Acid Burns

It ignited with a bright flash and spread, emitting choking black fumes that made her
back off, stumbling through the vines and uprooted trees. She turned to run, and through
the broken dome shell glimpsed a vast, dark shape outside, in a nearby recess of the
mountain. She didn't get a good look — too dark, too distant, and she wasn't hanging
around — but she recognized the behemoth instantly.
The claw marks, the discarded spines, the mutating zantar slug... they could all have
been coincidence. But now there was no doubt.
The zerg had returned. And they had come to Garxxax in force.
* * *
The zerg ripped through the acid-weakened door as if it were wet paper. Brach
turned and fired, killing four zerglings before he heard the next door hiss open.
"Brach, move!" Lee shouted, envying him his helmet as her unprotected ears rang
from the gunfire. She was already through the next door, her hand poised over the lock pad.
Brach ran through, ducking as Lee hit the emergency close button. Two more bulkheads to
cross.
They made it through the next before the zerg broke down the door behind them,
and Brach breathed a sigh of relief. They were getting some safe distance between them
and their pursuers.
headset.
"Captain, we're ready to roll. What's your twenty?" the pilot's voice barked in Lee's
"Entering hangar now," she said. "Stand by."
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