Chapter 48 Desperate Escape

                     _ _ Sargent Marcus Pov_ _ _

I'll admit that I've had some bad days in my life but this, this absolutely takes the cake by far. This world has been a literal fucking nightmare since we crashed landed here, and now this?! Things had gotten completely out of control and the most terrifying part was that I couldn't shake the feeling that this whole thing was planned by some unseen force.

"Luckily they started the evacuation or we might have been screwed." Orion muttered with a slight shake of his head.

(Thank god for that at least...)

"Come on you slowpoke." Ava mused, causing me to roll my eyes at her. "You can't afford to fall behind now."

"Yeah yeah..."

As we moved I took in the carnage going on around us, we hadn't run into any opposition as of yet but we could still hear the gun fire off in the distance. We were still holding them back somewhat mind you, however we were definitely being pushed back. In fact the worst part is that we had actually managed to get most of the defenses all back up and running relatively quickly after they went down but by that point far too much damage had been done.

Anyway, we continued forward until we finally reached our destination. The people on the ship in orbit had sent down several vessels, a fact that gave us some hope of escape. Unfortunately things weren't going to be as simple as we may have wanted them to be, mostly because the extraction point was currently under attack by a group of prisoners and, well, the attackers were kind of blocking our way.

Thankfully however, they didn't notice us until we opened fire into their flanks, a fact that killed a few of them before they could even react. Of course considering our position our allies had to now be far more careful considering they were firing in our direction. Fortunately however, everything went rather well for once and we quickly dealt with those that were left. Them freaking the hell out didn't help their chances of surviving either.

"Get the hell in here you lot!" Someone yelled while motioning to get behind their defensive perimeter that they had apparently set up. "Quickly now, there are more of those assholes on the way."

Of course once we were inside someone, who I assume to be a pilot considering the way he was dressed, walked over to us. "Good to see that you managed to get here in time sir." He hummed with a respectful salute.

"We should be saying that to you." Ava muttered and Mercer nodded in agreement. "Any news from the Perseus's current status?"

"We've tried getting into contact with them but since the captain ordered us to begin the evacuations, well, the communication with anyone onboard the ship has been sporadic and distorted at best while downright terrifying and concerning at worst." 

(Well shit...that can't be a good sign...) I thought with an audible sigh, however my attention was quickly pulled back to reality by Mercer a moment later.

"How many have we lost?"

Everyone went quiet after he asked that, mostly because no one actually had an exact answer for him at the moment. Eventually someone did step up and respond, however it wasn't a very satisfactory answer to say the least.

"We don't know." I recognised the man who answered, his name was Tyrone or something along those lines, I honestly didn't remember at the moment. "All I can say is that many are still unaccounted for."

"And the evacuations?"

"We're working on it now, however this is all still going to take some time for us to get done." That was fine by me to be honest, so long as I could get off this fucking rock that is. "Thankfully those flying pests have cleared out, so we shouldn't have any issues getting out of the atmosphere."

(That's some good news at the very least...) I hummed while remembering how on several occasions those damn things had been quite the hindrance to our efforts.

"Alright, get everything moving, we are abandoning the base." Mercer muttered with a short but tired sounding sigh and a shake of his head.

Before anyone could get to work however, Orion suddenly spoke up. "Why?"

"Hmmmm?"

"You said the flying bugs have left, right?" He asked with a puzzled look on his face. "But why? Why is that? Where did they go exactly?" That...that caused everyone to pause.

Eventually the pilot from before spoke up, although the confusion was clear in his voice. "From what we saw on our way...they seemed to all be heading right towards the location where the black hive should be located."

(First the attack on us, then the apparent outbreak on the Perseus and now this...) I thought while rubbing my forehead perplexed. (What the hell is going on?)

"We can deal with all that later, right now we need to get off this rock." Mercer hummed after seemingly thinking for just a moment.

Unfortunately there was still one piece of information yet to be spoken. "Sir..." One of the marines whispered just loud enough for us to hear as he stepped forward. "There is something else you should probably know..."

"What is it now?" Mercer hissed, after all it was clear from the look on the marines face that whatever it was probably wasn't good news.

"Kelly, she and a large portion of the engineering staff...they erm..." They trailed off not knowing how to finish that sentence.

"Oh...oh shit..." Someone muttered as we all glanced over at the colonel.

The man in question was completely still, at least until Ava spoke up next to him. "Samuel..."

"I know..." He growled through his teeth while clenching his fists that had slowly begun to turn white. "Let's just get the hell out of here..."

                     _ _ _Carmen Pov_ _ _

Blood, there was so much of it, so much acidic blood that it was eating through the ground quickly enough to the point that large streams and pools of the green fluid had begun to appear throughout the carnage. Hundreds of violet coloured bodies were buried under mountains of thousands of black ones, all of which were in various gruesome states. Some were nothing but mangled burnt corpses, others had been sliced to pieces, disemboweled by tooth and claw, some were even trampled into mush while others had died tangled together with their enemies in a solid mass made up of ripped off limbs and torn apart flesh.

It was mayhem plane and simple, a battle for survival where only one faction would stand supreme over the corpses of their enemies. And there, in the middle of this chaos was me, my scythe-like arms that were stained with emerald blood sliced through muscle and bone as I moved forward step by step. I was leading at the front of my forces, carving a path through the enemy that charged at me without a care for their own lives, like mindless beasts jumping into a blender one after the other. 

In fact by now my kill count was probably off the charts at this point. Thankfully, whenever I was about to be overwhelmed I'd have the Detonators far off in the back behind me take action, they would bombard the locations close by my current position allowing me to quickly pull back and recover. This is how it went for a while, I possibly killed hundreds of my black kin but they just kept coming, eventually however something did end up changing.

In that moment several trees off in the distance collapsed and a large figure stepped out and into the open. (It seems that they finally managed to break through...)

[Guess that means we are moving on to stage two of your master plan?]

(Indeed, however I need to deal with this first.) I hummed when I noticed that the black coloured Charger was beginning to head in my direction.

The massive creature seemed almost pissed off as it began picking up speed. I wondered why that was~? It probably had nothing to do with the crap ton of trees it had to smash its head through just to get here, no, it definitely couldn't be because of that. Anyway, the big beastie trampled everything in its path as it moved forward without a care at all for it's smaller counterparts, in fact by the time it reached me the bastard's feet were covered in the guts and blood of both enemy and ally alike.

Unfortunately it was heading directly towards me, of course this was a bad thing for its continued existence, not mine. This was proven true when it finally reached me only for my foot to slam into its head, all while the claws on said foot dug into its large armoured head crest. I was of course still pushed back somewhat but I quickly planted one of my bladed arms into the ground anchoring myself in place before I could be pushed over. The Crusher didn't live much longer after that however, in fact my free arm came straight down a moment later and pierced through its skull with ease before then going right into its brain killing it almost instantly.

[Nice execution.] Goldy mused, giving me a round of applause.

Obviously I was highly suspicious. (Great...what do you want now?)

[My word!] He gasps, clearly pretending to be offended. [Are you saying that I can't compliment you without some kind of ulterior motive?]

(Yes, yes that is exactly what I'm saying.)

[I am absolutely appalled you think that badly of me, appalled I say!]

Rolling my head at him I decided to just move on with the current situation at hand. (Anyway, let's move to the next step of the plan.) 

[Don't just ignore me!] He was quickly forgotten as I sent out my commands.

In that instant my smaller forces, such as Drones, runners and Warriors began to move. Before this point they had all been keeping some distance away from the denser part of the forest but now? Now they all started pouring into it in droves. Of course they had to kill everything in their way but eventually they began streaming into the tree line in large numbers. As for my larger forces, well, they began to pull back while splitting into two separate groups, two groups that soon began moving in opposite directions. And finally, I had one last command to send out.

<<Darook, you may now begin your part of the plan.>>

<<Understood... >>