***
“How the hell can they see us!?” Raist shouted over the burst of gunfire. Another Plaz-Shot shell from Philira’s weapon exploded the creature apart as the remnants of the super heated bolts tore through parts of the forest.
The silence of the forest during the day was a complete juxtaposition of the chaos of night with its endless howls, shadows, and attacks.
One beast that had finished goring another swung its huge tusked head towards the two of them and started charging. Raist lifted the Limiter rifle to it, and the soft ‘zzzt’ sound hid the fact that hundreds of sonic rounds were electro-magnetically being discharged out of the rifle. The spray tore into the creature, rendering its millions of generations of evolution for naught as the rounds blasted through it and the trees beyond. It skidded to a stop not far from the two of them, and was rapidly being cut down by the strange ground under it.
“They have to be sensing us some other way…thermally possibly,” Philira suggested as she rapidly rotated her head around every side of them, pumping a round into things Raist didn’t even know was there, only occasionally seeing the burning creature falling out of a tree or fall over from behind an alcove. She danced in front of him always making sure to stay between him and any danger.
‘DADADA!’ A loud, fast retort of a Close-Support-Weapon came from somewhere fairly close to them; they knew they were closing in on the other member of their group. But every step was a battle. Even the ‘grass’ had become even more alive, slicing back and forth greedily for something to fall onto the cleaving surface.
“How close?!” he shouted to Philira.
“Not far.” She quickly bent down, her hands rapidly flying over the Scatter gun as she threw the empty energy clip to the ground, reaching to her hip for another, slapping it in and triggering the toggle. The green neon lights on the transductor rails came back on as she jumped backwards shooting a creature that had closed on her quickly in that short time.
“It has to be thermally!” Raist shouted. It made sense why everything was out at night: heat would show up better. Unfortunately, their advanced weaponry probably was a beacon in the night with the hot barrels and explosive plasma blasts.
“Get down.” Philira dashed backwards, tackling Raist to the ground. In front of them the huge tree was sawed through by a barrage of rounds as it swayed in one direction, its structure cracking. Its mass swayed the other direction as its crystal structure started breaking, falling towards them as the base exploded apart. The razor branches came crashing down around them. They scrambled to the feet, pausing for only a moment as the tree grew closer and closer. They escaped being crushed, but not all damage as the sharp crystals shot-gunning around them as the branches of the tree fell everywhere.
“Gaaaa…!” Raist let out a groan as he felt something slip right through his right side, passing through the armor like nothing. The tree had come to a crashing end and Philira jumped up. Raist was slower and she grabbed his wrist and hauled him up.
He put a glove on his right side and it came back red; he had been sliced through by one of the branches of the tree that had crashed around them.
“Shit, I’m hit.” Philira looked at him with her cold eyes, trying to decide what she was going to do.
“I’m going for whoever that is. We need to unify our force immediately,” she started leaving.
Raist grabbed her wrist, pulling her back. “No, I am going with you. This is nothing.” A warning in the corner of his eye warned that the expected healing would reduce his total combat healing potential down to 73%.
The first few steps were painful until the chemicals were sufficiently pumping through him and he forgot about the pain completely, focused on gunning down the further away creatures while Philira focused on those close ones.
‘Dadada!’ Shots boomed across the forest, drowning out anything else.
“Ziko!” Philira tried yelling between the fire. “Ziko!”
“Holy shit, Philira!? Raist!?” The three of them ran closer to each other, but the reunion was short-lived as the battle was far from over. Ziko had racked up a large amount of kills as the forest had been cut through here. Even the razor grass had been blown away, leaving much safer soft rock under them.
Raist took a prone position in the clearing Ziko had cut through the forest with his CSW, while the two close range fighters fought back-to-back against the horde, standing right above Raist.
He was taking careful burst shots, squeezing a few rounds, gauging whether the creature needed more rounds to die, then either delivering, or moving on to a new target. The counter on the side of the rifle shot down rapidly.
He squeezed the final 30 into some creature hopping between the trees and as he rolled to his side to put a new magazine of 1,000 in. The magazine was in, and his hand was going to the ‘accept’ toggle when he saw a huge bird diving out of the sky right at their group.
“Up…!” he started, but it was too slow. Its mouth peeled open to reveal a tri-maw opening ready to consume one of them. The creature was closing on them when its large neck was separated from its body, liquid exploding out the backside as its head crashed to the ground not far from them, its body gliding into another dead creature.
“What?”
Raist toggled the rifle back on, and saw a line of white tracers clearing the sides of part of the trees. He knew that weapon anywhere: it was Leio’s Sweep Rifle, but she was aiming horizontally. What killed the bird?
“It’s Agrest and Leio!” Philira shouted, another of her clips dumping out of her Plaz-Shot and hitting Raist in the head as she reloaded with robotic speed.
He didn’t need to tell the two he was with to not hit them, and he hoped the other two knew they were here.
Beasts continued advancing on them until all of them mysteriously stopped, turning and running as fast as they could. Death had not scared them before, so it was definitely something different.
“Phi?” Raist asked.
“Something’s coming…top of the trees.”
The strange silence had returned to the forest, though a few wounded screams still pierced the night. Raist hated killing animals, and hearing their moans as they were sawed apart by the grass hurt his soul.
“Drone!” Philira shouted, grabbing Ziko and diving to the shot-up ground. Above them a large floating disk hovered over the scene of their battle.
“Shoot it! Shoot it!” she yelled.
Raist was the only one of the three with the longer-range weapon and brought it to bear, and though he was giving it rapid bursts of ten sonic rounds that were undoubtedly flying straight through its hull, its size would not easily be brought down. The two he was with were each rapidly reaching for their longer-range weapons as a firing arm extended above the disk.
A loud whoosh reached them long after the rocket did, rending the ground apart as they were flung through the air. Raist crashed into one of the trees between two of the razor edges and escaped serious damage. He switched his weapon to packet mode, morphing the small rounds into larger slugs designed to pierce before blowing apart inside their target.
He aimed at the disk that was readying another rocket and started shooting, catching the white tracers of the Sweep Rifle also on target of the drone. The thin, fast spray of the Sweep rounds, and Raist’s exploding slugs were pounding away at the machine. It tilted to one side for a moment, but righted itself. Raist was sure it was going to fire again until its core exploded and it crashed somewhere into the trees above them.
He was breathing hard, his mind in combat mode, looking around everywhere for the next thing to kill, and with nothing moving for a long time he gradually began to come off his combat high.
Something was hurting his core and looking down, he saw a mat of the spiky grass imbedded into his chest after being propelled by the rocket. He pulled each out; feeling the distant pain of sucking out the semi-vacuum each projectile had created in his body.
&n
bsp; He pushed himself out of the slight cove of his tree and staggered to the clearing. “Who is alive?”
“We are, but Ziko is hurt,” Philira’s voice had an edge he never heard before in it.
Raist ran over and saw Ziko slumped next to a tree almost exactly like where Raist had been blasted. The difference was he was moved slightly to one side, right into its sharp edge.
“Zi…ko?” Raist asked nervously.
“Yo, I’m alive, but shit…these plants are even worse than the creatures.”
Ziko’s words made it seem like he was okay, but Raist realized Ziko’s left arm had been cut cleanly off right by the shoulder. His nanites and suit sealed what was left of the arm to prevent any bleed off; it actually looked like he had a stub arm his entire life with how clean it was. The fact he could talk clearly was a result of their advanced training, and very tailored drugs to block pain and maintain combat efficiency.
“Your ar—” Philira started, Raist grabbed her and shook his head no.
“It’s okay…I know. I can get a bio amp replacement if we make it through this.”
“Hey, you guys over there?” Agrest’s voice shouted. “Get over here now!”
Ziko pushed himself off the tree, they all grimly watched for a moment as what remained of his arm was quickly chopped and consumed by the blade grass and its acid once the suit’s structural integrity had been broken down. “I hate this fucking place.” It seemed to be an understatement from Ziko as he watched his arm get eaten by the grass.
The three walked over to Agrest, his huge sniper rifle leaning against the tree. Raist realized it was Agrest’s shot that killed the diving bird before it killed them.
Leio was sitting on the ground, her knee looked crushed, and everything under it was gone. Her other ankle was broken, bent back up to her calf.
“What are you going to do with me?” she asked, looking straight at Raist. He felt his stomach drop a bit with the implication of one entirely real option he could take to save the rest of the group time. This was a woman he was intimate with, yet the mission was now at risk of being compromised due to both her legs.
“What happened?” he asked, trying to buy some time to think this through.
“The ankle was from the fall, and this,” she pointed to her missing calf and the crushed knee, “was from that bastard over there.” She indicated a large dead beast. “Heh, damn. I’ve never seen such a hostile fauna before.” She leaned back while they crouched down to inspect her damage. Even with her mutilated legs, she still was amazingly lusty, along with a slight independence still obvious in her countenance. “No wonder they put their fortress here. Secure the skies, and let the planet take care of the ground.”
Raist could feel everyone waiting for him to decide what they were going to do with the obvious change in plans the injuries and the planet presented to them. Maybe they were especially waiting to wonder if he would leave Leio, or kill her. The latter might be humane.
He stood up. “We are not leaving anyone behind.” He looked to Ziko before continuing, “I am taking you off Assault-role. It’s too dangerous to not have a combat-able person not firing, so because of your injury you are the one who will carry her. Leio, you are staying on the Sweep. The rest of us are changing our weapon configuration. Agrest, switch to your Silvershot for faster shots, I’m moving down to the ‘Saw and Leio you go with whatever you can shoot while still staying on Ziko. Z, you can either go weaponless or take a one-hander.”
“And me?” Philira asked.
“Stay with the Plaz-Shot. It is obvious to us now most of the fighting is going to be close range. I need Agrest and Leio to be on drone watch out. We are not that far in raw distance to our target so we are going to press on. I do not think resting is a wise decision.”
He walked over to Leio. “You know what we have to do right?” he asked.
“Of course, get it done already.”
They dragged her to an area devoid of the grass where it looked shot up from the battle. He handed her the handle of the SSAW with its softer grip, pressing it towards her mouth, she opened it and bit down on the handle.
“Hold her,” he commanded. Philira and Agrest knelt down and held her body and arms down.
“Heh,” she muttered out of her jammed mouth, turning her head towards the sky. “Never…get used…to this.”
Raist knelt down by her foot, grabbing the misplaced foot, and, without waiting for any okay or any delay, pulled downward and backward. Immediately her leg started flailing while the other two struggled to hold her down, letting out a painful ‘guuuaaaaa!’ through her gritting mouth. It was clear she was trying to maintain control despite the massive pain and compared to a scream most would have let out, her moan was fairly benign.
He continued pulling back until it was straight, and pushed it softly back into the semi-correct position. He held her foot still for a moment while she stopped moving; she spit the gun handle out. “I’m okay…”
All three of them let her go as she sat there. “Should be walk-able in about a cycle. I feel my nanites reforming the bone already.” It was quiet for a moment before she continued. “Well, stop staring at me already! As much as you guys like to do it, let’s get this going.” He reluctantly managed a smile at her pride hiding her shame of slowing the group down.
She lifted an arm up and Raist grabbed it, hauling her body over his shoulder then transferring her to Ziko where she sat on his shoulders. She used her one leg to wrap under his shoulder to his back and was using her hips to hold onto his head.
“Not pretty, but it will work. Z, can you still function?” Raist asked, handing him a pistol for his one remaining arm. The chemicals in them and their advanced nanites could keep them functioning at conditions worse than this, but still wanted to make sure.
“You mean with that hot ass wild woman riding him all night?” Agrest joked.
“I think his head is facing the wrong direction for anything wild,” Leio said, giving Ziko a tight squeeze.
“Damn Raist, no wonder you like her. I can tell she’s probably into bondage,” Agrest responded.
“Don’t make me squeeze his head off.”
“Why would you punish me for your two perverted minds?” Ziko said while he practiced moving around a bit with Leio on his shoulders.
“I think he’d like that.” Agrest added, “Either getting his head squeezed off, or your ‘punishment’ that is.”
At least their spirits…and chemicals… were still high enough to joke. Raist looked at the Spreading Squad Assault Weapon he was holding in his hands, its neon blue lines pulsing an incredible power just waiting to be unleashed. He was practicing drawing his knife out of the SSAW Philira had hidden in it in the event of a surprise. Raist was glad their spirits were still good for now though. He knew how bad missions could get.