Story Seed - Specimen

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Teams Fomor, Gorgon, and Oni advanced leapfrog style deeper into the complex. Above the Balor was now in low orbit, her guns energized, and auto tracking. Team Daeva was completing the data-mining begun by Fomor while team Yaoguai was leading a raid of the installations primary control complex. The Balor's guns had already ensured that no further communication between this installation and the other six on planet would occur, likewise the planet's ansible had been taken out by a high energy neutron beam shortly after it attempted to beam a large data packet off world. How much data succeeded in getting through would depend on compression ratios, but that was a concern for the analysts.

Fomor, Gorgon, and Oni had located an entire sector of the installation that was not on the schematics held in the complex's open computer core, nor the records held by the Ascendancy. Thus far they had met with heavy resistance. The security forces of Consolidated Extrasolar Mining were normally well trained and outfitted, but by comparison these troops were almost equal to the Ascendancy's own.

Almost.

Fomor 2 had been wounded during the first incursion, after which the Balor had dispatched Gorgon and Oni to provide additional breaching force. The three teams had quickly dealt with the initial guardian force and pushed into the covert area. Now, nearly four hours later they were battle weary. Three of the hellion-class troopers had been left at various points of the complex with injuries too great to continue onward, and another five were operating with minor injuries that would need tending after the last pockets of resistance were cleared out.

Gorgon 4 adjusted her scanner and then nodded to Gorgon 1, Fomor 1, and Oni 2, holding up a single finger. Her instruments indicated only a single occupant in the room beyond, and according to the Balor's deep surface scans this was the last area of the installation. Well guarded relief ran through the expressions of the remaining hellions; barring incredibly advanced shielding that was concealing still more unknown areas of the complex they would be done shortly and able to transfer local command and control to Ascendancy standard forces.

Oni 4 and Fomor 3 advanced to the door and quickly made short work of slicing into the electronic systems and freeing the door mechanism. Activating the servo pneumatics, the twin doors sllide aside and the three teams quickly advanced inward, weapons at the ready, expecting one last, brief, firefight.

Instead they found a large lab cluttered with all manner of equipment unlike anything they had seen before. Some of the technology looked vaguely familiar in the way of something based on the familiar but more advanced might appear, but other pieces were wholly alien. However it was not the alien equipment that shocked the hellions as they entered but the alien itself. Hanging from its limbs in a framework, and connected by tubing and wires to various machines was a small creature unlike any they had seen before. It was perhaps two thirds their size, almost devoid of hair, with skin that was pale, so pale that it was only shades away from white.

The creature was gaunt with narrow limbs that ended in hands with five (five!) fingers, while its feet also had five toes, but they were seemingly underdeveloped and almost atrophied; certainly the creature could not grasp much with its feet, even if it did have an extra finger and toe on each limb. It appeared unconscious, or insensate, and the team carefully advanced, verifying that there were no booby traps, improvised or otherwise, and that the only possible threat in the room was the currently helpless creature.  Fomor 1 moved to what seemed to be a primary control console and studied the screens and readouts alongside Fomor 6. After a brief discussion he radioed the Balor, "Fomor 1 to Balor. The complex is under our control. We have located what appears to be an illegal xenobiology lab. There is a single specimen and it appears that the creature yet lives. Reccommend you dispatch medical and xeno-science teams immediately to categorize and disposition the subject identified as a ... human."