Dinosaur island part 5
Clues to who Serafina really is are starting to come very quickly...but to the guy who chose Serafina as the name...did you know that Serafina means angel in Latin? Cause that will be a big clue too...but now I've said too much...
I'm taking it to the next level people, hold onto your butts, and expect a lot, and I mean a lot of suspenseful cliff-hangers. If you've read Mathew Reilly you may have some inkling of what I'm talking about. And OMG I just thought up the best plot points. I won't spoil anything. But read carefully.
Dinosaur island part 5
Bullets tore up the plasterboard wall all around Dave as he sailed through the air, quickly snatching up his deagle off the counter and sending a single, unbalanced, off aim shot in the general direction of the soldiers who were standing in the doorway.
He had already been moving when the door had been blown open, something about the lay out of the red dots, and the EMP had been a dead giveaway too.
Dave hunkered down behind the corner of the counter, the only part of it he could hide behind.
With a quick swooping motion he took a peek out from behind the counter, checking what was happening out there, and loosing two more shots in the general direction of his attackers to make sure that they didn't get any ideas about popping him while he was unprotected.
He could see that Serafina was already down. Either unconscious or dead, a soldier was standing over her, covering her with his gun, an MP5SD.
Another soldier stood to the left of the door, covering Dave with his MP5/10, the MP5's larger cousin, firing the 10mm round instead of the 9mm.
The third soldier crouched further in the room, half-behind a computer desk, staring down the sights of his UMP, repeatedly peppering the area around Dave with .40 cal rounds.
Dave knew he was in trouble. This was Charlie team, the spec-ops branch of the assault force that was sent to the island. They really knew their shit, and they were after him.
He reached down to his hip and pulled free two hand-grenades from his combat webbing, placing his pistol on the ground and holding a grenade in each hand.
One was the generic fragmentation grenade, but the other was something a bit more special.
This grenade, a simple oblong shaped green canister with a blue band, was an acid/poison grenade.
The grenade was unique, as it was equally effective against infantry and armour. The acid component could eat through six inches of tank armour in less than twenty seconds, while the poison component comprised of a powerful neurotoxin.
When the grenade fragmented, the shrapnel was coated in the poison, and any cut, no matter how small, sustained from the grenade shrapnel, would be fatal within seven seconds, unless the anti-toxin was delivered.
Dave cocked his right arm back, and threw the fragmentation grenade at the wall, as hard as he physically could.
It punched through the wall, bursting onto the other side of the plasterboard with ease, thunking down onto the ground in the next room.
"Take cover!" He yelled out to the commando's as he tossed the second grenade at them. It skidded to a halt, bouncing off Serafina's muzzle, and coming to rest very close to her.
The commando's, trained for a long time by harsh drill-sergeants, obeyed his orders immediately, unconsciously.
All three of them hunkered down behind cover as they saw the grenade. Dave ignored all of it, leapt at the wall, curling into a ball and crashing right through it, coming to a halt on top of the grenade he had thrown through the wall earlier, with it wedged painfully at the small of his back.
He had thrown the grenade to see if the wall had a support strut there, so when the grenade had gone through it, he had known that it was just stiff plasterboard, and that he could maybe go through the wall there. The acidic grenade hadn't been armed when he had thrown it. It was just a diversion.
His gamble had paid off though, and he rolled onto his stomach, reaching out and grabbing the grenade, cursing as he realised that he had forgotten his pistol in his rush to escape.
Dave stood up, crouching down low and moving fast across the new room, searching for somewhere to hide or a place where he could get away from the soldiers chasing him.
He was about to open a metal door when it slammed open, almost catching him, but he quickly sidestepped, the door missing his shoulder by inches as a soldier holding an M16 came rushing into the room, gun up.
Dave quickly grabbed the rifle near by the barrel, yanking it out of the soldiers hand and swinging around, slamming the butt of the gun into the back of the soldiers head as the unfortunate mans momentum carried him into the room.
The blow sent him tumbling to the floor, unconscious. He would be lucky to wake up ever again.
Dave pivoted, quickly bringing the M16 into a firing position, looking down the high-tech sights mounted on the assault rifle as the giant window to his left exploded, sending glass shards into the room.
Five bullets echoed throughout the enclosed space, each round finding their target with brutal precision.
The first bullet, a 5.56mm NATO round [It is a 5.56 round isn't it? I can't remember...I'm sure it's not a 7.62...but anyway...] hit a soldier as his feet touched the ground on Dave's side of the window, punching through his body armour and ricocheted off a rib, splintering it with it's unyielding passage. The round continued through the soldiers body, puncturing several internal organs, before lodging in the back of his armour, the dying soldier falling to the ground with a thud, his Kalashnikov AK74 skidding across the floor, cutting a swath through the glass.
Next, was the second soldier to enter the room. He took a bullet in the neck, not dead-centre, but rather, in the soft flesh to the left of his throat, scything open the vein there, the soldier dropping his G3A3 and clapping a hand over his neck, gargling softly as a thin stream of blood traced from the corner of his mouth.
Number three came through the window at the same time as number four, the former carrying a FAMAS assault rifle with optics, while the latter carried an advanced OICW.
Number three took a bullet in the leg, just above his knee, the round careening off the bone, just nicking the tough organic material, knocking off a small sliver of bone before exiting the other side of his leg in a small spray of blood. The soldier dropped into an awkward crouch, holding his leg, trying to stop the blood flow with his gloved fingers.
Dave pivoted and fired a round at soldier number four, the bullet going high and wide, as he hadn't had time to aim it properly.
The fourth soldier loosed a burst of 5.56mm rounds at him, the bullets spraying out from his high-tech weapon.
A soft grunt escaped Dave as the three rounds found their target, hitting him square in the chest and knocking him from his crouched position flat onto his arse, winded and probably wounded, although he had no way of knowing.
The soldier began to advance, and Dave ignored the pain in his chest and lifted his purloined rifle, firing four inaccurate shots at his assailant.
Dave was so off-balance from the three bullets that he had been hit by, that his aim was severely impaired.
The first bullet missed the soldiers hip by a small margin, slamming into the wall above the broken window. The second was more successful, hitting him in the shoulder, spinning him slightly to the right, which made the third bullet miss wide like the first.
Fourth shot was the kill shot. It hit him in the jaw, shattering the bone and tearing open the muscles, dropping him to the ground.
Dave collapsed backwards, lifting the rifle to fire a single shot into the chest of an enemy that came bursting around the corner, rifle held too high to hit him.
He let the rifle drop to the side, lifting a hand to rest it on his chest, trying to feel how many holes he had in him.
His vest was still completely intact, but the fabric had been torn off, several metal shards still embedded in the frayed fabric that remained around the hole. The metal of his vest was completely exposed, pitted and scratched by the bullets.
He moaned softly and struggled to his feet, wearily picking up the gun and using the wall as support, vaguely thankful that he wasn't dead.
The bullets that hit him were jacketed hollow points, and were made to fragment when they hit something. So, the bullets fragmented when they hit body armour and barely penetrated, if they didn't stop at all. But if they hit soft, pliable flesh, they entered the body and fragmented, tearing massive chunks of flesh away and causing much more damage than a standard bullet.
Dave leant against the wall, and a heavy bullet tore a hole in it right above his head. He immediately let himself slide down, until he hit the ground, staring down the sights of his M16 at the soldier who he had hit in the leg.
The round tore a hole through the unfortunates man body armour, slicing deep into his chest and nicking his heart, before hitting the back of his body armour and ricocheting off in an upwards direction, exiting near his neck in a small spray of blood.
Suddenly the world went white and a loud ringing echoed in Dave's ears as a nearby door was blown off its hinges, slamming into the room and spinning off a computer table in a shower of sparks and breaking glass.
As his vision cleared, Dave had only a moments notice as the area around him was peppered with bullets, a round glancing off his body armour, turning him slightly.
He lifted the M16 and fired three quick three round bursts, rolling to his feet and heading for the nearest door, leaping and turning in the air, firing another few bursts in the general direction of the doorway, landing on his back and pivoting as he rolled, coming up on his feet as the door burst open.
Dave didn't miss a beat; he lifted his gun...and threw it, straight at the soldier who had entered the room.
He dropped his gun in surprise as the gun sailed through the air towards him slowly. He caught it on a reflex action.
Dave stood in front of him, and then cocked his head to the side, giving him a patronising smile before drawing his sword and slicing the unfortunates soldier's head clean from the rest of his body.
He let the sword drop, kicking the weapon the soldier had dropped, lifting it to chest height, before he caught it and turned towards the room he was about to exit, holding the gun in his outstretched right arm, held sideways as he held down the trigger and turned the weapon in a quick arc from one side of the room to the other.
The soldiers who had entered the room immediately took cover as the area all around them was filled with smoking bullet holes.
Dave turned and ran.
As he ran down a long corridor, he stared at the weapon he had just picked up.
It was short, and looked futuristic, with a scope and no visible case-ejection area, and no barrel at all.
The weapon was a g-11, a weapon that was still more advanced than most firearms available. On three-shot burst, the G-11 could fire at the amazing rate of 2000 rounds a minute. On full-auto, it only fired at seven rounds a second. The bullets it fired were not normal bullets. They were basically only the head of a conventional bullet, with a wad of dynamite attached, which allowed the G-11 to hold an exemplary 150 rounds in its body.
As he ran, he pointed the gun under his own arm, loosing a short burst of fire towards the door he had just exited. The soldiers who were about to burst through it ducked back and returned fire, several rounds smacking into the walls around him.
Dave didn't like it. The hallway was too enclosed. If he stayed in here for too long then he would be hit, and hit soon.
He drew another grenade from his combat webbing, slinging it behind him and ducking against the wall, trying to get as much cover as he possibly could.
.
..
...
....BOOM!!!
The hallway seemed to pulse for a second as an amazing rush of heat spiralled down each end.
Dave ran towards the smoky haze formed by the grenade, loosing a long rain of bullets down the hallway, a bullet from the return fire glancing off his right hip armour piece, before he dived into a hole created by the grenade, quickly rolling to his feet and peppering the new opening with rounds after round of fire.
There was a cry of pain and a gun went skidding across the hallway floor and out of sight as the head of a wounded soldier thunked down, just in view through the hole.
Dave sighted and fired, a single round, which slammed into the bridge of the soldiers nose, shattering his goggles and killing him instantly.
He then turned around and headed for the only door out of the room, stepping into a huge room that looked oddly familiar.
It was a laser maze.
The first thing he did was to step on the plate that Serafina had stepped on in the last laser maze room, activating the rooms systems.
Red bars zinged through the air, starting to slowly rotate at set places.
Dave wasted no time in starting his run through the maze. He needed to get at least far enough into the jungle of red bars that they obscured him from attackers. Their fat red beams were good cover, so if he got far enough in, then he would be hidden.
He heard a zinging sound as the barrel of his Dragunov dissected a beam, the laser going right through it like it did to everything.
With a few nimble steps, he was across, just as the first cautious soldier stepped out into the room and started to make his way across.
Dave dropped into a crouch and unslung his rifle, figuring that the moment he saw a soldier, he would just shoot him, picking them off one by one...but there was a problem. His Dragunov was missing its barrel. About halfway down the barrel, it had been cut off, at an angle, like a hypodermic needle.
He cursed quietly. It wouldn't stop the weapon from firing, but the accuracy of the gun would be severely reduced, and it would be much, much louder.
The g-11 was his only real option at that point in time, so he slung his Dragunov again and drew the little gun, starting to head across the laser bars again, on a hunch, he tossed a grenade underhand at the nearest laser, and watched as the grenade hit the ground, split in half and rolled away in two different directions.
At that point a bullet swished through the air close to his face, almost nicking his ear, so he dropped into a crouch and returned fire as soldiers erupted from the doorway.
Some of them were hit, the range too long for the bullets to really cause all that much damage to their ballistics armour, but being hit by a 5.56 millimetre round is a large deterrent, no matter what armour you're wearing.
Dave started to work his way backwards, hoping that he wouldn't get hit. The lasers were good cover, obscuring his form as he headed for the other side of the room, but bullets still hit all around him and smashed against his armour, knocking him off balance.
One bullet caught the clip of his breast plate and shattered it, leaving it half hanging off, which rendered it impossible for him to turn around and return fire, as he would probably get hit in the process.
He drew his combat knife and quickly chopped off the breast-plate, as it would only be a hindrance now, and dropped it to the floor, a laser instantly sliding through it, cutting it cleanly in half. More bullets sparked off the ground nearby and slammed into his back, ricocheting and smashing against his armour. He quickly decided that he needed to get away, get some kind of an edge over his enemies, a way to distract them and get away while they were predisposed.
Dave took his acid grenade from off his combat webbing and his final fragmentation grenade, holding both in one hand as he took another grenade off his webbing, a flash bang, and threw it through the laser, hoping it would go off before it got cut in half.
It went off with a massive explosion of light and sound, assaulting the eyes and ears of anyone who saw or heard it.
The second grenade was the acid/poison grenade, which skidded to a halt near the blinded, deaf enemies, who couldn't react in time and were consumed by an explosion of yellow epoxy, which ate through their flesh, and shredding shrapnel that just cut them to ribbons.
Grenade number three, a fragmentation grenade, bounced against the wall and came to rest close to it, before it exploded in a shower of plasterboard and flame, creating a nice hole that was easy to traverse.
A sniper stood in the doorway to the laser room, looking down his sights dispassionately, sighting on Dave's head and firing, the bullet perfectly on aim, no way to dodge it, no way to stop it. Nothing between it and his soft brain cavity but an easily pierced layer of bone and air.
* * *
Carson was trailing along behind the two female soldiers, his arm in a sling and his pistol held in his good hand. The two women were talking, something about how strange it was that the raptors killed the teams so quickly or something along the lines of that. He didn't concern himself with joining their conversation, he just kept plodding along, hoping to exact retribution on the next raptor that presented itself to his gun sights.
Gina 'cat' Hillsworth was on the right, her G36K held at shoulder height, although the barrel was aimed at nothing but the flooring of the vent they were crawling through. The new recruit, the female, was crouch-walking on the left, her USAS-12 held at shoulder height as well, carefully aiming down the length of the vents.
They had all decided unanimously that it would be bad practise for them all to walk across the same length of air-vent at the same time, as structural integrity wasn't probably wasn't a strong point when the makers of the island had placed the here. Every now and again, they would pass a grate that hung off the vent, revealing the room beyond, usually a very long drop to the floor, with varying scenes shown.
There were lab area's filled with shattered glass, pools of dried liquids spread across the benches, several areas eroded by acidic substances that had spilled across them. Or better yet were the hundreds of rooms containing containment cells, all of them open. Or even better still was the giant room filled with revolving red light where a six metre tall, three inch thick, solid metal door had been torn off it's hinges and hung crookedly from where something had forced it's way out of it's cell.
"So just what are we looking for?" The new recruit asked.
"Other teams, for starters." Gina replied, flicking her gun from side to side as they reached an + junction in the pipes.
"Do you think that any of them survived?" The other asked, hefting her heavy weapon and rolling her shoulders as they were starting to cramp a little.
"We've gotta go look for them. There's nothing else we can do. We're stuck here for another sixteen hours. We were supposed to call in a pick-up, but those damn beasts came in and got us. They won't bother looking for us for another sixteen hours; even then it might take them another day to find us. They islands aren't rooted to the ground. They float along at quite a pace." Gina replied, and then quickly held up he arm in a silent "stop and drop" sign.
All three of them lowered themselves cautiously to the flooring of the vent, crawling forwards until they could peer out of the slatted opening into a containment cell area. Another of the massive cells stood in the centre, revolving red lights on either side. If one was to strain their ears, the sound of silenced weapons firing repeatedly could be heard.
The quiet gunfire stopped, and something immense hit the ground on the other side of the door. It was so big that the reverberations shook the door.
About a minute later the door exploded outwards, the carefully packed c-6 placed there destroying the hydraulic lock and hinges, so that both doors slowly fell forwards in a puff of smoke and fire.
Two men strode out of the clearing smoke, closely followed by all of delta team, the demolitions and electronics group, staring down their sights at the room, covering all entries and exits. They seemed to be unmolested by the raptors for some reason, or their team was very good, as they still had all their members.
The female recruit was about to call out when Gina clamped a hand over her mouth. "Shhhh...." She hissed, pointed to the centre of the group, where the team leader walked, speaking into a radio.
"Is operation archangel coming along as planned?" He asked, receiving a response that was obscured by interference, but was intelligible to someone who was holding the radio to their ear.
"So she's integrating into the team well then?" He asked.
"Oh yesss sir. Better than anyone could have anticipated. And she was only a last-second decision too. No one would have thought she could get in." Was the reply as the whole grouped walked by underneath the three soldiers who hid in the air vent.
The new female recruit stared at the group, and then slowly looked up into the barrel of Carson's pistol, and then she looked left, straight into the barrel of Gina's G36K.
Both wore steely expressions. They had heard all they needed to hear.
All three of them were so busy aiming weapons at each other that they didn't notice the smoke clearing from the doorway and the form of a giant, bullet-riddled carcass lying across the entryway, looking like a small hill, giant knife-like teeth gleaming from within a massive, blood-slicked snout.
* * *
Serafina awoke slowly, staring blankly at the strange object in front of her and trying to process what it could be or where it could have come from or what exactly it was. And then she began to wonder why it felt like she had been run over by a rampaging tyrannosaurus rex.
She crawled slowly to her feet, staring around at a room that looked like it had been home to a rampaging tyrannosaurus and wondered if that was what had happened.
The pop of gunfire could be heard from somewhere up ahead, and se went to investigate, reaching down and clamping her powerful jaws over Dave's thrown grenade and picking it up, carrying it in the tip of her muzzle like a dog retrieving a paper for it's owner as she strode off towards the sporadic sounds of gunfire.