TREASON

Ren'ehk was feeling satisfied today. She finished locking her hunting animals in their respective pens and smiled to herself at the coordination of this new pack, as she had whipped the new group into shape in what felt like record timing. Usually, she took a couple of weeks to extract the better of a new pack once the last one was depleted, but this time it took her less than four days to make the animals follow her every command without any doubt or hesitation. Yes, it felt good.

The Hungries were expendable, everyone in the Combined Army knew that, and so she had no attachment to this pack or any of the others she had commanded before, but still it felt rewarding to see she had gotten to the point where imposing her will over the creatures was as easy as walking forward. Of course, she could just use neural implants like many others of her kind did, but she was an antiquated female in so many ways. She still enjoyed beating and growling and forcing them to obey rather than just poking their brains with an electric stick and calling it 'dominance'.

Of course, if she was satisfied, it meant something was about to ruin her day, and that something was a young commander in full Suryat armor. The Oznat turned a corner, right out of the Hungry pens, and saw the young Warrior Officer moving towards her, his helmet off and his face looking intent. Kasaro was the youngest Warrior Officer in the Karanatat, the Morat word for regiment, she served in. He had been promoted for his courage and leadership during the Wotan Incursion and so far he had proved time and again that promotion had been well earned.

Even now, at a moment that could be called 'leisurely', Kasaro wore his full armor, and the huntress could see the pockmarks of battle scarring doting his suit, the maintenance always focused on keeping it effective, not good looking. The Officer's face itself was bearing some marks, as his left cheek was swollen, a purple sheen marking where a fist had smashed into his red face, and his eyebrow and lips were split, the white hair showing some red where it had been scalped off. However, while he had the marks of combat, his wounds were not severe and his stance was relaxed. He had been training, not fighting.

"Packmistress" Kasaro nodded respectfully, even though he was technically her superior, he preferred to show the female due respect as he had witnessed her ferocity and guile in combat way too many times to think himself actually superior to her "I've been looking for you"

"Yes?" the Oznat's white eyes narrowed. Her first thought was the Officer wanted her opinion on some tactical matter, something she really had no patience for right now. If she had wanted to be a soldier, she'd have become a Zerat "What is it... Officer?" She had to choke back the word 'whelp' before it came out. It was hard not to see Kasaro as barely out of his Kurdat, the word translating very loosely to a gang of young cadets fresh from childhood, still learning the ways of real war.

"It is a sensible matter" the Suryat spoke while only his eyes moved to check their surroundings. Thankfully, the Oznat was an early riser even for the standards of her kind, which meant they were mostly alone "Here." He handed her a piece of… It actually took a long moment for the huntress to realize it was paper. It was a folder, small and easily destroyed. Untraceable "Have a look. I am not good with words"

As a rule, Morats weren't good with words. There was a lot about Kasaro's stance that told her what she had to know. He was relaxed, yet his eyes moved swiftly, so he wasn't careless. His body was still tense, coiled back from his recent training, and his fists were balled, the armored fingers pressed against his palms in a defensive yet casual position. He wasn't nervous, but he was wary of something.

Ren'ehk took the folder and opened it, her eyes skimming the contents fast as she riffled through the few pages making it up. As she read, her own body language changed as well, her dewclaws shifting from facing the Warrior Officer to facing outwards, bracing for a pounce. Her muscular arms and thighs tensed up, pulling back like bowstrings about to be released. Kasaro noticed it, bracing himself for a reaction he knew was going to happen, yet hoped it did not...

It all happened in the blink of an eye, and someone less trained in the subtleties of Morat language would not have seen it coming. Ren'ehk crumpled the hardback paper on one hand while the other drew her sword in a quick, sideways slash aimed at the throat, a perfect, curt yet vicious killing blow.

The Suryat was getting better at close combat by now, and he managed to parry her strike just in time, raising the broader, heavier armored gauntlet of his suit "Listen to me, Ren'ehk" he snarled, pushing her back and using his size and weight to his advantage as he tried to grab her forearm, to keep that long, elegant blade from separating his head from his shoulders "This is important"

"It is treason" she swung around, planting one of her dewclaws on his chest and knocking him on his armored ass with the grace of a ballerina. That grace was deceptive, though, as the Oznat stomped down with the force of a Gurlanak beast, her foot denting his suit where it connected with the chest plate armor.

This was going to be rough. Kasaro was not a close combat specialist, and while his suit did give him extra protection, the barely armored female could match it in speed and strength, and unlike him, she had murder in her eyes. "Listen to me" he grabbed her foot with both hands and swung around, putting all his weight behind the move to whip her into the farthest wall before her blade could come down again "This zealous loyalty to the Combined Army will lead us nowhere." he managed to say as he stood up, bracing himself.

Ren'ehk hit the wall with a resounding thud that actually made her grin. The little whelp was getting smarter. Attacking a better armored opponent without her pack seemed like a dumb thing to do, but she was armed and he was not, so she changed tactics, starting to circle around the Warrior Officer, looking for an opening.

"Listen to me, packmistress" Even now his tone was respectful and low, his voice did not raise and his nostrils remained quiet. He was not afraid. This was his chance to convince her before he was drowned in a tide of precise blade slashes "You were in Wotan. You saw how they left us high and dry. We are expendable." Morat language was more than just words, and his gestures and stance, the way he waved them in a broad sweep and lowered his center of mass, added to the meaning behind his statement. The Suryat was not talking about the soldiers, but about their species as a whole, Morats were little more than cannon fodder for the Combined Army, just like the beasts stuck back in the pens.

She struck high, he raised his hand again, the blade biting into his suit and sticking into it, getting locked for a split second "I'm asking for a favor" he punched her in the jaw, his armored fist smashing so hard she felt the bone dislocate under her skull as she spun back, dazed and nearly knocked out "You don't even have to fight. Just help us set up the perimeter".

Ren'ehk growled as she stumbled back, taking the moment to set her jaw back into place, her grin lacking mirth now. Another blow like that and she'd be down for the count, or worse. She launched into a flurry of short, precise strikes, attacking in a series of short stabs that were aimed at keeping the much larger male back, pushing him slowly against the metal wall of the corridor.

Kasaro let out a grunt that was choking his throat, his armor getting several new cuts as he tried to back off without getting stabbed through one of the softer parts. One stab even nicked off his beard, cutting just slightly under his chin and tinting the white hair red. "I want you to realize one thing." he managed to say as his back thunked against the wall "We're doing this. It's going to happen. You can come and ensure we do it correctly, or we can go and do it anyways."

Appealing to her rational side made the Oznat stop with her blade inches from stabbing through his neck "I am not your mother" She snarled "Even if I was, I wouldn't care." She said as she held the blade, ready to put an end to his life.

"The regiment is our family. We all care, Ren'ehk, we all have fought and bled for one another." the Warrior Officer managed a smile, an honest one too "Are you more loyal to the Combined Army or to the Supremacy?" The question felt loaded, the kind of pointless conundrum she shouldn't even have to consider, yet here she was actually pontificating an answer when the Suryat helped her "We need your help".

"Does Hirok know?" She lowered the blade, his words worming their way into her mind as she sheathed the sword back at her waist, even taking a step back to let him get his back off the wall.

"No. I don't intend on telling him until we have the files. Are you in?" Now his nostrils flared, and his grin, despite the blood clotting on his beard and teeth, was sly and short. He was actually excited, or perhaps relieved.

Ren'ehk looked at the crumpled folder she had dropped on the corridor, moving to pick it up and read it again "Fine. But this time, you bloody well listen to me." she said as she opened it again "Here's what we will do…"

In the end, the Suryat felt quite happy for getting the Oznat's help. If he was going to strike at a heavily defended Onyx compound, he would rather have an experienced huntress at his side than going for one of the younger, less experienced ones that would have been way easier to recruit but equally less useful in an actual fight.

Ever since the Wotan fiasco a strong feeling of resentment and abandonment was growing within the Aggression Forces, and as much as he would rather take it out on the humans, Kasaro understood that it was time the Supremacy began moving away from the Combined Army, even if that detachment came in slow, careful steps. This was going to be the test run, a simple mission to steal several data packs detailing locations of Onyx bases and supply depots. In the event of a separatist war, these details could keep the Combine from glassing another Morat planet.

Of course, it was still treason, and this was why most of Kasaro's forces was composed of young, highly idealistic troopers who could easily be swayed to fight for the reestablishment of the Supremacy. It did carry the issue of these young fighters not being as competent as he would have liked, but the Warrior Officer was confident he could do it with the troops he had.

The compound itself was small, ugly and jagged looking as if someone had decided to carve out the buildings from long shards of obsidian like rock. Every surface gleamed black and smooth, absorbing the light so even though the illumination was actually very thorough, it still felt dark and oppressive to thread between the buildings and under the ever watching gaze of the Umbra operatives.

Kasaro had counted three of them, two of the hooded, masked Legates and one of the tall, lean, smoke like Samaritans. No one really knew where the Umbra species had come from, how their civilization started or how the Combined Army recruited them. What was known was that the Umbra were red skinned, tall and lean humanoids with an affinity for Vodootech and a religious devotion to the Evolved Intelligence that made the Daturazi Witch Soldiers sound like reasonable folks.

Their first insertion was, for all intents and purposes, a great big failure, with the strike team being discovered as soon as their Q-Drone advanced into an optimal overwatch position, and from there everything went to hell faster than a pack of cubs wandering into a Demarok Den. The drone was obliterated in a hail of precise machinegun fire from an unknown threat, the darkness of the compound giving some advantage to the Onyx operatives and their penchant for fighting in black.

Sor'kan, the Yaogat leading the sniper team for this mission, was quickly suppressed by that same machinegun, hunkering down behind a wall as steady, controlled fire peppered his position with such grim efficiency he didn't dare raising his head and risk getting it shot off. There was this silly idea in most people's minds that Morats never took cover, but most of them knew when to brave gunfire and when not to, even if occasionally they did try and run through gunfire with the kind of casual coolness that made it feel as if they didn't actually fear bullets.

However, the situation was not one for leisure walks through the enemy gunline. Not when that machinegun nest was suppressing both the sniper and the Warrior Officer himself, as he was pinned behind several stacked crates, cursing the precision of the enemy shooters. What started bad soon turned downright horrible when a shadow moved along their right flank. Kasaro saw it jump from building to building, a black cloud of smoke with only the vaguest humanoid shape to it, as if the night sky itself had decided it was going to fight for the Onyx forces.

"Umbra! On the right" the Officer roared into his comlink even as he tried to find any angle to shoot at that thing, watching in horror as it jumped down behind his hacker and… It was hard to describe what exactly happened. Maybe it was the dim night light, or maybe Kasaro was too angry to see it properly, but he could swear he saw the smoke coalesce into a seven feet tall, red skinned humanoid wearing wispy black clothes, the thing raising its hand up and draining the very life out of the hacker.

It was disgusting and revolting, yet there was nothing he could do but watch as his soldier was drained, his red skin turning pale, then grey, dessicated and bristling while the Umbra seemed to grow, the smoke around it bulging out with a grotesque, fleshy gurgle that made the stomach churn. Kasaro gripped his gun and attempted to move around, actually diving through the enemy machinegun's line of fire, his suit taking the brunt of the shots just so he could let loose with his own gun, squeezing off a precise burst that did nothing on the ethereal creature's hide.

He was shooting smoke, his bullets piercing through the billowing dark cloak with zero efficacy, high impact shots doing little more than annoying the large creature and putting him on its radar. "I've got it distracted." the warrior officer snarled into his coms, hailing their transport as it flew nearby "Lorkan, come in from the right flank. You have an opening. Use it" he grit his teeth, bracing his gun against his shoulder and firing again, focused on the writhing, barely visible form of the Umbra "Look at me, you ugly son of a worm." his voice cool, calm and relaxed even as anger boiled inside him "Come at me." his bursts short and controlled as he tried his best to keep the enemy focused on himself, drawing as much attention as he could.

Lorkan was a Rasyat, a diplomatic operative, although Morat diplomacy basically meant they were the first to shoot the enemy. He had been waiting for a while now, alone in the ship hold and ready to jump out. The original idea had been to use their hacker to triangulate a perfect drop position right on top of the enemy database, but now that the hacker was wasting away turned into a dessicated husk, he'd have to be much more careful. His gravitational parachute had to land a little off the combat zone, and he finished the insertion on foot, running under the cover of the taller buildings on the right side of the compound.

Lorkan had always been supposed to be the only one to get to the Onyx database, but on an ideal world he'd have dropped down later in the fight, when there were way less enemies on the field. Right now, he was facing horrible odds, sneaking behind tall walls and moving silently until he noticed something slink into the shadows to his left, moving in a barely heard whisper. "Found another Umbra" he relayed as if he had found an scurrying rodent.

"Take it down" Kasaro ordered as he coordinated with Sor'kan to pin the smoke monster assaulting their backline down. Thankfully the Samaritan had came from the right flank, taking out the hacker and two of the supporting Yaogats, but leaving their Med-tech mechanoid unmolested, as Kasaro hoped at least one of the warriors felled by that wispy cloud of nanotech bullcrap could be nursed back to life.

The Rasyat grunted an acknowledgment and moved in swiftly, pulling his shotgun up and putting two shots into the chest, or at least what he thought was the chest, of the red skinned creature. It even tried to raise a shotgun back to return fire, but Lorkan was faster. For a moment he marveled at his weapon and the one on the dead Umbra's hand, noticing that even though they worked similarly, they were very different in design and even ammunition. The Combined Army would never allow the Morats to use their truly advanced tech, even for such simple, small arms.

Moving nimbly among the buildings, Lorkan finally got a chance to see what was shooting at his commander and sniper team, taking the moment to spit on the ground, then rub his close cropped beard in pondering "Got visual of the machinegun nest. They have a Rodok fireteam on overwatch. I see a missile launcher too" he reported with clear disgust in his voice.

Rodoks were a new addition to the Morat Agression Forces, using much more technology than most of their troops had access to, with light armor, mimetic skin protection, and even jump packs. Most Morats would be naturally disdainful of the newer forces, as most of them had to prove their worth to the Supremacy first, and they hadn't had the chance yet. This disdain and lack of respect had also led many of these new soldiers to join the Onyx Contact Forces instead, looking for quick ascension in rank and acknowledgment from their peers.

"Take them down. We're running out of time" Kasaro more snarled than said, moving in between the stacked crates and supply boxes he had used for cover, trying to get a better shooting angle at the Umbra that continued to jump from cover to cover, dodging his and his sniper's shots as if they were thrown pebbles. At least the actual mission was going well, their lives be damned.

Lorkan grunted as he eyeballed the distance. It was too far away for a shotgun blast, and he couldn't even make out the exact position of the Rodok team with their mimetic devices making their lines blurred and confusing, so it would have to be a close combat fight. The approach had to be careful, so the Rasyat pulled out a smoke grenade, roaring a challenge and moving on, tossing the metal ball in a high arcing trajectory, sending it careening off the path as it bounced off a metal wall at a slightly wrong angle, falling behind the nest instead of in front of it.

He didn't even have time to curse his aim, as the machinegunner swivelled his heavy weapon on its mount with the kind of practiced casualness that made Morat soldiers so unnerving to fight against, and hosed the Rasyat down. High powered bullets the size of his pinky finger stitched their way across his cover, blowing holes on the wall, forcing Lorkan to dive in, but he was not fast enough, and one bulled ripped off his rib armor, taking three of his ribs with it.

The pain was lancing, and he felt his nostrils flare and eyes water at it, even as one of his hands pressed to the wound, the other fumbling on his pack for a spray of medical foam that would keep him from bleeding out. "I'm down" He reported without any change in tone from his earlier reports. If anything, he was calmer now as he needed to conserve air in his failing lungs "Mission failed".

There was a string of colorful curses on the communications link that showed Kasaro was very much livid with anger. He ducked under an already buckled and bent crate, huffing in annoyance as that machinegun swivelled again, hitting his suit with several shots that failed to penetrate. The Warrior Officer hailed the one Morat he hoped he would not have to use for this fight "Ren'ehk, now it's on you. Take out that machinegun and bring us the files." As angry as he was, the young Suryat was surprised at how casually commanding his voice sounded.

So was Ren'ehk at hearing it. It made her smirk as she realized the whelp was indeed Officer material, once more keeping his cool under fire and his mind on the mission. So far the Oznat had been resigned to guard the left flank, and all she had to deal with was a minor shootout with another Umbra, that she didn't report because said Umbra was now food for her pets and she wouldn't bother her Officer with her Hungries and their meal routine, making her participation in the battle so far next to null.

Well, that had been the original arrangement. She was supposed to merely guard a flank, allowing the rest of the troops to focus somewhere else. But now they were all either dead, wounded or too busy with a living nightmare to finish the mission, and the huntress had to take matters on her own hands.

So her target was set: a heavily defended structure that was most certainly the one with the files they needed, with a pillbox staffed by a rodok machinegun and a missile launcher on top of it, and most likely three other rodoks rounding up a fireteam inside the building. Following the usual fireteam composition, she expected a hacker, a medic and a team leader, probably some younger warrior officer who was a bit too eager for a promotion to realize he had pitched in with the wrong side of the Combined Army.

It was time to teach those whelps a lesson, and Ren'ehk was a patient teacher too. Like Lorkan, she didn't have long range weapons, so she'd have to use smoke to make her approach. Unlike Lorkan, she knew better than to toss in a high arch when the angled buildings made it so hard to predict the bounce offs. Instead she rolled her first grenade down an alley, waiting until it detonated into a cloud of oily black smoke, before running in, clicking her tongue to summon the Hungries to her.

Oznats were natural sprinters and endurance runners both, able to cover short distances faster than the eye could see, and Ren'ehk was used to blind fighting, so she was confident her next smoke grenade would roll perfectly under the pillbox, even as she swung underhanded and completely without sight to her target. It was all about the smells, the sounds, the way the barked orders and clatter of gunfire echoed and reflected along the metal walls, it made angling a throw somewhat easy as long as she didn't expect pinpoint accuracy.

There was no need for perfect accuracy when her objective was to blanket the reinforced position with smoke, robbing the enemy of their sight even as the Rodoks already started to coordinate should a sniper shot come through the shroud enveloping them. What they didn't expect was a lean female to barge through their front door, her snarling animals in tow, screeching, cutting and biting at the much better equipped soldiers.

The dense smoke meant she couldn't shoot at them, which was very good as in a shootout the Rodoks would have a clear advantage over her, no matter how much easier it was to fire a shotgun than a machinegun in close range. So she went in for the melee combat, kicking the front door open while her Hungries swarmed in from the pillbox opening, taking the enemy position from all directions at the same time.

In a melee, the huntress had more practice, more speed, and even more raw physical strength. She wasn't slowed down by heavy, bulky jump packs and mimetic devices amounted for nothing when Ren'ehk could smell whether or not the Rodoks had washed their briefs that morning. Inside the smoke, all she could see was the glow of their weapons and visors, but she could hear the whirr of their power packs, the thump of their boots on the ground. She didn't need to see to kill them.

The first one to go down was the machinegunner. He had to go, otherwise as soon as the smoke dissipated he would be back to suppressing Kasaro across the field. Ren'ehk stabbed him through the gut, her bone blade cutting into the light weave of his suit to puncture his lungs and intestines. It was a fatal wound, but not one that would kill him right away, giving him either a few hours of painful agony or more likely a chance to be healed back once the fight was done and she had retreated.

It felt bad killing other Morats. As much as her species wasn't supposed to care, and in many ways relished the chance to fight itself, to the packmistress it always felt like a waste of time and effort. There was so little to be gained fighting other Morats, that it felt more wasteful to kill them than to just maim them and make this a lesson they could improve on…

She found herself smirking again, thinking about how much of a teacher she was that she couldn't stop thinking about lessons and improvement even when these were her enemies… And then she saw, in the middle of all the smoke and haze, a very different figure. It was tall, gaunt and elegant, its slender legs deceptively powerful in their digitigrade stance, with long feet touching the ground at the tip of spindly claws. It wore a long coat, elegant and stylish in red and metal grey, with the markings of an officer visible on the side, its lustrous, smooth black head and glowing yellow eyes visible even in the smoke cloud.

Ren'ehk growled. It wasn't a Morat leading these soldiers, it was a Nexus. A bloody, Urkherit born, vat bred Nexus! These Rodoks weren't soldiers. These couldn't learn, they couldn't improve and pick up new skills, because they weren't even real Morat! It was one thing to have their species be ruled by the Combine, as humiliating as it was, but it was another to follow a bloody Urkherit drone into battle! At this point they weren't allies, they were just slaves with fancy uniforms, and slaves deserved no respect from a warrior.

Perhaps later she would muse on the irony of her anger, but at that moment, the Oznat was frothing, mad with pure rage. So much her blade was left stabbed into the machinegunner's side as she reached up, grabbing her own helmet and pulling it off. It wasn't very smart, it was violence without reasoning, savagery at the very finest… But it felt good. The moment her teeth came out, her claws ready, the Oznat roared to command her pack as if she was little more than one of the beasts herself. Oh, she would relish every second of this!

Before the bony crest of her helmet had hit the ground, Ren'ehk was upon the Nexus agent, clawing at his long, elegant gun, another high tech model that outperformed the blocky rifles given to the Morat soldiers. But no amount of high tech gear could stop the packmistress' claws as she dug into the Nexus' wrist, twisting it violently until the bone cracked beneath her grip, drawing a satisfying screech from the creature's pulled back, leering lips. It died howling as Ren'ehk spun around it, using its body as a shield to take a close range shotgun blast from one of the Rodoks.

She could have used the Nexus' own rifle to eliminate all of them. But at this point her rage was blinding hot, her white eyes seethed with it, glinting in the choking, claustrophobic smoke cloud that kept filling the room. The dead Urkherit was thrown bodily over, knocking the Rodok medic down and allowing two of the Hungries to pounce on him, one of them biting his face off while the other ripped at the leg.

There was a growl and a hiss to her left and Ren'ehk ducked under a shower of caustic blood as a lucky blow from the enemy hacker caused the highly volatile blood of one of her pets to detonate in contact with the air. The close range, small explosion turned the former Morat into a puddle of molten metal, bone and skin, but the packmistress dodged the stray jet, turning her gaze to the last one, his long weapon dropped to the floor as he pulled an elaborate, curved blade.

"You don't deserve to use that" the Oznat spat on his face as she rushed him, the soldier realising not quickly enough that he was not trained to deal with a rabid female and her overly violent beasts, switching to his pistol mid charge and firing point blank. The bullet connected with her sternum so hard it fractured the breastplate, leaving a big, darkened gash where it punched in. But while it did hurt, the wound lacked real danger, and the smell of her own blood only drove Ren'ehk into a more violent frenzy.

She grasped the blade clumsily held by the last remaining Rodok and twisted it in, stabbing him with his own weapon, pushing against him, her arms flexing and air escaping between her hissing teeth until the blade pushed out of his back and he was left stuck to the wall. The Rodok struggled with his bulky jump pack, trying to scramble off, but there was nothing he could do to stop the packmistress from punching into his throat, her claws cutting through the soft armorweave, the skin, the muscle, all the way so she could grab his cartilaginous throat and rip it off, yanking the tube out with a fleshy, choking gurgle that would continue for a moment as the slave soldier choked on his own blood.

The Oznat snapped her tongue and the remaining three Hungries stood to attention, watching the entry points for any more enemies as she wiped both of her hands clean on her own long hair. She took a second to admire the glistening red adorning the tip of her otherwise pearly white braid, and huffed in approval before picking her helmet back up "Machinegun nest cleared" she reported when the mask fit back in "I'm downloading the files now. You should call for extraction, Officer."

Kasaro was surprised at his own smile now. The packmistress had actually made a request instead of giving him an order for a change. Thank the gods for small progresses. Still he couldn't extract his team when they were still beset by an angry, living smoke monster, and now he had a very short time to kill that last Umbra before the ship arrived and left him for dead.

The Umbra itself was getting increasingly angry, or maybe Kasaro was projecting his own frustrated rage onto it. It pulled out some sort of tri-bladed boomerang that looked ridiculously out of place on a creature that quite literally oozed vodootech out of its pores, and tossed it in a way too perfect arc. The blade spun around, whistling as it cut through the barricade Sor'kan had been using as cover, and then sheared his long sniper rifle in two.

A little lower and it would have cut off both his arms too, but the sniper reacted fast enough to just lose his gun and not his fingers. However, that did make him incensed, and like his officer, he knew the extraction was coming soon and they were strapped for options, so he figured he might as well do something insensate for a change.

The Yaogat charged the Samaritan. There was a moment of stunned silence as the creature itself realized some red faced monkey with a death wish was attacking it with a long, curved sword, and then the most difficult duel of its life began. For some reason this Morat was faster, or perhaps just angrier, and made it all the harder for their blows to connect.

Sor'kan hollered a curse as wispy nanotech smoke enveloped him and he stabbed at random, only to suddenly feel his blade meet actual flesh. There was a spurt of foetid blood and a startled cry as the Yaogat yelled "It bleeds!" he said in triumph, pushing his blade further in hopes that he would cause enough damage to stop that rampaging monster even as more of its smoky tendrils enveloped him. The smell was awful, but the glistening blood spurting out of the wound was very real.

And then Sor'kan died. It was just as fast as his crazy, pointless charge had been, as the Samaritan seemed to decide it had had enough and simply lifted him by the throat, his body losing color and strength as nanotech viruses ate it from inside out. In the space of a breath, the Morat sniper was a husk, tossed to the side like a discarded wet tissue.

However, there was a lesson to be learned: Umbras bled. And if they bled, they could be killed. Kasaro knew it as he raised his gun up, the heavy machinegun resting on his shoulder, cold and precise. He aimed true, standing tall and sure he wouldn't take enemy fire now that the Rodok team laid butchered where they stood "Now you die." he snarled under his breath before pulling the trigger.

All his life he had learned 'Short, controlled bursts' and 'holding down the trigger is for maniacs and Raizot pilots'. At this moment, he felt like a maniac, he was angry, angry that his mission was an almost failure, angry that his people were oppressed by some unseen tyrant, and right now, most of all he was angry that this mass of utter bullshit nanotech monstrosity had killed half his strike team. So he did what he was not supposed to do and squeezed that trigger until his joints hurt.

The Umbra came at him under a hail of bullets. The ammo counter on his visor running down so fast he couldn't see the numbers fly by as his high impact rounds seemed to just cut through the smoke without effect. Then the creature staggered as a shot hit its mark "Found it." he thought even as his ammo counter hit 0, and he ejected the drum magazine before the weapon could click empty, slamming another one home faster than he could draw breath.

He had found the fleshy, vulnerable bits hidden in the smoke, and now he aimed at them, uncaring for how much nanotech protection it had, nothing could take upwards of two hundred shots and survive and he knew it. His gun bucked on his hand, but between his natural strength and his powered suit, he held it on target, hitting it over and over and over again until the creature finally staggered and fell down, gurgling and losing control of its nanotech cloud, the viruses turning on its own dying body to devour itself in an attempt to repair the damage even as it died, its death throes spastic and violent. The Suryat didn't stop shooting until it stopped moving, firing on and on as the Umbra lost form and cohesion.

In perhaps ten seconds, maybe less, Kasaro had exhausted two ammo drums on his target. Now his gun felt hot, the muzzle glowing red and half molten from the constant discharge. A thin trail of smoke rose both from the tip of his weapon and the pile of pulped flesh and still writhing nanotech cloud that had been the Umbra Samaritan.

Silence hung out now that the combat was done, and Kasaro ordered his med-tech to make a quick check of every trooper that could be saved. As it did so, he walked over to Sor'kan's corpse and recovered the Yaogat's blade, now tainted black by the Umbra's ichor. The Warrior Officer swapped his own sword for that one, giving his Kurdat friend and companion a short, respectful nod before standing up and moving on, waiting for the dropship.

Far away from that frantic shootout, Ren'ehk pulled her sword off the dying Rodok gunner, twisting the blade around so it would shred his inner organs, making the damage that would have been repairable into a deadly hemorrhage. She turned to the local computer and began downloading the files they had suffered so much to recover, listening to her Hungries' clicks and snarls for any further troubles. None would come.

In a bout of curiosity, the Oznat opened one of the files and skimmed it. Once more she found herself smirking when she realized Kasaro had lied to her. These weren't just the supply bases for the Onyx Contact Forces. These there contacts for human dissidents, Krakot mercenaries, all the network of spies and infowar operatives the Combine had implanted in the human sphere!

"Smart kid" the packmistress chuckled as she closed the file. The realization of her own treason, her own part in this little conspiracy finally hit her and so did the irony of she becoming a traitor after butchering those Rodoks for betraying her species' ideals. But for some reason she felt fine with the thought of splitting, of leaving the Combine, of being free. Seeing her own species being so directly led by another had churned her guts, had made her question if it wasn't time the Morats just up and left the Combined Army already.

Now, the next step was to convince the Karanatat commander that this was a good cause, before he had them all sent to death for treason. And once more Kasaro showed his smarts: If Ren'ehk couldn't sway that old Sogarat to their side, no one could. But that didn't mean she was all too eager to face Hirok now.

"Maybe after a shower" she spoke out loud as if she was talking to her Hungries. It was a very bad habit she had never been able to kick. That, and smirking to herself when she was alone. In the end, Ren'ehk was feeling satisfied today, and that was enough.