The Zhanaarkan Dead

The silence was intolerable; Doubly so for the Doctor, who's newly enhanced metabolism caused that agonizing wait to be nearly twice as long. Small tremors had begun to work their way up Kraft's cybernetic muscles as his hind-brain kicked into overdrive, the combination of drugs and fading andrenaline demanding their toll on his biological resources. He's about to order a fading retreat when the hissing catches his ear. It's duller, in this space between moments, and he can't quite place it...

Until the wall in front of him disintegrates. He throws an arm up to shield his eyes, ears already throbbing with his own heartbeat from the sudden concussive shock.

"BACK!" He can feel his throat make the noise, more than hear it just yet. "We're being breached!"

He's already backpedaling again, looking for a safer place to bunker down and wait the inevitable charge. What happened to the beserkers and their mad rush? He has been sorely outplayed.

The doctor continued to move backwards in the cave behind him, as Serik continued to lie on the floor waiting, peering through the smoke, dust and flying debris. The large hole in the wall let in some more light but the now billowing smoke was doing its job of making things harder to see. The large meta just waited, peering and aiming his shotgun towards the direction that they expected the raiders to come from....

OOC: Hold action...

Kraft settles down once again, now that he's backed away from the door, and brings the shotgun to his shoulder again. Finger easing against the trigger; He cannot go backwards, and expose their rear. Nor can he press forward, and be shot from at all directions. Here, at least, they can funnel the enemy in towards them and pray that Nalan and Ace arrive soon. Little beads of sweat pop up along his brow, his eyes flickering back and forth as his hyerpactive system registers every mote of movement as an enemy..

OOC> Hold

Thunk.

Serik and Kraft can feel the vibration of the impact conducting up through their feet. The front half of a positively massive harpoon bursts through the wall, narrowly missing them. With a metallic scrap, four massive hooks snap open from the shaft, turning the harpoon into a claw. The evil mass of sharp steel jerks back, embedding itself into the stone. Dust falls from the ceiling, the groaning of the rapidly weakening wall a reminder that it is, in fact, load-bearing.

Ahead, the smoke has fully expanded, obscuring most of the walkway, rapidly approaching the point when it would be too dispersed to be useful. In ten seconds, that smoke will be gone.

Well, this was a marvelous set of circumstances. The Doctor considered the new harpoons preparing to pull the roof down with the calm assurity of a Professional. When in panic situations, a true master of the craft takes a moment to consider. Staying here or baking up would leave Nalan and Ace on their own; Not an entirely too desperate scenario, considering mobility, but these particular raiders were far more capable than the previous lot meet in the town.

. o O (Perhaps that was the purpose; To lull interlopers into a sense of compliance with the obvious stupidity displayed in previous encounters.) O o .

With a single nod of his head, Kraft regains his feet, and glances once to Serik.

"We're being forced forward; We'll just have to hope we can go faster than they can react. Going backwards will leave us trapped and hapless. Try to make it to the opposite cave, if you can. I'm small enough to shelter behind the pillars; You are not. Just run."
And then Kraft's cybernetic muscled will tense - and propel him forwards..

Serik lunged to his feet as well, and sprinted down the rapidly deteriorating cover in which they were lurking. It was only seconds before the whole complex would come crashing down, and Serik had no intention of being crushed by rock and stone. The big meta was fast on the heals of the smaller Doctor, and Serik passed him as the 'cave' opened into the ledge-way with the three pillars. The smoke was beginning to disperse, so that was another good reason to get through it. The harpoon destroying the wall had been...unexpected, to say the least, and somewhat forced their hand. Well, either way, they were attacking. As Serik charged the smoke he held his shotgun right handed and with his left hand he pulled out and extended one of his collapsible batons, snapping it open, and holding it low to his leg in readiness for an upstroke if he encounters any of the raiders....

As Kraft and Serik sprint out into the sunlight, a torrent of badly-aimed suppression fire explodes around them, filling the air with dust and splintered stone. The Doctor looks left just in time to catch the flash of a scope, ducking behind a pillar as he hears the dull impacts of supersonic slugs burying themselves into the walls. The two of them spare a look at the tower, seeing their attackers for a heart-stopping, gut-wrenching moment. The two raiders were nothing new, though the sniper rifle with scope and laser sight was a novelty.

It is the other foe that is terrifying.

Upon reflection, the townsfolk apparently only called it a troll because they had nothing else to call it. The creature towers over the other raiders, a monstrous grotesque covered in spiked bone and mutilated flesh. Two beady eyes stare out from underneath a slobbering, toothed maw, which is so large it nearly splits the disproportionately small head in two. At its feet is what can only be described as a siege bow, modified to be held and fired. Clawed hands grip a thick cable, its spiked heels dug into the floor of the building as it endeavored to yank a hole in living rock via a combination of leverage and sheer muscle power. With a resounding roar, the monstrous mockery of a troll gives a hard tug. Behind them, Serik and Kraft hear the sound of crumbling stone, followed by the beginnings of a cave-in's rumbling cascade.

Then they are in the smoke. There is a moment of blindness, of nothing but the echoing roar of the beast and the whipping lash of unseen bullets in their ears. Then they are out of the smoke and into the cover of the cave, momentarily safe. Behind them, the gunfire subsides, leaving the air empty save the crumbling collapse of falling limestone.

---

Out of the corner of her eye, Nalan catches the muzzle flash of a rifle from the West tower, no doubt from the same shooter as before. At the East Tower, she sees the flash of an explosion, followed shortly by a cloud of dust rising into the sky.

The beating of chopper blades above her couldn't break Nalan's concentration. The same sniper that killed Ace would undoubtedly have a bead on the Doctor and Serik, and that meant he had to die. Nalan turned the helicopter's sensors toward the tower where the shots had originated, the aging skyscraper being used by the raiders. It bothered her to have to cause more damage to these relics of an ancient city, but there really was no choice. Even as the helicopter continued slicing its way toward the skyscraper, she scanned across the building, finding the floor and zooming the sensor feed in on the windows. First one was clear, second... third. Odd, she was sure the flash hadn't been at... but sure enough, she found the sniper in the last window. He was moving around. That set him apart from the mostly mindless raiders from before. She wondered what was going on.

But at least she knew how it would end. Turning to her weapon system, she centered the smartlink guidance in on that last window. She shifted the sensors to maximum zoom, and found the sniper in the targeting reticle, the helicopter sliding sideways to better line up the shot and increase the difficulty of any attempt to do to her what he had done to Ace. She would make this sucker pay, even if it meant bringing down the whole historic city in the process.

The muzzle flashed again, silently singing through the air the Wasp would have occupied if Nalan had not altered her course. Even as she watched, the sniper began to move, hauling the gun back as it prepared to take yet another new position.

---

Darkness.

The cave was completely pitch black, lit only by the sunlight flooding in from the opening. The walls were smooth limestone, just like the previous tunnel, sloping downwards into a thick curtain of blindness. Both Kraft and Serik feel a shiver, despite the heat of the daytime desert. There is something sinister about the darkness of the cavernous depths that yawned before them. Perhaps it is nothing more than instinct; nothing is more like the uncertain oblivion of death than the impenetrable darkness of an open cave.

As if to confirm her suspicion, the sniper fired once more. He could try and move, but her bullets were faster. As he got ready to reposition, she mentally triggered the minigun on the helicopter's nose to send a burst downrange. She smirked as she keyed the weapon's activation. Let him take his potshots at her. Now... it was her turn. She let the autocannon keep shooting even as the helicopter swept to the side, spraying the entire window with rounds. If he didn't get caught in that deadly maelstrom of lead... well... there was always time to send another burst in after the first one.

The metallic buzz of the autocannon echoes through the canyon as the flurry of explosive bullets rip into the side of the structure. Nalan has just enough time to glimpse the Raider getting a chunk of its torso blown apart before the cloud of shrapnel and smoke obscures it completely from view. Glass and chunks of masonry crumble, cascading down the side of the tower like a waterfall.

Serik moved further into the tunnel, switching between various vision enhancements, until finally settling on low light vision, as he kept the extendable baton in contact with the left hand wall. He slung his shotgun by the simple expedient of letting it fall back to his side on its sling. Witth his now free hand, he dug into one of his large pouches for a moment or two before retrieving a short thin rod, which he then whacked against his leg. The luminescent rod began to glow, its greenish hue lighting up the nearby area. "No going back now Doc, so onward we go." Serik switched hands with the baton and rod, and held the rod out in front of himself and up high to provide light for his comrade, as he began to move off down the tunnel and into the darkness. Behind him he could hear the destruction caused by the Helo of their airborne companion, but being unable to see anything, the large meta frowned as he pondered the source of the noise, as they stalked the darkness....

The first attack was a good start, Nalan decided. The sniper had obviously taken a hit, but with these foes she doubted that was enough. She had seen the monsters keep going without a head, so who know how long this combatant could continue the fight with some of his torso missing. Sure, his weapon might have been ruined in that onslaught, but she refused to leave any chance that Ace's killer might escape this encounter by some twist of fate.

No, she would show him the same mercy he had given to Ace. Two bursts, certain death. The minigun roared once more, such a brief noise and yet so fearsome, another grouping of rounds hitting the room violently, flashing in the smoke-filled interior as explosions danced all over. If he had somehow lived through the first attack, she had no doubt he was obliterated by now. Still, she hovered there for a second more, hoping to confirm the end of this menace once and for all.

Another burst of dust and ash fills the window. When it clears, the window has been replaced by a gaping hole in the wall. The interior of the room has been completely scorched. Here and there, stray pieces of burning flesh, shards of bone, and splattered blood can be seen.

---

The glow from the light stick suffuses the cave with soft, green light. The path curves left, snaking downward into the depths of the Earth, the walls lined with dark deposits of Quartz. The tunnel is silent, each footstep echoing into the belly of the mountain.

Suddenly, both commlinks give a loud squawk, Nalan's message having finally arrived. The motion of the light stick casts eerily shifting shadows all around. Maybe it's their imagination, but the duo could swear the shadows aren't quite moving right.

A grim sight, to be sure. Nalan held on to the picture of that smoking room, focusing on the scene of carnage in an attempt to gleam some sort of satisfaction for it. But none came. Ace was still dead, maybe even the Doctor or Serik or Erlan, she didn't know. And killing the one responsible didn't change that. But at least that threat no longer loomed over them... one hostile down, many more to go. Nalan turned the chopper's nose towards the cloud of smoke. Hopefully soon they would be within comm range, and she could find out just what was going on.

The two towers grow in front of her as Nalan approaches. A cursory glance reveals little; no Raiders greet her with gunfire. The central building, which sits squat between the remains of the two skyscrapers, is a one-story building which has been partially gutted, turning half of the first floor into a walled-in courtyard. The helicopter's sensors indicate that there is quite a bit of thermographic movement throughout the East Tower and the central building, but so far she sees no raiders peeking out of cover.

"At the very least..." Begins the Doctor, listening to the dull explosive thumping of the Helio-copter's roaring weapons, "... we are no longer so horribly outgunned." He then considers the massive, warped entity that was the 'leader' of this little encampment of horrors, and amends himself slightly. "Probably." A thoughtful frown crosses his features as he listens not only for the quiet thumpa-thumpa of the passing helicopter, but for the sharp whine of the rocket bike; A missing element of their calvary rescue. The beep of his wrist-comm and Nalan's arriving message solve that curiousity in a most satisfactory manner, albeit a grim one.

"We've lost one already? Alas. We'll have to recover her... afterwards." The Doctor knew how critical the first hour was; He also knew there was no way to back out of this engagement yet. It'll have to be finished quickly. Cycling a deep breath through his lungs, the Doctor nods at Serik and begins to carefully crab-walk after him; The better to watch the large hunter's flank. His cybernetics hum softly on occasion, tremors shaking hands as his nueral system shudders under the influence of the drugs that have heightened his reactive processes. Monocle clicking as it flickers into the thermal, giving him at least half of what Serik can see naturally.

"Mind your step." He murmurs quietly to Serik, even as his gaze is continually drawn away to shadows that just - don't - move - right...

. o O (It could be worse, I suppose. We could be teenagers breaking and entering into some closed summer camp, only to be slaughtered by a parody of rough sports with a mean machette. As it is, at least we're armed with more than a bat and sexual innuendo.) O o .

As the two continue down the tunnel, the strange feeling increases. The air feels greasy and thin, though there is no difficulty in breathing. Both feel a slight tingle on their natural skin, which in Kraft's case is only his head. The shadows dance.

Suddenly, both see the cave around them shift, suddenly replaced by a vast, glowing landscape littered with indistinct figures of black smoke. In the distance, glowing slivers of shimmering purple slither through the air. The cave walls are nowhere to be seen; the landscape spreads far into the distance, stretching out to meet the black sky at a distant horizon.

Then, just as quickly as the it appeared, the vision fades, leaving only the green glow of the cave walls.

---

As Nalan scans the area, a slight movement catches her eye. In the East Tower, a large figure is moving, carefully bringing to bear a large gun. On a closer look, the figure is revealed to be the misshapen mockery of a troll that Kraft and Serik have already met. In its massive arms is a minigun strapped to a Gyro Stabilization harness, which the creature had just finished buckling itself into.

"Doc? Did you see that?" Serik asked suspiciously, stopping midstride as the cave walls disappear and then reappear. The big meta looked over his shoulder to see if Doc was still with him, and then, if his companion is still with him, Serik slowly backed up a step, to see if the walls disappear again or not. He looks around carefully, in the flickering shadows, flipping through his various optical and audio enhancements to see if he can detect anything. He then stoops down close to the floor to examine it for telltale tracks, or indeed any tracks at all, other than he and his companion...

Brought up short by the sudden visual switch from 'cave' to 'smokey plains of mystery', the Doctor slows his step - the only way he could keep up with the longer limbed Serik. When Serik mentions his own ethereal experience, the Doctor frowns quietly. "I was hoping you'd say you saw nothing. It would mean I could chalk my own experience up to a bad reaction to the Cram." Keen eyes once again glance about the cave, the Doctor's frown deepening quietly as his monocle flips between spectrums again.

"I suspect something more mystical in nature than wires or portals. We may, in our quest to gain an advantageous firing position, have stumbled into the very metaphorical hornet's nest." Another glance about the area. "Although, perhaps not nearly as metaphorical as I'd wish it. We should attempt to push forward, and circumvent the cave as quickly as possibly; Once the physical elements are dispatched, we can investigate further..."

A quiet tap against the base of his neck activates the micro-mic.

>>> Begin Transmission
>>> To: NalanComm
>>> From: DocComm
>>>
>>> "Nalan, are you doing alright in the air? Be wary; These are not the brainless rampaging beasts that we had initially encountered. By simple deductive consideration, I'd imagine the presence of their prime ... the larger fellow.. may be making them more 'competetive', to put it lightly. We're trying to get through the caves now to give support. I hope you can hear this.."
>>>
>>> Transmission Sent
>>> Comm Status: Hidden, Ready

In the air, Nalan hears her commlink beep, the message received.

---

The vision has disappeared, but the shadows seem stranger than ever. They snake and undulate oddly, even when the light stick is barely moving at all. Ahead, the passage seems to open into a larger chamber, from which a light breeze can be felt. The silence weighs heavy.

Frowning, Serik looked down at his beeping commlink, and then hit the mute button, and then continued forwards, looking for telltale foot prints using his light, experience and vision enhancements. The Doc was right, the vision could wait. In the mean time, there was a big 'troll' to kill....Serik pushed on, further down into the tunnel, expecting it to come to an end soon. Then the assault on the actual tower would begin...

Nodding his head once, the Doctor presses on with Serik - though his own gaze keeps switching back to the shadows, a moue of concern crossing his features as his forehead wrinkles. After a moment's consideration, the monocle flickers through it's thermal setting across the shadows as well - to see if any are showing up in a manner quite unhealthy for something based on the 'normal' spectra of light; Well, normal homo sapien spectra without any particular twitches to the genetic coding, of course. He gives the shadows a bit of a closer look, trying to determine if there's anything formed by the wiltering and writhing shades, though not with much hope of success. Otherwise, his ears and less keen senses remain positively on paranoia's edge.

Nothing about this missive was going 'according to plan'.

The shifting shadows twist, seemingly at random, but there are hints of shapes there, like the fading memory of a dream. Glimpses of tree-like shapes out the corner of the eye, a hint of claws and fangs, long wisps that seem to flit from place to place; Kraft fancies catching glimpses of all of these, but none of it is certain.

Then the two enter the next chamber, feeling a breeze across their face. Fifty feet away, they see the light of the cave exit for a brief moment.

Then the world shifts again.

The cave becomes a vast chamber, a hundred feet across and immeasurably high. The walls and floor gleam white, so bright it almost hurts the eyes, while the cave opening has been replaced by an inky black portal. Braziers line the walls and there is an immense gilded throne to the left, flanked by torches. The fires burn black. The room is empty, but the two can hear distant whispers on the edge of hearing, though they are unable to understand any of it. That is, until a single whispered phrase drowns out the rest for a brief second.

"I hunger."

The single foe in the window exposing himself to threaten her with his weapon was just begging for a cleansing burst from her minigun. Nalan really wanted to show him the folly of bringing small arms to a vehicle fight, but unfortunately, as she scanned him with her sensors, she decided he was too well covered, obscured by the remains of the wall.

Too chancy a shot, she decided, kicking the helicopter off to the side and killing her altitude so she could plunge lower, making it difficult to track her trajectory and get a bead on the helicopter. She followed through to swing around the other side of the skyscraper, away and out of his range. She turned the chopper to the building, searching the windows for any other raiders sneaking around. At the same time, she opened her commchannel to allow her to speak with Doc and Serik. "Hey, guys? Yeah, I've noticed they aren't just mindless killers here. I took out the sniper, but they've got some kind of brute with a cannon. I'm scouting out the tower right now, let me know if you need anything shot!"