Chapter 93: Diving Deep.
"Remember guys this has to be quick and quiet, we cannot afford to be discovered or this whole thing is going to be blown and not in the way we want," Markus said to the three members of his team that were accompanying him for this mission.
The resistance which had now officially named themselves the Black Claws of Velona were already upholding their part of the bargain in that they had hit a couple of warehouses and minor weapons cashes before making off with all of the supplies held within.
This served multiple purposes in that it distracted their enemy and got them looking in the wrong places. Thinned out some of the guards from the hydrogen facility giving the team an easier time entering it and finally liberated some explosives they could use in the attack.
Granted it would have been far easier for the team to use Clan Mason equipment but it would have also been tracible and that's the last thing they wanted.
The resistance was also going to be assisting on this op by hitting a convoy that was due to be passing through the area on its way out of the hydrogen plant and heading for a nearby FOB.
The main targets would be a couple of hydrogen transporters which when detonated would not only make a nice big boom which would attract the attention of the guards of the plant and hopefully draw some of them away to investigate which would further thin out the defenders while also starving the base that the fuel was intended for.
"I seriously hope these suits hold up down there," Adesus said flexing her gloved fingers as she looked down into the bottom of the cavern.
From up here they could see a faint shimmer of the water of the absolutely massive underground reservoir that fed the facility with the H2O that it used to crack hydrogen from to make into hydrogen fuel for their vehicles and suits.
"They are rated for vacuum and extreme pressure plus the science hive has informed me that advanced rebreather systems can even filter oxygen from the water itself if need be so there's no need to worry," Markus said glancing down at the water far below them, even from all the way up here he could feel the ebbs and flows of the aquatic life that called the reservoir home.
"Don't you worry Adesus with Markus in charge down there even if we do get into trouble he can always ask the fish for help," Lucious chirped confidently and Markus glanced at him trying to gauge whether he was joking or not because that was surprisingly astute observation.
"Yeah I guess I mean he does already have a spider as a butler who opens his bedroom door for him," she said shooting him a grin.
"So that's where he went, I was beginning to wonder where he'd scuttled off to," Levi said checking the seals of her suit for about the tenth time.
"Alright people game faces on its time to do this," Markus said as a symbol in his HUD lit up green to tell him that the Black Claws had begun their attack on the convoy.
This had been relayed to him from Victus and Feris who were perched up on top of the cave network with a set of high-powered sniper rifles that gave them a fantastic view of the area around them.
Feris had been tasked with watching the road and if need be assisting the resistance while Victus had been tasked with watching the facility and providing sniper cover as a last resort, both had been told only to fire their weapons if there were no other options because the moment they did shit would really hit the fan as the resistance didn't possess rail or coilgun technology.
"Alright bottoms up mammals I'll see you at the bottom!" Levi said before jumping over the side of the cliff they were all standing atop of and plunging into the darkness below.
"Hey! Who the fuck are you calling a mammal!!" Lucious yelled before plunging after her in a surprisingly graceful swan dive.
Both Markus and Adeus looked at one another before shrugging and jumping but not before clasping hands so they could go together.
As the pair hit the water with a loud splash Markus saw Lucious floating on his back looking like he was having a lazy pool day back on the homeworld at one of the communal pools that the Raptorians seemed to love so much.
Ironically despite really not having been given the chance to do so back on their homeworld, Raptorians made for truly natural swimmers, though as a Seeker Lucious had extensive training as it was a Requirement of every single wing of the Clan Mason military that all members can swim.
Though as funny as it was no-one in their right mind would dare laugh out loud the first time they saw a nine-foot-tall Yautja huntress wearing either water wings or supporting a very un-Yautja-like inner tube around her waist, especially as Tik eleth Mason was known to be one of the strongest swimmers in the Clan.
Though this fact was a rather unsurprising one when you considered that her husband could actually walk on water being one of the only known Seekers to have mastered that little trick.
Like a black-skinned shark popping its head up to get a look at its prey on the surface Levi slowly and silently raised her large domed head from the surprisingly still surface of the black water which was only coloured so thanks to the complete lack of ambient light.
"You should see the sheer amount of fish down here boss, I swear I even saw one with what looked like legs down there," she said as she used her long tail to power her through the water towards them.
"While I can't see them yet I already know they are there as I can feel them as they can feel us," Markus replied as he kicked lasily and tread water.
"How the hell can you see down there it's just black to me?" Adesus said.
"Xenos have highly attuned sensory organs that work kinda like a bat's sonar mixed with electrical sensors not to mention we can actually see pheromones when we don't have our heads jammed inside a helmet, but quite a while ago our science hive came up with a genetic modification that super refined it so that now we can even see fine detail and even colours," Levi said.
"How's that even work inside a helmet?' Adesus asked.
"Don't ask me to explain the science that would require an entire team from the science hive and if you don't fancy a headache that lasts for three days you'll avoid asking one of our science brood a question like that, I'm a Xeno and not even I can take all that screeching and hissing for long, my hive is much quieter, all I know is the suit is packed with a sensor suite that mimics our natural organs and connects to an implant that put at the base of my skull when I officially joined the War Angels," Levi said.
"Don't worry about visuals, when you dive under the water you'll be able to see as your suit will fire up the infra-red lights for your night vision and its also equipped with imaging sonar so if we hit a silt cloud or something just switch over and you'll see right through it," Markus said and with that, he dove under swiftly followed by the rest of them.
One of the little tricks this new suit had that the Clan was experimenting with for implementation within the Clan's armour on a wider basis was the inclusion of what the science hive called smart hide.
It was a form or programable matter that was apparently made up of some form of carbon nanotube that could be adapted to fit the needs of the user on the fly using a non-sentient AI program that had been developed with the help of the freed Wayland Yutani synthetics.
It was the job of this AI to look at the obstacles the wearer was facing and to adjust the suit to compensate on the fly, for example, if the person was climbing it would activate the spider system to allow the soles of their boots and gloves to stick to the surface like the feet of a spider, or if they were running over smooth sand it would adust the soles of the boots into a tread pattern that not only gave them traction but widen them a little to give them better surface area so they didn't sink.
Right now it had changed both the gloves to be webbed and their boots into short fins to allow them to move through the water with far greater ease than they had before.
No sooner had he dove beneath the surface than the world lit up in a slightly distorted black and white as the infrared torches mounted on his helmet lit up the world around him while the sonar pings that rapidly emitted from his suit lit up the fish rapidly darting all around him like little blue shimmers.
It was like watching little wireframe fish darting about in a computer simulation, but thanks to Markus's life sense he saw them far clearer than the others would as he could actually see the life force that powered each of the little aquatic lifeforms through the water all around them.
"Alright people stay in tight formation we don't want anyone getting lost down here or sucked into an intake we may have missed on a scan," Markus said shooting a pointed glance in Lucious's direction as the little Raptorian rotated slowly in place staring at the fish all around him in wonder.
"Yes boss," the three of them chorused though he sensed the mirth in Adesus's voice when she said it.
The four of them made their way towards the floor of the reservoir as quickly as they could each of them keeping an eye on their pressure gauges as they dove, as despite being rated to resist the pressure involved in deep water diving Markus knew from experience that deep water pressure was no joke and one minor fuck up could cost a life in a split second.
"Look! There, that looks like our pipe!" Lucious called and everyone glanced at him to see him pointing down at a forty-five-degree angle off to their left side.
Down in the gloom towards the floor of the reservoir they could barely make out what appeared to be a long white pipe that vanished off into the distance.
"Yup that looks like it good eyes Lucious, alright everyone form up and follow me," Markus said before slowly swimming down towards the long white pipe.
Around the grated and mesh-covered entrance to the pipe, Markus could already feel a suction current pulling him towards it so he stopped and signalled the others to do the same.
"Alright time to tie off everyone," he said pulling a length of high tensile line from his waist.
On the end of it was a little black caribina clip that was made of incredibly strong metal which he was able to hook onto a clasp on Adesus's waist while she did the same to Lucious who did the same to Levi.
With the daisy chain complete the team slowly floated down to the bottom and allowed the suction of the pipe to pull them to its entrance.
Around the entrance, Markus could see what appeared to be a series of little frustrations that had entrenched themselves into the mud and rock to feast on the algae and other microorganisms that the pipe was sucking in their direction.
All of the little creatures ducked for cover in their little hidy holes as the chain of much larger creatures floated along towards the entrance to the pipe, which as he saw it clearly Markus silently thanked Paya that they had left Victus on the surface.
The pipe was going to be a bit of a narrow squeeze for them to wriggle through, well it would for the human-sized and Velon-sized members anyway, Levi like all Xenos could pretty much squeeze herself into just about any space like a fucking octopus and Lucious well he was Raptorian so yeah this would be a breeze for him.
Thankfully the makers of this pipe network had the foresight not to make the suction of the pipe too strong so that it didn't suck any large fish into the mesh grille covering the end of it and clogging it so Markus didn't have to fight the current as he anchored himself against the end of the pipe, though he could quite easily feel it sucking at his midriff as he pulled his plasma cutter from one of his pouches and set to work.
While the others watched his back and helped to hold him stable Markus slowly cut a perfect circle into the metal mesh while also cutting the heavy metal bars behind it free until finally, he was able to turn the super hot plasma torch off and admire the glowing circle that marked his handy work.
As the edges cooled the group all moved in and helped him to shift the large metal circle to one side where they dropped it to the floor of the reservoir further scaring the little crustations which had been popping their little stalk eyes up out of their holes to watch them curiously.
"Alright people try not to bunch up in here, take it nice and slow the last thing we want is to end up as a living fucking cork in here," Markus said as he crouched down to look down the long narrow pipe which was only just wider than his shoulder width.
Lucious was going in first because if they hit another grate or filter mesh he was going to be the only one of them with the arm space to be able to cut through it so before they finally entered the pipe they reorganised their places on the chain.
"Adesus do try not to stare at your boyfriend's arse too much, I know it can be quite a trick but try to resist, I doubt the last thing he needs or wants is for you to get distracted and fail to notice that he's stopped before jamming that long snout of your into a place I'm not sure he'd appreciate it being," Levi said shooting the embarrassed Velon a grin that Markus felt rather than saw.
"Alright cut the chatter people's minds on the task," he snapped before Adesus could retort and the pair glanced at him like a pair of scolded children and nodded.
Moments later Lucious crawled into the pipe on his hands and knees before Markus followed after him though he was only able to fit by stretching his arms out ahead of him and shuffling along on his belly.
As it turned out putting Lucious at the head of the group to cut through obstacles had been the smart call as they encountered another four of those filters in that claustrophobic nightmare which forced them all to stop and wait while Lucious cut through the obstacle, which took even longer than normal as he had to make the cuts as close to the metal of the pipe as he could to not only allow them the maximum room to squeeze through but do not leave sharp edges which might damage their suits or snag them.
But finally after what felt like forever the group finally emerged from the pipe into one of the giant feed tanks which was responsible for pumping water collected from the reservoir into the large hydrogen cracking tanks further inside the plant.
Even through the thick metal that made up the tank and the water that it contained, they could hear the distant peal of alarms ringing out, this indicated to the team that the resistance was hard at work making a hell of a noise to keep the defenders looking the wrong way.
Markus tapped his long-distance comms system, "Shadow one to Shadow five and six we've reached the tank and are moving now to infiltrate, over," he said.
"Roger that Shadow one message received and understood, the Black Claws are doing their part and keeping things loud and bright but please do not linger, over," Victus's voice replied.
"Roger that will call again when the objective is achieved and we are extracting, over and out," Markus said before closing down the comms line.
Lucious pointed to the top of the tank and Markus nodded as they all swam upwards after the little Raptorian who had spotted their exit.
Undoing the large round hatch from inside the tank while floating in the water was an easier said task than a done one, but with perseverance and some creative thinking, they finally managed to get the thing open before sending Lucious up first to get a look around.
"Looks clear, well as clear as a compound crawling with sentient insects can be anyway," Lucious called down to them as he peeked his little head back over the lip of the tank top.
Levi clambered up next followed by Adesus with Markus coming up last, but finally, the strike team were inside the compound, now all they had to do was reach their targets undetected and plant their charges, yet another easier said-than-done task.
From atop the massive water tank, the team had an excellent view of the entire compound far below them, they could easily see the insects scrambling around as the alarms blared out.
"Alright from the plans we saw our main targets are those hydrogen storage tanks there and the processing system which should be housed in that facility right there," Markus said first pointing at four large circular tanks that were about half the size of the tank they were currently sat atop of before turning to point at the large central building which sat right in the middle of the web of pipes that littered the place.
"Do we really need to hit the manufacturing facility if we are detonating the storage tanks, won't the explosion from those going up take it out as well?" Levi asked thoughtfully.
"Better safe than sorry, the last thing we need is to find out later that the production facility had heavier shielding than we anticipated and leaving the infrastructure intact, so no we leave nothing to chance here, we hit both and ensure this whole fucking place turns into the biggest crater you have ever seen," Markus said.
'Looks like most of the guard is scrambling to deal with the resistance," Lucious said pointing towards the road and when Markus turned he could see a column of large walking tanks and what also appeared to be some kind of mech suits heading down the road in the direction of where the resistance had hit the convoy.
Infact the black smoke from the burning vehicles was visible even from this far away as it rose into the sky in the distance.
"Alright let's get a move on people, I want to be in and out before those vehicles get anywhere near our resistance friends, manufacturing plant first so let's go!" Markus said before turning and lifting up his rifle which he'd slotted a grapple bolt into and firing it at the roof of the nearby plant.
Now while the bolt was fired using the same magnets that propelled the slugs the gun fired at the speed it propelled this much larger grapple bolt at was far slower so there was no supersonic crack as it fired, infact the loudest noise was the thud the bolt made as it impacted the concrete on the side of the building and anchored itself in.
It did this by using a special micro charge located in the base of the grapple that detonated when the point of it made contact with a flat solid surface you see the bolt itself kinda looked like a large rod of metal with three pop-out stabilizing fins much like those of a rocket that deployed as it left the end of the weapon barrel.
When the bolt made contact with the surface it was aimed at the micro charge in the base would detonate firing a claw-like arrowhead out of the tip of it into the surface it had made contact with kind of like a sabot round going off.
But the idea was not to punch clean through the wall but rather to securely anchor the attached line from the spool on the side of Markus's weapon so he could run it a bit further out before clipping it and attaching it to something like the guard rail at the top of the tank creating an effective zipline for them to traverse.
Once it was secured Markus placed his weapon back on his back and tested the tension of his line which was made of very tightly woven microfibres made of super strong plant material grown on Raptoria.
They also had another version which used a version of Xeno resin but in keeping with not wanting to leave anything behind which could easily identify them he had opted to bring this version as the plant fibres would simply burn up under the heat of the explosion where the Xeno resin was treated to be highly resistant to heat.
One after the other the team used their traveral tools to slide down the wire and onto the roof of the processing plant where they stacked up at the entry door after Markus recovered the bolt from the wall.
As predicted the door itself was locked from the inside so while Lucious set to work on cracking it open the others took up defensive positions around him scanning their firing arcs to ensure there were no surprises as they still didn't fully understand what these insectoids were capable of when it came to combat.
Thankfully Lucious was very good at his job and managed to rapidly pop the door lock while also managing to both identify and isolate the door alarms so they didn't sound the second that the sensors were tripped by the door opening.
Once through the group began to make their way down a rather large stairwell moving slowly so that their cloaking systems kept them hidden from view.
The first door that they came to in the stairwell led them to some kind of storage area which was filled with a multitude of replacement parts for the various equipment that kept the plant running, so they moved on even lower.
The next door they tried led them out into a series of high catwalks that ran the length of the building interior and were obviously there so the workers could carry out maintenance on the absolute spider's web of pipes that covered pretty much every wall and surface.
Infact as Markus looked over the sides of the metal catwalk he noticed that there were three more levels like this one at various junctions that gave access to valve and control systems that were spaced out along the pipes.
But thankfully this level seemed to be bereft of work for the moment as they all seemed to be busy on the lower levels.
That's when Markus got his first look at one of the insectoid workers and to his surprise they did follow the caste system of an insect hive.
The workers were much shorter than their soldier counterparts, they also had more hands than the soldiers as well had three sets of arms each with a large and highly dextrous hand at the end of it that by the looks of it could perform a multitude of tasks all at once.
The workers kinda made Markus of a beetle that had been crossed with an ant of some kind as they had a large, colourful carapace shell on their backs that reminded him of the wingcovers that some species of beetle had back home.
Their legs were short but very powerful looking giving them a very compact but powerful frame, which indicated to him they were used to carrying heavy loads which would make sense if their primary purpose was to repair whatever their colony needed fixing.
But as much as the Tamer in him would have loved for him to study these fascinating creatures further and to study the evolutionary process which had created them they were here to do a job.
Silently Markus and his team made their way in single file across the metal catwalk while being careful to keep their footfalls careful and deliberate to keep them silent.
Using this high catwalk they reached a thick bunch of multicoloured pipes which by their bore marked them as carrying both liquids and gases and by the condensation and even frost on a couple of them it appeared that they were also carrying liquid oxygen as well as the hydrogen.
This while an interesting development actually made sense as the secondary product of cracking water was pure oxygen, which if you cooled and compressed you could quite easily liquefy making it useful for everything from life support systems to rocket fuel for non-ionic and magnetic drive systems like those of Clan Mason and now their allies, hell even they used them for the chemical and breaking thrusters that some of their ships used like their fighters.
But this development simply made Markus smile even wider because now they were going to get even more bang for their buck when they detonated this place as the one major thing about liquid oxygen is that it is highly explosive.
After leaning over the railing to check that their path was clear, Markus reached out and engaged his spider system allowing his gloves to stick to the bare wall of the building, followed swiftly by his feet allowing him to climb vertically down the wall like he was on an invisible ladder.
Their primary targets were the bleed-off tanks at the centre of the facility, this is where the hydrogen and oxygen were stored after it was pulled from the water by the electrolysis cracking process which was little more than using a piece of charged steel and a cathode to create a surface for the molecules to be split and separating the two gases apart.
This was then run through a complex filter system which would separate the two gases by how light they were with hydrogen being collected from further up the tank due to it being much lighter than oxygen.
So once at the right height Markus reached out and swung himself underneath a catwalk that ran directly over the tanks that were their targets, once under it he gripped it and held his weight so he could press the soles of his boots to the metal, this allowed him to walk upside down like he was wearing a pair of space boots and was walking along the hull of a spaceship.
Once in place Markus signaled his team and pointed to each of the tanks before pointing to a team member to indicate who was going where and once they were all assigned the team split off one by one heading for their assigned tank.
The charges they had brought with them were not as potent as the explosive that the Clan themselves tended to use as the Grand Patriarch was rather a fan of packing a hell of a lot of clout and power into a smaller-than-expected package, said it reminded him of his wife.
But it was a policy that had driven the science hive to strive to produce more and more complex molecules and compounds at one of their facilities that operated away from the main hive and indeed the city due to the danger of the materials they were working with.
But the results of those incredibly smart Xenos hard work spoke for themselves in they had produced compounds so powerful that only a couple of grams of what they called Tikesium had the explosive power of a pound of C4.
The Grand Patriarch himself had been responsible for gifting it that name as up until then the Xenos had simply called it compound 8561, but once the Grand Patriarch had seen for himself the power it could unleash in such small quantities he'd instantly called it Tikesium because he said it exploded like his wife's temper on a bad day when some had chosen to insult their cubs and she had stubbed her toe before also finding out they were all out of Black pudding.
That rather vivid description always made Markus chuckle but never in front of the Grand Matriarch herself, only members of her direct family were as suicidal as to make fun of her legendary temper, there was a reason she was one of the most famous berserkers this universe had ever known.
By contrast, this stuff they had gotten from the resistance which was essentially stolen quarrying explosives was like comparing a pop cap to a nuke, but for this job, it would do just nicely as the predominant amount of boom would not come from the explosive itself, but from the chain reaction it set off within the storage tank he was currently connecting it to.
Once each charge was set he set the emergency switch which was the only piece of Clan Mason tech that was incorporated into these devices and was built as so to be completely untraceable as it was a simple yet tiny and ingenious device.
The system was set on a radio detonation trigger which was linked to Markus's suit comms, but if for any reason the detonators and his suit lost comms for a set amount of time this tiny little device would kick in and trigger a backup timer on the device which was synced with his suit, so he would be completely aware of the situation and would know exactly when the clock started ticking and how long they had left.
Once his device was set he turned and glanced at his team all of which seemed to have enjoyed the same success he had as they were now making their way back up to the catwalk to join back up.
Now came the truly tricky part, getting to the massive storage tanks out in the main yard of the facility without being seen.
As good as Clan Mason cloaking tech was it wasn't flawless, the faster you moved the more the armour and its emitters had to work in order to keep you hidden which meant the faster you moved the more obvious you became as it created a kind of glass figure effect around you making you shimmer.
If you remained stationary or moved slowly the image was pretty much flawless so it would provide you near perfect cover and if you combined this with some well learnt tricks and tactics that after years of experience in using the Yautja of the Clan were masters of teaching.
None more so thank Tik eleth Mason herself.
Infact one lecture she gave to all branches of the Clan military was about how to effectively deploy and use your cloaking tech, Markus remembered the first time he attended this lecture while training to become a Seeker and the Grand Matriarch was at the front of the lecture hall showing them images of how effective the armour could be if used correctly on the holographic projector when suddenly she stopped, smiled and then gestured to the room oddly, suddenly out of thin air the Grand Patriarch and her own team of Hunter one simply appeared in amongst the students.
As one could imagine this surprised even the Seekers-in-training in the room as they had been quite oblivious to their presence thanks to the Grand Patriarch shielding them from the Seeker's aura sight but the shock of having these powerful warriors in their midst close enough to reach out and touch the entire time while being completely oblivious to their presence royally helped to hammer the Grand Matriarch's point well and truly home with her students, patience and silence were your friends in the field, fight smart not reckless.
With that in mind, Markus decided that his team should head back out the way they had entered, through the roof access as he wanted the height advantage to help keep them out of sight as well as to be able to spot the enemy on the ground below them.
So after carefully picking their way back up through the catwalks the team emerged onto the roof and Markus looked over the side.
"looks like there are quite a few emplacements between us and those storage tanks and the distance is too far for us to be able to use a grapple line," he said.
"I doubt shooting anywhere near those tanks would be such a great idea anyway, one misshot there and suddenly we have a whole other problem of the being blown back to the GMF kind," Levi said.
"Agreed, any suggestions?" Markus asked glancing around at his team.
"I got one," Lucious said and the others turned to look at the little Raptorian.
"Go for it," Markus said gesturing to him.
"See that support frame over there?" Lucious said pointing to some metal running frames that seemed to be mounted above a large crane which lifted large prefilled tanks onto the transport trucks.
"Yeah, what about it?" Markus asked.
"Well the tanks are both too far and too dangerous to risk shooting at but that thing isn't and both myself or Levi could easily scale over that thing to the tanks, my because as a Raptorian I have great balance and if you add in the spider modifications to these suits I can easily just walk over those rails while Levi could simply stick to it, well if you can hit that thing then one of us can slide down the wire and you can slide the charges over to us," Lucious said.
Markus studied the frame the little Raptorian indicated and while it was pretty far away and would be a hell of a shot to hit at this distance it was do-able.
"Alright good idea Lucious, slight modification here though I want both you and Levi going over, Levi will plant the charges as it's easier for her to reach the places to plant the charges as her kind have a far easier time moving on any surface than the rest of us do due to Xenos being kinda built for it, you will be the charge runner, we slide the charges down the line to you, you then take them to the end of the frame where Levi collects them from you and plants them before you both make your way back up here and we bug the fuck out," Markus said.
Both of them saluted and nodded in agreement.
"What am I doing during this?" Adesus asked.
"Overwatch, set up on the side there and keep your eyes on the ground below them, warm them if there are any enemies near enough to them as to be a risk," Markus said and Adesus nodded and moved to set up on the side of the building with her rifle.
Markus took a deep breath and placed his trust in Paya as he lined up on the small frame in the distance, he measured the distance and lifted his sights to account for drop and windage when he felt a kinda rightness to his aim he gently squeezed the trigger.
It was kind of hard to explain how that feeling felt but sometimes when lining up on a distant target you simply felt that the modification to your aim was just right, it was like having the Goddess of the hunt herself as your spotter giving you the go-ahead to shoot and no sooner had he pulled the trigger than Markus just knew she had been guiding his hand as the bolt struck true and clean.
After a few seconds to check that none of the ground troops had heard the impact of the grapple bolt both Levi and Lucious mantled the wire and slid down it, arriving promptly on the other side.
Lucious was carrying the first charge with him and while Levi moved along the frame to leap onto the large storage tanks Markus slid the next one down the wire to the waiting Raptorian at the other end.
It took them only five nerve-wracking minutes to get all four of the charges in place ensuring that both the liquid oxygen and hydrogen tanks were rigged to blow and then came the ascent phase, where both Levi and Lucious had to clamber their way back up the wire not able to risk using their assention gear due to the noise the motors made possibly giving them away.
But finally, the team were reunited and the bugs still seemed completely unaware of either their presence or their impending doom, with their objectives complete Markus led his team back out the way they had come in, back through the pipe network and into the reservoir from which they put the spider systems of their suits to good use and climbed back out of it and into the cave network where they moved to reunite with both Victus and Feris.
"How are the resistance faring?" Markus said dropping down into the OP next to the large Beledon and Velon.
"They are noble and ferocious warriors, they will make fine allies in the fight to come," Victus said lifting his head and cocking a rather bushy eyebrow as Levi dropped down next to him so close she might as well have sat on his back.
"Alright time to get them out of there I'll make the call," Markus said and he patched his comms into the resistance frequency.
"Shadow one to Black Claw one come in over," Markus said.
"This is Black Claw one go ahead!" a slightly distorted voice came back thanks to the chattering sound of weapons fire in the background.
"Objectives complete fade out, I repeat job done fade out, over," Markus said.
"Roger that Shadow one fading out now, see you soon, Black Claw one over and out," Tes'veren said.
Markus turned to his team and lowering his mask he gave them a toothy grin.
"Time we really get this fucking party started, time for some fucking Clan Mason-sized party poppers," he said and with that he pressed the detonator switch on his wrist comp.