As the defenders held the firing line, Jada, firing from the hip, continued towards the temple entrance, a simple archway leading into darkness and the unknown.
“On your right!” shouted Strega suddenly. Jada turned and saw that a hollow, its ammunition expended, was rushing at her with its wicked claws.
The merc dove to the side and skidded on her back across the rugged ground as the hideous creature swiped at the air where she’d been only a second before. The creature was off balance, and Jada was able to put several rounds into it before a second creature leapt upon her. Had she been the unenhanced marine of her past, the abomination would have been able to sink its claws into her, but the meta-human mercenary she was now, slammed the side of her rifle into the creature’s chin, holding it at bay for a precious second so that she could grab her pistol and put several magnum rounds through its throat and out the back of its skull.
Jada rolled and cast the beast off of her as she rose to her feet, pistol at the ready. Ahead of her, Berg, Ranec, and Poe, were plunging into the temple entrance. The merc cast her glance across the battlefield and saw the rest of the defenders holding their position, their superior firepower having all but wiped out the hollow counter-attack.
Then Jada saw Strega pounding bullets into the body of a hollow. As it fell away, the merc could see that it had been on top of Osric. The creature had managed to force its bladed fingers into the joints of Osric’s mag-armor, prying open his suit like a tin of food rations. The merc had been torn to pieces in seconds. Jada watched with a sense of detached horror as Strega just stepped over Osric’s ravaged body and moved on, slapping a fresh magazine into her rifle.
As Jada followed Strega into the darkness, the two mercs swept their gun-mounted lights through the gloom. The shattered bodies of multiple hollows filled the corridor, as if they’d charged Womack’s squad en masse and been mowed down. When they came across the mangled corpse of Ven, a Dire Sword veteran of many years, it was clear the advance had not been without cost.
Jada could see that though the exterior of the temple was covered in flowstone, this interior was made of the same polished alien material as the necropolis buildings on the tomb worlds. The sounds of fighting within were near deafening, and in the tight confines of the temple interior, Jada was thankful for the dampeners in her helmet.
Soon, the corridor opened up to reveal a similar, if smaller, layout of the tomb world central chamber that Jada recalled from her first encounter with the Gedra.
Among the dozen or so slabs, upon which Jada recalled the alpha cyborg had been transforming dead penal legionnaires into hollows, the floor of the chamber was littered with more bodies of hollows.
An alpha cyborg was standing atop of a low dais being subjected to a punishing amount of firepower as seven Dire Swords unleashed their weapons on it.
Strega leapt into the fray and began shooting, while Jada hesitated for a moment. She saw Taymar lying prone at the base of the dais, huge pieces of her left side simply gone, the wound lines fused, indicating that she’d been hit with one of the deadly energy orbs that the cyborgs defended themselves with.
Jada raised her rifle to her shoulder and took careful aim, knowing that in moments, the cyborg’s energy shield would fail or at least flicker, and the merc was determined to end this fight. Her patience was rewarded when the shield suddenly collapsed with a tremendous shockwave.
Jada squeezed the trigger and a single armor-piercing round streaked from her rifle, tearing through the eye socket of the cyborg, knocking its head back. It had barely begun to collapse when it was thrown off the dais by the combined bursts of fire from several of the other mercs.
When the cyborg’s body exploded, as expected, most of the mercs had been able to find cover.
As Jada watched the cyborg die from a distance, she was taken aback at how routine such incredible events had become in her life. Years ago, when they had first encountered the Gedra, the salvage marines had died in droves trying to bring down the giant mechanical beast.
Now that years of war had passed and more intelligence gathered, they knew how to kill these things with brutal efficiency. While it was almost impossible to defeat them without destroying them, the command module and its powers had yet to be recovered or investigated, but at least not nearly as many people had to die in combat against them.
Then, as quickly as it had arrived, the sensation of accomplishment was dashed when Jada realized, as did the other mercs, that the Objective’s whereabouts was as yet unknown.
“Recover Taymar and let’s get topside,” growled Womack as he returned his now empty assault rifle to its mooring pegs on his back. “The Objective isn’t above and it isn’t below. We’re going to have to call this one a wash.”
For a moment, nobody moved, shocked as they were at their leader’s admission of failure. They were the Dire Swords, they did not fail, and yet, here they were, on a hostile alien world, with Helion bearing down on them, and no sign of the Objective. Already, more Dire Swords had died on this single operation than many others combined and they had nothing to show for it.
When they emerged from the temple, it was to the sound of wind and thunder, but no violence. The merc defenders held their line and it appeared that the hollows had spent their strength at last. As soon as they were out of the temple, their comm-beads flooded their ears with radio chatter and the mercs realized that their signal had been temporarily ruined while inside.
“Overwatch, we can see the Helion barges, maybe three minutes out, be advised,” said Najib over the company channel, “This is going to be tight, you may have to shoot your way out.”
“Dropships are returning for extraction, on site in two minutes,” responded Marcus. “Raid Alpha, you aren’t going to believe this, but we are looking at live feed sat images and the Objective is right there.”
“The temple was just a hollow horde conversion chamber, no sign of the Objective,” argued Womack.
“Negative on temple, Raid Alpha, the Objective is standing in the center of the master ring base, right there on the dais,” Marcus insisted, his voice tinged with something like disbelief. As one, the mercs all looked at the ring and the dais at the center of the base.
“Overwatch, your instruments are lying to you, I’m looking right at the dais and there’s nothing there. Raid Alpha, converge on the master ring, we’re done here,” ordered Womack as he began to ascend the terraced steps leading to the base of the master ring. “Overwatch, this mission is humped, no sign of the Objective, we exfil now before we lose anymore that we have. I will inform House Indron of our failure in person.”
“Copy that, Tasca pulling out,” responded Najib, and Jada could see the slaver skiff moving over the flowstone buildings start banking hard so that it could move away before the Helion barges arrived.
“I’ll be glad, at least, to get away from the cold spots,” said Poe as he joined Jada, “I haven’t been able to get used to that and this place is full of them.”
Jada stared at Poe, then turned back and looked at the dais, swept away by a sudden idea.
“The ghosts,” she breathed.
She began rushing up the terrace, and as she continued upwards, she became more convinced of her theory. “Womack, the Objective is here!”
The Helion battle barges were coming close, and the growl of their engines started to fill the air, each of the mercs knowing that in moments they would be disgorging fresh platoons of battle troopers, likely with tank support.