"Dammit! The things can regenerate!" Rex roared, his blaster finally unleashing its deafening barrage!
*BRRRRRRRRRRRT—!!!*
A storm of superheated energy projectiles swept across the corridor entrance! The tremendous noise echoed in the confined space, threatening to shatter eardrums. The lead two or three crystalline masses were instantly riddled with holes by the terrifying firepower. Large chunks of crystalline shards flew everywhere, their structures temporarily shattered as they collapsed, twitching, attempting to reform.
But more masses surged from behind, fearlessly advancing, even trampling over the "remains" of their counterparts. As some advanced, the crystals on their surfaces began to glow with a brighter, gray-white light.
"Energy build-up! Watch out!" Kael warned.
No sooner had he spoken than several扭曲的, gray-white energy rays lanced from the fronts of those masses! They didn't travel straight, but snaked forward like twisted lightning bolts!
Kael and Rex immediately dodged. Rex tanked a hit on his heavy armor, his shield indicator instantly dropping a noticeable chunk, the impacted area on his plating showing clear scorch marks. Kael agilely rolled to the side, the energy ray grazing his shoulder guard and striking the wall behind him, instantly melting a small, honeycombed patch of crystalline structure into the alloy.
"They have ranged attacks too!" Kael's heart sank. These enemies were formidable: high physical resistance, self-repair capabilities, and now ranged energy attacks.
"Lia! Anything?!" Kael yelled, continuing to fire controlled bursts from his pulse rifle to slow the advance. The rifle's effects were limited; unless he could concentrate fire on a single point to cause structural failure, completely destroying them was difficult.
"Found a damaged node! Attempting to access the main network... The firewall is highly anomalous! Not a standard architecture!" Lia's voice held unprecedented urgency. Her fingers flew across the virtual console, data streams cascading like waterfalls in her eyes. "It's... it's actively resisting! There's a... consciousness... in the network!"
As she spoke, a cold, chaotic, malevolent data stream surged back along her connection, launching a counter-assault!
Lia's body stiffened abruptly. The data streams in her eyes instantly became chaotic, flooded with error codes and garbled data.
"Urgh—!" A short, system-overload-like gasp escaped her as she stumbled back a step involuntarily.
"Lia?!" Kael glanced at her, alarmed.
"I'm... I'm alright!" Lia forcibly stabilized herself. The data streams in her eyes began to re-order, but their speed was noticeably slower, as if engaged in a fierce struggle. "It's aware of me! It's attacking me! This isn't a virus... it's a... primitive, but immensely powerful... network sentience! It's centered on that energy signature and has permeated the entire outpost's systems!"
She wasn't just trying to crack a system; she was fighting a perilous electronic war against something entrenched within the network.
"Can you seize control? Any control at all!" Kael shouted, firing a burst that deflected an energy ray aimed at Rex.
"Difficult... its structure... non-logical... chaotic but... powerful..." Lia's voice was fragmented, clearly under immense strain. "Attempting... to lure it... into opening the blast doors towards the labs... might divert some..."
It was a risky plan. Opening the doors to the labs might release more creatures, but it could also provide them with a target other than the team.
"Do it!" Kael didn't hesitate. Things couldn't get much worse.
Lia stopped responding verbally, pouring all her processing power into the invisible battle. Her body trembled slightly, occasional arcs of aberrant electricity flickering across her synthetic skin.