The Autumn War Vol. 02: Remnants

Ruza strode ahead of him, his muscles rippling beneath his pressure suit, his long rifle held low like a spear as he charged a pair of Drones. They reacted too slowly in their stupor, the nearest one driven to the ground, the feline throwing his five-hundred-pound mass into the blow. His bayonet split the alien's carapace as it penetrated its sternum, the thing's twitching limbs curling in on itself, its lifeblood spewing onto the dusty floor. Its companion had regained enough sense to draw a long, chitin blade that was shaped like a saber, brandishing the cruel weapon as it lunged at him. The creature was quick, darting in to slice the cutting edge across Ruza's stomach, but all it did was score his ceramic armor.

The Borealan drew back his arm, then swiped, turning his hand so that his hooked claws were facing his opponent. A blow that could have shattered bone caught the thing square in the face, Ruza's talons slicing through flesh and carapace alike. Part of its helmet was torn off - or maybe part of its face - clattering across the factory floor. When Xipa got a clear look at it again, one half of its helmet was missing, the lenses and mandibles ripped away to expose the bloody flesh beneath. There was a single eye, not too different from Bluejay's, rising to track Ruza's next blow. The feline bared his sharp teeth in a roar as he shouldered the Drone into a printer, denting the housing, his weight enough to crush the creature. He was built for gravity near twice as potent as that of Kerguela, and it showed in his sheer ferocity, Ruza stepping back to let the broken body fall.

He wasn't given any time to collect himself, a plasma bolt narrowly missing his head, its glow reflecting in his visor as it sailed past him. Ruza turned on his assailant, bringing that six-foot rifle to bear again, its bayonet still dripping with alien fluids. He fired in semi-auto, his target diving back into cover, but to no avail. A mere printer wouldn't stop a projectile that could punch through two inches of steel. The slugs tore through the machine, spraying molten shrapnel as they exited on the other side, hitting the Bug like a shotgun blast.

"Keep pushing up!" Xipa growled into her helmet mic, throwing herself into cover behind one of the printers as a pair of Drones sent a barrage of bolts sailing her way. Taking a leaf out of Fletcher's book, she leaned her XMR around the corner, keeping her body concealed as she brought up the in-picture scope on her HUD. The recoil was harder to control, the weapon nearly leaping out of her hands, but her cone of fire sent one of the Bugs flailing to the floor. "Keep the pressure on them! Don't let them regroup!"

Her next shot was more controlled, catching the second insect in the torso. She moved up as it fell back into cover, not giving it an opportunity to find its footing. She put a few more slugs through the printer about where she expected it to be, then rounded the bulky machine to find it lying dead on the dusty floor.

Bluejay and Ruza formed up with her as she stepped out into the nearest aisle, the three moving together, cutting down two more Drones that were retreating towards the doorway they had originally come from. As they passed the rows of machines, Xipa caught a glimpse of one of the scouts off to the left side of the room. She had knocked one of the Bugs to the floor and was setting upon it with a claw hammer, pummeling it with vicious strikes from the sharp end of the implement as it tried in vain to fight her off, droplets of its blood splattering the dark visor of her welding mask. She didn't stop until it ceased its struggling, standing over it as its fluids dripped from her weapon, holding her plasma rifle in her other hand.

Another Bug advanced on her down the aisle ahead, forcing her to roll out of the way as its plasma bolts melted holes in the carbcrete floor. It showed a callous disregard for its fallen comrade, the burning projectiles peppering the motionless body. From somewhere behind the woman, a brilliant beam of emerald lanced forth, the unmistakable glow of a neodymium laser glittering as it refracted off the motes of dust and aerosolized particles in the air.

The pulsed beam cut into it, the concentrated heat melting through carapace and flesh, cauterizing as it went. It seared a burning trail across the Drone's chest, driving it back, the insect reacting to the pain as though it was a physical force. The shooter stepped into view, walking closer to her writhing target, holding the scuffed housing of her laser rifle tightly in her hands. More of the scouts moved up beside her, one of them dropping into a low posture to fire her plasma rifle at something out of view.

The smoke from the pheromone grenades had cleared by now, and the team was approaching the far end of the factory floor. Bluejay took down one more Bug as they neared the last row of printers, tungsten slugs shattering its carapace, knocking it off its feet. He reloaded as he went, leaning around one of the machines to check that there were no more waiting for them.

Xipa heard the sound of a plasma weapon, turning to see another Drone stumble out of one of the aisles, pushed back against the wall. Miqi followed after it, the conductive rails on her rifle crackling as she fired off shot after shot, the magnetically-contained gas melting fist-sized holes in her target. She paused to reload as the smoking body ceased its writhing, popping out the empty plasma canister that was housed behind the rails with a practiced tap of her fist, letting it roll across the floor. It was about the size of a drink can, with transparent, vertical strips that let the wielder see how much gas remained inside. She produced a replacement from her belt, slotting it into place with a mechanical click.

"Everyone good?" she yelled, turning to do a quick headcount. "Don't slow down, there could be more of them ahead!"

They rallied at the door, Xipa pausing briefly to look back at the dead Bugs they had left in their wake. She reloaded her XMR, slamming in a fresh magazine, the new ammo count flaring to life in the corner of her HUD.

The team left the printing facility behind, moving into the corridor beyond. It wasn't unlike the one they had traversed to get to the factory floor, and it likely led to another stairwell that would let them access the upper levels. They were maybe halfway up the building's overall height, and their destination was now above and behind them relative to the direction they were heading.

Xipa glanced into the open doors that lined the hall as they passed them by. These were storage rooms filled with raw materials that would have fed the printers, barrels of powdered metal, and drums of liquid polymer. As they neared the end of the corridor, there was a sudden flurry of movement ahead, one of the scouts at the front of the group letting out a yell of alarm. A surviving insect lunged at her from a side door, catching her by surprise, plunging a long blade into her side. She wasn't wearing any armor, so it went straight through her clothes, the pointed tip emerging on the other side with a spurt of dark blood. The two of them grappled, the thing clawing at her with its four hands as it tried to withdraw its saber for a second strike, the woman wailing into her gas mask.

Only the nearest scouts could come to her aid in the cramped corridor, one of them striking the Drone in the head with the butt of her rifle, but it remained undeterred. It brought those snapping mandibles to its victim's face, the serrated chelicerae biting into one of the filters on her gas mask, sawing through the polymer to expose the fabric inside.

The scout who had hit it with her rifle drew a sidearm in the cramped space, forcing the rails of the weapon beneath its chin, squeezing the firing mechanism. There was a flash of green light, the blast forcing the creature back, a piece of the gas mask still held in its mandibles. Smoke poured from its helmet, the thing twitching as it fell back through the doorway from whence it had come.

The injured woman stumbled backwards, the blade still protruding from her side, falling into Ruza's waiting arms as he waded through the smaller aliens to reach her. He swept her off her feet, her cry of pain muffled by her mask.

"Tell them to clear that room!" he barked, Xipa doing as he asked. The scouts hopped over the smoking Bug, sweeping the storeroom, Ruza carrying his charge in after them. He set her down on the grimy floor, her diminutive frame so light that he could carry her weight in a single hand, his yellow eyes fixed on the chitin blade that jutted from her abdomen. Dark blood stained her clothes, pooling on the floor beneath her, her concerned companions crowding around them.

"Give them room!" Xipa snapped, the women retreating a few paces. "Ruza knows what he's doing. You must let him work."

"Tell her to remove her mask," Ruza said, Xipa relaying his demand to the injured woman. She reached up to fumble with the straps with shaking hands, tearing the damaged gas mask off her face, sucking in a sharp breath. The motion seemed to hurt her, and she groaned, gritting her sharp teeth.

Ruza sank his claws into her blood-soaked clothes, tearing open the fabric around the wound site to expose it. The blade had entered her body where her spinach-green scales began to taper into the beige of her smooth underbelly, protruding a few inches to the right of her navel, its orange hue contrasting with her coloration. She was bleeding, but not profusely. The blade was probably helping to stem the flow. Ruza produced his medical scanner with the practiced speed of someone drawing a sidearm, waving it across her midriff, the device beeping as the results flashed on its little display.

"It missed her gizzard," he said with a sigh of relief. "An inch to the left, and I would not have been able to save her with what I have on hand. One of her lateral thoracic air sacks has been punctured."

"Damn it!" Xipa hissed. Unlike many of their Coalition counterparts, the Valbara'nay had a respiratory system made up of air sacks that connected to their lungs, extending throughout the body and even into some of their bones. They inhaled and exhaled through pressure changes created by the expansion and contraction of muscles in the sternum, either drawing in or pushing out air, forcing it through the lungs where the gas exchange took place. It made their bodies lighter and gave them more oxygen to work with, but if one of those sacks was perforated, it boded ill. "Can you do anything for her?"

Ruza was already snapping on a pair of his signature surgical gloves, starting to fish for medical tools in one of his many pouches.

"I must treat and seal the wound before a buildup of gas in her abdominal cavity causes the sack to collapse," he explained, keeping his eyes on his work as he talked. "She will not survive to make it back otherwise."

"What's he saying?" Miqi demanded, hovering nearby as her feathers flashed purple with worry. "Can we do anything to help?"

"She has a punctured air sack," Xipa explained. "Just keep that hallway covered while he works."

"Fuck!" Miqi hissed, cursing into her helmet. She yelled orders at her scouts, two of them moving to cover the doorway, one of them dragging the still smoking body of the Drone out of the way.

"Do you need me to tell her anything?" Xipa asked as Ruza eyed the chitin blade.

"Tell her to keep as still as she is able, and that this is going to be painful," he growled. He closed one hand over the alarmed woman's snout to stifle her cry of pain as he gripped the haft of the blade, ripping it out of her in one smooth motion. He tossed it aside, sending it clattering across the floor. Its edge was serrated, and it did even more damage on the way out, but there was no time for a more careful extraction. The scout moaned into his glove, dark blood welling in the jagged wound, obscuring Ruza's view. He swabbed at it with a bundle of gauze bandages, much to her displeasure, cleaning some of it away so that he could see what he was doing. There was already so much blood that it was making Xipa feel light-headed.

He reached for the canister on his hip, the same one that he had used to seal Gustave's bullet wound and his own leg injury. It was painted white, with a green cross emblazoned on the side. She remembered that it was filled with antiseptic foam. He pressed the conical nozzle into the wound, his patient groaning as the white foam poured into the cavity, her blood staining it pink. It spilled out onto her scales, dripping down onto the floor beside her.

Next, he upended a bottle of what might be alcohol onto a strip of gauze, using it to clean the scales around the wound site. Xipa heard the rustling of paper as he produced a large, flat packet from one of his pouches. He tore it open, tossing the packaging aside, revealing a transparent film. Its edges were lined with adhesive tape, and he placed it over the bulging foam, creating an airtight seal over the area.

Xipa was confused, but she dared not interrupt him while he was working. A sucking chest wound required some kind of valve so that the air that escaped into the body cavity could be released. If it was allowed to build up, it would cause the sack to collapse. When she had learned first-aid in the City Guard, she had been trained to use a kind of adhesive patch that was applied over the wound, which allowed air to escape but not to enter.

Ruza fished inside another pouch on his rig, pulling out a little disk-shaped object. It was colored white with green accents, identifying it as a UNN medical device of some kind. It was small enough that it would have sat comfortably in the palm of Xipa's hand. There was a little LCD panel on one face, along with some small buttons. The Borealan raised his medical scanner again, seeming to compare the two displays for a moment.

"How deep is this cursed air sack?" he muttered to himself, using the rubber pads on the ends of his gloved claws to tap at the buttons on the device. When he was done entering values, he removed a protective cap from the underside of the puck, a clear, circular film springing from it. It was another adhesive patch, the puck sitting squarely in the center of it. "This is a stint," he explained, sizing up his patient. "When it is applied to the wound site, a needle will extend from the device, piercing the collapsed air sack. The valve mounted in this housing will allow her to breathe normally until surgery can correct the problem."

"Will we be able to move her afterwards?" Xipa asked.

"The needle is made rigid through the application of an electric current," Ruza replied. "Once that current is interrupted, it will become a flexible tube, which will have much less chance of causing additional damage to the organ. Know that this is merely a stop-gap measure. Tell her to expect pain."

Xipa didn't bother explaining everything that he had told her to the scout, she merely warned her that it was going to hurt, watching as Ruza applied the adhesive. It overlapped a little with the first one, the device placed a scant few millimeters from the bulging foam. He pressed another of the buttons, and the woman let out a gasp of pain as the needle pushed its way through her scales and into her organ. Around the edge of the little puck, a series of small hatches flipped open, revealing what looked like vents. As she began to breathe more easily, the scout relaxed a little, the immediate crisis averted. She flinched as he stabbed her in the neck with another hypo, injecting something into her bloodstream.

"That will hold for a while," Ruza said, peeling off his gloves as he rose to his feet to stand beside her. There was so much empty packaging and discarded equipment around him, the blood on the floor staining the sand-colored fur on his feet. "I gave her an immunostimulant and a pain suppressant, but she needs surgery, or she will not survive."

"How long?" Xipa demanded, but he shrugged his shoulders in reply.

"What use is the question? We cannot leave now, and we haven't the strength to split our forces. I have done all I can. We will make it back in time, or we will not."

"She doesn't have long," Xipa said, turning to Miqi. "Ruza has stabilized her for now, but she needs surgery as soon as possible. There's no time to waste."

"I need two of you to stay behind and watch her," Miqi announced, but the injured scout was quick to voice her objection.

"I can handle myself," she wheezed, wincing as she reached for her rifle. She shuffled backwards, propping herself up against a large barrel of resin, resting the weapon in her lap. "Find our comrades. I'll be waiting."

Xipa and Miqi shared a glance, but it didn't look like she was going to argue.

"Let's get moving," Miqi said, making her way to the door. She paused, then turned back to the injured scout. "We'll be back soon, Nocha."

Nocha gripped her rifle more tightly, giving Miqi an affirmative feather display.

They moved back out into the corridor, checking the side rooms carefully as they advanced. They didn't encounter any more hidden Bugs, and they soon arrived at another stairwell. This one was intact, and it allowed them to access the top floor, which was where the signal had been spotted. All they had to do now was make it from one wing of the building to the other.

"I'm not optimistic enough to assume that we just killed off the only Drones left in the building," Bluejay muttered as they made their way onto the landing. "What's your ammo count?"

"Still good," Xipa replied, checking her rig. "I have three mags left. I never thought I'd risk running out of slugs, but here we are."

"Make them count," he added, raising a lower hand to the second foregrip beneath his barrel.

CHAPTER 14: OUT OF THE FRYING PAN

They moved away from the stairwell, heading down another small corridor. This one opened up into a massive space, Xipa craning her neck to get a look at the high ceiling above their heads. The room was as wide and almost as long as the factory floor they had just left, but it extended far higher, maybe two storeys up. There were tall windows that spanned from the floor to the ceiling. They were covered in grime now, but they would once have let natural light flood in, and they would have provided a wonderful view of the city.

The floor space was taken up by curving office tables, no two exactly alike. The chairs were no more uniform, some of them styled as padded stools, while others had back supports and a slot for the occupant's tail. Old holographic projectors and touch displays lay long dormant, coated with layers of dust, and there were still PDAs and personal belongings strewn about. Her eyes wandered to a cup that was sitting beside a touch panel, the mold that had sprouted inside it so overgrown that it overflowed the container's bounds. They must have been working when the invasion had happened. This was another time capsule, frozen in place as though some all-powerful deity had hit the pause button.

Great pains had been taken to make the environment more welcoming, as Valbara'nay architectural styles tended to do, and someone had used dividing walls that only rose about five feet high to break up the sightlines. They were organic in their design, placed strategically to provide privacy without being overbearing, leaving the space above them open like the sky. There were recesses in the floor that were filled with piles of cushions where the flocks who had once worked here could relax, and there were raised platforms like balconies that jutted from the walls between the windows, linked by walkways that passed over the workspace like bridges.

There were planters, too, spread out all over the place. She could see boxes where shrubs and ferns would have grown, and some of the walls were covered in racks of living vegetation. What had once been carefully tended decorations were now either long-dead or running wild, a few of the hardy creepers that had once adorned the walls now scaling the dirt-caked windows in search of sunlight.