Breachstorm Narrative - Prologue 01 - "Colliery"

Timestamp: HRU609.17

The massive sinkholes of Colliery-17 practically swallowed light; their stone walls stacked with scaffolds, bulbous habitation modules, and businesses adorned with neon holosigns that barely lit the yawning void beneath them. Above, a sickly purple sky heralded the approach of the planet’s windswept night, and showcased the toxic atmosphere that whipped above the denser, breathable gases which settled into the sinkhole cities.

The hunter lay prone in an abandoned maintenance crawl above the precarious infrastructure of the vertical city. He was propped up by the bulky framework of his exoskeleton. He readied his massive hypervelocity rifle on the rusted grating. A pair of stabilizer armatures protruded spiderlike from the exoskeleton’s back locked into the gun; securing it in their metallic embrace.. Within his angular, opaque helmet, advanced optical feeds painted the strata of the city in a ghostly-green. His wolfpack of surveillance drones orbited down-pit, relaying broken feeds through static — glimpses of his prey’s silhouette darting between crane arms, pressure doors, and vent steam. The Mayde who’d hired him needed her alive; which meant gel rounds in the chamber and tranq darts in his sidearm. Professional courtesy.

He recalled the first time he’d seen his quarry’s face. A decades-old security recording; grainy from age and duplication. A small girl in a medical gown, unkempt silver hair spilling across bony shoulders; surrounded by armored humans. Their batons rose and fell in silence; and for a moment the hunter had looked away from the brutality. But not before he’d caught the change in her expression — the sneer splitting her battered face. The vid looped in his mind whenever he laid eyes on that distinctive hair.

The team he’d hired — some local muscle; some disgruntled miners looking for an easy score, and a few more hardened criminals. Ex-Konager military, or so they’d claimed; the hunter hadn’t asked for proof - a move he was regretting. They called in sightings over the commweb, voices jittery, convinced they’d had her cornered. Then, one by one; their channels went dark. The hunter watched through the keen eyes of a networked surveillance drone as a body tumbled down an ore chute, tagged for retrieval with the silvery gleam of a bounty retrieval marker. Moments later, a shuddering voice came over comms half-strangled, crying for help. A woman; Triv, one of the Echelon group, had pursued a lead too deep; separating from the team in reckless pursuit of her payday. 

“Plas it… she’s down here. Get your asses down here!” Her voice was shaking; but whether from exhaustion, adrenaline… or fear was unclear. Just as the hunter opened a channel to demand the woman return to formation; her voice crackled into his ear once again. This time, her tone was more frantic; she was pleading now; wild with fear; petitioning the hunter to descend to the hellish darkness of Colliery’s mine-pits to rescue her from the phantom she had been confidently hunting just moments ago. The hunter’s auditory surveillance picked up a burst of snapgun fire; a spray of low-velocity slugs peppering some unassuming mining machinery before being abruptly cut short. A strangled sound gurgled over the still-open channel. Triv stopped broadcasting.

The hunter’s memory of the security vid returned unbidden: the girl’s hand striking up to close around the end of a charged baton, voltage dancing across her burning skin. A heartbeat later, the guards in the footage lay broken and sprawled. He could not forget the way her eyes had flashed, blood and hair mingling as she stood alone amongst the carnage.

The hunter had acquired a firing solution - triangulating the location of his gunwoman’s last broadcast, and her final retort of poorly-aimed gunfire… the hunter’s omniscient view of the city picked out a single signature from the thousands of other human forms that flecked his infrared vision. His exoskeleton whirred as he acquired his target; deftly guiding the massive gun he had shouldered. The hunter squeezed the trigger; a nonlethal round passed through three gantries and two layers of alloy floor plating before smacking harmlessly where she had stood a moment ago. It was as if she had moved before the gel bullet had even left the weapon’s muzzle. 

“Keeper’s name!” The hunter cursed; a colorful phrase in his native Rhestran.

The soft hum of one of his drones followed the flutter of its quarry’s passage through the narrow confines of the mining complex’ lower levels, continuing over the fallen body of Triv as it did so. Unmistakable on her corpse, the hunter noticed the silvery stamp of another bounty marker. “Keeper protect…” The hunter whispered. “She’s not running from us. She’s baiting us.” 

The feed from his drones began broadcasting confounding reports. One showed her scaling a ladder three levels down; a long coat silhouetted billowing in the stale air beneath her... but the time stamps didn’t align. Another caught a glimpse of her shadow crossing the illumination of a worklight; silver hair flashing under the bright halogen glow… at almost exactly the same time.

“Plas, she’s ghosted the feeds. I don’t have eyes.” The hunter reported, broadcasting to his team on an open band. He was met by silence; both the pit and the hunter’s headset were quiet save for the thunder of drills far below. 

He stood; stowing his massive gun as its stabilizer armatures disassembled the weapon into its component parts and folded themselves neatly behind him like a set of furled metallic wings. Drawing his sidearm and affixing a carabiner to his gantry perch, the hunter stepped fearlessly into the yawning void of the sinkhole. Briefly he felt the dizzying elation of freefall, before being caught by the cable affixed to his exoskeleton. Winch whizzing, he rapidly descended after her, falling past catwalks slick with condensation, down into the scaffold where half-finished freight lifts hung over the abyss. Slagfires shimmered in the depths, casting a dim furnace glow upwards towards the sinkhole’s upper levels.

Even before his boots crunched on the emulsified stone of the sinkhole’s bottom; she descended out of the vaporous haze like some supernatural thing. For him it was close. Too close. His rifle was useless in the confines, so he raised his pistol. The staccato pulse of an EPP weapon discharging reverberated off the rounded walls of the sinkhole as shock darts embedded themselves harmlessly into the metal of the mining machines directly behind where she had stood a heartbeat ago. It was a blink; only two steps and she wrenched the weapon aside, its final shot cracking harmlessly into a girder above her. He spun; swinging off the cable still connected to his exoskeleton to give its mechanically augmented arms momentum as he snapped a bonecrushing blow into his target’s face. 

But she was already beneath him, azure eyes flashing, reflecting eerily in the dim light. A kick buckled his legs and set the hunter on his back, dangling helplessly a few inches off the ground on his still-attached cable… With the momentum from her attack, Kaylex whirled backwards in a blur of dark cloth and body armor; coming to rest on one knee, a massive sidearm gripped calmly in both hands and aimed directly at the hunter’s pounding heart.

“Name,” she demanded. Her voice was flat; professional, not unkind.

He hesitated. His contract hadn’t specified anonymity; but regardless he was not in a position to bargain.

“Wulf,” he admitted, “I’m… new in the game.” The words were bitter; they tasted like losing.

She reached down; gloved fingers deftly retrieving a small glowing object from a pouch at her hip. She tossed it neatly onto Wulf’s armored chest. It was a detachable viewscreen… from his ship. Its glowing face looped the grisly security footage of the young, silver haired girl.

“Where’d you get it?” Now her voice had hardened. These images had seemingly hit a nerve in that cold exterior.

Wulf hesitated. “You mind if I…?” He took the viewer in one hand and scrambled to right himself from his dangling position; slowly, and cautiously. Kaylex remained impassive, gun levelled.

“Employer provided; as ID… I guess.” The Rhestran mercenary gulped; he hoped the motion was hidden behind his helmet. Kaylex’ reflective eyes narrowed; the light exoskeleton protruding from her coat adjusting itself as if preparing for the recoil of her killshot.

“Who?” It was almost a statement more than a question… but one Wulf had been dreading either way. He knew the Mayde would respond violently if he broke; but the woman before him was a far more immediate threat.

“Contarsi syndicate rep out of Entrepot.” He sighed; resigning himself to his fate.

“A Maydeman?” The woman scoffed, eyebrows raising an almost imperceptible distance. “Did you meet them?”

Wulf shook his head in the negative; his bulky helmet exaggerating the motion. “No… just some underling.”

The woman narrowed her eyes, peering at his impassive faceplate for a moment, before stowing her gun. Wulf felt the tension drain from him like blood from a leeched wound… leaving only exhaustion.

“Helpful… ‘Wulf.’” Kaylex raised herself from her crouching position and took a step forward. “Piece of advice, don’t use deserters out of the Echelons. The crowns pay well for oathbreakers… and those second-rate neuroconnectors are too easy to track.”

Her coat swirled as she turned away, vapor swallowing her retreating form; and for an instant, Wulf wasn’t watching the assassin vanish into the haze—he was back on his ship, staring at that vid feed. At the image of the girl with silver hair matted red, eyes flashing and surrounded by broken men. In the last frame of the vid, Wulf had sworn we could make out a robed alien figure, just in frame… a clawed hand reaching out towards her.

In that instant; past image and the present view overlapped as Kaylex’s silhouette dissolved into smog. Her voice echoed back through the steelwork, calm, almost amused:

“And next time… shoot real rounds.”