Ch: 115 Going back (Patreon)

Unedited

Sorry for the delay. Some of our people got deployed to Louisiana and Mississippi to help out the hurricane victims. I worked overtime to cover their shifts. I was done this morning, but I didn't like a part in the middle of the chapter. I decided to wait until tonight so see if I came up with a better idea. I kind of did, but it wasn't as good as I wanted it to be. Anyway, trigger warnings, this is a very sad chapter.  

Chapter 115

Going back

Freya crouched low, clearing the way before her team. Her imagination kept bringing up tentacles and how they were just around the next curve. She slowly eased around the gentle curve, keeping her rifle up and ready. As she did so, she was very much aware that this was the second to last curve before the hole where the Ketica was hiding. Finding the curve of the tunnel straightened out for a bit and was empty she relaxed a bit as she moved on.

She had checked her mini map earlier, and, to her relief, she saw Monkeyman was about three feet behind her. She knew he was standing up to cover her. If it came to a firefight she would stay low while he fired over her crouched form. It gave her some comfort that she knew he was carrying his bazooka and was ready to fire it at a moment's notice. Behind him, roughly five feet from Monkeyman, was her platoon leader. She was on the opposite wall from  both Freya and Monkeyman. Lurch was in the rear behind both the Captain, who was about five feet behind Sergeant Kruz, and the Psychic. The PsyOps agent was about ten feet behind the Captain, staying as close as she could to the side of the wall that Freya and Monkeyman were on.

Lurch had a drone out in front of them. The feed from the drone was currently showing the hole from about twenty feet away. On the feed, there was nothing to see, but Freya thought it wouldn’t show up in the feed even if the Ketica was standing right on top of the drone. She had a bad feeling it had a stronger way to camouflage itself than the spy constructs. After all, no one besides her had seen the tentacles until she shot it.

“Last bend before the hole. I strongly suggest we don’t go too much further.” Freya said over the radio.

“We need to get closer.” The agent promptly replied.

“How close, ma’am?” Freya asked, mentally cursing the woman. She had a bad feeling that the psychic would want to get right up next to the alien. Being that close was a sure-fire way of getting someone dead. They had been lucky last time. She was pretty sure that they wouldn’t be this time.

“I need to be as close as possible, Marine.” The agent returned. It was only then that Freya remembered that the woman could probably read her mind. That made her realize that she had never thought about it before, and then wondered why she hadn’t. That made her question if the woman had done something to her mind so that she wouldn’t think about things like that. She decided it didn’t matter. At least not right then. She had a job to do, even if that job sucked.

“Copy that.” Freya replied. She sighed to herself and made herself move forward. Like before, she hugged the wall as she made her way down the tunnel.

No one said anything as Freya took way too long, at least in her own mind, to clear the last bend in the tunnel before the hole. Then she was clear of the bend and found herself staring at the dark hole in the middle of the tunnel. She stopped at the sight of the hole and knelt down using the wall as cover.

She didn’t see anything except signs of a one-sided battle. The walls near the hole had a bunch of pockmarks in them that only came from bullets or beam weapons. There was a spent ammo rod casing to the right of the hole where Monkeyman must have reloaded his gun. The dust on the ground was shoved clear near where she must have landed when she jumped out.

She saw movement out of the corner of her eye and nearly shot Sergeant Kruz who took up a position across the tunnel from her. She didn’t really almost shoot the sergeant, but she nearly pointed her gun at the woman. She didn’t say anything and turned away when she saw that the sergeant hadn’t noticed. She turned her attention back towards the deceptively calm hole.

Kruz made a V shape with both her hands, letting her gun rest on her knees while she did so. Then she pointed at Monkeyman then to herself and pointed to the left. Following that she pointed to Freya before turning to look at Lurch and point to him as well, making sure he was watching them. She turned back around to make a motion for them to go to the right of the hole.

Freya nodded her understanding along with the rest of her platoon as Lurch moved up with them. Monkeyman moved so that he was behind the sergeant. Kruz waited until everyone was in position before turning to the Captain and the PsyOps agent. She made a motion with her hands that indicated she wanted them to go up the middle. Captain Thompson and Agent Smith both nodded their understanding. Then, not looking at them, she waved her hand twice, making the go motion.

Freya shuffled forward and to the right of the hole. She stopped a few feet away and, still crouched, aimed her rifle down at the hole. She heard soft crunches coming from Lurch's feet as he did the same. She mentally cursed him for making so much noise, but let her anger slide as she remembered he had always had a problem being silent ever since their first mission together in the tall grass. A second or two after they got into position, Thompson and Agent Smith arrived in the middle of the tunnel near the hole. Freya kept her attention on the hole, but she couldn’t stop herself from watching from the corner of her eye as the agent raised her hand over the edge of the hole.

Everything instantly went pear-shaped as soon as she did. Freya didn’t have time to react as a pink tentacle shot up from the hole and hit the psychic, sending her soul flying out of the back of her body. Freya instantly pulled the trigger, sending round after round into the tentacle as it waved towards her. She got flashes of the battle as she dove to the ground to avoid the thing.

She saw Thompson pulling Agent Smith’s body backwards onto the woman's soul. She saw Monkeyman stand up and fire his bazooka beam weapon. She saw Sergeant Kruz’s body fall forward right before Monkeyman fired. The sergeant’s soul stayed where it was while her body fell into the hole. There was a flash of light from Monkeyman’s weapon. When Freya could see again, she saw that Monkeyman had somehow caught Sergeant Kruz’s body and yanked it back towards where her soul was waiting. That was when a second tentacle rose out of the hole.

Freya didn’t stop to think. She yanked a grenade out of her belt and armed it with her thumb. She didn’t stop to look at what type of grenade she had pulled out as she tossed it into the hole, angling it towards where she knew the Ketica was hiding. It hit the tentacle and bounced deeper into the hole under where Freya was crouched.

She felt the krump of the grenade going off right before something screamed, and pain exploded in her mind. The scream felt like someone was raking her brain with claws. It was so bad that she let go of her gun and tried to block the sound out with her hands even though it wasn’t a physical sound. Everything started to spin and she instantly got light-headed and her body locked up on itself. She dropped to the ground as the sound went on and on, unable to do anything. She looked on with horror as more and more tentacles appeared out of the hole then she saw it as it pulled itself out of the hole.

The thing was huge. It had looked big in the hole before, but now it looked so much bigger than it did before. It used its tentacles to pull itself completely out of the hole before it started to roll away from them towards the darkened tunnel in front of them. It’s tentacles reached out and pulled it forward so that it rolled away from them. Freya couldn’t help but wish the thing would hurry as she started getting control over her body back. As it rolled away, Freya spotted a very familiar small black ball in the thing’s center.

“Denial sphere!” She screamed in her head. She tried to call out, to warn the rest of her platoon, but couldn’t stop screaming long enough to say something.

“I’m not going to die here!” She told herself, as she forced her body to move. She couldn’t get up nor could move her eyes away from the thing, but her left hand was free. She pulled it towards her chest where her pistol was, and found the holster then the gun itself. She yanked the gun out as darkness started closing in around her eyes. She knew she was about to die even as the thing was running away. She raised her gun and pulled the trigger. She fired blindly as the darkness closed over her eyes. Oddly enough she could hear her gun continue to fire even blind as she was. It was only a few seconds, but she continued to hear her gun go off as she lost sensation in her hands and the world went away.

One second she was asleep and the next she found herself sitting up, pulling on the trigger of her now empty gun. It took her a couple of trigger pulls for her to realize that nothing was happening. In those seconds she came back to herself. In near panic, she started searching for another magazine. That was when she saw the denial sphere on the ground, dead, with a large chunk missing off the top of it.

Her hand found the ammo rod and she blindly rearmed her pistol before switching it to her dominant hand. She looked around, keeping her pistol aimed at the denial sphere, and saw that everyone was on the ground and not moving. She was opening her mouth to say something when Agent Smith groaned and started to sit up. Less than a second later, everyone started to come around. Almost everyone.

She looked at each person as they slowly woke up and started to move. When she turned towards Lurch to see if he was up, she saw that he was staring at her foot. She looked down, and didn’t see anything worth staring at, so she looked back at him again only to see he was still staring at her foot. She knew something was off, but her mind wouldn’t tell her what was wrong. She reached out and shook him.

“Lurch, you okay?” She asked.

Her voice sounded odd to her. It sounded rough and it hurt to talk, but that wasn’t what was odd. It was her tone. She didn’t understand her tone. It sounded frightened which was really odd because she felt numb. She didn’t feel anything. It was like someone had cut all of her emotions out of her. She didn’t like the feeling. She didn’t like Lurch’s stare.

“Lurch?” She asked, shaking him harder. She looked away from his face and accessed the panel for his vital signs. She blinked at the zeroes she saw there. Her body moved on its own as she watched like a passenger in the back of her head. She saw herself reach into her vest and pull out a medi pen and slot it in his suit.

“Yes. That’s a good idea.” She told her body as it pushed the medi pen in. She watched the liquid disappear, but when she looked at his vital signs the zeroes hadn’t gone away.

“Dammit, that pen is defective.” She told herself as she yanked the empty pen before she frantically started searching her vest for another pen, her mind no longer a passenger of her own body. She found another one and quickly slotted it into his suit. The numbers didn’t change.

She cursed out loud then called out. “Anyone have a medi pen that I can have? Mine‘s defective.”

“Magic, stop.” A voice she recognized as Thompson told her.

She looked up to see them all standing around. Monkeyman looked... bad. She turned her head and noted that no one was helping her. She got angry. “What the hell are you guys standing around for? I need a working medi pen. There is something wrong with mine.” She told them, but they didn’t move.

“Magic, he's gone.” Thompson told her. Freya got even angrier. It was Thompson’s voice. It grated on her nerves unlike anything she had heard before. She turned away and ignored what the Captain had said.

Freya looked away from them and searched her vest for another medi pen, not wanting to believe them. She got angier as she couldn’t find one. There was something wrong with her HUD as everything started getting blurry. She shook her head and realized there was nothing wrong with her HUD. It was blurry because she was crying. She was still figuring out that it was her tears that were making everything blurry when she found another medi pen. She didn’t use it though. She held it in her hands as she looked down at the unmoving Lurch.

A wave of fury exploded throughout Freya’s body. “It was her fault. She wanted to get as close as possible. She got Lurch killed.” She saw herself, clear as day in her mind, standing up with her pistol in her hand. Her imagination showed her turning and pointed the gun at the agent. She could feel her finger slipping down from the trigger guard and onto the trigger as if it was really happening. Even as she imagined it she felt herself touch her pistol in real life. For a second she had no idea what she was going to do. Her anger screamed at her to pull her gun, but something held her back.

“It’s not what he would want, ma shiv.” He told her, whispering right next to her helmet in a quiet voice. A wave of guilt followed his statement and she let her hand fall away from her gun as she looked down towards the ground. Like someone had pulled the plug on her anger it fled in the wake of her guilt.

“Thompson, we need to go.” The PsyOps agent said in a panicky voice. “Call for an evacuation of the area then ask for an orbital bombardment.”

Freya blinked in surprise, her head shooting up to look at the agent. “What?” She asked herself, not understanding what was going on.

“You want me to do what?” Thompson asked, sounding just as confused as Freya felt.

“That scream. It was both a cry for help and a weapon. It dropped you two as soon as you heard it. Magic and me, it kept us awake and in hell. It damn near burned me out, and I’ve been with PsyOps for decades. I have no idea how she’s still sane.” The PsyOps agent told them, pointing at Freya.

“I’m going to need a reason besides a scream.” Thompson told the agent.

“It’s a cry for help.” The agent said, sounding scared. “It was so loud that I wouldn’t be surprised that they heard it all the way on the other side of the planet. They’ll all be coming.”

“Who? The Ketica?” Thompson asked, still sounding confused.

“Hell no, their weapons. The constructs. They’ll all be coming here.” Agent Smith said, waving her hand, as if to encompass everything around her. “And they’ll be pissed.”

Thompson didn’t say anything for a few seconds. Freya watched her stare at the agent, wondering what her boss was going to do. Then she saw the moment the captain made her decision. She turned sharply towards Monkeyman and her before she started issuing orders.

“Monkey, pick Lurch up. We aren’t leaving him behind. Magic, get the Ketica’s body. We’re going to need that. Kruz, you're on point. Stell, man the hell up and calm the fuck down. I’ll send out the request, but the bombardment won’t be up to me. Come on, people, we're leaving.” Thompson said, grabbing the PsyOps agent and pushing her towards the far end of the tunnel, away from the hole in the ground.

Freya stood up as Monkeyman walked around her. She watched him reach down and pick up Lurch and roll the body onto his shoulders. She felt someone grab her and push her away from Monkeyman. She turned towards whoever had grabbed, her anger rising, but it faded to a dull roar when she saw Kruz standing behind her.

“He’s got him, Magic. Get the Tom-cursed body like the captain ordered. We need to get gone.” Kruz said, handing Freya’s fallen rifle back to her.

Freya felt herself nod and she quickly turned to the hole. Keeping her rifle pointed at the hole, she quickly jogged around it to where the black ball was laying on the floor. The ball was the size of a basketball and so black it seemed to soak the light from her night vision into itself. Kneeling down she touched it and flinched when, instead of something hard, she felt only the softness of recently-living flesh. She had thought the thing was made out of metal, but now she knew differently. It brought home that this wasn’t an armored construct. This thing had been a living creature.

Just for an instant she felt guilty for killing it. Then she remembered Lurch and hate hardened her heart. Disregarding her feelings, she slung her rifle sling over her shoulder, reached down and grabbed the thing with both hands, picking it up. It was much lighter than she expected. Again, her expectations were along the lines that it would be much heavier than it was. Once more she was proven wrong. The thing weighed about the same as her long=barrel rifle, maybe a bit lighter.

She turned back to her platoon and ran to catch up with them. Kruz led the way with the captain behind her. The Psyops agent and Monkeyman were following after them. Freya took up the rear, carrying the black ball with one hand while covering them with her pistol in the other. She noted that Monkeyman was holding his back-up rifle with his right hand while he held Lurch’s arm and leg with his other in a fireman’s carry. He wouldn’t be accurate, Freya knew, holding his gun that way, but he still could add his fire to theirs if they got ambushed.

They had moved about ten feet or so into the bend in the tunnel when Freya heard Thompson curse over the radio. “We got incoming.” The Captain warned them. “Pick the pace up, people.”

Freya looked to Lurch’s drone feed that was still running in the corner of her HUD. On it she saw the tunnel that split off into three different tunnels filling up with weird insect-looking constructs. They had thin but long sharp arms besides their four dog-like legs. The front row of the odd-looking constructs were currently using their sharp, pointy arms trying to break down the metal shield that was blocking the way towards the only exit that Freya’s platoon knew of. For the moment, Freya saw with relief, the shield was holding.

She lost that feeling as something huge came out of the left tunnel, pushing the constructs before it uncaringly. The drone feed cut out right after the thing’s head breached the tunnel. She didn’t get a good look at the thing, but whatever it was filled out the entire tunnel. She started running at a full sprint trying to keep up with her platoon. The captain and the PsyOps agent left them in the dust, bypassing Kruz like she was standing still. Kruz cursed over the radio, but none of them stopped running.

Freya started hearing loud metallic banging noises long before she got to the exit. She hurled herself around the last sharp bend and saw the shield had been breached by the sharp arms of the smaller constructs, but it was still holding. She didn’t see the PsyOps agent by the hole, but she did see Captain Thompson waiting on them.

“Magic!” The Captain said, clapping her hands and motioning towards the black thing she was carrying. She tossed the corpse of the Ketica to the captain as Kruz sped past her and took up a defensive position about ten feet or so away from the shield, right behind the auto turret. Monkeymay slowed down next to the captain, but Freya kept running until she was next to Kruz. She knelt down beside her platoon leader and raised her rifle up beside her.

The metal shield had multiple holes in it now. Some were just holes while others had sharp construct arms in them. It looked like they were trying to push the shield down from the way the struts were bending. Freya took a deep breath, knowing the shield wouldn’t last that much longer.

“Magic! Kruz! Let's go.” Monkeyman yelled from behind them.

Freya looked at Kruz knowing one of them had to stay behind to guard them. Kruz didn’t even look at her. She just yelled, “Go!”

Freya nodded before she spun around, running for the hole. Monkeyman was at the top of the hole with his hand hanging down. Freya dropped her rifle to hang on her chest as she leaped up for his hand. He caught her just below her hand by her wrist. With a surprisingly strong yank, he pulled her out of the hole.

“Kruz!” He yelled as Freya rolled on to her belly and pointed her rifle down into the hole.

She watched as Kruz spun around and raced towards Monkeyman’s hand. She had only taken a step when the shield’s struts bent and the shield folded down part of the way. The constructs behind it didn’t seem to care as they poured into the tunnel. The auto turret went to work as Freya fired into the seething mass of constructs. The auto turret lasted about four seconds as the mass of constructs poured over it. It was, however, just long enough for Monkeyman to pull Kruz out of the hole.

Freya reached down to her belt, pulled out a grenade and shouted, “Fire in the hole!” she dropped it. She had set the timer for three seconds so it barely passed the hole before it went off. She could feel the blastwave hit her then she stood up and was running for the exit from the dome before she registered what she had done.

She saw Monkeyman and Kruz both toss grenades in as she passed them. They didn’t bother yelling as both grenades went off a few seconds after she had reached the first dome’s exit. She absently noted that the place was deserted as she spirited for the exit. She bit her lip as both Monkeyman and Kruz passed her by, being much faster than her. Then she leaned forward and poured on the speed. She exited the second dome and left the Ketica fort. She never once looked back, feeling like the constructs were just behind her on her tail.

She saw the Marine makeshift fortifications just outside the fort along with auto turrets. The latter spun up and started to shoot seconds after she left the fort. She could feel the bullets pass her as her armor dimmed the sound to her audio pick up so she wouldn’t go deaf from sudden loud noise. It took her about five seconds to make it to the foxhole fortification, and it was the longest five seconds of her life as she ran into the fire of the auto turrets. The whole time she ran she saw both Monkeyman and Kruz keep getting further and further away from her.

Then she was passing the auto turrets and the foxholes. As she passed them she took a quick peek and realized that they were empty. She looked forward again as saw Captain Thompson and the PsyOps agent standing on a nearby ridge waving at them. Freya adjusted her course, and as she did so she turned to look back. What she saw made her run faster. The constructs were pouring out of the enemy fort. They weren’t just coming through the one hole the marines had made, but were making their own as well. So far, the ring of auto turrets were keeping them back, but Freya knew it was only a matter of time before they overran them. Plus she hadn’t seen the big thing yet.

She was about halfway from the ridge when she saw a support ship dropping from the sky coming for a landing at the ridge. It looked like one of those two seaters that she had qualified for as a weapons officer just recently. It had landed by the time Freya had started to run up the ridge. She watched the canopy open and Captain Thompson helped the PsyOps agent into the seat then passed her the black ball that was the corpse of the Ketica. Freya slowed to a stop as the canopy closed. Seconds later she was watching as the ship rose high into the air.

“We got an assault shuttle coming to get us, but it’s been delayed. We need to hold out until it gets here.” Captain Thompson said over the radio. Freya stopped looking at the fast-rising ship and looked around. Everyone but her and the captain had taken defensive positions. Freya immediately went to an open spot and laid down facing outwards. She had a good view of the retreating marines, but was facing mostly away from the fort. She could see it to her right, but it wasn’t in her firing position’s line of fire.

The marines were gathering around the vehicles, using them for both fire support and cover. She could also see that they had left their dead brethren behind, still laid out in neat rows. She was still looking at the neat rows thinking bad thoughts when the fort exploded. Freya’s head snapped around and to her horror she saw what the big thing that had been inside the tunnel was. It was a huge worm, much bigger than any of the dead ones on the battlefield.

It rose up over the fort even as its body tore through most of the building. It stayed in the air for a second then it started to fall. She watched in horror while the marines on the hill with the vehicles scattered as the thing fell right on them. As if that wasn’t enough, out of the fort exploded thousands and thousands of those weird insect-looking constructs.

Freya looked in front of her, seeing nothing but never-ending desert, and quickly low-crawled forward so that she was now facing the fort instead of protecting the platoon's flank. She started to fire, picking off the advancing constructs that were headed in their direction. She downed two of them before the rest of her platoon started shooting. The lead constructs started to fall, but the line of constructs still advanced towards them.

“If our ride isn’t here soon, then there won’t be much left of our corpses.” Kruz said over the radio, sounding oddly calm.

“They’re coming.” Captain Thompson replied, sounding slightly out of breath.

“Also, anyone else wondering why our ground sensors didn’t pick up the tunnels or all these constructs?” Kruz asked, still sounding oddly relaxed.

“Now’s not the time, Sergeant.” Thompson replied, angrily.

“Understood.” Kruz replied. Then she spoke again. “Hey, Monkey. How about you set us up some mortars? This place could do with some steel rain.”

He cursed then replied, “On it.”

“Also, you ever going to tell us your real name? Seeing as we're going to be dying soon.” She asked him, still sounding as calm as she could be. “I can’t keep calling you soldier in prisoner speak. That would be just too odd.”

“That is my real name.” Freya heard Monkeyman reply as she reloaded. Her kill count was in double digits now and quickly rising. Just after Monkeyman stopped speaking there came a thump thump as he started firing his mortars.

“Your mother must have hated you, then.” Freya heard Kruz reply as the mortar rounds started landing, sending up pieces of constructs each time one landed. “You do know if we survive I will be verifying this, don’t you?”

Freya ignored the byplay as she looked away from the wave of constructs that were coming closer to them to look for the big worm thing. She found it lying, unmoving, among the military vehicles. She looked on in awe as she realized that they had somehow killed the giant thing. From all the bodies lying around it, she knew it must have cost them, deeply. She reloaded and started shooting again, wishing, not for the first time, that she had a weapon that shot faster and had more shots before she had to reload.

“Assault shuttle is ten seconds out. It’s going to be a hot load and they will not be on the deck for long. So, you better get on board as fast as possible or you will be left behind.” Captain Thompson told them.

Freya acknowledged the order as she started to shoot faster, trying to empty her gun before the ship arrived. She saw it first on her mini map. The ship came from behind them and set off a bunch of anti-personnel missiles which drove deeply into the line of constructs. Then it was hovering right in front of them with its ramp down. Freya didn’t hesitate as she picked herself up and ran for the ramp. She was, of course, the last one abroad, but she did make it aboard.

The assault ship was overcrowded, and there wasn’t really any room inside the ship. That meant that they were stuck standing on the top of the ramp. Freya looked around and noted how full the ship was and how ragged the marines that were inside looked. Shaking her head at the gross misconduct charge the pilot could be facing, she turned her head to look out at the battlefield as the ship slowly rose again.

She could see other assault shuttles landing behind the other marines seconds before the marines started to run towards them. She immediately noted that there were a lot of marines still alive. Far more than she expected. She also knew that there weren't enough ships to take them all. She watched them pile into the ships like sardines while the constructs advanced on their back line.

She watched, hugging the ramp support pole, as the first ship lifted off with people clinging to the sides of the open ramp. She watched, horrified, as one of them fell. She watched him fall all the way to the ground. He didn’t get up after that. One by one, the assault ships lifted off, carrying far too many marines inside them. Most of the marines who stayed behind to cover the retreat didn’t make it. Not that the ships didn’t wait for them. They were just overwhelmed by the insect constructs. The last ship nearly waited too long as one of the constructs jumped for the retreating ship's ramp. The marines on board weren’t having any of that though and the thing was chewed up by the small arms that were fired from inside the ship.

“Brace! Brace! Brace!” An unknown voice yelled over the radio. “Orbital bombardment incoming.”

Someone grabbed Freya around her chest and, before she could do anything more than hug the ramp’s support pole, the world turned white. Freya felt the blast wave hit her chest and for a second it was hard to breathe, then the world went back to normal. She blinked as her face shield undarkened and she could see what the bombardment had done.

What she saw amazed her. The only other time she saw an orbital bombardment was in a sim on the Monarch. This wasn’t anything like that. There were no mushroom clouds like before. There was only one huge, deep crater. Around the edge of the crater the ground was carpeted with the bodies of the constructs. There were thousands of them, and none of them were moving. She was still watching when the middle of the crater, which was still burning, opened up. The bombardment, impressive as it had been, hadn’t killed all of the constructs. Freya watched as yet another worm rose out of the new hole and fell into the fire. She watched it ignore the fire and move snake-like up the side of the crater before exiting out into the gray desert. She was still watching as more and more insect-like constructs come pouring out of the hole in the crater in unending waves.