Gamma Nine (Book One) (38 page)

Captain Locke
drew his own rifle and sighted the hungry monsters rushing towards
them, pulling the trigger as his bullets splattered brains and
burst hearts. In the back of his mind he silently willed Sabian to
hurry up. There were more monsters than he had seen in a long time,
and he knew that Santor was not dying, it was dead.

Soon, the
Wolves, and everyone else still drawing breath, would see exactly
how dead a city, and a planet, could truly be. Its death echo would
haunt the sectors for decades to come, and its memory would forever
be written in the minds of the people who saw it perish.

Exactly thee
minutes and fifty seconds later Sabian’s convoy arrived in a hail
of gunfire, ripping everything in its path to shreds. High calibre
fire peppered the monsters swarming over the school buildings while
the Lancers inside the vehicles covered the flanks with their
rifles, firing from slits in each troop carrier’s side armour,
lending more weight to the onslaught the lightly armoured convoy
was throwing around.

Bullets
impacted against the wall Locke was leaning against as he
shouldered his rifle, firing and keeping the monsters away from the
breach Xander’s explosive had made. If the beasts plugged their
escape hole, then it would complicate their extraction and movement
to the second objective.

Xander was
right next to his captain, throwing different kinds of smaller
devices at the rushing horde, vaporizing anything within proximity
to the deadly devices when they exploded. He unclipped a grenade
shaped like a five pointed star from his looping belts, tossing it
into the head of a bulky monster running for the breach. The
grenade pinned itself in the forehead of the monster, and before it
could take another step its head vanished in a spray of blood and
gore. Its body slumping and falling forward as its momentum carried
it forward. It finally came to rest in front of the breach,
lifeless and leaking blood into the concrete below its ravaged
body.

But there was
no time to admire Xander’s handy work as another beast, twice the
size of the one that had just died, stepped over the dead bodies of
its allies, casually trudging towards the breach with a hunched
over posture. Locke emptied a clip into the creature, but it still
kept coming. Head shots from Xander’s pistol just ricocheted off
the beast’s skull, unable to penetrate its bony cranium.

It was too
close to use any explosives and bullets were not halting its
forward movement. Locke turned his head for only a moment to see
that the other Wolves were too busy with their own battles, which
meant Locke and Xander would have to deal with the monster on their
own.

Rivers stood
with his back against the wall not too far away from the breach.
But his shotgun was pointed inward, firing slugs into beasts trying
to overwhelm Pyoter and the Quinn brothers.

Pyoter was
engaged in a frantic melee battle with a large group of mutated
humans, furiously swinging his giant blade as they attacked him
from all angles. Pyoter was in his element though, and the giant
Titan expertly parried every strike, relishing the battle anger his
skill was feeding on. He swung his sword high and cleaved another
monster in half from head to asshole, separating another beast’s
head from its mutated body with the follow-up swing.

Christian
rammed his shield into the chest of sickly-pink monster that had
jumped into the great hall from the broken windows overlooking the
stone courtyard. The blow knocked the creature senseless, and it
took a few struggling steps on wobbly legs towards Pyoter’s killing
grounds. It never reached Pyoter; the sound of Nathan’s launcher
from behind Christian felled the beast before it reached Pyoter.
Nathan ejected the spent shell and reloaded one of his launchers,
its barrel still smoking. The click and thump announced to
Christian another shell was ready to be fired, and he charged the
closest beast to set up another tag-team kill.

The lumbering
monster was almost upon Xander and Locke; its sheer size blocking
any other monsters from sneaking into the breach. Its flabby body
was only a few steps from the breach when thunder sounded
Godwaker’s involvement in the fight.

Locke and
Xander took a step back, drawing their blades, but it would not be
necessary. The monster’s body trembled as Godwaker fired three
shots into its back. It stopped its slow trudge forward, turning to
try and look behind it, not understanding where the sudden pain had
come from. It never saw or heard the fourth bullet coming, dying
instantly as Jay’s fourth shot went right through the creature’s
heart, leaving nothing but a hole in the creature’s torso. Jay had
used the first three shots to weaken the creature’s flesh, aiming
the fourth shot to use that weakness to kill it.

For a moment
the creature stood as still as a statue, unmoving and frozen
upright. Xander was the one to shoulder the monster in its fat
belly, causing the dead mutant to fall backward, crushing two other
beasts beneath its weight.

Sabian’s
request to leave interrupted Locke’s thought of commending Corporal
Joshua on an excellent shot. “Can we leave now Captain?” Sabian
asked over the radio.

Locke did not
reply, instead he turned to call his Wolves. “Our ride has arrived
Wolves. Xander make sure we aren’t followed. Pyoter will take the
lead. Nathan and Corporal Quinn cover the rest of us. Move out!” he
ordered.

Xander turned
and immediately unclipped handfuls of devices from his belts,
tossing them into the beasts and open spaces in the great hall.
Pyoter finished his fight by removing the limbs off the closest
monsters before falling back to the breach. Rivers and Nathan
covered his retreat with a barrage of shotgun and launcher fire
while Christian used his shield and blade to batter away anything
following them.

Pyoter broke
into a run and jumped through the breach, lifting his sword high as
he carved a path through the monsters disorientated by the gunfire
from the convoy. Christian and Nathan were right behind him,
shouldering and stabbing their way forward. Rivers had clipped his
shotgun to his back and used his bare hands to smash heads into
pulp as he pushed forward behind the other three. Locke was next to
leave the great hall, firing his Kicker with one hand as he used
his free hand to slap away anything trying to get close to him.

Xander was the
last to leave the great hall, running at full speed through the
breach. He had left enough devices inside to make even him worried
about the blast. He ran so fast he passed Locke and Rivers as he
made for the convoy, and this in turn made everyone else run even
faster.

“There is a big
boom coming. Get clear!” Xander yelled over the radio, picking up
speed as he jumped on top of the lead vehicle of the convoy before
anyone else. He had passed everyone with his stocky body at full
tilt, dodging underneath Pyoter’s blade without losing any
speed.

“Boom time!” he
screamed with relish as the last of the Wolves reached the lead
vehicle.

Xander pressed
the activation button on his handheld custom detonator, smiling
inside his helmet at the same time as the click of the detonator
ignited the devices within the great hall.

A blue light,
more blinding that the death of a star, erupted from every hole and
window in the school’s stone and concrete body. Silence hit the
convoy as the explosion blotted out sight and sound.

The convoy was
already moving when the blue light erupted, the drivers of each
vehicle gunning the engines as soon as the Wolves had latched onto
the lead troop carrier. No-one was looking back at the blinding
devastation of the first objective. No-one expect Xander of course,
he had used his suit OS to shield and darken his visor, watching in
creepy fascination at the explosion and its hungry destruction.

They reached
the street leading away from the first objective when a second
explosion followed the blinding light, chaining the two together to
wipe the entire school from the face of the planet, rocking the
entire city with its raw power. The shockwave was felt as far as
the city edges, by monster and enemy soldier alike.

The two
vehicles protecting the rear guard of the convoy were lifted into
the air and slammed into a nearby building by the force of the
blast. Luckily the Lancers inside and the vehicle itself were
relatively unharmed, the light armour doing its job well enough to
keep the vehicle operating.

Locke looked at
Xander who was standing on top of the troop carrier, looking back
at the destruction. He slapped the Titan on the helmet with his
armoured hand to draw Xander’s attention.

Xander turned
to his captain, lifting his shoulders and hands in a questioning
gesture, saying nothing to accompany the action.

Locke just
shook his head in disbelief as the convoy raced away from what was
only a smoking crater now, heading for the second objective.

Hopefully there
were people still alive at the hospital, and there would not have
to be a repeat of what happened at the school.

As they closed
the distance towards the second objective, Christian scanned the
city with his suit’s sensors. The maximum range for his suit’s
scanner was only a few miles, but he still held on to his hope of
seeing the beacon where Jessica was, popping up before everything
went to hell in Santor.

“
It is when we are surrounded by our
enemies on all fronts that a human’s true personality shines
through. The danger clears the cloudiness of the human soul and
reveals what is hidden within. The strong stand firm in the face of
peril, drawing strength from the terror clawing at their courage,
and thus fuelling their resolve until nothing can break them. The
weak, however, crack and crumble, scurrying to save their own lives
before the monsters can get to them, and they drag anyone down with
them, never stopping to consider the value of human life. These
insects need to be stepped on by armoured boot, or broken over the
knee of our heroes. Crush the weak, and feed them to our enemies so
we may grow to hate them more.”
-General Tolas Bastion, Self-proclaimed War Prophet, Counted among
the lost after the disappearance of the Gravenstein, 2571 - 62
ASD

Captain Gray’s
calm exterior was solid in front of his bridge crew, but on the
inside his nerves were raw.

For hours he
had pushed his beloved Hyperion to its very limits, dodging vessel
after vessel trying to strafe the Hyperion or block its path.
Luckily his ship was faster than most of the swarm chasing in the
Hyperion’s wake. Gray’s cunning manoeuvres had saved his ship more
than once, but the cat and mouse game could not go on forever -
something would have to give, eventually.

The Stygian
Council was too slow to catch the Hyperion itself, so instead its
commander had ordered its escorts to chase it down and cripple it.
Vincent wanted Captain Gray alive and begging for his life at his
feet. Only then would he kill the Hyperion while Gray watched,
relishing the shock on the aging captain’s face as his crew and
ship broke apart and perished in the cold, silent void.

But Gray knew
the black-haired bastard wanted him to grovel and beg. That was the
kind of man Vincent was, only happy when people feared him or asked
for his glorious mercy. The man’s arrogance and haughtiness was
disgusting, and Gray was not planning on giving the bastard what he
wanted.

No, Gray was
going to draw Vincent out, and little by little force the man to
make a mistake as the commander of the Stygian Council’s annoyance
and anger with the chase grew. Gray understood the weakness of men
like Vincent, the arrogance and anger growing until it overtook
reason and clear thought. When that time came, Gray would be ready
to pounce on whatever opportunity Vincent’s weakness would
provide.

Until then,
however, he would draw on every ounce of skill he possessed, making
sure that he kept his ship in one piece and of the reach of the
Stygian Council’s killing grasp. Gray heard Remy yelling at him
through his daze of piloting his ship and pondering the
unknown.

“Another bomber
wing approaching!” Remy announced with a hint of fear in her
voice.

“I see it!”
Gray replied, his voice straining to maintain the same strength it
always had when addressing his crew. He took immediate evasive
manoeuvres to try and shake the bombers approaching fast.

An escort ship
pursuing the Hyperion on its right flank was Gray’s chosen target.
The ship was named the Duchess, a small but agile escort vessel,
running alongside its target in hopes of blocking it somehow to
allow the bombers to cripple the Hyperion’s engines. The Duchess
lacked any significant firepower, its role within the fleet that of
a light reconnaissance vessel, never tasked with any hostile
operations. Its weapon bays were nothing but advanced
reconnaissance equipment to survey and report findings directly to
the Stygian Council. The Duchess was nothing more than a glorified
camera with engines attached to it. But its captain, inexperienced
and well out of his comfort zone, had his orders from Lord Vincent
himself, and there was no wiggle room when his lord and commander
made his wishes known. Block and disrupt the Hyperion, by any means
necessary, meaning that if the Duchess had to be sacrificed, then
that is exactly what would happen if Lord Vincent ordered it.

Orders from
commanders like that always left officers in very peculiar
positions when the time came to choose, and eventually they would
have to choose between their orders and their own lives. Gray had
served under such a commander in the days after he had graduated
from the academy, and he knew that the weak officers would flinch
ever time and choose their own pathetic lives instead of following
an order. Gray hoped the captain of the Duchess was one of those
weaker men as he aimed the Hyperion directly at the escort ship’s
bow.