Part 2 - Echoes in the Stone

 Captain 'Ace' McGuire returns in...

The Galacteers pressed into the corridor, boots ringing on alien stone, shadows pressing close as if the darkness itself yearned to smother them. At the vanguard strode Astro-Angel Peggie, steel-nerved and eagle-eyed, her scanner crackling like a divining rod of the void. Jane slipped in beside her, pistols loose in her hands, every muscle wound tight as a drawn bow.

Then, the earth exploded!

The stone floor heaved up like the skin of some great beast and from its bowels erupted a nightmare of scale and fang. A colossal worm, its hide glittering like shards of amethyst, reared upward with a roar of shattering stone. Its maw, ringed with grinding teeth, gaped wide enough to swallow an atomik tank!

“The Amethyst Terror!” Jane cried, vaulting back as its slavering jaws thundered toward her.

But the Angel did not falter. Resolutely she stood her ground and her twin pistols blazed, their beams striking fire against the worm’s armoured hide. One shot rang off like a bell tolling doom, but others seared deep, carving sizzling wounds. The beast reeled, howling its hatred into the cavern air.

“Gods, what a monster!”” Jane gasped, her heeled space-boots sliding across grit.

Ace’s blade was out in a heartbeat, gleaming like a comet’s tail. He charged forward with Dr. Zahn close at his side, making room as Stacey and Jen swept past. The Angels’ rifles cracked with fire, bolts hammering into the worm’s flesh and opening fresh rents. Still the thing lunged at Jane, maw gnashing, slime flying.

“Hold fast, Jane!” Ace roared. “We’ll send this nightmare back to the pit that spawned it!”

Rocky, ever the sentinel, dropped into the shadows of the pit below. His blaster was raised but he held his fire—too many comrades, too little space. “Steady!” he growled to himself. “One slip, and my shot burns one of us instead!”

Far beneath their feet, in the labyrinthine dark, the Maker-Bot stirred. Its claws retracted with a hiss of pneumatics, and in its place a winged silhouette detached from its moorings. A drone of steel and shadow banked down a corridor, eyes glowing like embers, angling toward the heroes who dared trespass.

On the surface, the worm reared once more. Stacey’s rifle tracked its bulk. “Hold your lines!” she barked. “If this brute breaks through, we’re done for!”

But with a sudden thunder of dust and shattered rock, the beast dove back underground. The cavern shook with its retreat, the ground trembling like the heartbeat of some titanic god.

“Where - where did it go?!” Stacey shouted, choking on the cloud of stone grit.

Jane allowed herself a grim chuckle. “I’d run too, if I were that ugly!”

The Galacteers pressed forward. Stacey’s sharp eyes caught a gleam ahead: two strange cylinders standing on circular pads, humming faintly. Alien computer consoles stood nearby, their glyphs pulsing like malignant stars.

“Dr. Zahn!” she cried over the comm. “I’ve found your Shlar-Tak resonators!”

Zahn advanced like a scholar approaching a dragon’s hoard, awe and dread mingling in his eyes. His hands hovered above the keys. 

“By the old chronicles…” he whispered. “A resonator indeed, but altered! Galacteer circuits grafted like scars upon alien flesh. This is part of the Shadow Circuit! If Scar activates this network…” His jaw tightened, and his hand clenched into a fist. “I must disable it, though every key I touch might unleash our doom!”

Jane circled the second terminal, eyes narrowing. “I thought I saw something scuttle just now…” 

In the gloom, a tiny seeker drone, no larger than a child’s toy, snapped a glimmering picture of the squad. Its lenses blinked once—and then it flitted away into the maze like a wasp carrying poison back to its hive.

The squad split: two Angels stood guard over Zahn while the others tightened their cordon around Jane. Ace joined Stacey and Jen, his jaw set like iron, eyes burning in the glow of the alien display.

Dr Zahn’s fingers danced, trembling but resolute. “If this glyph combines with that one… ah! A success! One step cracked; one victory against the alien logic! But I need more time!”

“Roger that, Doc!” Jane barked. She spun, twin pistols at the ready, and unleashed a volley into the second resonator. The machine screamed in a shower of sparks, plates warping, ozone biting the air. “This one won’t sing Scar’s song!”

The Angels joined her, firing disciplined volleys. One weapon spat hollow—laser cell empty. “Damn it, dry!” the trooper cursed, slamming a fresh cell into place. The rest of the bolts ricocheted harmlessly from the alien plating.

Far away, the seeker drone’s intelligence reached the Maker-Bot. Its claws tightened, finishing the assembly of a new hover-drone. The machine whirred alive, lenses chevron-bright, waiting for the order to kill.

Ace’s pistol cracked, his shot gouging only a shallow scar across the resonator. He spat. “Not enough. Zahn, wring every secret you can. We’ll burn these abominations to ash!”

Rocky’s voice echoed from the cavern rim, grim and low. “That hum again. Louder now. Like a motor. Steady. Low. Mechanical.”

Dr Zahn’s voice came sharp, every syllable a battle. “Two sequences cracked. More to go. One wrong press and the Shadow Circuit blooms to life!”

Ace raised his sword, its edge catching the glow of alien glyphs. His voice was iron:

“We’ve found two. Scar thinks his shadow grows. But we’ll rip it out by the roots. Three more to go. Hold the line, Galacteers—hold the line for the galaxy itself!”

And in the corridors beyond, the catacombs answered with the murmur of machines waking—hover-drones stirring, shadow wings unfurling, the unseen hand of Scar tightening its grip.

TO BE CONTINUED...

the resonators Live, 

the Maker-Bots stir, 

and the Legion’s net tightens!