I rushed with Eve to the front of the line, forgetting our roles and protocols and all that stupid shit. People were still marching towards the exit, but we didn’t have time to piss around now. Our commanders were up front looking at the tunnel exit, inspecting it to see what all was in the way.

  Once we made it up there, it was obvious the tunnel exit had been purposefully blocked with dozens, maybe even hundreds of damaged or destroyed vehicles. They were layered on top of each other, up on the roadway ramp all the way to the ceiling of the tunnel, stretching between both walls. The opening should’ve been a hundred feet wide to allow several cars to pass through at once, but now there wasn’t even enough room for a single person to squeeze between the wreckage blocking our way forward.

  “We can’t just blast our way out, that could compromise the structural integrity of the tunnel and cause a collapse.” Kotlokk mused aloud.

  “It seems like all the vehicles are jammed in together, no way to move or pull them apart, and it’s not like we have equipment for digging.” Almana responded.

  Eve and I abruptly stopped before the commanders and I could see they were shocked by our sudden appearance, and Seash did all he could to keep his face neutral—his annoyance with us now ingrained into his character it seemed.

  “What is it now?” Seash demanded.

  I waved at the blocked tunnel exit, “It’s another trap, the enemy will be bearing down on us soon.”

  Seash crossed his arms, looking no less annoyed, “Well of course it’s a trap; did you think all these vehicles piled themselves up here?”

  Eve stepped forward, clear annoyance on her face, “You don’t understand, fool, this is where they’ve been leading us all along; they were only tenderizing us along the way, weakening us so they could finish us off once and for all here.”

  Seash’s expression turned serious, “You’re sure?”

  Eve gestured to herself, “Do you doubt my insight?”

  Seash looked back towards our troops, seeing what all we had left, then back to Eve, “How long do we have?”

  Eve shook her head, “Not long.”

  I pointed out to both ends of the tunnel, “They’ll probably try to box us in from both directions, force us into a choke point at this ramp I’d imagine.”

  “Do we even have time to start trying to work our way out of the tunnel?” Almana asked.

  “With what? I wouldn’t even know how to start on this mess.” Kotlokk said.

  Before anyone else could respond, there was a high-pitched screech that echoed through the tunnel, sounding like it was coming from all directions in the darkness, monstrous and threatening.

  “What the hell was that?” Gryme asked.

  Sounded like a Predazoan screech, like something worse than the assimilated soldiers were in the tunnels with us.

  Seash ignored the screech, focusing on the problem at hand, “We can’t dig in here forever, so we’ll have to split our attention; have some people work on breaking through the blockade while the rest hold defensive positions.”

  I gestured to Eve, “You sure you don’t want Eve to use one of her specialty weapons?”

  Seash narrowed his gaze, knowing what I was getting at, “No, those heavy weapons would do more harm than good in this situation. As always, the two of you need to stay back to mitigate risk.”

  Almana looked surprised, but didn’t say anything, probably thinking it wasn’t her place to interject. Of course, when your life was on the line you’d think that would be the perfect time to voice your concerns.

  There was another screech coming from the opposite direction now, and I could see the eerie noise caused the rest of our soldiers to move double-time to make it to the ramp with the commanders.

  Right away quite a few soldiers started trying to brute force it, move any part of the wreckage blockade they could, and while they were able to shift a little of the warped metal, with the progress they were making it would’ve taken days to clear things out.

  “We don’t have time to be wasting around like this; we need an actual plan.” Kotlokk insisted, watching the soldiers work in futility.

  Seash nodded along, “Let’s get defensive measures established quickly, then we’ll start working our way out of the tunnel from behind the barriers.”

  Moving with dedicated haste, the soldiers deployed every repulser barrier we had and even some of the encampment wall-shielding we used at night, enough to give us some cover and funnel in enemies that would come from either direction.

  The distant screeches were more frequent now, and not as distant as before; it was harrowing and horrifying, probably meant to demoralize us before the fighting even started—and it was working.

  The vyranes had no idea what we would soon face, but the unknown in the dark was taking its toll on them. As for our soldiers, they did know what was waiting for us in the dark, either from first-hand experience against Gamma-17, or thanks to all the data and footage of what the Predazoans were capable of.

  I looked back to see Seash repurposed the power armor soldiers for digging duty rather than holding the defensive line, an obviously desperate move. The power armor soldiers were using some multi-tool I’d seen them use to help clear the area for when we needed to make camp for the night, like some weird laser-chainsaw that created shockwaves of focused heat to clear away debris. It wasn’t drilling equipment, but I could see they were actually making some progress breaking down some of the vehicles in their way. However, it was still pretty slow work.

  Eve and I were relegated to the far wall of the exit ramp alongside the researchers, all looking wide-eyed and terrified same as always—wildly out of place amongst all this danger, even more than me honestly. We all had our guns out and ready, but by the time we’d actually use them once the enemy broke past our barriers for us to join in with the fighting, it would probably be too late.

  I looked over to see Kianna’s knees were actually shaking, and with every screech in the dark she yelped and covered her eyes as though accepting this was the end.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  I put a hand on her shoulder, “Hey, we’re going to get out of this, trust us.”

  Kianna smiled awkwardly, her teeth almost chattering, “Easier said than done.”

  Gorgam looked between me and Eve, doing a much better job of holding onto his fear, “And do you two, uh, have a plan?”

  I shrugged, “Stay back and out of the way so as to not expose ourselves to danger, I guess.”

  Gorgam’s big frog face looked more skeptical than afraid now, “Right, but there’s obviously no way the two of you would be willing to make your final stand here.”

  Gorgam seemed to stay clear of any conversations about the Empire or the mission when it was brought up around us, obviously trying to stay neutral. But he wasn’t dumb and definitely knew there was no love lost between us and the Empire—knew we’d never actually lay down our lives for them.

  “If all your efforts fail and the enemy overwhelms everyone else, I’ll take Adam away from here, breaking through the ceiling of the tunnel and flying back to The Radiance with him if I must.” Eve admitted casually.

  Kianna’s eyes grew wide as her pink skin paled several shades, “You’d just leave us here?”

  Eve smiled kindly at Kianna, “No, of course not, this would be after you’ve all already died.”

  If I thought Kianna couldn’t look anymore horrified, I was wrong, but before she could just straight up start crying on me, I waved a hand out to cut off any rebuttal.

  “She’s joking guys, seriously.” I said, then reached up to tug on a handful of Eve’s tentacles, earning a glare from her.

  ~You damn well know I wasn’t joking~ Eve told me through the humming vibrations.

  ~Yeah, but there’s no reason to torture the poor people in case these are their last moments after all~ I countered.

  Eve chuckled and rolled her eyes at me, pulling her tentacles free of my grip, ~Such a saint~

  I ignored Eve’s little commentary from there, turning back to Kianna, “Look, we’re going to play things safe for now, follow along with our orders, but if shit really hits the fan and there’s no other way out, obviously we’ll have to break protocol and reveal some of Eve’s powers.” I confirmed.

  ~And leave them all to die afterwards~ Eve added in my ear, but I ignored that too.

  I could literally see how much my words reassured them, as though they were suddenly given a way out no matter how bad things might turn out. Of course, I had no idea if we’d actually be able to save them, and honestly Eve would probably want to leave them behind anyways, but I wasn’t about to tell all them that; better to let them live and die with hope.

  There was a loud sound of rending metal, and pretty much everyone seemed to jump a foot in their air with their nerves strained as they were, but we looked up towards the noise and saw the power armor soldiers pulled away a huge chunk of damaged metal, what looked like an entire vehicle from the blockade.

  “Excellent, keep that up and we should be able to get out of here in no time.” Kotlokk encouraged the men, helping to haul away the newly dislodged scraps.

  Still, they were quite far away from breaking enough of the wreckage away so a person could get through—a dozen vehicles in the way at least.

  “Shh, quite everyone, you hear that? I think they might’ve caused something else to collapse.” Almana warned, tilting her head to the side to try and hear better.

  The power armor soldiers paused their efforts as everyone leaned in to try and hear if they made the exit even more unstable. It sounded far away, but I thought I could hear a low rumbling too actually.

  “Wait, that doesn’t sound like metal.” Seash said.

  “Sounds too far away too.” Gryme added.

  The low rumbling was constant, but I quickly realized it wasn’t coming from the blocked exit, rather it was coming from deep inside the tunnel, and slowly growing louder.

  Everyone seemed to come to the same conclusion all at once, and Seash gestured for the soldiers to resume their digging.

  “Hurry now, no matter what happens, you must continue work to clear the exit.” Seash insisted.

  The rumbling was accompanied by screeching now, echoing all around us, scattered and random at first, but after a minute it seemed like the screeching never stopped.

  “Shit, I think I see something moving in the distance!” One of our sniper marines called out.

  We had a small bubble of light around us at the bottom of the exit ramp and a little of the roadway beyond, but outside that was pure darkness, and inside that was a rumbling, screeching, chattering of noise that slowly started to sound like a collective, coming closer—coming for us.

  “Contact!” A soldier called out, though I was sure it was just panic that caused him to see something that wasn’t there, but when he fired his gun into the darkness, the red laser bolt lit up enough of the darkness so we could see dozens of twisted forms closing in around us, too quick to make out any details.

  “Contact left, contact right!” Another soldier called out, and more and more started firing off into the darkness, into the unknown, randomly and aimlessly—desperately.

  “Contact everywhere—they’re everywhere!” A marine shouted, and then all hell broke loose. No longer was anyone concerned with following the strategy of focusing their fire on a single target, no, now they were just wildly shooting into the darkness, unable to even see their foe, let alone strategize against them.

  You would think the laser fire and explosions would drown out all the noise, but no we could still hear the creatures in the dark screeching and clawing their way forward, making their way into the light.

  When the first one stepped into our field of vision, there was a moment of crazed confusion where the lasers stopped as people tried to comprehend what they were seeing.

  Right away, it was obvious it wasn’t an assimilated soldier—not a person at all really. It stood roughly four feet tall on four legs that seemed insectoid and jagged, armored maybe with thick black chitin. Its thin torso paled to dark grey and looked like a reptile’s underbelly, and then it darkened at the chest and seemed to bulk up almost too large for its frame. Its arms were beefy too, also armored with the black chitin, with long, slender hands that looked weirdly jointed like some crab or spider, with a huge, curved blade on the forearm extending at least a foot past its fingertips. Its face was nightmarish, looking like a bald grey cat wearing a black spider’s mask, with long tentacles coming from the top of its head, whipping around with silvery spikes at the end.

  I didn’t need Eve to tell me what these were; they were Predazoan drone forms. I’d asked before why Beta-09 didn’t just take over the planet with the drones, and Eve said it was simply more efficient to assimilate and control the local population, rather than repurpose their biomass into creating new forms.

  Well, it seemed like Beta-09 did a little bit of both.

  The drone reared back and let out a terrifying screech, a call and a challenge, chilling the blood in my veins as it echoed all around the darkness. And then to answer the screech, more drones stepped into the light, all roughly the same shape, though with minor variations.

  More and more drones started marching forward into our view, stalking towards us slowly at first, but as their numbers continued to grow—as more filled the dwindling light around us, they started to trot, then sprint towards us.

  There were dozens of them—no, hundreds even. They were all around us, all over us, screeching and clawing for us, desperate to get those claws into our flesh.

  “All units, fire!” Lieutenant Bryx declared, standing at the front of the line with the soldiers.

  The lasers ripped into the drones as they made their way towards us, but any that died were trampled over immediately as dozens could replace the fallen without pause.

  “Fire, fire, fire!” Bryx continued, sounding more desperate as the enemy advanced.

  I looked back to see the power armor soldiers weren’t even three cars deep into the blockade—not even a quarter of the way through.

  I heard a huge, staticky warble as the drones crashed into the repulser shielding, getting thrown back and away, only to be replaced by two or three more drones trying to break through.

  The barriers held for now, but they wouldn’t last forever, and our soldiers had to be careful as they shot after the drones from behind cover, and even when they were able to down them by destroying enough biomass, they were simply replaced by the dozens behind them.

  I looked off into the distance, to see the darkness of the tunnels, to see the drones were still piling on through, no end in the line coming after us.

  It was then I finally felt what everyone around me was feeling; hopeless. Even with my superpowered abilities, how the hell would we ever be able to defend against such mindless ferocity—against the seemingly endless hate?

  I looked towards Eve who watched me with an almost satisfied expression.

  ~Ready to make our escape now, my darling?~ She asked mildly, sounding surprisingly smug despite everything.

  Honestly? Looking at what all we were facing, seeing the insurmountable odds before us, I actually considered it.