Jason wasn’t a reckless man, but he wasn’t afraid to play the madman when the situation demanded it.
He followed the spider drone cautiously. He was absolutely certain they were marching straight toward the central core. The enemy had fully compromised the drone’s programming!
Are they getting desperate? He reasoned that the hostile entity was highly intelligent. Perhaps it realized Jason had cracked its psychological maze and decided to test him using a hijacked Federation drone. What if the drone actually managed to lure him in?
This desperate play also confird sothing else: the enemy’s operational capabilities were severely limited.
Jason played along, pretending to be oblivious as he followed the machine step by step.
Thump, thump, thump. His heartbeat hamred in his ears. His breathing grew heavy, his muscles coiling tighter with every step. In the next instant, that sickening blend of extre danger and synthetic relief washed over him!
He couldn’t take another step forward!
"Is that your nest right there?!" Without a second thought, Jason dropped Henry to the deck, ripped his assault rifle from its sling, and pulled the trigger. With a deafening crack, the 5.56mm rounds tore the spider drone into sparking scrap tal!
"Is this your nest?! I’m not going in!" Jason roared.
But a split second later, the horrifying sound of scuttling tal echoed through the dark. Over twenty spider drones ca pouring out of the central corridor, swarming toward him!
They were all under enemy control!
Originally designed as military combat drones, the science division had stripped out their internal weapon systems to make room for exploration sensors. But that didn’t an they were harmless; their eight bladed, pneumatic legs were lethal weapons. They could launch those tal limbs like high-velocity throwing knives, and even a microscopic tear in a pressurized spacesuit could be a death sentence.
In the middle of a firefight, there was no ti to patch a suit. A single puncture ant rapid decompression, explosive blood boiling, and suffocation!
Jason’s focus snapped into absolute clarity. The swarm of twenty-plus drones surging toward him exerted imnse psychological pressure. There was no ti to aim down the sights; he simply raised the rifle and fired, relying entirely on raw instinct and years of combat experience.
The rifle roared, spitting a barrage of suppressive fire. At the sa ti, his shoulders jerked violently as the heavy recoil threatened to throw him off balance.
"...Damn it, the gravity here is too low for automatic fire!"
Even firing single shots with kinetic weapons in low gravity required a braced stance to manage the recoil. Unloading a full-auto burst made staying grounded nearly impossible.
But his reaction speed was superhuman. The mont he pulled the trigger, he used the recoil and the torque from his core to spin mid-air, launching himself toward the adjacent bulkhead.
Biting his lip, Jason planted his boots hard against the scarred tal wall and pushed off into a evasive roll.
Three down! In that split second, three drones were shredded by armor-piercing rounds.
These machines were built by humanity; Jason knew their specs and weaknesses better than anyone. Their outer chassis were light and completely unarmored!
"...You really think you can kill with half-finished human tech?!"
But the next wave of drones completely ignored the unconscious Henry lying on the floor and lunged straight for Jason. This confird his darkest suspicion: The thing in the core wants live specins!
It knew it couldn’t mind-control , so it’s trying to eliminate ! It’s leaving Henry alive for the harvest!
The horrifying realization flashed through Jason’s mind, but he instantly shoved it aside.
His entire focus locked onto the three drones leaping at his face. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw several more flanking him through the darkness, their optical sensors completely dark to avoid detection.
Where the hell did so many co from?!
The leaping drones triggered their pneumatic launchers, their bladed forelegs snapping out like spears. Jason’s breath caught in his throat. Ti seed to dilate, slowing to a crawl. He violently contorted his body mid-air, violently snapping his rifle barrel to the side and pulling the trigger.
Muzzle flash strobed in the dark. The rounds punched dead-center through the drones’ sensor clusters, sending their shattered bodies tumbling backward in a shower of sparks.
But in the blink of an eye, a volley of bladed legs had already reached him!
Jason’s pupils contracted. He executed an impossible, mid-air evasive twist, kicking off the ceiling. The heavy recoil of his burst fire pushed his trajectory slightly higher, allowing several blades to slice through the empty space inches below his boots!
Six down!
He rebounded off the wall, spinning aggressively and firing in rapid bursts. Milliseconds later, a cluster of blades ricocheted off the bulkhead right where his head had just been.
These blades were forged from standard human alloys. They weren’t strong enough to penetrate the alien hull plating; they simply sparked and clattered uselessly to the deck.
Eight down!
Jason gunned down two more drones. He continued to use the rifle’s recoil to manipulate his trajectory in the low gravity, constantly dodging, vaulting, and tumbling through the crossfire.
There was no one around to witness the spectacle; only his suit’s biotric caras faithfully recorded the lethal ballet.
Whether the alien entity watching through the drones possessed the capacity for awe was unknown. But what Jason was doing completely shattered the biological limits of a normal human being!
Chaining the weapon’s recoil with his explosive physical strength, Jason ricocheted back and forth between the narrow corridor walls, never touching the floor for more than a second. He consistently dodged the lethal, high-velocity blades by milliters.
It was a terrifying display of pure combat instinct.
His assault rifle spat a relentless stream of fire, nearly every round finding its mark, but the swarm was relentless, and the quarters were getting tighter...
Twelve!
In less than sixty seconds, twelve smoking piles of scrap tal littered the floor, arcing with electricity. But Jason had just vaulted into a blind corner. He had nowhere left to dodge!
With a sickening thwack, a heavy blade slamd into his chest plate, followed imdiately by a sharp, biting pain. He gasped. A loud, terrifying hiss erupted from the breach as his suit’s pressurized atmosphere violently vented into the near-vacuum corridor. He was out of ti!
Each drone can only launch four blades, but they fire at over 100 ters per second. Thank God the suit’s undersuit sh is Kevlar-weaved; otherwise, that blade would have punched straight through my sternum!
He couldn’t afford to hesitate. In the milliseconds, he kicked off the wall with everything he had, firing point-blank into the swarm.
His standard-issue magazine held thirty rounds. If his accuracy held up, he had just enough ammo to finish this.
Seventeen!
Jason smashed his way out of the encirclent, but a stray blade caught him in the calf, punching through the suit.
Two breaches. The air pressure was plumting. He took one final, massive breath of oxygen, knowing it might be his last. Gritting his teeth against the pain, he spun around to face the final four drones.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
The assault rifle roared, reducing the last four machines to shredded aluminum.
Twenty-one! That’s all of them!
The adrenaline instantly crashed, leaving Jason’s muscles burning with exhaustion. The lack of oxygen was already triggering severe hypoxia in his brain. His suit was completely flat, and if he didn’t seal the breaches imdiately, he was going to suffocate.
He slamd his rifle to the deck and ripped open his thigh-mounted tool pouch. Grabbing the exposed hilts of the tal blades in his chest and leg, he yanked them out. The Kevlar weave had stopped them from hitting major arteries, but blood was still flowing freely. He grabbed a heavy-duty adhesive patch and slapped it over the wounds to stop the bleeding.
For minor suit punctures, ergency sealant gel or heavy adhesive patches could temporarily restore the suit’s integrity.
He moved with frantic precision. Despite his lungs burning for air, his hands remained perfectly steady. It took him thirty agonizing seconds. Just as the edges of his vision began to tunnel to black, the seals held.
Jason violently twisted the valve on his ergency oxygen cylinder. Pure air blasted into the suit, puffing the fabric back out. He took several desperate, ragged breaths. A dull, throbbing pain flared in his lungs, a nasty side effect of the rapid depressurization.
Thank God none of my own riffle casings hit , Jason thought, reviewing the chaotic crossfire. He had gotten incredibly lucky. Firing full-auto inside a confined tal corridor ant the rounds could have bounced multiple tis, easily shredding him or Henry.
But he had survived.
"Now it’s my turn!"
He scanned the dark corridor with a cold, predatory smile. After confirming the drone swarm was entirely neutralized, he walked over and picked up the heavy Gauss Rifle. He leveled the barrel dead-center into the dark abyss leading to the core, and pulled the charging ring...
Boom!
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