Welcome to Gaia! ::

Saul checked the next room, not needing to open the door, for it had been forced off by heavy vine growth and pinned to the far wall by its thorny branches. It was empty, save for a desk, chair, side table, and bed, all dirty and covered with mosses and various molds.

"Its clear. And I was from a planet called Keffia. Its gone now. Blown into atoms over a decade ago."

He wondered where these cultists were, as he checked another room. More of the same, dirty, lots of planets, hot, humid climate, no cultists.

Saul, his senses covered by his helmet's filter modules, stepped into the room, and began to examine the corpses. His modified eyes and portable computer scanned everything, looking for a pattern....Then there it was....

"None of these corpses has eyes, and they are also missing several large chunks of flesh and specific internal organs. There is an odd mutation of their blood too, as if the DNA was somehow corrupted...."

He had a theory, but he shoved it to the far recesses of his mind before it could fully form. Thinking about it was too horrifying.

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Saul frowned under his helmet. This girl was beginning to get on his nerves...either he was beginning to like her, or he'd kill her himself.

He stood up, backing as far away from the moldering pile of corpses as possible while remaining in the room. This place was definitely home to some kind of evil...and the cultists were the least of it.

"You're wrong. I don't have to tell you a single thing if I choose not too. Mission sensitive information that is above your ranking does not have to be handed out," he said. The damned girl...if he didn't need...what the hell were her skills again?

No matter, he thought. The girl would survive, or not, and of course, he might die too, but if he made it and she didn't, at least he could have the satisfaction of knowing she didn't have the skills for this mission... High Command was strapped for trained personnel, especially in her field...sending them off on missions they weren't trained for was more common then not...someone had to do the dirty work, whether or not they were trained for the task at hand.
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...all I have is revenge.

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Saul was just about to give her a biting insult, when howling voices reached them, for very close by. The pair stepped out of the room to find the far end of the corridor filling with red-robed maniacs armed with a mish-mash of improvised weapons and old style laser and projectile guns. They charged, well over a dozen of them, showing no type of tactics or self preservation, and Saul opened up with the shotgun, the heavy weapon bucking and snarling in his grip as it spat hot, burning lead into the masses. the closer ones caught fire at the hot lead ignited their robes, but it didn't seem to stop the mad charge, with many more cultists pouring in.

Saul was dimly aware of the girl next to him firing into the cultists as well, and finally, after what seemed like a lifetime of firing, his weapon clicked on empty, and the cultists were all dead. Several dozen filled the long hallway, and he could hear more chanting from all around.

He slung the shotgun, the reload for its single drum magazine would take too long. He drew his pistols, the guns humming to life as they charged.

"I think this is far more then they expected here. I think this is something far worse then just a cult."

Then he couldn't hear her answer as they charged again.

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...all I have is revenge.

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Saul didn't bother to take cover. He saw the grenade land well outside of his danger zone, and kept firing. His plasma shots were devastating their ranks, and finally,they stopped coming, leaving only about a dozen left in the corridor. He unslung his assault laser rifle, and hosed them down, making sure that everything in the hallway was dead.

When the gunsmoke and vented gases from laser and plasma weapons cleared, the scene was one of pure carnage. Shredded and mangled bodies were everywhere, several clumps of them on fire from their robes catching fire from one thing or another, and all in all, well over fifty dead bodies. It was insane how they had kept rushing in...

He couldn't let it bother him now, he figured. He sat on a discarded box of some kind, and began to reload his weaponry. The combat shotgun took the longest, loading thirty shells one at a time. His other weapons still had a decent charge left on the power packs, so he didn't reload them.

Finally, he stood up, and turned to the girl.

"We need to check them for ammo or grenades. If there are that many of them, we'll need everything we can get."

He started digging through the corpse piles, trying to ignore the reek of unwashed bodies. Obviously, bathing hadn't been a concern for these people...men and women alike.

He saw something as he dug around, and recoiled.

His hand had caught on one of the cultist's hoods, pulling it back. It was a woman, disfigured with several extra eyes and a bug-like set of pincers growing from her mouth. Half her head was covered in a bug-like chitin, hard as any armor...

He'd seen this before, at least in records. These mutations were not as random as they seemed.... they were the hallmark of an insidious alien threat that humanity thought banished long ago....

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...all I have is revenge.

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Saul recoiled with disgust after looking too long at the corpse. The things he'd heard of those monsters...their race was called the Corrupters by humans and alien alike. They attacked viciously, and once they had suitable prey, they would infect them with an alien virus that replicated the Corrupter's DNA instead of their own, making them a mindless drone to the will of the Controller, usually a human with psionic potential they had infected. Once the infected host bred, the spawn would be mutated hideously, tearing its way free of the willing mother as it was born, to begin the cycle over again. Once they had a few generations to get started, they looked almost human, save for a slight difference that marked them as thralls to an insidious alien will.

He hoped they wouldn't encounter a full-blood Corrupter down here...they were like a huge flying mantis, with claws and teeth capable of shredding through even power armor, and a bulk that could crush a human into a pulp with one blow.

Saul sat down, the thoughts going through his head making him shake. he heard the girl ask what the woman was. He sat down suddenly, and related everything he knew about the beasts. He watched her go from a rapt audience, to having disgust, horror, and finally worry upon her face. He wouldn't wish the knowledge of such a foe upon anyone.

When he finished, he finally could stand again. He pulled himself up, checked his gear carefully to ensure he had everything he needed still, and barring ammunition, he did. He brought his assault laser up and checked the charge again. Still half-full.

He turned to Persephone, and spoke again.

"Alright...let me get my bearings here, and some ammunition, and we'll go hunting. I trust you see why we cannot fail here?"

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...all I have is revenge.

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Saul gritted his teeth together. This girl, always prying...it was enough to drive one insane!

"I'm fine. Just shut the hell up and let me think," he said.

He checked the corpses that had made it through the fight intact for ammunition, and found some, but most of the corpses, and whatever they carried, had gone up in the fires that had broken out.

He turned and wandered down a second section of corridor, finding nothing of interest but more empty rooms, these ones large,and overgrown, of course, but with no hostiles.

His comm unit chimed a note, and he opened the link.

"This is command. We found the homing beacon of the last crew that went down there. It was a heavy weapons squad, there may be something left."

"Acknowledged. I'll check it out," he said.

"One more thing. We went over the old schematics for the lower levels, each of them was fitted with a fuel pump spray system, to use in case of a viral outbreak. Activate it, and in an hour or so, the whole level fills with flammable gas. If you use those on all three levels down there, you should be clear to come up."

Funny they hadn't mentioned this earlier, he wondered....Unless they hadn't heard what they were up against. And he knew from reading the files on these beasts that fire worked wonders....

"Roger command, I'll keep my eye out. Send me a file of the pump system, image only. I need to know what I'm looking for."

The file was sent moments later.

"Good luck, Scout. You'll need it."

Then the transmission cut off. He decided the best course of action was to find the dead team, check them over, then activate the pump system. He used the helmet's systems to paste a ghost image of the pump system over one of his eye pieces, so he could know what to look for.

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...all I have is revenge.

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Saul turned around from his conversation to inform the girl of this new change in plans, but found her gone. He shrugged, and kept moving towards the homing beacon's signal.

She seems too wary...perhaps they knew about you, and sent her as a plant to find you out, then leave you to die down here?, his mind whispered to him.

Saul pushed the notion away, and kept going. He found boarded up rooms with holes in the doors, and after straying too close to one and having several mutated arms pop out grasping at him with twisted, grasping claws, decided to stay back from them. Then he changed his mind,and started heaving grenades through the holes.

It was working like a charm until the fourth door. Something shoved it towards the door and the entire thing blew off, releasing a horde of mutated kids. They jumped him, and he banged his head on the floor, accidentally opening him comm unit. His grunts of struggle filled the airwaves.


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...all I have is revenge.