2 Hours After Deployment

His heart thumped hard in his chest. Around the grip of his rifle, his knuckles were white, though for all appearances, they were encased in matte black armor. The man licked his lips and calmed his breathing.

“Clear on north,” he whispered into his comlink. They didn’t dare risk open channels, and only short-range, tightbeam comms were used. Behind the man, a half-dozen other men and women in the same camouflage patterns warily glanced right and left.

The other soldiers on point whispered their confirmations of no contacts before them. “Let’s move.”

They padded forwards, silent as wraiths, eyes and ears tense for any sight or sound of hostiles. “Duke, what’s ahead of us?” whispered the man.

“Some redacted shit, Orr. Big, though. Wide area,” replied The Duke.

“Redacted mean’s someone’s got somethin’ to hide,” added Whiskey. “Let’s check it out.”

“Roger that,” Orr agreed. “How far?”

“Ten meters. Turn left, and there’s a service entrance onto the upper scaffolding,” said The Duke, glancing at a wrist-mounted data-pad.

They slipped forwards, and Orr and Whiskey gripped either handle of the double-doors. “We do this quiet, capiche?”

The other ARC troopers nodded and tightened their focus, getting ‘into the zone’ as some soldiers liked to call it. “Go.”

They pulled the door open, gliding the old-fashioned machinery on its tracks. The other four commandos poured in, weapons following their eyes. There were no enemies on the catwalks, strung high up in the room, but the ARCs still were careful to watch their steps.

Orr glanced down at the room, zooming in with a blink. Falleen and Twi’leks and Zabraks and even a couple of Verpine, both male and female. “No humans,” grunted Mute.

“So?” sneered Smokes. “Aliens die same as us.”

“And what the hell is that...?” Charge asked, pointing.

Orr’s eyes swept over the scene. “If I had to hazard a guess, it’s something very, very bad.”



Deployment - 12 Hours

Orr was dancing. A step, a spin, and a flourish of his hands. He danced with the grace and confidence of a member of the old Imperial court. At least, that’s what it appeared to be.

Each ‘dance’ step was carefully calculated, balance and footwork impeccable to deliver an attack from any angle; foot, fist, elbow, knee. With a pirouette, he could snap a man’s neck; with a step, shatter a kneecap. His was a dance, surely, but only a dance of death and horrible damage.

A soft tone eased him from his practice; Fort Sexton’s usual officer’s quarters klaxons were obnoxious and broke Orr’s concentration. He was an ARC; the Army would cater to his little wants when he was more than ready to take on its most impossible missions.

He tapped the small receiver buttons on his desk. “Orr.”

“Commander. The XO and TO request your presence in Briefing Room One,” the mid-grade officer said quickly into the link.

“Roger that. Orr out,” replied the ARC soldier. Room One - where the important missions were handed out. The room itself was buried deep within Sexton, only a floor below the main command center, and had access - with the correct codes - to almost any intelligence stream. ARCs rarely had briefings elsewhere.

The Commander shrugged into his unmarked uniform, and strapped on his duty pistol, before wheeling from his quarters and striding through the halls.



Garryll Gates sat behind the short table beside Havock; Tactical Officer and Executive Officer they may be, but bored would have been a more fitting title for them. Excitement was little and far between for the two career soldiers, but this mission had been stamped ‘URGENT’ and passed right up the chain to them.

Intelligence was loath to mark something ‘urgent’ unless they absolutely had to; they lost face every time it was simply a nerf stumbling into a top-secret military facility and setting off only the internal alarms, as had once happened before. ARC troopers on-scene had not been happy to have been roused for something so trivial.

“There’s really no cemented ARC teams in Sexton right now?” Gates asked, pawing through the half-dozen dossiers that their aides had supplied.

“Yeah,” Havock said glumly. “We have to just throw together the best of what we’ve got and hope it’s enough.”

Their musings concluded then, as the ARCs began to trickle in.

Orr - Gates had served with him, and the cold, predator’s red eyes, set in the gaunt face, flickered over every part of the room. Gates could feel a calculating, crawling sensation as the ARC Commander measured even the two High Command officers before him.

Whiskey, one-time lead of the now disbanded Theta team. Capable, loyal and determined, she was the second Commander of the hastily-assembled team. Her eyes swept the room even quicker than Orr’s had, and she sat without a word.

Two more came in at the same time, and two more different men could not be found; one was deathly silent, with cold, dead eyes and a subdued walk - the tremendously efficient ‘Mute’ of the ARCs. Rumors had it he rarely spoke over a whisper, but even Commanders had learned to heed his words. Beside him was perhaps the one man who didn’t seem to hold him in a sort of nigh-petrified awe: The Duke. The man had earned his nickname for the famously bold mission to assassinate a member of the Imperial Court a handful of years ago. Bold, ruthless and supremely confident, the Duke was dangerous in an entirely different way than the man he walked with.

Charge was the other female of the group, though the charred-away hair ensured that she’d always appear severe. The woman’s personality would never be mistaken for someone who had total control of their mental functions, however. She was shaking what her dossier insisted was a ‘Magic-8,’ a child’s toy shaped like a billiards ball. The toy would supposedly answer questions posed to it, and the dossier, which had seemed to have been insane at first read, was proving all too sane.

The last ARC had earned an escort. It wasn’t a good thing, as four military policemen with shock-batons and stun-cuffs escorted the smoking ARC trooper, shackled hand and foot. Smokes: the killer ARC, a genial, obedient smile on his face as he was led into the briefing room. Gates dismissed the MPs and as Smokes sat, the ARC team had finally gathered.

A more psychologically damaged group of individuals could barely be found in this entire base, mused Gates. But they’re perfect.

Havock stood and pressed a button before her on the table. The lights dimmed and a hologram rose from the center of the table. A planet spun lazily before them.

“This is Shumongi. Whiskey, you may know it, but we’re not concerned, unfortunately, with the region you’ve been deployed to before,” Havock began. The globe whirled, focused and zoomed in on a mountainous region. “This is where we’re concerned.”

Charge was shaking her Magic-8 and whispering something that sounded like, ‘Is this really a problem?’

Based on her expression, the little ball had answered ‘yes.’

Gates picked up where Havock had left off. “This is a facility; we’re not entirely sure what it’s for, but readings and Intelligence suggest that it’s a research facility. Intelligence did some more digging, and it turns out, this place belongs to Gygaxial.”

A few eyebrows raised. Smokes chuckled. “That’s the name on all the drugs the docs got.”

“Correct, Sergeant,” Havock replied. “Gygaxial is a pharmaceutical company. They’ve outlived the Empire, and were founded decades ago.”

“Gygaxial’s huge. But it’s Core-ward based,” the Duke remarked. “Why do we give a shit?”

“Gygaxial has reach, sure. But its reach is contained in Flail,” Gates answered. Eyebrows were raised. “Flail is the one-time security department of Gygaxial. They worked exhaustively with the Empire. They’re nearly a private military contractor now, but it’s more than that.”

“They have an experimental wing contained within Flail,” Havock finished. “And neither Flail, nor Gygaxial, has had a friendly public appearance in the last decades. They’ve been accused of xenophobia.”

“Fits with the Empire,” remarked Orr. “Hate the alien.”

“Flip the script,” Gates said. “They didn’t let humans into their company, and even the Empire never pressed ‘em.”

“So the Empire owed them one. A big one,” Whiskey said quietly.

“Flail is rumored to have done a great many dirty deed for the Empire,” Gates said. “How dirty, and what, we don’t know. But we’d like to. And this facility on Shumongi may have some answers we seek.”

“So it’s important, then,” The Duke remarked.

“Tremendously. And -” Gates was cut off by Charge thoroughly shaking her Magic-8.

“Dangerous?” she asked. With a grin, she slammed the orb down on the table before her, and all of them glanced at the words that were swimming on its reading surface:

Without a doubt.

Aryanna 'Whiskey' Graves stood by the landing ramp, waiting for the final word from the pilot that they were all clear. The landing on Shumongi had seemingly gone off without a hitch, but in her experience this planet was always full of surprises. She had been there on one of her last missions with ARC Theta to build facilities, or at least that had been their cover. The real mission was to gain intelligence on the inhabitants and take note of their military strength.

The mission had to be aborted early, the ARC's blew their cover and Whiskey was stripped of command shortly afterwards. She had done her best to fit in with the commandos in the regular Army after that, but was always thankful when she got these calls. The black ARC armor fit against her skin like the embrace of an old friend.

Seeing Havock again was always a short and welcomed affair. Whiskey marvelled at how different the two twins had started to look. It was still obvious to even a blind man that they were related, but not that they were identical anymore. Havock had become thin and her eyes were dulled from long hours staring at numbers and statistics. Her younger sister had become an executive officer of a vast army, people needed to become numbers in a game or she couldn't lead with impartiality. Of course, Whiskey knew there was one soldier on a battlefield somewhere that never left Havock's thoughts and was probably the reason for the dark bags under her sister's eyes.

Charge approached the second in command as she rolled her smaller portable 8-ball between each of her fingers then around her palm. She refused to go on any mission without at least the smaller version of her charm. She wasn't sure if it was lucky or not, Charge wasn't sure if she even believed in such nonsense. All she knew is it was a comfort to her and smaller than a thermal detonator so commanders had no reason to bitch about it.

She rubbed her hand over the stubble that was struggling to grow over the top of her head. Charge had several tattoo's. For a time she would get a new ink stamp each time she returned from a successful mission. When she ran out of room on her arms, legs and body she figured the ones on her face should be special and thought out.

The armor was sufficient but the the helmet was way too stuffy for Charge and the visor made it hard to see the words on her 8-ball. This mission was about infiltrating anyways, so what use was a helmet other than to stick out like a sore thumb.

“Ready to go boss?” Charge shook the 8-ball as she spoke. The answer swirled to the top -outlook unclear-. The scrawny woman grimaced then turned her dark eyes back to Whiskey. “As anyone ever told you that you kinda look like that XO lady.”

Whiskey raised her eyebrow at the trooper that had already moved her attention to checking her large supply of explosives. Charge only carried one pistol, the rest of her gear was made of satchels and pockets for her wide array of surprises for the enemy. From the dossier the girl may have been little but she was loud.

“That XO lady happens to be my sister, and yes damn near everyone has mentioned the resemblance.”

Orr walked up and regarded the two women on his team with a curt nod, then slapped his palm against the door controls. The ramp descended into the soft grass leaving an impression for others to find one day long after they had gone.

“ARC's roll out.” Orr's voice carried over the comm system, not that it was necessary with his booming voice.

Once everyone had reached the clearing Orr and Whiskey had already retrieved the teams speeder bikes for the mission.

Whiskey stepped out from behind the handlebars of the last one. “Here are our rides. They have been outfitted with dampening stabilizers to keep the sound down. They also are nearly undetectable by anyone's radar. You can all thank the XO for making sure the upgrades were completed herself.”

“I don't thank anyone for giving me a sore ass lady.” Smokes barked from a tree stump.

“Right, I'll keep that in mind Sergeant when I need to choose which body part of yours to shoot should you keep interrupting me.” Her blue eyes scanned the rest of the group. “You will find a target on each of your nav readouts. Follow it through the forest. We will be going the last click on foot.”

Orr stepped forward and assumed a posture of authority. “No funny shit, we need to do this quietly.” His gaze fell on Mute for a second and he almost flinched at the irony of his expression. “Keep together and keep your weapons to yourself. Let's go.”

“In position. I repeat, Smokes and Mute in position.”

Turning to his partner, Smokes held out his cigar in a silent offering. Mute shook his head and held up a hand.

“Suit yourself. Now, remind me,” Smokes said, “Did we pick this spot? Because I don’t remember having a vote. And if I had had a vote, it wouldn’t have been for this.”

Mute glanced at him as he paused to take one final drag from his cigar before carefully extinguishing it and replacing it in a small pouch on his belt. The man caught the look and shrugged.

“What? It would be breaking protocol to discard it here. Besides, I’m not completely done with it.”

With a quick motion, he slipped his helmet on and snapped it in place. Mute nodded and turned back to the facility. They were hidden within tall grass on the edge of the treeline, which ended  close to the walls of the facility. But not close enough. There was still a brief stretch of bare ground where they would be completely exposed. Mute didn’t like it and, judging from the complaints, Smokes didn’t either. But they had to make the best of it.

“No guards.” Mute remarked.

“Not down here. Look up top. I caught a glimpse of a guard as I moved in, right before you showed up. He’s probably doing a circuit.There are cameras though. There and there and there.” the other ARC said, pointing out the location of the three cameras.

“Take them out?”

“How?”

Mute raised his rifle.

“Oh. Yeah, that would work.”

The wall on their side of the complex was a stark grey, bare, except for a few camera placements and a single set of doors. The cameras were placed on either end of the wall, and one more was placed to the side of the doors. Each slowly scanned, moving from left to right to left and back again.

“Intel said that the facility was lax on security. Obviously, they were wrong.” Smokes said, following up with a curse.

Mute frowned. Intel had indeed said that the security would not pose a problem with getting into the facility. But once they were inside, they were on their own. If this was what Intel considered lax, he was not particularly looking forward to getting inside. He watched the cameras as they panned back and forth. They were primitive, by modern standards. So why were they being used here? Mute suddenly had a stroke of inspiration.

“They’re dupes.”

Smokes nodded, “That’s a possibility. But how do we test that? We don’t want to be wrong . . .”

“Easy.”

Raising his rifle, Mute took aim and rapidly shot off a trio of bolts. He felt a faint sense of satisfaction as the cameras basically exploded. A few minutes later, a guard came meandering across the top of the wall, barely glancing down. He disappeared, that part of his rounds complete for the moment.

“Go, go.” Mute said.

Smokes grunted and leaped forward through the grass, quickly followed by Mute. They covered the ground quickly and each slammed into the wall on either side of the doors.

“I’ll take point. You cover our flanks.” Smokes said, nodding after Mute clicked an affirmative.

The doors were unlocked, thankfully and they slipped inside. Two guards were leaning against the wall, chatting, to their left. A moment later and two corpses fell the floor, dispatched handily by Smokes. The sharp crack of gunfire had luckily been muffled slightly, though it was still too loud for Mute’s tastes. They moved the guards’ bodies off to the side and pushed them into a closet that happened to be nearby.

“Smokes here. We’re in.” he said.

Eighty Minutes After Deployment

Two Flail men walked sedately down the hall; they were talking about a recent Grav-ball tournament. The taller of the two was commenting on the star of his friend’s team when his life ended.

“He can’t carry ‘em - the Binaries don’t have the talent to - urk!”

The Duke dragged the man into the short hallway he’d hid in and dumped the guard on his friend. “Grav-ball is so boring,” he muttered.

Orr shrugged and moved down the hall from which the two guards had come. He panned his rifle to and fro; his ears strained to hear even the footfalls of further contacts. “Duke, what’s the map say about how far we have to go?”

“We chose some small utility closet as our rendezvous, it looks like,” the man replied dryly. “But we’re close.”

They moved up again, and found the room they meant to regroup in. It was a pretty small room, but it was just a navpoint for them. Orr pried the door open and slipped in. “Nothing in here. Of course.”

“So we just set up and wait, boss?”

“Yeah. Hurry up and wait, as they say.”

“Roger that,” the Duke agreed.

So they sat, rifles within reach and the door closed most of the way. They waited until the other ARCs showed up. The Duke took his helmet off after a few minutes; the man disliked how it cut off some of his senses, especially when he was moving in enemy territory. Orr kept his on; the protection it offered, along with the host of sensors, made up for it in his opinion.

“Someone’s coming,” the Duke said, drawing a long-barreled pistol from his belt and standing, rifle hanging by its strap. He stood and pointed the handgun at the mostly-closed door, then gripped the inner handle and slid it open, smoothly.

A grinning, bald head stared back at him. The Duke cursed and fell over.

“Gods! Charge! You crazy bitch!” the Duke hissed. “And why do you smell like shit?”

The demo expert grinned like a loon and stepped over the Duke’s prone form, finding her Magic8 in one of the pockets of her ad-hoc uniform and giving it a shake.

“What? What’re you asking it?” The Duke grumbled, sitting up.

“Was our entrance more exciting and cool than yours,” Charge said matter-of-factly. She tilted the ball. It is certain

Whiskey slipped in Charge’s heels and slid the door closed again, then said in explanation, “Sewers.”

“Ah,” Orr said quietly. “Once Mute and Smokes get here, we move. So have your gear ready.”

They didn’t have to wait long. A few minutes later, the door slid open from the outside, and Smokes poked his head in. He was greeted by the barrels of four guns.

“Yeah, they’re here,” he hissed over his shoulder. “Next time, you check.”

“On me,” Orr said. “Let’s keep this quiet, people.”

*** *** ***

2 Hours After Deployment

They stood on the catwalks and surveyed the scene. The Duke was cursing softly and constantly, and he was joined by Smokes. “This is sick.”

In a twenty-by-twenty glass cage, a dozen shambling forms stumbled into one another. They were almost human, but for the vacant expressions and the patchwork surgical scars on shaved-bald heads. Too, the drool and primal noises coming from the things’ mouths indicated their lack of humanity. Beings in lab coats had datapads in their grips and took notes on the motions and actions of the things.

Orr watched, blinking slowly, as a human male was strapped down on an operating table. He was unconscious, but still the aliens in lab coats restrained him at both arms and legs, neck and waist. Then they drew a droid carrying dozens of surgical tools over. Four IVs slid into the man’s arms as droid assistants bustled about him, and sickly-colored fluids started pumping in.

Then the saws started, and Charge joined in the cursing.

“Alright, enough of this,” Orr said quietly. “This place needs to burn. We rapel down and we secure any data we find, then we blow it to hell.”

“Gladly,” Charge said in disgust, averting her eyes from the surgery that was going on below them.

They found good points to hook in, and each ARC prepared him- or herself; they readied weapons and set themselves.

“Go on my mark....three, two one...mark,” Orr said, one hand guiding his rappel line, the other gripping his assault rifle. With a squeal of metal on pulley, he fast-roped down, clicking to a stop a half-dozen feet up as the rope ran out. With a flick,he detached the rappel and fell to the ground.

A scientist in front of him squeaked in fear and ran off. Orr scanned for real targets rather than just cutting the man down, but other of the ARCs had no such priorities. Gunfire rattled in the lab, and soon, alarm klaxons were echoing through the room.

The pounding of combat boots emerged from the far side of the room as security forces appeared, and a gunfight began between the ARCs, scattered across the room, and the security forces as they poured in, trying to rescue their scientists. Random fire flickered across the room, hitting experiments and tools and making a mess of the lab. Orr fired back as well as he could, and barked orders and locations to his comrades.

With so much fire in the room, it was only a matter of time until something unexpected happened.

“Warning: containment has been released. Containment cells four, ten and fifteen have been released,” the alarm system sang calmly. “Containment cells six, eight and thirteen have lost power. Containment cells one, two and eleven are failing.”

In the periphery of Orr’s vision, the glass cage that had dominated the room opened at various points. The things inside stumbled out. They turned baleful, animal gazes on the guards and ARCs alike -

-and then they screamed. They screamed with raw, terrible voices and stumbled forwards at a fast pace. The Flail guards bore the brunt of them, stumbling over and through the obstacles in their way as they fell upon the security men and clawed at them with rigid hands or snapped at them with slavering jaws. One beelined towards Orr, but he blasted it half a dozen times in the chest and face. It collapsed, but then started crawling at him. He shot it through the skull again and it gave out.

“ARCs! Out! NOW!” Orr yelled. “Backdoor, now! Fall back!”

“This is where you guys split,” Orr said, gesturing. “Get up to the surface and get the word out.”

The female commander looked none too pleased, but nodded. The Duke shrugged in response. Down the hall from which they’d come, the door smashed down. The shrieks and groans of the creatures heralded their approach. “Time to go.”

“You’d think that door would’ve bought us more time, but no-o-o-o!” Smokes cursed, firing his rifle.

Whiskey turned on her heel and started climbing, the Duke right behind her, pausing only to toss Orr the wrist-mounted datapad that had a copy of the map. The other ARCs waited until they could see the crashing mob behind them and opened up, gunfire slamming into the front runners.

“Fall back!” Orr barked, and the ARCs slid down the ladder one after another, ducking out of the shaft after they reached the next level. The screaming creatures tried following, and a couple toppled haplessly down the shaft, seemingly incapable of figuring out ladders. One grabbed the edge on its way down, though, and screamed in satisfaction as it spied the ARCs only a handful of feet away. It tried to pull itself up, only to eat a combat boot and topple after its brethren.

“Gods!” Orr cursed. “They just keep coming.”

“Lower, boss?” asked Smokes, backing away from the shaft.

“Yeah. We need to get to the major security hub and lock this place down,” Orr said, gripping his rifle tight. “How far?”

“Two levels below us,” Mute muttered. “Stairs are a hundred meters.”

The ARCs nodded and moved forwards; they saw no mutants on this level, as yet, but were quick and quiet anyway.

“Contacts,” hissed Charge, shuffling into cover. The rest of the ARCs fell into hiding places, though the hall had few enough. All of them raised their rifles and readied themselves.

A trio of men and women in lab coats stumbled into the hall, with four Flail security guards on their heels. “Gods! They’re loose!”

“Keep moving, sir. We have to - urk!” ordered one of the guards, but what they had to do was never made clear. A mutant had fallen onto him and was shrieking as it tore at his face and chest. The guard’s own screams joined the creatures and his blood splashed on his comrades. They blasted the creature, and it died. “Where’s the exit? Oh...no! Damn! There’s more!”

“They’re quite concerned with the creatures, boss. We can get to the stairs.”

“Go. Move,” Orr said in decision, and they scrambled past the panicking scientists and guards as they fought and died. They didn’t even last long enough for the ARCs to get to the stairs and smash the door open, and soon, they were running again. Down the stairs a couple of levels, and out into another, thinner hallway.

“Security station is a hundred meters,” Orr said, bringing up the map the Duke had tossed him. “Charge.”

“Yeeeeeeees?” the bald woman inquired, automatic fire spitting from the weapon in her grip.

“I need you to blow something up.”

“Woohoo! I’ been dying to do that all day!” she stopped shooting and drew a half-dozen explosives from her belt. “Where!”

“Here. We need to buy ourselves some time, so we need a roadblock. Mute, Smokes, secure the station. I’ll cover Charge.”

The two other ARCs nodded and moved ahead, while Charge wired up her bombs with the skill and speed of a born destroyer. Orr flattened the first monster around the corner with a full-auto barrage, and Charge was stabbing at buttons on the explosives in a few seconds more.

“We’re set!”

“Move!” Orr barked, and suited actions to words with a dead sprint. Behind them, the screams of the creatures mixed with the rapid beeping of the bombs. And then they exploded.

The hallway was thrown around, the concussive effects knocking both Charge and Orr to the ground. The hall behind them was collapsed, rubble and dust filling the air.

“Good. Now we just lock it down and get deeper. Play hide-and-seek until someone shows up to help us out,” Orr said. “And they better come fast. These things have no quit in them.”