Out of Space

Chapter 24: Loot

"Karl..." Kristine cries as she applies pressure at his thigh. The arrowhead has nicked his femoral artery, causing Karl to slowly bleed out. She tries her best to press down hard on the wound.

James looks back at the green skins, seeing them distracted by the force attacking them from the flanks, he quickly rushes up to Karl and Kristine. He grabs a self-sealing bandage from his first aid kit and rips Karl's pants away. He pulls the arrow out swiftly, before slapping the self-sealing bandage over his wound.

The bandage with medical nanites quickly dispenses a fast clotting agent, that stops the bleeding temporarily. The medical nanites than enter the wound and starts to repair as much damage to the muscles and tissues and the nicked femoral artery.

James looks up at Kristine and said gently, "He should be fine for now. Don't move him. Try to keep his leg elevated." He rubs the tears away from her face. "Keep him safe!" Before he stood up and returns to the fight.

The rescue team that came in manages to suppress the whole green skin army, the green skins with shield or bucklers raises them up to form a shield wall, only to prove useless as the bullets still penetrate through. The shaman scream and rage at its people, ensuring none of them slip away from the battle.

It raises its staff and the bullets hit an invisible wall, sparks could be seen where the bullets impact its magical shield. James watches from the side, realizing that the staff the shaman is holding is the key to its power.

James reloads his Glock and hefts his machete, taking advantage that green skins are distracted and not bothered with him, he then charges into their ranks. As James stands over 1.8m tall, and weights 90 plus kg with all of it as muscles, he slams into the ranks of the green skins like a quarterback playing football.

The flimsy shield wall explodes inwardly, the small sized green skins unable to match his strength and weight tumbled backward and body parts started flying. James hacks and slashes into the center of the formation, forcing his superior height and arm reach advantage against the smaller creatures. The shaman sensing James approaching, turns and points his staff straight at him, and starts to shriek something out.

James fires his pistol blank point at the shaman, invoking a shower of sparks, causing the shaman to flinch. Its concentration broken, James ignores the rest of the green skins and charges closer to the shaman. Using his long arms, he chops down hard at the shaman's right arm holding the staff just as it raises the bone staff up and starts chanting again.

A look of shock appears in the shaman's face, it screams in pain as he flails its severed arm in panic, spraying greenish blood all over. The shaman glares at James with hatred and using its left hand, draws out a curved wicked looking dagger and stabs towards James.

James gave a smile to the shaman and steps back out of its reach, he than lazily raises his Glock to its face and pulls the trigger. "This is for Karl!"

With the shaman dead, the rest of the green skins' morale broke, and they skittle away in all directions, shrieking in fright.

"Yo! Thunder!" Someone yelled.

"Flash..." James replied tiredly. He slumps down against the stone wall, suddenly feeling all the cuts and bruises on his body.

"Hey, I need a medic over here!" Cpl Collins steps over the bodies of the dead green skins and kneels down beside James. "James, you ok? Where are you hurt?"

"I'm ok, tend to Karl, he is in a bad shape!" James wave Collins toward Karl's direction.

The rest of the rescue team starts to surround them, forming a defensive perimeter. Lt Frank kneels next to James who was laying on a stretcher. "Hey Marine. How are you doing?" He asks.

"Hey, boss." James smiles, high on morphine, "Feeling great!"

"Alright, we gonna get you out of here in no time. Hang in there." Lt Frank got up and went to check on the others. He watches the medic load Karl onto a stretcher, hooks up a plasma drip before 2 others help to carry the stretcher out. The girl Kristine wrapped in a thermal blanket follows closely along, escorted by another 2 security personnel.

"Cpl Collins, organize the men, we going to flush these green things out." Lt Franks toes the dead shaman's corpse. "Once all is cleared, gather everything for the science guys to check them out."

"Yes, Sir!" Cpl Collins replied. "Alright people, form up. I want team A and B to push in that tunnel, C, and D this side..." Collins yell out instructions as he organizes the men into action.

Several hours later, the last denizen of the underground dungeon was wiped out. The teams mapped out the entire dungeon, which lucky, wasn't very huge. All the passageways link up to the hall where Kristine was held and a flight of stairs was found to lead up into the collapsed tower.

Hundreds of green skin bodies were carried out by portable heavy lifters and dumped at a mass grave, several of the more in one piece bodies and the huge humanoid were carefully packed into body bags to be sent back to the egg heads at the lab.

Other stuff was also carried out by the teams, gold and silver coins, precious stones, jewelry, bladed weapons, antique armors and even mana stones. There were even several bones of various creatures that were packed and transported back to be studied.

Lt Frank stood watching the crew pile all the treasure up inside a tent, he looks at Dr. Sharon who just arrived at the ruins not long ago and said, "There are probably 2 to 3 tons of gold and silver there. We are rich!"

"Yes, but I am more curious is where did these coins come from. Is it an ancient civilization or a current one." Dr. Sharon frowns, her brown hair tied in a severe bun. She stands at 1.5m tall, his head not even reaching Lt Frank's shoulder who height is at roughly 1.8m, his boyish good looks a contrast against each other, like a teacher and student.

"Those green things seem to eat anything that isn't their own or maybe even eats their own kind, as evidenced from the bones we found." She continues. "From this cracked femur, where they chewed it for the bone marrow, looks very human, but there are some differences from us still." She swaps some images of bones taken from the dungeon in her tablet.

"There should be more humanoid races out here. We are not alone on this planet after all."

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