After recalling his drone, the operator began to prep it once more, this time making sure its lights were working properly. There was a very high chance of it becoming scrap once it flew in there, but it was a much better solution than going into yet another cave blind as they did before.
The drone was now ready and prepped; the operator threw it from his hand and let it fly on its own. Using his operating tablet, he directed it manually to go into the cave.
Pressing a few buttons, he shared the visual feed of what the drone was seeing with the others.
"Pay attention; if you spot anything important, speak," Ridge said as he focused on the video feed.
Already, the drone had passed the entrance that Ridge was able to scout with just his light without going further in himself. The cave was covered in more of that moss-like substance that was clearly a telltale sign of the fungi species.
Instead of the winding tunnels, this cave simply began to go down, not a very steep decline, but enough that Ridge wouldn't have been able to notice it when he was initially looking in.
Going down, the silent drone continued scouting. There were no signs of any more spots of blood, but there were some more pieces of the suit that they found in the entrance area of the cave. It didn't take long at all until the drone entered a bigger cavern within the cave. Not as big as what they saw when fighting that Queen Fungi, but decent nonetheless, enough for living.
As soon as the drone entered, the entire group spotted a few figures hunching over, likely chewing on some kind of animal carcass. The drone, while making no sound, did have a flashlight that easily gave its position away, and so once the light shone on these figures, they noticed it immediately.
"Enemies, they look like simple parasite fungi, likely from the frigate a while back. Looks like they were the ones we were tracking, though it is somewhat surprising that it's only two," Ridge said with furrowed brows.
"Recall your drone quickly," he ordered.
The drone operator responded quickly with his actions, and the drone began to fly back quickly. Before it could exit the cavern, the video feed went black, and the operator's tablet screen went red.
'MISSING CONNECTION'
"The drone has likely been destroyed; there's something in there that we didn't see," the operator told them.
"Let's go in," Ridge said with a stern face.
"Before we enter into that cavern, however, I am gonna try and flush them out with flames; it doesn't seem like a large enough space that they can just ignore it," He continued.
Leading the way, the others followed behind him, stepping all over the moss as they walked inside. What they didn't notice, however, was that with each step they took, the moss imperceptibly vibrated ever so slightly, seemingly sending a signal all the way back to where it grew out from.
Making it quickly to the decline within the cave, Ridge held his fist up and stood up to aim his gun down. Just before he could unleash the flames, he noticed some quickly charging towards him from below. Making a quick step back as if in slow motion, a blade-like object sliced past his face, just barely missing him.
The others reacted quickly, firing their plasma rifles. The cave quickly lit up with the color of the blasts. Ridge quickly swapped his flamethrower for his sword, and just as the creature was slicing down on him once more while dodging the blasts, he held up his sword and blocked.
Staggering back slightly, Ridge noticed quite quickly that this fungi creature was quite strong, much stronger than the others he had fought closely on the ship a while back. It was also multiple times faster.
Blocking another attack, he retreated slightly before swinging his own attack.
With the blasts from the plasma rifles, a metallic clashing sound also echoed throughout the cave.
Screams suddenly sounded out. Ridge had no energy to pay attention to them; the fungi he was fighting had been injured slightly by the plasma rounds, and he wanted to take advantage.
Swinging his sword down hard, he managed to break through the defences of this unknown fungus and cut it, causing it to scream slightly. During this time, he also managed to finally see what it was. It closely resembled a human, which seemed to be a similar theme from this species, but instead of regular arms and feet, there were blades and a pair of legs that closely resembled some kind of animal.
"Redirect fire from this thing; I can take care of him. Take out the other enemies," He shouted while continuing his assault.
The others quickly redirected their efforts and fired at the few soldier fungi attacking from below. It was a group of ten that were attacking, so in reality for them it wasn't a big deal to hold them back. Though they did curse the drone operator in their mind. After all, they only managed to scout two enemies.
The soldiers charging up from the cavern were picked off one by one, though a couple of them did manage to almost reach the top during a hold in firing to reload or cool the weapons down slightly. When that happened, the scouts on top simply kicked them down.
Ridge, who was dueling up top, slowly but surely took his time to press the advantage. With every swing of the opponent, he would sidestep only slightly to dodge and grind his blade against theirs. Directing their energy to hitting the ground, while he angled his blade to cut into the enemy.
Even with two limbs as swords, Ridge had noticed quickly that it seemingly had a dominant hand when attacking, so he made sure to take advantage of that and attack its seemingly non-dominant side.
Cut after cut and block after block, not even two minutes had passed when Ridge finally let out a shout and dodged a heavy attack by the fungi before swinging his sword to decapitate it.
With a thud, its head and then body fell over, quickly wilting into that familiar brown when plants die.
Letting out a breath of exhaustion, Ridge put his sword away and, using his now sore muscles, equipped his flamethrower again. The others had finished firing their last shots and eliminated the rest of the enemies. Luckily, they weren't a problem at all, just common grunts, it would seem.
"Stand back," he said before pulling his flamethrower up and pressing the trigger.
'WHOOSH'
The orange-red flames spat out at a rapid pace and quickly filled the cavern below. It also caught on the moss on the grass, which quickly burned black and wilted before turning to ash. Waving it left and right, he made sure it filled the entire cave before turning around.
"Step behind me; I have to take care of this moss up here as well," He quickly informed them as he was turning around.
They, of course, obeyed and once again got behind him. Rinse and repeat. Ridge did the same thing below, inside the actual cavern as well, just in case there were some things still left alive.
This repeating action took a good ten minutes. Having the men sweep the cave one last time for anything interesting, they found nothing. It would seem that the fungi had just carried over the bodies and consumed them to presumably create that new fungi spawn.
At least based on the theory of the scientists back at base, he assumed so. After all, they needed matter to create new spawns, and he didn't see any animal carcasses this time around.
Back at the opening ridge sat at the entrance to rest. Although he didn't get injured, luckily, he was extremely sore and tired.
The sky had already begun to once again turn dark, so while resting he ordered the others, "We'll rest here tonight, set up a fire and a perimeter. We'll have a rotating watch as we sleep. Two at a time while the others sleep."
"Yes, sir, I'll grab some firewood and then take first watch," one of the scouts announced. Another also volunteered, and the two walked off to gather the wood.
The others, besides sitting down to rest, cleared the ground of their makeshift camp and began setting up some small lights for a designated perimeter.
Generally speaking, this planet seemed to be relatively warm. Hence, the fire wasn't necessarily needed for the cold, or anything like that, and those small lights would work perfectly for, well, light. Still, Ridge wanted the fire primarily to help ward off any animals, and the fire itself would actually emit a lot more light than those small lights, so it was useful.
Not to mention it gave the others something to do. Ridge thought to himself before chuckling.