Out of Space

Chapter 16: Giant Wolves

As the echo of Bartley's HMG died down, the techs together with Mills cheered. "Hot damn! I need one of those myself!" Mills swap out a new mag with his partial empty mag from his rifle. "Hey techies, is that a giant wolf or what?" He asked the techie crouching next to him.

"Eh? I have no idea. We need to bring the corpse back to study. But it does look like a wolf, with horns." The techie replied excitedly, as he peers intently at the downed wolf. "Huge too."

"No shit, Sherlock." Mills rolls his eyes. Damn nerds.

"Mills, it's not over yet." Bartley's calm voice cuts into their conversation. "More incoming."

In the distance, sounds of something heavy crashing through the foliage could be heard. Snarls and growls seeming grew nearer and louder. A sudden howl heralded the arrival of 4 more giant wolves, each as huge as a car or minibus!

"Oh shit," Mills saw the group of wolves appear at the opposite side of the field. "Run!" He yells at the techs. "Big Guy! Covering fire!" And opens up with his rifle.

Bartley opens fire with his weapon and backs off slowly. He directs the spray of tracers onto the nearest and largest wolf in the group. Sparks, smoke, shreds of meat and fur flew as the tracers come into contact. Seeing his target dropping, he sweeps his fire to the closest wolf. Clumps of dirt and torn grass flew as the bullets wrought destruction in its path.

The wolf roars in agony and raises its front paws to protect its venerable face, as bullets slam into its body. The other wolves quickly leap into action and split off towards the left and right respectively to escape the storm of bullets from Bartley.

The heavy fire from Bartley manages to suppress and take down the two of the wolves but the other 2 wolves moved too fast for him to get a good lock on them.

For Mills, it was harder to hit the wolves. "Fuck! How can dog shit like that move so fast?" Mills cursed. He tries to get a good aim on the closest wolf but it kept dodging his shots. "Damn it! You dog! Stay still!"

Bartley ceased his fire, turn and ran towards Mills. Upon reaching his side, he turns around and covers Mills's flank and fires at the other rapidly approaching wolf. He fires a short burst and waits after the wolf makes a dodge by leaping to the side than he opens fire at where he estimates the wolf will land. The laser beam like tracers torn the area where the wolf landed into smoke and blood, causing a small fire in the grass field.

Finally, Mills also manages to bring down his target, just 10m away from him. The wolf crumpled down, dying of internal injuries. Even in its dying breath, the giant wolf snarls and rage, it struggles to raise up and its limbs claw desperately in its attempts to move its body. Slowly the hate in its eyes faded as Mills and Bartley watch it slowly stops moving.

"Any more?" Mills asked. He reloads and crouches down keeping his rifle in a ready position.

"I don't see anything," Bartley replied. He lowers his weapon and checks his ammunition counter.

"Phew, thought that last one was gonna get me." He walks up and pokes the wolf carcass with his smoking rifle barrel. "These guys are tough! I'm using AP rounds!" He bends over and examines the wolf body before using his hands to pull something out from its fur.

"Holy shit." He holds up a complete bullet, with the tungsten alloy core tip slightly flatten. "This shit is supposed to penetrate up to 14mm thick steel plates!"

Bartley picks the bullet from Mills and examines it. Then he walks 1 full circle around the body and gauges. "Roughly 5 meters long, 2.5 meters tall." He taps the horns growing out from the head of the wolf. "Solid ivory."

"Damn, we bagged a big one eh?" Mills grins. "Think they allow us to mount its head up in the barracks?" He poses with one foot on top of the giant wolf like a big game hunter. "We can make big bucks with this."

Soon after, the rapid response team of 8 arrives with the group of techs. 2 Marines and 6 from the security details, their gear and uniform greatly different from the marines. They are armored with black riot gear and dark naval grey jumpsuits, carrying PDWs or shotguns.

They hurriedly bash through the undergrowth and appears out of the tree line and sees Mills leaning on top of a large rock while Bartley seems like trying to put out some fire in the distance. "Took you guys long enough." Mills grins. "And no thanks to you guys but the day is saved!

"Yeah yeah," Lcp Cooper from section 1 rolls his eyeballs at Mills. "So what shit you got into this time, Mills?"

"Found ourselves the natives!" Mills pats the "rock" he was leaning on. "A freaking giant wolf." He gives a little bow as he presents the giant wolf to Cooper and his team.

Cooper looks over the giant wolf with the horns and whistle. "Damn this is a huge son of a bitch!" He gives the wolf a kick. "Bloody solid too."

"We got another 4 more of this bad boy here." Mills jerk his head towards the field. "And this is just 1 of the smaller ones." Bartley could be seen stomping around among the blue greyish rock-like objects amidst the smoking grass.

"4 more?" Pvt Koing and the rest of the security section looks on wild-eyed. "There's more of these things around?" The security sections fingered their weapons and look around their surrounding nervously.

"I don't know, seriously." Mills shrugged. He watches as the techs excitedly start to collect samples, measure the bodies and snaps photos. "All I know is they are pretty bullet proofed."

The group reports back to base asking for more support and help to transport the bodies back for analysis. Soon after over an hour, another 20 people arrived with heavy lifters and strapped the bodies onto the lifters and they started the trek carrying the giant wolves back to base.

By the time they approach the base, everyone has heard about the incident and turned out to see the giant wolves. Mills happily basked in the glory of all the attention as he bragged about how he and Bartley heroically saved the survey team and how he killed the giant wolves.

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