Lowlight Team (Pt 6)

We back!! Finished the other project, had a day to myself, now i can go back to continuing this series :) This one's more of a filler episode, but the next week should have more coming out very soon! Rock and stone!Part 5- https://ift.tt/2Gh7Hku links will be in the other stories, too lazy to post em all)***Box threw himself into the wall, the appendage missing him by a hand’s breadth. He felt the air rush by as something wet spattered his skin and beard. He pushed himself off the wall, drawing his pick with his good hand. In a split second decision he activated the energy field, lightning crackling around the pick’s head as he spun towards his assailant. His face went white.It was a glyphid. The same eyeless face, the same six scrabbly legs, the same spittle flying from slavering jaws. What was different was the tentacle-thing that grew from its back, long and glistening and tipped with a strange spike. The spike opened and closed, moving joints snapping before closing into a spike again. It stalked towards him over the black gunk, delicately crawling over the eggs, tapping ever closer as the tentacle reared to strike. That wasn’t the off putting part.It was translucent, almost entirely so. The black fug, the blue eggs, the grey dirt were all visible behind it, albeit like looking through water. It was surreal- the camouflage of a true predator. Box had seen the pictures and videos of what employees of DRG had called ‘horrors’, but this was an altogether different creature. Unknown, unidentified, and clearly hungry.Box wasn’t a fighter. Not in the same sense as Ymir or Nuru. Box was the builder, the barricader, the besieger. He could set up a platform bunker in record time, block exits and create chokes for various beasts and aliens before directing the appropriate amount of firepower their way. By no means did that mean he didn’t know his way around a pickaxe- any dwarf worth their body hair knew. Yet here he was without a bunker or vantage, without the various guns at his disposal, with only one good arm and a pick. Electrified and modified, granted, but just a pick. As the translucent glyphid hunter thing approached him, coming ever closer, Box’s mechanical mind switched on. Time slowed. This must be what they were for- this was what R&D was working on.He had to hope he could set it off.The glyhid’s appendage bent backwards to strike, like the stinger of some xeno-scorpion. Box groaned as his injured arm reached into a pouch on his belt, shoulder throbbing down to his fingers. The glyphid hissed, front claws rising, black spittle falling to the ground. Sweating and straining, Box pulled out a shiny cartridge with a bright yellow tip. In the darkness of the ghostlight, the yellow seemed unnatural and garish, bright and shining. Box took in how it actually seemed to glow down here- information for later. He needed to focus. With a jolt of pain up his wrist he flicked the cartridge up and drew back the pick.The tentacle shot up and Box sent a surge of power through the pick before smacking the bullet.The field scraped the rear of the falling cartridge.Like thunder the bullet shot, igniter sparked by the pick’s energy field. The chem-tipped bullet shot clear through the tentacle, black blood fountaining into the murky air as the bullet passed on and struck the beast’s back.It shrieked. Box stumbled back as the glyphid thing thrashed about, Box swallowing as the assassin threw itself into the egg-structures. Yellow trails coursed their way through its body, the chemical agent activating in the veins of the horror. The horror continued to hiss, movements slowing as the toxins proved too strong for it to resist. With a final gasp it fell to the ground, bubbling as its body melted.“That was easy,” Box gasped. He stood still for a moment, panting in the humidity. The bullet had worked. If only he had recorded it- the way the bullet had pierced the creature’s strange hide, had actually stuck in its body, the release of the toxin that could be tracked visually. He didn’t even have a body to take.Box shook his head. Now was not a time for research. He needed a plan. Or rather, he had a plan already and just ended somewhere safe to set it up. As he began to shuffle his way past a cluster of larger egg structures, the heat of this bottom layer of the biome hit him even harder. He panted, beads of sweat rolling off his moustache. He could feel his shoulder swell, from the injury and the pressure. He hadn’t noticed that before. Interesting. Had to be tied to the egg structures and the glyphid. No other answer for it. There were also no lantern lilies down here. Did that mean something? Box’s mind raced, taking the edge off the pain. The dim blue light of the throbbing egg structures led him on, and he looked for a place to set up for his plan, somewhere a little farther down.There came a small whooshing. The sound of a pin drop. Box turned to see a small piece of metal bouncing and rolling on the floor. His eyes widened. He knew what that piece of metal was intimately.“Oh no,” he mumbled, hurrying on down the small valley. Another one clinked beside him. Then a third on his shoulder. He needed to hurry, needed to get set up. He winced, urging his sore limbs on, mind working through the pain. He needed to find a place to think, somewhere to set up. He had enough parts on him to scrounge something up, put something together the Box way. That was when bullet casings began to fall like rain from the darkness above.***Ymir was cursing as he switched his ammo feed. It was difficult to change while hanging over an abyss, his normal bravado strained as his hands worked desperately. Nuru was backing up to the cable, poignant bursts coughing from his rifle. Tokala was sending waves of fire back towards the lantern lily and that seemed to hold the creatures at bay- but only just. There was no telling if the flames were actually hurting the things. The light seemed to flow through their bodies, the bright red and orange passing like a wave through semi-translucent bodies all the way down the horde. They came like the tide from the bend in the tunnel, quiet chittering the only sounds from the horde of horrors that were released with the drone’s beeping.“At least get across!” Nuru called over his shoulder, cutting down the front rank of horror swarmers. Little bodies struck by the strange bullets turned yellow and exploded, splashing yellow liquid over the others. The toxin seemed to work quite well on these things. Every drop sizzled and burnt another swarmer, killing some and hurting others. Tokala’s flames slowed them and herded them enough that Nuru’s shots took small chunks out from the mass.Ymir yelled his frustration, but Tokala heard the grav-line whine as Ymir began to cross the abyss. Nuru called him, counting down.“3,2,1, break!”With a final gout of flame Tokala turned and sprinted, jumping out of the lantern lily’s light and into the air. His heart almost skipped a beat as his armoured boots peddled mid-air, and with a grunt he activated the grav harness. The line bounced, Ymir swearing, but it held, Tokala swinging on the cable. The spike creaked, straining in the dirt on the weight of the dwarves. The gunner was still struggling with a fastening on the minigun, but he was almost across. Tokala craned his neck to see Nuru at the chasm’s edge, faced with the living ocean of swarmer-horrors.Nuru was placing his shots carefully, trying to splash as many as possible with the chem-rounds. Yellow liquid seeped into the dirt as the translucent nightmares splashed through the drying substances. He was only feet away from the edge when he ejected another magazine. If Tokala was counting right, Nuru had only another two left. Yet the swarmers came on.“Let’s go! Get on!” Ymir called over his shoulder as he prepared to jump the last few feet to the other side. His minigun barrels were already cycling, the soft clacking of metal on metal carrying over the chasm. Tokala was halfway across when Nuru grabbed on to the line.The electronic blare sounded like a horn, deafening in the quiet storm that faced the dwarves. Nuru was hooked on and moving across the cable when a light appeared in the tunnel, the whir of mechanics louder than the whispering swarmers. Ymir held his fire, braced in the dirt, leaning back in preparation to fire. Tokala zoomed in with his goggles, the drop below forgotten as something came up over the bend. His brow furrowed, mouth dropping open as the bright warm light, different from anything else they had found in these depths, shone like a sun.It blared again, hatches opening and closing, blocked by various growths that coiled from seams in the joints. The light on top was cracked but shone on all the brighter, blinding the night vision. Its steps were jerky and wonky- just wrong, a puppet’s legs moving on strings by a poor handler. It carried on through the swarmers, and they seemed bolstered by its presence. It sped up when it got closer to the edge, loping towards the fleeing dwarves. Tokala’s mouth dropped open as he realized it wasn’t simply leading the swarmers- they were coming out of it.“Is that a MOLLY?!” Ymir yelled.“Take it out!” Nuru roared as he lept for the cable.Ymir’s gun thundered as the chem rounds spat out in a torrent. The swarmers were scythed down in rows, Ymir sending bursts into pockets, chemicals splashing every which way. Nuru was partways across the chasm, holding his fire, priming and tossing a grenade. Tokala hopped off the line, turning around to watch the Molly unit approach the chasm edge. Something was attached to it, not quite visible through the roiling mass, but it looked like-“Nuru! Jump!” Ymir yelled, breaking Tokala’s thought. He turned to see Nuru almost halfway across, calm and collected, as the Molly neared the spike. It blared again, a shockwave of noise roiling from its horn. Tokala could see, behind the finally thinning horde, another glow emanating from the tunnel. Cold and blue like ice, stones and debris rumbled as something was digging- no, battering its way through the tunnel. It had to be massive.Then Tokala’s earpiece crackled. Even Ymir grunted in surprise.“Can you hear me? It’s Box- repeat, it’s Box. I’ve managed to get a signal going. Anyone respond?”Nuru was almost in range to jump off the line. “We hear you, Box, give us-”The Molly beeped. It rammed the line, electronically wailing as it shoved against the spike. It slackened.Nuru fell as the line dropped. via /r/DeepRockGalactic https://ift.tt/3eeVPw7