Empyrean Iris Story Collection Vol. 4

The Clot

The metal floors were crossed with a latticework of ice and frost, even with the light of seven lanterns, the tunnel hallways seemed wreathed in shadow. Yebb hovered at the middle of the group, hemmed in on all sides by those more heavily armed. She felt, surprisingly useless, as they made their quiet way through the underground ice tunnels of her own home planet. She was no solider, she wasn't trained in combat. If they hadn't have come along with her she certainly wouldn't have felt safe enough to walk down that first latter, let alone head further into the darkness.

And now she felt more like a liability than anything else. The group moved to her at their center, protecting her from any unknown outside forces. Even Etium, who had taken up one of the side positions acted as a barrier between her and the darkness. He may have been small but he did have the biggest gun.

If this had been a laboratory, all this big clunky soldiers would have seemed like uncoordinated fools, but they weren't in a laboratory, they were in a potentially hostile enviornment well below the surface of, what to them was, an alien planet. Next to their lithe, silent and graceful movements she felt oddly clunky and lumbering.

They paused just before an intersection, and yebb heard Adam speak through the radio. Outside her earpiece, she couldn't hear him, he had turned off his external speakers so his voice was completely concealed inside his helmet. The others responded the same way, and Yebb refused to speak terrified to break the silence.

"Etium, can you do that sonar thing again."

Etium crouched down to the ground letting go of his gun for a brief instance so he could press his hands into the metal of the catwalk. Overhead, ice glittered blue with diffused light.

"Mmmm.... No joy boss, we have a couple floors below us, big open spaces I think are hallways, but after that, it sort of just opens up, either some large cavern or the abyss."

Maverick sighed, "Can we do our best to avoid creepy words like abyss when we are walking through the ice tunnels of doom."

Sunny spun her spear idly, "What, you worried that the powers of negative energy are going to spawn some eldritch horror?"

Maverick adjusted her weapon in her arms, "You know you joke, but with all that we have seen in the last few years, I am not entirely sure that that isn't exactly what might happen.:" The group fell into sobering silence at that pronouncement.

Adam, still keeping his eyes on the tunnel ahead nodded his helmet once, "Alright there is really only one option, Maverick-"

"If you suggest we split up, I am going to shank you?"

Adam turned his head ever so slightly to look at her, "Its like you think I'm stupid or soemthing, or that I have never seen a horror movie before. Despite what Fred Jones would suggest we are not going to split up."

At the back one of the other SE soldiers muttered, "Whose Fred jones?"

Yebb wondered idly how a man in helmet could manage to look so scandalized, "Freddie, from scooby doo, the worlds leading expert on ineffective trap building that somehow manages to work out in the end? Humanity's mot beloved himbo?"

The SE soldier shrugged.

"Adam sighed, That's it, that's your job, after this mission is over. You need some proper cultural education."

"With cartoons?"

"Damn straight with cartoons, but before we get off on a tangent. No, we are not splitting up because I don't exactly feel like being picked off one by one. We stay together. Etium, you have a general idea of where we are going, so you should direct us. Maverick you take point, sunny and I will cover the sides Etium keep your position and Jackie make sure to keep our rear covered."