No human hybrid DNA was left in whatever crept through the foul lake and it was unlikely there had ever been. This abomination, whatever it was, had evolved within the cauldron of toxic waste and discarded refuse and he was the interloper in its domain.
Samuel still couldn’t make out exactly what it was, so despite the risk of alerting the gunner above he flicked on his gun-light just as the thing crossed between two heaps of underwater refuse that lay ahead of him.
Despite the light hitting the beast directly, Samuel’s brain could only detect a mass of undulating, rubbery, pink flesh. Primal instinct took over and he instantly toggled his weapon over to full-auto, squeezing the trigger without regard for the danger of discovery. His brain screamed at him that whatever this was must die, lest it kill him, eat him, or perhaps even lay eggs in his rotting flesh.
Samuel was yelling without realizing it, and continued to fire as his light tracked the nightmarish creature. He could see bright yellow liquid clouding in front of him from multiple ragged holes in the creature’s tentacled body.
His magazine clicked empty as the beast fled deeper into the darkness of the chamber, well out of the range of his lights. Samuel knew with certainty he’d wounded it, perhaps even mortally, but knew just as certainly that his position had been exposed to the gunner above.
Confirming his thoughts, a salvo of bullets streaked through the water. They would have punched several holes in him had Samuel not immediately thrown himself to the side, simultaneously shutting off his gun-light and dropping the light stick as he re-loaded. Samuel knew he was taking a huge risk moving so quickly through the murky darkness but it had to be done.
Samuel found that if he kept his eyes upwards he could just make out the intermittent muzzle flashes of the machine gun as it alternated between firing into the water around it and then toward the docks.
As he moved, the marine could see that the gunner was standing on some of some kind of grate. He decided this was as good a vantage point as he was going to get. Toggling his combat rifle back to semi-automatic, he began firing rounds up through the grate.
The marine expected many of his shots to be stopped or deflected by the grating, but as he had hoped, several seemed to find their mark and a body splashed into the water above him.
As Samuel moved aside to avoid the sinking corpse, several fleshy tentacles erupted from the darkness to attack him. They fastened to his armor with unbelievable strength using dozens of tiny suckers on the bottom side of the tentacle. In the half-light, Samuel could see that several tentacles had also attached themselves to the corpse. Despite his shock, he realized that if he did not disable that gun his comrades would be in continued peril as more hostiles rushed to operate the weapon, so he held his ground. Samuel felt the tentacles slither around his legs and torso. Apparently the creature wasn’t intelligent enough to differentiate between his weapon and his arm so his aim was unwavering.
Refusing to struggle against the tentacles wrapped around the rest of his body, he focused on his iron sights and the dim flash of the machine gun muzzle as he continued to fire. His clip went dry moments before more tentacles wrapped around his gun and wrenched it from his hands. The marine was very thankful in that moment, that command had deemed it allowable for those Reapers who wished to do so to carry their boarding knives.
Although meant for the close confines of shipboard combat, Samuel and many of the other marines had found them incredibly useful in downspire. Samuel slid his blade from the sheath on his forearm and began slashing wildly at the tentacles as they wrenched pieces of his armor loose from his body and began to ravage the thin body glove and flesh beneath.
Standard issue Reaper battle armor was cheap and overall considered low-tech when compared to the power suits of the Grotto Storm Troopers or elite mercenaries, though what it lacked in sophistication it made up for in overall stoutness.
When it came to small arms fire the armor would deflect all but the most precise or direct shots, however, no Grotto engineer had ever intended to protect the soldiers from an enemy attempting to tear the armor away. Samuel felt as if he were some crustacean being assaulted by the most macabre of cephalopods. In this case, reality was much more horrifying than anything his imagination could have conjured.
Now that the gun above wasn’t providing even temporary illumination, Samuel was unable to see much of anything. Even if he’d been able to get a light-stick ignited all he would have seen would be the billowing clouds of the creature’s yellow blood mixing with smaller clouds of his own red blood as he and the creature tore into each other.
Samuel was unsure how long he’d been unconscious, though he knew it could only have been a few seconds. He was in pitch darkness and could still feel that he was underwater through the holes in his suit. It was the thought of what nasty microbes and toxic materials that might be seeping into his body that galvanized him to action. The marine ignited several light-sticks one after the other and let them fall around him to illuminate several meters of submerged chamber.
At his feet Samuel could see the body of the ganger he’d shot slowly being sucked down into the thick muck that covered the chamber floor. There were chunks of tentacle everywhere, all slowly sinking down to join the ganger. Whether he’d killed the creature or not, Samuel couldn’t tell, but it had to be one tough monster to survive all the bullets and severed tentacles. He hoped it had crawled back to whatever hellhole it called home and died of its wounds. He couldn’t move much and was relieved when he saw the wake and shadow of a skiff making its way over to him from the grating area where the machine gun used to be.
Someone from the skiff lowered a gaff pole into the liquid and friend or foe, Samuel decided he’d rather be out of this murky mess than in it, regardless of who might be hauling him up.
“Prybar, you are one unkillable son of a bitch!” shouted Patrick as he hefted the marine’s armored bulk onto the small skiff.
Samuel struggled to find a witty response, though was simply too spent to vocalize much beyond a weak smile and a groan as his fellow marine helped him take off his helmet. Samuel’s armor was pitted and slimy from the toxic water, and the marine could already see the flesh of his wounds turning a sickly shade of white and green. Patrick followed his gaze and nodded as the skiff pilot; a marine recruit that Samuel seemed to recall was named Holland, cranked the motor and headed back to the shattered dock.
“We got lucky, old pal, if you hadn’t knocked out that shooter’s nest we would have been fragged,” Patrick said as he opened the squad med-kit and began dosing Samuel with vial after vial of antibiotics, anti-inflammatories and a few painkillers, “Those gangers with the big gun and those wall crawlers had us so busy we didn’t notice their backup.”
“There were four small access tunnels that they’d covered up with canvas painted to look like the walls,” explained Holland as he moved them closer to shore, taking care not to move too quickly to avoid hitting any partially submerged scrap metal. “Before we knew it, dozens of those hive scum are charging at us with everything from axes to clubs.”
“The others?” asked Samuel in a voice thick with painkillers as he struggled to maintain consciousness, “Are they…”
“Kade did just fine. Takeda got clipped early in the shootout, but we held our own, and no fatalities.” Patrick grinned as he patted Samuel’s shoulder before his face turned sour and he looked back at the oncoming docks, “Cor-sec got chewed to pieces though, sixty-percent casualties. Between us three, I don’t think cor-sec had any business being down here.”