FFFF

[X] Move fast even at the cost of movement security.

"Alright then. We go and we go fast." You load the maps onto everyone's overlay. <<Go to internal comms.>> The civilians don't have a tac-link but their equipment is good, definitely the best practice civilian gear for a war zone.

<<Hi.>> Jessica sends you. Reizay quickly sets up a proper tactical channel.

<<Hi yourself.>> You aim your carbine and set off out of the gallery chamber. As you leave, you notice a black resin bleeding from the walls over the metal.

Reizay's map leads you down another set of corridors in the temple towards an entrance to the honeycomb beneath. You move forward not without care, but neither with the bounding overwatch you'd do if you had more time. It's a terribly insecure way to move, especially as the dark begins to splash.

<<Hey, check the walls.>> Mirareki briefly pulls up her flashlight and pans it across the stonework. Wetness is spreading across it. <<The nanodetector is going wild. The temple's started a self repair cycle.>>

<<"Get footage of everything.>> Jessica tells Bethany.

<<Oh trust me, I haven't stopped filming.>> Bethany laughs. <<This is going to be the greatest show we've ever done.>>

<<We'll give you some of our drone footage if you want,>> says Mirareki.

<<Aren't you like, secret commandos or something?>>

<<ECHO CHAMBER want to kill us. Discrediting them for vandalising an ancient temple will benefit our counterattack.>>

You move in silence for a while, sloshing through areas of water in this temple block. Around the walls murals show armies of Nereidi and some kind of octopoid beings contesting, slashing at one another with spears made of shells. It's unclear if the octopoids are another sapience or some kind of war beast.

There's a gurgling scream nearby and Mirareki perks up, aiming her gun in that direction. <<We just lost some drones.>>

<<There's got to be at least two.>> Luyu looks up. <<I can hear ECHO CHAMBER shooting at something in the upper temple.>>

<<I saw it!>> Jessica calls, sending you a clip of something moving across a side passage.

<<It's behind as well.>> The other Luyu aims her weapon back the way you came. <<Only clear route is forward.>>

<<It's herding us,>> says Mirareki. <<I don't like that.>>

<<It's herding us out,>> says Anabis, suddenly, excitedly. <<It's part of the defences, it stops animals lairing here. It probably hibernates->>

<<If it wants us to get out, let's get out.>> You gesture for everyone to keep running soon you're splashing through the water as you reach the bare, bizarrely intricate stone of the honeycomb. The temple structure has mixed with the natural rock and perhaps coral as well, creating a set of passages that become randomly narrow and wide, sometimes requiring you to turn sideways and making Luyu grunt in annoyance, other times expanding out into massive caverns fifty or more metres long.

<<There's something going on.>> Reizay says, <<The ECHO CHAMBER carrier is launching a ton of extra stuff. I'm seeing aircraft deck launches - supercavitating drones as well.>>

<<Something's under the water.>> A Luyu outside calls. <<It's not them. It's attacking the Pegasi!>> She narrowcasts; through glitching static you see a dropship reeling in the sky as green plasma bursts from the water and scatters over its shields. It answers with drop torpedoes and moments later you feel tremors flicker through the stone around you.

<<Ever think we should just stay in here?>> Mirareki mutters.

<<I'm considering it.>> You look into the darkness ahead. And then the air suddenly changes, from damp stillness to the frigid roaring rush of a pressure wave. <<Hold onto something!>>

You duck into an alcove and yank Jessica in close to you. A wall of water erupts from ahead and rushes past you, almost pulling you away as your skin rips against rough rock. Jessica hangs onto you, the one warm place amid cold water. The pressure doesn't ease. There's too much water. You start to slip but Juketta, better braced, grabs hold of you.

Outside the battle is in full swing. The Pegasi pull up high, and launch a spray of munitions towards the bay. Beneath them something breaches the ocean, a thick sinuous torpedo spraying inky clouds that swallow the flashes of the Gardenian warheads. Its mouth yawns open and from the puckered flesh emerge the coppered barrels of Riverine plasma weapons. The exact same kind Luyu uses.

<<Whole fucking war party out there!>> calls Alawen. She's dug a pickaxe into the wall and roped Anabis to herself. <<They must have breached the temple.>>

The pressure is easing, the lower level must be flooded. You give Juketta a thumbs up and swim free. You're surprised she's still here rather than ceding to Alietta in this dangerous situation. You half-carry Jessica along, and emerge gasping in an elevated chamber in the rock. Even here, the water is up to your waist. You switch your carbine to supercavitation, and push a secondary magazine into the catapult, arming it with torpedoes.

The visual conditions are terrible. You could use a pair of those ECHO CHAMBER goggles. You can barely see the other members of your team grouping up. There's a flicker in the water. Mirareki turns on a torch. Then the first Nereidi breaches..

Giant eyes. Funnels of teeth. Cloaks and coats of viscous flesh from which they brandish blades and harpoons that shift in shifting light, and the gleaming barrels of Riverine blasters. There's a half-dozen here. There's more currents in the water and shadows in the dark. A tense standoff stretches through the chamber, pinned on each pointed weapon.

<<What's the call here?>> Luyu asks. <<Shoot or no shoot?>>

<<And what about us outside. Do you want us to engage or not?>>

Party here:
[ ] Shoot
[ ] Don't shoot and get out of the way to let them pass
[ ] Don't shoot lower your weapons and advance past them
[ ] Don't shoot and raise your hands empty to show you're no threat

Outside Luyus
[ ] Engage ECHO CHAMBER
[ ] Set up to cover you when you emerge but don't engage
[ ] Retreat immediately
[ ] engage both ECHO CHAMBER and the Nereidi

[X] Don't shoot lower your weapons and advance past them
[X] Set up to cover you when you emerge but don't engage

<<Guns down. We'll walk past them.>>

<<Is that okay?>> Jessica asks.

<<We should take the initiative in getting out of here.>> Pushing things might be bad, but on the other hand, just leaving is basic self defence training. Mirareki isn't making any objection either and she's the contact specialist.

You walk forward, weapons lowered, towards the Nereidi, who have lowered their own weapons but unshouldered smaller, biological devices which they're holding ready. Perhaps they don't want to risk damaging the temple by unleashing the firepower of the river beam weapons in here. They're making brassy sounds to one another, totally unintelligible. Bioluminescence flickers in complex patterns across their skin.

You continue forward. The Nereidi aren't giving ground. There's a little bit of a gap in their formation; they aren't closing it but they aren't opening it either. Their weapons follow you as you back single-file against the wall. They haven't stopped calling to one another, or moving with little twitching waves across the group.

<<Are you sure-> starts Jessica, just before the nearest Nereidi shoots out a limb to block your path. The Luyu and Mirareki raise their weapons, then the Nereidi grabs its arm with another and pulls it back. The brass and the waves change form, the Nereidi make a little space.

<<That's an interesting interaction>> Mirareki mutters. <<Going to have to talk to Atet about that later.>>

Atet has been mostly hiding in her suite lately, even before Scythia. You should look into her when you get back to the deep ship. You let the thought drift as you queue up a macro for your arms. The reflex override which will bring the carbine up to firing position as fast as your muscles can spasm but likely to be too slow. You'll use the catapult on the nearest Nereidi, and if it still grabs for you you've got your side arm and swim knife.

<<Last out!>> Luyu says, stopping to block the Nereidi at the chamber entrance, the other moves up beside you. <<And let me take point. There's a battle going on out there.>>

<<Okay.>> You put a hand on the Valkyrie's shoulder. <<Jess, grab onto me and don't let go.>>

<<I got Bethany.>> Alawen reports.

<<Academician's with me.>> Mirareki reports.

<<Okay go.>>

Luyu dives under the water, swimming strongly for the cavern entrance the Nereidi made. Her defence aura flickers on as the first shockwave passes through, and she pauses at the entrance.

Outside the scene is chaos. Blooms of sea bed and bubbles are rising as dozens of torpedoes and submunitions fall through the water surface to pound at racing dark shapes beneath. There are two, or more, of the predatory black shapes diving across the water, conducting a duel across sea and sky with the ECHO CHAMBER gunships above. Bright laser light flickers through the water, refracting blue green as it cuts through the silt on the seabed, deflecting to flaring brightness as it hits a screen of something raised by one of the pods. The forests under the bay spin and twist in the currents.

You flick your carbine to supercavitation mode. <<What's the carrier group doing?>>

<<At least a squadron of subsurface fighters are heading towards the coast. It looks like the carrier group conducting defensive manoeuvres.>> Reizay reports. <<There's more gunships and fighters coming your way to. I think you should leave.>>

<<Yeah, working on that.>> You make a quick assessment. The seaweed forest is probably the safest way out, as it offers at least some concealment from all of the submunitions the ECHO CHAMBER gunships are dropping, even if it's a bit thin. This is going to suck. Fortunately the Pegasi mostly seem busy with the whale-forms.

<<We'll go through the weeds. Keep your heads down and concentrate your defence auras for top attack. Load for missile intercept above.>>

<<That low power field can maybe give us some protection too.>> Mirareki says.

<<Yeah, good idea, but keep an eye on it. I don't want us to have a big trail of disturbed kelp>>

You descend toward the forest, and suddenly your eyes cut out.

<<Contact!!>>

It's an automatic reaction via the squad link; they come back to the aftermath of a string of flashbangs from Luyu's catapult. She's pushing forward and taking cover behind a rock, she makes it just in time to avoid a bolt of green River plasma that blasts a terrifyingly large chunk of it to dust and shockwave. Nereidi are moving in the forest ahead, in seeming disarray but that surely won't last.

<<Looks like they just wanted to let us out into the inner cordon,>> she says.. <<Cowards! Didn't want to get into a nice close fight!>>

<<It probably had more to do with protecting the temple,>> says Mirareki.

<<Sorry Boss.>> The other one says. <<They were going to snatch us the moment we got into the kelp.>>

You trust Luyu's instincts, but this is now a tricky situation. There's a whole squad of Nereidi hiding in the kelp, probably an inner cordon around the temple and probably a second wave, and they have a lot of firepower to pin you down here. You, meanwhile, can't breathe underwater, and only have about five minutes of air in your lungs.

The kelp bed is dead ahead, and the rocky bottom of the temple does at least give you some cover, better as you move over the top of the honeycomb and between the rocks and upwellings of coral towards the beach.

<<Start bounding laterally towards the beach,>> you say. <<We don't want to get between them and the entrance. We'll use the coral for cover.>>

<<We could demo our way back into the honeycomb maze and try another direction.>> Mirareki suggests.

<<That traps us back in with both them and ECHO CHAMBER though.>> Luyu say. <<I've got a mortar on the beach, I could drop some rounds on them. On the other hand they have a lot of ways to escalate.>>

You feel Alex stir in your mind.

[ ] Try to laterally bound free between the rocks and hope the Nereidi aren't that interested.
[ ] Bring in mortar fire to pin the Nereidi down and obscure them with blackout liquid.
[ ] Try to draw ECHO CHAMBER's attention against the Nereidi cordon team.
[ ] Blow back into the complex and seek another exit.
[ ] EXEC.AQUA_JAMMER