Jada slammed into the dusty floor just inside the deep walls that had been cut through the flowstone. Her descent had given her some idea of just how deeply the Helion crews had dug in order to uncover the master ring and the alien sprawl that surrounded it.
Whatever happened here had been quick, and it was likely that the only reason Helion had not been able to respond was the continuous attacks by the Dire Swords on other worlds in this system. The mercs had kept Helion scrambling to cope with their lightning assaults and security forces and were now spread thinly across the whole system. With an entire archaeological site going dark just as the mercs were smashing the urium plays on another world, it was likely all Helion could do to mount a modest void defense to at least keep the main Grotto fleet engaged. It was possible that Helion troopers were not even aware that a tactical insertion was taking place.
It wasn’t until Jada was on her feet and hefting her rifle that she considered the idea that Helion knew exactly what had happened here and perhaps was staying away on purpose.
In moments, Jada closed the distance with her battle buddy, Poe, and soon after they were joined by Berg, Ranec, Strega, and Osric. For a time, they stood in stunned silence, facing all directions in a loose defensive formation. All of them shared looks, and Poe shrugged as if to acknowledge the strangeness of it all. The only sounds that could be heard were the rapidly fading engines of the dropships as they returned to meet Sword Base for re-fueling and the dwindling hiss-pops of dropshields impacting as the last of the mercs made planetfall.
“We should be hip deep in bad guys by now,” snarled Ranec as he scanned the darkness ahead of him. What little light there was came from the dropships above, reflecting briefly off of the skull face etched into his helmet.
To date, corporate forces had only engaged Hollow Horde enemies that had been recently created and they were slow combatants. Even though they were shambling corpses re-animated by an, as yet, unknown means, even they would have reacted by now.
Jada began to wonder what the cyborgs might have done had they been given more time with their creations. Suddenly, the merc became concerned that there had been a glaring oversight in their intel.
Berg gave the signal to advance and the six mercs moved forward, each of them scanning the darkness for signs of the enemy they knew had to be lurking there. In the near pitch black, even with their HUDs at maximum aperture, it was difficult to judge distance or maintain full spatial bearing, as everything looked like the same series of dig pits, scaffolds, and stairs leading up or down. It wasn’t until they reached a bombed-out building that they were able to make sense of their position. There was a Helion building, likely a pre-fab that had been airdropped, which looked like it had been formerly a mech bay. Jada recognized the distinct shape of the doors and the multitude of loading tracks embedded into the floor.
“Labor mechs,” said Jada as she ignited the light on the end of her rifle and shone it into the depths of the bay.
“This place is a freaking maze!” grumbled Poe as he ascended a series of steps that the Helion engineers had cut into the smooth curve of flowstone that led upwards and around the side of the mech bay. “I’ll bet you anything Helion has their compound connected with tunnels of their own, drilled right through the site.”
“A door at the bottom of a hole,” whispered Jada as she moved her light back and forth, yielding some small additional illumination.
“You say something?” asked Poe as he turned on his light and the two of them proceeded into the darkness of the bay side by side.
“Thinking about old times. Listen, as we go, be sure to check your back shadows and blind corners,” said Jada as she swept her rifle back and forth ahead and behind her. “Basics of hostile salvage, I have a feeling this won’t be the kind of stand-up fight we thought it would be.”
Poe nodded silently and the two of them pressed onwards, then after a few steps, Jada suddenly stopped. Her instincts were screaming at her to flee, but she held her ground. Poe didn’t seem to feel what she did and he followed her lead. The mercs slowly retreated backwards, never allowing their aim to waiver as they pointed their weapons into the black. When they reached the entrance of the mech bay, they were joined by the others, all of whom were at the ready.
Moments passed, and then the rest of the mercs began to grow restless, as if they too were beginning to feel the monstrous danger the same as Jada.
What emerged from the shadows of the docking bay then was something out of the most raw nightmares in the human psyche. It was clearly one of the Hollow Horde that all of the Dire Swords had faced back on Gedra Prime, but unlike any hostile they’d seen so far.
It had once been a Helion battle trooper. It still wore most of the carapace combat armor, though the bodyglove beneath it had torn through in places. The flesh underneath the armor had been bleached, as if all the vital fluids had been rerouted elsewhere and thick cables could be seen buried in the creature’s exposed joints. The human hands had become elongated claws, metal blades crudely grafted to the fingertips that had torn through the tiny plates of armor that comprised the former trooper’s gauntlets. They twitched incessantly, clicking together as the creature approached.
The helmet was gone, from the back of the misshapen skull a nest of cables protruded. The glare of the creature’s (for it had long since ceased to be a man) eyes were now yellow, smoldering exhaust ports.
The creature opened its mouth, threw its head back, and howled. The jaw split down the middle and spread wide to reveal a maw filled with what looked like a blend of chainsaw teeth and sewing needles as it pushed it’s formerly human vocal cords to the limit. The sound that came forth shook even the hardest of the mercs to their very core. None of the warriors present had faced something so horrifying, save one, and even she hesitated for one critical moment.
When it didn’t seem possible that it could get worse, four hinged metal protrusions suddenly snapped out from the cradle on the creature’s back, additional limbs tipped with what appeared to be metallic stingers.
Jada tried to blink away her shock. For a second, it was not a Gedra abomination that stood before her, but the Stalker in the Dark.
Faced with her greatest foe, Jada still recognized it as her conscious mind attempting to make sense of what she was seeing. The storm of traumatic memories flooded her mind even as her body was racked with the sensations of her combat injuries, and worse, at the hands of the Stalkers. She recognized what was happening and let the hallucinations wash over her, embraced them.
As the other mercs stood in shocked disbelief, it was Jada Sek alone who acted.
She screamed as she raised her rifle, the hinged stingers tracking her movement, making her realize that they were actually small firearms, each of them seeming to be corporate weapons that had been re-fabricated to fit the Gedra.
The merc and the beast fired at the same time. Her modified Gedra rifle produced a salvo of armor-piercing rounds that punched through the Helion armor with a resounding crack.
The four modified corporate weapons of the Gedra beast sprayed a multitude of hard rounds at the squad, seeming to opt for a group attack over concentrating its fire on a single target.