"Whatever in the armory is yours, provided you can carry it. Familiarize yourself and read the manual; League issue frequently demonstrates itself ill-fitting for your line of work. Sink or swim, as your kind like to say."
The Invictoid's eyes turned from the sole human of the team to the anguillid alien, still in its stupor over previous duties to an empire to many now in decline. To that, the skeletal spectre paused, arms crossed and striding past hologram and the splinters of living light from the spherical biocomputer. Its head swivelled before settling back on Rho-Hux.
"A funny thing about that. There had been no time to organize a command structure with the urgency of the prior mission. The voidhanger however, proves himself capable and devoid of the signs of lobotomization most pure-skins and their adjacents are plagued by. There is your authority - feel free to challenge it or more fittingly, earn his place as your own."
From the corner of Salvator's sight, the pupils of some frozen emotion (contempt, arrogance, disdain, fear) crossed with his sight. The Invictoid left and in his trail the machinery that had manifested retracted in its hovels and holes like the glands of some insect having finished their purpose. Conversation diminished and the clatter-buzz-hum of the command centre returned. Where the sphere-leader once hovered it had drifted off into the jungle of wiring and jutting appendages of the ceiling to melt into the mindlessness of whatever gestalt consciousness systems it reigned over above.
The walk to the armory had been uneventful in the realm of angular black metal and occasionally shifting isopod-like bioplating that was the Intransigent vessel. Yet there were signs of something fouler beneath its contemporary cutting-edge visage. The smell pungent like oil yet earthy like damp forest at first and the sound of not merely cocking and clicking firearm but equipment that chittered, trilled, and sucked. Not the sonic profile of civilization but something primal it had long since evolved from.
The quad-doors retracted.
Another human-like-yet-not; features skeletal but covered in the signs of corrosive rot and infesting cybernetic plague. Cybernetics colonized fester-dark biomass, emerging to form plating aligned with tarrhaidim-type bio-kevlar energy-ballistics padding. Humanity was present but buried beneath the invasion of fungoid flesh that had long since staked its claim and machine components dividing it from what was left of their original self.
Rectangular pulse projector in his hand, pulled off of an unfurling spider-leg every bit living and machine as they - lights pulsed as if awakening to the foul dream of a world of dishevelled combat organisms and shining before the eyes of the fellow envenomed as they entered. Flaccid worms flopped out, twitching in pathetic hunger before the coiling bony digits seized them and stabbed their barbed mouth tips into ports across transhuman's lower back.
Mechanisms of biomechanical hunger chortled and fluids sucked their way through. Just in time for them to turn and face their comrades for the first time.
More shapes hidden amidst the cylindrical trees of clenching and unfurling arachnoid limbs. The lights above were dim and a sickly purple, fluctuating into brighter neon yet the copse of artificial life that held the tools of the trade casted long shadows over them.
Colossal vrexul sitting upon the floor yet whose bulk alone was boulder-like, primarily limbs having split into numerous finer appendages as they maintained a weapon that might as well have been jagged metal and predatory beetle body rendered as a projectile spitting junk-cannon. Its head shield-like, a mask with empty dome-like eyes that stared at nothing yet everything, apathetic to its array of curving limbs emerging from sides and back. To each one was assigned magazine, grenade, portable drone, nutrient-mulch sac - occupied by all manner of a living arsenal's necessity.
Bladed-bodied, jagged shell, patterns like flames sculpted into a craggy armor of stony carapace - celaderakan warrior, their external skin-exoskeleton marked with cleft and crevice. Peering eyes could see the cybernetics within but hear not buzz and whirr but humming pulse. A touch of coldness as anyone neared him, the space itself feeling crowded even as he leaned alone against the wall. Scatter-rend shells beat out a steady rhythm loaded into pouch magazines, sucking in the shells when they touched the edge of its receiving port. No eyes with which to glare but his gaze was felt; predator to prey or observer to subjects, difficult to determine.
Surrounded by the x-winged drones, the way their bladed flight appendages cut through its body reflected the shape of its skull, a scielto hovered a foot above the ground. Gun-holder platforms hovered around with diagonally symmetrical anti-grav projectors attached to frames holding a variety of modified infantry rifles. One swung upwards, blurring as any envenomed looked upon the barrel that now pointed between their eyes for a scant second. Its features were obscured yet not by purely ethereal means. Its gnarled almost bark-like body was obscure by both a transparent membrane and a series of overlapping cloaks night-blue in colour yet whose translucency fluctuated at a whim.
The post-human's mouth opened and closed as if testing its own jawbones - many, many jawbones. A lower jaw that was comprised of smaller arm-branches that split it apart and reformed it. Hints of cracks travelled across its head and something gazed at them from behind the mask of decomposed humanity it wore. It was but a brief flash of something worm-like, almost an illusion before those some cracks hermetically sealed; the very metal-bone aggregate of its self sealing them.
It stood before the door the team had entered. Guarding its own or the welcoming committee; the others remained at work, watchful not just of their allies but the one who greeted them. Its eyes had not one but multiple tadpole pupils and it watched each member of the squad as if for inspection.
"I question your methods more than your effectiveness. SBC's last broadcast had a funny bit about the innocent apartheid troopers shot 'executioner' style... with wounds matching those of League issue submachine gun rounds."
It did not need to look at Kleo to detect her; multiple sensor systems within its cybernetic body had felt them enter before they had entered the door, scanned biomechanics and ethereal signature. A blank slate; a being of purely flesh and blood.
"Strutting around in a high class antique; they don't make unaugmented brigades nowadays - not good for much beyond putting down civilian militias. Maybe that's why your friends at the village didn't follow you further, ultimately for the best."
Its voice was human. Throaty, tinged with phlegm from a dry drone hovering underneath every inflection. Its stature was imposing at five foot ten yet it did not come off as domineering - its body sleek and power condensed into a shape one could almost say slender if only not contrasted by the rugged brutality of the celaderaka or the imperious mass of Echo. Before an ordinary human, it was moreso a looming spectre.
"So, you're the ones doing the actual spleunking and we're on voice-in-your-ear duty. Personnel dossiers are off limits, but I'm guessing the 'rocht isn't the pathfinder here. You got some vacuum-walkers I see... that construct recovered from a black box somewhere? Not the first anomaly that swung by here."
The Invictoid's eyes turned from the sole human of the team to the anguillid alien, still in its stupor over previous duties to an empire to many now in decline. To that, the skeletal spectre paused, arms crossed and striding past hologram and the splinters of living light from the spherical biocomputer. Its head swivelled before settling back on Rho-Hux.
"A funny thing about that. There had been no time to organize a command structure with the urgency of the prior mission. The voidhanger however, proves himself capable and devoid of the signs of lobotomization most pure-skins and their adjacents are plagued by. There is your authority - feel free to challenge it or more fittingly, earn his place as your own."
From the corner of Salvator's sight, the pupils of some frozen emotion (contempt, arrogance, disdain, fear) crossed with his sight. The Invictoid left and in his trail the machinery that had manifested retracted in its hovels and holes like the glands of some insect having finished their purpose. Conversation diminished and the clatter-buzz-hum of the command centre returned. Where the sphere-leader once hovered it had drifted off into the jungle of wiring and jutting appendages of the ceiling to melt into the mindlessness of whatever gestalt consciousness systems it reigned over above.
The walk to the armory had been uneventful in the realm of angular black metal and occasionally shifting isopod-like bioplating that was the Intransigent vessel. Yet there were signs of something fouler beneath its contemporary cutting-edge visage. The smell pungent like oil yet earthy like damp forest at first and the sound of not merely cocking and clicking firearm but equipment that chittered, trilled, and sucked. Not the sonic profile of civilization but something primal it had long since evolved from.
The quad-doors retracted.
Another human-like-yet-not; features skeletal but covered in the signs of corrosive rot and infesting cybernetic plague. Cybernetics colonized fester-dark biomass, emerging to form plating aligned with tarrhaidim-type bio-kevlar energy-ballistics padding. Humanity was present but buried beneath the invasion of fungoid flesh that had long since staked its claim and machine components dividing it from what was left of their original self.
Rectangular pulse projector in his hand, pulled off of an unfurling spider-leg every bit living and machine as they - lights pulsed as if awakening to the foul dream of a world of dishevelled combat organisms and shining before the eyes of the fellow envenomed as they entered. Flaccid worms flopped out, twitching in pathetic hunger before the coiling bony digits seized them and stabbed their barbed mouth tips into ports across transhuman's lower back.
Mechanisms of biomechanical hunger chortled and fluids sucked their way through. Just in time for them to turn and face their comrades for the first time.
More shapes hidden amidst the cylindrical trees of clenching and unfurling arachnoid limbs. The lights above were dim and a sickly purple, fluctuating into brighter neon yet the copse of artificial life that held the tools of the trade casted long shadows over them.
Colossal vrexul sitting upon the floor yet whose bulk alone was boulder-like, primarily limbs having split into numerous finer appendages as they maintained a weapon that might as well have been jagged metal and predatory beetle body rendered as a projectile spitting junk-cannon. Its head shield-like, a mask with empty dome-like eyes that stared at nothing yet everything, apathetic to its array of curving limbs emerging from sides and back. To each one was assigned magazine, grenade, portable drone, nutrient-mulch sac - occupied by all manner of a living arsenal's necessity.
Bladed-bodied, jagged shell, patterns like flames sculpted into a craggy armor of stony carapace - celaderakan warrior, their external skin-exoskeleton marked with cleft and crevice. Peering eyes could see the cybernetics within but hear not buzz and whirr but humming pulse. A touch of coldness as anyone neared him, the space itself feeling crowded even as he leaned alone against the wall. Scatter-rend shells beat out a steady rhythm loaded into pouch magazines, sucking in the shells when they touched the edge of its receiving port. No eyes with which to glare but his gaze was felt; predator to prey or observer to subjects, difficult to determine.
Surrounded by the x-winged drones, the way their bladed flight appendages cut through its body reflected the shape of its skull, a scielto hovered a foot above the ground. Gun-holder platforms hovered around with diagonally symmetrical anti-grav projectors attached to frames holding a variety of modified infantry rifles. One swung upwards, blurring as any envenomed looked upon the barrel that now pointed between their eyes for a scant second. Its features were obscured yet not by purely ethereal means. Its gnarled almost bark-like body was obscure by both a transparent membrane and a series of overlapping cloaks night-blue in colour yet whose translucency fluctuated at a whim.
The post-human's mouth opened and closed as if testing its own jawbones - many, many jawbones. A lower jaw that was comprised of smaller arm-branches that split it apart and reformed it. Hints of cracks travelled across its head and something gazed at them from behind the mask of decomposed humanity it wore. It was but a brief flash of something worm-like, almost an illusion before those some cracks hermetically sealed; the very metal-bone aggregate of its self sealing them.
It stood before the door the team had entered. Guarding its own or the welcoming committee; the others remained at work, watchful not just of their allies but the one who greeted them. Its eyes had not one but multiple tadpole pupils and it watched each member of the squad as if for inspection.
"I question your methods more than your effectiveness. SBC's last broadcast had a funny bit about the innocent apartheid troopers shot 'executioner' style... with wounds matching those of League issue submachine gun rounds."
It did not need to look at Kleo to detect her; multiple sensor systems within its cybernetic body had felt them enter before they had entered the door, scanned biomechanics and ethereal signature. A blank slate; a being of purely flesh and blood.
"Strutting around in a high class antique; they don't make unaugmented brigades nowadays - not good for much beyond putting down civilian militias. Maybe that's why your friends at the village didn't follow you further, ultimately for the best."
Its voice was human. Throaty, tinged with phlegm from a dry drone hovering underneath every inflection. Its stature was imposing at five foot ten yet it did not come off as domineering - its body sleek and power condensed into a shape one could almost say slender if only not contrasted by the rugged brutality of the celaderaka or the imperious mass of Echo. Before an ordinary human, it was moreso a looming spectre.
"So, you're the ones doing the actual spleunking and we're on voice-in-your-ear duty. Personnel dossiers are off limits, but I'm guessing the 'rocht isn't the pathfinder here. You got some vacuum-walkers I see... that construct recovered from a black box somewhere? Not the first anomaly that swung by here."
