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Fourteen survivors followed the impossibly-tall female soldier through the halls. Every few minutes they would come to a stop and the soldier would stare to the side, as if listening to something, then she would nod slightly and press on, confident in her direction. He wondered where she’d come from and whether she had arrived after the attack or had always been here. He could not remember ever noting someone like her in the logs.

A scream pulled his head up and Sergeant Lancell noticed a dark, metallic shadow down the hall.

They were discovered.

More shadows appeared and charged. He cursed the soldier for insisting the last two carbines be kept at the back. That was the most foolish thing he had ever heard. He commanded his two armed men to assist the soldier, but they both froze. Private Fialto screamed at him to turn and run, but he passed her off to the man next to him and grabbed a weapon, pushing to the front as the shotgun boomed.

The Beast pushed forward into the charging monsters, her weapon spitting fire and obliterating everything it hit. Grey torsos blasted into chunks, helmet-like heads fragmented and the bio-goo inside the creatures painted the once-sanitized walls. In seconds she’d downed six aliens, but on the seventh shot, her mighty shotgun clicked. A misfire.

She dropped the gun without hesitation and pulled the mammoth pistol from her thigh, slamming two rounds into a creature inches from the end of her barrel. The pistol reports rivalled the shotgun in sound, but the loads did not pack as mighty of a punch.

“Clear the jam on that weapon,” the soldier yelled as she closed with the wounded creature and rammed a combat knife up through its jaw and into the brain.

The Sergeant raised his carbine at the three remaining aliens. “I’ll cover you.”

Beast yanked the carbine from his grip and shoved him behind her. “Clear my weapon, dammit!”

His carbine’s fire sounded meek compared to her other weapons, but by the time he reached her shotgun, she had already unloaded the clip into the first invader. The shotgun had to have weighed fifty pounds and he just stared in confusion at it in his hands.

The colonel was beside him, pointing and yelling. “Pull back the hammer and rotate the cylinder. The hammer… that thing on the back.”

He cocked the lever on the weapon and rotated the cylinder in the middle of the gun until it clicked over to the next barrel. He looked up and yelped, seeing the soldier backpedaling right at him as she unloaded her pistol into the last two attackers.

“Here! Here! Here!” he cried, holding out the gun and wishing she would stop before the creatures reached him.

Beast slammed a round into the second alien’s head and dropped her pistol as the last one lunged for her. She spun on the ball of her foot and kicked backward into the alien’s chest, stopping it mid-lunge and snatching the gun from Sergeant Lancell in one motion. She completed the spin and swung the shotgun barrel right into the enemy’s face, pulling the trigger at the moment of impact. The last round fired and blew bits of the alien everywhere.

The soldier swung the cylinder of the shotgun out, dumped the spent rounds and slipped eight new shells into the barrels. With a flick of her wrist, she spun the cylinder and then slammed it home. Swapping out the magazine on her pistol took her a second and then they were moving.

She dropped the magazine out of the discarded carbine and gave it back to Sergeant Lancell. “Reload and keep this thing at the rear. You fire only at anything coming behind us. Leave the front to me.”

Sergeant Lancell stood there, stunned. He nodded slowly. “Yeah… understood.”

Beast pushed forward and Sergeant Lancell waited where he was for the rear to catch up to him. Most of the men stared at the back of the soldier in similar states of awe.

Private Holiday had a grin on his face as he passed. “I think I’m in love.”

* * *

The colonel audibly yelped when she saw what waited for them in the elevator. “That’s an M-2. And you found ammunition! It’s operational?”

Nikki ignored the exuberant officer and waved the survivors inside. She closed the gate and sent the carrier up to the top floor.

“How many of them are up there?” The NCO in charge, Sergeant Lancell, hid his fear poorly in front of the others, but he acted under fire instead of freezing or fleeing, and that was more useful than a brave face.

“Unknown.” Nikki didn’t like conversation and feared any conservative speculation on her part would panic the others. She knew what would be waiting on the other side of the doors when they opened. As the carrier reached the floor, she racked the slide and hugged the butterfly grips to her chest.

“Plug your ears and take cover.”

A flurry of chrome claws and gun-metal teeth lashed out as soon as the doors parted. Nikki opened fire and turned the beasts to pulp. She barely noticed the expanding pressure inside the elevator carrier, but the others likely thought they had been transported to the bottom of the ocean. In seconds she had cleared the first wave of the attackers at the door. She looked around at the others. Those that still stood wobbled on legs of jelly, but most hunkered in the corners. Blood trickled from a few ear canals. Nikki had not been ordered to deliver them in perfect health; simply alive.

She kicked on the hover drive and pushed the cart and 50-caliber machine gun down the ramp and out into the hangar. The two ships to the left appeared in good condition. By divine fortune the aliens seemed uninterested in destroying technology as demonstrated by all the still-active drones circling above the carnage.

The path to the closest ship was clear of enemies, but as Nikki gave the command for the survivors to move, an alien exploded from cover to her right. She tried to swing the barrel of the M-2 around, but the beast cleared the short distance too swiftly.

The cart, the gun, the ammunition and Nikki flew in different directions. Nikki got her right forearm in front of her throat and the metallic talon skewered it instead. The bay spun around her as she tumbled across the concrete with the creature. She heard the survivors screaming and hoped their fright did not indicate more aliens.

The shotgun still clung to the strap on her harness and she found the grip while ignoring the dozen razor appendages digging into her flesh. She swept the barrel up and bisected the alien with a loud blast. The top half of it lashed out in a frantic death throe, catching the weapon with a claw and flinging it. She shoved the thing off in time to see a second tango looming over an injured soldier.

It lifted the impaled man off his feet with its spear-like tail and chomped down on his head and the top half of his torso in one bite. The others sprinted for the ship, but the alien discarded the dead soldier and quickly turned its attention to the fleeing humans.

Nikki noticed the spasm in her stomach more than the pain when she put her feet under her, and the amount of blood already soaking her suit foreshadowed the information Shogun fed her.

Beast, you’re mangled inside. Mobility is at sixty-three percent and dropping. You won’t regenerate quickly enough in combat. Proceed to the second ship immediately!

“The survivors are boarding the first ship already; it’s too late to switch ships.” Nikki gave chase, drawing her pistol, but she could not unleash and sprint without hitting those in her line of fire; not with being fifteen years out of practice.

Leave them, Beast, or you won’t make it and they’ll be dead either way. We need that drone data. We need you alive, soldier!

Nikki had no room to stop and hesitate. Her mind comprehended the order and worked through the logic of it, but her body did not react quickly enough. She slammed into the alien from behind as it slowed to pick off a straggling soldier and the injured man hanging on his shoulder.