With this new entry, we have fifty chapters of The Hungry Stars done and only five* more to go. The battle in the hangar reaches its desperate zenith. The survivors have surprise, inside support and a hyper-narrow focus on what they need to do and how they need to do it in order to have a chance to get off Samhain. The defenders have numbers, firepower, technology and unswerving dedication to the cause. Let’s find out which one will win this time. Our plucky survivors have been making headway, but their allies are dropping like flies.
In the snippet below, we check in with one of said allies as, his mission accomplished, he tries to complete the last task before him: survive. For the full story and scene check out the links above, and hope you enjoy!
*estimate only number is subject to change as author loses more battles against compressed storytelling
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The hangar was chaos. Gunfire and explosions were everywhere. Armoured men and women running, setting up fire points and defensive positions or launching assaults while inhuman machines did the same. Emil ran past the wreckage of bodies that had fallen or been thrown from the higher levels. One Marine lay prone on the deck. He didn’t know where she had come from, nor was there any sign of what had caused her plummet, but she left a red smear on the deck as she pulled herself forward one hand at a time.
Her spine must have been broken because she couldn’t stand, relying entirely on her arms to move. She saw him. He could only see a little of her eyes behind the cracked lenses of her helmet, but he saw confusion, hope… and then something else as she began to crawl towards him, legs dragging uselessly behind her.
In her eyes now, he could see hate. Despite her injuries, the woman was still alive in her armour. If her implants had taken control of her corpse, she wouldn’t be staring at him with such naked loathing. The eitr only hated one thing. A human was too small for that hatred.
Through the painkillers flooding her system and keeping her from screaming from her grievous injuries, the Marine realized that Emil wasn’t any lucky survivor. Her mouth moved. He wasn’t on her channel, but he could read her lips. Fucking traitor. She had no weapon. Her rifle dragged behind her, its strap tangled around her right bicep, but it was broken from the fall and useless. Her sidearm was gone, probably on another deck entirely. Paralyzed and bleeding through her breached armour, she still didn’t give up and kept dragging herself towards him.
Emil almost thought about drawing his pistol, but it was too small a caliber. Even a point-blank shot into Marine-grade power armour would be more likely to ricochet off and hit him than actually do anything to her. He almost shook his head in apology to the Marine. He couldn’t give her a quick death and there was no time for anything else. Maybe she’d be found before she bled out. Maybe they could save her and repair her spine… or maybe someone with her face would soon fall out of a gestation tank, gasping as her lungs took in air for the time and her brain tried to remember how she’d gotten there, but never quite could.
He kept running. Someone shot at him, but the gunfire stopped abruptly. He didn’t look back to see why. He’d just reached the elevator when there was a bright flash of light as the Confederate pinnace fired a missile at something he couldn’t see at the far end of the bay. The blast enveloped more than half a dozen levels, leaving a glowing, molten crater large enough to drive multiple cars through. If there’d still been air in the hangar, the concussion would have bowled him over. Even so, shrapnel whizzed through Twenty-Three like a hail of shurikens. It bounced off marine and Riddari armour, but would easily tear through lighter EVA suits like his. Emil heard something strike the elevator doors as they closed, letting out a breath as the lift carried him back up to the main levels.
He’d done his part. He just had one job left. It was the least likely of all to succeed, but he’d still try. Doing anything else was giving up. “I’m on my way,” Emil reported. Half-joking, but really not: “Don’t leave without me.”
A woman answered him. The young soldier, not the cold, unsettling captain. “Then you’d better fucking hurry.”
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