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It took a couple of days for my ankle to heal up, but that wasn't to say that I was just sitting around. I spent most of my time helping Sarah and Tyler around the lounge and discussing how we would attack the tower with Martin in control of security. Allen had shown me a map of the Kojak Aquifer System and I had seen something. The tunnels ran in a sort of curved, jumbled grid, but a grid none the less. There were four, clearly defined tunnels that went around the entire perimeter of the lab and branched off into about 400 smaller tunnels that connected to each other, or stopped in dead ends. There was one tunnel that came up in the basement of the tower so that's where I was headed.

"Looks like you'll get to visit the Kojak in all it's glory after all", James said as I marked out the route on my PDA.

"Looks that way", I said.

"You sure your okay for combat?", Allen asked, "Martin is nuts, but he's also crafty and a stone cold killer, he's got Ranger training and he's not scared about getting his hands dirty."

"I'll be fine", I said, "count on it. Now what we have going on down there?"

"The Kojak was used as a Marine Biology lab as well as a way of harvesting minerals from the rock and water for chemical research and to use water from to cool the individual labs back up generators. It's mostly just rock, glowstone and blue algae down there, but there's a species of bi-pedal crabs down there that are highly aggressive. As for the presence of Chemical 240 or Number 12? Who fucking knows anymore."

"What about security forces?", I asked.

"Minimal", Allen said, "all the synthetics send any information they collect to the Cluster 300, which stores and reviews it to improve bot placements, behavior and strategy. Right now, the 300's telling me that all the bots are in the exobiology and Gene Splicing section of the lab. I'll see if I can hack into the camera's and I'll radio you if I find anything, but until then, Martin is kill/capture."

"I vote kill", Matt said, "man tried to blow the chip out of my head."

"I'll pop one in the man's dome for ya then", I said, "and one extra for blowing my ship up."

I grabbed my vest from the couch and slipped it on. I grabbed the FAL and checked to make sure it was loaded before setting down on the table and slinging it over my shoulders.

"You ready for the biggest paycheck of your life?", James asked.

"After all the shit we been through?", I asked, "I'm doing this for free."

"Stay safe Skyline", Sarah said.

"Yeah", Jacob said, "Listen to the lady and come back in one piece."

"You kidding?", I asked, "Martin is toast."

I grabbed the FAL and left the lounge. I walked down to the end of the hall to the door where I'd entered the basement the first time. I walked down the stair case to the steel floor that had been flooded a few days ago, but was now dry. Allen remotely unlocked the huge steel door that lead into the aquifer and I stepped inside.

The Kojak was the single most amazing piece of a planet that I'd ever seen. The cavern was 20 feet or so up and extended back as far as I could see. The walls consisted of water weathered white and gray granite with huge diamonds jutting out from them. The water was glowing a dim blue and the glowstones in the ceiling were glowing an aquamarine color that blended in soothingly with the white granite and crystal clear water. I could see the Blue Algae plants growing right out of the solid rock in the bottom of the pond river that was being fed by a water fall originating at an unseen point swaying with the movement of the water. The falls were giving off a mist that had put a sponge light structure in the granite around it. The Kojak was truly an amazing, almost mystical sight.

"Jeez guys", I called into the radio as I started forward, "when you said this was beautiful you weren't kidding around."

"Told you", Allen said, "before I became chief and they brought in all those synthetics, I was posted down in the Kojak. Nice place and tries constantly to put you to sleep, but all the water will soak you by the end of the first hour of your 12 hour shift."

I laughed, "at least it's not soaked in your own blood. Be happy about that."

Allen sighed, "I'll just do that then."

I shut off the coms and then turned to my PDA, according to my maps, I would turn down the first tunnel to the right, follow it all the way to the end, and then go to the left, where I would follow that tunnel and enter the basement of the tower and find my way up from there. I put my PDA back into my vest and continued to follow the tunnel. I soon came to a somewhat more narrow passage that had two tunnels branching off it and a third archway that led into a huge main room. It was so amazing that I couldn't help but stop and admire it.

The main room was some 100 feet in every direction. Down in the middle was a huge lake that went so deep that the natural light from the glow stones went from bright around the edges of the lake to an intense, dark navy blue in the middle. There were two huge pillars of white granite in the middle of the pond with a small lab station in between them, forming an arch of sorts. There were two palm trees growing out of the solid rock with their big, bushy leaves near the brightest of the glowstones and there was a giant water fall feeding the lake pouring from the granite ceiling.

"Wow", I said to myself, "now that is something."

I pulled out my PDA and snapped a picture before quickly returning to my mission. I followed the tunnel down into near black nothingness before I started to ascend again. I followed a long, dark path, using my flashlight in one hand, my PDA in the other, and the Primal Combat instincts and skills that every Xenomorph was born with, the ability to ditch all weapons and fall back on your own body as the weapon, on red alert. According to the PDA, I was 100 feet from my next bank. At about 50 feet distance, I began to hear what sounded like someone walking around in rubber boots full of water with a sponge for a sole. I could also hear heavy breathing sounds and smell a watery, wet tin like smell, something I'd never smelt before. Allen had said that there was a species of humanoid crab living down here, so I assumed that's what I was hearing. I exchanged my PDA for my Automag and continued to follow the path marked on the map. About 20 feet from where I needed to be, my light found one of the alleged crab people.

It was about five feet tall. Small, but it made up for with it's two foot wide claws and heavily built, armored body. It had two extra arms with smaller, six inch wide claws on each one underneath each of it's main arms and there feet consisted of two, rock like spikes and they had a very bony, spiky looking tail. It didn't sound very happy either.

"Damn", I said aloud as I raised my handgun. I let off three rounds the first two were eaten by it's natural body armor, but the third one broke through and knocked a big chunk of flesh out of it's way and sent a green slime everywhere. There was no exit wound, so my guess was that the armor in it's back stopped it or the creature's flesh was so dense that it absorbed the round a little like a sponge. Either way I knew I hit something vital because after the third round hit, it fell. I waited about a half a minute to see if it would try and get back up, but it didn't, so I kept going.

I entered through the hole in the granite wall and discovered a small, wooden elevator that seemed to be running on the momentum on from an unseen water fall. The elevator looked old, like it had been there for thousands of years. The wood carried a musty odor and the texture of it on my hand mad me think it was birch. It had a light brown, almost tan color to it. The elevator bucket was composed of five, four inch thick logs with notches cut into them on each side, which in turn were roped and possibly nailed to the five on the next side. The bucket formed a hexagon and the base of it was one big wooden slab. There were two thick wooden beams that were nailed and roped to the bucket and another cross piece at their summit linking them, forming what looked like a basket. There was another amount of rope curled around the top cross piece that was wound up to what looked like a stone pulley. There was net of rope and metal parts in the small, glowstone lit space above the basket. There was another two pieces of birch wood next to the basket that had been nailed together to form a lever. I pulled it down and the basket gave a lurch before it slowly descended. It took me through a completely black tunnel that the flashlight could barely light up. After about a minute or so of slowly winding down, the bucket stopped and I turned on the flashlight, stepping out as I did.

I was in a huge square room that was being held up by cobblestone and wooden pillars. There were broken clay pots everywhere and I even thought I could see what looked like a shrine and a few animal skins hanging on the wall. To my left was what looked almost like a small black smiting station. I could smell old charcoal and what I thought was just hardened metal, a remnant of the people who were once here I guessed. In the back of the room were old torches that stood above a small doorway and I could see more glowstone light on the other side. Not my kind of place to live. This must be thousands of years old. I stepped out of the basket and walked a meager two feet before I was faced with a large drop off. I could take the fall pretty easily, getting back up would be the hard part. I pulled out my PDA and checked the map. My little red dot said that I was right underneath the tower and the RFID for the entrance was pinging only about 300 feet away. I stuffed my PDA into my vest and jumped down.

The second my feet hit the floor, there was a sound like a diesel engine starting and then the sound of electrical motors spinning up. Suddenly my dark cavern was bathed in LED light and I could hear solid granite crumbling away underneath was most certainly diamond studded tungsten drills.

I felt my breath leave my lungs as the wall in the back of the cave crumbled away and a massive, iron tank rolled over the boulders, crushing them into a fine powder. Their were two huge, four foot diameter drills mounted on the front of the tank with three, huge spikes on them that were spinning like fans. The tracks on the monster looked like hammer forged steel and the entire thing was covered in LED lights. The paint job was jet black and the drills still held worn traces of crimson paint. The massive tank lumbered through the rubble of the wall and slowed to a stop before closing the drill fans to make two, giant stone boring bits that would tear through my Chitin body armor and flesh like it wasn't even there.

"What is that thing!?", I yelped.

The tank's drills detached and bored into the stone beneath me. In the light from the tank's headlights I could see the drills punch through the wall to my side and shoot out, lucky for me they were just far enough apart that they would miss me, but I could have reached out and grabbed a hold of their lDirve Lines if I wanted to. The first two times the bits struck at me missed due to them being far apart. The second time they surfaced tough, they were side by side and wide open. They shot from the wall as I took my feet out from under me and dove to my back as the deadly drills just barely missed my heart and throat. After missing their second attack, the drills returned to their tank and flew open, beginning to spin up, their IDrive electric motors giving off a terrifying hum as the tank backed up. It was going to charge me, pin me to that wall and turn this cave into a Xenomorph blender, so if I wanted to keep breathing, I had to find some form of cover.

In the lighting from the tank's LED's I could see two small ledges that had been covered by the goliath's bulk when it was drilling, if I could get up there I could protect myself from those massive drill fans. Of course the tank could might just charge as I started running and I wasn't too comfortable playing a poker game where loser losses his life, but it was gamble and possibly live, possibly die, or don't gamble and be pureed.

So I took it.

I ran for the ledge as the tank continued to back up. I managed to climb up and get my tail out of the way just as the beast charged forward, so quickly and ferociously that I damn near passed out from the adrenaline kick. The damn thing knocked over all the stone structures in it's way and sending chips of stone and boulders the size of my head hurling through the air. Many of them hit the wall with such force that they exploded like hand-grenades, requiring me to keep my head down.

I climbed up onto the second ledge which was just high enough to let me walk right out on the top of the tank. In the middle of the pop riveted, hardened tungsten armor was a grated vent, exhaust by my guess. The spaces between the bars weren't very big, but they were just big enough to drop a frag down. I pulled one out of my vest and pulled the pin off it at the exact same time that the tank decided that it wanted to back up. The drills closed up and the tank lurched backwards, causing me to lose my balance and fall of the tank. I'd say that letting go of the grenade and not knowing where it went was bad enough, but I was lucky enough not to be crushed underneath the track. I pulled myself up off my stomach and turned again to face the tank as it sent it's drills deep into the stone floor.

"Oh for crying out loud", I whimpered as I panned around the room for the drills, "where did that damn grenade go!?"

A half second later the grenade went off, bringing down one of the cobblestone supports. Down around the tank and starting in a small stream of water. Not good. If that tank knocked over that many more of those, I'd be so royally screwed from the all the water that would gush in here. I was deep enough now and judging by the path I'd followed, I was right under the massive lake that was so deep that it absorbed light. I swallowed, If I didn't stop this Iron Juggernaut on tracks where it was, it would keep drilling until the solid granite wasn't anything more than a stiff sponge.

The drills appeared for a fourth time, but this go around, there was only one. It was right in the corner where I was standing and had a straight shot for me. It shot out of the wall and I quickly stepped out of it's path as the second one came through, right beside the first. I dove to my back and narrowly avoided having my stomach drilled out of my gut as the beefy tungsten bit bashed into one of the cobblestone supports and shattered it like glass. More water poured out of a crack above it. I swallowed. I needed to blow this thing to kingdom come.

The tank's sent it's drills in for another go at me, repeating what it had done with single drill attacks, but reversing it, sending them at me from another direction. I managed once again to avoid the lethal bits and the tank retreated for a second charging attack. I ran for the ledge, once again barely making it as the tank charged forward like a Cheetah pouncing on a rabbit.

"What is the upside to shit like this!?", I yelped as I climbed onto the tank and reached into my vest for another grenade. This time, I pulled the pin off and forced it down the exhaust port as the tank started to once again backpedal and block my only escape route. I jumped off in front of the tank and made a splash as I hit the ground. There was about a centimeter of water on the stone floor now, which meant that the holes the tank had drilled in the ground were already flooded, that was scary in it's own right, but considering that these were IDrive rock crusher drills, it was terrifying.

The tank's drills once again churned into the stone. This time though, they were coming from both directions of attack, one behind me and one to the side. One of them was closest to me in the corner of the room, while the other one came out in front of the tank itself. Judging from the way it had been attacking me, each drill was going to follow the rocky wall as an attack pattern, which meant this time it could get me with both drills and grind me to a pulp. The drills shot forward and I jumped out of the way as they retreated and came out right beside where they had been a few seconds prior. They shot forward, I dodged and they retreated, pacing down the wall as they went. When the drills were hugging the walls again, they retreated to the tank and opened up, the tank however, did to retreat, it stayed where it was. Fear set in and I found myself looking for any demons I had left. If that tank came at me with those monster boring bits flared open then there was no way I was getting away from it, it would be like someone putting me to a meat grinder.

The drills closed and shot forward, it was sheer luck that I snapped myself back in time to get out of the way. The bits buried themselves in the rock, causing the entire room to shake. Water began to spew from around them. In that split second, The cracks in the ceiling became gouges and then holes. Water came rushing into the room as the tank pull it's drills from the wall and a geyser opened up. Water came rushing in, sweeping me off my feet as if someone were flushing a single piece of toilet paper. The tank's head lights went out, the drills stopped as the water gushed and poured from the holes it had made. What was worse was that my lungs will filling with water as I hadn't been able to close my mouth. The torrent carried me up over the tank and down a hallway until I entered another glowstone lit room with a giant hole in the middle that was acting like a sink drain, the water spinning around and around before flushing itself down the hole of black nothingness.

Normally Xenomorph's are good swimmers, but that's when the water doesn't take us by complete surprise, sweep us off our feet and fill our lungs almost all the way with itself before we get a chance to close our mouths. The current carried me around the room until I hit the ground, threatening to flush me into the hole of no return. In a last ditch effort, I sank my claws into the limestone floor, only to have it brake on me. The current promptly threw me into the hole and forced me down what was probably 200 feet before I smacked into something that felt like metal. The surface pulled up and the water flushed me into a room with a grated floor with a fan underneath it. I lay there for a few seconds before the water level receded and I was able to get a breath and cough the water out of my lungs, some of my acidic blood coming up with it. I lay there for a few seconds before I heard boot steps. I tried to get up and see who it was, but I was so winded and my chest hurt so bad I was rendered immobile.

Seconds after I heard the first step, Dr. Martin was standing over me. He was wearing all black with a tan plate carrier and his labcoat on over it. He had his handgun strapped to his leg and his rifle from a single point sling at his side.

"Glad you could join me", Martin said in a welcoming, yet still cold, voice, "now we can get to know each other better."

The last thing I saw before blacking out was an AR-15 stock crashing down on my face.