While Poe and the others had been frozen in terror and shock at the sight of the vile beast, the explosion of gunfire snapped them out of it.
The squad scattered as they were pelted by hails of bullets, most of the projectiles being turned away by the stout armor worn by the mercs. Berg, however, jerked and fell backwards as several direct hits knocked him off of his feet.
In the back of Jada’s mind, she observed with interest that the abomination’s cannibalized corporate weapons did not have the same reactive connection with the user that the Gedra modified rifles allowed. That was a small boon, and it spared the lives of the squad, as they dove in all directions to avoid enemy fire.
Jada strode forward, heedless of the handful of rounds that spanked off of her armor. She snarled as she squeezed her trigger over and over. The merc drove round after round through the chest and neck of the creature, cutting short its furious assault. Jada’s rounds tore pieces of flesh and armor away from the creature’s body, forcing it to stumble sideways from the impacts. It screamed defiantly before Jada sent a burst of fire through its horrible maw and out the back of its skull.
In the rush of battle hormones and emotion, Jade had not even noticed the two rounds of enemy fire that had managed to bite through her armor. Her right thigh, just above the knee, seeped blood from a bullet that had managed to impact hard enough to drive a splinter of her own armor into the meat of her leg. The other was her right arm, just at the elbow, where a round had grazed the joint section and taken a piece of her flesh with it. Her enhanced physique was struggling to cope with what, to Jada, were minor wounds, though any unenhanced warrior would have lost the use of their right arm and left leg and surely been out of the fight.
“Contact!” barked Womack over the comm-bead, “Confirm Hollow Horde elements, heavily modified, they look to have been Helion.”
“Well, that’s at least one mystery solved,” muttered Poe as he helped Berg to his feet, the merc seeming no worse for wear.
“Contact! On the surround!” shouted Strega from far to Jada’s left. The merc turned her head to see Strega looking at her mounted short-range scanner, “I’ve got pings on three-sixty degrees!”
“Raid Alpha, stay on mission, engage and eliminate on your way to the master ring, don’t let them lead you down a murder hole!” commanded Womack over the company channel. “Let’s get what we came for and evac so we can nuke this site from orbit!”
“Guns up!” shouted Berg as he fired a beacon flare in a high arc across the excavation site. As the flare hung in the air and began its slow descent, it illuminated much of the site that had been shrouded in darkness. Seconds later, its light was joined by a number of flares from other squads as they all worked their way through the massive excavation site.
Jada’s HUD immediately registered the beacon embedded in the flare projectile, and it served as a rally point for the squad. Given the near pitch darkness of the battlefield and the chaos that was likely to ensue in a matter of seconds, the rally point would be critical for allowing the squad to regroup. Even with the flare’s temporary illumination, the helmet’s low-light settings were cranked to maximum, and Jada knew this was going to be a nightmarish conflict fought out in the half-light.
As if in step to the rhythm of her mind, everyone’s HUD was awash in hostile contact as the enemy surged out of seemingly every deep shadow cast by the light of the flares. This time, none of the mercs shouted out the Dire Swords battle cry; it went without saying. They were in the depths of necrospace, fighting shoulder to shoulder with hardened veterans, while surrounded by darkness and bitter enemies. Death at this point was assumed; the only question remained was who would fall and who would remain standing.
Jada raised her rifle and fired as she caught movement out of the corner of her eye. The Gedra rifle, anticipating her needs, fired a burst of low-velocity tracer rounds, the accelerant of the cartridge having been put towards creating the brilliance at the cost of knockdown power. Still, a bullet was a bullet and several of them pounded into the flesh of the creature as it leapt from the shadows. The creature lost its footing due to the multiple impacts, though that did not stop it from firing wildly with its four gun appendages. Poe lent his fire to Jada’s and the two of them blew the creature apart with a combined salvo.
Behind them, Ranec rushed a network of scaffolding, aiming his weapon up to reveal several of the creatures moving through the ironworks with a sickening grace.
The merc’s precise shots caught one of the hollows in the mid-section and it nearly fell off the scaffolding. Its clawed hand caught a rail just before it fell, holding its weight as the wounded creature dangled from its high perch. The beast returned fire and pushed Ranec scampering into cover to escape the hurricane of small arms projectiles that chased him.
Berg took a knee, and with a single shot, blew apart the creature’s hand before it could transfer its aim from his battle buddy to him, sending it plummeting down and out of sight behind one of the many flowstone walls.
Strega and Osric ran across the flowstone parallel to each other, pouring fire to the left and right of the pair as they followed the arc of the flair.
Under the cover of their fire, Berg and Ranec were able to concentrate on gunning down another creature and as its ravaged body fell to the ground the six Dire Swords closed ranks with their battle buddies and pressed the assault.
“Reloading,” said Osric calmly, swapping out his empty magazine for a fresh one. As he did, one of the hollows emerged from behind what might have been a heavy trash container or crushed rock storage and rushed the merc’s position as it opened fire.
The merc did not look up from his task, so confident was he that his battle buddy would anticipate his needs. The man’s trust in Strega was well-placed despite the fact that they had only been training as a pair for a few weeks. Before the enemy had more than a handful of poorly aimed shots off, the merc stood over Osric and blasted the creature off of its feet.
Jada and Poe sprinted wide and to the right of the squad, drawing fire as several of the hollows broke off their attack and raced in pursuit of the dashing mercs.
Poe stayed a few paces behind his battle buddy, working to keep the creatures from flanking the pair by firing sporadically into the shadows whenever he caught a glimpse of limb, gun, or horrible jaws.
Jada pressed ahead into the fray, where their numbers seemed thickest, firing her rifle in tightly controlled bursts and moving from target to target with methodical detachment. She did not allow herself space or time to think of her enemies or the fighting beyond terms of target acquisition and bullet placement. She lost count of how many hollows she had gunned down.
There was no telling definitively which of the creatures she sent sprawling would actually stay down. Some of them wore armor that marked them as former battle troopers, though she began to notice that such creatures were in the minority. Most of the hollows were dressed in the tattered remnants of staff jumpsuits, indicating that they were labor crew, though whether each individual had been a driller, hauler, roustabout, or engineer was beyond her awareness or concern.
The sick green light of the beacon flare hung in the sky, and it suddenly reminded Jada of Deepspire, only where once there had been pools of shallow and fetid water, there were open dig pits and skeletal scaffolding. She had survived that, and she was determined to survive this; where others had gone into Vorhold and died, she yet remained. The thought of her continued survival was both a source of strength and anger for her, as it seemed like no matter what hell she walked through, it was her friends and loved ones who died, never her. Always, she remained a wretched thing that the universe just couldn’t seem to kill. She was hard meat, as Vol used to say. The merc raised her rifle to her shoulder once more, determined to show these hideous things, and herself, that she was indeed more than they could handle.