Cyne looked to his teammates and observed their behaviors and their replies.

As he spoke to Silas previously, it was hard not to notice Gaz's dismay of their current situation. However, it was for far different and insane reasons. While closing the blast doors bought them time to plan their next move, the decision was however evidently unpopular for the Fungai; having been not only denied but also delayed in participating in the eventual carnage that was about to ensue. Besides that, Gaz boasted his capabilities that Cyne couldn't deny and having their walking tank at the front would've certainly increased their chances with the Hive in a direct and aggressive manner.

Gerad on the other hand didn't think like Gaz and rightly pointed out that their job didn't include dealing with the Hive. They were already pushing their luck by cruising through a system in-conflict; dealing with Hive on top of that had made their odds unfavorable despite the advantages they held. Gerad ultimately vouched to destroy the vessel and destroy both the Hive and the invading mercenaries. In addition, the plan ensured that whatever secretive data that remained in the lab would not fall into the wrong hands.

In the end however, it was Silas' choice to make. And he chose to blow the vessel.

"Acknowledged," Cyne replied in agreement.

Their new plan now was to rendezvous with Silas and Macklyn at the ship's armory, located nearby the munitions deck where all ship-based ammunition was stored and delivered to many of the Balrog's main guns and secondary weaponry. Stealing the assets within the armor and rigging munitions would be a simple process. Getting there however meant having to force their way through a deck that was now swarming with Hive and mercs. The area would quite literally be a warzone but with both parties violently disputing territory, they could very well get by without drawing too much attention to themselves. Cyne could already imagine Gaz taking his moping and groaning even further with the prospect of avoiding a direct fight with the fight; hopefully the Fungai would find some appeasement with reading the armory.

After Silas gave his orders, Cyne complied, "We'll meet you there, boss," Suddenly, the last blast shield buckled with many hideous growls and screams resonating from the other side, "right after we deal these uninvited guests."

Cyne found some irony in the statement; technically, they and the invading mercenaries were the uninvited ones here. The Hive were simply running their twisted version of pest control, "you heard the boss; once we're through with this bunch, we're regrouping at the armory to light this place up. Get ready!"

As if on cue, the armor-plated surface of the blast door shifted in color and quality. From the center spreading out, the chromic finish contorted into a mushy green before the epicenter gave way, clearing a hole through the shield. From the other side, a glut of tendrils spewed out before congregating into a pair of massive limbs and forcing the weakened slab open. With a mighty roar, the creature on the other end peeled the door away and stumbled forwarding, revealing its immense and meaty form.

A Brute. It was the Hive’s very own siege engine and battering ram and one of its number had forced its way in with a horde of murderous creatures rushing behind it. Cyne reacted quickly and fired of a magnetically accelerated .50 caliber round. Brutes were notorious for leading assaults on fortified positions and if they got through, its brood would pour and quickly overwhelm any defenders the Brute effortlessly pushed past. With only three people out in the open, Cyne simply could not allow an advantage to over take them.

The round did its job and slammed into the Brute’s shoulder causing the beast to recoil and fall backwards, roaring in pain as it collapsed to the floor with a heavy thud. Cyne knew that one shot wasn’t going to be enough to stop it dead but at least it prevented the behemoth from joining the charge along with the enraged swarm. He pulled the trigger several more times, killing a leading Slasher with a shot that tore the creature’s upper skull off while three more rounds striking several Sploders.

The filthy Sloders the Hive used had to be mad creatures, even crazier than its other brethren. Even the typical Swarmer held some fathomable sense of self-preservation whereas these the tumor-covered psychos rushed into the fray on their stubby legs wanting nothing more than to erupt into a surge of acid, capable of melting nearly anything it was exposed to. It was likely that the same creatures were responsible in compromising the blast doors earlier on. Durable alloys and organic tissue alike were dissolvable to the substance residing within their bulbous sacs. Coincidentally however, the other Hive creatures were just as vulnerable as their prey.

The Spoders Cyne shot spasmed violently before, as their names suggested, exploded into a mass of acid catching several Swarmers that were too close. As one would expect, the Swarmers stumbled and squirmed all over the floor, crying out in horrid agony as the acidic substance ate them alive. But even as Cyne had eliminated a large part of the swarm attacking them, he couldn’t stop the rest from storming the bridge.

@CaptainSully
Two Slashers, big creatures known to devastate entire squads of well-equip infantry with their large razor-sharp scythe limbs and biologically-engineered acid shooters, came barreling through the bridge entrance and vectored in on Gaz. The large and armored monsters blazed away at the Fungai with splinters of acidic material while five Swarmers moved in with them. As it came into range, the lead Slasher raised its bladed claws in preparation to cleave Gaz’s face in two.

@Athol
Another Slasher charged forward with its focus gleaming towards Gerad. With a loud wail, an additional number of five Swarmers rushed past it and made a murderous dash in the Garundin's direction. Showcasing the Slasher's known tactical thinking, the creature brought it's shooting limb to bear and opened up with a volley of acid, intent of suppressing Gerad beneath it's hail.

While he was grateful that Silas was being practical about things and opted to blow the ship, Gerad was still a bit annoyed that he’d decided to have them trek all the way to the Armoury to do it. Soddin’ git, ‘e knows I c’n pop the ‘Rogs cork jus’ dandy with the flitters in ‘er hanger… He huffed in annoyance; but the decision had been made, now he just had to deal with it. As the blast door finally gave under its assault, there was a soft tone in his ear, and that made Gerad slime slightly; his armour had just finished ripping as much data as it could from the wrecked cruiser’s computers.

As Cyne peppered the Brute with slugs, Gerad tore into it as well with his VLA, the powerful laser burning through several large muscles. He considered hitting it with a plasma shot, but they needed to go out the way it had come in, and several meters of vaporized decking would complicate that. Before he could pour more fire into the Brute to finish it however, there was a slight complication in the form of a Slasher charging towards him.

Bringing his collapsible Barrier up, he also charged his armour’s energy shield just as the Slasher let fly with an acid volley. Unfortunately he was just a moment slow on the activation and the first acid shot did make contact with the Barrier mounted on his left main arm, while the rest of the shots crackled and sizzled harmlessly off. Damage alerts flashed across his HUD as the acid began to corrode the Barrier, though the armour was designed to handle extremely hostile environments so the process was slow going. Automated systems went to work and the built in nano-factory began disgorging nanobots that swarmed over Gerad’s armour and set to work trying to neutralize the acid and repair the damage.

While the automatic systems did their thing, Gerad closed the distance, firing as he did. One shot destroyed the Slasher’s acid shooter and another burned a long furrow down the length of the creature’s body, before the range closed enough to make shooting impractical. Still twisted in pain, it swung at him, intent on eviscerating the little beast that had caused it so much pain; but things did not go as intended. Gerad had holstered his VLA and collapsed the Barrier, so when the Slasher swung it massive claws at him, his main hands were free.

New damage alerts sprang to life as he actually caught the claws, but the damage was easily reparable, and thanks to a Garundin’s native strength, augmented by his armour, he stopped the claws cold. Activating the mag-locks in his boots for greater footing, he tightened his grip and began to twist as he advanced.

In a brief span of moments the Slasher went from bearing down on what it thought would be an easy kill, to desperately trying to break free of this tiny creature that had now captured it. Injured as it was from the earlier laser blast, it was unable to move backwards much, so as Gerad advanced and twisted, the strain on its arms grew more and more, until with a crack and some great shrieking, Gerad broke both its arms. Using the shattered limps to throw the creature to the deck, he then released it and drew his hammer in its full length, delivering a couple of extremely powerful two-handed blows to its head. Between the Swarmer open fire and Gerad killing it, took less than 30 second.

With the Swarmer’s skull smashed like an overripe fruit, he turned his attention to the wounded Brute and rest of the horde. Switching back to his VLA, Gerad began lashing the hole in the door with continuous fire. Although he couldn't see beyond where he was firing, the squeals and grunts his armour's audio receptors were picking up indicated he was having some effect on whatever reinforcements were out there.

With the news coming through that the team were going to avoid the suspected Hive nest, Gaz was less that pleased. "Dammit 'umies!" He began to stomp the floor in frustration, his bulk denting the floor slightly. When he finished his tantrum he was told that he would have free reign of the armoury but even that didn't subdue his frustration. "I don't need no 'umie guns! I 'as da' bestest guns 'ere already but you ain't gonna let me show dem to you gits!" With added anger added to his last word the sounded of crashing metal brought a smile to his face. In his brief moment of anger he had forgotten about the impending Hive assault. He turned to the door to see the wave of creatures pour forth from the ruined door and felt nothing but pure elation fill every fibre of his body. "Oh yes boyz! Dis is what ya needs!"

Gaz began to spin up the barrel on his dakka gun as a small Hive contingent made their way towards him. Giant globs of acidic mass impacted against his brightly coloured armour but did little in the way of damage. The thickness of the armour alone would have made life difficult for the acid to do it's job on his flesh, but the recently fresh coat of hive blood that coated his armour acted as a buffer. Neutralising the acid the blood made their ranged attacks all but useless. "Come on den you gits!" The first of the larger creatures lunged towards Gaz with its giant claws lurched backwards. Gaz moved at a speed that defied his size and took hold of the creature around the neck with his power klaw. He stopped short of decapitaing the beast, cutting deep into its neck. It it snarled wildly trying to to bite at Gaz and trying to swing its claws at him. He was safer being right next to the beast than he was several paces away. He let out a bellowing laugh before filling the entire room with deafeningly louds gunfire.

The barrel of his dakka gun began to spew rounds into the torso of his quarry, causing it's chest to erupt into a fountain of gore. The power of his weapon meant the rounds continued out through the back of the creature and began to lay waste to any creatures unfortunate enough to be behind it. As he continued to unload rounds the slasher in his grasp fell limp giving him a much better view to the incoming horde. He moved the slasher around like a doll as he began to lay waste to the swarmers that had followed it. The dakka gun made quick work of them leaving little more than piles of unrecogniseable gore.

Gaz's laughter continued as the barrage of bullets eventually split his caught slasher in two, it's legs and lower body falling to the floor with a heavy thud. "That's enough dakka! Time for da choppa!" Gaz closed his power klaw splitting the remainder of the slasher in two. With the weight of the beast gone he ceased fire with his dakka gun and drew his chain choppa. In front of him the other slasher remained, this one seemingly more cautious of the fungai than the other had been. It had shown deft agility as it had not taken a single shot from his dakka gun. The two sized each other up for a moment, Gaz standing several inches taller than it. Then with a ferocious roar the slasher made for Gaz.

It thrust it's large claws forward attempting to skewer Gaz. The whirring blade of Gaz's weapon deflected the blow, cutting chunks from his enemies limbs. Gaz followed up with a headbutt but proceeded to only stun himself, the armoured head of the slasher strong enough to prevent any sort of damage. As Gaz stumbled backwards the slasher pounced and knocked him back, driving one of its claws into his shoulder. His thick armour deflected the blow towards the joint allowing the claw to cut into him. It made quick work of his flesh and emerged from the back of his shoulder joint. "Is that all you got?" Gaz laughed as he took hold of the arm the claw was attached to. He pulled a face at the beast before casting his gaze down slowly at its arm. He looked back up at it with a smile and could see that some amount of intelligence rested behind it's eyes. It began to pull on it's arm hard but it could not break the fungai's grip. With one swift motion Gaz brought his chain choppa down onto the slashers arm. Letting it go Gaz laughed as he was showered with the blood of his enemy. The fountain of green sludge erupted from it's severed limb, it's claw still firmly embedded in Gaz's shoulder.

Still reeling from Gaz's attack the beast wailed and fidgeted wildly. Gaz raised his left arm with his devious smile still etched on his deep green face. "Oi! Git!" The beast turned at the call but rather than turning to find Gaz, it was met with a wall of scorching fire. Gaz's skorcha burnt hot and even with the slashers thick armour plating, it reduced it to ash in mere moments. Gaz looked at the devastation he had left, his armour once again dripping in green gore. He turned to Cyne as the human dealt with his own Hive. "Oi 'umie! Did ya see that?" With another echoing laugh Gaz turned his attention to the biggest Hive creature. Using his power klaw to point at it he yelled out, "That thing's 'ead is goin' in my room!" With the slashers claw still in his shoulder, Gaz began to unload his dakka gun at the brute.

The Brute eventually managed to, angrily, bring itself into an intimidating and looming stand. However as before, it was again met with Cyne's rifle discharge and soon followed up by fire from Gerad and simultaneously riddled by Gaz's dakka gun. The large creature roared in defiance and willed itself forwards despite the sustaining fire brought against it. Unfortunately, its mighty efforts became in vane as mortality finally set upon it. Fear educing howls subsided to agonizing moans and the Brute fell forward, collapsing into a heap of meat, its last breath an escaping gurgle from its loose and crossed maw.

Cyne lowered his rifle, finally gifted the chance to breath normally now that the danger had passed. Surveying his new grotesque surroundings, it was hard to believe that where they stood was the bridge. Beneath them was a lake of wretched green and ichor and the husks of the fallen Hive abominations seemingly making up the new terrain. The remaining acid violently secreted by the torn Sploders reshaped the artificial walls and other sapient-made surfaces into toxic, rounded, and organic scenery. What was originally a commander center that governed the entire ship had quickly become a twisted and unnatural set of carnage.

He turned to Pathfinder and found the drone still connected to the Captain's personal terminal, likely harvesting any data it could capture at the Captain's authority level, the highest level of secure data that could be breached. Given the situation they stumbled in, the actual highest level of information was trapped in the depths of the R&D deck and that place was no longer their problem. With seemingly everything they came for claimed, Cyne glanced at Pathfinder and then to Gerad whom he had spied accessed one of the other consoles.

"If everyone is not dead and doesn't need carrying, I suggest we prepare to depart and ensure the house doesn't go down until after we close the front door," Cyne announced but didn't specifically address anyone in particular, "since the good Captain isn't here to make things easy for us, we'll have to improvise a proper scuttling."

Typically, setting the Balrog to self-destruct would've been far more promising and far less of a hassle than rigging the munitions to go off. But due to intelligent ship design and systematic security procedures, simply programming the ship to explode was an option that was not on the table, not without the Captain's authentication card and approval code. Such measures were established to ensure that no one other than a captain could make the fateful decision to destroy such a vital and mobile asset.

Cyne soon continued but not before eying Gerad and Pathfinder once more, "Munitions will likely have built-in safeguards surrounding the deck to prevent internal detonations from crippling the Balrog outright. We'll first need those suppression systems and structural bulkheads disengaged. For maximum effect, any maintenance shafts and ventilation routes should be exposed to our fireworks show; we need to make sure any explosive cascades that occur can reach the ship's sub-stations, so it can domino' everywhere else. We have master-control over the ship from here so let’s get this heap rigged and move out."

For awhile, he figured that while they were here, they could also manipulate the bulkheads that had auto-engaged to vent any unwelcomed obstacles out into space and perhaps even deploy more blast shields to change the available and traversable layout of the ship. The advantage could work well against the Hive but not for long against the invading mercenaries and scavengers. Once their opposition found that the Balrog's systems were being used against them, and if they were thinking on the same tactical sense that Cyne was meditating on, one of the cruisers could conduct a strike against the bridge. This not only would put them in jeopardy, but this also risked having more bulkheads engage in their path if the Balrog sustained further external damage; it was a miracle the entire vessel was still marginally intact. With the situation as it was, it was better to keep the mercs' attention glued to the Hive rather than the intruders that came before them.

Once they were done, they promptly left the bridge and made their way to the lower deck. With the isolated war between the Hive and the still-arriving mercs, many of the surrounding corridors were essentially left untouched. Every few minutes, they would run into several small and isolated packs of Swarmers scouting the untouched sections of the ship. These groups quickly dispatched, due in part to the narrow hallways that bottlenecked their attempted charges, only to be ripped to bloody shreds by concentrated fire. their quick journey eventually brought them to one of the Balrog's three cafeterias that were conveniently adjacent to one another.

As with the rooms they've seen previously before restoring power, the dining facility they arrived to was in equally bad shape. Many of the tables and seats, broken or untouched, lay overturned and scattered everywhere. Trays, utensils, and a variety of other tools and debris littered the place, nearly burying the evidence of structural battle damage and smears of red that imprinted into the floor. Many of the fabrication counters and vending machines were surprisingly in good condition still and were probably able to vend edible meals and snacks if anyone were to query for them. Of course, with their run-ins still fresh in his mind, Cyne certainly didn't have the appetite. That however didn't stop him from presenting a mock offer to his comrades.

"Anyone else feelin' hungry?"

Whatever their responses where, they were soon interrupted as a large group of mercenaries, platoon sized, quickly stormed the cafeteria. Like Cyne's squad, they too surveyed the place but it didn't take long until both side found themselves staring awkwardly at one another, "Shit," Cyne moaned as he anticipated the next phrase that was about to blurt out of the platoon leader's mouth.

"There they are! Blast them!"

Called it. Almost immediately, solid projectiles and energy bolts flew into the air, Cyne dove for one of the tipped-over table and claimed it as makeshift cover. The table was probably not even sturdy enough to absorb the incoming fire, but it nevertheless provided an extra layer in front of his wellbeing. Now that they were under fire, Cyne didn't bother to order Gerad or Gaz, especially Gaz, to return fire. It was now fight or die time against twenty-seven angry mercs before them.

From behind cover Macklyn gave his twin guns a twirl before he stood and opened fire into the crowd of swarmers. This was too small a room for this many targets and his fancy tricks weren't going to help much in this situation. He placed simple shots where necessary and missed very few shots.

The Raiders were effective at dispatching the Swarmers and avoiding the Slashers reach, for the most part. Macklyn assumed this was out of motivation inspired from their fallen comrades, but as the number of swarmers got smaller and smaller the presence of the Slasher became all the more evident. With the room to move the Slasher raged through the room with fury and more raiders fell. Silas and Macklyn fought back to back removing the remaining Swarmers until all that remained of their opponents were Myra, a few of her crew and the terrifying presence of the Slasher.

It raveged through the room but as the cafeteria wasn't very large it was clear that the Slasher was too large to comfortably navigate the area. Macklyn and the others riddled the creature with holes while avoiding its reach as best they could. At one point a small slip on a dinner tray caused Macklyn to fall to his back and just before the Slashers arm slammed down onto him Macklyn managed to roll away, narrowly dodging the claw. It was then when he had noticed the gas line supplying a furnace along the wall. He quickly grabbed hold of it, cut off the supply lever, ripped the extended connection from the furnace, aimed at the Slasher as it rapidly approached Silas, opened the supply lever and ignited the gas line with the hammer spark of his gun.

BOOM

A massive plume of fire gusted out onto the Slasher causing it to writhe in agony. Macklyn quickly shut the supply lever before the oxygen rich artificial atmosphere caused a bigger problem than the Slasher itself.

Weakend by its encompassing burns, everyone in the room reloaded and unloaded into the beast until it slowed to a stop and collapsed. Everyone in the room took a deep burnt flesh smelling breath of relief. In the moments after, there was a quiet in the room and everyone took a moment to recollect themselves.
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The silence was broken by a small click as Macklyn pressed the barrel of Ebony against the back of Silas's head.
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Standing before Silas, Myra presented a confident grin and raised her gun towards him. "Almost all of my away crew fallen, and it was worth it to finally catch you with your pants down"

"Poor big boss man, all them years and a 'rookie' got the jump on ya?" Macklyn said in a condescending tone. "It aint personal, Myra's just got a lot more money then you and I've got coffers to fill back home. Shame I gotta kill ya though Cap'n. I spose on some level I started to like ya. Even when ya thought I blew up that asteroid on accident ya gave me a pep talk.

See, Myra knew you'd be first to find this derelict. What did you call it Myra? A frustrating amount of luck? This ship was a flame and you're the moth. so I joined your crew to help her find you, for a substantial fee of course. Soon as that famous luck of yours came to, I'd send the signal"

"A massive exploding asteroid is hard to miss" Myra added.

"It's unfortunate you lack the funding for my loyalty, I don't imagine I'll enjoy spilling your blood on this garbage heap of a ship. See ya in the next life Cap'n" Macklyn began to squeeze his trigger...

With the Brute finally dead, he took a quick survey of the area as Cyne gave voice to his idea. Chem’ ‘splosives!? He scoffed to himself. Touch’n… The Militia Fleets had stopped using anything that primitive about the same time they made contact with the greater galaxy. No need t’ fog matters by talk’n tho…c’n wait ‘til we get there.
--
Once the trio set out, they made good time through the ship, cutting down Hive packs quickly before they could get bogged down in combat. Pushing into a mostly intact ship’s mess, Gerad let out an amused chuff at Cyne comment. ”Naa, ‘uman food tastes like t’ bottom end o’ a tharnx.” He replied, referring to a common herd animal, and source of protein, on Eshan. Tha’ said… He added, eyeing one of the food machines; he got no further in his thought however as a band of mercs busted in, their leader ordering his men to open fire.

Threat analysis programs in Gerad’s armour triggered as soon as the new hostiles had come into sight, and he was unimpressed, but not surprised. None of the new mercs had anything heavier than non-garundin small arms, which meant they only posed a threat to Gerad if they’d all concentrated their fire on him…and he did nothing to fight back; instead, he responded to the platoon leader’s order by snapping a single shot right through the leader’s helmet, the VLA flashing a 10 cm hole through his head before he’d even realized Gerad had raised his weapon.

Ignoring the other mercs fire as it spent itself, mostly, harmlessly across his armour, he made his way to the closest fabricator. Using his armature mounted cutter, he sliced open the machine and began digging into the inner workings with his secondary arms, extracting a series of small components, while at the same time a swarm of bots from his nano-factory swarmed down the same arms as began stripped what he wasn’t taking for needed base elements.

He was nearly finished when his threat alarm sounded as his armour registered a genuine challenge to his safety, another set of Militia armour. The merc platoon’s garundin must have been at the back, probably covering them against Hive attacks from the rear as they moved and as such was a bit of a late arrival; which, unfortunately for them, meant Gerad got them on the bounce.

Gerad’s PRP came online, swivelling on its mount towards the new threat, and firing, before the other garundin realized he was there. The plasma bolt covered the intervening distance faster than thought could process, and it struck its intended target square in the chest. The blast killed three other mercs outright as well as throwing the survivors into even more chaos.

Silas watched as the battle progressed seeing how the Raiders were handling the Swarm so he took the opportunity to dwindle their numbers. By the time things were getting close to settle down. When it came to the point when Macklyn opened the gas line to burn out the Slasher the Raiders numbers had been dropped to 3. And even then Silas took the moment of the fireball to his advantage letting loose a few golf ball sized metal balls onto the floor. Then after the Slasher's defeat it came Macklyn's gun pressed against Silas' head. Silas didn't move as Macklyn gave his little speech and when it was over Silas gave a grin. "Looks like I win the bet!" Sven's voice chimed in as Silas' metal spheres started to light up. One let out a blinding flash illuminating the entire room and blinding the members of the Reapers while the rest exploded into balls of Shrapnel. During the flash Silas made his move in one swift motion Silas moved out of the gun's path and brought himself up behind Macklyn twisting his arm so that his own gun was placed to the side of his head.

As the flash subsided and vision returned Myra was the only standing member of the Raiders although she was holding her side as she took a hit from the blast, and then there was Silas and Macklyn. Macklyn now being held at gunpoint and being Silas' captive. Myra took a moment to look at the situation "Damn you, You might win this round but I will pay you back!" She said while turning and retreating. Silas let the girl go, partly due to their history and partly due to him not wanting to shoot someone retreating in the back. Now just Silas and Macklyn stood in the cafeteria. "See that? Didn't think they would ditch you did ya?" Silas asked, "Pirates don't care about outsides. Hell if you had succeeded you probably would of only caught a bullet to the head yourself." he continued tightening his own grip as Macklyn tried to escape. "But I guess that doesn't change things now. I don't put up with betrayal from my own men so your still going to catch a bullet here. It's a shame though had you chosen to actually be part of this crew you would of survived this. But luckily I don't shoot people from behind so you do have a bit of a chance" Silas said as he let go of Macklyn's and kicked the man to the floor. Macklyn quickly scrambled raising his gun to shoot but as he locked eyes with Silas it was to late as a hot bolt of plasma found its mark right between his eyes. Macklyn hit the floor and Silas raised his pistol. "Its a shame I kinda liked the kid." Sven chimed in again, "Yeah, he would of had some real potential if he had chosen the right side." Silas responded.

After the ordeal in the Cafeteria Silas took a moment to recuperate before continuing on his way. With one group of the Raiders decimated and plenty of hive slaughtered Silas didn't have much trouble with making his way to the armory even arriving first. It took him a bit to bypass the doors locks but by the time the second team arrived Silas had opened the door and even went and collected some extra ammo and explosives. When asked by the others what happened Silas only answered that a betrayal had been dealt with. And after that motioned inside. "Looks like the Hive wasn't the only secret on the ship. There seems to be some Experimental weaponry in here. As promised Gaz you can have your pick of the lot if you wish. After that everyone else feel free to pick up whatever you can. Don't want it to go to waste with the ship do we?" He said letting his team rearm and restock their supplies. It was then that Sven decided to chime in again. "Um Boss there is something weird going on in the hanger. Aside from the fact that the Hive came and cleared out the Reapers it seems that some of their slashers are carrying eggs onto one of the transports." Sven reported. "They haven't noticed me yet, and I'm not going to take any action to change that fact. But I'll keep you posted if they do anything else weird." Silas looked up after Sven's report. "That does not sound good at all. So now that were all here any ideas on how we're going to blow this thing to hell? Gerad I'm sure you have been cooking up something for a while now lets hear it." he asked looking for a quicker way off of the ship and to finish the mission.

With the brute down and the rest of the hive forces shot, cut and burnt to cinders, Gaz ran to the corpse of the hulking monster. Opening his claw all the way he placed it around the creatures neck. With a satisfying crunch and pop the beasts head separated from it's body, but to Gaz's enjoyment. "That's goin' on ma' shelf!" He turned and held it up joyfully for his two comrades to see before fastening it to his armour.

As the 'umie talked absolute gobbledygook Gaz imagined the perfect placement for his latest trophy. He felt a bit of a cheat given that it was a team effort to bring it down but that didn't mean that it wasn't worth placement with his other collectibles. It just wouldn't have a place on his special shelf, a place reserved for the most difficult of foes Gaz had to go up against. At present he had three trophies alone on it. A giant tooth from a death mawler, a battleship sized worm inhabiting the dunes of a distant planet; the head of a Bolthorion Battle Droid, an now outlawed AI based robot with more guns than Gaz and his crew combined. Finally in the centre of the shelf rested the middle finger of his former clan leader. After years of subservience Gaz had enough and challenged the leader to a fight. The leader proceeded to swear at Gaz in the human style of showing the middle finger, in the process Gaz gutted him and chopped off his finger for good measure.

When he finished reminiscing Gaz found himself with the others in the mess hall. As Cyne opened his mouth to speak Gaz already began sprinting to a nearby vending machine. He patted at his armour as if they had pockets, realising he had no change to operate the machine. His face became one of pure sadness, a lone tear slowly falling down his cheek. Then looking at the floor he spotted a severed human hand. He reached down to pick it up, the blood around it's wrist now dry. For a moment he stared at it before launching it through the glass of the machine. Sadness had made way for joy as he began to tear through the variety of snacks on offer. With a mouthful of food he turned to speak to Cyne and Gerad, "W.o w..ts s.me?" The inaudible sound was soon drowned out by gunfire as mercenaries burst into the room. An energy bolt whizzed passed Gaz closer than he would have liked. He raised the bar of chocolate in his hand to his mouth but as it came into view he could see that there was nothing left but the melted remains of his treat. "That's it! Now i'm mad you gitz!" With minimal effort Gaz lifted the vending machine above his head and launched it across the room, crushing two mercenaries beneath it's weight. "Nobody takes my snacks!"

In a fit of rage Gaz closed the distance to the mercs drawing his chain choppa in the process. Cyne and Gerad had already began opening fire on the intruders when Gaz split his first one from head to toe. His green blood coated armour started to receive a fresh coat of crimson blood as he began to carve his way through the enemies. Limbs and gore sprayed wildly in all directions and Gaz let out a continous roar of pure rage. Amongst the roar was the occassional shouting of "SNACKS!". By time the trio had dealt with all that stood before them, Gaz found himself knee deep in body parts and caked in another layer of blood.

Bullets and energy projectiles filled the air above Cyne's head. Within seconds, the table he claimed as cover was shot to splintering, burning shreds. Much of it hardly remained but Cyne, flatly embracing the floor, managed to avoid the majority of the deathly hail with only a handful descending shots grazing his armor and a small few direct hits being absorbed by the inner kevlar-like material of his armor. Suffice to say, he was lucky he wasn't the table.

Seconds into the firefight, a sizable portion of the mercenary platoon's attention shifted to the raging and charging mass that was Gaz after witnessing one of their own literally cut down lengthwise. The remaining grunts kept their focus on Gerad and Cyne. Cyne slowly and carefully crawled away from his degrading position, minding his own head as gunfire still whizzed by. It wasn't long until the mercs gunning for him realized that their target was no longer present, having utterly obliterated the cafeteria furnishing and no bloodied heap to be found. After the incoming gunfire subsided, Cyne, having taken up new residence behind a toppled structural beam, quickly rose from hiding and returned fire. His first shot neatly exited the head of a machinegun-wielding merc; the primary culprit responsible for suppressing Cyne before, leaving a spray of red behind its vapor trail. He took pleasure in the kill and with his second discharge, the round tore off the left arm of an unfortunate scavenger. The merc reeled back and crumbled to the shell-casing ridden floor, rolling and screaming in pain. But with so much exploding gunfire, he was silenced and but a face of churning agony.

Cyne instinctively ducked as returning fire came his way. Predicting his new position would soon be compromised and being annoyed to no end of the constant threat alerts berating him across his HUD, he deployed Pathfinder once more. This time however, the drone was shifting into a combat stance. Presenting Pathfinder with an array of hand signals, the drone dipped its frame into a nod and flew off, diving and weaving through the local debris. On his part, he tapped a switch built into his gauntlet and soon a low winding noise resonated from the center of his suit.

Within seconds, a Cyne materialized into view, breaking cover and running horizontally in the mercenaries' sights. The mercs were quick to retrain their fire at Cyne and not long after that, their gunfire homed in and struck him, causing him to abruptly lose momentum and collapse. And then his form completely vanished into thin air. The engaging mercs ceased fire and stared at the unusual scene, struggling to comprehend what had just happened and where their supposedly defeated foe had disappeared to. It was then one of the mercenaries had pieced together the grim puzzle and called out to his squad mates in panic.

"A-a hologram!" he cried, "it was just a-"

The frightened man failed to finish his sentence. It didn't help that a glowing blade of a heat-knife was sticking out the front of his neck. Fumes of cooked flesh seeped out of the puncture wound as the heat-knife cauterized the merc's thoat, burning and fusing his esophagus and wind pipe. The blade quickly retracted back the way it came and the buckling gunman reactively clutched the hole in his neck, painfully wheezing and gasping. His comrades spun around and found him squirming on the ground, further adding to their confusion. Once they had figured it out themselves, it was too late.

Another merc lost his balance as two deep cuts swiftly manifested into his unarmored thighs with emptying blood spraying across the floor in a horizontal manner. Before he could even utter a word, a large incision appeared in his chest as some invisible force effortlessly slammed him backwards into the hard ground. He quickly died as the driving momentum pierced his heart.

The three remaining mercenaries of their squad jumped back in dread, their weapons trained on an empty space with no visible opponent to shoot back at in spite. Regardless of that hopeless fact, they let loose a desperate barrage with pleading aspirations of scoring a hit on their invisible attacker. However, none of their shots struck true. They never had the moment to retreat or call for help when the empty scene flashed loudly before them. Two of them naturally flinched and the third member fell backwards with a bleeding hole in his head. Another gunshot discharged, this time briefly revealing the illuminated form of Cyne just before he claimed another victim. The last merc, finally catching a glimpse of his assailant took aim and fired. Cyne's ghostly after-image vanished once more and again, the merc claimed no hits.

The frightening moment gripped the mercenary's nerves as his startled eyes darted all over the room, oblivious to the carnage behind him as he tried to find his target. He then lost it and insisted in firing his weapon wildly in all directions in distress. His assault rifle eventually fell silent as its magazine became empty. The merc initially failed to identify this fact and when he did, his wobbly and trembling hands went for another magazine confined to his waist pouch. In that very instant, everything faded to black for the merc after a loud bang resonated briefly in his ears.

The merc fell dead and Cyne finally reappeared back into reality, holding a standing posture with his right arm extended and a smoking handgun his hand, pointed right where the merc's head was. Cyne rested his arm and holstered his sidearm just as Pathfinder zipped by and re-docked with his suit. He looked over the new mess they had created and grimly observed Gaz massacring the remaining mercenaries. One such merc, wearing the armor and uniform configuration of a field communications officer, seemingly lost all will to fight and backed away from the Fungai as it tore into his comrades. Seeing no other direction to go, he made a frantic dash back to the entryway where his unit had originated from. Cyne, twirling his knife by the circular ring at the butt-end of its handle, quickly gripped the lower handle and threw the knife into a wide vertical spinning arc toward the escaping merc. The blade found it's mark and imbedded itself into the back of the man's neck, dropping him to floor, dead as the others.

As Cyne walked over to the dead mercenary, the shifted his view to Gaz and Gerad. Unsurprisingly, Gaz had leaped into the fray, only to walk out with his lumbering form covered in blood. The still wet body fluids from the different species he'd slain today didn't mix well and turned him into a grotesque color pallet. Gerad on the other hand, remained mostly untouched. Cyne recalled the Garudin's victims wither bore large burned-out holes in their bodies or where overall charred and shrapnel ridden.

He eventually pulled the knife from the corpse from the man he killed, wiping the remaining blood off the merc's uniform. Before he could turn back to his team mates, Cyne took notice of a synthesized sound resonating from the merc's headset. Wrestling the headset off from the merc's limp form, he pressed one of the speakers to his exposed ear and listened in.

"Charlie Four to Command," a voice barked from the headset, "munitions deck secured but we're encountering stiff Hive resistance. Requesting intercept squad at the following..."

Cyne didn't need to hear anymore from the open transmission. Their original plan to capture and rig the munitions depot had just went up in smoke now that the place was now infested with not only mercs but Hive as well. Fantastic, he sarcastically thought.

Walking back to his squad, Cyne chimed into comms, "Change of plans," he reported, "just got word that the munitions deck has just become a hot zone of enemy activity. Silas, we're regrouping with you now. We'll meet you at the armory shortly."

He then faced Gerad and Gaz, "Saddle up...and I suppose take any snacks with you..."

Making their way to the armory was surprisingly uneventful. While echoes of conflict resonated around them, not a Hive abomination or a lone mercenary scout crossed their path. It was almost like walking past a sealed off stadium with a syntho-metal band blaring their music from within, only to be drowned out by many layers of concrete and steel. They eventually reached the armory, finding the doors open after its security locks were visibly breached. Walking inside, Cyne found Silas, but only Silas and no one else. Not even Macklyn's IFF was showing up on his HUD.

"Where's Macklyn?" he bluntly asked.

Silas eventually explained what had happened and Cyne went silent. Despite what they just went through, it was the case of a betrayal that caught him off guard the most. The appearance of the Hive however was a guaranteed second. While Silas and Gerad spoke on about their next direction, Cyne found himself a terminal and queried the armaments it held in stock and created a checklist of what they could steal.

@Arthanus

He’d pretty much ignored the rest of the fighting, stopping only for a moment to let off a derisive little snort at Gaz’s antics; like anything fungai did they were too loud, overly messy and wildly inefficient. Ignoring the rest of the brief firefight, he concentrated on gathering the components and raw materials he wanted.

”Works f’r me.” Gerad added as Cyne informed them of the change in goals. ”Ah c’n do what’s needed just ‘bout anywhere.” As he spoke he began thinking of the best way to accomplish the total destruction of the infested cruiser. Eventually he decided to go with a tried-and-true method, a subspace tunneller charge.

During their rather uneventful trip to meet Silas and Macklyn at the ship’s armoury, Gerad spent his time producing a whole host of components from his nano-assembler, fitting those components together, and assembling a device roughly 30 cm square by half a meter long. Arriving with the others at the Armoury, he noticed the lack of Macklyn, but Silas quickly brought them up to speed on what’d happened.

”Damn stupe move,” Gerad muttered. ”Though would’a bet cred tha’ the ‘shroomi woulda been th’ firs’ one ta’ try an’ flip.” He shrugged, there was little use in worrying about things like that at this moment.

”Oi Boss,” He called out heading towards Silas. ”Gots a plan on ‘ow we skrag this tub.” He patted the device in his secondary arms and bared his teeth in a rough mockery of a human smile. ”You an’ Cyne keep me clear, I rig dis an’ a few bit an’ bobs, an’ den we make like a young blood inna sliverback lodge.” Not waiting for Silas’ answer Gerad set to work, placing his device on a nearby workbench before diving into another Armoury terminal.

His more agile secondary hands flew across the keyboard, calling what was left of the ships computers to bring him what he needed; the drive sections of two T-875n ’Sledgehammer’ ship-to-ship missiles, the seeker head of an AIM-4010 ‘Tackhammer’ point defence missile, several large capacitors and a lot of power cable. With the help of reprogramed remotes from the ship, Gerad tore both missile drives a part and reassembled them, incorporating his device as he did, in such a way that anyone no matter how limited their knowledge was, would say was a bad idea; to that he wired in the seeker head and the capacitors. Then he used his torch to hack a hole in the decking, to expose part of the Balrog’s primary power run.

***CRACK***

There was a brilliant arc of electricity as he connected the power cable to what was left of the ship power, and then the contraption Gerad had been working on began to hum ominously. The first, smaller, device that he’d built earlier began to flash a series of lights and a small screen began displaying a readout in Tekthlan, the common Garundin ‘trade’ language. Gerad looked over the display with a grunt of satisfaction before turning to Silas once more.

”Right, dats all set. Let’s be on t’ bounce th’n. ‘S gotta QE det’nator so we don’ got timer t’ out run.” He rumbled with amusement as he patted the deliberately unstable collection of gear. ”Gonna make right pop wennit goes.”

With the short, and rather violent, battle now over, Gaz set about stuffing whatever snacks he could into the gaps in his armour. The plan that Cyne gave meant they wouldn't be hanging around much longer. "All da snacks for Gaz!" He avoided offering any to his colleagues, simply miming an offer with his mouth. Cyne and Gerad kept their distance from Gaz as they set off to regroup in the armoury as the blood on his armour had started to congeal and mix, giving off a horrific smell that the Fungai simply shrugged his shoulders at.

Within the armoury Gaz looked at all the technology on show with plenty of fancy looking guns much more shiney than anything Gaz had to hand. He pushed his way forward totally oblivious to the lack of Macklyn's presence amongst the group. He gave a simple nod to Silas as he made his way to the armoury lockers. With a rather Gaz'esque approach he began to tear doors off their hinges to expose an even wider array of weapons. Behind him he could hear Gerad set to work on his own project and so Gaz decided to get a new weapon for himself.

Taking several different weapons he placed them onto a nearby table. Metal crunched and snapped with bits, screws and bolts flying around in every direction. With the nearby crack as electricity arc's on Gerad's creation, Gaz raised his own invention high above his head in celebration. "I call dis my mega zzap gun!" The bright glow from the main body of the glow illuminated Gaz and his bloodstained armour. "Who likes it?!" He spoke with his happy, toothy grin, proud of what he had on show. As he lowered the weapon he placed it onto his shoulder, it's bulk meaning that it needed to be rested there for best effect. Unfortunately the clumsy Fungai accidently hit the trigger as he placed it onto his shoulder. There was a loud sound of a power charge before a bright beam of searing energy erupted from the weapons barrel. Gaz waved it wildly around the room. "Oh shit! Dis ain't good boyz!" For several more moments the beam cut into the walls and floor of the room before stopping. Gaz looked at the floor while rubbing at the back of his head. "Sorry boyz...I forgot to take my finger off da trigger." The beam had cut through several walls and floors as it's high energy made quick work of the metal.

Raising his head he turned to Gerad, "It's as good as yours dis!" He gestured to his new weapon by tilting his head towards it. While his intentions were pure the chances were that his four legged companion would be nothing short of pissed at how Gaz and his magic duct tape had managed to create such a powerful energy based weapon.

Cyne minded his attention to the terminal for several solid uninterrupted minutes. Despite the chaos the spread throughout the ship, the realm of ammunition and firepower ironically became the most peaceful. Everyone as about their individual businesses. Gerad cannibalized much of the heaver munitions that, luckily for them, were transferred to the armory due to a over-stockpiling in the munition's deck based on one of the assess manifests that caught Cyne's curious eye. The device that the Garundin was fabricating was their answer in resolving the Balrog's Hive infestation problem and a secure way to ensure no one acquired whatever sinister secrets the SDD had produced. Shame it was all going to waste but anything to do with the Hive would quickly be labeled as universally bad and accepted by most sane parties to be terminated.

Gaz on the other hand, aside from being Gaz, was retrofitting some kind of new science-defying weapon only a Fungai could conceive and was being loud and albeit clumsy about it to. With all the racket he was making, it amazed Cyne that nobody outside the armory had taken notice. He could understand the raiding mercenaries not taking notice due to their deployments being directed elsewhere across the ship, but the Hive? Such bothersome sounds resonating though the ship's inner hull and crevices would be picket up relatively easily and eventually traced back to them. The Hive creatures were not known for being such slouches regarding loud disturbances and thus their lack of appearance was notably unusual.

Cyne meanwhile had summoned up a trio of hauler droids, small yet wide machines whose purpose was to transport large loads of miscellaneous cargo from one destination to another, hence their name. The droids powered to life and departed their charging stations built into the armory's walls before lining up information before Cyne. After a few more finger strokes upon the terminal, the droids vectored off towards several large towering storage units. Each unit was slightly larger than Gaz but held far more mass, so much mass that a single large crate could arm a sizable company of soldiers. One after the other, each droid and adjusted it's physical frame to accommodate the weight of each storage unit before heaving it atop their sturdy platforms.

Just before the droids were finished, Gaz had, unsurprisingly, lost control over his new weapon. The beam produced by Gaz's makeshift gun ran amok wherever Gaz had unintentionally pointed to. Cyne braced himself against the terminal as the beam whizzed by him, several feet apart while Silas ducked out of the way. The Fungai-induced chaos eventually ended once Gaz regained control over the weapon. He apologized with genuine honesty over the mishap but Cyne couldn't help but survey the damage the beam had caused. While the room was not in flames, the beam had never the less had burned and sliced its way through untold millimeters of structural plating and even manage to penetrate several nearby decks in the process. Since no one was being sucked into either of the glowing crevices, it was safe to assume the beam didn't compromise the external hull.

Everyone glared at Gaz with annoyed and unamused looks. Cyne was about to call out the Fungai for the accident but the sound of screeching metal cut him off. A large gutted ventilation and maintenance pip overhead, loosened by the now-nonexistent struts that were destroyed by the energy beam, gave way and fell to the floor with a loud crash of grinding metal followed by the unusual wet sound of something being squished. No one was caught underneath the pipe but as everyone circled around it just as the dust cleared, it became apparent that the Hive did hear them. Within the destroyed pipe were the destroyed carcasses of Swarmers that were either torn in half by the beam or crushed by the fall.

"Huh," Cyne simply sounded off before turning to Gaz, "good job."

Silas pinched the bridge of his nose with closed eyes and sighed, "While, that, had just saved us some time, it's clear the Hive are on to us. We should move as soon as possible."

On cue, Gerad had reported that his device was now ready to go. Cyne then reported in that the ship droids have secured their cache of weapons and were ready to ferry them back to the Crimson Fang.

"Good," Silas replied with a nod, "we leave now. Anything new on your end, Sven?"

"Nadda. But there are sure are a lot more Hive down here than before. I would really like to get off his heap as soon as possible, boss." chimed Sven.

"Hang tight, we're on are way."

"It's the only thing I can do, boss. But I appreciate it."

Once everyone was gathered their gear, they were off again, now as an organized unit. Getting back to the Crimson Fang proved to be a developing irritant. Aside from the occasion few Swarmers they ran into a quickly dispatched, much of the of the Balrog they were now traversing through has sustained much of the external damage and through the ship's safety protocols, had rearranged their path thanks in part due to the bulkheads sealing up those exposed deck. However, their trip would soon be over as they eventually arrived at the cargo bay connected to the hanger where the 'Fang and Sven were located in.

"I'm picking you guys up now," Sven reported in, "but there is a horde of those monster between you an me. I'd gun them down myself but with...five of those Brutes in here circling the 'Fang...well you can probably figure that -oh hell, I think one of them is on top the ship now."

Silas growled as he moved forward, "We're on our way! Gaz, take point. We're going to have to force our way though. Gerad and Cyne, you're with me; we'll lay down as much covering fire as we can. Sven, we're going to try to get those bastard's attention. Once you think you're clear, I need you to open up with the 'Fang's plasma turrets and mow down anything that doesn't look remotely like us."

"Copy that, boss." Sven complied.

Just as the group moved into position, the sensor-driven inner hanger door opened up, revealing a very unpleasant scene before them.

"Um, Silas?" Cyne voiced in evidently concerned with what they were looking at, "that's not just a horde of Hive. That's all the Hive."

While Cyne's assessment wasn't entirely accurate, he wasn't wrong either. Before them was a mountain-full of creatures roaming throughout the hanger. Swarmers mindless gnawed at the structural framework of the hanger while several Sploders crawled around aimlessly. The larger Slashers and Brutes however displayed a more refined and orderly behavior. While scattered around, the many Slashers present were observing and standing watch for their lesser brethren while a group of Slashers and Brutes patrolled around the anchored transports; and the Crimson Fang as well. It didn't take long for the shooting to start up again as a nearby Swarmer reared it's ugly head toward the group and cried out the same spine-tingling scream heard previously. The scream had caught the attention of all the Hive in the hanger, causing each one to peer their glowing murderous eyes in their direction.

"Noted. Light 'em up, boys." Silas simply ordered as he pulled his plasma pistol from his holster and fired.

The first wave of hive that set upon them were several groups of savage and hungry Swarmers. They recklessly stormed the entry without a thought or care of waiting for the Slashers to back them up; all they wanted was something meaty and bloody in their mouths. Behind the wave were several Sloders screeching and ticking across the hard floor. As their movements were before, they veered wildly into different directions but their vector towards their group remained true. Finally, a group of four Slashes came up the rear, doing their best to keep up with the lesser creatures but were sure to arrive late.

@CaptainSully

After Gaz’s ‘weapon malfunction’, Gerad just glared at the big fungai; when Gaz proudly ask his opinion, Gerad snorted. ”Da’ bit a scrap? Anybod old’r den a younglin’ would be shamed to found makn’ such a slag heap.”

Any further comments from Gerad, however, were cut short by the sound of screeching metal, and a rather wet and meaty ‘thud’. As the bit of Swarmer oozed out of the piping, he initially drew his weapon, but put it away when no living Hive creatures showed themselves. With everyone set and Sven eager to go, they set off toward the hanger, though as they did Gerad made on final modification to the detonator, tying it into his armour’s medical systems to create a ‘Dead Man Switch’; even if the Hive killed him, he’d drag them screaming into the Void with him.

As they neared, Sailas conferred with Sven about pick up, and unfortunately the Hive seemed to have taken notice of their ride out; opening the hanger access however confirmed it was much worse. Swapping his VLA to his off-hand, he drew his hammer and primed his PRP. ”Well dis be a fine mess,” He quipped, turning a bit to grin up at Silas. ”Be thinkin’ Boss, may be want’n a raise affer dis…” The horde noticed them at the same time and began to surge forwards, and Gerad moved to meet them.

Setting the VLA to ‘Beam’, he burned a line straight to the crowd of Sploders, rupturing one and causing the others to burst, while at the same time lacing the rest with plasma fire. His first volleys were for the Slashers and or Brutes he could see, and when those got lost in the crown, he just drove superheated death into any large knots of hostiles, his only aiming consideration was to not drop and shots too close to the Crimson Fang. While the PRR ran on semi-autonomous mode, he swept the VLA back and forth in an arc, cutting down as many Swarmers as he could be for they reached him; those that did make it, found his hammer waiting.

With the sudden onset of the monstrous horde, albeit due to his overexcitement, Gaz laughed. "Time to giv' dis' a propa go!" He took aim at the swarm that poured forth and pulled on the trigger once more. The searing beam of energy shot across the room and began to cut the beasts to piece. Claws, teeth, limbs and torso's were cut, nothing withstanding the power of the ramshackle weapon. As he turned to watch Gerad doing the same he laughed before shouting across to him. "Dis' slag 'eaps keeping up wiv your shiny bit of kit!" Several more creatures of all sizes found death at the hands of the cutting beam of Gaz's weapon. With the numbers thinned and a lone brute patrolling the entrance to their escape, Gaz stowed his weapon and took his large chain choppa in hand. Shouting over to Gerad once more he struggled to contain his joy at the rather dire situation.

"Oi! Six legs! What's better than one big 'ead? Two big 'eads!" He let out a deafeningly loud laugh before charging wildly forward. As he did so, several smaller creatures tried to pounce on him. Their frail bodies were no match for the whirring teeth of his weapon as it cut through them, leaving a trail of severed torsos in his wake. Soon enough he had a clear run at the brute which soon enough spotted the fungai charging forward towards it. It arched it's body towards Gaz, turning it's head as it let out a roar that caused the very ground to shake. Gaz returned the favour with a warcry of his own as the brute began to bound forward towards him.

With an almost impossible feat of agility Gaz leapt into the air in an sequence that was like something out of a twenty first century action film. Unfortunately the deceptively quick creature turned it's body and clattered Gaz with a thunderous shot from it's tail. In mid air Gaz felt the wind driven from him as he was flung several metres to the brutes side. Before he had even hit the floor the creature had already started to chase him. Slow to get up and body wracked with pain, Gaz's face still had the toothiest of smiles on it. He turned and looked at the brute as each heavy step shook the floor beneath Gaz's feet.

"Come on 'en you git! 'Av it!" The brute ducked it's shoulder like a battering ram, trying to use it's fully weight to crush the fungai. Unfortunately for it, Gaz sidestepped and brought his weapon down on it's tail. The long black mass of muscle fell to the floor and wriggled for a moment before all sign of life disappeared. The brute did little beyond grunt, either ignoring or unable to feel the pain of the attack. When it turned to Gaz once more it somehow managed to look angry, even with it's very alien face.

Once again the brute lunged forward this time trying to use it's limbs to grab Gaz. Stepping inside of it's reach Gaz thrust forward his chain choppa and sparks began to fly as it cut into the beasts carapace. Soon enough the sparks gave way to blood and soon it started raining blood. Gaz began to increase the rev's of his weapon, the teeth turning faster and faster. The brute began to let out a horrifying howl of pain as it felt it's inners get chewed up and spat out of the gaping cavity in it's chest.

With it's life approaching it's end, the brute took hold of Gaz who was too focussed on trying to dig through the creatures innards. Lowering it's head it moved to bite at Gaz's face. "Fuck dat!" Rearing his head back Gaz then threw his head forward with a sickening crunch, catching the brute square in the mouth. As he pulled his head away the brute's mouth was left almost toothless those that had once been in his mouth fell shattered to the floor or embedded in Gaz's head. The shock of the headbutt had loosened the brutes grip and with one last forceful drive, the chain choppa emerged from the back of the creature. It let out a death cry before slumping over onto Gaz. Even with his remarkable strength, the almost persistant fighting and weight of the brute meant Gaz soon found himself flat on his back with the brutes weight firmly atop him. "Oh great..." His complaint was not not due to his new predicament however. "Dis trophy's no good now wiv no teef!"

With the horde of hive creatures upon them, Cyne immediately opened fired on Silas' order. His rifle barked loudly five times; each instance lead to the demise of every few Swarmers each round penetrated, one creature right after the other. He squeezed the trigger several more times and felled another group of Swarmers but despite his efforts, the mad beasts in surplus numbers kept charging without any care of their fallen kin.

On the bright side however, Gerad and Gaz's combined beam and energy fire eventually created a steady defensive line, supported by Silas and Cyne of course, that prevented anything from reaching them. One such energy projection from Gerad caused a group of Sploders to keep true to their namesake and evaporated into a mess of vile green. Several Swarmers and a pair of Slashers that were caught int the organic blast collapsed to the floor, flailing helplessly as they died slowly to the acid melting them. Within a minute's time, a row of Swarmer bodies had managed to pile on top of one another with more livelier and unfazed contributors ready to add to its bloody mass. Only a few of the Swarmers managed to climbs over the bodies of their kin but neither of them ever succeeded to reach their prey.

Although briefly, the battle came to an apparent brief standstill as Swarmers continued to rush the group of four while simply being mowed down. However, their logic-defying stubbornness kept their prey from reaching their objects. Unfortunately, this particular horde of Hive had not witnessed the same stubbornness of a Fungai. With an incision having been created in the Swarmer's uncanny formation, Gaz had pushed forward to meet the Hive directly. While Cyne was moments away from interjecting and disavowing Gaz's action for leaving their covering fire, he was quick to notice the Brutes that surrounded the Crimson Fang breaking from their post and thundering across the hanger give the Fungai and those behind him the same courtesy; just as Silas wanted though albeit not in the way he imagined it.

"Keep it up, we're almost through!" Silas chimed in, "Sven get the 'Fang warmed up. Now. We're about to get you clear."

Sven didn't bother to respond verbally; the sound of the Crimson Fang's engines roaring to life was enough as a reply. The Brute that Sven had reported climbing atop of their ship was still there and was unusually complacent in remaining there despite the carnage below it the same carnage is oversaw but gave no indication of intervening. Whatever it's reasons were, assuming it actually could reason with anything, Cyne saw it as a target a fired. Three accelerated shots slammed into the Brute's body, causing the behemoth to reel back and roar in pain. A forth shot came and carved the upper section of its skull clean off. The roar it emitted died down into deathly gurgling before is slumped backwards and fell from the ship, colliding with the floor whose impact was enough to dent a crater into the hard surface material. Once all the surrounding vanguard Hive were vanquished or were distracted, Sven fired up the Crimson Fang's thrusters and eventually got the dropship airborne.

"Here comes the fireworks fellas. Recommend taking shelter, ASAP" Sven called out into the calms, just before the two twin-barreled plasma turrets began tracking for fresh targets. There was only a second delay before the cannon found their marks and opened up.

Cyne and Silas hit the deck the hanger was consumed in strobes of violent light. Before, all Cyne could here was gunfire and howling. Now, there was only deafening thumping of the plasma turrets going off. Creatures of all sizes that came under fire were either incinerated or blown apart into meaty bits. Sven was careful in his piloting of the ship and the targeting of the cannons as he strafed the hanger while trying not to unintentionally hit any of his comrades.

After a minute, the cannons stopped firing and the hanger was finally 'silent'. Cyne got to his feet although slightly disoriented due in part with the plasma cannons going off in such close proximity. The hanger, was evidently worse of than it as before; not counting the innumerable amount of hive corpses that littered the floor. In fact, it was now debatable if there was much of a floor since the 'Fang's cannons has quite literally chewed the place up. Multiple craters of melted and twisted metal framing stuck out from the holes Sven has managed to carve into the hanger's surfaces.

"I don't see any more hostiles showing up on scopes," Sven reported over the comms, "how about you, boss?"

"That's..." Silas struggled to get his bearing but soon found them, "that's a positive. Looks like we're clear. Okay Sven, get the rear hatch open so we jet out of here."

"Music to my ears."

Sven complied and brought the Crimson Fang around before landing once more. As it did when they arrived, the walkway hatched unlocked and unfolded, revealing an ever so appealing ramp to freedom. With their path seemingly unhindered Cyne gave a loud whistle that echoed down to the entrance of the hanger. The three hauler droids from before, having taken a safe position away from the fighting, quickly came into view and made their way towards the 'Fang.

"Alright gang, we're not out for the woods yet." Silas' voice came in, "that ruckus we made is likely to rile any remaining Hive onboard and prompt them to make their way here. Be on the look out for anything else, but once those droid's secure our cargo, we're leaving."

Sure enough, another alien scream echoed from the hallway. Cyne didn't know how far away the Hive were but they were certainly close now. It was only seconds later that several Swarmers had appeared from the hanger entrance and charging their escaping prey with murderous intent.

"Silas! The loot is now secured. I really do think its time we leave." Sven chimed in.

"You heard 'em!" Silas called out, "all aboard!"

Gerad ignored Gaz’s crowing in regards to his handmade technical abomination, but he did keep a sensor lock on the plasma spewing monstrosity; mostly so he’d have some warning for when it inevitably exploded. Every time Gaz pulled the trigger, the sensors in Gerad’s armour went wild with massive power spikes, alerts for potential containment failures and other things generally associated with a powerful energy source on the cusp of a total systems failure and overload.

Following the fungai’s lead, to a point, he advanced towards the onrushing Hive, transferring his VLA to his secondary arms so that he could make use of his forearm mounted barrier as well. Beams of coherent light and packets of super-heated plasma burned through carapaces and reduced flesh to ash, while the hammer shattered limbs, mandibles and anything else that got close enough. With Gaz thoroughly distracted and the two humans doing their best, an odd Swarmer or two got through, so to counter, Gerad activated the close combat protocol for his cutter/welder; running a similar semi-autonomous program to his PRP, the tool lashed out at attacking hostiles with a fusion torch ‘blade’, savaging anything it hit.

Moments later Sven joined the fray with the Crimson Fang’s weapons, reducing the remaining Hive to so much smouldering meat, and doing a fair job of running both the hanger and every other remaining small craft as well. While Silas and Sven got the loot loaded, Gerad made a check of the proximity sensors that were a part of his device; seeing that they were clear, he made his way forward to the cockpit. “Oi clanker!” He called out to Sven. “C’n ye keep us de scan shadow of dis tub? Closer those merc haulers stick to it de better…” He added with a slightly sinister tone. “Tha’ said…we gotta be ‘bout five thousan’ kays out, less we get it too.”
---
Sven did his best, but the Fang wasn’t intended for totally covert work. Still they managed to make it half way back to the End before the furthest out merc ship spotted them. Fortunately Legion’s End had been moving towards them to rendezvous under its own ‘aftermarket’ stealth systems, so when it lit off its ECM suite, the merc cruiser was caught off guard. With a poor firing solution, it fired a few long shots at the freighter as it swooped in and snagged the Fang in a rather rough ‘snatch-and-run’ pick up, but none came too close.

Gerad ignored all of this; all his attention was on the readout showing their distance from the Balrog. When he realized they weren't quite going to make the minimum safe distance if he waited, he triggered the device and muttered a quiet prayer to the Ancestors.

When a starship jumps to hyperspace, the hyperdrive creates a ‘bubble’ around the ship that causes it to move out of phase with n-space, allowing it to appear to move faster than light without upsetting what humans call ‘Einsteinian Relativity’. Because creating said bubble is massively power intensive to do in one go, it is instead created by a series of linked generator nodes around the ship’s hull, their smaller bubbles merging together to encompass the ship, this helps ease strain on the ships power systems during the initial jump. If one of those nodes were to fail, that section of the ship would end up out of phase with the rest of it with catastrophic results; needless to say there are many safety features built onto any FTL capable vessel to prevent such things happening.

Gerad’s ‘hyperdrive’ had no such nodes, nor did it even know it should have them; as far as it was concerned, everything was just fine. When the QEC got the command, the computer executed its only directive which was to spin up the drive and jump into hyperspace. The capacitors dumped their loads, the generator hummed and a hyperspace bubble slightly larger than the Armoury where it was sitting enveloped the area. As soon as it reached 100% strength the whole section disappeared into hyperspace, and then promptly fell out again. Maintaining a hyperspace bubble of any size is expensive and usually once a ship has jumped it maintains its bubble by tapping into the energy created at the interface between the bubble and h-space itself, allowing for an essentially free ride.

This was another thing the device lacked. As soon as it jumped, it cut itself off from its only power source, which caused the bubble to collapse, and the Armoury to revert to n-space. Any time there is a translation between one or the other there is a substantial ‘flare’ of energy, larger when dropping into n-space, which is spectacular but harmless when just in the void. This however wasn’t so harmless.

Raw energy ripped the bulkheads and decking apart at the most basic level, the sub-atomic reactions further fuelling the destruction. The Balrog’s battered and abused power systems overloaded, and the safeties failed, allowing a massive pulse to dump itself into the already compromised reactor, which promptly exploded with the fury of a small star. The time between Gerad sending the command and the ruined cruiser disappearing into an expanding ball of super-heated gas was less than 1/10th of a second.

The closest mercenary vessel died in almost the same instant as the near-light speed shock front of energy slammed into it with a destructive force that no battle screen could have turned aside. The cruiser’s own reactor breach simply added to the holocaust as the surrounding asteroids shattered under the impact.

The second ship was far enough away to avoid getting hit with the initial blast or the death throes of its sister, but all that meant was that her crew knew they were going to die. Massive chunks of rock were blasted outwards, and while the helmsman did his best to try and get clear, there just was not enough time. A rock roughly half a kilometer in diameter struck the bow, sheering off a sizable chunk, while smaller ones wreaked havoc elsewhere. The second ship’s reactor safeties did react in time to prevent any breach, but all that it accomplished was to leave the vessel crippled without anything more than basic life support as the debris reduced it to an air bleeding hulk.

The third ship which had moved in pursuit of the Crimson Fang was lucky enough to avoid destruction at the hands of Gerad’s hyperspace ‘bomb’, but it didn’t get away unscathed. The mercenary captain, thinking they were only pursuing a small dropship, had failed to bring up any more protection than the basic particle shields. He’d been in the process of calling for battle screens as the Legion’s End made its presence known, but he never got the chance. While the plasma ‘shock front’ created by the death of the first two ships died out relatively quickly, the super dense wave of neutrinos generated by the explosions kept going. While neutrinos generally don’t interact very much with stuff in relativistic space, on such a small scale, the wave was so dense it caused an intensely strong gravitational ‘ripple’ as it hit the ship. While extremely unpleasant for the crew it was survivable, though it did cause failures all across the ship, leaving it dead in space.

This was nearly the fate of the Legion’s End as well, but it jumped into hyper the instant the dropship was inside it ‘bubble’. The neutrinos still managed to touch the ship though, causing and instability that dropped the ship back into n-space just outside the system’s ecliptic, now well beyond the effect area.

”Bit tight, but no’ bad…”

The total elapsed time from start to finish was less than five standard minutes.

As soon as everyone had gotten into the Fang and the cargo was secured Sven punched it out of the hanger. "Fire up the Engines and come pick us up!" he yelled at MACK who chimed back over the comms as The Legion's End started to roar to life among the asteroid field starting to make its way out. Sven on the other hand kept the Fang hugged close to the Balrog's hull for as long as possible to avoid detection before punching it to full throttle trying to make it to the End before one of the Merc cruisers got a shot at them.

Silas has rushed over to Macklyn's little fighter and took it for himself. Following close behind the Fang during their escape and he had even noticed that one of the pirate drop ships exited the hanger not soon after they had. but instead of heading to regroup with the ships it plunged full speed planet side. Silas gave a shutter at what could possibly be on that ship but it really was none of his concern at the moment.

With the End bursting from the asteroid field the Fang and Silas were greeted with a bit of a challenge as asteroids then sprayed into space pulled from their orbit after bouncing off the End's hull. Sven seemed to avoid the rocks with ease while Silas struggled a bit as flying wasn't exactly his forte but he managed to pull the small fighter into the hanger of the End. As soon as the Fang docked Sven made a run for the cockpit telling Mack to ready the ship for a jump sending the little droid into a fit as it hurried pulling levers and flipping switches without even knowing where it was plotting the jump to. And all Sven had to do when he got to the cockpit was pull up a holo-map and touch a nearby system before the Legion's End began its jump. And not a moment to soon too as the Balrog's explosion nearly caught up with the End mere moments before the jump.

With the jump came a wave of ease as the crew knew they had made it out safe and alive. The Legion's End was now on its way to the Noctus System known as a bit of a scum hideout but a good place to lay low for a bit after causing a bit of a commotion like they had just done. As is it would take the ship 15 hours to make the jump and until then the crew would be stuck on the ship. Coincidentally Silas had been prepared for this and had grabbed the fire suppression hose blasting Gaz as soon as he tried to get off of the Fang in an attempt to blast off the bigger chunks of gore off of the Fungi before he truly entered the ship before sending the big guy off to clean himself up. After the crew had a little bit of a rest to get out of their gear and clean up as they wished Silas had a bit of a debriefing where he admitted the pay for this mission would probably be light as their income would mainly come from pawning off the cargo they had stolen and selling off Macklyn's ship and any of his stuff the crew didn't want. And unsurprisingly this announcement caused a bit of animosity among the crew but Silas reassured them that there was already another job lined up and even threw in that he would pay for any ammunition used in this last mission to try and make it up to them.

After the debrief Silas would make his way to the lounge area on the ship grabbing a deck of cards and sitting at the table playing a bit of Texas Hold-um dealing against himself for now open for others to join the game. Sven on the other hand stayed in the cockpit for now running a few diagnostic checks just to make sure that the Legion's End hadn't received any hidden damage from either the asteroids or the massive explosion.

Cyne shot a sickly glare towards Gerad, leaning against the inner framework of the Crimson Fang, "My stomach disagrees..."

Gerad however wasn't wrong though; they were so very close from becoming stranded due in part by the neutrino wave were it not for the last second jump. Had the moment been any longer, they probably would have been at the mercy of cosmic forces around them. If not that, then the remnants of the SSA and the KOT would be upon them for sure. Thankfully in the end, it was their head start against the other mercenary vessels, more so with the artificial singularity, that was enough to keep them out of death's grasps or in a confinement cell.

With an amalgamate of effects from dense neutrinos and rough vertigo plaguing him, no thanks in part with their frantic and rushed docking within the Legion's End, Cyne struggled to bring himself to his feet. His suit's exo mechanisms compensated for his erratic movement as he lurched forward and caught hold of one of the railings and leaned into it, trying to fight off the daze. He didn't know how Garundin or Fungai responded to the same abuse but he knew it would be minutes before his body would naturally adapt and eventually recuperate.

Hours later, having rid himself of his suit, bathed, and donning is casual fatigues, Cyne was once more in the bridge helming communications. While they were now hundreds if not thousands of light-years away from Poseidon's Belt, some chatter could be picked up from numerous relays and outbound transmissions. The broadcasts were barely what one would consider quality and not at all surprising, given they were in FTL transit. Nevertheless, he was able to at least piece together the events that transpired after they booked-it out of the system.

The moment Gerad's device went off, it had gathered the attention of everyone in the system. Fighting between the SSA and KOT forces immediately ceased with an apparent understanding coming together between the two factions. Everyone else uninvited were wise to leave rather than dealing with two larger parties whom were in mutual agreement. The details became sparser but it seemed that an investigation regarding the Balrog's complete destruction had taken place afterwards. Cyne leaned back into his seat and rubbed his eyes between his right hand's index finger and thumb. The dwindling facts and reports eventually evaporated as the ship finally came out of range where it's subspace transmitter could no longer pick up outgoing transmissions.

Cyne continued to lean back and stare at the ceiling. Their debrief was, unsurprisingly disappointing. What was originally believed to be a huge paycheck in their laps turned out be less than half than the crew were looking towards. Selling of Macklyn's ship and their loot of weapons would guarantee their income, it simply wasn't the same than what everyone had been preparing for. All the mental and psychical preparation that went into such a mission seemed devalued although there was no doubt it was that same preparation that got them off the Balrog in one piece. There was that positive at least.

@Arthanus@ShiningSector

Gerad replied to Cyne’s queasy grumbling with what passed for a grin. ”We alive ain’t we?”
-
While Silas hosed the fungai off, he made his way to his assigned quarters. Once inside, he brought the local air mix/pressure up to something more Eshan-like before cracking the seals on his armour. With a yawn, some stretches and a bit of long overdue scratching, he then set about seeing to his post-mission maintenance.

Thanks to the built in nano-technology Militia gear was largely self-repairing, so long as it had sufficient reserves of base elements. Firic26, Collium27 an’ Palanik46 all tad low. Down 70% on plasmas…No bad… He thought, taking stock of his armours expendables. Keying the info into a datapad, he tucked it into a pouch on his harness before getting ‘dressed’.

Unlike many species who had developed thick body hair during their evolution, garundin’s had never ‘lost’ theirs; as a result they, as a society, never developed clothing in the same way others had as there was no real need for it. They had developed many varieties of harnesses and strappings which let them carry tools, goods and all the other various things an intelligent species may have use for.

The result was that compared to many, like humans, garundin’s walked around ‘naked’, not that they really had any taboos along those lines. Like the rest of his gear, Gerad’s harness was Militia issue, with various pouches for tools or objects, a hanger for his VLA should he need to carry it while not in armour and a chest mount for his breather; garundin’s could function at the lower atmosphere pressures that other species preferred, but constantly feeling short of breath was never fun. Fixing the mask in place over his face, he double checked the self-repair on his armour before depressurizing his quarters and heading for debriefing.
-
When Silas got to the bit about them getting a bit shorted in pay, Gerad was not what one would call ecstatic but he did, grudgingly, understand, and Silas’ offer to cover munitions expenses was appreciated, the ionizing medium he used for his PRP cells could get a bit pricy.

With the briefing concluded, he hit the ship’s galley for a drink and some snacks; finding Silas at a table dealing cards, Gerad joined him. ”Say Boss,” He said, sipping his drink through a ‘liquid induction port’ in his breather mask. ”Meant to say, we start doin’ more Hive job an’ I’m a want t’ renego’ m’ contract…ye don’ pay near ‘nuff t’ deal wit’ bugs.” He add with a chuckle as he looked at his cards. Wha’ in d’ Ancestor’s Piss is this? He though irritably, looking at the terrible starting hand he’d been dealt. Fortunately, in this case, garundin’s didn’t have the most expressive features.

The hose was refreshing for Gaz, he hated cleaning his armour so to have it done for him brought a smile to his face. With the clean done he strolled off joyfully to his quarters. He took the time to get out of his heavy armour and got into something a little more comfortable. A part of flip flops gave sight to his chunky green toes, while his tree trunk sized legs emerged from a pair of bermuda style shorts. His scarred torso was covered by a plain white tank top that if fully laid out could act as a bedsheet for a human. He took a quick glance in the mirror, I am da best lookin' on dis ship. He let out a boistrous laugh before stopping, his eyes catching sight of something in his head. He rubbed at his forehead with his hand feeling several, hard and jagged points. He leant in closer to the mirror before laughing once more, "More trophies!" With his thick fingers he yanked the teeth from his skull and began placing them into his trophy cabinet.

After some more time had passed Gaz made his way to lounge to find Silas and Gerad playing a game of cards. Unfortunately for Gaz the size of his hands made it exceedingly difficult to hold the cards. In all he wasn't that upset by not being able to take part, in reality he didn't have a clue to play anyway. He simply liked to watch as the others played, celebrating a win or throwing a tantrum at losing a hand. Besides, watching meant he could walk and get food whenever he wanted. Speaking of food, Gaz had created himself a three foot long sandwich filled with twelve different types of meat from five different planets. Layers of human cheese topped the meat with a native Fungai sauce to top it off. He marvelled at it as he heard Gerad begin to talk to Silas. His accent made it hard to understand what he was saying at times but he could make out enough to get the gist.

"Wait...is going afta' bugs an option?!" Sam moved his glance from his sandwich for a moment. "I like killin' bugs!" His attention soon returned to his sandwich as it vanished into the chasm that was his mouth.