As we emerged from the depths of the cargo hold, I could feel the ship vibrate with the beat of the music. Stereo’s that I hadn’t noticed, streamlined and subtle, cast the noise out far and wide, roughly every third of the ship, and struck me with a sense of dissonance as they didn’t match with what I had come to expect from a ship of naval warfare.

The most potent source, however, came from above us. Clearly visible on the communications stack that rested atop the command deck was a DJ’s platform - for lack of any other way to explain it - sheltered from the sun and somewhat the wind. I noticed a man, Mr. Fischer, working a turntable and a few computers even from here. A dozen wires sprouted and coiled tightly around the tower, almost giving the impression that the little shack was the head of some serpent. It took several long seconds for my brain to really begin to process the scene, accompanied with the noise and strobing lights that wouldn’t be out of place at a rave. Comprehension, however, did eventually settle in, though not without a certain measure of surprise.

“Is there a reason why this is going on?” My perplexedness clear in my voice as I turned to Adira, “Not that I find it annoying or anything, just very… unusual.”

The others of my team seemed to agree, although I did notice how Domino’s foot was tapping to the beat good naturedly.

Adira laughed, “Fischer came up with the idea. He wanted to test and see if we could force Leviathan to aggro on us on our terms, fishing, if you will. It turns out that almost every single kind of Leviathan hates loud noise, bright lights, and intense bass-” at which the dubstep did indeed drop the bass, shuddering the entire ship with the force of the speakers undoubtedly hidden below the waterline, “-. C’mon, there’s an observation room downstairs. We won’t be deploying any teams since we won’t need too just yet, but that doesn’t mean you can’t see what’s going on below the waterline.” At that we followed her, the air fresh with the salty spray of the ocean and the afternoon sun beaming overhead. The moment we were back inside, the noise dulled, playing much quieter to prevent it from interfering with anyone's work. Instead of ascending the many flights of stairs to the command deck, Adira brought us downward, well below the cargo bay. We only stopped when there were no more stairs to take, and Adira excitedly led us straight down the hull. Pushing open a heavy steel door, we were led into a dimly lit, comfortable looking room with several couches and even some simple beds that folded up into the walls along the sides. Consoles and screens adorned many of the walls, and some of the furnishings had mounted screens that lowered from the ceiling on flexible arms. However, the most imminent of details in this room was the fact that the forward, concave wall was actually the hull of the ship.

Only, it was clear like glass, able to be seen through into the shimmering waters and darkness below. Bands of this see-through material lined the floor as well, letting us see into the deep sea beneath our feet.

“This is the break room for anyone on shift.” Adira answered the unspoken question, gesturing to the bar and small kitchen attached, “This was a pet project of an old friend of mine, and we ended up finishing it. As you can see, the lightshow outside is particularly awesome.” At which point she gestured to clusters of drones that were strobing lights outside, diving down deeper and deeper, casting a most certainly chaotic, near ethereal lightshow into the black.

She plopped herself on a wide armed sofa, sinking in slightly with a light ‘whumpf’ as she did so. Still amazed, I sat myself down next to her, even as everyone claimed their own ‘station,’ though Domino helped himself to the small kitchen storage on the side, celebrating at the sight of various drinks.

Adira gestured to the air in front of her, and a portion of the ‘glass’ in front of us began to seemingly flex with holographic light, following the specifics of the drones onboard cameras as they dove deeper. Effort had been made to ensure that this space didn’t look too austere, and somehow managed to feel comfortable and homely.

Returning my attention back to the holographic screen showed weighted drones sinking and drifting away from the main hull, flashing with bright lights and connected by long wires. Distractedly I caught a drink that Domino tossed in a wide arc to me, leaving it untouched as the drones continued to stream light, strobing and matching the tone and beat of the DJ high above.

Adira, grinning, caught my look, “What do you think? Pretty cool, eh?”

I turned to her, “Very much so, I wasn’t sure what to expect, but a light show definitely wasn’t it.” With a chuckle I settled in, forcing myself to relax and take the scene in.

As a few minutes dragged on, the room quickly filled with small talk. I didn’t want to think of this mission as any kind of vacation, but this voyage had thus far given me a surge of downtime in-between action. It was hard to realize that I didn’t really remember how to relax, but the company I kept helped immensely in figuring out how best to calm myself.

When the sound system gave two jarring beeps, though, our conversations petered out.

“Here we go,” Nana Pain chuckled, “Boys and girls, you’re gonna see a real big fish.”

I blinked at that, unreservedly leaning forward, even as Adira chuckled at my interest. The many drones, flickering light and playing music loudly underwater, thrummed in the depths several hundreds of meters away from the ship.

Out of the darkness of the depths, I saw a massive form loom forth. It seemed slow, by virtue of its massive size, and almost cautious. The creature was unlike what I’d expected, a dark, slate gray hide and main body resembling a vase, long trailing tendrils sprouting from a gaping mouth atop the thing, easily ten meters in width on its own.

“Potter,” Lou winced, “These ones creep me out bad.”

“Seconded,” Fran stared in fascinated horror at the creature, “Does it try to swallow prey whole?”

“I bet it could. That thing’s mouth is huge, the hell is with that size.” Daniel held his drink close, watching warily for how the benign moved.

Boneless feelers around its mouth twirled around, thirty meters and more in length, equal to the rest of its body at the shortest. The girth of the creature swelled as its tentacles started to flick erratically in the direction of the drone, still a hundred meters away.

“Who’s running drones, today?” Adira asked, a mild note of seriousness to her voice.

“Dominique,” Lou answered without missing a beat.

“Good, then maybe we won’t lose it.” She glared at the thing. I wanted to take the moment to ask why, but I felt taking my eyes off of the scene right now would be a mistake.

I turned out to be very right.

Instead of sucking in all at once, the vase had swollen to the extent that it looked almost more like a beach ball. However, it rapidly compressed in the span of a second, blasting out a huge plume of writhing mass.

“Ew,” Alice shivered, “Oh, ew, ew, that’s disgusting!”

I didn’t blame her at all, and instinctively tightened my own guts at the sight. Quite in fact, out of the corner of my eye, I saw most people in the room go a shade paler at the sight, the only ones not as affected being Adira’s team. And even they seemed disdainful of the sight.

Considering that the so-called Potter just fired streaming trails of its own organs, still attached on the inside of its body, a hundred and fifty meters forward, I had to admit that I’d probably just found the most repulsive biotic I’d ever not wanted to meet.

The drone, however, began moving rapidly before the biotic could perform its own maneuver, flashing lights becoming even more erratic, and I could have sworn I heard Mr. Fischer howl with the music.

The Potter shivered and quaked, fanged and toothed organs quivering and flexing, grasping out for any target. It must have realized the Drone was escaping, though, because instead it sucked the mass back into its body with another explosive retraction.

“I never thought I could feel ill again.” I stated dryly as I sat back and cast an eye to Adira, “How common are those?”

“Potters? They’re not. Thankfully.” She made a grimace, “They’re usually eaten by the other Leviathan’s, but even without that they tended to have their hives closer to the upper shelf. We killed most of them. Mostly because they’re… well, hideous.”

I nodded, watching as rippling fins and small ventricles pushed it through the water, higher and higher in chase of the Drone. The Wendigo’s little helpers, however, were far from slow, and their streamlined bodies gave plenty of distance between the pursuer.

And then, I felt the ship vibrate for just a half second, two cannons firing off the sides of The Wendigo’s hull. The trail was marked with a plume of superheated water, steam and bubbles erupting from the projectiles. The biotic itself was no better, half of its body literally exploding underwater in a swell of heat and expanding gasses.

“Plasma, baby!” Zack crowed, “That never gets old!”

I blinked at the sight, realizing that the bulky, spherical turrets that leaned off the sides of The Wendigo were all plasma guns doing wonders for my assessment of the vessel. With something like this - even if we couldn’t shrink it - we’d be able to tackle hordes of biotics easily. I could already imagine mounting such weapons on city walls, effectively decimating powerful and weak chaff organisms alike.

“That was incredibly potent,” I grinned enthusiastically, gears racing in my head already on whether we could persuade the Brigade to share the technology with us.

Adira grinned, “Right? We’ll send you guys some schematics later. I’ll warn you, though, the energy costs are damned high.”

“I-” words started on my lips before ceasing. She smiled, and for a moment I was caught wanting to ask what she wanted in return.

Instead, I felt that bargaining, bordering on political fuckery, wasn’t the right choice here.

“Thank you,” I smiled, “We’ll see if there’s anything we can help you guys out with.”

Even with my personal feelings, being that I actually liked Adira as a person, aside, this was what I wanted: a genuine friendship between the Legion and Basilisk. Benefits and goals that were strictly self-serving would only go so far; our old world was based too much on such selfishness. Furthemore, having stalwart and capable allies in the fight against biotics wasn’t something that I counted in any sense as a loss.

I turned my eyes back to the screen, catching movement on the camera.

“Crap,” Adira tensed at what I saw, her smile wiped away and replaced by a frown. Her eyes seemed to become distant, “Captain Reigner, do we have a crew available for the new contact?”

Eyes back on the screen I watched as a hulking body of dense, bony plating reached forward with snapping claws, clasping onto the corpse in front of it. The Potter was being torn to manageable chunks by unfurling mandibles at the front of the creature, shoving them unceremoniously deeper into a mouth I couldn’t see.

Four claws half the size of the Potter flexed, clenched the biotic tissue tightly as it manipulated it. Constantly undulating armor plates flexed along the long, scorpion-like body, keeping the massive creature afloat. It was easily eighty meters long from the head to the tail. I saw no eyes on the thing, but an array of spiney, searching spikes waved in front of it, likely its means to see the world. It also reminded me of a pistol shrimp in some aspects with its bulky claws.

I didn’t want to imagine what that would be like underwater, scaled up to this size, but it seemed reality didn’t give a damn about what I wanted.

“What the fuck is that!?” Daniel looked at the creature in shock and disbelief.

“Titano Shrimp,” Lou answered Daniel, “Large, fairly quick, and more than capable of tearing an unaugmented Destroyer open with a click of its claws-” he turned his gaze to me then, “-they’re why we run with fleets as a rule.”

Nana Pain waved him off, seeing the tension in the room spiking “He’s being dramatic.” She said, seeing Domino and his friends ease up a bit, “They make us run with two or three at a time, but it ain’t these critters that made us run with fleets.”

I snorted a laugh as the others tensed again, and she let out whooping laughter, “Y’all need to relax like your man here!” Her broad toothed smile betrayed her amusement as she lifted a drink in her hand, to which I did the same, followed quickly by her own crew.

“Don’t worry none, we’ve been kickin’ ass in this region plenty,” Zack chuckled heartily, “Adira’ll let us know if there’s trouble.”

At that moment, Adira sagged back into her seat with a long sigh, “The Black Sail is gonna take this one.”

“See? That’s their favorite anyways.” Zack shrugged, clinking his glass with Joanna’s.

Daniel nodded, giving a wry smile to Fran who, in spite of being somewhat unsettled with the even more alien organisms we were seeing, gave their own little cheer. The others settled, as well, though I could certainly sympathize with their discomfort. The Legion wasn’t so far out of our depth - or comfort zone - that we would be overly shaken by the sights here.

I leaned back, and turned my attention to Adira, realizing that she still seemed perplexed. “What’s bothering you?”

She looked surprised, turning to look at me, even as Cocoa shuffled to be more comfortable around her neck.

With a sigh, she said, “We shouldn’t be seeing Titano Shrimp out here. That’s supposed to be the edge of the Red Zone.”

I nodded and considered the statement. There were a few things that could mean, the most wishful of which being that it was merely bad luck or a coincidence that this biotic happened out to this area. But, the next and more worrisome option…

“You’re worried something’s changed in the Red Zone? Maybe something worse having moved in?” I asked, noting the way her facial features tightened slightly. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Terry and Domino exchange wary glances at my line of thinking.

“God damnit,” I heard Terry sigh, “Can we not have an easy mission? I mean, I’ve got a beer in my hands, for crying out loud!”

“Welp, the Legion literally says nothing about drinking on the job,” Domino pointed out, “So… I’m gonna go get some more beers, who else wants one?”

Several ‘yesses’ in all their varieties sounded out at that.

Adira was quiet for a moment longer, but a grin began to sprout on her face at our antics, though not all of the seriousness had quite left her eyes. Half a moment later she took in a deep stabilizing breath, let out an over dramatic sigh, and against all expectations adopted her best pirate accent and declared, “Drink up, me hearties, yo-ho!”

Not a heartbeat later Joanna spewed her drink right at Zack with the force of her raucous laughter, his face going from shock, to amusement, and back to shock.

I had to admit, the Brigade had wowed me a number of times already, but I felt that I’d look back on this moment with no small amount of amusement, a long time from now.