The crawler slowed to a halt only twenty or so meters from the edge of Far Point Crater. A nasty dust storm had just come through the area and sand was everywhere, piled against every rock and boulder. Everyone climbed off and began taking samples of the dirt because Loyd's mom wanted them. Loyd stood at the edge of the crater looking down into its depths.
"Ragnarok! Come here, would you?" Loyd called, as panic churned in his stomach.
"What is it-" Ragnarok turned and froze, staring out into the crater. "How many are there?!" he asked in a strangled whisper.
"I count eight hundred, give or take," Loyd answered, softly. "Think they're friendly?"
"What are you two looking at?" Sara asked, coming closer and looking out at the crater. Her eyes widened as she realized what she was looking at. "Oh fuck! How many of them are there?!"
"I count roughly eight hundred. Do you think they'll be friendly?" Loyd asked, still hoping they weren't all about to die.
"I don't know. They look like they're shut down," said Sara, squinting and leaning forward. "None of them are glowing like the ones we already fought. Should I get the one we have in the hangar? She's not finished accepting her new limbs yet."
"No," Loyd said, shaking his head slowly as his eyes danced over the massive gathering before them.
The crater was filled with black possessed Crystalids, all curled into balls and missing their signature glow. The sands of Mars had partially filled the crater but it was obvious that these possessed creatures had just arrived only a few hours ago.
"What do you think pulled them here?" Sara asked in awe.
"I'm not entirely sure but it looks like we're not the only ones here," Loyd said, pointing at a cluster of white domes near the middle of the crater.
"Who would want to stay in the crater? Especially surrounded by that many possessed," Jim asked walking up.
"Why don't we go ask them?" Griffon asked, hopping over the edge of the crater and sliding down its wall.
"HEY! ARE YOU CRAZY! WHAT HAPPENS IF THOSE THINGS WAKE UP AND TEAR YOU APART!" Madeline screamed. "I can understand Loyd doing it but now Griffon too? What happened to your guys' sense of self-preservation?!"
"The military," Loyd answered, saluting as he followed Griffon with a grin.
"When in Rome," Sara cried, also jumping over the ledge.
"Seriously?!" Madeline cried, watching Ragnarok jump as well. "Screw you guys, I'm going back to the crawler!" She flipped them off and stomped back to the crawler shaking her head. Was she the only one who was sane?!
Griffon landed on what he thought was just an outcropping in the wall. The shock of him landing, dislodged the mechanical abomination from the sand and the two slid the rest of the way down the slope. The thing underneath Griffon began to move, a glow coming from under its overlapping armor plates.
"Shit! Run!" Griffon cried, jumping off the Crystalid underneath him.
The rest of the curled up possessed began reactivating. They stood up, one by one. Their glow had become unnatural, seeming to suck the very light in from around them. Their claws were covered in black iron sand and arcs of electricity danced along their claws. The static charge that had arced along their backs before, had been replaced by a dark field, much like their new glow. Instead of red, their glow had become an even deeper black, where even light could not escape. Where their eyes had been, were now hollow black pits.
"That's not good!" Ragnarok said, landing next to Griffon.
"You're telling me! I slid down on the back of one of those things!"
"Well, they aren't attacking for some reason. How could they be absorbing the light like that?" Sara asked looking around.
"I'm not sure but whatever it is, I kinda like the effect," Loyd said admiring the monstrosities before him.
"Everyone, stay away from them!" Tiny yelled at them. "I've only seen that once before! It means they're about to fold the space around them and obliterate anything caught within the area!"
"And where did you see this?!" Loyd asked, quickly taking a step back.
"One of the ships that made up the fleet I had been with, reversed their tunneling matrix and dissolved the swarm home system!" cried Tiny, panic not so evident on his face, but obvious from his tone of voice.
"How big a blast is about to happen here?!" Griffon asked, stepping back as well and looking around at the hopeless scenario.
"They should only suck themselves into oblivion but I'm not entirely sure!" Tiny shook his head.
"What happens if we kill them before that happens?" Ragnarok asked, flexing his hands and curling them into fists.
"They might stop the folding process but I don't know."
"Worth a shot," Ragnarok said with a shrug and charged one of the black possessed Crystalids.
When Ragnarok tried to grab the thing's head, he only caught thin air. The possessed had folded space around itself and repositioned Ragnarok's hand to an area above it.
"The hell?" cried Ragnarok confused as he pulled his fist back and looking at his hand as if it had betrayed him.
The possessed stabbed Ragnarok in the torso, opening holes before its talons even made contact with Ragnarok.
"Well, that's problematic. Loyd, do you mind remote controlling me?"
"Not at all."
Loyd remotely connected to him through the artificial Swarm connector inside Ragnarok.
There was no pain from the five holes in his chest. The possessed pulled its hand out of Ragnarok, closing the holes behind it. Loyd crouched Ragnarok and swept the legs out from under the possessed Crystalid, who seemed confused.
"You can hit them where the field isn't present. Around their ankles and the center of their chests!" Ragnarok screamed, punching down through the possessed and ripping out a new chunk of crystal that had not been inside any of the other possessed.
"What is that?" Sara asked.
"This is the folding device these things use, I think," Ragnarok said, tossing it in front of Loyd. "They don't seem to upset that I just killed one of them."
The other black possessed Crystalids backed away from Ragnarok; moving almost like they were fluid or gas.
"This looks like black quartz. This stuff is definitely radioactive! Look at those green sparks coming off it!" Griffon said excitedly. "Ragnarok, this didn't hurt your hand when you touched it, did it?"
"Not that I can tell. Why do you ask?"
"Black quartz is made near uranium. And I know that uranium normally doesn't react well with crystal."
"Well, my hand seems fine. I'm just confused as to what happened with it stabbing through me without actually hurting me. Loyd, why haven't you taken remote control of me yet? I want to kill as many of these things as possible!"
Loyd stood there, his eyes glossed over as though staring into the distance. His suit covered the rest of him, but it was still obvious something was wrong.
"Loyd? Are you alright?!" Sara asked shaking him.
All thoughts of what the possessed Crystalid had done, warping space around Ragnarok was forgotten as Loyd turned and looked at them with a dull and far away look in his eyes.
"The creators have fired their weapon at this system," He said distantly.
"What? What creators? They have a weapon?" Sara asked, looking back and forth between him and the black creatures around them.
"They can connect to our network with that rock, the black quartz-like rock. It should be powerful enough to get us to the space elevator from here. I'm not sure what they meant when they told me that but it doesn't sound pleasant," Loyd said, barely able to stand. "The white domes in the middle of the crater are abandoned. They came here because it was safe from the dust storms."
"Are you alright? You look like you're about to keel over," Griffon said, helping Loyd stand by throwing one of Loyd's arms over his shoulder and grabbing his waist. It didn't work too well, as Griffon was shorter than Loyd by a good foot.
"I'm fine, I just got mind probed by an alien monster is all," Loyd drawled, seeming to nod to himself. "This sort of thing seems to happen a lot around me."
"If there's nothing but them down here, then I say we get back to the crawler," Sara said.
"Yeah, we should get ready to go. We've already spent too much time here," Loyd said.
"What do you mean we've been here too long? We just got here ten minutes ago!" Linda, Loyd's mom exclaimed from the top of the crater.
"Then, my sense of time's messed up now, too," Loyd grumbled, stumbling up the wall of sand and almost falling, dragging Griffon back down with him.
"Ragnarok, get him to the medical bay," Sara ordered.
"Yes, ma'am."
Ragnarok picked Loyd up and jumped up the sand wall. The black possessed Crystalids returned to their low power state. Loyd lost consciousness and entered a dream state.