by J. N. Chaney
They came at us in a sprint, most carrying some kind of blunt or bladed weapon. A few of them even carried blasters. They were all infected Rung, their alien bodies covered with mechanical enhancements, from steel tails to metal hands.
Coupled with their augmentations was the black liquid characteristic of the infected that oozed from their eyes, noses, ears, and mouths. I thought I knew horror, but right now, I was reminded of what a true nightmare Legion really was.
It seemed I wasn’t the only one caught off guard.
Dama hesitated for the slightest second. “Fire!” she finally screamed, recovering from her initial shock.
The wide wall lit up with weapon fire coming from the Rung firing lines. Maksim was on the left with the rest of the group from the Orion colony. I was on the right. As one, we let them have it, full blast, with all we had.
The Dragon’s Breath in my hands went off with heavy thuds that rocked my arms and threatened to force me back every time I pulled the trigger. The weapon was a piece of art. Red fiery blasts of pellets shredded the Rung rushing forward, practically exploding them into bits wherever they were hit.
Those that did get shots off with their blasters were sporadic at best. In true Legion fashion, he’d relied on his numbers instead of tactics. His army was not trained and was very disorganized. The scene was a light show as our blasters cut through the darkness, piling up the Rung dead.
“A dozen, huh!?” I heard John yell at Maksim over the sounds of the fight.
I wanted to say the same thing, but I was too busy with my Dragon’s Breath. The Rung dead piled so high in front of us, those still coming out were having a hard time climbing over them. They would scramble clumsily over their fallen brethren, then attempt to fire on us with limited success.
Part of me felt sorry for them. These Rung were infected and controlled by Legion. If we could kill him, then we could free these creatures from his hold. The only problem was the armor we needed to kill Legion was below and these poor souls stood in our way.
“Cease fire!” Dama yelled to her soldiers.
As one, we let up, taking in heavy breaths. The Dragon’s Breath felt hot in my hands. The barrel of my weapon smoked, sending curling tendrils up to the ceiling.
“Is everyone whole?” Sulk asked, looking around at the Rung soldiers first and then to us.
“We’re good,” I said.
“I think you need to relearn how to count.” Stacy fixed Maksim with a glare. “A dozen, huh? There has to be triple that.”
“They must have called in more. How was I supposed to know that?” Maksim swallowed hard. “I don’t know how he knew.”
“Well, it’s done now, and he knows exactly where we are,” Dama said looking to one of her Rung soldiers. “Let’s hurry up and get down to the lower stairwell and—”
Loud blaster fire cut her off. The Rung that Dama was speaking with took a round to the face. His skull exploded, pieces of brain and bone showering Dama as he was taken off his feet. Dama looked on in shock and horror, but quickly recovered.
A round slammed square into my chest, causing me to lose balance and fall onto my back on the floor. The air was forced out of my lungs with a whoosh. Still, somehow, I managed to inhale and coughed. My head had been slammed against the floor, but thanks to my helmet I avoided any serious head injury, though my ribs felt like I had taken a straight kick to the torso. I lay there as I caught my breath and gained my bearings.
“Dean!” I heard Stacy yell over the new blaster fire that erupted between the two factions. I wanted to yell that I was okay, but I was still somewhat breathless.
“More, deeper into the stairwell!” Sulk roared.
“Let them have it, now!” Dama ordered. The Rung let loose with a volley from their blasters.
“We can’t see them back there!” Tong added, panic rising in his voice.
I heard and processed all of this activity as I struggled up to my hands and knees. Oxygen was finally being allowed back into my lungs, and consequently, my brain. I looked down at the Remboshi armor, saying a silent prayer of thanks, remembering Lou’s simple words as he led us in prayer. The blaster hadn’t penetrated the armor. While the injury definitely sucked, it could have been a lot worse.
“Dean,” Stacy said by my side a minute later. She half dragged half carried me behind the firing line of the Rung warriors. “Dean, are you hurt?”
“Bruised a little, but it didn’t get through the armor,” I wheezed, finding my first long breath. “Ribs ache, but I’ll be fine.”
“We can’t see anything, it’s too dark!” John bellowed. ‘We either have to go in or retreat.”
“Follow me!” Maksim said.
I looked up in time to see the crazy son of a gun rush into the dark room, and I wondered if everyone would listen to him. How he didn’t get hit by either the rounds from the Rung or the infected inside was a true miracle in my eyes. The guy was like a cockroach.
The next second, he was gone, having disappeared into the stairwell. Sounds of fighting could be heard a second later. Everyone that was remaining waited for Dama to give the next directive.
“Cease fire!” Dama ordered. “Blades!”
The Rung warriors obeyed, holstering their weapons. Dama was the first to charge the stairwell, followed by Sulk, who wielded his blade above his head, clicking madly, and his band of assassins. The rest of the Rung warriors came next, right on their heels.
“These Rung are crazy,” John said under his breath as he and Tong jogged over to help me. “Dean, you good?”
“I’ll live,” I said, regaining my feet as they reached down, extended their hands, and hoisted me up as an assist. I went over and picked up my weapon.
“Let’s get in there and help them,” Stacy said, reaching for the Remboshi light blade that was called a ray. “Blades only. We don’t want to hit one of our own.”
I slung the Dragon’s Breath over my shoulder and grabbed the Skull Splitter.
The weight and grip of the weapon felt right in my hands, as if we were meant for each other. Grunts and screams and thuds could be heard from the darkened stairwell.
We rushed in, stepping carefully over the first wave of the dead infected that littered the ground like so many discarded peanut shells.
My heart rate doubled in speed again as we observed the battle taking place in the dark between the Rung and infected. The stairwell was a large room with steps going up on one side and down on the other.
Flashlights were on again as the combatants sought to outmaneuver and disable one another. The beams of light flashed and scattered around on the action, giving the area a surreal appearance as the Rung diced and sliced their way through the infected, felling more than falling themselves.
“Dean, keep on moving down to the next level!” Dama yelled from somewhere near the front of the pack. We were making progress through, and that was reassuring.
“Stay close!” I yelled to Stacy, John, and Tong. “We have to hurry. The longer we take to get to the armor, the more time Legion has to get more infected to our location.”
“Warriors!” Dama said, hearing my warning. “Forward as fast as you can!”
The Rung warriors turned into a meat grinder. Our columns moved forward, continuing to slice their way through the infected horde like a bulldozer pushing through piles of dirt.
I moved to the center of the pack, striking out with my hammer at whatever poor soul was unlucky enough to live past the initial lines of the Rung powerhouse.
I didn’t think about what I was doing. I couldn’t think about it, or even process the sound or sight of what I was seeing and hearing. Slicing through meat and crushing skulls was not something I ever wanted to do again, but if we didn’t make it to that armor, we were all dead. Not just us. If Legion got off planet, how many more innocent beings could be lost?
I took my thoughts out of my actions and simply reacted on instinct, swinging back and forth through the horde with my Skull Splitter, whic
h was certainly living up to its name.
We paid for every step we took. As the Rung in the front lines tired, we relieved them, and they retreated to the back for a few minutes’ respite. At one point, I found myself fighting with Tong on my left and Maksim on the right. There was no time for talking as we pushed forward, hacking, kicking out, and always moving forward.
There wasn’t a single one of us not covered in the black substance that was a part of Legion. We pressed forward to the bottom of the stairwell and to the next level below.
Only then did Legion finally let up.
More than one Rung warrior collapsed from wounds and exhaustion.
“We can’t stop. Not yet,” I said, going over to Tong, who had fallen on his hands and knees.
The Remboshi took off his helmet to throw up on the ground in front of him, his shoulders heaving as he did so.
“We killed—we killed so many of them,” Tong gasped after vomiting again and gasping for breath as he spoke in a weakened voice. “They just kept coming at us like they wanted to die. I killed so many of them.” He was obviously traumatized, but I had to snap him out of it.
“This is what Legion wants,” I said, grabbing Tong by the shoulders and getting him to his feet. “He wants to get into our heads. We have to keep going.”
I looked around at our depleted ranks. At least five Rung warriors were dead. There were twice that many wounded to various degrees. Those still able to be patched up were seen to by the medic, who got them ready to move again.
Stacy helped John with a somewhat serious wound on his shoulder. A blade had found its way between his armor and his chest plate.
“Dean’s right,” Dama said, finding her breath. She had not been seriously injured but was definitely showing signs of exhaustion. “We can’t stop now. We have to move on. We’re almost there now. Sulk!”
Sulk limped forward, his tail dragging behind him. A trickle of blood dribbled down his left leg.
“Protect the rear and leave no one behind, but get them moving as fast as you can,” Dama ordered.
“And you?” Sulk asked. I thought he had nerve questioning his commander, but maybe that was common practice for the Rung army.
“I’m taking point,” Dama said, raising a hand when Sulk looked as though he was going to argue. “Hurry. We can’t afford to let Legion regroup. We’re almost there!”
15
We took off at a steady but careful pace. As much as I would have liked to run the rest of the way, there were just too many of our wounded who couldn’t move quickly. I moved beside John, who I could tell was in more pain than he wanted to admit.
“You going to make it?” I asked. “Because if you’re not, I should get a confession from you right now that you know I’d win in a fight if there was ever a rematch.”
“Even now I could take you,” John grunted. “Don’t make me laugh. That might hurt and pop open my wound.”
“We just have to make it to that power armor,” I reminded him. “We need to get you inside a suit, then it’s clear sailing from there on out.”
“We’re just overlooking the little details, like how we’re all going to learn how to pilot said power suits on the run, that we have to actually get to them first, and hope that Legion isn’t making a move against the Orion as we speak,” John said.
“Details,” I said, shrugging off the weight of worrying about those topics. I especially didn’t want to think about what was going on back at the camp right now. If that virus’s nasty little tendrils could reach out in so many different places at once, we needed to get it at its core to nip it in the bud. “Let’s worry about what we can control, right?”
“Worry about what we can control,” John repeated after me. “You’re smarter than you look, Dean Slade.”
“Yeah, I get that a lot,” I answered with a small bark of a laugh.
Up ahead, Dama came to a sudden halt. She consulted the map on the back of her right vambrace one more time.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, coming up next to her and following her line of sight. “Legion?”
“When we round this corner, we’ll be in front of the doors to the armory,” Dama said, pointing to her map and indicating an image that was consistent with what she was describing. “We have to anticipate Legion will make one final stand here. I’m worried. There were thousands of Rung taking shelter here that Legion infected. We’ve come across dozens, maybe a hundred at most.”
“So where are the rest?” Stacy asked as she came up and joined the conversation.
“He may have taken some to other Rung bunkers, maybe others toward the Orion, but I fear he also left a fair amount here guarding the doors to the armory,” Dama said. “He couldn’t get in. We managed to change the passcode as we lost control of the bunker, but there’s no doubt he’s there, making sure we don’t get inside either.”
“Any bright ideas?” I asked. “How to get through a few hundred infected with no more than ten, maybe fifteen capable fighters?”
“I think I may have an idea,” Maksim said as he came up to us. “But you’re not going to like it.”
What else was new? He didn’t seem to have too many ideas that I did like. None, actually.
The four of us stood silent for a moment, anticipating what he was going to suggest, curious yet dreading what we would hear.
“Try us,” I said, finally breaking the silence.
“I noticed a few of the Rung have small explosive devices that we haven’t used yet. If we were to use these together, say with a few dozen smaller piece of metal scraps, we could clear a path,” Maksim suggested. “At the very least, it will buy us a few seconds during which Legion will be disoriented and we can get into the hangar where the power armor is kept.”
“You want to make a dirty bomb?” Stacy asked with a sneer. “Adding in scrap pieces of metal to inflict as much damage as possible? How many times did you use that little trick back on Earth on civilians?” I supposed that Stacy was starting to get exhausted and a bit emotional, since I thought this was actually one of the few options we had. I hated the thought of killing so many infected, since we were closer to a potential cure, but if we did nothing at all, no one would be saved.
“We need to think about right now,” Dama said, reining Stacy back in. “Whatever wrongs were committed before will have to wait. We need to focus on a solution and working together today or there may not be a tomorrow.” I was glad Dama had echoed my thoughts and I didn’t need to pull Stacy back to the here and now and the dilemma at hand.
“We’ll scout ahead,” I said, nodding to Stacy. “Maksim can work with you to create the bomb.”
“Agreed,” Dama said. “I don’t know how quiet you have to be. Legion obviously knows we’re down here. He’s just waiting for us now.”
That thought brought a chill to my spine. Dama was right. Legion was waiting for us. He had anticipated our move at the stairwell, leading us to believe he was going to rush in and attack, then hold infected with blasters in the rear to catch us off guard. What did he have planned for us now?
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Stacy asked as we made our way down the corridor. The hall we would have to make a right on was still a good hundred meters or so in front of us if I had read Dama’s map correctly and was judging distance accurately.
“How much I could use a hot meal and a bath right now?” I asked. “Or how that blaster took me in the chest so hard, it made my belly button touch my spine?”
“What?” Stacy almost laughed, surprised by my attempt at humor. “No, not at all.”
“Oh, go ahead, then,” I said, glad I was able to bring her a moment of relief from the seriousness of the situation. “What were you thinking?”
“If this all works and we get into that room, we can’t let Maksim get into a power armored suit,” Stacy said, shaking her head. “It’s too much of a risk. Think of what he’s able to do on his own, then put him behind the wheel of a walking tank? We can’t take
that risk.”
“I agree,” I said. “When we get in there, you and I will need to be on top of that situation. Tie him up if he’ll let us, knock him out if he won’t. As much as I hate the guy and don’t trust him either, he did save my life back in the woods and he’s trying to help now. Honestly, I’m not sure if it’s the amount of concussions I’ve had or something else, but I don’t know how to feel about him, and whether his intentions are sincere or not.”
“We won’t have to decide,” Stacy said. “If we live through this, we’ll take him back, and he can stand trial in front of his peers.”
I was about to make another comment about this topic, when we arrived at the entrance to the hall. On our right, just a few feet away, another massive corridor opened up, leading to the power armor hangar.
I edged toward the corner, peering around the side.
My helmet had done a good job of keeping odors out, but a rotten stench too strong to ignore hit me now. It smelled like death. That was the only way to describe the horrible stench assailing my nostrils at the moment.
I tried hard to fight back a gag.
Stacy coughed next to me as she too peered around the corner.
Rows of infected stood waiting for us halfway down the aisle. The darkness didn’t give away much, but bright blue emergency lights stationed around the edges of the doors to the power armor hangar lit up enough of the room to see the horror greeting our group. There had to be a thousand or more, all standing so close to one another the air in the area had gone stale.
One of the infected in the front lines took a step forward. It was an elderly Rung female with a deep gash across her left eye.
“You should know that as you waste time here, the Orion falls,” she cackled with glee. “Your stupid knee-jerk race attacks where the bulk of my force isn’t. All those you love and care about are now mine. They are joining my fold as we speak.”
I knew that Legion could be lying to throw us off. Still, a ball of panic formed in the pit of my stomach.
“While we wait here playing these games, your people die.” The Rung shrugged her shoulders. “Even if you succeed in getting your precious power armor, you have gained nothing and instead are losing everything.”