[color=8dc73f][i]"You have the living tank. We do not. This makes you the perfect battering ram." [/i][/color]

From beneath piles of rubble and blast-scourged earth, movement broke the sterility of the ruined battlefield. The area where one of Echo's drones had traced the targeting laser to came alive; light-refracting camo netting was tossed aside and moss-shrouded barrels revealed themselves, wielded by bipedal figures in fluctuating fatigues. Their very criss-crossing colour patterns shimmered from the appearance of mottled dirt and rubbled they were previously laying to into a mixture of murky smoke-grey and black-brown-grown mimicking the surrounding treelines and its many gaps. 

There were at least 12 of them, rising to hunched posture. From beneath the shimmering camo-cloaks, a fabric-like armor almost like kevlar stretched against their torsos laced with dulled semi-metallic carapace plating. Above which six-spot eyed HUD-visors swept over the ruined area with a far, far wider field of view than a conventional human's sight.

There was no doubt about it that Intransigence funding and support was far more extensive in the region than even UCL news reports were aware of.

[color=8dc73f][i]"CivSec defences grow heavier from this point onwards. We were under orders to guard the area, but this is too vital an opportunity to pass up on, now that we have proper firepower."[/i][/color]

There were more however, hidden in the treeline; not rifles in their hands but miniaturized rail-cannons, slender and sleek but shoulder mounted. The shaped and edgeless metal of their bodies was contrasted by symbols of eel-like, serpentine creatures marked and imprinted across the length of these deadly weapons, wielded by armored fingers of long digitigrade legs cocked like predators ready to pounce. The slightly elongated  heads covered in masks of shaped, cranially fitting composite metals, sleek and lined with one-sided transparent-alloy slits seemed to gaze at all yet also sharply in front of them. Each held their shoulder mounted-cannons with one long, multi-joined arm with six long, armored fingers, their free arms motioning to the notably shorter humanoid and tarrhaidim troopers to begin advancing.

[color=8dc73f][i]"It had a heftier weapon we did. We arrived just in time to find nothing remained. We set-up a kill-zone with bio-sensors in the corpses, but it seems it's not returning. What this squad was doing, we know not. Autocannon-rounds. Maybe another vrexul squad. Maybe a walker. Gunship, even. With your unztadtlige ally however, its fangs will be blunted."[/i][/color]

No doubt those four were the squad leaders and given how substantially more heavily armed and armored they were, this still known threat was a major priority.

[color=8dc73f][i]"We will be concealed in the foliage; a direct confrontation is not our specialty. Once you punch into their lines and confusion is sown, our wrath will be known."[/i][/color]

A sound like a muffled saw aggressively ripping up soggy meat emanated over the coms as the heavily armored aliens raised their arms and swung down, half crouching as they stomped in a circular formation; some tribal war-dance punctuated by the sound of predatory teeth clattering and muffled, chanted words spoken. 

Its energy bled through the coms, any semblance of their rigid militancy vanishing yet reappearing as quickly as it had been discarded. Like fish who had felt the water's surface disrupted, they shot off soon into the surrounding trees, silhouettes stalking along the treeline as they advanced towards the artillery platform.


[Center]==========[/Center]


The path had grown steeper but the presence of the artillery platform was ever-threatening. The trees had shuddered once, the ground quivering and buildings trembling. Now the foliage around them shook and thrashed as if by a sudden gust of gale force winds, the crumbling ground rocking itself, stone and loose debris tumbling about, and a wave of skin-tingling, uneasy power washed over them with every no longer distant report of its mighty blasts that nearly muffled anything they attempted to say to one another.

Much of the path the Envenomed squad had traveled on had vanished into the jungle again but that wasn't necessary. HUD systems, bioethereal sensory apparatuses, in-built scanners, even their own supernaturally attuned sensory capabilities - everyone knew it was close. Each time the weapons report made the world tremble, the plume of energy-discharge that burst above the treeline flashed warningly but with enough clarity now they were this much closer, there was no more room to really hide.

They were in deep jungle now yet it was hard not to feel exposed, not just from the bright glare of the energy-cannon's blasts but how busy the air itself felt. Voices could be heard, shouting commands indistinctly as a hum of pulsing, intonating density distorted and obfuscated anything discernible. 

If they could hear that through the thunderous wrath of the artillery platform, it meant that they were close to both the target and its crew.

Another sound soon could be discerned. Gears whirring, uniform stomps, and the sound of dirt and rubble - it seemed perhaps there was a pathway again or some sort of road up ahead. Through the gaps in the foliage roughly 150 or so feet ahead, armored figures could be seen hurriedly moving through an area of cleared foliage. Some of them were definitely automata; rigid and tall, standing like statuesque products on display at some arms dealer expo before snapping their heads to wherever the hand of a blue-visored, heavily armored trooper pointed.

The former were familiar; they had seen a few of them back in the abandoned settlement, having run down from the hillside to assist but having been deactivated before they could have amounted to much. [b][url=https://i.ibb.co/Xkw6hCN/Combat-robot-holding-a-belt-fed-machine-gun-tumblr-msj1975-F6-P1qdkeiao1-1280.jpg]Yet this time, there were far more of them, at least six in total.[/url][/b] The same LMG in their hands but this time it was yet unknown if they were controlled by a particular user or if they had some sort of autonomous capability. 

They were dwarfed a few inches by a power-armored soldier.

[hider=Power Amored Infantry]
[img]https://i.ibb.co/wyDLZwh/Two-soldiers-in-heavy-power-armor-Dude-by-Agus-SW.jpg[/img]
[/hider]

No doubt about it, that was not the sort of armor a lesser post-Reckoning power would have access to. Too domineering in size, the brand new servos on its limbs almost profanely out of place in the jungle, and the modularity of its plating far too current generation compared to the heavily retrofitted armor of the CivSec infantry they had gunned down earlier. Its carbine looked almost too small in its arms but as a few of those very humans walked by, gesturing and pointing off down the clearing they stood in, it was clear just what they were up against.

The standard CivSec troopers were a general height of maybe 5''9 to 6''2 but this figure was at least 7''2, their armor a mottled darkened blue, splotced with green camo-patterns. Their carbine dwarfed their rifles, large and thick enough it looked as if hollowed out their rifles could be fitted inside of it diagonally. To say nothing of the barrel-drummed weapon magnetically locked to his back, even longer and larger if difficult to get a read on. The robots themselves were between the CivSec and likely League trooper in size, bringing the group to around 10.

There was a truck most of them were gathered around but past it they could see tripods with what looked almost like triangular communication-dishes made of diagonally pointed parallel rods, camo-meshed tents, and what looked almost like somewhat shrunken down but still enormous shipping crates covered in foliage and bramble. 

The Envenomed team had not been spotted but it was outnumbered. While their previous foes had been trained by the League, the likely heavily augmented human while but a single soldier was nothing to be taken lightly. There was a reason they were a superpower; in terms of raw power and durability, augmented League troopers were said to be the most powerful of all the four hegemons.

Based on their body language, this one was not slacking and its high alert state was replicated increasingly in those under its command. They were expecting something and were getting prepared for a potential fight.