Chapter 105: Angels of Battle.
"This is Viper one two we need Battle Angels at our location immediately we have two Raptorian Star Stalkers down I repeat we need Battle Angels here now!!!" the call came through the comms like a bellowing call to arms and Nyx turned to his sisters who had been working out of the command Titan providing aid for the vehicle crews as they slugged it out with the well-entrenched insect defenders.
The four of them turned to look at their commander who had blatantly heard the desperate call for aid from the Hunter team that was deep underground clearing the tunnels and she spoke a single word that said everything they needed to know.
"Go," she said with a determined and dark look on her features.
Nyx let out a bellowing shriek and the massive Pretorian leapt high into the air before hitting the ground running on all fours towards the town across the sands of the desert with his three sisters in his wake.
"Do not stop for anything! We will reach our fallen brethren and we will save them!!" Nyx screeched as he ran on all fours with his head down like a living bulldozer powered by the pure determination to perform his sacred duty to his hive.
All three of his sisters formed into a single file directly behind their massive brother as he punched a hole clean through the bug lines it was obvious the insects had not been expecting a team of Xenomorphs running at full clip to race right over the top of them.
Shots pinged off their shields as the team weaved left and right with Nyx following the transponder's trail, now contrary to popular belief Battle Angel armour is not just meant to be showy and pretty, it's actually incredibly solid as unlike their counterparts Battle Angels are more focused on saving life than taking it.
But they cannot do that if they are dead, so they have sacrified weaponry for thicker armour and heavier shielding, this lets them punch through even the heaviest of fire to reach the wounded and fallen.
When you combine this with the fact that all of them carry portable bubble shield generators to provide mobile cover points they become a very formidable force for search and rescue.
As the four of them cleared the walls of the inner base that was now peppered with scorch marks and holes from both railgun slugs and plasma shot alike not to mention missile strikes from the Raptorian Gipkas the place was an image drawn right out of hell itself with masonry, debris and body parts strewn everywhere the eye could see.
"Prep for a tunnel run my sisters! Get on my tail!!" Nyx screeched and he charged directly towards the open tunnel mouth at the centre of the base vanishing into the darkness without a second of hesitation.
Now the underground and tight confines of tunnel networks are the natural home of the Xenomorph, so manoeuvring in these tight twisting confines was no problem to them even to Nyx.
"Viper two nine to viper one two what is your location over?" Nyx said into his comms without breaking his running stride.
There was a pause as the human Hunter confirmed their position and he began to read back a series of co-ordinates over the comms which Nyx instantly used to correct his run down the right tunnels.
"Roger that hold tight Hunter the Angels are coming!" Nyx yelled and with that, he accelerated.
"It sounds like our patients are under fire sisters, I will deal with the vile defilers of the injured while you tend them," Nyx said as he ran there were a series of affirmative screeches from behind him and that's when the sounds of gunfire became very apparent from up ahead, the Angels were close.
Nyx burst through the tunnel opening into the chamber beyond and he instantly located their patients, they had been dragged behind cover by their comrades who were now trying to both treat them and provide protective covering fire to keep the enemy away.
"The Angels are here!!" Nyx bellowed and lowering his head he charged full tilt right into one of the massive bio-suits sending it crashing backwards under the incredible force of the charging Xeno-shaped bulldozer that collided with it.
Meanwhile, his sisters pounced on the casualties and erected a barrier shield before getting straight to work, the next words he heard whipped Nyx into a fury of purest rage.
"One dead one mortally wounded, we are working brother but it does not look good, but we will never give up!" they said over their private channel.
The rage of being too late to save one of the Raptorians sent Nyx over the edge as grief for the fallen hit him like a hard slap.
He hit the bugs like a living wrecking ball, his claws and tail spike cleaved right through their bio-composite armour like it was made of paper, one of the suits was making a beeline for the line of Beledon Knights that was creating a shied wall for the escaping civilians that the Serpentinus were shepherding to a breach in the wall that led to one of their burrowing APCs.
When he saw this Nyx screeched in purest rage before leaping onto the ceiling and running right over the heads of the other bugs to land before the suit.
"Oh no you fucking don't!!!' he screeched before slamming his heavily armoured head crest right into the suit's face in a savage headbutt that crumpled the armour in like it was made of wax.
Before the suit could recover its composure from the savage hit Nyx whipped around and lanced it with his tail spike, driving it right through its chest cavity and out of the back.
When he noticed a hiss of escaping gas from a punctured canister within the suit he whipped it towards its companions where their plasma shot ignited the speweing cloud of gas causing it to explode in a ball of green flames.
That was when Nyx noticed something odd, there was a suit that was larger than all of the rest and it seemed to have others around it like bodyguards at the rear of the formation, but unlike the others, this one was not marching mindlessly towards the carnage, it was trying to slip away unnoticed.
Nyx let out a challenging screech and pointed it out in the hope that both the Beledon and the Hunters would see it, it certainly seemed that the Raptorian Star Stalkers did and by the way, they scrambled to put the fire down on it and its guards those girls were out for vengeance and blood.
One of the Raptorians rushed into the fray touting an absolutely massive cannon on her shoulder that was even bigger than she was.
"You killed my sister!!! I'll fucking kill every last one of you!!!!!' she bellowed as she fired the huge weapon at the retreating bio-suits.
That's when Nyx got an idea and he very quickly dashed forward using his long tail he snatched the little Raptorian off her feet and deposited her on his back between his ventral spines.
"And Vengence you shall have little sister, let us carve out a wound so deep that your sister's name is never forgotten by these vile insects!!" Nyx screeched as he charged forwards with the little Raptorian now holding onto his back for grim death with one hand while still trying to fire her huge cannon with the other.
It seemed that all the practice the Raptorians had put in firing mounted weapons from their Surface Skimmers had paid off because after only a little correction the little Raptorian was able to correct her aim and start blowing holes in the armoured suits while Nyx dodged between them throwing off the aim of any return fire while also carving out some blood of his own.
It also seemed that the Hunters had rallied now and their leader had whipped them into a frenzy, three of the Yautja had gone completely berserk and were in amongst the bugs fighting hand to hand, using their combi-sticks and wrist blades to carve the bugs into confetti.
It wasn't long before they had not only pushed them back but had punched clean through their lines and were now moving to cut off their escape.
"Do not kill the big one little sister, I have a feeling that one is important, we will need it," Nyx said softly to the little Raptorian riding on his back still shooting her cannon while also loading the shells into it herself something that was meant to be a two Raptorian job by the awkwardness of it.
"Get me fucking close enough and I'll make sure the fucker talks, they'll be fucking begging to tell us everything we want to know when I'm done with them!" the little Raptorian snarled.
"That is not how the Clan do things, little sister, we may kill our enemies but we do not torture them, do not stoop to their level even in the depths of your pain and grief do not become them, it is beneath you and the memory of your fallen beloved one," Nyx said as he began his dash towards the larger suit who had now lost most of its guards and was making a break for the exit on the far side of the room while still firing its massive plasma cannons back at them.
The little Raptorian on his back lowered her cannon and aimed the fleeing suit and with some spectacular marksmanship, she not only managed to blow its plasma cannon arm clean off at the shoulder but one of its legs as well.
As the bug suit fell crippled others rushed to aid it, now while the little Raptorian had done her best to cripple the big suit and its allies she spared no mercy and simply unleashed a barrage of fire down onto them that turned the entire group to splinters.
Nyx leapt over the remaining bug and stabbed his long tail into the shoulder of the stricken suit being careful not to hit anything vital.
"You're coming with us fucker, we got some fucking questions for you," he snarled in a hiss as he lifted the stricken suit and held it before their faces, then wrapping his long segmented tail around it and ensuring it could not use any other remaining weaponry it may have he dashed back towards the Clan's battle lines.
As he made it back he could see his sisters safely within their powerful bubble shield working on the still-living Raptorian Star Stalker, they were fighting with everything they were to ensure that they would not lose this one, it was the Battle Angel's war cry after all, 'Not one innocent life lost now we guard them.'
Three Raptorians were clinging together in a shared grief and as they arrived the fourth one jumped down from his back and moved to join her sisters in their grief, this was obviously the pride that the fallen pair had belonged to.
"If I may little sister, what was the name of the sister that you have lost?" he asked softly and with reverence.
"Jex, her name was Jex," the little Raptorian said softly and Nyx nodded as he made a mental note for the war logs.
"I will ensure that her name is not forgotten by the Clan little one you have my word, we will honour her memory and her sacrifice just as you do," he said.
"Thank you, brother, that...that means a lot," she said before heading into the arms of her grieving pride mates.
Nyx decided to drag the large bug commander or what he suspected was a bug commander back to the Clan's lines himself, so while his sisters continued to work he rushed back up the tunnels and back out into the desert night.
Thankfully it seemed that the Titans and the other armoured vehicles had moved into the city now and were going street to street clearing them out, he was delighted to find the four Seekers gathered in the base courtyard having just cleared it of defenders.
"Report!" the commander said as she saw Nyx appear with the crippled bio suit still containing its captive occupant.
"We lost one of the Raptorian Surface Stalkers, one of Alpha pride, a girl called Jex, she was killed by a plasma weapon, and another of them is in critical condition, the Hunters, Beldeon and Serpentinus as well as remaining Star Stalkers are fighting to secure the civilians they found down there, we captured what we think is a bug commander and I brought him to you for interrogation," Nyx said.
The commander punched a sandstone wall so hard in her frustration at losing someone so early into the engagement that she knocked a hole clean through it.
"Have the Beledon Soul Knight perform a Soul Tear, she'll know what you mean, tell her to make sure Jex's soul gets to the Great Tree as for this fucker we're gonna send him to the Grand Patriarch, I'd have a little chat with him myself but there is still much to do here, we have many bugs to dig up," she said.
"Permission to transfer the prisoner to the command Tiant and rejoin my sister commander?' Nyx asked.
"Granted, go with the Eternal Huntress on your shoulder Battle Angel," Misty said.
Nyx rushed back down into the tunnels to rejoin the fight and as he arrived he saw that it was pretty much over, the Hunters with their enraged Star Stalker allies had pushed the bugs back into the far corner of the room where they were staging a last stand, but it was no good, the Clean and their allies were being driven by pure rage at the loss of one of their allies and Nyx knew that to the Clan there was no such thing as acceptable losses, every one of them felt this loss like it was their own and they would fight to avenge Jex in blood.
As the last of the bugs fell to one of the Yautja's blades a roar of victory went up that was picked up by every one of the Clan members and their allies, it had been a battle hard fought but also won.
Nyx weaved his way through the group until he found the large Beledon Soul Knight who was the leader of the Beledon Knights of Beledonia the Beledon's new orbital shock troops.
"Greetings honoured sister, I bring word from the commander and she asks for your aid in performing a Soul Tear for the fallen Raptorian girl, she wishes you to be the one to send her soul into the Golden Garden of the Great Tree," he said saluting the large Beledon Seeker.
"It would be my honour, I will ensure that the little warrior walks into the Garden with her head held high and her chest puffed out, she will wait for her pride in paradise knowing that she fell with honour," the big Beledon Seeker said slamming her fist into her breastplate in a salute.
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As the big Beledon approached the fallen Jex the rest of her pride gathered around their fallen sister protectivly as if the big Beledon woman intended to defile their fallen sister.
"Fear not little warriors, I intend no disrespect your fallen beloved one, quite the opposite, I intend to give her the chance to say her final goodbyes to you all and to pass into the Golden Garden of your Great Tree with the honour she deserves, will you allow me to do this?" she said.
Thomas stood by watching the pride grieving the loss of their sister, it was a pain that despite not being either Raptorian or indeed a Seeker and capable of feeling on their behalf he could still feel radiating off them.
As he watched them close ranks to protect their fallen sister's body he knew they didn't understand what she was offering them so he stepped up and gently placed a hand on Vessa's shoulder causing her to look up at him.
"Don't worry Vessa this is a sacred tradition of the Clan and one we offer freely to our friends and allies, she means no insult to Jex only to help her pass onwards into the Great Garden of the Great Tree.
Vessa looked at the others and they all parted to allow the big Beledon into their midst where she knelt before Jex's small body.
Now this next part Thomas never claimed to have any clue how the Seekers did, it was like watching true magic being performed before your eyes, all he knew was that they could do it and it was a truly incredible thing to bear witness to.
The large Beledon began to invoke the names of her own Gods and Goddesses, drawing on their power to pull her soul cleanly from the young body that lay before her, it was like watching sunlight being born as the large Beledon reached out and placed a large hand on Jex's stomach before pulling it away with a soul attached to it, a soul that was in the shape of Jex.
As the large Belledon placed the golden soul of Jex down before all of her pride sisters every single one of their mouths fell open, well all except for Cemmil who was still in critical condition and being tended by the Battle Angels.
"J-J-Jex is it really you?" Vessa exclaimed as she stepped forwards towards her smiling sister.
"Yeah it's me, Vess, wow gotta say it's a hell of a rush this dying thing," Jex said looking at her golden sparkling hands.
"Oh, Great Tree it is you!" Vessa exclaimed and the whole pride closed in to hug their fallen sister.
"Look guys I know my time here is limited I can feel my soul pulling on the power of my new beledon friend there and she's gonna need every bit of it to keep the rest of you guys going in the days to come, I can also hear the Great Tree calling to me so I'll just say this, remember what we discussed Vess, well you had better get off your bloody tail end and do it, when you guys finally come to me in the garden you had better be towing that fucking boy with you, I expect to be able to take my turn with him in paradise you got me?" she said makingn them all laugh and try to dry their tears.
"We will Jex I swear it, if I have to write out a ten-page essay to explain to Cemmy to explain to her why it's a great idea I will I swear," Vessa said drying the tears from her eyes.
"Tell her I'm gonna be haunting her dreams until she gives in and gives her stubborn ass up," Jex said with a wink and with a final wave to all of her beloved sisters Jex turned and walked into the light leaving the pride one less but with more fire in their hearts than they had ever had before.
"If there is anything me or my Hunters can do to help you guys let me know ok?" Thomas said placing a hand on Vessa's shoulder and she took a deep breath before turning to look up at him, he was somewhat taken aback to see such a powerful fire in her eyes suddenly.
"Yeah there is something actually," she said.
"Well name it then," he said glad to be able to help out in any way he could.
"Become our pride male," Vessa said and now it was Thomas's turn to have his mouth fall open in shock.
"W-Wait you want me to be your pride male?" he exclaimed and she and the rest of her pride nodded in unison.
"We've had our eye on you since we first set eyes on you, you fought alongside us, helped us, cared for us and stood tall and proud alongside us, plus you are beautiful, kind, gentle and have a heart full of fire," Vessa said.
"Plus you're hot as hell as Jex would have said," the others said together making Vessa chuckle.
"W-Well obviously I'm deeply flattered but umm are you sure this is the right time? You are all still gonna be grieving for a while and umm we're in the middle of a war and..." Thomas began but Vessa marched right up to him and pulled him down to her level by his armour so they were face to face.
"Deny us right this second commander or I am gonna kiss you so deep you are gonna be tasting my tongue for days, you're right this is a war and the fact that any of us could die at any second is laid right there on the floor with her soul on its way to the Great Tree, I am going to miss my pride sister for every single day that I walk on any world let alone this one which is going to always now be a reminder of what my pride has lost, but I'm not gonna be the one to join here there when it's my time and tell her I fucking failed in her last request, so what's it to be yes or no?" Vessa said.
"Alright if your sure I'll..." Thomas began but was cut off by Vessa carrying out her threat of jamming her little tongue right into his mouth.
Vessa's tongue was aggressive in its exploration of Thomas's mouth her long skinny tongue seemingly wanting to taste every single skin cell of his mouth not to mention every single one of his teeth.
When they finally parted Thomas was both shocked and breathless as he stared wide-eyed at the little Raptorian warrior girl.
"Well pick this up later our new pride male but for now my pride have a sacred duty to perform," Vessa said nodding to the others who split into two groups of two and formed up on Jex's lifeless little body.
"Pride honour guard lift!" Vessa barked after they slid the four-person stretcher under her lifeless body and had folded her arms over her chest.
Jex's pridemates lifted her into the air and instantly Beta pride formed up ahead of them to protect their kinswomen, "She fell fighting for what she believed in and now she will travel back to Raptoria as a hero," Vessa said and with that, the group of Raptorian Star Stalkers headed back up the tunnel towards the surface.
Nyx suddenly tapped Thomas's shoulder making him snap out of his stupor and turn to look at the massive pretorian male.
"We've stabilised their other pride sister and it looks good that she'll make a full recovery, but she's going to need to be transferred back to the mini medical hive either at the FOB or on board the GMF," he said.
"Roger, can you and your sisters handle the transfer?" Thomas asked and the large Xeno nodded his large crested head.
"You can count on us commander, nothing will harm a single scale of her hide further while we guard her," he said and Thomas patted the large Xeno on his long massive arm.
"I don't think anyone tells you this enough but I am not going to let that slide, you and every one of your brothers and sisters are both a credit to your hide and the Clan as a whole, whatever would we do without you watching our tails?" he said and Nyx hissed softly.
"Thank you, commander, your words are kind but unnecessary, we fight for the Clan just like anyone else here we just fight differently, we fight to keep life," he said and with that, the massive Xeno turned and signalled to his sisters to power up the floating bio-bed which they would use to transfer Cemmil back to the command Titan for transport back to safety.
"Alright people let's not slack off we still got work to do, what's the status on the civilians?" Thomas said shaking off the events of the last few minutes and getting his head back in the game.
"Loaded and ready for transport," came the reply from the Serpentinus over the comms.
"Alright send em up, I hereby transfer them into the custody and protection of the Royal Sword packs, get em to safety ladies then get those scaley tails back here, we got a fucking bio-lab to nuke out of existence and I get the feeling we are gonna need a hot lift out of here," he said.
"Roger that commander," Vetra said saluting him before hissing order to her soldiers in their native language which made all of them slither like some had lit their tails on fire.
There was a series of rumbles as well as a small shower of sand from the breaches in the walls as the Serpentinus Sandcrawlers withdrew and took their civilian cargo to safety.
Thomas knew that Commander Misty would already be calling in drop ships either from the FOB or from the GMF to transport the wounded and civilians to safety on the surface so now it was up to them to get this place cleaned up, as far as he was concerned this place was a fucking blight and he was going to be damned if the enemy got any use out of the vile data they had created here.
"Secure any intel and data we can and then wire this place to blow, Ziva time to break out those plasma charges you are so fucking fond of," Thomas said and the large Yaujta growled deeply inside of her helmet.
"You always know how to make a Yautja girl quiver with delight by saying the nicest things commander, a real pauking pity those scaly little ooman stealers got to you first though is suppose given what they have just suffered they have earned you, but I swear this to you, commander, do not let them down or you will answer to every one of this team, we will not allow it," she said reaching into her large combat pack and retrieving something that looked like a couple of thermos flasks jammed into a lunchbox full of wires which Thomas knew to be a high yield plasma charge.
Now it was Thomas's turn to growl and he turned to face the large Yautja girl head-on with anger directing his movements.
"I would never fucking let those girls down and you fucking know it! I have never let my Clan down and I don't fucking intend to start now, I got star hunted and yeah I'm happy about it, I wish it could have been under better fucking circumstances and I wish the proposal could have come at a better time but that doesn't mean it didn't carry with it the weight of the feelings behind those words she spoke to me, it took fucking courage and sheer guts to throw your heart out there after something like that, I seriously fucking doubt any one of you could have had strength like that so you can bet your fucking tusks I'll be proud to stand at their side!" he yelled so loud that his words echoed with the confines of the lab.
The entire team froze in place startled by Thomas's outburst as they were not used to the usually calm human losing his rag, the Beledon among them who hadn't met him before today didn't seem to know where to look so they simply kinda milled about and seemed to all suddenly have a very pressing need to polish their shields and swords.
Ziva growled and nodded her head approvingly.
"Now that is the fire of the Eternal Huntress right there, so it does burn brightly within you young ooman and I did wonder when I would see it, but I am very glad I got to see it and it is fitting that your new Raptorian wives are the ones that pull it out of you, it is as it should be," she said and with that, the large huntress headed off to start setting her charges.
Thomas sighed heavily as the weight of the last hour or so simply crashed in on him and he leaned on one of the consoles as the rest of his team set about pulling anything that even remotely looked like a data storage device out, though given the organic nature of a lot of components some of them couldn't be removed without killing the things, so they had to figure out some way to interface their tech so they could pull the data out without compromising it.
Eventually, the commander herself came down into the tunnels to get an in person sitrep, she rode in with the returning Serpentinus who were now ready to extract both the Beledon who now that there was nothing left to kill had decided to lounge about in the Sandcrawalers.
Even as he saluted her Thomas could see by the look on her face she was disgusted by what she was seeing here.
"Report," she said returning the salute as she glanced around at the lab with its honeycomb of cells in the walls.
"All prisoners released and sent topside, all enemies rooted and destroyed commander, we are currently wiring this place for demo with plasma to ensure whatever nasty shit they were cooking up down here gets fucking incinerated along with the whole fucking place, right now my people are trying to download the bugs data but it's slow going thanks to their bio-organic tech," Thomas said.
"Yeah I get the distinct feeling that shit is going to be a major pain in our collective ass going forwards, well recover what you can and then wire it up, I want this place to be a fucking crater before we leave, I'm gonna head back topside and evacuate the civilian populace, can't risk their entire town going crashing down a fucking sinkhole, I already got the Clan running dropships down from the GMF to pick up the wounded and the rescued prisoners, so I'll just give them a heads up of what we are going to do here so they'll send some more ships," she said and Thomas nodded.
"A sound plan commander," he said.
"Alright carry on and let me know when you are ready to turn this lace into glass," she said and Thomas nodded saluting her.
As she started to walk away the commander stopped in her tracks and glanced over her shoulder at him, "Oh and congrats on the Star hunt, can't say the time I would have picked for it but those Raptorian girls walked out carrying their dead sister and I saw the glow on them and now I see it on you too, so I see what happened, I guess death can sometimes force us to be braver than we ever thought, so congrats, I hope they treat you well and that you can help to soothe their pain, Goddess knows they've earned it," she said.
"Thanks, commander, I'll do my best for them I swear it before you and the Eternal Huntress," he said and she nodded approvingly.
"You'd better, the Huntress never misses a trick and she takes promises like that real seriously," she said and with that, she was gone back into the tunnel.
Thomas and his team worked diligently to collect all the data they could from the bug network, it took a couple of hours and the vast majority of it was encrypted far beyond their knowledge or tools to be able to crack through, but they'd leave that up to the brainiacs of the science hive and the attachment of Sigints working with them to figure out, they were just the ground grunts getting shot at and ripping shit out of walls.
"This is Viper one-two to Viper one how copy over?' Thomas said into the comms.
"Loud and clear Viper one-two, the ground is clear above the town, evacuation complete so you can light the fuses and run like fuck whenever you are ready over," the commander replied as if reading his mind.
"Roger that Viper one commencing operation light the fuses and run like fuck, over and out," he said and with a hand signal to Ziva the big huntress started pressing buttons on her wrist comp while the rest of them quickly packed themselves into the waiting Serpentinus Sandcrawlers for evac.
The Sandcrawlers were surprisingly spacious, hell they made their own APCs's the SilkSpiders looked like an elevator cab on wheels by comparison and they weren't exactly small considering they had been designed to carry Beledon, Yautja and Xeno Pretorians around, but the Serpentinus seriously knew thing or two about troop comfort, the chairs were even padded with nice plush leather though Thomas did find himself surprised that they didn't simply have throw pillows all over the place.
As the crawlers assented to the surface and towards the safe zone outside of the blast radius Thomas could see Ziva watching her wrist comp like a hawk, she was monitoring the countdown clock for the charges and when it hit the last few seconds he opened her massive spade-like hand and began to drop fingers until she finally closed her fist.
There was a roar and a rumble from all around them as the plasma charges blew, the vibrations of the blast travelling off outwards like a mini earthquake sending shockwaves off in every direction.
"Hold onto your tails, it's gonna get bumpy!" the Serpentinus pilot called back and thankfully Thomas remembered to strap himself onto the crash couch as she was seriously not wrong.
The team shook and bounced about as the crawler attempted to correct for the currently collapsing grounds behind them pulling them backwards, the blast had indeed opened up a massive sinkhole in the desert that was currently in the process of swallowing the Velon town whole like a giant sandworm had risen from the depths beneath it and was currently swallowing it whole.
Finally, they were able to escape the pull of the shifting sands and the crawler breached onto the surface swiftly slithering its way towards the the nearby armoured column.
As the crawler came to a halt the side doors opened and the Hunters and Beledon began to file out into the desert night, it had already been decided that the Beledon Knights were going to be accompanying the team on the remainder of their mission so now it was just a case of finding a place for them among the vehicles where space was kinda limited and ten rather large Beledon did rather take up a fair bit of it.
As Thomas watched he saw a group of Raptorians making their way towards them and he instantly recognised Vessa riding atop her MK5 skimmer in the gunner's position, they pulled up alongside them and she jumped down.
"It is good to see you didn't get yourself blown up our male, Cemmil has been transferred to the medical hive aboard the GMF and I am told she will be able to rejoin us once her treatment is complete, I must say I am impressed by the leaps forwards your medics have taken with our nanotech, they have taken what would have taken weeks to heal and shortened into days and even hours, our sister will be back among us fighting fit soon and I find myself with the bittersweet realisation that I must be the one to break the good and the bad news to her upon her return, but I take solace in that now at least you will be there to help comfort her in her grief, I only wish that she had been able to say her final goodbyes to Jex like the rest of us," she said.
Thomas stepped forward and drew his little Raptorian female into his arms, "Don't worry Vessa when the time comes to break the news I'll be right there at your side, as for the rest I'm sure we'll figure it out together after all isn't that what a good pride is supposed to do?" he said.