Smash

Smash

                "Why am I on this mission?" asked Starla grumpily. She was driving an 'armoured' four-wheel drive through a field, vaguely in the direction she'd been asked to. 'Armoured' meant equipped with a huge metal bulbar that was meant for knocking down fences, and very little else. That also annoyed Starla.

                "Because you were on call," replied the man in the passenger seat. He was a grizzled looking veteran of far too many combat encounters; his face and hands a mess of light scarring. "Be grateful you weren't called up from your first damn holiday in years."

                "Damn straight!" called out one of the passengers in the middle seat, the man in question's wife. She was as scarred and grizzled looking as her husband.

                The car filled with chuckles from the rest of the passengers. It was filled to the brim with proper combat types who were each armed to the teeth, and was one of three cars chasing after the giant mole that had burst from a river several days ago. Sort of chasing, at least - a chopper overhead was keeping track of the mole's movements and directing the four wheel drives as they attempted to cut it off or catch it.

                Starla didn't fit in with the combat types. For one thing, her combat training was only twenty-percent complete and she certainly wasn't capable of the fitness level the others were all at. Secondly - and more importantly - her 'thing' was high risk operations where her ability to die but not properly die would come in handy. This wasn't one of them.

                "Plus, you're not going to fight," continued the man. "We were short a driver, so you're driving."

                "You're lucky I can drive," said Starla. "I only learnt how to drive a manual a couple of weeks ago. I'm not even licensed for it yet."

                The man chuckled. "Don't worry, lass. Plus, you're the one who doesn't die properly - you'll live through this even if we cock up."

                "I can't exactly come back from getting sliced in half," said Starla grumpily. The radio chirped with a new heading, and Starla turned the car to match it.

                "Are you sure?" asked the man. "I mean, have you ever tried? Has anyone ever tried?"

                Starla shot the man a quick mean look. She'd have glared, but crashing the car wouldn't have gone down well. "No. But unless I was stuck together again really well I wouldn't be able to stay alive. Also: the mole could mince me. The claws are seven metres long!"

                "Seen worse," said the man. His comment set off another round of laughter amongst the passengers.

                "Can't believe I was on during the long weekend," muttered Starla.

                "What was that?" asked the man.

                "Just more grumbling," replied Starla. Noticing some trees up ahead, she added, "I'm going to focus on driving for a bit."

                The man gave her a nod (almost dangerously distracting her) and turned around in his seat to face the rest of the car. A discussion about who'd 'bag' the creature quickly began, burbling along as Starla focused on avoiding trees.

                The drive continued for another half hour before the got anywhere close to the mole. Starla stuck to driving rather than grumbling, half listening to the conversation going on in the backseat. It was interesting, at times - the passengers reflected on past hunts. Some of the creatures they'd faced sounded terrifying, others interesting.

                After clearing a bunch of trees scattered along the edge of a field, the creature finally came into sight. "Jesus!" exclaimed Starla as she caught sight of it.

                It was a mole quite like the example image she'd seen in the quick briefing before leaving. But it was titanic in size - Starla wasn't quite sure how big, but at least thirty metres long and ten tall. The four-wheel drive was the size of the creatures paw - and the paw was smaller than the huge claws attached to it for 'digging'. The chopper  flying above it was a tiny dot in comparison, despite being only a few dozen metres in the air.

                The creature was scrambling along, trashing the ground as it chased after another of the four-wheel drives. The final car was flanking the creature, a couple of its passengers pointing guns out the windows. Starla made a sharp turn to the left, setting her car on a course parallel to the creature.

                "Alright," said the man in her passenger seat, "keep going this way even if it comes after us instead."

                Although the metal bulbar knocked it down, the reinforced wheels of the car still made a horrible noise as they crushed the fence separating two fields. Starla was pretty sure she'd seen some barbed wire on that fence - whatever had been done to 'reinforce' the tyres was very effective.

                A couple of gunshots rang out as those in the chased car took a few shots at the creature. It screeched and leapt forwards, barrelling ahead faster than the driver of the car could react. The beast's claws caught the rear-end of the car, tearing through and flipping the car into the air. It landed a short distance away, and the mole approached it with cautious curiosity.

                Quite suddenly part of the mole's nose exploded with a tremendous boom. A white trail joined the growing explosion to a rocket launcher poking out of the second car. They'd pulled to a stop to take the shot, and the flashing of various muzzles showed that it wasn't just the rocket launcher they were firing.

                The mole screamed in pain and charged towards the new attackers, ignoring the trashed car as it ran. Its target got moving immediately, zooming off in the same direction the other car had been heading.

                "What the hell are they doing?" asked Starla, doing her best to keep her vehicle beneath the creature's notice.

                "Luring it," said her passenger. "I'm pretty sure we've missed something because they don't trust your driving." As he spoke, he busily tapped away on his phone. The phone made a little beep when he received a reply moments later, and he seemed satisfied with what it said.

                "Well?" asked Starla. Up ahead the mole was still charging after the functional four-wheel drive. They had a bigger lead than the other car had managed, so they were safe for now.

                "They're luring it to some mines. The first car - they dropped off a small team to set up a group of shaped charges up ahead. Creature runs over, charges go boom, creature takes massive internal injuries and dies," said her passenger. "They should be getting there right now, in fact."

                Not far ahead of the other car was a gap between two hills, only slightly bigger than the mole. They were headed right for it, and as Starla watched the car disappeared between the them. Moments later, as the mole was about to do the same, there was an incredibly loud explosion. The noise from the rocket - one of the loudest Starla had ever heard - paled in comparison.

                A cloud of smoke, dirt and fire billowed out from under the mole, lifting the creature up in the air a few metres despite its titanic size. Incredibly, moments later two lumpy projectiles tore out of the creature's back with a bloody spray - although compared to the size of the creature they were not particularly big. The creature landed with a small earthquake, shaking the ground and forcing Starla to bring her car to a stop.

                Her heart pounding at an incredible rate Starla stared at the creature. It lay there unmoving, despite her deep expectation that it would rise again. The silence stretched out for a few moments before the man in her passenger seat destroyed it.

                "Looks like we got it!" he yelled, to a cheer from the rest of the car.

                "We did lose one of the cars," noted one of the other passengers, sadness in his voice.

                "Could've been worse," replied the man.

                New orders popped up on the gps-like device that had been guiding Starla as she chased after the mole. It read 'Approach creature, prepare for clean-up'. It was time to begin the laborious process of carving up the creature and hauling away the mess (not too mention fixing up the damage they and the creature had done to various fences).

                "Ah, clean-up time," said the man in the passenger seat. "Time to use the good ol' chainsaw."

                "Yeah," said Starla sourly, "yay."