329 Contact 2

In response to the eerily cold voice which sounded out over his comm line, the surface of the strange figure in front of Dax flickered slightly before disappearing.

(!!!!)

This immediately set off alarm bells inside Dax's head, and without even waiting for his conscious mind to make the decision for him, Dax's instincts launched him into the air just as the drones under his control lit up the area he had just been standing. Normally such rash actions would fall completely outside of Dax's normal operational procedures, but as his instinct silently screamed at him not to underestimate his current opponent, Dax took no chances.

Incidentally, reacting like that saved his life.

[Interesting…]

As the strange figure appeared once more it had one of its arms extended out into a spear which priced just where Dax's head a been a split second ago, with the drones under Dax's command opening fire on that location just at that moment, the qiton had an entire nanosecond of relief that the threat had been eliminated before the first 50 mill special purpose heavy armour piercing round made contract with the strange creature. Just before the rounds hit the figure, it once more distorted like its entire surface was made of ferrofluid before becoming completely smooth, this last second armour adjustment seemingly rendered the drone's attacks entirely mute as the rounds made to defeat magic barriers ricocheted or disintegrated harmlessly off of the surface.

[Snapshot Brimstone, lightning!]

[IMI CONFIRMED: SPLASH, 20 SECONDS.]

[Excellent strategic judgement too…]

Even with the voice that had infiltrated Dax's communications system continually seeing straight through his actions, Dax didn't hesitate as he authorized a strike using a strategic antimatter annihilation torpedo on his own location. While the creature had first struck out after Dax and now remained still as it was pelted by the drones, the rest of Dax's unit wasn't idle.

"Strike with everything!"

Having instantly switched over to the language she had learned in the other world to hide her intentions, Lux followed Dax's level of response and commanded the rest of the squad to attack. First to strike was Lux herself, having become quite used to nothing really making much sense when it came to elemental magic, she formed a 10 metre long lance made of fire in a hard vacuum which then shot off towards her opponent at breakneck speed, in an instant the lance struck its target and created a massive fireball explosion. Even before the fireball disappeared, the bedrock around the strange being suddenly shot up to the surface like a bear trap or the mouth of some leviathan creature with way too many teeth and quickly enveloped the figure still caught up in Lux's attack.

[IMI ADVICES ALL COMBAT PERSONAL: SPLASH 10 SECONDS.]

"Pirce."

With a single command, Solaris launched over a thousand needle thin, 5 metre long spears at the mound of bedrock, easily pricing straight through it and embedding themself deep into the rock, supposedly doing the same to the trapped thing inside. Giving a short nod to Alice for securing her spell hit, Solaris was just about to prepare another spell when that eerily cold voice once more sounded out from the comm system in her vacuum suit.

[Elemental magic? Then this must be the group that's been messing with my other operations, I can't have that at all…]

For the first time, the voice succeeded in instilling an uncomfortable amount of fear in those who listened to it, it seemed that whatever creature was speaking to them had just grown more interested in exterminating them instead of continuing its 'experiments'.

Right as the strange voice shifted its tone, the antimatter torpedo Dax had called in entered final approach and armed, but instead of detonating a split second later it simply came to a stop just above the mound of bedrock, as the torpedo simply hovered without gravity affecting it, the bedrock which Alice had strengthened to multiple magnitudes of its original toughness started cracking, followed by the creepy voice once more sounding out, this time speaking in traditional qiton and directly addressing Dax who it assumed was the only one who could understand.

[Last chance to surrender, I wouldn't want to waste such a great sample.]

Not even flinching at the voice, Dax wore a somewhat strange grin as the figure broke free from the bedrock and some sort of force crushed the antimatter torpedo above it.

[While that biological drone might be easier to operate it has one fatal flaw, care to know what it is?]

Perhaps feeling something was wrong, the strange voice didn't respond to Dax's question, instead, mana seemed to rapidly condense around the figure as it constructed some sort of massive spell, only it was far too late to get serious as Mu which had been making sure she didn't draw attention to herself at the start of the fight answered Dax's open ended question.

"It contains water."

Using the mana which had formed around her target against it, Mu clenched her hand before the strange suit collapsed like a marionette doll which had its strings cut.

"... What just happened?"

Perhaps due to the rapid and sudden end of the encounter, Alice found herself at a bit of a loss for words as the strange blue haze which so far had been surrounding them slowly started dissipating. 

"I did something which went against basic ethics and galactic law against war crimes, you don't want to know anything more than that. More importantly than that, I was forced to destroy the only thing worth studying here, so I don't believe my presence is needed anymore."

As Mu made Alice really afraid of her, a transport broke through the rapidly disappearing haze and landed before deploying drones which recovered the leftovers as Dax and the others started the investigation of the underground complex, although using drones instead of going in person as Dax's hunch that the place was trapped to hell proved correct.