Their lungs burned as they hid, backs pressed against the rough bark. A soft glow of alien technology in the way of their mission. Josh risked a peek around the tree and saw it. All 7 ft of the mass of metallic tubes, blades, and blinking lights. And behind it, the facility.
Amberlyn, hidden behind another tree took a flair from her coat pocket. A soft snap of plastic sounded, followed by rustling as it landed far to their left. The whirring grew closer, a few blades knocking into nearby trees. And then… the hissing of the flare, and the creature passed by them to confront the perceived threat.
They moved.
The facility was in front of them then. The large broken doors, the warning signs that hung precariously from the structure that was covered in ivy, mold, and moss. They entered when the first shot fired. Amberlyn ducked and tumbled. Josh followed, his tumble clumsy. In a second she was up and running, trusting her other half to be following suit. They had to reach the control room.
Josh's body refused to get up. His legs, he couldn't feel them. Warmth spread over his back and stomach, the floor becoming slick. A long blade slid between the trembling doors behind him. He reached for the disk the commander had given him. More tendrils slid past the door, the starlight glinting off silvery joints. He pressed in the top of the device with a click. With a whispered apology he released the button as the blades reached him. The end came too quick for him to know if the device had worked.
She reached the control room as the facility shook. The dim light of buttons and computer scenes lit the empty hallway behind. Maybe he was still alive. Her fingers flew across the keys, codes memorized only a day prior granted access through digital doors. There, the activation folder. She typed it in, the first tear falling as a scrape of metal echoed off the steel floor.
[Password accepted.]
The scraping stopped. The monster, felled at last, lay sprawled behind in a tangle of wires and weapons. She didn't stay to marvel, and didn't so much as pause to see the wires and tubing that hung limp in the hallway.
The entrance was silent, the walls fractured with shrapnel and stained red. Hope fled and she collapsed before the grave.