Sayeeda rolled into a crouch, brownish ichor coated her chest and right arm where Neil’s shotgun blast had splattered the first of the alien. Its companion roared as it swatted the pilot aside and then swung a short barreled weapon towards Junebug. With a spike of adrenaline she threw herself behind the large marble table a second before a spray of hypersonic flechettes tore the floor where she had been crouching to fragments of powdered stone.

“Fuck,” she moaned, her own rifle had been lost in the scuffle and the abbreviated nature of their preparations meant she didn’t have a side arm or another backup weapon beyond her power knife. She didn’t fancy her chances against the hulking xenos with only a six inch cutting bar. Glancing around desperately she caught sight of Neil’s shotgun laying against the wall a few feet beyond her. The alien made its weird hunting hiss and leapt atop the table with a crunch. Junebug dived for the weapon, snatching it up by the rubberized grip and twisting to face her opponent. The Hexangallion was already swinging its flechette gun down towards her. There was no time to aim, or properly brace, only to pull the trigger. The shotgun smacked into her shoulder with terrific force as it went of, the blast blowing the alien’s knee into a pulpy mass of shredded flesh and shattered bone. It screamed as its body betrayed it and toppled off the table into an ungraceful heap. Junebug fired a round into its chest and another into its head, spraying the white marble room with gore.

For a moment she lay on her back gasping, the smell of poisonous vapours and slaughtered alien tugging unpleasantly at her olfactory senses. The things smelled like burning dung, their blood or flesh evidently containing some kind of sulfurous compound. It wouldn’t be long before however was out in the hallway either rushed the room, or, more probably, tossed in grenades to do the work for them. Taya was yammering in her ear but Junebug ignored her, crawling instead to where Neil lay. The pilot was unconscious but still breathing. There was no way that Junebug was going to fight her way passed the remaining soldiers in the hallway dragging the supine pilot.

“Junebug,” Aiden’s voice sounded in her mastoid implant, “Alexander and his cronies are on the move, they are headed for the garage four levels down from you.”

That didn’t strike Junebug as a good idea, for all Alexander knew they might have an anti-aircraft gun waiting to swat him out of the sky, but war was a fog and no one ever had complete information. As it happened it was the right move, there was no way they could make it down four levels unless…

“We are on it,” Sayeeda acknowledged. 

The window blew out with a gust of wind that swept a storm of paper and detritus out into the night. The howling wind took Sayeeda by surprise but it should not have done. They were several hundred feet above the ground and there was nothing but the shattered glass to obstruct them. With a shout she ran for the window one hand on Neils belt the other on his heavy shotgun. She leaped into the abyss before she could think about what she was doing, plunging downwards at heart stopping speed. The rope which Neil had worn like a bandolier played out behind her until it snugged up tight against the marble table. The jerk nearly broke Junebugs ribs, but the webbing she and Neil wore distributed the force of the four story fall enough to save them. Nonetheless, they slammed against the window with enough force to star its reflective surface. Awkwardly she turned the shotgun to press against the window and blew it inwards with another shower of shattered glass and then swung them inside. There was no way to disengage the rope so at the end of the swing she sliced it with her knife and the pair fell the remaining three feet to the carpeted floor.

The room appeared to be a lounge of some sort but it was presently deserted. Against the far wall was an impressive fish tank that had sprung a leak when one of the shot gun pellet ricochet through the relatively thin plastic wall. The slow leak would take hours to drain the half a tank of volume. This was the right floor, they just had to get to the garage before Alexander and his council could escape. Neil groaned below her and she realized she was sitting astride him. His eyes fluttered open and she rolled off him.

“Awww,” the pilot moaned in mock disappointment then pawed at the rope attached to his webbing.

“Rope, you always end up needing it.”
[@POOHEAD189]