Free Dead Worlds (Necrospace Book 2) by Sean-Michael Argo

knocking his own forearm against the ganger's, which Samuel did, a warrior's greeting in downspire culture that Samuel and Harold had learned after a night out drinking with Vol and his Rotted Kings brothers.
     "We be legends now, chummer," said Vol with evident satisfaction. He nodded at Samuel, then turned back to the gate while Boss Marsters and Ben struggled with the rusty crank wheel. The keening sound of the metal grinding on metal filled the chamber.
     

BASIN DEEP
     
    Vol called them Stalkers.
    When the first of them stepped into a pool of light cast by one of the work lamps, Samuel understood why.
    The creature before him was humanoid, and perhaps, at some early point in its evolutionary journey, it had been a human being. Elongated limbs made it adept at climbing, a skill it displayed by scuttling across the pipelines overhead like some four-legged spider, dropping down to face the Reapers and cor-sec troopers head on.
    The thing’s flesh was a pale white and even though its eyes were mostly hidden beneath large, handcrafted goggles, the marine could tell that the pupils were huge, which would be perfect for life in the quarter-light of deepspire. Leather breeches and patchwork armor made of what looked to be hides, scrap metal, and wire twine covered its emaciated body.
    Samuel couldn’t tell which was more intimidating, the overwhelming stench of the stalker or the bizarre looking gun clenched in its bony fists.
    Despite all that they had been through, the Reapers and cor-sec troopers both were nevertheless stunned by its appearance. That pause gave the creature the opportunity it needed to raise the strange gun and fire. A ball of bright orange slime exploded from the muzzle of the weapon and streaked towards the Grotto soldiers, leaving wispy trails of orange gas in its wake.
    Samuel snapped out of his shock enough to hit the deck and roll to his right, a move that kept him out of the projectile’s path, but dumped him into one of the sluice pits surrounding the drainage pylon. The marine shouted as he plunged into the foul, knee-deep liquid, scrambling to rise into a firing position. He locked onto his target just as it fired a second round at the Grotto soldiers. The marine began drilling it with disciplined shot groupings. The first three rounds knocked the creature back against the far wall with smoking holes in its chest, the next three shredded its abdomen, and then the final three caught it in the head and neck as the creature bent over in pain before collapsing in a heap.
    All around him Samuel could hear the throaty cough of the strange slime guns, the familiar staccato chatter of Grotto small arms fire, and the sounds of dying soldiers. The marine hoisted himself back onto the deck to join Bianca in laying down suppressing fire while Holland did his best to help the wounded. Samuel fired several rounds at another of the scuttling Stalkers as it tried to advance over the edges of the sluice pits, though in the quarter-light he wasn’t sure if he’d managed to score a kill.
    “Dammit, this stuff is corrosive!” cursed Holland as he examined a dead cor-sec trooper whose body was already being eaten away, then rushed to the next trooper only to find her dead as well. “Okay, people, whatever it is, if it gets on you it’ll eat a hole straight through, so take care how you position your body if you get splashed!”
    Samuel could see by the corroded rents in the decking and the bodies of three cor-sec troopers that whatever these Stalkers were shooting was absolutely fatal if they even managed a partial hit.
    The cough of the guns was unmistakable and from the sound of it, there were a dozen or more shooters out there in the quarter-light. The marine spent his last few rounds pushing another Stalker back into the darkness in a cloud of blood before he dared survey the unfolding battle at large.
    The vast drainage pylon chamber was awash in the dull caustic glow of the slime guns as the projectiles