Chapter 115:Call of the Allmother.
As Thomas and his pride reemerged into the cave that had become the FOB of their battlegroup and the Spectre team they could instantly see quite the hive of activity going on.
As they looked around everyone seemed to be running around like shimmer lizards that had their heads cut off.
"What's going on?" Vessa called out to one of Beta Pride as they ran past.
"We just got a call from HQ routed via the GMF, the bugs have launched an all-out counterattack!" Tizi said before turning to run after the rest of her pride.
Thomas and Alpha Pride looked at one another all wearing the same expression of panic. As one they turned and ran to the command tent that was set up in the shadow of the Runner.
As they burst in they could see the commander and all the other commanders of the various units assigned to the battlegroup already gathered along with the Spectre team.
"Ahh good you're here and you brought Alpha pride with you, I was just about to send someone to fetch you guys," Commander Misty said.
"How bad is it?" Thomas asked moving up to the holographic table where a map was showing an image of what was blatantly the main FOB where all of the troops had been landing.
"Not great but not as bad as it could be either," Markus the leader of the Spectre team said pulling up an image that had blatantly been taken from the GMF in orbit.
"The bugs came up right out of the pauking ground all around the place, they hit the FOB from all sides at the same time, fuckers managed to tunnel right up to us without us even bloody noticing them, if there hadn't been so many Hunters and Seekers currently on station they might have actually managed to overrun the place, but our guys held out, took a hell of a beating though," Misty said flicking the image to one of both the Grand Patriarch and Matriarch charging into battle at the head of the defenders that were trying to push the bugs back into their holes.
The pair of them looked every bit like the warrior leaders of Clan Mason that every Clan member knew them to be.
Jack Mason was calm, collected and purposeful, leading his Seekers to attack the bug's weak points and sow chaos among their ranks.
While Tik eleth Mason led her Hunters from the front like a warrior queen, hammering the bugs like she was holding a giant golden boot with which to smash them with.
But that wasn't to say that the Clan's allies were idle in this oh no.
The image blatantly showed brave Star Stalker units, Royal Sword packs and even Beledon Knights all charging headlong into the battle alongside their allies.
There, of course, had been casualties, images of Raptorian medic prides running about alongside their Battle Angel allies flashed up, one particularly striking one of a massive Pretorian dressed from head crest to tail tip in their striking pink and white armour slamming a bubble shield spike into the ground right through the head of what looked to be a bug warrior to get a shield in place so that her little Raptorian allies could tend three fallen Beledon and one fallen Serpentinus really stuck with them.
But the final image said more than anyone could ever say in words with its power.
It was of the Grand Matriarch and Patriarch, the Grand Patriarch was holding his massive claymore sword above his head with one hand to show victory while carrying two fallen Raptorian Star Stalkers with the other, all while his wife stood at his side hammer in hand, mask down and mandibles flared in a battle roar, blatantly both daring and ready to strike at any who would threaten him or those he protected.
"The problem is these fuckers conduct most of their warfare underground, it makes them almost impossible to fucking track, they can pop up just about anywhere like a fuck-ugly game of whack-a-mole," Markus said gesturing to the tunnels on the map.
"Did the teams manage to close them?' Vessa asked and Misty nodded.
"Yeah, War Angel teams with some help from the Raptorians collapsed them with some charges which will slow the fuckers down but we know they are simply regrouping to hit us again, the GMF dropped some heavy ordnance from orbit into the desert following the most likely tracks to collapse them further but we have no idea how effective it was," she said.
"So what's the score on our end, how does that change our mission?" Thomas asked.
"It doesn't, in fact on direct orders of the Grand Matriarch we are stepping things up, she is determined to liberate Mycelia the Allmother in the hope that her Hands will be able to get eyes on things all over the world, she has a ready-made spy network that if we manage to take control of we'll have eyes on some of the most crucial targets in all regions, everything from infrastructure to key players in Clan Ruara's war effort," Markus said.
"And if we can hit them we can destabilise the whole thing!" Vessa said and Markus nodded and pointed at the energetic little Raptorian.
"Exactly, now how as for the bugs we can't exactly tell how that will change things, from what the Grand Patriarch has learned from the interrogation of the captured bug commanders, good work on that by the way, it seems that the bugs are merely using Adem and his Clan Ruara to fully establish a presence strong enough on the planet to take it for themselves, it seems that they have a queen somewhere pulling the strings though whether she is on or off-world is still up for debate, all we know is that even with Clan Ruara out of the picture shit is still royally going to be dripping form some very fucked fan blades," Markus said.
"But at least with Clan Ruara quelled and out of the picture we will have not only the full support of the populace but its resources and infrastructure to be able to mount a proper defence of this planet," Misty said and all around the table nodded.
"The Grand Matriarch has diverted some additional resources to us in order to hasten our mission along, we're getting some more of those mech suits for Beta pride so you guys won't be riding exposed on those MK5s anymore plus you'll have some serious firepower to bring to the table, and we're also getting some more units to bolster our numbers up," Markus said.
That last part really caught everyone's attention.
"Who are they sending us?" Thomas asked.
"Survivors from an ambushed battle group called Rose squad, they got hit pretty bad while trying to take out a production facility, from what we hear rather than retreat the battle group took out the facility and a large section of themselves and the ambushers along with them, survivors got lifted out and they are now dividing the survivors up among the other battle groups, ours included," he said.
"Oof fuck, that sounds bad," Vessa said and the rest of her pride nodded in agreement.
"Yeah but these guys and gals are tough as nails, from what I understand they are being bolstered up by a couple of fresh units as well, so we got a War Angel squad, a Beledon shock troop Hunter squad and some kind of mixed Raptorian and Serpentinus pack or pride, fucked if I know how that works but hey I just work here," Markus said with a shrug.
"When are they arriving?" Misty asked and Markus checked the readouts.
"Should be any minute now, I already sent some of my team out to guide them in, they are having to fly low level as the bugs are getting wise to our tactics of knocking out their anti-air and have started moving the fuckers around underground popping them up when they detect things in the air above them and firing off then vanishing again before we can get a line on them, it's startling how quick they are adapting to our tactics," Markus said.
"Plus how fast they can replenish and grow their numbers, it's like fighting a never-ending horde," Misty said thoughtfully as she looked at the readouts alongside her fellow Seeker.
"My money is on the Grand Patriarch and Matriarch switching things up a bit now that we have far more boots and gear on the ground," Markus said and they all looked up at him.
"Oh? What are you thinking?" Vetra the leader of the Serpentinus asked.
"Well now the Grand Matriarch is on the ground she will assume command over the bulk of the main forces like the Hunters, Saviours and our mechanised units. This will in turn allow the Grand Patriarch to do what he does best, start using the Seekers and other small special forces teams to identify targets of opportunity or harass the shit out of troop formations while sabotaging shit deep into enemy territory. Sow the seeds of chaos," Markus said and Misty nodded her agreement.
"This will allow our other teams much greater freedom of movement as it will thin the bug numbers out as it will force them to respond to threats from unexpected directions, like behind them," she said in agreement.
"Exactly, so that's my thesis on what will happen now the Grand Matriarch is in the fight proper, her version of diplomacy usually involves smashing something or someone with a big-ass hammer or boot, while the Grand Patriarch is much more subtle but no less brutal," Markus said.
"So where does that leave us?" Vessa asked.
"Doing what we were sent here to do if anything the change in tactics will take some of the heat off us as while the bugs know we are out here they hopefully don't know our objective yet and hopefully not until it is too late to undo what they did to Mycelia and get her Hand network back in the game," Markus said.
"When that happens you will have more than just an army of spies you will have a full-blown rebellion in motion," a little voice said and they all turned to see Lucious there with his trademark tea urn and hover sandwich cart rolling up to the table, the little Raptorian boy really did take taking care of the troops to the next level.
Vessa couldn't help but smile at this as this little Raptorian male truly did exemplify the true ideals of a good new age, post-invasion Raptorian male, he was kind and gentle while always looking out for those he considered to be his pride which seemingly extended to everyone in his unit, while also being brave enough to go out and fight for what he believed in.
Seeing a male of her own kind in a combat zone still rattled her bones to the core of her given her every instinct told her to get her pride and surround him and then escort him somewhere safe but if being around Clan Mason and especially around her own beloved pride male had taught her anything, it was that this little male was as safe as he could be as not a single one of these good people would let anything harm him without one hell of a fight.
"Take my Feris for example, when her connection to Myecilia is reestablished then she'll be able to indirectly speak to all the other hands all over the planet in pretty much real-time, they'll be able to share information and plans pretty much instantly and what's better is that outside of someone like a Seeker of Truth or a Nightmare Assassin, the network is completely unhackable, so even with my ninja male coding skills I'd be shit out of luck trying to break in," he chirped.
"Well then we'd better get to work on finding out how they managed to cut Mycelia off from all of her Hands, Lucious go grab Feris I think we need to go through the whole process of how she became a hand in the first place so that it might give us an idea of how this works and then maybe we might be able to figure out how they did it," Misty said and the little male Raptorian nodded before heading back over to the Runner to find his Velon pride-mate.
As Feris was just getting started explaining the connection process to everyone they got an alert to say that their new team members were on approach so Markus put the meeting on temporary hold so that they could greet their newcomers as their ship was guided in for drop off just outside the cave base.
As the commanders of all the units headed outside, they were just in time to see the lander ship decloaking as it put down in the landing area they designed for drop off.
Thomas held up his hand to shield his eyes from the dust and dirt being kicked up by the eight mighty engines of the Pretorian class drop ship.
These ships were a relatively new addition to the Clan Mason fleet and had been specifically designed to hot drop both large teams as well as heavy equipment into the most treacherous of combat conditions.
They were essentially a large flying rectangle with eight large engines mounted along the side with four on each side of the craft.
Now while most people would think hang on that doesn't sound very Pretorian and yes they would be right until they saw the two party pieces of these heavy landers.
The first was the sheer amount of guns the craft had mounted all along its belly to defend itself while also having some serious firepower mounted in the rear to protect it against pursuit craft, so quite the sting in the tail if you will.
The second was the armour.
While yes the craft was equipped with the same hardened shields that all Clan Mason ships boasted the Pretorian had extremely thick armour all over its hull made from the same stuff that gave the GMF its incredibly dense hull and not only that it had a quite literal crest of it surrounding the cockpit and nose of the ship so that it could quite literally batter its way into a ship in space to drop off its cargo if need be.
It was quite essentially a flying battering ram with the ability to get what it was carrying where it needed to go while keeping its crew safe.
Now this did not mean it was invulnerable by any means, in order for it to be able to fly with all that extra weight because of its insane hull armour and its payload which could be up to four Titan class MBTs not to mention troops, those eight engines had some serious power behind them.
This gave the craft quite the thermal signature in atmosphere.
It wasn't so bad in space as once you got a craft moving inertia would do most of the work for you, but when you were fighting both gravity and atmospheric resistance was where things got spicy.
As the massive lander touched down three ramps extended all at once.
One large one from the rear and one from each side between the engines.
As the Raptorian mech suits intended for Beta Pride began to clomp down the rear ramp troops began to spill out of the sides to create a perimeter around the craft.
The first group Thomas noticed were the new Beledon shock troopers.
These guys were not like the Knights of Beledonia at all.
Rather than the heavy shields and melee-style weapons that the Knights carried these guys supported quite a medley of heavy support weapons.
From 20mm rail cannons to massive plasma launchers, what looked like a couple of rocket launchers and even a few plasma miniguns were thrown in for good measure.
These guys were armed to the horns and were quite obviously geared to hammer an enemy position with some much heavy firepower that they would turn it to dust.
This was a stark contrast to the oddly mixed Raptorian and Serpentinus unit that snuck their way down the opposite ramp and had crept/slithered their way up to them before he'd even really noticed that they were there.
When he did finally notice him the three Raptoran females and three Serpentinus females were almost right on top of him and his pride making them all jump in surprise.
From their armour and weapon load-outs, he could quite plainly see that these girls were combat scouts.
The first thing that he noticed was that their armour seemed to have an adaptive camo system in play, it actively changed colour to match the background and while this wasn't quite as effective as the standard issue cloaking systems that Clan Mason used it was much less lower power in its cost and drain on the suits internal batteries.
He saw the slight telltale shimmers that gave away their active shielding units running which was smart as one major drawback to using a cloaking system was that you couldn't shield yourself at the same time it was one or the other which was why Clan armour was designed with such dense plating to protect the wearer when their shields were down, while with this system it was very much possible to kinda have the best of both worlds.
The weapons the group were using were a mixture of Clan weaponry as well as weapons native to their own species.
The Raptorians of the group were using what appeared to be versions of their liquid propellant ballistic systems that had been heavily modified to fire larger projectiles over longer ranges while still allowing them the element of stealth if the heavily suppressed barrel set-ups were anything to go by.
Meanwhile, the Serpentinus were using a weapon that Thomas had not seen before.
They almost looked like they were carrying some kind of crossbows and it was only when he got a closer look so that his analysis software was able to kick in that he was able to identify the things.
It was called a Spiker and while it might seem a little crude by Clan standards he had seen footage of these things in action and they were incredibly effective against armour.
The system fired a bolt-like projectile that kinda reminded him of an oversized arrow that was essentially a rod designed to punch into the armour of a vehicle, once embedded in the outer skin of the armour a charge would detonate in the rear of the spike and drive the internal core of the projectile through like a giant railway spike, that happened to be being hit by a very big war hammer held by Tik eleth Mason on a PMS day when someone very brave/foolish (Probably Ryan) had hidden her favourite Gulthar meat sour cream dip.
But that wasn't the end of the weapon's little tricks oh no, once the charge had gone off and driven the internal and much denser armour-piercing projectile through the armour and into the vehicle it was then detonated by a small charge designed to shatter it in a billion tiny slivers that then proceeded to bounce around inside of the vehicle like a cloud of death that shredded anything organic and squishy that was unlucky enough to get caught in it.
It was a literal tank crew killer that could actually leave a vehicle near enough unscathed for all intents and purposes.
And that was only the basic bitch version of the projectiles.
Thomas had been already hearing stories of Serpentinus Royal Sword packs modifying some of their projectiles with Clan tech, so now they did all sorts of lovely things like unleashing a cloud of ionized plasma inside your vehicle.
"Greetingsss I am Pemistra Gloryfang and thissss issss my pack, we call the SSSSissssterssss of War," a rather large Anaconda genus Serpentinus said as she slithered up to and towered over Thomas to look down at him.
"Nice to meet you, I'm Commander Silkweather and this is Commander Redfeather," Thomas said giving the large Serpentinus woman a wave.
Near instantly Thomas found himself surrounded by the odd pack who all seemed to be scrutinising him very closely which set off Vessa and her pride's protective instincts and instantly they surrounded their male defensively.
"He is our pride male," Vessa said proudly and with a warm greeting but there was a very obvious warning note to her voice to tell the newcomers to back the fuck up.
The large Serpentinus woman turned to look down at the little Raptorian and her pride as they tightened their defensive ring around Thomas and a large smile appeared on her serpent face.
"My apologiessss little sssissstersss, it wassss not our intention to intrude on your claimed territory, our previoussss battle group wassss made up of only SSSSerpentinussss and Raptorianssss, so we have yet to sssseee a human up close, we merely wisssshed to know what all of the fussssss our ssssissstersss are making about them," she said.
"Apology accepted and has he sated your curiosity?" Vessa asked placing her hands on her hips proudly.
"Quite, I know ssssee why sssso many of our ssssisstersss are in ssssuch a tizzy, we never got to meet any of them during our integration training, it was only Xenosss, Yajuta and Beledon, but now we ssssee what the fusssss is all about," she said and with that, the odd mixed pack slithered/walked off into the cave where they were greeted by Markus and Misty though they got quite the pair of surprises when they tried to surround Markus.
Firstly he vanished only to appear a few feet away and secondly, out of nowhere a rather angry Velon woman appeared with a look that said 'Try that shit again and I'm breaking out my best descaling knife and making a whole new wardrobe.'
"I get the feeling someone is going to need to teach them how to deal with humans rather quickly before someone starts throwing punches," Thomas chuckled as his pride seemed to visibly relax now that the interlopers were safely far enough away from their male.
"Yeah it would probably be a good idea," Vessa said.
With Markus now out of range and guarded by his female the odd pack suddenly and rather surprisingly switched their attentions from him to Commander Misty and tried to surround the rather surprised-looking female Seeker instead.
Both Vessa and Thomas blinked a few times before looking at one another and grinning.
"I very suddenly get the feeling that no human is going to be safe around here from now on," Vessa said with a sly grin as she watched the small Raptorians of the odd pack moving in closer to the Commander while the large Serpentinus ladies tried to form a tail knot around her before she was able to jump clear.
"I get the feeling you might be right, gotta be the first Bisexual pride or pack I've ever seen, I mean I heard about them sure but I've never seen one before and especially not one made up of both Raptorians and Serpentinus," he said and Vessa suddenly let out a laugh.
"Greedy little tail lifters," she said and Thomas glanced at her curiously.
"Care to explain?" he asked raising an eyebrow at his little lover.
"They are gonna want one of each and something tells me they are not gonna stop until they get what they want, they are a pride that has seen the horrors of battle and have lost sisters as we have, they know the pain of loss and now they hunger to fill the void left by their loved and lost, so they are letting that urge drive them through their grief and pain to try and heal their wounds," she said.
"Huh, think it will work?" Thomas asked and he felt the rest of his little lovers close in tight around him feeling their little hands even through his armour.
"Did for us our beautiful one," Cemil said from behind him.
"Be interesting to see if they are able to find both a human male and female who are not only willing to give themselves to the pride but one another as well, that will be a different one," Thomas said softly as he watched the pride/pack vanish deeper into the cave in sear of new targets with all human-loving non-humans now watching them very closely indeed.
Suddenly a rather large shadow fell over Thomas and his pride and he turned around to come face to face or rather face to hip with a truly massive Beledon male holding what looked like a portable artillery cannon in his hands like it was nothing more than a handbag.
"Greetings brother and sisters in arms, my name is Brexan Ironhoof and I am the commander of Anvil team of the mighty Hunters of the proud Grand Matriarch Tik eleth Mason, I see by your armour that you are of her proud and noble warriors also war brother," the massive male said looking down at them before fixing his gaze on Thomas.
"Indeed and it is good to meet you commander, I have never heard of Anvil squad quite the name you have there," Thomas said and the big Beledon snorted and swished his tail proudly.
"Thank you, war brother, it was given to us by Lord Beltran himself under the command of the Grand Matriarch, he said that we are to be the anvil on which the enemy is beaten into submission and we take our role and our name seriously, we carry it with honour," he said puffing out his obscenely large chest to the point where Vessa wondered how the hell they'd managed to encase him in enough metal to stop it from splitting every time he breathed in deep enough.
As Thomas ran his eyes over the rest of the Beledon shock squad he couldn't help but be impressed by the sheer level of firepower that they were bringing to the table, having these guys on side was basically like having a walking artillery squad on hand.
"I can see why they chose that name for you guys, with that kind of firepower anything in your way is going to end up as a very large smear," he said and the large Beledon once again puffed up his chest proudly and Thomas could have swore that he heard his armour creaking under the stress.
"Thank you, war brother, as a seasoned veteran of this ground battle your words do us honour," Brexan said.
That's when two more squads appeared around the corner of the ship and Thomas glanced passed the large Beledon to take a look at them.
One squad was blatantly the War Angel team by the way they were made up exclusively of Xenomorphs and appeared to be led by a large female Pretorian.
But it was the squad behind them that caught his eye the most, it was a Saviour squad that seemed to be made up entirely of humans which was odd, to say the least.
Upon seeing them Lucious made a loud and very happy chirp noise before rushing forward to meet his battle brothers and sisters.
"We shall see you later war brothers and sisters, we must present ourselves to the commanders so that we may get our orders," Brexan said before Thomas and Alpha Pride bid them farewell before returning their attentions to the odd ten-man team of human Saviours.
The group were blatantly specialists in various fields, from combat engineers to snipers by their very mismatched assortment of gear.
It appeared that Matriarch Sela eleth Mason had decided that it would be a good idea to reinforce the newly formed Spectre team's utility abilities by sending them more people who could handle things like setting up bridges and hacking into networks.
That part didn't really surprise Thomas as that was simply a good call by the Matriarch but the fact that the entire team was made up of humans was what caught him off guard, usually no matter what part of the Clan Mason military you were a member of there were few units that were single species exclusive.
Granted there were exceptions like the Knights of Beledonia or the War Angels, but hell even the Battle Angels had non-xeno members in their ranks, so this was quite odd.
Lucious skipped over towards Thomas and Vessa with his fellow Saviours in tow in order to introduce them having caught the eyes of the entire pride.
"Alpha Pride let me proudly introduce to you to the RAMs which is short for Recon and Mechanics squad, they specialise in long-range recon and well-fixing just about anything that's broken, while also being able to build things that we can later break," Lucious said with a mischievous little grin as one of the Saviours snorted a laugh inside her helmet.
"I dare you to break any of my construction work little one, I'll be damn impressed," the Saviour blatantly a female by both her voice and body shape said.
"Welcome to the party, didn't know that Matriarch Sela eleth Mason had any fully human teams in her ranks?" Thomas said shaking their hands as the team gathered around to greet him and his pride.
"Oh we're a relatively new team, Matriarch Sela decided she wanted to construct some new Saviour squads to reinforce our battle groups on the ground and give them much better combat utility options, like clearing minefields, building bridges for the tanks, or even popping a bug's head clean off its ugly neck at over a mile out, we all voluenteered for it and she put us all together in in the same unit, I don't think it was intentional that a lot of the humans ended up together that's just the way the cards fell, she didn't have a lot of time to organise the teams, I'm Corporal Alissa Jones by the way," the woman who had teased Lucious said and that's when Tezz noticed some very odd contraptions attached to the rear of her armour.
"Are those fucking arms!?" the little Raptorian exclaimed vanishing behind the human woman to inspect her armour closely.
"Yup, it's a new design to help us less vertically and spatially challenged species keep up with our more screechy brethren," Alissa said and no sooner had the words left her mouth than four long robotic arms unfurled themselves from a backpack on her armour.
"They are controlled through a neural shunt in the top of my spine that allows my brain to make sense of their inputs, I can use them just like my own hands," she said lowering two of the large arms down and picking Tezz up off her feet to hold her out in front of her pride.
"Hey put me down! I may be cute but I'm not a toy!" Tezz exclaimed as she thrashed and swung helplessly in the robotic hands.
"I gotta get me some of these, would do wonders for us Raptorian-loving humans don't ya think my little loves?" Thomas said playfully as he turned a loving eye over his pride.
"Don't even think about it human boy, you are evil enough with just two organic hands, Great Tree only knows what mischief you'd get up to with four extra hands at your disposal," Vessa said making the entire pride and some of the Saviour laugh out loud but by the dreamy expressions on some of the Raptorians faces they were indeed wondering what mischief he'd get up to with extra hands.
"But in all seriousness they allow us to not only handle heavy materials with the strength of a Xeno or Beledon but also allow us to easily scale things like the fucking giant trees the Velons have, they can even be used to dig tunnels as they have a fuck-ton of attachments," Alissa said demonstrating after she placed a now somewhat sulky Tezz back down on her feet and allowing Thomas to stoke her little head.
The arms flicked their hands into their backpack and one came out with a drill bit attached to it while another came out with what appeared to be a spade head of some kind.
"Amazing, I'm pretty sure this officially makes you a human Swiss Army knife as the Grand Patriarch would say," Thomas said making Alissa laugh and nod.
"Yeah so we keep getting told," she said.
Thomas glanced at Vessa again.
"Just imagine what I could do with so many attachments," he said playfully.
"Don't even bloody think about it, I'm trying real fucking hard not to," she grumbled making him chuckle.
Suddenly Markus and Misty called them all together in the main cave and the RAMs stuck with Thomas and Alpha Pride as they made their way to the planning table.
"Alright guys I'm sure you've had a chance to meet all of our new guys now so let's get down to the brass tacks here, this terrain is going to be some of the hardest we've had to deal with so far, Feris has informed us that massive root clusters are running all through this place that we simply cannot risk damaging as they make up a large part of Mycelia's neural network," Markus said gesturing to the holographic map.
"It would be like taking a bullet to your brain and surviving, you might be alive but part of you is just going to be gone," Feris said gravely.
"So we have to do our very best to avoid that kind of collateral damage to the terrain, I do believe that means our new combat engineer team the RAMs are seriously going to have their work cut out for them, we're going to need some serious solutions how to not only move heavy armour around in here but also how to wage warfare against an enemy that is most likely not going to give a single shit about what they damage," Misty said.
"You can count on us commanders, figuring shit out is what we do best!" Alissa said and the rest of the RAMs cheered their approval behind her.
"Glad to hear it corporal because you and the big brains of Matriarch Sela eleth's crew are gonna have your work cut out for you," Markus said.
"Ok heres my first proposal, I believe we should make use of our new scout teams in the form of the new War Angel and snipers from the RAMs to scout any terrain ahead of the main force, this will allow us to plot a route through and also allow the RAMs time to work on solutions for any hazards we may encounter," Misty said.
Markus nodded his approval of this idea.
"Might be a good idea to assign a Seeker and a local guide who knows the terrain to them so that they have a headstart on things," he said and Misty nodded.
"On the front of the local guide that would have to be Feris and as for the Seeker I have just the man for the job," she said turning to glance up at a rather large Yautja male who stood to her right side and simply nodded silently.
"Alright people Feris is the only one who has any clue what we are looking for here, she is the only one who has ever seen the Allmother's true form and knows how to commune with her so I cannot stress to you the importance of protecting her at all costs, we lose her and we lose any chance of ever finding Mycilia let alone freeing her, so you all know what do so let's get to this shall we?" Markus said and with that, the planning really got underway.