Rifles primed, everyone looked around themselves in a panic.
"What the hell are you talking about?"
"What do you mean the body is gone?!"
An ear-splitting scream filled the room. The squadron turned to the source, eyes wide with horror as Anderson's struggling body was lifted into the air, skewered on a titanic red blade.
He was every bit as shocked as they were, and could hardly grasp what had happened before his throat welled with blood. His desperate chokes filled their communications as the pirate Commander viciously flung the body from his scythe, cutting straight through his armor and leaving him in pieces.
The team immediately focused their fire, Brady and Shendra entered Hypermode and unleashed every bit of their arsenal. But the Commander barely remained for a second before disappearing entirely from sight.
"Fall back, NOW!" Brady ordered, quickly realizing even they didn't have the firepower for this.
The team eagerly obeyed, turning to run. But it wasn't long before the slinking, steely sound of a teleporter filled their ears.
Just as soon as he appeared, he was gone, the nearly-imperceptible flash of a blade his only trail. Brady's body collapsed to the ground. His head was nowhere to be seen.
The fearful sound of heavy panting filled Kayleer's helmet as he ran as fast as he possibly could. They were being stalked by something they could not even see. The pirate Commander was picking them off at his leisure, and it seemed only a matter of time before that blade greeted him, too.
The team rushed into the corridor adjacent to the skyway. The tunnels wove through the inner workings of the cargo line, winding and winding until the team at last came to a dead end. A rail pipe bordered a steep drop-off, giving way to the abyssal depths of Urtraghus. There was nowhere farther to go.
The hissing sound of the Commander's teleporter began to ring in their ears once more, and Shendra gave a frantic order to what was left of her team.
"JUMP!" she cried.
Four heads turned to her in disbelief, but the sound of an energy blade being drawn from the void quickly dissipated their hesitation.
All together, the marines leapt from the cliffside, tumbling into the darkness below.
Kayleer groaned. Everything was bruised and sore. His prosthetic ached with the telltale signs of damage, fingers struggling to move. He tried to stand, collapsing immediately after as a pain seared up his leg and back. He tried again, trying desperately to remain standing despite it.
It was dark, impossibly so. But the light of several shoulder-mounted flashlights illuminated the scenery. Surprisingly, the environment was almost entirely stone, broken only by the occasional jut of wires and steel. A thin stream of acidic water flowed through the center of the gorge, searing the rock as it moved.
"Kalson, Kalson?" Shendra's voice echoed against the walls.
"He's gone," Toni said grimly. "He landed on his neck."
"Can you stand?" Shendra asked. Toni shook her head.
"I think my legs are broken," she said meekly.
"Stevens?"
"Arm is pretty busted up, but I'm fine," he answered, stuttering through his words. He stood up with relative ease, but his left arm hung uselessly at his side. It tottered slightly as he stood, and he grimaced and gasped as he clutched at it with his rifle-arm.
"Can anyone on the surface hear me?" Shendra spoke into her transceiver, hoping someone would pick up. Only static answered her, and the feedback quickly told her that the transmission had failed.
"I can't get a signal to work here. We need to get moving til we find a place where it will," she ordered.
"What about Toni?" Adelaide asked.
Shendra thought for a moment, turning her eyes to Kayleer. "Do you think you can carry her, Kayleer?"
"I'm not sure," he admitted. He was more than twice the size of his squadmate, but armor was dense and heavy, and the pirate was uncertain of his strength. He remembered all too well what an impossible burden Shendra had been, but he couldn't use much more than a single arm back then.
He knelt down and offered Toni his shoulder. She slung her arm over and clasped it about his neck. He pulled her up, straining with the effort as the heavy marine weighed down on his arms. Toni rubbed her head and winced in pain, finding even the pirate's gentle movements to be a strain on her injuries.
"I think we can manage," he reported.
Shendra nodded, and led the way forward.
She fiddled with her helmet's transceiver, trying desperately to find something that would work. Her helmet suddenly buzzed with static, and she lit up in surprise.
"It's a transmission! Federation in origin but it's on a different frequency than usual," Shendra eagerly reported.
"Hello? Hello? Can you read me?" she inquired.
Kayleer looked down in surprise as he heard a muffled echo of Shendra's voice beneath Toni's helmet. He felt in the marine an immediate sense of panic. He was confused. Shendra hadn't sent the message to her teammates, but to the unknown source of the transmission.
"No response," Shendra said, disappointed. She adjusted her radio waves, trying to change the transmission she was receiving into more than mere static. As the blaring sound faded, she saw an image slowly begin to coalesce on her HUD. She squinted in confusion as she tried to make it out.
"They're… coordinates," she said. "But I don't understand, they line up with the ones my HUD displays. They're our coordinates."
"What the hell do you mean?" Adelaide said. "Someone's transmitting our coordinates?!"
He turned to the pirate and raised his rifle. "I knew it, I FUCKING KNEW IT!" he screamed. "He's giving away our position to them! Fucking pirate scum, should've snapped his neck when he was on the ground."
"Adelaide calm down," Shendra tried to reason with him.
"Calm down? CALM DOWN?" his voice cracked. "Have you fucking lost it? Half the squad is dead. And we're not far behind them. Why do you think the transmission's on a frequency we wouldn't normally detect? He's trying to lead them to us!" He backed away, never taking his aim off the pirate. "No wonder you were so eager to help Toni. Bet you thought if you were carrying a human that we'd be more hesitant to shoot? Yeah, you're clever, I'll give you that. You're finished, you've been exposed. Now put her down."
"Adelaide, please -"
"I SAID PUT HER DOWN!"
A familiar ringing filled the air. It was coming from directly behind the pirate's back, and he instinctively leaped forward. An energy blade slashed against his foot, and Kayleer cried out in pain as he stumbled forward and fell to the ground, dropping his squadmate in the process. He turned to see the red scythe coming down upon him for a second attempt, and he quickly rolled to avoid it.
Adelaide immediately began to open fire on the familiar, red-armored form of the pirate Commander. He merely laughed as the plasma shots clinked harmlessly against the rich, crimson phazite.
"Yyou are uselesss, marine," the Commander laughed, English words hissing awkwardly forth in a raspy, guttural voice.
A new sound rocked against the cavern walls as Shendra entered Hypermode. It seemed to demand the Commander's attention, and before she could fire, he clasped his hand around the head of the marine lying on the ground, pulling her body up in front of him.
"Go ahhhead and ssshoot," he grinned.
"What the hell is this?!" Toni cried, her tone indignant. "You promised you'd spare me!"
"Did I?" the pirate rasped.
"I'm the correspondent, I'm the one that got you here now put me down!"
"Ahhh, I was wonndering which of the four of yyou that came from," the Commander hissed, dropping the marine to the ground.
The remaining three looked to one another in disbelief, uncertain what to do. As soon as the pirate dropped the revealed spy, Shendra opened fire. No sooner had she done so did the Commander disappear yet again, his hollow laughter bouncing maniacally against the canyon walls.
"Back to back, NOW!" Shendra ordered.
The three soldiers threw their backs against one another, preparing for the impending attack. Shendra's Hypermode quickly wore off as the suit's safety function forced her back to standard fire. There was silence as the marines simply waited, rifles primed and ready.
Despite their vigilant formation, the Commander was undaunted, phasing forth directly in front of Shendra. The flash of the teleporter rang through the air as he stepped forward and grabbed the tiny human by the neck.
"Shendra!" her comrades cried in unison. holding back their fire for fear of hitting her.
"That PED you're using is ssstolen," the Commander hissed. "Allow me to sshow you how the original functions."
He drove his blade straight into the phazon holster on Shendra's back. With careful precision, he forced it through her armor, into her body and held it there. The pirate smirked with satisfaction as the human's screams filled the chasm walls.
Shendra writhed in agony, kicking her legs desperately against the air as the pirate held her helpless. The phazon from her suit rushed inside the open wound beneath her armor. It burned inside her, searing through her blood.
Kayleer's rifle lowered, his eyes went wide with horror and he felt a familiar weakness in his legs. He wanted desperately to help, but found himself unable to move. Phazon oozed down her armor. Vivid blue drops of contagion mixed with blood slipped down her legs and coated the ground, crackling with life and radiation.
Finally her screams stopped. Her body became limp. The pirate Commander laughed, reveling in the ecstatic pulse in his head as another mind joined the ranks. He dropped the marine, who landed upright on the ground, shakily raising her rifle now at her own squadmates.
"Shendra?" Adelaide called to her, confused.
She did not answer. Her body spasmed and began to erupt with phazon as she entered Hypermode, rifle bursting with energy as she prepared to fire.
The Commander only laughed, quickly phasing out and appearing directly adjacent to his newfound comrade. He had the marines trapped between them, and there was no where left to run.