Samuel yelled and fired his combat rifle, part in anger and part in revulsion as his mind was flooded with memories of how the bone worms would hunt rats in the steamy darkness below Assemblage 23. He felts as if he was living in a nightmare and pulling the trigger was the only way to wake up. In seconds, his magazine went dry and his fury was spent, leaving the shredded corpses of both the trooper and the worm floating in the fetid water.
Samuel reloaded and looked at his two remaining troopers. He found them to be shaken, but not broken. The three of them turned away to continue toward the pylon.
Samuel saw the white sheen of mucus on the lip of a nearby sluice pit just before another worm reared up and charged them, only this time they were on guard for such attacks. Between the marine and the troopers they gunned down the worm in a hail of fire.
Samuel realized that the mucus was an indication of which pits were likely inhabited and which weren’t, so he did his best to lead the squad on a path that would take them wide of worm pits. It slowed their progress considerably and by the time Samuel and the two troopers were within range of Pylon 4 it was clear that the situation had gone from bad to worse.
Boss Ulanti and George Tuck stood behind the meager remnants of their portable barricades, guiding the defensive efforts of a scant handful of cor-sec troopers. It was clear from a swift tactical scan of the area that Pylon 4 had suffered the brunt of the attack, and though they had repulsed the enemy for now, the cost had been great.
The corroded and smoking bodies of cor-sec troopers were scattered across the base of the pylon, joined by the armored remains of two salvage marines. Stalker corpses peppered the area, though more were taking cover in the pits surrounding the pylon and exchanging fire with the dug-in Grotto soldiers. Samuel couldn’t see the welding team, though from the activity behind the barricades it was likely their numbers had dwindled since Boss Ulanti’s last plea for assistance.
Samuel turned back to the two cor-sec troopers and indicated with his hands that they follow him and they were more than eager to obey. This was a shooting gallery, with minimal cover for any of the combatants beyond the shallow pits and the shadowy shroud of the half-light, which Samuel doubted hid much of anything from the sight of the Stalkers. The only reason the Grotto soldiers were still holding this ground was the portable flak board barricades they had been issued as a protective measure for the welding crews, and of those, very few remained.
Ever since the Haggard Sons had blown the metro line nearly a month ago, Reaper command had been using support crews with hand tools for much of the salvage work. That meant much more intensive manual labor, but there also happened to be a displaced urban population that was more than happy to have a chance to earn some cash and a hot meal. Those who couldn’t cut it as cor-sec were laborers, and it was with muscle and bone that much of Vorhold had already been picked clean.
Samuel moved towards a better vantage point and found a pit that gave him enough of a view of the battlescape that he could provide covering fire for the defenders of the pylon and engage Stalker targets. The marine took a deep breath and raised his rifle to his shoulder to draw a bead on the back of a Stalker as it fired shot after shot from its slime gun.
The marine toggled over to three-round burst and then squeezed the trigger. The Stalker jerked violently, and for a moment Samuel thought it was going to return fire. He saw that its mouth hung open in shock, its ribcage blown out from the impact of his rounds. The creature splashed face first into the pit and sank into the rancid, shallow water. To the cor-sec troopers credit they managed to intuit their best use, and employed their short range shotguns to deadly effect against another Stalker who attempted to flank Samuel as he focused intently on executing his marksmanship.
More shots rang out with the familiar signature of a Grotto combat rifle and Jada Sek appeared out of the darkness on Samuel’s right. She fired at a steady pace as she waded across the pit adjacent to his and between the two of them another three talkers were cut down. Several slime rounds hissed and splashed into the pit where Jada was standing and she was forced to hurl herself into Samuel’s, surfacing again as she found her footing in the murky, but only waist-deep liquid. One of the cor-sec troopers screamed as she was enveloped by a slime round and fell into the water as the left side of her body disintegrated.
“Over the side!” shouted Samuel. He grabbed Jada by the shoulder and helped her jump and roll over into the pit in front of them.
The cor-sec trooper behind Samuel fired into the blackness as he backed up, and the marine vaulted over the edge. Samuel turned and began searching for a target when his field of vision was overwhelmed with buzzing orange light. He instinctively ducked into the water; his last vision before going under was the cor-sec trooper’s silhouette as he faced a fusillade of slime rounds. The impact shook the pit and Samuel could hear the sizzle of the metal and see water burning, so he kicked off the bottom and emerged from the pit with his rifle at the ready. Jada Sek emerged at the same time and together they went full-auto, hurling a combined two magazine’s worth of bullets chewing through the small squad of Stalkers that had been harassing them.
“Fancy meeting you here, soldier,” smiled Jada as she swiftly re-loaded while the two of them sloshed through the pit towards Ulanti’s position.
“Boss Marsters said you were making a lone wolf thing happen,” Samuel joked before squeezing off another three-round burst that forced a Stalker to dive into a nearby water pit. “I didn’t want to miss the show.”
“One minute to full cut,” reported Boss Ulanti in their com-beads, “Everyone on me. When we’re through, I want all elements moving out. Boss Aiken, we are coming to you, can’t hold this position any longer.”
Jada and Samuel rushed up the steps and without needing to be told, each half-slung their rifles so that they could be fired from the hip with their left hands. With their right hands they each lifted the most intact flak board they could find and held it aloft like a shield. George Tuck did the same and soon another five of the cor-sec troopers were following suit. There were only three welders left, but as they sliced through the last centimeter the cheer that went up from them sounded as if they were making up for the other seven who lay dead at their feet.
“Form a square, center on the welders,” barked Boss Lucinda as she took up her own flak board and half-slung her rifle, “Reapers on the corners. Let’s move!”
The haggard unit retreated from the dais and began making their way across the treacherous expanse of sluice pits.
“White mucus on the edge of the pit means it has a worm,” stated Jada as the formation worked its way forward, exchanging fire with several Stalkers as they went, “Can’t imagine what they’d do to a person if they got hold of you.”
“It’s not pretty,” said Samuel in a low voice before peeling a few rounds into the legs of a Stalker, who was then finished off by a hail of pistol fire from several cor-sec troopers.
One of the troopers went down screaming as a slime round corroded away his flak board just before a second splattered against his pelvis. His body soon floated in two smoldering pieces, slowly sinking beneath the slop as the formation closed ranks and pressed on.
The Stalker attacks had somewhat abated and soon Pylon 2 was in sight. They had lost two more cor-sec troopers in making the journey, and both Samuel and Jada had discarded the melted and useless remnants of their flak-boards.
Samuel heard the harsh inhuman voices of the Stalkers to his far left and turned to face them just as two groups attacked them at once. He could hear Bianca shouting for him, both in his com-bead and his raw ears, and all around him the world erupted into chaos.