Greyloch.

Several minutes passed by, no movement. Darkness and unknown extended from one end of the closed trench to where-ever it lead to. Ordlo's goggles could only show him black eternity.
His suit and body sat motionless on some oblique angle, he tried to move, the suit convulsed, armour and boost circuits straining against the extreme weight laden upon his frame.

Though his Infantry Armour persisted, Ordlo made an effort to take a break and let his breath escape into what little space existed between his body and the snow engulfing him.
To his surprise, his exhaled breaths began to slowly melt away some of the densely packed snow after the strange structure shape-shifted and trapped he and Tyrone within its confines.
For a moment, the major toyed with the idea of using his radio link to contact Tyrone. But his left arm seemed to be utterly buried, and would take some effort to free in order to begin a transmission frequency boot.

Some time passed, Ordlo wriggled and squirmed, when the snow wedging him in place beneath its extraordinary weight, moved precariously and seemed to flow off in clumps into the darkness of the tunnel. As though some shift in gravity had upset the otherwise settled behaviour of the icy casket engulfing him.
The Major struggled in darkness and in desperation, the respirator clamped around his head offered restricted movement. He panted and heaved in an attempt to dislodge snow.
To his right he felt snow drifts give way, seemingly subverted by forces unseen in the passive gloom.

He felt the snow upon which he rested finally slip away, Ordlo rolled with it, arms pulled free tumbling several metres as drifts splashed and sifted all around. Ordlo halted, horizontal but in an open space with clear space around him. Enough perhaps to rise.
Ordlo stood, but as he stooped at the waist he was suddenly hit with a large object, forcing him downward again and both he and the shape landed in a jumbled pile of limbs, snow, and scattered debris.

While still in an open space, Ordlo reached over his shoulder for the switch to a lamp. In the bright, LED-fed beam, the Major froze, then panicked:
What had knocked him over was the twisted metal-encased carcass of a creature with spindly appendages. He threw the thing off him and crawled away.

He stopped again, curious now, he crawled back to the inanimate thing, wanting to inspect its repulsive frame in the lamp-light. A Holcroid. Dead. Frozen.
A clump of snow landed on the Holcroid plating, which Ordlo brushed off, examining the plate-metal. At its edges, the metal was fused to the aliens’ flesh, a deep green hue sprawling on the exposed parts. The creature had four long, uniramous limbs connecting to a central torso. The upper half of the body clad in the same metal casing as its limbs.

As he panned the light over the Holcroid's prone and long-dead form, he had found the cause of death. While Holcroids were essentially a melding of organic and machine parts, which resulted in the latter dominating the former, the organic layer is still utterly fragile.
The cause of death was not being frozen to death or hypothermia, but a gaping hole in the creature's wide angular head.

~ Someone has had fun in here. ~ Ordlo mused. The Holcroid's upper appendages, six of them, appeared to be entirely mechanical. Three jointed, articulating, 'arms' shouldered into the left and right flanks of the torso. The top four limbs ending in sharpened blades, the top two longer by approximately a metre and a half. The two base limbs, which were fused to the icy surface of the metal surrounding the torso, featured connective tubes, or wires linked into the spinal assembly of the torso. These limbs Ordlo noticed, housed a large boxy tube each. Inside, a short barrel extended to the rear of the armature supporting it.

~ Jesus. Who could nail this thing, and dodge all of this without being either skewered or melted? ~ He reasoned. The Major rotated on the powdery floor to angle his wrist-pad's scanner array over the metal components stuck to the creature's flesh. A few seconds later, he was able to discern what compounds the Holcroid was made of. For the most part, all the metal was only crudely labelled as being a large percentage of chromium and magnetically-polarised iridium alloy.

Without a full spectrographic analysis, the scans Ordlo could make would only reveal partial content as deduced by the limited database at his disposal.
Satisfied. Ordlo gave the hole in the creature's head one more inspection, he instinctively gave the bladed instruments and cannons a wide berth crawling away.

Ordlo swapped the lamp-light for the side-arm torch, and infrared overlay in his goggled HUD. Sweeping torch-beam left and right, safety still on, the TASTRAS officer had to find the Sergeant and warn him. Fast.
Now and again, Ordlo would switch between infrared and thermal-tech overlay, in short bursts to conserve power.

There came a loud burst of static and a readout of radio connection establishment in Ordlo's ears and infront of his eyes. The noise bounced, trembled and died.
"Tyrone? Sergeant! Sound-off!" Cried Ordlo. Pressing the tac pad screen, willing it to find the frequency again. The sound returned in his ears, this time muffled grunts and static sizzled in non-rhythmic fashion. Finally, the Sergeant coughed and spoke:

"Tyrone here Sir, agh, I can't move, can you locate me?" Tyrone's voice laden with strain and discomfort, helped Ordlo process the transmissions point of origin.
"I gotcha. Sit tight I'll dig you out." Ordlo swore as an obscene squeak effused from the tiny speakers near his ears. He trudged over to Tyrone's position, and flicked the lamp on his shoulder back on, holstering the R-11, and commenced a flurry of motions to remove snow from Tyrone.

Relieved to be in one piece, Tyrone emerged, snow cascading from the powered suit encasing his stiff frame after bearing the weight of a small mountain on his torso for a prolonged period, Tyrone was understandably fatigued.
"Still burying in Sergeant? Ambushes work better when you can perform it." Ordlo chuckled.
The pair exchanged laughs and dusted snow off. Though, Tyrone still secretly distrusted the Major.

A creeping sensation returned to Ordlo. Recalling the encounter with the dead Holcroid, he and Tyrone rediscovered it in the blackened void in which they were all bound. Tyrone remarked at the precision shot made in the Holcroids cranium. From it, he established whoever killed it couldn't have been more than ten to twelve metres away. At that range, such marksmanship is only encountered in TASTRAS Designated Marksman ranks and CMS Regular Defense Force Snipers.

~ There had to be a unit inside this place. ~ Ordlo concluded.
"Whoever our resident sharpshooter is Tyrone, we had best try and make contact. Where's your weapon?"
Tyrone ignored the Major briefly to say:
"The weapon used to put this thing down wasn't a rifle. It's a high calibre handgun, a sidearm. It was fired in close." Tyrone, at which point, unclipped a compressed, black hard-case. He pressed a panel on a tiny indented display screen, the ends of the case slid out and released to unlock the contents within. Tyrone opened the canister. Inside, five separate components lay in shape-moulded, plasti-foam. The Sergeant worked with refined speed and precision assembling receiver, stock, barrel, magazine and sighting equipment.

Ordlo said nothing, only kept watch sweeping his R-11 slowly around the walls scanning for movement. The Sergeant, now armed, finished his tentative analysis of the alien corpse.
He cutoff radio communication for a moment while he scrutinised an intel file stored in his headgear's data cache. It was a comprehensive information packet detailing the known Holcroid substrates.
The one Ordlo had found, or rather had found him posthumously, was designated as an 'organic/cybernetic bio-synthetic symbiont.'
Unaffectionately dubbed the Slasher. Based on its preferred method of engaging enemies. The bladed scythe-limbs adorning its mechanical upper body.

Tyrone crouched reading and pondering the biology, synthesis, strategic engagement deployment and tactical prowess utilised by Holcroids as vaguely documented by the file in-cache. He stood up and hoped the part about 'swarm and pack-hunter behaviour' wouldn't factor into their current situation. Some time ago, Tyrone had passed through some terrain on SX-02 with his Platoon, all the time his patrolling units would report movement or noise, Skittering sounds half-muffled in the wind, sounds like electrical discharge and weird tones would often come up. Morale seemed to waiver, until an operator reported seeing something, a dark, spiny shape disappear behind a snow drift.
Shortly thereafter, the ferocious blizzard that now shrouded the planet reached a climax.
Tyrone wondered if his Platoon were lost still or dead after being ambushed by isolated groups of Slashers. He wondered if Holcroids were even being affected by the storm. Maybe even generating it somehow.

Tyrone tapped out a template reminder code on his wristpad to sequence out bursts at regular intervals of twenty-four hours. This way he could remember to inform Control, that Objective "Low sentiment" was accomplished. He documented his findings in high-resolution captureframe images, and tapped the radio console.
The Sergeant extracted the magazine from his rifle, and began loading high-velocity diamond-tipped anti-materiel rounds in it from a pouch at his waist.

The silence inside the elongated trench begged to swallow any, and all sound. The Major made the only sounds in spite of the noiseless eternity, of scuffed feet and stretching fabric as his fatigues moved with him.
"Major? My platoon and I were separated six hours ago, I have no reason to suspect any members of my fireteam are in proximity to where we are now, but we should begin shortwave beacon bursts, and transponder IFF signal broadcasting."
Tyrone rammed the full magazine into the rifle's receiver, then checked spare ammunition, full magazines, and sighting.
"Copy that Sergeant, beaming positional data now. Maintain radio contact, maintain readiness and stay alert. If we don't attract friendly attention by lighting ourselves up like a fucking burger-stand, hope like hell we ain't bleeding for the sharks."

Tyrone flicked a switch on a small boxy attachment on the right side of his weapon and a long thin beam of red laser light cut into the dark. Tyrone tapped the side of his respirator helmet, the familiar whine of IRNV goggles ensued, dominating his view parameters with a sickly green hue. He overlaid the Infrared with Thermal Detection. The pale yellow, patchy blue figure of Ordlo stood waiting for him to signal readiness.
"Ten, Sixty One Major." The soldier raised his weapon to shoulder height and advanced past the Major watching his six o'clock.

"One sixty, ten out." Replied Ordlo. He silently backpedalled with Tyrone moving in slow advance in the same direction the pair had done an hour ago before the trench had closed them in. The dangers of moving through potentially hostile terrain with no intelligence, no structural layout to advance by, and no backup, meant that the mission parameters could be defined simply as they had been since they landed on SX-02... FUBAR.