'Hey peeps GhostNobody here to say a big big thank you for all the love and support you guys have shown me over the last week. The heartfelt condolences that I received really touched me and helped to lift my spirits a great deal, they also helped to pull me out of a rather dark place. So in thank you to you guys I have decided to release this chapter ahead of schedule. Don't worry that doesn't mean that it's not ready or only half done, it's up to the quality that you guys have come to expect and demand of me I assure you. It's just the love shown to me reminded me that while we may all be just a random collection of strangers with the same interests that doesn't mean that we can't extend a hand to each other in our times of need, if anything it holds up what I said about us all being like a little messed up family.
I also wanted to bounce an idea of you guys too, it's been rattling around in my head ever since my friend CelfwrDderwydd stuck it there and I wanted to know what you guys think. He suggested to me that I do a sort of spin off from Hunter Hunted but like a collection of mini stories, now I think this might be a good idea in the run up to the release of the second part when I begin to write it, each chapter would follow a different couple or person depending, showing their struggles and strife's to build their new life as part of the clan Mason on their new home world. Let me know what you guys think because as always I love to hear from you either in the comments or by PM because as I've always said my door is always open to everyone, if you have a question ask it, if you have a comment say it, if you just want to say hi do it, don't be shy.
So with one last big thank you to you guys, this is GhostNobody signing off and saying love received is love returned, this one is for you guys, oh and on with the show…..'
Chapter 8: Building Bridges.
A can bounced down the hallway causing an echo as it span and pinged off the drab grey coloured concrete walls.
Ice turned and looked at Picasso accusingly, he just shrugged guiltily. "Sorry it's kinda hard to see under this thing sometimes" he said gesturing up with his heavily modified M56 Smartgun.
This particular Smartgun had been through Tank's hands and had been rather up heavily modified, it was made of much lighter materials to make it easier to handle in tight places and also to carry over long distances. Next up was the tracking systems, he had modified them by combining them with the same system used by Yaujta hunting masks and plasma castors, so now instead of just firing wherever the user was looking it could be used to lock onto targets for sustained fire, this meant the user wore a modified head piece attached to their helmet which displayed a heads up display into their visor and projected the laser which it used to lock onto targets, with a bit of Tank flair he had somehow managed to make it smart enough to now also be able to track multiple targets at once and also prioritize them based of distance and threat analysis, so for example if you had a heavily armed sniper two hundred meters from you and a charging Xeno one hundred from you it would prioritize the sniper and fire a burst to make them get their head down before switching to the Xeno.
Tank's last trick with this particular gun was its real party piece, Tank called it TAA or Target Adjusting Ammo. This stuff was just as smart as the gun and worked perfectly in conjunction with the gun's sensors, it adjusted itself for the particular target that the user was firing at, for example if you were firing at a Xeno it would adjust the ammo to penetrate the target's thick skin and then explode inside the target before the acid had chance to dissolve it, but if you were firing at a soft unarmoured human it would drop the projectile charge to slow the round down and adjust the tip not to fully explode but rather to pop open and expand, so that it did not punch straight through but stayed inside the target mushrooming out to do maximum damage.
The heads up display was also fitted with a mini movement tracker like the type that the Colonial Marines used but small enough to clip to the user's helmet and display the results in the user's visor.
But despite all of Tank's modifications the gun was still a bit of a beast to wield, big and cumbersome to hold even with the mechanical belt helping you to swing it around, this was what was hindering Picasso as he found it difficult to see his feet under it.
Ice just shook her head as she turned back to the corridor in front of her, this hospital was very fucking creepy and she really didn't like it here, the lobby and the corridors they'd encountered upon entering it had looked like a tornado had swept through them. There was stuff strewn in every direction, seats and desks over turned and thrown around, over turned wheel chairs and gurneys had also been quite the flavour in the main lobby. What had disturbed her the most about them was the fact that every single one of them had been blood stained, so they hadn't been just stored there, they'd been occupied when whatever blitzed through here came through.
As they'd moved deeper into the hospital they'd also begun to notice makeshift barricades in various corridors and against doors, obviously doctors and nurses and probably patients had tried to seal themselves off from whatever it was that had swept through here, the depressing thing for Ice was that pretty much every single one of them had been breached.
As they moved into a large X Junction Ice swung her modified pulse rifle from corridor to corridor in succession checking that it was clear, this version of the M41 Pulse rifle had also been through Tank's hands and he'd named it, the M41T.
It had been lightened the same way as Picasso's Smartgun, it also now supported a reinforced barrel made from precision milled Tritanium that was fitted with an integrated life lasting suppressor, this made the weapon much quieter than the standard model especially when combined with the subsonic ammo that he'd come up with for it.
Ice always chose to carry a mixture of ammo for it so she'd always have a good balance for whatever their engagements threw at them. On this trip she was carrying 10x24mm caseless explosive tipped rounds and 10x24mm subsonic hollow points, these were stored in custom drum magazines that Tank had created for the gun, these held two hundred rounds per drum allowing the user to stay in the fight longer before swapping.
The gun also supported both a small holo sight and a laser pointer on its rails to aid its accuracy, he'd also rigged the gun's fire selector to include single shots so that it could be used to its maximum accuracy.
Tank had also rejigged the under-barrel pump action grenade launcher with a much smoother action and when combined with his own brand of airburst frag or incendiary grenades this made it particularly deadly to crowds.
Ice looked up at the signs in the corridors, to their left was X ray and the MRI departments, to their right was surgery and the intensive care units, directly ahead of them led to the labs and to the wards.
Glancing over her shoulder she saw Picasso scanning the area with his large Smartgun and his sensors, "The labs would be our best option, if they had any time before the worst of this hit then there'd be samples and possibly specimens there for us to analyse" she said, Picasso nodded,
"Alright lead the way Doc this is your game field not mine" he said, she nodded and they headed ahead down the corridor that led towards the labs.
As they walked she began to notice even more breached barricades in the smaller branching corridors.
"Hold up" Picasso suddenly hissed from behind her, Ice instantly froze and glanced over her shoulder at him, he was moving his Smartgun around as if trying to get a fix on something,
"I got movement, fifty meters four signals" he said in a whisper and pointing in the direction his motion tracker had got it's ping from, Ice nodded and brought her weapon into the aim in the direction that Picasso had indicated.
Both of them moved slowly down the corridor with Picasso counting down the distance between them and the four pings on the motion tracker, as they drew closer Ice started to hear an odd scraping noise, she held up her balled fist and Picasso stopped, she motioned to her head to show that she heard something and a return nod from him indicated that he'd heard it too, the pair of them began to move again but even slower than before both being extra careful of their footing with all the loose items and debris littering the floor, this was extra difficult for Picasso but he did his best.
A small corridor leading off the main one seemed to be where the pings were coming from and as it appeared Picasso signalled Ice that's where the pings were, she nodded and moved off to his left as they both moved to round the corner.
Stepping around the corner both of them instantly saw what had tripped the motion tracker, there were three humans and a male Yaujta standing in the corridor, they were stood at a closed door and from the massive scratch marks and what appeared to me teeth marks that Ice's night vision systems picked up they had been trying to get through it for quite a while.
The four of them didn't even seem to notice the two newcomers. Ice thought about shouting a challenge, well that was until she noticed the huge growths sticking up out of the back of the Yaujta male. It looked like he had some form of coral shards sticking up out of his back and his shoulders. The night vision screwed her ability to identify colours as everything just looked like it was a million different shades of grey. Ice also noticed the same growths sticking up out of various parts of the three humans bodies as well, plus the fact that the one nearest them seemed to be missing his left arm at the elbow didn't help.
All four of them were wearing hospital lab coats which indicated that they were medical staff, either doctors or lab techs.
It was at this point that the Yaujta noticed the two newcomers, he turned slowly at first but them when he was able to see them with the one good eye that he still had as his other was completely encased in one of those coral growths, he straightaway let loose a blood curdling roar, only two of his mandibles flared as he did and the other two just kinda twitched as the skin between them seemed to be fused into the coral mass on the side of his face.
Without hesitation Ice levelled her M41T on him and as the laser mark fell on him she put three rounds into his chest. As they were in close confines and she figured they'd be facing unarmoured targets, her gun was loaded with the hollow point rounds, the M41T made a rapid series of dull thuds as it fired off the three rounds in rapid succession. All three found their mark and caused the male Yaujta to stagger backwards but he didn't fall, glowing blood sprayed out from the impact sites in his chest and caused a fine glowing mist to spring up in front of him. But instead of stopping him all it did was seem to piss him off as he let loose another roar, but this one did sound kinda rattled as he had what would be three sucking chest wounds.
As one the three humans with him turned towards the two of them and now Ice could see the extent of the damage to their bodies as well. The fact that one of them was still up and mobile was nothing short of a miracle, her body was peppered with a verity of gunshot wounds, her chest was peppered with holes and most of her stomach had been blown away with what was obviously a shotgun hit at close range.
Ice's eyes widened at the sight of the young woman with her intestines hanging down around her knees like a skipping rope and a gigantic hole in her abdomen, she glanced at a Picasso and she could see the shock painted in his eyes as well through his visor, "Weapons free!" she yelled just as the four of them headed straight for them.
Picasso's Smartgun roared as he opened up on them, fortunately Tank had fitted the end of the barrel with a flash suppressor to eliminate the muzzle flash so that their night vision wouldn't be affected when used in dark places and to make them harder to target.
The smart targeting picked the heavily injured woman as she was the closest to him and the large rounds from his opening burst tore her upper chest to pieces and slammed her down onto her back, but to their utter shock no sooner had she hit the floor than she was scrambling to try and get back to her feet. "No fucking way! That's not fucking possible!" Ice yelled as she sent yet another burst into the chest of the Yaujta opening up even more of his chest, but it didn't stop him or even slow him down he just kept coming.
The second burst from Picasso's Smartgun hit the second human and opened a zipper of hits right up his chest with the final round slamming into his face hitting him right between the eyes. The large round blew the back of the male's skull out and the vacuum pressure that was in his head nearly collapsed it while also causing his one good eye to pop out of its socket, the other one was encased in coral.
The male fell backwards onto his back and took out the legs of the Yaujta who got tangled up in the sprawling male as he fell causing him to trip and fall on his face. Picasso noticed that this human didn't try and get back up, turning to Ice he yelled, "Go for headshots!".
Ice nodded and levelled her M41T on the centre of the Yaujta's face and he tried to get up while looking like he was doing some sort of push up while using the human as a bench to rest his feet on. Her three round burst caved his face pretty much in on itself and his body crashed back down to the floor with a heavy thud, this time he did not try to get back up.
The final two that were left standing fell with a burst from each weapon to each of their heads slamming them down onto their backs and sending them skittering backwards.
"Tangos neutralised" Picasso said as he tapped the Yaujta male's corpse with his armoured foot, he turned to look at Ice who was already crouched down next to the body of the young woman whose body had nearly been turned inside out by gunshots.
"We need to get these bodies to an autopsy room, I need to run some tests." She said,
"Are you sure that's wise? There's bound to be more of those fuckers heading our way now" Picasso said, Ice nodded her agreement at this,
"Yeah I know, but we still need to know what the fuck we're up against here" she said.
A small sound from the door caught Picasso's attention and he immediately snapped his Smartgun up into the aim levelling it on the door, which to his utter amazement now stood open and in the doorway stood a young Scalathor woman.
Picasso nearly opened fire on her, if it wasn't for the fact that she immediately held her hands up in front of her protectively he would have. He body language instantly told him that she wasn't infected.
"Please don't shoot!" the young woman exclaimed as she saw Picasso levelling his weapon on her, at the sound of a voice Ice snapped up from inspecting the bodies and levelled her weapon on the newcomer.
"Identify yourself!" Ice snapped keeping her weapon trained on her, treatment like this always seemed harsh and unnecessary to civilians who didn't understand how the military mind works, it's all about threat analysis and situation control and sometimes the only way to stop civilians and sometimes yourself from panicking and running around was to show a measure of authority and control.
From the white tone of her skin Ice could tell that the young reptilian woman was scared out of her mind, she also looked exhausted.
"I-I-I-I-I'm Zachee Twist Horn, I work here or at least I did" she said in a soft but scared sounding voice,
"Doctor?" Picasso asked, her eyes flicked from Ice to him, in his opinion she was rather a pretty young woman, she was about 5'2 with a long curved horn in the centre of her short feminine snout that like her name depicted twisted at the end like a corkscrew.
She kind of remained Picasso of the pictures of dragons that he used to love looking at when he was a kid, in fact she kinda reminded him of the dragon he had tattooed across the back of his shoulders and onto his chest, it was probably the small rows of little horns that ran along the sides of her snout and over the top of her head, but to be fair she was a lot prettier and a lot more feminine than the pictures he'd seen.
"Y-Y-Y-Yes" Zachee stammered, Ice and Picasso glanced at each other and shared a slight almost unperceivable nod, then as one they both lowered their weapons and stood up straight to face Zachee.
"A-A-A-Are you the rescue team?" Zachee asked still stammering in fear, Ice glanced at Picasso and he nodded, this was his area of expertise being the team's interrogation specialist.
"That's right. You can call me Picasso and this is my colleague Ice" He said in a very soft and controlled voice as he took a step towards the young woman, he could now see past her and into the room in which she'd been hiding, it appeared to be a laboratory of some kind. He could see a few work stations with magnifiers and imaging equipment as well as sample cabinets, he couldn't see any others in the room and his motion tracker only showed her signal.
"Oh thank the Gods!" Zachee said in a voice that sounded like it was full of relief and at the same time sounded like it was about to crack and explode with emotion, Picasso knew that he'd have to keep her stable while he asked her a few questions, so pushing his Smartgun's barrel upwards for the belt harness to hold he locked it in the upwards position so that his hands were now free.
Slowly he placed an armoured hand on her shoulder, instantly she flinched at his touch and she looked up at his visor hidden face, he guessed that without night vision she wouldn't be able to see anything except his helmet so in order to calm her nerves he reached up and pressed a small switch on the back of the helmet which caused the internal lights to bathe his face in soft blue light enabling her to see him.
As soon as she saw his face something inside Zachee snapped and in a flash she threw her arms around Picasso's torso and began to sob against his armoured chest, "Thank you, thank you" she began to say over and over again as she clung to his chest, slowly he placed a hand on the back of her scaled head and tried to soothe her.
"Shhhh now it's ok now" he said in a soft voice. Looking over her head at Ice he motioned with his head for her to check the lab that Zachee had been hiding in. Ice nodded and slowly moved past the pair and into the room.
It was a rather advanced lab for performing toxicology screening and blood work, there were four separate lab stations with various equipment designed to filter blood and fluids and then to inspect them, things like high precision microscopes and other scanning equipment littered the stations.
The room was pretty much dark except for a small amount of light being given off by what appeared to be some sort of bio luminescent fungi that was stored in jars that Zachee had placed around a small couch that she appeared to have been using as a bed.
It was kinda obvious that Zachee had been in here quite a while by all the wrappers and other trash that was piled up near a totally buried bin in the corner of the room, Ice was just glad that the lab had its own toilet facilities or she guessed she'd have been very glad of her helmet.
Using the team's hand signals Ice motioned to Picasso that the room was clear and safe, he nodded a response and then made a signal to her for her to call it in before turning his attention back to the still sobbing young female Picasso gently lifted her chin so that she was looking right at his face. "I need to ask you some questions Zachee, we need to know what happened here and what we can do to help" he said in his soft voice,
"Help!? There is no help now, all we can do is get the fuck out of here before more of them come, more of them always come" Zachee said in a fearful voice, as she spoke he heard another voice over his comms in his helmet.
"Ice to all call signs, Ice to all call signs, we have a survivor repeat we have secured a survivor, will continue to search the hospital for anything else useful, have also taken down four X tangos, repeat four X tangos neutralised, if encountered use only headshots to engage as body and limb shots are pointless, repeat engage with headshots only, over" Ice said through the team comms.
The response was almost instant, "This is Inferno confirming info received and understood, continue your search and keep us updated with anything you find" she said, there was a fair bit of static on her line but Ice was able to understand what she'd said thanks to her gruff voice cutting through the static, Spike had designed their personal comm systems and they had not only a massive range but huge depth so that they could function even when the operator was underground or in a fortified building, so if there was static on the line that meant that Inferno was somewhere shielded and the signal was having trouble penetrating.
A second voice came over the comms, "This is Tank confirming info received and understood and just in time girly, I think we're about to need it, we've just reached the shuttle station and it's pretty heavily fortified, we're gonna see if Moodstone can work her black magic and get us inside, if we're successful we'll see what we can turn up and if possible turn this place into a staging area, over" Tanks voice said over a much clearer line.
"Roger that, keep us in the loop on any progress and watch your back, treat any civilian contact as hostile until confirmed that they are uninfected" Inferno's voice said,
"Roger that" came the various replies including Ice's.
Looking from Zachee to Ice the two shared a small nod, Picasso was about to resume his questioning of the frightened young woman when a metallic clang echoed down the corridor from his right, instantly he released her and swung his weapon down into the firing position and turned his visor lights off. As he looked down the long corridor he couldn't see a single thing till what appeared a can slowly rolled from the left of the corridor to the right before hitting the wall with a metallic thud. Taking slow controlled breaths Picasso scanned the corridor with his Smartgun but there was nothing in sight and his motion tracker wasn't showing anything, well not at first anyway, first one bleep, then two, then ten.
"Contacts! We gotta move now!" Picasso roared to Ice who without hesitation appeared behind Zachee and grabbed her before she could retreat back into the room,
"Go I got you covered" he said as she pushed past him with the protesting Scalathor, walking backwards he kept his Smartgun in the aim down the corridor as the markers got closer, they were currently at forty meters and closing.
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Tank looked at the scene of utter chaos that surrounded the shuttle station, there were barricades and mesh wire barriers strewn everywhere, in among them were what appeared to military vehicles like hover hummers and two massive Challenger 10 main battle tanks, all of them were totally abandoned.
It looked like they'd set up some sort of checkpoint here, probably in some attempt to begin an evacuation, an evacuation that for whatever reason never happened.
One of the first things he noticed were the huge holes in the tarmac and cement leading up to the shuttle station carpark, it looked like heavy weapons fire and judging by the massive blood stains and bits of tissue everywhere most of the fire had been fairly accurate.
But the thing that was puzzling him the most was where were the bodies? All those holes and all that blood and there was not a single body in sight in any direction.
"Sure was a hell of a shit storm came this way" he said as he kneeled down to inspect a rather large scorch mark that was obviously made by a Yaujta plasma caster.
"Given that I can't see a single body anywhere I'm suddenly not liking the odds here very much" Moodstone said sweeping her weapon across the empty carpark as she did she looked up at Whisper who was also inspecting a hole apparently made by heavy weapons fire, she simply glanced up at her and nodded her agreement.
"Well we can't hang about here all fucking day, let's get a move on hens and see what we can do with that big arse building over there" Tank said pointing at the main shuttle station building, both Moodstone and Whisper glanced at each other before they looked back at him and nodded following his lead towards the main building.
The main building was a huge retro styled affair, it reminded Tank of the old Grand Central train station on Earth, but on a much older scale and he could also see a lot of artistic licence from the architect in the form of huge brick archways that lines the entire outer wall that circled the building. A large black granite staircase led them directly up to the main doors, where a huge shutter had been closed in front of the doors themselves to prevent entry.
Tank stood looking at the massively dented silver coloured shutter, but it wasn't the dents that he was paying attention to, it was the collection of bloody handprints that littered it.
"Think you can crack it open lassie?" Tank asked looking at Moodstone, she grinned at him through her helmet,
"Is that a trick question lover?" she asked causing Tank to return her grin inside his helmet, before he met this wondrous woman he'd have never even imagined looking at another species the way he looked at her. She'd turned his entire perception of the universe upside down and inside out the second she'd stepped into his life, as he turned to help Whisper keep watch while she broke out her plasma cutting torch from her pack, he remembered the very first time he'd set eyes on her.
The team was in the process of being assembled by the Queen Bee and he was stood in the meeting room of the Ghost's Shadow, he'd been talking to the team's Sargent a kinda normal looking guy whose code name was Reaper while he looked around as each of the team was brought in one at a time and introduced.
Now he'd never met any of these guys before today and he had to say he really wasn't that impressed by any of them and he'd certainly not heard of any of them before, well that was all except for Reaper.
He'd heard of this guy before and although he wasn't exactly much to look at, his reputation alone was enough to give entire armies the willies. Before he'd been recruited by the Spirit's he was some kind of floating assassin out in the outer rim, but now while assassins were ten a penny out here on the frontier, this guy was different.
Instead of your everyday petty thug this guy specialised in going after the slaving rings and pirate crews that operated out here, a story sprung to mind of a pirate cruiser that had attacked a colonist ship killing most of the crew and taking the passengers as slaves.
Well when the Colonial Marines had been drafted in to find and take them out they'd found that someone had beaten them to it.
They found the ship adrift inside an asteroid belt and when they boarded it they'd found every single one of the crew dead, but there was no evidence of a struggle or even a battle. Every one of them had been killed execution style, either with a shot to the back of the head or with their throats cut some times in groups of three or four and the slaves were simply gone.
They all showed up on a Wayland Yutani run deep space station which acted like a refuelling and R&R station for those going to the frontier worlds, every one of them told the same story of a guy dressed all in black who's face you couldn't see for his large hood who moved like a ghost and killed without mercy, some of them had watched him from their cages as he'd moved up on the totally unsuspecting crew and just cut their throats or simply shot them in the back of the head and that was only one of the stories accredited to him, there were hundreds of tales just like it, so while Tank wasn't impressed with the look of the man he was more than smart enough to know to respect him, the man was beyond dangerous but he was also surprisingly pleasant and friendly to talk to.
It was at that point that she walked in, Queen Bee had introduced her as Moodstone and had started listing off her specialist skills and credits that explained her position in the team, but while the Queen Bee had been speaking Gregor had not heard a word she'd said, his mind had been totally captivated by the totally radiant creature that was stood before him and what made his heart nearly leave his chest is the fact she was staring right at him and smiling broadly, it was so incredible that Gregor wouldn't have been surprised if one of those little cherub fuckers showed up and shot him with an arrow, thought if he did he'd still have to punch the little fucker through a bulkhead, principle and all that, couldn't have the team thinking he was a weak little wee bern.
"I got it! We're in" Moodstone's voice snapped him out of his happy memory, he turned and saw that she'd managed to cut through all the securing bolts that held the shutter down, now it should be free moving on its mountings, she turned to look at him over her shoulder,
"You're up my love" she said with a smile, moving Bertha onto her sling Gregor moved to the shutter and jammed both his shovel like hands under it before with a gargantuan effort lifted the heavy metal shutter up high enough for them all to crawl under.
The shutter made a huge crash as Tank let it fall to the ground, it seemed to echo around the large pitch black entrance hall they'd found themselves in. "Everyone switch to night vision" he said upon seeing how dark it was, as they were switching over something lit up in his Hud.
"Motion tracker's getting a signal, sixty meters that way" he hissed pointing his finger into the dark hallway, each of them brought their weapon up into the aim and started scanning their arcs,
"I'm on point, Moodstone you in the middle and Whisper cover our rears" Gregor and the others nodded while moving into position, slowly they began to move down the hallway in a staggered line constantly sweeping with their weapons as they moved.
As they moved closer more signals started popping up on Gregor's motion tracker, he stopped the team with a hand signal, "I got multiple signals here, counting ten signals so far" he said, the other two nodded and slowly they moved off again now being even more cautious as they moved down the large marble hallway.
At the end of the hallways was two sets of large wooden double doors, the left set had a padlock and chain wrapped around the handles, "Guess we're going right" Tank said pointing to the doors, Moodstone and Whisper nodded and moved into position on either side of the doors while he got into position directly in front of them.
Whisper who was the closest to the handle counted down from three on her hand till it hit zero and both her and Moodstone hit the door handles at the same time and the doors creaked loudly inwards with the three of them following them.
The door led into a massive waiting room with lots of benches and seating in the middle of the room, the entire outer walls were full of shops and what looked like check in desks. The whole place looked like it had been heavily vandalised as cases and bins and various other articles were strewn all over the floor in every direction.
All three of them scanned their arcs with their weapons suddenly Whisper held her hand up and pointed down her gun barrel towards a set of check in desks over to the left side.
She was holding a cousin of Reaper's PIMP gun called the AMPIP or Anti Material Plasma Infused Projector. It was a dedicated sniper version of the PIMP gun that Reaper carried, it had been built specially with Whisper's talents in mind.
Using this weapon, she currently held the longest shot and kill record, having hit and killed an enemy combatant at nearly four miles away with a single cold bore shot.
The weapon was chambered to fire plasma projectiles in a 20mm slug at insane velocity, upon impact the rounds drilled into their targets before releasing all that charged up plasma energy with an explosive burst that tended to vaporise the target's internal organs leaving them a pretty much hollow shell made of toasted skin.
Both Moodstone and Tank followed her sightline and spotted what she was looking at, over by the check in desk there appeared to be someone stood leaning on the desk as if they were filling out a boarding card.
Tank motioned for Moodstone to come with him but for Whisper to stay where she was and provide cover if necessary, both nodded and moved into position, Whisper moved to a bench and knelt down flicking down the AMPIP's barrel legs as she did.
Moodstone moved off to Gregor's right and slowly the pair of them approached the figure stood by the desk, both of them were careful as they approached making as little noise as possible while trying to avoid debris. Once they were close enough Gregor held up hand and motioned for Moodstone to move further right, she nodded and circled around the figure.
"Hey fella, you waiting for a flight or what?" Gregor yelled to the figure he had now identified as a human male, the guy slowly turned towards him as if every movement was a struggle, each movement seemed to be really twitchy and non-fluid, as he turned to face him Gregor's eyes widened, half of the guy's face appeared to be just skull.
Without warning the guy who was dressed in what looked like an expensive looking black business suit let loose a blood curdling screech and flew straight at Gregor with his arms outstretched. Before he'd gone three steps there was a flash over Gregor's shoulder and the male's head snapped backwards, his eye sockets and mouth seemed to pour a blue and pink light out of them along with what looked like wispy steam for a second before he collapsed forwards onto his knees and finally onto his face.
As he fell Tank noticed the large third eye socket that had appeared in the centre of his forehead and he knew instantly that Whisper had taken the shot, he gave her a quick thumbs up to indicate that he was ok, it was scary how accurate that girl was sometimes, that round had passed so close to his own head that he had a vague white trail dissipating next to his face.
"So this is what they were talking about by biohazard" Moodstone said as she approached the now dead male, Tank joined her and now getting a good look at the male his jaw dropped open,
"How the flying fuck was he even still able to be walking around like this?" he said more to himself than directing the question at either of the girls.
The male was in pretty bad shape, not only was half of his face missing, but one of his legs had a compound fracture in his shin and the bone was stuck out of the side of his leg, three of his ribs appeared to be exposed by what must have been a high velocity hit to the chest. His left arm appeared to have been shattered at the shoulder by a second hit but somehow he was still able to raise it.
As both he and Moodstone were examining the body Whisper came to join them, looking down at the body she seemed concerned, "He had no heart beat" she said flatly,
"I'm not surprised hen, you just vaporised his brains and probably everything else in there" Tank said,
"No I mean before I took the shot, I tried to use the heartbeat tracker on my scope and it picked up nothing" she said, Tank and Moodstone glanced at each other then back at the body laid on the floor before them,
"Malfunction?" Moodstone voiced, Whisper shook her head,
"I could see both of your hearts beating no problems, but nothing from him" she said gesturing with her gun barrel at the body laid on the floor, again both Tank and Moodstone looked at each other but before anyone could say anything there was an ear-splitting screech was heard from off to the group's left.
As one the three of them all turned and swung their weapons up into the aim, suddenly Tank's motion tracker lit up like a Christmas tree, "Multiple contacts heading right for us, distance fifty meters, count many" he said as the spots kept appearing, in fact there were so many of them that one entire side of the radar style screen had turned completely white,
"Fuck there's way too many of them, come on we gotta go!" Moodstone yelled as she got a distant glimpse of the massive crowd heading from them out of the gloom, but as they all turned to go back the way they'd come they noticed that more of them were coming down an escalator that led directly to the ground next to the doors.
"That way!" Whisper said pointing towards the ticket desks to the right, the three of them set off at a run, they could now hear the running feet of the crowd chasing them though how they knew where they were in the total pitch black was beyond any of them.
Behind them they heard a massive crash as the check in booths were destroyed by the sheer weight of the crowd that crashed into them, this simply gave them even more motivation to break into a full on sprint but as they glanced left and right there seemed to be more and more of them pouring out of nowhere on all sides of them and joining in the pursuit.
"Where the fuck are they all coming from and how the fuck did we miss them all!?" Moodstone yelled between pants of breath,
"Who fucking cares lassie just fucking keep that sweet tail of yours moving!" Tank yelled from behind her, suddenly off to their right a red light flashed out of the inky blackness and the three of them heard a distant voice yelling,
"Over here! Over here quickly!" the voice yelled and the three of them saw a figure dancing around waving what appeared to be a red light flare, as one the three of them changed direction mid sprint and accelerated towards the figure.
The figure who seemed to be wearing some sort of black armour was stood next to what looked like a blast door that had been jacked up, "In here!" the figure yelled pointing at the door and the three of them didn't need to be told twice, ducking as they ran the three of them sprinted past the figure and under the massive blast door.
As soon as they were clear the figure ducked under the door and kicked the jack away causing it to slam down with enough force to shake the entire room, this was swiftly followed by the horrendous sound of the huge crowd that was pursuing them simply slamming full tilt into the hardened metal with enough force to actually shake it in its foundations.
"I tell you what you sure timed that entrance of yours laddie" Tank said to the armoured figure between heavy pants as he rested his upper body on his legs while bending double,
"Agreed very well timed" Moodstone panted,
"Sorry I'd have tried to intervene sooner but to be fair I wasn't exactly expecting to see a Spirit team sniffing around here" the armoured figure said standing a few feet off to their left, that instantly put all three of them on alert and the three of them stood up straight their hands reaching down to their weapons.
"Who the devil are ye laddie that you know who we are?" Tank said the gruffness instantly returning to his voice along with a very hard edge, very few knew of the existence of Spirit teams, the figure held his open hands out to his sides to show that he wasn't holding a weapon,
"Sorry let me introduce myself" he said and with both hands he reached up and released his helmet from his head revealing the face of a young Yaujta male, but there was something very off about him, it took Tank a second or two to realise that instead of regular dreadlocks he seemed to have actual hair,
"My name's T'sall Jack of the proud clan Mason, Agent first class of the Guardian Corps" the young male Yaujta said drawing his Mandibles up into a smile as he looked at the three now very confused Spirits in front of him.