U.S.S.A Umbra

Chapter 10 Hell in wonderland

 The horde of splinters gathered around them. There had to be a hundred or so and possibly more on the way. There were only four marines, Damien included.

"Did we come this far just to be torn apart by these things; to have survived all the horrors we've witnessed, to come so close to escaping with our lives, only to be devoured by the once-familiar faces of our fellow crewmen?" I barely had the time to ponder that thought as they started to shift and twitch, their bodies all started to tense, and we could all hear the wet popping of flesh, muscle, and sinew being torn and bone molding. The ones in the front had all reshaped their limbs into bloody bone protrusions; they began crawling on all fours towards us like fucked up four-legged spiders. "Open fire!" Tyson yelled out. A volley of rifle rounds echoed throughout the cargo bay, our bullets tore through them, one by one; they fell and skidded against the ground, leaving a black blood trail behind them. Their ranks in the back were pushing forward quickly as we were distracted by the fast-crawling ones in front. "Hey, Damien takes the launcher!" Tyson yelled out. He threw the launcher with one hand while manning his machine gun with the other. I caught it as my mag emptied on the ground. My HUD adjusted the best targeting solution to use, I aimed at the appropriate angle and fired four grenades where they numbered most, the blast from the HE shells reduced them to onyx showers of blood and giblets.

Tyson was taking down hostiles faster than they could replenish their numbers, but even we couldn't kill everyone on board with what ammo we had. "Did we get them all?" Pvt. Helm asked. There was no sound except for heavy breathing from everyone. "Alright we got them all, everyone gets on the ship!" Just as Tyson said that a large white armored splinter came up behind him rocking the ship. He barely had time to react and with one swipe of its engorged arm, it swiped him and his HMG off the top of the Ebony. "Tyson!" We all yelled out. He hit the ground hard but was still alive. The splinter was a tempest special forces judging by his white armor, this was not going to be an easy fight. I fired the last two grenades at it, but it deflected them out of the way in random directions, causing us to disperse. I looked towards the Ebony, Alice was still inside with Emily and the other scientist, the ramp was closed but if we didn't kill this thing, it would have little problem getting inside and doing god knows what. The tempest splinter jumped down in front of Pvt. William Helm. Helm emptied his rifle into it, but the bullets just shattered ineffectively against its armor, he quickly switched to his sidearm and fired half a mag into its neck, stunning it. After seeing how useless small arms are, I looked at Tyson's HMG and ran for it. As I sprinted towards it; I saw Helm run away from the tempest but with its long reach, caught him before he could get far enough. I picked up the HMG and aimed towards the monstrosity, before I could fire, it held Helm in front of it, I didn't want to risk firing on him. "Ahh just do it Damien, fucking shoot it!" That was the last thing he said he said before it grabbed his lower half and slowly twisted him like a magazine then tore him apart. The blood-curdling scream he made caused me to freeze still as I watched him get torn in half. 

It walked slowly towards me, its contorted face made a smile at me, and it made out a gurgled sentence. "After I'm done with you meatbags I'm going to violate all your corpses." Something in me snapped again as I heard what it said; my muscles tensed painfully hard as I lifted the HMG. I unloaded a torrent of 50. Caliber Tungsten sabot in its direction. It covered itself with its massive arm, but the sheer power of the turret was too much for it. Large chunks of black flesh and white armor were blasted off. After I ran out of ammo, the tempest was just standing there, barely held together by what muscle and tendons were left. It collapsed to the ground in a bloody heap of its viscera. I walked over to it and pointed my shotgun at its neck. I looked over towards Pvt. Helm's body and I looked back, my finger clenched the trigger and an echoing blast came out, spraying the contents of its throat all over the floor. Tobey was jogging over towards Tyson to check on him, I followed up behind to help him with Tyson. "Ugh thanks," He said begrudgingly, we carried him on our shoulders to the ship. I knocked several times on the entrance door to the Ebony, the door opened slowly, and there she was again, as beautiful as a sunny day. "Oh good, you're all still alive." She said relieved. "Not all of us," I said looking over at Pvt. Helm. Tobey and I helped Tyson into a seat, Emily walked over to me with a look of anticipation on her face. "Are we gonna go home now?" -"Not yet, we need to go get help, then we can go home." I patted her on the head and walked over to the co-pilot seat next to Alice. "Everyone good to go?" Everyone yelled yes. "For the love of God yes!"  Tobey shouted.-"Alright let's get out of here." I could feel the vibration of the Ebony's thrusters igniting and lifting us off the ground, we flew through the hanger force field and into the void of space beyond the Umbra. "Ok settle in everyone, I'm activating the Babelion drive."  As I saw the space in front of us warping and distorting as we went from normal space into the purple ether; something was wrong, the Ebony was still and then all I saw was white. "If only escape were so easy my playthings, now welcome to my wonderland, I hope you enjoy your stay.