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Talia realized she still had her rifle in her hand and swung it toward the Blue with one arm. He kicked it hard enough to send it flying, striking the window before bouncing further down the hall. Without missing a beat he rushed her while she was still sitting with her back against the wall.

“Who the frick are you?” she shouted. The only response was a vicious snarl.

She caught a savage punch aimed at her suit’s helmet, but his other hand slipped behind her torso and yanked her back onto her feet. She spun under his arm and then he slammed her into the Data Vault’s compartment bulkhead. The lights in her suit flickered from the impact.

The Blue pulled her back to slam her again, but this time she braced herself with a free hand, then twisted out of his grip, kicking him in the head as she spun to the ground, rolling away. Before she could stand, he fell on her again, this time straddling her waist and dropping his entire weight on her suit, pinning her to the ground.

A thick looking blade appeared in his fist, and he plunged it downward with both hands gripped tightly around it. The steel point slipped off her suit’s rounded chest-plate, leaving a nasty gouge in the Durasteel. A vicious snarl spewed spittle mixed with blood onto her helmet visor and the Blue raised the weapon again for a second try, this time the point going for her weaker neck joint.

Her LIRU slammed into his hands from the side as the weapon plunged a second time, knocking the Blue off balance, but not out of the fight. The LIRU was smashed into the wall, then the floor, then ceiling as the Blue waved the robot with one arm, sending parts and crushed metal debris flying in every direction.

When it turned back toward Talia, she had her multi-tool pointed at its head and fired. Molten material spewed out and coated the Blue’s skin, eliciting a pained shriek. It threw its military blade at her hands, knocking her aim off before closing the distance to knock the tool from her hands.

A vicious, exo-skeleton powered kick between the alien’s legs had no effect other than a replying punch to the chest that sent her cartwheeling backwards.

She flew down the hallway, landing with a skid before rolling onto her knees and pushing herself back onto her feet. The Blue hadn’t followed, screaming and tearing at its face. To her horror, it tore the solidifying metal off with its hands—along with its skin. It grabbed a pouch attached to its belt, then loosened its string before tilting backward and opening its mouth.

A large pile of fine dust fell into the Alien’s throat, while some coated its now torn skin and face. The screaming’s pitch dropped into a bellow and then the Blue started to glow. The alien’s skin began to pulsate before its armor and body stretched outward. Military straps went snug then snapped, armor plates became comically too small for its enlarged body, and its melted skin was replaced with glowing blue plasma.

Talia looked near her feet, spotted her PAR and dived for it, grabbing it and pointing it toward the enemy. “I didn’t come here to deal with jacked up alien drug users!”

Her aim was bad, but the bullets smashed into an ethereal blue field and sparked, sending molten flares through the air. It bellowed at her, then charged like a gorilla. That wasn’t ideal, so she turned and ran away.

“Neo! Help!” Talia shouted.

[Affirmative: Assisting units have arrived.]

A raptor appeared outside the crystal window and began to fire its gauss rifles. Massive cracks appeared and spider-webbed, but despite the pounding refused to cave in. Its drive flared, then it disappeared from view.

Panic and alarm pushed her toward the ladder and escape. “That didn’t wo—”

An explosion behind her knocked her off her feet as an explosion punched through the ceiling and through the floor below, fire filling the entire compartment. Her suit’s environmental sensors flashed an overpressure and thermal warning before things returned to something more normal.

A raptor drone lowered itself through the massive hole the artillery shell had carved in the structure and oriented its guns on the somehow still standing and angry Blue hulk-monster-alien-thing. Blue flames were flaring off of its skin, setting the bare metal floor and ceiling around it on fire. Gauss rifles dumped themselves into the alien, but it charged and then jumped over the gaping hole in the structure to smash into the Raptor.

Which immediately began to catch fire and dropped through the cylindrical channel dug out by the artillery.

Talia froze and stared and tried to process what she had just seen, her chest heaving from the exertion despite her exo-suit doing most of the work. One of her helmet screens had shorted out, killing her peripheral vision on her left. And her center screen flickered annoyingly, indicating damage as well. Her environmental seals indicated they were fine, but her exo-skeleton reported immediate maintenance and repair was required.

[Notice: While User safety and evacuation is a higher priority, research module minimum reconstruction requirements include Computronic Module and Data Core. Losing either item would be catastrophic to User long-term survival and planned escape from the planet.]

Talia grunted and realized Neo was right. She couldn’t run away now, although she had been considering it. The Raptor seemed to have taken the Blue with it, and she scurried into a run. Her suit’s movement assist highlighted the ground in front of her and showed a red trajectory line and X hinting that she’d not make the leap if she tried.

A yellow line appeared to cross to the still remaining inner wall of the structure, then launching from that to the other side. She had never done any parkour or the like before, but her suit’s functions applied the wall running technique for her. A quarter of the way across, she began to slip down and then her feet crunched the wall behind her, launching her through the air.

She landed with a heavy thud on the other side, then clambered back onto her feet to sprint to the Data Vault. The door was till open, and the chamber had filled with a thin layer of smoke. All the monitors had gone completely dead, but her HUD highlighted the location of the Data Core. It wouldn’t open when she tried the controls, so she grabbed it and yanked.

The housing ripped out of the floor, and then the top came loose. A purple crystal contained in a clear glass cylinder glowed faintly.

[Research Module Primary Components]

| Computronic Research AI Module: 1/1 |

| Research Module Crystalline Data Core: 1/1 |

[Primary Objective Completed.]

[Recommendation: Immediate Evacuation.]

“No shit,” Talia breathed.

She slipped the cylinder into her suit’s bracer storage just as a heavy crunch outside the room sent her heart back into overdrive. She looked for another way out, but there was none. Her eyes settled on a high-pressure cryogenic tank that was sitting near the doorway.

Talia rushed it, grabbing the integrated pipes and ripping them apart. Bluish white gas began to flood the area, but she didn’t stop there. Ripping it the rest of the way out of its cradle, she charged out the door. The Blue was standing right where she expected, and she charged.

The second she reached punching distance, the Alien obliged her with a heavy fist.

So, she flipped a switch on her HUD and triggered her personal shield generator to invert. The blue field around her flared into a solid blue wall of light as the generator burnt itself out, trying to resist infinity.

The cannister disintegrated outwards. Compressed gas exploded, launching the Blue backwards while blasting around her in a vicious V as she acted like an immovable wedge in the gas-flow. Visibility dropped to near zero, but her suit compensated by switching to its wireframe mode.

The Blue clipped the hole in the ceiling but managed to catch itself. The gas pressure disappeared and then it swung forward, landing with a heavy thud at the edge of the chasm, puncturing the research module. It stared at her with two glowing blue orbs for eyes and half its face missing. It was bleeding from dozens of wounds and injuries, red liquid pooling at its feet as it stared at her.

A horrifying laugh erupted from it before it uttered a single word. The insane levity that had gripped it disappeared, then it took a single step forward toward her.

Before she could consider her options, a black spike erupted from the Blue’s chest. A second one appeared, as a hot-pink spider pulled itself up the Blue’s back. The enraged Blue’s glowing eye orbs visibly dimmed like the energy in them was being sucked out.

Talia winced as the spider levered itself upward and then bit the alien’s head off. The corpse fell to its knees, and the spider rode the body to the ground, immediately letting out a shriek. It almost looked like the spider was reaching for the sky while it wailed and the aura that had surrounded the Blue transferred to the spider, blue flames rolling over pink spider-fur. Its body began to bulge and grow before it surged, growing nearly double in size.

When the transformation was over, it leveled out, standing over the shrunken Blue’s corpse. Glowing eyes slid downward toward her before the spider issued a furious hiss. Pulling a bloody spike-tipped leg out of the Blue, it started forward slowly.

She stepped back and raised her hands. “No! I’m a friend.”

The spider paused, then issued a challenge. “Taker!”

“Neo, tell the translator to work harder! Tell it I’m a maker! I brought help and came to free them!” Talia urged.

The spider twisted its head as it listened to the series of clicks and chirps that came from her suit. There was a momentary lull, as it seemed to consider her words.

Her hand dropped to her empty multi-tool holster, and her PAR was no-where to be seen. Her shield generator was slagged, and her exo-suit’s software didn’t seem confident she was going to be able to run anywhere, much less fight an enraged magical dust infused alien spider.

“Neo, I think we should have invested in a huge ass energy sword or some shit,” Talia said.

[Affirmative: Adding melee equipment to future equipment priority list.]

A smile crept onto her face, despite feeling utterly spent and without any good backup plan. She had to force down a stupid giggle.

The spider seemed to make up its mind and charged forward.

Talia grabbed an ajar bar from the metal doorframe and brandished it like a club. But the action wasn’t needed.

A brown spider appeared from the ledge and pointed its rear at Hot-Pink, a white glob of gooey web launching outward to snag the enraged spider’s charge. A gray spider followed it a second later, jumping to the floor and rushing to place itself between her and her assailant.

“Maker!” Dusky chirped loudly.

A dozen more spiders began to enter the ruined interior through the blown out chasm. Hot-Pink shrieked and attacked. Several more webs splattered out to restrain, but the blue fire began to burn them away almost immediately. Only Dapple’s web didn’t burn. But all the other spiders seemed to be of one mind and charged forward anyway.

Hot-Pink slashed with her spikes, but the smaller sized spiders dodged out of the way, deftly avoiding being impaled. They didn’t stab back though, instead they grabbed on and buried the rampaging spider with their bodies, pinning and restraining it. The blue glow began to diffuse over all of them until Hot-Pink began to shrink to her normal size.

“Neo. What just happened?”

[Notice: Analysis in progress. Evacuation vehicles are en-route. A serious complication has arisen. Suggested User extraction zone is located on the Research Module’s roof.]

Dusky turned towards Talia and raised her forelimbs in a cheer. “Maker Spider Rescue! Spider Rescue Maker!”

“Thank you. Neo says we have to hurry and get to the roof!” Talia replied.

Dusky tilted her head, then turned to chitter at the other spiders. They hopped off Hot-Pink, which stood up, looking much more…normal for one of the alien spiders. It looked at her for another second, then turned and joined the other spiders, which had begun to climb up the walls and then out the hole in the ceiling.

Talia followed, but she didn’t have a way up. But the web Dapple used gave her an idea. “Dusky! I can’t get up; can you use your web to make a rope for me?”

Dapple and a few other spiders peered over the edge, and then several long strands of white web fell down by her feet. A wince appeared on her face as she tried to put the sticky, gooey consistency out of her mind, but as soon as she had a hold of them, she let out a yelp as she was yanked upwards.

The spiders were more than strong enough to lift her up without forcing her to climb and she levered herself around the crumbling ceiling’s edge to land on the roof. Her heart leapt as two dozen of the giant spider aliens greeted her. “Maker!”

Her HUD fuzzed, and she reached up to thwack her helmet to fix the image. “Neo, we’re on the roof. Whe—”

A blast of hot air slammed into her, threatening to send her flying. Several spiders lost their grip on the ground and hung in the air, their webs the only thing keeping them from blowing away. A massive roar filled the air, and then the building lurched to the side, leaning precipitously.

The worm. She’d forgotten about the Giant Jungle Worm.

“Neo!”

[Notice: Distractions for Native MEGA FAUNA have been depleted, and it has begun to target the Research Module directly. Please stand by for evacuation.]

An electric buzz filled the air before a Raptor skimmed up the research module’s side. A second, then third one appeared, then began to hover beside the building.

Talia turned toward Dapple and Dusky and pointed toward the drones. “Those are our ride out of here. Tell the other spiders!”

The two turned and began to chirp and chitter, and a few seconds later, the gathered spiders began to jump off the roof to land on the Raptors. Some of them hung from webs, while others gripped the drones tightly with their claws. Each drone was only able to carry two or three before it had to zip away.

“There aren’t going to be enough Raptors, Neo!” Talia shouted.

A heavy gust of wind from above blasted debris on the roof in every direction. She looked up; it was the Seeker-H7. Its side ladder had deployed, and she hurried over to it and grabbed the bottom rung and pulled herself up. It lowered further, directly over the chasm, and the remaining spiders got the idea and jumped onto the vehicle’s chassis.

It was just in time because the entire structure crashed downward into a massive exploding pile of debris as the Giant Worm launched itself through the wreckage directly for them.

The VTOL’s engines whirred and shot them upward out of the way before its jaws snapped shut. Molten metal and sparks flared around them from the creature’s mouth, but it failed to gain any more altitude. Instead, it turned and then body slammed what was left of the Research Module.

A flickering HUD panel flashed green.

[MISSION SUCESSFULLY ACCOMPLISHED.]

Talia took a deep breath, then pulled herself up another run on the ladder while the VTOL flung itself back towards their staging area and the waiting Lynx Artillery.

“Yeah…we did it,” Talia whispered. But things had been unacceptably close. Maybe the research AI would be able to upgrade NEO’s planning algorithms.

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Next Chapter... Chapter 63 - Intermission – Star Bound (Part One)

Additional Chapters are available on my Patreon! Up to chapter 72!

See you, Explorer!