Moloch jumped off the balcony. His armor was equipped with a small anti-grav repulsion unit that softened any landings causing the impact to be as mild as jumping down from several stairs.
He landed on his feet in a slight crouch. He had his emitter pistol up in the ready position and began moving as fast as he could towards Haru.
The Golden Lion was crouched low, as the rapidly collapsing force field had started to singe off his mane. Moloch slid to a stop at the forcefield’s instrument panel, and began the deactivation inputs.
He lurched hard to one side as he was struck by an emitter blast, and was relieved to hear the sound of his armor crinkle and smell the stink of it melt, as it absorbed the shot.
He held down the input button until the forcefield shut off with a snapping pop of electrical discharge. Moloch felt an instinctual prompting to side step once more, which he did, as another emitter shot went whistling past just missing his head.
With the forcefield deactivated Haru lifted up his head, and roared. The sound chilled Moloch to the bone. Down beside Haru, he was twice Moloch’s size and rippled with muscle. He stood up, snarling, looking at Moloch and extended his long claws, with a flick of his wrist.
Moloch held his emitter up and kept it trained on the great beast. Haru lunged with lightning speed, blurring past Moloch, to leap on a large scorpion hybrid that had come scuttling out of the darkness under the mezzanine level.
He nimbly dodged the piercing attack from the sting of the scorpion creature, but the hybrid caught his arm in its pincer, and clenched hard, trying to crush his limb in its grip. Haru roared with anger and rage, and whirled, lifting the scrabbling insectoid into a high spin and then getting both his legs under the creature he pulled back with a mighty effort, dodging the thrusts from the stinger, as the scorpion hybrid tried to drive the poisonous barb into his chest.
Haru’s combined strength and fury wrenched off the pincher and he flung it away, his legs kicking back hard against the rest of the scorpion, sending it flying off and away into the darkness that surrounded the periphery of the central den.
Two more searing emitter blasts came blazing down from the darkness above, to impact around the Golden Lion. Moloch could tell whoever was shooting at him had changed from targets to Haru. The Golden Lion stood still breathing, for a moment, not in the least bothered by the unseen sniper that was taking shots at him. He looked at Moloch.
“Thank you Centurion. I told that fool Tzreek the Legion would soon be upon him, and here you appear. I won’t forget your generosity of spirit today. Now I must be off, for I have several scores to settle with these vermin.”
Moloch nodded. “I figured, but you will not harm my Legionnaires. Now go, someone like you deserves to die on their feet, or paws, or whatever you call them.”
Haru snorted. “Feet will do well enough. There is still enough Anoekian left in me. None of you will be harmed by me. Now die well, Centurion.” He said, and with a mighty leap he was gone and off into the darkness.
Moloch could hear squeals and grunts of terror as Haru spared none of the hybrids that he found in his path. He could just imagine what an ethical review panel at the legion ziggurat would say, if they knew if he released a hybrid, from certain death but he knew in the core of his being that he had done the right thing.
He keyed the anti-grav pack on his armor and leapt into the air. The force of his leap carried him up and he sailed through the air. He grabbed the lip of the mezzanine level, and effortlessly pulled the lightweight version of himself up. Krasus and the other Legionnaires had pushed down the stairs, and had made contact with the hybrids in the tunnels on the first floor.
He was about to key the anti-grav pack and leap down again, when the sensors on his helmet pinged him with a motion alert coming from behind. He instantly ducked and spun, pivoting to the left immediately. He guessed correctly and narrowly avoided being brained by the swing of a long polearm.
A hulking red haired primate hybrid with four horns growing out of the crown of his head, and two curved tusks, slashed with a barbed hook fixed to the end of a pole, where his throat and stomach would have been a moment earlier. Instead it only connected with the armor on his back.
Moloch cried out in pain as the force of the blow shoved him to the ground. The front of his helmet impacted and skidded along the floor with a terrible screech. He rolled over and came up firing wildly. None of his shots connected, either flying to either side of the creature, or impacting on several large thick keratinous scales that it wore over its more vulnerable parts, as a type of primitive armor.
Moloch’s emitter pistol clicked up for the chamber to spin off and cool, as it needed to cycle, before it could be fired again. He drew his voidblade and sparked it up, giving it a few swings before the primate. The weapon hummed menacingly as its edge crackled with a hot yellow heat. He swung it through the air, to intimidate the hybrid for in several strokes it would make short work of the creature reducing it to a dismembered heap.
His voidblade was longer than the Legionnaires gladius, and slightly curved, intended for duels, or for fights that took place separated from the ranks of the other soldiers, where he would have room to swing it without harming his fellows.
He held his voidblade, in the ready position, his feet shoulder width apart and his knees slightly bent. Something impacted his hands. It was wet and sticky, but barbered and coarse at the same time. He felt his hands go numb. Tingles and pinpricks blossomed all over his skin. He looked over to see a chameleon hybrid with massive bulbous eyes and wet festering skin, had wedged itself into a corner of the room above him, forming a small nest with its hardened secretions that seemed to glisten all over its body. Its tongue which Moloch realized is what had struck him, wrapped around the hilt of the voidblade and wrenched it from his numb grasp, whipping it up and away to the creature's mouth. Its large eyes grew even wider, when it realized what it had done, and that there would be no way to stop what was coming next. It gave a startled croak as the voidblade impacted into its soft wet body, cutting it in half. Its tongue lolled out, still wrapped around the voidblade, as it hung limply down, from the creature's nest but unfortunately out of Moloch's reach.
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He looked back at the primate hybrid and it gave a low gravelly laugh, at Moloch’s misfortune. It surged forward swinging the weapon down, in a fearsome overhead arc. Moloch sidestepped the blow, and it came crashing down, with such an impact that the floor shuddered. With a surprising degree of agility, the ape-man pivoted and kicked out with a foot that it formed into a fist. The force of the blow sent Moloch flying through the air to land on the floor several paces away, with the wind completely knocked out of of him.
He tried to sit up and groaned. It felt like several of his ribs were broken. His emitter chamber clicked up, as it had to be spun off to disperse the excess heat. The Ape-man leapt high into the air, raising the polearm to bring it crashing down on Moloch with enough force to smash his body into a bloody pulp, like a sledgehammer smashing a satsuma.
Click! His emittered finally finished spinning off, and the cylinder clicked back into place, seating the firing crystal of the weapon back against the primary fractionator. With a desperate effort, Moloch lurched away, flinging himself to one side, and shooting a tight burst of three shots. Two of the rounds struck the hybrid’s shoulder at the site of attachment for the arm holding the polearm. Its flesh, muscle and bone began to melt away into ash, as the beast howled in pain. This caused the polearm’s trajectory to be altered slightly, and it was just enough for Moloch to be able to dodge the blow.
Now its arm hung by several ragged strips of flesh as the pole arm clattered from the creature's grasp. This seemed to only enrage the ape-hybrid more, in a quick movement with its other good arm, it ripped it's useless limb off its body, and threw it hard at Moloch, who had gotten back up to his feet and had keyed his anti-grav pack to allow him to jump, away from the Ape-man and regroup with Krasus and the rest of the Legionnaires. To be alone in the darkness, surrounded by hybrids in their own lair was suicide.
The Ape hybrid must have lost its offhand for the throw that it made with its severed limb, flew straight and true. The bloody appendage hurtled through the air and struck Moloch as he lept away. Since his mass was greatly lessened by the gravitational field of his grav-pack it caused the limb to hit him like a freight tram, knocking him off course and smashing him into the side of a column, where he careened hard and sliding to a stop on the floor, a hideous screeching sound accompanying the sparks that arced from his armor as the impact of his body armor dug a deep furrow into the floor as he slid across it.
Moloch knew now that he was going to die. Numb from the frog hybrids envenomed tongue, and battered by this implaccable ape, he knew in the next few moments his end would be upon him. “Why did I have to jump down there and try to save that hybrid? What was I thinking?” Moloch said to himself, as he coughed, and pushed himself up slowly.
The ape-creature was already upon him, in half a dozen quick strides.
It picked him up with his one good arm, lifting him back the ankle to hold him eye level with itself as it roared its festering breath into his face with a long triumphant howl.
Moloch tried to raise his emitter, but the ape-hybrid shook him so violently that his numb and increasingly unresponsive fingers could no longer hold onto the weapon and it clattered down to the floor. Black whorls and multicolored lights danced as the veins of his eyes began to pulse in his field of vision.
“Now, you die!” The hybrid roared, as it brought Moloch down to spear him through his abdomen on one of his sharp filthy tusks.
He struggled, weakly kicking and striking at the ape hybrid, resisting the creature with all the strength he had left.
As the Ape brought him down for the final blow, Moloch could hear a sound growing nearer. It sounded like running footsteps and a male shouting his warcry.
Then he heard a searing slice, as the ape-hybrid lost his other arm in one smooth stroke. Moloch fell to the floor again, but he was able to fall in a crouch, seeing his emitter pistol at his feet. He crawled around trying to snatch up the weapon, looking past the creature to see Constable Salazaar, as he ran the Ape-hybrid through with a voidblade, pulling up and separating the torso of the creature in half. It gave a final gurgling cry of anguish as it fell to its knees as Salazaar beheaded the hybrid with a single smooth stroke of the blade.
“Am I ever glad to see you, Salazaar.” Moloch gasped as he lurched to his feet, fumbling with a pouch at his belt.
“What incredible odds, that I would run up these stairs and the first thing I happen upon is a monkey-man choking the living daylights out of you. That pole-ghost was right!”
“Pole-ghost? Oh you mean, Nassim?” Moloch said, as he found an injectrix and cycled it to a large dose of vivastim and put it to his neck.
“Blue transparent guy, with the open robe, speaks in riddles?”
“That’s Nassim.” Moloch agreed, as he felt the cool rush of the vivastim coursing through his veins. In moments the feeling returned to his fingers, and he felt imbued with vigor as the pain of his wounds faded .
“Thank the light you came when you did, Salazaar. I would have been dead if you had taken a moment more to get here.”
“We both will be dead if we don’t move from here Centurion, Salazaar said, looking around. I can make out at least a dozen thermal signatures with my night shades, moving towards us in the darkness.”
Moloch went and retrieved his voidblade from the tongue of the chameleon creature, fixing it to his belt.
“Krasus has cleared the way ahead, let us not waste any time catching up with him.”
“Agreed.” Salazaar said, as they moved forward, towards the staircase.
As they reached the stairs, they saw a pair of legionnaires who had died, their bloody hands clutching at ugly red ragged wounds that wrapped around their necks. Their helmets had been pulled off and their lifeless bloodshot eyes were open and staring in a rictus of horror.
“These two must have been bringing up the rear of Krasus’ force.” Moloch said. “I wonder what attacked them?”
As Moloch said the words, he heard a strange whistling sound, moving through the air behind him.
He shoved Salazaar hard to the side and dropped into a low crouch.
Behind and above them two small tarsier-hybrids maws with filed pointed teeth, huge glowing eyes, held long poles with short scrawny arms, tried to slip nooses over their heads, in an attempt to snare them, from the darkness of an alcove, holding into the beams above with their hand-feet.
The loops of sizzling electrocord just barely missed their necks and the hybrids above cittered to one another with frustration, as they quickly tried to reel in their lines for another attempt at snaring them.
Moloch looked up with his helmet and put two searing rounds into each of their chests. They dropped their noose-poles and fell limply to the hard stone floor. Their death wails were stifled in their throats as half their upper body and throat melted away into ash.
Salazaar and Moloch did not spare them a backwards glance as they moved forward and down the hall.