Matt stayed low, moving up the steep and uneven terrain, pushing to acquire a good vantage point of the valley. Despite every slow and well-plotted step and the extra pounds of gear he was carrying, he was surprisingly agile.
That was until he stepped on some loose rock.
It sheared like slate, pitching him over, causing his stance to buckle. He began to slide back down the way he came, only to snag his other foot on a narrow ledge, breaking his descent.
Matt gave himself a moment to recover, his chest heaving hard. The sharp drop to the surface below was more than enough to shatter bones. He took in a few deeper breaths, swiping a small water drop icon that hovered above his forearm console. A clear fluid tube appeared inside his helmet, snaking up until it found his parched mouth. Matt feverishly sucked down some electrolytes, scanning the area, making sure he was nowhere near the vicinity of a Hellsting nest, which were always hard to spot.
Like some abominable cross between a coconut crab and an Emperor scorpion, Hellstings were fond of a booby-trap mechanism similar to that of the Australian trapdoor spider - utilizing an ultra-thin membrane of silky material that stretched around the perimeter of their nests in a circular formation, acting as a tripline. It is common for wandering fauna to be completely unaware they have breached a nest until it’s too late. If Matt was unlucky enough to trip a nest, or worse, fall into one, it would almost certainly mean death as they are extremely aggressive and territorial creatures.
With no eyes, these creatures hunt via a rim of hackles that form the dorsal crest of their heads. These are in constant motion, rippling in response to electromagnetic feedback humans are blind to. The average female is no larger than a full-grown alligator, but the needle-like stinger that protrudes from their bloated abdomens can easily puncture tank armor.
In addition to their deadly stingers, they also produce a highly toxic and corrosive venom called Crystalline Vitelloxide, which can be spat at prey from up to twenty meters away. A single drop is more than enough to kill a person if ingested or absorbed through the skin. In the previous year alone, several troops on ground patrols had met their demise this way. A constant hazard to both the USC and the Wraith, Hellstings were not to be trifled with.
Matt retracted his fluid tube and crested a rocky ledge until he reached a promontory that served as a good observational spot. He dropped to his knees, going prone on his stomach as he inched up to the lip of the slope. His HUD lit up, switching to the thermal binocular app which began automatically scanning and mapping the valley rift before him.
Matt took note of the scorching hot wind that whistled eerily between rocky crevices, and the low sun that hung like a blood clot in the sky, casting bizarre shadows, making this terrain feel even more desolate and alien.
He wheeled to his left, locating Darkhorse’s crash site in the distance. The actual wreckage was obscured, but columns of smoke could still be seen pluming into the sky. Scavs circled way above, riding the unseen thermals that rippled between Epsilon’s noxious clouds.
He turned to his right side and inched up some more to zero in on a cluster of rocky ledges that jutted out from an adjacent cliff face.
And that’s when he saw it.
A spectral flutter of cloth stretched across the mouth of a small cave.
Matt slid the rifle off his shoulder, raising the scope to his eye. “Warhammer, this is Stryker actual. I have eyes on a possible HVT position. Grid forty-four, bearing two-two-seven-three-seven-four. How copy?” Matt’s audio feed was met with a shrill of garbled static, causing him to wince. “Awesome,” he muttered. “This day just keeps getting better.” His eyes narrowed as his augmented binoculars zoomed in tighter on the point of interest.
The cloth was ragged and torn, shimmering in and out of his HUDs thermal spectrum, flapping loosely in the wind. There was no doubting it was Wraith tech. This was the target his scope had picked up earlier, which meant either Pinehurst was right, and this was a decoy, with the sniper’s real location yet to be revealed. Or, Matt had located the sniper’s nest and he was holed up somewhere inside. But first, he needed to investigate the Darkhorse crash site and check for any survivors.
Matt laid there for another twenty minutes, still as possible, his breaths shallow, eyes locked on the strange material. The sun was getting lower, but it was still hot enough to beat against his armor, threatening to bake him like a turkey inside an oven.
He lifted his faceplate and sifted some dirt through his armored fingers, bringing a clump up to his nose for inspection. He searched for a smell - something familiar - a faint trace-scent that might help conjure a memory of the planet he longed to return home to.
There was nothing. The dirt stunk of sulfur.
With no additional movement from the cave and no further shots taken at him, Matt was confident the sniper, wherever located, had not seen him escape their dropship wreckage. It was time to make his way over to the Darkhorse crash site.
Matt lowered his head and began to inch back down the slope, when he suddenly felt the surface beneath him shudder like a minor earthquake tremor. He immediately knew he was in trouble.
Deep trouble.
Before he could react, a full-grown Hellsting burst through a layer of fine shoal next to him, its hideous translucent stinger already poised to strike, glistening in the low sun.
“Ah, shit!” Matt cursed to himself. He’d been laying right next to a nest the entire time. He leapt to his feet as the Hellsting let out a bubbling hiss and scuttled towards him like some malformed spider.
Matt skillfully dodged a flurry of stinger blows, careful not to slip. He could feel the grip underneath his boots loosening against the rubble. One wrong move and he was a goner.
Now the Hellsting flicked its stinger around in the opposite direction, cracking it like a bullwhip.
Matt ducked under the lashes and unloaded a barrage of shots, firing from the hip.
The rounds pounded the upper shell, shattering it like brittle chips of bone. But the gunfire was hardly enough to stop its advance. The creature reared up like some rabid stallion, beating the air with its three pincers.
Matt had studied Hellsting behavioral patterns enough to know this gesture was a prelude to a death-strike, where the creature would dislocate the base of the stinger from its abdomen in order to extend its reach. It was an ideal maneuver for skewering larger prey while keeping a safe distance.
Matt also knew when the creature was poised like that, it revealed an inherent weak spot. He wasted no time firing at its exposed belly.
The Hellsting screeched in pain as fountains of milky-white blood erupted from its wounds, splashing over the rocky slope. It was gravely wounded, but Matt’s actions made the god-awful thing even more pissed. The hackles across its back stiffened as it dropped low and started to circle him, now knowing better than to idle in his direct line of fire.
Matt could see it was losing a significant amount of blood. A single headshot would be enough to put it down. He raised the rifle to his eye, the scope reticles automatically locking onto the frontal lobe of its bulbous forehead. “Sayonara,” he whispered before pulling the trigger.
Click… click-click-click!
Out of ammo.
Matt paled. “Oh, come on!”
As if sensing Matt’s dilemma, the creature retracted two fleshy jowls around its gaping maw, unsheathing a long appendage like a mosquito's proboscis. Matt knew it was preparing to spit venom at him. If a single drop made contact, it would be the grand finale’ to an already horrendously shitty day.
Never taking his eyes off the Hellsting, Matt ejected the spent ammo cartridge with lightning speed. Expert hands at work.
The empty cartridge clattered across the rocky surface, the residual effects of the high-capacity pulse rounds making it glow neon-blue.
Matt clipped a fresh cartridge off his belt and smacked it into the underside of the rifle. The second he heard the cartridge click into place, the Hellsting fired venom at him. It looked like a stream of cloudy water.
Matt leaped out of the way as it shot past him, torquing hard into a somersault. He broke the roll with his right knee. It was messy form, even reckless, but he needed to gain some distance before it could fire another shot at him.
Instead, the Hellsting charged Matt in a full-frontal assault, its pincers snapping wildly.
No time to line up another headshot, Matt began firing from the hip again.
The Hellsting shrieked as the rounds pocked its shell.
Matt never stopped firing until the Hellsting smashed into him like a sledgehammer, hissing and thrashing in its final death spasm. They both tumbled down the slope in a blur of dust.
Matt reached his arm out and snagged the base of a spire, canceling the momentum of his fall to a sudden jolt, nearly ripping his shoulder from its socket. He yelped in pain as the Hellsting barreled over him and continued over the cliff, plummeting into a narrow fissure below. After a few seconds, he heard the creature hit the bottom with a meaty thud.
Matt laid there for what seemed like an eternity, desperately trying to put some air into his wracked lungs. Epsilon’s dense atmosphere wasn’t doing him any favors. He was bruised, battered, and covered in Hellsting blood, which stunk like a mix of vinegar and three-day-old roadkill.
Upon painfully hoisting himself upright, he realized his supply bag had gone over with the Hellsting. He looked down at his belt seeing only one ammo cartridge remaining.
Matt let out an exhausted sigh. “Fuck this planet.”
Please log in to recommend or discuss...
