Karin fired off her claw , a telescopic punch she would call it later. The bladed fingers snapped open and grabbed hold on the head of a corrupted Rapier strike suit. She watched the lenses shatter and a shower of sparks burst forth, setting the biomechanical mass that consumed the robots body on fire. With the other hand she fired off a burst from her arm mounted grenade gun at another unit. Under the blistering heat of the lights died , leaving only the suit lights and the muzzle flashes to light their view.

A pair of jet black Ravens , small and agile suits with elongated noses and stubby arms, broke through the front line and sped into a flanking position. Each had four heavy machine guns blazing away at the damaged sections of Ryuki's mech. The surprise attack pushed his mech back onto the slanted floor , the force of the fall breaking off his manipulator arm. He was left with the back mounted weaponry and the small machine guns loaded into the neckline of his mech. A light artillery cannon rolled up his mechs' back on a set of tracks till it reached the remaining shoulder. It then flipped down, clamping onto the torso and releasing a shoulder guard to absorb its recoil. Ryuki's mind was moving so fast he had not realized what the impact of the shell would do. His instincts had overcome his training , leaving the team in danger of being buried under rubble.

He fired one shell from the cannon. It raced upwards past the swarming drones and broke through into the next floor. The explosion lit up the ceiling with molten hot metal, turning the lightless chamber into a hot glowing flow of molten steel.

The corrupted drones were caught in the steel lava , burning up and catching flames. The explosion had cooked them from the inside out and back pressure tore them to shreds. What survived melted away.

"Against the walls!" Ryuki screamed through the radio as the ceiling caved in. Once the jumbled mess of melting scrap settled, the marauding force was a pile of smoldering broken parts and bleeding limbs. The floor shifted again, lifting upwards a few centimeters before stopping.

"This thing is sinking, thats the only way that it could shift so rapidly" Ross yelled out. "You can't be serious, we are on a sinking ship now? Thats a joke only Reaper could make" Barry yelled back. "What the hell would make it do that?".

"The engines. Those engines could be heating up and melting the ice around it" Karin broke the silence. "The nose is shifting up, meaning that the tail is sinking down and the amount of heat being generated by the engines would be enough to do that. Thats the only possible reason for this" Karin concluded.

"We are heading for the bridge. All allied ships have the bridge on the second to last level, and by my count we should be two levels away from it", Ryuki said. "Status!" he barked out.

"I'm out of ammo on my autocannon, missile pods are empty, machine guns have about 100 rounds left, a full magazine on my recoilless rifle. Foot actuators are lagging , tracks busted", Barry replied.

"Two magazines for my flak gun, right shoulder actuator shot to hell. Ive got half a drum of HMG ammo. Leg armor stripped and I think I see holes in my deck. Can you see me waving?" Reaper spoke.

"Claw is broken, no ammo for my guns, down to half a drum of ammo for each of my back mounted gatlings, head sensors are picking up a lot of static and lost my NV capabilities. Computer is reporting dozens of hardware faults and I think Im leaking hydraulic fluid from the reserves. Still got a full magazine of impact grenades for my launcher though" Karin said.

"Lost my entire left arm along with the burst rifle , rocket pods are empty , grenade dispensers still working. Head is totally smashed , Im running on auxiliary sensors. Torso joint is stuck at 120 degrees. General fault warnings with my suit armor. Still have the claw" Ross replied.

"Anyone check in with Wasp and Dizzy?" Reaper asked. No one had thought of what happened to them. The fighting had captured their attention , their singular concentration on the hordes of bulbous mechanical monstrosities. "Well theres no way to call them up, we'll have to find the PA system somewhere" Karin spoke. "Its a miracle our radios work" Ross remarked.

"Ah, excuse me, Im talking to you through a hole in my armor" Reaper replied. It was time to take a moment to do as much repair work as possible.

The loading bay shifted unexpectedly under their multipedal tanks. "What the frak?" Dizzy yelled out. The floor slipped away from her, tossing her spider tank against the far end of the bay. "The thing just turned sideways, what the hell?" Wasp yelled back. They struggled to keep their mechs up right, having four legs did not help much.

There was no solid footing as they slid. Boxes and containers collided into the wall , breaking apart into splinters. "Brace for impact" Dizzy yelled over the radio. As she spoke , the wall approached surprisingly fast. First their legs smashed into the wall, collapsing onto themselves in an attempt to dissipate the sheer force of two 200 hundred metric ton vehicle smashing into a hardened bulkheads.

The walls deformed under the kinetic force with silhouettes of the spider legs poking through like braille. Damage indicators lit up bright red, warnings and cautions blinking rapidly to get Dizzy's attention. Actuator damage, hydraulic damage, reactor warnings , over-pressure systems buckling. Optical sensors were blurry , the lenses had become misaligned from the crash.

"Cap, cap can you hear me? You guys ok? The ship just tilted, whats going on?" Dizzy yelled. All she received back was static. Off to the corner of her eye was the reason. A communication fault had popped up , hidden by the stacks of warnings and alerts. Connection lost, it said. Dizzy rapidly went through a string of expletives in multiple languages, including Jovian, a language known to be much more peaceful than the average guttural language.

"Comms are down, the cables cut" she told Wasp. "Well we are frakked " he replied back. "We need to reconnect, or somehow boost our broadcast range. These damn walls just wont let us through though" she said to herself.

She popped out from her mech and looked around, looking for anything that still functioned. The control room was still active though the room had dimmed considerably. Power failures could turn it useless.

She climbed down as quickly as possible as Wasp told her to stay inside. He could hear rattling, like something crawling through the walls. She made her way across the slanted floor, climbing atop crates and shipping containers. The other side was still fifty meters away when the next quake shook the ship. Her footing collapsed as the crate she climbed over slid away. She caught hold of a light fixture, holding on to it with all her strength. The fixture started to break apart, the screws separating from the base plate and the elbow of the lamp buckling. Her only hope was that the shaking would stop before the light broke free. She closed her eyes and waited for the fall.

The shaking stopped unexpectedly. She opened her eyes to see the new floor under her littered with wreckage. To her surprise though, the metal shipping crates were still in tact and formed a platform that could take her to the control room. She let go hesitantly , rolling into her fall to soften her landing. The next quake could happen at any time so she rushed past splintered crates and piles of tubes and steel girders.

A long and deep blast rumbled out of the walls, like a distant thunderclap slowly expanding from its epicenter. Several more , shorter and higher pitched, rang through the walls as Dizzy reached the control room. She couldn't tell what it was, her mind was too preoccupied to even attempt to make an assumption. Her sole goal, one that seemed to stretch away into infinity , was to access the comms and blast a message to every floor on the ship.

She climbed up , using the bolted down chairs and open lockers till she was within grasping distance of the console that looked to control the comms. She tapped on the screen which brought it back to life. Now what, she thought. What exactly could she do to send out a ship wide message? Perhaps an emergency broadcast, these systems always had something like that. Her tenuous footing though made navigating the menu's difficult, each button press was just a few CM higher.

She could hear rumbling coming out through the walls but it was a different sound that left her uneasy. A skittering noise, like incessant tapping was racing up and down the wall just across from her. Something , or many things , were moving on the other side of the wall. They were scurrying every which way , as if they were looking for something. As she listened , her finger slipped onto the emergency broadcast button. A loud shrill noise, the PA system bursting into life, pierced through her skull.

"This is Lieutenant Dessirae Simmons, can anyone hear me?" she yelled. She perversely hoped nothing would answer her. She asked again, still more silence. One last time, she thought. Now her dread was split between two expectations ,that none of her friends would reply or that something other than human would answer.

She waited , still grappling the side bar and her feet planted on the side of a chair. Her hands and feet hurt from the awkward position , the sweat on her brow dripping down into her shirt. Her palms began to ache and burn from the weight she supported on them. Then a sound, a click ,came from the panel.

"Hey,the emergency channel is for emergencies only" Barry's voice sounded through the speaker. "Considering that the ship looks like its sinking , I would say that would qualify as an emergency" she replied back gruffly. The next voice was Ryuki's. "Hows the situation down there?" he asked.

"Not good sir, our spider mechs are pretty much immobile, cant use them with the way they are. Mission killed. Our supplies are buried under rubble. And something else" she trailed off. "Im hearing something moving through the walls. A lot of somethings. I don't think its safe down here" she said.

An imminent danger. They had to be swift , they had to clear the elevator to pull Dizzy and Wasp out. And with the PA blaring out throughout the ship, it would only rustle more things. "We're gonna blow the blockage , get your power-armor ready and get ready to walk up the elevator shaft. Bring spare armor for the rest of us" he said.

"Roger, we won't be able to communicate while we're getting ready" she replied.

"Understood" , the speaker reverberated with static. The channel closed and the panel returned back to its idle screen. She sighed before letting go to land on the door frame. Her trek back to Wasp's mech was a distant land on the other side of the ocean.

"Alright, get whatever explosives you have left and get to the elevator on this floor. We still have topographical data so we can navigate to where it should be. This will probably mean that some of your mechs are going to be scrapped. We'll figure things out once we get there. We got two people needing a way out, lets get this done" he yelled through his open pilot-deck.