Dozens of rockets cut through the water, a wide spread that should be impossible for anything to avoid. With this, we could kill it, or at the very least seriously wound it. Already I felt my heart hammer in my chest, the excitement for the kill rushing through my veins. The Determinators, even with their simpler minds, shared my enthusiasm as the first of the rockets hit our target.
Flesh ruptured with an agonizing squeal that vanished in the ensuing explosions. Several missiles hit, far more exploded nearby, shredding the terrain around it and blasting it with pressure waves, shrapnel, and bursts of superheated water. The Angler vanished amidst the plume of explosions, and for a heartbeat the chaos was absolute.
My stomach dropped as suddenly the water pulled me inexorably forward. I didn’t even have a moment to wonder at what was happening before the Determinators around me were pulled down, a sudden vortex of rushing water devouring the surroundings greedily. Countless tons of water overhead pressed us down, what had at first appeared to be solid ground beneath us collapsing inwards from the force. I grit my teeth, feeling my suit strain as rocks clattered against me. A pair of Determinators smashed against me and sent me tumbling as we all desperately attempted to gain some kind of control over our sudden pressurized descent.
There was no controlling this, however, and the moment I crossed the threshold into the hole, it felt like I was fired out of a cannon. Water pressure alone peeled away layers of protective coating over my armor, scraping down to the metal. In moments I smashed into something hard, feeling something fracture beneath my weight, then the rattle as I bounced off of the ground. Red light and warnings chimed into my awareness, but I quickly shut them out. I tucked myself up into a tight ball as I was thrown through.
In that fraction of a second I gathered as much information as I could. The first thing I realized was that this area was a massive cavity beneath the sea-floor, hundreds of meters wide and far. Huge columns rose from the floor, several of which were now shattering with the forces that suddenly acted upon them. Volcanic material spewed from the cracks, and for one despairing moment I feared I was sitting on some kind of magma vein.
However, there was no river of fire here, but something far more alien instead. Writhing, transparent vines like pale anemones grew everywhere, even without water. I could see several weathering the assault of the now in-rushing ocean, though those closest to the exponentially expanding hole were shredded to pieces near instantly.
I didn’t have more time than that to look around, though, and as I spun through the air I twisted, hoping that my suit wasn’t breached. If it was, I would be dead the moment the water finished filling the cavern. A small city could fit in here, but that would mean nothing to the ocean above. This cavern would fill in seconds.
A ledge rushed to meet me as I fell through the air, and I set my feet together, bending my knees as I hit it. Carefully I partly rolled forward, setting through the balls of my feet and then pushing off with my legs, keeping moving. The impact was jarring, and in the blink of an eye that the move took, I’d already settled on my next moves.
I bled momentum on four more jumps, moving deeper into the cavern and over the writhing fields of strange transparent plants. Ridges of stone rose up in many places, and I clamped onto one such area that was free of the plants, turning my attention back to where I’d come fearfully. The ceiling was virtually disintegrating, calcium, stone, the creatures that had been above us, and most of all, sea water churned downwards in a white-blast of water.
Desperately, I dove to the ground between the cracks, ignoring the anemones at the moment. A thousand thoughts danced through my head. Were there any Determinators that survived? Was my suit’s integrity enough to survive? What was this place? And, not the least of which, did the Angler die?
I filed those concerns away as the water hit me, grinding me against the crevice I’d selected for a moment. Pale flesh of the organics beneath turned to pulp from my armor hitting them. The rush of water tore me from my shelter, rushing past me and crashing into the ground farther afield. I did my best to try to control my forward motion, but accepted the impossibility for what it was. I braced my arms as the water threw me into a column, feeling the calcium crack as I rolled off of it, carrying flecks of it with me even as a patch of not-yet-mulched transparent animal broke my momentum elsewhere.
At some point, I felt an impact as a stone the size of a car hit me, throwing me into a spin and stunning me. It was everything I could do just to try to protect my more vulnerable head. Dents appeared instantly, some I did not even notice until I’d already received four more.
Then the water began to settle, slowed as the cavern filled. Already I was doing a damage check, grimacing at the state of my armor. It held, but I wasn’t keen on stress testing my power armor any more than I already had.
“Roll call,” I murmured to myself, body now resting against an intact pillar, a plume of superheated water blasting upwards within the hollow confines, vibrating my armor almost comfortingly.
In moments, I received our status update. Stunningly, fifty of the determinators were still online. The remaining fourteen had been backed up, their hulls having been caught underneath the water spill for a few seconds too long, or smashed to pieces in a deluge of rock.
However, of the fifty, only ten were in a state that could be called ‘combat operational,’ bearing all of their limbs and not having accrued too much damage. The others were clawing themselves free of debris, some with only a stub of an arm remaining, or having difficulty with damaged motors all over their bodies. We all took stock of what was left of our environment, and what we’d fallen into. Above us, the ceiling had stopped collapsing, but still left a hole more than a hundred meters in diameter gaping. Sea-water filled the once dry cavity, and it was clear to me that this entire area had been created intentionally. The pillars, for one, were made out of calcium, not unlike the coral formations I’d seen on the sea-floor above. The cavern itself bore vaulted ceilings, broad structures that wouldn’t have happened in nature normally.
Then I realized that the fleshy pale anemones all around looked familiar, reminiscent in no small way to the Angler’s own flesh. I hoped that was just a coincidence, because there looked to be thousands of them here. Many were destroyed now, ground into nothingness, but the ones that were further from the breach were less damaged, some on the far side of the cavern appeared fairly unruffled.
Reflexively, I pulled up my rifle as I sighted the far cavern wall. Hundreds of broken pods, ruptured from the force of the water, sat anchored to the ceiling above pools of dense brine, or some other kind of super thick water that was heavier than the surroundings. I couldn’t guess at the purpose of the water, but I could easily see what had been in the pods. Many were mangled, but enough weren’t that I could pick out very familiar shapes.
Leviathans, thousands of them, were being grown in the cavern. Only a handful of them were left, car-sized and larger, some of the pods had managed to survive the sudden introduction of water pressure, and I was positive that these pods were nearly ready to hatch.
Just past the egg field, though, was the real prize.
What must have been a hundred hive cores were strung in a large network of dendrite-like flesh, each amassing towards a single central core. Tendrils of transparent flesh wrapped up each one, pulsing slowly and rhythmically with a silvery liquid being drawn from the spheres. They moved from the periphery, smaller, weaker cores that clearly belonged to Gen 1 biotics to interior ones, that were Gen 2. They were larger, more metallic in coloration with less black, and those too led deeper inwards. A much smaller cluster of almost pure silver cores lay there, what I assumed were Gen 3 cores.
They, in turn, led to a single, resplendent silver core, with only a few minor imperfections, and as large as I was in the middle of the entire network. Most of the weaker cores had shattered, as did about half of the Gen 2 cores, but the rest had survived.
By far, though, the central core was the motherlode. A Gen 4 core, or perhaps one that was going to be a Gen 4 core, was being made. I made certain to get a very good look at it all, intent on cataloguing this for our uses later.
We knew that Gen 1 and Gen 2 cores could happen as a matter of course, but we hadn’t even seen a Gen 3 core, let alone the one we were seeing form now. Knowing how this process worked would help us dramatically in the long run. But how did this happen? Was this something that occurred naturally?
I paused then, feeling one of the Determinators send an alarm to the rest of us. As one, we jolted, sharing in the visual feed with a sense of dread.
The Devil’s Angler moved, little more than a plump mound of flesh with teeth on one end. The Determinator that watched it was heavily damaged and unarmed, but could clearly watch as it scraped its misshapen jaws along the ground, scooping up the transparent flesh of the anemones greedily. Every bite it took, a little bit more definition came back to its form, prioritized on the jaws.
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It was healing.
My hackles shot up as I and the rest of the mobile Determinators charged towards it, dodging past plumes of superheated water from ruptured chimneys. We couldn’t allow it to heal, there wouldn’t be a chance in hell that we’d win against it if it was even mobile, let alone fully regenerated. If I had to guess, I’d say this entire place was its lair, a farm of sorts that it could come back to if it needed to regenerate in a pinch. Perhaps it had put together the Gen 4 core too, the first of its kind, only to be the first of many.
I shuddered at the thought that there could be more Anglers out there. But, no, I doubted that would be the case just yet.
Rather, I desperately hoped that wasn’t the case… if it were, then the only option we had was to send automated machines to war for our sakes into the seas. That, or work out some kind of psychic shielding.
A pair of Determinators flanked me as I moved over the last rise, seeing The Devil’s Angler in person once more. It had improved marginally, but still looked pathetic, its bobbing red lure flickering weakly as it moved to devour more materials.
We dove in quickly, and only then did the Angler realize it wasn’t alone. A single pale eye sought us out, and it snapped forward with a surprising agility.
I narrowly dodged the surprise attack, but the Determinator beside me did not. Half of its body was in its mouth, and in spite of the crooked fangs, the teeth tore deeply into the armor.
Contrary to what either myself or the Angler expected, the machine disconnected the lower half of its body, shoving itself deep into its mouth and forcibly lodging itself in the biotics throat. I could feel a thrum of cold fury on my mental connection to the A.I. in question, and realized that it was, spitefully, not going to allow the Angler to consume any more material at any cost.
I almost laughed hysterically at that. The Determinators were very much done with fighting right now. What was losing a few more limbs after everything else that had just happened?
Predictably, the Angler thrashed in panic, trying to disgorge its obstruction, or swallow it down. In response, blades extended from its arms and torso, the metal warrior refusing to be moved. When the other Determinators arrived, there was an almost comical moment where they turned to look to one another to confirm that they were seeing what they thought they were seeing.
We encircled the Angler then, aiming rifles at it and blasting it apart. When it could barely move, we closed the distance and began to carve it apart with blades, making even shorter work out of it, slicing through its scales with heavy strikes. Eventually, we pulled the Determinator out of its head through a cut behind its skull, the machine in question exuding a profound aura of contentment that I found made me somehow proud of them. I could tell that they were pleased to be done with this hunt, even though it had nearly gone catastrophically wrong.
For a minute afterwards, we simply sat and waited, making sure that it wasn’t moving anymore. I could feel them communicate with each other, half of the functional Determinators moving amidst the rubble and gathering their damaged comrades.
While they did so, I reached out with my mind, connecting to the communications of the Legion as a whole. I took a deep breath before connecting to Terry.
“Terry, can you hear me?” I asked, noting that his vitals weren’t erratic anymore.
“Yeah,” he nodded, voice and video chat coming online, “I can hear you. Did you get the fuckin’ thing?”
I nodded, tiredly, “It’s dead. Probably. We’re watching its pieces to make sure it doesn’t regenerate again.”
There was a long pause as Terry waited, and then with what felt like forced humor said, “Oh, that was a joke. Whew! That would be some kind of bullshit if it could actually regenerate from all that.”
I didn’t say anything, simply staring tiredly into the feed once more. His face paled somewhat after a few moments.
“Oh. Wow. That’s… what the fuck. That’s nuts, how do these things even-you know what? Nevermind.” His voice shook slightly before he took in a deep breath to calm himself, “You already know what’s going on up here?”
I shook my head, only checking on the vitals of those topside. I knew that there were at least twenty casualties among the Legion, a huge loss, but I didn’t know how everyone else was doing currently. My face darkened as I realized that there were four fatalities on my own team, Eric, Harold, Venezuela, and Covina all were dead. Eric and Harold died when they rushed in their madness to attack the Angler. I didn’t know how Venezuela and Covina died, nor how nearly two dozen others in my Legion died.
And then, of course, there were the Brigades casualties in the strike force. That didn’t include the number that was present on the ship that the Angler had attacked.
“Well,” Terry shocked me out of my thoughts, “a little over three quarters of people have more or less recovered. They’re still shaken up - everyone is - but they’re not trying to claw their-” Terry’s voice hitched, “-they’re stable enough. There’s some that are still in hysterics, but we have them above water and back on the ship. Adira’s flash frying the ocean whenever a biotic so much as looks in our direction right now, so we’re good there. Give a heads up before you come topside, though.”
I nodded, “Will do, after I’m done down here. I’m going to have some Determinator’s help me take care of some things first. For the time being, I don’t want anyone down here that’s susceptible to psychic attacks.”
“So, everyone but you, right?” Terry paused, “Because you don’t pay me enough to go down there with that thing.”
I chuckled, “No, you stay up there, better to keep an eye on things. Let me know about any new developments.”
“Gotcha, boss.” He said before he logged off of the chat.
After that I turned my attention back to the remains of the Angler. Thus far, it hadn’t moved, but now the Determinators were busily digging a pit of a sorts and shoving all of the biomass they found into it. I blinked as they placed an armed missile into the pit, covered it all up with sand and rock, and then detonated it.
“You guys…” I uttered exasperatedly, but then stopped myself. They may have been paranoid, but at the same time, wasn’t paranoia just the better part of caution?
The next pit, I fired my Phantasm Lances into the mass, watching as the unstable nano machines tore the molecules apart and electrically fried everything. It wasn’t glorious work, but we were patient. Five Determinators went topside, ferrying four of their damaged kin each time. They were deposited in the ship where they then worked on performing repairs. We didn’t have the materials to replace the force completely, but within the hour I had thirty fully kitted Determinators down with me, and another three topside, trying to cobble together full body sets out of the remains.
My heart ached dully as I worked, mind present enough only to continue the methodical work. At a distance, I was examining the condition of all those involved. From what Terry had said, things had indeed calmed down somewhat, but that was only in comparison to the psychotic break that had overtaken everyone when the angler had first arrived. Few would return from this mission unscathed and unchanged, and it was much worse for the few that were psychically inclined.
Richard was beside Alice, her sedated and sleeping form resting on a bed with cushioned straps over top of her. According to Richard, she panicked and violently lashed out at everyone trying to hold her down, and while it didn’t look like it, she was much stronger than she looked. Luckily, Richard used some of his non-combat related chemical concoctions, to help subdue both her and others who showed the same fight or flight response. There were more than a hundred that remained afflicted, and three to four hundred more that were at least recovered enough to not be a danger to anyone or themselves. That wasn’t just from the battle group we’d been attached to. The initial casualty count was off, given that we still hadn’t found out what was going on with the ship that had been on fire and assaulted by The Devil’s Angler.
It seemed that prolonged exposure to the Angler’s light had exponentially devastating effects, and that it traveled through materials. Over half of the hands of the flanking destroyer were lost, most killed by each other in violent fits of rage and terror. Of the remaining half, fifty were spread out between each of the remaining fleets destroyers.
That wasn’t the only news, however. One of the other fleets that had been assigned to rendezvous in the area made the deadline, but the other had not, and had shown no signs of approaching. The only thing we were aware of was smoke on the horizon, several nautical miles away.
Scout vessels were underway, but we wouldn’t know what was the cause of the smoke for a while, but more than a few of us feared that we knew exactly what the fate of the other fleet had been.
Domino, Jessica, Rachel, and Emma were all that was left of my newcomers. It was devastating for us, and I couldn’t even begin to imagine how they felt. No small part of myself was wary that I wasn’t more affected by their deaths. I felt numb to the loss, and even the fact that the others were still recovering hadn’t hit me as hard as it should have.
But, I had a job to do first, one that I poured myself into. Aside from some samples to be carefully stored and taken to the lab, we destroyed everything we could find. The eggs we dismantled, the hive-core network we took apart and put into metal crates along with the fibrous material that connected their disparate pieces. We would learn as much as we could about this process, but I refused to leave it here. It was too risky, after all that we’d already gone through, to leave a potential source of Devil’s Anglers here. The Obelisk had rated it as a Unique, but we hadn’t stumbled across any Gen 4 biotic. Against the odds, we may very well have gotten lucky and stumbled upon a freshly created core.
As I packed the last crate and began my ascent with the other Determinators, I took one look around at the remaining sea-floor. A large portion had been destroyed, yet there was plenty more besides. Living creatures and biotics still resided, oblivious or uncaring of our presence, continuing to exist down in the darkness of the sea.
That meant something, at least, that even after all of the carnage, there was still life left. With that thought in mind, I returned to the surface, weary, not quite happy, but relieved to be done all the same.