Karp - Spartan One 024

The service tunnel shuddered beneath Orion’s boots as he took the survivors down a less trafficked area of the colony. 

Dust sifted from the ceiling upon every footfall. Somewhere ahead, the atmosphere processor’s great machinery churned with a grinding pulse. Red emergency lights washed the narrow passage, and it was clear that they were still being hunted. 

“The manual controls to the atmospheric processor are in the primary gallery. I can initiate a containment failure there.” Bishop emotionlessly supplied. 

Orion temporarily ignored the clanker, and observed his remaining forces. 

Ripley kept Newt close at her side. Vasquez had traded her empty Smartgun for a rifle. Hicks checked the tracker, then the dark overhead grilles. Whilst the surviving Spartans held the passage in a compact wedge, with the Sergeant remaining vigilant at the rear. 

As for Johnson? He was sore, but the bleeding had stopped. The Umbrella Pharmaceuticals injector had done its work fast. A thick, dark scab covered the tear in his shoulder, and the skin around it had already begun to close. What he received wasn't as good as that life saving miracle drug exclusive to executives that Harper had gifted Orion before. However, during their brief touchdown on Troy, the spook had pulled some strings, and each member of the squad had an injector on hand that could heal minor cuts completely, and even effect serious wounds like what had happened to Johnson. 

“Shoulder holding up okay, Private?” Orion asked.

“Better than it has any right to. Hurts like a round of bloody knuckles after church.” Johnson remarked offhandedly. 

Orion rapidly blinked, unable to process the correlation. Just what kind of backstory did this kid have?! 

During that thought, a scrape sounded above them. Orion raised a fist, and everyone paused their steps. A facehugger dropped from a vent and hit the deck between Hicks and Vasquez. It sprang for Hicks’s throat. Orion caught it in a blue-white Cryoblast field. The creature stiffened in midair, and then was stomped on by the Latina tomboy, shattering it like a crushed popsicle. 

“She's ice cold~ Just how I like them.” Johnson joked, then hissed when Vasquez poked him in the scab. 

“Careful, blue, I like to play rough.” Vasquez chirped back. 

Although it was clear to Orion that the young woman was unnerved, and was using the banter to keep cool. He could relate. The first time he worked a hospital job, he had used humor to keep his mind occupied. More movement rippled through the vents, and he couldn't remain stalled here forever. 

Moving towards an access hatch, the rest of the squad tensed up. On the other side was the unknown. With how these things were learning to hunt them, who knew if they were waiting motionlessly on the other side?! 

Of course, Orion wasn't so tense, as he was confident in his esp. Pulling down on a lever, he utilized his enhanced strength to open the large door in one go. Slamming it open, he strode forth with great confidence, intent on increasing the group's morale. Losing the Colonial Marines had been expected, but to the other Spartans, perhaps they had thought themselves invincible after so many suicidal missions. But now, death had disillusioned them. 

The corridor they found themselves in transformed into a 3-story tall, open area. It was full of catwalks, open-topped elevators, and all sorts of sci-fi machinery. Orion couldn't make heads or tails of any of it, but that's why they brought an android along. 

‘Once Cortana is complete, I'll have to get Halsey implant her into a synthetic body.’ Orion mused to himself. 

Meanwhile, Bishop reached the control station and jacked himself in. “The core safeguards have been disabled remotely. I can still force a local overload.”

“Do it.” Orion immediately replied. 

Soon after, three Xenomorphs dropped from the overhead girders. The Spartans fired in disciplined bursts. One alien folded before it touched the catwalk. Another struck the railing, claws scraping sparks as it tried to haul itself up. Johnson put a shotgun round through its open mouth. The recoil rocked his healing shoulder; he grunted, reset his grip, and fired again when a fourth creature lunged from behind a column. 

Vasquez and Hicks covered Bishop, shooting automatic rounds from their rifles without wasting any ammunition. Ripley pulled Newt behind a console as two facehuggers skittered through the catwalk. Orion thrust out his hand in response. A [Warp] field snapped around the first and crushed it against the wall. The second leaped. Ripley shot it out of the air.

Bishop’s fingers moved over the controls. “Manual interlocks engaged. It will take some time to crack the code.” 

“Then we hold the room.” Orion shouted. 

“Damn, damn, damn, I hate escort quests!” Johnson growled in impotent rage. 

The Xenomorphs came in waves, whilst the Spartans took the highground, positioning away from any vents or grates. Using mobility & obstacles, they successfully kited a few aliens using both distance & mobility to their advantage. Xenomorphs were fast, but the robotic leg enhancements that came standard with ODST armor meant they could sprint up to 40mph in a pinch. Considering a Xenomorph could move between 25 and 60mph depending on how advanced it was, these mechanical legs were great for creating space. 

Meanwhile, Hicks and Vasquez covered the control station. Johnson stayed beside Ripley and Newt, firing only when a target cleared the machinery. Orion caught one alien with a pair of heavy sniper rounds, making it vanish in a spray of blood. 

Under Bishop's ministrations, the atmospheric processor began to groan. “Containment failure confirmed, core temperature is rising.”

Seconds later, a prerecorded alarm boomed through the processor and out across the colony:

“Warning. Atmosphere processor core meltdown initiated. Catastrophic facility destruction is imminent. Evacuate immediately. Core breach in FIVE MINUTES.”

The announcement repeated, calm and unchanged while the machinery below them began to shake and shudder. 

“Five minutes.” Hicks said in disbelief. 

“Four minutes and forty seconds.” Bishop corrected. “With your enhanced mechanical legworks, I estimate it shall take us 2 minutes, thirty eight seconds to arrive at the hangar. 

“Run.” Orion ordered, shooting a Xenomorph dead, and then ignoring the rest as he plunged forward, following a new route on his GPS. 

Following his lead, the rest of the squad desperately moved at a rapid pace. 

The route back cut through maintenance corridors where the alarms echoed unceasingly. Facehuggers flooded from floor grates and ceiling vents on all sides, seemingly in an unending swarm. Orion spammed [Warp] & [Cryoblast] alternatingly, but they truly were endless. The only consolation was, that the soldiers of Terra were faster than the creepy little things, that their boots could stomp on them if need be! 

A Xenomorph dropped in front of them and skidded across the floor. Hicks fired twice. The creature jerked, recovered, and charged. Orion hit it with a [Warp] burst that hurled it into a sealed hatch hard enough to buckle the frame.

“Don’t stop!” He shouted.

They crossed the habitation junction at a sprint. Newt nearly fell out of Ripley’s grasp as a clawed hand just missed. Out of desperation, Ripley pressed an emergency button, and watched less than a foot apart as the door slid down, cutting the Xenomorph in two. 

“Ripley!” Newt cried out in dismay as the front half of the dying, bleeding creature reached out, painfully gripping her ankle. 

Newt jumped down and stabbed her knife into the alien's wrist. Although the metal soon melted, and the cut shallow, the already dying Xenomorph was truly on its last ‘leg’ and had its muscles spasm, involuntarily releasing the Warrant Officer. 

“Newt, you were very brave…but we can't fall behind.” Ripley urged, and picked her up, fearful that everyone else would leave them behind. Because in their eagerness to escape, the squad was moving at a breakneck speed. 

“CORE MELTDOWN THREE MINUTES.” 

During their desperate march forward, hope sprang in everyone's hearts as they finally saw the hangar doors up ahead.

Orion expected the line of Mobile Infantrymen they had left there: two hundred troopers, rifles braced behind cargo barricades, covering the transport. 

Instead, the hangar barely had a dozen friendly lifeforms inside. 

The doors had been forced open, and smoke rolled through the gap. Spent magazines and abandoned rifles covered the deck. Bodies lay between overturned supply crates and the landing struts of the dropships. A torn banner from the Mobile Infantry’s landing force clung to a railing, a decapitated bloody arm held it in place, yet the body was missing. 

Inside this macabre den of the dead were ten brave soldiers who refused to give in. Amongst them was a protagonist Orion knew all too well. 

Johnny Rico was at the center of their makeshift position, firing short bursts to keep a knot of Xenomorphs away from the survivors. His armor was scorched and blackened, evidence that he had gotten up close & personal with the acid bloods. One of his troopers dragged an injured comrade behind a fuel cart while another reloaded with shaking hands.

At the far end of the hangar, Captain Jack Harper fought the Queen.

The ONI officer’s coat was gone. One sleeve hung in ribbons, and blood ran from a cut above his eye. His blue bionic eyes flashed with intelligence as a psychic purple light blazed around his hands. He drove a force wave of energy into the Queen’s chest, sending the enormous creature skidding backward across the deck.

The Queen answered with a psychic blow of her own. Invisible pressure buckled the air around Harper’s psy field, cracked it, and threw him sideways into a shuttle’s landing gear. He hit it hard, making something snap. Yet the unenhanced Human knew he couldn't   remain still and rolled just as the Queen’s tail swept across the deck. He caught it in a psy-field just short of his ribs. The tail trembled between them, its barbed tip inches from his unarmored chest. 

Rico’s rifle fire kept the Queen’s smaller kin from reaching Harper. His troopers fired until their weapons clicked dry, then pulled wounded men behind cover and grabbed whatever rifles still had ammunition.

“Harper!” Rico shouted. “We can’t hold out much longer!”

“Not yet, son. Believe in him.” Harper calmly replied between unleashing the raw psychic potential of his mind. 

The Queen wrenched her tail free, making Harper’s field collapse. She surged toward him, jaws opening.

“Spartans, clear Rico’s flank!” Orion called out, arriving on the scene. “Vasquez, Hicks, keep the Xenos off the survivors. Johnson, get Newt to the dropship with Ripley,  and keep your eyes on the android.”

Then, as the Queen lifted her tail again, Orion shot out a [Cryoblast], careful not to catch the spook in his attack. 

The Queen lunged forward, jumping over Harper, clearly having a premonition or sixth sense regarding Orion’s frosty blast. 

Just when she had cleared the Captain & was in the clear, ‘stuck' midair with nowhere to dodge, he unleashed [Warp]. 

“I've got you, you sonnuvabitch.” Orion lethally smirked. 

Right when she was going to be flattened like everyone else, she tore free from the mass effect field! An intangible aura coated her form, protecting her from other psychic powers. 

As she landed, she tossed a heavy crate full of tools at Orion, forcing him to dive beneath it, then snapped her tail toward Harper. The Captain caught a glancing blow, and whilst she stood over him in triumph, the ONI spy was calm as can be. Bleeding from a dozen lacerations, sporting a broken rib & a sprained ankle, Harper began to painfully, wheezingly chuckle. 

“Humanity will never lose.” He said, accepting his fate. “Orion go.” 

“CORE MELTDOWN IMMINENT: ONE MINUTE.” 

Orion began unloading all his weapons at the Queen. Sniper rifle bullets thick as a man's forearm, grenades by the bucketfull, and even a pair of rocket launcher blasts. Each hit drove her back a step. The psy-shield coating her form dimmed more and more until it was transparent. However, all of his weapons had run dry, and time was running out! Shooting one last [Warp] off on a hail mary effort, he finally popped that shield, but the bitch was still alive!

Emerging from the field of unreality, the Queen was a mangled mess. Missing a leg, and covered in wounds that looked like someone had removed a chunk a block at a time, the massive pitch black alien broodmother crawl-lunged at Orion at a very respectable speed. 

‘Is this it?’

As he had this thought, he heard rapid movement from behind. 

‘Did the line break, and the Xenomorphs are rushing from all sides?! Damnit. I'm not going down like a bitch!’ 

Quick reloading his magnum, Orion pumped every last round into the Queen. Twelve slugs of HE .50 cal Human Democracy flashed into the xeno-scum's wounds, exploding inside, and showering the deck with acid green blood. 

Hissing & roaring, she slowed down, but the momentum of her big body was still approaching. Tail whipping around like a clothes line in a stiff breeze, the spear narrowly missed his chest, and just as he was about to attempt to jump away, something startling happened. 

Rico had at some point had made his way over, and much like Johnson, appeared as something of a blank to the psychic senses of others. It wasn't until he was very close that the Queen sensed this threat. But by then, it was too late. 

Out of ammo, and not too keen on tackling the Queen head on, Rico had to think, and fast! Spotting a solution to his dilemma, he ran forward with all his might. Releasing a switch on a console, Rico activated a claw that dropped a heavy load. 

Just as the alien had stood above Harper in her moment of triumph, a series of cargo crates dropped right on top of her, snooshing her dead. 

“That's how we do things in Buenos Aires.” 

Bitch.