294 Retaking body 4A 1

Receiving that final radio transmission before her drop pod was surrounded by superheated, ionized plasma which made such communication impossible, Alice was isolated from her comrades. This was to be her first engagement against the Emergence on foot and even though she had been told what to expect, Alice was still quite nervous.

"Come on, come on…"

Even with her limited experience on the subject, Alice could say with certainty that she absolutely hated being deployed by drop pod. Stuck inside a metal can, only a few centimetres of ceramic armour and heat shielding currently separated her from temperatures easily surpassing 3000 degrees celsius and to make matters worse she was strapped inside that can with a significant amount of ammunition which was just waiting for a hairline crack in the heat shielding before it would cook off, ending Alice's life before she would even realize. To make matters even worse, Alice's drop pod was most likely taking fire, not that she could even see that at the moment, but her only hope of surviving was trusting the orbital fire support above to keep her safe, she really had no other choice in that matter.

"Come on!... Finally!"

Having impatiently waited for her drop pod to pass through the upper layers of the atmosphere, Alice spent no time at all purging her drop pod before she started free falling down towards the surface of C-201 D-11 4a, the relatively large moon with was previously home to a bustling trade hub now only amounted to a crater filled ruin. Landing with the help of air magic, Alice readied her rifle as she found herself in the middle of an eerily quiet plaza pop marked with craters.

(... What the hell is that?)

With the sounds ringing out through the ruined area being the far off sounds of orbital artillery, it was impossible for Alice not to hear the countless footsteps moving her way. This moon was supposed to be abandoned, the only thing remaining should be… The Emergence.

"... Shit."

Hurriedly surrounding herself with defensive spell formations, Alice switched her rifle to fully automatic as countless drop pods landed around her. With newly designed Lazarus drones emerging out from the drop pods and falling under her command, Alice started the mission she had been tasked to fulfil, the first part of that operation was grouping up with Dax and the others.

"On me, formation 7. Weapons free."

"Phalanx!"

Sensing slight movement in the corner of eyes, Alice put up defences just in time before a hail of bullets completely saturated Alice's shield and her immediate surroundings.

"Howitzer!"

Immediately returning fire using bullets enhanced with mana, Alice levelled the nearby cafe where the shots came from before scanning her surroundings.

"Deploy, search and destroy!"

With the drones around her starting suppressive fire as they moved in to check for survivors, Alice noticed something else moving across the destroyed cafe, Alice made a few gestures for a pair of drones to follow her as she moved in to investigate. Entering what seemed to have been some kind of electronics store before it was abandoned, Alice found the narrow aisles still half packed with various goods too closely packed for using her rifle and thus switched to her pistol as she entered the store. Weaving through the various aisles with a drone covering her rear, Alice saw the fleeting shadow move into a backroom out of the cover of her eyes, turning to that point as a firefight started somewhere outside the store, Alice decided to play it safe and not clear the room which smelled openly of an ambush.

"Galactic marines! Exit the room with your hands over your head!"

"... Help. MeeeZZqZ."

With a strangely inorganic sounding voice responding to her callout, Alice's suspicion that it was an ambush proved correct. Shooting a hole in the plywood door with her pistol, Alice quietly wove together a spell as hail of bullets was returned from the other side of the door.

"Will O' wisp."

Snapping her fingers a small white flame quickly flew into the back room before a bright explosion blew out the door from the inside. Moving in through the blown out door frame, Alice found a group of charred corpses holding weapons, each of them was fused with crude cybernetics concentrated around their heads.

"... Clear."

Exiting the technology store, Alice found that her drones had cleared out another group of Emergence cyborgs before forming up on her once again. Leaving the rotten corpses behind, Alice continued to make her way through the destroyed mall before she came across something strange, some kind of gigantic tear shaped machine appeared to have crash landed in the middle of the mall, its strange half organic construction made it clear it was some kind of Emergence craft. Securing the area around the strange craft, Alice noted multiple metre wide circular openings in the machine all around it, those openings appeared to lead into the machine through a maze of intersecting tunnels.

"Yeah, there's no way I crawl into that thing willingly."

With her drones already done cataloguing the strange machine, Alice took some distance before she wove together a spell.

"Will O' wisp."

Once more snapping her fingers, Alice let an entire swarm of small white flames swarm the Emergence craft before entering it through the countless tunnels, detonating once they reached the end of their respective tunnels and cracking the entire structure in multiple pieces before smoke blew out of all the tunnels, among with the smoke came a particularly unpleasant smell of burnt flesh, together with the sound of metal scraping against metal emerging from the machine.

"Now what the fuck are these things!?"

Not even a split second after Alice had raised her rifle, countless insect like, child sized drones with countless sharp metal legs swarmed out of the Emergence machine, seemingly eager to claw apart everything which moved. 

Without realizing it, Alice had just attacked an Emergence 'organic processing facility' it's sole grotesque purpose being repurposing corpses and civilian survivors alike into those cyborgs she had met a few minutes ago.

Wiping out the processing facility after losing a few drones to the Emergence hexapod, Alice made her way past the mall without meeting that much more in the way of resistance, but as she was making her way through a neighborhood of destroyed luxury apartments the sound of close by weapons fire drew her to change her deviate from her course. Moving quickly through a half demolished apartment block, Alice reached the scene of a battle of epic proportions.

"Javelin formation: Lighting spear of the prophet!"

Unleashing a golden, white hot glowing javelin at her opponent, Solaris flapped her wings and flew into cover behind an apartment building to get away from a swarm of high explosive missiles that all detonated and quickly demolished the angel's cover. Solaris was currently fighting against some kind of strange Titan drone misshapen with strangely organic looking missile pods that replaced the entirety of the drones left side. Before Solaris' javelin spell could hit the Titan, it was entirely destroyed by the drones point defence, making Alice realize that Solaris might have issues dealing with the drone all by herself.

"Solaris, make it turn to the left on my mark."

Quietly speaking into her radio, Alice quickly made her way to the top floor of the ruined apartment building she found herself in, bustin down the door of an apartment which windows faced out towards where Solaris was fighting, Alice took cover behind a kitchen counter which she leaned her rifle's bipod on.

"Now!"

[Got it!]

With a response from Solaris coming through the radio, Alice saw the Titan drone get hit by a ray of which quickly started melting its outer armour, in response the drone quickly turned to the left to get out of the way of the beam of light, turning its back to Alice.

"Howitzer!"

Enhancing her bullet with an anti tank class spell, Alice blew the Titan's right leg clean off, making the gigantic drone fall over on its side, taking an entire building with it.

"Hit it now!"

[Gladly!]

While Alice continued to pelt the Titan drone with howitzer spells, a swarm of bus sized spears made out of golden crystals completely disseminated what remained.