Arafura

The course of the two days were mostly uneventful. They must have been unlucky, Adrian reasoned. They did not see anything else remotely dangerous. He trudged along. The group's mood had lightened a little. Hadrian was starting to make jokes again, and a few of them could manage to smile when he had done so. Jethro had not been a spectacular soldier, but he was a good comrade in battle. He had his heart in the right place and would be missed dearly by his family. Damn. His family.

Adrian tore his eyes from the rusty steppes to gaze up at the poisonous-looking green-tinged yellow sky and sighed. He hadn't thought about Jethro's family. Jethro had a wife. Three daughters. Likely the marines would organise to give a cut of their pay from this mission to them. It was a tradgedy, but they would be well looked-after. That was the reward for those who paid the ultimate sacrifice for humanity. Despite himself, Adrian chuckled. That was just one bit of military propaganda he remembered from Social Studies at high school.

Adrian was torn from his thoughts at the sound of a scream. Unbelievably he saw Lendrax, who had been on point, inexplicably soar through the air right over the rest of the party and solidly hit a tree. Adrian blinked. He rushed over to Lendrax to see if he was alright. As he grabbed hold of Lendrax's pauldron, the marine's head flopped limply to the side. His eyes were wide with fear. Before Adrian could work out what was happening there were more screams. Marines were being thrown everywhere with loud cracks like that of a whip.
The sound of gunfire brought Adrian to his senses. He hoisted his rifle and walked forward, taking a combat stance. Out from the trees, where the column had just entered, burst the most bizarre creature that Adrian had ever seen.

It had six legs which sprouted out of a oval-shaped disc-like body, along with a neck, then six arms above the areas which underneath rested each leg. At the end of each short and thick arm sprouted three barb-covered tentacles, making eighteen in all. From the end opposite the neck, an equally strong but twice as long tail reached over the body in much the same manner as a scorpion's. It had a menacing-looking spiked club at the end which, given tail length, could easily reach about three metres in front of it. Then there was the head. It consisted of one row of five eyes followed by a column at either end of the row with three, making for eleven eyes. In between these columns and below the row was a gaping maw which contained seven heavily-spiked teeth. The entire creature seemed to be covered in a chitinous carapace.

He had only just taken this in when it was almost upon him. He raised his assault rifle and fired. Full automatic. He unleashed an entire magazine into the eyes and mouth before being knocked off his feet by a tentacle. There were no trees to stop him and he arced through the air before skidding along the hard ground in a pile of dust. He quickly reloaded and fired again. The platoon was coming to its senses and starting to fire back. A rocket slammed into the joint of one of the legs and the creature screeched with what seemed to be pain.

This only made the thing redouble its efforts. What was a hunt for it was now a fight. It thrashed madly with its tentacles, tossing marines to and fro. Every time some of them were knocked to the ground, one or two men did not get back up. Adrian's heart was beating loudly in his ears as the entire platoon was being systematically wiped out. Marine by marine, this thing was single-handedly killing them all. He saw Hadrian fly past and time stopped for a mere moment. Adrian saw his brother's blood-streaked face and his imploring eyes, before he crashed headfirst into a tree and then lay quite still. Adrian looked back at the creature, tears stinging his eyes but utterly hopeless. He fell to his knees in anguish and looked up at the sky for one last time.

How unfortunate that he should die so far away from home...