Slev's breath quickened in anticipation, it took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the thermal vision. The sickly reds and oranges that crept into the corners of the lab's darkness held no answers. Just the still warm blood dripping from beakers and microscopes. Using his free hand, he slid the door the rest of the way open. He eased forward, pistol dancing from side to side, scouring the room for anything still living.
He worked his way slowly forward, using the two main tables in the center of the room for cover. Scatted glass and broken pieces of diagnostic equipment lay cold in his vision, obstructing his path. Slev stepped over an empty helmet and stopped, another door was visible on the far end of the room. But he heard the slightest shuffling noise behind a desk in the right-hand corner ahead. He skirted around to the far left along the wall and circled towards the sound.
Just as the small workstation desk came into view, he saw the slightest flash of orange movement. Slev deactivated his thermal. Instead turning on a massive beacon of a spotlight on his helm, a lithe armored bipedal form flashed towards him a sword in hand, already descending towards his chest. Automatically, he engaged his vambrace's plasma blade. Sweeping it across his body and upward. Narrowly parring the deft slash and sending his opponent's sword flying with such force that it stuck into the roof above.
Slev braced his feet and fired two powerful shots, point blank, into the black and green armored figure. A brilliant blue half dome arced out in response from his opponent's forearm. The energy shield caught both impacts, but the kinetic force lifted the figure from the ground, casting them back towards the desk. To Slev's utter shock, the figure back flipped with its momentum and landed smoothly on the edge of the desk. Already drawing a sidearm of its own with the unshielded arm.
A dark shadow eclipsed the light from the hallway for just a moment as something rushed from the laboratory and into the hall. The armored figure switched focus immediately, firing at the quickly retreating angled form. But too slowly, none of the projectiles from a small crossbow-like launcher hit the mark. Slev dashed forward firing. While his target was distracted by whatever had presumably eviscerated its companions. One, two, three massive blue flashes as the tungsten projectiles impacted the shield. This time flinging its wielder into a heap against the back wall.
Slev rushed in, slamming another magazine into his sidearm. The figure against the wall was already struggling to its feet again. Slev hammered the full magazine into his foe's shield, rinsing the room in blue white flashes. Somehow, the figure being dashed against the wall managed to fire twice. One slow-moving projectile, Slev sidestepped. the next slapped onto his mid-thigh. Then the world bloomed with pain as it drove something through his armor, inches into the meat of his thigh.
“Aghhh Fuck!” Slev screamed out, stumbling the last few steps and landing on top of his opponent.
This was going poorly; whoever this guy was, he was a damn good fighter. Slev pushed his knee into the shield and shot both arms out, grabbing the armored shoulders of his foe. He heaved with all his might, pushing the shield further down onto its wielder, until he was rewarded with a sickening crunching as the shielded arm folded under his weight.
“TELEPORT DETECTED!” Reaper warned as the figure under him suddenly disappeared from Slev's grasp.
Slev's suddenly redirected momentum tipped him into the wall with a pained grunt. "Reaper, who the fuck is that guy, and do you have any idea where he went?"
“Unknown combatant, equipment matches Aramis elite security, power surge outside indicated the anchor was on one of the shuttles.” Reaper's synthetic voice has almost a hint of concern and anger behind it.
As if to punctuate that statement, Slev heard the thrumming whine of one of the shuttles taking off from just beyond the gate. Holy shit his leg hurt. He looked down at the profusely bleeding hole, where a small disk had latched on, and then shot a rod through his armor. That would have been immediately lethal to most species in the galaxy, Slev mused. He ripped off the disk and poured a bag of coagulants directly into the wound.
Aramis huh? Slev mentally added that to an ever-growing list of real threats out here in the stars. That space ninja. Yeah, Slev decided he was going to refer to him as a ninja with a chuckle. The ninja was better trained and equipped than he was hell, if he wasn’t a human, he probably would have died twice in that fight. He pulled himself up from his seated position against the wall and fumbled through the open doorway to the next chamber. This time he stopped right at the entrance and groped blindly until he found a small pad that luckily activated the lights.
He was in a geology workshop of some kind, with samples scattered on tables and dozens of slides laid out in well-organized trays. Slev didn’t see much damage in this room. One dead technician slumped over next to a few glass cases. With a concerning number of massive slash marks across his back. Slev abruptly stopped and looked back at the glass cases.
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"Mabe, this planet isn't all bad,” Slev said with a smile, making his way towards the small row of cases.
Reaper sighed, actually sighed, before speaking, "Yes sir, I will erase the camera footage”.
“You know me so well buddy." Slev reached out and began stuffing what appeared to be uncut emeralds, rubies, and a beautifully pearlescent blue and purple stone into his waist pouch.
Slev grabbed a few more stones that looked to his untrained eyes to be gold ore. Then moved to the next chamber door. It was halfway open by virtue of being ripped partially from its sliding tracks. Rather than squeeze through, Slev slowly pried it all the way open.
This final room was a massive cavern, obviously partially mined into the side of the cliff face. While The farthest half looked natural, with sloping walls and purple-hued stalagmites. Mining stations were dotted around the edges of the cavern, with a large conveyor belt running through the center. Surprisingly, the housing was also located in here, plain white plastic tents circled around the open door. Those tents however, were slashed and shredded to the point of being unrecognizable. Slev looked out on a field of dead scientists. Cut down and partially eaten by something. Hopefully, the something that had fled when he and the space ninja started brawling.
He looked closer at the tents until he saw the scattered remains of one that had more power cables running to it than the rest. He crept through the corpse of the tent pavilion. Slev's heart hammered at every shifting stone in the distance. He had a bad feeling about this place, even worse than the obvious threats in the jungle.
He made it all the way to what he assumed was the administration tent. Without any issues, but the sense of unease kept rising. Slev started sifting through the wreckage as quickly as he dared. He was looking for literally a black armored box with a Cerberus logo and a do not open label. It took him five minutes of sorting through shards of limbs and broken equipment, but he found what he was looking for. With a heave, Slev picked up the hefty armored box. It still had a cable running into the back of it. So he yanked that free and jumped in startled horror, as an alarm began blaring from somewhere in the cavern.
Slev started edging towards the entryway. Eyes desperately scanning every inch of the cavern. He stopped as a part of the natural cavern ceiling shifted. The deep brown and grays of the roof curved and swirled into a deep purple streaked with orange. As the ceiling began to unfurl itself steadily towards the floor. The figure became visible. It looked like a ten meter tall mantis. Its chitin swirling into different colors with every inch it moved. Two sets of slashing scythes gently touched the cave floor, not far from him. Then another set of smaller scything arms, these with clawed hands, set just before the crook of the blade slipped forward. Silently, it shifted its massive frame from the ceiling to the floor below.
Its armored and angled head eyed him curiously. Six malevolent orange eyes with no pupils seemed to appraise the figure before it. Eerily, it shifted its frame closer without lifting a single one of its pointed legs from where they dug deeply into the stone. Slev held his breath, life flashing before his eyes, praying this thing wasn't still hungry. His hand slowly edged towards the remaining microgrenade at his belt, careful not to startle the avatar of death staring him down.
It struck without warning and faster than Slev's eyes could track. One of the smaller under claws shot up, and the blunt edge of the scythe arm impacted him under the armpit. He was roughly slammed all the way against the back wall with a bone-shattering impact. He limply fell to the floor next to the exit door. Slev struggled to his feet, his body screaming protests at him as reaper was trying to tell him something, he couldn’t hear it over the pounding blood and ringing in his ears.
The creature trilled in curious excitement, seeing that its prey struggled to its feet. Then it flashed into undulating purples and pinks before charging. Slev roughly threw himself through the open doorway and crawled as fast as he could. He was only one-third of the way through the room before a searing pain pinned him to the metal floor. He glanced back in horror as its scythe retracted from his calf with a sickening sucking sound.
Slev screamed and threw the grenade at the doorway, pushing his mangled body to get farther from the monster. He didn't look back when the room rattled with an explosive impact; he just kept crawling. Consciousness slowly fading, he made it to the main hallway. With weak shaking hands, he managed to grasp the doorframe and pull himself into the cleaning closet. He heaved the door most of the way closed before the world around him finally faded to sweet and painless black.
Hours later, Slev awoke with a start adrenaline flooding his system. He was alive, but everything hurt.
He took stock of his injuries reading a list reaper had floating in plain text in his visors view. It wasn't lethal, but it was pretty bad. He needed to get the hell off this deathtrap of a world. With an unsteady gait, he peeked both ways down the hall.
It looked like he had managed to cave in the hallway leading to the monster's lair itself. Nothing obvious was lurking towards the jungle either. Slev began a long and painful journey back to his ship.
It took him the better part of three hours, but between his abundance of caution and reaper's eagle-eyed scanning. They made it back to the knoll to retrieve his mangled rifle, and eventually back to the ship itself without any more fighting.
Slev immediately took off from the planet. Streaking through the atmosphere until that abomination of an ecosystem, was once again just a beautiful glittering marble hanging in his viewport.
Slev took the better part of the day to treat his wounds and thoroughly shower. He would be waiting here for a few more hours for Cerberus to send a private messenger buoy that he would upload the black box onto. With time to kill, he began unloading the various gems and ores he had collected. Deciding to just roll with the extravagant theme for now, he was placing them strategically around the ship as decorations. He hung the stunning pearlescent stone from the cockpit holo display with a chuckle.
"Just like fuzzy dice, right?” he asked himself.
The handoff went smoothly, and Slev sighed as a massive weight was lifted off his shoulders. He watched his bank account scroll back up into a healthy five digits and decided to celebrate. He made himself a rather excessive alien dinner with the ribs of some pig-like species. A half-dozen side dishes and some "wine." He carefully settled into his cockpit, juggling a plate in one hand. and stretched over to the navigation controls to begin the journey back. With the flick of a switch, the ship began slowly turning and accelerating towards the nearest transit array.
His eyes focused in on the pearlescent stone for just a moment as he sipped some wine. Then widened as he dropped his plate to grab the stone and examine it. The top, near where he had tied it, was split open. The interior now hollow and moist. Something had just hatched onto his fucking ship.