The moment Yomar vanished we went on the offensive. I was the second into the cavern, gun up and lights on full to fight the shadows. I could hear Yomar screaming, anger and frustration mixing with swearing.

I realized it was coming from above us a moment later, and I could almost feel my helmet dim with disbelief at what I saw.

There upon the roof I could see Yomar, a veritable spear of a salt-covered barb piercing his gut. His barebones exosuit narrowly protecting his vitals. Clanging sounds reverberated as he struck against the mandibles of a large creature, broad, translucent wings gleaming in the bright light.

“Fuck off! Gonna eat me? Eat this di-” Yomar was interrupted as one of his axe heads sheared through a smaller mandible. The large creature, half again as large as the hive guards, flung him hard off of it, toward the ground.

From the corner of my eye, I watched Tabitha rush forward with Ziek to catch him.

Without coordinating, Richard and I fired the moment he was clear, bolts striking instant after instant into the things left wing where it met the body. I shredded the other.

At least, that's what we tried to do. A smattering of shots hit the creature, resulting in a high keening noise as it launched itself from the ceiling, faster than I thought possible for something that large. It’s wings vibrated quickly as it streaked away, repositioning and facing us.

It was then that I noticed two things.

The first was that this creature bore an enlarged abdomen, almost appearing as a mix between a beetle and a hornet. A flexible stinger, barbed with salt and now covered in blood, shone grimly in the light. Its mandibles flowed with silver blood from its attempt at eating Yomar, who struggled to his feet, bleeding and whimpering.

If I was in a position to be distracted, I’d be wondering how in the hell he was on his feet with an open gut wound like that.

The Queen didn’t give me the opportunity to care.

It weaved forward, the sound as jarring as a helicopter. We fired at it, many of my shots hitting it for virtue of my enhanced senses. The others got off a few shots, Tabitha doing the best of the four of them with two shells glancing off of and carving a portion of the salt armor from its head.

It focused on me, however, knowing full well that it’s intricate, deceptively delicately created armor was being punished the most by me. A highly intelligent, fast, strong, lethal enemy.

Definitely a boss monster.

It swiped at me with its legs as it closed in, hook like barbs nearly connecting as I ducked and weaved between the strikes with no room to spare.

I did the same for the stinger as it surged forward, dodging just out of its range an--

The stinger extended, connecting with my gut and hooking deep into my flesh. For a brief moment, it was as though gravity didn’t exist, I simply floated off of the ground. In the next, though, I was wracked with several G’s of force as it rounded back the way it came sharply.

The barb wasn’t deep, it had hit my guts, however. There were some converted parts that were biosteel, but the vast majority was still soft flesh.

After this they wouldn’t be, given how I could feel the barb and stinger flexing around wildly, wriggling in my gut. Disgust and agony mixed together as the creature’s head and limbs came down quickly, seeking to chew my head off.

I swapped my rifle to a more practical pair of weapons.

Hanging off the stinger, I let both of my arms hold my reaper blades, swords that glowed red along the edge as hot as plasma.

With my left arm, I smote the stinger, and with my right, I cut off the tip of a barbed leg that sought to cut out my throat. I fell like a puppet with its strings cut, any semblance of grace extinguished.

I heard someone call out as I fell, and a retort of firepower come immediately after, the pained shrieking of the queen overhead telling me that they resumed firing the moment they could. As I hit the ground, I felt my insides churn, and the ground cracked around me.

Did I hit the ground that hard? Surely that was…

Reflexies kicked in again, powering through the white hot pain in my stomach. As the ground crumbled inwards, I reached the edge of the covered pit, stabbing into the edge with a sword, anchored with my biosteel arm.

Beneath me, I saw a dozen infant creatures, each one ravenously chittering, and I got to see their limbs. When not covered by salt, they were themselves armed with razor blades for limbs. Perhaps they dulled as they aged when used for digging up salt. Nevermind that, these things set this? Really?

“The floor is trapped!” I called out in a blend of warning, indignation, and outrage. I hauled myself over the edge, my blood trickling down into the pit to a few all too happy creatures.

“Oh shi-!” Yomar screeched to a halt on his own, feeling the ground cave beneath him. He reached the edge as well, clamped on by sheer desperation.

Ziek fired a bolt as he ran, coming up from the side as the Queen warily eyed Richard, his bolts doing a great deal of damage.

“I got you man.” Ziek uttered, even as I stowed the blades and brought out the rifle once more, firing a retort at the flying biotics flank.

It snarled, looking to me as it bled profusely from its leg. And then, as it swept around, it surprised me by ignoring me entirely.

Instead it swept down towards Ziek, lashing out with it’s remaining legs. It sliced down towards Ziek as he worked to pull Yomar from the edge.

I lost sight of him, but I could see the talons of the Queen nearly flowing with blood from the deep strike, and a coldness gripped my heart. At best, his spine was severed. At worst, he died instantly.

Judging from what might be at the bottom of the pit, I wondered what would be worse.

“Mother fucker!” Anger rushed through me, blinding me to the pain in my gut. I immediately began firing, emptying my clip a second later. Without a moment’s lapse, I snapped a new cartridge in, watching as it screeched, first chunks of salt falling, and then showers of silver liquid.

It turned towards me, bee-lining in its intent to tear me to pieces. Distant shots from Tabitha’s fifty caliber caused it to flinch in its approach, but it didn’t stop. When it closed the gap, the armor on its torso was little more than molten metal, and a hissing sound filled the air as its exoskeleton was cooked from the slag.

The moment before it reached me I pulled out one of the blades. As it flew past, it tried to slash at me with another limb. It paid for the attempt, the leg severed cleanly. To my surprise, it hit me with a grazing shot, the stub of its stinger bearing a few lingering jagged slivers of salt and keratin.

With a tearing sound, it rent through the edge of my armor, catching my ribs and tearing flesh from bone. Blood spattered, and as I spun, I struggled to right myself, firing another barrage into its back as it went.

This time, as it spun back around, it hesitated as it considered what to do about me. I could almost see the deep seated hatred it had for me, an invader of its home, and how it wanted to disembowel me.

And yet, that was the worst thing it could have done in that instant. A pair of shots rang out, a sniper shell scoring a lucky - or accurate - hit on the compound eye on the right side of its head, one of four such mounds. Bolts struck it in its now softened chest, the sheets of melted salt running like water down its limbs.

It darted forward towards them in a blind rage, and in that moment I dreaded that they were going to die. The large flying insect buzzed towards them, and as it passed, I watched Richard step forward, shield first, firing slug after slug at its head.

At the last second, Tabitha fired another shot into another set of compound eyes, and from the range she was at, they exploded like a ripe melon dropped from a twelve story tall building.

It lost control of its movements before it got to them, flaring off to the side and smashing hard into the ground, rolling as it went. While it rolled what almost sounded like the shattering of huge panes of glass met my ears. Even while my feet carried me towards the core, I realized that it’s wings were no more.

“Keep firing! I’ll take out the core!” I shouted, now only a few dozen feet away from it.

“Hurry up!” bellowed Richard as he jammed a new belt feed of ammo into his weapon, the previous box totally used up now. He shed weight as he went, positioning himself away from Tabitha in case it rushed them so they wouldn’t die at once.

He didn’t need to worry. It’s head snapped in my direction as I closed on the core. With an ear shattering cry, it filled the air with its awful voice. All at once, I felt the ground underfoot quake, and suddenly every pit in the room began to move. Salt collapsed in on itself as coverings were shattered. Dozens of pits, each filled the young beetles, were exposed.

However, I was more than close enough now. Rewriting this core was never the plan, it’d be too dangerous. Instead, I leveled my rifle and began firing, fully two clips vanishing into the hungry maw of a fully automatic weapon. The Queen seemed too shaken to so much as move in that instant, and I found myself almost amused at that. The core, however, released its own, almost pathetic, keening then. Suddenly ever biotic in the room was overtaken by a single directive, one motion.

They flooded forward, the Queen stomping over and onto anything in its way. Silver explosions of gunk erupted as it heedlessly trampled any in the way.

A kernal of hatred lit in my heart at the thing. For all I knew, Yomar and Ziek were dead, no small portion of that due to this thing.

Almost with a casual display of violence, I kept the rifle trained on the core, already the first of the hatchlings were closing on me. But the Queen was fast, even down two legs and without any wings.

I pulled out my trench gun with my left arm, shield coming active to protect from the heat and projectile spray that might come back on me. I pressed the trigger, holding tight with my biosteel left arm and bracing, every portent of focus I had coming to bare in aiming at the core and the barreling monstrosity before me.

It proceeded with impunity the first shot, the red hot pulses and slag tearing through the armor that yet remained. But it only grew closer, and after the second and third shot, it was clear that it would never make the journey. Chunks of exoskeleton flew through the air, gallons of silver blood cooked in the intense heat of a weapon designed for merciless slaughter. When it was only feet away, the body was tumbling forward, around the ninth shot. On the twelfth little was left of its head and most of its upper torso.

After the fifteenth, it finally skidded to a halt before it could reach me. Its strength had been in its speed and evasiveness, but the core didn’t care about that. It only cared about getting aid.

I turned my shots to the core, and felt more than heard the core shatter from the force. A surge of energy flooded through the mine and focused into my body through the symbol engraved into my right hand. Matter Energy, a massive amount of it.

All around, biotics fell, each infant, of which there were hundreds, seemed to simply go slack, dying on their feet as they already began to unravel.

It was a hard-fought victory. And it as far as they went, this was bitter sweet. The shattered pieces of the core already turned to dust, vanishing with the pulse of energy that inundated the air.

Quickly, I turned and came to the pit where Ziek and Yomar had fallen. I didn’t notice them come up, and hoped against hope that they were alive.

That hope diminished considerably as I looked at all the blood in the pit. All around the two bodies, beetles perished. Not a single one had been unclaimed by an axe, but it was painfully clear that Ziek was dead. His throat had been torn out, and it looked like Ziek had counter killed the beetle that did it, a bolt sticking out of its body with his fist clenched around it.

I shook my head mournfully, they were riddled with injuries. Ziek’s were clearly worse, but it looked like Yomar might have died from a thousand cuts.

Beside me, I heard Richard and Tabitha come up. The older man swore under his breath, a tightness in his eyes at the sight.

Tabitha said nothing, she’d seen awful sights before, I’m sure. But even so, her face was a practiced mask of solemnity, tinged with sadness.

“We should get them out…” Richard spoke, and I nodded. I dropped down into the pit as he tossed me a rope. I rested next to Ziek, closing his eyes and straightening him, doing my best to make sure he could maintain his dignity. He’d died fighting, trying to help a comrade. I wouldn’t forget him.

I felt a tightness constrict my heart, grief building.

‘A little longer…’ I reminded myself, trying to put off the wall of emotions that I shut out during this entire adventure. Richard hefted him out of the pit, ignoring the blood that got on him as he pulled a thermal blanket out of his pack, covering the man. He dropped the rope once more, and I began to loop it around Yomar.

And then he spat up blood, gasping for air as I leaned him up.

“Yomar!” I started, almost dropping him, “Hang on, don’t lose consciousness, stay awake!”

“Ziek? Where is Ziek?” He nearly gurgled through blood, spitting another mouthful, too delirious to focus.

I shook my head, “We’re gonna get you out of this pit, hold on.”

He gripped my shoulder, “Ziek, where is…?” he trailed off, losing focus. I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t. The dam of emotion that I’d barricaded off was swelling. He was alive, in spite of it all, he’d somehow lived.

And the first thing he wanted to know about was the man who died for him.

‘Just forward. Just move forward.’ I begged my legs as I helped to haul him from the pit. We needed to move. My injuries could wait, his couldn’t.

“Everyone, get out of the mine, anyone who isn’t injured help the wounded, we need a medic right goddamn now!” I shouted into the mic. Tabitha helped to carry Yomar, Richard carried Ziek as we moved through the cavern. It felt like it took both twice as long as no time at all before we’d run into the group again. On the way up, we saw only two corpses of the hive guards, and we quickly found out why. The delve team were a mixture between smiles and sadness - we’d lost another two men among them - but all around them four of the Hive Guard were down. They’d killed them in the counter offensive.

They saw who we carried between us, and against all hope, I prayed that our remaining two medics could stabilize Yomar. The third was nowhere to be seen, at least not in a recognizable fashion. Exhaustion fell over the lot of us, the rush of the battle over. It was gone so quickly, like a whisper of death on the wind, the only evidence of its passing the memories and corpses in its wake.

“Matthew,” Fran’s voice picked up, “Our headcount is shaping up to be five wounded, no dead luckily. We were able to dig in well. How did it go on your side?”

I opened my mouth, dry as sandpaper. It was fortunate that I was the only one she directly spoke too, given what we’d gone through. How would they take news that there were no fatalities topside? That they’d drawn the short straw? I turned my gaze to the others, they looked haggard, and weary, but we were alive.

We were alive.

“Send people down to the chute to get us out of here.” I answered, “We’ll go over the details later.”

She must have gathered a bit of the situation from that, because her answer was much more subdued, “Understood… We’ll be down shortly.”

I was grateful for that at least. And as we moved forward, we noted that there were several more beetles that had managed to find an alternate entrance. If we were late even by another minute, how many of these things would have attacked the delve team from behind?

After this, we needed more than just willpower and manpower. What would it matter how many people you throw at something if your weapons barely dent the thing? Would morale hold up if you know that at least one person would die every single time you hunted biotics?

Hell no, you’d do everything you could to stay away.

No, what we needed was to arm ourselves, we needed something better than standard fare. Kevlar kept a few people alive here, but we needed more. High-grade weapons that could shred the beetles, armor that could shirk anything but a point-blank strike. Buying completed weapons and armor would be a waste, we needed to create our own.

And now, we had the capital to do it…

Some modifications would have to be made, and a building would need to be appropriated, but we wouldn’t be caught like this again. Next time, when the Legion marched, it would be to the damnation of anything we came across.

We would be the ones to rip and tear. We would be the ones to bring death.

I vowed that not to myself, but to our fallen. Their sacrifice would not be in vain.