The Baldie, The Clone, and the Sabre: Chapter 8

[Martzin]

L.V. 426
0554

The marines had still been in a jolly mood, briskly waiting for the bulk of the force to come back down and continue the offensive.

The plan was all laid out on the comms; The men back on the Sulaco would drop down, they would swoop in and reclaim LZ2 which supposedly was crawling with the slimy things. Once that was done, if they hadn't been beaten to a pulp they would push into the caves and end the infestation. Reno, Garth, and Weaver would lead the charge, being the only men on the field with the highest ranks.

Reno was still sitting with his face locked onto the landing pad. He had been thinking about what to do once the force got here, suddenly unable to grasp anything about leading anymore. He couldn't think up specific details or callsigns, hell he could barely speak normal sentences. It was all suddenly greatly befuddling and whenever he attempted to remember details his brain just hid a cold brick wall.

No worry, Reno mumbled to himself. This shiny silver sabre will lead me to glory, to victory, it alone will destroy this threat and then he can go home and sleep. He was really tired.

He listened to the men on the comms rabble about whatever crap they were worried about, but he didn't care enough to actually make out what they said. It slowly regressed into background noise as he continued to wait.

Soon enough, they could hear the loud machinery hissing and feel the wind kick up dust and smack against their faces, waving their clothes about. The men stood up, some with an askew posture presumably from injuries or fatigue. They were all eager to leave, though they knew the leaders would have to stay behind and continue the fight.

The Rasputin finally touched the ground, and out the hordes of fresh Marines flowed. They formed into clumps on the LZ, the wounded which hadpretty much been left to die up to this point being dragged aboard.

Suro limped her way through the crowds, the boots constantly nudging her backward with their never-ending barrage of heavy shoulders and arms. Her pent-up anger was beginning to bottle up inside, as all she wanted was to get off this filthy rock of a planet and go back home... At the very least, take a nice nap whilst on the ride back up? She continued to slowly break her way through the rows of boots until she finally penetrated through the last wave, faced with those gleaming dark green chairs, with nothing but the on-edge anticipation of getting off this hell-hole reverberating in her mind...

And then an MP jumped in front of her face, grabbed her by the shoulders and pushed her back.
"Hey, what the fuck!"
Another one held Suro down as the same MP grabbed her feet and they lifted her off the ground. She immediately responded by kicking and thrashing, hoping she would break their grasp and escape, the images of the Temple and Kopchek being dragged off flickering back into her mind...

Soon enough, she was screaming like a mad-man that the lizards were taking her and yelling at her friends to shoot them. They whacked her in the stomach with their stunbaton and she immediately shut herself up, an immediate rush of pain sprawling throughout her entire body, the pain and shock too much for her to even writhe.

To her right, 2 more MP's were forcing Ray Dubi out of the Rasp. The same pair had forced him on in the first place, the CO stating that every able-bodied man would go down there whether they wanted to or not.
"Let go of me! I'm not going to stay here! I'll die!" he constantly spat in their faces, but their stone-cold expressions stayed the same and they threw him on the ground. He quickly got up and tried to run back in but they kicked him in the knees, forcing him to the ground.

He looked up and tried to stand, but they had already closed the doors shut. Ray turned his head and looked back at the rest of the troops. He wasn't going back there, no way no how! Nobody could force him back into those slaughter halls of caves, nobody! So Ray began to desperately claw at the steel doors, shouting at them to open up but they still wouldn't budge.

"Poor bastards," Jeff stated, gazing along with the rest at the 2 marines who had lost their minds.

Garth snickered dismally. "I know just how they feel," Garth lamented. "Anybody brought any coffee maybe...?"

"Oh for fucksake," Weaver interrupted. He marched over and pulled Suro back on her feet, and promptly grabbed Ray by the backpack and swung him over to the rest of the marine force. "You 2 need to clear yer heads now, cuz we're moving out!"

Suro looked down and rubbed her eyes, walking over to Reno. Dubi did the same followed by Prevatt, who escaped the hive just in time for the parasite implanted within her to get removed.

"Alright marines," the XO yelled to the poorly-organized blob of soldiers. "Organize yourselves with the proper SL. Delta and Charlie you're with Reno, the Charlie SL.. Alpha and Bravo, you're with Powalski, Bravo SL."

The boots formed into their respective squads.

"Good," Weaver took a second to observe the square formations of men. "SL's, keep your men alive for the sake of the platoon and the rest of human kind. Godspeed!"

And with that, Reno immediately began the push.
"Follow me!" he simply yelled, giving no order as to what formation they should take or what route they would go. Just one simple order which delved the men into chaos as they attempted to keep up with Reno.

Ray wanted to stay behind. He demanded to himself he not go with them; but seeing how nearly everyone was leaving, he'd be alone where he stood. And that's never a good thing.
"F...Fuck!" he whispered to himself, before catching up with the rest.

They immediately sprinted through the Nexus halls, Powalski and his men beside them. Their armor-lights illuminated the entire building which must've warded the Hunters away. The conglomeration of troops finally popped out the other side, sprinting through Atmospherics and trudging through the knee-high water that kept the 20-foot tall jungle tree alive. Reno held his sabre steadfast through it all, chopping up the parasitic weeds and the natural green vines alike to carve a path for the Marines.

Soon enough they were on the path towards Internal Affairs, where some engineer must've blown a hole in a wall for their own pyromaniacal amusement. But they ran through the charred blank space of the dome, stomping on large shards of metal.

And suddenly, a Hunter popped out from the vents and grabbed a marine by his ankles, the man falling face-flat onto the cold tile ground.
"HELP!! HELP MEE!!" he desperately cried, as the troops piled around him. The thing continued to jab it's spiked tail into his torso, puncturing the armor like styrofoam and through his heart. The blood spurted into the air like a water fountain, and soon enough he was vomiting blood out in the same fashion.

One marine wearing Alpha's colors stabbed the alien's crested head wildly, screaming incoherently with a mix of rage and despair at the horrific end to his friend, the hunter frantically wriggling it's way back into the vents. But that Alpha grunt still held on, the acid spilling out as he still shanked the alien's neck while holding onto it's skull. He didn't let go even when it took him into the vents with itself.

The men had no time to lose, and so they left the bloody corpse there and continued. Reno was not fazed at all by the casualties, figuring it's just the Marine life.
"KEEP GOING!" he hollered back at his men, thinking it might boost their morale after the gory scene. It might have, who knows?

But they broke through the IA dome and Reno made a straight charge, Powalski's squad splitting off into Robotics where they would flank from the North.

And then once they got there, there were no aliens to be found. It was nothing but remnants of an old nest with weeds slowly crawling along the gravel and grass, and countless bodies. Innumerable amounts of bodies.

"Cun' samwun call duh pod down?!" Reno yelled into the headset.

"What retarded fuck is saying that?" the RO responded.

"It's me, Reno! We needz duh pod down to clone all dese bodies!"

"How many bodies?" the CO asked, now hopping onto general comms.

"A shit ton, sir. This musta been an old nest before they left it for... some reason." Weaver answered to the headset, lightly nudging the head of a bursted marine.

"Maybe it's a trap!" Dubi suddenly exclaimed. "They're trying to lure us in... with the bodies! They're smart, they pulled this shit off back on the Sully."

"The fuck are you ramblin' about, private? You think they understand us cloning them?" Weaver retorted.

"Maybe they fucking do, XO! They know everything about us after they got on the Sully! Even if they don't, they MUST know that we like to drag our fucking dead buddies away!" Ray darted his head around the LZ. "They're here, crawling around us... a fucking trap!"

Soon after they could hear the hissing of the shuttle touching the ground. "Just load up the fucking dead," commanded Weaver.

And so the troops went to work on dragging the heaps of dead comrades onto the pod, most of them having been nested and popped with holes in their chests.

The stench was unbearable for the boots, though the vast majority of them were accustomed to the odor of rotting corpses by now.
The majority of the Sulaco above was in a similar state too, with weeds and resin having to be scraped off the metal corridors and both human and alien bodies needing to be disposed of.

Reno stood there, his sword proudly jabbed into the sand with the handle in his palms. He posed like he was on a great statue, as the rest of the men dragged the decaying bodies onto the pod, the shuttle itself being too small for the amounts of corpses. They had to be stacked ontop of eachother like blocks, and when they were done it was like a complete jenga tower made of dead bodies.

Someone suddenly nudged Reno from behind, throwing him off-balance. "Hey!" he cried.

"Quit slacking and help us with the corpses," Suro said.

"Alright, alright.. I's working on it," he responded. So Reno walked over and dragged some bloody cadavers onto the pod, lunging them on top of some other corpses. He wiped the dirty dark red blood from the bodies onto his uniform, having no concern for sanitation.
"A job well done!" he said to himself.

As anti-climactic as the push for the 2nd Landing Zone was, Weaver again had the squads rally up. They would soon begin the final assault on the Lizard Menace, ready to pillage those cooped-up cave nests and set it on fire or bury it into the gravel or whatever. They just wanted to make sure these animals go extinct, forever.

[Karmac]

I'm anticipating a "Clever girl" moment after Dubi's outburst, also god damn MP's.

[Monoo]

Cun' samwun call duh pod down?!

Poor, poor Reno.

[Karmac]

He's beginning to suffer from a case of Boreale.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJMLfACod48

Spess mehreens.

[Eenkogneeto]

>When you just want a nap but MPs are assholes
Make a mental note to put icyhot in their jumpsuits later.

[Martzin]

Cun' samwun call duh pod down?!

Poor, poor Reno.

This made my day.