Out of Space

Chapter 121: Bazooka

Seacliff Mines, Dungeon Operations Command

"Goddamn it, Dungeon Ops, people are dying here!"

"Apache Two, this is Dungeon Ops, wait one over," The radio operator replied as she turned and looked at Magister Thorn standing there watching the video streams on the display coming from the Marines inside the dungeon. "Sir, what do we do?"

Dr. Sharon poked Thorn on his side, "Thorn? Are you ok?" she asked him after seeing him standing frozen before the displays and not replying to the operator's questions.

"Ahh, I am trying to recall what that creature is," Thorn sighed, "My memory is not as good as before."

"Thorn, you need to hurry up," Dr. Sharon stared at him seriously, "Not trying to pressure you, but people are dying."

"Yes yes yes, I know," Thorn rubbed his temples and suddenly snapped his fingers, "It must be a silver dragon!" He pointed to the silver scales of the creature and explained, "Those silver scales are the trademark of a silver dragon, but they do not grow up to that size! And those crystal formations on its body, I suspect it might be an evolved or mutated species!"

"Great, how do we defeat it?" Dr. Sharon patiently asked. "We got a name now."

"Hmm, silver dragons are carnivorous creatures," Thorn closed his eyes as he recalled what he had read about them, "They belong to the metal-earth element class, weakness to lightning attacks... They are weak to air element spells and strong against fire and earth."

Dr. Sharon nodded and stood over the radio operator, "Put me through to Sergeant James, now!"

-----

Seacliff Mines, Dungeon level 2, Boss room

"It's either an evolved or mutated form of a silver dragon, weak to lightning based attacks or air elemental magic," Dr. Sharon voice came in through the comms. "Strong against fire and earth magic, over!"

"Apache Two, copies that!" James responded just as he saw a burst of fire from one of the bazooka teams firing.

The fire rune concussion primed, black powder rocket-propelled with a fin-stabilized 70 mm rocket was almost the exact same rockets used by the Valkyrie gunship rocket pods, except the difference was the infantry version uses a shape-charged warhead instead of a thermobaric warhead and has a shorter rocket body.

The rocket exited the RPG -1 'Bazooka' tube with a muzzle velocity of 79 meters per second and impacted with a thunderclap directly at the chest of the T Rex like dragon. A small black cloud formed over the explosion and the behemoth roared in pain and anger. As the smoke cleared, under the lights of the Marines, the chest scale where the rocket had impacted, had cracks and blood leaking out.

"HIT IT WITH ALL BAZOOKAS!" James yelled over the gunfire. The rest of the heavy weapons teams, a total of four, one team each in each section, fired as they got into position. "Protect the rocket teams!" James ordered as he noticed the smaller dino lizards appearing to edge towards the rocket teams.

The silver behemoth roared again as another couple of rockets slammed into its side. He fell onto all fours with a ground-shaking crash and followed up with a tailwhip at the nearest Marine, who cried out and dodged just in time. The tail whip smashing the stone blocks to pieces, sending rock fragments flying like bullets to the shattered Marines.

James ducked as a fist sized rock chunk smacked against the pillar he was behind. "Platoon 3 guys, flank left and distract that piece of shit!" He yelled his order to the new arrivals who ran to cover.

"Everyone, don't stay in the same spot! Keep the smaller lizards off the rocket teams! Keep moving and keep your head down!" James commanded as he ducked out of cover, running towards one of the rocket teams.

Another rocket burst out, and impacted against the shoulder of the dragon, blowing off a

chunk of crystal off. The dragon growled in anger, whipping around impossibly fast for its size and reared up its head. It opened its jaws and seemed to suck in the air, its chest expands outwards, and light motes of visible magical energy started to gather before its open mouth.

"Shit," James screamed, "GET THE FUCK OUT OF ITS WAY!" And the men all scrambled away, just as all the crystals on its body started to glow brightly, turning it almost like a light show. A beam of super concentrated energy burst out, the beam gorging a trench out from the ground in the direction it fired and dumping all its energy into the walls, leaving behind a glowing molten furrow and tunnel almost five meters deep along the ground and wall.

"Everyone alright?" James yelled as the dust slowly settled down. The power of the dragon had scared away all the smaller lizards, only leaving behind the foolish humans and elves in the room. The dragon panted and appeared to shrink slightly and the glow of the crystals diminished. It glared with glowing green eyes filled with madness and anger at the puny two legs before it.

All of the Marines managed to dodge the beam attack, only those closest to the beam, suffered from a suntan, their exposed skin turning bright red from the heat of the beam attack. Lance Corporal Abert of Platoon 2, Section 4's heavy weapons team had dropped his bazooka when he dodged the attack of the dragon.

His buddy, Private Minosta, panted and rolled over on his back as they the two of them took cover behind a section of a destroyed pillar. "This is crazy! How in the 13 hells are we gonna to kill that thing?"

"See where I dropped the Bazooka?" Abert asked as he peeked over the cover, seeing the dragon slamming its front limbs at some cover, where a couple of Marines ran out from the smoke and debris. As the dragon was busy destroying the cover, another rocket streaked out from the side and exploding on its back.

"There," Minosta pointed, "You dropped the damn rocket launcher there." He pointed to the matt grey tube laying among some debris in the open.

"Cover me," Abert said, "I am going to run over and grab it."

"Damn, you are crazy," Minosta worked his M1 Magelock action, and braced his rifle over the cover and aimed at the angry dragon. "GO!"

Abert took off in a sprint, keeping his body as low as possible, hoping that the dragon won't notice him. He skidded to a stop next to the fallen bazooka and grabbed the carrying handle, and turned up to see the dragon looking at his direction. "Ahh, fark!"

His buddy, Minosta fired at the dragon, yelling "Over here, you damn piece of shit!" He managed to draw the dragon to his attention and cried out in fear as the dragon kicked a large chunk of stone at him, which slammed into the space where Minosta was under cover.

Abert cursed and dashed towards Minosta, as the dust settled down, "Mino! You okay buddy?"

A cough and a dust covered Marine appeared out from underneath the cover, "Damn it, I have enough of this craziness!" Minosta was part of his crew when they were back defending the city walls, out of the twenty men, only Minosta was alive.

"Come on!" Abert grinned in relief at his friend, offering him a hand up. Both of them looked towards the dragon, seeing it battered, its silver scales looking slightly dull, and leaking fluids. It gave a roar and the crystals on its body started glowing again.

-----

James yelled over the voice comms, "Apache Two to Three, request all bazooka loads immediately, over!"

"Three, Roger! Standby five mikes!"

"Two Copies! Out!"

James glanced out of his cover to see the dragon starting to glow again. "Ah fuck this, is this some kind of T Rex Godzilla?"

"INCOMING!"

-----

"Load me!" Abert yelled as he went down on a kneeling stance, propping the bazooka against the top of the cover. MInosta pulled out a rocket reload from his backpack and carefully inserted it into the rear of the bazooka, before inserting a fire rune to the trigger.

"Ready! I got one more round left!" Minosta said, slapping Abert's shoulder and dodging to the side, covering his ears and opening his mouth.

Abert waited as the behemoth drew in energy from its surroundings, charging up its beam attack again. The crystals on its body grew brighter and brighter. "Fire! For heaven's sake!" Minosta yelled at the side.

"Not yet..." Abert muttered, "Wait for it, wait for it..."

The light motes grew in intensity around the mouth of the dragon, and a rocket slammed at its head, causing the dragon to flinch. The attack got disrupted and weird whitish glow on its body dimmed and it angrily turned to face the direction of where the attack came from.

It started gathering energy again, and the rocket team scuttled away, but the dragon seemed intended on them, it tilted its massive head, tracking the two Marines running from cover to cover. It would have been comical if not for the deadliness of the attack as, where the two rocketers ran to, it followed them, forcing whoever is in the same cover to run away too.

"Fark," Abert cursed, "Come on, we need a better angle!" He gestured Minosta to follow him, making him groan.

Another rocket exploded on the dragon's back, breaking more of the crystal shards but it ignored it, focusing at the running rocketers. The glow of energy grew brighter and brighter as it charged its attack again, Abert and Minosta came to a halt next to a fallen pillar and Abert hoisted the bazooka on his shoulder, aiming at the dragon.

The dragon reared its mouth open, as the energy gathered reached its limit, it threw its head forward, to roar out the mass of energy when Abert's rocket detonated next to its snort. The high-explosive anti-tank rocket warhead detonated by having the black powder charge inside collapse a metal liner inside the warhead to form a high-velocity super plasma jet of liquid metal which splashed against the ball of supercharged magical energy formed in the mouth of the dragon.

The reaction between the two energies caused the magical field to collapse, and the energies ran amok, resulting in a massive explosion which blew the upper jaw and half the skull of the silver dragon away.

The energy shockwave broke out and the ground cracked, those Marines closes to the explosion suffered from ruptured eardrums, collapsed lungs and other internal injuries. Those furthermost away were knocked off their feet and dazed by the shockwave.

The body of the dragon stood swaying lifeless, before toppling over, causing another earth shaking crash. Cries for medic and pain were heard after the shellshock effects of the shockwave dissipated. James stood, rubbing his eyes and shaking his head to clear it of the ringing sound, leaned against a destroyed pillar and looked dumbly at the destruction the dragon wrought.

The remaining Platoon 3 support sections arrived and quickly helped out with the medical assistance. "James? SERGEANT JAMES!" Someone yelled next to James who jumped and turned to see who was it and saw it was Collins.

"Are you alright man?" Collins stood before James, checking him for injuries. "You ok?"

James nodded dumbly, pointing to his ears, "I think they are broken."

Collins unbuckled James's helmet and removed his helmet, finding his ears leaking blood. "Goddamn, what happened here?" Collins looked around at the men of Platoon 2 and some of his Platoon 3 support who were all down on the ground and waved for a medic to come over to treat his friend, "Medic! Over here!"

Collins left James to the medic and comms Dungeon Ops for a trauma team to be on standby for mass causalities and calling for more support to be sent in.

James smiled dreamily as a tranq shot was jabbed into his arm and the meds worked its wonders, a trail of blood slowly dripping out of his nose and mouth as he was laid on to a stretcher.

"Fucking dragons..."