When Sean flew his damaged ship into the main hangar, he saw that the others had already arrived. There were large groups of people milling about the hangar and Sean saw Asuta and Roger down there shouting while Lira and Ash stood back and seemed to be talking with one another. Most of the Immortals shot interested glances at Ash as his eyes scanned the crowd.
Sean’s ship was the most heavily damaged. One of the other ships had some small scrapes and its windshield was cracked, so its shield must have failed there as well at some point. But overall everything seemed to have gone well. Sean landed carefully in his designated spot as Asuta took a break in herding the wandering Immortals to guide him as she held her holopad to her lips to speak to him over his ship’s intercom.
After a few more minutes, Sean landed and everyone inside unloaded to enter the main hangar. Sean shut down the ship and followed behind the group of Immortals in front of him and made his way over to where Lira and Ash were standing. It was only when he was a few steps away that he noticed that Entiru and Alvrix had followed right behind him.
Before he could turn around, Lira spotted him.
“Hey, Sean,” she said as she took a few quick steps forward and gave him a brief hug that he returned, “How did it go? Your ship looks pretty damaged. Have some trouble?”
“Yeah,” Sean said as he released her and she took a step back, “Humanoid creature threw a tree at us if you can believe it. But I dodged it in time, and we didn’t drop anyone. So it all worked out.”
Lira looked hesitant and almost said something before cutting herself off, “Oh, well good thing it worked out then,” she said, “Seems crazy seeing all these people here, isn’t it? I’ve never seen this place so crowded before.”
“Yeah,” Sean said before glancing at where Asuta and Roger were working to get the crowd to stand all in one spot and stop wandering around. To little success, as not everyone seemed to be listening to Asuta as they looked around themselves in curiosity and wonder.
“Think we should help them?” Sean asked Lira and Ash, “What’s the plan?”
“I can help,” Entiru suddenly chimed in, “Maybe they’ll listen to me given my rank in the past.”
“I’ll… Help him too,” Alvrix said as she shot a side eye at Entiru and leaned towards him slightly as he glanced at her.
She reached out and put a hand on Entiru’s shoulder before gesturing towards the crowd with her other hand. “I’ll back you up, Entiru,” she said before a playful note came into her tone, “Sir knight.”
Entiru coughed, “Er, ah. Yes, thank you Alvrix. Let’s go do that.”
The two of them walked over to the crowd and Entiru started shouting about his place in the royal guard. That caught the crowd’s attention and they started following his commands as he formed them up into lines as he stood there radiating authority. Asuta looked vaguely annoyed, but eventually let Entiru take command and seemed to direct him on what she wanted rather than trying to convince the crowd by herself anymore.
Alvrix was standing close to Entiru with her arms folded in front of her and a stern expression of what Sean was sure she meant to be intimidating. But it was clearly amateur and an act.
“Have they met before?” Lira asked Sean with a playful tone.
“What, Alvrix and Entiru? The two I came with? I don’t think so. Not more than meeting at a party one time from what I overheard.”
“Hm. Well, she’s certainly working fast then,” Lira said. Sean looked at her and raised an eyebrow.
“Give me a break,” Lira said lightly, “I haven’t got to really gossip about anyone in hundreds of years. Seems that he likes her too based on how stiffly he’s standing right now.”
Sean glanced at Alvrix and Entiru and snorted as he saw that Lira was right. Alvrix was standing quite close to Entiru and edging a little closer with little micromovements even as she stood there, her eyes darting between Entiru and the crowd.
Entiru was standing there stiffly and pointedly not looking at Alvrix, and making it clear to Sean that he was more than aware of how close she was to him.
“You’re right,” Sean said, “Look how she’s edging towards him with that hungry look.”
Lira stepped forward and grabbed his hand as they stood side by side, “Mmmh. What do you think? Love at first sight? Something about him being a knight? What’s got her so fired up?”
“You are starved for gossip,” Sean said before leaning to gently bump his shoulder against her, “Maybe it's forbidden love. They saw each other at the party and she’s been madly in love with him ever since. Unable to confess her true feelings until the end of their long imprisonment.”
Lira scrunched her nose, “You’re making fun of me,” she said flatly.
A short pause.
“Maybe his parents didn’t approve,” Lira said, “Both madly in love with each other and neither knowing it. Each pretending to not know each other until the dam holding their love breaks all at once!”
“Of course! Their forbidden love is only able to reveal itself now that they’ve both been thrown together as if by fate,” Sean replied.
Lira shot him a knowing look, but then kept speculating. Sean kept throwing more and more ridiculous theories to reply to Lira as they stood there watching the large crowd assemble into orderly lines. Even Ash joined in at one point after he seemed to understand that they weren’t being serious and just saying ridiculous things for fun.
Asuta was giving a long speech to the assembled Immortals, Lira and Sean were so carried away that they didn’t listen to Asuta as they kept whispering to each other. They only broke out of their fun as they noticed the crowd dispersing again as Asuta said some final words.
“Er, uhm,” Sean said as Asuta and Roger started walking towards them, “What’s the plan then?” He asked Asuta as she got close enough to hear.
Asuta shot him an incredulous look.
“Didn’t you just listen to my amazing speech just now?” Asuta said, “All of it was off the cuff too, a call to action to bring up morale for the troops!”
“Er, remind us?” Lira said.
“Gah. Whatever, our new guests were listening at least. They’ll all be training with our combat exosuits for a few weeks, then we’ll do some rescue missions to save some more of the Immortal trapped by the Endless Flesh.”
“Is that possible?” Lira asked, “How would we find them if the Endless Flesh burrows underground again?”
“Don’t worry,” Asuta said, “I’ve got some scanners for any tunnels they build. You saw that the creatures holding the Immortals inside of them need a bit chamber for them to grow into. My scanner can find that and give us the right route right through the tunnels there. And detect even the tiniest motions underground in case they try to hide from us.”
“Can we afford to wait for training?” Ash asked, “Would now not be the best time to strike when the Endless Flesh has not had time to develop any new variants to counter us?”
“Yeah, well…” Asuta said, “We’ll work on it. Do our own raids. We’re all experienced enough with combat for this kind of thing. But most of these people we picked up don’t even have any combat training at all it seems. Out of the fifty, only that Entiru and the eight others who were part of this ‘Royal guard’ know how to handle themselves. Everyone besides them will just shoot each other by accident and panic if we throw them out there right now even with them inside of the combat exosuits. They’ll just get in the way if we used them as they are now without any training at all.”
“What about the ones left? Entiru and the trained ones?” Sean asked.
“They’ll be training the others as best as they can,” Asuta said, “Keeping order and make sure everyone’s working hard while the rest of us are busy. I saw your ship, Sean. Thing looks completely scrapped. What ended up doing that?”
Sean quickly described the humanoid giant with the mantis head that had thrown the tree at his ship.
Asuta nodded.
“Okay, that’s not too bad,” she said, “Sounds like some heavy weapons should be able to take them down. Alright. Everyone, break for four or five hours or so. Take a shower, relax for a bit. Then meet back up at Armory D43546 and we’ll go on our first raid. Agreed?”
They all nodded and dispersed. Lira and Sean took showers and then both took a power nap after setting an alarm.
After waking up, they went to the armory and met up with everybody.
“Ash? Are you sure?” Lira asked after they arrived, “I know you want to help, but this will be dangerous…”
“I’m sure,” Ash said firmly, “I will not be left behind. We go together.”
Lira hesitated and then nodded, “Okay, Ash. But be careful. I just worry. We both do.”
Sean nodded, “We’ll be right there with him, Lira. No one left behind this time.”
“My weapons are much improved from last time,” Ash said while nodding, “We’ll be fine.”
“Alright,” Asuta said to interrupt, “Now that that’s dealt with… We’ll go in two groups. All of you in one group, and me in the other. I’ve sent a list of targets to your ship already. Everybody but Ash suit up in the exosuits and arm yourselves.”
“Will you be fine on your own?” Roger asked. Asuta gave him an unimpressed look.
“Er, well. I mean, will we be okay without you?” Roger asked.
“Yeah, just stick together,” Asuta said, “The ship you’ll be using is one of my most advanced combat models. It’ll be able to take out anything that breaches the surface for as long as you need it to. And give you the scans of the tunnels so you know which way to go.”
“Are you going to be using a combat exosuit too?” Lira asked, “What if you get in trouble or it fails?”
“Ah, you cuties are all so worried about your sensei!” Asuta said, suddenly shifting from the more serious and no nonsense tone she’d been using ever since the Endless Flesh had arrived and Emily had left to repair the planet destroying ship to a playful one.
“Don’t you worry about me,” Asuta said, “I’ve got a special power armor that I use for combat. It takes special training to use, so you’re best to stick with the standard ones for now. But I’ll be just fine. Now all of you get suited up, I’ll give you options for weapons and then go get suited myself.”
All of them but Ash and Asuta entered their combat exosuits covered in the heavier plating. Sean’s body felt lighter as the armored exosuit began increasing his strength and the helmet closed to seal him inside.
Asuta went around and checked everything before nodding.
“Alright, weapons!” she said after she was satisfied, “Let’s arm all of you now. I’m sure you’re going to love all of the shiny toys I’m about to give you.”
— — —
Sean looked into the open hole in the floor in front of him as the air rushed down below. The ship vibrated slightly as the lasers of the ship kept firing to kill the members of Endless Flesh emerging from the ground in waves of dozens or more at once or charging in from all sides in groups of twos and threes across the open grassy plains.
The ship that Asuta had ushered them into an hour ago was strange. It was like a floating fortress. It was square at the top, but sloped down to a round sphere at the bottom now that the landing gear had retracted and they were floating above the nest of the Endless Flesh.
Concealed within each of the corners of the rectangular top was a single heavily protected engine firing to hold them in the air. The rest of its exterior was bristling with weapons, mostly laser and energy based weapons. But there were three or four longer guns on the top and bottom of the ship that had physical metallic rounds meant to take out more well armored enemies.
The ship was bulky, with even the three of them in exosuits and fully armed as well as Ash able to easily fit in the main cabin in the center of the heavily protected ship. There was a panel on one end that let them direct where the ship would go, but it wasn’t truly piloting. They ordered the location the ship should be, and it automatically would travel there and hover there on its own.
The whole time they were conducting this raid on the Endless Flesh, the ship would remain hovering here and holding off the enemies on the surface, firing on them automatically.
Which brought Sean back to the hole into the open air in front of him. He took a deep breath before taking a step forward and letting himself fall down. There was a moment of freefall before the harness and rope attached to the inside of the ship caught on the mechanism and started slowing his fall. He landed on the ground, his heavy weight of the suit sending him sinking slightly into the ground. The rope on Sean’s back released and retracted back into the hip above. With a simple radio signal from their suits the ship would lower the rope again and reel them back up after they were done.
Lira, Roger, and Ash quickly followed after Sean, touching down and holding their weapons aloft. It was time to enter the nest.
Sean eyed the three dimensional display of the scanned map of the tunnels below them in the corner of his heads up display.
Sean walked forward and walked into the crater blasted open by the ship above them which was still firing its weapons into the distance even now. At the sides of the crater a tunnel was revealed which had been completely exposed by the giant crater that Sean was walking down into, his weapon held at the ready.
All four of them walked into the tunnels, Sean taking the lead.
It took two minutes before the attacks started. The soil in the wall to Sean’s right started to shift and bow inwards and he swiveled the wide nozzle of his rifle like weapon and fired before the massive emerald beetle even emerged. A searing blast of flames shot out from the end of his weapon and washed over the beetle before it could react as it burst out of the wall. The flames were so bright, that Sean’s helmet automatically filtered out some of the brightness so that he could see properly as he cursed and flinched from the sudden blast of light.
The beetle only twitched twice as Sean kept blasting it with his flamethrower for a few seconds before it went still.
Sean stopped firing and waited for a moment to make sure that it was dead before stepping over it and continuing deeper into the tunnels.
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“There’ll be more where that came from,” Roger said grimly as he adjusted his grip on his own flamethrower.
“Remember, these things use antimatter to fuel these flames,” Sean said, “If the warning light goes red after it’s damaged, then toss these things as far from you as you can. We can use it as an antimatter grenade in the worst case I guess.”
“We know, Sean,” Lira said from behind the helmet of her exosuit, “Let’s just go fast. People don’t call these things the Endless Flesh for nothing.”
— — —
“Ash!” Lira shouted. Sean turned his head from where he was scorching the tunnel in front of him to push forward through the press of emerald mantis and beetle swarm pressing at them relentlessly as they pressed forward.
Five of the mantis’ had breached through Roger where he used his own weapon to fight off the portion of the swarm flanking them from behind. Ash reached out and sliced it in half with one of the sharp blades emerging from his forearms even as the tentacles on his back continued firing pinpoint lasers to support Sean and Roger with pinpoint strikes from any other of the insects that grew close to them. The blades of the mantis’ only slightly scored the metal of Ash’s body with their attacks, but the damage and scratches on both Ash and the rest of their armor was steadily accumulating over time.
Sean kept jogging forward and saw the ceiling beginning to rain dirt and bow downwards. Lira raised her weapon and fired her weapon just as the ceiling caved in and dozens of mantis’ leapt down on all of them from above.
Sean kept pressing forward as he saw Lira send a plume of flames upwards into the newly revealed tunnel above them. She reached to her belt and pulled out one of her grenades. She drew her arm back even as three of the mantis’ crawled over her armor and attempted to strike through it with their bladed arms and jaws. She tossed the red painted grenade up into the hole above them even as more mantises rained down from above.
Before the first grenade even went off, Lira reached down and retrieved another red grenade from her side and twisted and tossed it through the hole above them to the other side of the tunnel above.
Both grenades exploded one after another, filling the tunnel above them in a wave of liquid napalm flame in both directions that sent the swarm above chittering and screeching in pain. A blast of napalm blasted directly down from the hole above them and washed over the whole group.
Ash turned his body and folded his tentacles behind his back so they would be protected from the flames.
After a moment, the flames washed past them and caused the mantises clinging to them to fall to the ground, twitching as they tried to recover from their severe burns.
Sean turned forward and kept firing his flamethrower as he moved. He checked the suit and saw that the temperature was still within decent levels. He didn’t have to worry about his suit overheating just yet. They were almost through to the central chamber, things going mostly smoothly so far despite a few scares or sudden ambushes like the one that Lira had just swiftly dealt with.
After a few more minutes and Lira dealing with another two groups attempting to burst out of the walls to the sides, they reached the central chamber. A massive cave filled with complete darkness just like how Sean remembered it.
Sean saw a similar titanic grub as last time sitting there motionless on the far side of the chamber.
“Here I go!” Ash shouted as he raised both of his arms. His forearm blades retracted and after a moment the pair of heavy duty lasers took their place. The newly revealed lasers glowed brightly even as Ash’s tentacles swiveled to face forward. Lira turned to join Roger to fight off the swarm charging towards them from behind while Sean fought off the stragglers coming at them from within the massive chamber itself.
With an electric crackle, Ash fired all of his lasers at once at the motionless grub on the other side of the chamber. The creature squealed and jolted as if surprised at the sudden attack. Ash continued the assault by his lasers and the grub only flailed for a few moments before going still.
The whole group pushed forward, the swarm attacking them undeterred by their killing the thirty foot long grub.
Ash focused his lasers on the dead creature’s midsection and carved a long line in it until it split open and its guts started spilling onto the floor.
Several somethings squirmed within the pile of gore, and Ash quickly turned his tentacles lasers to firing on all of them indiscriminately. When the group reached the body of the grub, only one of the creatures was still moving. Sean brought his flamethrower to bear and fired into the organs even as he internally winced.
He’d wait to carefully extract the Immortal from the pile of organs without hurting them… But who knew how long that would take? Every second counted for this. This was not the only nest of the Endless Flesh, and they worked to support one another. Who knew how long it would be before something appeared that they or the flying fortress above couldn’t?
After a few seconds, Sean’s flamethrower carved through and shriveled the wet flesh covering the remaining squirming creature. He stopped his flame as soon as the last bit of the flesh shriveled away revealing the naked woman beneath.
“Lira,” Sean said as he turned and started burning the few insects that had gotten closer to them within the chamber while Sean had been focused on burning the Immortal free.
Lira came forward and reached forward and with the strength of her exosuit grabbed the woman and pulled her out of the insect goop. The woman thrashed and screamed but calmed down after Lira started speaking with her. Lira slung the Immortal over her shoulder facing backwards. Lira held the no longer thrashing woman in place with one hand while the other held her flamethrower. Lira slapped a clothing band on the woman’s wrist and pressed the button so after a second the Immortal’s body was covered again as the clothing band did its work.
They all turned and started running back out of the nest to retrace their route in, this time with Roger taking the lead while Sean covered their retreat.
With how many of the insects they had taken out on the way in, you’d expect the way out to be easier. But the fighting was just as fierce if not more than their way in. The woman over Lira’s shoulder watched with wide eyes as the four of them carved through the enraged insect swarm with ruthless efficiency, nearly at a jog as they moved back up the snaking tunnels to the surface.
The swarm seemed to sense that they were taking the woman away from them after saving her. They threw their bodies into the flame in a blind rage as the group continued upwards, even more enraged than they had been when they had been fighting their way downwards.
But the swarm was too weak to stop them, and they all emerged on the surface with nothing but a few deep scratches on their exosuit armor and Ash’s chassis. And a traumatized woman that had unfortunately had to be burned and clawed at by the creatures as Lira did her best to keep the swarm of the Endless Flesh steal her back and drag the woman back down into the depths.
They stood there on the surface and took a few steps back to a clear area as the shadow of the ship above shrouded the area in a deep shadow.
The swarm of creatures kept pouring out of the tunnel behind them, but the lasers of the ship above carved them to bits as soon as their bodies left the shadow of the tunnel. The ship above was still firing over the horizon with its weapons, even the heavy projectile cannons booming one after another even as the group stood there in the open space.
With a short signal from Sean to the ship above them, five cables dropped down to them from above.
They quickly shrugged into the attached harnesses at the ends of the ropes and clicked them closed around their exosuits. Lira shifted her grip on the Immortal so they were standing next to each other and the metal gauntlets of Lira’s exosuit was holding the Immortal under the armpits in a firm grip.
Lira went first, her rope retracting with a harsh whine from above them as she was drawn into the bowels of the ship above them like the tongue of a beast retracting and swallowing her into its depths.
Sean shook his head as Roger was drawn up next. He’d spent too long down there fighting in the Endless Flesh hive. No need for morbid thoughts like that.
Ash went until finally Sean was drawn upwards. As soon as he was inside, the open hatch below closed again. The new Immortal was looking around curiously and asking Lira questions about what was happening.
Sean walked over to the monitor and watched the screens. Ash took control of their flight path and started tapping at his own panel and the floating fortress began smoothly moving back to base.
Sean had wondered in the beginning why they couldn’t do multiple raids in one go…
Now he knew why.
In a roughly circular ring around with a radius of miles from where the flying fortress had been hovering above them was a wall of insect bodies nearly ten feet high. The walls of dead bodies had a long slope on the back end to form a strangely bowl like shape of the whole formation with the center of the bowl where their ship hovered. The land beyond the walls of bodies was a churning mass of insect bodies writhing and charged as they all swarmed with single minded purpose towards their position.
All of the insects rushing above the steep slope of the outside of the wall of bodies were blasted with a laser blasting from the flying fortress within seconds, falling dead and joining the growing pile one by one.
Even as Sean watched, a hole was blasted through the wall of bodies as one of the giants with mantis heads kicked a gap in the wall as it threw bodies to the side with its strength and started walking forward as it worked to widen the opening.
Hundreds of the smaller creatures swarmed in behind the larger one and spread out to exploit the sudden gap it created. Several lasers from the ship struck the giant’s body at once, but while it recoiled in pain and flinched, it remained focused on its task as it let more and more creatures break through to charge towards the flying fortress unimpeded.
The large cannons below boomed and an instant later, a portion of the giant’s shoulder was struck by the metal slug at high speed, sending the creature stumbling to the side before recovering its balance with a massive bleeding hole in its chest.
But the creature was still not dead and it kept moving on its task. The cannons boomed again. The creature fell to the ground as another round hit it. But it had survived the shot, if only barely. Crawling on the ground now, draped over one side of the walls of bodies and still pushing with its legs to widen the gap it had formed.
The cannons boomed one more time and the creature went still for the final time as the final strike ripped into its side and caused it to finally slump to the ground dead as it lost too much blood.
The flying fortress was now moving back towards home base, letting the swarm behind get closer while carving a wider swath of destruction directly in front of it.
They reached the edge of the carnage after two minutes as the flying fortress kept laying waste on the insects who dared to stand in its way.
It took another three whole minutes of flying before they reached the edge of the thick bodies of the dead swarm that had been cut down by their heavily armed ship. Beyond that invisible lines were only the occasional scattered body in threes and fours where they had been in their path.
The Endless Flesh wasn’t truly infinite. Sean changed the view to show the shifting mass of the swarm charging after them from behind, stretched from horizon to horizon it seemed like it was. But despite everything, the swarm was slow and even the flying fortress was rapidly outpacing them with its flight.
It only took another five minutes before they finally lost sight of the swarm behind them and Sean let out a sigh of relief.
No way that many would attack them each time. That… that was too many… Right?
Hopefully Asuta was doing alright on her own…
— — —
“Whoooo hooooo!” Asuta yelled in exhilaration as the clawed feet of her custom armor dug into the hard soil of the tunnel floor beneath her. It had been so long since he’d taken this thing for a spin.
The wall of the tunnel bowed inwards as one of the emerald backed beetles prepared to burst through to attack her. She felt the heavy bank of antimatter power systems rev up on the thick section of plating on her back.
She opened the mouth of the suit. It wasn’t actually her mouth, but beneath the helmet was a hinged portion reaching halfway down her neck. It made the suit look like her head was recessed into her chest, but Asuta thought it was worth the tradeoff.
Asuta opened her mouth as the tracking software from the helmet scanned her face to match the suit's motions to her face. And then… She started blowing, and bright flames came blasting out of the open ‘mouth’ of her metal power armor.
She didn’t kill all of the creepy crawlies that burst out of the wall alongside the emerald beetle, but her flames were enough that she was able to agilely dash past them before they could manage to stop her.
She kept going, the swarm too slow to catch her as she breathed fire whenever something was almost about to block her way forward.
After a while she reached the final chamber with a forty foot grub laying there motionless, slowly growing in size as it fed on the Immortal contained within its body.
Even as Asuta rushed inside, she eyed the disgusting creature. She’d forgotten how gross these things looked up close…
Asuta flexed her hands and the five long sharp and curved claws at the ends of her fingers.
Before the swarm behind could stop her or the grub could fully wake itself up, Asuta rushed forward at full speed. The grub stirred as it sensed her charge and rolled over to face its head towards her.
She stopped a short distance from the creature as the grub silently inspected her, seemingly confused about her presence. She raised her leg and brought her clawed foot down on an angry member of the swarm charging her, crushing it into paste.
Asuta could tell from a change in the grub’s body somehow that it was enraged. It let out a massive screech of booming sound that caused Asuta to take a half step back even in her power armor.
The grub opened its jaws and its head darted downwards and closed around Asuta, leading to her being swallowed down its throat. Asuta smiled within her armor. They fell for it every time…
Once she was past the esophagus and within the creature’s main chamber, she flexed the claws on her hands and diverted some of the suit's power to them. She waited for a few seconds as an electric buzz filled the air and her claws started letting out light as bright arcs of electricity started flashing between them.
Just when the electric crackles and hum grew to a crescendo, Asuta lashed out and carved a long stripe out of the fleshy walls around her.
Immediately all the electricity in her claws rushed out in a massive burst of electricity into the grub around her.
The whole body spasmed at once, throwing Asuta from her feet and tumbling around. But she didn’t let up, slicing and dicing with her electric claws and breathing fire from her suit’s jaws. She even got a few good kicks in with the clawed feet of the suit too as she was tossed around every which way as the grub thrashed in pain.
After a short time, the grub finally went still as Asuta’s flames and electricity finished it off. She quickly navigated through its insides and killed the flesh harvesting creature that attacked her as soon as she entered the room with the captured Immortals.
Huh. There were two of them, both men. Well, this should be interesting.
The two naked men stared at her with wide eyes and started asking her rapidfire questions, but she ignored them. She used the strength from her power armor to pull them from the thick goop in the walls that they were trapped inside one after the other.
Before they could react, Asuta slung both men over her shoulders, holding one in place with each hand. Mmmmhhh. This was making her think dirty thoughts. Bad Asuta, stay on mission.
She ignored the men’s shouting as she moved back to the grub’s throat and got on her knees and started carefully crawling her way back outside again.
The fleshy walls of the esophagus pressed in on the three of them as Asuta crawled forward until they spilled back out into the cave.
A group of insects was gathered around and they stared down at her in her armor for a moment as she rolled out from the dead grub’s throat. But then their little brains finally registered who she was and as one they all charged to attack her at once again.
She opened her mouth and breathed out and panned her head to the side, adjusting her grip on the men so they wouldn’t be in her way as she breathed flame.
After the first surge was defeated after a few seconds, she started moving again, rushing back through the tunnels and rushing back as quickly as she had come in.
Asuta reached the surface, still ignoring the two men she was holding. She sent a signal to her ship hovering above her while cloaked in an invisibility field.
The shimmering distortion above turned off and revealed Asuta’s sleek ship that had been waiting for her. She ran and dodged around as the swarm of insects covering the ground around her all tried to attack her at once. But with so many, they interfered with one another and only a few actually managed to land any attacks on her.
Her ship got low enough that it was almost time, so Asuta lowered herself into a crouch and opened her suit’s mouth again, spun in a circle and breathed out more flame to clear a small circle around herself from the swarm.
Her ship launched something from its base as the harness automatically fastened itself around her suit. Her ship kept moving at high speed, pulling out of its quick dive to fly back into the sky again.
Asuta’s feet were lifted off the ground as her and her power armor were pulled upwards by the trembling cable and harness. The two men with her screamed in fear as the cable began trembling violently as it started to retract and pull her upwards. And the ground rapidly flew away below them as her ship kept flying high into the sky.
Asuta saw a few of the giants that Sean had described trying to throw trees or boulders at the ship, but their throws weren’t nearly strong enough to get even close as Asuta’s ship rapidly flew out of range before their projectiles even left their hands.
The cable finished drawing Asuta and her armor up through the open hatch in the floor and she hung there swinging for a moment dangling from the wire from the center of the cabin. But then the hatch below her closed with a loud clunk and the sound of the rushing wind around them disappeared.
The harness released and Asuta’s power armor dropped to the floor with a heavy bang. She released her tight grip on the two men and set them on their feet.
She stood there and admired them for a bit through the visor of her suit as they stared back at her blankly.
“So, are you going to answer our questions now, or…” One of the men asked.
Asuta shook her head to clear away her thoughts, she couldn’t let out steam that way when Emily was around. When they were near each other it could only be them, Asuta had promised Emily that. And she wouldn’t betray Emily for anything in the galaxy. Ugh, and she had just been creeping on these guys, she had just realized. Coming out of all that fighting and combat had just gotten her so excited she hadn’t even thought about what she was doing…
“Sorry, sorry. Here, there’s a bin to your right,” Asuta said quickly, “Just put on the wristband and hit the center button and it’ll cover you in clothes.”
The two men looked down at themselves, appearing to have forgotten that they were naked in all of the excitement. They rushed to fumble on the clothing bands and the nanites rippled over their bodies to cover them again.
Asuta sent a command to the ship through her power armor and it began rapidly speeding back to home base. She’d probably be able to do five or six raids in the time the rest of the crew could do one.
Speed and stealth were far more effective than guns blazing heavy fortress method that they were using. But Asuta wanted all of Emily’s friends to be safe, and any mistake in the method Asuta had just used would lead to their capture by the Endless Flesh. Or the destruction of Ash, which Asuta was sure would devastate Emily just as much as it would everyone else…
“Oh, questions right?” Asuta said, “Right, so ask away. We’ve got ten minutes and then you’ll have a whole group of people to talk to.”
“Ah, so…” the man who had spoken before asked, “Who are you and where are we? What’s going on with these clothes? And what is that beast that swallowed us so long ago? Do you know how long we were in there?”
“You really start with the easy questions, don’t you?” Asuta said lightly, “Okay, so let’s start from the very beginning…”