“Holy fuck!” Alyssa gasped in shock at the sickening sight.


    “It’s the Hivelord!” John said grimly, “Aim for the back, its unarmoured there!”


    The two of them dropped to one knee and began to open fire on the grotesque abomination, rounds punching straight through the Hivelords unarmoured abdomen and spraying green blood out the side of the creature. The Hivelord screeched in fury and pulled its ovipositor out of its victim with a sickening plop. It turned towards them, its mouth opened wide to bellow it’s rage, only for Alyssa to st the creature right between the jaws, her armour piercing rounds shooting through its mouth and punching into the nerve clusters at the back that led up to its brain. The Hivelord staggered to one side, crippled by the deadly shots and crashed to the floor in a tangle of twitching chitinous limbs.


    “That was a hell of a shot!” John congratted the young woman, amazed at her uncanny uracy.N?velDrama.Org: owner of this content.


    She grinned at him and tipped an imaginary hat, making him chuckle. They stood and cautiously walked into the room, looking for any more hostile aliens, but finding that they were now alone with the captured humans.


    Pleas for help and desperate cries to be released began to echo around the chamber, as the terrified prisoners realised that against all odds, they had been saved by these two unknown heroes.


    “We’ll get you out, don’t worry” Alyssa called out in a loud voice.


    John found a nearby console that operated the cages and began to open the chitin doors one by one. The prisoners within began to climb down thedders that led up to each cage, in a desperate hurry to leave this horrible ce. A small group of people went to help the abused victims on the central tform and after five minutes all the prisoners had congregated fearfully in front of John and Alyssa.


    “Now follow behind us” John ordered them, “We’ll lead you out”.


    They began to trace their way back up to the hangar, passing through the deafening wall of sound in the Kirrix nest and then up the ramps that led to the upper decks. As they reached the long corridor that would eventually lead them to the hangar, John’s sensitive ears began to hear the distant sound of gunfireing from ahead of them. Recognising the sound of Terran Federation assault rifles, he led Alyssa at a hurried pace to see what was happening in the Hangar.


    John walked through the ornate archway that led into the huge hangar to see that they had stumbled into the aftermath of a pitched battle. Parked in the middle of the hangar was a bulky Terran transport and a heavily armed gunship hovered nearby, facing the other side of the Hangar. Armoured Terran troopers had fanned out in a line and were gunning down the remnants of a Kirrix force that had tried to storm theirnding site. The hexagonal tiled wall opposite was a mosaic of green blood and ichor, the corpses of bullet ridden Kirrix soldiers slumped where they had fallen prey to the urate fire from the marines. It had not all gone the humans way however and over a dozen Terran troopers eithery dead, or writhing in agony from Neutron weapon hits.


    An armoured soldier was standing next to the transport, issuing curtmands to a couple of attentive officers. One of the officers saw John and Alyssa and pointed them out to the figure, who whirled around to face them. The stern faced man strode up to them purposefully, the eagle insignia on his shoulder pad informing John that this was the leader of the Marine troopers.


    “Commander Paul Richards TFMC” the grizzled veteran informed John as he reached the doorway and saluted respectfully.


    “Commander John ke, TFMC – retired” John said in reply, smiling as he returned the salute.


    “Not much of a retirement John” the marinemander said, smiling grimly.


    “I don’t know, it has its perks” John replied grinning, as he nced at Alyssa.


    “You’ve done a hell of a thing stopping these Kirrix. We saw your handiwork in the hangar when wended” Paul said, clearly impressed. “Where’s the rest of your team? Not too many losses I hope?” he asked soberly.


    “It was just us two” John replied nonchntly. “We’ve taken out the hive guard, the Broodmother and the Hivelord and there’s several hundred freed captives in need of an evac, if you can help us out?”.


    “You’re kidding right?” Paul said, looking in disbelief at John and the teenage girl at his side and then over their shoulder at the huddled throng of humanity massed behind them.


    John shook his head, and smiled at Alyssa with pride.


    “Well god damn!” Paul eximed, before he burst outughing, his face lighting up in a big grin.


    “What I could do with a few squads of troopers like you two!” he said wistfully.


    John smiled graciously. “We’re in a hurry to chase the Pirate leader who sold all these people to the Kirrix” John exined “Can we leave you to mop up here and look after these prisoners?” he asked politely.


    Paul looked at him in stunned amazement.


    “Are you off to fight the war with the Kintark single handed as well?” Paul said, bursting into another round of boomingughter.


    “We’ll take care of things here” the Marine Commander grinned, once he had stoppedughing. “I’m just d you’re on my side!”


    The two men shook hands firmly and John led Alyssa back to their captured Kirrix dropship. They climbed on board and the young blonde fired up the ship’s engines and sealed the airlock, before taking off and gently pirouetting the dropship around to face the hangar exit. She powered up the engines and they left the Kirrix hive ship behind them.


    John used themunicator as they left the hive ship, calling Cra to let them know they were safe. The gorgeous brte’s concerned face filled the holo-image.


    “Oh thank goodness!” She eximed “Are you two ok?” She asked worriedly.


    “We’re fine and we rescued the prisoners!” John replied happily.


    “Thank god for that!” Cra replied, sighing with relief.


    “We’ll be there soon” John said fondly. “You did a hell of a thing today Lieutenant”


    Cra looked back at him and smiled proudly.


    “See you both soon” she said and blew him a kiss.


    Alyssa brought the dropship around to the side of the Invictus and then eased it into the Hangar bay as soon as John had opened the hull doors. They disembarked, eager to leave Kirrix technology and the blood soaked ship behind them. As they left the hangar, they passed a couple of cleaning robots who had stopped at the pile of Kirrix corpses, paused as if unsure how to proceed. The automatons eagerly began to clean up their bloody green footprints however, soaked as their boots were in Insectoid gore. Having pity on the cleaning robots, John and Alyssa left their bloodied armour in a pile in the Hangar bay to collect and cleanter, rather than tracking blood all over the spotlessly clean ship.