Looking around Terintal quickly decided there were far too many of the remnant hunting gang for him to take on, especially in his current condition. Narrowing his eyes and concentrating to one side of the gang, he dug deep inside himself and pictured the rubble strewn area. His focus dropped to one particular stone. Concentrating carefully he lifted it up with just the power of his mind and his innate knowledge of how the energies of the world around him flowed. Snapping his eyes open, he ended the Wielding, allowing the stone to come crashing down.
Instantly several shots were fired in that direction. It was just enough of a diversion, and Terintal leapt over the far wall and began to bolt for the nearest chunk of rock and debris, hoping to get behind it before he was seen.
“Over there!” came the shout from one of the gang members. The men were trained enough to keep thier eyes peeled when something like the noise the rock had created caught them off guard. More shots rang out. Just as Terintal leapt over the latest line of rocks and rubble puffs of stone chips sprayed up around him and the air near him popped as shots wipped passed him.
Where Terintal expected to find flat ground he instead found a steep incline. With a yelp of surpise he tumbled down into the darkness.
The little bit of training possessed by the Remnants went out the window once prey was spotted. Several let loose their dogs and started charging for Terintal’s position. Others moved a bit more slowly, what was important, was that they did not stick together.
——–
It was that mistake that gave Drigzin the opportunity he had been waiting for. He strode up, quietly and calmly. When the first dog heard him and turned, Drigzin squeezed the triggers of the twin Raust PD-3 mini machine pistols he was carrying. Though he was almost at the edge of the weapon’s accurate fire range, his aim was true and he had the element of surprise. The closest two Remnants did not even know what hit them. Their bodies danced, riddled with bullets, then came crashing down. It left several Remnants and dogs to deal with.
They all turned toward the dark cloaked Necrosi warrior, with hatred and anger in their eyes.
It was then that the grenade Drigzin had quietly rolled into their midst went off. The darkening night erupted as the explosion tore through man and beast.
——–
Corporal Kaliana Hicks, like the rest of the bio-engineered combat troops had been through this before. Unlike some of the others though, she had been through it enough times that she was able to sleep during the Sarge’s speeches and the jostling of the Prowler in the hooks of the Kestrel. When the trooper next to her elbowed her she woke up, wiped a bit of spit from the corner of her mouth and then went over the final check on her weaponry.
The pilot came over the comm system again, “Be advised drop zone is hot, active weapon fire detected.” All over the interior of the Prowler, weapon safeties were flipped off.
——–
Head over heels, Terintal fell, rolling along the hard ground. Finally he landed against something soft, a net or cloth of some kind he thought at first. When it stuck to him Terintal realized that it was much worse than that. Looking deeper into the hole he saw something massive beginning to stir. His adrenaline pumping, he sprang to his feet and ran as hard as he could back up out of the hole.
The thing behind him was fast, and if it had not been surprised by the noise of the firefight and then the arrival of Terintal right at its doorstep, it might have had a meal without any real effort. As it was though, the giant nocturnal scorpid took a few moments to get its bearings then charged up out of its lair.
The remnant gang was so surprised to see Terintal run up out of the hole that they did not fire. They had already let the dogs off their leashes, and even those vicious attack dogs knew that something was up. Something was not right, very not right. Terintal glanced to one side and was shocked to see a new threat, flying in low, about to land and release a Prowler was a Kestrel shuttle.
——–
The Prowler shocks absorbed the blow of the shuttle landing. The shuttle hooks detached with loud clangs, and the shuttle began to ease upward.
Some of the remnants, seeing the shuttle come in started firing in that direction. The shots bounced easily off both armored vehicles.
The back door of the Prowler slammed down and the squad came flowing out, Kaliana in the lead. A quick burst from her assault rifle took a Remnant firing in their direction off his feet. Stan ran out and ducked to one side. He found a large outcropping of stones, slipped between a few and began to set up his comm relay gear.
——–
The giant scorpid burst from its lair with surprising speed. It slammed into the remnants like a freight train. Massive claws snapped dogs into mashed fur, gore, and bones. Its tail stinger slammed through the chest of remnant, his submachine gun sprayed fire into several of friends as he writhed, his screams were drowned out by the roar of the shuttle engine.
Seeing the scorpid, the shuttle pilot decided it was time to let the ground pounders do thier thing and get back to the arcology.
The scorpid, reacting to the sound and the heat from the shuttle more than any recognition of it as a threat, lifted its gore coated tail in that direction. A thick web like substance sprayed forth. It coated several of the combat soldiers, covered the prowler and the left half of the shuttle.
——–
Drigzin and Terintal saw each other at the same time. They decided quickly that neither was an immediate threat and the surrounding threats were more important. Terintal pointed at a large rocky outcropping off to one side between them and the advancing combat squad. “There, let them kill the beast!” He bolted that direction, and Drigzin fell in behind him.
Kaliana was one of five squad members not caught in the web. She turned and let the single grenade chambered in her F3000 loose at the creature. It exploded on contact with the massive thing’s armored carapace. While the blast rocked the creature it did not take it down. It continued to smash its way through the last of the remnant hunting gang.
Some of the squad members turned to engage the beast, while others fired at the two men running for cover. Recognizing that was where Stan was, Kaliana moved quickly in that direction, determined to engage the targets.
The ground behind Terintal and Drigzin began spraying up as bullets trailed them toward cover. Stan looked up just in time to throw his hands up as Terintal and Drigzin dived into the cover he was already located in. The two men tumbled to either side after knocking the AI over. Drigzin failed to notice the comm gear until it was too late. He landed badly, stumbled, and smashed into the comm relay.
The shuttle’s engines roared, and for the briefest of moments the webbing held. It was just enough. The pilot over compensated, and when the webbing tore loose the shuttle spun in a wide arc. Its tail slammed into the Prowler sheering a huge hole in one side. The tail came completely off and the rest of the shuttle body, rocketed to one side.
The Prowler, propelled by the impact flipped up and to one side. It landed on several squad members, killing them instantly. One of the squad members had leveled his rifle for a grenade shot at the Scorpid. As the Prowler flipped the webbing went tight and he was yanked off his feet. The grenade was fired instead at the ground right in front of him. The resulting explosion killed another squad members and leveled two others.
The explosion behind Kaliana had her spinning and looking for cover. Terintal saw her and bolted out. He grabbed her combat harness and threw her back into the rocky cover, turning his back on the carnage behind him. Kaliana landed on her back between Stan and Drigzin. She looked passed Terintal and her eyes went wide. The last piece of the shuttle, the main fuselage slammed into the scorpid killing the massive semi trailer sized beast. The shuttle engines, both powered by a small reactor, breached not only their first containment arrays but their second.
Drigzin lifted his head at the noise, then regretted doing so. His goggles still on his head did him no good when the brilliant explosion lit up the battlefield. He screamed and threw both hands to his eyes in pain, then rolled away from what would be an intense blast wave.
Kaliana laid there staring at the man that had thrown her down into cover. He was quickly thrown into shadow by the explosion. She could not see his face, just the outline of his form. She knew it was their target. She knew she would die with him though, and thus the company would be able to charge payment for the job’s completion. At least it was something.
Stan’s neural net of programming and neurons was designed to do battlefield calculations on the fly. He quickly calculated their survival probability at zero percent. An error checking routine reclassified the percentage at one percent. One thing Stan had learned over time was to always include a chance of something unexpected happening.
