Chapter 110: Whispers of the Forest.

"Have I said this hour how much I fucking hate this place or have I hit my quota?" Tezz whined over the pride comms as their MK5s picked their way between the trees at what felt like a snail's pace.

"I think you are one whinge over your quota but I'll let it slide because I fucking agree with you," Vessa said as she adjusted the angle of the MK5's hover drive to glide them around a stump ahead of them that was just barely peeking up out of some very thick foliage.

To be fair it really wasn't the terrain that they hated as in a way it reminded them of home quite a lot. With its thick bushes and low visibility in all directions, it was very much like being a true Surface Stalker back on Raptoria again for the pride.

No what was causing them all serious anxiety was knowing that there were hidden bugs in the trees and the foliage but they had no clue where they were or when they would pop up like an evil Jack-in-the-box.

What was making things infinitely worse for the pride was that their pride male was riding in the turret of Vessa's MK5 which seriously set all of their feathers on edge.

Vessa had to force herself to keep her eyes forward and on the terrain ahead as every one of her instincts was constantly screaming at her to keep checking on their male behind her.

She had to keep reminding herself that he was every bit the professional solider that she was and that had just as much if not more experience in the field than she did.

It wasn't that she didn't trust him to not look after himself as that was not the case at all, it was more that as a Raptorian female, every cell of her being was telling her that she needed to put herself between him and any potential source of danger that may come his way.

It was an incredibly hard thing to ignore.

"I'm getting scattered thermal readings in the trees constantly, its hard to tell if it's the bugs or the local fauna, fuckers keep appearing and then disappearing just as quickly, its like they move to get a look at us and then when I swivel my head or turret towards the source it simply melts into the fucking foliage," Thomas grumbled over the comms as Vessa heard the motor of the turret gun above her humming as Thomas turned the guns to look at something.

"Getting anything on the drones?" Vessa asked as she banked them around a large rock in the trail causing the whole MK5 to tilt nearly forty-five degrees on its axis as it strafed.

"Fuck all, the canopy is so thick it's like looking at an ocean of mirrors all reflecting the bloody heat back at them, I'm constantly cycling through the vision modes and getting bugger all other than a few little flickers here and there," Tezz said.

"Same here, even the electrostatic view is all but useless in here as it seems that even the bloody foliage gives off enough of a charge to throw the sensors for a fucking loop, the bugs really couldn't have found a better place to hide as this place is making all our tech pretty much useless," Thomas said as he turned the turret again.

"Looks like we're stuck with our MK1s then," Tezz said turning her own turret around in a sweeping arc off to their left side though she was careful to keep the gun barrels pointed up into the trees as she did.

"MK1s?" Thomas asked in confusion.

"Your eyes," she said causing him to chuckle into the comms.

"Yeah Roger that, 's good ol organic viewfinders to the rescue," he replied.

Suddenly there was a high-pitched whine followed by a loud ping noise as something moving at incredibly high speed skipped right off the armour of the turret of Vessa's MK5.

"Contact front!" Thomas yelled swinging the guns around and opening fire into the trees ahead of them.

"I don't fucking see them!" Tezz yelled as she began to fire at where Thomas's fire was stitching the trees sending spinters of thick wood exploding into the air as the heavy slugs punched clean through.

"Me either!" Thomas yelled as another round skipped off the armour right next to his head causing him to instinctively duck as Vessa initiated evasive manoeuvres.

To think only yesterday he'd been riding with Yexa and they hadn't seen a single fucking thing, not a single whisper of a bug anywhere.

Now they were only an hour into today's ride and already they were under fire, it was no wonder their anxiety was at a serious peak, at this rate if they managed to survive this campaign they'd all have grey fucking feathers if they had any left from all the worry.

From their right Cemmil who was now riding as the gunner on Yexa's MK5 opened up and stitched across the tree line in a long sweeping arc.

"There at three-a-clock high!" Cemmil yelled and instantly all of the guns swivelled to where she indicated just in time to see a burst of high-speed movement.

A puff of smoke in the branches where Cemmil had called in turned every single drop of blood in Vessa's veins to ice.

"Anti-Armour!" she yelled kicking the MK5 into an incredibly sharp slide to evade the incoming rocket only seconds before it slammed into the ground where they had been sending a cloud of deadly shrapnel screaming out in every direction from the strike point.

The flaring bursts off their shields indicated that some of the shrapnel had impacted them before being deflected by their shielding.

But honestly, their anti-armour rockets were a lot less of a threat than those fucking organic needle-like bullets of theirs.

Those damn things were a nightmare because the shields simply ignored them allowing them to pass right through without even slightly slowing the damn things down.

That allowed them to dump all of their deadly energy directly into the armour.

This was because the shields were calibrated to absorb kinetic energy from both energy weapons and from metallic projectiles, not from biological ones.

This allowed them to simply shoot clean through with those needle guns of theirs which was a fucking nightmare because those things packed one hell of a punch.

But they were not a patch on the fucking web trip mines.

"Strands in the road!" Thomas yelled from above Vessa's head spinning the turret around and firing on the base of the trees ahead of them.

One of his rounds found its mark and detonated the hidden mine that had been anchored to the base of the tree sending a cloud of shrapnel into the trees opposite it about a second before they shot through the gap.

As they burst through the cloud of smoke left in the wake of the detonating mine Vessa snarled angrily and her feathers vibrated inside her armour.

These fuckers had set traps not only to unseat the rider of a MK5 but to kill the turret gunner which in her mind meant they were deliberately targeting her male.

"Viper five to Viper one we have a contact, requesting indirect fire mission from the Gipkas, over," Vessa snarled into the main comms.

"Roger that Viper five we have the feed from your drones, danger close, scatter, I repeat scatter over," the commander's voice came back.

"Viper five to all Star Stalker call signs scatter I repeat scatter, danger close over!" Vessa yelled into the local comms and like they were performing a choreographed dance all of the MK5s began to slide sideways as they scattered between the trees.

Only a couple of seconds later the telltale whistle of Gipka-fired air burst missiles was heard above the din of the whining engines followed by a series of heavy thuds high above them.

A deadly rain of directed shrapnel screamed down into the canopy from high above them tearing the leaves into confetti along with any branches and trees in its path.

This also included any bugs hiding among them.

Above her Thomas opened up on the now exposed and fleeing survivors of the airstrike as their cover had been shredded allowing them to be easily picked out among the remaining branches.

As one all of the other Star Stalkers followed Thomas's example and sent a mixture of plasma and Tungsten into the air but despite the hail of absolute death they sent skywards some of the bugs still managed to vanish into the remaining canopy and out of sight.

The Gipkas sent another barrage after them and it was obvious that the commander was watching the drone feeds so she could see the fleeing bugs the same as Vessa could.

Suddenly out of nowhere ahead of them, the ground erupted as the two Serpentinus Sand Crawlers burst out of the ground and began firing into the trees alongside their Raptorian and Clan allies.

It seemed that the Serpentinus commander had taken her vehicles deep enough to evade the winding tree roots and had burrowed clean underneath them in order to burst up and surprise the bugs albeit a little late to the party.

But despite their late arrival the Serpentinus vehicles packed some serious weaponry and were able to lay down a heavy amount of fire into the treetops after the fleeing bugs.

In only minutes the entire area had gone from a seemingly calm slice of thick jungle forest to looking like someone had blown a landing zone big enough to comfortably land a cruiser-class starship in.

Vessa and her team pulled up alongside the two large Serpentinus Sand Crawlers just as one of the hatches along the side of the left-hand one popped open.

"You guys ok?" a distinctly Serpentinus voice said from inside a moment before a large armoured head popped out of it to look around.

"Yeah more or less, these fuckers are adapting to our tactics so fucking quickly it's bloody frightening, they've even taken to placing bloody trip mines across the trails using silk strands as detonators now," Vessa said leaning back in her MK5's saddle as she addressed the Serpentinus commander.

"Yeah we've been reviewing the footage of the encounters we've been having with the bastards over the last few days and I have to give them this, they are experts when it comes to guerrilla warfare, their hit-and-run tactics are second to none," the Serpentinus commander said leaning back into her coils like she was sitting on a large bean bag chair.

From above Vessa's head, she heard a ping noise and she tensed up for a moment before she realised it was just Thomas pulling one of those organic resin spikes free of their armour.

"It's these things that make shit worse, these things pass right through our shields like they are not there and punch into our armour like it was made of paper," he said tossing the organic spike which despite having buried itself into the composite armour of the MK5 had lost none of its edge.

"Yeah from what I hear the commander has sent details up to both the science hive of Clan Mason but also to our science packs and the Raptorian research prides, all of them are trying to come up with a way to counter the bloody things, I had to have my girls pull so many of them out of our hull after the last fight we got into that we looked more like a spiked sand runner than a mighty slitherer of the deserts," the Serpentinus commander said as she deftly plucked the spike out of the air.

"If the damn things can do this to vehicle armour I dread to think what's going to happen if one of these things finds its mark in the person they are aimed at," Thomas said.

"Honestly I'm amazed that they can get simple resin to pack such a punch, the force that they must be using to accelerate these things to the velocity needed to punch through armour the way it does must be incredible," Vessa said looking at the needle-like spike of resin.

"Incredible and disturbing that such a simple thing can bypass our technology so easily," Thomas said with obvious concern in his voice.

"Makes me wonder what other fucking surprises these fuckers have in store for us," Vessa said.

Suddenly a loud burst of static came through the comms followed by the commander's voice.

"Viper one to all call signs we're picking up a large arieal contact on radar approximately two clicks from your position and coming your way at high speed, brace for bug air support!" she yelled.

Every head snapped up and the team scrambled, the Serpentinus commander quickly slithered back to her position back inside the Sand Crawler and the hatch closed behind her.

"Viper five to all Star Stalker call signs scatter and get eyes on this fucking thing!" Vessa yelled as the MK5s of both Alpha and Beta prides hummed to life and began to circle the two Sand Crawlers as they began to spread out to avoid being a concentrated target.

It didn't take long for them to hear what sounded like the heavy beating of gossamer wings from somewhere as thanks to the trees it almost felt like it was coming from all around them at once.

"There! Contact north!" Thomas yelled from above her as he swivelled the turret around to face what looked to be a large shadow moving over the canopy of the trees.

Thanks to the thick canopy of foliage it took them an obscenely long time to actually catch a glimpse of the fucking thing and it was the drones they'd sent up that got the first look at the thing.

It looked like a giant armoured Dragonfly.

The large bug aircraft had eight wings all beating in pairs at high speed, it had to be at least thirty feet long with six spindly legs tucked up under its long tubular body.

A large bulbous head covered in antenne and huge compound eyes flicked left and right as it seemingly searched the canopy below it for either a place to land or for a target, it was hard to tell which.

But what worried them more were the large armoured bio-suit mechs all clinging to the sides of its long tail section.

It was a rapid troop deployment vehicle designed to drop off their mechanised troops into a battle zone at a moment's notice.

"Viper one-two to Viper one it's a fucking troop carrier, it's got a load of those heavily armoured bio-suits of theirs clinging to the sides over," Thomas yelled into the comms.

"Yeah Roger that Viper one two I'm watching your feed, brace for anti-air, the Raptorian Gipkas are trying to find a firing position from between these fucking trees, until they find one we're going to try and pull them away from you and the Serpentinus with the Titans over," the commander replied.

"Roger that Viper one over and out," Thomas said.

Suddenly there was an ear-splitting crack and a boom from overhead and it took the drone feed a moment to show what had happened, one of the Titans had fired off their main guns at the flying bug.

The Titan's main guns were truly fearsome things, 200mm of Tungstan-flavoured fuck you delivered from the tips of the twin railgun cannons at insane velocity.

Despite all of the Titans being equipped with both CWIS and long-range missile launch capabilities, trying to punch through this canopy with said weapons would be futile.

But the main guns of the mighty Clan Mason MBTs had no such problems as announced by the blue vapour trails left in the wake of the huge slugs that narrowly missed the massive bug.

Thomas could even see the splinters of wood and leaves peppering the trails where the massive slugs had simply cut clean through the trees in their path.

The massive Dragonfly's head seemed to snap to the location of where the shots had come from and it took evasive action just in time to dodge another volley of shots from the hidden Titan tanks.

"Looks like the Titans have its attention now," Thomas yelled down to Vessa as she steered them between the trees.

"Thank the Great Tree for that, think they could probably use a hand dealing with those fucking suits while they bring it down though don't you?" Vessa said and she heard the loud sound of the turret gun being cocked above her head causing her to smile inside her helmet.

"Viper five to all Star Stalkers let's give our big friends a hand, converge and harass those suits when they hit the dirt, I want those fucking tail holes to know what it feels like to not know which way shit is coming from for once!" Vessa yelled as she kicked the MK5 into a power slide over some water before gunning the throttles.

"Roger that!" came the chirps of all of the Star Stalkers as they followed suit.

Through the drone feeds they could see the bio-suits detaching from the large mothership and dropping into the canopy below them.

"Here we go!" Vessa yelled as she pushed the throttles even harder and from above her she heard the high-pitched whine of the turret gun charging up about a second before it began unleashing a hail of high-velocity death.

When it came to acting in sync you were hard-pressed to beat a Raptorian pride and this could easily be seen by how they not only cut across each other while moving at high speed without having to evade one another as they timed their movements perfectly.

Even their firing lines cut over one another without ever intersecting in a truly impressive display of coordinated combat manoeuvres.

Thomas had to deploy all of his armour's IFF tracking systems to gauge the safe firing solutions so he could avoid hitting the other MK5s as they cut around the large armoured suits but the Raptorians of both Alpha and Beta pride were making it look effortless.

"Viper one-two to Viper one we are suppressing their ground armour so you can focus on bringing that fucking flying nightmare down over," Thomas yelled as he loosed off a burst of fire across one of the suits that were turning to try and get a firing line on him and Vessa.

The suit managed to loose off three shots of burning green plasma before Thomas's slugs found their mark and took its arm clean off at the elbow with a spurt of green and yellow ichor.

"Roger that Viper one two good job, keep it up over," the commander said as another volley of hypervelocity death tore overhead towards the Dragonfly.

A sudden green flash to their right got Thomas's attention but before he could turn the turret to get a firing solution there was a series of blue and green flashes from the plasma impacting on their shields.

The plasma hit with enough force to shake the entire superstructure of the MK5 knocking them off course and causing Vessa to have to kick the ass of the vehicle out to try and correct their slide.

It seemed that suit sensed the blood in the water and it kept up its barrage of plasma until Thomas managed to get the turret on it and sent a burst of slugs right through it at centre mass, unfortunately, it was already too late for them.

The last series of shots that the suit fired off not only managed to breach their shielding but managed to blow off two of their magnetic hover coils causing the whole MK5 to drop on the right side.

"I'm losing her! Brace for impact!" Vessa yelled her voice heavily laced with fear.

The next few moments were a blur as the MK5 hit a tree with enough force to knock off the remaining right-side hover coil which sent them tumbling head over tail like a giant metal cartwheel.

Both Vessa and Thomas ducked down inside the armour of the MK5 as it took the impacts of their high-speed cartwheeling through the jungle.

Thomas was vaguely aware of Tezz's panicked voice coming through the comms as he bounced around inside the turret as his seat straps held him in the vehicle.

"Viper five is hit! I repeat Viper five is hit, they are down, Alpha pride converge!" she yelled.

But it seemed that the bug Bio-suits had other ideas.

Seeing their opportunity to push their advantage the remaining bio-suits formed a wall of chiten and plasma between the pride and their stranded members.

Thomas groaned heavily as his head slowly stopped spinning, it took him a moment to realise that the destroyed MK5 was resting on its right side wedged between some smaller trees.

"You ok down there Vessa!?" he immediately said as adrenaline that his wife might be hurt kicked his senses back into alignment.

"Uggggh I think so what about you?" Vessa groaned before the thought that he might be hurt seemed to also kick her back into reality.

"Yeah just about the same can't be said for the MK5 though, pretty sure she's fucked," he said looking around him for the emergency armour release for the turret.

He found the handle he was looking for down by his knees and with a yank it fired off the explosive bolts mounted into the armour of the turret top blowing it off so he could crawl out and onto the jungle floor.

Without even wasting a second to look around himself Thomas quickly made his way around to the front of the destroyed MK5 and looked down into the mangled cockpit to see his little wife inside it.

The structural reinforcement of the cockpit armour had done its job wonderfully and had directed the force of the crash away from both the pilot and the gunner and instead absorbed it into the superstructure.

"I feel like canned Raptorian in here," Vessa groaned as she scrabbled around for her own blowout handle causing Thomas to chuckle in relief.

"Gotta say your engineering prides really did a number making these things, to be able to walk away from a crash like that is no joke," he said as he helped her out after she blew the panels off.

The pair limped away from the wreckage and Thomas leaned against a tree while Vessa began to fuss over him checking his armour and patching her sensors into his suit's bio-signs reader.

Suddenly Thomas heard an odd clicking scuttling noise and he held up his hand to stop Vessa fussing and she froze.

"What the hell is that noise?" she asked and the pair of them went to reach for their weapons before they both realised their rifles were still in the MK5 and they only had their side arms and in Thomas's case his plasma casters.

A faint shimmer passed close in front of Thomas's face and he recoiled from it but it was already too late, the silk lasso snapped shut around his upper body, pinning his arms against his sides.

"What the fuck!?" Thoams just had time to yell before what looked like a cross between a spider and a pile of moss detached itself from the trunk of the tree and dropped on him.

Vessa spun at the sound of his voice and before she could even have time to lift her arms to begin to help another lasso snapped shut on her pinning her arms as yet another of the moss-covered spiders dropped onto her.

For a moment Thomas wondered if it was some kind of fauna but by the way it worked and with the speed and precision it began to wrap the incredibly strong silk threads around him he could not deny the intiligence at work, no this was no creature this was another of the bug soldiers.

Thomas began to kick and struggle against his captor but despite his best efforts and even the power-assisted movement of his armour, the moss spider managed to completely cocoon him in its silken threads, immobilising him.

"Thomas!" Vessa yelled and even through the voice modulator of her helmet he could hear the fear in her voice.

"I'm here sweetscale! I'm here!" he yelled back before an idea struck him.

As he felt the spider bug lifting him up to carry him away he uttered a code phrase which activated his suit's comms.

"I call and the Clan answers," he said.

"Viper one-two to Viper one myself and Viper five have been captured after the destruction of our vehicle, I repeat, myself and Viper five have been captured by some kind of snatch bug, it looks like a spider covered in moss, does not show up on thermals or electrostatic, wraps you in a silk lasso and cocoons you, lock onto our suit transponders and follow them, it should lead you to the local base over," Thoams said trying to keep his voice calm and collected as he felt the large spider scuttling along under him.

"Roger that Viper one two we have your position, we are tracking the transponders, your suit's bio signature shows you are uninjured but we are getting no response from your vehicle over," the commander said and Thomas could hear the barely restrained fury in her voice.

He knew that the commander was simply itching to kick these kidnap bugs into orbit for daring to lay a leg on a member of Clan Mason but was restraining herself due to his assessment of the situation and the plan of action he had proposed making sense to her.

"Our MK5 is a write-off, we are clear of it so broadcast its self-destruct code, we didn't have time to initiate it ourselves over," Thomas said.

"Roger that are you clear of the blast zone over?" she replied.

Thanks to his thermal optics Thomas could see right through the silk that had been wrapped around his head like he was looking through a hazy shadow.

"Yeah Roger that and please do me a favour, recall Alpha pride to my Silk Spider and inform Viper one three to sit on them, otherwise you are likely to have a mini mutiny on your hands when they find out what's happened, over," Thomas said.

"Roger that Viper one-two, we'll see you soon I promise you that, Viper one over and out," the commander said and Thomas sighed before uttering another phrase to close the comms down.

"When silence reigns the Clan listens and waits," he said.

Now all he had to do was wait and also try and keep Vessa calm which was going to be easier said than done considering how angry she was right now.

There was a muted boom as the commander sent the kill code to their MK5 which sent the power core and fuel cells critical.

This in turn caused a cascade and chain reaction that detonated not only the engine core but also all of the stored ammunition as well.

This was a system that was baked into all Clan tech to prevent its capture and reverse engineering, it was also a system that the Clans allies had adopted for their vehicles and tech as well.

No sooner had the vehicle detonated than their private pride channel lit up like a Freedom Day tree as the girls noticed that their sister's vehicle and the one carrying their pride male vanished off their sensors.

"What's going on? Where is Vessa and Thomas!?" Tezz yelled and the others all began asking the same question.

Thomas heard them being recalled and ordered back to the Silk Spider and he also heard their subsequent protests until they had their sister and their male back safely in their hands.

It was something that Thomas could easily understand if he was honest.

If someone ordered him to abandon his brothers and sisters in the field and return to base he'd most likely tell them to go and pauk themselves vigorously with a cactus, unless that someone happened to be the Grand Matriarch or Patriarch.

Thomas heard the commander telling his pride that their sister and their male were alive and well and that they had a plan, she also told them to trust her as she would never let anything bad happen to them which caused his pride to begrudgingly agree to return to the Silk Spider.

He knew that when they got there Ziva would keep them in check until the plan was ready to be sprung and from there she would most likely lead the pride on the rescue mission herself.

Being carried along on top of the odd Spider-like insect's back was an odd sensation, to say the least as he kinda felt like a backpack bumping along against its hard chitin exoskeleton.

But as he listened he could hear the creatures carrying them softly chittering to one another in their native language which set his translation matrix going as it tried to decipher their language.

It didn't take long for them to find out how the fuckers were managing to hide from them and appear all over the place, there were bloody tunnels.

Through the hazy filter of his thermal vision, Thomas watched as one of the spiders lifted a hidden flap out of the way in the jungle floor at the base of one of the massive trees allowing its comrade to scuttle in carrying Vessa.

"It's alright sweetscale I'm still here with you," Thomas said as the creature carrying his little scaly wife passed by him.

"Where are you my male I can't see you!?" Vessa said her voice sounding a bit calmer and relieved to hear his voice.

"Switch on your thermals," he said softly.

"Are we in a tunnel!?" Vessa asked.

"Yeah looks like it, explains how the fuckers keep popping up all over the place, we should have seen this shit coming a mile off given that you know insects," Thomas said a little bitterly.

"Yeah I guess you are right, so what do we do now?' she asked.

"We sit tight and wait for our pride and the Clan to come for us, they know what's happening and are tracking us, so with a bit of luck these things will take us right back to their regional HQ as I get the feeling that grabbing some enemies like us they will want to try and interrogate us," Thomas said.

"You said interrogate and I hear torture," Vessa said with a hard note of concern and fear in her voice that set every fibre of Thomas's being on edge like a razor.

"Don't worry my little sweet tail our loved ones will come for us and they will get us out of this, plus when they do they will show these fuckers exactly what happens to those that would dare to take their beloved ones from them," he said trying to sound confident as to put her nerves to rest.

"I hope so my love but if the worst comes to pass know that I do not regret a single second of loving you, no matter how short it was it was sweet and wonderful and if they do take my life I will wait for you in the Golden Garden with my sister and you had better make us wait as long as you possibly can!" she said.

"Enough of that kind of talk my love, it will not come to that I'm sure of it and if by some supreme turn of bad luck, it does happen to do that then we will be entering that garden hand in hand as there is no way I will let them hurt you before my eyes without fighting to my death to ensure that if we are going out then we are taking as many of them as we can with us," he said.

"I know I should be shouting at you for saying such things as it is the way of a proud Raptorian female to ensure that her male is safe and cared for at all times and to keep him as far from danger as is reptillianly possible, but it makes my heart swell with pride to know you feel like you do, it will be my honour to die at your side fighting for you as you do for me Thomas," she said with such passion and sincerity in her voice that it makes him choke up a little.

"I feel the same way my love but don't you worry I believe that it will not come to that, these fuckers are going to get yet another taste of Clan justice, mark my words," he said.

The trail through the tunnels was like a fucking maze, there were so many intersecting tunnels winding off in every direction that it was making his head spin as he tried to mentally map them.

Though thankfully for Thomas his suit's sensors were doing the job for him as he'd had the good presence of mind to turn on the auto-mapper system before he'd gotten on the MK5 that day.

This system used a collection of various sensors in the suit to map the terrain a Clan soldier was in so that it could be relayed to their comrades to make it easier for anyone following them to negotiate their path.

One of the most potent sensors in play here was a form of hyperfrequency sound mapping that worked like a bat's sonar.

It sent ultra-high frequency pulses out every second and measured the bounce back to paint a picture inside the suit's memory of the terrain around them, it could also be used in places where the visual systems were useless.

But right now it was painting a picture that was being broadcast through the open comms signal back to the commander in the command Titan as while the voice channel might be closed the signal most certainly was not.

This was thanks to the code phrase that Thomas had used to close the vocal comms, 'When silence reigns the Clan listens and waits.'

This was a coded instruction to his suit to close the vocal comms but to tie in his suit sensor systems to the frequency and broadcast every possible metric it was recording on every frequency it could use to ensure that it was being received for as long as possible.

So with any luck, the commander and the others were getting a good picture of where to go to follow them through the depths of the pitch-black tunnels.

After what felt like hours of scuttling the Spider creatures seemed to finally reach some kind of base that just like the tunnels it was located inside of was hidden and camouflaged.

The spider carrying Vessa walked up to a wall and seemed to be interacting with something hidden in the wall that Thomas could not identify unfortunately as the resolution of the thermals was not good enough through the layers of silk.

But after the spider was finished a section of the wall simply slid away and revealed yet another tunnel, though this one was much shorter than the others and it opened out into a large chamber, that was filled with other bugs of all shapes and sizes, this was it, the command centre.

Both Vessa and Thomas were simply dumped on the floor at the feet of a truly massive insect that Thomas instantly realised was one of those bio-suits but unlike the ones they had been fighting in the jungle this one had the same configuration that the commander they had fought back in the town had, this was the regional boss.