The thermite cord ignited, its bright glare still clearly visible through my visor's auto-filter, and started to cut through the metal plate which hid one of the entrances to the core of the compound below. Fifteen seconds later it had worked its magic with the glow dissipating, leaving a mostly eaten away seem, giving the second part of the job to one of the oldest tools known to mankind, a marine with a big fucking hammer.

Our demolition expert with the exoskeleton braced himself and one mighty swing later the metal popped down like the lid of a soda can. After a couple of loud clunks, the free plate of metal came to rest on the floor below. From a quick peak through the shaft it looked to be a safe enough slope to just slide down from.

The designated breachers then popped a few grenades down and soon after they exploded, they slid down the dangerslide onto our new destination and just a fraction of time later they gave the all-clear for the rest to move down as well, with me being in the middle pack with our medics soon after.

It was a bit of a tight fit for our exoskeleton-equipped marines but as these throughways were constructed for bulky mechanoids, they still got through just fine and the short slide down was actually pretty fun if I had to be honest. Something that you really couldn't do a lot out of basic training.

I just got my gun ready again when a very loud high-pitched tone filled the hallway. Without our helmets on this would have definitely been debilitating but luckily noise cancellation was a technology we had implemented in our helmet design. And from the gauges on my HUD I could see that the temperature in this already warm hallway was getting cranked up even more.

"The bastards are trying to flush us out with environmental tactics, keep on your toes, the next step is probably going to be physical." I signalled the marines around me to cover every angle and just like I had assumed only a couple of moments later the sound of mechanical clanking also assumed as their non-confrontational tactic proved to be futile.

The first mechanoids that appeared immediately got blasted by Gunny's heavy machineguns as he had just come through the passageway as well. "We are almost all through, Commander, just a couple of marines left."

The marines on our other flank also started shooting rounds down range as the mechanoids were trying to pincer us from both sides.

Once everyone was accounted for in the hallway I immediately gave the order to move Northwards as a pack. As the heat seemed to be coming from that direction, it was the obvious way to go.

As we stepped over the first deactivated mechanoid husks I noticed just how polished these ones were compared to the units outside, their almost chromelike armor looking to have been updated as well compared to their surface units, however, not enough to stop our armor-piercing ammunition.

While we pressed on I gave the command to Sergeant De Smet while I occupied myself to coördinate with the other units who had also successfully made their entries into this defensive layer and also ordered them to follow us North. I did get a bit of pushback from the other squad leaders that I was putting too many eggs in one basket but I just didn't want to spread our concentration of forces too thinly by heading in other directions even more.

Ultimately they all listened to my command to converge on the source of the heat in the north.

My educated gamble led us, after ten minutes of close quarter fighting, to a dividing line where the metal sheathing gave way again for armed concrete. A point where the other squads also seemed to be converging on at about the same time. All the while the mechanoids kept streaming at us from beyond a massive open doorway that led into the concrete structure.

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"We must be very close now! Keep on pushing!" I signaled my heavy weapon specialists to take the vanguard and push forward as we could not afford to get bogged down here. As we had been fighting away from our heavy armor, that also meant our available supplies had become a lot more limited, as the ammo fabricators that the tanks housed were just too heavy to carry along. We were still set for a while but we really couldn't linger too long. As for my personal ammo situation, I was being pretty conservative with my shots, but luckily in a commanding role I could very much make that work.

With a sheer show of force we pushed the mechanoids back into their concrete hole. It did come at the cost of a couple of minor injuries that would require some medical followups back on the ship, but that's just a given, given the lack of hard cover near the doorway.

Once we were in, the fighting became easier, having the reinforcing mechanoid waves slow down to a trickle rather than a pour and with better cover for us to utilize. With the architecture here being back to somewhat recognizable we managed to push our forces all the way to what looked to be the room which housed the central mainframe. Massive fans pushing out the heat from large, old-looking computers with incredibly big power cables feeding into them.

We quickly secured all entrances into the room as our experts from the scouting team started to set up the communications uplink we needed to get in contact with our ship to grant us the aid from our lovely AI assistant, Ellie. Without her help introducing the virus into the system was going to take way too long.

As the team diligently worked on the uplink, the rest of my forces could rest up a little. With all the entrances and exits covered we didn't really need all of them at the same time as our force was more than adequately multiplied. I designated a resting zone in a corner blindspot where no one could get hit by a stray shot and ordered our most-fatigued soldiers to take a breather. In the meantime I occupied myself with closely supervising the complicated looking comms equipment. Because we had foreseen that the mainframe was going to be housed in a particularly fortified section of the compound, Ellie had made us bring some add-ons down to the planet surface to add to our scout team's equipment. It was all way too complicated for me to completely understand, but the gist of it, from what I was told, is that it would make use of resonance in combination with the radio equipment of the vehicles outside to get a powerful enough signal to reach our ship in orbit.

"Is it going to work out?" I asked one of the techs who had taken a step back to get a clear overview of the apparatus.

"It should work, yes. It will drain our battery quickly but have been rather economical with it so far. And if it runs out we can probably find a way to tap into this power source here as well." Corporal Maggs beckoned to the giant computer next to us. "But that's Plan B as I would rather not mess with alien tech without AI guidance."

"I understand that sentiment…" More than they know. Without Ellie the secrets of our little black box upstairs wouldn't be as evident to mess around with. Even with my girlfriend's Eva's genius. Ellie's help has been indispensable.

I let the Corporal go back to work and took another quick scan of the room with my eye falling on Eva who was currently giving some minor aid to the resting marines.

She must have felt my gaze on her shoulder as she glanced back at me, giving me an okay sign in return, probably accompanied by a cheeky wink hidden behind her visor.

I signed the same signal back and was about to turn back to our equipment when I saw something strange in the corner of my eye against the ceiling of the roof. Something slowly crawled in the direction of the resting zone.

"Watch out! Ceiling!" I called out and quickly reached for my gun. In a fraction of a second I had raised it to my shoulder, but the moment my flashlight connected with the object I had spotted on the ceiling it changed direction.

Time slowed down as adrenaline flushed through my body as a labrador-sized metallic being with a glowing right limb rocketed directly at me.

I squeezed the trigger and my gun impacted my shoulder twice, accompanied by loud thuds, hitting both shots on my bogey.

The metallic whateverthefuck veered downwards off-course because of my gunfire but its force trauma course correction wasn't enough for it to completely miss me and my reflexes weren't nearly fast enough to jump out of the way.

A burning stinging pain in my thigh and the impact of a couple hundred kilos of metal floored me and almost knocked me unconscious as I cried havoc into my helmet.

The intense pain sent memories flashing through my mind of waking up in hospital with half my torso missing…

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