Sarge's Tale, Part 2

The loose rocks shifted as nightmare creatures erupted from concealment. Giant centipede-like monsters known as sand snipers converged on the unit. Several others uncoiled or emerged from holes excavated beneath boulders. Three men were down before the patrol realized what it was that was attacking. Nearly two meters long, their armored, segmented bodies were the color and rough texture of the surrounding terrain, twin scythe-like appendages pierced exos-armor, blasting through to pin one of the men to the ground. Another was buried under a sniper's metameric weight as the thing plunged its fangs with their paralytic toxin into his exposed neck. Another man was eviscerated by a sweeping blow from a third creature's hooks. The screams of the dying were drowned out by the enraged cries of their companions and the staccato thunder of .306 rounds ripping the air, chewing sclerite armor. The creatures squealed in high pitched grinding sounds and they fell back, those with a prize disappearing back into their holes.

"Pull in, they will make another run!" No sooner had Sarge barked the order than one of the sand snipers came whipping around a boulder, its armor showing cracks and splinters from glancing blows. It lunged in at McGraw, the sergeant fell onto her back, throwing her booted feet up, slamming her heels into the slashing front appendages, the razor edged claws raked the earth to either side of her head, taking her ear-mike in the process. The mandibles clacked futilely inches from her face, the dripping venom caused a cold burning along her cheek. Its smaller, hooked legs scrabbled ineffectually against Sarge’s Exos-1 body armor as the usually flexible armor hardened with each traumatic impact, protecting her torso. The sergeant jammed her carbine into the thing's lightly armored belly. Screaming in rage and fear, McGraw emptied the clip of heavy ammunition, the bullets clawing out the thing’s gut, spewing her with green gore.

With a roar Sarge heaved the limply twitching thing off of her, half of its mutilated body falling in the opposite direction. Rolling to her feet, the soldier dropped the empty clip out of the gun and jammed a fresh one home without conscious thought. Ice chip eyes scanned the battle field; three more of her command was down, leaving Miguel and four others still on their feet. It appeared that all the sand snipers or parts of them at least, were accounted for—except for the three that made off with her men.

“Sarge,” Miguel said. “The other three went down here!” He was kneeling by a narrow cleft in the rock face that slopped downward. Miguel flipped up the polarizing face shield of his helmet to meet his leader's gaze with his own intense dark eyes. "Hicks was still alive."

"We don't know that, and we don't know if that burrow would be big enough for us to maneuver in. I won't risk four good men down there. We return to HQ." Sarge went to where one of her men had fallen. Chuck "Boom Boom" Mancine, had been the grunt that was carrying the M201, a grenade launcher. She picked up the weapon from where it had been knocked away in the skirmish. She ignored the stench of Mancine's spilled intestines as she took his ammo belt. "We lob a couple of these babies down the chute; we cover our dead, and then return to base."

"Sarge…" Miguel almost pleaded.

"We've been hurt enough. I don't want to loose anyone else, end of discussion. We need to let LANS know that these things are this close to us and in these kinds of numbers." One of the men dragged off, Sanchez, was the patrol's radio operator.

"Let me go in just a ways, Sarge. If it doesn't open up, I will come back and do as you say. But if it does and if we can find Hicks alive…"

Sergeant Alisa McGraw wanted to scream in David Miguel's face that each high-bred was too valuable to waste out here in this abandoned hell! She did not yell because she saw in her corporal's face the need for something that might be construed as victory, after the beating they just took, they needed a win to save face and honor. "Okay I will give you eight meters to see if widens to a cavern. If not you shimmy back out and we head home."

"Yes, sir!" Miguel replied.

"Don't yes sir me, corporal! Do you see any gold bars on my lapels? No, because I work for a living now get down that hole. Mills! Tie him off with some rope so when eight meters play out I can jerk his sorry ass back!"

Mills jumped to comply, lashing thin, but strong nylon cord about the huge man. With a nod to his leader, Miguel was down the hole, his carbine leading.

The big man wasn't gone but thirty seconds when his head popped back out of the hole, his eye-shields immediately going dark again, exposed to the sun's light as they were. "It opens up less than a meter in. It looks to be an abandoned bunker." He swallowed before continuing. "There is a blood trail to follow…."

"All right, in the hole. Alive or dead, we will bring Hicks home."

Sandsniper Art by Derek Benson