The sky screamed as the incoming tore the damp sky into dirty gray contrails. A half dozen computer aimed plasma guns stabbed the air with painfully vivid cyan. The Armored had the best automated air defense money could by and the guns knocked the shells out of the sky with mechanical precision. It wouldn’t be enough, not today. Sayeed crouched in the hastily prepared fox hole, clutching her 20mm plasma gun close as the sub munitions of the carrier shells burst above them. Tank killing rounds plunged out of the stratosphere like demons. Off to her right Captain Martel’s skimmer exploded in a shower of shattered ceramic and titanium fragments. 
Someone was screaming, maybe a great many people but the constant earthshaking detonation of kilotons of cordite rendered the effort almost comical. Junebug closed her eyes, knowing that in a few moments one of the tank killing shells would smash one of the national army panzers to flaming ruin. The gouting ruin of its fuel tank would spray across her back and left arm. It would be hours before the shelling of Hill 22 slackened enough for the medics to reach her, long after her limited supply of analgesics had run out. 

Junebug snapped back to the present as she realized that Neil hadn’t just sprayed her with the flame gun. The filter on her helmet rendered the muck in vivid red, hotter even than human body temperature. Her helmet wasn’t signaling anything dangerous biologically but it was a big universe.

“Booster cut the visual enhancement,” she snapped and the blood red ambiance fell away abruptly. 

“Well alive or dead, something did that to him,” she gestured to the claw marks into the limp distended skin that had been a man before drawing a can gray spray sealant from her webbing harness and pulled the tab on the base of the can. Sealant hissed out coating her armor and skin. The hydrophilic sealant drew the moisture into it and hardened into a latex like rubber. It wasn’t a foolproof response to a biological threat but it was the best she could do without a hazmat unit. She tossed the sheet of rubber away with revulsion.

“Look, whatever is going on here is beyond our pay grade, we are omega,” she told Neil and turned to look back down the hallway. Something stirred in the corridor which lead back towards the ship. Junebug pulled her sub machine gun tight to her shoulder and fired a short burst down the hallway. The muzzle flash illuminated a confused mass of pallid faces and twisted bodies, washing down the hallway in a nightmarish wave. The burst shattered several of the creatures into bloody rags that splashed the walls with blackened fluid.

“Scorch it!” Junebug yelled but Neil was already stepping forward raising the flame gun. A shiver of remembered pain ran through her, but you didn’t survive by being squeamish. The accelerant roared into the hallway in a reeking firestorm. The things came on in eerie silence even as flesh burned and bones crackled. Out of the corner of her eye she noticed a green telltale blink red.

“Cease…” but it wasn't going to be fast enough, she grabbed Neil and twisted the flame gun sideways spraying flame onto the wall. A second later carbon dioxide jetted into the hallway and the automatic doors slammed shut. If Neil had held the burst on target, the back blast would have coated them both. Several slams sounded against the closed blast doors, there was even a faint scratching as the things tried to pull themselves through the guttering flame.

“Well, not that way. Shit. Booster find us a route from the command center to the hangar that doesn't require the A level corridors.” Map Info not available, flashed twice on her visor and then went dark.

“Damn, we need to find another way back.”

[@POOHEAD189]