The powered armor was rather slim and sleek. These specific models were called hardsuits, self adjusting pieces of armor that covered from head to toe in thin but resistant composite hexagonal plates. The armors were all color coded for each member of the team, with Dizzy's suit colored silver and yellow. Each suit slightly different in size and shape to account for the different builds of the team members.

Wasp and Dizzy scrambled for their own on the wrecked spider-tanks , now knowing that the clattering in the walls were the sounds of creatures searching for a way in.

"Damn it, how do they expect us to carry their stuff too? We need to take guns too dont we?" Wasp yelled at Dizzy through his open hatch. "These suits should have a transport mode, you know they can walk on their own right? We just need to guide them over to the freight elevator" she yelled back.

Dizzy pressed down on the collar of the suit to open the back plate. The armored legs separated into two panels , while the arms swept forward. She stepped into the legs while pulling the torso up onto her zero-suit. The sound of compression clamps snapping down in rhythm echoed through the cargo bay. She slipped her arms in, pulling them to her side and then letting the back plate clasp shut on the armored torso. Finally she wore the crown. Its armored plates crawled down her head, covering it completely. A reflective shield came down over her face to completely seal her inside.

She popped open cargo containers stored inside the spider-tank to find the other hardsuits, compressed into blocks. "All here" she whispered, alleviating the fear that she had forgotten to pack the suitcases. The container, with all the gear inside it, weighed nearly 500 kilograms. It wasn't designed to be lifted by a single hardsuit. But it was designed to take punishing falls. She tied a rope to one end of the case and the other end to an exposed steel beam.

The beam was precariously at the edge of failing, jutting out of the wall and swaying with every little tremor. She took a cutting torch and began to melt away the weak joints until the beam broke free. It crashed into the corner, dragging the case out with it. The impact alerted the swarm , their chattering feet turning into a staccato of twitching steps

The hauled two of the containers out using their improvised pulley system. Only one crate of small arms was salvageable from the wrecked cargo skid. Wasp lamented the hundreds of bags of rations strewn across the wall, too many to gather up. As they marched past the wreckage, he did get a chance to take a hand full of packages, though few would stay in his burdened hands. The crates and containers were like coffins, strung along by high tension steel cables, like some kind of spaghetti western. The sense of loneliness the cowboys felt in the middle of an unforgiving landscape was all too familiar to Dizzy and Wasp. Would there be a final showdown? No one knew and that empty space that would have been filled with shouts of war crys was now just a dark corner that quickly grew in size .

"All right, we need to drop our mission killed mechs onto that tumor down there" Ryuki told his gathered team. "Ignite the fuel and set the reactors off. We'll need to get into our suits as quickly as possible. Barry , we're going to need you to use your claw as a makeshift elevator to get them up here quicker. The sooner we can get in our hardsuits, the less radiation exposure".

"Roger, who's mechs are we gonna dump though?" Barry asked from his open pilot deck.

"Reaper is going to have to drop his, anyone not comfortable with their suits? Considering we're about to be blasted by an overloaded reactor". The others nodded their heads. Were they more afraid of the ship than the radiation? They knew how dangerous it would be to continue on in compromised suits. "No sir, we are taking these things to the ninth circle of hell", Karin spoke up.

"Alright, rig him up"

The reactor controls were only accessible externally on the armor. Mostly to prevent pilots from inadvertently purging the radiated molten salts into friendly troops. The control panel itself was underneath a bolted reinforced plate, located underneath the torso, close to the torso panel was a simple monochromatic display, with a mechanical keyboard to go with the command line interface. Karin deftly issued commands, releasing the failsafes and the backup coolant system. The reactor though would still shutdown if the power was cut to the emergency auto-shutdown controller. So instead, Karin commanded it to continue to overheat by faking the thermal resistors, pulling them out and replacing them with metal blocks. "Alright, this should do it" she finished.

"Rig up a countdown,then toss the suit" Ryuki said.

They pushed the suit to the edge and lifted onto a lever made of twisted girders for the final push. Ryuki asked for a volunteer. The person closest to the suit would be hit with the most radiation. With Reaper squeezed into Ryuki's suit, there were few other choices. "Well, it might as well be me" Barry replied.

His mech ambled towards the lever and placed his foot on it with as little pressure as possible. Standing on one foot though was still a test of coordination even for a machine designed to always stay balanced. "Ready here" Barry called out.

By his estimates, Dizzy and Wasp had to be waiting by now. No way to communicate, even yelling wouldn't work with the huge mass blocking the way. "Tap the elevator wall three times then wait for a response", he told Ross.

Three taps went down. It seemed ages had passed before a response. Three taps, the sign of intelligent life. "Sounds like they heard us" Ross radioed. "Alright, hit it Barry" , Ryuki yelled.

His foot slammed down on the lever, tossing the wrecked mech into the elevator shaft. A loud ring went off, signaling the reactor overheating. The leaking fuel drums were seeping fuel onto the twitching cancer. "Brace yourselves!" someone yelled through the radio/

When the molten salt pipes broke open under pressure, the radioactive liquid exploded out , turning into quickly cooling daggers. The heat ignited the fuel into a ball of plasma and heat . The explosion tore the mech's torso apart, tossing its severed limbs out like rockets.. The shrapnel sliced through the tumor, eviscerating it., letting the flames scorch its pulsating belly and the overheated plasma to burn it asunder. The bulb broke free and spurted clear fluid in its dying throbs. It went hurtling down in flames, tumbling like a hot coal.

From below, it looked as if ball of fire was hurtling towards Dizzy and Wasp. They hugged the walls next to the elevator entrance to hide from the excoriating plasma and salt. It passed by , sucking the air out in its vicinity before continuing its fall to the bottom. From behind it came the rocket claw blazing down in a halo of rocket exhaust. The claw clamped down onto elevator doorway ,its jaws biting down hard enough to warp the steel plating. A voice from above echoed down.

"Grab hold of the claw, tie everything youve got to it" the voice yelled. Dizzy and Wasp took heed and quickly assembled the containers and crate into a single package using the high-strength cables. They took the claw and clamped it down onto a makeshift handle they fashioned from reinforced steel platings. "Take the claw up , its got the gear on it" Dizzy yelled. The claw whizzed back up with sparks visible in the background, jumping onto the walls from the traction servo.

It was then that they noticed that the walls bulging. On the other end of the bay, warts growing out of the walls like goose bumps. The walls rattled, the sound of clamoring feet emanating from every corner. The claw came back down just as the clattering grew raucous. They hopped on, holding on for all that is good in life, keeping their eyes above. Whatever lay behind them , that darkness that was bursting at the seams of conscious thought, it was coming for them. Run, run as fast as you can, they told themselves.

The makeshift elevator zipped back up. They found their old friend Reaper in his hardsuit, waiting for them as if an eternity had passed them by. Welcome back, he said. Welcome back to the land of the still living, they thought.

"Sir, the cargo bay is compromised, whatevers down there is most likely going to come up here" Dizzy spoke as Wasp nodded his head with a nervous twitch. "We gotta do something" Wasp said , his voice filled with a shaking but silent anxiety.

"Anything up there we can shoot down to seal that entrance?" Ryuki asked Barry as he peered over the threshold as his hardsuit finished sealing. "Looks like theres some kind of maintenance elevator up there, yellow with black stripes. Looks like its a big one with its own set of counter weights".

"Blow it up" Ryuki said in a monotone voice, a simple order. Ross armed the remaining impact grenades in his launcher and positioned himself leaning into the shaft so that the gimbal turret mounts could point straight upward. A series of red hexagons popped over his vision, floating above him , each one showing the expected impact point of the grenades.

The belt fed launcher swiveled up, audibly creaking from all the damage it had taken. The 20 mm grenades sat inside a drum that hung low on the mechs back. The 3 barrels that made up the rotary cannon began to spin up. The belt was tugged into the firing chamber in quick succession. A zip sound of the cannon firing that burst from the barrels. A rapid succession of explosions echoed down like thunder.

It began to shake loose, the bumble bee carriage swayed under the explosions. Something snapped and it began to hurtle down, smashing its way past overhanging ledges but constrained by the narrow shaft. It was odd how fast it was moving. Air began to flood through the elevator doorway, the massive gust in response to the rapidly descending carriage speeding up.

"Take cover!" Ross yelled as he drove his mech back in. The air pushed him to the ground while the others braced themselves. The screeching elevator raced passed their floor giving them a view of the massive freighter that crashed as soon as it appeared in front of them. A succession of explosions raced up the sides, blowing out the windows and the walls around the elevator.

"Status!" Ryuki yelled. He hoped that no shrapnel managed to pierce their already compromised armor. "Looks like we're all good, though Wasp is complaining about his suit getting slow. The explosion might have jammed something. No shrapnel damage ,sir" Karin reported back as she assumed the role of field mechanic. It was unfortunate though that there were no medics. He knew that this would bring unpalatable consequences.

With the new wall sealing whatever was down there and blocking any means of escape for themselves, their only choice then was to move forward. Not many choices abound, from the lack of any discernable alternate routes to the fact that a swarm of mind-controlled soldiers and scientists were hiding somewhere, along with corrupted mechs and battlesuits.

Ryuki felt it in his bones. A chill that cant be warmed. Deep in his muscles, a tension that couldnt be eased or massaged away. He could hear it, smell it, see it. A creeping darkness that sat just at the periphery of his vision, appearing superficially as a moment of complete darkness and then receding back as soon as he blinked his eyes.