The metal floors were crossed with a latticework of ice and frost, even with the light of seven lanterns, the tunnel hallways seemed wreathed in shadow. Yebb hovered at the middle of the group, hemmed in on all sides by those more heavily armed. She felt, surprisingly useless, as they made their quiet way through the underground ice tunnels of her own home planet. She was no solider, she wasn't trained in combat. If they hadn't have come along with her she certainly wouldn't have felt safe enough to walk down that first latter, let alone head further into the darkness.
And now she felt more like a liability than anything else. The group moved to her at their center, protecting her from any unknown outside forces. Even Etium, who had taken up one of the side positions acted as a barrier between her and the darkness. He may have been small but he did have the biggest gun.
If this had been a laboratory, all this big clunky soldiers would have seemed like uncoordinated fools, but they weren't in a laboratory, they were in a potentially hostile enviornment well below the surface of, what to them was, an alien planet. Next to their lithe, silent and graceful movements she felt oddly clunky and lumbering.
They paused just before an intersection, and yebb heard Adam speak through the radio. Outside her earpiece, she couldn't hear him, he had turned off his external speakers so his voice was completely concealed inside his helmet. The others responded the same way, and Yebb refused to speak terrified to break the silence.
"Etium, can you do that sonar thing again."
Etium crouched down to the ground letting go of his gun for a brief instance so he could press his hands into the metal of the catwalk. Overhead, ice glittered blue with diffused light.
"Mmmm.... No joy boss, we have a couple floors below us, big open spaces I think are hallways, but after that, it sort of just opens up, either some large cavern or the abyss."
Maverick sighed, "Can we do our best to avoid creepy words like abyss when we are walking through the ice tunnels of doom."
Sunny spun her spear idly, "What, you worried that the powers of negative energy are going to spawn some eldritch horror?"
Maverick adjusted her weapon in her arms, "You know you joke, but with all that we have seen in the last few years, I am not entirely sure that that isn't exactly what might happen.:" The group fell into sobering silence at that pronouncement.
Adam, still keeping his eyes on the tunnel ahead nodded his helmet once, "Alright there is really only one option, Maverick-"
"If you suggest we split up, I am going to shank you?"
Adam turned his head ever so slightly to look at her, "Its like you think I'm stupid or soemthing, or that I have never seen a horror movie before. Despite what Fred Jones would suggest we are not going to split up."
At the back one of the other SE soldiers muttered, "Whose Fred jones?"
Yebb wondered idly how a man in helmet could manage to look so scandalized, "Freddie, from scooby doo, the worlds leading expert on ineffective trap building that somehow manages to work out in the end? Humanity's mot beloved himbo?"
The SE soldier shrugged.
"Adam sighed, That's it, that's your job, after this mission is over. You need some proper cultural education."
"With cartoons?"
"Damn straight with cartoons, but before we get off on a tangent. No, we are not splitting up because I don't exactly feel like being picked off one by one. We stay together. Etium, you have a general idea of where we are going, so you should direct us. Maverick you take point, sunny and I will cover the sides Etium keep your position and Jackie make sure to keep our rear covered."
The group did a bit of quick shuffling.
"What exactly are we looking for/"
"Sings of life I guess." Adam said, "Yebb said that this was some sort of power plant in operation less than three years ago. It seems weir dot me that they would just abandon it."
"I don't like this." Sunny offered
Adam laughed, "if you do you're crazy." He turned to look at Yebb, "If things go to shit, I don't want you getting lost, so I'll have you with me." It didn't take much urging to convince Yebb, and with a bit of prompting, she clambered onto Adam's back. Knowing that they would be spending their time underground, Adam had ditched the jetpack, but the mountains were still there, which left a convenient foothold for yebb to stand on while they moved forward.
She felt safer now, and the group moved faster now that they were no longer having to move with her in mind. As long as Adam remained at the front and not the back she would be covered at all times. She kept her hands gripping tightly to his armor as they came around another corner. Their light beams pass through a thick cloud of frontmost before coming to rest on something strange.
Yebb flinched back and so did Adam.
Their light beams cut down through the darkness and stopped on the walls of the next tunnel, coated in.... in something. Whatever it was it looked black in in the light, though it might also have been a dark red. It seemed to be frozen and clinging to the walls. Polyps of clear white flesh stuck out in clusters from the ceiling and floor.
"Pull back." Adam said, and the group of them did as told, retreating down the tunnel some way.
"What now?"
"We have to find out what that is." He turned his head to look at Yebb, but I won't do it without you being covered."
Luckily they HAD planned for this. Yebb had insisted it probably wouldn't be necessary, but she was now coming to realize that that had all been wishful thinking. She was glad the others had planned ahead. Etium detached another small unit from his suit. It was a small package for HAZMAT related scenarios and included inside was a DURO environment suit. Basically like HAZMAT but assuming you were also in a hostile environment.
They all waited as yebb pulled the suit on, feeling stupid for making them wait.
No one said anything, but she did her best to hurry, finally pulling everything into place. The helmet was a clever contraption that was basically collapsible until an electric current ran through it to make it rigid. The suit itself provided that current, and it sealed over her head with a hiss. A basic heat regulation system kicked on, and the air around her grew to be just a little warmer. It was nice considering he rlack of fur.
She returned to Adam, and they returned to the hallway with the strange growth.
This time it was Adam who did the sampling.
He had opted for a sampling kit as one of his attachments. Clearly it was just an excuse to touch strange alien things, but no one begrudged him that as he knelt down to test the sample. "Now would be a great time to tell us if this is some kind of native fungus.' He joked.
Inside her helmet Yebb finally felt comfortable enough to speak , "Would you be mad if I said no."
He shrugged, "its never that easy.'
They waited a few uneasy minutes for the test results to come through, and when they did Adam muttered something dark under his breath.
"What is it?"
The group leaned in to hear him.
"Its blood, human blood and tissue/"
There was a sobering moment of silence before Maverick offered, "I don't suppose we can brush this all off as some king of strange explosive pattern. Maybe some poor sod tried to come to the planet and bother the locals, and he was blown up or soemthing. The ice freezes his blood and guts and stuff where it fell on the walls, and here we have it."
"Yeah.... I don't think that's how that works, but you might be onto something."
"I am?"
Adam nodded standing up and putting away his sampling tools, "You said the blood was frozen, and that does seem to be the case. On the other planets, the heat was generally approaching hot or tropical allowing the aerosolized blood to hang around. Here on the Tricar world the blood would freeze resulting in a blood snow. Depending on how the mist spreads, it might be to heavy to get off the ground in the first place."
Yebb understood where he was going, "So there might still be hope. Maybe the infection wasn't able to get far?"
"that might be the case." He glanced at the wall and one of the strange white polyps, "Though. I am not entirely sure how these come into play."
"Maybe you should sample one." Yebb said
Adam didn't seem to keen on that idea, but he did lean forward, gently using his tools to prod at the skin. It was just then that something below them in the ground shook. The tremor was enough to cause Adam to wobble and his sampler was plunged into the skin of the polyp. There was a strange popping noise, and yellow tinted fluid began leaking out of the growth. Adam cursed and stepped back, yebb held tight to his armor.
A sharp squelching pop echoed around the room, and the polyp ruptured, sending a burst of clear yellow fluid oozing down the wall. Yebb shrieked inside her helmet as the thing came for them, racing down the wall and across the floor towards Adam's feet. It was over an instant later, as faster than thinking Adam brought up his boot and stomped on the creature before it could make it any further.
It died with a soft sort of squelching noise.
"What the honey toasted FUCK was that." Sunny demanded. She was much better at using human expletives than almost anyone yebb knew, except for krill. Krill had it down to a science.
"Who had the Flood for 10 thousand." Jackie joked from the back of the group.
"Flood? No I am definitely getting Doom vibes, with like the flesh wall."
Adam shifted crouching down to inspect the creature more closely, "I would be very proud of all of ou for your vintage science fiction discourse. I have trained you all well, if it wasn't for the creepy thing that just tried to attack us."
There was a pause and the group crowded around for a better look.
The body of the creature was sort of wrinkly an off pinkish white color with yellow mixed in. Little blue veins ran below he surface of the off colored flesh, but that was only its main abdomen, the rest of the creature was supported on a lattice of what appeared to be open tendon, and its legs were white.... Like bone. It had four legs in all both of them shaped like spider legs though they ended in a sharp point. It had no mouth to speak of, even when Adam used his sampler to roll it over.
"What the hell is that." Maverick asked.
Adam took a few more samples, and his voice was grim when he finally spoke, "brain matter, and bone."
A silence filled the air around them.
"I think this is the point at which we say hell naw, and get the fuck out." Jackie offered.
"The nope train has arrived at central station with one way tickets to nopeville." Maverick added.
Adam sighed, 'Well I am sorry but we are going to have to derail the nope train on the corner of, we have a planet to save."
Maverick laughed, "Do you really think we have the tools to deal with whatever the hells this I right now."
"Maybe not." Adam said, "We should call in reinforcements, get Valkyrie and Terminator down here now, Keep firefly on standby in orbit. Whatever this is we re probably the only ones who can deal with it.