At first, MacReady was pissed. The second Blake started trying to talk to him on the radio once he and the other Special Forces survivors got back underground, MacReady began asking him where the fuck he'd been and what the fuck he thought he'd been doing.
Then Blake explained that he'd rescued four certified badasses and they were coming back with a fair amount of loot.
That had really smoothed things over.
After doing the tests and exposing the infected survivor, (Blake grimly lamented that the only engineer had been infected), he'd organized the team and had them scour the facility for supplies. Unfortunately, the Special Forces team had been running low when they had arrived at the abandoned research station, and it seemed that other survivors had already been through the station, so there wasn't much in the way of medical supplies, food reserves or weapons and ammo. Once they'd gotten everything they could, they'd trekked back through the storm to the Way Station. Blake had had them do a cursory scan of the place.
They'd taken the most immediately valuable things they'd found: some medical supplies, a pair of flamethrowers and lots of fuel, a cache of test kits. Once they'd gotten as much as they could comfortably carry, Blake had said that they could come back several times to empty the supplies and return it back to headquarters, since it wasn't all that far away. As soon as he'd gotten down the ladder, cleared the area and made sure the others were down safely as well, he'd contacted MacReady and updated him on the situation.
Once they'd made their way back through the tunnel, having to put down a handful of Scuttlers and a Walker, they had arrived back at the base. MacReady promptly had them all tested, and they all passed. Once they did, he began to bring them into the fold.
"Welcome to Outpost Bravo," he said. "Our new headquarters. I can't imagine that Blake didn't outline this, but I will now for emphasis: everyone pitches in, everyone pulls their own weight. We're fighting a war and we're vastly outnumbered. Now, house rules: we test every two hours, unless you're sleeping, but then you have to be tested as soon as you wake up. We're going to be sending people out for a variety of reasons, be prepared for this. Right now, though, take a few hours to eat, shower, catch some shuteye if you need to."
The men nodded and moved off to investigate the base.
"How are we doing?" Blake asked, finding himself standing alone with MacReady in the entryway to the base.
"Better, but we've still got a ways to go. We're on our feet at least. The generator is back up to one hundred percent and we've got enough fuel to last quite a while. The next big thing we need to do is fix our radio tower. Right now, we're still figuring out the best way to do that," MacReady replied. He looked tired.
"Anything you need me to do right now?" Blake asked. Although he'd been on the go for almost three hours now, he still felt full of energy, ready to take on new challenges.
"Yes, actually. Every minute we don't clear that Way Station of supplies is another minute someone else might show up and do it for us. I'd like you to take North and Weldon and start emptying the base of all the resources you can."
"Got it."
Blake headed deeper into HQ, looking for North and Weldon.
* * * * *
Two hours passed.
Blake led North and Weldon through the tunnel half a dozen times, both ways. Their luck held the whole time. They didn't run into any problems. They cleared the Way Station out, recovering guns, bullets, medical supplies, food, water, test kits, fuel, tools and whatever else they could think of to grab. Blake had kept an eye out for radio parts, but, unfortunately, the communications gear had been shredded in the initial disaster that had overrun the facility. After five trips, he'd taken them back to do one more sweep, found a handful of useful items, then had led them back down to HQ for the final time.
After that, the three of them had taken a lunch break. Or, hell, it could've been a breakfast break, dinner break or midnight snack. Blake had basically lost all sense of time and no one seemed to have watches.
"Blake, need you," MacReady said as they were finishing up their meal. "Actually, I could use you, too, North. We've got something."
The pair of them stood up, disposed of the remains of their meals and followed MacReady back out to the entryway, where he joined Peltola, who was dourly smoking a cigarette, in standing before a large map of the area.
"What have you got for us?" Blake asked.
"We've found a small communications facility about a half-mile away," MacReady replied, pointing to a section of the map. "Managed to get some more data from some recovered files you found at that Way Station. They should have the parts we need to repair our own radio tower, which is crucial, because we need to start gathering intel on Gen Inc, and listening in on their radio transmissions will be the quickest way to do that. Now, you can take the tunnels all the way to the radio tower. Peltola will be joining you, and you should probably bring one of the SF soldiers with you. I'll leave it up to you to determine who," MacReady replied.
"We'll get it done," Blake promised. He turned to face Peltola and North. "Let's gear up and get on with it."
* * * * *
It was dark, cold, smelly and miserable in the tunnel.
Blake led his squad through the grim, subterranean environment, his senses alight. In the end, he'd selected Taylor to join them. The squat, bulky combat medic seemed like a solid choice, plus, having a medic on the team rounded it out nicely. He felt fairly confident that they could deal with any threats they came up against.
They'd been walking in the gloom for five minutes now, picking their way through the debris and wreckage. So far, so good.
"North," he said, drifting closer to the dark-skinned soldier, "good to see you again."
"You too, Blake," he replied, grinning. "Couldn't believe you made it. I had a bad feeling when you went to investigate that other outpost solo."
"Well...you were right. Everything pretty much fell apart after that. Although it sounds like if I had stuck around, it would have gone even worse. At least this way I managed to take down Whitley and stop him from shipping samples of these things back stateside."
North let out and appreciative whistle. "Must've been tough," he replied.
Blake nodded. "Hardest thing I've ever had to do..." He paused, looked around. "...so far."
Up ahead, something shifted. Blake frowned, stilling the others with a raised fist. He crept forward, listening intently, trying to scout the situation out. His instincts were telling him that there was something big up ahead.
That was never good.
Blake made his way in between an unsteady stack of crates and the dark bulk of a huge cargo truck that had been abandoned some time ago. He made a mental note to search it at some point. Up ahead, he spotted a large open area, almost like an arena. Something was stomping around in that arena, something seemingly waiting for them. Something big. It was easily twelve feet tall, a thing with tree-trunk legs and long, reaching, disproportionate arms that ended in long, slender, bony fingers that seemed perfect for grabbing.
He started considering ways around it when, suddenly, the beast spotted him. And roared.
"Attack!" Blake screamed, heading through the opening and raising his MP-5. He opened fire as he began strafing, leading the creature away from the opening through which the others had to enter if they were going to help him. The beast began lumbering for him, loosing another roar of alien fury. Blake sprayed it with gunfire, emptying half his MP-5's current magazine before being forced to throw himself out of the way.
The huge Thing beast lumbered past him and smashed into the far concrete wall, sending bits of debris flying everywhere. Blake spun back around, catching sight of North, Peltola and Taylor. North and Taylor were also armed with MP-5s, Peltola had appropriated a shotgun. All three of them opened fire. Blake joined them, raising his sub-machine gun and rattling through the rest of the magazine, emptying it into the huge beast.
Black blood and chunks of flesh sprayed across the wall as the huge Walker whipped around and started coming for them again. It began making for the others, apparently intent on the larger group. Perfect. It would pass right past Blake. He quickly switched to his flamethrower, aimed up and, as it stomped past, into the hail of gunfire the other three were pouring into it, squeezed the trigger. The flame crossed the distance and clung to the inhuman creature's ugly flesh. The immense Walker caught immediately aflame.
It began to bellow and suddenly lashed out, narrowly avoiding hitting Blake's head and decapitating him. He stumbled back as the long limb flew mere inches over his head, the heat washing over him.
"Keep firing!" he shouted, spraying more flame onto the enormous creature.
The Walker let out a trumpeting shriek and took another step for Blake, coming for him, furious beyond measure, but then it hesitated, stumbled, took another step and then fell flat on the floor. It started crawling for him. Blake kept backing up, switching to his MP-5, slapping a fresh magazine in and spraying it with gunfire.
Finally, the huge thing ceased moving, burning silently, filling the air with smoke.
"Holy fuck," Blake muttered. He took a deep breath and let it out, then leaned forward slightly to examine the crispy Thing creature.
It saved his life.
A bullet whizzed by the back of his head, right where he would have been if he hadn't leaned forward, and buried itself in a crate.
"Incoming hostiles!" North roared, then opened fire.
Blake whirled around to face the other end of the open space, the way they had yet to go, and saw a half-dozen soldiers in white camo gear and gasmasks taking up position among the wreckage. Of course, because why not?
Sighting the nearest bastard, Blake popped off a luck barrage of shots. Two bullets slammed into the enemy's gasmask and the crate behind him sprayed with red gore. Didn't even get a chance to scream. The group scrabbled for cover, but there wasn't much to work with on this side. Blake managed to get behind a large crate. He saw that Peltola was retreating back the way they'd come and Taylor had taken cover behind another crate.
He couldn't see North.
Bullets pinged all around them. Cursing and wishing vainly for a grenade, he leaned cautiously out and tried to sight another one of the hostiles, but gunfire drove him back. Suddenly, he heard a noise from overhead. Glancing up, fearing that they may have been flanked, he instead saw a gun barrel poke out over the top of the cargo truck they'd passed getting in here. It started opening fire. Blake grinned. North.
Taking advantage of the new diversion, Blake leaned out, sighted another gasmask and fired. The guy's head popped like a rotten fruit. The Gen Inc trooper's offensive quickly fell apart after that, especially with three Special Forces vets on the case. They put them down with a series of quick headshots, North doing most of the work from the high ground, and then all fell silent. Carefully, Blake leaned out again and canvased the area.
"North, you see anything?" he asked.
"No, nothing, Cap. No movement."
"All right people, let's police up the ammo and move on."
They set to work.
* * * * *
Blake stared out the windows onto the seemingly infinite antarctic wastelands, feeling that after-action lethargy sapping his strength. That moment when the battle was over and your adrenaline was heading back down to something like normal.
They'd managed to take the communications tower.
It hadn't been too hard, since they had the element of surprise, superior firepower and an unprepared enemy. The tower wasn't very large. They'd come up from beneath, climbing a ladder and entering through a hatch that led into a basement storage room. Blake thought it was disappointing and sloppy how they hadn't welded this thing shut, or at least locked it. They wouldn't live to regret their mistake, though.
There'd only been eight personnel manning the comms tower, two of them guards. The rest were support staff. He and his squad had taken them out one by one, briefly getting into a firefight with one of the guards, but he'd taken a round through the neck and gone down. Once they'd cleared the tower, which was a three-story structure meant to act as its own miniature outpost, he'd had Peltola start to strip parts from their gear.
The attack would be two-fold: they would repair their own communications and throw a wrench in Gen Inc operations.
While Peltola had done that, he, North and Taylor had searched the tower, gathering up as much useful supplies as they could carry.
"Almost done?" Blake asked, turning away from the window.
"Just about...there we go!" Peltola said, pulling a piece of gear from a large tower of radio equipment taking up a good potion of the room they were in. "Done," he said, putting the piece carefully into his backpack, zipping it up and slipping it on. "This will be enough."
"Perfect, let's go," Blake replied.
As he began to lead Peltola back down through the tower and gather up the others, he wondered how long their luck would hold out.