16 – IncomingThe thump of grenades echoed over the hollow where the team had set their trap, and the spine-bag erupted with fleshy geysers; Perry and Mathews had scored perfect hits with their launchers—right into the sphincter-like egress tubes. The resultant explosions sealed the blimp-like creature’s fate. Like a deflated balloon, it drifted downward, crashing to the corpse-laden field where Hector and the others had killed its children.Hector checked his ammo counter, frowning when he saw he was down to his last nine bullets. “Need to resupply,” he announced in comms, and Red, standing closest to him, nodded, twirling his two pistols and holstering them.“Supply’s running low, but I reckon we’re about done with the killing. Eight hours until exit, and it’s gonna take the techs most of that to harvest this haul.”Hector grunted in agreement as he let the gimbal sling stow his rifle behind his right hip. He took a step and his leg almost gave out on him, so he thumbed the safety and depressed the trigger for his armor’s auto-injector, exhaling with relief as the nanites got to work blocking the pain signals from his many gashes and puncture wounds. There’d been nearly thirty spine thrashers inside the host creature, and they’d gotten some licks in before he and others put them down.Perry bounded toward them, his armor whirring and whining as the actuators increased his momentum. He waved the barrel of his stubby grenade launcher at a nearby corpse. “Damn thing had some big ones in it. Thought they would’ve left home and looked for careers of their own.”Kristy, always the quickest to join Perry in his attempts at humor, laughed and added, “The one that latched onto Mathews at the start looked like it should’ve been off to finishing school by now.”Freddy, sober since his alone-time with Hector, said, “They have different castes. These are soldiers, and the mother nest always has some living in it. Hunters (...)