Alien Mine Ch. 24

Nelya paused for just a second to let her Guard overtake her, following immediately behind them and using her beam weapon in devastating fashion. Nelya felt invulnerable as she slashed and killed. The disrupter gave her a god-like feeling as she used it to destroy the enemy. Bugrov and his men were pinned in the big corridor ahead, and short-range missiles fired from behind Nelya arched overhead, erupting in airbursts and clearing anything hiding in the corners. "Cover!" one of her guards shouted, and Nelya felt herself grabbed and thrown to the floor as explosions rattled her brain and men died behind her. Nelya bounced up and fired back amidst a hail of outgoing and incoming fire. More drones rushed past her, firing point blank into a sudden counterattack by the Trangrods. "Advance!" Nelya ordered, and they followed her. Something ahead of her blew up in a flail of legs and insect body parts, the fire coming from directions now shredding the Om.

The Trangrods didn't try to run; instead, they attacked mindlessly, sacrificing themselves in a way Nelya would never understand. The fighting was close quarters and more chaotic than she had ever imagined. Multiple strikes hit the sides of the tunnel beside her and Nelya leaped right but was hit midair, causing her to tumble, skidding into the far wall. The rounds hurt but did not penetrate except for the one that smashed her faceplate. A Trangrod lunged at her but came apart as one of her guards blasted it with autocannon rounds. She killed another, her beam curving around the armored soldier in front of her to drill the Trangrod through its cybernetic brain. "Above!" she shouted as a hole opened up directly above her. Grabbing her grenade launcher with her left hand, she put several grenades into the hole just as multiple centipedes slithered through. Autocannon and chain guns screamed as fire poured into the opening, but still, they came, the Trangrods dropping down among the Guard. A centipede lost limbs and part of its torso in a hail of heavy weapons fire, and Nelya finished it, but several more followed through the debris, twisting and slashing with multiple weapons firing. The multi-legged horrors twisted and struck like rattlesnakes, grabbing armored soldiers and gutting them with their forelegs while automatic fire raked through the passageway. Men stood and died; there was nowhere to cover.

But through it all, Nelya moved and killed like a mythical warrior from old Russian legends, slashing down as she leaped above one centipede, then landing atop another and driving her beam into its brain. She jumped backward as an armored man went spinning past her, his head missing while blood gushed from his neck. The Trangrod then turned on Nelya, but with a flick of her wrist, the Trangrod fell, sliced in half. Then, incoming fire exploded, adding to the confusion as Bugrov and his men fought their way to her, pinning the Om between them. More short-range missiles fired again, filling the tunnel with smoke and shrapnel, and the Trangrods returned fire; this time, there were a few red beams of energy, and men cried out and fell as it cut through their armor. Nelya plunged into the morass, adding to the chaos, moving quickly as only a symbiont/human could and slashing her hand back and forth as if wielding a blade - a blade that nothing in front of her could withstand. Nelya could see Bugrov pinned in position and assailed by several Trangrods as he fought toward her side, but he was too far away, out of range of the disrupter. Nelya grabbed a BFW from a dead soldier and joined her remaining guard in pouring fire and grenades into the remaining Om.

General Jabin Beit led the conglomeration of Middle Eastern and African forces in the wild plunge into a nightmare of tunnels and passageways defended by alien creatures the like he had never even imagined. Casualties had been heavy but not as bad as he had expected. The armor and the strange tanks designed to fight in this kind of terrain had performed better than expected, and the drone swarms had saved their asses more than once. As with all battles, chaos reigned, but this one even more so. Alien creatures were at home below the ground, humans were not, and fighting on the enemy's turf was always a disadvantage. Now, however, the battle had reached a critical stage, and Kiania was giving them new orders.

"Nelya's forces are under heavy attack, and we risk losing them," Kiania said. The Om have pulled part of their forces defending against our main thrust and are using them to surround and destroy Nelya and the Russian and European contingent. They are in danger of being overrun. General Beit, shift the axis of your left flank attack here," she said, indicating a tunnel that led deeper into the nest. The General could see her planned attack displayed on his visor. "That will force some of the Om to defend against you. Shift your right flank here and push down this passageway," Kiania added hurriedly, "which will let you join forces with Nelya. Nelya, shift your attack to meet up with Jessica. Jack, pull the Marines back into the fight, push them in behind Rhys to keep the Om from closing in on us from behind. Rhys is leading us to what we believe is the central core of the Om nest, and I expect to lose communication with everyone when we do. When the Om realize what we are doing, all their forces will try to fall back to protect the nest area, probably similar to what we found under Moscow. You must not let that happen! Continue to engage the Om at all costs!"

"I will lead the right flank attack," Jessica said to General Beit, sprinting away before the general could disagree. Not that there was anything he could do to stop her; she outranked him anyway. The General was good at his job but overly cautious, Jessica thought. She needed to get to Nelya before something happened to her. Nelya's primary job was to be a diplomat and lead Europe and Russia; her secondary job was to be a warrior. Rhys had rebuilt Jessica's body to kill his enemies; that was her main purpose, and she needed to get to Nelya quickly before the Om did.

She sent orders to Captain Yair while sprinting down a steep tunnel, dodging men and armor or, where possible, simply leaping over them. "Get the men moving, Captain; I will be there in fifty seconds," Jessica said without breaking stride. She and Captain Yair had worked well together, and each knew the capabilities of the other. Checking the tac-grid, she could see the precise movements of the Om and knew where they were gathering to strike at Nelya. The AI had highlighted what it thought was the Trangrod directing the forces attacking Nelya, and if she and Nelya planned this right, they would crush the Om between them.

Captain Yair ducked and cursed as someone unloaded chain gun fire close to his left ear. The noise penetrated through his helmet, but Yair couldn't disagree with the damage it was doing to the Trangrod, who had been firing at him from behind the wreckage of one of his tanks. Pieces of insect-like limbs went flying, and Yair finished it with his BFW. He paused to read the info from the cicadas that had worked their way down here over the last several months and compared it with the input from the AI. He didn't know how it was doing it, but the tac-grid was right on, and he knew where the Trangrods were, and his company was killing them.

At his signal, Second Squad let loose small missiles from the drones, along with volleys of grenades and BFW fire. Trangrods lying in wait at a tunnel junction blew apart as the world exploded around them, and then they killed those that ran forward to replace the dead and dying alien monstrosities. They were a lot like insects in some ways, Yair thought. Trangrods never seemed to retreat; when you killed them, others just rushed in to take their place. The tactics resembled a fire ant bed rather than an intelligent species. Sending soldiers after soldiers to defend against the attack, no matter how many or how futile. Second Squad which had the lead stood aside as Third Squad moved up to take their place. "Watch the overhead," he warned, slowing the men as they moved past him. There was a company of Egyptians in the tunnel above, and they were getting pushed back.

"Quit worrying about your flanks or your rear, Yair," Jessica said, suddenly beside him. Your goal is to break through. You see this big bastard here," she said, indicating a dot on Yair's HUD. "Get us there; we need to kill it. The AI thinks that it is controlling the Trangrods against us. Take him out. They will be just like insects without a brain to tell them what to do.

"It knows we are here," Nelya said to Jessica. "It should retreat, but it stands at the junction to the main passage down as if waiting for us."

"It is waiting for us," Jessica said, "it's here to kill, but we will be doing the killing."

Nelya's immediate forces had survived multiple attacks, repulsing each one with mounting casualties. She had lost fifty percent of the soldiers that had followed her down, most of them dead. The Trangrods were not taking captives and would often stop to savage a wounded man even at the cost of their own life. Still, they had survived the onslaught and had fought their way to meet up with Jessica.

Jessica led an unusual mixture of Middle Eastern and African troops that had battled their way meter by meter through the most intense combat Jessica had ever experienced. This was much worse than urban combat but not as bad as it could have been. For some unknown reason, the Trangrods did not booby-trap the passages and tunnels they had built, as if they were reluctant to destroy them. "We are here at the junction," Jessica said, watching as two of the few remaining armored tanks went silently past. "Launching our attack now." This part of the Om nest tunnel was huge, at least thirty meters in diameter, and the junction ahead was probably twice that. Jessica did not understand the strange geometry the Om used in constructing their nests, but it was alien in every sense of the word. The basic structure, the angles and the curve of the walls were wrong to the human mind, and at times disorienting. Yair's company was in the lead on this assault, and he sent in his remaining drones ahead of the armor.

Explosions and gunfire ripped through the passageway up ahead, and Yair started to order Second Squad forward to support the armor, but his uplinks, the Brain Machine interface implants that allowed him to use the tac-grid were suddenly overwhelmed, and his knees folded as he fell to the ground semi-conscious. Jessica felt the mental jamming hit her like a hammer blow, but her symbiont overrode it in a millisecond, and she was up and firing as the Om counter-attacked.

A slash with her right hand cut a leaping Trangrod in half while the grenade launcher in her right hand pumped grenades into those behind. Moving fast through the pandemonium, she killed a centipede, rolled right against the wall, braced in a three-point stance, waiting for the next attack. Yair and his men were down, seemingly catatonic, but Jessica didn't have time to think as a monstrous figure came hurtling through the smoke and shrapnel, a red energy beam sweeping the area in front of it. Jessica exploded out of her stance into the air, saw the beam weapon focus on her, and then cut it off with a swift movement of her arm. The centipede adjusted even as Jessica flew over the top of it, grabbing her with a lightning-like movement of one of its forward blade-like mandibles. Jessica counter-pivoted, dropped the grenade launcher, and formed the monoblade from her armor, and sliced through the mandible.

Jessica landed and braced, then predicted and ducked as the centipede reared and moved like a striking cobra. High-velocity rounds exploded above her head as Jessica swept the faint blue beam like a sword, cutting off the head. Rolling away into a crouch, the blue beam tore through two more, the lifeless alien bodies falling to the ground. Jessica exploded down the tunnel toward the center of the junction and was amongst the remaining Trangrods before they could react. She took heads where she could or just sliced the alien monsters in half with the deadly beam. Another grasshopper-like Trangrod leaped, intending to skewer her with its front knife-like legs, and Jessica ducked and rolled beneath it only to have it explode as a bright red beam found it instead of her. Jessica felt it at the same time her eyes found the darkness, and a chill ran down her spine. It looked and felt the same as Rhys had described it, and it had almost killed him. Now Jessica faced it alone, and she didn't like the odds.

Rhys swept his right hand across his body, slicing through a Trangrod that was coming up through the entrance of a smaller tunnel. He never broke stride; speed was a weapon of its own now. He had timed the strike exactly right, but there was only a short window before the Trangrods would react to his sudden thrust into the guts of the nest, and he intended to make the most of it. One of Hua's bodies ran on each side of him, Sandy and Kiania a bit behind them, and Thea in the rear with her heavy disrupter. Ahead of him were two hundred and twenty drones that were clearing most of the Om and clogging joining tunnels to slow reinforcements. They gradually decreased in number as they were destroyed or damaged, but they only needed to slow, not stop, the Trangrods.

Rhys was back in control of himself; the berserk rage that had consumed him had been replaced by cold, rational thought through sheer force of will. Jessica's and Nelya's forces were in a precarious position, both in danger of being cut off, but they had drawn the bulk of the Trangrods, giving Rhys the opening he needed. Kiania was pulling the Marines back into the battle, opening a second line of attack to pressure the Om further, stretching their defenses. He didn't know if it would be enough to save them, but he had nothing left but this strike into the bowels of the Om nest. If they found what he expected, it would draw all the Om forces down on them. Rhys felt the sudden jolt as the wave of jamming swept over them. He stumbled, but Bob reacted, and Rhys was suddenly functional again.

"Rhys, they have jammed everyone's uplinks; our forces are helpless! Thea shouted.

The main chamber was only one hundred meters ahead, and the way was clear. "Thea, blast our way in," he ordered firmly; there was nothing else to do now but kill the mother of all Trangrods.

Nelya and another soldier pulled Bugrov from beneath the pile of alien body parts, wounded in the side but still alive. Nelya looked him in the eyes and liked what she saw. Bugrov still had that fire in his eyes, and she needed it now. "Quick, reorganize the companies; Jessica is leading an attack to relieve us, and we need to meet her halfway," she said quickly while sending the route display to his tac-grid. Bugrov didn't hesitate, quickly dispatching orders and organizing an attack on the fly. That's what she liked about him, brave, a great tactical thinker, and willing to die for her. She waited until the first company pushed by before joining them.

"Empress, please wait; many of your Guard are dead or injured."

"No, Bugrov. They will need me for what lies ahead. It is the thing controlling those who attack us, and it will be hard to kill."

The way forward was easier now that they knew where the Trangrods were, and they moved rapidly down parallel tunnels, barely pausing as tac-grid assigned them targets they couldn't even see yet. The drones and heavy weapons blasted their way toward Jessica's approaching troops. Bugrov's men see yet. Nelya was impatient and pushed her way forward over the objections of her guards. She knew what awaited them and readied herself. Bugrov pushed more men to the front, "Protect the Empress," he exhorted each man. He knew the words were unnecessary; every man here would die for her. He turned to follow when a wave of noise hammered at his brain. He tried to stand but collapsed to his knees like the rest of his men.

The electronic wave hit Nelya, and her symbiont shrugged it off in a microsecond. The men around her were catatonic, but the effect seemed to be local, as those further behind were unaffected. She paused, not under attack at the moment, but then sprinted forward at Jessica's call. The Trangrods in front of her seemed equally affected, standing listlessly, almost frozen in position. Nelya slashed at them with the disrupter as she raced to meet Jessica.

Jessica launched herself off the floor towards the right side of the tunnel while keeping the blue beam focused on the creature trying to kill her. She recognized it from studying the battle under Moscow, and it was even more terrifying now as it tried to kill her. Jessica cursed when the disrupter failed to penetrate. There must be a shield, she guessed, and she kept moving, trying to get one of the tanks between them. The red energy beam took approximately six seconds to fire again, and Jessica hit the side of the tunnel and sprang back, trying to put more distance between them.

A heavy round hit her leg, not penetrating but knocking her down. Jessica rolled and launched two missiles off her backpack and volleyed all the grenades she had left while desperately moving back toward cover. Her leg hurt, probably going to sport a huge bruise, but the round hadn't penetrated, and she scrambled behind a tank just as the red beam cut through the side of the armor, just missing her foot. Captain Yair and his men knelt or lay prostrate on the ground, so she grabbed a BFW and scooted left around the edge just in time to see the darkness rushing at her. Jessica fired, raking the creature with high explosive rounds. It didn't seem to like that and moved sidewise out of sight. "Didn't like that did you, asshole," Jessica shouted. She knew Nelya was seconds away, but she couldn't stay hidden; the red beam would find her in seconds.

Jessica rolled right and sprang up, leveling her weapon where she thought the creature would be, and was hit from the left. Jessica felt the coldness and darkness enclose her, and she couldn't breathe or scream as she felt tentacles penetrate her armor, reaching inside of her. She knew it was reaching for the symbiont, injecting bio-micro-machines into her as it reached for her heart and brain. For the first time, she felt fear from the symbiont and was paralyzed by the pain, pain like she had never felt before. By instinct, she triggered her last defense. Drans metal armor flowed like water into several points, each becoming a monoblade that shot forth into the Om creature. Thea called it the porcupine defense, and it must have worked, Jessica thought, because she was violently thrown across the tunnel, impacting hard on the other side. She scrambled to her feet, mind racing, searching for the Om, expecting to feel the energy beam slicing through her. Instead, she saw Nelya leap into the air and come down in the darkness, a monoblade sprouting from each hand.

Nelya had seen how ineffective the disrupter was, so she attacked the creature from behind, stabbing down with all her weight and might behind it. The creature was clothed in darkness, and she felt cold envelope her as her weapons struck. The Om reacted violently, twisting quickly as a striking snake, and threw Nelya away. Even as she flew through the air, Nelya felt bullets impact her armor, knocking her body around as she tumbled to the ground. "I'm hit," she thought, feeling pain in her side and shoulder even as she scrambled to her feet. Nelya swayed, then raised her arms, preparing to defend herself as the darkness rushed toward her. Darkness surrounded her, and she screamed in agony as tentacles pushed into her insides and through the bio-metallic bones and muscles, then gasped as they were suddenly withdrawn; the Om creature pulled away to defend itself against Jessica attacking from behind.