Advance on the Enemy

Fate sat in the transport cabin of a Kraken Mobile Weapons Platform, along with thirty other soldiers. Throughout the massive "base" of the Kraken (the horizontal line on the "T" shape) were forty-nine other doors along the top of the base. To Fate's left was a door leading into the rest of the Kraken, which was mostly a mess of hallways leading to various cabins and the cockpit.

To the right of him was the air-tight, reinforced door leading to the outside, which was currently inaccessible. The Kraken was designed to land horizontally, resting its tail and base on the ground at the same time. Artificial gravity inside the ship prevented those inside the cockpit from falling from the floor to the wall when they landed, while the cabins were designed to rotate when landing, allowing those inside to exit the ship. Due to this, the doors leading outside currently just faced a wall.

The cockpit was a massive glass canopy in the middle of the base, with said glass extending from the bottom of the base's front to the back of the base's top, allowing the pilot and technicians to see above and in front of them. The sides and back of the base, along with the back of the tail, had around a dozen thrusters granting movement up, down, side to side, and forward.

The Kraken was currently using its Kozmos Drive, along with a contingent of two hundred Firebirds, as well as Tom's Shadow Jumper. The Firebirds and Tom would provide cover fire for the troops inside the Kraken to depart safely, before the Kraken and the fighters started wreaking havoc.

A bearded man, the leader of this cabin's squadron, was currently briefing the men inside on the mission. If Fate remembered correctly, the man's name was Robert. Fate was sure the other cabins were experiencing something similar.

"Our mission is to destroy a Cragost hive festering on the mining planet Bulgar XIV. We've gotten several reports of Cragost-spawning females in the area, which the eggheads have dubbed 'Cragan.' We're to kill these monster-makers, and make the planet safe to mine again. Our intel suggests the hive is relatively small but heavily defended. We're talking hundreds of Cragolo and at least one Cragoloss.

"The job of the others on the ground is to distract the overgrown lobsters while Null and us slip in and takes care of the Cragans. The lab boys back home figured that that fire works just as well on these lobsters as plasma, so I expect those of you with them to use your P-X10Fs' flamethrower on large groups.

"All of you should have a P-X10 as well, and you better know how to use it, because those K5Xs you're used to don't do jack against these things. If you need something with a little more 'oomph,' use those railguns on your hip."

As the squad leader said this, the entire ship rattled, everyone lurching toward the front before steadying themselves. "Alright, we just stopped the Kozmos Drive. We land in ten minutes. You maggots ready?!"

"HOO RAH!" shouted the soldiers in the cabin, all of them standing up. Fate checked his weapons, not bothering to form a sense of comradery with these men. He didn't expect many of them to survive.

A cursory glance at his weapons told him everything was in order; he was using a P-X10 like the rest of these men, and he kept his custom Dragoon on his hip. He also had a few incendiary grenades, given to everyone here to burn the organic hive's infrastructure down.

Not long later, the shooting started. Several hundred Cragolo rose up from Bulgar XIV, followed by the gargantuan form of a Cragoloss. The Firebirds and Tom swiftly moved to engage, drawing the fire of the Cragoloss and its young. Meanwhile, the Kraken took a few hits but managed to touch down safely on the ground.

The troop cabins rotated, allowing those inside to disembark. Fate's squad waited to get off sometime in the middle, to avoid immediate retaliation from the Cragost. To the squad's horror, a quarter of these Cragost were mutants, with an arm that was several sizes larger than the other, abominable and cylindrical, with what looked to be a barrel where the hand would go.

Unlike the rest of their bodies, these arms had much fewer shells, mainly around the shoulder, joints, and barrel. From these large arms, they fired red-hot blobs of plasma that ate away at the bulky armor designed to protect against the lobsters' claws. Fate activated his Null power, running closer to a group of these mutants, before pulling an incendiary grenade off his belt and throwing it at the Cragosts' feet.

The grenade exploded, throwing burning oil onto each one of the mutants. They screamed an ear-splitting shriek that made one's ears bleed and gave one the urge to cover their ears. Many soldiers did so, but the majority continued with a grimace, attacking the nearby Cragost with renewed fervor.

Due to the hivemind of the Cragost, all of them in the vicinity experienced the fear and pain secondhand from the burning mutants, disorienting them and allowing the humans to gain the upper hand.

"PUSH THROUGH!" yelled Fate's squad leader, raising his voice to be heard over the chaos. The squad obliged, rushing past the dazed and confused Cragost and towards the gigantic, pulsing flesh hive in the distance.

Up close, the hive seemed as tall as a mountain. Fate looked left and right, but he couldn't see the end of it. Looking up, he saw that the pulsing, disgusting flesh extended into what cloudless sky for what felt like infinity.

'The pilots must've been able to see this thing from space,' he thought. 'Too bad that stuffy cabin didn't have any windows.'

"Awright, men! This is what we're here for! We burn this freak of nature down, and then we can all go home!" said Robert. "Take out your flamethrowers!"

The men with large tanks on their backs, which was about half the squad, flipped off the caps on their P-X10Fs and inserted a tube that ran into the tanks. This tube would feed the rifle the fuel in the tanks, transforming the rifle into a flamethrower. The squad grimaced, looking at the dark, gaping hole in the hive. The hole was over thirty feet high and oval-shaped. "That's not… and orifice, is it?" one of them said.

Fate glanced at the flesh again, probing it with his psychic senses. "…No. This hive is made of countless bug-sized things stitched together somehow." He took a Seasons knife from his belt, heated it to the max, and stabbed at a bug. The knife glanced off without a scratch on the carapace.

"These things are tough. Probably why we couldn't just nuke it from orbit." He sheathed his knife, then shot the flesh with his P-X10.

The plasma hit the hive, spreading out over it and dripping down in thick clumps. When all the plasma had fallen to the ground, the now-visible place Fate had shot was now another hole, albeit one that didn't go all the way through. Instead, it looked like someone had scooped a piece of the flesh out with a spoon, exposing the blackened flesh of burnt, but alive, hive mites.

"This is gonna be a pain in the ass to kill," said one of the soldiers.

"Isn't our job to complain, soldier. It's our job to follow orders," said Robert. "Let's move in. I'd like to be home tomorrow, not in this shithole."

The soldiers grew serious, their expressions becoming uneasy, but resolved to do what needed to be done. The squad readied their weapons, pointing them ahead of themselves. Those with flamethrowers took the vanguard. Fate walked at the front as well, constantly sensing ahead for an ambush. Soon, they were too deep for the sun to reach from the distant hole behind them.