A degeneration cannon was an ugly thing, nearly never used by Humans because it used Nano to fire and forced any Nano it came in contact with to mutate and denature, making it impossible to harvest. It also took an outrageous amount of energy to fire the cannon at all.
Being the Head of an ancient Clan meant knowing things. Especially about weaponry.
Clan Head watched as the Force Shields blocked a series of rapid, lower power shots, searching for gaps. Finding none, the fire stopped.
A few warnings sounded out from Sentries.
The overcharged beam hit a Force Shield and the weighty green impact stuck against the shield and seeped into the Bearer's arms. The Clan Trooper held onto the shield as long as possible before they and the rest of his body mutated. The tumors and growing masses built up in his hands and arms for a few seconds before the rest of his body expanded and burst.
They had to take out the beam.
"Cut off the arms before it spreads." They were already down two Troopers before they started chopping off the mutating flesh and sealed the ends with Medjel. It briefly delayed but, did not stop the mutations.
“Clan Head Lee, Junior Monitor Yoseh wishes to report about the cannon.”
“I know it is a degeneration cannon. I already know that.”
Leanne stopped herself from speaking as she thought, her high voice distributing orders on automatic; she wasn't sure how to respond, so she didn't. She left it to the early-middle aged man with blue-pigmented skin.
“Monitor Yoseh I sincerely hope you have good news.”
His stare of silent reproach overshadowed Yoseh’s mumbling reply.
“You had better speak up Junior Monitor Yoseh, it's past time you've found your voice.” He remembered this one. He woke up just into adulthood and naturally fit into the Monitors. He was weak but useful.
“Ah uh, apologies Clan Head. The, as you called it, degeneration cannon cannot be stopped by cutting off the affected limb.”
“Perhaps Junior Monitor, you would like to test this conclusion? I still don’t see how you are telling me anything I don’t already know.”
The Junior Monitor marshaled his courage as he flinched from the latest beam shot. “The cannon mutates Nano at the quantum level…”
Clan Head knew what this meant, as someone with highly-aspected Nano, the cannon would be especially dangerous to him, “it will affect all the aspected Nano in a person’s body regardless of where it is.”
“Precisely, Honored Clan Head. Your wisdom knows…”
“Quiet. You’ve done well, find other ways to distinguish yourself and you will be rewarded.” Clan Head Lee left out the ‘in this life or the next.’ No reason to ruin the boy's hope for reward.
Monitors were useful, if a bit tiresome, their studies spread from knowledge to Skills and Mods related to manipulating technology and energies.
Even though the high-powered shots still punched through it gave them enough time to reform the shield wall again. He ordered the rest of the column to advance behind the shields.
They had finally reached maximum range to get an IR lock-on the Thermo-Electric missiles. They waited for another beam then fired simultaneously. The missiles shot forward; one impacted into the wall as it tried to turn around. The other circled the surface of the wall in a tight circle. They were forced to stop as they caught up to the explosion.
They had burned 3 missiles, the third managed to take out the cannon. Clan Head Lee was not satisfied about half of their stockpile being used so soon.
Their battle-group had lost 32 men and women from those that had held the Force Shields. They had lost a few more to the unending crabs that flowed into their rear.
He looked around and saw the zeal in the eyes of the Clan’s people. Of his people.
They just needed orders.
He directed the entire column ahead at maximum possible speed.
Now that they were moving at a rapid clip he could feel morale meet determination. Leanne broke through.
“Clan Head… do you hear, feel a buzzing?”
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They didn't stop, neither did the traps. Instead they looked more and more complex as he Bashed some sort of ancient looking, multi-armed robot into the wall. It hadn’t even started doing anything but he didn't want to find out.
He heard another cry cut off mid-scream somewhere behind him. A pad opened on the floor and ceiling and a dull red beam connected from floor to ceiling melted another Human into dust.
As he tried to think about how many they had lost so far, he felt the aim of the laser and of Yuma next to him and shot out his arm to shield Yuma from a thick, thumb-width laser that swept past. She fired around the constant flow of disk-like blades fired one after another from some sort of automatic catapult far down the corridor.
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“Shit Yuma,” she raised an eyebrow at him but didn’t stop trying to get her bullets into the mechanism itself. “Have you noticed the longer we take the more things it comes up with?” He kicked the remains of the robot as he steadily tried to work his way down the Run. “I didn’t see anything like this robot until we started to slow down.”
He felt her nod next to him.
Now that he had brought it up, she had noticed it. She cursed herself for missing it. The longer they took, the more complicated, and dangerous, the traps would get.
There was a difference between noticing things and connecting those dots together.
Jack didn’t pay attention to any of her internal criticism as the laser opposite of the disk catapult fired off a jagged, randomized sweep of its laser. He managed to prevent it from breaking past him into the group but took the end of the beam to his left shoulder.
Jack looked behind him and anxiety started to spark deep in his gut.
Each person behind him was trying to dodge blasts of fire, streams of some sort of super acid, conventional bullets that ricocheted even when they missed, darts that he didn’t catch the end result of, types of energy and projectiles that he couldn’t recognize; traps were firing from all sides. Not to forget the fresh crabs coming up their rear all while everyone was trying to stay somewhat behind him to they weren’t carved up by whatever was coming down from the front.
The growing defenses and projectiles meant that sooner rather than later, they’d eventually get past him and start really cutting into their numbers.
He accented his forwards pace by dodging forwards and the laser that tried to catch his feet caught on the bottom of the shield instead. Losing feet here would be as good as dead. He felt a faint charge up ahead and another laser popped out of the wall, his Affinity saving his ass again.
He kept the Zappa flowing between charging himself, shaking it as fast as possible, and trying to fire off small balls of electricity from the end of it. His subpar Dexterity wasn’t doing him any favors with his aim.
He sprinted towards the first laser now, shield first. He barely managed to beat it to the punch, he could sense the electrical charge behind it as it was building up charge. He launched a far-zapp ahead of him and managed to catch the edge of the mechanism.
They couldn’t just leave the turrets disabled, they would just activate again. That had cost them a few already.
“Make sure someone takes out this,” before he finished his sentence a figure leapt forward in a flip and sliced it out of the wall. They both continued to Run.
“Who’re you?”
“Tule. You are Jack, correct?”
“Pretty sure,” he picked up the pace and "Tule" kept up alongside him. He blocked the next laser that shot out of the new turret down the hall. Its pattern was even more randomized. He was having trouble catching the whole beam.
The problem with the lasers is that they got way more dangerous the closer he got to them. At their max range he only had to protect vitals and maybe even then only the ones located on his head. Close up? It’d cut right through his chest and the next 5 torsos behind him.
His mind was whirling, a cold calculation suddenly throwing its support into the effort. Death was given out entire too freely here to hold back.
“Jump on my shield after the ne…” the laser cut again and made him flinch, it aimed right for his eye as if to make a point, “now, get on my shield!” He angled it back but Tule was frozen, he had been caught off guard by the sudden shift in conversation as well as by the electrical pressure trap that set off beneath him.
Jack changed the plan on the fly, he had thought about doing something like this with Yuma earlier. He placed his shield against Tule’s back and Bashed him forwards, taking his place on the trap.
The deep line the laser had left on his shoulder healed in the electricity as Tule found himself tumbling forwards. He tucked, rolled, and transferred the momentum into a sprint. As the distance closed the laser fired, he flipped off the wall to narrowly dodge it. Tule landed gracefully and the laser exploded behind him.
Tule met his grin as Jack continued past. Not bad.
He heard a gurgling gasp cut off somewhere behind him, shit, that’s another.
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Shit fuck shit fucking shit. She hated rearguard, she led her own damn Cryo-Pirate crew so she would never have to run rearguard. A unwelcome memory tried to surface, as if she had caused it to happen by breaking her promise to herself. The memory and emotions that tried to rise with it were violently shoved back down as she redoubled her fire towards a stream of crabs that had created a bridge of bodies across an acid puddle. Shit, she hated rearguard.
She took the moment her latest flurry of hard-light shots had given her, to catch her breath as she continued running backwards. It didn’t buy her much time. She felt a tap on her right shoulder and dodged to the right, a flame shot out and a few crabs were cooked just a few feet from her.
The crab situation wasn’t nearly as bad as it was before. Still she had preferred it when she only had to worry about crabs and not being exploded, or melted, or lasered, or somehow fucked up by some random bullshit.
The crabs were still building up and coming on strong, because of course they were, but the crab situation was still somewhat better.
Her fucking luck though, the “crab situation” was only getting better because the “trap situation” was getting way fucking worse.
She had long given up on her shifting stance because she couldn’t run fast enough while in it. The problem with that was that her shooting stance was the only way she had to dodge traps on her own, she didn’t have enough Senses, IQ, and Agility to look, perceive, and dodge them all outside of her Stance.
The traps were hidden until they weren’t and then they were launching a stream of acid to rearrange your face.
She was grudgingly impressed with the woman keeping pace behind her, her Skills and Mods had something to do with cellular regeneration or replacement, she didn’t really have time to consider the difference. She also had good Senses, reactions, and warnings that had been keeping her alive from whatever new hell tried to stop her from her assault on the crabs.
Whatever it was, the woman’s Mods were a great combination with her hard-light cannon that was busy consuming her cellular life-force. Still even with her help, Kala’s hard-light repeater was taking a, currently irreplaceable, toll on her; new cells didn’t have the same life-force to give as mature cells.
By this point she was pretty sure that her squad was only her, Uller, and maybe Mikey. She wasn’t sure if Kensey was still alive. It looked like his lightning gun was trying to help her but she didn’t know if it was still him using it or not.
She had known when Mik had bitten it, she recognized the ancient watch he had proudly worn on his wrist before it joined the rest of him in a puddle of melted goo, flesh, and Nano. There was also Kensey who she hadn’t seen or heard from in a while.
She didn’t want to look to the front to check. She had tried but she just couldn’t. A fear had wormed into her gut that as soon as she turned around to look, she would die.
She trusted her gut and continued to pour fire into the crabs that were squeezing by the bottomless pits, the acid baths, the flames, the electricity and other energetic reactions that she didn’t recognize.