Sunundra rushed through the screaming alarms and red-washed corridors of the sixth level, placing hastily made charges where false dens laid. The first of the freed were scared and reluctant, but an abridged rendition of her initial speech gained their temporary loyalty easily enough. Human and Lilhun fell in line, amassing behind her and heading towards the next cage, the next imprisoned, and the next victims of the Union’s treachery. Groups, pairs, and unfortunate tombs were revealed with every pop of chemicals against the metal barriers. They met wary faces, vigilant defenders, and more corpses than she would have wished. Those dens sent rage through her kin, but she kept them in line with the assurance of revenge. They need only heed her words.

Every fallen form was fuel for her ire, every broken cadaver a reason for her authority. She was their pack master, and they, her implements. Even the humans recognized a need for order, volunteering to carry any gathered supplies and doing an appreciable job of not letting fatigue slow them down. Their furred companions were able to scout ahead unencumbered, confirming the safety of the group, without weight adding unnecessary strain to already weary forms.

She couldn’t help but steal glances on occasion, watching the mixed races reassure and comfort those they were close to, as well as any who had been left behind by a recent passing. It felt right to work alongside one another, even if the pale-furred female needed to suppress the sorrow resting beneath her cooled rage. She envied how close some pairings were, knowing that her version of happiness had gone to dust while theirs persisted. Feeding the feeling would have done little, so she bit her tongue and kept on task, steeling herself to complete a portion of her bond’s wish as best she could.

More and more captives were extracted from their holdings, allowing Sunundra to distribute simple explosives to others so they too could assist in freeing their kin. It wasn’t long until detonations in the distance were followed by more again. They were always soft. Familiar. Hers. The pack took form and grew at the behest of her specialty. Once again, she was freeing those who were trapped within iron and stone, but this time she would not be ignored.

They broke down door after door, bypassing walls and rubble from tripped traps. Her beckoning became shorter with each charge placed against metal, the speech she prepared sharpening as precious moments ticked by and reinforcements became nigh inevitable. The foolish were forced to submit or be left behind to perish; if they were unwilling to risk everything for their other, then they would lose everything instead.

“Come,” she commanded, barely waiting for the smoke to settle before addressing the four fearful inhabitants of the den she breached. Their hazy silhouettes hesitated, a brief exchange voicing their worries and confusion, but they were intelligent enough to know something was amiss with the situation they found themselves in before her arrival. They were intelligent enough to know she was their salvation.

And more importantly, they were intelligent enough to obey, falling in line when she walked away to continue her mission. They bowed to her authority, and she pretended not to notice the disgusting satisfaction it caused. Freed from the shackles of self, she ruled.

Sunundra held no delusions as to what she appeared to be when she accosted the first group; she was injured, weakened, and soiled by the stench of blood and fury. Yet with every confinement torn asunder, newer additions saw not a broken defect, but a stalwart, unshakable force deigning to gift them a way out, demanding only compliance in return—a cost paid eagerly.

The makeshift units she ordered to gather the others steadily returned with fresh forms looking to aid the escape. The few dissenters were swiftly silenced when she blasted their way to the fifth floor, and although murmurs had swept through the gathering, her station was no longer questioned. The newfound pack obliged her requests, no matter their species.

When the first enemy came into their sight, all it took was a wave of her paw for the armed amongst her kin to open fire. It announced their presence, true, but it also revealed a problem.

Some of her pack’s weapons were bio-locked. Their guns clacked uselessly once away from the original owners, the triggers reduced to little more than noisemakers.

The cells, magazines, clips, and single rounds were expelled from chambers and storages, then collected to supply the working firearms of various designs before the inoperable guns were discarded. With little choice, her kin tried to make the best of bad news. Their force was already limited in the number of Lilhuns who were trained in organized combat—the vast majority being civilians who were employed in peaceful sectors—but most all could navigate their implements to a passable degree. Given that an allotment of their weapons were effectively clicking door-stops, and how little time they had to reorganize who was afforded what, there were hobbyists and sport shooters now unarmed beyond their claws, yet accountants and data-entry specialists who were struggling to maintain a target. The issue was one to be settled with time and newly felled foes, but it put a damper on their effectiveness all the same. The humans occasionally ended up with something, though most confessed a substantial lack of any experience with weaponry at all.

Sunundra couldn’t help but wonder if the Union accounted for this as well.

Regardless, the second wave of antagonistic forces was dealt with in similar fashion as the first. Orders had been barked into communication devices, warning of more to come, yet she focused on where she needed to breach next while her subordinates turned hostile resistance into unmoving litter, stripping armour and armament when possible. None were pleased to wear freshly sullied equipment, but they did, for she said so. They bowed to her whim.

How simple it turned out to be, gaining the respect of her kin through threat and displays of competence when their very lives balanced on the tips of her claws. Her efforts before? Worthless. When she was kind and considerate, peaceful and smiling, she was discarded by those she sought the company of. It seemed that all it took was a promise of violence and an iron fist for them to bend the knee to her will.

Eventually, she found a suitable enough location to resume her work, ordering her pack to upend desks and cabinets, littering the hallway with waist and chest-high barricades before the pursuing enemies caught up to them. Some made hopeful comments about having successfully lost the tail, yet the defect knew better.

Hope was dead.

“Switch out! We have more injured!” someone yelled, though she couldn’t quite tell who it was.

Sunundra scowled over her shoulder at the scramble of her kin pulling a Lilhun back from cover and around the corner into safety, a newly reddened paw clutching their leg to stymie the relentless rivulets of crimson. The overwhelming din of gunshots and panicked voices almost drowned out Syrus’ barked orders as replacements for the fallen procured dropped weaponry and continued the battle. New colours flashed, lighting up the already bright hall. Gouges and streaks from stray shots marked the walls and toppled furnishings acting as barricades, both sides of the engagement forced to hunker down between bursts lest they be struck. Yet more Lilhun blood was spilled, but the fallen knew their sacrifice would not be in vain, and it was her duty to see that made true.

The defect gazed upon the amassing wounded before returning to her task, ignoring the chaos behind her. Her weakened form couldn’t participate—she was too injured, and a leader needed to exude an air of one whom the others could rally behind. Besides, leaving her kin to their devices told them that she expected them to succeed, even if she fought the dregs of deadened dread with every lifeless corpse or injury sustained in the effort.

The vast majority of Lilhuns and humans stood in wait for the eventual rotation with those who were actively discouraging approaching forces. A few had taken to tearing clothing or using stolen scraps to tend to the wounded, but there was only so much they could do while suppressed like this. There had been too little time to scavenge the proper assortment of supplies, and they had not the comfort of secluded confines to work in.

As much as she would have preferred traversing out of sight, there was a potent lack of maintenance tunnels on the fourth level, which left them few options other than breaching upward at a dead end. Without being able to tuck themselves away and bridge the gap between hidden passages, a rather powerful blast was needed to clear the entire floor’s worth of material at an angle, and that could only be achieved while in the open. Thankfully, Bill had been instrumental in helping her complete an explosive that would make such a daunting task possible.

The mist from her latest experiment drifted down from its place upon the wall, soft cracking sounds informing her of destruction hidden by the device. Although the multi-stage explosive was up to the task, it used the last of her free compounds to make. Furthermore, it was an agonizingly slow process—one that took every hard-earned moment the pack tore from the claws of death pursuing them.

The wisps of vapour from the charge dissipated. Only moments remained before the final thumper blew a hole through the barrier blocking their ascent; she heard the ominous creaks and falling dust warning her of the deafening explosion soon to come. She cycled a breath, trying her hardest to push aside the scent of fear, loss, anger, and blood, while the aroma of seared chemicals added to the sickening sense of anticipation prevailing in her veins.

It would do no good to dwell on the fallen. The others were needed to fight off the impending waves of security so she could facilitate their egress, and they needed her to remain focused in turn.

And fight they did. They fought for their kin, their others, their bonds, and their departed loved ones. Most importantly, they fought for her, and that was something she found disturbingly correct.

Now, she only needed to prove their allegiance to be well-placed.

A small light on the charge turned green.

“Brace!”

She leapt backwards and flattened her ears to her head, stumbling an extra step from the abuse her body sustained. Others did as told, though a few near the intersection were too busy laying down suppressive fire to hear her.

Though they certainly heard the bomb.

A blast of smoke and rubble shook the very ground they stood upon, the shockwave throwing a few faithfuls and their bonds to the floor. Light from the third level bled through the hole, but the superheated stone and metal prevented more than scant glimpses of hope in the pack’s eyes. She barked orders for her kin to prepare, including a command for the group defending the corner to push back the assault long enough for the new tunnel to cool.

Emboldened, they obeyed.

More succumbed to the onslaught, more were left crying and broken, but she swallowed the budding guilt and focused on keeping them organized. Alive. The injured were dragged by fur or clothing, triaged, then either resupplied with ammunition or assigned a non-combatant to carry them. New armament was scrounged from the bodies of security who encroached on their position, then redistributed to fill empty paws.

They were able to defend themselves long enough for the new passage to be traversable, though the losses were heavy. A final push by the enemy was halted when a haphazardly rigged battery was passed off to a human, then thrown into the wave of reinforcements. The resulting explosion left only death in its wake. It gave them a moment to breathe and assess their status, the cheers of victory stifled by the dread of more encounters to come.

Most were fine, though a few bled through their hastily applied bandages. Sunundra wasn’t sure how many they had lost, never quite having bothered to keep track of the following she gathered. Forty became sixty, which then surpassed what she could estimate at a glance—hundreds, she supposed. It hardly mattered in the end; the number dwindled with every confrontation. Yet, even as they suffered losses, every fallen promised tens of enemy slain by their claws. Cries of sorrow were met with reminders that their sacrifice allowed the group’s survival—a bittersweet message, but a necessary one. It would be too painful for those who lost their others if they were allowed to dwell.

Eventually, the faint echoes of hostile communication devices fouled the air once more.

They fled the fifth level, bypassed the fourth, and emerged amidst the third, fringes of Sunundra’s mind wondering just how far away Bill’s corpse was. For better or worse, the urge to curl up and die in her bond’s arms wasn’t given much time to linger. The enemy reinforcements were swift.

The pack let loose volley after volley to suppress their foes, suffering minor casualties and injuries. Quick thinking and eager humans allowed them to stymie bleeding wounds and gouged appendages. Weaponless, they cooperated. Frightened, they rushed. The thick scent of adrenaline and purpose assaulted the defect’s olfactory, every wrong instance of what she knew only sharpening her commands and snapping the dazed from their stupor. Wave after wave was repelled as they reached the next site, but she couldn’t help but notice a shift within her ranks.

It started with a group of furless males pulling their Lilhun counterpart behind cover as soon as a magnetically propelled kinetic round punched through armour and sent viscera splattering outward, the black coat failing to hide the deep red pouring out of his chest. A human took his injured other’s weapon and opened fire, bellowing his rage with ferocity that made the collective flinch. Then another did the same. Then another.

The reaction made Sunundra pause in her placement of explosives, a thought passing through her mind despite the cacophony of gunshots and roars of agony.

From the scarce rumours circulating since the Union contacted her people and the extensive compatibility ‘testing’ commenced, the bond was proven to be unique to the Hunt Mother’s kits. Initially, the churches were filled with hesitation and speculation. Worried faithful voiced their concern of if their Goddess would be so cruel as to assign them their destined in the form of a grotesque alien from the stars. Thankfully, none who returned ever suggested it was possible, and most expressed annoyance at the muted or absent pheromones amongst their cosmic neighbours. Their words brought relieved exhalations throughout the species, and the Lilhun people grew confident in their singular suitability for the Mother’s favour. They were beloved like no other, just as they should be.

Yet…even if Sunundra had been content with the strange, one-sided bond she thought hers…seeing a furless biped snarl with such focused rage, mowing down the enemy and shrugging off perforating punctures with barely a wince until they succumbed? Now, she questioned if her kind was as unilaterally blessed as history foretold.

The humans might not have bonded in form, but they became broken in soul, and they felt no contentment in merely watching their shattered selves scatter upon the Void.

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They grabbed the shards and bared them as weapons.

The Mother would approve.

The pale-furred female resumed her task, pushing aside the howls of fury and distress. According to the map, they would find the hangar on the second level, and then they could commandeer a shuttle to escape through the launch bay, bypassing the first floor of the complex to the surface. She was forced to breach upwards in a spot that was less than ideal, but her paw was forced. Without a building’s worth of material between the third and second level, a mundane breach charge was sufficient to punch through the ceiling. She was grateful for that, if nothing else; her bag was almost empty, and she doubted the usefulness of what she had left.

Recon’s gift, scraps of bandages, and powdery residue were all that met her cursory inspection of her backpack. A couple of painkiller applicators lay cracked near the bottom, their contents spilled and soaked into the fabric. A pitiful selection, all things considered. Barring the remote detonation utility of her makeshift controller for the drone, there was no reason left to hold onto the storage, nor what little remained. Yet she donned it anyway; the lessened weight pulled her back straight, and it would act as a pathetic layer of armour. Not enough to make much difference, but every bit mattered.

Thankfully, the simpler explosive took significantly less time to detonate, and it was a much more directed affair, which saved her the trouble of getting her weakened limbs to flee from the blast radius. It released a muted bang, then left a haze where foundation once laid. She felt the air circulating along a new pathway and watched it carry away the dust. A single callout to the others led to the most well-off of them boosting everyone else upwards, while a few increased their rate of fire to apply pressure on the enemy. The flood of projectiles discouraged an immediate retaliation, allowing the pack to make a relatively clean getaway. Some more of her number had been removed at the claws of the enemy, but she ignored that fact, as well as the cries that came with it.

But she couldn’t ignore the subordination that arose.

Even when she ordered it, the newly broken refused to leave behind the vacant forms of their others. Disparaged humans wept, though were coaxed away from the gaping hole where security would advance. The affected Lilhuns roared their ire, some diving back down to purge the sinful, while others held onto their faculties and demanded possession of firearms and ammunition to secure the safety of the pack. Arguments flared up immediately, but all eyes inevitably turned towards their Sunundra, their temporary leader.

Gazes of wrath, loss, desperation, and fear surrounded the pale-furred female, each seeking her judgment. Would they arm and abandon the few, weakening the many as weapons dwindled, or would she demand them be carried against their wishes in an effort to save as many faithfuls as possible?

Sunundra glanced at the navigational terminal in her paws, noting how much distance remained to be traversed. Not much, and although it would be tedious, at least it was possible to drag the unwilling. In the end, it should have been a simple decision; a mere word was the only thing between their protests and forced compliance, and it was in her interests to utter it. She was supposed to return to Iras with droves of those who were wronged by the Union—the stubborn included.

Yet…

“Arm half,” she ordered flatly, turning on her pads and leading the march towards the hangar without sparing a single glance towards those who were discontent with her ruling. Humans protested, calling for reconsideration. They argued that even a single life was worth the risk and discord that would be caused by forced action, but they spoke from ignorance. Their numbers were fewer, their strength lessened, but the Void had already gripped the broken. She didn’t blame her alien allies—her bond would have said much the same…

It was just pointless to consider.

Even if she brought them back, they wouldn’t remain amongst the living for long. They would rather perish while avenging their others and defending the bonds that remained than uselessly persist. They chose to take a stand despite being shattered.

That was something she understood all too well.

- - - - -

The lack of an assault as they progressed through the corridors of the second floor was unnerving. Gunfire and shouted threats echoed through the halls, but those who elected to stay behind were rather effective at stymieing the flow of security. It seemed that the Union had no faith in her ability to climb the levels as quickly as she did, and thus thought cutting them off on the third would be enough to put an end to her escape attempt. Perhaps they assumed the slow charge she needed to bypass the fourth floor was the standard? It hardly mattered; they quickly reached their goal thanks to their enemy’s incompetence.

The hangar itself was thankfully devoid of staff, though she supposed that made sense considering that the entire complex was on some sort of lockdown. They passed door after door, each reinforced with heavy shutters and thick bars of materials she couldn’t readily identify. The destination itself looked to lack that particular security feature upon the impressively tall entryway. Perhaps it was left open to allow bigger machinery access? She wondered why constructs large enough to tower even modest dens would be needed, but that internal pondering quieted once she stepped into the room that the terminal benignly labelled as ‘Hangar.’

She felt it would have been more accurately described by words interspersed with expletives.

Shadows stretched across the city-sized room, swallowing entire fleets of smaller shuttles in various states of disrepair. Colossal freighters put the Lilhun counterpart to shame as they loomed over most everything else in the gargantuan space. Transport vessels lay littered around imposing support pillars the size of entire residential complexes. Countless mobile mechanic stations and antiquated scissor lifts lay abandoned, the tools and workstations that supplied technicians being left open or in disarray. Automated maintenance drones and odd emplacements were scattered around the floor and on tracks that snaked through the cacophony of vehicular debris, transporting strange components to places far beyond what she could see. Alien technologies melded together on experimental crafts near a decommissioned hauler of some description, the terminal arrays next to them having been shot and hastily destroyed further. She recognized some design cues of her people’s ships, but whatever the Union was attempting to achieve was far beyond salvage now.

A hurried pat on her arm stung, a forgotten wound agitated, but Sunundra suppressed the twitch of pain to glower at whoever thought it wise to bother her before she could determine what to do next. Syrus’ bond, Jean, switched back and forth between looking at the pale-furred female pleadingly and staring at the corridors they just left, fear darkening her expression.

“I… I think they’re coming,” the human whispered. “It’s too quiet back there.”

Quiet? The defect added a raised brow to her resting scowl, turning her head to listen. She heard murmurs of uncertainty from the pack and the occasional jostle of equipment, but the din of combat had long since become naught but faded reverberations, no? It was merely wisps of sound lost amongst the chaos, and even the stifled sobs that remained outcompeted it. How could anyone distinguish if it was absent when the shuffle of impatient feet was deafening in comparison?

However…Jean was the one who convinced the others to fall under Sunundra’s rule… That should be rewarded, if only by heeding her warning.

“New directive,” Sunundra called out, the pack snapping out of their stunned stupor and turning their attention from the giant super ships to the diminutive defect. “Group up into tens and spread out to identify a craft we can commandeer. Once found, shout to alert the others. Stay within line of sight of at least one other unit. Be wary of forces following our advancement. If you are engaged by the enemy, do not drag them to the others. You are to fend them off until a ship is located, or until they are dispatched. Assist those in combat if feasible. Go.”

The command took precious few moments to spread before it was followed. Some broke the first restriction by expanding their allotted size to twelve or thirteen, but she wasn’t so strict as to ignore the possibility of bonds or carried injured causing some skewed arrangements. Cracking down on it would only waste time they didn’t have, and if the slight deviation gave them comfort, then she wouldn’t comment on it.

She did feel the need to remark on a certain dark-furred male who opted to coax some others to her side instead of splitting off, however. She nodded to the seven additions of Lilhun and human, Jean rounding out the unit.

“Syrus,” she intoned curiously. “This is unexpected. I was under the impression that you wished little of me.”

The male gave his bond an annoyed glance that was less subtle than he thought, while the human simply frowned, staring him down until he bowed his head. “This one will follow his better, high one.”

Sunundra dismissed the interaction with a hum, watching the groups start their progression into the hangar’s depths. She eyed the others individually for a moment, then waved her entourage onward. “So be it. We will stay near the centre of the spread. You have been given your orders.”

They grunted in acknowledgement.

- - - - -

The pale-furred female frowned at the cluster of small shuttles around them while she waited. Some humans in the pack had apparently been employed upon similar models in the past, and were confident that several could fly them if the need arose. It was an assuring thing to hear, and the crafts themselves were a fair size, but they would need to take three in order to accommodate the pack. Two might be possible, assuming her kin were content with being pressed so close together, yet she suspected that pondering it was a waste of time.

She was proven correct by the human who had volunteered to check the ships; the male stood atop a nearby lift, shaking his head in annoyance. Yet another was added to the list of crafts that were useless for their escape. A round of curses were uttered by those who were growing impatient, and by the lack of reports from the other units, Sunundra figured everyone else was having similar luck as well.

To say that the defect expected to jump into the first craft they came across would be inaccurate, but after locating a cluster of ships and finding all seven to be gutted, she was starting to wonder what the purpose of the hangar was. From what they could observe, all the reasonably sized options were stripped inside-out for parts, and as interesting an idea as it was, escaping with one of the supersized freighters would only welcome an anti-ship bombardment from Iras. Needless to say, that would be less than productive—not that they had anyone on paw who was qualified to pilot something that large. She doubted there were many who could jump behind the alien controls of something several times the size of a shopping complex and seamlessly operate it.

A long exhale through her nose replaced the sigh of irritation she wanted to produce. Her anxiety was beginning to creep around the deadened sense of neutrality, and every effort wasted was yet another chance for the enemy to overwhelm those defending the passage. Putting the thought aside, she gestured for the furless biped to return, hollow clunks of metal rungs breaking the tentative silence as the human climbed back down the ladder of the maintenance equipment. The defect looked towards the larger vessels casting wide shadows in the meantime, keeping watch for anything of note or for possible signs of distress from distant pack members.

The next batch of smaller ships was too far away to blindly pursue. The silhouettes were smaller than a claw’s width from where she stood, and she wasn’t keen on the idea of walking all that way just to find yet another deconstruction yard. Of course, there was still the question of if she could make it there at all. The only thing keeping her legs beneath her was the determination to see a task done, but even that was slowly losing the battle against blood loss and injuries. True, she could push past her limits thanks to numbness dulling the pain, but it didn’t erase the damage causing it, nor did it stop more from being sustained. There was only so much longer she could keep going before everything caught up to her—a fact she hated, yet was forced to accept.

A twinge of discomfort spiked as she rolled her shoulder, the pale-furred female lost in thought about how much more the limb could take before it finally stopped responding. It had already faltered a few times, though she was able to adjust how she moved it to feign her wellness and maintain the image of a reliable leader. Barring any unexpected athletics, she could likely manage with just the one fully functional arm for the time being, but it would be best if she wasn’t made to find out if her speculation was accurate. If the pack knew how thin the thread she was hanging by truly was, then all of her authority would vanish in an instant, and she would fail her bond.

A flicker of motion in her periphery pulled her from rumination, one of her followers raising a paw in a strange request to speak. She regarded the five-digit appendage with a flat expression, then gave permission with a curt nod.

“We should check the bigger ones…?” Jean proposed, hiding her insistence behind a questioning tone before sheepishly lowering her arm. “We can still go towards the next few, but we’re not fitting everyone in just one of these, right? Even if we do find a working ship, we’ll still need to find a second. It’d be better to just focus on the ones that have enough room.”

The others in the unit exchanged glances, and although they seemed reluctant to spend even longer waiting for someone to climb the maintenance equipment to access each individual ship, they too had grown increasingly frustrated with recurrently defunct prospects.

The human noticed the judgmental looks from her Lilhun counterparts, though the confusion on her face showed she was unaware how her words might be interpreted as a challenge of authority. Sunundra ignored the social misstep, doubting it was intentional and letting the novelty of her pack being offended on her behalf subside before considering the suggestion.

It was a valid query. Should they continue to check shuttles that their number would likely know how to fly, or should they start risking even more wasted time with crafts of truly alien design? True, they might be fortunate enough to find something of sufficient size that someone could pilot, but was it worth the added periods of inactivity? Besides, it would only be more difficult to ensure that no one was left behind if they split up further. She knew from experience that corralling so many individuals was a task best avoided when possible. Her eyes wandered the group to survey their thoughts.

Syrus elected not to give an opinion, instead dedicating himself to gazing along sight lines towards the entrance of the ridiculously large room. Sunundra suspected the male was doing so because his bond would likely injure her neck from how frequently she looked over her shoulder before he opted to take up the role himself. Jean was in favour, obviously, and although the rest seemed torn, they bowed their heads in deference to the pack leader’s judgment.

The defect cycled a breath. “You raise a valid point. I suppose it would be best to adapt to the circumstances. You two—” She flicked a claw towards the tallest and most visible members. “—signal the adjacent units to ignore the personnel transports. I suspect the Union was in the process of salvaging the easily accessible vessels. We will transition to the… I would call them ‘small’ cargo ships. Regardless, they will be quicker to inspect than anything larger.”

Her order was carried out as soon as she turned away, a pair of males splitting off to pantomime the change in procedure. Others in the distance repeated the process of conveying the changes to those beyond the mess of crafts and equipment. It wouldn’t take long for the entirety of the pack to be informed.

As soon as confirmation was returned, they set out to find a broader ship that seemed promising. Locating them was more difficult than one would assume, given that the pack needed to navigate the maze of equipment and parts that were larger than most personal transport vehicles. The colossal freighters took far too long to circumvent, so they resigned themselves to losing sight of the other units while walking through the alleys created by large blocks keeping the crafts off the ground. It was the first time in quite a while that she was pleased by her shorter stature; if she needed to crouch like some others, then her collapse was all but guaranteed.

They came across a possible candidate soon enough, but Jean reiterated her concerns of how much time had passed since she last heard weapons fire. Sunundra outwardly dismissed the paranoia and argued that the enemy had charged at every opportunity thus far, yet internally…

Internally, she was worried. The search was far from expedient, and although she would rather be able to boast about her kin’s prowess in combat to quell the discontent, she had seen too many corpses in too short a time. Furthermore, the broken cared not for injury; they were just as likely to succumb to cumulative wounds as they were to be taken out by a single lucky round. This was not a legend of old being told to the small inside their dens, but a brutal, unforgiving reality. There would be no divine intervention to bless those of virtue, nor would there be a Liquid Claw to restlessly hunt the sinful until there was no more blood to be spilt. There should have been something happening by now. Forces should be charging after them, cracks of kinetic rounds pinging off the hulls of ships. Her pack should be defending themselves from the enemy, silently preparing themselves to either run towards a discovered ship, or to die taking as many of their foes with them as possible.

But…nothing? No, that was outside of her expectations, and every stretching moment that they continued without harassment was beginning to erode her confidence.

The human returned from his task, shaking his head once more. Thankfully, the next craft wasn’t too far away. The arrangement of ships allowed long corridors of clear ground on occasion, and they were able to speed up their pace without needing to navigate around thick cables. She watched as the furless male hefted himself up yet another ladder and attempted to gain access to the vessel. Succeeding, he disappeared within the confines of the metal hull, leaving the rest of the unit to remain vigilant down below.

Sunundra busied herself by checking down the long stretch of open floor for the next closest target, shoving down the unease caused by being so exposed. It was somewhat foolish to feel as if they were mere moments from being attacked—Syrus was unerring in his diligence, and he made sure to keep a visual of the entrance that the enemy would come from—but the lack of combat itched at her. Still, she chose to trust in her temporary pack, dismissing the disquieting sensation and focusing on the task at paw.

The search within the ship took much longer than before, but she supposed that the human needed to travel further to reach the helm, or perhaps he was held up by the need to override locks. Maybe he was exhausting his options before conceding that the vessel was inoperable? Regardless of what occupied him for so long, he returned, waving to catch their attention. She noticed him first, glancing up to see the verdict. Yet another useless ship, it seemed.

That was expected to a degree, but it didn’t make her any less disappointed. The irritated frown grew as she idly considered what they would do if the ‘Hangar’ ended up being more of a ‘maintenance silo.’ Would the surface be a viable place to find a ship? They would need to go through the first level, and she was already out of explosives to make an unexpected entrance, though a cargo elevator should have remained untouched. The defect pulled out the navigational terminal just in case, flicking through the various blueprints until she found the one she needed. It wasn’t much different than the other floors, save for the larger rooms and broader hallways. Except…

Armouries, mess halls, barracks…

The vague recollection of Greg mentioning a security level crossed her mind.

That very floor was above them, had unrestricted access to the elevators, and they had absolutely no sight lines with all the ships and pillars blocking their view. A shiver ran down her spine, the runaway train of thought brought to a temporary halt by shouts being echoed through the scattered groups of Lilhuns. She listened closely, straining her ears for the tell-tale signs of distress, yet only picking out enough to hear something resembling elation. Someone else had found a shuttle they could take? If so, they needed to act quickly—all this time spent being cautious was more than enough for the enemy to take advantage of the circumstances.

Sunundra turned to the male and motioned for him to—

A spray of red mist exited the human’s head, his lifeless corpse tumbling over the side of the platform. He hit the ground with a sickening thud, unmoving as crimson pooled beneath him.

Syrus’s gaze snapped to the body, then back to the same large doorway he had barely separated his attention from. Nothing. Stunned silence lingered for only the briefest of breaths while eyes snapped around, but none were able to find where the shot had come from.

She heard the crumpling form of a Lilhun behind her, but her focus went elsewhere. Specifically, she stared in the opposite direction of the entrance they had been so wary of. Something produced a small flash of light atop one of the gigantic ships in the distance, and yet another of her group was wordlessly silenced. Her muzzle opened to bark the command to seek cover, but Syrus’ voice came out first, his warning splitting her attention.

Reinforcements were coming from the entryway. The broken had been surpassed.

Security was on the first level, pouring in more foes through the opposite route.

…They were tricked, lulled into a false sense of safety while the enemy set up their counterattack. Now the pack was left with little option; ascending further was a death sentence, and a retreat back into the facility was just as lethal. Enemy forces were going to swallow them whole from either side.

They were trapped with only the hope of reaching whatever craft had been found before they were slaughtered.

And Sunundra knew what the world thought of ‘hope.’