Musical Inspiration
“….. take out Experion. Everyone else, engage the ground troops,” ordered Silver Spider.
He missed the first part of the orders. He’d lost focus after his brother’s first words about the screams he had heard, and the obvious fact that Gleam Shimmer had not arrived with the rest of the team. Someone mentioned that her abilities would help her and Jacob survive, but it didn’t really register. He could hear himself start to argue. Again, he’d lost her again. Disbelief, grief, hate….RAGE.
LAUNCH: T-Minus 10 Minutes blared over the perimeter of Cape Canaveral.
He swallowed bile along with his rage and grief, shut his mouth and turned to face the advancing soldiers as the flyers took off to their assigned tasks. Blurring slightly, he charged towards them with his brothers and the two newbies.
Combat. A blur, always. Evaluate and move, attack, shift, fire, move again, strike, strike. It took thirty seconds to move into hand to hand combat, his forte. He saw and noted the dissolution of an M4 by some sort of ray from the weird dude called John, walking calmly in his sandals. The don’t kill order warred with his internal rage, habit and years of training. Orders held, sort of. With a flying kick here, and a massive punch there, they were not intentional killing blows, but nor were they pulled, intended to be necessarily survivable. With his enhanced strength, bones snapped, crushed, and blood spilled.
One hope. Complete the mission. Like a mantra it echoed through his thoughts, drowning out all else.
He saw and noted the APC meld into the soldiers near it, becoming animated, pumping out massive bullets, and he watched them hit Silver Spider and Red Ring. More soldiers went down to Deathstalker’s flying chains.
Over the roar of gunfire and the continuous count down, he heard, or maybe felt, his name being called. Turning slightly, he caught the weapon thrown by John, years of training noting it as an AT4, instantly giving him statistics on range and operation, he brought it over his shoulder, sighting at one of the massive thrusters on the shuttle. He launched, the round running true, causing significant damage.
Two or three bullets hit him, but nothing hurt like the whole in his chest. The wounds started instantly to heal, and more of his friends were taking fire. His enhanced senses could see that the flight team was struggling with disabling the launch vehicle and the alien Experion.
One hope. Complete the mission.
Enraged, he ignored the closer troops he was supposed to target. Instinctively, or by luck, spikes from Silver Spider knifed into the two soldiers between him and the M117 security vehicle. With an animal grunt of effort, he picked up the fifteen-ton vehicle and flung it at the launch vehicle and tower, where it hit with a resounding explosion.
But the bullet to the back of the knee hit at just the right angle, buckling his leg, less from pain than from stability. For the time of a breath, he paused, gathering his strength, then lunged towards the Humvee a few feet away. The knee’s joint ground together as he landed, throwing him off balance for another moment. Gritting his teeth, he stood back up, leaning on his good right leg. While the two tons of the Humvee posed no barrier to his strength, the one legged spinning throw looked like some sort of crippled Olympian’s bastardized hammer toss. Still, it hit near the launch tower, throwing more fragments and burning fuel into the launch thrusters.
One hope. Complete the mission.
The space shuttle began to tilt, and the thrusters began to fire. With Ghost Venom’s predictable luck, it began to fall straight toward him and the rest of the ground assault team.
He smiled. Whatever else might happen, the mission was complete. There was hope.
Last Dreams 