Chapter 39: Clan Hammer.
Second tenant Lisa Elliot was currently stood on the bridge explaining what had happened to her and Xipato the captain, from where he sat comms officer T'Vren couldn't hear what was being said but the very animated body language spoke volumes to him, Xipa had been shot down and most likely killed saving her.
Suddenly his control panel began to bleep as it seemed to be picking something up on a broad spectrum frequency, it was on an open un-encrypted channel, he wondered if this was the humans broadcasting but why would they be using an open channel like this, hadn't the Grand Patriarch said they were paranoid about stuff like that?
T'Vren opened the frequency and tuned it in as best he could, there was a lot of static and interference but T'Vren was a skilled Sigint and comms officer, so with a bit of effort, he quickly and skillfully tuned in the message that seemed to have been locked on repeat, that's when he heard words that froze his heart solid in his chest.
"Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!" he yelled scrambling from his seat and running full pelt to a nearby panel on the wall while everyone watched him in pure shock.
He slammed his hand against the reader on the panel, it scanned his palm print and bleeped green causing the pannel to slide up and reveal a keyhole that he jammed the long key he'd pulled from around his neck into before turning it ninety degrees right and priming the system, "Comms officer first class T'Vren Asama, Dark Star I say again, Dark Star, this is not a drill" he said trying to keep his voice from shaking, never in his life had he imagined he'd be the one to have to say those sacred words.
No sooner had they left his lips than the whole ship went utterly crazy, the oath had been called upon and now it was time to deliver upon it.
His fellow comms officers were immediately calling out into the depths of space on every available encrypted Clan Mason frequency informing home and every other Clan member in range of the oath being called in, klaxon's began going off on the bridge and all over the ship giving a very specific alarm and call to arms, one that was reserved for just this occurrence and no other, so that its weight would never be lost among the noise.
The captain marched right up to him, "Report Comms officer T'Vrel!" he demanded in a voice so deep it sounded almost subsonic.
"Dark Star call from second lieutenant Xipa Longclaw, she is alive and fighting for her life!" he said his voice wavering as he delivered the news.
The captain nodded and turned briskly to march right up to his chair pressing the internal comma button as he did, "This is the captain I want all Seekers, Hunters and Battle Angels assembled in the hanger bay, everyone else to battle stations, we have a Dark Star and we are going to get our beloved sister back no matter what! That is all" he said before dropping into the chair.
"Helmsman, plot a course, we are going in," he said.
"Sir yes sir!" the helmsman a rather tall Xeno flight officer yelled saluting before turning to his console and plotting a course to take the large heavy battle cruiser into the asteroid field.
000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
Back on the homeworld, the comms and intel centre was going crazy, the call had come in over the quantum comms system and the comms officer had deployed the Dark Star alarm, immediately the others had begun routing support to the origin of it, both the CMN Fury and the CMN Vengence were already en-route from neighbouring systems to join the Clan's Pride, now ranted that was probably more than enough to deal with the threat, but that wasn't the point of the Dark Star.
"I want the Grand Matriarch's Fury battened down and ready to go as soon as myself and the Grand Matriarch are on board! Contact the Clan's Pride and inform them that we are coming!" the Grand Patriarch yelled as he headed for the door with such fierce determination in his voice and his posture that no-one could help but feel a swell of pure pride in their hearts, this is what it meant to be Clan Mason, call and the Clan will come for you, no matter what and everything about the man said he was about to prove it beyond any measure of doubt.
000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
As Jack ran towards the shuttle hop off near Yoshi and Citrus hive he was joined by other running Seekers and Hunters but as he drew near he saw two very obvious figures coming out of the hive and heading right for him.
"Is it true Grand Patriarch? Is the Dark Star my Xipa?" queen citrus said using her telepathic voice as Jack drew near.
Jack nodded never breaking his stride as he headed for the shuttles, "Yes, she's been captured by hostile humans, I don't know all the details yet" he replied telepathically to cut through the noise.
"Then we are coming too! That's our beloved daughter and we are her parents! We will not leave her out there!" Citrus snarled angrily and Jack looked at both of them, he couldn't say he had ever seen the mild-mannered Japanese man that was king Yoshi looking so determined and fired up so he simply nodded and pointed to the shuttles before the large Xeno queen and her human king fell right in step with him.
000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
"Go Go Go! Line up! Get ready!" the Hunter Sargent major yelled so loud that her voice boomed off every surface in the hanger bay of the Clan Pride and the teams of Hunters, Seekers and Battle Angels scrambled to form up into ranks six long by six deep, well all except for the Seekers who only had one team of four onboard.
Since the Clan had spread out the Seekers were spread pretty thin, there were far fewer of them than there were the other sections of the Guardian core, so as a result there were only a single active Seeker team to each Clan Mason cruiser, less on smaller vessels but given what Seekers could do that was more than enough.
"We have received a confirmed Dark Star call from second lieutenant Xipa Longclaw shot down and thought lost by hostile human forces within the system, she has been captured and taken prisoner by these forces but she managed to get out a single transmission to us, a Dark Star call and we all know what that means, our beloved sister fights for her life and is protecting innocents, so we will attack them and we will retrieve our beloved sister and save those she protects!" the Sargent major yelled so loudly that her passion reverberated around the room along with her voice.
There was a loud cheer and Remal Rainbowscale pumped his fist in the air and yelled out his fury and devotion to his new family just like the nine-foot Yautja female to his right and the six-foot human male to his left, his voice might be lost in the symphony but it was as much a part of it as any of them.
This was his family now and he was determined to fight for them, they had given him a place in the universe, a purpose and they hadn't coddled him simply because he was a male, they had lifted him up and made him strong, they had taught him how to fight and how to be the male he'd always dreamed of being and now it was time to pay back that debt.
000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
"Captain the Fury and the Vengence are on station and forming up on our flanks, both captains report full battle readiness and their Seeker, Hunter and Battle Angel teams are at our disposal, they have also put our fighter wings under your command as they have conceded fleet control to you as Xipa is ours," T'Vren said glancing at the Capitan who was sat in his command chair with his large fingers making a steeple as he rested his arms on the armrests.
He nodded his acknowledgement, "Very good, tell them to launch their fighters and have them RV with ours, we'll tie our systems into their sensors and use them to help us plot a route through the asteroids" he said and T'Vren nodded before issuing the commands to both Fury and the Vengence.
Using the fighters as scouts the three large cruisers picked their way through the asteroid field, recording the path so that it could be transmitted to other enroute CMN ships that were rushing to join them, including the Grand Matriarch's Fury which had sent confirmation that it was underway to their location.
The three large ships used their CWIS and point defence guns to destroy the smaller asteroids that were unavoidable with the large turrets having to blow larger ones out of the way only once or twice as they moved in tight formation, pretty soon the large ships were clear of the huge asteroid field and began to power into the system where all three imminently picked up the presence of the enemy ship that had been reported by second lieutenant Lisa Elliot upon her return.
The three cruisers headed right for the planet and its defender with zero hesitation, even without direct contact with the Clan the Dark Star protocol gave the commanding officer on scene the authority to act with the full support of the Clan and to carry out whatever actions they deemed necessary to reach their personnel, including lethal force.
This had been decreed by both the Grand Matriarch and Patriarch upon the founding of the Dark Star protocol, they had wanted these words to be so sacred to each and every member of the Clan that they would be ingrained into their psyche as both a warning and as a promise, they said to use these words and you will pull the whole weight of the Clan's might to you to defend or avenge you, but do not use them lightly because in doing so you could not only cost a great many of your brothers and sisters lives but put the whole Clan at risk.
It was meant so that these words would only be used in the direst of circumstances, both a warning and a promise all in one, one that every member of the Clan both respected and feared, this is why up until this day these words had never been used before.
As the three ships moved towards the planet the human ship began to move to put itself between them and the large red body, "Scan them" the captain said and the weapons officer and science officers both carried out deep scans of the enemy ship.
"Looks to be a light cruiser of some kind, looks like is carrying nuclear weapons by the radioactive signatures I'm picking up, but its weapons are pretty minimal and have no energy shielding, they won't last a minute in a fight with us," the weapons officer said confidently.
"My scans concur, captain, by our standards the technology is antiquated," the science officer said.
"Captain they are hailing us" T"Vren said as he heard a distinctly human voice come through his headset.
"Put them through," the captain said and T'Vren transferred the voice to the main speakers.
"Unidentified ships this is the USSMC Hammer you are in restricted space, turn around immediately or you will be fired upon!" a rather angry sounding human voice said.
The captain growled deeply, "USSMC Hammer this is the CMN Clan Pride you have perpetrated an act of war upon Clan Mason by firing upon one of our ships and taking one of our pilots prisoners we demand her immediate release and also the release of the prisoners we know you are keeping hostage on the planets surface, take a good look captain you are severely outgunned, that toy you call a ship will not last five minutes in a shooting match with one of us let alone three, so we offer this choice, return our pilot and hand over the prisoners to us and you will be allowed to leave peacefully or stand in our way and we'll show you exactly what Clan Mason does to those that hurt its people!" the captain said with a deep snarl.
Then he turned to T'Vren send this message to the Vengence and the Fury, lock all weapons on the human ship and prepare to fire, Xipa is on the planet so that's where we are going, one way or another" he snarled and T'Vren relayed the message.
000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
"Fuck!" Xipa yelled as she ducked behind a workbench, shots pinged off the metal surfaces above her head and she desperately looked for a way out.
After she'd set the comms system to broadcast the damaged controls effectively freezing them so they couldn't stop it from broadcasting, she'd then turned her attentions to trying to free her brethren from their captivity but it hadn't taken the humans long to discover what she had done and trigger a base-wide lockdown alarm.
Now they'd unleashed some kind of odd-looking synthetic humans out into the base to hunt her down and the fucking things were relentless.
They looked like humans but then not like humans at the same time it was odd, they had the same features and bodies but then their faces were so incredibly synthetic that it was disturbing, china white faces that didn't seem to have any expression other than neutral despite their constant attempts to take her life from her, these were faces that were going to haunt her dreams for quite some time, that's if she lived long enough to actually go to sleep another night.
Suddenly she noticed a vent hatch to her left against the wall and with the speed, only a true Xeno could muster she turned and wrenched it from the wall before diving into the ventilation shaft head first.
Thankfully being a Xeno meant that despite her large size Xipa could fit into incredibly tight spaces as she was able to compress her body in on itself, but unfortunately, this vent went vertically straight down so after diving in headfirst she now found herself falling headfirst vertically down into the dark.
"Whoa shit!" Xipa exclaimed jamming both her claws and her dorsal spines into the metal in an attempt to slow her slide down the narrow shaft and she managed to stop herself about two feet off the base of the shaft.
"Goddess that was a close one" Xipa breathed as she slowly wiggled herself down into the base of the shaft and began following it along.
"Xipa I can feel you stronger, are you close young one?" the queen's voice drifted into her head and the queen was right her voice seemed louder to her now.
"Not sure, I'm the ventilation shafts, the humans set their robots on me, they've been chasing me non stop since I sent a message out to the Clan" Xipa replied.
"Trust your feelings young one, follow my voice, come to me, if you can free me I will help you," the queen said.
Xipa tried to focus her mind but it was difficult with the fear still screaming in her heart and soul but eventually, she managed to get a bead on the sense of the queen, it was an odd feeling really like a magnetic field was pulling her, so she followed it, crawling through narrow metal tubes until she found another vent that would let her out.
It took a few hits to get the grate to smash outwards allowing her to crawl outwards and finding herself in what appeared to be a pitch-black storage room of some kind with large boxes and shelves in every direction.
Xipa moved slowly between the shelves trying to keep a low profile towards the door, all of her senses were on high alert as she made her way to the door, she was listening hard and focusing trying to pick out any little sound that would reveal the presence of the enemy.
That's when she heard a pair of footsteps and an of voices drifting into the room from beyond the door, "What the hell is going on!?" a gruff sounding female voice called from beyond the door.
"We're being recalled to the Hammer, the USSMC is pulling out" another voice this one male said.
"What? Why?" the female demanded.
"Dunno but from what I've heard we might have pissed off an alien species or something, Smith told me that three huge ships have shown up after we shot that fighter down, so my guess is the Corps doesn't want to start some kind of interstellar war with an alien race with that kind of firepower on call, plus my guess is that the commander doesn't want the fact that he's been renting out Marines to the fucking dodgy squints of Wayland Yutani because the people back home are going to kick up a fucking stink about it and the top brass are really gonna take a dim view of this shit," the male said.
"But we don't even know what the fucking hell is going on here, aren't they just studying some alien animals or some shit?" the woman said defensibly.
"Oh come on Marks please tell me you're not that fucking stupid, I don't pretend to know exactly what these squints are fucking doing here but these guys are not studying fuck all, they are making weapons of some kind, I don't know what or why but why in the name of hell would they be on a godforsaken dust ball in the middle of no-where?" he said.
"Seriously? Do you think that's what those black things are? I mean I've never got close enough to really get a good look at them because the Wayland security guys and those fucking creepy-ass droid things keep us grunts away from those areas but I've seen some creepy ass things in cages being taken through the base and why the hell do we keep bringing prisoners here? Where do they go? I've never seen them again" Marks said.
"No clue and don't want to know but what I do know is that I don't want my ass shot off by some pissed off alien race so come the fuck on because if we miss the fucking shuttle we're getting our asses left behind," the man said and the footsteps faded into the distance.
Xipa found herself smiling to herself brightly, the Clan, the Clan were here and they were coming for her, all she had to do was hide and keep out of sight and the Clan would get her out, but first she had to reach the queen.
Lightly pushing the door Xipa poked her head out into a brightly lit corridor, the sounds of running footsteps were everywhere but they didn't sound close by so Xipa decided it would be worth taking a chance on and she moved out into the corridor.
Xipa moved slowly staying low to the floor and hugging the wall to try and lower her profile just in case another of those marines came around one of the corners, she was following her feelings letting that magnetic draw pull her through the maze of narrow corridors until she came to a door with what appeared to be a had scanner next to it.
"Fuck! I need a palm scan!" Xipa said as her frustration hit her and her mind began to whirl as she tried to figure out a way to get into the room when it hit her, she's a Xeno, her blood is pure acid.
Xipa looked at the wound on her tail and she hissed as she scratched at the scab on her wound causing it to reopen and begin bleeding again, she flicked her tail at the hand scanner causing her thick green blood to spray onto it and immediately began fizzing and smoking as it began to dissolve the casing.
The panel sparked and began shorting before the lights on it shut down, but unfortunately, it didn't open the door it caused the door to lockdown, "Fuck!" Xipa yelled in frustration slamming her fist against the metal causing it to ring like a solid dong.
That's when a second idea hit her, if her blood could melt the panel why couldn't it melt through the door?
So Xipa began to wrap her knuckles against the metal listening for a change in pitch, as soon as it changed she pressed her wounded tail against the metal which immediately began to smoke as her blood ate into it.
Fortunately, she was not losing enough blood to be risky but it was most definitely unpleasant and was making her feel slightly lightheaded, but fortunately, her blood did its job and cut through the locking bars and deadbolts that held it shut allowing her to dig her long claws into the hole and use her impressive strength to pull the door open.
Behind the door was a control room of some kind, it was fitted with monitors and a variety of machines that were monitoring the cages that contained her brethren.
The room was utterly empty it looked that the scientists had already evacuated to whatever place of the base they deemed 'safe'.
Xipa noticed that one side of the room was made utterly out of what appeared to be glass, she stepped up slowly and glanced through the glass that appeared to overlook a large circular chamber that had heavy chains running down from the ceiling and attached to those chains, was the queen.
That's when Xipa heard a soft bang from behind her and she spun around searching for the source among the computers, that's when she spotted what appeared to be a small row of lockers that would probably hold clothing for the scientists.
Slowly approaching the first locked Xipa leaned in and listened hard against the door but there were no sounds so she moved to the next one and listened again, this time she heard the extremely fast thumping noise of a panicked heartbeat through the metal door.
With a series of smooth rapid motions, Xipa wrenched the door open reached in and grabbed the terrified looking human inside it pulling him out and holding him up in the air in front of her by the scruff of his collar like she was holding a fire tiger cub.
The male human was young, no more than twenty-one years old by her reckoning, he had very pale white skin with a short cut of brown hair sat on top of his head.
His brown eyes that seemed to have an odd outer circle of went as wide as dinner plates behind a pair of glasses that were pinched onto the end of his nose as he came face to face with the large angry Xeno girl who was holding him in the air.
"Please don't kill me!" the male squeaked in a heavily accented voice that Xipa vaguely recognised as German, she had encountered a few human members of the Clan whose decedents had hailed from this region of Earth before migrating to the Clan homeworld and given that they had always insisted on teaching their offspring their mother tongue it always seemed to ensure that the accent remained as well.
"Give me one good reason not to" Visa snarled angrily opening her mouth to snap her inner jaws in front of his face to make her point.
"Holy shit you really can talk!" the male exclaimed the surprise making his voice go even higher than before.
"Of course I can talk! We are not fucking animals for you to run your vile experiments on! And we are certainly not your fucking weapons!" Xipa screeched right in his face.
"I-I-I-I didn't do any of this! I just work here! I didn't have a choice! The company has my family under surveillance because they didn't want me to leave! I-I-I'm a biochemist and a pretty good one, I-I-I signed up for the company's biochem program in college because they promised to pay my way through college and university, b-b-but when they realised I'm very good with molecular acids they sent me here, t-t-they lied to me!" the male almost screamed and Xipa cocked her head curiously.
"Lied to you how!?" she demanded.
"I was lead to believe that I was coming here to study the effects of using molecular acids to separate minerals from ores and to cheapen the extracting of minerals from ore-rich planets like this for the company's mining section, but as soon as I got here I realised something was off because the molecular acid they had me testing on materials was like nothing I'd ever seen, it seemed organic so I started snooping and found out what they were really doing here, it sickened me that they were testing and experimenting on real live alien creatures! I wanted to leave but they wouldn't let me, they showed me pictures of my family, my mother and my sisters and told me that if I didn't shut my mouth and keep working they would simply disappear
and then I would as well" the male said sounding very forlorn.
Xipa wasn't detecting any form of deceit from him, his pheromonal scent was incredibly strong and laden with fear, but when they are under stress and living humans release very obvious chemical markers and they simply weren't there with him.
"So they forced you to experiment on my kind under threat of killing your own family if you didn't?" Xipa asked in a softer voice and the male nodded his head causing his glasses to slide down his nose and making him reach up to push them back into place.
"B-B-But I didn't ever experiment on your kind, I only worked with the samples they brought me," the male said and Xipa nodded.
"What is your name?" she asked.
"P-P-Paul, Paul Ritter," he said and Xipa nodded again.
"Alright Paul Ritter I'm going to offer you a chance at redemption and possibly at a new life but put it this way if you have deceived me in any way you will regret it and I promise you it will come to light," Xipa said.
"It's the truth I swear it to you! And I'll do anything just please don't kill me or hurt my family!" he said in a pitiful sounding voice.
Xipa snarled at the implication, "No member of Clan Mason would ever hurt an innocent! We are the sworn Guardians of the innocent the universe over, so if your heart is pure then you will be offered a place among us but you will have to prove yourself and earn it" Xipa said.
"H-H-How do I do that?" he asked and Xipa carried him over to the window and pointed with her free hand.
"Help me free her, do that and I swear to you I will plead your case before the Clan because trust me when I say this you are going to meet them very very soon," she said.
Paul seemed torn probably because he had been told that the chained queen was the most dangerous thing on the planet, but eventually, he nodded.
"I did not work in this section I was confined to the labs, I got in here with a stolen key card, that I grabbed off one of the team leaders as they panicked when the alarms went off, while they ran to the shelters I ran here in the hope that I could find something to use as leverage to protect my family, but alright I'll help you, if I am to die at least I can do it doing something good," he said showing Xipa a red key card with a woman's face on it making Xipa smile broadly.
"That's the spirit, now come on help me get to her, we have to get her out of there," Xipa said taking the card from him and with that, she placed him down on his unsteady feet, then the pair began searching for a way to get into the queen chamber.
000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
"Detecting multiple shuttle launches from the surface, they seem to be on an intercept course with the Hammer" the weapons officer reported loudly.
The captain growled loudly as he paced across the deck back and forth, "Any change in their stance?" he asked and the weapons officer shook their head.
"None sir they are simply sat there blocking our path to the planet," they said.
"Fuck it, this is taking too long," he said and pressed his comms button on his seat armrest.
"This is the captain green light, I say again green light go with the goddess Guardians, get our sister back to us or carve a wound so fucking deep in their memories that they will never come a thousand light-years of Clan Mason ever again!" he said and instantly T'Vrel began relaying the instructions to both the Fury and the Vengence.
000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
"Alright, people you heard the man! Get your tails on the shuttles we are fucking going in! All Seekers launch you are going in first!" the Sargent major yelled.
Remal gave the thumbs up to the hanger bay launch coordinator as he checked his controls and they all showed green, he was sat in the pilot's seat of a brand new ultra-high-speed fighter aptly named a Seeker Shadow.
These fighters were designed with solely Seekers in mind as only their reflexes made them capable of piloting them, they were utterly unarmed but were heavily shielded and were basically an ultra-high-speed missile with a pilot seat, they were designed with incredible manoeuvrability and high speed as they're the sole focus, to get seekers where they needed to go incredibly quickly, they were even shaped like a missile.
"This is Blue one, Seekers sound off!" the voice of Xtam the leader of his team as the fighters lined up on the launch ramp, she was the huge nine-foot-tall Yautja female he had been stood next to in the hanger bay and her voice sounded like gravel across his sensitive ears.
"Blue two on station" a voice that Remal recognised as Micheal Lee the human that had been stood next to him also.
"Blue three on station" Remal chirped his voice sounding rather high pitched as he let his excitement get the better of him a bit.
"Blue four on station" the voice of Misha a large female Ghost Slither that had joined the Clan and had become a full-blown Seeker at the same time as Remal said.
"This is Blue team leader we are launching!' Xtam said and four green lights lit up above the hanger doors to indicate they we good to go and as one of the four Seekers hit the auto-launch controls firing them from the protected atmosphere of the hanger and into the cold unforgiving vacuum of space.
The four Seeker craft were flying in tight formation as they were joined on both flanks by eight other craft that Remal recognised as the Seeker Shadows from both the Fury and the Vengence as they two had sent their Seeker teams out to join them.
"This is Bronze team we are on your left-wing Blue team leader we'll follow you in," a distinctly male human voice said.
'Roger that Bronze team leader glad to have you along" Xtam replied.
"This is Red team leader we're on your right Blue one, let's show these bastards what happens when you fuck with our beloved Clan!" a very excitable human female voice said with infectious enthusiasm.
"Roger that Red one we are the spear tip but the real pain is following us," Xtam said and this confused Remal.
"What do you mean Blue one?" Red one asked.
"Check your rearview cameras, check out who just showed up, trust me if think we are bad news for these fuckers the real pain is following us," she said and they all looked into their rearview cameras just in time to see an absolutely massive ship punch through the asteroid field like it was made of paper, it made the Clan Pride, the Fury and the Vengence look like they were children's toys.
It was the Grand Matriarch's Fury and that ship was aptly named because even from here Remal could feel the fury of the Clan leaders that it contained.
"We're being targeted!" Remal yelled into his comms as his sensors lit up like a freedom day tree showing they were being hit with radar and laser pulses.
"Alright, people let's show these pauks why you can't stop the Seekers of truth! Hit the burners and prepare for ultra speed manoeuvre, evasive on my mark...mark!" Xtam yelled and Remal punched the button.
The experimental plasma drives that the Seeker Shadows were equipped with ignited sending the ships ripping forwards at incredible speed that threw every one of them back into their seats, at this speed no other creature would have a chance of reacting to any changes in trajectory, but these were no ordinary creatures, they were Seekers, they were Dream Warriors one and all.
To Remal the world seemed to slow to an absolute craw as he adjusted his controls, ducking diving and weaving around the targeting systems coming from the human cruiser as they shot past it, to their sensors they must literally look like a cloud of chaff bouncing around all over the place as they were, that was until as one they pulled back and hit the atmosphere like darts cutting through it and by that time it was already too late.
But honestly, the cruiser didn't even attempt to fire a single shot at them, now if only the same was true of the ground defences, "All Seekers prepare for stealth detachment, set your Seeker Shadow for tactical evasion and landing and then bail out" Xtam yelled into the comms.
Remal's little hands were a blur on his controls before he hit his camouflage button and the bailout button at the same time, just as he vanished from sight Remal felt the punch of the ejection system firing him up and out of the canopy which slid back just long enough for him to clear it and to put him into free fall before closing up and firing off at top speed drawing the flack guns fire.
Remal found himself flying through the air as his suit deployed its glide wings, turns out he was first out because he noticed his fellow Seekers were forming upon him on either side forming a largely invisible arrow as they flew through the dusty air heading for the ground far below them.
"Blue three you have point, lock in the flight path and we'll follow you in," Xtam said.
"Roger that path locked in everyone on me!" Remal said proudly as he brought up the green indicator path on his HUD and began transmitting it to his fellow Seekers.
Suddenly a very familiar voice came through their comms, This is Sliver one to all Seekers you have a green light to commence the attack, we are on our way in, the human cruiser has pulled out and is leaving the system, seems they have some brains after all and do not wish to test us, but do not get complacent, there is bound to be heavy resistance on the ground, you are weapons free to engage with any means at your disposal, lethal force is authorised both myself and Gold one will be there soon, Goddess bless your hunt Seekers, show these kidnapping pauks what happens when you fuck with Clan Mason!" the Grand Patriarch said.
"Yes, Grand Patriarch!" Every one of them echoed as one, Remal smiled to himself as his little Raptorian heart filled with pride, he felt not only the eyes of the Clan upon them but the weight of their strength ringing in his words these fuckers were not going to know what hit them and as if to prove the point the sky all around them was suddenly filled with vapour trails as the mighty railguns of the cruisers in the sky above them took out the air defence turrets still firing at their Seeker Shadows in one decisive strike, the hammer of Clan Mason was well and truly about to fall on these fuckers.