Look Before You Leap
"Whoever said the pen is mightier than sword obviously never encountered automatic weapons"
Douglas MacArthur
If this ever got out it could do a lot of damage, and there was the bit about an incurable infection… Since he had to die here (and he knew he would because he wouldn't risk spreading the infection) he sure as hell wasn't about to just roll over and give up. No, these bases always had scuttling charges in the form of nukes in the megaton range. They were meant to keep anything from falling into enemy hands.
His new course laid out before him he checked the base layout and found it seven floors below him. Stowing his hacker kit, he started to turn to leave when he was thrown violently forward as pain seared down his back like someone had just pored molten led down it. He threw himself sideways barely avoiding the next slash, as he hit the ground he rolled to his back and fired once with the scatter gun. At such close proximity to his target the superheated metal fragments effectively blew his target apart. He heard the slight hiss of compressed biofoam filling in his wound and sealing his armor air tight again. Upon closer inspection, he found it was the mutated Vaagh from the hallway he had kill earlier. So, they didn't stay dead, that had unfortunate implications for the likelihood of achieving his goal. Still if he wasn't the type to choose to go down fighting instead of just giving up now, he never would've made it in the Reaver Core and there were a great number of time his tenacity and unwavering will to succed drove him to survive where so many others were swallowed by the dark howling abyss of despair and death.
Checking his sensors again and super imposing it on the image of the compound blueprints he charted his course, avoiding the larger groups of creatures. He moved with a purpose down the blood-stained hall way checking the vent openings and doorways he moved past. He was about a third of the way there, when he noticed that many of the groups where now on the move and he was pretty damn sure from the way that they were moving someone or something was coordinating them. They were moving to block his way forward and back. They were trying to box him in.
He began to run in Ernest. The first pack he found was composed of twenty-seven of the blade armed creatures and three new ones he hadn't seen yet. They were about the same size and weight of the bladed ones but lacked the blade arms and walked upright. Seams down its face, neck, and chest met with similar seams in the arms, abdomen, and legs. As the first of the pack arrived he fired his scatter gun and super-heated bites of metal flew from weapon with every blast as he filled the hallway with death. The speed and thermal expansion of the shards caused so much damage as they passed through the creatures that they simply disintegrated coating the walls, ceiling and floor with blood bile and viscera. As he mowed down the blades, the new ones in the back began to move.
The seams split apart and a thick red slime started to ooze down their bodies. Inside the seams were many closely packed bone like spikes, and as he saws this, the memory of a hallway on the surface flashed through his mind. He began to move, as there was nowhere to take cover he lunged forward ignoring the slash to the inside of his lower thigh he grabbed the blade and jerked it upright in front of him throwing a frag over its shoulder at the newly flayed corpses. As he did the flayers opened fire, they only lunched one bone at a time but did so with blinding rapidity. This was only compounded by the fact that there were three of them in mere moments the scythed down the remaining ten blades. The bodies barely slowing down the spikes, his shields flashed and failed on the third hit. His only saving grace came from the fact that it seemed as if the flayers couldn't really aim. Only fill the whole of the hallway with spikes. His frag went off at their feet turning the flayers into a red mist, but not before one of the spikes found him. It punched right through his flimsy cove and his armor. It lodged under his breastplate in his abdominal region.
With more packs rapidly closing on his position he had no time to treat his wounds. Sprinting off down the corridor he saw the packs trying to intercept him. Not just moving to where he was but to where he was going. This spoke of sentient level intelligence, and because he had seen any radios or other comm gear on the other ones he'd kill, he had to assume from their rapid response and coordinated efforts that they had telepathy of some kind or group mind. Personally, he thought it was probably a hive mind or something similar.
Still whatever they were they were about to learn the hard way, never chase a Reaver. He began to slap antipersonnel mines on the wall every 5 meters with a feral grin on his face. He only had thirty of the small high-powered explosives, so it wasn't long before he ran out. It didn't matter as he'd reached the home stretch. Pulling out a block of J-7 (it was kind of like its ancient ancestor C4 but with 100 times the yield) he began to prep the explosive. A quick scan of the room told him it was empty, so he plowed through the door. As he burst into the room his mind already racing through the necessary steps detonate the scuttling charge something smashed into his chest with enough force to dent the wall on the other side of the room nearly 20 meters away.
Everything went dark, then as his mind kicked back into gear the world rushed back into focus. He was running along the wall, he didn't remember hitting the ground much less getting up and running. With the few seconds gained this way he managed to breathe again, and reorient himself to the threat. Only there was nothing in the room, his scanners had nothing and his mark I eyeball had nothing. So what hit him? Whatever it was had to be quite strong as it dented the armor on the right side of his chest, causing his ribs to partially collapse, making it very hard to breath. Before he could form a feasible strategy his invisible enemy caught up to him and with another powerful stroke sent him sailing through the air to plow a furrow into another wall when he hit at an oblique angle.
When the world returned to him this time he was still on the ground and from the way his arm was angled he knew it was broken. This time he could see some of his enemy, the claws that had lacerated his armor were covered in his blood along with some of its face and chest. As the creature made its way toward him he got ready to activate the five second timer on the J-7. There wasn't enough to detonate the scudding charge from here but there was more than enough to reduce any organic substance in this room to little more than a smear of carbon. As the creature approached him, he was reminded of the words a great man once said, “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy". He smiled as he activated the detonator.
Just as the countdown hit zero he felt a horrible wrenching sensation in guts and the world went dark for a third and final time.