"Do your best to just knock them out," Tony said as he finished with a pair of teenagers before directing them off the platform and down the tunnel. "Rip them apart and we won't be able to save them later."
"Great," Kennedy grumbled as she thumbed her Helixes down to their lowest settings. "Now a kinder, gentler defense that just knocks the enemy down instead of taking them out so they don't come back later and kill us." Then she was jerking herself behind cover as a hail of bullets filled the space where she had just been standing.
"It doesn't appear that our adversary has the same reluctance," Jasper grimly noted as he also took cover. "It does beg the question, though: why do you think the breathers call them reclaimers?"
Their answer was swift in coming. Even as they drew behind cover, several figures in heavy, dark gray body armor exploded out of the stairwell, automatic slug throwers in gauntleted hands. They quickly saw that the armor was positioned to ward against biting, protecting every millimetre of exposed skin, including the face and hands.
Clear of the doorway, the reclaimers hesitated slightly. Then Kennedy heard one speaking to another in a low voice:
"It doesn't matter if you see a face you recognize this time. You see a breather, you put a bullet in their heart. Because last time you didn't, and good people got turned."
"She,...she was my wife, sarge," a second voice said. "I just couldn't,..." One of the reclaimers made a sharp gesture.
"I told you to kill her but you didn't. We got her back, but she claimed hundreds of us before we did. Any of which can now bite you!! And now you gonna turn and you gonna tear away the flesh of her bones. In this life now you kill or you die. Or you die and you kill. It can't be any more simplified than that!" Then the speaker was making a gesture and the slug throwers were spraying a cloud of ordnance across the platform towards a handful of recently turned humans that were trying to get away.
Most managed to avoid getting hit. But a handful were struck, each crying out with pain as the bullet impacts spun them around and dropped them onto the platform's uncaring concrete floor. And, as Jasper and Kennedy watched in astonishment, they almost instantly turned back into zombies as soon as death took them. They quickly scrambled back to their feet and, with whispered thanks, ran between the reclaimers and back up the stairs.
"Well, that answers that," Jasper rumbled. Then he was stepping out from behind cover, his percussion rod humming.
First to go were the slug throwers. Barreling into the lead reclaimers, rod humming, Jasper smoothly knocked them flying with tight, precise swings of his weapon. With the percussion field, a cylinder of hyper-excited sonic force, active, the rod bent weapons in half and dented the reclaimer's heavy armor. Then Kennedy was joining him, using short bursts of devastating sonic force from her Helixes to knock individual reclaimers back with shots to the chest and torso.
Unused to an actual counterattack that didn't involve teeth or grasping hands, the reclaimers were instantly thrown into disarray by the expert assault. Then Kennedy stepped into the stairwell to scatter the reclaimers that were gathering there, the Helixes making short work of their attempts to stand and fight.
Knocking aside a sidearm lifted in a trembling hand, Jasper knocked its owner out with a sharp blow to the top of its helmeted head. Then he was looking over at Tony.
"You've got room, Tony. Maybe two or three more minutes," he said.
"Gotcha," the heavy-set fellow replied, pulling the last of the turned humans to his feet before pushing him towards the ladder leading down into the tunnel. "And we're clear here. Back towards us quickly, before they reset."
Nodding, Jasper reached out to give Kennedy a quick slap on her shoulder to let her know he was withdrawing. Nodding herself in acknowledgement, Kennedy sent several blasts up the stairwell before she joined her partner in backing away from the entryway.
Only to suddenly freeze in place, unable to move.
"What,...?" she began with not a little alarm. She could see out of the corner of her eye that Jasper too was frozen in place and Kennedy felt a thrill of alarm. Her combat sheath could deflect the first two or three shots from those slug throwers, but it wouldn't hold forever. And Jasper's body armor had not much more protection. If those reclaimers came charging down the stairs right at that moment, they'd find them easy targets. Then they were being surrounded by some sort of distortion field that made the platform beyond blur into indistinct clouds of color and motion.
"Your interference here will no longer be tolerated," a soft, whispering voice said and both twitched in surprise as a slender creature appeared between them, glowing a soft blue. The glow, seeming to emanate from within the creature, prevented them from seeing any detail, but they could tell it possessed an over-sized head and eyes, which it had turned on them to regard the pair with a disapproving air.
"You're a Konda," Jasper stated and the being turned its attention to him. "One of the interdimensional aliens that Tony mentioned."
"Yes," the soft voice replied without the being's mouth appearing to move. "And you are not of this probable universe. You are here by accident."
Jasper nodded.
"We were traveling to a distant place to render assistance to some of our people. Something must've happened to our equipment and we were deposited here instead," the big man said.
"Then you must be returned to that probable universe," the Konda stated with no little authority. "Before you further upset the balance in this place."
"You're kidding, right?" Kennedy was incredulous. "I don't know what happened here, but undead running around getting hunted and turned by humans into more humans by merely getting bit doesn't seem to be all that balanced to me."
The glowing creature turned towards her.
"You speak out of ignorance, human," it flatly stated. "Despite what you think you know, your understanding of the universe, of Reality, is weak at best." It paused to look at the distorted shapes of reclaimers carefully combing the platform beyond the stasis field it held the two partners in.
"In this place, with these creatures, the state of existence they currently experience is justice for the crimes they committed against not just the Konda. But against all of Reality. Neither truly alive, nor dead until they understand what horror they would've achieved had they been successful in their endeavors." Then it paused to look back at them.
"But these are things you have no need to be aware of. It suffices to say the necro-field and the cycle of the flesh keeps this world caught in the middle. And there they will stay, until we have determined that they've learned the error of their ways."
"And now you're God, with the power to make that judgment," Kennedy hissed, unwilling to let it go.
That earned her a tightening in the creature's face, visible despite the glow emanating from it.
"Again you speak in ignorance. And in arrogant assumption that you know all you need to know to cast judgment yourself. On this situation, on the Konda. Without even knowing the depths of the crime these humans committed in this version of the universe."
Again the glowing being paused, almost thoughtfully.
"Yet it is to be expected. After all, do not your own people jump from place to place within your dominion on your bug hunts to destroy species deemed 'invasive' because they threatened your interests? In destroying them, or thwarting their purpose, are you not playing a deity of sorts in judging them unworthy of your benevolence?"
"That, that's not the same,..." Kennedy began, suddenly uncertain. This glowing creature knew about their bug hunts??
"Is it not?" the Konda countered. "After all, it's by your judgment that they are determined to be not as intelligent, not as valuable as humans. And that their activities are harmful. Perhaps your Continuum should spend some time under a necro-field to learn the value of life, all life,..."
"I'm afraid my partner speaks with an enthusiasm born by her empathy for these people in this place, friend," Jasper hastily interjected before the Konda could speak further. "We will speak no further on your intent here. Instead, we will thank you for the insight you've brought us, an insight that we will now carry back to our people if you allow."
The Konda turned to regard Jasper for a long moment before glancing back at Kennedy.
"Your associate speaks with a wisdom belied by his militant appearance. A wisdom I hope you emulate some day soon," it quietly said to her. Then it was lifting a glowing arm to touch something on its wrist and the platform disappeared in a swirl of light.