Neil felt trapped, something he really disliked. The young pilot did his best to struggle and shove himself out of it, but it was to no avail. Drake watched him struggle with a smug grin as he cradled the core like a newborn babe. "Don't have any witty remarks now, do you?" Drake said.

"Turn these shields off and I'll show you plenty, along with a gun-butt to the head free of charge." Neil replied, gritting his teeth through the shimmering haze of the blue field. Drake merely snorted, and held up the core as if to gloat, giving Sayeeda a mocking wink as he made his way out of the room and up the rise.

"Well...this is a poor end to a new crew." Neil said, slumping back. He briefly thought of shoving the stasis field with his feet, but he knew that would lead to nothing. These things were built by beings humanity built their civilization on. "So...wanna play 'I Never'?" He looked at Sayeeda. The question was never answered, for in the center of the light, matter suddenly billowed and coalesced into what appeared to be a...face?

It looked to be wrought of thousands of different metallic cubes formed together into a face that looked somewhat human. It had an 'Uncanny Horizon' feel to its features, elongated and somewhat flat nosed, with ears stretched like heated leather.

"Representative, what is the meaning of this?" It asked, it's echoing voice feminine. Neil blinked, and glanced toward Sayeeda, before looking back at the shape. "Wha-...who?" Neil said to it, palms on the blue walls of the stasis field.

"You bear the mark. You are the Representative." It said as if it was the most blindingly obvious thing in the universe. Neil raised an eyebrow, but he didn't question it too long. He asked who the being was, and it described itself as the facility's AI system. The AI asked its question again. Neil replied with "Some punk trapped us and took the core of the facility with it."

"You must stop him. The anomaly will be released. All life in the system will be wiped out without mercy or restraint. Allow me to free you."

"Whoa wait, what's going to happen?"

It paused, as if it was uploading a file to share, and spoke once more. "3,000 years ago, the Aelahyne creators of this facility trapped one of their most dangerous creations. The Harbingers. An artificial being of power beyond comprehension. If all of them had been released, the Aelahyne would have become extinct. Thankfully, these facilities were built to keep the population of their creations in check for study. In twenty standard galactic minutes, the lack of power and cohesion from the core unit of this facility with awaken the Harbinger, and it will create a new order of domination in the system."

Neil sighed, and ran a hand through his hair as the stasis shield suddenly vanished. "Well fuck," he sighed.
@Penny

Junebug blinked as the stasis field around her vanished. She sneezed violently as in-rushing air gusted dust into her sinus. Fortunately her helmet visor maintained a low grade electric charge that repelled the particles and kept the face shield clean.

"More Goddess Cursed AI's," she grumbled as she vaulted down from the raised platform and landed with a clang, her combat books waking echos across the deck plates as moved at a tactical jog towards the door Drake had vanished in with, what she assumed, was the core of the facility.

"Can't it just close the doors on this asshole?" The moved into the hallway at a jog but the voice, seemingly omnipresent in the facility, followed them.

"System degradation over, the centuries has rendered this impossible Consort," the mechanical voice went on, with no more or less emotion that it had possessed when it spoke of the destruction of the system. Sayeeda was running through the corridors now, there were no obvious turns to slow her and while the corridor snaked back and forth there were no options for exploration.

"Consort!? She spluttered in outrage as they broke into a large room that seemed to be filled with some sort of statuary, still in the same alien metallic style.

"You are the Consort of the Representative are you not?"

"I don't think we need to go that far," Sayeeda said dryly as she moved through the forest of eerie statues, the muzzle of her submachine gun sweeping from side to side.

"Booster bring up thermal at a 25 percent mask," she instructed her helmet AI and the world took on the subtle shadings of color based of the rates of differntal cooling. The effect was slightly nausating with so much cold metal becoming tinted with icy blue. Neil had a warm glow of body heat about him, as would Drake when they caught up with him.

"Would you perfer a different form of address Consort?" the AI inquired polite.

"Shut the fuck up," Sayeeda snapped, she didn't have breath to talk with a centuries dead computer and she certainly didn't want to tip off. WHANGG!! Sparks showered her as she burst through a door at the end of the hall of statues. The were in a large room that reminded Sayeeda of a chapel or maybe a particular ornate mess hall. Strange alien designs hung on the walls and long benches lay in curiously asymmetrical rows here and there a console station flickered with the odd purplish light and strange symbols they had seen in the control room and at the keypad. CLANG! CLANG! Rounds ricocheted off the wall beside her as she through herself forward into a diving roll. Drake stood across the room frantically tapping at a keypad with one hand while firing one handed across the room at her, his face a mask of fear and concentration. His first shot had been lucky Sayeeda realised, Drake was comfortable with guns but even she would have struggled to hit a surprise target across a room while her attention was focused on another task. Well, maybe she would have struggled.

"How the fuck did you get out!" Drake shrieked his voice high with panic as he frantically hammered at the keypad.

"Not really relevant!" she shoulded back, glancing up to make sure Neil had made it through the doorway safely. To her relief he had.

"You aren't taking me back, there is too much work to do!"

"Full disclosure Drake, I don't give a damn about your work and my contract with your father dosen't specify what condition your kneecaps need to be in!"

"You don't understand with the knowledge of this facility..." she came up in a crouch sighted and fired across the room, two sharp snaps as the electromotive weapon drove the light metal slugs up the barrel faster than the speed of sound. There was a diffuse red flash and Drake dropped to the floor, shrieking in agony, and clutching at his lower thigh where her shots had torn to neat holes. Blood stained his finger and he whimpered for a moment.

"Crazy fucking bitch," he whined and then to his evident shock the door behind him hissed open.

@POOHEAD189

Neil dived into the room behind Sayeeda, though he didn't bother to un-holster his ARC gun, instead taking out his sidearm. He decided he'd let Sayeeda handle this one, however. That whole 'Consort' thing probably had her on edge and Neil thought she could use a little time to let out some steam. The fact she didn't vehemently deny the name either had him confused in a not unwelcome way, but he could think about that later. For his own sake, he was just glad he kept his bewildered laugh in check when the AI called her that.

"Crazy fucking bitch," Drake breathed, and the door opening behind him with a hiss gave him a priceless look on his face. Neil stood over him next to his superior officer, gun in his left hand. "Oh I'm sorry were you complaining about this?" Neil asked him and kicked the man's wound. He gasped in pain, and his grip on the core loosened. Neil grabbed it before it could clang onto the ground, and lifted it up to hold protectively.

The entire facility suddenly jerked, as if a tectonic plate beneath the surface decided to reassert itself over another. Neil fell to his knees, but luckily still held the core to his chest. "Nice going asshole." Neil said to Drake, only to be interrupted by what sounded like the guttural growl of a beast the size of a continent. It clicked monotonously, its pitch nearly too deep to fathom as it echoed across the halls.

Above them, a light began to shine from a hidden scanner at the northern most side of the room, and the Aelahyne AI appeared in a more bioluminescent form, made of light waves. Drake's pain was forgotten for a second, as weirded out as anyone when the face materialized before them.

"The fuck is that!?" He asked, pointing from the ground.

"Hurry. You must place the Core back from whence it came." The AI said. "It is by the Representative's hands that it must be placed back."

---

Harbinger Flagship.
50,529 Kilometers above Savran.
Command Deck.

"Sir! There are strange readings on the planet's surface!" One of the UAI personnel called, redirecting the readings to be displayed before Admiral Corvus. It showed a green layout of the planet, with reverberations upon the site they had sent the commandos, and strange activity next to the anomaly they were to investigate. He didn't know what in hell was happening down there. The communications to the commandos had been lost mere minutes ago.

"True image. Zoom in and clear up the feed." Admiral Corvus commanded. The display turned into normal viewing of Savran, and the image picked up much closer to the location of Hatcher's city, now only about 100,000 square kilometers were visible on screen. Admiral Corvus wasn't sure what to make of what he was seeing. But if his eyes were not damned...one of the mountains had begun to ripple and stretch. One of the mountains had come alive.

---

"I'll head back in there." Neil said, his face glistening from the running. He knew he had to go, but Sayeeda might be able to salvage something. He'd tell her just to run without him, as altruistic as that sounded, but she couldn't fly the ship, could she? Without even thinking of the move, he kicked Drake in the head, knocking the man unconscious without a moment's hesitation. "With the Captain's permission, I'd like to tell her to get one of the transportation vehicles and to come back to pick me up. But I got to backtrack now."

He blew some hair out of his eyes. "Hey, for what it's worth, if we both die... it was a fun few days."
@Penny

Junebug was about to ask Neil just how in the hell she was supposed to get a vehicle in here when the nearest one she knew of was ten clicks back the way they had come but the pilot was already gone and the words would likely have been inaudible in any case. The alien ruin shook as if a child had picked it up and rattled it and the strange silver metal dented in alarmingly in several places. Goddess even if she could get to the jeep they couldn’t fly it over the treetops they would need an air car or… the disparate pieces of a plan began to slide together in her mind and she grinned as she reached down and slung the unconcious Drake over her shoulder with a grunt of effort. Sayeeda was extremely fit but there was a limit to the mechanical advantage her slender frame could provide.

“Booster… damnit ...uh facillity, are there any exits to the surface closer than the one we entered by?”

“Yes Consort,” the system responded and to Sayeeda’s amazement a pale pastel line appeared on the floor. It took her a moment to realise that it was a thermal signature, the ancient AI had guessed or detected she was using thermal and was using it to guide her. Damn.

“Neil,” she said, queuing the comlink in her mastoid to transmit to her pilot.

“I’m going to secure transport, you’ll have to exfiltrate the way we came in, I’m going too…” the facility rocked in another titanic convolution and Sayeeda managed to stay upright despite the weight of Drake across her shoulders, the man’s bulk pressing her armor painful down across her shoulders. The radio played the low background hiss of an empty carrier wave. The seismic activity or the distance had severed the link. Or Neil was dead of course, but there was no way to determine that and no profit in worrying about it. She would have to hope he got her earlier transmission or that he had sense enough to backtrack the way they had come in. Worse come to worst he might think to ask the alien AI, no doubt it picked up her transmission.

The pale stripe lead her into an antechamber and down a series of what her mind rendered as maintenance corridors. The ground continued to heave around her, filling the narrow corridor with dust and grit. Drake moaned on top of her and she wondered if she should have taken the time to apply a tourniquet to the gunshot wounds in his thigh. It hadn’t appeared to be bleeding that badly when when had picked him up. The broke into open daylight with a suddenness that Sayeeda hadn't been expecting. The strange alien architecture gave way to the outside through a smooth oval portal and she found herself looking down a broad valley of intense green. Far below she could see hordes of birds and larger creatures breaking from the folliage. The whole ridgeline was rippling as though it were alive and dirt and leaf litter poured down it in a torrent.

“Goddess,” Sayeeda whispered as she looked down at the mass of falling trees and tumbling earth. The pair of them seemed to be on a rocky ridge several hundred meters above the jungle canopy, the door must have been deliberately concealed here by its ancient builders. Reaching down to her equipment belt she pulled her radio, a palm sized military model she had taken from the Highlander, and thumbed it to its emergency frequency.

“Prio, Prio, Prio, this Captain Sayeeda Cyckali to any Terran Units. I have the scientist you are seeking and require immediate extraction, say again immediate extraction, over!” There was a long pause. The radio only had a range of a hundred clicks or so without a booster, and there was only one Terran unit within that sort of range.

“Say again Cyckali?” came a voice, sexless and attenuated by the radio transmission.

“I have Drake Ferenhall in custody, he is wounded and we are stranded requiring immediate extraction.” Another long pause stretched out for perhaps thirty seconds. Doubtlessly the Terran radio operator was conferring with his superiors.

“Hold your position Cyckali, we have a dropship inbound on your signal, any resistance will be met with overwhelming force,” the radio crackled, in the background she could here the attenuated roar of vectoring thrust.

It was less than five minutes later when the dropship howled into view. Sayeeda spent the time futilely trying to raise Neil on the commlink and absently pulling a pair of twist ties around Drake’s leg in an improvised tourniquet, he seemed to be coming around so she looped a second pair of ties around the young mans wrists securing them behind his back. That accomplished she tucked her needle stunner into the back of her prisoners trousers. The dropship, the same one that had delivered the commandos, unless she very much missed her guess came in low. The pilot was careful to keep the vessels two vectors engines, large bulbous pods, close to the ground as he skimmed across the surface of the valley. The pilot was good, good enough to deliberately keep the vulnerable thruster nozzles of the massive gimbaled motors pointed down. There was a pair of linked plasma cannons in a blister on the nose that gave the vessel a blocky insectoid aspect. Two large doors on the body of the thing were open and a gunner crouched behind a door mounted tri barreled plasma gun. To Sayeeda’s considerable relief the gunner and a pilot, sheltered behind armored transparent aluminum cockpit panels were the only crewmen aboard. If this was the dropship that had bought the commandos, they hadn’t made it back to their ride before it had been ordered to lift.

“Toss your weapons down and prepare to board, try anything and we will riddle you both,” her radio crackled. If the gunner was speaking she couldn’t tell through his opaque face shield. The dropship rose up, level with the rise, leaving only a few feet of empty air between the Terrans and Sayeeda’s position. The roar of the engines was deafening and she was glad that the filters in her helmet lowered it to tolerable levels. The dust storm would have been a problem if the steep curve of the ridge didn’t billow the spoil out at an angle below them, suction behind them sucked dust up into the air in a coiling snake.

“These are expensive,” Sayeeda began to object, but the Terran gunner merely waggled his barrels. Sighing she ostentatiously cast aside her submachine gun and hit the magnetic clasp that dropped her plasma rifle, clattering to the rock. The Terran locked his own weapon and drew a pistol and then stood up reaching across to help receive Drake as Sayeeda pitched him across, she hopped across the gap and landed on the quivering deck of the dropship. Counterintuitively she felt immediately better, the dynamic stasis of the ships deck was similar enough to a skimmer to make her feel at home. The Terran gunner shoved Drake into a crash couch and swung his pistol onto her. Sayeeda snatched the needle stunner she had put down the back of Drake’s trousers and fired three rounds into the chest of the gunner. The weapon made a quiet chunk as compressed air fired the razor sharp crystal iron carbide spikes into the Terran. Alternating currents in the crystal sparked to life and the gunner convulsed violently. The pilot must have been ready for something of the sort because he immediately yanked the control yoke sideways, throwing the drop ship into a steep climb that tumbled the convulsing gunner out the far door. Drake slid as well but snagged up on something she couldn’t see. Sayeeda leapt forward into the cockpit and rammed the stubby barrel of her stunner into the side of the pilots neck and yanked at the control yoke with the other. The dropship balloned upwards, nearly stalling but the pilot cried out and steadied them. She risked at glance over her shoulder and was relieved to see that Drake was crumpled in a ball in the rear or the crew compartment.

“You need me, you can’t fly this thing,” the pilot declared.

“You can’t fly in general, so either you do as I say or I do a little on the job training with you as a passenger.” The pilot sagged slightly.

“Alright, let's go rescue my pilot.”
@POOHEAD189

Neil felt like he was running through the corridors of a submersible and the groaning was its hull that was near to bursting. He didn't know if he was as fit as Sayeeda, but he had long legs and an energy most would envy. Making his way out of the strange temple they had found Drake in, Neil sped down hallways, his mind surprisingly effective when it came to memory and logistical thinking, realizing (mostly) just where they had come from even after all of those turns. It was one of the benefits of being able to pilot near anything.

Most turns he wouldn't even skid to a stop, merely leaping and kicking off the wall to turn. His hands fully secured around the core as the groaning grew louder and louder. Unfortunately, the clock was against him. The AI had said the core needed to be returned 20 minutes ago 18 minutes ago, and Neil still had a few hallways to go, not to mention he had no idea how to put the fucking thing back. "You find a good ship, you get a hot Captain, might start a small business of high space piracy, and then what happens?" Neil asked himself facetiously under his breath, wondering just how he ended up trying to save a planet after being on Savran less than a day.

He didn't even slow down when he made it into the Xenos mausoleum, instead leaping off the third story and surfing down the curve of the wall. "Your prisoner unleashed the Harbinger of Doom." the AI voice replied to his query. Neil hopped off the wall at the bottom and then paused for a second to glanced upward. "I was just bullshitting. Now what do I do?"

The room began to glow red, and more than even before it began to shake. The very foundations of the ground bucked and groaned like a lover. "Answer me!" Neil cried, but the AI instead began to repeat. "Warning. Harbinger is being unleashed. Warning. Harbinger is being unleashed. Warning. Harbinger-"

"SHIIIIIIIIIIII-" The pilot leaped and tossed the core into the central light, hoping to all that was holy that it worked. The core sailed through the air, hitting the light as if it had penetrated a surface of water. It flew far into it, before bouncing back to slowly bob a bit in the center, the mark on Neil's hand now glowing on the core. The light regained its natural color, and the groaning halted.

"Goddamn." Neil said to no one. "I need a vacation."

---

It was ten minutes later Sayeeda's transport found Neil, only the landscape was much changed from their last visit of the place. The pilot was at the top of a tree, sitting on one of the outer lying branches and waving for them to see him. The horizon behind him was no longer the mountain of the valley, however. The trees, rock, and soil had been replaced with the top of a monstrous, metallic visage, eyes made of intertwining steel, and the horizon itself had been replaced with an arm that had lifted out of the planet's surface to find purchase on the the above ground. The hand of the beast could now provide cover for a city thrice the size of Hatcher's settlement.

Once the transport hovered next to him, Neil grabbed on and wiped his brow, his red shirt now matted with sweat. "Thanks babe." he said to Sayeeda. He gave her a grin, the events that just transpired were a bit too out of their realm of reality for him to remember rank just there. All they had to do now was evade the Terran blockade. Not too hard, right?
@Penny

The Highlander spiralled skyward in a long lazy corkscrew, beneath them Saravan’s polar wastes twisted like a monochromatic kaleidoscope. Junebug’s console was split into three sections, showing the attack board, the plot position indicator and a live video feed. The feed was being remoted from the sensors on one of the planetary missile batteries. The unit was a front line military model and had the crew known its business Sayeeda could never have entered its sensor feed, but without professional crew managing the software, it was simple enough to pirate the visuals. The feed itself showed a glowing lance of plasma lifting the second Terran destroyer, Windhoven, up to orbit. The destroyer’s crew did know there business and there was no way for Sayeeda to enter its systems. It didn’t take a genius to deduce that the Windhoven was executing an emergency lift, doubtless with half its crew left in whatever bars and brothels they had been carousing in when the emergency recall was issued.

“Told you it would work,” Neil said with a smirk in his voice. Sayeeda nodded in an acknowledgement that the pilot, seated forward, couldn't see. If the Terrans had noticed them, breaking orbit in the polar magnetic flux, they were too focused on the new metallic mountain range closer to the equator.

“So you did,” Sayeeda conceded as she imported the latest RIP data from the navigational satellites. It seemed like there had been little change in the RIP in the last 24 hours and they had their own reciprocal course to Hodinera to work from. That would simplify the return voyage. They had returned to the city on their stolen dropship without incident. Junebug had initially been concerned their might be trouble with the locals, but the seismic disturbances they had unleashed had what passed for authorities in the city swamped. It had been to her considerable relief that the Highlander hadn’t been shaken off the landing pad and into the ravine. Sayeeda had clouted the Terran pilot unconscious and scrambled his access controls. It probably wouldn’t make her any friends with the Terrans but it was preferable to shooting the man outright. Besides it was fair to say that the popularity contest had already been lost. From there they had flown low across the planet to the southern pole before punching for orbit. Neil claimed that the magnetics would make them difficult to see.

Drake moaned from one of the passenger seats, his hands and arms secured with cago tape to the arm and foot rest. A piece of the silvery adhesive tape was stretched across his mouth also. The scientist pulled at the tape in frustration, but the boron monocrystal woven through the fabric, and the industrial adhesive that secured it, could have have held a small vehicle. His left leg was stained with dark blood and his face was bruised from Neil’s kick. She supposed that once they were in the RIP she would get him into the ships medi-comp and have some of the damage taken care off. It was unlikely her father cared but proper treatment of prisoners was an axiom of mercenary service.

“Fifteen minutes to insertion Cap’n,” the ship's AI chimed. The PPI blinked green, even at full burn the Z-49 wouldn’t be able to reach them in timer and the Windhoven wouldn’t be fully clear of the atmosphere for at least five more minutes, by the time it was underway they would be long gone. Sayeeda unsnapped her restraints.

“Well Neil, it was a hell of a first day.”

@POOHEAD189

Communications Code FM101-5-2. Master Chief Petty Officer Gunther Briefing.
Terran Date 3.4.189-87

It has come to my attention that the anomaly known as Harbinger, bearing the same name as the flagship of the vanguard fleet, has been identified and confirmed. At 1645 on the Terran date 3.4.189-76.3, an unknown craft approached Planet 139 known as Savran, entering its atmosphere past our scanners and evading one of our missiles. Less than a day later, Terran date 3.4.189-76.31, we sent commando squad falmer down to intercept where we believed subject X was located, also known as Drake Ferenhall. Their success was limited, and the anomaly was unleashed, destroy provinces bravo and charlie, before halting in its movement and shutting down by unknown means. We were prepared to glass the planet, but once its movements had halted, we waited on word from our on planet squad. Admiral Corvus ordered a planetary assault not a day later, given that the anomaly needed to be investigated and the despot Hatcher would hinder our efforts. It wasn't until the previously mentioned unknown space craft was gone that we received reports of its leaving. Drake Ferenhall has yet to be located.

---

Terran Date 3.4.189-76.7
Sector Tumultus
Planet Fornax
2 weeks later.

Well needless to say the two of them had been skeptical taking this for a first job. The volatile fusion reactors meant to power the orbital defense system of this planet on the edge of space were the last thing Neil would want on their ship (particularly how he piloted). But it had paid off in the end, they had to admit. Fornax had also paid them handsomely, the planetary Governor apparently overjoyed that they had actually received their shipment on time and intact. Neil wasn't entirely sure why they didn't get a legitimate transport to ship them to the Outer Sector, but then again Terran laws often changed. Perhaps they didn't want to ship them legitimately only for them to be arrested for treason when they arrived out of R.I.P. space.

Neil didn't give a flying fuck. He now sat on the hellish manufacturing world's most debauched and infamous bar, fully three stories with more selections of drinks than you could fathom. On a world that never stopped their employees working, men and women needed serious downtime when they could afford it. Plopped on a chair, with his left hand holding a mug to his lips and his right arm snug ontop of the chair next to him, Neil felt like he had made the right choice in becoming Highlander's Pilot.

"So, tell me about how you saved the planet from destruction again?" The dancer asked, lithe finger running over Neil's chest as her girlfriends sat in wonder at his story. Likely they had never even been off-planet, and hardly met any off-worlders. The sky being a constant haze of red and soot, he felt sorry for them. The young pilot sighed and placed his mug down, slipping his now free arm around the dark eyed beauty as he shifted in his seat. "Certainly," he conceded. "But this is the last time, ok? I've been in space for over a week and I need some rest."

"You're not leaving soon are you?" A blonde girl asked, her eyes big and blue. Neil shook his head. "No, I'm here for another few days while my crew finds a new job. Don't worry." He gave her a wink.
@Penny

Formax stank. It was so omnipresent that it was a part of the weather, a constant low grade assault on the nostrils. The smell itself was hard to describe, it was a mix of effluent, harsh chemical solvents, heavy metals and unwashed human bodies. Formax, to the extent that it mattered, was a world of impressive but ancient volcanism. In the geologic past the magma hot core of the world had shatter the mantle and thrust great mountain ranges up into the smokey heavens. That core had been cold and dead when humans arrived, eager to exploit the worlds rich natural resources, and they hadn’t improved it sense. Vast manufactorys crouched in the once majestic valleys. Smoke and chemicals poured forth in profusion that must have matched the long vanished volcanos, staining the sky a sooty gray.

Junebug found that the smell had a physical component, an oily slickness that clung to the skin and made her eyes feel gritty. It didn’t bother her unduly, certainly in a decade of near continual warfare, most places she had been had reeked of cordite, plasma gun residue, burning fuel and burning men.

“Captain Cyckali?” Junebug’s attention snapped back to the present. The factor, Jardine, looked worried. Goddess what had her face been like a moment ago. She licked her lips and gave the short muscular man her full attention. Jardine’s office was not prepossessing, it was tucked into the corner of an aerial catwalk ringing a warehouse and the furniture was cheap but functional extruded plastic. Below them forklifts moved containers weighing thousands of of kilos in and out of a warehouse that would have covered a small starport. There was a basic noise cancellation field but even a unit decades younger would have struggled to keep the cacophonous roar at bay.

“Sorry Master Jardine, it was a long voyage.” That had been true. The Highlander had made the eight day run from Hondiera in two insertions. It was a brutal run through a dangerous path through the RIP but neither Neil or Junebug had wanted to linger where Terran operatives might be looking for them.

“I see,” Jardine said doubtfully, letting his muscled bulk sink into a beige chair.

“Well as I said, your credits have cleared and your cargo will be delivered later this afternoon,” Jardine concluded. Sayeeda nodded and pulled up a data feed on her datapad. Everything seemed as Jardine said and his company didn’t have a reputation for dishonesty. The factor would have been a fool to try to defraud them after they bought those generators in and no one survived in a sharkpit like Formax

“Thank you Jardine,” she said, shutting the feed and turning to leave.

“Captain Cyckali… it isn’t really my business, but what do you want with five tons of freeze dried coffee?”

Junebug paused in the hatch like office door, her hands gripping the edges of the hatch.

“It isn’t your business, good day Master Jardine.”

The Level was on the lower levels of the factory hab. A steady drip of unidentifiable stinking fluid trickled down from higher levels, pattering Junebugs plastic poncho as she pushed her way through the crowded hab level. The entrance to the Level was lit with flickering neon glowstrips in bright red. A pair of bouncers lounged lazily under the stoa which protected the entrance from the stinking rain but the didn’t look concerned to see a wiry woman in a black flightsuit under a rain poncho, even if she was openly carrying a submachine gun slung muzzle down. There probably were bars where weapons were prohibited on Formax, but the Level wasn’t that kind of a place. Harsh electronic music blared out as she stepped through the door.

The interior was dark and filled with men and women dancing and drinking with frenetic enthusiasm. For a moment she wished she had worn her helmet, the more so for the interested looks she got from a number of the patrons. One man leered at her and started to lift himself from his seat until their eyes met. The man looked away quickly from her unfocused thousand yard stare. She saw Neil at a table in the back, describing a maneuver with his hands to several scantily clad dancers. Grinning to herself she picked her way across the floor and slid in next to a well endowed blonde. She slipped her arm around the girls waist and pulled her to her.

“Good news Neil,” she said brightly, “Got us a cargo loading this afternoon.”

@POOHEAD189

Neil was just getting to the part where they evading the Terran missile when he saw Sayeeda sashaying over, for once positively jubilant. It looked good on her. The girl she grabbed squeaked in surprise, and a few of the other girls looked less than amused and perhaps a bit jealous of her familiarity with Neil. However once he explained this was his Captain, they looked to her with a curiosity and the buxom woman she grabbed felt quite snug.

"Well I was hoping to enjoy myself longer but, more money's more money." He said, raising a cup to toast with Sayeeda. The other girls that had drinks of their own joined in, probably just to say they were apart of one of these smugglers' many adventures. Neil then chugged the remainder of his drink, savoring this last one for the day. If he had anymore he might start dropping cargo later on, and even with a smuggler's job, efficacy was key. Particularly with a smuggler's job, now that he thought of it.

"Oi!" A faint voice was heard in the background. "Oi, you girls!" It grew louder over the course of the next few seconds, just as Neil's lips were finding purchase on the voluptuous dancer on his lap. She was suddenly yanked off unceremoniously by a less than amused balding man, who looked like mid-life had hit him like a ton of bricks. Behind him, his two bouncers were stone faced and grim. The red faced man's voice, now not muffled by the music, was like a nasty wake up call to the women. "Just what in the hell do you girls think you're doing!? Get back to work!" He ordered. The women scattered like mice. "And you two, if you want to entertain yourself other than drinks you better pay for it."

Neil's hair was a mess from the hand that had just ran through his hair being yanked out of it, and he blinked. "Should have expected that." He said to Sayeeda, but mostly to himself. Never a dull moment in his life, smuggler or mechanic. The music above them shifted into something harder and more fast paced, and the men gave Neil and Sayeeda one last, dangerous look before heading away again. "Well, might as well head that way, yeah?" Neil said to the Captain, leaping to his feet.

It would be once they made it into the glassteel hallway above the refinery when a certain noise, a noise that had been drowned out in the bar, was now more than evident to their ears. A horn was sounding in warning, and an automated voice repeated the following statement over and over.

All orbital traffic has been halted effective immediately. Darkspace threat inbound. All orbital traffic has been halted effective immediately. Darkspace threat inbound.
@Penny

Junebug was already striding out of the Level when the alert started pulsing over the public alert channels. The palm sized computer clipped to her waistband began to chirp with some similar variation on the global alert. The crowd in the streets seemed to pause as one, looking up with fear, concern or annoyance at the overhead speakers blaring the warning. Sayeeda pulled her rain poncho back on and adjusted the sling on her submachine gun so it slung muzzle forward rather than hanging point down. It was unlikely that the weapon would save her in a sudden stampede of pedestrians but you used the tools you were comfortable with.

“Lonny,” Sayeeda said, queuing her comlink to the ship's AI. She had finally given in to the nickname due to the need to differentiate her helmet AI from the ships much more elaborate unit.

“Better button up the ship, there is some sort of navigational anomaly and we don’t need panicked civilians trying to seize the ship.”

“Cap’n, there be men here a loadin’” the AI responded unexpectedly. Sayeeda chewed on her lip for a moment, weighing the options. If the stevedores were loading the coffe there was little to be gained by interrupting them.

“Roger that, let them finish the load but seal off access to any areas other than the cargobay. Six Out,” she concluded breaking the link before the AI could respond. Just for fun she tried to query port control on her wrist mount, but the link was beyond swamped. No doubt every captain was calling in regarding the anomally and half of those trying to get emergency clearance to leave. Darkspace was a catch all term for disturbances in the RIP, particularly violent eddies and back draughts which rendered all computed solutions impossible to execute. They were unusual but there were documented cases of systems being engulfed for days to weeks. There were even a few cases where entire systems had been cut off and contact was yet to be reestablished.

“Maybe we should lift without clearance,” Sayeeda said as they pushed their way through gathering crowds. They were moving up levels and here and there a large public vidscreen blared the news to enraptured crowds. Darkspace Anomaly Engulfing Formax. Uncharted Darkspace Threat, Duke to Comment at 8 Local. People seemed agitated, here and there men in rags ranted about the end time. One man was collecting money and slicing himself with a knife in a vicarious absolution of sin, his bloody footprints standing out starkly on the bare concrete. The workers were a superstitious lot, perhaps because of the monotony of life forced them to look to omens for meaning.

“No good Capatino,” Neil responded, snatching a fruit from a vendor's cart and flicked a small denomination credit coin to the dirty old woman who owned it. For all her apparent frailty she snatched it from the air with the grace of a magician. Neil bit into the fruit and continued around a mouthful of dark purple flesh.

“They’ll have canned the beacons for the duration, no point frying expensive sensors with the Darkspace rolling in, and the RIP will have changed too much for us to use the old data if its bad enough that they can detect it,” Neil explained, forestalling her next suggestion. By the Goddess she didn’t want to be stuck here even an extra day if she could avoid it. The run she had planned was tight on the timing as it was

“Well I’m open to suggestions,” she rejoined tartly. They were crossing into the upper sections of the city now. Purple and Black the colors of the house of Cho-Lan, the noble house whose fractious members controlled Formax and several other worlds in the sector, were much in evidence, both on buildings and in the clothing and ornamentation of the more prosperous looking citizens. These areas were associated with shipping and thus with an order of magnitude more wealth than the poor damned factory workers could dream of.

@POOHEAD189

"Well, there's no harm in checking to see if there's certain paths that are cleared in the RIP." He said to her, and when he felt like she might not entirely understand what he meant, he fished in his pocket for a holodisk, placing the coordinates of it to the system they were currently in. Stopping for a moment, a small image of the system, including Fornax and its sister planets, as well as the asteroid belt appeared before Sayeeda.

"I'm not an expert, but in RIP travel, there are never certainties on whether you can make it to your destination, but neither is there ever a certainty that you can't." He explained, and then pointed at a section of the asteroid belt. "Now, if we were feeling frisky we could head out here to one of their outposts on the belt. Outposts are generally located where the RIP is the calmest, therefore the easiest to travel."

He gave Sayeeda a wink, turning off the disk and slipping it back into his pocket. "So, maybe we can check with Lord Cho-Lan to see if we can get a contract to go and see what's happening out there. They're bound to have radio silence. If we can find a way through the RIP, we ship the cargo. If not, we come back here and get paid for reporting in. Sound good to you?" He asked her. To be honest, he'd much rather have gotten laid than all of this nonsense, so he wanted to bleed this planet for all its worth.

"Fine, we'll make contact with this Cho-Lan and see if we can convince of this little scheme of yours" Sayeeda said, giving Neil a light push. Neil grinned. "You can just say you're impressed. I don't bite."

They wired themselves to the public access channels of the Cho-Lan district, and after a lot of hassle with people who wanted to feed Sayeeda and Neil with enough bullshit to try to deter them from speaking to their boss, they were patched through. The man sounded completely tired at the moment, but it only took a few minutes to convince him of their plan to check things out. He offered 2,000 Terran credits, which wasn't too bad, though a little more might have been more apt for someone who was getting a risk free line of sight thanks to them.

"Let's haul this cargo first." Neil said once they made it to the hanger, entering the custom launch codes so they would be given leave to exit the atmosphere. He headed out of the opened cargo door and was just about to begin unloading when he noticed something odd about some of the crates. "Is this Coffee!?"
@Penny

Junebug nodded sagely and cycled the cargo hatch. The smell of coffee was immediate and powerful, nearly a hundred wooden containers were loaded with pallets of freeze dried coffee beans in 5 kilogram industrial packets of a sort that lower tier reasturants might use. It was stacked to the ceiling and lashed down with thick canvas tie downs and cargo tape.

"We can't shift it," Sayeeda said as she picked her way forward towards the cockpit, "not in any sort of time anyway and we have to pay to store it."

"I had planned to take it to Carver's Reach but I guess that is shot all to hell," she grumbled voice straining slightly as she climbed the ladder. It was late in the season to start a voyage to the Reach. Within days the shifting tide of the rip would close the Reach off from easy navigation for well over a year. It would have been the perfect time to sell a luxury like coffee.

"I guess we will get rid of it somewhere, once we can get a fix on RIP conditions. If we can get a fix." She clicked her safety harness into place.

"Well we can always drink it," Neil said clearly straight faced only by a herculean effort of will.

"Ha," Sayeeda said tonelessly, "Ha. Ha." The comm system chirruped as clearance came in from the automated tower control. The panel blinked with a voice alert from tower control. Sayeeda ignored it. Automated clearence was all they needed. She grinned viciously.

"Light her up."

_________________________________________________________________________

X-792b was a nondescript asteroid in Formax's mid system belt. It was a two by three mile section of compressed iron ferrite with an irregular elliptical spin. Junebug imagined it would have some gravity. X-792b had been mined at some point in the mythic past, but the current regime, or their ancestors, had built a communications station into the ancient tunnels. The only problem was that it wasn't currently communicating. Part of Sayeeda had hoped they could pirate the current RIP data and jump for it but the transmitters were offline. Not just standby or maintenance but physically disconnected. That was beyond strange. Even the usual low powered transmitters and unused microwave transmission heads had proved stubbornly silent.

"Well? What do you think?" Sayeeda asked as the third scan came back with no active transmitters. Her palms itched slightly, which was never a good sign in her unfortunately extensive experience.

"Feel like a night position just before it gets hit," she said, unstrapping herself and reaching for armor. Scans didn't register an atmosphere breach, which she supposed was something.

@POOHEAD189

"Only one way to find out, babe." Neil said, realizing the scans could easily be misconstrued based on a variety of gravitational, not to mention darkspace, factors. He unclasped his belt and and hopped up, a fire dancing in his eyes that promised adventure and not a small amount of danger. "Lonney, bring us in and dock us with the station if you please." He said. Just in case Sayeeda would protest, Neil gave her a wink. "Can't be sure unless we look. Speaking of which...we got an extra one of your submachine guns?"

Looking around, they didn't. But Neil did find a small flamegun that he'd take with him. It was a rare weapon used near the turn of the 3rd millennium. Somehow the liquid-concoction would burn you even in the vaccumm of space, though don't ask Neil how that was possible. Well, perhaps it burned even without the napalm-like substance actually being aflame. Putting on his space suit and hooking on his sidearm and flamer, he then set his rebreather on just in case.

The two of them waited within the cargo bay as Lonney slowly lowered them into position. Hailing the people inside that they were landing wasn't an option, as they had received no reply for a variety of possible reasons. Outside the hatch window, the dead of space stared back at them. Hopefully the interior of the base had people Neil and Sayeeda could converse with. It gave Lonney time to find ways to get into a good RIP tide, because so far they'd come up short on that account.

"Roight lads n' lasses, get yer knickers ready and we'll open up." Lonney announced, the greenlight above them indicating the outer door that would lead to the runway could now be opened manually. "Ladies first, I take it?" Neil asked her, gloved hand on his high caliber pistol. Within, they'd find a long hallway that would lead to the innerhatch that would in turn, lead into the station. Beyond that was anyone's guess.
@Penny

The airlock cycled with a metallic chunk and a rush of pressurized air. The Highlander’s atmosphere was denser than the stations, probably due to indifferent maintenance of air reprocessors by the station staff, but it was high enough in oxygen that breathing wouldn’t be a difficulty. X-792b was crewed by convicts, not those guilty of respectable crimes like murder or theft, but the far less forgivable sins of getting caught with the supervisor's daughter, or failing to pay an appropriate bribe. It didn’t encourage a strong work ethic.

The hallway was partially finished with metal and structural plastic and partialy carved into the rock. Large cracks from thousands of docking operations and the thermal flux of opening to the vacum traced a spiderweb through the first few feet. It was unlikely that it leaked enough air to be significant but Junebug felt a slight breeze stir her flightsuit. Illumination was by way of overhead chemical light strips which cast a greenish glow over the whole scene. There was no sign of any crewmen.

“Well, so much for a welcoming committee,” Sayeeda said, “Booster, give me a 25 percent thermal mask and carrot movement.” The quality of her vision changed subtly, rendering everything in cool shades of blue. She lifted her submachine gun to her shoulder and stepped into the station, frost crackling beneath her boots as she stepped into the station.

“Next time we are somewhere civilized, we need to invest in some more hardware.” She didn’t like the flame gun in the tight quarters of the station but you didn’t tell another veteran what tools to use either. Everyone had their own tricks to get the through and she would just have to trust Neil to handle himself.

“Someone ought to have responded, even if just for the oft chance we were pirates,” Sayeeda commented as they mad their way down the rock hall. The ice ended a few feet from the lock and she instinctively shifted to hug the left hand wall, sweeping back and forth with her submachine gun.

The first door at the end of the hallway opened into what must have once been a decontamination area. A large infrared sterilizer stood a few feet in front of the doorway, although judging by the dust and the corrosion on the unit they had given up any notion of sterilization years ago. There were signs of more recent occupancy. Dozens of stim cones, small chemical phials that delivered a variety of narcotic substances via subcutaneous injection, littered the floor around a large desk which Junebug guessed was the duty station. Several video files were running on the bank of security monitors although all of the feeds except one seemed to be pornography, some of it imaginative enough to turn even Sayeeda’s somewhat jaded head. One of the feeds was blank and, after making sure Neil was covering the exits, Junebug lay down her gun and tapped the terminal. The file had also been porn but a private file rather than a system net feed like the others. She hit a couple of keystrokes and bought up a command history.

“File was started about three hours before they got the word planetside,” she said thoughtfully.

“Only fifty minutes of video,” she mused. A few minutes of frustrating work revealed that not only had the security feeds been disconnected, but it hadn’t been connected in months or years. Lack of maintenance and interest had rendered the facility as blind as enemy action could have managed.

Sighing she pushed herself to her feet and grabbed the submachine gun by the hand grip. Whatever was going on, the answers would lie deeper into the facility. The needed to get to the comm center where the navigational and communication equipment was housed.

“They kept an outpost here, however… sloppily, something is up and it looks like it started just before the anomaly was detected.”

@POOHEAD189

Neil's ears uncomfortably popped due to the depressurization, causing him to open his mouth wide and bite as if he was chewing gum like he'd been taught back on his homeworld. Once they made it inside the facility proper, he switched on the lights mounted atop his small head piece. It was a far more civilian and less bulky version of what Sayeeda wore, more of something to keep his rebreather hugging his mouth. But the small flashlight helped, and if he needed he could put on infrared/ultraviolet goggles with a mere switch.

He headed into the ghostly decontamination room, pistol out and ready. The feeds of the monitors buzzed ominously, but other than that and the lack of light, it looked like there'd been quite the party in here. Drugs and packs had been tossed away, a table was overturned as well, but no sign of anyone. No passed out personnel, or even a corpse to set any kind of scene. It was as if they disappeared. "Well, they might have heard about the anomaly and decided to head out before the RIP was impossible to traverse..."

He watched the exits while Sayeeda checked the feeds, and something had his intuition piqued. He didn't exactly know what, but he slowly placed his handgun back in the holster, and deployed his personal flamer weapon, revving it up just in case. Thankfully, nothing had happened so far.

“They kept an outpost here, however… sloppily, something is up and it looks like it started just before the anomaly was detected.” Sayeeda said. Neil raised an eyebrow at that. "Well, I don't think we'll actually find anything here, but...might as well get Cho-Lan's money's worth."

Neil peered through the hatch's window, gazing into the darkness of the hallway that lay before them. It looked like there was nothing amiss, even with his limited field of vision. He checked to see when Sayeeda was ready, and then opened the blastdoor to reveal the hallway fully. His flashlight shining into the deep of the lightless corridor, he squinted. Shaking his head, he could have sworn he saw a face when he shined his light on the right corner, but it was suddenly gone when he looked back.

"Did you just see that?" Neil asked Sayeeda.

"See what?" Sayeeda replied, gun trained on any movement she might find. Neil shook his head. "Probably nothing." The pilot shrugged, and they moved out. Boots padded on the floor as they moved, and the next facility they encountered had various side rooms covered in glassteel, with stretchers and beds set up to house whatever patients happened to be sick from all of the vices they happened to do way out on the fringe of the system. Tools and blood samples were splayed across tables unceremoniously.

"Well this looks deserted too." Neil said, making sure the left of the hall was covered why Sayeeda had the right in her sights. Flamer glowing hot, Neil was about to turn it down when he heard a scream that he'd never imagined would come out of Sayeeda mouth. And a wet thump hit the ground. Neil spun, to see Sayeeda's left shoulder covered in some sort of liquid that clung to her skin. The pilot's light drank up what had hit her what was now on the ground.

It was the face.

A body twisted and corrupted, its back broken by what looked to be savage convulsions, and tear marks were through the man's torso. He wore the tattered remains of a lab coat. His left arm was shattered, and his eyes stared blankly at Neil, just as they had the split second he had seen it not 10 minutes ago. Neil's mind began to work, and he gazed upward to reveal slime dribbling down from the ceiling, mixing with the crimson blood of the broken form that lay on the floor.

"I saw this guy back in the room, in the hall. But...I don't think he was alive then either."
@Penny

The sky screamed as the incoming tore the damp sky into dirty gray contrails. A half dozen computer aimed plasma guns stabbed the air with painfully vivid cyan. The Armored had the best automated air defense money could by and the guns knocked the shells out of the sky with mechanical precision. It wouldn’t be enough, not today. Sayeed crouched in the hastily prepared fox hole, clutching her 20mm plasma gun close as the sub munitions of the carrier shells burst above them. Tank killing rounds plunged out of the stratosphere like demons. Off to her right Captain Martel’s skimmer exploded in a shower of shattered ceramic and titanium fragments.
Someone was screaming, maybe a great many people but the constant earthshaking detonation of kilotons of cordite rendered the effort almost comical. Junebug closed her eyes, knowing that in a few moments one of the tank killing shells would smash one of the national army panzers to flaming ruin. The gouting ruin of its fuel tank would spray across her back and left arm. It would be hours before the shelling of Hill 22 slackened enough for the medics to reach her, long after her limited supply of analgesics had run out.

Junebug snapped back to the present as she realized that Neil hadn’t just sprayed her with the flame gun. The filter on her helmet rendered the muck in vivid red, hotter even than human body temperature. Her helmet wasn’t signaling anything dangerous biologically but it was a big universe.

“Booster cut the visual enhancement,” she snapped and the blood red ambiance fell away abruptly.

“Well alive or dead, something did that to him,” she gestured to the claw marks into the limp distended skin that had been a man before drawing a can gray spray sealant from her webbing harness and pulled the tab on the base of the can. Sealant hissed out coating her armor and skin. The hydrophilic sealant drew the moisture into it and hardened into a latex like rubber. It wasn’t a foolproof response to a biological threat but it was the best she could do without a hazmat unit. She tossed the sheet of rubber away with revulsion.

“Look, whatever is going on here is beyond our pay grade, we are omega,” she told Neil and turned to look back down the hallway. Something stirred in the corridor which lead back towards the ship. Junebug pulled her sub machine gun tight to her shoulder and fired a short burst down the hallway. The muzzle flash illuminated a confused mass of pallid faces and twisted bodies, washing down the hallway in a nightmarish wave. The burst shattered several of the creatures into bloody rags that splashed the walls with blackened fluid.

“Scorch it!” Junebug yelled but Neil was already stepping forward raising the flame gun. A shiver of remembered pain ran through her, but you didn’t survive by being squeamish. The accelerant roared into the hallway in a reeking firestorm. The things came on in eerie silence even as flesh burned and bones crackled. Out of the corner of her eye she noticed a green telltale blink red.

“Cease…” but it wasn't going to be fast enough, she grabbed Neil and twisted the flame gun sideways spraying flame onto the wall. A second later carbon dioxide jetted into the hallway and the automatic doors slammed shut. If Neil had held the burst on target, the back blast would have coated them both. Several slams sounded against the closed blast doors, there was even a faint scratching as the things tried to pull themselves through the guttering flame.

“Well, not that way. Shit. Booster find us a route from the command center to the hangar that doesn't require the A level corridors.” Map Info not available, flashed twice on her visor and then went dark.

“Damn, we need to find another way back.”

@POOHEAD189

Neil had a grim, nearly insane amount of satisfaction cremating the spilling corpses. The fire lit up his face to reveal a grin, and perhaps Sayeeda would understand why they'd given him the 'Firestorm' codename back on his homeworld. He sprayed his weapon just long enough for the flames to reach chest height, licking the walls with its pseudo-napalm chemicals. Neil never did find the science behind this type of flamer. It was a step above the normal terrestrial-make.

He was glad Sayeeda had yanked the flamer away when she had. He had gotten carried away and nearly killed them, but then again that's why she was here he guessed. "My bad." He said, his eyes still glowing with a crazed glint, though it was slowly fading. The slams knocked him out of his reverie, and the scraping noises even through the half meter thick blast doors told him enough about whatever the hell was on the other side of the doors.

"I think we're dealing with someone you don't deal with everyday..." he deadpanned, though his face showed for once that he felt the gravity of what they were dealing with. He'd never heard of an alien who rends corpses and puts them in shallow cocoons on high places. He'd never have even imagined it. Some of the bodies had looked drained of all meat and fluids as well, just before he had scorched them. It was only now his mind had caught up with what he had seen.

Neil backed up then, reloading his ammunition and mentally telling himself to conserve it now. "Ok...watch the vents. We don't know how little these things can get. Or how big the vents get." He reminded her, turning around. Both of them needed to head further into the facility to find another corridor that led back to the A level. Opening the back hatch, they hesitated and waited, only proceeding when the coast was certain to be clear.

The hall was covered with blood, streaks of it across the floors, walls, and ceiling. It reminded him of the disappearing face back in the decontamination part of the facility. Something had yanked it away to feed on it further. "Let's stay close." He told Sayeeda, walking over the slick floor. As they walked, doors to personal rooms had been torn to pieces or shattered. The third door they passed, a severed head watched them with an impassive gaze, a parody of the life it conveyed from its mouth still opened for a wordless scream.

Behind them, they heard a dry clicking noise, and a shuffle in one of the smaller rooms they had passed. They froze, and soon a wet thump hit sounded from within. It sounded like another corpse dropping. Neil gave Sayeeda a hand signal. He hadn't used any in years, but he indicated to her to shine a light and flush whatever it was out, so he could get a clear shot.
@Penny

Junebug wasn't familiar with the hand signal Neil used, but the 'you go first' meaning was clear from context. Nodding her head she slid the muzzle of her submachine gun between the door and the jam and thrust it open, toggling her tactical flashlight as she did so. The stink of blood and vicera was immediate and the stabbing beam of light played across a rib cage open from one end of the sternum to the other. Coils of smashed intestines lay where they had slithered, filling the room with the smell of human waste. The beam swept across the room and across what first looked like a mass of smashed piping. It was a creature. The alien was the size of a large dog but built much heavier. To Sayeeda's eye it looked like a cross between a lobster and some sort of giant spider. Long Chitinous legs scuttled with a disturbing grace and mandibles clacked.

When the door opened the thing had been scuttling towards one of the large air vents built into the side wall of what must once of been a maintenance room. As soon as the light touched it it leaped at her. The motion was confusing as the thing didn't pause, or turn itself to face her, merely leaped sideways with the force of a detonating mine. Sayeeda had the squeeze feeling as the thing sailed towards her, legs extended wide like a carnival toy grabber, that the thing wasn't systematical, it seemed misshapen and uneven in a way that made her stomach churn in a way that the familiar reek of spattered entrails did not. She took up the fraction of a pound of trigger pressure and her sub machinegunn stuttered twice. There was a sound like cracking ceramics but the thing didn't pause, silent testament to the force of the leap. The thing hit her in the chest with the force of a medicine ball being dropped from a two story window. The blow hurled Sayeeda from her feet and into the wall with a crunch, a few rounds ricocheted crazily around the room as her submachine gun stuttered off a few addtional rounds before falling silent.

The creature stank like spoiled orange juice and gasoline it it scrabbled at Junebug, claws raking at her exposed arms. Something clanged off her ceramic armor like a hammer blow and to her horror, Sayeeda saw that the thing had extend a two foot long oviopositor which it was trying unsuccessfully to ram through the ceramite plates of her armored vest.

"Goddess cures you!" she spat and tried to hurl the thing off her with all her might. The alien managed not only to hang on but to sink the tips of two of its chitinous appendages into the rock and yank Sayeeda towards the ventilation vent. They both crashed through the protective screen and the sickening drop of her stomach informed Sayeeda that she was falling. They plumeted into the darkness together, a second blow striking her breastplate as it tried again to impale her. With shocking suddenness Junebug jerked to a stop, the jolt tearing the chittering creature from her at last and nearly breaking ribs. The armor was designed to spread out blunt force trauma but a however many story fall was clearly at the edge of its tolerances. She dangled for a moment, gasping for breath before she realized that her webbing had caught on some pluming fixtures on the side of the shaft. There was a slow wist as she hung, her armor digging painfully into the bottom of her armpits.

The submachinegun was gone, probably in the room they had found the thing, but she manage to get a handlight from her belt and illuminate the shaft below. Her heart lurched she saw the thing scuttling vertically up the wall towards her, ovipositor extneded, long chitonous legs driving into the rock of the shaft.

"You have got to be fucking kidding me," she screamed and snatched her cutting bar from her belt. The weapon humed to life and with a single swipe she cut the dangling harness and showered herself with sparks as the whiring cutting blades glanced of the piping. The webbing parted and she plummeted towards the thing like a 70 kilo cannon ball. Junebug braced her feet together like a grav trooper and locked her body rigid, turning her falling body into a spear. Booth boots hit the thing square in what would have been a face in a creature not conjured out of nightmare. It might have been inhumanly strong, and inhumanely fast, but as her old academy instructors had been at pains to point out: Physics could be a real bitch.

Sayeeda's impact shattered the legs the thing had in the walls and her boots crushed the ovipositor to splintered chitin, knocking it from its precarious assent like rain dislodging the proverbial incy wincy spider. Mercenary and monster plummeted another two stories into the blackness before they hit bottom. It grew confused for an indeterminate time which might have ranged from moments to minutes. When she could focus again she was laying at the bottom of a ventilation shaft, with access passages leading off into the darkness. Her armor was intact but her equipment and webbing were scattered everywhere. The whole sceen was illuminated by pale green standby lights. It was painful to breath but by reflex she forced herself to sit up. The creature too was moving, feebly, trying to rise up in its remaining limbs. A jagged crack ran through its carapace and ichor, greenish gold in the tunnels light, gleamed in great goblets. Despite the damage, it looked like it was planning on moving again. Junebug tried to rise, intending to use the cutting bar to finish the job but a wave of nausea nearly made her black out again. Instead she pulled open her shoulder holster, miraculously undamaged, produced her side arm and emptied the entire magazine into the horrid creature. Not in the rapid jitter of panic fire, but in the unhurried tattoo of a professional working over an enemy installation. The barrel of the pistol glowed white from the heat of discharge when she dropped it to the ground, the creature little more than a smear on the far side of the shaft.

"Neil," she gasped, opening the com link to the pilot, "Make a note, we are officially putting in for hazard pay."

@POOHEAD189

"Fuck," he cursed, unable to shoot his flamer at the eldritch abomination that had tackled Sayeeda. He didn't even trust himself with his sidearm in the dark. He hesitated on what to do, then looked at how hefty his weapon was and the light-bulb popped into his head. Unfortunately he didn't make it there in time to bludgeon the Xenos. Neil felt a cold chill run down his spine, and a tightness in his throat when he saw Sayeeda being yanked into the ventilation shaft.

"Captain!" He cried, skidding across the smooth surface of the floor and poking his head into the shaft. His voice would echo down the ventilation system. "Sayeeda! Babe!"

He couldn't exactly comprehend the struggle that ensued, and the gunshots he heard brought a surprised look to his face. It was her voice on the comm that showed he wouldn't need to promote himself to Highlander's Captain.

"Neil," she gasped, opening the com link to the pilot, "Make a note, we are officially putting in for hazard pay."

Neil gave a disbelieving laugh, and nodded. "Oh, we'll squeeze him for all he's worth, girly." He replied, turning around and keeping his light on the dark hallway he now stood within alone. It seemed so much bigger now that he'd have to walk through this by himself. But then again, he liked challenges. Granted he had to tell himself that, but still. He decided to keep away from the ventilation, and back up into the hallway, his flamer set on ready, bringing a soft glow of fire at the muzzle of its barrel.

He didn't know if she would admit she would need help, but by her voice she didn't sound too hurt so... there was that. He turned the comm on again, a faint static registered as he did so. "Let's rendezvous on C level." He said to her, not knowing how far she'd gone down and trying to find a middle ground for them to meet. "With any luck, we can find some stairs that reach all levels, find an empty hall and climb up to A's fore. Copy?"

Her reply was filled with static, and he couldn't exactly decipher it himself. He let out a sigh, more annoyed than afraid at this point. "Fucking figures." He said. His comm's static grew louder, and he had to shut it off lest it reveal his position.

Shoving the comm away, he reached into his pocket and produced a toothpick, slipping it into his mouth. It helped his mind on the task at hand, playing with it with his tongue every so often to keep the fidgeting part of his head preoccupied.

Unfortunately, that didn't solve the problem of being alone in this hallway. The slow crawl to the end of A level was as ominous as before Sayeeda had been taken. Blood smeared across the walls and floor, caking the once white surface of the facility into a hellish painting out of nightmares. Dismembered limbs and half devoured corpses were strewn, intermingling with the overturned tables and chairs. Doorways lay unopened, broken, or hastily half opened. He checked everyone, his finger on the trigger and his reaction at a razor's edge.

The second to last door at the end of the hall, he found his first dead Xenos. He almost couldn't believe it was a corpse at first, but there it was. Its mass of spider-like limbs shrunken and now drooping as if it was an un-watered plant. Next to it was a man's corpse, covered in slime, having been impaled by...something. The chitinous carapace of the alien was scarred and ripped from what Neil could only guess was gunfire, and it was confirmed when he saw the gun in the rigid grip of the man. He didn't know if he should feel better these things didn't kill anyone without casualties of their own, or if forty dead equaling out to one kill was a very bad sign. Its clawed arms looked sharp enough to split limbs, which made sense from the gruesome scene behind him.

Neil stepped into the room, the furniture and chairs, and the coffee maker, made him realize this was a lounge of some sort. Various bodies lay limp, but the one next to the Xenos looked to be one of the security officers based on his uniform and gun. The pilot was wondering if he should take the firearm. This guy wouldn't be needing it anymore.

When the man's corpse coughed, Neil leaped back and instinctively revved the flamer. He thanked whatever higher power that was out there he didn't immediately engulf the man in flames. Neil shut it down and headed over to him, kneeling down before the guy as he coughed more. "Hey...hey buddy." Neil said, shaking him to rouse his attention. The man coughed again... and then again. It was the final cough that produced a fountain of blood shooting out of his lips, and Neil yelped at the sight, some of the crimson liquid coating his cheek.

He watched in horror as the man's body contorted and swayed, and then jerked twice. "Well that's..." Neil whispered as claws and segmented legs began to rip through the man's upper chest. "-something you don't see everyday." There was a terrible cracking, and a sucking noise as the newly born Xenos lifted itself out of the man's corpse. Neil suddenly remembered the swiftness of when the alien hit Sayeeda, so he wasted no time in turning his flamer on.

"Shit," he spat, seeing it just about to leap before the woosh of the fire engulfed it. To his surprise, he was still nearly killed. The fire consumed it, but its flaming body flailed from the sudden coiled spring of its legs, having lots its leaping accuracy due to being killed mid spring. Neil ducked under the flying alien, the Xenos hitting the wall with a thud and sliding down, dead. Neil spit on it, before realizing he'd been preoccupied far too long. The young pilot turned around to make sure nothing else had snuck up on him in the dark. His light illuminated the doorway to reveal-

Nothing. He squinted, deciding it was best to make it to the stairway he had seen at the edge of the corridor. With practiced, light steps from his days of thieving, he made it to the door without making another noise.

It seemed the caution paid off, for there was the lightest clicking from back whence he came, and another clicking that followed as if in reply. He tongued his toothpick, and mouthed 'not today.'

Firestorm didn't even step into the hallway fully before he lit up the corridor with flame, spraying a short amount but making sure to engulf every corner he could reach. There was a terrible shriek, a shrill, utterly alien cry that threatened to dig into his mind and unhinge it, and the flinging, popping alien corpses of three Xenos looked like hellish dancers in the firelight. Suddenly, he doubted he's get as turned on by dancers now as opposed to his tastes when he first made it to Fornax.

The last thing he saw before entertain the Stairway and jamming the door was sixteen eyes staring at him from across the lack of liquid fire he had created.
@Penny

"Crrrrch... Rendev.... C Le..." The radio wave popped and hissed in Junebug's ear as she forced herself to her feet. Toggling a switch on her helmet bought up a diagnostic display, radio carrier wave strength pulsed red. The high ambient iron in the rock must be shielding the signal at least it wasn't damage to the equipment itself. Still she had enough of the message to understand that he wasn't going to try to climb down. That was smart because they didn't have any rope to repel and she was in no condition to climb back up. Unfortunately her submachine gun was still up there and even if Neil realized that the weapon wouldn't survive a seven story fall.

Woozily, she forced herself to her hands and knees and retrived her pistol. The sour orange stench was nearly overpowering from the corpse of the thing she had killed. It still shivered and twitched occasionaly but the damage had been too extensive for any hope of regeneration. Her pistol still radiated heat as she picked it up, ejected the empty magazine and clicked a fresh tube into place. She cocked the weapon, removed the magazine and replaced the missing round before reloading. Putting one up the spout gave you an extra round, it wasn't much but no one ever complained about having too many rounds.

Her whole body ached as she made her way down the ventilation access tunnel. No doubt she had traded a falls worth of broken bones for an equivalent number of brusises and contusions and from the pain in her lower back she would probably piss blood for a week. That was cheap a the price but she none the less pulled one of the analgesic tabs on the side of her armor and flooded her system with short term pain killers and stimulants. That too would cost later, which was fine with Junebug providing she got a later in which to suffer the inevitable crash.

The ventilation system wove its way through the rock like the twisting intestines of the station. Periodically she had to stop to deactivate large fans to step through them. She made certain to reactivate them once she was passed. No so much because she was worried about not being able to get air to the stations decimated population but because they would rather effectively chop to pieces anything that followed her.

After about ten minutes she began to see traces of alien activity, scrape marks in the dust leading down from more vaulted overhead shafts. This had to be the base line chamber on D level which meant she had to get up a level to meet up with Neil.

"Neil, come in," she said, trying the radio futilely. Reluctantly and with gun raised she followed the vent and the strange tracks deeper into the bowels of the asteroid. The rotting orange scent grew denser as she moved and she noticed that the tunnels here seemed newer, or at least better maintained and she started moving more stealthily, by now the drugs had well and truely kicked and and while she was aware of the pain, it was distanced by the pharmaceuticals flowing through her system, the cocktail contained a mild anti inflammatory too which was a good thing or she would be crashing out by now.

Rounding a corner she finally found what she was looking for, a large red access door that lead to a vertical stairway. Beyond the door however was a stranger sight. A dozen of the creatures, perhaps a little smaller than the one she had killed were gathered around a glass box the size of a shipping container. Beyond them was a glass wall which sectioned of an area of cave. Two men, looking quite unphased by the aliens, were behind the glass watching proccedings. The smaller creatures were tearing at that box, which must have been made of transparent aluminum now that she had a chance to take it in. They struck repeatedly at it with their talons doing little more than marring the surface. Inside the box was a much larger version of the aliens she had seen. The thing was the size of a large horse and had long serrated legs like a preying mantis. Its shell was a glistening black but it appeared that holes had been drilled into the thing at intervals and tubes and wires were fed directly into its carapace.

"What the actual fuck..." Sayeeda breathed as she ducked back around the corner.

"Booster play back the last 10 seconds of footage at a 50 percent mask. Pause footage." Inside the secured partition the men had video feeds to other locations in the facility. It was hard to tell from the grainy enhanced images but from the number of screens it was clear they weren't ignorant of what was going on. Lab equipment was tucked away in one corner, including the dissected corpse of one of the juvenile creatures. Sayeeda pressed her back against the wall for a moment and tried to parse the disperate information she had gathered. The picture it began to form in her mind was not pretty. Reaching down to her belt she drew a red banded grenade from the ruins of her webbing and rolled the dial to 20 seconds, the longest setting the weapon had. Then she took a deep breath primed the grenade, rolled the bomb across the floor at the creatures and darted up the stairs.

____________________________________________________________________

Dr Erwin Chang looked up from his view of the xenomorphs in surprise as a metal cylinder rolled across the stone floor before claning to a stop against the containment cell. At first he thought this was some novel strategy by the larvae to free the captured adult but then his mind caught up with his eyes and he realised it was human tech. He looked to the fire door that was already swinging shut in supply and reached for the security vid controls to wind back a few seconds. Before he could touch them the strange cylinder shattered in a puff and a finely distributed haze seemed to fill the air. Some sort of petrolium or oil product. There was a flash of light and a sudden searing so intense that Chang's eyes were destroyed even before the overpressure of the blast shattered his aluminium shield and cut the remainder of his pulped body to bloody rags.

___________________________________________________________________
Junebug had covered nearly a hundred meters before the blast went off. The ignighter charge setting of teh bunker busting fuel air explosive with force that was incredible no matter how many times you saw it. The blast was attenuated by the stone stairway but the hallways served as natural channels. It knocked her off her feet and electric lights flickered and died behind her. Dust fell in a cloud as the reverberations of the blast rocked through the station. She needed to find Neil. She tried to push herself to her feet but her battered body refused to respond for a moment. Fine, rest here for a minute and then find Neil.

@POOHEAD189