Ice Fight

Dustin didn’t reply to Jaisyl’s words immediately, because the fleshy monster had moved. Long blobs of red flopped outward from the central mass, dragging it towards them as he levelled his pistol and squeezed the trigger. Blood fountained out to splash on the walls, but the creature just kept moving, seemingly not noticing the injury. Motion in the corner of Dustin’s eye made him whirl, diving forward just in time to parry a lunge from the metallic worm towards Jaisyl, the beast’s many-fanged circular mouth sparking down the side of his pistol.

“Fuck,” he swore, wishing for a moment that he’d brought more than one gun. “Get in the slide - wedge your feet against one wall and your back against the other and climb that way,” he managed to yell to Jaisyl, wrestling with his silvery opponent as the flesh-monster grew ever closer.

Fighting two foes in the dark was a challenge. Doing so with the military hardware equivalent of thoughts and prayers was even more of one - Dustin’s pistol rounds seemed to not be doing anything to the fleshy creature no matter how many chunks he blew off it, while the two shots he fired at the silicate lifeform bounced off at weird angles from it’s tough hide. Not wanting to risk a ricochet hitting either himself or Jaisyl, he opted to concentrate his fire on the biological enemy rather than the worm - for all the good it would do.

He could only hope the princess had followed his orders - turning to check her positioning while he also backed towards the tunnel would be suicidal with both of the creatures seemingly fixated on him. Even giving them his full attention turned out to not be enough; half-stumbling under the weight of another barbed lunge from the silver worm Dustin felt the incoming rush of air a moment before he was knocked sideways, his ribs a cacophony of pain as a blood-red appendage whipped into him.

Gritting his teeth and rolling, he scrambled upright just in time to avoid the follow-up lunge from the worm and an overhead strike from two of the bio-monster’s extensions, both blows that would at the least have left him with broken bones. From where he now stood, he could thankfully see Jaisyl’s feet disappearing into the shaft. That was some good news at least, the princess was escaping. On the other hand, it also meant that the monsters were now between him and her, and his weapon didn’t seem to be doing much good as far as damaging them went.

**** times called for **** measures. If he could at least deal with one of his foes, he could make a break for the slide and hopefully climb high enough that whichever one remained would decide to try and find easier food for the time being. Given the lack of any real signs of pain or slowing on the part of the many-limbed flesh blob, that meant his best bet was the seemingly indestructible silicate worm. Great.

Hopping rapidly from side to side to avoid attacks, Dustin freed the only other option he had for weaponry - one of three stun grenades he’d pulled from the armoury without any real hope that they’d actually prove to be useful. Against Fractals, he’d have been right, their stunning effects useless against a thinking machine, but here… temporarily holstering his pistol, he twisted the end of the grenade to prime it, then launched it into the path of the worm as it attacked yet again.

As he’d hoped, the creature didn’t discern between Dustin’s limb, the rocky floor or an advanced stun grenade - with a scraping of metal and a convulsion it swallowed the charge whole. As it did so, Dustin took off, sprinting for a tiny gap between the fleshy beast and the wall. The biological nightmare moved rapidly when it sensed what he was trying to do - but he made it through just in time before a wall of flesh slammed the way shut behind him.

On the far side of the flesh-monster wall, the worm twitched. Then, the first stun pulse radiated out. Cracks appeared on every facet of it’s surface as the pressure wave expanded outward too fast for it to contain or release. Air rushed from both ends of the beast as it desperately tried to equalize, but too late. The intake of air shattered the plates, before a second outward pulse blew the entire thing apart, the grenade breaking under it’s own **** in such a confined space and peppering the wall of flesh with shards.

With one foe down, Dustin was in a much better spot. Backing up rapidly, he scrambled into the tunnel behind Jaisyl, the other two grenades already in his hand. “Climb!” he barked, pushing her up ahead of him as he drew his pistol and aimed at a spot just below his feet.

Rock fell out of the hole as the rounds drilled into the side wall of the passage. Dustin shimmied sideways and adjusted his aim - he didn’t have much time. Firing the next set of drilling shots over his knee, he winced as the recoil and chunks of stone bashed into his leg. The first tendrils had entered the passage below him by the time he was confident the holes were deep enough, and his hands were shaky as he slammed the pistol back into it’s holster. With the weapon secured, he shoved the spare magazines for the pistol - part projectile, part battery - into the holes, before following each with a primed grenade. Then, with a frantic scrabble he began to shuffle awkwardly up towards Jaisyl, praying he’d timed everything right - and that he could clear the demolition zone in time.

For a moment, it looked like he’d failed - fleshy tendrils reached up towards them, the monster beginning to work it’s bulk into the tunnel - and then his makeshift blasting charges blew. In the tight confines of the rock, the pulse from the grenades detonated the magazines, blowing out the tunnel walls and causing the sides to cave in on the creature. With a grinding thud, the way below Dustin sealed itself, rubble blocking any sight of their pursuer. For a moment, he let himself just hang there - back wedged against one wall, feet against the other as he breathed out and waited for the ground tremors to cease. Then, with a groan at his still-painful ribs, he pressed his hands behind himself and began to climb.

It took Dustin and Jaisyl over an hour to climb back up a shaft they’d taken mere minutes to slip down. It would have taken far longer, had Dustin not called ahead. Rye had then managed to scavenge up some cable to make a makeshift rope, and once she’d done so Yril’k scrambled down with it, the Vex’ess woman’s blade arms and chitin-clad hands allowing her to treat the roof and walls of the passage as little more than another floor.

Reaching the hole they’d fallen down and climbing free with the assistance of the others, for a moment Dustin just lay on his back on the corridor floor, breathing heavily and waiting for his heart rate to subside. Jaisyl copied his lead, although periodic tremors visible even through her vacsuit suggested the princess would take a while longer to get over the trauma of her sudden descent and the monsters below.

When he’d finally got his breath, Dustin sat up. “We need to get to the others as quickly as possible. And then evacuate as soon as we can safely do so. I don’t know what the scientists here are studying, but I doubt it’s silicate worms as tall as me that can swallow stun-charges whole, or whatever the fuck the big fleshy blob monster was. Pistol did fuck all to them as well, and there’s no guarantee thanks to that hole suddenly appearing that there’s not more of the things lurking in dark corners. I want proper tactical squads down here to sweep and clear out any research the scientists think is vital eventually, but right now we’re emptying this facility when we leave.”

Standing with a hand up from Rye, he frowned and added almost as an afterthought “and once they review my helmet cam footage, I suspect they’re going to rethink the orbital station idea.”

Sure enough, when they had eventually made their way back to the huddled and shivering scientists and engineers a short time later, O’Zaxx was all too ready to agree to the evacuation plan. “Even if your footage isn’t what you say it is,” the alien said, refusing to risk their limited power on a display to review the evidence, “we’re still without proper heating. This blizzard should die down soon - but there was a projected cold snap coming in. Outside temps will drop like a rock from the ‘balmy’ minus thirty it already is out there. We need power, or we need off this ice-ball before we become frozen statues.”