"Cover?" Leilah responded via her helmet's comms. She opened a video feed for a moment and spun, transmitting the image of scrawling violet vine-analogues festooning the fungus matted corridors like wet arteries. The vines were becoming more moist as well, and Leilah's sensors were reading volatile hormones suffusing their vascular tissues.

"Yeah right." Leilah snorted derisively. "Do you see any cover Captain? Don't worry, I'm probably safer than any of you. This organism will respond to the most immediate threat, which is your team."

Sensors were already analyzing the new organic compounds, and in this case her assistance wouldn't speed up the process. She'd sort through the data her algorithms yielded later, when the entire team wasn't in jeopardy. Leilah hoped the pirates had the skill to combat the central mass. They probably did. After multiple cycles of refining terrestrial battle doctrine, and years of playing catch-up to the Vaneijin sector's technological average, the ADD continued to suffer defeats to alien mercenary bands at more than a forty percent rate.

Still, while the pirates dealt with immediate dangers, Leilah was thinking ahead. What conclusions could she draw about the organism based on her data so far?

She could make an educated guess based on what she'd seen of the "plant's" morphology that its spiral growth pattern would hold true universally. Instead of the vines meandering radially from the center, like plants on Earth, the vines should swirl outward from an axis perpendicular to the local plane of gravity. If that was true then the organism's body interlocked the architecture surrounding it, penetrating any weaknesses in the decking. Leilah could also safely assume that the organism would grow toward the gravity well whenever possible in order to conserve energy. Which meant that it also permeated unquantified layers of whatever direction constituted down.

So what have I learned? Leilah asked herself. The creature is vast. The creature is hooked into the Castigation's structure for an unknown quantity of meters. The creature is capable of moving its projections with alarming strength. Oh fiddly hell.

"Captain? If that battle of yours lasts for too long you're going to have to start cutting vines, and I mean double-quick. I'm only estimating here, but I believe that there's an excellent probability that the organism could rip apart the entire terrain of this region. I mean a catastrophic collapse farther than we've even explored yet."

"I'd rather meant back at the shuttle, though I see you've abandoned that position." the Captain responded as Eva streamed an update from her helmet camera. A broad smile crossed her lips, far from the front lines and stationed near the team's emergency exit, and when she'd realized the team was in danger rather than saving her skin she'd come running towards the danger. How impetuous, how very daring, how absolutely delectable. Of course, if she actually had launched the shuttle she imagined she'd have had to make an example of her, freelancer or no, but it was still a sight to see such bravado from a member of the support staff.

The bark of a battle rifle laying down suppressive fire told her that the vines lining the ceiling were tearing their way free of the ceiling, their color shifting subtly from deep violet to a dark red that bordered on black as veins pumped greater quantities of alien adrenaline through the blasphemous creature, prompting spontaneous growth as atrophied muscles flexed with new vitality, the rubbery exterior stretching to accommodate the tendril's new girth.

"Cleanse this hall!" Weaver snapped, pulling the blade over her left shoulder free, a shining arch lashing out to hack through a reaching vine as it flexed and twisted at her. Thick, clotting blue-violet sludge spattered over her white voidsuit, streamers of green squirting over the top of it from a vascular tube running down the center of the tendril. The pulpy flesh flexed strangely, causing spiney protrusions to slide through it's tough skin, the quill tips dripping with the thin green fluid before a gout of flame belched out and torched the limb.

"Understood!" she snapped at the comm, the tension of being surrounded by a single entity that was becomming by more dangerous by the second tinging her voice. "Bob! We need those breaching charges you're carrying. Kikatien, Sarthin, Lankin, get ready for close quarters combat and Lo-G maneuvering."

"What are you scheming?" came the artificial voice she'd correctly identified as Sarthin's before, beady eyes and a long tapered snout looking at her through his oblong helmet as his wet glistening flesh turned a variety of psychedelic patterns.

"Simple, really." Weaver said as a dozen broad black tubes clattered to the ground, "Bob" expelling the contents of his thick, gritty gelatin-like interior out through the artificial membrane of his alien voidsuit. Pulses of red and blue light strobed over her in time with the energy weapons scathing life down another angle of the hallway, punctuated with the bright yellow flare of the flamethrower, "We fan out and use the gravity repeller to ascend the chamber. Then, we use these charges to blast him free of his primary appendages, the fire should've scoured any tendrils of their sensory nodules so it'll be half blind in there."

"Taking refuge in the eye of the storm ... it's risky." came the buzzing response of the diminutive semi-insectile Kikatien.

"Are you afraid, bug?" Lankin snorted, his nostils flaring derisively as his lips peeled back.

"I didn't bring the best away team I had because I expected this to be a cake walk." Weaver said, passing the explosives out to the team, the deck-plating rolling as something shifted under them, "Besides, at this rate the station won't hold together long enough for us to reach the shuttle. Kill or be killed, gentlemen!" she punctuated her statement be sliding the other three blades free from their sheathes.

“Captain, if you’d let me amend that plan slightly, I believe I can give your team a chance to destroy the central body without sacrificing the supportive limb structure.” Leilah spoke hurriedly, in tempo with her breath. She was sprinting toward the central chamber.

Her plan took on detail as she approached. Asking permission was simply a formality, there was no time to spare waiting for Weaver’s reply. Leilah rounded the hallway’s latest curve at a lean, her suit’s footpads gripping the floor with engineered traction.

“I need one of those charges to blast a hole in the deck.” Leilah explained. “You can only knock out the opponent’s exposed roots. I am almost certain the majority are sunk below its central body, so it can still trigger a collapse. But if I can infiltrate the natives' control system I can use it to open the center up so it can be destroyed.”

Lankin hissed at the sound of Leilah’s static-wracked voice in his earpiece. A scientist had no business suggesting battle strategy. He switched off her channel imperatively as he reached the repeller’s graviton field. Purposely toppling forward, his legs raised above him and he fell upward against the curvature of the chamber’s dome.

A yellow icon appeared in Weaver’s HUD next to a clipped photograph of Lankin in profile, magnified for a split second to make identification easier. A quick motion of her eye brought up the details, and she realized that Lankin had cut Leilah out of his comm’s net. Not merely her audio feed, but the entire link between them including the data feed from the chip she’d given him.

Two thoughts occurred to Weaver then. The first was that Lankin, her subordinate, had directly disobeyed an order. He’d have to answer for that, but this wasn’t the time.

At least he isn’t hesitating, was her second thought as she watched him take the lead into the chamber.

Neither consideration stopped her from assessing Leilah’s plan. She brought up the tactical map and saw that Leilah was en route and quite close, within a hundred meters. If nothing else the xenobiologist displayed confidence. But confidence doesn’t rescue a doomed strategy, and Leilah’s depended on quite a number of assumptions. It made sense that Lankin distrusted it.

“ETA…less than thirty seconds.” Dr. Eva gave the tense update.

The assault team advanced with a combination of mechanical teamwork and frayed-nerve reflexes. Tendrils and vines withered in their path. Bob’s omnidirectional weaponry sizzled encroaching vines which attempted to flank the party. One by one the charges were set on the largest, least mobile of the monstrous plant’s limbs. But it was concentrating its efforts on them. Flagella thrashed near the pirates blindly, feeling for their vibrations, tasting their trail. The perilous, thorny masses were converging.

“Do I have that extra charge or not?!” Leilah shouted into her wrist. A section of twisted hallway crumpled and fell beneath her feet, and she dove into the central chamber. Weaponless, she gestured at the ceiling, jumping and waving. Thunder and lighting sprayed from the pirate team overhead, but slowly the sheer mass of vines was threatening to blot out the show.

“Detonate!” Weaver commanded. That ought to buy some time.