Pressia | A LOK Forums Original Novel | by AMJ

[Cthulhu]

Oh man, this is a really cool idea. To incorporate a game using the poll as a medium is pretty sweet. Your writing is really good, I haven't read act 2 and 3 yet but after this post, I will.

[axmanjack]

Schreiben und schreiben und schreiben.
Action will be done tonight.

[thealchemist]

um was that a translation

[axmanjack]

Uh, no. Ignore those last two posts. I'm still up writing and this won't be done until tomorrow, er tomorrow tomorrow.

[amerninja38]

Nah, I loved the german. Keep it up. On a more serious note, I love what you're doing with this project. Looking forward to future updates

[thealchemist]

soooooo today?
-With love you impaitent fan

[axmanjack]

Ok, so I'm at a 8355 words and counting. I'm probably about %75 of the way done, but this thing just keeps going and going and going. I'm going to release this teaser to hold you guys over. It's an H-scene with vore too, so, yeah.

Pre-Release Teaser

Spoiler (click to show/hide):

[playback paused]
[signal cluster located]
[ad hoc devices d19007-a00001 activated en masse]
[localized network established]
[trace found]
[observation point found]
[subject located]
[begin trans]
Free Citizen San Paral
Unknown Life Form, Esophageal Protrusion, Pressia
32 Hours after the scuttling of the Orion

The waiting was the worst. Her people’s god, this monstrosity, it was toying with her. She’d fought for what seemed like an eternity, gaining ground and losing it just as quickly as the maddening clatter of the straws surged and ebbed around her. She’d seen it again, popping in and out of the straws above and below her. The occasional struggling shadow grabbed up by the quick moving dark. The occasional scream of another survivor being cut short over the unending din, the insane noise of the straws. Her body had gone limp from exhaustion. Fought the good fight, she thought to herself. Now she’s cold and tired, lamenting the loss of her shoes and the top she had been wearing, pulled off by friction in the animalistic struggle to survive. A struggle she lost. Come and get me, she thinks. End this.
It comes as though it was waiting for the cue, the whole last hour just a cheap gimmick to get her tired so she wouldn’t do damage on the way in. I should have played dead, she thinks as it pushes its way slowly toward her. It’s a big worm, leathery brown, segmented skin slick from the water soaked straws that brush its surface with a sound like sandpaper on wood. The segments of its body expand and contract, already swallowing before it reaches her. Its front tapers to a point that splits into four leaves. She can only see the cross-shaped seam that they open along. Benevolent, kind, a honeymoon retreat for couples ready to have children. She was conceived here and now she knew she would die here. A vicious cycle had come to term. It opens its mouth slightly and she is only slightly relieved that it doesn’t have teeth. It’s a hairs breadth away from her face now, sniffing the air. Smelling her. She doesn’t want to die.
“No, no, no, no,” she murmurs as it prepares to engulf her. She struggles in vain, willing unwilling muscles to move. She begs for a miracle, but she doesn’t know whom to beg now. “Please no, not like this. Please.” The tears on her cheek run down to the corner of her mouth. Salty and warm. It opens its mouth all the way and rears back. The maw is huge, bigger than her, bigger than any drainpipe she’s ever seen and lined with thousands and millions of little slime-coated phalanges like little red thumbs that wriggle with anticipation or greed or nothing at all and then it’s on her, cutting off the scream that barely forms before it snaps down soft and firm over her head. She’s surprised she can breath. Slime drips across her face and into her mouth and pleasure washes over her like she’s never felt. The fear cuts through the euphoria and she struggles again, halfheartedly trying to grab a hold on the thing’s outsides and push as a single strong contraction pulls her into its mouth up to her elbows.
She tries to dig her fingernails into its hide. If she could see her hands she’d be looking at her palms. Her elbows are hooked to its lip. If I can just hold off, she thinks, it’ll get tired and let me go. The mouth is hot and warm and presses firmly against her chest. The phalanges rub against her exposed breasts and she can feel the blood rush to her face. Another contraction pulls her further inward and she barely grabs on with her hands. Her legs kick uselessly in the cold outside air. She can feel the wet surfaces of the straws rubbing against her calves. The phalanges brush against her stomach, her ribs, her breasts, her back, the ticklish spot on the side of her neck. Her hair is soaked in the slime and every follicle feels like its being hit by an electrical lead. Her focus wavers. She’s tired. She goes limp again and this time she doesn’t try to fight.
How can I still breathe? She thinks as the next contraction drags her in up to her thighs. The worm-thing flexes its lips over her pants and soon they’re being pulled down over her butt. I guess it only eats organic, she thinks, relishing the feeling of the phalanges exploring her upper thighs. They wiggle over every inch of her, a thousand hot tongues hitting everything but her face. A few find their way into the space between her legs and she sighs contentedly. Her toes curl outside the mouth as her lower legs swing back and forth with the rhythm of the worm’s swallows. Pressure surges and recedes on her torso, perfect, crushing hugs that wash the thoughts from her mind. Her fingers find their way to her pussy and she slides two in slowly. Some of the phalanges push their way into the crevasse of her ass and push gently against her other hole. San lets out a muffled moan and slides a finger into her butt with her other hand.
Intense heat builds throughout her body, she has no self control left. She assaults herself in rhythm with every contraction. Now she’s in up to her ankles, and every inch of her is being stroked with a live wire. Hot, wet, and slick it’s mouth slides against her as she slides against herself. The orgasm builds and she opens her mouth and pulls in a phalange, sucking it like a cock. Her mouth fills with the hot, flavorless slime and she swallows it willingly, switching to another one when the first shrinks back, depleted. She lets the worm fill her as she fills it taking more and more as the greed and the pleasure build. Her mouth is gentle with them as she suckles, her eyes half lidded even in the absolute darkness.
The orgasm comes and rocks her body, making her stomach muscles seize up. She screams, her face pressed against the dripping side of the worm, phalange resting loosely on her tongue. Her toes curl a final time outside the worm, and as the orgasm fades so does her consciousness. She’s pulled in with a soft “plop” and feels herself sliding down, down, down.

[NamelessSynthetic]

Om nom nom goes the worm. XD

it's good, sir!

[thealchemist]

i think the waiting is going to be worth it.

[axmanjack]

10206 words and counting. Can I do it? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-tFAgygjAg

[axmanjack]

On the final sequence now. 11396 words and counting.

[thealchemist]

soo almost done

[axmanjack]

Uh, like right now yo.
Presenting the 13549 word long Action 7!
And suddenly fuck me. I went over the character limit by like 14000. I'm posting in two parts.

Action 7 [losses] Part 1

Spoiler (click to show/hide):

Action 7 [losses]

[ad hoc device a00021 online]
[begin trans]
Ensign Katie Teuschle
Medical Center, Relei, Pressia
32 Hours after the scuttling of the Orion

A burst of static crashes through her mind as the collar’s pads lose contact with her skin, then—

[signal lost]
[begin audio playback]
Relevant Data Unknown

I pulled the collar off for the first time in years. The momentary aural feedback of the lost connection made my ears ring, then it was gone. My HUD died out slowly, an afterimage that clung to my eyes like a hazy film. I blinked and there was nothing. I felt cold and disconnected. Alone for the first time since I was a young girl, when my mother had brought me to the Enrichment Center on Grand.
I looked at myself in the mirror, running my fingers across the pale line that encircled my neck. They wouldn’t have any reason to believe anything I said ever again. I’d lost my sense of primacy when I took off that collar. The unbroken line of absolute truth that ran from my twelfth birthday had been broken at that moment, in a destroyed medical center on an alien world trillions upon trillions of miles away from where it had begun, a long way to walk for solitude.
Who’ll believe this record when they find it, floating alone through the dark?
I made my way out of the medical center. Sirens blared around me, cutting through the empty hollows of the town and ringing off the walls. I stayed low and moved slowly, never letting my eyes rest for a moment. The town was completely barren. I regained my bearings and found I was back on the main thoroughfare again, atop the steep incline that led down to the sea. Somewhere down there on the beach something was causing a real bad commotion, but with the buildings in my way I couldn’t see it yet. The palace loomed in front me down the cluttered, waterlogged street. There was an armory in there, and I’d need weapons and clothing if I were going to get off this planet anytime soon.
I kept my eyes up and picked through the discarded luggage that had washed up against the downhill slope. Somewhere in the distance someone screamed, a long bloodcurdling wail that harmonized with the discordant echoes of the sirens a hundred, maybe two hundred meters away. Not my problem. The screaming stops abruptly a few minutes before I find a bag that hasn’t been soaked through with dirty water. It has sandals that fit, work pants that don’t, and a t-shirt with a picture of some pig-man with absurd pink hair singing to a crowd of silhouetted hands. I measure out a saying about beggars and choosers, then pull then shirt over my head and jam my hospital smock into the bag. I tossed the bag into a pile to cover my tracks and made my way toward the palace.
I’d made it a bit further down when I came to a cross road that let me see past the downhill buildings. It was incredible, the island we’d hit had come ashore on the beach two clicks away. It was massive, cyclopean. It ran the length of the shoreline that bordered the town, its sides a rippling viridian curtain that reflected the sunlight in sickly green waves. The mammoth face was fully visible, and my stomach turned with the revelation that the thing was alive. Its jaw was twitching, its mouth held open in rigid death mask. It wasn’t bad enough that something like this was alive, I was about to watch it die. It was suffocating on land.
Right about then things started to fall into place for me. Why we were here, likely to put some fire on that thing’s ass. What happened to Mira. The hijack species briefing. Those spiders that attacked Lacy and the other two. The moss. The Orion being shot down. Eld, the guy with the switch, had said something to me about “protecting their god.” I should have realized what was going on when I saw the weird waves at the burnt out campsite. I’d been looking at its wake as it powered its way across the ocean. Spider-monster plant-rape island was alive, had a human face, and could swim. Right about then I decided to quit my job as soon as I was back on Grand. Right about then someone in orbit around that mud ball was saying to himself, “little does she know.”

[playback paused]
[signal cluster located]
[ad hoc devices d19007-a00001 activated en masse]
[localized network established]
[trace found]
[observation point found]
[subject located]
[begin trans]
Free Citizen San Paral
Unknown Life Form, Esophageal Protrusion, Pressia
32 Hours after the scuttling of the Orion

The waiting was the worst. Her people’s god, this monstrosity, it was toying with her. She’d fought for what seemed like an eternity, gaining ground and losing it just as quickly as the maddening clatter of the straws surged and ebbed around her. She’d seen it again, popping in and out of the straws above and below her. The occasional struggling shadow grabbed up by the quick moving dark. The occasional scream of another survivor being cut short over the unending din, the insane noise of the straws. Her body had gone limp from exhaustion. Fought the good fight, she thought to herself. Now she’s cold and tired, lamenting the loss of her shoes and the top she had been wearing, pulled off by friction in the animalistic struggle to survive. A struggle she lost. Come and get me, she thinks. End this.
It comes as though it was waiting for the cue, the whole last hour just a cheap gimmick to get her tired so she wouldn’t do damage on the way in. I should have played dead, she thinks as it pushes its way slowly toward her. It’s a big worm, leathery brown, segmented skin slick from the water soaked straws that brush its surface with a sound like sandpaper on wood. The segments of its body expand and contract, already swallowing before it reaches her. Its front tapers to a point that splits into four leaves. She can only see the cross-shaped seam that they open along. Benevolent, kind, a honeymoon retreat for couples ready to have children. She was conceived here and now she knew she would die here. A vicious cycle had come to term. It opens its mouth slightly and she is only slightly relieved that it doesn’t have teeth. It’s a hairs breadth away from her face now, sniffing the air. Smelling her. She doesn’t want to die.
“No, no, no, no,” she murmurs as it prepares to engulf her. She struggles in vain, willing unwilling muscles to move. She begs for a miracle, but she doesn’t know whom to beg now. “Please no, not like this. Please.” The tears on her cheek run down to the corner of her mouth. Salty and warm. It opens its mouth all the way and rears back. The maw is huge, bigger than her, bigger than any drainpipe she’s ever seen and lined with thousands and millions of little slime-coated phalanges like little red thumbs that wriggle with anticipation or greed or nothing at all and then it’s on her, cutting off the scream that barely forms before it snaps down soft and firm over her head. She’s surprised she can breathe. Slime drips across her face and into her mouth and pleasure washes over her like she’s never felt. The fear cuts through the euphoria and she struggles again, halfheartedly trying to grab a hold on the thing’s outsides and push as a single strong contraction pulls her into its mouth up to her elbows.
She tries to dig her fingernails into its hide. If she could see her hands she’d be looking at her palms. Her elbows are hooked to its lip. If I can just hold off, she thinks, it’ll get tired and let me go. The mouth is hot and warm and presses firmly against her chest. The phalanges rub against her exposed breasts and she can feel the blood rush to her face. Another contraction pulls her further inward and she barely grabs on with her hands. Her legs kick uselessly in the cold outside air. She can feel the wet surfaces of the straws rubbing against her calves. The phalanges brush against her stomach, her ribs, her breasts, her back, the ticklish spot on the side of her neck. Her hair is soaked in the slime and every follicle feels like its being hit by an electrical lead. Her focus wavers. She’s tired. She goes limp again and this time she doesn’t try to fight.
How can I still breathe? She thinks as the next contraction drags her in up to her thighs. The worm-thing flexes its lips over her pants and soon they’re being pulled down over her butt. I guess it only eats organic, she thinks, relishing the feeling of the phalanges exploring her upper thighs. They wiggle over every inch of her, a thousand hot tongues hitting everything but her face. A few find their way into the space between her legs and she sighs contentedly. Her toes curl outside the mouth as her lower legs swing back and forth with the rhythm of the worm’s swallows. Pressure surges and recedes on her torso, perfect, crushing hugs that wash the thoughts from her mind. Her fingers find their way to her pussy and she slides two in slowly. Some of the phalanges push their way into the crevasse of her ass and push gently against her other hole. San lets out a muffled moan and slides a finger into her butt with her other hand.
Intense heat builds throughout her body, she has no self-control left. She assaults herself in rhythm with every contraction. Now she’s in up to her ankles, and every inch of her is being stroked with a live wire. Hot, wet, and slick it’s mouth slides against her as she slides against herself. The orgasm builds and she opens her mouth and pulls in a phalange, sucking it like a cock. Her mouth fills with the hot, flavorless slime and she swallows it willingly, switching to another one when the first shrinks back, depleted. She lets the worm fill her as she fills it taking more and more as the greed and the pleasure build. Her mouth is gentle with them as she suckles, her eyes half lidded even in the absolute darkness.
The orgasm comes and rocks her body, making her stomach muscles seize up. She screams, her face pressed against the dripping side of the worm, phalange resting loosely on her tongue. Her toes curl a final time outside the worm, and as the orgasm fades so does her consciousness. She’s pulled in with a soft “plop” and feels herself sliding down, down, down.

[transmission interrupted]
[signal net intact]
[finding next source]
[trace found]
[observation point found]
[subject located]
[begin trans]
Leftenant Per, Lesser Crown Adjunct
Relei, Pressia
32 Hours after the scuttling of the Orion

“Nooo!” Screams Per as the Low King levels his pistol at his father’s head. His rifle is up and he is firing before he knows it, the over-charged arch of neon white light lancing across the room in the blink of an eye and taking the lesser monarch in the shoulder. It neatly burns through blood, bone, and flesh and Cer’s now useless arm falls ignominiously to the ground. Cer looks at the cauterized stump as it begins to slowly weep blood and he tries to turn his gun arm, but Per is firing again and screaming. Every laser blast burns the oxygen in the air, and the room is full of the sucking gasp of displaced atmosphere and the cloying acrid stink of ozone. The bolts of light hit Cer in the torso, burning ugly craters into his chest and stomach. They strike his combustion firearm and ignite the remaining rounds, blowing off his hand and filling his face and neck with pieces of shrapnel. He falls backward, gurgling and choking on the blood filling his throat.
Per moves up, working on autopilot. Check corners, check overhead, check rear, back to target. He keeps his rifle to his shoulder, keeping the barrel trained on Cer.
“Dad?” He calls as he gets closer. “Dad! Are you OK?” He tries to suppress the quavering worry in his voice, but it breaks through. His dad has to be OK. Has to be. There’s no other option. Can’t be. The relief that washes through him when he sees that Eld is still breathing nearly brings his legs out from beneath him. He stays professional and keeps the weapon trained on Cer, deciding to check on him before tending to his dad. Dying men were the most dangerous type. Cer was convulsing in a pile on the floor, his body and face mangled from Per’s attack. His hand was a bloody stump that ended in shreds of tattered flesh, somehow his thumb had survived completely intact and was wriggling about insanely. Tears of blood wept in a constant stream from the cauterized meat of his left shoulder, and from the gouges on his torso. His heart was still beating, and his blood pressure was pushing through the sear sites. Cer’s right eye was strangely deflated and had taken on the lumpy shape of a potato. His warped iris now gazed upward into his own skull, draped in ruined connective tissue. His only good eye rolled around in its socket. Cer had either gone mad from pain or was deep in shock. Per brought his rifle up and finished what he’d started, wincing from the high-pitched squeal of water escaping his overheating skull as it cooked away to cinders and steam. When it was done, all that remained was a blackened stump of a neck, and the soot covered and melted remainder of his upper spine.
Per said a silent prayer to god. He’d never killed someone before, and the familiar words he muttered sounded false and empty in light of the experience. This was real, what he’d done. There was no secondary interpretations to be had, no polite discussions of repercussions or hypotheticals. At this point in time he existed in a world of absolute fact. He had become the period at the end of the sentence. In light of the finality of it, he found he felt nothing but a small amount of satisfaction in the accuracy of his shots. Shaking from the adrenaline, he managed to sling his rifle over his back and turn to his father.
His old man was fully awake, and met his eyes with a look he’d never seen before. Respect from a man to a man, not simply a father to a son. Eld nodded twice, clearly in a great deal of pain. They looked at each other, sharing the moment, then it was on to business. Neither of them talked as Per stripped away Cer’s blood soaked clothing and improvised battle dressings from the cleaner parts for his dad’s wounds. Eld helped tie the dressings, and when it seemed he could finish on his own, Per used his rifle to break up the backboard of the throne and used the pieces to fashion a makeshift crutch for Eld. They finished nearly in tandem and Per helped Eld to his feet, handing him the crutch and letting him throw an arm over his shoulder for support.
“Can’t go to the medical center,” said Per. “It’s been abandoned.”
“Don’t need to,” said Eld. “Get us to the hangar. Med Lander’ll have what we need. Gotta--” he coughs and Eld surreptitiously checks for blood. He sighs with relief when he doesn’t see any. “Gotta tell the High King. Gut shot doesn’t kill you for a while. I’ll be fine.”
Per nods in agreement. They lean on each other and head for the door.

[transmission interrupted]
[signal net intact]
[finding next source]
[trace found]
[observation point found]
[subject located]
[team black infmod battlenet]
[begin trans]
32 Hours after the scuttling of the Orion
Team Black Battle Net, Mission Briefing, Operation Aardvark
Hanger Delta November Delta, Pericles, Pressian Low Orbit
H-1 to Drop
Black Main this is Papa Main
Send
Roger, be advised Hour one to drop
Understood
Team Black this is Black Main, check in
Black Two Clean and Clear
Black Three Clean and Clear
Black Four Clean and Clear
Black Five Clean and Clear
Black Main Copies all, standby for mission brief
(B2-5) Roger
Mission will be conducted as follows
Primary bombardment from Charlie November over LZ Whiskey
Teams Red, White, Green, and Blue will land at LZ Whiskey and set up OP Whiskey
Red and White will form a Secure Perimeter
Green will disembark after Red and White are finished and provide Overwatch
Blue will have four ST548’s and two ST54’s and will provide Combat/Evac support
Team Black
(B2-5) KILL
Team Black
(B2-5) KILL
Haha
Team Black will be dropped into City A2, codename Relei
Black will secure any prisoners, mark targets for bombardment, and capture intel
There are currently two known survivors
They are combat code A00021 and A00001
Both are officers
Both are survivors
A00021 is one of us
Her codename is Schoolgirl
A00001 is an infantry lieutenant
His codename is Richboy
Richboy is a high priority target and will be brought back alive without exemption
He is being held in the Enemy Command Center and is in critical condition
We will be infiltrating at Pos 2 Mark 1 immediately after H-Hour
Main has zero ground intel but it seems that a natural disaster has occurred
The city is currently evacuated, but the Command Center is still chock full of assholes in the lower bunkers
We will be direct dropping in pods to avoid detection and retaliation
Go time is very soon gentlemen
Solid Copy?
(B2-5) Roger
ARE YOU READY?
(B2-5) KILL
ARE YOU READY?
(B2-5) KILL
Get some rest boys
These fuckers haven’t seen hell yet

[transmission interrupted]
[signal net intact]
[finding next source]
[trace found]
[observation point found]
[subject located]
[begin trans]
Warrant Officer Ichi “Sugar” Katsuo
Communications Suite, Cosa Nostra, Pressian Orbit
32 Hours after the scuttling of the Orion

He watches her watching herself in the mirror. Ensign Katie Teuschel. He wonders if she can see what he sees when he looks at her. How unstoppable she is. The collars record audiovisual data that can be streamed live into any registered communications suite with the correct destination tag. He’d seen the suite on Grand, with hundreds of thousands of screens all scanning collars across the universe. Now it was just him and Teuschle. Her eyes are hard, glittering little chips of ice. She is thinking about taking off the collar. He respects the decision. After his talk with Marl he took his own off. There is no one to monitor him but himself anymore, and he’d always been able to do that just fine.
He packed his tin and popped the cap off, pulling a plug and sticking it in his lip. He’d only brought a few tins with him on the mission. Bad move, considering he was now close to running out. Only a few pinches left, better make them count, right? He shoots a stream of brown tobacco juice onto the floor to the right of the seat. There’s no reason to be clean about it anymore. Pretty soon he’d put the entire suite on automatic, set to record and send the transmission to hundred different secure servers that would in turn send the transmission to every reporting agency in the known galaxy. They’ll do the rest.
He watches Teuschle make her decision. He can read it on the monitors. He sees it in her eyes. She reaches up and grabs it. She’s worried about the consequences, he can tell, but she follows through anyway. The last thing he sees of Katie Teuschle is that steel in her eyes, then her hand jerks down and the monitor cuts to black. Before the Living God had lost the right to his first name, that would have been a death sentence.
“[collar disconnected willingly]” It says. “[send error report]” He reaches forward, taps the ignore area of the monitor and shuts it off. He’s happy that the ship even has touch monitors still, he can’t see the holo projections without his collar and this would have been much more difficult. He makes a few quick selections and soon the computer is set to automatic, and every planet side collar forms a net that begins to record anything inside itself. He puts in an exception for Teuschle’s biometrics. No more spying on her, he thinks to himself.
On the floor next to him is an old school optical camera. He’d seen video of confessions before in his life, and earlier he’d decided to make his to something. No more direct interpretation of his living thoughts through collar feed. He’d admit his sins as he remembered them, and let the viewer interpret them as they saw fit. My guilt is my own, he thinks, setting the camera on the console and angling it to look into the empty glass eye of the lens. There’s no reason to let someone judge how guilty I felt by living in my head. My burden. My confession. Mine. He reaches forward and presses the recessed button that activates the eye. A tiny red light lets him know it’s filming.
“My name is Ichi Katsuo,” he begins. “I’m a Warrant Officer, or I used to be until an hour or so ago when I decided I wasn’t anymore.” He sighs and rubs his hands together, bowing his head then raising his eyes to the camera. “I’m, uh, normally not accustomed to speaking publicly. That’s really what I’m doing right now, giving my whole last testament and whatnot, but I guess that this whole deal is a lot easier when I can’t see people looking at me. A day or so ago… A day, what is a day in space right? Anyway, a day or so ago I was contacted by my old commander. She had to through together a crew to respond to the scuttling of the Orion, a Presidium Class ship that went down over Pressia. A relatively newly discovered planet that was thought to host the first sapient life ever discovered.
“We were briefed that the ship had been downed by Pressian forces. We were led to believe that they had anti-star weapons capability, an assertion that I later proved to be false. The Pressians had been embargoed from their nearby colonies by our local forces under orders from Consul Rick Tanner Sr. Orders which I recently discovered came from a source other than himself, though he followed them anyway. It came to my attention recently that the Living God had sent the order, and that he was also responsible for the creation of the life forms on the surface of the world. They’re, uh, genetically modified humans who’ve had time to develop, uh, pig-like noses so God decided to kill them all and no one disagreed.
“In an hour or so my Commander will order beginning of a bombardment schedule that will leave the planet absolutely devoid of life. I know she will not fail to do so because this isn’t the first time she’s killed a planet. Roughly three years ago I was party to the destruction of the Stadtwelten Agdam. I was ordered to fire a high-velocity magnetic round into the planet’s atmosphere with the intention of skipping it across the world’s crust. This was highly effective. I didn’t try—“ Sugar buries his face in his hand and chokes on the word. “I didn’t… try to stop the order, or disagree with the course of the action. That wasn’t my place and it would’ve happened anyway, but… I enjoyed it, to a degree, the power. The control I had. Until I saw pictures from the surface it didn’t hit me what I had done.” He runs a hand across his nose and sniffs.
“The desolation was… complete, I guess you’d say. Everything dirty and covered ice, hurricanes that engulfed continents. Cities coated in miles of dust. All from me doing a few calculations and pushing a button. Our orders that day were to use unyielding force to destroy the planet’s pirate bases and dissuade other planets from following suit. What we didn’t know was that the Stadtwelten wasn’t carrying out pirate attacks, but had declared independence and were fighting off what they considered invading units. Admiral Fontaine had been given orders to destabilize the seditious world. We atmo-skipped the round to undo the planet’s terraforming, but the impact was super-effective thanks to me.” He takes the wad of tobacco out of his lip and flicks it out into the server bay.
“I plan on making things right.” He stares into the camera. “I can’t let myself be party to something like this again.” He picks the camera up and turns it off.

[end trans]
[transmission interrupted]
[signal net intact]
[finding next source]
[trace found]
[observation point found]
[subject located]
[begin trans]
Free Citizen San Paral
Unknown Entity, Stomach, Pressia

It’s a nightmare, she thinks as she’s pushed deeper and deeper into the guts of the creature. It’s dark, hot, and moist, and the she’s lost any ability to orient herself. How long have I been in here, she thinks. She doesn’t feel worried. She doesn’t feel anything. Life is motion and pressure. Bliss in motion. San is drowning in honey, but she can still breathe somehow.
Time passes.
Days.
Seconds.
Months
Minutes.
Suddenly there’s light, and with the light comes pain and cold and harsh, pain-filled breath. She gasps, sucking for air and finds none, her lungs heave in her chest as she gains her bearings. She’s kneeling over, blind, hands pressed against the spongy unfocused floor. She shudders and hacks, clearing slime from lungs. She heaves again and this time she gets her wind. A long quacking breath that feels like it’s made of fire and she coughs it back up.
She lies there for a long time, coughing and wheezing before her vision clears and she finds she can see. Long waving shadows crisscross in the light before her eyes, supple gray blurs that coil and toss against a deep orange haze. Tight coils bind her and raise her up, she can barely make out the contours of the area. A great orange disk glows overhead, the walls are red and shake furiously. She can hear nothing but a heady buzz that fills the void and shakes her bones. San begins to drift away gently into sleep.

[end trans]
[transmission interrupted]
[begin audio playback]
Relevant Data Unknown

I left the island monster where it was sitting, I’d figured at the time it we were better off keeping to our own respective selves. I stopped off at the detention center I’d woken up at after the first time they fried my brain with that switch. God only knows what kind of impact it’s had on me. From what I understand you really aren’t supposed to go toying with the human central nervous system, but that’d never really bothered anyone on Grand and from where I was sitting it didn’t really bother me anymore either.
The detention center was worse off than the medical center had been. Tiny drops of blood dried in little brown circles going from the entrance to behind the short gray desk built into the wall. Arterial spray spotted the top of the door in little dashes and commas that had run down the wall before drying, making the shape of a broken harp whose strings dangled into nothing at the door frame. I followed the blood trail behind the desk and found its originator, a pig-man corpse that had been desiccated to the point where his clothes looked seven sizes too big. He stank like sulfur and old paper, his lips pulled open in a screaming rictus. His eyes were missing, the holes coated in half dried blood and dust. I held my breath and checked him for anything useful.
I patted him down from top to bottom, finding nothing on him but keys and an old-school microwave communicator. I slipped both into my pockets and rolled him over. His bones had been made brittle by whatever killed him and his arm snapped off just above the elbow. No gun, no knife, and no real weapons to speak of. I think about taking his uniform and making something with it, but the back is covered thumb sized holes ringed with old blood. Better to leave it I thought.
The desk drawers had all been emptied, so I decide to try and find the armory, and something in the back of my mind tells me to avoid the long cellblock on the other side of the metal door behind the desk. It was shut and hopefully locked, a few bloody smears obscured the small, square window set into the center of the door. Another door on the right side of the room leads me to an office hallway. The carnage from the reception area hadn’t crossed into that area, but the search was mostly fruitless. Twenty or so desks set into seven shared offices that ran down the left wall. Steel-shell desks filled with papers and pictures of sullen faced pig-men holding up numbered signs. I couldn’t read any of the words without the translation software from the collar, but surprisingly the Pressian’s number system closely followed the Arabic numerals and seemed to be a base ten. Curiouser and curiouser.
I finish my sweep of the desks fruitlessly. At some point I found a discarded table leg, but passed on it when it bent easily over my knee. The whole time I searched I couldn’t shake the sense of foreboding. That just before the storm feeling where you know you have only a few minutes to find shelter or you’re going to get wet. The only door left is at the back of the hall on the left. From the opaque glass and the gold swirling Pressian lettering I can tell that it was the boss’s office, or something like that.
Horror comes at you suddenly. The neighbor you never expect to visit that shows up at the most inopportune time. I open the door slowly, and they turn around. They’re too busy eating the fat pig-man in the chair. His gray, ashen face lolls to the side and rocks gently back and forth as the spiders suckling at his guts vie for position. There’s a girl standing behind the chair, her modesty protected by heavy bands of silk that bind her torso and upper legs. Her eyes glow a dispassionate red as she strokes the brittle white hair of the corpse. She notices me and our eyes meet. It’s Lacy and her children, somehow free from her cell. Without moving her eyes she bends down and strokes one of the platter sized spiders. It chirps at her then turns and fixes its dead black eyes on me. Lacy waves, a quick little wave of the fingers and the spiders begin to swarm at me, jumping high and fast through the air as I barely shut the door in time. One hits the window in the door and it shatters as the spider flops through it and onto the floor, wounded.
It calls with a pained squeal that pierces my ears and then all of them are flowing through the hole in the glass, chirping and swarming over each other to get at me. Then I’m sprinting hard down the hallway. I can hear them behind me, swishing and sliding over the discarded papers in the hallway. Their footfalls sound like sand falling on steel and all I can think of is not losing one of the stupid sandals I’m running in. One of them manages to get on me as I take the corner into the reception area and I manage to grab it and fling it off before I make it to the front door. Its body is hard and black and covered in sharp yellow bristles. I almost vomit when its body splits on impact, leaving a spray of orange viscera on the wall.
[take off the collar]
Then the door slams behind me and I’m still sprinting. The sandals make smack wetly on the watery pavement and I’m surprised to see a group of four wide-eyed pig-men just outside the entrance. They look at each other then scream something intelligible at me, probably whatever Pressian is for ‘stop’. They bring their rifles to bear and one of them gets a shot off, blowing a cloud of dust off the building in front of me, before the swarm makes its way out of the building and starts eating the four of them alive. Their screams follow me up the road as I make my way to the palace. I look over my shoulder when I think I’m far enough and I see Lacy standing over the quivering mass of bodies. She’s surveying her children’s work. She looks up at me and gives me the same smile and wave. I run faster. I need a fucking gun.

[axmanjack]

Action 7 [losses] Part 2

Spoiler (click to show/hide):

[end trans]
[playback paused]
[signal cluster located]
[ad hoc devices d19007-a00001 activated en masse]
[localized network established]
[trace found]
[observation point found]
[subject located]
[begin trans]
Free Citizen San Paral
Unknown Life Form, Stomach, Pressia
32 Hours after the scuttling of the Orion

The walls are covered in people. Mostly women, but men too and even some Imperials. The room is a large pit with no ceiling, the size of a sports arena. The same protrusions that had pushed San down the worm’s gullet grew out of the pulsating red walls. They were larger here, and pulled and pushed the occupants up and down the wall, pushing themselves in and out of whatever hole they blindly located. But everyone was happy, smiling or fixed with a blank stare of absolute pleasure.
San feels herself being pulled up the wall, and she gasps and sighs as the appendages rub across her inner thighs, in between her ass cheeks, across her stomach. There isn’t a part of her that loses contact for more than a few seconds. Somewhere in the back of her mind she hears a screaming begging need to be free of this hell but she pays it no mind. The movement stops and through the haze she realizes she’s found her place on the wall. Thick tongue-like appendages find their way into her armpits and swell and pulsate, reaching around to grab her breasts and fix her in place. She thinks she can see the terrified girl from inside the straws a few meters to her left, lazily sucking on one of the tendrils that have wound its way through her hair and into her mouth. Her hands hang loosely to her sides and two fat appendages are working their way in and out of her bottom. The protrusions inside her seem to pulling and pushing themselves using a wide web of yellow prehensile fibers.
San takes a long, unfocused look at what she understands is her new home. The opposite wall is so far it only looks like a rippling mass of red covered in dark specks. The noise from the walls is so loud and incomprehensible it feel as though she’s listening to static through earpieces. In the center of the arena is single, massive yellow flower that has yet to bloom. From its green stem, at least as thick as a house, to its top it’s at least two hundred meters tall. Impossibly large, it casts a grand shadow in the weak sunlight that comes through the open top of the area.
More appendages cover San and she stretches her back with anticipation as one grazes her asshole, then pushes gently at the opening. She relaxes herself and it slides in slowly, needing no lubrication to find its way all the way in. It throbs and pulses warmly inside her, pushing itself in deeper without any resistance. She moans loudly as the friction increases, filling her chest with warmth. Another appendage moves in front of her and she can see that it looks like a much smaller version of the flower in the center of the room. It unfolds in a gentle swirling motion and its petals flutter like a ballerina’s dress during a spin. Its thick stamen is covered in thick sap, and she can see it leaking more with every pulse.
San arches her neck and leans forward, opening her mouth for it, needing it. The strange flower’s petals seem to split into a myriad of little tendrils, then it obliges, moving forward slowly and placing its girth on her tongue. San can feel another one moving into place beneath her and she groans as it slips back and forth inside her wet labia, roughly flicking her clitoris on the end of each stroke. She wonders if she’s covered in sweat or the saliva-like fluid that drips from the walls.
The flower in her mouth pushes itself in and wraps its tendrils around her head as the one between her legs does the same, filling her in a way she’d never felt before. They start to fuck her in rhythm. One, two, three, one, two, three, a waltz of infinite pleasure that turns her mind into a puddle of euphoric jelly. They assault her over and over, and the passage of time becomes a mundane and incomprehensible oddity. She can’t breathe, then she can. She can’t think, then she can. Every intangible thought in the universe come and goes and she fucks and fellates the bizarre growths. The first orgasm comes and her ass clenches against the flower’s stamen, prompting it to spurt a heavy hot stream deep inside her. It pulls out and before she can register its absence, another fat load fills her mouth and she swallows it greedily while the flower leaves and folds itself, disappearing into the wall somewhere.
The flower in her pussy picks up speed and she can feel her self being flipped over. Her wet hair falls into her face for a second and she finds her hands have been freed when she moves it out of the way on instinct. The wall has changed shape and now she’s on her shoulders, watching the flower fuck her from above. With her free hands she pulls her knees to her chest. Her feet bob up and down from each impact, sometimes slapping the impromptu tentacle bed with her toes.
Another shuddering orgasm comes and goes, leaving her nearly out of breath. Above her she can see the stem of the flower bulge as something fat and round makes its way through it. It’s going to put that in me, she thinks. In the dark, shut off recesses of her mind an unknowable horror tries to get her to fight back. It tells her that this is fundamentally wrong. It screams and screams, but she doesn’t listen. She just watches the bulge get closer and closer until she feels the first painful hint of it trying to push itself past her opening.
She screams in pain and ecstasy as it pushes the fist sized egg into her. The scream is lost in the din of the arena, and soon she is hoarse and contended as the final orgasm passes and fades, her consciousness beginning to fade with it. Once the egg has been deposited, the flower slides out of her and folds itself up and into the wall. Still upside down, the wall’s appendages slowly begin to lower the hundreds of meters to the floor. Through her sex-drunk and half-lidded eyes she can see that the flower in the center has begun to bloom. A tan woman as tall as a building, with eyes more beautiful than a sunset is curled in the center of the flower like a baby. For a fleeting moment San feels absolute love for her, then the flower sweeps closed again and San’s journey toward the bottom continues.

[transmission interrupted]
[signal cluster located]
[ad hoc devices d19007-a00001 activated en masse]
[localized network established]
[trace found]
[observation point found]
[subject located]
[begin trans]
Warrant Officer Ichi “Sugar” Katsuo
Bridge, Casa Nostra, In orbit over Pressia
32 Hours after the scuttling of the Orion

A deep calm settles over him as the loading bar for the transmission of his recording reaches %100. Off and gone, his admission of guilt sent as far as the signal waves would take it. Through the known galaxy and the unknown parts. A tiny little ball of steel that would wink in and out of space-time until it failed to find a power source, sending his words and face to any who could see or hear. The period at the end of the sentence. Curtains pulled on a life just begun, at least in his mind. He deserves it all, he supposes, as he pulls the compact laser pistol from the lockbox beneath his bed and tucks it into his waste band. He’d walked to his room and watched the uploading from an electronic PDA, soon enough the entire communications suite would be inaccessible. Lockdown protocol. Not really his problem anymore.
The walk to the bridge is quiet, and he makes the trek pensively. I wonder if I’m even doing the right thing, he thinks. I’ve lived a life of good initiative and bad judgment. Is it gong to a repeat of all the bad choices? Will this be the one good thing I’ve done, or am I just another self-affirming war criminal like Fontaine? Too late now, he thinks, ejecting the battery pack and sliding it back home. It would be a bad time for a poor connection to fuck this all up. The battery light flashes a dark green and he shrugs and holds his breath. The pneumatic doors to the bridge are in front of him, but he’s too nervous to reach forward and hit the ‘open’ button.
Pistol at his side, he reaches forward to hit it, but the doors rush open with a slick hiss. He has barely enough time to slide the pistol into his back waste band as a disinterested Yeoman moves past him into the hall. She nods at him, cocking an eye at his civilian attire and he nods back. Sugar walks onto the bridge and the doors snap shut behind him with all the severity of a closing coffin. He’s surprised to see the bridge hands going about their normal routine, oblivious to him and his plans. He was the aggressor here, none of these people woke up expecting what’s about to happen.
“Sugar!” He starts at the mention of his name and sees Fontaine on the center platform. She motions for him to come up. “There’ve been some warning lights popping up about the communications suite. Is that why you’re here?”
“Uh, yeah, sort of. Um.” His mouth goes dry and he looks around. A few Yeomen are looking at him, but most are going about their routine with impassioned boredom. When should I even do this? He thinks. You’d think there would be a moment or something, but now I just feel like I’m interrupting something.
“Sugar? You were saying?”
“Oh, fuck.” He says, pulling out the gun and pointing at Fontaine’s face. The deck explodes in confusion around him. People run back and forth screaming ‘gun’ and a disorganized mad sprint to the door begins. Men and women stumble over each other, desks are knocked to the side, and some just sit and watch wide-eyed.
“Sugar, put down the gun.” Says Fontaine, putting her palms up and making a lowering motion. “Calm down and tell me what’s wrong.” Her calm is unbreakable, she doesn’t even raise her voice.
“I know, Admiral. I know everything.” Sugar feels one hot tear roll down his cheek and Fontaine’s expression hardens. One of the bridge hands rushes him and Sugar turns and shoots the girl in her left thigh. She screams and falls to the deck, clutching the burn site. Fontaine doesn’t even flinch as her subordinate whimpers and curls on the deck a few meters away.
“What do you know Sugar? That you’re clearly unstable? That if you don’t drop that weapon right now you won’t be leaving this room alive? That there are severe penalties for treason regardless of the breakdown of command at home?”
“I’m not unstable, ma’am, I know that much at least.”
“Then where’s your collar?”
“This dog doesn’t have any use for a collar anymore ma’am, and I never planned on surviving this.”
“Why?” Despite the gun he feels like she’s just reprimanding him, an elder scolding a wayward child.
“Because three years ago you gave the order to exterminate a planet of 3 billion innocent people, and I pushed the button.”
“Do you have any proof of this?” The girl starts gasping for breath on the deck next to him. His aim had been off, she was going into shock. He’d have to make this quick or the medical team might not get to her in time. There is only one more life to take anyway, he thinks.
“The Metatron, his name is Marl. He told me everything. I can’t let you do it again here ma’am. Not again.” She cocks up an eyebrow at him.
“Hm, so what do you intend to do? Let our ground forces get caught in a meat grinder? Are you going to kill me Sugar?” He shakes his head.
“That thing down there needs to be destroyed, it’s no better than us, but the people down there all deserve to live on their own merit. No control, no interference. Please sit down.” She obliges and he lifts the gun up and aims. For the first time he can see her wince a bit, she can feel the bolt coming. He fires and the bolt cuts through the fabric over her right shoulder. A white ribbon of smoke rises up from the burn site. An automated voice comes over the loud speaker.
“SMALL ARMS FIRE DETECTED. PREPARE FOR EVACUATION.”
“Goodbye Admiral,” he says to Fontaine as she gives him an honestly confused look, then she realizes and it’s too late. The chair disappears and Fontaine with it, their exit signaled by the loud pop of air refilling the sudden vacuum created by transit space. Almost done, he thinks, hitting two buttons on the PDA. The first ejects the Admiral’s escape pod on course with the surface of the world, and the second alters the ship’s bombardment plan to only hitting the abomination. The same automated voice comes over the intercom and lets him know that both endeavors were successful. With Fontaine gone, the new program couldn’t be altered, unless someone learned how to do it by attaching a thought collar to him. And his thoughts wouldn’t be a problem for much longer.
“Hey, you,” Sugar says, approaching the Yeoman who rushed him and turning her over gently on her back. The whole room is empty except for them now. The concentration of bodies in the hall would hold off the react team for a moment longer. “Are you OK?” Her face has gone white from shock, but her eyes are alive and glittering with intensity.
“You… shot… me…”
“Uh, sorry about that.” He checks the burn site and sees that it’s a through and through, and cauterization is less likely on the lower heat settings. Internal bleeding, but she’ll live, he thinks. “You’ll be fine when the med team gets here.” He bends down and picks her up, she’s too weak to struggle and not very heavy, then sets her down near the door. He can hear the hushed voices of the react team on the other side of the door, getting ready to storm in and blow him to bits. He leans over to the girl. “That was pretty ballsy of you lady, what’s your name?”
“Amelie,” she responds through clenched teeth.
“That’s a nice name. I’m going to go over here for a bit. It’d be better if you don’t look.”
Sugar leaves the girl and walks up to the central platform. If he were wearing a collar right now, he would be able to see the solar system again. Look down on Pressia, that brave girl fighting her ass off down there. Instead he just saw with his eyes. Black plated steel walls that wouldn’t throw off interpretations of the hologram. The bent black arms of the holographic projectors. The steady red glow of the track lighting in the floor. The warm ambient heat being drawn from the reactors at either side of the ship. I’m so far from everything now, he thinks, twisting the expulsion rate on the pistol to ‘Full’, then pressing the emitter to his ear. So fucking far away.
He pulls the trigger and the deafening snap twists his body around and he falls to the floor. His eyesight grows hazy, blurred. He feels his pulse, the vibration of the engines in the floor. The door slides open and he sees the med team rush in after the react team. They help the girl. That’s good. The world is filled with stomping boots, but there is no noise now, and soon darkness will fall. He feels it coming like cool water rising in a creek bed.
Three years ago I killed a planet.
Today myself.
Tomorrow I’ll kill no more.
Sugar closes his eyes.

[signal terminated]
[begin audio playback]
Relevant Data Unknown

I ran for the doorway to the palace like a bat out of hell, hoping beyond hope that Rick hadn’t been in that detention center when Lacy’s abominations started eating everyone. There wasn’t anything I could do for him if there was. I’d thought about him a bit here and there, now that I look back on it I’m surprised he didn’t register higher on my scale. I could have used a partner, but I had no idea where he was, and I was unarmed, underdressed, and in an enemy capitol. It never dawned on me how lucky I was while I was wandering around down there on the waterlogged Pressian streets, running and gunning blind and alone. If that island thing hadn’t washed up on the beach and started breaking shit I’d still be stuck on that table, getting ready to be sold off or whatever they had planned for me. I was focused though, survival was my only concern and I just kept moving.
I made my way into the palace as quickly and quietly as possible, going as fast as I could to escape the swarm while still not tipping off anyone who could recognize me. The inside of the palace seems to be empty though, the halls are full of even more discarded luggage and bags than the streets outside. Everything’s considerably dryer than outside though, which means the people who were here got inside before the tidal wave pushed inland. There are several drying boot tracks too, moving in formation past the overturned carts and lost packs to the central hall, splitting off in two directions. A search team, but looking for what?
I think for a second and choose the right side hall, making my way past a floppy little rag-doll with corkscrew eyes and a befuddled expression that some child had abandoned. Such an absurd reminder of innocence in a place like this, I thought to myself. What I’d gone through only a few hundred meters and that goofy-faced doll, likely some little girl’s prized possession. You’d think that somehow the two couldn’t occupy the same place, but, there it was. Does evil stain good or the other way around? Do they even exist? Does it even matter? I decide no and keep moving. With an active search team in the area it would be stupid to try and dig through bags trying to find better clothes, and no evacuee would bring a weapon and then abandon it when things got bad. OSP again, a reoccurring theme of my little trip to Pressia. I promised myself I’d never go anywhere without a weapon again.
I walk through the cavernous halls of the palace always on guard. Each corner takes a few seconds, intersections even more. Paranoia becomes a thick fuzz that coats my brain and makes every small decision a possible mistake. I wonder if I’m even following a search team. I wonder how fast the swarm will finish its meal and come after me. I feel much more important than I really am, walking terrified and silent through the tomblike passages. Even the muffled footfalls from the carpet seem to echo off the brown marble walls. Every open door is an ambush, every dark corner an insidious trap. I think as though I were the enemy and in doing so, confer my abilities on them. I’m imagining myself hunting myself in the dark and flickering corridors. When the first real sounds come they are so much louder than the imaginary ones that I freeze and drop like a possum.
The sucking burning sounds of laser fire, screams in the distance. Despite the plethora of rooms to hide in I decide to sneak up on the firefight. Everything in my mind screamed ‘bad idea’ but I went anyway, moving slowly around corners until I could see their backs. I couldn’t get a body count, and I could only make out two. One was leaned against a wall talking into some sort of short-wave communicator; the other was firing in tandem with someone I couldn’t see. I could hear my mother’s voice, the hard-as-ice New Prussian accent yelling at my siblings and me when we were still young, stick fighting with pads in our backyard while dad overcooked sausages for us on the grill. “Hard, fast, and leaving no possibility of counter attack.” ‘Yes ma’am’ I think, then I make my move.
I walk hard and fast behind them, letting the sound of rifle fire and the fog of combat hide my steps. He hears me just as I’m grabbing his sidearm and he tries to grab my hand, but I ram my shoulder into the small of his back. He stumbles forward and the momentum draws the gun for me. Before he manages a few steps I put two rounds into his lungs and one into the base of his skull, spraying the wall in front of him with blood. His friend only has time to glance over confused before I put four and five into his jaw and right eye. I barely have time to register the blood trickling out of the shattered goggle’s lens and then I’m turning the corner. Only one left on this side, still firing his rifle, oblivious to the recent demise of his two friends. I point the barrel at the back of his head and pull the trigger, but the gun clicks and I realize the round is jammed in the chamber. I forgo the shitty Pressian tech and kick out the back of his knee, then blood choke him until he goes limp, then a few seconds more to make sure.
[take off the collar]
A hesitant call in Pressian comes from the scorched doorway at the end of the hall. Through the doors I can see rows and racks of rifles, pistols, shotguns, and even medium and large machineguns. An armory. The force inside would have to be small not to able to fight their way out of there. Even if they kept combustion ammunition in a separate area, I could still make out guns that could be plugged into a wall socket and fired indefinitely. I call back to them with the same noise, and a hand comes around the doorframe and fires a few sporadic shots. Fine, I think to myself, picking up a rifle and training it on the doorway. If they want a fight, I’ll bring the fire.
I stay low and to the left-side wall where the gunman fired from so I can see the other side of the doorway when I get close. There’re two more dead pig-men further up that I didn’t kill, black smoking holes in their heads and chests, hard motherfuckers waited ahead. I’d have to be harder. I can hear whispering, admonitions, commands, all in another language. I miss the collar’s language processors right now, but it’s not like they’d have anything to say to me any way. I pick up some brick-like communicator from one of the dead pig-men’s belts, and when I get close to the door I throw it hard at the floor in the middle of the hall.
The gun comes through the door again, firing crystalline bolts of white light that sizzle the air in front of my face and make the air reek of ozone. Then I see my chance. I grab his wrist and pull him off balance and through the door. With the angle I can only shoot him in the leg and stomach before he pulls me on top of him. We roll twice and end up with my rifle in his neck and his gun in my hand, pointed at the doorway. From inside I hear an older man’s voice scream, his voice wavers into a cough and the one beneath me answers before I shove the emitter harder into his throat. There’s pleading from the other side of the door but I can’t hear what he’s saying, beneath me the pig-man groans in pain. His forehead has broken out in sweat.
I can hear shuffling from in the doorway and the other one crawls into view. He’s wounded, and clutching at the blood-soaked front of his uniform shirt. Through the pain wrinkling his face I can see that it’s the pig-man who turned the little black switch on me first. Commander fry-your-fucking-brain-for-a-minute-or-two Eld of the who-gives-a-fuck army of rape planet. I level the gun at his dumb-fucking-skull and get ready to burn his eyes out, but he’s not even looking at me. His eyes are focused on the one with a rifle barrel displacing his Adam’s apple, and he looks genuinely concerned. Then I get it, they look almost the same, but different ages. It’s a relative, likely his kid I’ve got under me. I flip the selector lever to a higher heat setting and Eld raises his hands and shakes his head slowly from side to side.
[chill mode]
Both of them are bleeding, weak. I know that I could blow a hole through both of them right now and save myself the trouble, but some old feeling comes back to me. I think of my mom’s lessons again. Absolute violence wins battles, unconditional compassion makes them worth winning. I pull the emitter away from the kid’s neck and stand, tossing the pistol and shouldering the rifle. Eld crawls out on his stomach leaving a patchy trail of blood behind him and makes his way to the kid. The kid says something and they both laugh, then begin to help each other up. I never let the rifle fall the entire time. Sometimes I feel like I’ve spent my life watching the world through a sniper’s scope, distant and deadly but never actually there.
Eld gives me a knowing nod and I can see real gratitude in his eyes. He speaks the boy and they both stop, neither can walk without the other. Eld looks at me and flattens his hand out horizontally, then makes a ‘whoosh’ noise and raises his hand slowly, then moves it up quickly. A pantomime for aircraft. He leans around his son and points to the end of the hall and then to the right. Hangar bay that way. We share a collective nod and they make their way out into the hall, painfully bending over to pick up a rifle on their way out.
When they’re finally out of sight I turn and begin to clear the armory, going step by step through the racks to make sure they haven’t gone out of their way to fuck me. When I’m satisfied everything’s safe I take my time rummaging through the armory with the door shut. It’s a goddamned treasure trove, and I find everything I think I’ll need in just a few seconds. The only thing that bothers me is the large crate full of discarded thought collars. If they were all dead, that was bad, but these were all whole and none were covered in blood or scorch marks. There were other humans still alive on the planet somewhere, I hadn’t seen anyone but Lacy at the detention center. Anyone who’d been there would be dead anyway, and there were more collars here than cells. I wondered where they’d have taken the prisoners.
I spend the next few minutes digging through equipment until I manage to find some decent utilities. I take a can of spray-paint that I find in a maintenance locker and cover them in black stripes so I don’t look like I’ve gone completely native when I rejoin the fleet. I’d gotten used to the idea of surviving by that point, might as well think positive. I picked out a decent flak-vest with ceramic heat reducers and utility webbing that I packed full of batteries. I normally didn’t use laser weapons, but I didn’t have time to sight a rifle and lasers were easier to use without sighting. I filled a pack with more ammo and strapped a side arm to my leg, then grabbed a full-tang blade from one of the boxes in the back of the armory. Thankfully, they also had a pair of boots roughly my size. I cut a length of bootstrap from one of the leftovers and tied my hair back.
Time to find a boat.

[playback interupted]
[signal net intact]
[finding next source]
[trace found]
[observation point found]
[subject located]
[begin trans]
Leftenant Per, Lesser Crown Adjunct
Hangar Bay, Relei, Pressia
32 Hours after the scuttling of the Orion

“So was it just me,” says Eld in between pained breaths. “Or was she wearing a Magnificent Tak shirt?” He laughs and Per joins him while trying to find a comfortable way to shoulder the rifle. The air smells better somehow, he thinks. After the Imperial spared him he hadn’t had a moment that he didn’t enjoy. He feels like he’s living on borrowed time, and he doesn’t intend to cash in the dividend anytime soon. Cer had called their gambit and informed the remaining infantry units that they had gone rogue. They had caught up to Per and Eld as they were passing the armory. If the Imperial hadn’t come by, they’d be dead.
“Haha, yeah. I’m sure she was, dad.”
“We just got our asses handed to us by a girl wearing a teeny-bob tee and sandals. I’m starting to think I’m getting too old for this game.” Eld hugs him surreptitiously, hiding it as an attempt to get better grip on his shoulder. He’d been so close to losing his son right in front of his eyes. He thinks back on all the men who’d served beneath him over the years, who’d he’d sent to their deaths without a blink of an eye. Their fathers and mothers had felt the same way. They get to the maglev that goes down to the hangar bay and enter. It only has two destinations and as soon as the doors shut behind them it springs to life and they can feel their stomachs rise as it rapidly descends. A short, high-pitched chime lets them know when they’ve arrived. The doors open with an oily metallic swish.
“Per,” says Eld averting his eyes elsewhere in the cramped service elevator. Beyond them the hangar stretches out to the massive steel curtains that cover its entrance. The tiniest bit of sunlight leaks through, but the primary lighting comes from several rows of recessed yellow ceiling lamps. Several vertical landers are in the bay, most ready to fly. Dust is falling quietly through the beams of light that reach through the doors. Per looks down and his dad is smiling at him. “Son. I just. Well, you did good today.”
A laser bolt takes Eld in the temple on a very high heat setting. It carves through his skull like butter, leaving a hole large enough for Per to see the boiling grey matter in his dad’s head and then he’s falling to the floor and crawling for cover while bolt after bolt after bolt impact the back wall. There is nothing in the world but the sucking burning heat of the lasers boiling the steel from the back doors of the elevator. Per takes a last look at his dad and crawls, screaming from inside the maglev, dragging the rifle behind him. He was still smiling, Per thinks, through a choking rage-filled sob. The fucking cunts, I’ll kill every fucking one of them.
“FUCK YOU!” He screams, leaning out from behind cover and firing bolts at the origin point. More rounds come back at him and he crawls from the crates he hid behind, dragging his bad leg, to the sled-like foot of the closest vertical lander. He’s on his back. Whoever’s out there is still firing into the elevator, burning his dad to a crisp. Motherfuckers, he thinks. “I’m coming for you, you godless whore fucking afterbirths.” He screams and rolls out from behind cover into the prone, barely acquiring a target in time. It’s another Pressian, garbed all in black. Pressians fighting Pressian’s while the Imperials hang like a sword in the sky. Per hated everything in that moment. The fundamental truth of fairness, its inexistence, brought out something deeply ugly in him. He shot the fucker in the shoulder and the knee, taking far too much pleasure watching the cunt’s leg collapse around burn site. He didn’t get to die, not yet.
The strike team Pressian hits the ground screaming for help. Per can hear him begging for assistance, and the others have stopped firing for a moment. One gets up the courage to run out and grab his comrade and Per returns the gesture by cleaving two holes through his left lung. He freezes in mid-step and hits the ground, sliding several feet before stopping. Before he stops moving, Per rolls to another vantage point, barely escaping the onslaught of beams that tear into the vertical lander’s sled, tearing through the metal leg in only a matter of seconds. The lander collapses over the damaged sled and a second later smoke begins to rise from the power plant. A stray round, Per thinks, then the firing begins again, this time from two separate directions. Flank and maneuver.
He checks the battery indicator on his rifle. The high output has severely diminished his remaining battery life. Only a few more shots until he’s empty. The crates he hid behind extend all the way to the wall, forming a dead end with a small mouth. He decides to squirrel away there and try to take as many of them as he can in the choke point. How did I even get to be like this? He thinks. Days ago he was happily fucking his way through life and today he’d killed four men and traumatically injured another. The lift’s doors close.
She’s coming, he thinks, wanting to warn her despite himself. That’s not his concern. He flattens his feet behind him and props his elbows into a perfect prone firing position. As many as I can, he thinks, as many as I can for dad. The smoke from the vertical lander’s burning power plant has reached the ceiling, and the automated fire sprinklers kick on, dousing the whole hangar with millions of gallons of sea water.
The lift rushes up its track.

[transmission interrupted]
[begin audio playback]
Relevant Data Unknown

I find an elevator and hit the call button, realizing at the time that the palace is built like a massive rectangle. If I hadn’t been on point I wouldn’t have noticed the boot prints of the other wing of the search team crushed into the plush red carpet that ran through the hallways. They were down there, and they probably wouldn’t be playing nice. My mother’s words in my head again. ‘Expect the worst from the enemy, then plan for everything you can survive’. Elevators are cramped rooms, and there wasn’t going to be any sitting on the roof and waiting for a reload. I wondered if Eld and his kid had made it, if they had sold me out and now I was waiting for a face full of super-heated air. I popped my back and hit the call button again, growing impatient. I’ve always thought it was worse to wait to die than to just die. I haven’t had experience with either so I couldn’t tell you the answer.
I hear the rush of the elevator returning to the floor I’m on before it gets there. I stand at a 45-degree angle to the opening doors, rifle up and ready for whatever wants to poke its dumb fucking head through. The doors slide open and I almost gag from the smell. The putrid scent of burnt meat and hair, overheated metal and ozone. I clear the door and see Eld, or what’s left of him. He’s been broiled by laser fire. His skin is puckered, red, and swollen from heat blisters and his skull has been caved in by heavy weapons fire. The doors and walls of the elevator are warped from heat, but it’s the only way down.
I hesitate and the doors begin to close automatically. I put my foot in between them and they pop back open. There’s no way back, and even with my new equipment I likely won’t make it out of the city alive on foot. I hold my breath and step into the elevator. Fuck it, I think. If Eld’s kid isn’t here then the trap isn’t perfect. If they have the kid the kid might tell them how ‘valuable’ my uterus is on this world. Maybe the kid’s still alive, kicking some ass down there, and if I fucked him up then I can fuck them up too. I hit the only button in the elevator and in a second it’s off, faster than I thought it would go. I get behind the short ‘wall’ next to the front doors and double and triple check my weapons during the descent. The elevator comes to a stop and the doors slide open.
The hangar bay is full of heavy rain, from wall to wall. It pours down in a deafening crescendo, pooling on the floor and running in rivers towards unseen drainage pits. I can’t hear, and the rain is falling so hard I can’t see more than a few meters ahead of myself. In the distance I can see sunlight blurring and rippling through what must be the hangar doors. My rifle is up. No retreat. No going back. I make my way slowly into the deluge.
The water beats down on me, soaking my clothes and making my ponytail an irritating tickling thing that clings to the back of my neck. It runs over my gun as I make my way through the bay, dripping over it and my eyes. Over the din of the pour I a can hear a scuffle there, something metal and hollow being knocked over there. The quick scrape of a boot on some corrugated surface. I have two meters, that’s it. My life has become small and slow and confined to too small a space. My mind runs circles around itself. Run. Stop. Shoot that shadow. Get on your belly and wait. I keep moving.
I find the burning hulk of a lander just inside the entrance. Its forward sled has been cut from underneath it and it lies at a strange angle. Something whispers behind me and I’ve turned and taken a knee, gun up, before I see the kid on the ground behind a small stack of crates. Water pools up around his face and elbows. He’s dropped his rifle and has his hands up. Against my better judgment I turn my back to him and cover my way towards him, kneeling next to his head. He taps my calf and I look at him. He throws up three fingers, then points to his rifle, then to the hangar bay. Three shooters out there at least. I nod and he continues.
He’s broken, it’s plain as day on his face, even with the water pouring from the ceiling. He makes a V-shape with his hand and points it at the bay to my left, then points at his rifle again, then at himself. He was last fired upon from that direction. Then he grabs my ankle and looks in my eyes. His are red, he’s been crying the tears of the monumentally pissed off. He points at my rifle, then me, then at the hangar bay, then hits his chest twice with a closed fist. Kill them for me, please. I nod and he picks up his rifle and I’m gone, moving out into the artificial storm.
I’m a shadow in the rain, moving swiftly from cover to cover. My gun is up, I’m ready for fucking anything. I hear the squeak of boot soles on something hard and move to my left. I move through the water, letting it fall on and around me. I find two bodies and see that they’re Pressian and keep moving, congratulating the kid on his solid tactics. Blood has begun to pool around the one with the severed leg. Sniper bait. The kid knew what he was doing. Another squeak, same position, then a cough further back.
I stop, calming myself and letting my ears adjust to the work. I can hear the steady squish of my own blood in my ears. The rattle of my bated breath in my lungs. I turn my head for a better angle and I hear two tiny pops from my neck. There it is again, another squeak. I stay still, standing in the rain and the dark like a statue. Someone clears his throat and I’m moving. I hit them from their flank and they don’t even hear me coming. Two of them, standing side by side, but one further forward than the other. I take my time and aim, catching the first one in the skull from only a meter away. The bolt hits perfectly and cleaves his head off at his brain stem, he’d never even know he died with his jaw flopping around in the water covering the floor. The second one I shoot through the chest sideways. His rifle is up over the barrier of crates they were hiding behind and the laser passes through his lungs, cutting off the scream that forms on his face. He falls to the ground wheezing and I end it for him with a shot to the face.
Something hot and weightless heats up my back so bad I almost want to drop my rifle and paw at it, but instinct takes over and I turn to fire only to have my weapon grabbed by some oversized Pressian holding a high output emitter the size of my torso. He rips the rifle out of my hands and the sling pulls me off balance. He raises the rifle higher and I can feel myself being lifted off my feet. I grab my knife from the front of my webbing with my free hand and slice the sling loose with one stroke. He kicks me as I hit the ground and roll easily back to my feet just as he’s aiming his oversized laser at me. I roll again, this time left and the bolt sears the air just over my shoulder, turning the falling water into screeching steam.
I rush him and he swings hard and wide. I duck and then I’m inside his guard, landing two quick, brutal stabs to his abdomen. The water overhead has begun to die down quickly, the reservoir has run dry. He takes the hits like a champ and brings an elbow down on the back of my neck. My vision blurs and I drop to a knee, then grab his ankle and rip his leg out from under him. He manages to correct his balance but I still have a knife and in a second he doesn’t have any Achilles tendons. He flops to the floor with a pained yelp and I’m on top of him, dragging myself up his back with my knife like a fucking ice climber. Stab. Pull. Stab. Pull. He’s gurgling blood before I get to his head and it must be a relief when I pull up his chin and drag the knife through every important blood vessel in his neck. I feel the warmth of his life fading away and roll off of him, catching my breath and trying to avoid the flow of blood in the running water.
The water stops before I get up and pick up my rifle. It leaves no smell, no trace of combat. When I get back to the kid he’s still where he was, but surprised as hell to see me. I tap my hand over my heart twice. Thanks. He nods at me and I help him up, letting him know that if he fucks around I won’t hesitate to burn him too. He shakes his head and points at the elevator. His dad’s still in there. Even though Eld used dick head tactics to take me down I have to admire the guy’s resolve. I nod again and go to the elevator and drag the body out onto the floor. He’s ruined, but the kid kneels over him, using the rifle as a crutch to steady himself.
I walk back to the big guy I just killed and pick up his emitter. It’s heavy as fuck but it’ll do the job. When I get back the kid sees what I have in mind and he nods to me. I signal him to turn around but he just shakes his head. He has to watch, needs to see. I respect that. I figure out the heat setting dial and crank it to max, then point it at Eld. The kid taps over his heart twice and I fire, burning the remains to nothing.
Nothing is a powerful word I think sometimes. That which isn’t. Which hasn’t been. Which will never be again. A gap. An absence. Vacuum. That kid was feeling the real truth of nothing in that moment. I could see it in his eyes as the pure white light burned away every physical trace of his father before him. He broke all the way, right there. Became like me after… well. Never mind.
Minutes pass with him staring at that black scorch mark on the ground. I don’t say anything. He knows I’m waiting and for this, well, I could wait a while. It wouldn’t be right to hurry things up. I keep an eye on the elevator. There are still small smudges of blood inside it. The one on the floor from the father, the two on the wall from the son. The door never closes.
When he’s finished he goes to the other end of the hangar bay and opens the doors with a few deft button punches, then hobbles back to me and stretches out a hand. I take it and we shake. He’s never going to be right again, I think. He’s never going to understand people the way they understand themselves. A wolf in sheep’s clothing until the day he dies. Some shadows stay long after the sun sets.
He climbs into one of the vertical landers and takes off. The rumble from the propulsion shakes the bay for a moment, then he’s gone. I miss my mom, I think, sitting on crates and watching his aircraft disappear into the sky. I don’t know why I thought that at the time, but I did, and I meant it. But you’ve got to keep moving. Always forward.
The edge of the hangar is only a few feet above ground. I could jump down and walk, or try my luck piloting an enemy aircraft. I sit down on a crate and think about things, taking time to reorganize my gear. I reach up and rub the tan line I know is still on my neck.

END ACTION SEVEN: [losses] TIME ELAPSED: CLEANSING IMMINENT, NEW PROTOCOL INITIATED: CASA NOSTRA ON STATION IN ORBIT AROUND PRESSIA AMBASSADOR CLASS PERICLES EN ROUTE FOR EVAC
A LUX, DEO

[axmanjack]

Also, if you guys have any questions about the story. Comments or concerns, that type of stuff. Send me a message. I did a bit of math and this thing is going to end with a novel-length word count, so I might try and sell it or something and you guys are the best quality control ever.
Seriously, if it weren't for thealchemist and NamlessSynthetic I'd probably never get anything done.
So let me know what you guys think, positive or negative. I literally can't get offended.
Love ya'll motherfuckers.

-AMJ

[thealchemist]

good job. the wait was absolutly worth it.

[thealchemist]

ummm I can't vote for some reason

[axmanjack]

ummm I can't vote for some reason

Fixed! I think.

[thealchemist]

why are there four options

[yillsemkcuf]

Just a thought but it would be cool if someone could post what each plot fork was, and witch of the choices we chose, before each new segment. I think it would be interesting to look back at the choices and results of said choices.
Either way Im going to start keeping track and posting the results after each new storyline update. I just need people to fill in the first 5 blanks for me.

choices

Spoiler (click to show/hide):

1
a.
b.
( _ chosen)

2
a.
b.
( _ chosen)

3
a. Resist capture.
b. Surrender honorably.
( a. chosen)

4
a. Forget Rick hes on his own. Because you aren't fucking pig people!
b. Sacrifice yourself for your comrade. If they want to play, You'll play.
*note there may have been a third option here. I cant recall.
( b. chosen)

5
a.
b.
( _ chosen)

6
a. Katie takes off her collar.
b. Katie leaves the collar on.
( a. chosen)

7
a. Flee the apocalyptic town by foot.
b. Flee the apocalyptic town in an alien space craft (one Katie doesn't know how to fly)
( _ chosen)