Existential Threat: Chapter 14 Part 1 of 2 (Patreon)

Chapter 14:

11/07/2242

Fin, Jynx and Moose fanned out in a semi-circle facing into the center of the mining facility. Foxtrot was to the right side of the repair shop, Hotel to the left. Shiro and Luke were out in front of the shop among the automated miners remains.

Two bots from Golf squad were digging through them, pushing the ones that worked or were easy to repair back up and activating them, tossing the scrap and broken ones to the side for another squad member to run into the factories.

“Alright Hotel, Foxtrot push up,” Luke said.

The two squad bounded forward through the path of destruction the Drop ship had cut through the facility.

Tracers cut out at the squads. Fin let loose with a burst of V-1, nothing fired anymore. Foxtrot bounded forward, slowly at first and picked up pace again, reaching another squat building of compressed blocks.

Weapons fire hit the bots as they dropped down.

“Cease fire, they’re Orkaran!” Scalia yelled.

Luke released the tension on his trigger.

“We are here to help you and kill the Adraxi, please stop shooting so that we might assist.” Sally’s translation program changed the words as Martinez yelled them out of her bot on local. The shooting cut off randomly. The silence nearly eerie as Martinez kept talking to them. The facility silent except for her yelling.

“Moving up to you.” He turned to Ken and Per, suited up in armored vacuum suits. “Lets go.”

He bounded forward, taking the lead, they followed behind, Shiro trailing at the rear.

No one fired at him as he reached the other squads.

“You’re up,” Luke pointed a thumb at the building, hiding behind a flipped over automated miner.

Ken nodded.

“It’s Ken’Lur’Soo Don’t shoot me!”

“What are you doing out there Ken?”

“Har is that you?”

“It is.”

Har was on the second shift while he was on the third, they’d talked before when handing off their task to one another.

“We stuffed movers into the entrance and the Adraxi rushed us, we attacked them and before we knew it they destroyed the walls and came inside.”

“Adraxi?”

“The creatures that fell from the sky and bring the purple death fog with them. The humans here have fought them before.”

“They wear the symbiotes of the Aer!”

“You ever see an Aer run across the mining facility or use such weapons of power to kill others? Have you seen them give us weapons and armor?” Ken pulled off his helmet, hooking it to his belt and stepped out between the miners and forward, picking out places to put his feet as he held his rifle up in display.

He heard Per walking behind him, shooting her a look as he kept walking out infront of the storage warehouse. The large buildings filled with materials sorted and ready to be sent to the landing areas.

His ears relaxed. “It is nice to see so many of you, even if you’re all pointing guns at me,” His ears flicked in amusement.

“Come in around the loading side, we will talk.”

***

The compressed rock, cracked and broken by fierce fighting, shifted under Luke’s feet as he entered the fortified mining offices.

Golf on his right, Hotel on his left as their squads and his own leaked through the breaches in the wall.

There were multiple breaches into the walled compound. Broken turrets lay at the four corners of the facility. Landing pads separated the walls from the maintenance buildings and smoking command post in the center.

The buildings showed daylight through them, hit by several crab cannons. Three had collapsed under the fighting.

Adraxi dead covered the landing pads, intersped with Orkaran. They gave their all. Luke breathed out, scanning as he dropped down into cover behind part of the wall that had been blown out.

Golf and Hotel squads bounded forward across the landing pads.

A broken turret’s gears grinded, clicking to the side without moving, smoke rising from where the ammo feed and the back of the light machine gun was supposed to be.

An Adraxi screech rose, firing at someone bounding forward from Golf squad as they reached the maintenance buildings.

Luke adjusted his aim, those covering the runner cut the Adraxi down.

“Grenade out!”

It went off with a muffled thump, shifting the rubble the Adraxi had been hiding in.

Luke’s eyes caught movement, raising his rifle to one of the office buildings, its windows blown out.

His vision zoomed in with his preset scope settings linked to his gun.

“I got people up in building Alpha,” Luke pinged the building, checking windows. “Orkaran.” Something pulled him to look down and to the right.

Past the rubble he saw a familiar sight.

“Got a broken command post in the middle.” The place was littered with Adraxi dead. A new marker for command post added itself to the map, just as the turrets did once found.

The rubble shifted next to Luke, he checked his mini-map scanning the offices.

“Ken.”

“There are people alive in there?”

“Got Orkaran movement.” Ken tensed.

“Wait,” Luke growled, checking Golf and Hotel were across.

“Ken you’re with me, First fire team we’ll cross in one bound lets move.”

Fin and Jynx ran with him across the landing pads, Ken and the ten fighters he’d brought with him, each wearing an armored vac suit and a rifle.

Luke crouched in the rubble on the other edge of the landing pads, rifle up. The Orkaran mimicked him.

“Covering!” He called out at nearly the same time as Fin and Jynx.

“Moving,” Moose and Shiro replied.

“Luke, its Martinez, we got people moving in the buildings again.”

“Got Ken with me to chat up the locals.”

“Alright, we’ll move to create an all around defense then?”

“Yeah, sounds good, Golf?”

“On it,” Scalia said.

“Hold,” Luke said as Moose and Shiro reached the other side. “Move in extended line forward, Ken you do your stuff.” Luke rose up, stone cracking under his feet as he walked through the dead and rubble.

Ken’s group watched, ready to shoot anything that looked at him wrong as he pulled off his helmet.

Kid’s got talent as a leader.

“Gra! You there its Ken, I’m the guy who said we should use movers to block off the entrances!” He advanced past the maintenance sheds.

“Nice and slow,” Luke told his squad.

“Ken?” A voice came from the building.

“Gra?”

“Yeah,” The voice sounded tired and gravelled. “Those Adraxi, they dead out there?”

“We cleared the rest of the facility, there are squads of human bots watching the corners, this is the last place we have to clear.”

“Thank Ahk, we need to get the families out!” There was movement at the windows.

“Where are they?” Ken asked.

No one answered as Orkarans climbed out of the bombed out buildings.

Rubble was shoved to the side, an Orkaran with more grey’s and whites threaded into his brown fur climbed out what had been a window. Others gave him more space as he half-jogged to one of the collapsed buildings.

“We put them in the basements and broke the supports so the building would cover them, help me out.” Gra’s people followed him, Ken jogging after.

Luke clamped his rifle to his back.

“Do you have wounded?”

“They’re waiting Ahk’s embrace.”

“I have healers that can help.”

Shiro stepped forward. “Show me to them.”

Gra’s ears flicked in a way Luke couldn’t read. “Yer, take them.” He never stopped moving through the rubble.

One Orkaran turned back and waved Shiro to follow..

“I’ll call up the ambulances.” Shiro said, pulling off his new medical kit.

The medics from Golf and Hotel collapsed in.

Luke followed Gra, the Orkarans made lines picking up and throwing rubble to the side.

Luke picked up slabs, hurling them into open spaces.

“Stronger than you even look,” Gra muttered.

Luke grunted, the others using their heavies to pull free rubble.

“There, that’s the stairs,” Gra said, he went down, Ken right behind, throwing up pieces to others who threw it away.

“The Adraxi are gone, its Gra, we’re coming for you!”

Luke heard the sobs and crying twisting his heart.

An Orkaran peered up from the bottom of the stairs, blinking against the light.

She staggered, her hard flat ears relaxing as she grabbed the side of the stairs.

“Husband mine.” She stumble crawled up the rubble.

“It’s not clear,” Gra’s voice gruffer than before as she wrapped him in a hug, both gripping onto one another’s clothes, not caring how tight the embrace.

Others started moving at the bottom of the stairs.

“This way, don’t be afraid littles,” Ken soothed, holding out a hand to help out people, holding littles looking around with wide eyes, their little hands nestled under their chins.

Luke stepped away and to the other collapsed buildings that were being dismantled.

The burned out movers blocking the road into the compound squealed and scraped as a heavy mover shoved them out the way.

Orkaran movers with metal panels crudely fused to their side with a red diamond painted overtop pushed bumped over the rough ground, swerving around craters and running over Adraxi shells, stopping at where Yer waved them down.

People poured out from the basements. Someone dumped snacks others hauled water buckets from the back of medical movers, freeing up space for the wounded being loaded.

People started to slow and then stop.

“Here comes the rain,” Fin said.

Nuclear aurora’s created a patchwork across the sky, contrails in the thousands burning through the atmosphere.

They crossed the sky, dropping altitude and converging, kinetic impactors spun free from their entry-craft fins adjusting flight paths.

Interceptor missiles spat out like flares and accelerated, sonic booms disturbed the trails. The Adraxi did all they could to stop them from reaching their target. The rounds kept coming a steady and constant stream.

The Entire’s Armada’s worth of firepower disappearing over the horizon as it dropped.

Orkaran fighters came out of the shelters there was no one left inside.