Sunken’s Snippets Stash

[Sunken Grove]

The sound is cacophonous. Gunfire, explosions, the screams of the wounded, the roars of beasts. But Tiffany is listening to two quieter sounds.
"Ping," goes the motion detector.
"Beep," goes the data tracker.
The signals are coming from the same place. Tiffany bites her lip, staring into the darkness beyond the doorway.
The op isn't going well. Between the slaughter when the first advance was flanked and the grinding retreat that followed half of the marines deployed are dead. Tiffany's two fellow intelligence officers are among the dead. She alone remains to pull the files and disks from the freshly bombed out ruins. Surely one piece will give them the edge they need. A reason to call in reinforcements, a weakness in the local xenomorph strain, some stimulant to turn the tide. Anything. This op rests on her shoulders.
Play it safe, or step onto the weeds and follow the trail?
She switches her night vision on and steps through the doorway. Crates are stacked to her right, the target her data tracker has led her to.
Papers rustle between her fingers. A lab notebook is seized and shoved into her bag.
"Beep," goes the data tracker.
One more crate to search.
"Ping," goes her motion detector.
"Crunch," goes the doorframe as the xenomorph's claws close on it.
A defender. Too close for her gun she backs away, hands fumbling as she panics.
The beast sweeps forward and it's tail sweeps her into the wall
"Crack," go her bones.
"Click," go the grenades in her hands.
Metal foam to trap the beast with her.
Incendiary to burn it in their mutual tomb.
Tiffany Buckley dies with a horrible grin.

———————

How many of my intelligence officer runs end. The xenomorph survived with minor scorching, but I wanted to editorialize.

 

[Sunken Grove]

It's only quiet sounds now in the communications equipment room of the Almayer now. The sound of Tiffany trying to get her breathing under control. The beep of the mine in the antechamber echos oddly through the metal foam that surrounds it. The hiss of a xenomorph's acid eating through the walls. The equipment blinks green, relaying the radio messages of the fighting crew. Tiffany has turned her radio off. She knows she will die here.
"Ping," goes her motion detector.
It shows a single contact in the through the reinforced interior hull of the Almayer.
A muffled bang propagates through the metal. Then another. Whatever is on the other side settles into a rhythm.
Tiffany leans against the wall, listening. She makes out the sound of rending metal. Something is digging through the solid metal of the hull.
"Ravager or Praetorian?" Tiffany muses idly.
"Expect comms to fail shortly," she broadcasts over the Almayer's command channel.
Tiffany reaches into her waist pouch and pulls out her last laugh. One grenade for each hand. She carefully pulls the pins out, holding the spoons tightly.
The metal of the wall crunches as an enormous claw bursts through.
Tiffany startles, then stares at the grenade she just dropped by accident.
"Well fuck."
Tiffany Buckley dies in a munitions accident that also destroys the equipment she was defending.
The ravager breaks through after the grenade detonates and stares in what can only be described as confusion at the broken body. Communications fail on the Almayer for the last time. Her mistake is forever inscribed in the xenomorph hivemind.

—————————

I did fumble a grenade. No, this isn't a rare occurrence with me involved. I'm sure it has nothing to do with my habit of dropping live grenades behind me while running away from xenos.

 

[Sunken Grove]

Jane sits in the jumpseat, a dead man's gillie suit chafing her face. Ammunition cans lie next to mortar shells in the aisles of the Alamo. The aisles are packed with the supplies of the evacuating forward operating base. Jane glances to the empty seat beside her, then around the similarly empty dropship as the last marines scramble aboard from the flare lit landing pad.
"LAUNCH," shouts Captain Stelz as he stumbles up the cluttered walkway.
The Alamo's engines rumble and she feels the dropship lift her. Someone says the lords prayer behind her. Searing light burns through the previously dark portholes, then the Alamo rocks with the turbulence of the blast wave.
The xenomorph infestation of Solaris Ridge is wiped away along with the corpses of three quarters of the front line compliment of the Almayer.
The glowing mushroom cloud rises behind the climbing dropship.
Some victory.

————————

This is often how longer matches play out. It's frequently an anticlimax as both sides have run out of ways to get reinforcements.

 

[Sunken Grove]

Diana's gloved hands are covered in blood. She knows her fingers will be bruised when she takes the gloves off. Seven incisions, seven rib cages broken open, seven xenomorph larva painstakingly unrooted from the organs they wound around. One patient is propped in the corner, shotgun pointed at the operating table. The gun is steady even as blood seeps from the hastily cauterized incision on his chest.
Diana pulls the larva from the marine's chest cavity. She bends the ribs back into place. Carefully pins and glues and sews and cauterizes.
She pulls the marine from the operating table and places him on the ground next to three of his comrades.
She walks through the door of operating room one, looking up and down the length of the medbay. Operating room three has its biohazard shutters closed. The other two stand empty.
The radio in her ear is filled with the chatter of triumphant marines. She hears people talking about medals. Hears the sounds of beer cans opening, revelry beginning.
Diana pulls another blood bag from the warming machine. Turns and walks back into her operating room as the medbay door opens to admit another stretcher.
Her fight has just begun.

—————————

I must confess to have been rather salty when I wrote this. Five doctors and the chief medical officer playing and only two bothered to keep working as the round wound down. Larva removal gets pretty tense when the line forms. Both because loosing a marine sucks and having a competent xenomorph player shipside is a nightmare. For everyone except the MPs anyways. The MPs just like actually having something to do.

 

[Sunken Grove]

Runners smell like vinegar and hairless dog. Tiffany knows this now. Tiffany also knows she is going to die. The runner knows she's here. It's hunting her. She made it across the colony behind the hive's territory, all the way to the alternate landing zone.

But command isn't sending a drop ship. One rifleman isn't worth it. Not even the specialized sniper's gear she carried from where her specialist partner was captured makes is worth it.

The voice on the radio has gone silent. She's not worth spending the time and attention on. Not for a dead woman walking.

She's been written off.

Tiffany sees the runner across the landing pad. It's sniffing the ground, found her trail.

Tiffany rises, camouflage failing as she goes to meet her fate.

 

[Sunken Grove]

Tiffany's hand throbs in rhythm to the doorgun she's firing. The smartbullets weave past the marines scrambling past and into the dark. The pain is odd, some distant corner of her mind notes. Her hand is lying on the other side of the containers that wall off the port side of the Alamo. Yet it still hurts as the vibrations of the M56D in her hand travel to her bracing arm. She having trouble focusing, she notes from where she seems to float above her body. The gun thunders into the dark as shadows grow. Her own shadow stretches towards them, backlit by the flames burning around the prow of the drop ship. Someone is shouting behind her. She should probably go, she muses as a xenomorph warrior looms closer. Something flies across her vision, bouncing off the cargo container to land at her feet. A new red light reflects of the warrior that is looming over her. She releases the gun, stumbling as those horrible claws rip through her armor. As she does, she sees the source of the red light. The blinking cylinder rolls at her feet.

"Son of a-"

She's thrown against the container by the grenade, lands face down. Something is pulling her. The light is getting brighter. It burns. She is burning.

Tiffany dies as the Alamo lifts off the pad.