Sean-Michael Argo - Ghost Faction

Strega’s scanner lit up and the mercs quickened their pace, eager to engage, as if the whirlwind of a firefight was more comfortable than the eerie silence of moments before.

Jada emerged over a low ridge of flowstone and saw for the first time the sheer scale of the master ring. There were five fresh flares hanging high in the area, illuminating the scene before her, as if all of the muzzle flares weren’t enough.

Two squads of mercs were fighting their way up the terraced steps that had been cut or otherwise shaped out of the raw face of a massive flowstone wall. Resistance appeared to be light, as only a handful of the creatures stood against them. The real firefight was taking place at the base of the ring, where two squads of Dire Swords were exchanging withering hails of fire with a swarm of hollows that poured in from the surrounding area, as if converging on the temple in order to defend it.

Jada and the others sprinted across the open ground that lay between the urban landscape and the temple and began to engage. The mercs circled wide of the firefight and then cut in sharply, putting themselves somewhat parallel to the other mercs defending the base of the structure. When Jada cut loose with her rifle, spitting forth a mixture of tracer rounds and armor-piercing bullets, her angle of attack allowed her to tear into the enemy with a strong crossfire while avoiding having her comrades downrange.

In the additional seconds it took for the squad to get into position, the hurricane of small arms fire had dropped one of the mercs defending the temple and the rest of them were sporting a wide variety of minor injuries.

Jada advanced as she fired, her sprint having slowed to a steady march as she carefully selected targets and put round after round into them. Now that all of the Dire Sword elements were in place, the frag ban was lifted and the squads who were positioned on the terraced high ground of the ring started firing grenade rounds into the thick knots of advancing hollows.

Each of the mercs had been kitted out with a break action single shot grenade pistol that fired explosive projectiles. They were ‘slag frags’ that were metal cylinders with cores that became super-heated when fired. Once detonated, the cylinders were transformed into molten metal shrapnel, capable of burning flesh and slagging armor, hence the name.

Jada and her group advanced under the cover of the hail of grenades coming from the squads above. The rain of explosives combined with the crossfire maneuver had inflicted grievous casualties upon the enemy. However, the hollows were not deterred and continued to hurl themselves at the mercs without regard for their continued survival. A fresh wave of hostiles emerged from the urban sprawl and sprinted towards the merc defenders, spitting pistol rounds in deadly clouds as they came.

Jada had seen this sort of tactic before on many battlefields, the last desperate surge before defeat, the most reckless and deadly moment of any conflict. Without an abundance of legitimate cover, it was a shooting war out of ancient history, with two forces hurling salvos at each other across open ground. Such was the tactical reality of the conflict, even if it was far less than ideal. Thankfully, the presence of the Gedra rifles and the slag frags gave the mercs a distinct edge.

As the defenders held the firing line, Jada, firing from the hip, continued towards the temple entrance, a simple archway leading into darkness and the unknown.

“On your right!” shouted Strega suddenly. Jada turned and saw that a hollow, its ammunition expended, was rushing at her with its wicked claws.

The merc dove to the side and skidded on her back across the rugged ground as the hideous creature swiped at the air where she’d been only a second before. The creature was off balance, and Jada was able to put several rounds into it before a second creature leapt upon her. Had she been the unenhanced marine of her past, the abomination would have been able to sink its claws into her, but the meta-human mercenary she was now, slammed the side of her rifle into the creature’s chin, holding it at bay for a precious second so that she could grab her pistol and put several magnum rounds through its throat and out the back of its skull.

Jada rolled and cast the beast off of her as she rose to her feet, pistol at the ready. Ahead of her, Berg, Ranec, and Poe, were plunging into the temple entrance. The merc cast her glance across the battlefield and saw the rest of the defenders holding their position, their superior firepower having all but wiped out the hollow counter-attack.

Then Jada saw Strega pounding bullets into the body of a hollow. As it fell away, the merc could see that it had been on top of Osric. The creature had managed to force its bladed fingers into the joints of Osric’s mag-armor, prying open his suit like a tin of food rations. The merc had been torn to pieces in seconds. Jada watched with a sense of detached horror as Strega just stepped over Osric’s ravaged body and moved on, slapping a fresh magazine into her rifle.

As Jada followed Strega into the darkness, the two mercs swept their gun-mounted lights through the gloom. The shattered bodies of multiple hollows filled the corridor, as if they’d charged Womack’s squad en masse and been mowed down. When they came across the mangled corpse of Ven, a Dire Sword veteran of many years, it was clear the advance had not been without cost.

Jada could see that though the exterior of the temple was covered in flowstone, this interior was made of the same polished alien material as the necropolis buildings on the tomb worlds. The sounds of fighting within were near deafening, and in the tight confines of the temple interior, Jada was thankful for the dampeners in her helmet.

Soon, the corridor opened up to reveal a similar, if smaller, layout of the tomb world central chamber that Jada recalled from her first encounter with the Gedra.

Among the dozen or so slabs, upon which Jada recalled the alpha cyborg had been transforming dead penal legionnaires into hollows, the floor of the chamber was littered with more bodies of hollows.

An alpha cyborg was standing atop of a low dais being subjected to a punishing amount of firepower as seven Dire Swords unleashed their weapons on it.

Strega leapt into the fray and began shooting, while Jada hesitated for a moment. She saw Taymar lying prone at the base of the dais, huge pieces of her left side simply gone, the wound lines fused, indicating that she’d been hit with one of the deadly energy orbs that the cyborgs defended themselves with.

Jada raised her rifle to her shoulder and took careful aim, knowing that in moments, the cyborg’s energy shield would fail or at least flicker, and the merc was determined to end this fight. Her patience was rewarded when the shield suddenly collapsed with a tremendous shockwave.

Jada squeezed the trigger and a single armor-piercing round streaked from her rifle, tearing through the eye socket of the cyborg, knocking its head back. It had barely begun to collapse when it was thrown off the dais by the combined bursts of fire from several of the other mercs.

When the cyborg’s body exploded, as expected, most of the mercs had been able to find cover.

As Jada watched the cyborg die from a distance, she was taken aback at how routine such incredible events had become in her life. Years ago, when they had first encountered the Gedra, the salvage marines had died in droves trying to bring down the giant mechanical beast.

Now that years of war had passed and more intelligence gathered, they knew how to kill these things with brutal efficiency. While it was almost impossible to defeat them without destroying them, the command module and its powers had yet to be recovered or investigated, but at least not nearly as many people had to die in combat against them.