On station hI-567 in the galaxy of the Druins, two sentinels were gossiping while waiting for their shift to finish.
Druin 1 "This shift has been so boring. First, we had to clean the latrine's a shit job but normal; however, all of the hysteria around the poison blood team, it's almost impossible to do our cleaning and guard duty in peace without a higher officer watching over us."
Druin 2 "I know normally I would not mind having an officer watch over us as we work as they would often pitch in and help us finish early so, we could relax for the last half an hour before our shift is over however, they have been ordered not to help us and just to stand watch, it's so annoying."
Druin 1 " damn right plus what can this new poison blood do to us, its not like they can get the drop on us, we are not like other stations."
Druin 2 "Our tech far outpaces their tech. I never understood how those poison bloods are getting around our organic tech, our spears are connected to the whole outpost, relaying information from every inch of it, even then they cannot find them"
Shift lead Druin "The tech they use is an abomination amalgamation of our tech and other civilisations' technology that took thousands of years to refine. These rats are piggybacking off our hard work" he spat at the ground in disgust.
Druin 1 "If they did not steal others technology and learn to use it so they would have no chance at winning"
Druin 2 "plus how many Humans they are willing to throw at us, they would definitely have no chance of winning"
The Druin captain "If those poison blood rats show their faces we, we are the first line of defence. They are truly violent beyond imagining so stay sharp and keep an eye out we cannot let them get past us"
"Yes Sir, captain. We will be ready they will not get past us, not a single rat" said Druin 1
In the shadows of the building on the Druin outpost hid a man in blue armour patiently waiting for a single moment. His eyes darted around the outpost, surveying the surroundings, gathering information about the Druin and duty and their outpost.
The man lowered his arm, pulling out his rifle from his back, he slowly aimed the strange-looking rifle at the Druin captain.
The weapon in the man's hand slowly pulsed with a dull green glow.
The Druin guttural growls and grunts lingered in the background, those sounds sent shivers down his spine and goosebumps up his arms.
The gun hissed, releasing a small amount of green steam proceeding a projectile leaving the barrel, trained on the Driun captains' chest.
This was his job, what he needed to do, what he was made and what he had been born to do.
He moved the rifle away from the captain as soon as he fired, training it on the second Driun, holding him in his sights.
All the Druin looked the same in his eyes, the horns that adorned their head shone while, their scales black with red in-between.
The second Druin, hearing the shot, saw the projectile fly straight through the captain's chest, he barely managed to deploy his shield before a projectile arrived at his chest. The shield only managed to shift the bullet away from the chest of the Druin to his shoulder, piercing it and going straight through.
Red blood splattered the face of the Druin next to him and the ground behind him.
The man clad in dark blue armour started running towards the Druin, a dagger and pistol drawn.
His pistol roared, releasing a projectile at the unharmed Druin, the man in blue armour was running towards the injured Druin. He tapped on his arm console and drew his dagger back before plunging it into the back of the injured Druin's neck, severing the spine clean in two.
His body twisted the knife still embedded he crouched behind the dead Druin's body using it as a shield, the man took aim and fired again, four projectiles in quick succession. This time, the first three bullets were stopped in mid-air but the fourth bullet sailed straight through the Druin's chest.
The second Druin's body hit the floor in a dull thud, "damn, they are placing more and more guards, it is getting harder to break into these outposts" he mumbled to himself while examining his screen that was projected into air above his gauntlet. It was an image of the Druin's outpost with red dots moving around.
Cross marks occupied specific spots on the screen. The man clad in blue reached out, touching the screen another cross appeared on the screen.
"Another team taken out"
His time was limited, he needed to move faster, he needed to disable the communication hub before he could leave the outpost.
If he did not disable it in time, the fleet would not make it through this space undetected, leading to an all-out war.
The man clad in blue armour was Seth, what the Druin called a poison blood he preferred what the humans called him, a scout.
After killing the 3 Druins, Seth kneeled on the ground, searching for a mass conduit of Fungi that was running along the ground.
After about 30 seconds of searching, he had found what he was looking for.
The fungi that the Druin technology was built upon fed off of residual heat, something which was abundant on the planets the Druin inhabited. What humanity had discovered was that if you froze around the fungi, this slowed the fungi down and slowed the metabolism of the fungi. This natural ability of the fungi allowed the humans to blind the Druin even if just temporarily
'who knew it was this easy to blind them, if we had known this at the start of the war I wonder how many humans would have lived' Seth thought to himself.
Seth searched for the right spot among the countless connections of fungi on the ground a mess of organic matter.
It did not take long for Seth to find the right bundle of fungi he had been trained, and he excelled in this area.
On the sides of his arms vents opened, white gas shot out from them freezing the fungi he started with the area around the bundle before freezing the centre of the bundles as he froze more of the bundles his armour shifted in colour from dark blue to blacker, finally after the bundle was frozen, he severed it with his knife. He stood up slowly while collecting the Druin spears which had begun pulsing by now, these "spears", as most humans called them, were the main way Druin interfaced with their technology and manipulated it.
Unfortunately for Seth, it was coded to the Druin genome, allowing only them to use it.
Seth stabbed the now pulsating spears into the three bodies of the Druin. After he was done, the spears stopped pulsing and returned to normal.
He travelled further into the outpost, heading towards the communication hub's mainframe. He was now running against a clock of his own making because if he did not reach the communication hub and take it down before the ice melted, he would be in grave danger.
The halls of the Druin outpost are always long, winding and complicated.
The halls dwarfed Seth, standing over nine feet tall. He followed the halls left, right, left, left over and over again seemingly endlessly as he moved deeper with each turn.
He arrived at the entrance of a large chamber filled with an orange glow flowing down from above. A small device on a pedestal, black as night with red fungi leading from the base along the ground and into the walls from all directions spread out like spider webs with the podium in the centre. This was the centre of their base, one of the most important rooms in the outpost the communication hub.
The communication hub was within his site. At last, all that was left was to kill the guards and disable the hub, and then he would be able to leave this godforsaken hot rock.
Seth slowly got into position, crouching in the shadows just outside of the room, making certain that he would not raise the alarm before it was time to attack.
He would not let all the preparation so far be for nothing.
His eyes slowly blackened as his pupils dilated taking up his whole iris, his muscles tensed, his heart now beating like a drum fast and hard. He was close to the finish line, so close he could see it, but he also knew how hard the final push would be.
He had to take out heavily armoured Druin guards with trident's at the ready for any intruders.
These 4 guards would be a challenge for him to take down, the worst-case scenario he would lose the base would be alerted and he would die before his team could extract him.