“Is he… dead?” Jenkins asked, closing the door softly behind him after everyone entered the room. Remembering that they were technically in enemy territory, he slid the various locks home. Sealing them off from any outside forces.

“He… can’t be. He’s an Unranked Officer.” Nessa said, shock evident in her face. “Better yet, who in the hell could kill Officer Hargrave?”

She walked up to the machine of a corpse and stared into those eyes. She’d only met the man a few times in her career, but each interaction with him left a feeling of unbridled power. How could someone or something have not only killed him but done so in a way that left the body completely intact.

“This is another workshop.” Alec said, opening his faceplate to inspect the various workstations scattered around the room.

Each bench held parts that any Dragoon or Possessor would wet themselves to hold, much less possess. However, either fear or respect – he wasn’t sure which – told him not to take any of it. This place had a sense of wrongness about it that he simply couldn’t place.

Joining in the exploration of the tiny room, Jack found himself standing in front of what would be appeared to be a meticulously well-kept toolbox. However, unlike every other toolbox he’d seen his entire life, this one only held small rods that differed in size. Raising one to his eyes for a closer inspection, he saw a tiny Light emitter on one end.

“Alec,” He said, waiving the Dragoon over and handing him the handle, “Aren’t there generally tools on the end of tools?”

“Unless something has gone horribly wrong, yes. Usually a Li-Tech tool would have more to frame it, but this is just a stick… Maybe it’s a screwdriver?”

“Then explain why this workshop has at least thirty screwdrivers and no other tools. It’s obviously some sort of high-tech lab, and it has been used recently.” Jack pointed at the layers of dust that were disturbed in far too many places to be coincidental.

“It almost looks like an operating room.” Thea said, standing over the body and peering into the exposed circuitry, “But instead of healing someone, they are tearing him apart.”

“I’m not so sure that he is being taken apart.” Alec added, inspecting an arm. “These screw heads aren’t scratched where they should be for removal. Maybe they are building a new Hargrave?”

“Why in the hell would we need a second Hargrave?” Nessa scoffed, “The man is by far the greatest threat to the AHF. Adding a second is just asking for trouble.”

“So are we if we keep hanging around here.” Jack said after a few moments of silence as they all stared at the body, “Take anything that looks like you can use it. Leave the rest, we can turn in the spared when we get back to the ship.”

With a thought, his visor lowered and brought back the slightly annoying personality that was his AI. The movement reminded the others to do the same, and soon the seven soldiers were ready to continue in their mission.

“Light Comm’s only, no more opening our helmets unless we are back in a secure area, got it?” He reminded, unlocking the door, and pulling it open. They had gotten pictures of the lab, if it was of any real concern, Command would let him know and give them orders to torch the room. As of now, the silence told him not to worry about what he found.

“Any enemies down there Monroe?” Dave asked as he pried open the door to an elevator shaft at the end of a hallway several minutes later.

They hadn’t found any more enemy soldiers, but they had found evidence that they were here. Kitchens left in disarray, bunk cabins with all the mattresses on the ground, the scenes reminded Jack more of a crack house than what he expected from an invading force.

“No. Remember, once you are down there, get to the stairwell as fast as possible. We will be waiting on the other side.”

“I got it. And if I run into a shit load of them Rhino things, I’m blaming you.”

Dave brought himself over the edge and hoped with every fiber of his being that the little Binder girl could hold him and all his equipment at the same time. Crossing his fingers and toes, he nodded for Candice to start lowering him.

“You know West, I have a pretty good track record for not killing people.” She said, dropping him precisely ten feet and holding him in place. “Unless you want to fall to a quick and unpredictable end?”

“No, I don’t. You drop my ass and I’m going to drop you.”

“Been a long time since I had a cowboy drop me to the ground. You can’t threaten me with a good time.”

“Stars damn… wait.. hush up for a minute.” Beyond the door, he could hear the distinct sound of Raak’Shee speech. “Going to need to breech this one. Monroe, I need everyone down by that door. Get ready to punch through as soon as I enter the room.”

“And the fact that the door is locked?” Alec asked.

“Do we have to go through this again? We just found out that Nessa was a master thief about an hour ago, have her pick the lock.”

Dave waited for what felt like an eternity, hanging from a basket made of glowing yellow wire that looked like it couldn’t hold a kitten, much less him. If he fell, the whole mission would wash. If he failed, more death would be on his hands.

“Alright West, we are in position and Walker has her weapons drawn.”

Jacks voice broke through the fog of self-pity. Yes, he’d failed Ortiz. And yes, he would probably fail again one day. But for now, he would have to charge in like a pissed off bull and wreck some shit.

Wrapping himself in a layer of power, he drew the skeletal frame of a great sword from him back. The others talked about how it was difficult to use weapons that didn’t easily integrate with their power, and he’d had that as well from his rifle. But what he held in his hands was a weapon made of defense.

When it’d been explained to him, Dave just didn’t understand how they could take the defensive Light and turn it into a weapon. At first, he thought it would act as a battery like every other corps less item, but he was wrong.

Oh how he’d learned.

He funneled power into the blade, allowing the circuitry to pull the particle thin hexagrams along the edge. The more power he fed into it, the faster they spun. It was almost like the chainsaw he used back home to clear debris from the fields after a bad storm, but much faster, and much sharper.

“Get ready. I’m breaking through in 5… 4… 3…”

The last two numbers were silent, they knew how to count. If Alec had a problem with it, then Dave would buy him a beer later to smooth it over.

He created a shield between the two doors and expanded them outward in an eyeblink. The force from the rapidly formed shield slammed them open and revealed the hallway beyond. So far, every fight had been all hush hush, but it was his turn to take care of business.

Dave leapt into the clearing, surprising the three aliens and knocking them off their feet with another quickly formed shield. The impact of the blue light always came as a surprise to anyone who didn’t wield it themselves, but to someone that had trained for two years, it was like a third appendage.

Sprinting for the first downed soldier and gripping his sword in both hands, he swung with a downward chop. The alien tried to get away from the weapon, but the saw-like blade still sliced through the leg and into the floor below like a hot knife through butter.

The Raak’Shee roared in pain, retaliating with a backhanded fist that should have connected with the puny human, but didn’t. Before the strike could land, a blue barrier of force sprang to life and absorbed the attack with what looked like almost no effort.

Afterall, that was what the faceplates were for.

Grunting a sound that reminded him of his enemies language, Dave ripped his blade free from the floor and through the arm that was so recently stopped by his shield. Orange blood sprayed from his grievous wounds. If this creature could survive, then he would me more than a little impressed.

“Alec, get some punch blades and help me take down this overgrown bull.” Dave shouted, turning his attention to the second of his enemies. He didn’t know for sure that his squad mates were there, but from the looks of shock on his opponents faces, he assumed that his backup was here.

“Why not guns?” Alec asked, spinning up his left gatling cannon. “I got them in spades.”

“Only if you know you can get it in a vital organ or take a limb off. Otherwise, blades.” Nessa said, darting past the second enemy on her way to the third. In both hands, crimson blades were lit and ready for war, on her back clung a Crawler drone that was taking the occasional shot at whichever enemy seemed best at that time.

“Jenkins, Alfson and I have backup on Walker. Get the crawler down and execute that first target. Once done, focus on helping out West and Morningwood.” Jack ordered, sending a near constant stream of fire into the third aliens face.

“On it.”

The Crawler jumped from her back and landed on the hallway floor with a series of skittering taps that were drowned out by the sound of battle that flooded the hallway. From the corner of his eye, Dave could saw the clamp on to the first Raak’Shee’s head and begin to squeeze.

While the sight didn’t exactly turn his stomach – the visions of violence had long been bedfellows of his – it did give him the sense that the fight was going to get much more brutal the longer it went on.

Dave’s current target had recovered its wits enough to draw a wicked looking ax from its hip. His shield could hold the creature, but at the rate Alec’s gatling was hurting it, Dave would collapse of exhaustion long before it was dead.

“I said punch blades!” He shouted, shield bashing his target and using the opening to swing with his great sword.

The massive creature dodged the attack, but not without taking a glancing blow to the abdomen. Ironically, this small cut was bleeding more than the dozens of rounds Alec had already pumped into it.

It growled, stepping in and swinging the ax with abandon, halted only a mere inch from Alec’s face by blue barrier made of thousands of hexagons. Angry that it had been stopped, it started pounding on the shield trying – in vain – to shatter the defense.

“And how the hell is a punch blade going to drop this thing?”

“Do I look like I know? Find a way!” Dave yelled, dropping his own shield to conserve energy as he swung his sword through the upraised ax-hand.

Past the boiling point of rage, the Raak’Shee grabbed the fallen arm and used it as a club, still trying in vain to break through the defense.

“Care to help asshole? Every hit drains me.”

In response, a blade of orange shot out from Alec’s swinging fist and connected with the target’s throat. It was only there for a second, but the harm was done. A burbling waterfall of orange liquid poured from the wound as the alien’s expression changed from rage to horror.

Dropping its makeshift club, it started clawing at its throat in a desperate attempt to stop the bleeding.

“Move!” Thea shouted as she danced in between the two victorious soldiers and placed her glowing hands on the creatures body.

Dave didn’t know what she was doing or why, nor did he particularly care, All he knew was that all three fights had been won, and the final combatant would be dead in a few short seconds.

“Alfson, care to explain what you’re doing?” Jack asked as she continued to work on the limp form of her patient.

“I’m stabilizing him. If I can bring him back from the edge of death, we may be able to get information.”

“And when he tries to rip our heads off the moment he isn’t actively dying?”

“He won’t… Or it would be better to say that he can’t. I’m severing all the muscles in his extremities. The only thing he will be able to do is talk.”

“Do you have a translator?”

“I do.” Jenkins said, walking over and placing a small flat module on the creature’s chest.

Dave didn’t give a shit about any of this, his job was to take hits, not heal them. So, he silently cut the flow of power to his sword and placed it back in its sheath on his back.

“Ok, well you two can handle that. We are going to find out what was so special about this floor. Hopefully, we find what we’re looking for.”

Jack walked slowly towards a door at the end of an offshoot hallway. On its face, it appeared to be nothing more than a plain, unadorned steel door like every other one in the complex. However, this one felt… wrong.

He couldn’t pin if it was something about the hallway behind him, or if it was simply his own mind playing tricks on him. The door radiated pain in a way that no door should be capable of, telling him that the horrors inside were not for his eyes.

“Jack, are we going in or what?” Dave asked, staring at the frozen sergeant.

“Do you feel that?”

“What?”

“Pain. Anger. Betrayal…. Hate.”

“Not towards you, but I could say that about an ex or two.” Dave said, clapping Jack on the back with an armored gauntlet. “Now, lets get inside so we can see why I had to chop up some rhino.”

The Aegis stepped in front of Jack and pushed the portal open. The stench that rolled over them was so powerful it was as if an entire freezer of meat were left to rot in the hot sun for weeks on end. Dave turned away, gagging and cursing as he forced himself to leave the scene of carnage inside.

The room was home to a single, now deceased, occupant. A star-shaped table in the center of the room holding all that was left of the now unrecognizable victim. The floor, walls, and even part of the ceiling were covering in a silvery substance that could only be one thing, blood.

“Oh my god. What the fuck is that?” Dave gagged, still gasping for fresh air as the smell made its way down to the rest of the squad.

“A prisoner, by the looks of it.”

“Did we do this, or did they?” His eyes almost begging for it to have been the enemy they face now. It was like Dave simply couldn’t believe just how cruel mankind could be.

“I don’t know.” Jack said softly, stepping into the room and turning on the recording function of his helmet.

The skin – what little there was to recognize – was the color of tarnished silver, while the bones themselves shined as if they were polished silverware. There were no convenient stations in this room that might hold a recording of what happened here, but it didn’t take much imagination to sort it out.

“Bob, what species is this?” Jack asked, trying to gather information from every angle possible in order to pass it on to his commander.

“Without a face it is relatively hard to pinpoint, but from the physiology I would go with XanRai’d. Although, why was a prisoner here, I don’t have the foggiest clue. Can we leave?”

The fact that even Bob was asking to leave this place told Jack that it was past time to go. He understood why that wrongness was so prevalent before opening the door, he wasn’t just disturbing a prison cell, he was disturbing the remains of the dead. If the conviction to destroy the factory hadn’t been strong enough before, now it was rock solid.

Jack didn’t care who had tortured and killed this being, he didn’t even care what the reason for it was. The simple fact that it happened on a formerly human planet was enough for him to realize that the universe was not what it seemed. If it came to it, and they couldn’t save the factory, Sergeant Jack Monroe would have no issues in bringing it to the ground.

I will rise. Above this, I will rise.