At point blank range, there was no dodging the pistol. Alice's sidearm spat and the puppet shuddered and jerked moreso as if it had been punched than shot. The blink-long delay between impact and detonation made it spasm to and fro; heavy around crushed bone and dug into organs, rocking it one way, before a small explosive sprayed all contents and jerked it the other. The mag went dry and what had been roughly bipedal in its festering gait could now only be described as a spread of mush and pulsing etheric fumes attached to a parody of a skeletal frame.

[i][color=92278f]"[i]Damn these cameras; they're decades out of date, can't get a scan on Alice - but I doubt qillatu poisoning is an issue for her. She takes her vitamins, goes to bed at a reasonable hour? Your kind are a hardy breed.[/i]"[/color][/i] Flux's voice faded in and out with the atmospheric disturbance bought about by [u]slaying one puppet[/u] but worsened by [u]another becoming a roughly bisected diagram[/u]. 

Salvatore's reaction had been faster than its maddened, bestial consciousness could process, held in place as it struggled to turn around - a microform had clamped onto its legs. It swung down but Salvatore was faster. Molten-hot light, condensed into a sword-like form, silenced the last of its thoughts. Qillatu spilled out in faint, noxious smoke but amounted to little more than a tingling on his skin - degraded, weak, and ephemeral.

[color=f26522]"[i]I ask if 'hanger had any interest in pit-gauntlet if this was home.[/i]"[/color] A voice like crunched fragments of rusted junk grated through the comms; English was not its native language and the words were leaden and weightier than necessary. Based on the accent, it appeared to be celaderakan - it hadn't revealed its name when they spoke back in the armory. [color=f26522][i]"Enjoying last 15 or so minute. You making a mess. I'm eating rations. Maybe share if you can speed it up. You have allergy with-[/i]"[/color]

Something akin to a curse could be heard before a burst of plasma created a cone-shaped sun, straight through the torso of the lashing terror. Cranial tendrils spasmed and whipped wildly, slapping against King's collarbone area and shoulders but they were wild, desperate blows - not of killing intent but desperation. Curled up and blackened, organs vaporized, meat cooked. Head and legs flopped to the ground as the massive trauma overloaded already ramshackle biochemical stability, [u]twitching as the last of its life bled out[/u].

The puppets charging Alice and Kleo stumbled as a microform rammed into one, laser beam melting through knee joints as a stray limb nearly tripped the other. They staggered back, step after step, as bone-crushing kinetic impacts caved in rib after rib, sending them out backwards in conical sprays of bone through its back. Bloodthirst carried it forward, step by step, until it was only steps - where had been an upper body was a withered scarecrow of twitching, squirming veins and flopping parasite-organs, not native to this creature now deprived of flesh and bone to shelter themselves. Rendered little more than an incomplete anatomical image, it flopped to the ground, even less recognizable than whatever it once was, [u]dead save for its helpless passengers[/u].

[color=00a651][i]"-Hear me peabrain? Your shit ain't tracking![/i]"[/color] Husk's voice once again crackled back into the comms as the interference dropped and he once again had an opportunity to berate Kleo. [i][color=00a651]"Where did they teach you to shoot? Terran Academy of Unarmed Protestor Incidents?"[/color][/i]

For what it was worth, the homing rounds would attempt to roughly go where they were pionted, but they could pivot and change course mid-air rather erratically. A few bits of viscera that had been sent into the air caused a few rounds to veer off and burst in the air, but many found their mark. One flew down with near vindictive spite, embedding in the upper body trailing its organs behind itself, dragging across the ground. The ensuing blast created a crater of meat and melting ether-flesh, [u]slaying another puppet[/u]. Additional rounds swung off and [u]blew off the shoulder[/u] of another that had been preparing a massive swing at Ilshar, sending it stumbling as its striking arm vanished in gore-vapour.

Two rounds later and so did its stomach, legs, and head. [u]A rickety, smoking mess clattered to the floor.[/u]

The ulvath spoke not too long after and a shielded puppet responded with a flare of qillatu, followed by thudding, cutting, incisive sounds. When the burst ended, all it had left to reply with was the thud of the hole ridden, unrecognizable cadaver falling down. [u]A wet splat followed as pulverized organs were crushed under its mutilated weight[/u], squirting and squelching a final response to Ilshar.

The scatter-cannon was even less merciful, as Echo would experience first hand. The sound would have been deafening if there had been more oxygen to carry the sound of one corpse practically vanishing; a solid body one moment, and[u] a flying blizzard of limbs and minced innards smacking and shattering against a wall the next[/u]. ERA sounded off mere moments later and Husk audibly cursed as the cameras were [u]blanketed in what was once the puppet that had hopped onto the massive unztadtlige[/u].

The rest of it rained down in fragmented bone, fluids, and mushy gunk, blanketing the team in a psychedelia-covered splatter. 

It took a few seconds for the comms to re-establish. 

[color=aba000]"Performance; satisfying. Reyot's comment of 15 minutes are a side-effect of excessive juvenile-state cranial trauma originating on Celaderakan junta-worlds. Rahadin has disciplined him. Tower systems are under control - continue forward but be forewarned - oxygen levels nonexistent past next 100 meters. Hard vacuum, exposed space, uncorrupted surface but large debris detected - chance of ambushing creatures."[/color]

All Heads-Up Displays would notice a superimposed real-time image of 3D prism tipped with a spear-like arrow, pointing down a passageway slowly being covered in the same bioluminescent smoke from earlier. 

[color=aba000]"Gunship support will be available and has moved to outskirts of area - there is a path leading to an exposed segment of the Sargasso at the end, likely due to a missile fired by the pirates from earlier. It provides the fastest route to the core. We will be making our way to the Yrrkradian control centre as well; stress-tests on neurolink drones to maintain usage of tower systems. Harvest out."[/color]

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The walk through the tunnel leading to the outside had been uneventful but the tunnel itself pushed the definition of the term. "Tunnel" as it wasn't of the Sargasso's origin - the rigid, blocky bulkheads and reinforced plating in faded green was akin to an assault ship and based on its design, it wasn't anywhere near as old - maybe a decades ago, not too long before the Reckoning of Empires.

They couldn't see it but they could feel it; a pulse and a throb that breathed through the walls, ceilings and floor. Glimpses of it in the cracks on the walls as gravity gave out, forcing them to use thrusters, mag-locks on boots, or other such methods, passing by where motley, fleshy texture quietly seeped where ages-old space installation met still-in service model architecture. The Sargasso hid innumerable secrets and the Evenomed drifted through a museum's worth of them with every metre traveled.

Not long after, the corridors gave way as the walls faded into blackened tatters and the hard, metallic surface greeted them again. Endless sky above, a looming tower in the distance, and the superimposed HUD arrow pointing down a narrow strip of passageway that lead towards the blockier segment out of which it rose. 

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A blip at the edges of their display; the makeshift gunship was marked with a green circle, floating as little more than a distant, barely visible speck over their heads. It was near indistinguishable from the rest of the debris, subtly adjusting its trajectory and drifting left and right to cover the team.

Due to its proximity, Echo would be able to temporarily control the warform within with the assistance of signal-boosting equipment stored within.

The path was longer than it looked and would take them to a wider space of the Sargasso, half disc-like in its shape and emerging from a crumpled mess of protruding half-wall structures and smooth-edged cube-trailers, worn from lifetimes worth of debris collisions. Parts of the station had been torn into raw, jagged trenches wide enough to fit a main battle tank - roughly three of these ran along the surface [u]around and above which floated enormous, lightly shimmering pieces of metal[/u]. 

[u]Each one was big enough to conceal Echo[/u] as they hovered or spun in place above the trenches, some of which were still visible 40 or so feet below in their depths. The trenches looked as if they were clawed on the way to the tower and the sloping roofed structure around its base - as if one could imagine the inhabitants there having watched whatever violent force claw these wounds into the hull of the station, as if it had been trying to extend them towards its otherwise clean exterior.

[u]Almost as if the missiles, chasmdwellers, and debris had avoided that part of the station for whatever reason, somehow.[/u]

In stark contrast to before, ethereal signatures were faint but not absent. The void-inclined could see it, subtly, trails that seemed to slide along the larger pieces of detached hull hovering above the trenches. [u]Almost like a path of slime sliding across the largest ones[/u], invisible to the unaugmented eye (or anyone lacking the right visualization software and equipment), curving upwards but growing fainter before vanishing - as if something had been lazily sliding its way upwards for no real reason.

A look into the nearest trench showed them to full of long dead exposed wiring and collapsed maintenance tunnels but they hadn't been devoid of life... or activity. Little bits of fluorescent, almost mucus-like transparent matter drifted like sea-grass in an unseen current - not living things but signs of their presence. [u]Some sort of organisms had been making their home here, but it would be difficult to determine more without further direct inspection.[/u]

Still, there were only the faintest signs on the surface the squad walked anything had been here. [u]Little bits of debris with the faintest bits of void signature [/u]- near flecks of dust to a few misshapen pieces of long-since qillatu-ridden debris no longer radiating malevolence. Detritus that had drifted out from behind bulkheads and the risen spinal-frills of metal, visible within some hollowed out rectangular structures sitting like trailers parked here and there. As if whatever had lived here had been forced to vacate.