Bombs bursting, the doors of the small hovel in Breswem shook violently. The main entryway to the city had been blown to shambles and most the spaceports had been taken out. Most of the civilians had run for the undergrond tunnels that led to Malpar, the closest city to the east, and only a few men, mostly fighter pilots, remained. Army had set up on the exteriort of the city but were being overrun.
Rafe, a man of about 23, had been among the pilots attempting to get into the air, but was quickly grounded due to the high losses. The casualties were staggering as most of the ground crew ran for he openings to the underground system. The system was devised hundreds of years before during a civil war between their homeland the country to the east. A bloody war, the tunnels were never forgotten and never destroyed. Now they were used again, this time it wouldn't be to protect not from a neighboring foe...
Rafe pulled off his head and chest gear, quickly unbuckling his safety harnesses. The overhead viewport and shield rolled back as he climbed out. None of the crew remained, so he crawled off the side and jumped a short ways to the get to the ground. He didn't know what had become of his family; he hoped they had made it into the tunnels. Thinking about overwhelming odds, he considered how safe Malpar would be, and for how long...
Running from the hanger and into the main corridor, he saw stragglers making for the furnace room. Looking behind him for a moment, he saw the red haze of fires swath the inside of the bay and knew that bombs would roll on them in a few moments. He ran to the furnace room and saw the open cellar door. Skipping steps as he entered he underground, he saw that only some of the lights were working. Surrounded by darkness, he sprinted toward the light ahead. Fifty feet from the lamp, he tripped and flew forward, hitting the ground hard. As he shook from pain and anger, he bit down and pushed himself back up. He knew he was bleeding...
Picking up and running back into the light, he saw the next lamp to the left and pushed toward it. The glint of the light off of metal in the far distance told Rafe the others weren't far ahead.
As he ran toward the light, he couldn't help but notice that the glinting light wasn't moving away from him anymore... They'd stopped...
A sound made his blood run cold. The crew member he'd followed was levitating, and the bladed arm of a melnex held him skyward. Though they were said to inhabit the undergrowth outside the cities, they weren't believed to have made thier way into the tunnel systems below ground. The fires from above had pushed them deep, though...
Rafe withdrew his pistol and fired twice, missing and then striking the melnex in the upper torso. It's scream made his skin crawl. As the dead crewman dropped to the ground and the grew body of the melnex raced toward him, Rafe fired without stopping. As the gun became hot, Rafe tensed; he could hardly see if he'd hit anything because of the bright discharge of the blaster. The gun stopped firing and silence pervaded the empty tunnel. Beneath his feet, he could see the blaster burned body of the melnex.
Rafe noticed he was breathing deeply... Then he ran past it and continued toward the light...
