EliteCommander

The Cradle

Rareth had never stopped firing when they fell back, and when it was time for them to move, she sprinted forward to place herself halfway between their camp and the cave entrance. It was only a short run between the two, but they still needed to provide as much cover as they could to get the civilians, and their equipment, across that gap safely.

Even as the ground shook, it did not meaningfully impact Rareth’s aim. With the targeting software assisting her, she could adjust immediately. First and foremost, she focused her fire on any creatures close enough to possibly intercept the others as they made their run.

Nirann ran alongside the Human scientists, though he did draw his carbine to defend them against anything that might get in their way. It was not his job to fight, in this situation, but rather just to make sure they got to safety. He controlled their cargo bots remotely, and so he also had access to all of their sensors as they moved.

The Cradle

The aid from the others did weaken the creature, though it did prove a difficult one to kill. She pushed outwards against the tendrils trying to crush her torso, and despite its size, she held her own. She could not quite pry its vines away from her, but as it was also taking fire from the outside, it changed its approach quickly. It formed several of its amorphous appendages into spikes and began striking at her armor from several angles to try and pierce through. There was a loud clanging with every strike, but the lessened crushing pressure did give her the opportunity to retaliate.

From her left arm, Rareth’s plasma blade deployed, immediately cutting through several of the vines. She swung in a wide arm while spinning around her body at the same time to throw off the wounded creature. Her sword cleaved straight through the center of its mass, though she was spared a spray of ichor by the cauterizing effect of the high intensity heat.

After quickly recovering her weapon, Rareth fell back with the others towards their camp, her fusion cannon firing non-stop to keep their attackers at a distance. In particular, she focused on keeping the path between them and the cave clear. Nirann had the transit station disassembled at this point; it just needed to be loaded on to the cargo bots. “We’ll move into the cave once everything is loaded up. Thebes, have a few of your people move slightly ahead along the path I’ve marked, while the rest of us cover our flank. There are creatures that inhabit this cave, but as long as we stay distant from their nest, they may leave us be.”

The Cradle

“Already on it!” Nirann shouted back as he closed up the panel on his chest. For him, it was trivial to connect to each of the cargo drones and run their startup sequences simultaneously. It barely took a small subroutine for him to control each of them remotely, moving them in position to be loaded up with their equipment. More time consuming would be the process of actually disassembling the mast and transit station. The Humans were taking care of the comms mast, so Nirann went ahead on getting transit station disassembled and loaded up. Their deployable cover was hooked into their new power source and still active. For obvious reasons, he felt it best to take it down last.

Rareth had her neural implant run a few calculations on the kinetic forces Memnon’s shields had been exposed to. She knew exactly how much her own shields could handle before being depleted, within a small margin of error. While a few of the other soldiers were dealing with a creature that made it over the ridge, Rareth tried to make sure no more could follow it quickly. She peered over the edge of the ridge only quickly enough to fire a single, explosive plasma burst at a time before backing up, changing positions, and doing the same elsewhere. Under such circumstances, even she could not land a kill with every shot, but the large plasma explosions could still injure from near-misses and slow their approach. However, what she really needed to do was to take care of the priority targets keeping them pinned.

Once the hostile behind them was dealt with and the soldiers could return their attention to the front, Rareth set her sights on a ballista being set up. These strange creatures were truly otherworldly to be able to take on such forms, but she could not deny that they were effective. Instead of peeking out quickly, Rareth leaned over the ridge long enough to take solid aim on one of their ranged threats. She was certainly quick on the trigger, as she was able to fire her shot before the creature could shift its aim. The explosive energy blast his square in the center of its body to essentially incinerate nearly every part of it. A second ballista, however, did have plenty of time to send a projectile towards her. It struck her shields and shattered, causing the energized bubble around her to flare up bright white, far more than at any point before. There was a great deal of kinetic force for the barrier to handle, but it did hold. The delay before the ballista’s next shot was more than enough for her to fire another well-aimed shot to blast it apart.

Rareth ducked back into cover, intent on allowing her shields to regenerate before engaging again. However, the creatures seemed as clever as they were quick. Some of the dust and debris kicked up by the battle so far obscured the approach of one of the creatures enough to put it in striking range of the ridge. Just as Rareth was retreating back, the creature leaped over the top and pounced on her from above. Its many appendages whipped against her shields and depleted them entirely, then it wrapped itself around her in an attempt to crush her armor.

The Cradle

As Rareth ran for her replacement weapon, she pulled the magazine of micro-missiles from her launcher and placed it on a magnetic holster just above her tail. Her new fusion cannon would certainly have a fresh magazine included, but the antimatter charges were far too valuable, and dangerous, to simply leave behind. Her neural implant linked with her new weapon before she had even picked it up, so it was ready to fire as soon as she had it in her hands.

Overall, Rareth agreed that they needed to get moving, if only to get the civilians to a less exposed position. The cavern would allow them to funnel the creatures into a chokepoint, which would help them deal with their numbers. The sooner they could move, the better, but they could not afford to lose any of their equipment. For the moment, they just needed to hold off their attackers and buy time.

The first creature to reach the top of the ridge did so with a shrill scream. The “vines” of its body twisted and formed into many long, sharp spikes, but even with its terrifying speed, it did not get a chance to use them. Energy bolts came in from all directions, from both Rareth and members of the Sacred Band, to tear it apart piece by piece. These creatures were at least partially amorphous and could reshape themselves after taking damage, but there were limits.

Rareth switched to her weapon’s second firing mode as she made it to the ridge. These creatures could recover from smaller wounds, so blasting them apart entirely seemed to be the best approach. “We should move into the caves. The chokepoint will work to our advantage; we just need to hold them back long enough for the civilians to move our equipment.” Rareth said through their comms. She had seen Memnon take a hit from one of those “ballista” bolts, and they did not seem to be something that even she could just shrug off. “Memnon, share me the data on that hit you took.” Rareth requested. She wanted to know the exact amount of kinetic energy the projectiles contained so she could evaluate how many hits her defenses could take before she exposed herself to them.

The Cradle

As their new equipment was being sent in, Rareth painted three more targets on her HUD. Instead of focusing on maximizing casualties this time, she instead picked critical locations on the path up to their position. She intended to damage easy pathways, cause rockslides, and in general slow their progress up from the valley, in addition to killing any that happened to be caught in the blasts. She launched the three missiles towards their intended targets, then immediately dashed back from the ridge to the weapons trolley as well. She could not fully-replace all of her gear in the middle of a fight, but she could at least grab her updated fusion cannon quickly.

Nirann, meanwhile, could not help but to express a mix of worry and frustration. Being attacked was bad enough, but as well, he was no fan of the position he was currently in. His body’s fusion core was currently powering their devices. He was sitting on the ground with paneling removed from his chest and jury rigged wiring connecting him to their equipment. His core had no trouble powering the transit station, but his internal wiring did not have the throughput to deliver that much power at once. As such, they had to bypass it and connect directly to the power core in order to deliver the needed power. Many of his frame’s functions were currently unpowered and offline. He had the power for to meet his minimum needs for cognition, but he did not even have access to his full range of processing power.

“I would comment on that theory, but I literally do not have the power to think about that right now. Let’s hurry up and get that new power source connected. If we’re about to be attacked, I’d really rather have my body back.” He said with no shortage of urgency.

The Cradle

Rareth stood up to her feet on the edge of the ridge. She let out a slight growl when the others started to open fire. “I said I would scout them.” She remarked, though it was clearly too late for that. Any other possibility except for a fight no longer seemed viable. The best they could hope for now was to stop them before they could reach their position. From what Rareth could see from zooming in on the approaching contacts, was that they were fairly large, numerous, and looked like they consisted almost of a tangling of vines. Although, they clearly were not plants.

With civilians to protect, and not to mention the transit station, Rareth’s priority was to make sure their position did not get overwhelmed. With her optics, she targeted three different points where the creatures were the most clustered as she drew her fusion cannon. There was a short sound of the mechanism inside shifting, then four launcher tubes deployed on either side of the weapon. The micro-missile launcher was loaded and ready. At long range against numerous opponents, this was the best place to use them.

Rareth raised her weapon and fired off three micro-missiles into the air, which quickly tracked on to the target markers she had painted. Normally, such micro-missiles contained an explosive charge roughly equivalent to an antipersonnel grenade. They were quick, evasive, and highly accurate intended to place explosives on precise locations with minimal collateral damage. However, these were not normal missiles. The modified munitions Rareth was using were loaded with antimatter charges. Instead of the pops of distant grenades when her missiles found their targets, each one detonated like heavy artillery. The blasts echoed like thunder across the valley, and the distant shockwaves could even be felt from the top. It was all the better that they had a wide explosive radius, as the divergence from the Cradle software was impacting their accuracy.

The Cradle

There seemed to be little question as to the destination of the approaching contacts. They were moving towards the group, though neither their intentions, nor how they knew of their presence was known. Whatever they intended when they arrived, it was clearly important enough to them for them to rush.

“I can move ahead and assess the threat.” Rareth said once she moved up to lay down alongside Athena and look out over the valley. “I can meet them in the middle. If they are hostile and end up attacking me, you will have an advantageous position up here to cover me while I retreat back up to this position.” She suggested.

The Cradle

Rareth’s return through the caves was even quicker than her scouting had been, especially since she encountered no resistance on the way back. She returned to the camp with the news that she had found a path through the mountain…and some scorn for the Humans for establishing contact with the outside despite the words of the creature they had spoken to. Still, there was nothing that could be done about it at this point. At the very least, they could make the best out of the situation and take the opportunity to resupply themselves. She gave Nirann, the version on the outside, her situation report, then made her requests for supplies and equipment she felt they would need.

First and foremost, Rareth had her suit and weapons replaced with versions that were fully adapted to this object’s software language, as well as taking nanite injections that would accelerate modifications to her internal implants to adapt them as well. She requisitioned a new body for the Nirann in the simulation to transfer into, as well as a dedicated power source for their equipment. Additionally, she requested extra supplies and equipment that could help them with their journey ahead. They were limited by the transit station in the size of objects they could bring through, but at the very least, they could bring small, hovering robots that could carry all the cargo and equipment they were bringing with them. It would make their trek a bit easier.

However, there was still one outstanding matter that was, in all likelihood, the most important they would have to deal with. If they wanted to return home at any point, their transit station would need to work for the return trip as well. After she finished communicating with the outside, Rareth approached the Human scientist. “Dr. Wetherall, what is the progress on our transit station? How soon will we be able to confirm that we can return people safely?”

The Cradle

Once the pair separated at the fork, Rareth picked up her pace heading deeper into the cave. In truth, she was not completely certain about the idea of even separating from the Agent for the short time it would take her to get back to camp, as it did feel like a risk not to supervise her. However, enough time had been wasted already, and Rareth needed to find if there was a way through the caves quickly. Granted, now that they had made contact with the outside, they would not be in quite as much of a rush. They would not longer be in danger of being pulled out of the simulation early as those on the outside became more concerned.

On her own, Rareth could move more quickly through the network of caves, though perhaps not by too much. The Agent had kept up adequately, but Rareth truly had no reason to hold back once she only had herself to worry about. She mapped the cave as she went along and, for the most part, was able to choose the correct path ahead of time thanks to her echolocating ability. Her best option was to follow the stream as much as possible. If it had carved out the cave, then it would be the most likely path out to the other side.

Rareth only slowed down when she encountered more of the stone-shelled insects. Although, this time, the encounter did not turn to violence. It occurred in a large enough chamber that she was able to skirt around the side near the wall to keep distance, while the insects seemed intent on doing the same. They were carrying back something with them, perhaps some prey, but while they did hiss and posture upon spotting her, they did not rush her like last time. Rareth was not sure what exactly caused the difference in response, but it was not her concern to figure out the particulars of the creatures’ behavior. All she needed to do was to make sure they could get past them unharmed.

Eventually, Rareth did find the light at the end of the tunnel. Literally, in this case. The stream flowed out of the far side of the mountain into another waterfall overlooking an expansive valley. The beacon in the distance still illuminated the area and provided some clue of how much farther they needed to go. She did expect that there could be some difficulty climbing down this side of the mountain, but it was not an unreasonable path, and it would still be much quicker than trying to go around. She saw evidence of nests nearby on the cliffs, but hopefully whatever created them would not prove to be a hindrance. In any case, Rareth did not linger long. Once she confirmed the path through the mountain, she turned back right away to return straight to camp and make her report.

The Cradle

The Agent would not have been able to see it under Rareth’s helmet, but she was giving 595 a rather judgmental glare as she looked down upon her. She glanced back towards the entrance to the chamber for a moment and reviewed the map of the cave network she had made thusfar. “As I said, I will continue scouting and find a way through the mountain. Thebes is perfectly qualified to talk with the others. You need to return to the camp and allow the medic to see you. You are not healthy, and don’t insult my intelligent by trying to pretend that you are. Anything could have happened to you when you were transported to this room.”

Rareth paused for just a moment in thought. “Do you remember anything of what happened to you? If so, you need to make sure it is recorded in a report. Anything could be important. But do it back at camp; we should move in case these insects decide to stop tolerating us.”