Rain drummed against my helmet as I crawled through the swamp, keeping low beneath twisted roots and the rusted remains of a century-old excavation site. The Major Order to liberate X-45 was in full swing. Thousands of Hellpods and Eagle strikes carved through the skies while distant explosions illuminated the horizon.
The Grey Owls don't get the luxury of 500kg bombs and loud entries, like our brothers in 39th Hell Blast Company. We operate in the spaces between the static, where a snapped twig is as loud as a gunshot. The Automatons in this sector were on high alert, organized and constantly calling in reinforcements. A few outposts were not enough to slow me down. By planting demolition charges at relay points, I disrupted local communications and created blind spots in their patrol network. Covered in mud, oil, and swamp water, I pushed toward my objective.
After dealing with another patrol, I finally reached the excavation zone where our command found the remains of MLS-4X Commando. The entrance lay hidden beneath collapsed concrete and stagnant water. Whoever built it never intended for it to be found. Inside, everything changed... Power still flowed through ancient cables. Somewhere deep within the complex, metallic footsteps echoed through distant corridors, the facility wasn't destroyed, or maybe automotons tried to reconstruct this weapon lab...
I spent hours moving through maintenance shafts and service tunnels, silently eliminating isolated sentries. A combat knife between armor plates, an M6C round through an optical sensor wrecked clanckers and spilled their oil on the rusty walls. Every machine was thrown into the darkness - no alarms, no mistakes.
The deeper I descended, the older the facility became. Modern Automaton technology slowly gave way to machinery unlike anything I recognized. Rusted surgical frames stood frozen beside conveyor systems while broken monitors flickered with fragments of corrupted data. Most were worthless, and some were terrifying. One fragment showed what appeared to be a processing room. A single human boot lay discarded beside a drainage channel. Nothing else. Just the boot. The recording ended after four seconds. Another file showed a row of metal restraints attached to a transport rail. One restraint still held a human hand. The image cut out immediately. The final fragment was heavily damaged. Sparks obscured most of the frame, and the footage was grainy, barely visible. A newly created Automaton stood motionless inside a maintenance chamber. This figure suddenly turned toward the camera. For a brief moment, its optical sensors flickered.
Then a voice emerged from damaged speakers:
NOT... SYNTHETIC. HUMAN... WEAK.
— Unknown Cyborg
The feed terminated...
In the blink of an eye, the alarms screamed. It's not what I was sent for, I'm not even sure if this is a recording anymore! There is no intel on A.S.S.'s location or next attack plans! Damn, it looks like a hidden transmission activated automatically, and the entire facility rumbled as though it had come alive.
Warning lights flooded the corridors while ancient machinery groaned somewhere beneath the complex... I need to move quickly, setting up a stratagem beacon and transmitting targeting data to my SES Shield of Eternity. In a few seconds, the super destroyer acknowledged the request and prepared an Orbital Laser strike. I fought my way through the tunnels as Automaton units poured from sealed bulkheads. The facility shook violently as the first orbital impacts struck. Sections of the ceiling collapsed behind me while fires spread through adjacent corridors. After reaching the flooded access tunnels, I escaped to the surface and transmitted all my data from my visor and fragments of recovered data directly to the Director's office of Taskforce 27.
Command acknowledged receipt instantly. No questions, no commendations, no dialogue - only the blinding, sustained fury of an orbital laser for six agonizing minutes. By the time my shuttle pierced the atmosphere of X-45, the landscape had been rewritten. Every trace of the ancient weapons lab leftovers and the automaton recovery site had been vaporized, replaced by a vast, smoldering scar. A silent, scorched warning that I had unearthed a truth far beyond my clearance level in the G.H.O.S.T. ...
