There was nothing for an awkward few moments but the sound of grinding gears and ripping dirt. The enormous walker had taken a comically large stumble down the slopes after having had multiple weapon and movement options crippled. None of the damage was inflicted was to core systems and as much as it had smashed and rolled its way down the hill, but it had probably done far more damage to the stones and the trees that had dotted the ascent. They would have heard bark and stone shattering alike between the groaning and screeching of tormented metal and they did, breaking the silence of the whirring rumble of a distant battle falling away into the distance.

The Envenomed heard all of the carnage layered beneath a sound that filtered into the air like the creeping ring of tinnitus. No sooner than Salvator had made his call had it began to appear, easily mistakable for residual electronics interference or the return of clear communications. At first it was only from their coms, near smothered by the sounds of the horrible machine they had felled no doubt rising to its chunky legs, stripped of wheels and pilot no doubt pride, but it grew too loud and insistent to be incidental. Where there was once just silence from command soon there was its pulsing hum, soothing the pastiche of shattered bodies and scenery they awaited.

Light fluctuated, blinked, not with the passage of absent clouds upon a clear sky but curving trails of yellow beams bent into shapes expected of glass sculptures that might filter them. Beams that once would peak through the foliage landed a few feet off and visually trailing them upward saw them curve and splinter around and against unseen turns and forks. There was a shape implied, one that covered much of the area of operation they had previously battled in even if it cast no shadow amongst the wreckage of being and machine. It was an aberration and it neared, the tops of trees and their leaves leaning away from it as if pushed by unseen barriers, scans of which soon were revealed to be sustained antigravitational force.

Closer now; shape manifested to augmented sight whether by HUD's, specialized biology, or internal computer systems if not combinations of such. A vessel of sort clad in the appearance of reality itself; see-through, invisible, the world as it appeared stretched over it like a stolen skin for a shape censored for the sensibilities of the squeamish. It was a long vessel not long as a typical jet or plane like aerial transport would be like, its body was enormous in its dimensions turning the space above them into a realm of distorted texture and bending sky. Segments lined its body, a long and predatory shape, large enough to fit at least a handful of tanks. Heat-like distortion near its end suggested the shape of tails and where realspace bent around sufficiently revealed the implied presence of a cockpit head - the entire thing was akin to some enormous predator lurking beneath the mundaneness of the sky, now hovering above them. 

The visual consistency of distorted vision was broken when black lines manifested across the false sky in their sight. Where was once the calm blue above split open and the body of the beast was revealed; a rectangular entrance blacker than the afternoon of the day that stared back at them with the intensity of its murk. Shapes were visible within; long appendages of irregular jagged joints that twisted themselves into strained patterns, all receding as the doors spread, retreating from what light was outside. The faint red of visored, goggle-like eyes - infantry, Intransigent, species unknown and specific loadouts difficult to perceive. A growing purplish glow emerged from the ceiling as dirt, rock, rubble, and leaves began to float and bump amongst themselves in a wide radius beneath - wide enough they could have taken likely two warforms in there. 

[color=f26522]"Low-gravitational well established. Board then depart."[/color]

The voice spoke as easily as one completing a purchase for an order, unfazed by the shapes moving through the foliage in the distance. Shapes bearing the same red eyes as the ones in the vessel, hidden behind cloaks over armored bodies - Intransigent forces, some enormous arthropod-like things of claw-hand appendages thicker than human bodies and torsos like inverted triangles broken off into almsot disjointed, incongruent segments some holding weapons that were autocannons rather than rifles in spite of their fitting size. Others were clad in armour seemingly made from night itself, not flat colours of endless dark but [url=https://i.ibb.co/sCMhQ2W/abram-hadnot-warfighters-61.jpg]criss-crossing complexities of hard padding, magazines, and reinforced collar protection[/url]. Weapons ponly spoken of in the tall tales of veteran insurgents and security forces, those who had survived strange incursions they were told never happened, aimed towards the slope where the enormous walker no doubt had returned to its feet.

[color=f26522]"Do not remain nor interfere with the rest. This is where your mission ends."[/color]

Vrexul, definitely vrexul, each of them a foot taller at least than the endoform band bearing weapons grotesque in their combination of innumerable, independently moving parts and savage in how it had been molded into jagged, pointed forms took up a perimeter position. It was deliberate that they moved past the Envnomed, not so much as even turning one of their living symbiote-limbs to peer or point at them. The entire group of reinforcements did not appear to even notice or acknowledge them, only the slow and rhythmic thud of the slowly approaching armored thread.

As the Envenomed ascended the gravitational column, flashes of light and missile trails streaked underneath. Projectiles that would have struck the ship detonated harmlessly beneath, vanishing their allies beneath the angry glare of explosions. A sound like a hammer, pounding in the depths of a mythical place of post-mortem soul punishment, responded in turn to the roar of mecha weaponry. It dimmed and dimmed as the vessel's body closed and Zanovia became another memory in a legacy of quiet shame and unspoken deeds.


[center][hider=Mission One Outro: Megadeth - Take No Prisoners][youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcySh35ahsY[/youtube][/hider][/center]


[hr]

Time had turned into a standstill on the biomechanical vessel. The carnage that once surrounded them and which was visible just a turn of the head past a cliffside was gone and in its place the dull drone and meditative pulsing of the living cybernetics of the strange vessel they found themselves on. The lights were low but their eyes adjusted to it, the faint purple-white of ambient dome-like growths along the ceiling and walls draping their surroundings in the nocturnal glow of an imagined evening. The metal of the floors clanked yet shifted beneath their weight just so slightly, as if generously accomodating them, and in little slits and crevices in the shell-like material of the walls, shapes skittered faster than shape could be determined beyond carapaced and multi-sectioned.

Whatever sounds of battle they might have wondered about were absent. At most there was the slight rumble of the vessel as it presumably left the atmosphere... but then there was nothing but the alien mundanenity of it; long corridors that widened until rooms of hardened biofilm windows, behind which figures human and inhuman paid little attention.

It was tempting to think some of them were elite commando forces but they were not like the reinforcements from earlier. Mismatches of weaponry from across the hegemon across armore painted colours fitting for the Intransigence yet not concealing of the smoother shapes of League issue hardware, the mismatched jaggedness of the Black City's rank and file, the ballistic living padding of fungal-kevlar worn by many Yrrkradians... it was familiar in an odd sense. It was not often one might see scielto not draped in the heavenly splendor of their ethereal nobility but clad in the same bandoliers and infantry-issue shield generators as the celaderaka next to them, clutching at where once was a quarter of their skull, the rest of it silently hovering around his skull connected by lightning-beams of tenuous, faint energies green and sickly.

The infantry that had been leading them said nothing, clad in the general infantry armor of Intranszjednota bipeds, having said nothing but merely motioning for them to follow. Yet they stopped at the corridor, shaped like a gigantic spinal column ribbed and lined with matter that resembled muscle beneath where bones did not fully connect. At its end was a figure no less skeletal.

[center][hider=Biomechanical Entity, Presumed Commander Unit][img]https://i.ibb.co/9VTJj9D/Skull-Face-Commander-Dude-jarold-sng-metalhex-03-fullbody.jpg[/img][/hider][/center]

It was more human than the rest of the assortment of species they had seen yet something more than that. In spite of being a mimickry of structured bone, it was greater than what a human skeleton would have been. There was volume to its mass, not spindly and crackling but rife with vigour in its motions, the striding of its six-feet-seven-inch height as vigorous as whenever it once had flesh and organic strength. It was not a skeletal grin but a harsh grimace hidden behind the tinted visor, steeled to whether coming trouble and terror alike. Intransigent forces did not often salute but the two that had lead them paused for a moment and muttered something inaudible and likely non-verbal, almost as if verses of a song. 

An affirmation in the form of a buzzing pulse emerged seemingly from the walls itself, the air, or the very space around the skeletal machine as the two soldiers left. 

[color=f26522]"Speak, freely. There is much to discuss and others to meet. The vessel has docked and you are to be briefed on what is to come. I had expected little given the constraints of time, but my decision had been correct. There is little time to rejoice. We are expected soon. Yet not so soon I cannot gleam a few things. With me."[/color]

Its voice was difficult to determine; it was not the voice it would have had when it was of flesh and blood but there was something distantly buried beneath the layered echo-speak that seemed to emerge both from its body and the very space around it. As if it was a singular being who was the vessel of an audience they could not see save for itself. It had not even introduced itself and its voice was still hurried. Attempts to scan it returned fragmented false readings from its ambient electronic warfare security measures but they were busy with an agenda of their own, too  much to care for little prods like that.

All they got out of any scans was that they were designated as [b]INVICTOID AUTHORITY NODE 04/10[/b]

Soon it lead them to a chamber, one at the very least had recognizable furniture not merely for humanoids but based on the enormous cushion-like memory-moss clump on the floor, it was meant to be comfortable for the endoform and any other sufficiently large as well (the warform had to be parked in a vehicle bay from earlier). The ceiling still resembled flattened insectoid features glazed over and laminated, the floor did not shift so much (it appeared to be solid tiles for once), and the table was... a table. A wide, circular table with chairs that bore no biomechanical perversity, even having cushions of the actually-a-cushion variety with a few neon lights above that aggressively clashed with the rest of the dead-yet-dreadful decor.

[color=f26522]"You have questions. I have questions. Speak your mind. Then I will speak mine."[/color]