POINT ZERO
SECTOR 7 (THE IRON COAST)
LOWER SLOPES OF THE MAGNETIC PEAK
NOVEMBER 15, 2012
09:00 LOCAL TIME
The dust didn't settle here. It hovered, suspended by the static charge that saturated the air.
"Big Mother is clear! Go! Go! Go!"
The rear ramp of the CH-47F Chinook kissed the black basalt of the landing zone. Alpha Team surged out, boots slamming onto the alien rock. The downdraft from the twin rotors whipped the scrub-brush—twisted, metallic-looking plants that chimed like wind chimes—into a frenzy.
Captain Russo took a knee, his suppressed M4 carbine raised, scanning the ridge line.
"Perimeter set! Big Mother, you are clear for dust-off!"
The massive helicopter roared, lifting heavily into the bruised purple sky. It banked hard, retreating to the safe altitude where the magnetic interference wouldn't fry its avionics.
Silence rushed back in to fill the void.
But it wasn't a true silence. It was a low, electric hum. The mountain itself was vibrating.
Harris Brown stood up from his crouch.
He looked... condensed. At six-foot-two, he wasn't the tallest man in the squad—Volkov had him by an inch—but he was the densest. The M134 Minigun hung from his shoulder by a custom tactical sling. The ammo chute fed from the massive backpack like a spinal cord.
He shifted the eighty-five-pound weapon, grimacing slightly beneath the Demon Mask.
"Heavy?" Rakesh asked, taking a position on Harris's left flank.
"It's not the weight," Harris's voice grated, filtered through the porcelain fused to his jaw. "It's the balance. My center of gravity is off."
He rolled his shoulders. The bio-enhancements made him strong enough to tear a car door off its hinges, but physics was still physics. Holding a vehicle-mounted rotary cannon required constant isometric tension.
"I need to work on my endurance," Harris muttered. "I burn too hot."
"Save the burning for the bugs, bhai," Rahul whispered, scanning the tree line.
Dr. Elena Kovač moved to the center of the formation. She opened a ruggedized Pelican case and began deploying a tripod-mounted sensor array.
"Setting up the baseline," she said, her voice shaking slightly. "The magnetic flux here is off the charts. It's... it's organized. The waves aren't random; they're rhythmic."
"Control to Alpha," Colonel Vance's voice crackled in their earpieces. The signal was already degrading, filled with static pop. "We read you on the ground. Transponders are green. Proceed to Waypoint Echo."
"Copy, Control," Russo replied. He hand-signaled the team. "Volkov, take point. Rakesh, Rahul, flank the Asset. Doctor, stay in the pocket. Brown, you are the hammer. Keep that gun spooled up."
Harris nodded. He thumbed the safety on the minigun's grip. The electric motor whined softly, spinning the six barrels just enough to keep them loose.
The team moved out. They walked into the shadow of the Magnetic Peak, a place where the compasses spun wildly and the air tasted like battery acid.
GDI HIGH-COMMAND
THE AEGIS, GIBRALTAR
11:15 GST
Three thousand miles away, the war was a series of numbers on a screen.
Sir Malcolm Hayes stood in the main command center, his arms crossed. General McCaffrey was pacing behind the telemetry operators.
The main wall screen showed a thermal map of Sector 7. It was a kaleidoscope of blues and greens—cold rock, cold air.
But in the center, near the peak, there was a red pulse.
"Magnify Sector 7-North," Hayes ordered.
The image zoomed in. The resolution sharpened.
"Sir," a technician called out, urgency in his voice. "We are detecting a thermal bloom. It's not volcanic. It's biological."
On the screen, the red pulse wasn't a single dot. It was a cluster.
Dozens of small, hot pinpricks were emerging from the cave mouth where Shadow Company had died.
And in the center of them sat a massive, burning blotch of white-hot heat.
"Is that the target?" McCaffrey asked. "The Spider?"
"That is the Matriarch," the technician confirmed. "But sir... look at the smaller signatures. They aren't moving like patrols. They are... growing. Rapidly."
Hayes leaned forward. "Gestation," he whispered.
He realized the horror of it instantly. The gold mine wasn't just a mine. It was an incubator. The creatures Shadow Company had woken weren't just guarding the gold; they were using the gold's conductive properties to accelerate their breeding cycle.
"The heat is rising," the technician said. "Sir, the ambient temperature in that cave just jumped twenty degrees. It's a birthing cycle. A mass hatching."
"How many?" Hayes asked.
"Estimating... forty. Maybe fifty. And they are waking up now."
McCaffrey grabbed the comms handset. "Control to Alpha Team! Abort! Pull back! You are walking into a swarm! Repeat, you are walking into a swarm!"
Static hissed back.
"Control... Alpha... signal... broken... interference..."
The magnetic storm on the mountain was shielding the team. They couldn't hear the warning.
Hayes stared at the screen. He watched the white-hot blops of heat begin to stream down the mountain, flowing like lava toward the small, blue dots of Alpha Team.
"They're on their own," Hayes said.
SINGING ROCKS
SECTOR 7 (THE IRON COAST)
ELEVATION: 1,500 FEET
The forest was dead, but it wouldn't lie down.
The trees here were petrified, turned to stone by eons of mineral absorption. Their branches were sharp, jagged spikes of black flint.
Alpha Team moved through the "Silent Forest" in a tactical wedge.
Crunch. Crunch.
Their boots broke the crust of the ash layer.
Harris swept the minigun left and right. The Mask was feeding him data—air density, wind speed, smell.
It smelled like ozone. And something else.
Copper. Blood.
"Hold up," Dr. Kovač hissed.
The team froze.
Kovač was staring at her handheld scanner. The screen was flashing red.
"The seismic readings," she whispered. "They just changed. It was a rhythmic pulse before. Now... it's a vibration. Continuous."
"Earthquake?" Volkov asked, his heavy machine gun raised.
"No," Kovač said, her eyes widening behind her glasses. "Footsteps. Thousands of them."
Harris felt it then.
Through the soles of his boots. A tremor. Not deep in the earth, but on the surface.
Skittering.
He looked up at the trees.
The petrified branches cast long, spindly shadows.
But some of the shadows were moving.
"Above us," Harris growled.
Russo snapped his head up. "Contact! High right!"
The canopy erupted.
It wasn't one creature. It was a rain of them.
Small ones—"Hatchlings," though they were the size of large dogs—dropped from the stone branches. They were pale, translucent white, their exoskeletons not yet hardened into chrome. But their mandibles were black and sharp.
"Open fire!" Russo screamed.
BRAAAKK-KAK-KAK!
The silence shattered.
Russo, Rakesh, and Rahul opened up with their rifles. The air filled with tracers.
The hatchlings were soft. The 5.56mm and 6.8mm rounds tore them apart, splashing yellow ichor against the black trees.
"Too many!" Rahul yelled, kicking a hatchling away as it tried to bite his leg.
Harris stepped forward.
He didn't fire. He couldn't risk hitting his team with the minigun in this close quarters.
He swung the barrel of the minigun like a club, smashing a hatchling out of the air. The impact crunched wetly.
"Kovač! Get back!" Russo yelled, dragging the scientist behind a rock.
"They're herding us!" Volkov roared, firing his PKM in long, controlled bursts. "They are pushing us into the ravine!"
Then, the trees parted.
A sound like tearing metal filled the air.
From the darkness of the deeper forest, something massive lunged.
It wasn't a hatchling. It was a Warrior-Caste.
It was the size of a minivan. Its legs were armored in gleaming, iridescent chrome. Its eyes burned with orange malevolence.
It ignored the rifle fire. The bullets pinged off its carapace.
It wanted the biggest threat.
It looked at Harris.
"Come on!" Harris roared. He squeezed the trigger.
The minigun spun. BRRRRRRT-
A stream of depleted uranium fire erupted. The Warrior-Caste screeched as the rounds chewed into its armor, shattering the chrome plates.
But the Spider was fast. Impossibly fast.
It leaped through the stream of fire, taking the hits, sacrificing its front legs to close the distance.
It landed on Harris.
The impact was like being hit by a freight train.
Harris was thrown backward.
The Spider slashed out with a scythe-like limb.
SHIIING.
The blow didn't hit flesh. It hit the gun.
The monomolecular edge of the spider's limb sliced through the rotating barrels of the M134 Minigun as if they were made of butter.
The weapon was sheared in half.
"No!" Harris grunted as the recoil of the impact lifted him off his feet.
He flew backward, crashing through a petrified bush and tumbling down a steep embankment into the dense, thorny undergrowth.
"Asset down!" Rakesh screamed. "Asset down!"
KILL BOX
The Warrior-Spider stood over the spot where Harris had vanished. It chattered, a victorious, clicking sound.
Then it turned its orange eyes toward the rest of the team.
And behind it, three more Warriors emerged from the shadows.
"Circle formation!" Russo ordered, his voice tight with fear. "Protect the Doctor! Focus fire on the joints!"
They were trapped.
To their backs was a sheer cliff face. In front of them, four Warrior-Spiders and a swarm of twenty hatchlings.
Volkov's PKM clicked empty. "Reloading!"
Rakesh threw a grenade. BOOM.
It blew the legs off two hatchlings, but the Warriors just hunkered down, shielding themselves with their armored limbs.
"We can't penetrate!" Rahul yelled. "The armor is too thick!"
The lead Warrior—the one that had taken the minigun fire—was bleeding yellow slime, but it was still combat-effective. It raised its front legs, preparing to charge.
Dr. Kovač squeezed her eyes shut. "This is it," she whispered. "Oh god, this is it."
Russo checked his mag. Three rounds left.
"Fix bayonets," Russo said, his voice grim. "We die standing."
The Warrior hissed. It tensed its legs to spring.
It launched itself into the air.
CRACK.
A single shot rang out.
It wasn't the rapid pop of an assault rifle. It was the thunderous boom of a battle rifle.
The Warrior-Spider, mid-air, jerked violently.
A hole the size of a fist punched through its primary ocular sensor. The bullet, carrying massive kinetic energy, blew out the back of its cephalothorax.
The creature crashed to the ground, sliding to a stop at Russo's feet. Dead.
The other spiders froze. They looked toward the dense bush where Harris had fallen.
CRACK. CRACK.
Two more shots.
The second Warrior collapsed, its leg joints shattered by precision fire. As it fell, a third shot took its head off.
The bushes parted.
Harris Brown walked out.
He was covered in black dust and yellow slime. The remains of the minigun backpack were gone—he had cut the straps.
In his hands, he held the HK417 Marksman Rifle.
He didn't look like a tank anymore. He moved like a ghost.
The Demon Mask was covered in scratches, but the blue eyes were burning brighter than ever.
Harris didn't spray. He didn't pray.
He raised the rifle. The optics settled.
He breathed. The world slowed down.
"Hey," Harris rumbled.
The two remaining Warriors turned toward him, shrieking. They scrambled over the rocks, closing the distance in seconds.
Harris didn't flinch.
CRACK.
One spider dropped, a bullet through its open mouth.
CRACK.
The last one leaped.
Harris sidestepped—a fluid, unnatural motion—and fired point-blank into the creature's underbelly.
The spider crashed into a tree, twitching and dying.
The hatchlings, seeing their protectors dead, broke. They chattered in panic and scattered back into the canopy.
Silence returned to the clearing.
The only sound was the hissing of acid blood on the rocks and the heavy breathing of the team.
Harris stood over the corpse of the first Warrior. He looked at the severed minigun lying in the dirt.
"Expensive," he muttered.
He ejected the magazine from his HK417. It clattered on the stone.
He reached into his tactical vest and pulled out a fresh mag.
He slammed it home. Click-Clack. He racked the charging handle.
Rakesh lowered his rifle, staring at Harris.
"I thought you were dead, bhai," Rakesh breathed. "You fell thirty feet."
Harris turned to look at the team. His uniform was torn, revealing the grey, stone-like skin beneath. There was a deep gash on his arm, but it wasn't bleeding red. It was clotting instantly, a black, tar-like substance sealing the wound.
"I bounced," Harris said.
He walked past them, taking the point position. He looked up at the mountain peak, where the heat signatures were still rising.
"Reload," Harris ordered, his voice cold and flat. "That was the welcoming committee. Now we go to the party."
Russo stared at him for a second, then nodded. He tapped his comms.
"Control... this is Alpha... We are still combat effective. Asset is... operational. Continuing mission."
Harris didn't look back. The minigun was gone. The brute force approach was over.
Now, the hunter had his rifle. And the Spider in the cave had just made it personal.