Prism and The Red Wolves

Ursun swung himself around an open door frame for cover as a stream of blue plasma made its way down the well-lit underground hallway he’d been dashing down. The hallways of the central level of Getla Base had smooth, light-brown walls and ceilings with shiny white flooring, all of which was composed of a mix of biopolymers and concrete. The bio-luminescent nodes that lined the center of each hallway ceiling offered nowhere to hide except for the few adjoining rooms along the wide halls. Despite being pursued doggedly by the infiltrators, Ursun felt at home being several dozens of meters underground. He’d grown up within the interior of a mountain, after all.

He’d been separated from Jaik and Srell during the chaos that had unfolded when a dozen infiltrators rapidly made their way up from Getla Base’s lower levels. The infiltrators were armed to the teeth with weapons and gear that were significantly more powerful than what was available to the Etrysian soldiers guarding the base, which allowed the enemies to mow down those who stood in their way. Only the Red Wolves and the Roses had weapons that could properly subdue the enemies, and they’d made a plan to deal with the infiltrators once it became clear what their targets within the base were.

The breakneck speed at which the enemies moved through the base was made worse by how efficiently they killed, leaving no one alive to report directly what they’d seen to their base commander. Deriges had been infuriated by how little of a defense his soldiers were putting up, as his base was known to be one of the most secure within the Conjunction. With their radio communications being jammed and their base’s assorted systems beginning to break down, Deriges and his soldiers’ situation seemed bleak.

The base’s saving grace was the multitude of functions and redundancies the Etrysian military’s biotechnology provided.

“Ursun, have you reached bio-generator 4’s membrane yet?” Deriges’ voice blared through Ursun’s ear clasp. The clasp was linked to the base’s terpenoid communication network, which was usually referred to as “terp-comms”.

“Almost, but these damned infiltrators are right behind me. Looks like we were right; they are definitely going after the base’s power system.” Ursun replied back.

“If they get into our bio-generators, they can blow up this base and the Athean coast with it.” Deriges’ said worriedly over the terp-comm.

“I know. I’m on it.” Ursun replied back curtly.

Ursun recalled a well-known incident that had occurred 12 years earlier, when Vadamite terrorists triggered a feedback loop within the Etrysian city of Shyon’s main bio-generator, which led to the destruction of the city and its surrounding area. It had been the first time such a thing had happened to a fourth-generation bio-generator, which had been designed by Etrysian biocrafters to make the possibility of disastrous or destructive meltdowns nigh-impossible. Vadam eventually discovered a virus that could not only infect the bio-generators, but would also lead to a breakdown of enough of the bio-generators’ internal safeguards to allow for an eventual and tremendous chemical detonation. Many believe that the Vadamites were given the virus by the Kingdom, as Vadam was not a nation known to possess any significant bioengineering capability.

Ursun withdrew a small mirror from his gear belt and extended the rod on it to check the hallway for his three attackers. The infiltrators had the good sense to shoot out any gene-gates or monitoring organs that they came across, so the base was left largely blind.

Their boots and armor allowed them to move silently, so he needed to rely on sight to locate them. He soon saw all three of them slowly approaching him down the hallway. One of them held a large plasma-thrower, while the other two held silenced pistols. They each wore sleek, silvery bodysuits that covered them from head to toe, with areas that appeared padded around their chests and sections of their arms and legs. Geometric patterns of reflective gold covered the padded sections of the suits, which served as the suits’ onboard technology. The suits could deflect most types of bullets in addition to being scratch, pierce, and blast resistant. It was the armor ordinarily worn by the Kingdom’s strike forces, which were almost never seen outside of major battles near the Kingdom itself.

“How the hell did these Destructors get all this Kingdom-tech?” Ursun thought to himself for the third time that evening. “Not even that cyborgized Constable that Prism took out could’ve outfitted an entire unit this well.”

He knew that the infiltrators who stalked him and who invaded the base were Destructors by the way that they moved. The Destructors were a brash gang of bandits, slavers, and killers. They tended to move with a thuggish swagger that betrayed any attempts to mask their sordid identities.

After putting away his mirror, Ursun grabbed a grenade off of his belt. But before he could pull its clip and throw it into the hallway, Ursun heard the sounds of a firefight down that same hallway. He quickly pulled out his mirror to watch what was going on, and was surprised to see Theda and her smaller female teammate shooting repeatedly at the heads of the infiltrators. The two women simply walked forward as the three suited enemies fell down from the nonstop barrage of Roses-designed disruptor bullets striking their heads.

When the disruptor bullets made impact, they released small electromagnetic pulses that damaged electronics. The golden designs on the enemies' armor flickered repeatedly as their technology attempted in vain to protect their wearers. It didn't take long for the bullets to tear through the rapidly-regenerating armored skin of the head-covering mask, soon causing the three infiltrators to slump over dead on the shiny white floor before the two Roses. After confidently stepping over the dead bodies, Theda walked down the hallway to where she’d seen Ursun’s mirror peaking out of a doorframe.

“Thorns Team Trias, at your service.” Theda said to Ursun after he stepped out of the room he’d been waiting in.

“That was good work. Those disruptor bullets of yours still pack a punch, I see.” Ursun said to her rather reservedly, which she thought was quite humorous.

“Their armor might look fancy and new, but it’s actually old-gen Kingdom-tech. Looks to me like the Queen is alright with letting these thugs use her outdated habiliment. It’s the only reason that our bullets do anything to them.” Theda explained while stylishly reloading her red-and-white machine pistol.

“Habiliment? Why couldn’t you just say “clothes” or “gear”? Don’t you ever get tired of being so snobbish?” Ursun said with an irritated shake of his head.

“Snobbish? I believe a better word to describe me is “grandiloquent”.” Theda said with a smirk.

“Six years haven’t changed you one bit.” Ursun groaned before glancing behind Theda. “She handled herself pretty well.” Ursun said with a nod of his head towards the black-haired woman with a buzz cut who was still standing in the middle of the hallway behind Theda.

“Risa is a quiet girl, but she’s one of the stealthiest and most observant Thorns we’ve got in the Roses. She’s the one that tracked the thugs and got us here undetected.” Theda explained with a proud smirk as she glanced over at Risa.

“We should get going. There are three more groups of infiltrators headed for the three remaining bio-generators.” Ursun said after grasping his PAW and looking determinedly towards the end of the hallway that he’d come down earlier.

“I’m well aware.” Theda said with a quick eye-roll. “I gave your two boys a few mags full of disruptor bullets. I expect any magazines that they don’t use to be returned to me.” She added playfully.

“That was generous of you. Weird that they didn’t tell you that we’re carrying an improved version of your disruptor bullets on us.” Ursun said with a chuckle.

“I should’ve known. Gnapp loves tweaking our designs whenever he gets the chance.” Theda said as the two of them began walking down the hall.

Ursun scoffed at her assumption and walked ahead of her. He knew it was pointless to argue with someone as undeservedly conceited as her. The Roses hadn’t invented anything that came near any of Gnapp’s creations for well over twenty years, Ursun thought. And yet the highfalutin private military company still claimed that Gnapp’s success came from mirroring their own technology. It was an assertion that infuriated Ursun, and Theda knew it.

After contacting Deriges on their terp-comms, Ursun and Theda learned that the infiltrators closest to them had nearly broken through the defenses Deriges had commanded to guard the base’s southern Bio-generator 3. It would take the three of them ten minutes to rush over to that section of the base since the bases’ lateral lifts were malfunctioning due to the virus that continued to affect its bio-system.

Deriges navigated the trio from the command and control room at the center of the base, helping them to get past several sealed security gates and gene-gates that had gone haywire. Ursun took that time to load his magazine of magflux bullets into his PAW, in case they encountered their enemies sooner than they expected.

By the time Theda, Risa, and Ursun made it to the hallway that led to Bio-generator 3, the trio of infiltrators had broken through the line of soldiers tasked with halting their progress. Ursun and his allies had been too late to stop the slaughter of the guards stationed there, and could only step over their bodies to reach the destroyed door leading to the bio-generator room and its membrane.

The semi-permeable membrane that surrounded the large energy-producing organ served a number of functions, such as adding an extra layer of security to the bio-generator while also keeping in much of the heat that it produced. The membrane formed a pink pulsating sphere around the bio-generator, and that sphere was propped up and fed by a network of thick-walled tubes and sacs known as the bio-generator’s endoplasmic reticulum. Numerous living cables of various colors and thicknesses ran out of the top and bottom of the membrane and into tubes in the ceiling and flooring of the bio-generator room.

On a ramp leading to the surface of the pink membrane, Ursun, Theda, and Risa found the three infiltrators, who were preparing to inject a super-virus into the membrane. Ursun raised his PAW and fired a single bullet at the suited man holding the white cylinder that had an equally-long golden needle attached to it. When the bullet struck the chest of his shimmering bodysuit, electricity erupted from the site and arced between the three infiltrators. They all twitched as their suits went haywire, delivering high-voltage currents of electricity from the golden filaments directly into their bodies. The enemies soon fell unconscious onto the metal grating of the ramp, and the viral syringe rolled out of the hand of the would-be saboteur.

“That worked a lot better than I expected.” Ursun said with a smirk.

“Absurd…what kind of bullet was that!?” Theda exclaimed as Ursun approached the downed infiltrators.

“That’s classified.” Ursun said loudly without turning around.

When Ursun bent down to pick up the large syringe, he heard Risa yell “Run!” just when he began to see the silvery suits near him begin to glow.

“Shit!” Ursun grunted before grabbing the syringe, placing it in a large pocket on his gear belt, and taking off running out of the bio-generator room.

Theda and Risa were running down the hallway when Ursun made it out of the room. Ursun tried to remember the yield of the suits’ self-destruct function, which normally needed to be activated manually, as he ran for his life. He hoped that the bio-generator’s membrane could handle the brunt of the blasts, but he became concerned by the reality that three explosions were triggering. He cursed himself for being so reckless with using Gnapp’s prototypes in such a risky situation.

KERBLOOM!!!

Each bodysuit detonated simultaneously, magnifying their destructive force as Ursun feared they would. Theda and Risa had turned around a corner to get off of the hallway exposed to the bio-reactor room, and Ursun narrowly leapt to his side to join them. Ursun grabbed the two women while he crashed to the ground and covered their bodies as the flames from the explosion shot straight down the neighboring hall and began to wash over them. The heat from the flames singed what little skin Ursun had exposed, though his armor protected him and his allies from the fire. The walls and the floor shook as they withstood the shockwaves that rocked the entire base. Theda twisted her head to look up at Ursun, and saw as he struggled to endure the conflagration. He gritted his teeth and held Theda and Risa more tightly like a bear protecting its cubs.

A sense of relief swept over them as water began to rain down from the ceilings after the explosion ended. The base’s fire suppression kicking in gave the trio hope that the bio-generator had survived. The fires were soon quenched by the water-spewing pseudo-nipples that discretely lined the hallway ceilings, and Ursun soon released the women beneath him from his grip. He groaned and rolled onto his back, allowing Theda and Risa to rise to their feet. He stayed sprawled out on his back for a while and let the cool water soothe his overheated body.

He shared the events that had transpired with his teammates over their telepathic link, and learned that Prism had just arrived on the surface of the base. Jaik and Srell were encountering trouble at the northern bio-generator, so Ursun directed Prism to aid them there.

“You okay, big guy?” Theda leaned over and said to Ursun, who appeared to be deep in thought.

“I’ll be fine, little lady.” Ursun said almost affectionately after opening his eyes and looking at her.

Risa looked gingerly at Theda, who stood at 183 centimeters tall, when she overheard Ursun’s words. Theda smiled at Ursun wryly, not wanting to reveal how pleasant his words sounded to her. She recalled a time when the two used those nicknames as lovers, though she knew how distant those days were.

“You must be delirious. Rest as long as you need to. We’re going to check on this bio-generator and see how bad the damage is.” Theda said gently.

Ursun propped himself up on his elbows and gave Theda a light nod before she left with Risa just when the water nipples ceased their sprinkling. He ran his fingers through his thick red beard, which he’d tucked in between the two women during the explosion. He was glad that it hadn’t caught fire or been singed off.

In the few minutes that the women were away, Ursun had stood up and re-established contact with Deriges. The terpenoids were able to flow through the base’s ducts and reach Ursun since the fire and smoke was cleared away. The base commander communicated that Bio-generator 2 in the eastern end of the base didn’t seem to be under attack, and that he and his forces had no idea where the last three infiltrators were. Deriges also shared that Jaik, Srell, and Deriges’ son Kurillios were in a firefight with three infiltrators at the northern Bio-generator 1.

“The membrane has a big hole in it, but it’s already beginning to close itself up. None of the reticulum leading from the bio-generator nucleus to the membrane were seriously harmed, so the membrane should be fully restored in an hour. The actual bio-generator is essentially unscathed, thank goodness.” Theda told Ursun once she’d walked back over to him with Risa several minutes later.

“Military membranes are tougher than I remember. That bio-generator would have been destroyed by a blast like that just a decade ago, membrane or no.” Ursun said

“Good to see you’re alright.” Theda said to Ursun curtly. “I’d hate to see what would have happened if the virus had been involved in the blast. The explosion might’ve served as an alternate delivery method.”

Ursun withdrew the syringe from a long rectangular pocket on his gear belt, having nearly forgotten it was there. He was relieved when he saw that it was undamaged. He turned it over in his hands, examining its contents. The white liquid within the vial was translucent and milky, and Ursun could see small sparkles glinting throughout it.

“Be careful with that. There’s a good chance that it can infect us, too.” Theda said worriedly as she saw Ursun transfixed by the bio-weapon.

Ursun grunted before placing it back in his gear belt, taking great care to cover its sharp golden needle with a piece of tough leatherine. It had been a miracle that he hadn’t jabbed himself with it when he dived down to cover Theda and Risa, he thought to himself. Not long after, they headed to the eastern bio-generator despite there being no signs that their enemies were there.

“We’ve stopped the infiltrators here. Prism is connecting to the base’s bio-system to find the last three of them.” Jaik relayed to Ursun telepathically.

“I hope he doesn’t run into any problems. This bio-system is a lot more secure internally than Surmil’s.” Ursun communicated to Jaik, Srell, and Prism. “Speaking of, what’s your status in the city?” Ursun then reached out to Leanna and Lorias.

“We’ve stabilized the people who were injured at the security station. We’re beginning to interrogate the female sniper that was responsible. She survived Prism’s attack, probably because she’s a cyborg.” Leanna said to her team psychically.

“Be incredibly careful. If she’s a Constable, then she’s got self-repairing functions and who-knows what else.” Ursun’s concern echoed through the link while Prism was focused on connecting to Getla Base’s bio-system using a nerve-cable within the northern bio-generator room.

“We’ve wrapped her body in a bundle of nerve-fibers, since their current has proven effective in subduing her already. Leanna has rigged up a makeshift control panel for the nerve-fibers, too. If our killer cyborg gets cute, then we’ll run a few thousand volts of bio-electricity through her again.” Lorias stated matter-of-factly through their telepathic link.

A feeling of unease crept through their minds, spreading primarily from Jaik and Leanna. Torture was something that Srell, Lorias, and Ursun had been both the recipients and perpetrators of, making them intimately familiar with it. The act of torture had been an unexperienced evil to Jaik and Leanna until that night, though Leanna told herself that she would reign in any sadism that she might witness from Lorias and Chief Goginae. She would be an effective torturer, who would only use pain to fine tune their enemy, she thought morbidly to herself.

“Don’t overdo it.” Ursun’s voice echoed in the mind of Lorias in particular.

As Prism stood poised to enter the infected bio-system of Getla Base, and as Lorias and Leanna prepared themselves to begin questioning their tight-lipped captive, the conflict seemed to be shifting in RED-1's favor. But they couldn't have imagined how much worse Surmil's Night of Terror would become.