Author: Johannes "Jergen[K]" Cruz			Viewing: Chapter 10

The water was lukewarm. Sergeant Dachande struggled to remove his armor as it drug him below the surface of whatever body of liquid it was he had landed in. Corporal Aegis, being somewhat faster than he, had already doffed his chest protection and was cutting at one of Dach’s shoulder straps while trying to pull him to the surface. His head throbbing with the hunger for oxygen, Dach exploded above the surface of the water with a loud gasping for air. Behind him Aegis was already pulling him along in a sidestroke. “Where the hell are we?” Dachande asked when he had regained his breath, “What about the others?” “I don’t think they resurfaced Sergeant, I only found you because you landed on top of me in the fall. Your rifle hurt.” “You probably deserved it,” with this Dachande began to draw air into his lungs to call for the other marines that had come down in the fall with him. Aegis gripped his arm hard. “That would be a bad idea, I still have my goggles and you don’t want to yell in here.” “Where?” Dachande paused in his question as he felt the deck under his feet and he could stand. Reaching down under the water he felt around at the odd shaped deck. There was a strange randomness to the structure here, as if it weren’t man made at all. Dachande’s heart leapt for his throat as a sudden realization came to him. “Hive,” he whispered. Aegis leaned in very close before he spoke into Dachande’s ear: “It appears deserted, if it weren’t.” He left the sentence unfinished. Had this been an active hive they both would have been finished long before now. In every encounter with the Xenomorph threat the beings had been especially viscous when defending their hives and young. Considering at least Dachande had no heavy weapons it would have been a serious problem indeed. “There is a small room ahead, we can make it there with no problems,” Aegis whispered, taking Dachande by the arm he lead him along. Completely surrounded by darkness from the loss of his night vision gear Dachande felt completely helpless. The thought that he was standing in the home of the most dangerous creature ever discovered made the situation worse for him. This place was deathly silent, the only sounds came from the lonely drops of water falling from the humidity condensing on the walls around them. “There’s no manual release, I’m going to have to blow a hole through the glass. I think the armor piercers I have loaded will do the trick, if not then this may be home.” Dachande stood back, turning his back to Aegis and facing what he imagined was the hive structure he waited. Aegis chambered a round and aimed at one of the observatory windows. The strobe effect from the rifle showed the hive for a brief second, causing Dachande to jump. The sight of the inhuman structure, huge and all around the two of them in this complete darkness, was overwhelming. Already he could feel his skin crawling. Aegis worked at the damaged window and finally pulled it free. The round had not only penetrated near one of the sills as he had intended; it had completely broken the seal of the pressurized glass and allowed him to remove the entire piece of reinforced casement. With Aegis’ help the two marines were soon inside of what appeared to be the observation room for the hive. Both men had heard rumors that the different corporations were running experiments with what they termed as “controlled hivelabs,” but neither had expected to see evidence of one. Aegis immediately began rummaging through the rooms’ emergency lockers and produced a civilian set of night vision goggles. In the case of a power failure every person aboard a facility would have need to see in the dark, and thus the night vision sets were standard in every room. Dachande thumbed the switch on his goggles and looked around the now green lighted room. Pausing at the sight of the hive he exhaled. “It’s better I didn’t see it Aegis, I wouldn’t have walked through it willingly.” The hive was immense. It rose to the ceiling of the room, sloping down to the body of water they had fallen into, and ran to the walls of it’s housing. The room the hive had been allowed to form within was more than three hundred yards across and one hundred yards high. The black, chitinous looking hive stood out like some surreal monstrosity. Although it was not a living creation, it was more alien than the mind could easily comprehend. Like black bones lying on their side the walls of the hive swept upwards in an almost cone that stopped mere feet before touching the ceiling. Above the water Dachande could see the rent in the ceiling that had delivered them to this chamber. All around the edges were some sort of scorch marks, but in the low resolution of the goggles he couldn’t make out specifics. It was evident the damage that had opened that breach had not been caused by the exploding mines several decks above. *** “She’s closing, signature nearly confirmed at 946 Kilometers Sir!” “Understood Stevens. Has she fired on the drone?” Captain Nealson shifted in his chair, watching the readouts on his three screens blink with a flood of updated data. “No Sir, she is coming into firing range but has not opened up.” “Do we have a visual?” Nealson leaned in close to his forward monitor in anticipation of the target being displayed. “Negative Sir, the station is in the way.” Stevens swiveled in his seat to face the Captain. “Sir, we could launch the weapons manually and allow them to acquire a lock.” “Negative Stevens, they will detect the shot and move in on us, lets run silent for a while, she isn’t going anywhere and neither are we.” “Any contact with my marines Green?” The Captain looked over his shoulder at the young ensign listening through headphones for any sign of the stranded landing team. “Negative Sir.” *** “We will have to climb the shafts to the above decks. It looks like the power generators are above us." Aegis turned to face Dachande, his goggles emitting an IR light to provide some illumination for the goggles to read. IR light was good for this as it was not visible to normal human eyesight, but to other goggles it stood out alarmingly. So, only when both men knew they were alone would they dare to announce their presence so boldly as to have a beam of light extending from their foreheads. It took them ten minutes to climb the access ladders to reach the next level of the complex. Once there they forced the lift doors open by a manual release lever and entered the immense power generator hold. Darkness pressed in upon them from all sides, far exceeding the range of their goggles, the artificial night of the facility was so oppressive it was nearly a physical sensation. “Jesus,” Dachande whispered. “I already miss daylight.” “I know the feeling,” Aegis mumbled as the moved deeper into the hold, walking along the immense frame of one of the power turbines. “I think the next level is the entrance,” Dach said as they approached the far wall. Stopping, Dachande pulled out his tracker, he was immediately glad that the device was waterproof as he performed a quick sweep of the area. In the open hold the device was nearly able to expand out to it’s maximum range of one thousand meters. The signal came back clean, the simple pulse sound of the empty tracker brought a sigh of release from both men. They entered the top level of the compound via a ventilation shaft. Gently Aegis replaced the panel as the two men dropped as silently as possible to the hard deck of what appeared to be a squadbay. Rows of beds ranged out of the limited range of their sight as they approached the first wall locker they found. Forcing the lock Dachande flinched as the sound echoed through the empty room. For a long moment both men stared at the empty signal bed of the tracker, their hearts pounding in their chests. Nodding, Dachande proceeded to raid the open locker. In a few minutes both men had managed to find armor, pistols and a good amount of ammunition. Both men were pleased to note that the weapons they had secured were the newer VP70 pistols. Made of only six separate parts the pistol was not only reliable but incredibly accurate, and given the fact that Aegis had only eleven rounds left for his rifle, it was at least somewhat reassuring to know that they had something to defend themselves with outside of combat knives. It was quickly apparent that water would be a problem. Dachande had no doubts about what had happened to the drop ships and the camp that had been set up, and with the possibility they had been stranded here for at least a period of time looming before them he did not relish the idea of spending that time in a desert without water. Both of them had two full canteens, but those would only last them a day, maybe two and then they would begin to die if they couldn’t contact the ship. His only hope was that at least one of the dropships had managed to get away before the attack had come. Thumbing the mute switch on the tracker they moved out towards the north of the squadbays. From the debrief he knew that the COC was nearby, and if the raiders were still about it would be a matter of time before nightfall and their chance at escape. Luckily he hadn’t noticed many trackers amongst the raiders, but his men had them and it was probably safe to assume that they had been stripped for enemy use. That alone would prove to be a problem. *** “Missiles away!” The Reaver shuddered as the twin dorsal launchers loosed their deadly volley. The XIM-28A Long Lance missile package was designed for an almost instant level of lethality in space. Being self-guided the tracking systems of the device were nearly infallible. The fire control of the launching warship would deliver the target package to the missile’s onboard systems, and then initiate the launch order. Once out of the tube the missiles would begin to track their target from the information given. This made it nearly impossible to distract the weapons once they were on course. If electromagnetic or passive countermeasures were deployed the missiles would simply track to the last known location of their quarry and engage. The solid boosters of both missiles burned out as the first stage motors finished their initial burns to get them up to cruising speed. The IR signature of both devices was very limited when launched, but once the motors had burned down the weapons were all but invisible to any kind of sensors. The only warning most ships were given before the detonation of the Lance was when the second stage motor ignited to accelerate it to attack velocity. “She’s attempting to evade Sir,” Stevens said, watching as the limited track became very pronounced on his screen due to the exaggerated movements of a ship trying to shake off an attack. Less than a second later three dozen signatures appeared on the scope, countermeasures no doubt, but it would not be enough. The Long Lance had been designed to hit satellites in high orbits. While less maneuverable, satellites were much smaller targets, compared to a starship the size of a needle-point, and the Lance was more than capable of striking them with ease. One second later a small flash of light could be seen to flare up starboard of the Reaver’s front viewscreens. “They got one sir!” Just after Stevens finished his report a second explosion could be seen further out. Then, in a brilliant white expanse of gas and heat, an immense reaction took place near the starbase. “She’s down Sir! She’s critical!”Stevens called out, turning about. “Any more tracks?” Before Stevens could turn back to his console the Reaver lurched hard to port. Red lights began spinning and claxons sounded as the monitors in front of them all went white with static. “Report Stevens!” Nealson leaned hard into his chair, latching his safety harness in place in case of another impact. “One contact aft sir, small ship, probably an assault gunboat. She’s ruptured our belly sir!” “Where the hell….” Nealson stopped the question in mid-sentence, it made no difference where the ship had come from, it was more important how they were going to deal with it. “Is she moving in to range to attack again?” “She’s closing at full burn Sir! She’s going to ram us!”