Chapter 119: Building Bridges.
As the Suba bumped along the ground of the forest of the Blood Plains a shrill bleeping sounded in the crew bay and Pemistra turned to the screen of her command console.
"We have a data burssst transssmission coming in from the Pathfinder team, hmmm sssseemsss they have found a rather big problem for our tame human engineerssss to ssssolve," she said.
"Hey less of the tame if you please, maybe Ian is but I'm a wild card I'll have you know," Alissa said defensivly and Ian snorted causing a glare from the human female to land him as if daring him to say what was on his mind.
Ian simply grinned right at her as if saying 'Challange accepted,'
"Shall I show them the picture of you in your jammies and bunny slippers I snagged of you in the barracks oh wild one?" he said and Alissa instantly found herself with every single set of eyes locked firmly on her, hell even the driver was looking over her shoulder at her.
"What? It was fucking winter and I'd just got out of the shower and was heading to fucking bed," Alissa said defensively crossing her arms over her armoured chest.
"Bunny ssssslippersss?" Pemistra asked in confusion and as a Serpentinus it was obvious that she and her other Serpentinus wouldn't exactly be the front runners in the world of footwear.
Ian's grin widened and Alissa's face cracked into a look of pure horror as she realised what he was about to do but she was too late to stop him.
The male human engineer quickly tapped a few buttons on the wrist comp that was synced into his armour and there was a ping noise from Pemistra's command console.
Before Alissa could stop the big Anaconda Serpentinus she tapped the file that popped up on her screen and it opened to reveal a perfect holographic image of Alissa with a towel wrapped around her head wearing pink pyjamas with little Xenos printed all over them as well as a load of little hearts and there on her feet were two white fluffy bunny shaped slippers.
"I present exhibit A your honour in the case of Alissa vs everyone else case of her being a badass wild card, please if it pleases your honour and members of the righteous jury please pay close attention to the extra floppy ears of the bunny slippers on her feet..." Ian said before his armour rang like a bell as Alissa clipped him across the back of his head which sensing the impending outburst he'd deployed his helmet ahead of time.
All of the pack began laughing their various shape of assess off and Alissa sat there with her arms folded over her chest fuming and sulking while also looking like she might murder Ian and take the Grand Matriarch's punishment for Clan killing the moment he dropped his helmet.
"Oh that is nothing, you should see what happened when someone gave Opina a stuffed cuddly human doll," Gizka said and her pride sister froze solid like she'd been petrified and before the little Raptorian could even ruffle her feathers in alarm Gizka had sent yet another file to Permista's command station which she promptly opened.
The image on the screen flicked and changed to show the little Raptorian sprawled out on what must have been the couch back in her pride's home and she was dressed in what looked to be her underwear nothing more than a simple bra and what looked to be the Raptorian equivalent of a pink little thong which really popped against her scales though thanks to them having a tail it was a bit tricky for the string to go right up her bum so it was also tied around the base of her tail with a cute little bow.
But other than that everyone's eyes were instantly drawn to the little stuffed human-shaped cuddly doll that was clutched in the Raptoran's arms as she was fast asleep with her muzzle hanging open.
Now every set of eyes turned from Alissa to Opina and the little Raptorian's feathers were vibrating so fast she sounded like she was being dragged through a hedge.
Ian grinned at the little highly embarrassed Raptorian.
"Like the thong, the colour really suits you," he said grinning inside his helmet obviously not willing to expose his head to either potential projectiles or sucker punches.
Opina looked confused and then looked again at the screen and realized what he was on about which made her let out an alarm beep like someone had lifted her tail.
"Close it! I don't want humans seeing me in my underwear!" she exclaimed loudly and Gizka rocked in her seat with laughter.
"Oh I get it you'd prefer they see you without it, hang on I'm sure I have a picture like that somewhere around here," she said making Opina snap around so fast that her tail tip nearly broke the sound barrier and she dove right onto her sister.
"Don't you fucking dare show them that!" she yelled and everyone roared with laughter as they watched the two little Raptorians rolling around in the troop bay.
"Wait Raptorians take nudie pics?" Alissa asked in surprise.
"Is that a strange thing to you? Sometimes it's naughty to tease a male that we are on intimate terms with to show him what is waiting for him when he gets home from shopping, or to make him rush home from the park quicker," Gizka said as she wrestled with her sister.
"I thought you guys said you didn't have a pride male?" Alissa said.
"We don't but that doesn't mean we don't umm practice, you know just to see if we'd look good enough to make one rush home with a quickness to his step," Opina said as she got up from the floor and still helped her sister to her feet before they retook their seats.
Alissa suddenly grinned broadly and looked at Ian.
"Hey, you did the combat hacking course that Smoke and his pride run didn't you?" she asked and Ian looked at her curiously.
"Yeah, well it's more Smoke running it as his pride are kinda in charge of both introducing and training all the new Raptorian prides that transfer over to the Clan, why?" he said.
"Think you can hack Gizka's phone, some cute Raptorian nudie pics stuck up all over the Suba cab would sure brighten up a long deployment don't ya think?" she said and this time they both heard both Gizka and Opina's feathers vibrating hard inside of their suits.
A large sly but equally playful smile cracked Ian's face as his helmet retracted.
"Oh yeah easy, no offence girls but Raptorian encryption ain't shit when it comes to Xeno and synth predictive algorithms, the damn things cut through encryption and firewalls like a Yautja girl busting through the fucking wall when someone tells her they just got a new Beledon-grade weight machine at her favourite gym," Ian said.
"Don't even fucking think about it, human boy! We might be small and ya might be male but that won't stop us from tying you up and fucking sitting on you for the rest of the trip, we got some big ass Serpentinus girls in our pride here that are damn good at making sure things can't fucking move!" Gizka said.
Ian roared with laughter and so did Alissa.
"Pretty sure they just threatened you with a good time there, Ian, fuck if that's all it takes to have a scaly booty or two stuck on your head for the trip sign me up, think you can teach me to hack?" Alissa said making the male human engineer laugh even harder.
"I think Gizka here once again forgets we're used to dealing with Yautja and Beledon girls, bigs girls are like our day in and out, gonna have to do better than we have a big pretty Serpentinus girl to wrap you up with and then we're gonna sit on your head, oh no whatever will I do? Hell with a threat like that I'm already lining up the algorithms," Ian said teasingly causing Gizka to swish her tail in annoyance and frustration.
"Wait, did you jussssst call ussss SSSSerpentinussss pretty?" Permistra said out of the blue as it just clicked in her serpentine brain what the young human male had just said.
Ian blushed a little realizing he might have just given them some ammo but to his credit, he decided to own it rather than dodge it.
"Well yeah I mean I'd be lying if I said otherwise and to a member of the Clan lying about such things is equivalent to spitting in the Eternal Huntress's face, she gave us the eyes that can appreciate the beauty of other species outside of our own and to acknowledge it is to pay homage to the gift she gave us, so yeah," he said with surprising passion.
Suddenly every single Serpentinus tongue was flickering in his direction.
"And what about Raptorians can you look at us the same way?" Gizka asked her outburst from moments earlier vanishing like someone had thrown a bucket of cold water over the fire.
"Pretty sure he just said that you sitting on his head was threatening him with a good time, what does that tell you?" Alissa said giving Ian an evil grin and making the young male cough slightly.
"Well err yeah you're not wrong but hey don't act all innocent like you wouldn't do the same here," Ian shot back.
"Oh I never denied it, cute Raptorian grils planting their scaly backsides all over me while a big Serpentinus girl shows me what the real meaning of the word hug is, hell sign me the fuck up, just gotta throw a boy into the mix for good measure there and you got a serious party," Alissa said grinning.
"Umm just out of curiosity here, if said umm 'party' were to occur would you be ok if the male thrown in was umm human?" Opina asked suddenly as if she'd found her voice again.
Alissa looked thoughtful for a moment and rubbed her chin.
"Actually I think that would probably be a good idea, wouldn't want to be the only human in that kind of party, I'd feel outnumbered, so yeah a human boy would probably be the best option," she said and every single one of Permistra's pack began sharing glances like they'd all suddenly developed telepathy.
"You know thissss may be a bit forwardsssss but I no longer care to sssslither on formality given what my pack and itssss beautiful ssssistersss have been through, but I do believe ssssuch a thing can be made to happen if you wissssh it," Permistra said slithering over to the human duo.
"Oh and how do you..." Alissa began but suddenly a loud shout from the cockpit grabbed everyone's attention.
"We're here and sensors are picking up multiple heat blooms, heads up guys this might be a hot deployment!" Vistra yelled back and Permistra cursed in Serpentinus under her breath as the mood in the troop bay instantly flipped from playful and flirty to all business in a millisecond, she'd have to have a word with her little Raptorian driver about being in such a hurry to get them places in the future.
"Alright everyone you heard Vissstra, headssss on a sssswivel, we may have bugssss lurking in the bussshessss, be on guard, not a sssssingle one getsss passsst ussss underssstand?" she said and there was a collective grunt of affirmation.
No sooner had the ramp dropped than the entire squad, human engineers included piled down the ramp and out into a fan shape around the Suba.
Vista instantly switched her controls from driving to gunner and began to swivel the large vehicle-mounted turret around to better use its optics to get a look while also firing up a few sentry drones to sweep the area.
The place they found themselves in suddenly revealed the nature of the problem that the engineers had been called in to solve.
Directly ahead of the Suba was a large chasm that when Pemistra looked over the edge of it towards the bottom gave her a wave of vertigo.
"Wow that issss deep," she hissed as both Ian and Alissa moved up alongside her and began appraising the situation.
"Looks like we gotta build a bridge huh?' Ian said glancing at Alissa.
"Yeah looks that way, least we got plenty of materials around here, you start getting the measurements I'll call in a support drop from the GMF, hopefully, they got a few bridge kits laying around," Alissa said and Permista watched the two humans curiously.
While Alissa got on the comms and began putting a call to the Clan Mason flagship in orbit Ian pulled out a series of what appeared to be laser measuring tools from one of his many kits.
The human male's robotic arms unfurled from his body and suddenly two of them opened up the large metallic claws on the ends before slamming into the ground like anchors and hoisted him up so he was now suspended from the pack on his back.
Permistra cocked her head in fascination and flicked her tongue at him while he appeared to angling some odd laser contraption towards the ground at his feet while also aiming another one at the other side of the chasm.
"Alright looks to be about a hundred feet edge to edge so we are gonna need at least one hundred and twenty feet to give ten feet of brace on either side," Ian said lowering himself down to his regular feet again but his mechanical arms did not furl themselves away, they simply hung at his sides as if waiting to be called into action again.
Alissa gave him a thumbs up to indicate that she had heard him and kept on relaying her request to the GMF.
That's when those arms of Ian's did something else incredible and Permista found herself watching in shocked awe as they once again lifted the human male off his feet but this time rather than just susspending him there they walked forwards right over the edge of the chasm!
Permista felt her entire pack respond in the blink of an eye.
The sight of a male walking over the edge of a fall that would surely lead to his demise every one of them leapt into action and shot forwards to the edge in a panic.
But rather than witnessing the human's form getting rapidly smaller as he fell to his inevitable death they instead found him suspended from the chasm wall anchored in place by four of the six arms now while the other two seemed to be using various tools to test the structure of the rocks.
"Umm, are you alright down there Ian?" Opina asked in amazement and the young human male looked up at them all gawking down at him.
"Err yeah fine why?" he asked.
"Oh no reason just a little warning before you decide to walk off the edge of a death fall would be kinda nice next time, now I'm gonna have to spend the next two hours trying to get my fucking feathers to go back down!" Opina yelled with irritation in her high-pitched voice.
Ian rubbed the back of his head in a sheepish gesture as he seemed to realize how he'd just scared the living daylights out of the team whose mission it was to protect him and Alissa with what he'd just done.
"Ahh shit yeah, sorry bout that I kinda forget that not everyone around me is an engineer at times," he said apologetically.
"Well it issss not every day we witnessss a human walk off a fucking cliff, at leassst this sssshit issss not boring," Permistra said trying to slow her pounding heart rate down before she started getting a panicked call from the medical unit aboard the GMF and it started raining drop pods full of screeching Battle Angels.
"Alright the GMF is going to rapidly drop us down a bridging kit so we can get started on sorting this out, hey what's everyone looking at down here?" Alissa said popping her head over the edge of the chasm and looking down at Ian before glancing at the pack next to her who were all still staring down at him.
"Oh, nothing just your college here nearly killed our entire pride with a collective heart attack by walking his human ass over the side of this damn cliff!" Opina said her voice seemingly getting higher by the moment which betrayed her lingering annoyance.
Alissa's confusion was evident even through her face plate and then it seemed to click in her mind.
"Ahh the robot arms, yeah those fuckers can grip onto just about anything harder than Silvian limpet and let me tell you those fuckers grip hard, took four brave saviours to chisel one of those brave little fuckers off the arse of the armour of Kestra Fireheart, mind you considering the poor little limpet probably had no idea it had latched onto the arse of one of the meanest Yautja girl's in the Clan when it grabbed on, it was no wonder the little fucker held the fuck on for grim death, that fucker knew it was getting launched into the fucking sun the moment it let go and she got her hands on it," she said.
"Well, you could have told us that they could do that!" Opina said defensively.
"Trust me if we sat down and started listing everything that these fuckers can do we're gonna be here a real long ass time, now everyone had better brace, we got drop pods coming in hot," Alissa said as a very familiar rumble began to shake the sky above their heads as the large pods breached the atmosphere.
Seconds later four large rapid deployment pods slammed into the ground hard a little ways from the team.
They hit hard enough to embed the tip of the pod's conical-shaped nose into the ground to keep it upright during equipment retrieval, but not hard enough to damage what was inside of it.
These pods were slightly different from the pods the Clan used to orbital drop troops into hot zones in that not only were they much larger as they contained meticulously packed equipment of a sensitive nature but they were also armed.
No sooner had the pods slammed into the dirt and the stabilising legs deployed to help keep the pod upright than a small automated turret popped up between the boosters on the top of it.
The small turret was little more than an automated battle rifle on a gimbal with an extended magazine that was programmed to fire at anyone or anything that did not have a Clan or alliance IFF tag.
But given that the Clan's primary battle rifle was a railgun this little turret still packed a serious amount of punch for its size and given that there were now four of them sweeping the area anything approaching the pods would be having a rather bad day rather quickly.
"Alright let's see what we've got here," Alissa said approaching the nearest pod and pressing her hand against a scanner that allowed the pod to sync with her wrist comp and recognise her authority to open it.
There was a series of bleeps from the pod's scanner and then a series of sharp clicks as the locking mechanisms undid allowing the sides of the pod to split open revealing what was packed inside of it.
"Ahh looks like this one is the jumping tools, alright Ian if you get these set up I'll start getting everything else ready," Alissa said when suddenly the turret on the top of the pod made a high-pitched bleeping noise.
Alissa and everyone else glanced up at it watching it spin on its gimbal as if trying to track something nearby.
"What's it picking up?" Ian asked but before he could check his sensors the turret opened fire and it was rapidly joined by the other three from the other pods.
The deafening report of the automatic railgun fire from the little turrets was thankfully dampened by the aural protection systems in their helmets but it didn't shield them from the surprise of the guns opening up on something.
They all spun around just in time to see a rippling shape that was barely visible against the nearby foliage being split open revealing oozing green and yellow holes.
A single second later the figure fell forward with a thump onto the floor and the camouflage it had been using disappeared to reveal one of the bug drone-like warriors less than twenty yards from them.
"SSSStealth unitssssss!" Permistra yelled and her entire pack leapt into action putting themselves between the two human engineers and raining surpressive fire into the forest in the same direction as the now dead bug.
The little pod turrets while relatively primitive in their nature still had a very sensitive tracking package on them and it seemed that each of the little turrets was now tracking different targets by the way they were moving.
"Visssstra hit the foresssst with the heavy gunssss flusssh thesssse fuckerssss out!" Permistra yelled into the comms.
"On it, boss heads down people this gonna get fucking loud!" Vistra yelled back through the comms and every one of them hit the dirt.
The large guns on top of the Suba roared to life and began absolutely shredding the forest and surrounding foliage though thankfully not the drop pods as Vistra rotated the large turret through a wide angle.
To Permistra's surprise rather than take cover both Ian and Alissa went into full combat mode.
Both of them deployed their all of cybernetic arms so that they now looked like some sort of anthropomorphic spiders charging into battle.
To her surprise rather than holding tools some of their cybernetic hands were now holding weapons like plasma pistols that they were using to fire from the cover of the pods while they had also deployed their shoulder-mounted plasma casters which were tracking their head movements while they sought out the hidden targets.
The plasma pistols they held seemed to be simply cut-down versions of their shoulder-mounted plasma casters that instead of firing rapid plasma shot or railgun slugs would charge up and fire a singular explosive shot.
"Got 'em! Everyone switch to electrostatic, the fuckers are masking their heat signatures but they can't hide their fucking muscles!" Ian yelled as all of the weapons he was holding began tracking and Permistra rapidly cycled through her visor's vision types lo and behold as soon as she hit electro static the hidden bugs lit up bright yellow against the muted background.
"Now we ssssssee you fuckersssss you will not hide from the Royal SSSSwordssss of Queen Ciri!" Permistra yelled as she lined up her weapon on the nearest camouflaged insect and the other Serpentinus of her pack roared their agreement.
"Nor the Star Stalkers of Raptoria!" Opina yelled and the little Raptorians of the pack including Vistra in the Suba answered with their own war chirp.
Now seemingly realising that their cover had been blown and that the pod turret finding one of them was not a fluke the insects opened fire on the team and pretty soon the air was sizzling with both plasma shot and Molton tungstan.
"Hammer one one to Viper one one we are under heavy fire, have encountered bug infiltrator unitssss, they have sssssome kind of natural optical camouflage that hidesssss them from our sssssensorsssss, need electrosssstatic to reveal them over," Permista yelled into the comms as the team traded fire with the surprisingly large bug force.
To her tactical mind it seemed that this attack was premeditated, she figured that the bugs must have realized that their troops would need to come this way to advance further into the territory so when they'd seen the Pathfinder until they had set up laid in wait for the following force.
But it seemed that they'd either made a tactical error here and had either mistaken them for the main force or simply hadn't been counting on the pods being equipped with broad spectrum scanning systems that sniffed them out.
"Roger that Hammer one one we're are watching your feed and we have you locked in tight, heads down tails up the Raptorians are sending these sneaky fuckers a proper alliance greeting over," the commander's voice said through her comms and her eyes widened as she realized what that meant.
"Headssss down danger close!" she yelled and hit the dirt slithering on her belly towards the Suba to use its armour for cover.
The rest of the team did the same using both the pods and the Suba for cover as suddenly the air was filled with loud whistling and whooshing noises.
The Raptorian Gipka salvo landed pretty much smack on top of the bug infiltrator unit's heads and the forest simply exploded into a giant cloud of metal and wood shrapnel as the Raptorians turned the entire area in which the bugs were hiding into a massive fucking crater.
A few seconds later the whistling and ringing stopped and an eerie silence descended on the area again causing Permistra to slowly lift her head to survey the scene, there was simply nothing left standing, not even ground weeds.
"Hammer one one to Viper one one fire misssssion ssssucessful tell my Raptorian sssssissssterssss thankssss and damn fine ssssshooting, Hammer one one over and out," she said.
"Roger that Hammer one one but by all the chirping and clapping I've got going on over here I believe they heard you, Viper one one over and out," the Commander said.
"Fuck me sideways those little Gipkas don't half pack a fucking punch do they?" Ian said slowly raising himself up to his feet from behind the cover of one of the pods to survey the carnage.
"What do you believe because they were small they would be underpowered. I'll have you know that little things can be both small and mighty human boy, being small just means we are harder to hit but it does not mean that we cannot hit hard ourselves," Opina said somewhat defensively.
"Not what I meant but yeah I think your girls back there proved that point loud and fucking clear here," he said gesturing to the large smoking crater that was filled with both burning foliage fragments and what appeared to be bug limbs.
That's when they all heard some very odd sounds echoing across the landscape that sounded kinda like very distant and very deep pop this was followed up moments later by a very loud and very close boom.
The whole team spun to the left just as a massive plume of green-coloured plasma gas erupted from the ground and incinerated everything unlucky enough to be caught inside of it.
"The bugs got fucking arty!" Ian yelled as another green plume exploded up out of the ground where the shot struck and turned the surrounding trees into giant matchsticks in an instant.
"Everyone back insssside the SSSSSuba it isssss the only thing that could take a direct hit!" Permista yelled and everyone sprinted and slithered for the rapidly opening hatch of the large armoured vehicle.
This turned out to be a very good call because no sooner had they all piled inside than the whole vehicle was rocked by a massive explosion close by that would have in the best case melted the outer plates of their armour.
"Hammer one one to Viper one one we are under heavy artillery fire, it sssseems the bugssss had an artillery unit hiding somewhere on the other side of thissss valley, over!" Permistra yelled into the comms as Vistra tried to manoeuvre the Suba away from the impact zone.
It seemed that before they'd shredded them with their own artillery the bug covert unit had called in an artillery strike of their own but thankfully now the bug gunners were firing blindly as there was no one left standing to correct their fire.
But this also meant that the bug gunners were widening the field of their fire as there was no one to call in corrections to narrow it on top of their targets so now the plasma was hitting at random.
"Roger that Hammer one one we're relaying your position to the GMF as we have no eyes on the bug battery, they are gonna send down some fast movers to try and get eyes on them so get low and keep your eyes on the skies, over," the commander replied.
"Eyessss up the GMF is sssending air ssssupport," Permistra said quickly bringing up the external cameras and pointing some of them skyward.
Moments later the roar of hypersonic engines could be heard along with the boom of reentry high above them that sent pulse waves of sound downwards to vibrate the hull of the Suba.
"Hammer one one this is Firetail one one we have eyes on you and your bug problem looks like the fuckers are a couple of miles from that valley, sit tight and we'll see if we can dig em out for you, over," the distinctly Xeno voice said over the comms as the four fighters roared overhead.
Permistra quickly hooked into the display from the lead fighters cameras and she could see what they were seeing now on her large screen.
All of the team quickly gathered to watch as the fighters banked to get a line on the artillery hidden between the large trees and what they saw both horrified and fascinated them.
The bugs seemed to have what appeared to be massive beetles that had huge glowing sacks attached to their abdomens and when they inflated these sacs they could build up a plasma charge within their own bodies before expelling it at an angle.
"How the hell do they get around the magnetic constriction required to hold the plasma like that?" Opina wondered as she watched one of the massive beetle-like creatures expel its payload into the air.
"I'm more worried about how mobile those fuckers are, think about it those things could go just about anywhere and pop up when we least expect it," Ian said.
"Target acquired command we're going to give them a proper alliance welcome to the party, over," Firetail said over the comms blatantly communicating with their controller on the GMF.
"Roger that Firetail one one show them what a big fucking boot from the sky feels like, over," a little male Raptorian voice replied, it seemed that the GMF had quite a few male Raptorians working in their SIG INT and signals sections.
"Alright people fast and tight, let's drop the pauking hammer!' Firetail one one said before climbing into a near-vertical climb and flipping the aircraft into a perfect dive right above the bug camp.
"Whooo get some!" another voice yelled over the comms as the four fighters began spraying missiles and railgun shots into the encampment, the callsign that popped up on the screen read Firetail one two.
The voice was blatantly human by the inflexions.
The whole encampment erupted into chaos as the four fighters rained death down on them from above with tiny figures scattering in all directions and some of them even returning fire with various high calibre weaponry.
There even seemed to be some of those hulking bio-mech suits that they'd all seen in the reports amongst the teams on the ground.
At least two of the surprisingly heavily armoured artillery beetles were hit directly by the fire before the four fighters scattered to regroup and by the massive eruptions of plasma fire that could be seen in the rearview cameras, their payloads weren't exactly stable.
The four fighters wheeled skillfully around in wide arcs to begin strafing the encampment from four overlapping angles which prevented the defenders from mounting an effective defence as they never knew which one was going to hit them next.
"GMF control to all Firetail call signs peel off I repeat peel off, the Grand Matriarch has the camp in her sights and she wishes to deliver a personal message, over," the little Raptorian signlar called out over the comms.
"Roger that GMF control tell the Grand Matriarch may the Eternal Huntress guide her hand, we are RTB, Firetail one one over and out," the Xeno fighter pilot said before the four fighters peeled off from their attack runs and began heading up towards the outer atmosphere.
Moments later there was a massive flash in their rear cameras as the massive railgun slugs fired from the mighty Clan Dreadnaught's underslung belly-mounted railgun cannons found their mark and turned the whole camp into glass.
"Holy shit those guns of yours pack one hell of a punch don't they!?" Opina exclaimed bouncing on the spot as she got to witness the full might of the Clan Mason Navy on full display.
"Oh you ain seen nothing yet, wait until you see the main gun fire off, now that's something to see," Ian said grinning at the excited little Raptorian.
"Oh yeah the planet cracker, damn now that's a fucking gun alright, scary as all hell but fuck me does it half send a message, saw the vids of the tests of those things and by the Eternal Huntress did they scare the shit out of me," Alissa said.
"Planet cracker? Are thosssse Dreadnaughtsssss of yourssss truly capable of ssssuch a thing?" Permistra asked in surprise and both of the human engineers nodded in unison.
"One shot can blow the outer crust of a plant clean off, a follow-up shot and well you no longer have a planet, you have an asteroid field," Ian said as he walked towards the Suba's hatch and pressed the release to lower it.
The team exited the vehicle and looked around at the damage that had been caused by the artillery barrage.
"Well at least they didn't hit the fucking pods, I really don't need an angry Xeno quartermaster screeching their fucking tail off in my ear as I tried to order us more bridging kits," Alissa said with obvious relief in her voice as she walked over to inspect the seemingly undamaged drop pods sat nearby.
"Yeah better you than me I still have nightmares about the time I lost my damn circuit splicing kit, three days I spent cleaning the damn stores and I can still hear Quatermaster Silvertail screeching in my fucking nightmares," Ian said and Alissa laughed out loud.
"That was fucking you!?" she exclaimed and Ian nodded guiltily.
"Yeah, unfortunately," he said as he began to extract the large bridge-jumping kits from the first pod.
The things looked like a massive pole with a swing arm and a grappling hook gun on it.
"Oh fuck we could hear her screeching from all the way up in the Saviour barracks, she really takes her store's numbers seriously doesn't she?" Alissa said as she helped him angle the pole properly.
"Fuck me that's the understatement of the year," Ian grumbled as he pressed a button on the side of the pole and it fired an anchoring point into the ground directly at his feet with a bang.
Ian quickly angled the swing arm on the top of the large pole outwards and began to carefully aim the grapple gun towards the far side of the valley before firing it.
The large hook spread over the gap with a trail of high tensile wire streaming behind it before it slammed straight into the side of one of the large trees on the other side and the winch drew the wire taught.
"Alright first hook's in place I'll take the other one over and line it up then we can get the fuck on with building this bridge, the sooner we are out of the open the bloody better," Ian said lifting the other bridge jumper out of the pod and heading towards the wire.
"Amen to that," Alissa said.
"I'm coming with you you will need a guard!" Opina said quickly.
"Me too!" Gizka chirped and suddenly the human engineer found himself carrying not just a large bridge jumping pole but also two little Raptorians under each arm as he hooked up to the wire, this was going to be an interesting day.