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I sat down in the doorway, letting the launcher fall to my side as I watched the ballistic misses carry their deadly cargo into orbit. The glow from their exhaust was still lighting up the entire launch platform. For the first time in my life, I had failed a mission.

"We lost", Alcatraz sighed, "it's over, Martin fucking won."

"We haven't lost just yet", Mike said looking at him.

"How?", Alcatraz asked, "Martin just killed 360 billion people."

"Were still kicking aren't we?", Mike said, "we can still find a cure."

"Say we find a cure", I interjected as I watched the missiles disappear, "we get it to so many people...how?"

Mike didn't answer me.

"That's what I thought", I said using my FAL to push myself up.

Sometimes when things go wrong, there isn't anything you can do. There will be times when even the baddest juggernaut super solider can't withstand everything the enemy has thrown at him or her. When this happens, all you can do is sit back, catch your breath, regroup, and figure out how bad the situation really is.

"Lets get back to the lounge", I said as I turned around. About halfway through the doorway, it slammed shut, almost cutting me in half. I turned around, facing the missile pad as Martin;'s voice came over an unseen loud speaker.

"No", he said, "as entertaining as it is to watch you fight, it's time to deal with you. Permanently."

There was a sound like a diesel engine starting up. The ground began shake as the black launch pad was bathed in LED light from mounted poles. Then I heard it. That terrifying hum that I had heard down in the Kojak.

"You see", Martin said, "this whole time I've just been buying time, I needed to keep everyone distracted while I cleaned house, it was working just fine until you showed up Skyline. You don't seem to understand that your arrival had forced me to accelerate my time table and finish one last project."

The hum began to get louder as the shaking intensified, I could see the huge concrete wall in the back began to crack and chunks began to fall away.

"What the fuck!?", Alcatraz whined, 'what is that!? What is making that sound!?"

"IDrive Rock Crusher drills", I gulped, "there must be three or four of them coming."

The back wall gave away to reveal what I could only describe as a fortress on tracks. The giant tank was about 15 feet tall and 20 feet wide and had 5 huge IDrive Rock Crusher drills mounted to the front that were flared wide open, showing their hardened tungsten, diamond coated cores. LED lights were mounted behind the drills on this one and it's paint was jet black while the drills were red. The exhaust was blowing black smoke as if it were an 1800's train and the engine was making so much power that the vibrations were causing the ground to shake. It was so heavy that it rolled over boulders the size of a dog house reinforced with rebar and crushed them flat as if it were a bulldozer rolling over a coke can.

"Nope", Martin said, "just one. Meet the HS-2200. The most powerful tunnel boring machine ever built by man, designed it myself. Now please, die."

The radios cut off as the five drills closed up and bored their way into the concrete of the launch pad. The vibrations were so bad we almost couldn't stand up.

"Scatter!", I shouted, "give it as many targets as possible! Our only chance is to knot it's drill lines!"

Quickly as we could, we dispersed. The tank, how ever, wasted no time in producing a square box with about nine smoke grenades in it. It shot all nine of them into the air, turning the launch pad into a smoky gray mess. Because of this, I was almost too quick to assume that whoever was operating the tank had thermal vision, which would only complicate matters further.

"Heads up", I called into the radio as one of the bits popped out in front of me, flaring itself open. I responded by falling to my back, just barely avoiding the spinning pike, "the operator is using thermal imagery."

"Copy!", Alcatraz shouted.

"Got it!", Mike replied.

I jumped back up as the drill retreated underneath the concrete launch pad. I could feel the vibrations of the drills snaking around from the soles of my boots, but couldn't exactly tell where they were, or what they were doing. I was more worried about them drilling through a silo and a stray spark catching the fuel of one of those IPBM's. If that happened, no one in the lab would survive. In an attempt to distance myself from the tank, I ran to the edge of the pad, finding it when I smacked face first into it, making me rear back and see stars and blurring my vision. There was a slight sizzle as blood leaked out of my cut lip and where my visor met my skull. Stumbling, I used my hand to follow the path of the wall away from the tank. As I did, I could feel the vibrations of the drill inside chasing after me. There wasn't anyway I could out run an IDrive Rock Crusher drill, so I had to wind it out as long as I could. Even the biggest tanks can only carry so much of it. I could feel the drill getting closer, closer and closer still. I could feel the vibration of the spinning bit about to punch through the wall. I couldn't run any faster, I knew I couldn't get away, all I could do was run and hope it wound itself out. I didn't make it to far. In the smoke, I crashed into Alcatraz, who was running so quickly that when I smacked into him, it sent us both into a daze. He was running faster than I was, but I was to heavy to move with speed alone. We both fell to the ground as the drill broke free from the wall and flared itself open like a Mongolian death worm.

That was when I heard what I could only describe as what you hear after winding a pull back toy car and letting it unwind with no ground contact, then a loud SNAP. The massive tungsten bit flew over our heads and crashed into the wall behind us. I heard a grinding sound like the tank was trying to drill steel with the bits open and then a CRASH and a gust of wind as the smoke cleared and the tank was sideways, throwing a shit ton of sparks out where the middle bottom drill had once been. I could hear the electric motor winding down as the tank retracted the res of it's drills to maneuver back into position.

What had happened was when the bit came at us, it had ripped the entire assembly right out the front of the tank after exceeding it's range limit. The force had tipped the tank so far forward that the operator had thrown the transmission into reverse to prevent from turning over. When it corrected, it got turned to the side and the impact had sent out a gust of air that cleared the smoke. As powerful as IDrive rock crusher tanks are, they suffer catastrophic failures when they exceed their range at full power.

"One down!", Mike shouted running over to us, "come on guys get up."

Mike helped me up and then turned to Alcatraz as I turned my focus onto the tank. The four remaining drills were no longer spinning, though they were still flared open. I watched as the tanks wisp of black smoke became a cloud as the diesel engine roared like a giant and the monster began to creep forward. It revved so loud that the launch pad was once again shaken from the vibration. I heard what had to be a 4 speed IDrive Automatic shift into second gear as the tank rolled into the middle of the launch pad and began to spin up the drills once again.

"There's no way we can get rid of all five of those things before it takes out the three of us", I said, "we need heavy weapons!"

Alcatraz glanced over to the Javelin laying by the door, "will that take this thing out!?"

"It's worth a shot!", I shouted as the drills detached from the tank and buried into the stone pad once again, "run for it!"

"I'm going for the Minigun!", Mike said pointing to the weapon Al had taken from the juggernaut, which was laying halfway across the pad.

"I'll give him something to play with!", I shouted, "go, go, go!"

The three of us split up, trying to give the tank as many targets as possible, though four drills to the three of us wasn't exactly a fun ratio. Two of them were on my ass, while the other two were hounding Mike and Alcatraz. Taking my gloves off in sprint, it was time to call on something every Xenomorph had the ability to do, go quadrupedal. I had always been faster standing upright than I had been on all fours, but I found on all fours, I was more balanced, could corner at full sprint, and could sprint longer. I could also dig my claws into the wall and actually run on the wall like Alcatraz could do in his Exo, though not for an unlimited amount of time.

"Can't catch me", I said jumping to the side of the two drills as they burst from underneath the ground, flared wide open.

"I don't need to catch you Xeno",....shit that had to be the tank, it must have been autonomous, "I just need to run you out."

The entire launch pad seemed to shake.

"Alcatraz", I said ducking out of the way of the drills again, 'where is that launcher?! This tank is going to keep drilling until this pad collapses."

"I got it!", Alcatraz shouted, "firing Javelin!"

I saw the rocket fly from the launcher and smack into the front of the tank, only to ping off one of the drills and fly up into space.

"Holy shit!", Alcatraz said tossing the launcher away, "were fucked!"

"Not quite", Mike called from behind the tank, when I glanced over, the mini was spooling up, "I've still got 300 rounds of .300 mag AP."

Mike let the mini rip and went through the armor piercing ammunition in under four seconds. Most of them glanced harmlessly off the tanks hardened Chobam armor, but a few of those precious rounds pierced through a radiator for the electric motors. Smoke began to rise from the back of the tank as rumbling in the ground ceased. When I lopped back around to the front of the tank, I saw the IDrive lines connecting the drills to the tank had become red hot and ceased turning. The electric motors were sparking and smoking as the drills, some of them half flared, were drawn back into the tank. Mike, Alcatraz and I regrouped as the tank placed it's transmission in reverse and roared once again as it began to back pedal into the hole it had made.

"You ripped off one of my drills", the tank's AI growled in a deep, computerized voice, "destroyed my cooling system."

Five or six flaps on the front of the tank opened up, from each one emerged vibrator charges. They were developed by IDrive as a replacement for mining explosives, the smaller the charge, the more devastating the effect, how they work I don't exactly know, but they do and their like scorpions, you see a small one in the basement of a skyscraper? Don't keep it to yourself. The tank wasted no time in launching them into the air. The small water bottle sized canisters buried themselves into the launch pad. There was a small delay before the pad shook so violently that the walls surrounding it collapsed. The LED lighting from the poles disappeared and several impacts on my head left me out cold as the three of us were buried under a sea of rubble.