If you slip and don’t get up in time?  The crabs climb you and strip your flesh to the bone.  If you climb something to escape the crabs?  They climb it and get you.  If you try to double back when you’re abducted and get to the portal “early”?  You get crabbed.

So why not use explosives, one might ask?  They tried that on the third incarnation.  And they found that disturbing the ground too much causes crabs to burst from the ground and swarm the nearest ambulatory non-crab target.

The survivor of that demo team was the one who coined the term “crabocalypse”.

“So, the plan is that we act as a scouting rearguard when the  next wave of abductees comes through.  There’s a thirty-second window of opportunity.  We’d use ATVs, but if you put too much pressure on the ground, crabs come out and pincer the tires and get in the engine and it’s all terrible.  So, they have these fat-tire rickshaw things that usually don’t disturb the locals too much.  Anyone who needs a break gets time in the rickshaw.  We jump in, tank through the crabs, give the DRT time to chivvy the civvies, and try to find the damn core once we’ve bought them time.  Any questions?”

"Sounds simple enough," Sara nods as she checks a few reinforced straps on her gear (rated to withstand crab-force pinches). "If the core is anywhere underground I should be able to spot it within the first few minutes. If not, I will need to be a lot closer. At least I should be able to tell if the big crab has it, if we catch sight of it." 

Tim is similarly checking himself!  And his checklist.  “Last time around, they thought the big one was guarding the core instead of hosting it, but we try not to bring explosives in anymore.  Um.  Except that I have a standard horde-clearing technique.  I crank on my augmentation to ten to failure and I sort of blow myself up a little.  I’m going to hang onto that, just in case.”  He very respectfully pats a trio of grenades hanging onto side of his MOLLE rig.

"That sounds like it may just result in further crabs," she notes, raising a brow at him. 

“Historically speaking, yeah?  But as long as I don’t have more crabs on my face it’s a step in the right direction.”

"I guess that's fair," she is covering a smile again. 

"Are the rickshaws motorized? Or are we going to be pedalling the whole time?" 

“Pedal power.  They think the crabs get aggravated by vibration.  But mostly we get to walk, we’ll get a lift from the DRT ops if we need to rest.”

"Well, let me know if you get tired," she teases, "I can carry you for a while before we bother DRT."

“You’ve been training, huh?”  Tim’s mental checklist hiccups a bit as his magazines aren’t standard.  Or standard for him, either.  “I actually am going to buff all of us a bit going through, we can bring in more rickshaws if we can do one rickshaw per op instead of two rickshaws per op.  I don’t plan on knocking myself out, though.  Sorry to disappoint.  His tongue pokes out at Sara.

She pokes her tongue back at him, "Spoil my fun, why don't you." 

She keeps half an eye on the portal while they talk, waiting for the latest wave to come through. 

"How many victims should we be expecting inside?" 

“A couple dozen per wave.  Waves seem to be about one every three and a half hours.  It’s pretty manageable as long as we find it fast and don’t provoke the big one.  Or, you know, a lot of the little ones.”  Check the time.  Hm.  “About fifteen to m-minute.”

Nod, "Does it have a preferred victim profile? Should we be keeping an eye out for anyone who will need help walking?" 

“The vibe is that it prefers people who think they can escape.  A lot of the DRT’s job has been to make people pace themselves and not burn out, since getting to the portal requires you to sprint across a few crabs.  Er.  Only a few for this dungeon, anyway.  I can cover the victims on the sprint out, as long as I don’t gas out myself.”

Tim does look a little uneasy about that part.

"-should I carry you, Tim? I don't mind, and if I am using my endurance anyway it won't make much difference. Maybe not to start, but at some point?" 

“Maybe towards the end.  It honestly depends on how much I need to use my power, and I think they want us to do two sweeps if we can.  And if we kill enough crabs without provoking the underground ones, maybe DRT can handle the rest.  Honestly, I want to take a crack at the big one, but that’s sort of a stretch goal if we think we can survive.  No Mobility ranking here, you know?”

"Yes, me too. Has anyone attempted to kill it before? Do we know how durable it is?"

“Well, RPGs didn’t work and had.  Er.  Consequences.  I thiiiiink I could take it, but I don’t know for sure.  I wanna try my big pistol before I try rasslin’ it for sure.  Er.  The big pistol is the one that’s an anti-materiel pistol.  It’d break your wrist if you didn’t have a strength or endurance power.”

She nods again, "I won't use it without ticking my endurance, then, if at all." She pats her shotgun, "You can use mine if you need it." 

“I have a smaller one.  Can’t burn backlash too much.  And it’s loud, too, I don’t like using it without augmenting bystanders.”  His normally-silenced pistol is gestured at.  “No silencer today, though.  Not much point.”  Deep breath, check through his kit as he walks.  Nothing has mysteriously gone missing in the last few minutes.

"Eekoshi. Positions? Will you be hitting them more with melee, or at range?" 

“Well, we have the Crabwhacker 9000!  We can’t really shoot crabs usefully, not for three and a half hours with no explosives.”  The Crabwhacker 9000 is perhaps the silliest polearm invented.  Tim swipes one out of the armory Rickshaw.  “It’s a ten foot long pole with a flat twenty pound weight on the far end.  It’s like a weighted snow shovel.  You just drop the weight on the crab swarm, then pick it up and flip it over and do it all over again.”

She holds a hand out to take the Crabwhacker 9000, giving it a couple swings to get a feel for it. 

"More efficient than a shotgun," she nods, "At least for as long as we will be in there. Are the DRT with us rated for your strength?" 

“Yes’m, up to an hour to failure.  We ideally want to be the last two, but we should prefer to engage only if it buys us sensor time or saves a civilian.  And I can ride piggyback while the DRT plays whackacrab if necessary, it’s just - a little risky.  They don’t have powers, you know?