(Anju's POV)
Anju held her bow out at the ready as she and her teammates walked the length of the metal bridge that connected to a hatch on the immense Cyclonian cruiser. She still could not believe that they were going to use this thing as a base of operations. There were so many problems. Was there a Sky Dock in the Free Atmos large enough to accommodate this monster? How were they going to keep the thing running, when this thing's fuel economy was probably the most abysmal in the Atmos? It was insane.
But if they could manage all those things, the Hellbender could be a passable ship for the job. But it was still a Cyclonian ship. Cosmetically it looked no different from the other cruisers that made up the backbone of Cyclonia's Fleet aside from the damage. It had the distinctive hatchet shaped prow bristling with six blaster cannons, three pairs of enormous engine nacelles, those weird rib-like constructs that cradled the hull and the three dorsal cannon batteries, a double stacked bridge, and a massive tiller on the rear that had the claw shaped insignia of Cyclonia, which was also emblazoned on the hull amidships.
"Alright everyone, we are going to search this ship together, no splitting off, I am the only one here that has any idea of this ship's layout, so follow my lead and watch your flanks," Rayner instructed. "Anju if you have any tips about dealing with this particular critter, please tell us."
Anju cleared her throat, "Shalks are extremely ill tempered creatures with very low intelligence and lack any sort of coordination without the aid of a queen, their chitin is very tough, but their underbellies are soft. Due to the fact that they live in the Wastelands their hides are highly resistant to heat, but they will crack when exposed to very cold temperatures, so Lucy go nuts."
"I'm already dere girlfriend!" The blizzarian said cheerfully.
"What about this 'Shalk Queen?'" Darius asked.
"It's very big, and it is the only one that has a brain worth a damn," Anju responded. "If this is a full colony we are dealing with, we will find her at the nest, which will probably be in the warmest part of the ship."
"That would probably be the conversion chambers, they always accumulate heat as long as there are some fuel crystals in place, even when the engines are idle," Darius said.
Rayner chuckled, "That's perfect, a quick test fire sequence on the engines would vaporize the lot of them."
"That'll only work if the fuel crystals still have enough juice in them, Rayner," Darius pointed out, "And there is every chance the engines could malfunction and explode, there is no telling what these bugs have done to the ship in the time they have been in it."
"We have little other choice, there could be enough Shalks in there to overrun the terra, or kill off most of the workers before a Militia or Sky Knight response can be sent." Rayner said. "Lister is just trying to shelter his business from scrutiny, and it's costing lives, we have to go in now while the sun is still up."
"Then what are we waitin' for?" Gorman demanded, pulling out his single-edged energy sword from across his back and igniting the fiery orange blade. "You hear us in there ya dirty Mughumpers? Prepare to die!" he roared as he forced the hatch open.
"So much for subtlety," Anju said, following Gorman into the belly of the beast.
The first thing she noted was the darkness, and the smell. She lifted the set of goggles that were around her neck over her eyes, it's vision enhancing properties quickly revealed her surroundings in a greenish tint. It was not a pretty sight.
The corridor she and Gorman were standing in was a mess. Bits and pieces of metal, dislodged pipes, and broken wiring littered the deck, cables hung from the ceiling like vines in a jungle. When the others came in, wearing similar light amplifying goggles, all of them were taken aback for an instant by the sight and the odors.
"Pee-yew! Forgit about yer BO, Rayner, this place is a crap house!" Lucy-Lu exclaimed holding her offended nose.
"No kidding," Darius commented, "Assuming we live through this and manage to get this thing to Atmosia, we are going to have to call in a cleaning crew to remove all the infectious diseases that the Shalks have brewed up."
"Quit your whining, you coward," Pocky said, "A little diseases here and there builds character." The Merb had elected to join them, on the account that life-threatening situations excited her. It was clear that in addition to mental instability she was an adrenalin junky.
"Whatever, if we can restore main power we can turn on the filters to clean up the air a bit," Rayner said. "Main engineering is located amidships, we can take a shortcut past the anchor cable lockers and hopefully bypass most of the infestation."
"Speaking of anchors, Pocky how did you guys manage to suspend this cruiser without being killed by the Shalks?" Anju asked.
"The Shalks did not make their presence known right away, they must have been hanging out in one place of the ship this whole time, they only started attacking about a day after we put her in anchorage." She explained offhandedly, "You should have seen their faces after the first attack, bleeding cowards the lot of them."
Rayner rubbed his temples in exasperation, "Gorman, Lucy, did they tell you any of this when you guys came here?"
Gorman shook his head, "No they did not say nothing about an infestation, I guess when we told them that we were a Sky Knight squadron, he thought he could manipulate us into taking care of his roach problem quietly," The larger man said.
"Yeah, what he said, Lister is a real bastard, eh?" Lucy-Lu replied, nervous from being put on the spot suddenly.
"A piece of shit is a more apt description," Anju said, sighting down the corridor with her bow, "Next time I see him, I'm using him as target practice!"
"Y'all have ta beat me to it! I'm gonna freeze that lyin' hoser up real good, and drop his chain-smokin' carcass inta' da Wastelands!" Lucy-Lu growled.
"Are you guys insane?" Darius demanded, "Need I remind you all that we are currently in a powered down cruiser infested with giant insects?!"
Everyone present adopted sheepish expressions, even shameless Pocky looked slightly embarrassed.
Suddenly Lucy-Lu stiffened and her eyes widened, "I can hear somethin' coming at us," she said urgently, leveling her staff down the hall, "Lotsa' feet."
No sooner than she said that, that Anju's well honed hunter's senses began to pick up the skittering of feet on metal floor, the subtle rasp of carapace. Moments later Anju got her first good look at a Shalk, it was a hulking ugly beast with six crab-like legs, an over-sized set of mandibles, black soulless eyes, and a heavy carapace hued brown green and orange. And it was not alone, more than half a dozen of the super-pests were making a beeline right for them.
"Shit! Open fire!" Rayner ordered, whipping his escrima sticks out and igniting them in emerald light.
Anju immediately complied, she released the string of her bow, the fire-crystal tipped arrow flew straight and true, striking the lead Shalk right in between the soft joint that joined the head to the thorax. The creature immediately halted and rolled onto it's back as it was burned from the inside out. She was already knocking another arrow when Lucy-Lu shot a frost bolt into the mob, freezing two in their tracks, their shells became brittle and their legs shattered under the weight of their bodies.
Anju loosed another arrow, dispatching another critter in the same manner as the first.
"Conserve your ammunition!" Rayner ordered, he leaped forward into the fray, his sticks weaved a complex pattern as he hammered a series of strikes into the closest of two Shalks, their hides fractured and broke under the force of the blows. Anju grinned and unclasped her energy dagger from it's place on the upper arm of her bow, it ignited in buttery yellow fire, and she immediately used it to shank a Shalk that had gotten past Rayner directly between the mandibles and into it's pathetic excuse for a brain. It still tried to bull her over for a few moments before realizing it was dead.
Another one took to the air on it's wings and tried to tackle Lucy-Lu, but the Blizzarian flipped her staff's bladed end to the fore, ignited in freezing energy. She impaled the Shalk through it's midsection and pinned it to the floor, before channeling the energy to freeze the entire beetle solid, before shattering it with a powerful kick. "Icebreakers fer the Cup!" she cheered.
Darius and Pocky were armed with blaster rifles, which they used to pick off the giant insects from the rear, Gorman guarded Lucy-Lu from being flanked by the creatures as she projected more ice blasts at them.
Rayner had been forced back to Anju's side as the number of Shalks coming at them increased, he could not risk getting cut off from his comrades and overwhelmed, all it would take was one of them getting at him from behind for him to succumb to the rest.
"Having fun yet Ray?" Anju asked her rival and friend.
"Damn, girl. I'm just getting started," he replied, "I'm not about to get eaten by these things, that's just insulting!"
"Could have fooled me, they forced you back," Anju shot back as she split another bug's head apart with her blade, thick black ichor coated the deck, staining her boots. She was totally showering a good three times after this.
"I didn't want you to feel left out," he responded as he slammed both of his sticks into a charging Shalk, slamming it to the deck and rupturing it's chitin. He finished it off with a stomp to it's head followed by an expletive. Those had been new boots.
"Lucy, Gorm, you guys good?"
"Heh, good times!" Gorman crowed.
"These thins are disgustin' it's getting' my feet all funked up!" Lucy-Lu complained, indicating her gore covered clawed feet. Anju suddenly felt a pang of sympathy for the poor girl who would likely be taking six showers to clean the gunk out of her fur.
"I told you that not keeping them covered would bite you in the tail one day!" Rayner admonished as he beat down two Shalks who had tried to gang up on him.
"Gee, thanks a lot!" She growled as she skewered another Shalk with her blade end.
"Less talking more killing!" Pocky shouted as she blasted a Shalk off the ceiling.
Deep in the bowels of the Hellbender a mother awoke to the feeling of her children dying. In an instant she was consumed by rage.
Intruders. Her thick chitin plates shifted rapidly, producing a deep buzzing sound.
Defilers. Mandibles the size of grown men clacked together, hungering to tear into yielding fleshy bodies.
Murderers! The great Matriarch of the hive loosed a loud screech that caused the bulkheads around her to vibrate, to be heard by all of her children.
Rise my children! Destroy the invaders! Bring their lifeless shells before your mother!
(Rayner's POV)
"What the hell was that?" Rayner asked, as the last Shalk collapsed to the floor which was now covered in bloodstains and bits of shattered carapace. Everyone in the team was covered by the foul smelling thick black fluids. The entire corridor was covered in the broken bodies of giant beetles, it was one of the most thoroughly disgusting sights Rayner had ever seen.
"That was probably the Queen," Anju replied, "It knows we are here."
"Good!" Pocky smirked, "I would like to meet her!"
Rayner brushed off the foul ichor that had accumulated upon his escrima sticks with a look of severe distaste. He would be glad to put this fight behind him as soon as possible.
"We have to keep moving, I have a feeling this little bug rush was only the tip of the terra," Anju advised.
"Agreed, everyone fall in behind me, Pocky watch our six," Rayner instructed.
They navigated through the Shalk corpses as quickly as their nerves would allow, the things were creepy even in death, and a few were twitching slightly, their primitive nervous systems still carrying signals through their dead bodies.
"Lucy do you hear anything?" He asked his friend who was walking right behind him ahead of Anju.
"Yeah, that lil' kerfuffle back there has stirred this place up good," she replied, her long ears shifting outwards as she strained to listen.
"Just warn me if they start closing in again," he said. She muttered something under her breath and continued following him. Rayner regretted being so brusque with her, while she was a competent fighter, Lucy-Lu was not used to being ordered around like just another soldier. But it was something she would have to get used to.
After leaving the corpse filled corridor behind, they advanced until they reached a closed bulkhead door. Rayner tried hitting the control panel on the bulkhead.
"Power is out, that door isn't going to move Rayner," Darius said.
Wordlessly Rayner went to the left side of the bulkhead and pried a panel from the wall, inside there was a contraption with a lever.
"All of these doors have a manual override to open them," Rayner explained as he turned the lever from a horizontal position, to vertical and then proceeded to pump it up and down. The door jerked open with each repetition until Rayner stopped when the door reached just around head height.
"Hope for our sakes that we won't have to open all of the doors on the way to the Queen," Gorman said, "Otherwise we will be bug food before we make it half-way there."
Rayner gave no reply to that comment, he was already debating the logic of what he was doing. He was risking the lives of himself and his team for a cruiser that may be a total loss, the safest course would have been to simply call in a group of air-tugs and have this ship dragged over the side of the terra and back into the Wastelands. But something compelled him to jump into this mess without looking.
He had wished to see how his team handled a combat situation, to assure himself that he could bring them into battle without too much concern. So far they were doing well.
Anju had performed to usual expectations, she was a Sky Knight of course. She was a ferocious fighter with deadly skills and firm tactical awareness and was the perfect candidate for XO of the squadron he was building.
Lucy-Lu was a little problematic, while she was undoubtedly readily capable of holding her own in almost any fight, she was lacking in the area of military conduct and tactical awareness, she needed a guiding hand behind her to remain effective. She was also a little too soft around the edges personality wise and Rayner had no idea how she would react to the realities of war and loss.
Gorman was ex-Cyclonian military just like Rayner, he was cool under pressure and calmly looked through his problems as they happened. He was well versed in standard military doctrine, and had a good head on his shoulders. He was perhaps the most dependable of the squadron.
Darius was also no stranger to combat. He handled himself well against the Shalks, as he probably had gotten into tight spots like this one several times in the past. Darius was by far the most tactically observant of the entire group, given time he could plan his way through almost any situation. But at the end of the day he was a mercenary and a thief, he could only be trusted so far.
Pocky, the last minute addition to their rag-tag band of misfits was mostly unknown to him, beyond the fact that she was crazy, and possessed literally suicidal bravery to the point of willful self-endangerment. But she did show signs of being trained, former militia perhaps? Must investigate further.
"There should be an anchor cable locker around here, it connects to a hatch combing that should take us to the lower levels," Rayner said as he searched along the wall, trying to pick out what he needed through the greenish haze of his vision enhancing goggles.
"Why can't we use the stairs?" Lucy-Lu asked.
"I don't want to risk running into more bugs on the way there, the hatch coamings around the outer hull will likely still be sealed and thus less populated than other sections of the Hellbender," Rayner explained.
"How do you figure that?" Anju questioned.
"Standard Damage Control Protocol dictates that in the event of a Wasteland landing, all hatch coamings on the outer hull are to be secured and locked before impact," he clarified, "It was something that every Talon is expected to know before being cleared for shipboard duty. Sealing the combings prevents the poisonous atmosphere and native fauna of the Wastelands from breaching the inhabited sections of the ship."
"Lot of good it did them," Gorman muttered, "That big tear in the starboard side cleaved through both hulls."
"That's something else I want to know, how did the Hellbender get shot down?" Anju asked.
"As I explained earlier, the Storm Hawks were the ones that took her out. As for the specifics, it is believed Lightning Strike used leecher crystals to compromise the ship's systems. Cyclonian battlecruisers are really greedy bastards when it comes to fuel, so the effects should have made themselves known pretty quickly once the power core started depleting," Gorman said, "And it wouldn't have needed to be dropped all the way, just enough so that the ship could not stay aloft. That said, it probably explains why the Hellbender is still for the most part, intact. It made a soft landing in the Wastelands."
"I found it!" Rayner called out, indicating the hatch coaming. It was about five feet tall and was elevated six inches off the deck. In it's center was a large iron wheel that was apparently used to open it. Rayner seized the wheel, and tried to turn it. The metal complained loudly as unlubricated surfaces ground together for the first time in years.
"Uh, Rayner... the natives are gettin' a lil' restless, ya might wanna hurry it up," Lucy-Lu warned, her ears standing fully erect in obvious alarm, "Crap... there is so many of them..."
"How many?" Asked Darius, checking the charge on his blaster rifle.
"More than last time," The Blizzarian replied shakily, she was starting to fidget nervously, "Too many ta fight against." Rayner had noticed that ever since setting foot into the Hellbender, Lucy had gotten more and more anxious. He was afraid she was starting to crack. She had been through tight situations like this before, why was she acting like this now?
"Cowards!" Pocky hissed, obviously not at all supportive of running away, "We can take them! And if we die, we will be able to greet our ancestors in the afterlife with our heads held high, for we would have died honorably!"
"If you want to get eaten Merb, be my guest," Darius sneered, "Me I am planning on killing a Queen, that sounds far more dangerous and exciting than getting turned into bug food."
Pocky paused for a moment, considering his words, "Ah, fine. Much rather die at the claws of the biggest one here rather than it's spawn," she said resigned to the dishonorable course of retreat.
'Good work, Darius,' Rayner mentally applauded his comrade as he finally nudged the wheel all the way to the open position, he then attempted to push the hatch open.
"Here they come!" Anju yelled over the skittering and buzzing sounds that had started to become louder by the second.
"I can't get this hatch open! Gorman help me!" Rayner called out.
Anju, Lucy-Lu, Darius, and Pocky started firing down the corridor, alien screeches answered in kind.
"Oh shit! SOLDIERS!" Anju cried out.
"You mean the last ones were..." Darius began.
"Workers, yes! Keep firing!" She shot back as the horrid baying filled the corridor. Gorman had joined Rayner in forcing the hatch open. He looked down the hall as he did so, and got a good look at one of the Shalk 'soldiers'. It was half-again larger than the workers, and it's mandibles twice as large.
"Lucy, raise a shield!" Anju shot to the crystal mage, the young female did not question the order, she swiftly brought a bright blue crystal out of her satchel and conjured a transparent blue film between them and the shalks, at the same moment, a soldier reared back and a large tongue of flame shot out between it's mandibles.
"It's breathing fire!" Darius cried out, shocked at what he was seeing.
Lucy's shield prevented the flames from harming them, moments later the rest of the horde hit the barrier and it glowed brilliantly.
"I cannot hold 'em like this fer long, girlfriend!" Lucy-Lu said, as she watched her shield crystal steadily lose it's glow as it's charge depleted with wide, frightened eyes.
The hatch groaned one last time before it was thrown open.
"Everyone inside!" Rayner called out. Pocky, Darius, and Anju bolted back to the hatch, while Lucy-Lu backed away, still holding her dimming crystal in front of her.
"Lucy! Drop the shield and get over here!" Rayner called from the hatch.
But she was not listening, she seemed to be focused soley on the creatures in front of her.
"LUCY!" Rayner shouted, "WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?!"
"Can't get away..." she whimpered.
The barrier fell away, and Lucy let out a primal scream of rage and fear, as the horde of insects rushed in to bring her down. She planted her staff into the ground and unleashed the power of her super-charged ice crystal all at once. The crystal shattered.
Lucy-Lu and her attackers were consumed by a massive blast of light, Rayner ducked away behind the coaming as the entire corridor was flash-frozen in an instant.
When the effect subsided, Rayner jumped out of the coaming, his sticks ignited and ready, his feet nearly lost purchase on the iced over decking, his eyes widened at the sight that greeted him.
"No..." he said, disbelief on his face, and sorrow in his soul.
Where Lucy-Lu once stood was a large hole in the deck, surrounded by the frozen forms of several shalks. Lucy-Lu was nowhere to be seen.
"Rayner! We have to go!" Anju called out. The Shalks that had been outside the blast radius were already recovering, and were massing for a second attack.
With a grim set to his face, Rayner reached down and picked up Lucy's damaged crystal staff, which had been discarded by the blast.
He took one last look at the hole before dashing back into the coaming, the door sealed shut behind him just as the first few shalks arrived.
Atmospedia
The Wastelands: Without a doubt the most hostile area of the Atmos. The Wastelands are known for flowing rivers of lava, intense volcanism, choking ash clouds, poisonous atmosphere, valleys of razor sharp rocks, and tectonic storms that make safely navigating it impossible. The Wastelands are an enduring reminder of the Great Cataclysm, which had sundered the continents, and covered the world in ash. The Wastelands alternate between calm areas of blasted terrain swarming with violent beasts, and volcanically active zones where the only living things are the Lava Wyrms, which eat anything they can fit into their large mouths, including each other!
Because of it's instability, the Wastelands are vastly uncharted, as few are crazy enough to spend prolonged amounts of time in it's depths. But the Wastelands also boast large amounts of metals that are needed to construct infrastructure and ships. To this end, several mining ventures exist to exploit the bounties of the Wastelands, at the forefront of these endeavors are the Cyclonians, who operate more than 70% of the Wasteland mineral extraction operations currently ongoing in the Atmos in order to construct ships for the Imperial Fleet.
A/N: And there it is, the first part of the Hellbender clean up mission. I know making Lucy-Lu go crazy like that may seem a little random, it will all be explained soon. But for now just know that she isn't as dead as Rayner thinks she is.