Free
tbZBeAst
Join Date: 2003-01-26 Member: 12755Members
Join Date: 2003-01-26 Member: 12755Members
<div class="IPBDescription">My late compo entry.</div> 1st draft, and with the SP stuff removed.
/edit Its split in two to get all of it in:
Free
I’m free, and the universe slowly revolves around me. I descend into blackness.
The worst part of the mission (for me) is over. The enormous pressure, sound, and shaking that accompanies the dropship being spat from its parent gone. Silence is total. The expelled atmosphere that accompanies my squad’s vessel stops obscuring the dropship’s forward camera, and for a second, I’m free. The greatness of creation wheels about me, and it seems like I’m the literal centre of the universe. Reality pivots and turns on me. I’m the centre. My squad silent, for a moment I’m alone, and isolated.
The slow turning of the dropship is corrected by the gas jets that pit its spherical surface. It brings my objective into sight. Another vessel, the twin of the one I’d left. Hurled from one unto the other. Gog to Magog. It grows impossibly fast in the camera’s view, and I have to check that the magnification is not increasing. No. I’m being dragged toward the drifting target.
When the ship fills the viewscreen, I’m mentally jarred enough by what I see to do a last equipment check. I’m not the only one. My squad are going through the last stages of preparation for the mission. Mechanical noises mix with muttered prayers, softer curses. The litany of the damned.
My breath catches in my throat. The ship, so like the one I’d left has been changed, subtly altered, bastardised.
The colony ship Bucephalus had left near-Mars orbit a rough ellipsoid, with a payload of one terraforming station, and 300 souls. Something had stopped it in its tracks near the end of its journey. That something resembled a cancer, an infection, a fungal outgrowth, centred on a deep puckered wound. Something bad had burrowed its way into Bucephalus and begun to spread. The entry point is huge, I realise as each moment brings it closer. For a while, it looks like the mission planner had meant us to fall into the chasm, to lance the infection, and with each second I grip the acceleration couch harder. Finally, as I stare into the gaping maw, a mass of organic reds, browns and pustulent greens, to my relief the atmosphere jets fire again, pushing us up, and away, towards a safer entry point.
With another hiss of escaping hydrogen our ship comes to a creaking halt opposite the expansively titled “Shuttle dock 8, Ventral Command Access”. There is a brief moment of blind panic as our computer is interrogated by whatever’s left of Bucephalus’s. Finding us acceptable, the pressure equalises, and the hatchway irises open. Our jets gently nudge us in. Drifting to a halt; the docking arms finding purchase on our hull; the airlock repressurises. It brings with it the sound of the docking alarm, rising from dully muffled to blaring as the volume of air in the airlock increases. We are nudged into the hangar body proper, and our landing feet descend as the docking arm disengages. The hatchway stays steadfastly closed. I ignore the readout on my retinal amp as the dropship tests for ambient temperature, oxygen mix and a hundred other things that could end the mission before it starts. The results are posted with a chime, and almost simultaneously the hatches about the circumference of the dropship are propelled outwards with explosive bolts, their dull clangs on the hangar floor felt as much as heard.
The sergeant’s voice cuts through my near-catatonia, as he urges us out of our couches and into the interior of the stricken Bucephalus. His barks prod us on, the noise transmitted though the audio jack buried in my jawbone. We’re the vanguard, first into the New World. The squad fans out, taking pre arranged positions, a protective circle around our dropship. The hangar looks relatively unscathed, with no sign of the rot we saw earlier. One thing that’s noted quickly is that the hangar is empty, there should be 3 dropships (the civilian version of our own sphere) held here. None are present. It gives me hope that some of the crew evacuated the ship, and even now their escape vessels are weakly pinging the ether, sustaining the bodies within until they can be found. The sarge will relay that back to the investigating flotilla, and our base, the Philip. Even if no one made it out alive, the machinery will be recovered for possible clues as to what happened. I almost hope that’s the case, we’ve all heard the rumours of what happened aboard the Essen. Whatever they’d taken aboard had run amok, and the ship had had to be destroyed, another rotten infection eating away at it at phenomenal speed. There were rumours of things seen in the bacteriological soup. Things with teeth, and minds, and hunger. I doubt that I’m the only one thinking about the Essen, and willing our techs to set up our base as quickly as possible.
Behind us (no-one looks) the unit engineers drag equipment from the hold, each moment increasing the chance that we’ll survive, each second a new toehold. Fear is bright and hard in my mind, the TSA is a new agency, created to deal with unknown out-system threats. By its very nature this means we have to face the unexpected each time we disembark.
Suddenly the lights flicker and go out. There’s a moment of utter blackness, then the emergency lighting kicks in, casting long red shadows on everything. I try not to imagine blood smeared on the lights, and fail. There’s cursing from behind as the techs begin to unplug whatever they were plumbing in to the Bucephalus’s power grid, and begin to unpack the generator we brought with us for just such an eventuality. I’m not sure which is worse: the deep red of the lighting, or the surreal blue glow of the visual amp on my helmet.
To their credit, the engineers barely flinch as a loud bang is heard, something slapping up against the Durite shutter of the cargo lift. As one, half of the squad trains their weapons on the shutter. Another bang. The shutter visibly moves, but holds. Silence, then a twitch as an engineer drops something behind us, and his apology. Everything is still again. At our backs the tokamak spools up with a whine, and more frenzied connecting work brings the hangar back in the stark relief of our floodlights. I swear I can see movement inside the ventilation pipes, as I removed the visual amps. Disturbed dust drifts slowly down, each mote a tiny flare as it hits the halogen beam.
The failure of the power grid means the c4 is the next item out of the dropship and connected up. The Command/Control/Communication/Console (c4) allows us to co-ordinate our movements like a genuine combat unit, but more importantly allows the shaping and defining of the nanites we carry with us, each grey cylinder a potential weapon, facility, or ally.
Our commanding officer, Lieutenant Alexander (a good omen?) directs the engineers to manhandle a nanite container within transmission distance of the c4. Within seconds the nanites have devoured their casing and constructed a functioning broadcast base. The antenna swings round and picks up the segment of sky corresponding to the Philip. Silently our progress is told, our small success, our arrival and deployment. That done, it begins its secondary function, scanning for movement, the results piped directly to our headsets. My field of vision springs alive with a riot of positive tracks. Around me, my comrades stiffen, and weapons begin to swing in small arcs. We know that not all of the results can be machinery-ghosts, and false returns.
The unloading and assembly continues, 10 minutes later, power is restored. Although the techs take credit, I’m not so sure.
The order to move out comes: Marine Knowles and I draw the short straw. We’re directed to the cargo lift doors. Saker, Wyatt, and Wilson get the main access hatch. We all move out as one, waypoints fixed in our visual field through the comm chair by Lieutenant Alexander.
I manually cycle the lift door, while Knowles covers the entrance with his LMG. I back off from the lock as the shutters begin to open, and also assume a covering position. To my relief, the lift is unoccupied, even if not empty. A congealed mass of organic matter is puddled in the lift. It’s unidentifiable, and looks incapable of the energy that was shaking the lift earlier, unless it dropped into the lift with a LOT of force. The lift seems undamaged, and tentatively, under the pressure of Alexander’s voice, we enter.
Although the slime on the floor is foetid and pungent, it doesn’t seem to be any immediate threat. I cycle the door from the inside, and keep my standard-issue trained up the lift shaft as Knowles collects samples of the substance on the floor. He tells me he loves his job. The portion of my brain not occupied with self-preservation is keeping track of the other team’s progress. They seem jovial but alert, they haven’t even encountered slime yet and we’re roundly abused on our “snot retrieval” mission. Knowles finishes scooping up his samples. In a fit of pique, I jab the lift activation button with the barrel of my LMG. Knowles stumbles and swears as the lift judders into life.
“Hope they’re confident about the power” Knowles says. I agree.
After the screeching, juddering ride finishes, We stop at the next level up, which, according to the ships plans should be the maintenance bay. The door cycles, sticks, whines, and stops. There’s a smell of burning, the door mechanism motor preferring death to what lays beyond. This time, I crouch at the entrance, and Knowles strains at the manual release. He has to disengage the safety lock to get any movement at all. Inch by inch, the door grates open. I’m almost knocked back by the stench from the maintenance bay. Spoiled fruit, burnt flesh, rotten milk and sulphur. I wish my helmet came with an olfactory filter.
All across the bay, creeping insidious fingers of the same matter we sampled in our lift lay across every surface, and festooned from the ceiling, even spinning from the overloaded air conditioning duct. There’s an oppressive moisture in the air, and a pervasive heat. Under the bacterial mat, certain shapes are recognisable: terminals, tools, equipment, spares, all have been smothered.
With muttered curses, we see that the lift door had been covered with a thin mucal slime, further examination reveals it to be as strong as steel and a powerful (if short lived) contact adhesive. Apprehensively we advance into the bay, the mat squishing and squirming beneath our feet. Sweeping through firing arcs (my training making it a reflexive as breathing) my elbow catches a diagnostic pad, which lands on the rot with a muted thud. Knowles warns me to be careful. I silently nod my assent.
Finding nothing more interesting than the all pervasive pestilential blanket, we turn to the other exits from maintenance. Both exits seem to have been welded shut, from the other side. Both are covered in fungus and the mucal web.
/edit Its split in two to get all of it in:
Free
I’m free, and the universe slowly revolves around me. I descend into blackness.
The worst part of the mission (for me) is over. The enormous pressure, sound, and shaking that accompanies the dropship being spat from its parent gone. Silence is total. The expelled atmosphere that accompanies my squad’s vessel stops obscuring the dropship’s forward camera, and for a second, I’m free. The greatness of creation wheels about me, and it seems like I’m the literal centre of the universe. Reality pivots and turns on me. I’m the centre. My squad silent, for a moment I’m alone, and isolated.
The slow turning of the dropship is corrected by the gas jets that pit its spherical surface. It brings my objective into sight. Another vessel, the twin of the one I’d left. Hurled from one unto the other. Gog to Magog. It grows impossibly fast in the camera’s view, and I have to check that the magnification is not increasing. No. I’m being dragged toward the drifting target.
When the ship fills the viewscreen, I’m mentally jarred enough by what I see to do a last equipment check. I’m not the only one. My squad are going through the last stages of preparation for the mission. Mechanical noises mix with muttered prayers, softer curses. The litany of the damned.
My breath catches in my throat. The ship, so like the one I’d left has been changed, subtly altered, bastardised.
The colony ship Bucephalus had left near-Mars orbit a rough ellipsoid, with a payload of one terraforming station, and 300 souls. Something had stopped it in its tracks near the end of its journey. That something resembled a cancer, an infection, a fungal outgrowth, centred on a deep puckered wound. Something bad had burrowed its way into Bucephalus and begun to spread. The entry point is huge, I realise as each moment brings it closer. For a while, it looks like the mission planner had meant us to fall into the chasm, to lance the infection, and with each second I grip the acceleration couch harder. Finally, as I stare into the gaping maw, a mass of organic reds, browns and pustulent greens, to my relief the atmosphere jets fire again, pushing us up, and away, towards a safer entry point.
With another hiss of escaping hydrogen our ship comes to a creaking halt opposite the expansively titled “Shuttle dock 8, Ventral Command Access”. There is a brief moment of blind panic as our computer is interrogated by whatever’s left of Bucephalus’s. Finding us acceptable, the pressure equalises, and the hatchway irises open. Our jets gently nudge us in. Drifting to a halt; the docking arms finding purchase on our hull; the airlock repressurises. It brings with it the sound of the docking alarm, rising from dully muffled to blaring as the volume of air in the airlock increases. We are nudged into the hangar body proper, and our landing feet descend as the docking arm disengages. The hatchway stays steadfastly closed. I ignore the readout on my retinal amp as the dropship tests for ambient temperature, oxygen mix and a hundred other things that could end the mission before it starts. The results are posted with a chime, and almost simultaneously the hatches about the circumference of the dropship are propelled outwards with explosive bolts, their dull clangs on the hangar floor felt as much as heard.
The sergeant’s voice cuts through my near-catatonia, as he urges us out of our couches and into the interior of the stricken Bucephalus. His barks prod us on, the noise transmitted though the audio jack buried in my jawbone. We’re the vanguard, first into the New World. The squad fans out, taking pre arranged positions, a protective circle around our dropship. The hangar looks relatively unscathed, with no sign of the rot we saw earlier. One thing that’s noted quickly is that the hangar is empty, there should be 3 dropships (the civilian version of our own sphere) held here. None are present. It gives me hope that some of the crew evacuated the ship, and even now their escape vessels are weakly pinging the ether, sustaining the bodies within until they can be found. The sarge will relay that back to the investigating flotilla, and our base, the Philip. Even if no one made it out alive, the machinery will be recovered for possible clues as to what happened. I almost hope that’s the case, we’ve all heard the rumours of what happened aboard the Essen. Whatever they’d taken aboard had run amok, and the ship had had to be destroyed, another rotten infection eating away at it at phenomenal speed. There were rumours of things seen in the bacteriological soup. Things with teeth, and minds, and hunger. I doubt that I’m the only one thinking about the Essen, and willing our techs to set up our base as quickly as possible.
Behind us (no-one looks) the unit engineers drag equipment from the hold, each moment increasing the chance that we’ll survive, each second a new toehold. Fear is bright and hard in my mind, the TSA is a new agency, created to deal with unknown out-system threats. By its very nature this means we have to face the unexpected each time we disembark.
Suddenly the lights flicker and go out. There’s a moment of utter blackness, then the emergency lighting kicks in, casting long red shadows on everything. I try not to imagine blood smeared on the lights, and fail. There’s cursing from behind as the techs begin to unplug whatever they were plumbing in to the Bucephalus’s power grid, and begin to unpack the generator we brought with us for just such an eventuality. I’m not sure which is worse: the deep red of the lighting, or the surreal blue glow of the visual amp on my helmet.
To their credit, the engineers barely flinch as a loud bang is heard, something slapping up against the Durite shutter of the cargo lift. As one, half of the squad trains their weapons on the shutter. Another bang. The shutter visibly moves, but holds. Silence, then a twitch as an engineer drops something behind us, and his apology. Everything is still again. At our backs the tokamak spools up with a whine, and more frenzied connecting work brings the hangar back in the stark relief of our floodlights. I swear I can see movement inside the ventilation pipes, as I removed the visual amps. Disturbed dust drifts slowly down, each mote a tiny flare as it hits the halogen beam.
The failure of the power grid means the c4 is the next item out of the dropship and connected up. The Command/Control/Communication/Console (c4) allows us to co-ordinate our movements like a genuine combat unit, but more importantly allows the shaping and defining of the nanites we carry with us, each grey cylinder a potential weapon, facility, or ally.
Our commanding officer, Lieutenant Alexander (a good omen?) directs the engineers to manhandle a nanite container within transmission distance of the c4. Within seconds the nanites have devoured their casing and constructed a functioning broadcast base. The antenna swings round and picks up the segment of sky corresponding to the Philip. Silently our progress is told, our small success, our arrival and deployment. That done, it begins its secondary function, scanning for movement, the results piped directly to our headsets. My field of vision springs alive with a riot of positive tracks. Around me, my comrades stiffen, and weapons begin to swing in small arcs. We know that not all of the results can be machinery-ghosts, and false returns.
The unloading and assembly continues, 10 minutes later, power is restored. Although the techs take credit, I’m not so sure.
The order to move out comes: Marine Knowles and I draw the short straw. We’re directed to the cargo lift doors. Saker, Wyatt, and Wilson get the main access hatch. We all move out as one, waypoints fixed in our visual field through the comm chair by Lieutenant Alexander.
I manually cycle the lift door, while Knowles covers the entrance with his LMG. I back off from the lock as the shutters begin to open, and also assume a covering position. To my relief, the lift is unoccupied, even if not empty. A congealed mass of organic matter is puddled in the lift. It’s unidentifiable, and looks incapable of the energy that was shaking the lift earlier, unless it dropped into the lift with a LOT of force. The lift seems undamaged, and tentatively, under the pressure of Alexander’s voice, we enter.
Although the slime on the floor is foetid and pungent, it doesn’t seem to be any immediate threat. I cycle the door from the inside, and keep my standard-issue trained up the lift shaft as Knowles collects samples of the substance on the floor. He tells me he loves his job. The portion of my brain not occupied with self-preservation is keeping track of the other team’s progress. They seem jovial but alert, they haven’t even encountered slime yet and we’re roundly abused on our “snot retrieval” mission. Knowles finishes scooping up his samples. In a fit of pique, I jab the lift activation button with the barrel of my LMG. Knowles stumbles and swears as the lift judders into life.
“Hope they’re confident about the power” Knowles says. I agree.
After the screeching, juddering ride finishes, We stop at the next level up, which, according to the ships plans should be the maintenance bay. The door cycles, sticks, whines, and stops. There’s a smell of burning, the door mechanism motor preferring death to what lays beyond. This time, I crouch at the entrance, and Knowles strains at the manual release. He has to disengage the safety lock to get any movement at all. Inch by inch, the door grates open. I’m almost knocked back by the stench from the maintenance bay. Spoiled fruit, burnt flesh, rotten milk and sulphur. I wish my helmet came with an olfactory filter.
All across the bay, creeping insidious fingers of the same matter we sampled in our lift lay across every surface, and festooned from the ceiling, even spinning from the overloaded air conditioning duct. There’s an oppressive moisture in the air, and a pervasive heat. Under the bacterial mat, certain shapes are recognisable: terminals, tools, equipment, spares, all have been smothered.
With muttered curses, we see that the lift door had been covered with a thin mucal slime, further examination reveals it to be as strong as steel and a powerful (if short lived) contact adhesive. Apprehensively we advance into the bay, the mat squishing and squirming beneath our feet. Sweeping through firing arcs (my training making it a reflexive as breathing) my elbow catches a diagnostic pad, which lands on the rot with a muted thud. Knowles warns me to be careful. I silently nod my assent.
Finding nothing more interesting than the all pervasive pestilential blanket, we turn to the other exits from maintenance. Both exits seem to have been welded shut, from the other side. Both are covered in fungus and the mucal web.
Comments
There’s a burst of feedback and static in my ear, and the chatter of the other squad rises in pitch and volume. I hear firing. I hear screaming. I hear animal bellows and a high pitched whine. Lieutenant Alexander is at first questioning, then by degrees his tones and instructions change. From questioning, to calming, to imperative, to forceful, to afraid, to hysterical. The last discernible words amongst the gunfire and screaming are an instruction to fall back and a moaned prayer. Then the link to the c4 chair drops. The information relayed to my helmet stops, and I’m purely relying on my own instincts. Knowles and I share a look, and begin backing towards the lift doors again. I try to confirm we’re falling back. I get no reply. In the absence of motion tracking, I turn on my helmet’s laser range finder, which at least can give me warning should the beam get broken, or the walls advance.
I hear a mechanical grinding shriek: the lift is called from below. The door begins to close. Spinning I sprint for the lift, slamming into the back wall and winding myself. Knowles isn’t as lucky. I see him slip in the slime, and his hip catches a workbench. Spinning, he falls. He’s on his feet instantly, but the delay costs him his life. The door, unencumbered by the safety lock he’d overrode earlier slams shut as he crosses the threshold. With a sickening crunch, the jaws of the lift slam home on his torso, neatly bisecting him. The upper half of his body projects into the lift shaft, I can see his legs still kicking, stuck inside maintenance. His eyes lock with mine as his mouth works silently. The lift lurches down. Disbelieving I shield myself from the warm rain.
The lift clanks to a stop. I force the door open and stumble out sweeping my LMG through wide arcs. My breath comes in burning gasps.
I emerge into a scene of utter carnage. Our beachhead has been razed. The wreckage of man, machine and something else is confused, and indivisible. I inch towards the remains of our command console. It looks like its been twisted and bent. I know that short of a bomb dropping on it, that shouldn’t be possible. What remains of Lieutenant Alexander is smeared inside. Our dropship is gone, I pray that someone made it out alive. The other equipment (civilian ships included) has been thoroughly destroyed. Microcircuitry is spattered with congealed bodily fluids. Coolant tubes hang like eviscerated intestines.
Fortunately the broadcast centre is relatively undamaged, I unhook one of the jacks and plug it directly into my helmet. As I work to contact the Philip I’m aware of the devastation around me, and that I’m incredibly vulnerable. It manifests as a crawling itch around my neck and shoulders. I imagine unseen assailants watching.
With a wail of feedback that makes me grit my teeth, I gain access to the external comms system, and try to reach the Philip.
The outlook isn’t good. I’m informed that a new beachhead is in the planning stages, and may be launched soon. May be. They confirm that to their knowledge, I am the only one of my unit to have called back in following the attack. They have dispatched a ship to pick up the dropship I arrived in. So far it has not responded to any communications directed at it. They ask if I can hold for reinforcements.
The operator’s next sentence fades into the background as I see a shape detach itself from the air vent above. Something the size of a large dog slithers from the grate. I watch as it begins loping towards me, suspended about 15 feet above me. It’s the colour of the mulch I’ve seen, and definitely not part of the Bucephalus’s original manifest. It inches forwards, keening. My world slows to a crawl as it springs at me. Without moving my eyes, my hand reflexively moves to my sidearm. My first shot catches a forelimb, whipping it off and flipping the creature in mid-air. The next catches its abdomen before it lands with a wet thump a foot away. I put another 3 rounds in it to top the screeching, chittering and the pitiful flapping motions as it strains to reach me.
The world snaps back into focus, the operator on board the Philip bellows profanity at me, asking what just happened. I reply that the likelihood I can hold for reinforcements is slim, and dwindling. He tells me to hold on. I reply that I have nothing better to do. I realise that I really don’t. I wonder if this is shock, or hysteria. I crunch down a stabiliser pill from my medpack.
The operator returns.
He tells me that the next squad is kitted up and ready for deployment. The powers that be have decided that if I can get a phase gate up and running, they’ll try to establish another foothold. I’m given forty minutes to make it to the colonists engineering deck. There I can use some of the nanites from their/our reserves to get a phase gate in place. I don’t trust my luck enough not to lash a container to my back. The Philip’s operator wishes me Godspeed, and puts a waypoint in my helmet’s visor.
I jack out of the broadcast centre. I check my weapons. As I leave, I see that one of the support HMGs had been deployed. I ignore it, it didn’t do its last owner any favours, and with the canister on my back, I need the mobility. I head towards engineering.......
.....and thats all for the moment folks.
sexy ^_^
this story is great Beast, I love how it's narrated from a first person view, but we don't know his name, this is a damn good story so far
keep it up!
<!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
GG fakeplastic BeAst <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif'><!--endemo--> hehehe
you every going to do more of this story? It's been a while!