The shattered edge

[Violette]

The screams over Stacy's Tac-Comms was worrying, Steele had heard them from a little further along the Derelict, but she knew them to be her second Marine Fire Team, Bravo.

"Charlie Team, loop back on yourselves and check on Bravo Team, probable hostile forces, shoot anything that doesn't look friendly"

Her own team progressed through the corridors, covering each strange-shaped doorway and opening until the space opened up onto a large platform.
They had arrived at a large chamber, alien writings and lights spread across the sides of the walls, marking tanks and holding areas, all of them had some kind of electronic locking system, and the bad news was they were all open.

The floor down below was littered with all sorts of strange liquids, some of it seemingly blood, amongst the gore were various alien lifeforms, and the pieces that were once attached to them. None of them seemed to be capable of structured language, let along space travel, so this must be some form of alien menagerie.

"Valentina, this is Winters, patch this through to anyone on Tac-Comms who can pick it up" she surveyed the large room again, "Seems when we woke the defences, we also woke some kind of freaky alien zoo, there were dozens of food-chains kept down here and the ones at the top seemingly killed whatever wasn't weak enough to fight back when they got loose" she checked her rifle once more, "We have a whole bunch of wild alien predators loose on this wreck, so be on your guard, although I'm sure some of you already found out the hard way, Winters out"

Stacy signalled to her Marine team to descend the staircase down onto the menagerie floor, spreading out to follow the length of the ship towards Brooks.
A loud roar was heard as a large black shadow charged out from between two tanks, taking a Marine of his feet along with it.

The Marines turned to face the direction it was heading, seeing nothing and fearing to move forwards to check it out.

"Sergeant Chang?" Stacy called after him, "Are you still alive?"

Silence.

The shadow made another charge, this time from behind them. The fired their assault rifles at it's bulk, failing to even slow it in any shape or form. Stacy shifted out the way of it's mass as it took out another two marines, cutting them in half like sausages.

The remaining three Marines all ducked for cover, waiting for the fast shadow to re-emerge. Stacy stepped up onto what seemed to be crates of food for the animals, placing herself on top of one of the tanks. She could see better from up here, and perhaps gave her a little more protection from the shadow.

There was a loud bubbling beneath her, and she realised she was standing on some kind of transparent metal alloy. Below her was a tank of rather vicious-looking fish, or eels, or perhaps dolphins, they certainly looked like they could do some damage without much effort.

There was another blood curdling roar as the shadow lunged from below, knocking crates out of it's way to pounce on the remaining Marines. It's large dark claws decimated their weak fleshy masses, cutting through combat armour and ignoring their high calibre bullets.

Stacy fired off her clip, each shot with increasing recoil against her left shoulder. Failing that, she herself pounced, grabbing onto what appeared to be fur on the back of the large black mass and holding on for dear life. The creature shook violently, trying to remove her from it's gargantuan back, Stacy grasped the fur as hard as she could, reaching with her left hand for her knife.

With a growl and a thrust, she stabbed at the mass she was holding violently, feeling the creature recoil in pain and dive forwards throwing her head over heels into one of the tanks, a large crack forming in the glass.

With another aggressive growl she clambered to her feet, lunging forwards while the creature was down. It thought as she did though, raising one of it's limbs to block her arm, preventing the knife from penetrating it's fleshy face.

And what a face it was, Stacy's eyes widened as she stared into a couple of the seventeen or so small beady eyes of the beast, a few strange mandibles dripped with what seemed to be blood or saliva, each ready to tear Stacy's face off.

The strength of the beast was greater than that of her own, considering it's mass was more than five times her own. It held her knife, edge pointing towards it's ugly face, another limb raising to strike her down. Stacy cursed loudly and squeezed the handle of her knife, triggering a mechanism to eject the blade. The beast screeched an ear-piercing wail as it stumbled backwards in pain, the blade of the knife sticking out of where it's eyes had been.

Stacy strafed and pulled her side-arm, firing a couple of shots into the cracked glass of the fish tank and removing herself from the area of effect. The glass gave in to the weight of the water, allowing the liquid to gush out onto the menagerie floor, taking it's vicious supply of fish with it.

She watched with a combination of disgust and morbid curiosity as the contents of the fish tank began decimating the beast with a mix of teeth and toxins. Stacy holstered her side-arm, picking up her rifle and backing away from the bodies of the fallen.

"Okay, that went... well..."