Hell On Kestrel-9

[APEX THREAT DETECTED!]

[Void Carapace Brood-Mother — Level 1 (Juvenile)]

[Note: Held at Level 1 by the Novice Buffer.]

[Estimated mass: 400 tonnes.]

[Recommendation: Leave… Leave now… Leave faster than that...]

'That thing is Level 1?!'

Leo's legs pumped against the wall like pistons, his freshly leveled body was the only thing keeping him from falling behind.

'Then what the hell is it going to look like when the Novice Buffer runs out?!'

BOOOOOM!

Far below, the Brood-Mother slammed its five-meter mouth into the bottom of the shaft.

The shockwave ripped up the walls like a whip crack. 

Every single one of them nearly lost their grip at once as Camila screamed and Jin-Ah's boot came loose as she hung there by one magnet for a horrible second before Harper grabbed her collar and slammed her back onto the wall.

"KEEP MOVING!" Leo roared. "DON'T STOP FOR ANYTHING!"

Below them in the pitch-black tube, a terrible chorus rose up… There were thousands of clicking teeth and scraping armor. 

…A whole living tide pouring into the shaft right behind their heels.

They were sprinting straight up a wall at full exertion with adrenaline flooding their blood, and every oxygen monitor in the squad flipped from green to flashing red at once.

[WARNING: Exertion at 280%!]

[Suit Oxygen: 00:18:40… and dropping three times faster than normal!]

"Eighteen minutes?!" Camila gasped. "We just had thirty-nine!"

[Panic burns air, Crew Unit: Camila… This unit did warn you… Several hours ago however nobody listens to this unit.]

"NOT NOW!"

SKRRRT!

Something fast came scrabbling up the wall beneath them. 

Leo looked down and saw a pale head rising out of the dark, five meters below his boots and closing.

"Harper! Below me!"

Harper flipped around on the wall without even breaking stride, hanging upside down by her magnets, and aimed straight past his legs.

"Eat it!"

THUMP-THUMP-THUMP!

Three rounds into the open mouth. 

The worm peeled off the wall and fell back into the dark, taking two more down with it like bowling pins.

[Harper: 8/15]

"Did I mention," Harper panted, flipping back upright, "that I hate this place?"

"The shaft's blocked!"

Chloe's voice cut through the ragged panting.

She was running near the front beside Sensei, her eyes glowing like twin rubies inside her visor. 

Her senses were reaching out through the metal walls, feeling every vibration far beyond the reach of their lights.

"Ten of them just burst out of the vents on Sub-Level 4! Right above us!" She pointed sharply at a diagonal service breach ten meters to the right. "Go in there! Sub-Level 5! It's quieter! We can take the service stairs up to the gantry!"

"Follow Chloe!" Leo barked. "RIGHT BREACH! NOW!"

One by one, they threw themselves sideways off the shaft wall and dove through the torn breach into the tilted corridor of Sub-Level 5.

…A split second later, a writhing knot of six worms erupted out of the wall vents above the exact spot they'd just left.

They hit the corridor floor running.

Their boots clacking frantically as there was total darkness except for their helmet beams and the floor tilted at fifteen degrees under their feet.

SKRRT-CLACK! SKRRT-CLACK!

Shapes dropped out of the ceiling trusses and the side vents straight into their path. 

Four Void Stalkers and two worms, driven into a blind frenzy now that the suppression field was gone.

"DON'T STOP!" Leo shouted, bringing his carbine up as he ran beside Harper. "SHOOT ON THE MOVE!"

THUMP! THUMP!

Ms. Tachibana didn't break stride.

Her silver halo flared white in the dark, painting outlines over every lunging monster before her light even touched them. 

She fired twice on the run. 

…One flechette straight through the eyes of a diving Stalker on the left wall. 

A second into the leg joints of another, sending it tumbling right under Chloe's feet.

[Aoi: 10/15]

Chloe fired three rounds point-blank into its face as it skidded past.

THUMP-THUMP-THUMP!

Then, without slowing down, she kicked upward with the heel of her boot.

CRACK!

She punted the two-hundred-kilo crab straight into a ceiling girder so hard its shell caved in.

[Chloe: 8/15]

"Nice!" Harper whooped, firing a burst into a Stalker clinging to the right-hand pipe.

THUMP-THUMP-THUMP!

It dropped.

[Harper: 5/15]

"Hey, did I mention I love you, Chloe?!... Because I love you!"

Chloe made a tiny embarrassed sound and kept running.

Behind them, a worm burst out of a ruptured steam pipe on the right wall and lunged straight at Jin-Ah and Elena in the middle of the column.

"DUCK LEFT!" Jin-Ah screamed, throwing herself to the floor with her empty rifle.

Camila spun and fired three rounds into the roof of its mouth.

THUMP-THUMP-THUMP!

[Camila: 9/15]

The beast flinched. Its head veered half a meter off course as it missed Jin-Ah completely...

And slammed its heavy armored side straight into Elena's shoulder as it whipped past.

"Ah—!"

The hit threw her sideways toward a broken pipe stub jutting out of the bulkhead that was aimed straight at her back.

CRACK… BZZZZZT… SHATTER!

Every cobalt line on Elena's suit flared blinding blue as her shield caught the impact against the broken pipe.

It shattered into a shower of dying sparks and bounced her forward onto her hands and knees.

[WARNING — Crew Unit: Elena]

[Kinetic Shield: 0/1 (BROKEN)]

"GET UP, STERLING!"

Leo grabbed the back of her harness as he ran past and hauled her bodily back onto her feet one-handed. 

With his other hand, he pointed his carbine back over his shoulder at the worm's exposed underside.

THUMP-THUMP-THUMP-THUMP-THUMP-THUMP-CLICK!

All six rounds... The worm thrashed and crashed against the wall behind them.

[Leo: 0/15]

"I'm up! Let go, I can run!" Elena panted.

Her face was pale and drenched in sweat inside her visor. 

The lines on her suit had gone dark and dead, just like Camila's and her hand was clenched white-knuckled around the Wasp but she ran.

They rounded a bend, and the corridor ahead was crawling.

There were three more Stalkers that were clinging to the walls and ceiling, stingers glowing white in the dark…

"Left wall high, right pipe, ceiling center!" Jin-Ah shouted. 

She didn't have a single bullet left, but her Level 3 eyes tracked all three at once, faster than anyone else's. "Ceiling's the fastest! It drops first!"

"Got it!" Harper fired at the ceiling.

THUMP-THUMP-THUMP!

It dropped dead before it could jump.

[Harper: 2/15]

THUMP!

Sensei took the left wall with a single shot.

[Aoi: 9/15]

The third one launched off the pipe straight at Camila.

She swung her gun up, too slow and the glowing stinger came at the dead lines on her suit where her shield used to be…

SHHK… KRA-BOOM!

A violet flash exploded in the air beside her.

Elena had thrown herself sideways and driven the Wasp straight into the creature's eyes mid-leap. 

The blade's charge went off inside its skull, and the blast threw the dead Stalker into the far wall in two pieces.

The seam along the blade flickered and went dark.

[Wasp: 0%]

Camila stared at her, wide-eyed and shaking and Elena stared back, just as wide-eyed and shaking.

"...Your hand was shaking earlier," Elena said finally, her voice cracking. "It was distracting… That's all."

"Elena..."

"RUN, MORALES!"

They ran.

[For the record, this unit saw that and this unit will be keeping that footage too.]

"SHUT UP!" Elena screamed at the ceiling.

'Seven people,' Leo thought as they pounded down the corridor, his own breath rasping in his ears. 'Seven people, eight minutes of air, and twenty-something bullets.'

'I brought them down here… I'm getting every single one of them back out!'

"I'm dry!" Leo called out, letting his empty carbine swing on its sling.

THUMP-THUMP-CLICK!

"Me too!" Harper yelled, firing her last two rounds into a Stalker dropping out of an overhead hatch. "That's it! Leo's dry, I'm dry, Jin's dry! Sensei's got nine, Camila's got nine, Chloe's got eight! That's twenty-six rounds! That's all we've got left!"

[Harper: 0/15]

"Thirty meters to the gantry!" Chloe called back.

She leaped up a buckled diagonal ramp and grabbed a jammed fire door at the top. 

With one violent yank, she tore it clean off its hinges and flung it aside, so the rest of them could pour through without slowing down.

"The window's right ahead!"

Behind them, the whole corridor floor was rolling like the deck of a ship in a storm. 

The walls groaned and bulged inward as the tide of worms and Stalkers surged up through the central shafts and filled every level beneath them with writhing armor and dripping acid.

Halfway up the stairwell, Jin-Ah stumbled.

Her legs just went out from under her. 

She'd been running on fumes and fear for an hour straight, and her body finally decided it was done. 

She hit the steps hard and slid back down two of them.

"Jin!"

Before anyone else could turn around, Chloe was there.

She scooped Jin-Ah up off the stairs with one arm under her knees and one behind her back, like she weighed nothing at all.

"I-I can walk!" Jin-Ah sputtered, mortified. "Put me down! This is undignified!"

"You can't," Chloe said simply, already running again. "And you're lighter than the door."

Jin-Ah opened her mouth to argue then she closed it, and very quietly hooked one arm around Chloe's neck.

"...Thank you," she muttered.

BOOOOM!

The whole stairwell lurched sideways.

Ms. Tachibana lost her footing and pitched toward the railing, and Leo caught her by the arm before she went over it. 

For a second they were face to face, close enough that he could see the sweat on her forehead and the fear she'd been hiding behind that calm voice all day.

"Thank you," she breathed.

"Don't mention it, Sensei… Just keep moving…"

She nodded and ran and below them, the floor of the stairwell split open.

CRRRRRACK!

A pale armored head the size of a car punched straight up through the steps they'd been standing on three seconds ago with black crystal teeth spinning and glowing like furnace coals.

…The Brood-Mother.

It had come up through the floor… It wasn't chasing them through the corridors, It was going through the station itself!

"IT'S IN THE WALLS!" Harper screamed. "IT'S GOING THROUGH THE WALLS!"

[Correction. It is going through the floors and the walls and anything else in its way… This unit strongly recommends not being in its way!]

"GO! GO! GO!"

They scrambled up the last flight with that thing grinding its way up through the metal behind them, the stairs buckling and folding under its weight as the whole structure groaning like it was about to come apart.

Camila was sobbing as she ran. 

Harper was swearing in a steady continuous stream and Elena wasn't making any sound at all, just running with her jaw clenched so hard it looked like it might crack.

At the top, the Brood-Mother's head slammed against the landing and got stuck.

Its armored bulk wedged sideways in the shattered stairwell which was too big to fit through the hole it had made… It thrashed and the metal screamed but it didn't come through.

…Not yet.

[Suit Oxygen: 00:08:12]

Eight minutes of air left.

They burst out of the stairwell onto the wide dark floor of the third-level gantry.

The exact same room they'd climbed into an hour ago.

Fifteen meters ahead across the open floor, framed against the black of space and the glittering stars, was the bent and jagged maintenance window.

…The way out.

"The window!" Camila gasped, her lungs burning. "Right there!"

They sprinted for it and Chloe reached it first.

She set Jin-Ah down gently on her feet, steadied her for half a second with one hand on her shoulder, and then vaulted onto the sill she'd bent with her own hands earlier as she turned around, ready to grab the others and throw them down to the surface, where the Wanderer-7 was parked seventy meters away.

Leo reached the sill right behind her. 

He grabbed the jagged edge, pulled himself up, and looked down at the grey crater where their ship was waiting.

The words died in his throat.

Down on the powdery regolith, eleven meters below the window...

The ground was already moving… They hadn't been the only ones looking for an exit…

Pouring out of a ruptured cooling vent near the base of the tower, halfway between them and the ship, came eight nine-meter worms.

Their pale bodies slid silently across the dust and straight toward the lowered cargo ramp of the Wanderer-7.

BOOM!

Behind them, deep inside the gantry, the heavy blast doors at the back of the room bulged outward with a deafening hit as the main swarm slammed into the steel from the other side.

BOOM!

"Leo..."

Harper skidded to a stop beside the sill and stared down at the worms sliding across the rock toward their open ramp.

"They're going for the ship!"

Leo stared down at them.

At the open ramp… At the ship that was the only home any of them had left in the entire universe… At the eight monsters sliding toward it, and the seventy meters of open rock in between…

They had eight minutes of air... Twenty-six bullets… No shields for Camila or Elena… A blind tide at their backs and a four-hundred-tonne nightmare stuck in the stairwell, chewing its way loose…

'Okay,' he thought, weirdly calm. 'Okay. Think.'

BOOM!

Behind them, the top hinge of the blast door cracked.

'Think faster.'