Thanatonautes

I perched in the bony arms of a once living tree over looking the Cabal fire base on Mars. Green and yellow armored suits littered the ground like fallen leaves. In the midst of the heat of the unforgiving Martian summer, their Fall had come, I thought to myself. My trigger finger was trembling from the cadence I kept and my shoulder screamed in vain for the stampede to end. The rest of me knew with a certainty that the Sand Eaters would never stop. They continued to pour from the underground bunkers in droves. Monsters. The sand stirred in small eddies at the bunker entryways. A Cabal-made disaster ready to happen. My helmet telemetry could not keep up with the speed at which this ungodly cross between rhino and turtle formed ranks. It was an avalanche of boulder sized juggernauts tumbling in my direction. "Crimson", I forced control into my voice. He was decrypting the low frequency murmurings coming from the data port looking for the file Ikora told us we would find. "Still calculating..." "Need it now...", a sliver away from all out panic. "Almost..." Crimson said in that robotic voice. "Too late!" I screamed as I watched a Colossus emerge behind a phalanx of shield bearers. This was no Sand Eater, the normal shock trooper of the Cabal. The red and white banner it wore marked it as an elite warrior attached to the Blind Legion. If Sand Eaters are the equivalent to a regular soldier then the Blind Legion are the special forces. The Cabal normally send out a Colossus to wipe out a small battalion. They always send out a Blind Legion Colossus to wipe out a complete army. I jumped from the skeleton tree and flashed as quickly as my void would carry me behind the terminal Crimson, my casper, was scanning. "Got it" he said, sounding like a school boy catching his first fish, just as the rockets slammed into the machine rendering it inoperable. So the Thanatonaut was real. I didn't get to contemplate much more as the first Cabal unit reached my now exposed position. My shotgun was out, ripped from the air itself. It caught the first Sand Eater right as he landed in front me. Clearly an eager bull ready for the kill. The shot punched through its helmet and a geyser of black liquid marked its demise. The others were on me. I dumped a void grenade and rolled away as the bolts searched for targets. I jumped to my feet and looked for a way out trying to remember where the Colossus went. The missiles hit again and I felt my left rib cage shatter. Crimson started reknitting it but the lung collapsed and I faltered. The smart suit I wore under my armor staunched the blood loss and stiffened on my left side allowing me to keep my feet. I turned and ran just as the mini gun found my right side shearing my arm off from the elbow down. "Again?" asked my ever inquisitive companion, as he quickly sealed the rupture. I wasn't in the mood to respond. "Air vent," he said, juking to the left. I dove on instinct as the last salvo slammed into the space I just occupied. I tumbled and fell into the black, clanging back and forth like some arcane pinball machine. Falling and wondering if this "thanatonaut" stuff was real. After all, I had died hundreds of times and all I could recall was pain and that damned red light. "Navigating death my ass..." I said as I continued to tumble. Then everything stopped except for the dark.