Bounty Hunter 2: Redemption (7 page)

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
this 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 fired 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.

“Fucking
run!”

The
soldier had his feet moving before he was fully upright, awkwardly running with
his head still close to the ground. The gate was closing and he still had most
of the base to cover. Jack knew, suddenly, that he wasn’t going to make it. He
hoped that the man couldn’t see the grimace on his face in the last moments
that the gate remained open. The soldier beat on the outside of the gate,
slamming his fists into it like the aliens before him. The sound of his screams
was cut off by a sloshing sound as he was gutted from behind, and his
intestines and blood splattered noisily on the inner wall.

“Fuck.
Fuck!”

Jack
heard the roaring sound of engines above his head that signaled the air support
had finally arrived. It was supposed to make him feel better but it didn’t.
Armed transports in the sky didn’t mean that they would succeed.

“The
inner wall is closed.” The voice came through to all of the marine’s ears.
“Everyone inside is to reinforce the tower. It won’t be long now.”

As
the final soldier to pass through the gate, Jack was the last one to climb one
of the ladders to the top of the wall. Although this barrier was significantly
smaller the the first one, they had suffered so many casualties that everyone
could still find a place to hunker down and fire at the enemy. He took his spot
and looked down into the base.

In
the short time that passed since he saw the gate close the base had been
entirely deformed. The ground was alive and writhing, spitting and hissing.
Jack found it hard to find anything to focus on or to even pick out the heads
of targets to fire at. There was fire and smoke along the outside walls, green
and red was smeared over every surface. Some aliens were feeding, some were
burrowing, and others further back looked to be fighting over the bodies of the
fallen soldiers. He couldn’t see over walls but even gaps in the fortification
showed the same squirming green. The Dross were without end.

He
fired into the base near thoughtlessly, finding it impossible to aim at
anything important but equally impossible to miss. Above them the tower
continued its hammering of the ground. This close to the structure Jack felt
like the earth inexplicably rumbled and growled in response to each impact. It
rattled the wall and everyone on it.

The
gunships floated comfortably out of range of the Dross and their rail guns
never seemed to stop firing. Empty bullet casings streamed down from the ships
like waterfalls, mingling with the aliens and lost from sight forever. Jack
bitterly wondered where they had been when he and Scott had been sent out to
check on the proximity pounders.

The
rest of the soldiers must have been having similar thoughts and the defensive
line descended into chaos. Grenades were thrown without warning, temporarily
blinding some and ruining the shots of others. The transmission receiver in
Jack’s helmet was silent, as dead as they all thought they’d be soon.