"Vinto, intercept the left flank!" Damien commanded, engaging his own thermal baffles to vanish from the creature's heat sense. "Pin it down!"

  Vinto’s walker surged forward, intercepting the charge with hydraulic fury.

  The alien bodyguard caught the beast’s snapping jaws with the massive, reinforced claws of his mech. Metal screeched against crystal bone as the two titans locked in a struggle of raw strength.

  The Hydra thrashed, its tail whipping around to crush the legs of Vinto’s suit, but the heavy armor held against the impact, groaning under the strain.

  "I have the left head secured!" Vinto roared, his suit’s engines whining as he fought to keep the monster stationary. "It is stronger than the hydraulics! I cannot hold it long!"

  "Yeka, you're up! Sever the tendons on the right!" Damien ordered over the comms, lining up his shot on the center head.

  Yeka materialized from the mist on the creature's flank, her Starlight-Saber humming a deadly song.

  She sprinted up the side of the beast, her boots finding purchase on the rough scales. With a fluid, dancing motion, she drove the plasma blade into the gap between the obsidian plates on the Hydra’s shoulder.

  The beast shrieked, the sound vibrating in their bones. Steam and burnt ozone erupted from the wound as the plasma boiled the creature's flesh. The right head snapped back, trying to bite the agile attacker, but Yeka was already moving, vaulting over the neck to slash at the other side.

  "Parker, suppressive fire on the center eyes!" Damien shouted, peering through his scope. "Force it to expose the throat sac!"

  Parker unleashed a torrent of fire, the rounds sparking off the creature's face. The center head recoiled, shaking its massive bulk to protect its vision. As it roared in frustration, the scales along its neck flared open to release the buildup of thermal energy from its exertion.

  "I see the vents!" Damien whispered, exhaling slowly to steady his aim against the sway of the tree.

  He squeezed the trigger of the Titan-Bane.

  The magnetic rails accelerated the tungsten slug to hypersonic speeds.

  The projectile slammed into the exposed, soft tissue of the creature's neck vent just as the scales flared. The impact force staggered the fifteen-ton monster.

  The slug punched deep into the muscle, shattering bone and disrupting the biological hydraulics. The center head went limp, collapsing into the mud with a wet thud, but the other two heads redoubled their fury.

  "One down, two to go!" Parker yelled, stepping forward to press the advantage. "Vinto, watch out!"

  The left head, still grappled by Vinto, twisted violently. It released a burst of acid point-blank into the mech’s arm joint. Vinto’s shield flared and died, the acid eating into the servos.

  "Warning! Structural integrity compromised on left manipulator!" Vinto reported, forced to release his grip as the metal fused.

  The freed head lunged, slamming its forehead into Vinto’s cockpit. The walker staggered back, losing its footing in the slick mud. Vinto crashed into a tree, the impact shaking the ground.

  "Vinto is down! Cover fire!" Damien screamed, firing another slug into the shoulder of the left head.

  The Hydra turned its attention to the fallen mech, preparing to deliver a crushing bite to the pilot’s compartment. Parker stepped in, interposing his own walker between the beast and his partner. He fired his cannons until the barrels glowed red, driving the beast back with sheer kinetic force.

  Yeka saw her opening.

  While the beast focused on the heavy armor, she sprinted underneath the creature's belly. Igniting her saber to maximum intensity, she drove the blade upward, carving a burning line through the soft underbelly.

  The Hydra convulsed, black blood gushing from the wound in a torrent. It tried to stomp on her, but she rolled away, her stealth suit slick with gore.

  "It’s bleeding out!" Yeka shouted, scrambling to her feet. "Keep the pressure on!"

  The remaining right head whipped around, eyes locking onto Yeka. It inhaled deeply, preparing to bathe her in acid.

  "Not today!" Damien yelled, firing his jump jets.

  He launched himself from the tree, dropping onto the creature's back. He landed hard, his mag-boots locking onto the obsidian plates. He drew his heavy vibro-cutter, activating the sonic disruptor field.

  The Hydra thrashed, trying to dislodge the flea on its back. Damien held on with one hand, raising the cutter with the other. He drove the blade down into the base of the right neck, sawing through the tough muscle.

  The beast roared in agony, throwing its weight against a tree to crush Damien. His armor shrieked as it scraped against the bark, the ceramic plating cracking under the pressure.

  "Damien, get clear!" Parker shouted, aiming his cannons at the neck.

  "Take the shot!" Damien ordered, rolling off the beast’s back and falling into the mud.

  Parker fired. The high-explosive rounds slammed into the wound Damien had opened. The neck exploded in a shower of bone and meat. The right head hung loosely by a thread of skin, useless and dying.

  The Hydra, now with only one functional head remaining, tried to retreat. It dragged its massive bulk toward the water, leaving a wide trail of blood and destruction.

  "Don't let it escape!" Vinto roared, his walker limping back into the fight. "It’ll regenerate!"

  Vinto raised his remaining functional arm, aiming the plasma repeater. He poured fire into the creature's hind legs, boiling the water around it. The Hydra stumbled, its strength failing from the massive damage and blood loss.

  Damien stood up, wiping the mud from his visor. He raised the Titan-Bane one last time, sighting on the final, thrashing head.

  "End it," he whispered and caressed the trigger back until the weapon snapped.

  The slug zoomed across the distance and caught the beast in the eye. The massive skull shattered. The Obsidian-Spine Hydra collapsed, its body twitching once before settling into the stillness of death.

  The silence that followed was heavy, broken only by the hissing of cooling weapons and the heavy breathing of the team.

  "Status report," Damien called out, checking his own armor. "I have minor fractures on the backplate, shields are depleted, but recharging."

  "My left arm servo is fused," Vinto reported, testing the limb. "Armor holding at forty percent. I have the tools to repair it in one of these compartments."

  "My paint is ruined, and I'm gonna need to recharge ammo for the main gun," Parker said, walking over to kick the carcass. "But I'm still standing."

  "I am covered in slime," Yeka said, looking down at her suit with a grimace. "But I’m unhurt. That was... thrilling."

  They gathered around the corpse. It was a mountain of meat and valuable components.

  "Start with the venom glands," Damien ordered, pulling his harvesting kit. "Then the obsidian plates. We take the eggs last."

  They worked for an hour, stripping the beast of its wealth. The venom sacs were intact, filled with gallons of high-grade acid. The obsidian spines were flawless, worth a fortune to armor smiths.

  Finally, they returned to the stump. The twelve eggs still pulsed with gentle light, untouched by the violence.

  "We take them all," Damien decided. "If it were any other planet, I’d leave some for the next generation. Vinto, can your walker carry the crate with that bad arm?"

  "It was already under repairs while you were looting. The nanites are doing the final tasks," Vinto said, lifting the heavy container with his good arm. "The hydraulics will be fully operational in…seven minutes."

  "We have loot worth half a million credits," Parker calculated, looking at the haul. "Moderate value for the risk, but it pays the bills."

  "The real prize is still ahead," Yeka reminded them, pointing deeper into the swamp where the storm clouds gathered. "The Spark awaits."

  Damien inspected his team. They were battered, their armor scarred, and their resources somewhat drained, but they were alive, and they were winning.

  "Let's move," Damien said, reloading his rifle. "The sun is going to set soon, and I don't want to be in the open when the real monsters wake up."

  They marched into the deepening gloom of the southern jungle, four specks of defiance against a world that wanted to swallow them whole. The night promised new terrors, but they carried big guns and bigger ambitions.

  Chapter 20

  The Scavenger's Banquet

  The southern swamp rejected the intruders with the chaotic, hungry chatter of a slaughterhouse waiting for the morning shift to begin rather than the majestic silence of a cathedral. Damien guided his squad through the knee-deep muck, his boots churning the viscous black sludge that smelled of sulfur, ancient peat, and digestions gone wrong.

  Beside him, Parker swept his massive rotary cannon across the treeline with the impatience of a man holding a hammer and seeing nothing but nails in the darkness. The heavy humidity pressed against their armor plates like a physical weight, condensing into oily droplets that ran down their visors like the sweat of the jungle itself.

  "I keep picking up movement on the periphery, but nothing stays still long enough for a target lock," Parker grumbled over the squad link, his voice tight with the frustration of a heavy weapons specialist denied a proper target to obliterate. "Whatever lives down here possesses the attention span of a gnat and the speed of a Lightning Raider on illegal combat stims."

  "Keep your eyes open and your finger on the trigger, because speed usually implies a pack mentality in this hellhole," Damien advised, adjusting the gain on his thermal sensors to cut through the ambient heat of the decaying vegetation. "We came here looking for a fight to test the new gear, but I would prefer not to die from a thousand paper cuts in the dark."

  Yeka moved on the right flank, her Specter suit rippling with adaptive camouflage that struggled to match the shifting shadows of the wind-blown canopy. She held her Starlight-Saber ready, the plasma blade humming a low, dangerous note that seemed to agitate the local insects into a frenzy. "I anticipated something larger based on the price of the permit, Damien. The reports spoke of Titans and Guardians, yet we have walked for an hour and have seen nothing but fog and mud."

  "Be careful what you wish for, Yeka, because the jungle has a nasty habit of listening to complaints and answering with teeth," Damien muttered, stepping over a rotting log that disintegrated under his weight into a cloud of spores.

  As if summoned by his caution, the undergrowth ahead erupted not with a roar, but with a high-pitched, chittering shriek that sounded like grinding glass against stone. A dozen shapes burst from the ferns, moving with a frantic, bounding energy that defied the sucking mud. These creatures appeared small compared to the horrors the team had faced before, perhaps the size of wolves, but they came covered in iridescent, oily scales and possessed far too many limbs for any natural creature.

  Damien’s tactical HUD flared crimson, cataloging the new threat as the creatures swarmed around them in a chaotic, mesmerizing circle.

  [ TACTICAL ALERT: SWARM SKIRMISHER DETECTED ]

  >> TARGET ID: DREDGE-LEAPER (SWAMP VARIANT)

  >> THREAT LVL: LOW (INDIVIDUAL)/MED (SWARM)

  [ ATTRIBUTES ]

  > VITALITY: LOW (Hollow Bone Structure)

  > ARMOR: OILY SECRETION (Deflects Glancing Blows)

  > AGILITY: EXTREME (Multi-Vector Jumping)

  [ ABILITIES ]

  > ACID-BITE: Corrosive Saliva

  > PACK-MIND: Coordinated Harassment

  > EVASION: Erratic Movement Patterns

  [ COMBAT ANALYSIS ]

  ! WEAKNESS: KINETIC IMPACT/FIRE

  ! ADVISORY: DO NOT CHASE INTO COVER

  ! TACTIC: SUPPRESSIVE FIRE/AREA DENIAL

  "Dredge-Leapers!" Damien shouted, raising his Titan-Bane rifle and tracking the lead creature as the beast bounced off a tree trunk. "They won't stand and fight like honest predators! They nip and run!"

  The Leapers descended on the squad, a whirlwind of snapping jaws and scratching claws that sought the weak points in their armor seals. They didn't commit to a full charge; instead, they darted in, slashed at armor plates, and leaped away before a weapon could be brought to bear on their slick hides.

  "Stand still so I can kill you properly!" Parker roared, spinning his cannons and unleashing a spray of high-explosive rounds that tore up the vegetation but missed the erratic targets by centimeters.

  "Use the spread! Don't aim, just saturate the area with kinetic force!" Damien ordered, firing his own weapon from the hip to catch a Leaper in mid-air.

  The heavy tungsten slug caught the creature in the thorax, the kinetic energy vaporizing its midsection in a spray of yellow ichor and chitin. The Leaper disintegrated, its momentum carrying the pieces into the swamp water where they hissed and sank.

  Yeka moved with the grace of a dancer performing a lethal ballet, her saber weaving a defensive net of light around her form. A Leaper lunged for her throat, jaws wide and dripping saliva, but she sidestepped effortlessly, her blade flicking out to sever the creature's head. The body tumbled past her, cauterized and dead before the carcass hit the mud.

  "They move fast, but they break like glass!" Yeka laughed, the thrill of the dance lighting up her violet eyes behind the visor. "Vinto, watch your left flank!"

  Vinto didn't bother with his weapons; he used his armored bulk as a bludgeon against the smaller foes. A Leaper slammed into his shield, its claws scrabbling for purchase, only for Vinto to grab the beast by the neck and crush the life out of it with a sickening crunch. He tossed the broken carcass aside like a discarded ragdoll.

  The skirmish lasted less than a minute, a flurry of violence that ended as quickly as it began. The Leapers, realizing the prey proved harder than the stone they lived on, broke contact with a synchronized shriek and vanished back into the treeline.

  "Cowards," Parker spat, his barrels smoking in the damp air as he tracked their retreat. "I wasted fifty rounds and only confirmed two kills."

  "They were testing us," Damien said, reloading his rifle with a fresh magazine. "Checking for weaknesses in the formation. They realized we aren't worth the calories to kill."

  "Did you observe the way they moved?" Yeka asked, wiping a speck of slime from her visor. "They weren't just attacking; they were herding us. Trying to push us west toward the deep water."

  "Then we go east," Damien decided instantly, checking his compass. "I don't like being herded by swamp rats. Let's see what they didn't want us to find."

  They pushed eastward, hacking through a dense thicket of razor-vines that snagged at their gear and scratched against their plating. The air grew still, the sounds of the swamp fading into an unnatural quiet that usually signaled death. In a small, secluded clearing surrounded by ancient cypress trees, they found the reason for the silence.

  Lying half-submerged in the mud, tangled in the roots, rested the bodies of four raiders. Their armor, painted a deep, blood-red, appeared scarred and pitted from years of abuse before the swamp claimed them.

  "Red Corsairs," Parker identified them, walking over to inspect the nearest corpse with his cannon leveled. "Looks like the Leapers got them. Their seals are torn open and the bodies are partially consumed."

  "Not just Leapers," Damien noted, kneeling beside a body that had been stripped of its primary weapon. "Look at the burn marks on the chest plate. Plasma scoring. They were fighting something else with energy weapons before the scavengers finished them off."

  "Freelancers stealing from thieves," Vinto rumbled, picking up a discarded helmet that had been crushed. "There is no honor in this mud."

  Damien checked the dead man's pack, ripping open the seals. It was stuffed with gear that didn't match the ragged Corsair aesthetic. He pulled out a high-tech sensor array stamped with the Void-Corp logo and a heavy thermal cutter that belonged to Iron-Clad.

  "These guys were raiding other raiders," Damien realized, sorting through the stolen goods. "They hit a Void-Corp team and an Iron-Clad patrol before they died. This bag is worth a fortune in stolen tech on the black market."

  "Finders keepers," Parker said, grabbing a pristine ammunition drum from a corpse's belt. "This fits my Thresher. High-explosive, armor-piercing. Very expensive and very useful."

  "Check the other packs," Damien ordered, scanning the perimeter for the return of the Leapers. "If they were looting, they might have Spark."

  Yeka found the prize on the third body. A heavy, lead-lined satchel clutched in the dead man's hands even in death. She opened the bag, revealing a cluster of raw Spark nodes that glowed with a fierce, unstable light.

  "Two kilos, maybe more," Yeka whistled, weighing the bag in her hand. "High quality, too. This isn't surface dust; this is deep-vein crystal harvested from a fissure."

  "Load it up," Damien said, feeling the familiar rush of a good haul. "We distribute the weight. Parker, you take the ammo. Vinto, you take the Void-Corp sensors. Yeka, secure the Spark."

  The team looted the dead quickly and efficiently, taking everything of value and leaving the rest for the swamp to claim. As they prepared to move out, the chittering returned, louder and more aggressive.

  "Second wave inbound," Damien warned, hearing the rustle of leaves from all directions. "They smelled the blood we stirred up and brought friends."

  This time, the Leapers didn't come alone. Larger variants, with thicker scales and venomous spines, joined the swarm, moving with the heavy tread of alpha predators. The fight devolved into a running battle, a chaotic brawl through the trees where movement meant survival. Damien fired controlled bursts, conserving his ammo while dropping targets with precision shots to the head. Parker roared with laughter, his new ammunition chewing through the trees and the monsters hiding behind them, turning the forest into mulch.

  They fought for another hour, pushing deeper into the swamp, finding smaller deposits of Spark along the way that the Corsairs had missed. Every hundred meters seemed to yield another prize—a cluster growing in a hollow log, a vein exposed by a mudslide, a node hidden in the roots of a parasitic flower.