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« on: February 25, 2013, 11:04:53 PM »
Here is my submission. Like Jacko I am far from a writer (I am fairly certain Caleb will weep at the torture I inflicted on the English language) and it is over wrought but it seemed genre appropriate. I also made a number of assumptions about how things happened off screen between Manjapa and my main character. Given the main character resurfaced in the last actual play these choices maybe very wrong but fortune favors the bold and so here we go.
Every Line has a Finite Length
His life was distilled down to an unremarkable stretch of corridor. A common place that thousands had walked never thinking that one day men would choose this place to make a last stand. The geometry of the space was simple, twelve meters straight ahead then a 45 degree bend to the right. Many lights had been destroyed casting a gloom over the concrete walls broken up by pipes and vents now interspersed with the mark of weapons fire and the stains men leave when violent death comes upon them. Mangled bodies, a mixture of men and the bio-mechanical forms that even in broken pieces he did not wish to examine closely, littered the hallway.
What remained of his garrison had dwindled to two men, Wallace and Bhardwaj, and they were low on every type of ammunition. Feeds from his comrades showed the same corridor from different vantage points and their vital signs reported superficial physical damage although each was suffering from exhaustion. The sensors they had embedded past the bend were silent. In the breaks between waves they had piled together rubble as a barricade although no one familiar with the term would call it cover.
Behind these last three men was a reinforced blast door. Strong as it might appear it would not last against the nightmares that keep crashing down the corridor. When the end came, he had no illusions it would not; the door would fall and so would all of those behind it. He and his men were exchanging their lives for time so those behind the door might have a chance farcast away from the madness that the surface had become.
The motion sensor furthest past the bend lit up confirming motion. Barnes, the voice in his head that was not a voice, said, "Inbound contact." He responded, "Nature of target and time to engagement?" He had little hope of a solid answer. His muse would analyze all of the data and broadcast it to the men but the threat they faced was not bound to the laws of geometry or rational composition. One target became three and then back to one as dictated by an alien concept of tactics. The next two motion sensors lit and the remaining camera caught a brief flash of a long thin body in flight. "Single target, inbound in three seconds." His hearing, aided by advanced signal processing and a slew of enhancements picked up a high pitched buzzing.
The thing came into sight, flying around the bend in an undulating motion. The body was no thicker than his wrist and three meters long. Wing structures representative of no evolutionary track seen on earth sprouted at the front and back of the flexible trunk. His muse highlighted the near invisible monofilament whips dangling below as the most direct danger and painted probable weak points with targets. His hearing modifications dampened out the supersonic cracking of the armor piercing slugs being spit out by the three railguns while amplifying the quiet noises so from his perspective the flier was torn apart in near silence.
That silence was broken by muffled scream and the feed from Wallace went dark. Turning to face his comrade he instantly knew that they had now made the mistake that must finally bring this stand to an end. He barked an order to Bhardwaj to keep watching the corridor and brought his rail gun to target Wallace. The brute engulfing Wallace's head was covered in a now tattered chameleon cloak that had allowed it to sneak along the ceiling and get behind them. It would have taken hours to slowly crawl along without giving itself away to their sensors or senses but the enemy had infinite patience. Wallace was rolling on the ground struggling to get it off his head. Powerful arms sprouted from the creature’s body and were locked onto Wallace.
Attempt to target the thing and not Wallace he realized he was wrong. The arms were not trying to pull the creature closer to Wallace but were pushing it away from him. A wet wrenching noise was transmitted clearly to his enhanced hearing as the vertebra in Wallace’s neck separated from each other. Blood began to leak out of the space between Wallace's shoulders and the bulbous mechanical carapace of the creature. He corrected his targeting to where he hoped Wallace's head was and pulled the trigger, walking the remaining slugs of his magazine up the monstrosity’s body.
Barnes cut into his head, "Multiple targets inbound. Sensors are being destroyed as enemy group progresses. Four or possibly six targets. No visual. Contact in approximately four seconds."
Bhardwaj opened the comm link between them, "Lt Stamps it has been an honor-"
He cut off the man with a gesture. "On the road we now walk words have no weight. Honor the men by finishing this." He signaled Barnes to pull out the stops as he dropped his depleted rail gun and picked up the one Wallace no longer needed. His combat armor began to pump drugs from the remaining stores into his body. It was a cliché that the world slowed down; you just suddenly found you saw things clearly and could plan and react so very quickly. The entroptics briefly lit up with warning about dangerous levels of drugs in his system but Barnes silenced them and stopped his armors healing suite from taking any action to counter the reaction. Any one of the chemicals taken at these levels was a lethal dose and the full cocktail of them meant his life expectancy was now measured in minutes.
“Barnes, prep a plasma grenade to detonate on command.” Before he could get confirmation of this action four small bodies, each on six spindly legs, tore around the corner. Details flooded in from his muse but these were not a new enemy. Each leg ended in a wheeled assembly that enabled them to maintain high speed on clear terrain while the long multi jointed legs ensured the speed was not diminished as they danced over debris. In front was a ceramic shield that was excellent at absorbing kinetic damage. Behind the shield short arms covered in needles would spring out to inject any organic life they could reach. The two members of his team hit by these injection arms had quickly fallen into a coma. When the bodies started to show signs of no longer being human he had ordered them killed and the bodies incinerated. Rumors had spread the dead were used as building blocks for further horrors and no chances could be taken.
Over the sound of legs skittering across the mass of broken bodies and machines came the sound of fast whirling blades. The tactical networking software started to puzzle out the last sound and swiftly divided the four targets between himself and Bhardwaj. Once down there was time to take a kill shot but this flavor of the enemy was slippery and unpredictable so halting their mobility was the first priority.
He got lucky with the first target and managed to cripple it with a single burst to the joint where three of the legs meet the body before it had advanced more than two meters down the hallway. He had a worse angle on the second target and his burst went into the shield.
Barnes delivered more bad news, "The sound does not fit known rotor craft. Fifteen distinct pitches confirmed. Either multiple craft or multiple rotors. Analysis of stereoscopic input predicts contact in four seconds."
A precious moment was spent to get a better angle of attack. The creature was only three meters away when he sent two bursts into the joint and side of the body knocking it down. Viscous fluids sprayed out of the things body and the remaining legs thrashed trying to keep it crawling down the hallway. One more burst into the body cavity emptied the railgun and brought the frantic motion to a stop allowing him to turn his attention back to his remaining man.
Bhardwaj had disabled his first target but the second had switched tactics and slowed forward progress down the hall in order to rotate its body and keep the shield between it and the hyper velocity slugs. Dropping the rail gun he pulled his pistol and sent a fully auto barrage into the side the thing had exposed to him. Armor piercing bullets tore into it but despite the small size they were resilient and the full clip was spent in ending it as a threat.
His entroptics flashed a warning that the new enemy was about to clear the bend. Instinct took his body into a dive away from where the previous creatures could have reported his position. In flight across the corridor he caught sight of the new threat as it appeared. It was oriented vertically with a leathery egg shaped mass on top and bottom and dozens of spinning blades rotating around the central axis. Most of the blades kept it hovering but his chemically enhanced senses saw four of the blades come loose from the main core and hurdle down the hallway.
A massive impact caught him at the waist and his body was thrown violently down. The damage report showed massive trauma to his lower body. It was immediately updated to report his legs and 20% of his lower torso had been sheared clear as one of the blades had caught him. Emergency warning alerts began to pop up in his display and what was left of his combat armor was vainly attempting to seal the damage and stabilize him. Barnes estimated he had twelve seconds of life left and only the massive dose of drugs he had taken was keeping him conscious and calm. The tactical net lost connection to Bhardwaj's muse but the last update was of massive trauma from multiple severed limbs.
He had landed on his back; his own blood covered everything around him as he weakly struggled to force his arms to grab any weapon. The abomination moved down the hallway quickly and in a moment was hovered over him. The bottom egg shaped mass split open and started to descend onto his head. With a last effort he thrust his hand up into the maw and signaled Barnes to detonate the plasma grenade he had grabbed in his scrambling.
A hot white light enveloped him and his vision died. His consciousness was black for a moment then returned reduced to a drifting collection of thoughts. Barnes reported that his right arm, portions of his upper right torso, most of his face, and both eyes were destroyed. The helmet had taken enough of the blast to leave his hearing partially intact. None of that mattered. He had fought and earned his final reward; a reward all of those in his profession knew was their final payment.
In that last moment he heard the blast doors open and a woman's voice shouting, "Get him inside and into the chair. We got to blow this corridor." With that all thought ceased.
Barnes's voice that was not a voice was the first thing after the blankness, "XP playback complete."
His stomach was next registering the displeasure of going from full earth gravity to free fall. The ghost feelings from moments ago, his body destroyed and his mind burning itself out on neurochems, still echoed in his mind. The software worked to ease the transition but it could only do so much. His entropic listed his vitals as elevated but returning to normal and noted mild dehydration. In anticipation his muse had procured a meal from the ships general stores which was on route to his cabin.
Opening his eyes he kicked his way across the small cabin to get a towel to dry the perspiration that covered his skin. Barnes chose that moment to ask, "You have not been well since Venus. Are you going to recover?"
Muses eventually know you so well they ask the questions you did not want to ask yourself. He considered not answering or telling a lie but instead said aloud "We both know that I am not." He wondered what the AGI that monitored cabins would make of that. Past performance had earned him some latitude but he could rapidity become a liability and Direct Action had made their reputation in removing liabilities.
The meal arrived and he mechanically started to eat but was interrupted by an alert appearing in his entroptics.
Encrypted message detected embedded in spam message.
Matches pattern flagged as high priority contact.
Decryption complete.
From: Your Benefactor
Subject: Hit on search Gerrad_Hume.
Essay posted to reclaimer group forum "The Grass Between Our Toes" with mesh ID connected to Gerrad Hume.
Linguistic analysis: 87% match with past confirmed written samples for use of language and style.
Geo-location of meta data associated with posting has location of post at a public mesh access point in Nectar.
Probability of hit exceeds threshold for automatic increase on bounty contract.
Increase in value on bounty exchange for Gerrad Hume contract initiated.
Authorization needed to increase bidding for next confirmed contact.
Respond to authorize further increase.
The man at Oversight had nerve to title himself “Your Benefactor” but when you had the advantage you got to call yourself whatever you wished. The weight of the favors currently owed to this man and how much deeper a future increase would put him under the man’s thumb gave him a brief pause but any choice other than full commitment had been taken from his hands back on Earth. "Barnes, send an encrypted response giving authorizing for increase on next confirmed contact."
He pushed the remains of his meal into the recycling unit and floated back over to the sleeping area.
'Time to arrival at Hexagon station?"
Barnes responded, "13 hours and 21 minutes."
As he moved into the sleeping alcove soft flexible arms deployed to gently hold his head and body. They would keep him from floating around the cabin and would cushion him during any acceleration. He closed his eyes and settled into their embrace.
"Initiate replay of previous XP session. Start at the beginning.”
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