Blind as bats, if it wasn’t for their night vision devices. The blinking red lights in the hallways were a sufficient enough light source for their night vision to function, but that was not exactly the case within a pitch black environment. A bit of light was required for the night vision devices to function,
and nobody could say that was in overabundance within the claustrophobic ventilation shafts they crawled in. For the time being, their helmet mounted
glowrod attachments were their source of light, illuminating the dark crawlspace that stretched before them.
All the young mercenary could hear, aside from a muffled thud every now and then from both him and his battle-buddy and best friend, Aiden, as they squeezed through the vent with all their gear, was his heart pounding rapidly against his chest plate as they crawled. His mind lingered on the rest of his unit, and the situation they found themselves in.
They were effectively cut off from them, and on their own; his team, Skif, Scalpel, Tower… they might have all
died for all they knew. They were out of the data link range of their helmets now. They could not monitor their vitals anymore, and neither could they monitor theirs in return, until they were within fifty meters of one another once more.
And the facility’s jamming equipment, merely
one of its known defensive capabilities in place against intruders, made it impossible to raise them over their comlinks despite the fact that they were registered into the facility mainframe. Until either the jammer was turned off, or the facility’s containment procedure was somehow lifted, they would be unable to raise them over the comlink.
But Charger and Trapper though, they were certainly gone. They had heard them flatline over their smart
HUD’s; not even ten minutes into the facility, and they were neck deep in complete and
utter chit, ambushed by a large horde of… whatever they were.
He could not make sense of the biological abominations he saw, aside from the fact most of them wore -although tattered in certain parts- clothing that matched the description of what the on-site research personnel and guards wore.
With the amount he saw attacking their unit, shortly after making entry into the facility put on complete lockdown, he was not sure if there were
any on-site personnel left alive to search and rescue. That meant they had only one objective left to accomplish: Scuttle the facility.
There were, according to their briefing, far more dangerous biological and chemical agents stored in the facility, than the one that had broken containment.
They could not let them fall into the wrong hands.
In the wake of a long sigh, the young man came to an abrupt halt to catch a breath.
<”You good, homie?>” Aiden promptly asked him with a mild tone of apprehension in his voice; Dylan’s unannounced pause, and increased heart rate he could see in his HUD worried him.
<”Yeah yeah, I’m.. I’m good,”> his answer followed shortly in the wake of a deep breath.
<”What about you?”> He asked as he shifted around to look over his shoulder; the white light cast from the glowrod illuminated his friend’s silhouette.
<”Enjoying the view back there?”> with a chit eating grin behind his helmet visor Dylan threw a quip at him to at least take the edge off.
Something to talk about was better than being alone with your thoughts, after all.
<”What, YOU? Nah homie I’ve not gotten that desperate,”> a muffled cackle escaped Dylan’s annunciator at his words while he shifted around to face forward again.
<”Yet!”> he crawled onwards once more, while he continued to joke with him.
<”Five!”> the young man scoffingly reminded Aiden, his words followed with a short lived, yet scalding laughter; five consecutive times the girls he had approached turned him down, and he was there to witness all of it as his wingman.
<”Kark off asshat,”> with a muffled grumble he retorted, only for his seemingly angered response to turn into a low chuckle a moment after.
<”One of these days you’re gonna get lucky and find the one, man. I just know it,”> Dylan said to him in firm belief.
<”Vent grill dead ahead,”> he promptly reported in between their joking, as soon as he saw it.
<”Yyyeeeeah, that is if I don’t use it all up over here tryna’ survive this mess,”> he muttered in a growl.
With a gentle metallic creek the vent grill swiveled downwards.
<”What do you see?”> The tech specialist asked him in a near-whisper tone. There was not much he could see in the hallway from the ceiling, beside the blinking red lights. There was no telling what waited for them down there.
<”Nothing,”> he said. In mild apprehension he reached for a chemlight from his chest rig in the wake of his words. Following a faint crunch, a light-stick fell into the hallway with a patter, painting the hallway in a bright blue hue in contrast to the flashing red.
No movement.
Not a sound, except for the faint rustling of the air circulating around the facility through the vents.
<”Think the coast’s clear,”> Dylan said, looking over his shoulder. He gave a nod of his head towards their exit from the crawlspace while his gaze lingered at his friend’s armored visage, beckoning him to follow his lead before he disappeared from his sight, dropping into the hallway feet first.
Immediately the young demolition expert brought his rifle to bear as he briskly cleared away from the vent above him on the ceiling; in rapid succession the young tech specialist dropped right behind him, and covered his rear as soon as he reached for his blaster rifle; in between heaves of breath, the two took in their new surroundings in between a few timid paces around and about. The bright lights from their glowrod attachments on their rifles and helmets swiveled from sector to sector as they tried to figure out where exactly they were.
Rows of blast doors on either side of the wide hallway appeared sealed shut as per containment protocols. Eventually, their illumination shone onto the Aurabesh writing on the wall.
<”Medbay,”> The techie muttered as he took a few steps backwards, shifting closer to Dylan.
<”You think there are any survivors here?”> Aiden asked him, not once shifting his gaze from the hallway stretching before him; distinctly, there weren't any signs pointing at a brutal confrontation with the aberrants they had come across with. No blood sprayed on the walls, no blaster holes, no bodies torn to shreds.
<”I doubt it, but... Well, there's only one way to find out,”> the young man remarked as he began moving forward; although he moved at a brisk combat pace, a certain apprehension was apparent in his motion. On edge, he expected to bump into another horde while he cautiously rounded a corner to his left.
He was not expecting to see a pair of silhouettes further down the corridor.
<”Contact!”> he warned his friend at a whisper-shout, immediately bringing himself to a crouch while he braced the rifle onto the corner for added stability to his aim. Unable to identify the silhouettes accurately, the barrel of his rifle lingered on them while Aiden scrambled to position himself on the corner across from Dylan’s.
