Sean-Michael Argo - Ghost Faction

Berg took a knee, and with a single shot, blew apart the creature’s hand before it could transfer its aim from his battle buddy to him, sending it plummeting down and out of sight behind one of the many flowstone walls.

Strega and Osric ran across the flowstone parallel to each other, pouring fire to the left and right of the pair as they followed the arc of the flair.

Under the cover of their fire, Berg and Ranec were able to concentrate on gunning down another creature and as its ravaged body fell to the ground the six Dire Swords closed ranks with their battle buddies and pressed the assault.

“Reloading,” said Osric calmly, swapping out his empty magazine for a fresh one. As he did, one of the hollows emerged from behind what might have been a heavy trash container or crushed rock storage and rushed the merc’s position as it opened fire.

The merc did not look up from his task, so confident was he that his battle buddy would anticipate his needs. The man’s trust in Strega was well-placed despite the fact that they had only been training as a pair for a few weeks. Before the enemy had more than a handful of poorly aimed shots off, the merc stood over Osric and blasted the creature off of its feet.

Jada and Poe sprinted wide and to the right of the squad, drawing fire as several of the hollows broke off their attack and raced in pursuit of the dashing mercs.

Poe stayed a few paces behind his battle buddy, working to keep the creatures from flanking the pair by firing sporadically into the shadows whenever he caught a glimpse of limb, gun, or horrible jaws.

Jada pressed ahead into the fray, where their numbers seemed thickest, firing her rifle in tightly controlled bursts and moving from target to target with methodical detachment. She did not allow herself space or time to think of her enemies or the fighting beyond terms of target acquisition and bullet placement. She lost count of how many hollows she had gunned down.

There was no telling definitively which of the creatures she sent sprawling would actually stay down. Some of them wore armor that marked them as former battle troopers, though she began to notice that such creatures were in the minority. Most of the hollows were dressed in the tattered remnants of staff jumpsuits, indicating that they were labor crew, though whether each individual had been a driller, hauler, roustabout, or engineer was beyond her awareness or concern.

The sick green light of the beacon flare hung in the sky, and it suddenly reminded Jada of Deepspire, only where once there had been pools of shallow and fetid water, there were open dig pits and skeletal scaffolding. She had survived that, and she was determined to survive this; where others had gone into Vorhold and died, she yet remained. The thought of her continued survival was both a source of strength and anger for her, as it seemed like no matter what hell she walked through, it was her friends and loved ones who died, never her. Always, she remained a wretched thing that the universe just couldn’t seem to kill. She was hard meat, as Vol used to say. The merc raised her rifle to her shoulder once more, determined to show these hideous things, and herself, that she was indeed more than they could handle.

The squad pushed deeper into the excavation site, their enhanced bodies and powerful armor allowing them to move with great speed amidst the fury of combat.

Jada had served alongside the godlike warriors of the Folken in years past, but they were heavy infantry, designed to be the equivalent of human battle tanks. The Dire Swords, with their blitzkrieg-style of warfare, had tailored their armor and their bodies for the specific task of lightning infantry assault. The six killers ran across the excavation site with a deadly grace, all while engaging enemies from every direction.

Jada sprinted across the smooth surface of what she now understood to be a former building and leapt across the gap between it and the next, her body sailing over the flowstone alley where at least one of the creatures roared and fired upwards at her. As she stuck the landing, Jada tucked and rolled, having noticed a hollow charging her from ahead. She managed to evade the hail of bullets that spewed out of the beast’s gun appendages.

Poe opened fire as he leapt across the gap, and several of his shots punched into the creature’s chest, knocking it off balance and causing it to stumble.

Jada rose to a kneeling position and raised her rifle to her shoulder to fire while she continued to move into a standing position. She leveled her sights at the creature and squeezed off a single round that went into the screaming abomination’s open mouth and exploded out of the back of its skull.

“Left flank!” bellowed Strega from the alley below while she turned her rifle to face the next threat as a hollow scuttled low across the ground, having just emerged from a dig pit covered in shadow and catching the merc by surprise. The beast had all of its appendages at the ready and they began to spit hard rounds at Strega before she could get her own shot off. Most of the rounds were turned away by her armor, though several bit through the joints and into her flesh.

As Strega and the creature exchanged salvos of fire, the Dire Sword was driven into cover by the sheer intensity of the enemy’s advance.

Osric emerged from the other side of the alley and opened up, pushing the hollow towards Strega as it twisted its limbs to return fire. The wounded merc swept her rifle around the corner and added her weapon to the crossfire. In seconds, the shredded corpse of the creature collapsed in a heap.

Ranec rushed past Strega as he fired from the hip, his Gedra rifle hurling hollow-point rounds through the re-animated flesh of a creature that appeared to have been one of the deck safety officers. A bright orange reflector vest still clung in tatters to the creature’s chest.

“Holding!” shouted Ranec as he sent suppressing fire against the dark shapes moving in the gloom both ahead and to his left.

“Moving!” answered Berg, running past Ranec and up a metal gangplank that appeared to lead to a series of flowstone rooftops, one of which had been capped with a security bunker.

Jada saw Berg emerge from the streets below and once again marveled at the sheer tonnage of dirt and stone that must have been removed from this site in order to unearth the flowstone urban area and the master ring itself. Much of the outer limits of the urban zone had been left only half excavated, though as the warriors pushed deeper into the ancient site, they could see that the terrain was more and more urban.

When they had first started conducting missions on Ellisian worlds, the bizarre rock formations had seemed strange, but over time, that strangeness had evolved into something with obvious intention, but still alien in concept. Now that the mercs were positive that these were crafted urban structures, Jada found she could intuit her way through the area, and could recognize the difference between streets, pedestrian walkways, and alleys. It was a strange sensation to realize that she had begun to intuit an alien urban environment, yet it felt right, as if any sentient being that thought to build a city would inevitably achieve a similar metropolitan layout.

She saw the security bunker that Berg was rushing towards and altered her course by cutting sharply to the left. A set of scaffolds occupied the side of the buildings ahead of Berg, and from her vantage point, she could see one of the creatures climbing up on an intercept course with her fellow merc.

She built up speed by sprinting across the roof of the current building and cast herself powerfully into the air. She landed on the metal awning of a supply container which allowed her to slow her momentum and slide across the smooth metal as she fired several haphazardly aimed shots at the creature before dropping the last few meters to the street below. Her attack distracted the creature, foiling its ambush. It held onto the scaffold with one hand, snarling at her as two of its four gun appendages turned in her direction and fired.