'Hi guys GhostNobody here with the very first instalment of my brand new project, this is going to be my second ever trip into the AVP fandom and I can only hope that it is received as welcomingly as my first was.

Now to answer one question that I know I am going to get asked, yes it does take place in the same universe but I'll let the story show you how it fits, I hope that you all enjoy this new trip into the strangeness of the heart and soul and I hope you all enjoy the ride and the adventure, so for the first time in this new world, this is GhostNobody signing off and saying on with the new show…'

The Enemy of my Enemy.

By GhostNobody.

Prologue.

New Britannia, a shining jewel in humanity's race to colonise the stars. It had started life in much the same way as any of the other human colonies, a wild untamed place full of mystery and intrigue which humanity had conquered through its sheer force of will and determination.

Or at least that's what the brochures would have you believe, it used to be called LV 476 when it was first colonised by the company for its rich mineral deposits, but after the discovery of a substance called hydronite in the water the colony boomed into a thriving city in a matter of a few short years.

Hydronite was an unlimited source of free energy, it was a spectacularly complex hydrogen molecule that could be used to produce obscene amounts of energy for a very very small amount of the stuff and given all the water on the planet which was similar to Earth in the fact that it was over seventy percent water made for a very powerful industrial machine.

What was better was the fact that when it was burned or used in the fusion process it produced no harmful emissions or toxic waste, it simply produced water and oxygen and given that the water produced would reintroduce itself to the atmosphere and become recombined again with the unique elements found in the rare atmosphere of this planet it would simply end up containing yet more hydronite, it truly was a natural marvel and it produced an unlimited source of energy which the colonists capitalised on this.

Now when they'd discovered this the colonists had been under contract to the Wayland Yutani company for exclusive mineral mining rights, so in other words any mineral that they extracted from the place had to be sold to Wayland Yutani, but after a rather smart solicitor who had given up the bar for the chance at a new life went over the contract they found that hydronite was not part of this agreement as it only covered any fossil or mineral types, it didn't cover any liquids or gasses found.

So rather than rub it in Wayland Yutani's faces they simply kept quiet and carried on selling them minerals which kept them happy and out of their hair, while on the quiet they began the extensive process of switching all their power systems over to run on hydronite.

This meant that everything they sold to Wayland Yutani even at their crappy prices was returning much more than the company had ever intended, simply because everything they dug up was returning nearly one hundred percent profit because hydronite made all their power consumption and extracting processes run for pretty much free.

By the time Wayland Yutani discovered what the colonists were doing it was way too late, the colony had been transformed from a simple town, to a city and then onto a sprawling white mega city in less than a hundred years, they had so much economic might and legal clout that every attempted claim that Wayland Yutani attempted to make to the wondrous hydronite was shot down in every court that they took it to, so by way of petty revenge the company cut all ties with the colony and refused to buy any of its mineral exports, but it was way too little too late, the leaders of the colony had foresaw this eventuality and had taken steps of their own to counter them, they'd begun putting out feelers to the rest of the Galactic community, by now the colony had made contacts all over the Galaxy and with the legal shackles now removed they were easily able to start up trade with both other colonies and other companies, even trading with the Yaujta who since the end of the hybrid wars as humans called them or the purity wars as they'd called them had become rather hospitable to the right oomans as they called them, New Britannia providing them refined hydronite to power their massive clan ships in exchange for various technologies and weapons, in fact it was now a rather common occurrence for the planet to have one of these massive ship's in orbit for refuelling.

Pretty soon pretty much every land mass on the planet had been colonised and New Britannia had become a shining Galactic hub of trade and commerce, not to mention a true melting pot of cultures and even species as the planet attracted others to move there in the hope of a new life.

It truly had become far beyond the paradise that the original colonists that first struck its soil had envisioned, but despite all their technological marvels and economic clout they were not prepared for what was to come their way, a true horror of unbound magnitude that moved with relentless force tearing through any and all unlucky enough to get in its way was sweeping across their happy peaceful world and by the time they became truly aware of it, it was already too late.

Chapter 1: Pushing the Envelope.

The first noise he became aware of was a highly irritating repetitive bleeping noise, it seemed to pierce the darkness of his skull like a nail being repeatedly struck into a raw nerve. The noise though irritating and painful seemed to be dragging him towards it at high speed and despite his protests it dragged him almost screaming into a world filled with light.

The first thing he saw as he opened his eyes was a world of blurry light as his eyes attempted to focus, his head felt like it was filled with mud and every though felt like it was having to fight its way to the surface, the first one to make it was 'What the hell is going on?'.

As his vision started to clear he became aware of a green light passing over him repeatedly and it hurt his eyes to look at it so he shielded them, then a very mechanical female voice announced that he had passed all medical checks and welcomed him back from hyper sleep, before announcing that he had been in stasis for three earth months.

As the green light had now stopped frying his vision he was able to focus his eyes properly and see what appeared to be glass in front of his face, with a series of whirrs and clicks from all around him the glass lifted up and away from his face, instantly he felt a rush of air come from all around him as his body was now exposed to the atmosphere outside of the tube, suddenly a face appeared in front of him, it appeared to be a rather pretty young black woman with dreadlocks that kinda made her look like an upside down medusa with a massive smile plastered on her face.

"Wakey Wakey Aiden it's time to start the party!" she said in a rather loud and rather enthusiastic voice that hurt his still groggy head,

"Eh what? Party? What party?" he asked as he tried to shake the mud out of his head, slowly but surely he could feel memories like bubbles rising to the surface in his head and popping back in to reality,

"Oh come on now O'Connor don't tell me that the mighty Reaper is actually human and suffers from hyper amnesia like the rest of us lowly mortals?" she said with an upside down grin that seemed to light up her whole face,

"Ha bloody ha Tina" he said as her name popped back into his head, Tina Fuller was the team doctor and a damn good one, a fully trained and experienced battlefield surgeon, the amount of times he'd seen her pulling bullets out of people while others were busy putting them back into others was unreal, when the shit royally hit the fan the playful young American woman would turn into the queen of ice, the contrast was absolutely amazing to witness, while not working she was the life and sole of the party and she was always running around either pranking the others on the team or planning to prank them, hence her love of making Aiden blush as she was the only one out of all of them that could find the chinks in his otherwise super strong armour, but when the chips were down there was no other person in existence that you wanted to see coming to get you, in fact it was her steely nerves under fire that had earned her the codename Ice.

Still grinning she leaned down into his pod and gripped his right arm and pulled him up right, for the briefest of seconds he was totally bemused by the sight that met him as she pulled his arm away from his body and he saw what looked like a black robotic arm, but then the memories of that day popped back into his head as well and a soft groan escaped him.

As she got him sat up right Tina moved around to his front and shone a light into his eyes while running a small hand scanner over him, she was about 5'5 and pretty well built looking like someone had chiselled her well-muscled frame out of solid black granite, it didn't help that she was dressed in a set of tight grey under shorts and matching under top that hugged her curves tightly, her long dreadlocks ran right down her back to her wide hips "Any sickness or nausea?" she asked in a more professional voice now, he shook his head, but more to clear the remaining mud out of it than to answer her question but it served both purposes, "Well your bio systems are looking good, mighty good actually" she said with the grin returning and giving him a small wink to go with it, he gave her a small smile, he remembered that Tina always made a point to flirt with him at every opportunity, probably because she knew that it made him blush and she got a kick outta it, but the rub was that he could never tell if she was serious or not, she never did anything like this with any of the others, only with him.

She continued scanning running it over the side of his head, followed by his chest and then finally his arm, "Cybernetics and Nano systems have all woken up and are all showing green, so you're good to go Reaper" she said with a smile, then she closed down her scanner and with a final wink at him she walked over to a another pod, as he watched her go he couldn't help but watch the way she rolled her hips as she walked, he couldn't help but thinking that she really did have a rather nice bum, but before she got to the next pod she glanced back over her shoulder and caught him looking at her, she gave him a grin and cocked her hip which caused him to blush so bright that he could feel his face lighting up, silently he cursed under his breath, looks like she won this round.

As he looked around the hyper sleep bay Aiden could see the other nine pods of his team, they were all opening one at a time and he could see various heads poking up out of the pods each sharing the same look of confusion and disorientation, he empathised with them as he truly hated hyper sleep, it always felt like a few bottles of Tequila and a joy ride in a cement mixer.

Aiden O'Conner was a member of a team known only as the Spirits, they were a covert operation that specialised in dealing with the weird and the worst kind of problems, they were set up to operate outside of the usual rules of engagement and to deal with circumstances that no other unit had the capacity to deal with, it was set up by the governments of various species to counter threats that fell outside of the expertise of either normal armies like the Colonial Marines of Earth, or even special forces like the Yaujta Halkrath core.

The cells were made up of exceptional individuals taken from a massive verity of walks of life, everything from military, police detectives and private eyes, bounty hunters, doctors and even scientists. The criteria of joining the Spirits was exceptionally high and you never applied to join, there was no forms to fill out, no job interview, they simply approached you and if you met their standards then you simply disappeared, no trace of your pervious life would be allowed to remain, you simply evaporated into the ether.

The training was the most intense of any military anywhere, physical training that pushed every operator to their breaking point and beyond, each operator was trained in everything from advanced combat tactics right through to scientific analysis, they were trained to operate as a team or as individuals, so they needed to know every element of each other's jobs while at the same time maintaining their own speciality, this meant that if a member of the team was either incapacitated or killed then another could step straight into their shoes and carry on, or if the operator found themselves working alone they'd have a huge plethora of skills to call on to get the job done.

Climbing slowly out of his hyper sleep pod Aiden placed his feet on the cold metal floor of the bay, the sudden cold shock helped to clear his head of some of the remaining mud and heled to focus his mind, pushing off away from the hyper sleep pod he wobbled a little on his unsteady rubber band legs, the first few steps were always the worst after hyper sleep, they were always the gateway to a good day where you reached your locker with a proud strut, or a not so good day where you kissed the bulkhead face first.

Today was not a good day, Aiden groaned as he pushed himself up off the floor in the press up position before climbing on to his knees to catch his breath, as he did he was glad to see he wasn't the only one of the team getting intimate with the bulkhead, to his left he noticed a rather large frame lifting itself off the bulkhead before letting loose a muffled stream of curses in Yaujta. The large frame belonged to the team's infiltration and tracking specialist T'shara and although the sight of an eight-foot-tall female Yaujta kissing the bulkhead before swearing at it was kinda funny Aiden held his tongue, her codename wasn't Inferno for nothing, he had personally witnessed this fiery female tear enemy combatant's limb from limb with her bare hands and that was when she was calm and collected, when she was pissed she was like a Mak hover truck with feet.

Getting to his feet he stumbled in the fallen female Yaujta's direction, "You ok T'shara?" he asked offering her a hand up, the young female looked up at him with fire in her bright grey eyes, but as soon as she saw whose hand was being offered to her the fire cooled, Aiden knew that there were very few that T'shara would ever dare to accept help from, the very proud and stubborn female would rather die than admit she needed help with anything, but he for some reason was one of these very few.

"I pauking hate hyper sleep" she said in her gruff voice before accepting the offered hand, Aiden pulled the massive female up from the floor and quickly steadied her as she wobbled unsteadily on her feet, as he looked at her Aiden couldn't help but be reminded of urban camo patterns as he looked at the colours of her skin, it was all grey white and black swirls and patches, she shook her head to steady her balance and it caused her long dreadlock like appendages to whip around and catch him across his side,

"Hey steady on with those things or we'll both end up on the floor again" Aiden said as he deflected some of them with his free arm, T'shara simply made a humph noise but he could have sworn he saw a faint smile flash over her mandibles,

"If we fall then we fall together" she said, he laughed softly as he helped the large female to steady herself as they slowly made their way towards the lockers, he did have to admit that she was rather striking for a Yaujta, but he'd never really looked at their species in that way despite being told more than once by various members of their species that his multitude of scars made him rather attractive to females of their kind, all he could say to this was that they really had very odd tastes as he thought his scars made him look horrific.

At first he'd thought that they were just trying to wind him up, although Yaujta were not known for their sense of humour when they did decide to play a prank it was always a real doozy and as Aiden had found out when spent quite an amount of time with their species when they'd trained with the Halkrath, but it had become rather glaringly obvious that they had not been joking when he had narrowly managed to dodge the amorous attentions of more than one of the female members of the Halkrath, in fact it had been this that had given him a lot of respect for their combat prowess as he remembered one particular session of hand to hand combat where one of their senior instructors had taken rather a liking to him, she had decided to impress him with her melee prowess by pummelling the shit out of him and pinning him to the ground, the words that she'd whispered into his ear as her heavy frame pinned him to the training mats still sent shivers down his spine and not the good ones.

But he did have to say that none of the Yaujta females he had met there had come close to T'shara in the form of looks, her face was very feminine and her eyes burned with a rich deep intelligence, in fact most of those that he had met in the Halkrath were missing most at least one body part which for some reason always seemed to be either a mandible or an eye and those were the ok looking ones, but despite having been with the Halkrath for a number of years T'shara had all of her limbs and appendages intact, she had her share of scars but somehow they just seemed to add to her already formidable and rather striking form and given all the combat she'd seen she was either really lucky or really good at her job and having seen her fight Aiden was convinced that it was both.

Fortunately, both his and T'shara's lockers were right next to each other so the hobbling bandy legged pair didn't have to make any diversions and headed in a straight albeit very wobbly line to their destination. Letting go of the massive Yaujta female she proceeded to lean on her locker door as he did the same with his, they shared a knowing glance before each of them turned and placed their left hands on the bio metric scanner to the left side of each locker door, a green line of light instantly swept over Aiden's organic hand bathing it in a soft lime green light, "Bio print accepted, identifying Sargent Aiden O'Conner, codename Reaper, Spirit team six, Assassination and Sabotage specialist first class, access granted" a female computerised voice said rather loudly, from his left he heard "Bio print accepted, identifying Corporal T'shara Shadow Sight, codename Inferno, Spirit team six, Infiltration and Tracking specialist first class, access granted" coming from T'shara's locker.

The large metallic grey door in front of Aiden slid open with a hiss, these lockers were more like mini wardrobes than lockers, each of the team pretty much lived out of them so they needed to be pretty big to contain all their gear. But unlike pretty much every other member of the team who decorated the inside of their lockers with pictures of people or places or even posters, Aiden's was completely bare. Spike their tech and computer specialist whose real name was Harry Ranald always made a point of teasing him about this, Harry was a pretty skinny black kid from one of the colonies who spoke with the deepest voice you'd ever heard in your life, which was pretty funny when you saw how animated and hyper active he was. He was the baby of the team at only just turned twenty but he had a mind like a computer and an eidetic memory to boot.

Watching him working on computer code was like watching a composer composing a sonnet, he was recruited when he was imprisoned when he was caught after hacking into a Wayland Yutani space station and turning the place into a giant disco, the kid was ever the prankster even now after having been through Spirit training and although he used to piss the team off quite regularly with his shenanigans, like the time he made Tina's medi comp sing Yankee doodle dandy every time she pressed any button, he was like everyone's kid brother and they were all fiercely protective of him, even T'shara who he was forever pranking in the vainest of hope of making the massive Yaujta female smile even if it was only once, she would be the first to march into hell to beat the devil's arse before carrying him outta there, but then she'd probably be the first to knock him straight back through said gates when she found that her holo mirror had been reprogramed to make her look like a six year old human girl again.

'A bare locker is like a bare heart, you need to fill it with those you love or want to love!" he'd always say, then there was that day he'd had bright idea to hack into Aiden's locker locks and put a poster up inside it, Aiden might have laughed at it, if it hadn't been digital mock-up of T'shara posing in a bikini albeit a really rather good one, the level of detail had been rather astounding, it was so good that it pretty much looked real, the problem was she'd been standing right next to him when he'd opened the locker door, at first Aiden thought T'shara was going to go nuclear and stuff him into his own locker head first, but she just slowly turned on the spot and pretty soon there were loud yelps of 'I'm sorry!' and 'It was a mistake!' along with one final one of 'I was just trying to help! I thought Reaper fancied you and I was just trying to give him a little push, you'd make a great couple!' being heard from around the ship accompanied with the sounds of running footsteps and the thunder of whole lot of angry Yaujta female in hot pursuit.

As he was putting on his skin tight black thermal regulation suit Aiden softly chucked to himself as the memories of that came back to him, T'shara who was doing the same next to him looked at him curiously, "What's funny?" she asked, he shook his head,

"Oh nothing, I just remembered that poster Spike put up in my locker that time" he said smiling at her, suddenly he saw an unusual look in her eyes, it looked like hurt, but it was only there for the briefest of seconds before they returned to normal, then she just made a noise like a humph while looking away from him.

Aiden gave himself a mental slap, he'd realised that he'd probably just hurt T'shara's feelings by making it sound like he was taking the piss out of the way she looked, he'd always been rather poor with women, he had a real habit of saying the first thing that came into his head without thinking sometimes and a lot of the time that was really what they didn't want to hear, he just couldn't understand them or how they felt, it wasn't for lack of confidence or anything like that, he just didn't know how to talk to them or how to read subtle hints or signals that they gave off, it had become the standing joke among the team that not only was he immortal but that he'd spend eternity alone.

As he strapped on his battle armour over his thermal suit Aiden kept glancing at T'shara out of the corner of his eye, he couldn't be sure but he could have sworn that she was stopping herself from looking in his direction, every time she went to move her head in his direction she would seemingly notice and snap her head back the other way, she was definitely angry with him, but for some reason that again he couldn't identify whenever she was angry with him she always acted differently than to when she was angry at any of the others, when she was angry at one of them everyone on the ship knew about it even those in hyper sleep because nothing wakes you up quicker than a Yaujta battle roar, but with him, she would just ignore him.

As he snapped his cybernetic arm through the modified chest piece of the Spirt battle armour he decided that he was going to have to try and make it up to her somehow, he glanced down at his locker while deep in thought, it now only contained his helmet as he was wearing the rest of the Spirit suit as it had been named by the team, it was modular armour made up of snap and lock sections that was covered in what kinda resembled interlocking dragon scales made of Tritanium which was titanium's bigger and badder cousin, while the light weight black scaled armour completely encased the rest of his body his cybernetic right arm was completely exposed right up to his shoulder met his chest where it was sealed to prevent the internal atmosphere leaking. The arm's outer armour was made out of a substance called Duratanium which made even Tritanium looked like wet shit roll, but the stuff was exceptionally expensive and was rare as fuck to get hold of, it was almost exclusively used in the construction of battle ship hulls and reactor cases, but this arm was completely encased in a quarter inch Duratanium skin with all of its internal components being made out of the same stuff, it was almost certainly more expensive than the entire ship they were currently on and every piece of equipment on it, times two.

As he picked up his armoured helmet Aiden glanced at the now apparently sulking T'shara, she was only about halfway through putting on her armour, her pace had apparently been slowed by whatever was on her mind, Aiden searched for something to say to hopefully make up for making her feel bad and in typical fashion he settled for the first thing that popped into his head, "You know what T'shara? Spike did a pretty good job with that poster, I shoulda kept it, I think you'd look pretty good in a bikini" he said with a smile as he walked past her hurriedly as he headed for the meeting room, his pace was so rapid that he didn't have time to notice T'shara's mandibles drop open as she stared at his back with a mixture of confusion and shock in her eyes as he quickly made his way out of the room his heart hammering in his reinforced chest the entire time, well given that no projectiles hit him in the back it must have made her feel better, or at least that's what Aiden argued with himself as he headed up the corridor.

Aiden was the first to arrive in the Ghost's Shadow's meeting room which everyone on the team simply called Camelot, it was circular room which at its centre had a large circular holo-projector which pretty much doubled as a place for the team to stick their drinks on while they were discussing their current job, it was massive sliver coloured table with a glowing green disc in the middle of it and given it was surrounded by ten chairs and the name the team had given the meeting room it just seemed rather fitting that it was just called the round table.

Standard procedure was that none of the operators in the cell was told anything about the job until they reached their destination coordinates, form there the ship would hook up with a comms buoy which would have been left for them with a heavily encrypted set of orders and instructions. Each Spirit cell was made up of ten members, eight ground operators, a piolet who could fly anything that they were given from a fighter to a dreadnought class battle cruiser or even a Yaujta clan ship and a officer who acted as a Sig Int, or signals intelligence officer, their job was to give the team orders while providing real time intelligence and updates using the ship's sensors and anything and everything they could hack into on the ground.

Most people would have thought that the last two jobs would have been the sweetest gigs being on the ship far away from the shit that inevitably would hit a verity of fans, but all Spirt officers were vastly decorated veterans who had cut their teeth on verity of battlefields and sitting in one place was never usually their foray, but it was their vast experience that usually meant that they saw problems before the team did, as for the pilot they would be expected to get the ship in no matter the risk and extract the team for whatever shit storm they found themselves in after the job was complete and if you think flying a couple of tons of bullet and missile magnet into a combat zone is easy or fun then you're the crazy one.

Less than a minute after Aiden had taken his seat Spike bounded into the room, "Reaper how the fuck did you do that!? What the hell did you say to Inferno you have to tell me man!?" he almost yelled as he dropped into his chair next to Aiden, it was pretty much second nature for each of them to call each other by their codenames rather than their real ones, but his words caused Aiden's heart to sink,

"Oh shit she's pissed at me ain't she?" he said with a voice filling with dread, Spike's face broke into a confused smile,

"Pissed? What are you on about man? She's fucking smiled!" Spike almost yelled at him, Aiden looked confused at this,

"What?" he said to check that he'd heard him correctly, Spike's animated rant continued at this,

"I know right? I mean I didn't even think it was possible for Inferno….." he started to say but before he could finish more boots could be heard heading down the corridor towards the meeting room and he shushed himself.

The next two to enter were an odd pair indeed but they were totally inseparable, where you found one the other was never far away, one was a 6'8 mountain of a human male who went by the highly original codename of Tank, his real name was Gregor Haverson and he was a rather gruff and no non-sense Scotsman, his flame red hair and wild beard combined with his fierce blue eyes made him look rather intimidating, but once you got to know him you realised that he was the biggest hearted man you were likely to meet, he was like a living embodiment of the term 'Gentle giant' unless you pissed him off, then he was a living embodiment of the term 'Fucking run'

Tank was the team's weapon smith and heavy weapons specialist and if you weren't intimidated enough by the man himself then you were definitely gonna pay respect to Bertha his pet pulse minigun.

Bertha was a highly customised minigun that he'd made himself by combining part from a smart gun, a pulse rifle and a minigun together into a rather fearsome machine that could easily kick out ten thousand rounds a minute and combined with the smart gun tracking systems pretty much every round was on target.

Stood next to him was Meesa Grey Scale, she was only half the size of Gregor but she was more than a match for him in the form of personality, she was a lively and easily excitable member of the Scalathor, they were a race of highly technologically advanced humanoid reptilians who humanity had encountered shortly after the end of the hybrid wars. She kinda reminded Aiden of a chameleon in her scale patterning and by the fact that her skin seemed to change colour to reflect her moods, it was well known among the team that if it was a red day stay the fuck away.

Meesa also had a small horn on the tip of her snout that curved backwards towards the back of her head, she had told Aiden while they were both drunk that it was for a female to lock her mate in place so they couldn't run away while mating, he'd laughed at the time but had never been able to pluck up the courage to ask her if she was joking since, but to be fair it wasn't like she had to use it on Gregor as the pair of them were practically glued together, they'd met when Spirt team had first been formed and had hit it off immediately, what happened next was probably an inevitability but it still shocked everyone when they came back and found them both naked in each other's arms on the sofas in the common room.

Before Gregor dropped his rather sizable frame into his own seat he made a point of pulling out Meesa's chair for her and he got a very loving smile from his reptilian soul mate in return, she swished her rather long thick tail out of the way before taking her seat at the round table as well, Meesa was the team's assault and breaching specialist, if they had made it she could a figure out how to get into it, "What are ye two wee girlies looking so guilty about over there?" Gregor asked in his gruff highlands accent which only seemed to get higher the angrier he got, a point that Spike had noted and made it one of his missions to get the big Scotsman so angry that only dogs and animals would know what he was saying, he nearly achieved it too when he got the big Scotsman to set his own beard on fire with a modified laser trimmer, the whole team had been singing Burning Love every time they say him they saw him for days after.

Meesa eyed them suspiciously, "I bet they know why Inferno is smiling all over her mandibles out there" she said in her heavily accented English, instantly both Aiden and Spike both started shaking their heads in denial, but before either of them could start even coming up with excuses they were joined with another two of the team, one was a blonde guy with the most piercing blue eyes that you had ever seen in your life called Doug Fowler, he was the team's interrogation and information retrieval specialist, his code name was Picasso simply because he loved to paint in his down time and he was rather good at it, pretty much every one of the team had one of his paintings of them in their bunk, well all except for T'shara who had threatened to shove his brushes and oils somewhere that it would be rather difficult for Ice to extract them if he even tried, she really hated having her picture taken.

With him was Whisper or at least that was her code name, her real name was Misellia Vall Blue, she was the quietest and most reserved member of the team and most of the time if you noticed that she was there it meant that you were looking at her to begin with, she was so quiet that getting more than a sentence out of her was deemed to be quite the privilege among the team, hence Whisper. For some reason this had really surprised everyone when they'd first met her, it was probably the misconception that a cat girl would be somehow playful and rowdy, but she was so completely the polar opposite that it had kinda taken everyone aback, she kinda reminded Aiden of one of the long lost species of Earth called a bob cat, it was probably the little plumes of tan coloured fur that stuck up off the tops of her ears on top of her head, she literally looked every bit like a bob cat that had learned to walk on two legs, she was a member of a species called the Felenis who humanity met just after they'd met Meesa's race. Her bright golden eyes seemed to bore right into your very soul when she looked at you which is what made everyone begin talking nervously when she looked at them, she was the team's sniper and long rang combat specialist.

"Whatcha all talking about?" Doug asked as he and Whisper took their seats at the round table,

"We were betting that one of these two know why Inferno is smiling" Meesa said causing both Picasso and Whisper to look at Spike and Aiden,

"I bet it's something to do with Reaper" Doug said,

"W-W-Why would you thing that?" Aiden stammered nervously, Doug grinned broadly showing his perfectly white teeth off,

"Simple because out of anyone here you're probably the only one of us who could pull that off and let's be honest it's definitely not gonna be Spike is it? Look of pure rage, yes, look of I'm gonna rip your arms off beat you with them then shove them up your battered arse, most probably, look of when I catch hole of that skinny fucker who put party poppers in my hyper sleep bunk again then I'm going to shove a party popper up his arse and fire him out of an airlock, definitely, but smiling and looking happy, no sir not a chance, that's definitely all you" Picasso said still grinning,

"Hey!" Spike said sounding wounded,

"Yea I agree" Meesa said,

"Aye definitely him" Gregor said,

"I also agree" Whisper said which caused everyone to look at her in surprise not only because she actually spoke but she joined in with a team discussion outside of planning stuff, which was even rarer.

Aiden sighed heavily as he could feel every set of eyes in the room on him, including Spike's, then an idea hit him and he lifted his cybernetic arm up and placed it elbow down and hand up on the table, "Alright then yes, I do have a pretty good idea why, but if you want me to tell you you're gonna have to arm wrestle me for the answer otherwise it goes to my grave" he said smiling, every set of eyes in the room all rolled in exasperation as one,

"Who in their right mind is gonna be stupid enough to arm wrestle you laddie? I mean I'd be tempted to give it a go if I hadn't seen you punch through a Tritanium blast door and pull the fucking guy through back through the wee hole with that fucking thing" Gregor said,

"And why is it going to take an arm wrestling match with you for you to tell us?" Meesa asked,

"Because I'm gonna need someone a hell of a lot stronger than me to protect me from her wrath if I tell you" Aiden said with a smile.

Just at that moment the last two members of the ground operators in the form of Ice and Inferno appeared in the doorway, Inferno was no longer smiling but her first glance into the room was directed at Aiden and a look of puzzlement and curiosity settled on her face as she saw him apparently challenging someone to an arm wrestling match, suddenly a mischievous smile passed over Meesa's reptilian face and Aiden saw it, instantly his heart sank, "Just the person we need, if there's anyone here who stands a chance of beating him it's you Inferno" she said, both her and Ice moved around the table to their seats but her eyes never left Aiden,

"Beat him at what? And why?" she asked curiously as she sat down,

"Well Reaper here has a secret that he won't tell anyone, but we all really want to know what it is and he's promised to tell us but only if someone can beat him at arm wrestling" Meesa said in a rather silky voice, Inferno glanced between them then at all the expectant faces around the table all looking at her, but Aiden's eyes seemed to be screaming silently,

"What would make you think that I am stupid enough to even attempt such a thing? Even if I had not witnessed him rip that blast door off its mounting and throw it at that suicide bomber on Allisia prime with my own eyes I would still not wish injury to myself or to risk injuring a valued team mate before a mission" T'shara said in a very matter of fact voice, Aiden instantly breathed a huge sigh of a relief, there were collective groans around the room, but before the conversation could continue two more people walked into Camelot, the first one instantly made very one of them jump to their feet and snap to attention, "At ease Spirits" Captain Francis Carter said in her cold but confident voice, she was a tall strong and very confident looking black woman in her early forties but time had not weathered her looks, she was one of the only two in the room not wearing the Spirt battle armour instead wearing an all in one black jumpsuit like uniform that vaguely showed off her well-kept and very strong looking frame, the only thing that detracted from her looks was the pretty nasty scar that ran from the top of her head right through her right eye to her chin, but even that wasn't even really in a negative way, it was odd but when looking at her the sheer presence she gave off pretty much made it invisible, her codename was Queen Bee.

Behind her was another figure and the last of their merry band, a short, stocky and very gruff looking male with a bald head and the wildest brownest beard you'd ever seen in your life stood with his arms crossed over his barrel like chest, he looked like an angry dwarf from a he looked like he'd never in a million years even fit in a cock pit let alone be the best pilot humanity had to offer, but every single one of them here had watched him pull off the impossible to pull their arses out of the fire more than once, like one time that he landed the Ghost's Shadow on a battle cruiser then took control of it and dived it into a planet's atmosphere to use it as a flack screen to protect the Ghost's Shadow from ground fire while following it in through the planet's atmosphere, his codename was Pegasus but his real name was Duncan Bellwether.

The Captain and Pegasus to their seats at the round table and everybody sat back down, "So what's the job here boss?" Spike asked looking at their Captain with a look of respect painted over his face, she was the only one on the ship that he didn't have the guts to pull a prank on, he'd rather tangle with an angry Yaujta any day of the week then piss off the Queen Bee,

"As of three months ago New Britannia went completely dark, no response to hails or any attempts of communication of any kind" the Captain said in her cut glass accent,

All of those gathered here looked at each other with curious looks before returning their looks to her, "Attacked?" Aiden asked, the Captains eyes flicked to him momentarily before she pressed a button on a small remote on her left arm, instantly a glowing green hologram of the planet New Britannia popped up from the centre of the round table,

"Unknown, but what we do know is that multiple teams from all species have attempted to make contact and have failed and not a single one of them has been heard from again, Humans, Yaujta, Felenis and Scalathor have all sent teams, first off they were civilian aid teams because it was fear that some sort of natural disaster might have befallen them, but almost instantly after the teams set down they were lost, then each species tried standard military but the same thing happened, finally they turned to the special forces of their own kinds" she said clicking the remote so that the image zoomed in to show New London the main capital mega city of New Britannia, "The same thing happened" she said looking at each of them in turn.

T'shara looked visibly shocked at this, "The Halkrath?" she asked looking right at the Captain, she shook her head,

"Lost, but that doesn't mean that their dead people, each of us know the resourcefulness of these teams and their operators, there might be a chance that some of them are still alive down there, certainly I know that if anyone has a chance of surviving whatever is going on down there it would be them, so let's not lose hope or focus here, if the job wasn't shit tough and fucked up to all hell then they wouldn't have called us, we're the best of what each species here at this table represents and we're sure as hell going to prove it" the Captain said again looking at each of them in turn,

"So what are our orders Captain?" Aiden asked,

"Simple Reaper, get the fuck down there find out what it is and stop it, if that's not possible locate any remaining or surviving operators or civilians on the planet and get them the fuck out of there, but your first job is to find out just what the fuck is going on down there" she said with a finality in her voice.

"Intel?" Picasso asked, the Captain shook her head,

"None to fuck all, no comms and no comm uplinks to link into, hell we can't even get into the camera network down there, it's like someone turned off the entire goddamn planet" she said,

"Well all except for that warning buoy telling everyone to stay the fuck away but not saying fuck all else and it be nice if while they were unplugging the planet they could have turned off those goddamn missiles and Yaujta plasma cannons" Pegasus said in his gruff voice,

"So no drop zone then?" Meesa asked looking at him, he shook his bald head,

"Not a chance honey, New Britannia has got the most complex anti-ship flask system that has ever been built, not even a Wasp's fart could make it through that lot" he replied,

"Well there is one thing that can make it through" Aiden said looking at him and for the first time since they'd been gathered here he allowed a small grin to cross his face,

"Aye there is one thing" he said,

"Oh fuck please don't say what I think your gonna say" Spike said looking at Aiden,

"Looks like it's time to break out the Devil's door knockers again" he said,

"Ah fuck I fucking hate those things" Spike said, the Captain nodded approvingly at Aiden,

"Gear up and get ready Spirits, you're going in one hour" she said and with that every one of them got to their feet and headed for the armoury.