Dark red blood pooled around the remains of the enemy soldiers, staining the floor. There had been no heroism in the fight. We'd been better than heroes. Heroes fight bravely and risk death. Cowardly maybe, but we'd been efficient and ruthless, and we were not only all alive but uninjured. The perfect battle as far as I was concerned.

Despite the carnage, Sarge was taking no chances. "Peters, Westcott, cover the stairwell with me. Kuwta, Robinson, make sure there aren't any survivors."

The squad did as commanded. Kuwta rolled each body over; a large jagged knife was held ready in case she discovered signs of life. Robinson stood behind her, scanning the other corpses watching patiently for signs of life.

Their clean up didn't take long. Only once did they find someone clinging to life. The soldier murmured something as Kuwta rolled him over. I didn’t catch his words and they had no visible effect on the Orc, she showed no mercy and there was no hesitation as his throat was sliced open. The act done she dropped him onto the floor to bleed out and wiped her blade clean beforing moving onto the next corpse. Terrifyingly during this time her expression didn’t change once. I was envious of her, in Kuwta’s world there was no remorse or moral dilemma, life was a challenge to be met head on.

After the cleanup was completed, we double-timed it up the stairs. A regimented clatter of feet beat in time as we ascended the one hundred and twenty-six steps to the top. The pair of double doors at the top could have been found in any factory back on earth.

These simple double doors with glass windows were intended to muffle noise. Despite the doors, a grinding noise echoed out to us. We silently watched the scene inside the room: huge baggage carousels rotated slowly as more De'Ath loaded large boxes onto them.

"This is a supply room." I offered. A pointlessly banal comment really, what else could it be? A mail-order delivery depot?

Sarge grunted in affirmation as he pointed to a symbolic sign indicating no sparks. "That's likely to be ammunition. We go in quietly and take care of business up front and personal. A single stray bullet could blow us all to kingdom come."

There was a swish as Robinson unsheathed a long hunting knife. The man smiled maliciously in anticipation of the fight. He'd never mentioned what he'd done before he joined the Marines. His enthusiasm for a brawl made me think he might have been a bouncer in a nightclub.

Always wanting to keep order, Sarge brought him down to earth. "There aren't many handlers in there. The ones near the far door are the priority. We don't want an alarm raised. Let's take them down quickly and quietly." He looked at each of us in turn. Staring into each person's eyes as he assessed our nerves. A sane person wouldn't stand toe-to-toe with an enemy and shove a metal blade into their guts.

We'd been fighting long enough that Sarge apparently didn't judge any of us sane. His assessment completed, he simply nodded in satisfaction. "Move out."

Westcott slipped through the door first. The youngster moved quickly and purposefully through the room. The rest of us followed each in turn, picking out a target and making a beeline for them.

Westcott's victim looked up as he came in towards him. The boy didn’t hesitate. He was more scared of being a coward now than anything else.

"Who are you? What .." That was all Westcott’s victim managed to get out before the boy's knife flashed forward, stabbing into the creature's guts. A quick flash to his neck finished him off, but the rest of the De'Ath were now aware they were in danger.

Out of my peripheral vision, I saw Robinson take his target out quickly. A brutal cut to the neck left his opponent flopping on the floor as he desperately tried to prevent his lifeblood from spilling away.

The De'Ath I was stalking heard the grunts and screams of his compatriots and turned to stare at me. I was still twenty feet away from him. He dropped into a wary crouch as his eyes flicked around the room, taking in his dire situation.

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He hefted a large spanner and snarled at me, obviously prepared to sell his life dearly. I tensed my muscles and steeled my nerves. The knife in my sweaty hand felt heavy as I prepared to make my move.

That was when Kuwta's throwing knife flashed past me. The wet squelching noise it made as it entered his eyeball will stay with me for a long time. The De'Ath rocked back and forth for a second before his body realized it was dead, and the light went out, then he crumpled to the floor.

Kuwta strolled past me nonchalantly and withdrew the knife from his skull. Wiping it absentmindedly on her pants.

"Knives are silent and deadly, a good weapon," the female Orc commented without looking up. "Please take no offense. I know some males like to play with their prey, but we are in a hurry."

I mentally shrugged, forcing my shocked mind to react.

"No, t-t-that's fine." I stuttered out. The others had dispatched the rest of the workers while I'd be facing off against my opponent; even Westcott seemed to have performed effectively. Blood had soaked into his uniform when the kid had gutted his opponent.

He grinned at my stare, quipping. "We gave those demons hell."

I nodded back and returned his eager grin with a resigned smile. I have no idea what happened to the scared young boy that we'd found in the infirmary. The kid who'd run when confronted by Orcs seemed to have gone. Perhaps his balls had finally dropped?

“I did alright though, didn’t I? I did my part?” Westcott asked.

“Yeah you did good.” I reassured him, but deep down it worried me that everyone seemed at peace with the fact that we'd just slaughtered unarmed people. They might have been enemy soldiers, but they also might have just been civilian contractors for all we knew.

I shoved my concerns down within my mind, now was not the time for a moral crisis. Staying alive required hard decisions, each of which I'd have to learn to live with if I survived.

The controls for the conveyor belt control system provided an easy distraction. A diagram of the bunker showed how the belt wormed its way through the complex, allowing easy distribution of supplies to numerous gun turrets. This room was the Achilles heel for the complex. Without the continual restocking of ammunition, the guns would eventually fall silent.

We could do better than that, though. I started moving amongst the boxes skimming the labels quickly and relying on my nanobots to explain what was held inside. I was looking for claymore mines ideally, but as fate would have it I found something even better.

Killing the workers in the room might have given me pause, but the bastards in the turrets had been slaughtering us on the beach.

They deserved to die.

“Spill the beans, brains.” Sarge requested. “That crazed grin normally precedes something crazy.”

“The workers are down, but I figure there is no reason we can’t continue to deliver munitions.“ I grinned evilly as I jimmied the crate I’d found open with my knife.

My nanobots reported on the grenades found within.

Smart Grenades

These grenades are small and inert until activated. To use simply unclip the control sequencer and place or throw the grenade, when satisfied with its position click the sequencer. By default once activated the grenade will explode after a three second delay.

For ease of use, several Grenades can be chained to use the same sequencer by placing them onto the same frequency.

Sarge looked at me, with an eyebrow quirked upward.

“What? There are hundreds of boxes of these things. We activate a single grenade from each and deliver one to each station. They’ll just stack them with the other munitions in their section.”

“Then when we’re ready, KABOOM!.” Robinson finished with a smile and elaborate hand gestures.

“Exactly,” I said, taking a bow.

Sarge looked back and forth between the two of us. “Well what are you waiting for? Get to it.”

Twenty minutes later the last of our special loads was placed on the conveyor belts and we watched it trundle whisked off into the depths of the bunker.

Sarge smiled and clicked the button on the remote control. A timer activated showing a five minute countdown. “Good work men, now let's get out here before this place blows to high heaven!”

We all whirled as one as the door scraped open, there struggling to push past the doors was the wet dead face of a fellow combatant.

Fuck!

I looked at Sarges timer, four minutes and fifty five seconds.

I hoped there weren’t more of these zombies downstairs.

But I knew in my heart of hearts that would be a lucky break, and while my squad had lots of luck, it was all bad.