The midday sun passed overhead in the cloudless sky.
A leviathan sized flying Zykra loomed overhead. Just floating there, menacingly. A flock of smaller zykra fluttering around it.
Gunshots rang out constantly in staccato.
Along with the sounds of impacting flash and shattering carapace. Breaking like giant eggshells. Bullets whipped through the sandfield ahead of the colony. Scantid's zig-zagged trying to dodge as they approached.
"We just have to buy time for backup to arrive! Keep shooting!" Luan called out from her position near a window. Many shooters were peaking out the windows and firing. They'd fortified them by stacking tables and chairs against them. Which was more productive than Selene had thought it would be as it was effectively blocking munloc fire.
She was doing her best to take care of their ranged forces. Munloc's were fewer than the scantids but were a far larger threat.
At first only a few scantid managed to reach the exterior of the building. Jumping and rending the metal walls with their keratin claws. They cleaved and popped off entire panels like it was a tin can.
"Raymond, get any of the scantid that get close!" Selene shouted.
Raymond glanced to her from where he was behind the counter. She gave him a seriously irritated look as she went back to popping munloc heads.
"I think we should detonate the canisters, slow the wave down!" Darude suggested from his position. Just then a claw pierces the wall near his face—then pries itself out. He shoved his barrel down the newly created hole and fired. A pained insectoid chirp sounded.
Luan glanced around; "Where the hell is Betty!? Did that bitch run?"
Selene saw a truck rolling through the scantid at over seventy miles per-hour. It was satisfying to see them roll beneath the tires, but irritating to see someone make such a shitty attempt at an escape. The Zykra were already turning the saloon into swizz cheese. Her truck wouldn't last nearly so long. Even though the front windshield was covered with metal shutters.
But she wasn't trying to escape. She pulled up to a garage a distance away and opened the door. A scantid sniffed around it curiously to be met with a shotgun blast to the face.
"Betty ran into the garage! Should be fine!" Selene called out.
Luan flipped the switch on the detonator.
'BOOM!'
The saloon shook in the aftershock of the explosion. Several cyan-colored mushroom clouds grew up in the distances. Causing a sand storm which blocked the sun.
"FUCK YEAH!" Cob yelled.
Colonists and some of the zeta unit cheered at the carnage caused by the explosions.
Once the clouds and storm dissipated the bodies of many Zykra laid smoldering. A wall of blue flames remained in the distance. A comforting barrier between them and the swarm.
That was until they began to charge through once more, unaffected by the flames.
They knew from their tests that they were fairly fire resistant. But it was disappointing still to say the least.
"Don't let up! It put a dent in their numbers but they're still comin'!" Darude shouted.
The staccato rhythm of their gunshots resumed.
"I'm running low on ammo!" Selene said.
She'd have to switch to her sidearm soon and it was terrible at any range accuracy wise. And to make things worse the automated defenses stopped firing. They were already out of ammo as well. Or crapped out. Either meant the same thing. They were screwed.
Just then the garage door blew outwards as a mech rolled through it. It smushed the scantids ahead of it like paste.
Selene had a clear view of it from her position. The thing slowed to a stop and stood up from it's crouched position.
It was spray painted with hot-pink in places. Skulls and hearts. And the words 'Big Bertha' were written across the cockpits window.
It's chassis was roughly humanoid, if a bit bulky and disproportionate. Black metal with a hexagonal pattern made up most of it's exoskeleton.
Silvery pipes and black wire could be seen between the joints with every subtle movement.
It's forearms were chainguns.
"Surprise!" Betty announced over their radios.
"Betty! You big beautiful bitch! You were holding out on us!" Luan spoke back into her radio with glee.
"Haha! She's not exactly street legal!"
The mech opened fire on the swarm that had been running around it. The chainguns gave out a blue muzzle flair. It tossed up clumps of dirt where ever it hit regardless if it hit Zykra or not. Chunks off them flew up into the air as Betty carved a line ahead of her. The torso spun impossibly in a 360 degree circle.
It made their contributions feel... Insignificant.
Scantid leapt onto the chassis and began to dogpile the mech. But their bites and claws weren't doing anything it seemed. They raked harmlessly off the shiny black armor.
Betty took off into a run. Each heavy step sending up a plum of dust. The mech crunched up like a pill-bug and rolled forward, crushing anything that clung to it.
Then it stood up again and fired.
Hope began to flutter up in Selene's chest. She could feel it in the air around the saloon. Could they actually survive this?
The flock of zykra flying around the Leviathan in the sky took notice and dove downwards. They dropped out of the sky at breakneck speeds, then just before they hit the ground—their wings went straight. They caught the air and flew toward the mech. Several blurs in formation.
Tails unfurled from their undercarriage. Scorpion-like tails tipped with a barb.
Betty noticed and began to fire. Holes ripped through the wings of a few of them and they fell down. And at their momentum they bounced along the ground like car wrecks. Plowing through the Zykra's ground forces.
But the rest continued their path and green beams of acid emitted from their tails barbs like napalm thrower's. Ropes of steaming green acid covered the mech and began to sizzle.
Sparks flew off the mechs many joints and it shook.
The flying Zykra flapped up into the sky to prepare to make another pass.
"Shit!" Betty's voice called out over the radio; "All my systems are red! I can't take another hit like that!"
"Get back to the saloon!" Luan ordered. There was a moment of quiet then. The Zykra horde was thinned out, a few of the flyers remained and sunlight shone into the saloon from many holes.
"I got a better idea... You boys give 'em hell, you hear?" Betty said, surprisingly cheerful.
The mech sprinted towards the wall of flame—chased by the swarm. It rolled through the flames and the flying Zykra dove and flew through the flames after her.
Another explosion sounded then. This time it was directed horizontally outwards around the mechs position rather than vertically like the laz-gas canisters.
The wall of flames parted down the center for a moment from the force—revealing another cyan explosion. Which swallowed the flyers and many of the pursuing Zykra. Black shrapnel flew out shredding Zykra for dozens of yards.
"Fuck!" Luan said. Clipping her radio to her belt.
The Zykra turned their attention on the colony once more and charged. With a renewed vigor. Betty pissed them off. But the feeling was mutual.
A scantid jumped against the shuttered window near the door and clawed at it. But this time Raymond was there with his shotgun and shot it through the wall. The top half of it's body turned to purple mist and the lower half fell to the ground, twitching sporadically before going still.
Numerous instances of violence like this happened then. All around the saloon. The colonist had grown invigored by Betty's act of defiance. They were going to win.
The floor in the middle of the saloon began to groan, and sink down in the middle. Bolts popped out and the panels busted apart revealing the beams below. They were melted away at the joints and began to fall into a hole in the floor at the center of the lobby.
Many panels fell into the black abyss below.
"Everyone away from the middle!" Selene said, but it was too late.
A few colonists slid down the slanted floor panels and fell into the abyss. Their screams were cut short as they hit the ground. Probably a mile down.
Brett began to slid too, but he reached out and Cob clasped his hand. Pulling him to the edge of the room. Anyone on the edge was safe, and thankfully that's where most of them were.
"Thowing a chemlight!" Darude said and pulled a light stick from his belt. He bent it in half which activated it, causing it to glow a vibrant red. He tossed it into the hole.
It fell. And fell... Illuminating the dirt rim as it did.
It bounced off the form of some fleshy worm creature two meters round. Tentacles held it firmly to the tunnels walls. Their collective breaths hitched at the sight.
Many of it's tentacles launched forward an incredible speed and distance.
Everyone flinched backwards from the hole instinctively. Selene shielded her face as a tentacle lashed across her palm—leaving a nasty gnash.
The tentacles turned the lobby into a blender. A dozen of them whipped around the room wildly.
A colonist was slashed across the stomach.
They cried out and fell back, clutching their insides as they did. They were dragged back from the hole by others.
Cob deflected a tentacle with the butt of his rifle, and Luan began slashing back with the machete she kept on her back.
A scantid began chewing through the wall.
"We don't have time for this!" Luan cried.
"Jason!" Raymond called out to across the hole. To the colonist who was hiding behind a table that's been flipped over to face the hole. "Help me!" he shouted.
After a worried shared glance the two leaned over the edge and began firing their shotguns.
"What's going on down there!?" Cass's voice called from the radio. His defense was all that was keeping them safe from the Zykra outside at this point.
There was a deep guttural moan as the tentacles went limp and flopped against the floor of the saloon. Then they slid down into the hole.
"Good work! You two keep an eye on it if another one comes!" Luan nodded to Raymond and Jason.
Then she spoke into her radio; "We're fine, just had a bit of a tunneler problem, but it's been dealt with!"
They turned their attention back to the saloons exterior. Some scantids had built up and were clawing away. Leaving larger open holes in their defenses.
A head poked through and Selene stabbed it with her kukri.
Once it fell back she saw something in the distance charging at them. It was a bug the size of an elephant. A thick quadruped with mandibles that hung low and reached forward like a pair of arms. Lined with rows of teeth the size of her legs.
"Brace!" Selene called out.
It tore through the saloon doors destroying the wall in one move.
Luckily it fell headfirst down the tunnel. But now their defenses were mostly gone. The ceiling bowed downwards towards the hole and began to crack open similar to how the floor had.
"Cass, get your people back!" Luan shouted into her radio.
Just before the ceiling split open. A few colonists fell through bouncing off the rim of the lower floor hole before disappearing into it. Their screams were haunting.
Selene looked up through the ceiling to see many terrified colonists looking back at her. A kid about Camdens age was just starring numbly, a trail of blood down the side of his face.
"Help!" a colonist on the lower floor shouted from behind her.
She turned to see the colonist who'd been cut across the belly now standing. His eyes were pupilless, sickly yellow and bloodshot. Strands of the flesh from his wound were now standing up and moving about like feelers. And his skin was hardening into chitin. He was holding a woman into the air as his transformation occurred before their eyes.
His head twitched to the side again and again as a singular mandible grew from his cheek. His leg snapped to the side as his calve burst in half, revealing a new joint. Barbs of chitin began to poke through his skin.
"Aaah!" the woman screamed in horror.
"Hey!" Raymond said. The thing looked over it's shoulder at him.
'BOOM!'
It's head disappeared at the shoulders, then it dropped the woman. Raymond kicked it into the hole.
"What the fuck was that... What the fuck was that!?" Cob shouted out, taking a moment to glance at each of their faces.
Luan was staring into the hole.
"They... Infected one of us. Turned us into one of them... W-who else!?" she leveraged her rifle towards the colonists. "Who else was cut by the tentacles!?"
Selene hide her own gnash beneath where she held her carbine.
"Sarge..." Darude said.
They looked to him to see tiny tendrils growing from a cut on his cheek. His eye on that side had turned pupilless and began to yellow.
"Kill me..." he said, his voice beginning to echo as if numerous voices were layered on top.
Cob pulled out his sidearm and blew his head off.
"FUCK!" he shouted then. "If anyone is infected, take care of it your damn self!" he said before turning back to a wall where a scantid had leapt and started to claw.
No one had any time to mourn Darude. The new opening that the behemoth Zykra had created was attracting scantid by the bushel full.
'Click, click'
The light on the side of Selene's mag turned red. Empty... Her last one.
She made a 'tssk' sound and threw it down. Then pulled out her sidearm in one hand and her kukri dagger in the other.
If she was going to die and turn into one of those things—she was going to make her final moments matter.
She blasted the top of a scantids head who'd appeared in the buildings massive new entrance, then jumped across the floors gap before slicing off another's scantids mandible. It cried out in pain. She kicked it into the hole complacently as she turned to face the Zykra outside the saloon.
She fought her way out, dodging munloc spurs and scantid claws.
"Selene! Get back!" Luan shouted.
'No.' Selene thought. 'No more. None of us will die because of them.'
Time seemed to slow for her as her heart thundered. Her fury reached it's apex as she rolled beneath a Munlocs slash with their long scythe-shaped claw.
Another one of those elephant-sized Zykra were charging towards her again. It barreled through the mote of Zykra corpses that surrounded the saloon.
"STOP!" she called.
It skidded across the dirt, it's forelimbs burying slightly into the dirt and sand. It's momentum was too much and so it flipped to the side and began to roll and tumble through the Zykra ahead of it. A munloc was pushed to the ground and it's head popped like a grape.
It slowed to a stop ahead of Selene.
"Die." she said, and pressed the muzzle of her gun to it's eye and fired. It flinched and went still.
Her fury radiated from her like the deserts heat waves to the Zykra. They hesitated and snapped at her from a distance. They were frightened.
Luan and Cob covered her from the sides. Firing on the remaining Zykra.
"..They're-they're retreating! Push!" Luan ordered.
The giant shadow of the leviathan in the sky shrank as it faded into the upper atmosphere, and many of the Zykra were fleeing back to the distant crags and tunnels beyond the sand fields.
Selene barreled through the Zykra who remained to cover their retreat. Her enhancements made her fast. Not quite fast enough to chase a scantid who was running away full speed, but fast enough to cut through any that remained.
She leapt onto a munloc and buried her kukri to the hilt on it's forehead. She flipped over it and jumped onto a scantid—crushing it beneath her boot. She felt it's warm flesh squish around her leg. Then flung it at another scantid who leapt at her, smacking into it mid air.
She kept pursuing. She was a good twenty yards from the saloon now. She'd go into their burrows. Kill them there.
"Selene!" Luan shouted, grabbing her wrist.
"WHAT!?" she shouted, whipping around to face her. Being met with the sympathetic gold eyes of her sergeant. Feelings of worry and affection radiating from her. It was like being doused with a bucket of cold water. She really killed Selene's vibe.
"They're retreating. There's no reason to chase them now. The DF will hunt the rest down. We survived."
The other surviving members of zeta unit were descending down from where the landing crafts were parked. Heading towards them.
Selene removed her helmet and brushed her bangs back. They were slick with sweat now. Then she hesitated and looked at her slashed palm.
It was healed.