"GLYPH welcomes you to your new permanent position within our rapidly expanding family -"
"GOD NO! NO! LET ME OUT!"
" - but it should be noted that your rental of our 'genesis suit' does incur significant debt -"
"I'M NOT WORKING FOR YOU!"
" - and you are expected to work to earn your keep. Should you fail to meet your rental payments, you will be expunged from company property."
The nomad's fingers were pried painfully from the edge of the machinery as her arm, her last grasp at freedom, was forced inside the suit. It snapped shut around her body like a bear trap as the suit's layers weaved their way around her, sealing her inside.
"This one needs time. Her fight will fade." The foreman affirmed from the rear of the forces. His suit was considerably more nimble than the other lumbering models that made up the bulk of the GLYPH forces marauding through the docks, but it still carried the same signature brass colouration, and an aesthetic caught somewhere between medieval surgical equipment and deep-sea bell diver. His beady eyes were just about visible through the haze of his dome-like helmet. "Delay the expunge. Monitor her cortisol levels."
He turned his attention away from the GLYPH recruitment vessel and back to the docks of Garon Moonstop, watching as his loyal 'employees' dragged unwilling nomads towards the stationed 'fingers' of the GLYPH ships, currently gripping onto the sides of the dock walkways. He briefly glanced up towards many heads of the elite mercs above, happy right now just to watch the action, for now.
Good. You stay there. No need to cross each-other's paths. Yet.
Suddenly, his visor flashed red, and he diverted his attention back to the docks.
A dissatisfied grunt escaped from between his dry, cracked lips.
*
"Get your fucking hands off me!" The nomad screamed, his finger pulling repeatedly on the trigger of his shaking pistol, emptying the whole magazine into the side of the GLYPH suit. But the creaking brass bastard continued on, unabated as the bullets pinged off its shell. It had the nomad by the leg, dragging him like a screaming child across the floor, one thudding step after another towards his future forever job.
And it wasn't just him. All around, many others were in the same situation, either being dragged towards the ships, fighting for their lives, or undocking as quickly as they could to get to safety. The lower docks filled with the pop of traditional firearms, hopelessly ineffective against the thick metal exterior of the GLYPH suits. As a result, GLYPH had remained non-lethal, opting to use a mix of stun rods and blinding sprays on the poor nomads docked closest to their vessels.
As the suit thudded towards its destination, an ear-splitting CRACK suddenly filled the nomad's eardrums. The suit's fist sprang open, releasing its grip around the nomad's shin. He glanced up, to see a melon-sized hole in the suit's chest as it stumbled forwards and collapsed into a chest-shaking slam against the dock. It rapidly began to gush a foul-smelling green fluid - and blood - over the metal walkway as its motion ceased.
"GET BACK! GET TO SAFETY!" Seeth yelled as she cycled the SAFU's thick foregrip. The nomad complied immediately and crawled away from the ruptured suit, keeping his head low. The towering Controller landed her gun sights on another suit, a strider-sized one this time, which pulled its attention away from cutting a ship door open with a drill and turned to face her. It raised its makeshift weapon, an oversized nail-gun built into the suit's arm, the silver tips of the nails glimmering under the dock lights.
But the Controller was far quicker than the ponderous brass invader.
BLAM
A solid slug of meta-steel punched straight through the suit's dome-shaped helmet with a resonating clang, sending a cone of shredded shrapnel out of the slug's exit wound. A blast of steam hissed from the wound as the suit collapsed to the ground, its metallic groaning only ceasing once it finally came to a rest.
Seeth cycled the shotgun again and quickly slipped in a couple of new slugs underneath, just as Venner and Oxyi appeared at her sides. Both were wielding shotguns themselves, although far more appropriately sized than the SAFU.
There was a collective, unsettling creak from the sprawling docks as the GLYPH suits turned in unison towards Seeth, their non-lethal approach ending quite suddenly as the sound of gunfire intensified across the lower docks. All out chaos ensued, as more and more nomads began to fight back, with some of them even seeing success as larger, more dangerous weapons were brought to bear.
"Should we even be shooting these dudes?" Oxyi asked as she dived behind a stack of metal crates, peering at the oncoming forces shuffling towards their particular walkway. Nails and red-hot metal prongs saturated the air, along with the stifling stench of hot iron and warm blood. The retaliatory volley clattered against Oxyi's cover loudly, standing her fur to attention under her armour.
"Yeah. It would be a mercy for these lot. You can tell the newbies from the 'grey eyes' from how they move." Venner pointed across at a sizable squad of GLYPH employees marching off one of their ships, blocking the lower decks from the Garon Moonstop station. Each suit had a lumbering, almost zombie-like gait to it, humanity long since drained from the people trapped inside. They didn't even flinch as bullets plinked off their shells in a splash of sparks, only continuing to press forward under the command of the foreman, who was currently taking shelter behind one of the giant brass hands that gripped the walkway. "They only use the broken staff for grab operations. People who'll just do what they're told, else they might risk insubordination. We had security alerts on Barru X about this lot."
"How the fuck do we stop them?!" Oxyi yelled, raising her weapon to her shoulder.
"Make it cost ineffective for them to continue." Venner replied bluntly. "They're a business. They'll stop when it hits their pockets."
Oxyi shuffled uncomfortably in her armour and swallowed loudly. If it wasn't a horde of sex zombies chasing her down, it was a mega-corp hellbent on shoving people into walking prisons, where deathrow was a mere push of a button away.
Before her anxiety could build any further though, she felt a golden warm fill her chest as the familiar sound of Diego's warcry filled her ears. A second shimmering skin covered her frame as her movements became lighter and easier, the shotgun clasped in her hands felt feather light. It was a roar to life as much as it was a call to action.
"Holy moly, that's... nice!" She exclaimed, her eyes landing on Diego as he bounded out on the ramp to the destroyer and charged down the walkway. He rammed the nearest GLYPH suit to the ground with his forearm, and as it attempted to wrestle him off, he snatched a heavy looking metal hammer free from its belt and crushed its dome-helmet in with a single shimmer-red strike. Nails and slithers of rebar pinged off him, ineffective against his psyonic defense.
The team advanced together; Diego at the front with the looted hammer, Seeth behind him with her SAFU raised high, and Venner and Oxyi just behind her. More GLYPH suits emerged from the perpendicular walkways attached to the main route, where the other nomad ships were docked, redirecting their attention from breaching the ships to combat the main threat. But as they choked the walkway with their hulking frames, raising their various tools and weapons ready to engage, the forward squad was swept off their feet. The overwhelming force of the SAFU crashed through their ranks. A single slug punched through three of them in a row, sending them all scuttling backwards before collapsing to the ground with a heavy thud. Between the deafening BOOM of the SAFU, the smaller shotguns played out of repeated succession, covering their big sister. Even if their impact wasn't as thunderous or devastating, they still successfully punched into the suits.
Both Oxyi and Venner kept Seeth's flanks well protected, landing solid hits on GLYPH suits trying to get an angle of the team. At the front, nails and metal shrapnel pinged off Diego's glimmering armour as he kept the bulk of the enemies' attention on him. For anyone suit who got too close, they were met with a crushing THWACK from the unwieldy metal mallet clutched tightly in Diego's hand. Despite the mallet's awful weight distribution, Diego handled it with surprising grace. He looked more natural with the mallet than he had any bladed weapon so far, with his tail swinging in counter-balance to each feracious slam of the metal chunk. Between the four of them, it only took a couple of minutes to clear their walkway almost entirely. Seeth's height and firepower made her a towering sentinel, able to leverage the anti-tank level firepower of the SAFU without fear whilst under the protective shimmer of Diego's psyonics. But, as their victory began to swell, in the corner of her eye, a fiery yellow light caught her attention.
A huge wall of metal flew through the air and aimed its stubby feet at the walkway. An oversized GLYPH construction mech, closer to a walking building than anything remotely humanoid. It featured two large mechanical arms with oversized scrap pincers, likely intended for tearing into wreckages or ships. It had no central head, instead having a cockpit on each shoulder, heavily armoured from the front with sheer slabs of steel, with letterbox-like slits at the pilots' eye level. These cockpits were otherwise open top, but both pilots were clad in the formidable GLYPH suits all the same, making them rather more hardy than pilots in traditional gear.
The mech landed with a heavy clatter, metal on metal as its heaving chassis whirred into life.
Seeth pulled the front back on the SAFU and ejected the live shell, stowing it on her hips before pulling out a black shell with a white skull on it and slipping it into the chamber. The way she moved, you'd forget these things weighed six to ten kilograms a piece, as she handled the munitions as though they were paperweights.
But before she could slam the pump forward, aid came from above.
Crack-Crack, Crack-Crack.
Two shots, two times, both pilots were double-tapped from the walk-way above. The first shot cracked their armoured domes, the second silenced them. The mech immediately stuttered to a stop before it had even had a chance to start.
"Keep pushing forward! We'll cover you!" A voice called out from above.
