[center][h2][b]Ilshar Ard’sabekh[/b][/h2][/center]

There was something wrong about this place, that much Ilshar agreed with as he dropped off the unztadlige's back onto the clearing's blasted ground. The increasing distance they had gained from the sounds of battle below had not been unwelcome, but there was always such a thing as too quiet a moment, especially this close to an enemy's positions. He found himself doubting whether the steadily creeping fog that had welcomed them among the trees was itself some trick of the cannon's defenders, an artificial vapour released to obfuscate the approach to the mountaintop. Excessive as that might have seemed in a heavily wooded area like this, it might not have been without its advantages. Right now, much to his irritation, it was interfering with his own detection attempts. The organs of taste and smell opening and breathing about his skin were quickly flooded with its bland humidity, leaving these senses useless. All he was going to perceive without seeing it were qillatu discharges through his more exotic implanted receptors, and even than might have been too little, too late.

And then there were those bodies.

Ilshar trudged up to the grotesque heap of mangled carcasses and crouched beside them. He had seen similar-looking things before. Not quite identical, but then they tended to be as augmented as any military type in the Expanse, if not more. The memories he had of them were not good.

[b]"Hope these aren't what I think,"[/b] he grunted aloud as he dug about the mass of splintered carapace and insectile viscera, now and then extruding a long, wormlike tongue to try a piece to the taste. If the League had brought vrexul, they valued this planet much more than anyone had imagined, and his squad's job had gotten that much harder and more dangerous. But even if these were vrexul - he was still not fully sure - had they actually been with the League? If their shells had borne any signs of their allegiance, most of it was now too battered to tell. As he rolled over a dismembered body with no small effort in search of identifying marks, Ilshar spotted an intact smaller plate on its underside. The material looked solid. Too heavy for a whole suit, certainly, but this much was just about the right amount to patch up a vital spot on his own piecemeal armour.

He had just finished painstakingly tearing the segment of slick bio-metal from its host when he heard Rasch's warning. [i]Rotting Abyss, let it not be vrexul.[/i] He hunkered as best he could behind the heaped bodies, reaching for his gun and casting out his ethereal senses. If the Nexus was propitious, this cover, however improvised, would be enough.