"Downstairs!" Byrne shouted at Habel and Jepsen, reloading his battle rifle. “Find a choke point!” The two recruits retreated down a narrow hallway to a stairwell that led to the basement levels and Loki's data center. Byrne could just see the top of the blue-armored alien's head behind its vehicle's engine. He pinged some rounds off the beast's helmet, and the alien pulled the vehicle away from the door, flinging spikes. Byrne ran zigzag down the hallway. Just as he reached the stairwell, the firing stopped. He whipped around in time to see the tan-haired alien dismount and charge through the smashed-in door. Byrne fired multiple bursts as the alien rushed toward him down the hallway, hunched over and clawing the polished polycrete with its paws. Byrne's rounds all hit but they ricocheted off its energy shields. "Shite!" Byrne cursed. He vaulted the stairwell railing and landed one flight below. As the alien unleashed a salvo of spikes above him, Byrne jumped down a second flight to the basement floor. He took off down a low corridor and the alien crashed down behind him. The Staff Sergeant wouldn't have made it very far if Habel and Jepsen hadn't been waiting at a four-way junction, just in front of Loki's data center. The two militiamen opened fire around the corners of their branching hallways as Byrne sprinted past. Shot-for-shot, their MA5s weren't as powerful as Byrne's battle rifle. But what their weapons lacked in muzzle velocity they made up for in rate of fire. With both recruits firing full automatic, the alien's energy shields began to falter; cyan plasma vented from its joints as the armor struggled to stay charged. But instead of retreating up the stairwell, the alien marched slowly forward, spewing spikes. One caught Jepsen in the neck, and he went down in a gurgling spray. Another struck Habel in the hip, shattering the bones. Byrne caught the second recruit as he fell, wrapped an arm across his chest, and fired his battle rifle one-handed. The alien drilled two more spikes into Habel's chest-one straight through Byrne's bicep. The Staff Sergeant grunted, dropped his rifle, and staggered to a knee, clutching his bleeding bicep, he saw a ragged hole in the data center's wall.-Chpt.21
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