Junebug wasn't familiar with the hand signal Neil used, but the 'you go first' meaning was clear from context. Nodding her head she slid the muzzle of her submachine gun between the door and the jam and thrust it open, toggling her tactical flashlight as she did so. The stink of blood and vicera was immediate and the stabbing beam of light played across a rib cage open from one end of the sternum to the other. Coils of smashed intestines lay where they had slithered, filling the room with the smell of human waste. The beam swept across the room and across what first looked like a mass of smashed piping. It was a creature. The alien was the size of a large dog but built much heavier. To Sayeeda's eye it looked like a cross between a lobster and some sort of giant spider. Long Chitinous legs scuttled with a disturbing grace and mandibles clacked. 

When the door opened the thing had been scuttling towards one of the large air vents built into the side wall of what must once of been a maintenance room. As soon as the light touched it it leaped at her. The motion was confusing as the thing didn't pause, or turn itself to face her, merely leaped sideways with the force of a detonating mine. Sayeeda had the squeeze feeling as the thing sailed towards her, legs extended wide like a carnival toy grabber, that the thing wasn't systematical, it seemed misshapen and uneven in a way that made her stomach churn in a way that the familiar reek of spattered entrails did not. She took up the fraction of a pound of trigger pressure and her sub machinegunn stuttered twice. There was a sound like cracking ceramics but the thing didn't pause, silent testament to the force of the leap. The thing hit her in the chest with the force of a medicine ball being dropped from a two story window. The blow hurled Sayeeda from her feet and into the wall with a crunch, a few rounds ricocheted crazily around the room as her submachine gun stuttered off a few addtional rounds before falling silent. 

The creature stank like spoiled orange juice and gasoline it it scrabbled at Junebug, claws raking at her exposed arms. Something clanged off her ceramic armor like a hammer blow and to her horror, Sayeeda saw that the thing had extend a two foot long oviopositor which it was trying unsuccessfully to ram through the ceramite plates of her armored vest.

"Goddess cures you!" she spat and tried to hurl the thing off her with all her might. The alien managed not only to hang on but to sink the tips of two of its chitinous appendages into the rock and yank Sayeeda towards the ventilation vent. They both crashed through the protective screen and the sickening drop of her stomach informed Sayeeda that she was falling. They plumeted into the darkness together, a second blow striking her breastplate as it tried again to impale her. With shocking suddenness Junebug jerked to a stop, the jolt tearing the chittering creature from her at last and nearly breaking ribs. The armor was designed to spread out blunt force trauma but a however many story fall was clearly at the edge of its tolerances. She dangled for a moment, gasping for breath before she realized that her webbing had caught on some pluming fixtures on the side of the shaft. There was a slow wist as she hung, her armor digging painfully into the bottom of her armpits.

The submachinegun was gone, probably in the room they had found the thing, but she manage to get a handlight from her belt and illuminate the shaft below. Her heart lurched she saw the thing scuttling vertically up the wall towards her, ovipositor extneded, long chitonous legs driving into the rock of the shaft.

"You have got to be fucking kidding me," she screamed and snatched her cutting bar from her belt. The weapon humed to life and with a single swipe she cut the dangling harness and showered herself with sparks as the whiring cutting blades glanced of the piping. The webbing parted and she plummeted towards the thing like a 70 kilo cannon ball. Junebug braced her feet together like a grav trooper and locked her body rigid, turning her falling body into a spear. Booth boots hit the thing square in what would have been a face in a creature not conjured out of nightmare. It might have been inhumanly strong, and inhumanely fast, but as her old academy instructors had been at pains to point out: Physics could be a real bitch. 

Sayeeda's impact shattered the legs the thing had in the walls and her boots crushed the ovipositor to splintered chitin, knocking it from its precarious assent like rain dislodging the proverbial incy wincy spider. Mercenary and monster plummeted another two stories into the blackness before they hit bottom. It grew confused for an indeterminate time which might have ranged from moments to minutes. When she could focus again she was laying at the bottom of a ventilation shaft, with access passages leading off into the darkness. Her armor was intact but her equipment and webbing were scattered everywhere. The whole sceen was illuminated by pale green standby lights. It was painful to breath but by reflex she forced herself to sit up. The creature too was moving, feebly, trying to rise up in its remaining limbs. A jagged crack ran through its carapace and ichor, greenish gold in the tunnels light, gleamed in great goblets. Despite the damage, it looked like it was planning on moving again. Junebug tried to rise, intending to use the cutting bar to finish the job but a wave of nausea nearly made her black out again. Instead she pulled open her shoulder holster, miraculously undamaged, produced her side arm and emptied the entire magazine into the horrid creature. Not in the rapid jitter of panic fire, but in the unhurried tattoo of a professional working over an enemy installation. The barrel of the pistol glowed white from the heat of discharge when she dropped it to the ground, the creature little more than a smear on the far side of the shaft.

"Neil," she gasped, opening the com link to the pilot, "Make a note, we are officially putting in for hazard pay."

[@POOHEAD189]