Swaths of green mist coated his visor, thickening in seconds and sliding off, like raindrops on a speeding car’s windshield. “Status check?” Zubren said. SKIES ARE CLEAR flashed in bright red on his visor’s screen. Zubren breathed a sigh of relief. As long as the green mist didn’t find a way through his exosuit’s vents he’d sleep well tonight. He dove through wave after wave of the terrestrial spore clouds until he spotted the legion of Crawlers writhing along the charred plateau. Against the black, their mass of bright orange hides stood out like a flow of lava. He fixated on a selection of the Crawlers. “Optics, magnify by fifty,” he ordered. A ping of acknowledgment rang in his ear. A single Crawler, resembling an enlarged version of a common desert scarab with grittier pincers and an elongated thorax, showed up in the corner of his HUD. From a series of statistics, he picked out the height: one meter. Still a threat to a field operator, the Union’s first line of infantry defense against the Crawlers.
