An auto-turret kicks off a round, the sound muffled by a sound suppressor. I glance at the weapons held by the four men. I’m not really a gun guy, but it goes with the job. I recognize the weapons as KRISS Vectors, which are technically future weapons not yet available to the military. Definitely DARPA. The weapons, unlike the turrets, are not sound suppressed, and not raised. Clearly, they think the two turrets will win this fight for them.
Rounds start flying, the turrets snapping back and forth. I turn uphill, back the way I came, and I see a wall of living black flowing toward us, on the ground and in the trees. Rounds chew up the forest, killing more trees than BFSs, but getting the job done...slowly. The weapons are targeting the nearest BFSs first, taking down one after another, but the mass, as a whole, is getting closer.
When the first unsuppressed weapon barks to life, I jump, not just from the sound, but because the round fired punches a hole in a BFS dropping down from above—toward my head. There’s a loud crack as the shell is punctured. The round hits the far side of the shell and doesn’t exit. Instead, all that energy snaps the creature to the side. It lands in the ferns next to me, and I waste no time unloading ten rounds into it, only stopping when the writhing tail falls limp.
I turn to the shortest of the four men, who shot the BFS, and nod my thanks. In response, he points up. I follow his finger and see more BFSs overhead, leaping through the trees, out of the auto-turrets’ range. I aim up and fire, the rest of the mysterious four-man team joining me. While the MP5 rattles in my grip, I can’t help but wonder where Hawkins went.
“Too many,” the biggest of the four men declares without much emotion, before taking a precise shot that drops a moving BFS two hundred feet up.
Geez, these guys are good.
“Give me thirty,” Silhouette says, tapping his ear and turning away.
The other three continue shooting, and so do I, but it’s a losing battle. The BFSs are still closing in, from above, and now from the sides. They’re avoiding the auto-turrets. Smart little assholes.
Through the gunfire, I catch two words spoken by Silhouette. “Scorched earth.” I don’t know who he’s talking to, but as someone who has dealt with a three-hundred-foot-tall monster capable of creating its own scorched earth, I understand the concept. They’re going to torch the forest, which means they also know what kind of danger these things present. And since there’s nothing I, nor the vanished Mark Hawkins, can do about this many BFSs, it’s the right call. In fact, so far, I’m glad these guys are here. Without them, Hawkins and I would have already given birth to our own small broods.
More words filter through. “One mile radius,” and “Three mikes.” His voice is suddenly clear when he turns around, once again addressing the group. “EVAC in two mikes, boys, payday in three.” As he says the words, he points his handgun at my chest. “Sorry, Jon, scorched earth includes you, too.”
“Ahem,” a familiar voice says. I turn to find Hawkins standing behind the short man who saved me, knife blade against the man’s throat. Hawkins’s face is now slathered in mud, no doubt to protect his identity.
None of the four men seem ruffled by this turn of events, including the man with a knife to his throat.
Silhouette looks at his watch and lowers his weapons. “We don’t have time for games, Specter.”
The small man gives a faint nod. “Shadow, Obsidian, you’re with me.” The trio heads downhill, leaving the expensive, and still-firing auto-turrets behind. All around, the BFSs close in, focusing on the three people present rather than on the three leaving. “Specter, catch up when you’re done.”
I look at Hawkins, his confused expression no doubt matching my own.
“Buddy,” I say to Specter, “Your pals just sold you out, so if you know a way to—”
Before I can finish speaking, the man’s foot comes flying up, slips past his own head and connects with Hawkins, who spills backwards. The blade pulls across the man’s throat, but doesn’t cut through his suit’s fabric.
The tick-tack of sharp feet punching through bark grows louder all around. I ignore it and fire at the man, nearly point blank. Each shot is a hit, straight to the chest, but the rounds don’t even faze him. With normal body armor, the rounds are absorbed, but the impacts are still powerful enough to crack ribs and bruise skin. Whatever this guy is wearing diffuses that energy, allowing him to do what happens next.
The short version is that he kicks my ass.
The long version is that he kicks the weapon from my hand, follows that up with a spinning kick to the side of my head and then a second spinning kick, in the opposite direction, to my legs. The effect is that I’m spun through the air, onto my back, dazed and breathless, all in about the same time it took me to fire three useless shots.
Hawkins fares no better. In fact, he’s still recovering from that single kick to the forehead. We’re at this guy’s mercy, and as his handgun comes around and draws level with my forehead, I’m pretty sure there isn’t much mercy to go around.