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


Flashes of light and concussion followed one another in quick order, so much so that Ilshar had to retract some of his sensory nodules to avoid getting distracted from his frontal view by the overload. He stepped wider to keep his footing through the shock of the gunship’s fall - [i]they really should’ve used the egg-peg, this is how it ends with low-precision missiles[/i] - and leaned aside as a piece of Echo came barreling through where he had been standing not long ago. He had trouble not thinking of it as a drone detached from the behemoth’s real body, but then this was not the time for that sort of reflection either. The grazing heat from some stray energy fire punctuated that. Thank the Nexus they didn’t have time to aim.

The comm traffic flared up in frantic bursts. Of course a crash like that was going to make trouble. Ilshar was idly surprised it had taken until now for that reckless human to go down for the count for the time being.

[i][b]“Acknowledged,”[/b][/i] Rasch’s remark made him glance in the direction the rebel fighter’s victorious cry had come from, [i][b]“Better hope they didn’t hear that last part.”[/b][/i]

Near him, Echo’s now scarred huge main body was falling back, but what it called its Endoform still looked sturdier than the whole armour on his back. The best course to press their advance was clear enough in his mind.

[b]“Echo, take point,”[/b] he shifted to place himself behind the metallic humanoid and held his hands in a broken circle before his chest, [b]“You keep them looking away from our wounded, I’ll help up save bullets going ahead.”[/b]

There was an unpleasant sensation of unravelling in his diminished arm as he called on the Chasm which he pushed down. Body strength was renewable, given a few moments out of harm’s way. Pale-blue fumes of processed qillatu seeped out from his wounds as if to contradict him, and his teeth scraped with strain as fog gathered between his fingers and three undulant shapes breached out from it like from a vertical surface of water. The semi-translucent bodies of the lamprey-mouthed ether worms coiled and scattered around the Endoform before loosely reconverging through the air towards the trench the last CivSec troops had taken refuge in, guided by the impulse of bloodlust the tarrhaidim had impressed on their simple sentience.