For two weeks they had slaughtered their way across the plains.  Constant streams of low level enemies had poured out of the underground structures, throwing themselves into the fray with suicidal abandon.  Occasionally a larger beast would surface but nothing to match the level fifty three they’d put down on their first day.


    A network of maglev trains had been built to link a series of forward positions.  Each of them was heavily fortified and staffed by swarms of drones.  They had cleared most of the lowlands and were now looking up at the hills that had been a smudge on the horizon before.


    “That’s a lot of broken architecture.  Why would slugs have built so many housey-things?” asked Evie.


    “They’re towers, not dissimilar to the ones the Void-slugs have built.  Different colour though,” said Flash.  The hills were constructed of broken towers, similar to the ones the team had been wrecking as they advanced across the flatlands.  They had been scraped across the surface and piled upwards.


    John could see the convoluted structure, composed of decomposing buildings, had been scraped together.  The landscape around the hills was covered in long sweeping grooves where some overgrown bulldozer, that had probably resembled a giant slug, had swept the now sandy plains clean.


    John glanced through the rubble.  Deep below the central hill a huge chamber had been built.  It almost looked like the jills had been built to provide a bulwark against airborne or orbital attacks.  There was no chance he could get at the thing lurking below with his rocks-from-god tactic.


    On the far side of the hills the ground fell away into the ocean.  It ended in colossal cliffs that ran for hundreds of miles in either direction and fell for nearly half a mile to the purple waves.  The underground tunnels maintained their aversion to the sea water and stopped dead at least two miles from the coast.


    “Well.  It’s not a big bastard at least,” he offered with a faint note of optimism.


    “What level?” asked Reg grumpily.


    “No idea.  I can’t identify stuff through stuff mate.”


    “Have to assume it’s higher than anything else we’ve bumped into.  Any little ones?” asked Vic.


    “A few but again not many.  I think they’ve thrown everything they had at us,” said John thoughtfully.


    “What’s on your mind, Saint?” asked Felicity.


    “It feels too straightforward.  We’ve got to be missing something.”


    “The other continents are uninhabited.  They aren’t even really continents, just archipelagos and the odd larger island,” said Bob.  “I think these guys don’t like the water.”


    “So how do we do this?” asked Evie.  “Let''s just kill the bastard and move on.  Leave the portal open and the extra drones can set up our holiday homes or whatever we’re going to use this place for!”


    “Sea life here is interesting.  I’ve sent some samples back to Pete and he’s interested in more.  Same with the Void beasts.  His new pet monsters are getting pretty evil looking.  This is also a great place to set up industrial plants that won’t be attacked when the Void gets to Earth,” said Bob.


    “Aren’t Mars and the moon already in that category though?” asked Sam.  Raoul nodded in agreement, his wider family had been relocated to Mars when the Carnival left Earth all those months ago.  According to Bob, Ryn and the others passing messages through the portal over four years had now passed back home and they were nowhere near having enough Essence to jump past the Monarchs.


    “We don’t know if they’ll hit off-planet sites.  Mars and the moon bases are pretty well hidden, half a mile underground, but the bastards will have space ships of some sort and we don’t know what their tech is capable of.”


    “So do you think the Void has ships like Kipragtsek?” wondered Evie.


    “We don’t know.  The voidliners just seem to dump us out or make us teleport off ourselves.  We haven’t seen any orbit to ground vehicles on board.  Have we?” Flash turned to look at John.


    “The bloody ship is full of weird shit I don’t recognise but I haven’t seen anything that looks like a dropship to me,” John confirmed.


    “What are we going to do about the Thing Beneath the Ground?” asked Raoul.


    “Go in kill the fucker,” muttered Reg.


    “Thanks Captain Obvious.  How exactly are we going to go about doing that?” Raoul countered.


    “Send the wee puppy in then yon Sassenach can blip us in.  We kick it’s arse into the next life.  Bob’s yer uncle.  No offence Bob.  Your lack of genitalia sometimes slips my mind,” Reg snorted.


    “So most of the time you’re consciously thinking about his genitals or lack thereof?” asked Evie.


    “I’ve got more balls than any male present.  Across various bodies.  Can we leave my bio-bits out of this discussion?  This is serious!  We can’t just penetrate the unknown, genitals or not.”


    Evie snorted and Raoul’s shoulders began to shake.This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    “Sod off.  Maybe sending the dog in is a good idea?” Bob offered.


    “The same old tale of human arrogance.  Am I disposable to you? I lack male genitals as well, is it something to do with that?” the dog demanded.


    “No girl!  You’re just usually the best choice when it comes to probing the unknown,” said John.  Evie’s shoulders began to shake as well.


    “Why not just bombard it?  Might take a while but you’ll dig down to it sooner or later,” said Felix.


    “Sooner or later,” agreed Felicity with a nod.


    “It’s too deep and the hills will just compact as they get smashed.  They''ll end up forming another layer of armour over the top,” said John, shaking his head.  “That-” he waved a hand at the towering landscape, “-is all chunks of towers like the ones we battered over the last couple of weeks.  It will pancake down for months before we start chipping away at it.”


    “Scoop it out with portals?” suggested Flash.


    “I can’t move the portals.  We’d need to shovel the stuff through.  Nah, we’re going to have to go in and do this one manually.”


    “Why not flood them out?” asked Zeeg.  All heads turned to lock onto the dog.


    “We don’t have that much water.  This place is tectonically dead so there’s no volcanoes.  What can we flood it out with?  Our tears of frustration?” asked Evie.


    “No, sister.  It amazes me that humans managed to luck into opposable thumbs.  I am not sure you earned that privilege. We are surrounded by a vast swath of water that is apparently filled with something that the void creatures do not like.  Why not use that?” replied Zeeg primly.


    “Huh.  Good point girl.”  John carefully brought his armoured gauntlet down to ruffle the giant dog''s ears.  Her tail wagged happily.


    “Hey, do you think it will work on all Void creatures?  Have we just found a superweapon for the invasion?  It’ll be like Day of the Triffids but with alien seawater!” said Sam brightly, miming aiming a fire hose in front of her.


    “It’s worth investigating,” said Bob thoughtfully.  “John, think you can flood this thing out?”


    John checked through the tunnel network and the confused rubble piled above it.


    “If I let the water pour over the highest hill it should filter through fairly quickly.  The whole structure is riddled with fissures, it’s like a giant sponge.”


    “So it’ll absorb it all?” asked Raoul.


    “No dude, it’ll drip through.  Imagine a giant sponge made of non absorbent alien coral perched on a massive ant hill,” said John.


    “That makes more sense,” nodded the big guy.


    “Seems like it’s worth trying?” asked Vic.


    “What if it ends up flooded and we need to go in afterwards and fight underwater?” asked Sam.  “Underwater combat isn’t fun.”


    We can deal with that when we get to it.  John can always open a new portal to drain the place,” said Flash.


    “Only if a certain brave canine goes down to give him line of sight,” grumbled Zeeg as she lay down and rolled over to beg for tummy rubs.  Evie went over and obliged the demanding dog.


    “I can see it from here.  You won’t need to get wet,” John reassured her.


    “So we try the drowning option?” asked Bob.  A round of agreement followed.


    “Fine.  I’ll go diving and find a good spot to pull the water from,” said John in a resigned voice.


    “Can’t you just use your fancy red eyes?” asked Evie.


    “I’ll appreciate the peace for a few minutes,” John replied as he vanished.


    He moved down into the depths via a series of blips.  As the light faded he instinctively reached out with his mind to switch his helmet''s vision spectrum to low light but realised it was a waste of time.  Bob hadn’t even built that functionality into his latest armour so he just squinted and flexed some unknown muscles to adapt the weird vision Magic had “gifted” him.


    The sea shimmered around him, currents trying to drag him down.  His armour weighed over a ton but he fell through the depths faster than he thought he should have done.  Strange jellyfish-like blobs or life drifted past, a few coming over to investigate him.  They drifted down around him as he fell deeper until the water became too cold or the pressure too much and then they darted towards the surface on squirts of pressure from beneath their skirts.


    John was scanning around religiously.  The deeps tend to be relatively uninhabited, at least on Earth, but the things that do live down there tend to be impressive.  Visions of giant squids and sperm whales kept flashing through his mind as the surface grew ever more distant.


    The depths were quiet, the only sound was the echo of his breathing in the confines of his helmet.  Fortunately his armour was rated for much higher pressure than he was being subjected to and he didn’t have to experience the creaks and rumbles of contracting metal.


    There was no natural light at this depth but he could still see perfectly.  He took an executive decision that this was deep enough, the pressure would force the water through sufficiently quickly that the network of tunnels a mile above him wouldn’t take too long to fill.  He blipped back to the surface, appearing next to the team and shaking off the excess water that had come with him.


    “That’s weird,” said Vic.


    “You’ve seen me teleport enough that I’m assuming that’s not it?” asked John.  Evie, standing next to Vic pointed down at the ground where the splashes were fluorescing a virulent pink where they had landed on the dirt.


    “Huh.  Weird.  Shall we crack out a barbeque or something while we wait?  I call dibs on working the grill!” asked John as a portal appeared in the distance and began gushing purple water onto the tallest of the hills.


    “That’s pretty!” said Sam.  “Reminds me of that scene at the end of Voyager into the Black Hole!”


    The team turned and watched as the water hitting the hill was also glowing pink as it cascaded down the side of the crushed masonry.  The torrent continued and the wave began falling behind the lower peaks.  John checked and it was soaking through, gradually filling the cracks and tunnels.


    “We might be here a while,” he muttered.


    “Open a couple more?” suggested Flash.


    John did so, spacing the portals out so three purple waterfalls fell separately before they flashed to pink and began to roll down the hill.


    “Yeah, that should do it,” he confirmed.  “Now, barbeque time?”


    “We’ve got some food left over from last night.  No need to cook.  You can bring it over if you want though,” said Evie.  “I could go for a bite.”  An array of cooked meats and vegetables appeared in pots on the ground.


    “Love, any chance you could…” John waved a hand at the pots.


    “Do you need me to clean them afterwards as well?” laughed Vic as flames sprang up around the base of the pots.  Once they were steaming happily in the chill air the team cracked their helmets and slipped off their gauntlets to grab bowls and spoons.


    “This ish nishe!” rumbled Raoul, awkwardly working around his breastplate to bring the spoon to his mouth.  The ground rumbled and they all glanced around.  “That washn’t me!” Raoul coughed as he hurriedly swallowed.  “I wasn’t responsible for that!” he reiterated.


    “What the hell was it?  This place has zero tectonic activity,” said Sam.  “Right?  That is what you said Bob!”


    “It was and it’s still true.  John?”


    “Hmm?” asked John, glancing up from the bowl he was holding at a strange angle to try and see into it around his bulky armour while he scraped out the last of the meal.


    “What can you see?” demanded Felix.


    “See!” echoed Felicity urgently.


    John glanced around as he licked the spoon clean before blipping it back to their last base of operations fifty miles away.


    “Crap!” John blipped the whole team back to their previous base in less than a second.  “Take cover!”