*000000*

The same responses kept coming through. No new information, all quiet, grumbling about the lack of action. It was kind of nostalgic, in a weird way.

"Team twelve, check in."

"..."

Well then, I guess it's starting.

On reflex, I checked team twelve's last known position, a series of what looked like access shafts to an even older factory complex that had been buried as the hive continued to grow. None of the area appeared on any of the maps I had available to me, so I was more or less blind in topography for the area beyond what we had mapped in our sweeping process..

"Team twelve, check in."

More silence. I started backtracking the routes that they would have to have taken to get there, and didn't see any connecting tunnels or anything that would have allowed for something like an ambush, at least not a traditional one at any rate. Concerned, I double checked the feed from their auspex, and the current reading was nothing out of the ordinary.

My paranoia spiked yet again, and I found myself fighting against an adrenaline surge. Need to think back to training. When in doubt, put more eyes on it.

"All teams, team twelve is unresponsive. Require visual check on last known location."

The Sergeant glanced at me with an odd look on his face. I ignored him as I used the remote link to reset team twelve's auspex to try to get a better look at the situation.

"This is team ten. We are moving to investigate." "Team eight, same."

Auspex still showed clear, even with me having just reset the unit remotely. What the hell? If there was a clear board, then why weren't they responding?

I absently fingered my Eagle as I continued to try and tickle answers out of the auspex relay…

"Understood. Be advised, auspex twelve shows clear. Be on the lookout for gas or bad air pockets." This got me another look from the Sergeant, which I again ignored.

"Roger." "Understood."

I grimaced even as I mind whirled. Because of the way the tunnels and other warrens were set up, we were deliberately limiting the use of active scanners to extremely short range stuff, only good for doing a detailed scan on a given room or section of tunnel than anything major. This was done to reduce the amount of backscatter and interference caused by our own units as we did our sweep and clear, and also to limit the potential exposure to any threat receivers set up inside of the tunnels proper. Not that I thought that would be the case, but the Sergeant insisted when I questioned him about it, so I didn't push the issue.

I was beginning to think I should have pushed harder.

The teams eight and ten were approaching the last known position of team twelve at a rather rapid pace now, and would be there in less than a minute. I was hoping that it was just a pocket of bad air or something similar that caused this breakdown, because if it wasn't…

Another hunch, this one fueled by a combination of bitter experience and rampant paranoia, prompted me to switch the auspex of team twelve to active mode for a brief ping of the surroundings, an action the sergeant noticed and attempted to stop.

His rebuke died on his lips as we beheld the sheer mass of contacts around the area, none of which I could resolve properly.

At almost the exact same time, the two teams reached the location.

I already knew what was going to happen before it started, and there was nothing that I could do to stop it.

Didn't mean I couldn't get as much intel as possible from the event, though.

"This is team ten, reporting in! We are engaged by...I don't know what the hell these things are! But they're everywhere!! Falling back!"

"All teams, contact at tunnel intersection DA33-12, last known location of team twelve. Teams eight and ten are engaged. Stand by for further instructions."

At least I could warn everybody else that it had finally dropped in the pot. I glanced at the Sergeant for any further commands, and found him staring intently at the sensor displays. Did he know something?

Movement on the boards drew my attention back to the situation in progress.

I watched as the teams began to pull back from the damned killbox that was now team twelve's apparent grave…and felt a sudden spike of unease. There was something I was missing.

I took a moment to glance around at my environment, and saw nothing that was out of place...for the moment. Still, that wary feeling refused to leave me.

The teams were now making their way back up to one of the main junctures of the tunnels in an unorthodox but quite effective fighting retreat, and actually doing DAMNED good at reaping a toll on their would-be ambushers. If the limited radio traffic was any indication, then they had yet to actually lose a man to the assault.

Even with the "good" news, I couldn't shake the feeling of something being dangerously off. I glanced around again, just to be sure.

"Team eight, reporting. We've made it to the main junction for this area. Requesting backup immediately!"

The Sergeant had apparently given an order out when I wasn't paying attention, as one of the reserve teams was already headed for the tunnel junction that we had identified prior. A quick glance showed that this was one of the "safe" corridors, with only a small number of ways in or out, of which only two could not be monitored from the "surface". Despite the minimal preparations for this raid, there was a bit more of the competence flowing around, as there was a pretty solid choke point set up for the path back to the base camp.

Teams eight and ten used the fortifications and it's defenders to maximum advantage, gunning down wave after wave of..something or another. I still couldn't resolve anything from the auspex.

The sounds of combat echoed up the tunnel, mostly the din of automatic weapons fire and the alien screams of whatever creatures may have been down there with those men. And even as tense as I was, I had a duty right here and now to provide as much accurate data as possible so as to allow them to get out of that shitstorm alive.

Still, that paranoia was only getting stronger and stronger, some back corner of my mind screaming at me to pay attention before I got killed. I took yet another look around, and saw absolutely nothing out of the ordinary at all. I turned back to my board to pre--

What the fuck!?!

I replayed the last ten seconds of memories back in my head.

I felt paranoid about something. I looked around, checking my environment, and saw nothing out of the ordinary.

In the middle of an impromptu base camp for a search team with reported hostiles.

In the middle of a high alert.

In the dead smack middle of an area where NOTHING is normal..

Mental Attack.

It was the only explanation, really. Someone had sicced a psyker onto us, and was doing a damned good job of keeping us distracted from noticing them doing whatever they wanted. There WAS, however, one major problem.

I had Thoth. And he was not affected by whatever this shit was.

I finally let my core free to scan as he pleased.

The sensor pulse sent out was simultaneously stupidly powerful as it was tightly controlled, sending up a scan bubble only along the "surface" axes. Still lit up the passive-mode auspices something fierce, though.

I would have laughed at it, but we had far bigger concerns at the moment,

Namely that we were surrounded by some kind of humanoid shapes, and from the movements and postures, they were not friendly.

The odd part was that they were mostly female, though. And as far as I knew, only House Escher ran with gang compositions like that. Which begged a very important question: why the hell was house Escher involved in this shit?

There was also the far, far more important question of how the hell were WE going to make it out of this mess, but I thought I had a workable plan on that front. I would just need to time things just right…

I kept at it with the sensor board, doing my best to get a solid read on whatever the hell that team ten was fighting down there, all the while setting up my improvised counter-ambush.

Step one: tell someone other than yourself.

I waved the Sergeant over to the sensor boards as I continued to monitor the situation. "Sarge, we got these thingies here, here, here, and here, trying to do something stupid and slick with the boys down there. Might need you to send some more backup."

I then whispered the next part under my breath, but still loud enough for Sarge to hear."We are being surrounded by an unknown force, attempting a classic ambush, need to get ready asap."

The Sergeant nodded, and then turned and briskly walked away, grabbing one of his Corporals as he did so. I focused back on the sensor screen, directing Thoth to monitor the real-world situation in case he had to act.

Team ten was still holding their own, as was team eight. But there was another horde of whatever those weird things were rushing down the tunnels like a living swarm, and from appearances they cared not for what stood between them and their meal.

A second point began to bug me: these things are dropping like flies. Why the hell did team twelve go dark?

Our would-be ambushers were almost ready, from what it looked like. We needed--

I moved. No thought, no hesitation, nothing but ACTION. One moment I was there, the next I had completely vacated the space where I once was, having dived for cover completely without thinking.

The multiple lasbolts hitting RIGHT where I would have been standing not even a mere second ago convinced me that I had made the right call..

It did confirm that I was something of a priority target for whoever these people were. Either that or the comms gear and electronics that had been set up for our use. I quickly glanced over to where the Sergeant was located...only to see a pair of shots connect with deadly accuracy, leaving behind only a rapidly cooling corpse.

...OR they could be targeting the apparent and obvious leadership…

Fortunately for our defense, the newly created deader was not the Sergeant, but one of his minions, likely acting as a runner for the news and battle plan. The bad part was that we had been caught in a conflux of the laws of attack, namely that we were being attacked both when the enemy was ready to do so...and when we were not ready to defend.

I really wanted to try and whip up a defense, but whoever the fuckers on the las were had some downright disgusting aim, punishing even the slightest misstep with terrifying ease. I needed to try and get some counter-fire on those bastards so that the rest of the crew could actually defend themselves before the main push of that ambush force comes in.

I heard the Sergeant shouting orders above the din of battle. Seems he'd had the same idea, and was using his team of heavies to shield from the las fire while trying to locate the firing position. From a quick glance (that nearly got my head taken off), he was not having much in the way of any fortune. We needed some way to break the logjam we were in, or we were all going to die.

A primal scream echoed all around us.

I quickly turned to the source of the noise, almost directly across from the current ambush forces, and saw something downright terrifying. It was something grotesque, a mockery of the human form, it was simply...Alien.

Nevermind that the damned thing looked like a fucking Xenomorph to begin with.

Worse, it had brought buddies, four in all, for a grand total of five. And they did not look happy. At all.

As if things weren't already bad enough, I heard over the vox channels that the search teams were getting HAMMERED by something down in the tunnels and were either doing fighting retreats or were pinned down at the nearest defensible location and trading fire. If what I was hearing from the garbled messages was correct, a group of whatever those subterranean things were had broken loose and were on the way to the "surface" area.

FAST.

And we had maybe ten guys up here in fighting condition. Maybe eleven, if I could get to that--no, ten. Fucking sniper bitch…

I needed another option to ge-Fun in the Sun (Warhammer 40k - T'au Empire) (100CP)

Plasma, radiation, and antimatter are all similar in that they relate to exotic and high energy states of matter, whether it is stellar mass or individual particles of subatomic size. You now are a master of T'au technology as it relates to manipulating these high-energy states of matter and the physics that underpin them.

-German Engineering (Smash Up) (200CP)

Everything you build seems just a bit more. More durable, more efficient, more precise. Call it a 10-20% difference across the board?

-Miniaturization/Efficiency (Worm) (400CP)

You can miniaturize anything down to levels that any sane man would consider impossible. A fusion reactor the size of a watch battery would be the absolute minimum of what you are capable of, and you'd be able to make it far smaller than that. Your power also makes you a master of technological efficiency, anything you make needing barely any energy to run compared to what it should and continue to do so for a very long time. These specialties also make you a master of nanotechnology and similar pursuits. Of course you aren't barred from building something big like a giant robot, just that it'll be impossibly efficient and crammed full of more weapons and subsystems then should be possiblet us out of here in one piece, or we were all going to die here.

Again, Difficult chapter. I'm splitting it into two chapters for that reason.