Chapter 2: The Ruins Are Alive

Doug's handgun fire whizzed through the air, missing the spherical object with his handicapped aim. Korofi's managed to ping a few shots off of it judging by the sparks that flew but they were glancing hits. It was off course, but not by much. Hitting a pile of fallen ceiling tiles, it bounced as if it was a beach ball.

Just a moment before it landed, a grenade was tossed towards its sender. The explosive force blew out windows and collapsing walls, kicking out a cloud of smoke but there was no time to marvel at the handiwork. The xeno-urchin bounced against the floor and began to whirl and buzz-whistle, spinning as its ascent stabilized before them. One GDW soldier hesitated for a moment before Jurgen cut his firing and started to yell.

He was a moment too late as the sphere exploded in a crack not into a shockwave but a spray of spines.

The soldier's hesitation proved fatal. Before he had hit the ground, four spines were embedded into their body. The reinforced glass of the visor was punctured as was their torso and gut. They made no sound as they slumped to the floor, joining three more similarly stabbed by its spiny projectiles.

Jurgen had gone prone but the sphere had not taken anyone else. Peeking up over the railing, he spotted movement and narrowed his eyes, his visor zooming in on one of the shapes.

A purplish white, arthropod like shape, bulky amost like a gorilla but segmented and multi-limbed like a far more primitive creature, with a smoking-barreled rifle-like weapon made of the same chitinous material as its body. He recognized the weapon first, then the blood-stained wounds across its body and its feature-less, mask-like face.

"Thought you'd get away huh?" He growled, audible over the coms as he swung his machine gun up and fired at the same hulking alien they had fought in the underground tunnels. It was not a short, controlled burst but a long, angry stream of tracer-ridden bullets. Walls and desks all but exploded, heavy duty rounds smashing and tearing them to cinders as the unintentional smoke-screen drowned whatever carnage ensued.

Something like a dry, echoing clatter like metal bouncing down a ventilation shaft sounded out. It was not entirely mechanical; enough of a soggy and twisting clearly living tone could be heard through the carnage. Another storm of ripping bee-swarm bullets but the fire was inaccurate and wild, missing the humans by wide margins and further perforating the walls behind them.

Deciding that they'd spent enough bullets, a second grenade flew, bounced, rolled, and exploded. Another earthy, rotten, and piercingly metallic howl shouted out as smoke and dust blew outwards. A few limbs lay on the ground, moist with purplish fluids with claw-blade digits twitching erratically. The room the second creature had been hiding in was all but collapsed but a long trail of blood leading inside was visible, continuing out to the side - down a long hallway where Jurgen, motioning for those still standing to follow him, could see their quarry retreating.

"Let's finish them off!" He shouted, firing a burst at the creatures - one running bipedally and another hunching onto it, spilling fluids into a thinning trail as rounds ripped down the hallway.

"Get away from the railings and take five of the remaining troopers with you. Rest of you, that bastard's paying with his head!"

The increasingly diminished number of soldiers was split; one group attempting to move Doug and Korofi to somewhere better obscured and easier to bottleneck threats. The others moved up with Jurgen as he motioned for Vlad to join him up front, spraying an angry bust of gunfire down the corridor at the shapes stumbling through a half-broken ventilation pipe fallen from the ceiling, the human corpse atop its tubular shape brushed aside as its metallic frame crunched over their frantic retreat.

The arthropod duo appeared to be heading through what appeared to be a lounge area of sorts visible through the blown-open ceiling and numerous holes along the walls. Its upper level could be seen half hanging and sloping downwards, the railing of its edges touching the floor as it leaned down as a giant unintentional ramp. That appeared to be where the aliens were heading towards. In spite of their wounds, the various limbs they still possessed extended slave-like and desperate, pulling and pushing them across the floor and the debris covering it. It was faster than any human could hobble but as Jurgen sprinted, ushering the rest to follow suite, it was clear that speed was not on the creatures' side.

The sloping pathway both of the aliens attempted to use to escape was probably something they could scale. It was a smooth and laminated wooden floor that normally would have been kept up by pillars, now scarred with rending trenches and blast-marks. Yet one alien was forced to shoulder the undoubtedly hefty weight of another. Both were wounded but by the time they had moved in position to attempt to scamper, the humans had chosen their targets.

The one that had tanked a grenade blast turned, looking over its houlder with its rifle in its hands but the humans had spread out and all settled on different parts of its body to target. The rattle of rifles and a machine gun synchronized to the jerky shudders of its body, dropping its ally onto the railing from the fallen floor. The very weapon it held soon became separated from its body along with its arm, once brased against its side and now uselessly clattered to the floor, purplish-green blood spewing from the stump as fingers twitched and the weapon buzzed.

Jurgen quickly shredded the arm past the carapace to what he presumed were bones. The once living creature fell to the ground a shredded, barely recognizable corpse. Meat twitched and little creatures within like finger-sized springtails and millipedes squirmed and skittered as the humans advanced.

One of them was not dead. The same one they had chased in the underground section from the beginning of their mission. The one who'd ran from the site of a civilian massacre. They were now was deprived of his laser-spewing rifle, a number of their limbs, huge chunks of the meat on their legs, and otherwise helpless.

Jurgen slung his machine gun and took out his pistol, pointing it at the monstrosity's head as the rest swept around the room. He motioned to Vlad.

"Get video footage of the corpse for later analysis. His friend might talk. Watch around for ambushes."

He then turned back to the hulking brute, now little more than a broken parody of whatever bestial, biomechanical might that had faced off against them hours ago.

"And you. Start talking or I'm going to do far worse than what you did to those civilians. Who are you, why are you here, and where are the rest of your people?"

Unlike his machine gun, pistol ammo was in plentiful supply.

---

"Fucking hell, that was just two of them." One of the GDW troopers, Jorge, cursed as he looked over the half-collapsed room and rubble barriers Korofi had moved them into. He could still see the bodies of his comrades freshly mutilated by the alien weaponry and while Doug seemed to be stabilized, the lack of an arm sent a glaring chill up his spine.

"Just imagine a whole battalion of those things. With those... walkers, christ, we came here for a security inspection, not to fight armageddon." He continued. The rubble his rifle's barrel sat on top of - a mixture of crumbled chairs and stacks of loose tiling - shuddered unsteadily. "I'm calling it - they cut us off and they're hunting all of us down. We're just taking as many down before we're tossed in with the rest of the ruins Doug."

"How do you still crack so many jokes? You are not even a proper soldier. What have you really seen on the battlefield?" A Soyuz trooper, Marczin, growled between his pants. Metallic clinks against his armor showed where recovered dog tags hung. "You calm down nobody. No joke would have saved my friends from being turned into pulp by that creeping bastard."

The slain creature Vlad was videoing was similar to their unwilling prisoner but it could not be said to be a perfect replica to Vlad's camera. This one was a little larger, spinier, yet also more slender in build. It was less beetle-like, almost more like an earwig - a thickened, bulky one but it was clear it had a mobility it was capable of. At least, that's the information that could be gleaned from a glance before it was rendered as a meat-based recreation of a chaotic mountain landscape.

The weapon it would have used appeared to be some sort of stubby rifle made of jagged, semi-geometric shapes of pinkish-white metal and carapace. Bullet marks within and the twitch of living plating demonstrated where the synthetic and metallic dividied.

It was very well dead but the elements that comprised it were busy struggling for life; little parasitoid creatures grubby and springtail like, spilling onto the purplish splatter around its body and its torn-off arm.

Meanwhile, Marczin did not seem pleased with the answer he got from either of his two compatriots.

"Maybe the joker can cope a little more quietly. I did not sign up to die on a routine mission and neither did my compatriots, especially with this damn commentary constnatly in my ears. There are barely bodies left for us to recover." He turned to Korofi, his visor hiding whatever snarl or grimace he was currently making. "Your Jurgen leads well but he is nearing his wit's end. I may be no optimist but even I know we are running out of options unless fortune truly favors the desperate."

He snatched them from the security guard's hands, staching them into a small storage pocket in his armor.

"Besides, with you jumping out in the open and spraying bullets, I feel as if we were told to take care of a trainee. You are right, maybe we are best kept sane. But my discipline extends from knowing I can TRUST the people around me - not to be good men, but competent ones. The next time you make yourself a target or the mag runs dry, hope that there is someone left to pull you out of the mess."

His last few words came as a growl, just in time for Jorge to return with the drone. He eyed it oddly. It was barely damaged from whatever had happened with barely any scratches along its suface. Doug's repairs and modifications had done more to it than whatever had happened during the time they were all still underground.

"Remember that radio signal we got earlier? I know it's hard to focus on that when a whole swathe of us got pulped, but maybe you can wire this to... do something about that? I'm outta options, but this building's big. That thing sounded intermittent. Two plus two."

He plopped the drone on one of the less messy, dust-covered tables and poked it a few times.

"What's an EMP bomb going to do? We know these things have electronics in their guts but... what about any friendlies that might be here? That message we got when we entered was on repeat. Someone set it like that but maybe it means they're hiding further inside. These are gov buildings, someone's probably like us - cowering in whatever safe corner can take more bullets. Doesn't military hardware like this have some kinda scanning function?"

Marczin immediately stood up, almost saluting at the sight of another SSM trooper entering.

"Oi Vlad, what's going on over there? I heard gunfire and Jurgen's growling something out. Did we get coms?" He asked, peeking out from a hole across two sides of a wall corner. "And did you get the two bastards?"

---

"I'll make this real simple for you. Where. Are. The. Rest. Of. The. HUMANS."

Jurgen growled as the huge creature's head turned his way, gargling something incomprehensible. His patience was nearing its end. A few of the infantry had climbed up the sloped, fallen floor to watch the upper level of the room leaving just two with him for his questioning.

A questioning that had gone nowhere but maybe a few handgun bullets could fix that.

His handgun pointed to the creature's leg and a pair of cracks were heard. Already weakened from the previous battle, its armor broke and he heard meat receive metal.

A sound like boiling oil and crackling frying pans sounded out and he pointed the gun to its head. The boil turned to a simmer and its cold, dome-like eyes looked with whatever malice or curiosity it could muster.

"Do not even think about bitching. You burned them alive. You are lucky I am not doing the same to you."

Eight rounds left. It was probably already dying. Maybe it was just attempting to spite them.

A sound like buzzing radio static and garbled, masked back-speak churned out of its mandibles along with an array of disgusting, squirming gunk splattering by his feet. His hand trembled; he wanted to dust it like its friend but this might be their only shot.

"Hey, Jurgen, screen just fizzed for a bit on my visor. Think the cunt's trying to tell us something. They're biomechs of some sort right?" A closed channel communication from the trooper to his right, now fiddling with some settings.

That gave him an idea.

He turned on his coms to the rest of the squad.

"Doug. Bring the drone. I think we may have a way around the language barrier."

"Keep that EMP on a hair trigger Doug. If things go south, it might be our ace in the hole."

Jurgen kept his handgun pointed at the creature's head. The sound of creaking ceilings straining under collapsed floors above had diminished. He could almost hear his own heart pounding into his ears. His voice was calm and cold; he realized a second and a half too late he had replied rather slowly to Doug and in a far sterner tone than usual.

He heard the others saying something under their breath to Doug and Korofi; some Russian, some German, nothing happy. He did not care. A part of him just wanted to turn the interrogation into an execution.

Is it normal to shoot unarmed civilians in your culture? How about prisoners? It's not normal in mine, not usually.

He turned his eyes to the corpse of the alien's friend as the wriggling mass emerging from its corpse began to twitch and sputter, the smell of rancid smoke emerging. The miniature ecosystem they had revealed was beginning to die; some of them anyways. Some burrowed back into the cadaver but others, wriggling and skittering staggered and dragged themselves over the puddle of spilled fluid to a moist, smoking death.

"Seems it works," He looked over to the alien, its body continually inexpressive, then pointed to the drone. "You tried to link up to us, didn't you? Do the same."

Its head turned to the machine, watching the way the various creatures in its fallen comrade seemed to sizzle. A few moments passed when the hand-computer Doug had for the drone began to buzz, its colours dancing on its screen.

"Just to reiterate, if you try to call to your friends, I will let them know you did not go down pleasantly." His handgun clicked again. The creature remained looking towards the drone. The crackle-static of the computer's screen began to clear into a pure white as if it had undergone some hard reboot.

Text began to appear. Flitters of manifesting language blurring through a variety of characters before they settled on English.

|| HUMAN SPECIES DEMONSTRATES SUBOPTIMAL COMBATIVE CAPABILITY UNDER STANDARD CONDITIONS. OUR INVASION WAS NOT PUNNISHMENT BUT INEVITABLE OUTCOME. INTERFERENCE IS NOT TOLERATED. ||

Jurgen took a moment to read before turning to the alien.

"I admire your guts. Maybe I'll spill them next. Why don't you repeat for all of us to hear?" He waited a moment as the text faded away before whispering to Doug. "Make sure he's not putting out a signal of any sort. If he is, plug the bastard."

"Alright, I'll humor you. What kind of 'interference' justifies a wholesale slaughter?"

|| YOU ARE INHABITANTS OF THE SAME TRIBE. IT IS NOT MY DUTY TO PLAY A GAME OF ASKING ANSWERS YOU SHOULD KNOW. WE MET IN THE FACILITY. YOU FOUGHT WELL, EVEN IF RELIANT ON NUMBERS. NUMBERS THAT HAVE BEEN DIMINISHED. OUTRAGE WILL NOT REPLENISH THE COST OF POOR TACTICAL CAPABILITY. ||

Jurgen holstered his gun. He looked to a steel bar that had fallen from the ceiling. Ammo could be preserved. The steel pipe that swing and smashed into a torn leg. Carapace cracked and blood splurted, again, again, again, before he slammed it right next to its skull. A claw rose feebly to seize it. Jugen's foot slammed down on its torn leg and a sound like boiling, sizzling food emerged from its mouth before he removed it with a hateful kick to what he assumed was a shin.

"You're very talkative. How fortunate. I'm very patient. Turns out, a bullet in the head is too good for you. Go on, more of your poetry. Better yet, why don't you ramble on about exactly who you people are?"

His voice had raised and even the voice distortion capability of his helmet did not hide this.

The screen crackled again.

|| WE ARE BUT INHERITORS OF AN OLDER TRUTH. ONE THAT EXISTS ABOVE AND OVER YOUR OWN. YOU HAVE FOUGHT FOR COUNTLESS TRUTHS, THE MAJORITY OF WHICH PRIMARILY SEE YOU AS THE INHERITORS NOT OF MIGHT BUT OF CHAINS: WILLING SERVITUDE TO A COERCIVE WEAKNESS SO THAT YOUR WORMS MAY FEED AND YOUR CARRION MAY PROSPER. IN YOUR RACE FOR ASCENDANCE TO THE STARS YOU QUIETLY WHISPER THE SAME DESIRE AS WE HAVE: THE RIGHTFUL ASCENSION TO WHICH YOU ARE OWED AND OF WHICH YOUR COMPATRIOTS HUMAN AND NON-HUMAN DENY VIA THEIR OWN AMBITION.

IS IT NOT NATURAL THAT THE PREDATOR HAS MERELY FOUND ITS PREY, ESPECIALLY IF THE PREY HAS ACQUIRED THE RIGHTFUL BELONGING OF ITS BETTER? YOUR KIND HAVE GLADLY FOLLOWED THIS EXAMPLE COUNTLESS TIMES. WE CONSIDER THAT WORTHY OF RESPECT. WE DO NOT CONSIDER YOUR ANGER AT NOT TRAGEDY BUT AN ORDER NATURAL AND EVER PRESENT ALL WORTH THE SAME CONSIDERATION. ||

Jurgen looked to Doug.

"I am... just so tempted. Stop me. Please stop me if..."