Earth Year 2840. The Crashed Dreadnought, Lower Decks.
The U.N.S. Aegis was a living labyrinth of necrotic flesh as a wall of dark sludge had overgrown the blast doors with glowing eyed and faces of a dozen assimilated crew members inside the horrific mass.
"We’re trapped! They’re coming up the cargo ramp!"
Daniel yelled.
"We need a fallback position! Eva, find us a sealed room!"
Maroon ordered.
"There!"
Zeon yelled pointing his weapon light to a corridor.
"Auxiliary Server Room 4 has manual quarantine bulkheads!"
Zeon spotted.
"Move!"
N032 commanded with his crude sword dripping black blood.
Eva sprinted to the heavy quarantine door crossing the wires until the metal door ground open.
"Get inside!"
Maroon ordered shoving Chang and Ruby through the gap.
Before a mutated officer could charge down the hall and ram Zeon, N032 stepped firmly into its path.
"Get back!"
N032 shouted, slamming his heavy blade against the creature’s chest with a concussive shockwave of twilight aura that sent the beast flying backward into the horde buying the squad time to retreat.
N032 backed into the server room last just as Eva slammed the manual override shutting the Doors.
"It’s holding!"
Eva gasped as the frustrated screeches of the assimilated crew muffled outside.
Chang dropped his rifle, burying his face in his hands as Ruby leaned over a server rack, gasping for air with sweat plastering her scarlet hair.
"We can’t reach the armory, the infection has taken over the main arteries making a direct assault with five exhausted recruits is suicide,"
Maroon stated with bitter frustration while checking his remaining ammunition.
"So we’re just going to starve in this server room,"
Daniel voice cracking.
"Nobody is dying today, Recruit,"
Eva snapped jacking her tactical datapad into a server mainframe.
"This auxiliary relay room is hardwired into the ship’s external short wave transceivers,"
she explained typing on the holographic console.
"If the mast outside isn’t buried in the mountain, I can scan the local frequencies,"
Eva noted.
After a minute of static, the terminal projected a blue holographic map of the alien archipelago into the center of the room.
"I’ve got them, The other lifepods survived and their encrypted federation emergency beacons are still active,"
Eva smile breaking across her blood streaked face as seventeen blinking green dots materialized.
Zeon stepped forward as he saw the dots scattered across the shallow oceans, the luminescent jungle, and dangerously close to the towering golden Tree.
"Are they transmitting any audio?"
Maroon asked stepping up to the console.
"...Lifepod 12 to any fed channels... we are pinned down in a glowing forest by giant predators... we need heavy evac..."
a panicked voice filtered through heavy static.
"...hull is breached... water is rising... Medical Officer Chopper is dead... anyone..."
another desperate transmission echoed.
"...This is Sergeant Hayes of Lifepod 43! We secured a cave system three klicks east of the crash site but we are running low on plasma cells! We have thirty survivors here and if anyone can hear this, we are holding our ground!"
the Sergeant broadcasted.
"Thirty survivors in one location, If we want to take back the Aegis, we need manpower,"
Maroon muttered as his cybernetic eye glowing a fierce crimson turnong to N032.
"We need a forward operating base outside of this infected deathtrap, and we need soldiers to hold it,"
the Commander decided.
"The jungle is a meat grinder, The flora is carnivorous, the locals manipulate ambient mana and the eldritch horrors have already tracked the scent of blood,"
N032 warned, slowly pulling his scraping heavy sword from the floor.
"If you go back out there, you will be hunted,"
the armored anomaly stated.
"Then we hunt them back, We rest for three hours, breach the external cargo doors, load up the Behemoth tank and push into that jungle,"
Maroon ordered.
"We are going to gather every single survivor on this godforsaken rock, and we are going to build an army,"