Orima Pim- Tansental- Grotto Hotel

  Orima quivered on the top floor of the hotel. Her eyes darted from screen to screen in the security booth on the top floor. A very expensive, inlayed laspistol wavered in her grasp as she looked at the two equally terrified guards in the room with her. He was here, Boletella himself had come for her.

  The Grotto Hotel was a shabby three-story building built on questionable foundations at the sheer edge of the swamp. A noticeable list to the entire structure gives the impression it might finally fall into the marsh someday. The inside wasn't much better. Earth-colored uniform hallways, rusted elevators, and obligatory artificial plants were the highlights. The lobby did have an aquarium, but that was currently on fire and filled with Charoke blood as Boletela finished up the “bastion” of defenders in the lobby itself.

  Orima zoomed in on Boletela on the lobby security screen. He casually plucked the arm from a remaining defender before tearing his communication device from his chest. She watched in curious horror as Boletela wiped the grime from it and clipped it onto his own chest. He began to make his way up to the next floor.

  A horrible perversion of a children's rhyme began to whisper across the speakers in the room. “There once was a lake, that held the great O'take.” Boletela began to growl out in wretched singing tones.

  Orima grimaced at the horrifying sounds and watched Boletela as he charged up the stairs. Laser fire washed across him to no effect as he grabbed a defender in the stairway and bisceted him with his tail. With the remains, he shattered the other defender in a brutal throw, knocking him through the railing back down to the first floor. He made his way onto the second floor.

  Boletela's voice settled into the room once again. “He had a hunger, a hunger he could not fake, a hunger he could not slake.” Boletela growled out the last word.

  Orima was frozen as Boletela reached her next line of defense. A dozen men behind sandbags of cover and force shields. Blocking the hallway to the next staircase. Boletela rounded the corner into a deluge of fire, he blocked and weaved as the hallway around him was torn apart. Finally spinning back to the center of the hallway as his cannon gleamed. His shoulder-mounted plasma weapon fired not a shot but a contiguous beam of plasma burning through the shields and cover, vaporizing parts of the hallway and rendering anyone in its path ash.

  Almost a whisper now. ”That great O'take, he could not make, he could only break, take, and ache.”

  His voice slowly dipped even lower as he made his way up to the third floor. “In the end, all he could do was forsake the lake, and choose to never wake.” His voice hissed off into an eerie silence as the rhyme finished.

  Orima screamed as a claw scraped across the outside of her door.

  Slev Torrent- Cormag One- Occupied Mining Post

  The mine itself was of suprisingly well-built quality. The red stone, occasionally swirling with irridecent silver quarts, had been hewn back fastidiously by hand. Every 10 feet held metal bracing across the ceiling and walls. The first chamber room,Slev came into about 30 feet down and another 20 forward, was similarly braced by expert hands and well funded materials. He paused behind an abandonded gravity cart peering into the gloom only lit by two loosly dangling lanterns humming near the ceiling. The left side of the chamber held a neat assembly of cart filled with raw ore and the right side along the wall held a myriad of equipment used in it's extraction.Stticking out like a sore thumb however was the earthen bullwark that had been assembled in the center of the room another gun drone slightly above it.

  "Sir, mines detected, one right at the exit of this tunnel, and another three interspersed in front of the inferior drone.” Slev grunted a thank-you to Reaper and weighed his options.

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  Slev gave an evil smile. “Large enough yield on the mines to threaten bringing the cave down on us?”

  Reaper calculated for a moment. "No, they appear to be antipersonnel shrapnel, high enough yield to be dangerous on direct detonation but most definitely not enough to threaten the ridiculously over-engineered structural supports in here.”

  Slev reached his gauntlet out around the corner, reaching for the nearest mine with his magnetics. He ripped it free from its piton on the stone floor and, with a heavy motion of his arm, tossed it towards the drone. Unfortunately, all that was accomplished was that the mine detonated a meter from where it started, and Slev received two searing bolts of energy across his hand.

  Slev jerked his arm back around the corner before the laser fire was enough to melt it from him. "Well, the way is clear now.”

  “You really should have shot the drone first,” Reaper said with a weary tone. "Laser fire was now wipping up the tunnel Slev was hiding in.

  "Probably, but I really, really, wanted to get a good highlight clip with this to send home to dad, start the play list, and record combat footage.” Slev was pulling the Terran-made Thresher automatic shotgun from its place next to the rail rifle as he said this. Terran metal began to pulse and tear its way through the mines.

  Slev switched the selector on the shotgun to wide spread, anti-armor. He paused, shrugged, and switched the incendiary on as well. The shotgun hummed in his grasp for just a moment as the shell loads were adjusted, and then a little green skull, giving a thumbs up, poped up next to the ammo readout that said 82 shots remaining.

  Slev came around the corner, his weapon blazing an almost literal wall of fire and armor penetrating slivers of metal. "Get some!” he shouted, blanketing the entire room left to right in a blinding torrent.

  "Congratulations! You just spent 8,000 credits in ammunition." Reaper chided

  Slev looked at the smoldering scrap that was once a drone and the popping and snapping corpse of a pirate that neither he nor reaper had noticed at one of the exit halls. "Oh, shut up and let me enjoy this. I never get to use this thing, the range on it is ass, and if I use it on a ship, it will kill us all. Fucking perfect for a mine though.”

  Reaper sighed “Movement down the right exit corridor, sir.”

  Slev Glanced towards the motion alerts and began closing the distance, he dashed across the field of fire, careful not to step too close to the half-molten drone; it was burning so damn hot that the stones around it were melting. He peeked down the right tunnel and ducked back just in time to avoid catching a shotgun blast to his own face.

  Slev let out an annoyed huff and blind-fired around the corner twice before rounding it with his weapon ahead of him. One pirate was missing his arm and legs. The other was knocked off his feet but managed to put a half dozen kinetic slugs from a stubby assault rifle across Slev's torso armor, knocking him backwards. Slev used his thrusters to stop himself from falling and annihilated the man with four point blank shots to the torso, leaving a glowing, smoldering husk of armor and ash on the floor before him.

  Slev rushed onward through the tunnel, hoping to seize the initiative and trusting that Reaper would stop him from running into any more mines or an ambush. They made it down a few more branching tunnels without incident before reaper slowed Slev's advance, with a flash of contacts in the next chamber on his heads-up display. There was absolutely no cover in this tunnel, so Slev just went prone, weapon trained ahead.

  A gruff voice called out to him from somewhere unseen ahead. “Our men are at your ship! Surrender, or they will kill whatever the fuck you have that’s alive on board!”

  Slev laughed into his helmet, then poorly played at being distressed. "Please, no, not my Pookums, hes just a helpless little hatchling.”

  The voice sounded a bit more confident at that. "Yeah, that’s right. Come on out with your hands up, or pookums will be on the dinner menu.”

  Reaper chuckled slightly. “I cannot wait to see the security footage from the ship after we kill these idiots.”

  Slev nodded in bemused agreement. He wasn't too worried if all the pirates had managed to do at the ship so far was identify that there was a single lifeform inside.

  "I'm coming out with my hands up!” Slev lied, making sure Reaper had finished tagging the targets in the room ahead. There were only two of them left.

  He decided to finish this quickly in case Chitters did, somehow, end up needing help. Slev stood in a sprinter's stance with his weapons holstered and took off with a thruster-assisted dash, blasting into the room and directly at the alien that had been speaking. His shoulder hit the pirate so hard that it completely knocked the wind out of Slev and pasted the man inside his armor. Stuggling to catch his breath, Slev whirled towards the remaining pirate, who wisley, had his hands straight up in the air.

  A svelt, almost musical voice called out to him, "Yeah, no, I surrender. I think you just liquified Joffery.”