses that appeared in front of them. He took advantage and swiftly shifted targets to each new alien that halted.

  He burned through two magazines before the attackers adapted and began leaping over the line. Each alien learned from the one in front of it and followed the lead, and the encroaching masses pushed closer to the wall. Jack was able to score a few kills by tracking the trajectory of the leaping aliens but it was too difficult to do quickly enough. They were moving too fast for them to establish a second wall of corpses.

  The first Dross jumped into the wall and bounced harmlessly off of it, as if they expected to be able to knock it down. Jack leaned over the wall and aimed his rifle downwards to them and let the bullets indiscriminately pour from the barrel. With so many targets so close he knew better than to waste time aiming and was rewarded with fountains of green blood pelting against the gray wall. New aliens slammed into the barricade coated in the blood of their dead allies.

  The ground between the wall and the first line of corpses was soon unable to be seen through the dead aliens and blood. Jack was having a hard time telling the difference between those that were alive and dead with the way that their tentacle tails kept lashing about after they had been killed. He focused solely on the attacks at the bottom of the wall.

  “Three second warning!”

  The words rang out in his helmet and they registered for Jack at the last moment. He turned his head away from the wall and ducked behind cover. He saw the soldier to his right grab a grenade from the crate, as did every second soldier that Jack could see along the wall. He took the precious seconds of a break that he had to reload his rifle and breathe normally. No aliens had broken into the base. Not yet.

  The explosions rocked through the wall followed by an almost hushing hiss of soil pattering on the aliens, the bodies, and the marines. The vibration from the grenades was soft through the wall, but was followed by a much stronger one that shook through Jack’s entire body. He looked toward the central tower and saw the pounder raising into the air after having struck the ground.

  Jack didn’t think it was possible that every alien nearby wasn’t already attacking them, but when he raised his head over the wall he saw new tunnels spewing fresh Dross out in response to the gigantic pounder. He shouldered his rifle once more and leaned over the wall. The grenades granted only a momentary reprieve; bodies were burning, and black stains likes ash joined the green blood at the bottom section of the wall. The aliens still attacked.

  The latest wave used the bodies to their advantage. They clambered on top of them and then sprung up on the wall as high as they could. Most fell back down without anything gained but occasionally one would stick its claws into the wall to try to climb it. The sound of their claws scratching down the metal was close to a whine and joined with the howls of the Dross in their attack.

  Jack considered the possibility that they might eventually do enough damage to carve into the wall and scale it. He slammed the scope of his rifle back inside the gun and used the standard sights, prioritizing each of the aliens that vaulted up the wall. Each kill sent one of them limply back down to the ground and sometimes crushing another below it. He watched down the gun as the alien heads ascended closer to him, ruptured open from his barrage of bullets, and sailed back down.

  “Second round! Three seconds!”

  Jack didn’t wait to duck this time and shoved his hand into the first ammunition crate. He was shocked that he had to fish around to find the final few magazines and kicked the empty container away after he had them placed next to his feet. He popped open the next one and eyeballed the grenades. There were more of them in this box.

  This time the detonations felt like nothing in comparison to the ongoing shock waves from the pounder tower. He waited a few more seconds for the smoke to disperse before he resumed his position over the wall. Some of the corpses had been blasted away but enough remained that the newest waves still jumped up at them, snapping their jaws together at the peak of their jump.

  Jack reloaded two more times before he took his eyes off the bottom of the wall to see if more Dross were still emerging. The moving army in the distance looked no different than when they first started, as if they had made no dent in their numbers at all. The aliens still looked like one titanic organism spread out over the ground instead of thousands of separate entities. He could hardly believe it.

  “Third round! Three—Shit! Breach! South side! Breach!”

  A chill shot from Jack’s neck all the way down his spine. He heard screams. Human screams. The creatures wailed and screeched, a little differently than usual, and Jack set his teeth together to the sound of their victory. He snatched some of the grenades from the crate next to him and dived down the barricade. He didn’t wait for orders. He didn’t have to. He knew they needed to contain it or be overrun.

  He found that he wasn’t alone in his thoughts of helping the south wall as others ran with him when he got onto the ground. The hole in the wall wasn’t large but he saw that each alien that shredded its way through made it a little bigger. He looked at the grenades and reconsidered, hooking them on his belt for when the hole was larger. He raised his rifle and suppressed the breach with the others.

  “Ammo! We need supplies down here! Anyone!” Jack heard someone yell out around him.

  “Fall back! The second wall!” Someone else roared.

  “Negative! Hold! Do not fall back yet! Air support is inbound. Do not fall back!” Another voice, the loudest of them all, rang out as an echo near Jack’s position and inside his helmet.

  An ammunition crate plopped down behind Jack just as his last magazine ran empty. He scooped up an armful of clips. He dropped them loosely on the ground after he crouched down and reloaded. The hole in the wall was big enough for two aliens at a time now and he focused on nothing else.

  “Three seconds!”

  Jack and the others didn’t stop or look away. They couldn’t risk it. They couldn’t hear the sounds of the grenades dropping from the constant noise of their rifles and aliens in their death throes. A series of explosions traced the perimeter of the wall and flashed brightly through the breach. A few corpses and a live alien were knocked through the hole in the blasts. The marines on the ground all turned to the live one and fired, sending far more fire power than was necessary and pounding the creature into pieces.

  Before Jack could resume firing on the gap in the wall he heard more human screams from behind him. The west wall, where he had been moments before, was being overrun. Three Dross were on top of the barricade and picking off marines in the panic. In one fluid motion he popped the scope back up on his rifle, raised it up, and fi
red in quick bursts. He wounded two and killed one. The dead one writhed for a moment before slumping down on the floor, deflated and gurgling its own blood.

  “Second breach! Fall back to the tower! Fall back!” The commander’s voice transmitted into Jack’s helmet.

  He began to slowly pace backwards as he kept the two live aliens on the wall within the cross hairs of his rifle. He let three shots out in rapid succession that hit one of them hard enough to knock it off the wall. Dead or not, Jack didn’t care, and targeted the remaining one. This one reared up, protecting its head, and the bullets dug into its chest. He kept firing while the marines on the wall began to race down the ladders and onto the ground. More Dross sprang up onto the wall as if replacing the humans that had been standing there.

  Jack grabbed his spare magazines from the floor and reloaded as fast as he could while running to the inner wall’s gate. Once there, he put his back to it and searched frantically for the closest targets. Now that they had breached the wall the creatures weren’t slowing down and pounced the nearest soldiers. Red blood joined the sprays of green as the Dross’s mammoth claws tore chunks out of the human’s torsos. The cries of pain from both sides merged with the percussion of the pounder and grenades.

  Most of the soldiers had made it inside the gate when command announced that it was closing. Jack was the last to enter into the secondary wall and faced out of it, ready to fire if anything charged at them before it closed fully.

  Across the base one of the soldiers threw his last grenade through the broken part of the wall and began to sprint to the inner gate. Behind him a Dross charged through the grenade’s explosion, a silhouette in the flames, and galloped purposefully at the running soldier. Jack knelt down and brought his weapon up, taking shots at the alien whenever he could and trying his best not to hit the marine in the process.

  The creature charged on, unperturbed by Jack’s shots, and took a final dash at the soldier. As if he sensed the oncoming strike, the man rolled forward onto the ground and lay flat, causing the creature’s strike to miss by a hair’s breadth. With a clear line of sight Jack let loose what was left in his gun and battered the Dross to death.