The package would consist of two parts; a modified comm buoy which was mostly just the hardware containing the digitized brains of two crew members…. And a drop pod stuffed full of drones.

  Drop pods were a fairly common thing, for the Skulls, so Kyle had seen thousands of them over the years. No FTL capability, usually able to drop once, and get back into orbit once; and every time it goes through that cycle, most of the hardware has to be replaced if it traveled through an atmosphere.

  Aside from that? They were a handy way to deliver a 3-man fire-team to the surface of a planet, and then extract it, without landing an actual shuttle or drop pod.

  The weight they could carry depended largely on the local gravity, and their internal space. And here? The target world had less than .7 Gs, so he could fit as much mass as the container could hold.

  Which… in this case…

  Was a set of three humanoid assault drones; improvised from backup Augment Frame parts, they could accomplish any movements or interactions a human could, an unusually strong human, even, but originally lacked the durability of an actual combat drone.

  Oddly enough, Kyle had seen humanoid drones on the market for sale. Even some with coatings that made them look human, though those… usually weren’t for combat purposes.

  No… he had ‘Augment Frames’ instead. Usually meant to help low-grav or crippled people with heavy-duty work, since he always had to wear one to restrict his own movements, he had tons of spare parts for them, and had pieced together a few of the normally fairly delicate frames.

  Of course… he’d mounted an armored shell to them, which hid a pair of hover-capable assault drones in each torso, and two spider-like scout drones in each limb. Which meant that each of those three drones was actually carrying a set of ten smaller drones into the battlefield… assuming it was in fact a battlefield.

  For Thor and Poisseux, they got a much closer feeling of the experience. While the lag would be terrible, they would be less than a few light-seconds away, while the Sapper was forced to watch from a distance… not risking something as massive as the ship being spotted by a dragon, or a Kraken.

  While Poisseux was, at present, focused on piloting the drop-pod… and the buoy their brains were in… Thor was focused on the combat drones. Checking all of their systems, powering them up… and once all that was clear… joining her in watching the upcoming impact.

  Whatever it was on the surface that had moved, it was next to an enormous cave system. A handy place that a facility could have been buried beneath the surface without even having to dig.

  They were mostly expecting to find some sort of sensor array. An antenna. Something disguised as a rock, or perhaps even a hatch. There’d been no response whatsoever to radio, whether from the planet or from the monsters, so it probably wasn’t a crashed escape pod or ship.

  But as they approached, and saw exactly where the object had moved… they just found an open, empty, cave. At least, from a distance; it was so deep they could only see the first few hundred meters from the outside.

  Poisseux shifted, steering the drop pod just a bit further… and letting her slam into the ground just shy of a kilometer away.

  The pod popped open; three doors flopped down, three humanoid machines popped out… and from Thor’s perspective, it was almost as if he’d just stepped out onto a barren rock himself; going from the neat confined space of the pod…. To an endless expanse of rock and sand beneath a dim star.

  ***

  Thor was focused, primarily, on the first of the three drones. He could swap it out, at any given moment, and a basic-level AI was running the others… but for him, he was treating the first one out as his own body. Just… with a weird level of lag he’d never experienced before.

  It took him a few minutes to adapt; fortunately, the bot was armored, and tripping didn’t matter too much. Even more fortunately, the whole region was covered with nothing but rocks and sand… and the oppressive dim grey starlight was perfectly bright to his cameras.

  They weren’t certain what they’d encounter. There might be an Empire base down there. A dragon. A Kraken. Yet another member of whatever messed-up ecosystem this was. So they’d brought… warheads.

  One for each of the humanoid bots; a breacher, built to fire a lance of superheated plasma as it self-destructed, piercing armor. A sabot; detonating and launching a metal spike at significant speed; and just a bomb. Pure high-explosives packed into a 150mm-wide warhead.

  He was carrying the Breacher; all of the usual thruster package gone, the normal cameras and sensors left on the ground… just an anti-starship munition and a software trigger.

  Speaking of cameras… as he slowly, carefully trudged towards the cave entrance, he sent the smaller robots; the various tiny spider-drones, the cameras started giving him the basics of the nearby caverns.

  Formed by extreme heat in the distant past, they ranged from tiny holes he needed to be cautious walking over… to the enormous, 50-meter wide, multi-kilometer-deep, cavern he was approaching… and which the thermal imaging cameras told him had some sort of internal heat source.

  As he slowly approached the cave mouth, the other two large drones moving off to his left and his right, he could see the temperature gauge rising; there wasn’t much atmosphere, but there was enough to transmit just a bit of the heat into his bot.

  And as he arrived at the entrance, able to look straight through… he could see a faint orange-red glow…

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  Molten rock. There was a pool of magma, buried deep down; and it was surrounded by some sort of odd, black, material… whatever it was, it was moving, and seemed like… tentacles.

  Was this another Kraken, buried in the rock, sticking its limbs out? There were hundreds of slowly waving stalks around the lava, with the tallest a few meters out…

  “Sapper, this is Bjorn. I’ve got line of sight on the stuff in the cave. I’m thinking this is the nest of another Kraken, not any sort of artificial structure. Reasonable chance there’s a second one who lives here… taking a lava bath.”

  The response took a few seconds, thanks to the distance.

  ~Using Bjorn now? That’s fine. Good news, all around. That doesn’t actually look like a buried Kraken, though. Some of those tentacles are coming out from too far away, or from wrong angles.~

  Thor chuckled. “True. On the other hand, it could just be a really big one. I’m gonna start getting closer. It… doesn’t actually look quite the same.”

  He focused. Each of the bulbous black tendrils had an odd purple formation near the end… and as he drew closer, he could see… a mass of loose tendrils; ones that might have been torn apart or fallen off, that looked like the ones near the lava, rather than the ones on a Kraken.

  “....I can see a whole bunch of them near the lava in just… a pile. And from the readings, they’re sitting on top of another heat source. Maybe another lava pool, maybe a living thing. I’m going to move this drone closer to the tendrils. I’m thinking… maybe a sort of plant? Or a less mobile animal. Poisseux, you want to take the flying drones and survey the rest of the cave?”

  ~Already on it. Honestly, I’m not liking what I see. Take a look at assault drone six for a second.~

  Thor glanced at the feed… and blinked.

  One of the drones was already far deeper into the cave system; and its camera revealed… the shells of several smaller dragons, with none of their glowing internal organs or blood visible. There were also bits of metal, including random tools, a few parts… and what appeared to be a couple of corpses in skinsuits. In fact…

  As the drone swept around the pile, more became visible. Not much metal was left; but there were dozens of bodies. They’d come across a graveyard. Apparently whatever was here didn’t have a taste for human flesh, but had grabbed whatever the people were carrying at the time before moving on.

  ~Any indication that any of them might have an intact implant? It would be amazing if we could bring someone back from this.~

  The drone focused in on the remnants of one of the skinsuits.

  It was white. And clearly a uniform. For a moment, he thought this must be an Empire enlisted… until he looked closer. Poisseux saw the badges before he did.

  Even as he slowly moved the humanoid bot towards the lava, Poisseux confirmed it. ~We’re looking at an Alliance crew. And judging by the outfits…. A mixed bag. Civilians, soldiers, and…. Slaves. Judging by the age… these people died during a time when implants were still a middle class and wealthy thing. None of the slaves are gonna have them, but the soldiers probably will, and some civilians, too. If I recall correctly, free implants were one of the selling points the Alliance offered to its soldiers in the early days.~

  Thor shook his head, trying to ignore it. Bunches of innocent people who would never be recovered. And some asshole slavers who probably could.

  As he reached the strange, shaking black and purple tendrils; he could feel the ground a bit softer underfoot; the rock sufficiently molten that he could likely crack it with a hard stomp; Poisseux was taking control of the other two humanoid drones… and having them start working their way towards the pile of corpses and debris.

  Looking at the tendrils up close, his plant analogy seemed more apt. They weren’t coming through the molten rock; they were attached to it. Perhaps these were plants that grew by absorbing the heat and material of the molten rock?

  He looked over at the massive pile of them over to the side. If that were the case, how did they end up over there?

  ~Bjorn, Poisseux… you’ve got a problem. Apparently these Kraken things aren’t always in stealth. There’s one approaching the cave you’re in right now, and fast. You’ve got maybe two minutes.~

  Thor grimaced. Fuck. He looked around… and then at the pile of dead plants. “Alright. I’m gonna set the breacher to detonate and hide. If this thing’s anything like the dragon you gave us the specs for, its only gonna hurt if I shoot it into the thing’s open mouth, but its at least a chance.”

  ~I’m gonna start decapitating corpses. I’m definitely picking up a few implants in here, so we’ll have someone to ask questions later… and either sell to the dubs or back to the Alliance. If we want to actually get any of them out, its gonna take some time, though. We’ll need a distraction.~

  ***

  Back on the Sapper, they were watching the videos from all the drones, with the one from Thor’s bot centered up, and the one from the assault drone that had come across the trash heap, with all its corpses and debris, above it.

  And then yet a third projection, showing the Kraken; either the same one that killed the baby dragon earlier, moving remarkably fast, or one extremely similar; was currently settling in, slowing down, on a trajectory that would leave it impacting the planet not far from the cave mouth.

  All of its tendrils were spread out, but there was barely any atmosphere, so it clearly wasn’t for maneuvering purposes.

  Kyle shook his head, watching. “Alright. How do we want to handle this? We can drop into the same spot we’ve got that buoy, launch a bunch of missiles, kill the Kraken, and see if we can dig up whatever’s left…. But there might be another one, waiting in stealth to nab us. We didn’t built the ship to survive that kind of impact, but it would actually probably take it better than the dragon did; their scales are softer, but more heat resistant, than our hull frame.”

  Elise was looking over her own console. “...Honestly, the implants aren’t worth risking our lives over. Maybe if it were a dub crew, but Alliance? Ehh. Besides, do we want the Alliance to know about these beasties?”

  Barry chuckled. “On the one hand that’s true. But the dubs will pay plenty for them. Plus… whatever those plants are? We should grab a sample. And if we could kill that Kraken, there, where we can see it? Who knows, the secret to how its stealth works might be in its flesh, easy to figure out. Bring back a pile of implants from witnesses, a chunk of Kraken flesh, some of that plant stuff… all the proof you could need.”

  Kyle sighed. “And I can pickup that dragon egg I stranded in darkspace before going back. Hell. Getting a sample of that Kraken would make a huge difference. But can we kill it?”

  A soft crackle as Thor chimed in, with a few seconds of delay. ~I don’t think we need to. Can you just arrange a distraction?~

  Kyle blinked. “If this thing likes heavy metal as much as the dragons, easily enough. I have a few decoys just for the purpose.”

  ~Launch one. Now. We don’t need to retrieve these bots, but we do want to get that drop pod back.~

  Kyle glanced at Elise… who was already typing into her console. “Got a distraction on the way. We’ll see if it takes the bait. Why?”

  ~This place is a nest. There’s eggs mixed into this pile of debris, that look exactly like those dragon eggs you showed pictures of. So either its a whole clutch of dragons, or these two critters just have similar-looking eggs.~