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


With the shredded remains of the last corpse-puppet fallen to the ground, everything was suddenly much quieter. Embedded lattices of synth-osseous matter - emergency scaffolding that was forming around damaged areas - gave a barely audible creak as Ilshar pushed himself back to his feet. The internal autocasts were going to be a pain to extract once back at a base of operations, but they would keep him walking through the rest of the mission despite the knots of crumpled muscle where he had been struck. At least the rest of the squad seemed to be doing all right besides one of the ‘hangers, and even she was clearly not critical.


[b]“We’d best be wary of engaging going ahead,”[/b] still stepping rigidly at first, he carefully kept his distance from Echo’s disinfestation fumes, jaws involuntarily contracting at the antiseptic smell within King’s bubble, [b]“Another one of those could send us to the final coil.”[/b]


He gestured at the sealed door behind which the ether-mind was hopefully still preoccupied with the scavenger worms. Truthfully the gunship worried him almost as much as the threat of more hostile nests. Even beyond his own squad, the comms chatter was a reminder of what sort of eccentrics the Intransigence tended to employ, and an incautious missile hit on a motley carcass like Sargasso could be disastrous for someone close to the impact. If the Nexus was generous, there would be no need for its support, but the station was full enough of ill omens.


[hr]


The way over the hull turned out to be as foreboding as Ilshar had suspected. The silence around the Envenomed was more than that of footsteps in the vacuum - it was the absence of the subtle work of decomposition. Sargasso was a graveyard, and it had maggots to its measure, but not here. The only signs of scrambling life had gone cold long ago.


[b]“A corpse is not truly dead,”[/b] the tarrhaidim commented over the squad comms as he half-jumped over a nasty-looking spar of gouged metal protruding in his way. The weakness of the almost makeshift mag-clamps in his boots was a boon here. [b]“It’s always crawling with renewed life, even when you can’t see it.”[/b]


He looked over the edge of the trench the group was passing by, noting how starlight glimmered across the more prominent pieces of debris. Almost like a mollusk’s residue. His etheric senses pulsed quietly.


[b]“There’s ether-trails all over there,”[/b] he pointed at a particularly cluttered pit in the scratched fissure, [b]“It’s like something marking its territory. I say we avoid these pits.”[/b]