More New chapters Posted! Manganator's Story

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Manganator
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Post by Manganator » Fri Feb 15, 2008 1:56 am

Na, u were addicted to painkillers.

I introduced your character to demonstrate to everyone how liberal I was with killing them off...

and that includes me too :P

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Zavrith
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Post by Zavrith » Fri Feb 15, 2008 4:24 am

If I get included, I'd be surprised if I got a line before I was killed ;)

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Post by duece » Fri Feb 15, 2008 5:53 am

post the next part already :(

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Post by dirt » Fri Feb 15, 2008 6:48 am

Zavrith wrote:If I get included, I'd be surprised if I got a line before I was killed ;)
"as mag was walking around he had to step over the corpse of zav."

Something like that lol dead before we even get to know you.

urablahblah

Post by urablahblah » Sat Feb 16, 2008 3:56 am

Wow, you have been busy! GREAT story!! Seriously, you should write a Sci-Fi novel, maybe over the course of 10 years or more, but you should do it.

Keep up the great work!

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Jwilson6
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Post by Jwilson6 » Sat Feb 16, 2008 4:16 am

I actually stopped reading somewhere after the second or third chapter
I think im ADD

Anyway if you could like edit ur first post and place every chapter in their with big bold text between each one designating the different chapters then that would make it much much easier for me to read

But... if I read all of this and then you don't finish it ill be super pissed!!!

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Post by dirt » Sat Feb 16, 2008 11:15 pm

You are killing me mag. It's almost as bad as when they took away Surge cola. I'm gettin twitchy!
Thats it, im busting out the giant neon letters!!!!!!



MORE!

You asked for it /\/\/\/\/\

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Post by Manganator » Mon Feb 18, 2008 1:19 am

Thank you all my loyal readers! I hope this was worth the wait.

The thermal-based sniper fire had reduced their options down to just a few. They could stick to cover, and allow themselves to be overwhelmed with no chance of fighting back, they could surrender, or they could run away.

Manganator’s hands twitched against the trigger anxiously. Luckily, he had engaged his safety.

“What are we going to do?” Kat asked, her slender body still splayed across his legs. He moved his legs a little, feeling her weight begin to uncomfortably compress the arteries in his legs, making them tingle.

“We don’t have any choice,” Manganator growled. “We gotta make a break for it.”

Kat and Rob’s visors both turned to his. They knew what this would mean.

For Rob, his chances of escaping on a near-crippled leg were slim. For Kat, just like Manganator, this meant a run directly through the enemy position. “Won’t they see it coming?” Rob asked, itching consciously at his biofoam caste.

“No... they wont see this coming,” Manganator said, trying to combat the rising fear in his own gut. It was the fear of death, a feeling Manganator got only when he felt the emptiness of the abyss directly at his back.

One step and he would fall.

And then, in desperate, frantic thought, inspiration struck.

“Rob, pass me that Rennie breather that you salvaged,” Manganator said at once. Rob shrugged and passed it over, a stout weapon that had actually made a good catch for Rob, because it’s compressed air projectile system made for no muzzle flash, and thus could be used without giving away his position.

Manganator ejected the clip with a quick push with his index finger, and then popped out the chambered round, completely emptying the weapon.

With the weapon ready, he placed it on the ground, and then rummaged through the ruck-sack he had been carrying.

He pulled out the two Claymore 2’s he had been carrying, finally glad to find a use for them. With a killing distance of 100 meters, the Claymore shot a shower of round ball bearings out in a single direction that cast a swath of death dreaded by all soldiers, but they hadn’t been practical when most of the engagements of the day occurred on Manganator’s-assigned flat stretch over distances of 150 meters. That had now changed.

He flipped the two Claymores over the barrier, mindful not to let his hands slip into the sniper’s line of fire.

Rob and Kat watched in awe, as Manganator strapped the Claymore’s detonators to Dirt’s back, and then propped his now-clammy body up against the barrier, setting up a rifle in his pale hands.

The thermal-scoped sniper would see that the dead body no longer had heat, and wouldn’t fire, if Dirt’s heat signature was present at all this long after his death.

As he frantically worked to set up the detonator, Rob quickly viewed the obscure plain with a single quick look through his scope, and brought his head back before the sniper could fire.

“Brian,” he whispered, looking alarmed. “They’re coming.”

Manganator nodded, still working. With the detonators on Dirt’s back rigged up, he grabbed the “breather” weapon, pulled out his side-arm, put it to the side of the air-gun, and fired.

With it’s compressed CO2 air tank punctured with a sharp metallic “clang”, it began to spew cold, white gas into the air. Manganator dropped his pistol, grabbed the punctured air-gun and doused himself, Kat, and a very surprised Rob in the white smoke.

“That should mask our heat signatures, at least a little,” Manganator huffed, breathing away from the CO2 filled air.

Without warning, he grabbed Rob by the ankles. “Let’s go!” he urged.

He got up first, Kat was right after him, and they ran for it. At first, the cold gas on their bodies worked, and the sniper didn’t fire as they scrambled away, running so hard that they barely gave their feet a chance to push off of the leafy ground, but that only lasted about 10 seconds. Then the sniper began to fire.

The first shot whizzed wide, and then, as they felt the sniper’s fire begin to zero in, there was another discharge. Manganator looked back, and saw Dirt’s body fall back from the force of a bullet striking his chest, fired by one of the approaching attackers.

The moment Dirt’s body hit the ground, the detonators were triggered, and there was a loud slamming sound and a quick flash of light as thousands of deadly metal balls were sent screaming through the air.

Manganator did not pause to watch the inevitable destruction, and continued to hobble away.

He made it to the end of the camp before he stopped, breathing heavily from exertion. “Put me down, you chia pet,” Rob finally grunted. Manganator abided, allowing Rob to gingerly return weight to his wounded foot.

“What happened!” Bill Hammel asked. Manganator turned around, he had not seen the chubby Marine approach.

“Thermal sniper and enemies closing in on our back end,” Manganator answered.

Bill’s round face paled. “What are we going to do?” he asked.

Manganator unshouldered his MA-25, and clicked off the safety. “Run for it. Put on your helmet, Bill.”

He nodded repetitively and choppily like he was trying to rattle his brain and quickly secured the helmet. “Ready?” Manganator asked more loudly.

“Ready!” Kat answered, a few yards to his left, hunkered down behind another barrier. Two more marines near her, behind the same barrier, also gave Manganator a confident nod.

Returning their nod, Manganator reached down to grab Rob, and heft him over his shoulder again, but the man swatted his hands away.

”No,” he stubbornly said, shaking his head. “Not this time.”

Manganator retracted his hands, meeting eyes with Rob. He knew just as well as Manganator that if he carried Rob, he would have close to no chance of making it. It wasn’t a betrayal, nor was it a cowardly thing. It was just cold calculation.

Manganator gave his comrade a pat on the shoulder, and a grenade.

“Thanks. I’ll do my best from here,” Rob said.

Manganator looked to his side, gave the thumbs up to Kat and the other three marines, and then counted off with his fingers.

3, 2, 1. They all jumped up, and with adrenaline pumping through their veins like gasoline, they vaulted their barrier and made a break for the valley. The enemy took a while to fire, probably taken off guard by the sudden charge.

One flash appeared as the first enemy recognized the charge, and bullets passed through vegetation and bark with a hiss, but after a few well-aimed shots from Rob, who was still stationary behind cover in the base, the shots ceased. Manganator found himself rushing through thick green all around him, barely slowed, even though his feet sank into the mud, and his feet kicked through tangled twigs.

He ran past the first man he saw, and was unable to fire, because he had passed him so quickly. The second man he was ready for, and fired a few sloppy shots, one of which struck the man in the foot. He dropped to the ground.

But all surprise that their attack had ever had was lost, and fire was coming in from all sides, pelting them from every direction. Manganator dropped to the ground just as a fellow Marine dropped with a hole through his throat.

Huffing, Hammel crouched down right behind him, and Kat began to return fire. Shredded leaves and spattered dirt filled the air as fire raked up and down their small divot in the earth.

It was a miracle that only one man had been hit, but that would not last.

Firing wildly with one arm, Manganator grabbed Hammel by the scruff of his neck, sprinted forward, and jumped over a small growth of bushes into a fast-flowing river. Right before they hit the water, he exhaled, and quickly reached up to his mask to engage “vacuum mode”, which would make the mask air-tight.

His lungs mostly empty of air, he began to sink just as the cold wet shock of water hit him. He immediately submerged and began to kick. He felt some dull jabs as bullets, slowed by the water, bounced harmlessly off his skin, and looked up to see Hammel had engaged his vacuum mode as well, and was struggling to stay below the water, his buoyant fat making things difficult.

Manganator kicked, looking up at the shimmering surface of the water. There was another neat splash as the slim form of Kat entered the water, followed by another hail of bullets, and then a dull belly-flop as a dead Marine hit the water, not moving. The seeping crimson which stained the water attested to his leather wounds.

Manganator closed his eyes, the intrusive cold of the water pressing in on him from all sides, and kicked his legs.

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Post by dirt » Mon Feb 18, 2008 1:48 am

Insult to injury......had to blow me up did you!!! I shall remeber this next time we meet in space combat :twisted: .

j/k

Another good chapter mag.

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Post by Deathreape98 » Mon Feb 18, 2008 1:55 am

Could you put it all in the first post, for convenience of new people reading it?

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Post by Manganator » Mon Feb 18, 2008 1:57 am

Deathreape98 wrote:Could you put it all in the first post, for convenience of new people reading it?
They would never read it.

That would be about 45 pages worth of stuff in one block.

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Post by Deathreape98 » Mon Feb 18, 2008 2:07 am

o-o 45 pages is short.....But then again, I am the guy that calls 1k page books on Communism, Presidential Reigns, history, etc. short :P

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Post by dirt » Mon Feb 18, 2008 2:25 am

Deathreape98 wrote:o-o 45 pages is short.....But then again, I am the guy that calls 1k page books on Communism, Presidential Reigns, history, etc. short :P
Now you just have to learn to read and your set. I wouldn't think the pictures are very entertaining in presidential reign books, but eh, w/e floats your boat.

urablahblah

Post by urablahblah » Mon Feb 18, 2008 2:40 am

Wow dirt, I didn't think dying then exploding would piss you off so much... :-p


Very good as usual Mag.

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Post by Zavrith » Mon Feb 18, 2008 2:46 am

Good stuff Manganator :)

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Post by Jwilson6 » Mon Feb 18, 2008 3:49 am

Manganator wrote:
Deathreape98 wrote:Could you put it all in the first post, for convenience of new people reading it?
They would never read it.

That would be about 45 pages worth of stuff in one block.
Well I am never going to flip through 9 pages to read it

PUT IT ALL ON THE FIRST PAGE DAMNIT!!

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Post by Luna » Mon Feb 18, 2008 4:53 am

Ok I've put all the chapters together to make it easier to follow the story up to this point. Apparently there is a limit on the size of a post. I'll have to make a second one and post the rest that it didn't allow in the first one




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PostPosted: Sat Dec 29, 2007 7:28 pm Post subject: Manganator's Story- Reviews & Comments Appreciated!
OOS: Continuations will be based upon ratings and reviews. Very Happy

“Men... I would just like to say...” Commander Manganator began, staring ahead through the semi-transparent steelglass that separated the bridge from the outside vacuum, “that I’m sorry.” Silhouetted against a red star as they zoomed by, the Commander had never looked more defeated. Before the auto-polarity set in, the sun was so bright that it seared across his vision.

He did not turn his head. His vision burned, but he did not care.

The men on the bridge, watched him anxiously. He had been their commander for so many years. He had guided them to victory on so many occasions, and maneuvered them from certain death on many others.

But the truth was, Commander Manganator was powerless. His ship’s engines, warp-drive, and even their emergency warp drive were damaged beyond repair by a surprise nuclear detonation right off of their bow. Of the three ships under his command, his capital ship was the only remaining one.

Through only the law of inertia were they still moving, the engines had no power, and it was certainly not fast enough to out-run the dozen ships on their tail.

But even so, faces, both young and inexperienced, and old veterans, looked to him with hope in their eyes, and it crushed him. I can’t... do anything. He felt it on the tip of his tongue. He wanted to scream it, but he knew that such an exclamation would do nothing to resolve the situation. Commander Manganator had no trick maneuver, no seat-of-the-pants strategy to outwit his opponents. He only had the taste of defeat in his mouth.

“Sir, report from the engine room, the chief mechanic has just passed away trying to restore power to the room.”

Slamming his fist onto the table in front of him, Manganator grabbed the stars from his chest, and threw them onto the ground in frustration. Sergeant Harrison, the chief mechanic had been their last hope at possibly repairing the warp drives. Without them, they had no chance at all.

He felt a tickling sensation in his eyes as tears began to form, but he turned away and wiped them clean. He could feel the men watching him. He needed to stay calm.

He had not cried in front of his men for the five years he had been their captain, and he didn’t feel like starting.

“Commander, the enemy ship is hailing us,” Benson, the communication’s officer, reported, still waiting eagerly for the commander to give out orders.

“Lower our shields and set the self-destruct to manual!” Manganator growled from between his hands. Eyes lowered among the crew. They knew what he intended to do, and they knew he would not be talked out of it.

“Sir, it’s possible that if we surrender now, we could be spared...” Lieutenant Nixon pointed out. Commander Manganator eyed the Lieutenant with distaste, before turning back to the viewport to see the enemy vessels closing in. No rookie will take the glory from this righteous suicide. This, son, is how warriors give their lives.

“Sir, the Lieutenant suggests...”

“Taken under consideration, Lieutenant.” Commander Manganator cut in.

The Lieutenant was a new recruit, sent up as a replacement for Manganator’s last second in command, who had been promoted to the helm of his own ship, under Manganator’s command, and now likely floated out in the vacuum among the other rubble.

Blips appeared on the screen as enemy boarding craft closed in to seize the crippled craft. It was easy prey... but prey that knew of it’s own lack of hope, and that was willing to sacrifice itself, was much more dangerous than it appeared.

Seeing that the craft were closing fast, Manganator gave a solemn nod to his grey-haired CO, Major Hammel. It would be the end of a long career for the both of them.

“Self-destruct will be ready on your mark,” Hammel reported.

Manganator heard a loud thud as the first of the boarding craft created an airtight lock with the Starcruiser, and closed his eyes. He felt the word on the tip of his tongue, knowing that with it, he would perish with so many other souls.

“Mark,” Manganator shouted, opening his eyes. He looked through the window towards the pursuing ships defiantly, hoping that it was the enemy’s best marines that would be incinerated along with him.

But nothing happened.

---------------------------------------------------


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PostPosted: Wed Jan 02, 2008 6:13 pm
OOS: I cannot write without motivation. One great motivation is ego-boosting, which is why I will require comments from 4 different people before submitting the section after this one Wink Enjoy!

Once they had docked, the men under Manganator’s command dispersed quickly from the ship and into the bustling port. Commander Manganator stayed on the bridge to brood over what had happened, and watch the liquid matter from Nixon’s brain ooze around the deck.

Of course, he could understand, after surviving a battle which seemed to mean certain death, it was his first impulse to exit this flying coffin.

”Bill…” Manganator said to his CO, “let’s get something to hugging drink.”

“I have some spice wine locked away in my room,” Bill offered, wrinkles stretched out in a smile, happy to see Manganator leave his gloomy state.

“No, nothing expensive Bill. I just want to… drink.”

Major Hammel’s concern returned to his plump face, making Commander Manganator look away in shame. “let’s go.”

As they left, Manganator inhaled, and took a mental note to set the cleanup of Nixon’s dead body from the bridge, as a top priority maintenance duty. The funeral would be a long one, filled with so many people that had been friends and comrades.

Manganator stopped, feeling a twinge of pain deep in his gut, but mustering the willpower, he stepped down the ramp into the access lock, moving towards the bustling market-scene in the port.

He could see many of his men already, crowding around civilization’s oldest professionals, sticking to the groups of friend’s that they knew best. Some of them gave salutes as him and Major Hammel passed. The men need this break… they nearly lost their lives, it’s time for them to enjoy and appreciate what they still have.

“Sir, don’t you think this might be dangerous?” Hammel said as they walked.

“How so?” Manganator asked off handedly.

“To go to such a predictable resting place and pause right after an attack. Our enemies could track us here.” Hammel elaborated.

“Our warp drives are damaged, I won’t risk a longer journey to Crostan in our condition,” he explained as he entered the door to one of the less-crowded bars. “Besides, those black ISC’s, no matter who they’re working for, they wouldn’t be able to dock here, or break the port’s shield before a fleet arrived from one of the many outposts a few hops in either direction.”

“That’s not what I mean sir!” Hammel exclaimed as they found their way to seats on the relatively-deserted bar. It was very dark, and the little light there was had a reddish tone.

“Two captain’s stashes please,” Manganator said to the bartender, an unshaven, brawny man. Grumbling, he got up from his chair shakily, and groped underneath the bar for a drink.

“What do you mean then, Bill?” Manganator asked. The barkeeper lazily placed a bottle of captain’s stash and two used cups in front of them. Now Manganator knew why this was the less-occupied bar.

“I mean assassins, spies, someone looking to catch a loose-lipped ship hand saying something that shouldn’t be said about our ship. And look at you… in a place like this without even your side-arm!” Hammel said, pointing to the empty holster at his side.

“That’s the idea,” Manganator said, pouring himself a glass. “Want some?”

“I guess it’s something I’m not supposed to understand,” Hammel said with a defeated tone, draining his own glass. His expression quickly turned sour as he swallowed.

“This is…” he began with a disgusted expression.

“Pure motor oil,” Manganator finished, pouring Hammel another glass. “Cheers!”

A few drinks later, Manganator and Hammel were starting to feel the affects. Where it lacked in taste, it made up in punch. Manganator began to drink straight from the bottle, and soon he and Hammel were laughing loudly, reminiscing about past adventures.

As he listened to Hammel begin to tell another story, Manganator’s vision wandered around the bar, and found himself looking at an very-beautiful woman. She was wearing a comfortable black coat, that still managed to reveal a tantalizing glimpse of her well-toned stomach, and a small black cap which allowed only bits of her flame-red hair to show. Her face was defined by two piercing, yet mysterious brown eyes. And those eyes were trained on him.

“Excuse me, Bill, I’ve found what I’m looking for,” Commander Manganator said, his speech somewhat slurred. He got up from the bar and stumbled over to the woman’s table.

“You look a little lonely, missy,” Manganator said, dropping himself into the seat opposite from her. He rested his hand on his empty holster.

Looking over him slowly, she gave him a curt smile. She appeared to be sober, Manganator observed. “You’re cute for someone of your rank,” she remarked.

”Want to go to your place?” Manganator asked, preferring to be direct.

“Oh… why not?” she said, giggling.

“See ya tomorrow, Bill!” Manganator shouted to his friend as he got up.

The confident, red-haired woman got up, and smiling to him as if he and she shared a secret. She led the way, looking back time to time. They negotiated their way through the crowds, and soon found their way to a more deserted section, with cheap lodgings.

“This one’s mine,” she said, pausing to smile just a moment before reaching into her coat for a key.

“That’s far enough,” Manganator said, pulling his side-arm from his pocket.

Chuckling, he cocked the pistol. “You must have overestimated your seductive abilities, to have not noticed there was a pistol in my pocket.”

“What the hug is this?” she asked incredulously.

“Hands out of your pockets now!” Manganator commanded authoritatively.

Giving him a nasty look, she slowly withdrew her hands. “Now! The gun in the left pocket of your jacket. Take it out slowly, and place it on the ground,” he ordered quickly.

With her eyes on his the entire time, she reached into her jacket, grasped the pistol by the handle, and slowly bent down to place it on the ground.

Just before she was going to drop it, she quickly jumped to the side and raised her pistol at his chest, planning to shoot him in mid-air.

Completely sober, he tracked her falling body and fired.

Struck in the right shoulder, her shot went wide, and she soon became more concerned with her spouting wound than of her pistol.

“Now if we don’t get that bandaged the-“ Manganator began icily.

“HELP!” she screamed, completely drowning him out. “HELP ME! SOMEONE HE-“ She stopped screaming as he pistol whipped her across the side of the head.

Grimacing, he reached into her coat, found her key, and opened the door, dragging her inside. The apartment was hardly furnished, the only personal effects in the spartan chambers was a Captains Stash, which Manganator picked up and began to drink slowly. As he drank, he observed the red-haired assassin on the floor in front of him.

“Who do you work for?” he wondered aloud.

Whatever organization he faced, it was much deeper and more far-reaching than any of the known pirate cartels. He planned to figure it out before reporting back to his superiors in Crostan.

I should just count my blessings that I was being tracked by a rather dumb assassin.

-----------------------------------------------

PostPosted: Thu Jan 03, 2008 1:59 pm
When the female assassin woke, she was bound tightly. She struggled to see if there was any slack, but there was not.

Next concern was her bullet wound. She looked over to check it, and found that it had been cleaned, sanitized, and bandaged. It did not look like it would be infected.

Her mouth was taped shut, preventing her from screaming again, and this would be a little easier to break, but to what end? Her captor was watching over her with a bemused grin.

Commander Manganator had draped his uniform over the chair in which he sat, and was holding the pistol steadily at her. Apparently, he had been waiting for her to wake up. “Rise and shine, honey bunches,” he said enthusiastically, scooting his chair towards her.

Unable to respond, she gave him a hateful glare.

Manganator’s face took a condescending look, like a teacher scolding a young child. “Now I’m going to take your gag off, and if you start screaming, I’ll just knock you out again,” he said, hefting his pistol by the barrel, “and if that happens I’ll drag you to my ship and we’ll fly back to Crostan where you can get asked questions by the professionals.”

By professionals, she knew what he meant. U.N. agencies were known for using the harshest interrogation techniques that a cruel imagination could invent. And if she wouldn’t talk, they had no problems with killing her.

Manganator watched her curiously. When he threatened her with handing her over to the authorities, she didn’t seem scared, like any common assassin, but instead, she seemed relieved. This troubled him.

He decided to test his theory, and quickly tore the tape from her mouth.

“Help SOMEBODY-“ As expected, it took just a moment for her voice to rise to its highest pitch. Expecting it, he held her mouth shut, and taped back over it, ending her yell as quickly as it began.

You just told me who hired you without saying a word, stupid assassin.

And it was the worst possible scenario. Black-painted commissioned ISCs, a mutinous Lt straight from the academy, and now an assassin that couldn’t wait to get to the heart of U.N. space, all pointed to one thing.

His enemy came not from the outer pirate rings, or small-time cartels, but from the U.N. itself. Someone wanted him dead. The realization came as a shock to him. Against a pirate cartel, he had a chance, but against the U.N... he shook his head.

No, not the U.N., but someone very powerful within the U.N. itself. It could be anyone of power. Perhaps a governor, a senator to the terrestrial assembly, or even one of the generals in his fleet.

As he thought, he noticed that the assassin had begun to squirm her way towards the door, and had made a small amount of progress, so he put a foot on her back and thought some more.
The U.N. port no longer seemed anywhere near as safe. He regretted being so slow to organize his men, not keeping a heavy guard on the ship, and lazily making himself an omelette. He should have just dragged her into the brig, and set off.

And then he remembered something he had once heard from an officer he knew in intelligence. He pulled out his radio, and switched to the private channel.

“Major Hammel, this is command one, come in,” he said urgently into the receiver. He got no response, so, figuring that Hammel was still asleep, he sounded the buzzer on his CO’s radio, which was the equivalent to a station-alarm, and served as a very good wake-up call.

Hammel still didn’t answer his radio, but it didn’t matter anymore.

Commander Manganator could hear the siren just a few apartments next to him, and just a few seconds after it began to ring, the radio was shut off. He immediately figured the worst, that this red-haired assassin was not the only one. “I’ll be right back,” he growled, lifting his foot from the girl beneath him.

Knowing the siren would alarm the assassin, he wasted no time, and ran through the dirty metal hallway to the next room. Pausing for just a moment at the metal door, he raised his pistol, charged it, and shot a concentrated energy shot through the lock.

He then kicked it open, slamming it against the wall, and then rushed in. He was immediately confronted by another girl, scantily clad in boots and white undergarments, with blond hair and another toned frame.

She was holding something in her hands, and it was pointed towards him. Without thinking, he fired off a shot, hitting her square in the chest.

She fell to the ground, and a metal plate of waffles clattered to the deck. Sputtering, blood leaked from her wound and from her mouth. She had been hit in the lung, a fatal shot. The red blood mixed with the thick waffle syrup on the ground.

“Who sent you!” Manganator shouted, grabbing her shoulder. He hoped that in her dying moments, she would tell him. Just one thing...

But she died without saying a word, her eyes lost their glimmer and her body relaxed completely.

“What the hug, Brian!” Bill shouted.

Manganator looked up, and saw his CO, that he thought was dead, walking half-naked with a blanket wrapped around him. The man’s folds of fat, released from his normally tight uniform (the largest size) jiggled as he walked.

“She was an assassin, Bill, sent from the U.N...” Manganator explained, pausing to breath. His heart was still racing.

“Jesus hugging Christ, George, she was giving me breakfast in bed!” Hammel shouted angrily.

Manganator paused for a moment. Had he mistakenly kidnaped one girl, and killed another?

-----------------------------------------------------------

PostPosted: Fri Jan 04, 2008 3:42 pm Post subject: Reply with quote Edit/Delete this post Delete this post View IP address of poster
Manganator paused to ponder what had happened. Had he misread the situation completely?

As he thought, he looked down at the girl he had killed. She too, was quite attractive.

“Bill... think about it. Do you really think a girl like that would want to sleep with a guy like you in her spare time... no offense.” As he said this, he took a glance at Bill’s uncovered chest, hairy and bursting with rolls of fat.

“Of course not, George! I paid her fifty-thousand credits!” he shouted back.

“Oh... well that makes sense...” Manganator said solemnly, watching the pool of blood grow at his feet, encompassing his boots. Boots.

“Well... we could always run away, sir,” Bill said, but Manganator wasn’t paying attention.

He stared at them, thinking what it was that was odd about them, besides a woman prancing around in her underwear and boots. “Why did she keep her boots on, Bill?” he asked quietly.

Taken aback, Bill took a while to respond.

“Uh... well she said that she didn’t like the cold steel plating. Wait... no wait... she said that she looked sexier with them on.”

“She said both of those things?” Manganator questioned, now getting a little more curious. And then Manganator remembered something.

The red-haired woman in his room. When he had bound her legs... they were the same kind of boots, or at least very similar.

“Well ya....”

“Did she leave them on when you...” he didn’t finish the sentence, an image of the now-dead booted female and Bill making love seemed like too horrible of a prospect.

“I don’t see how this is important!” Bill exclaimed.

“It is!” Manganator said, the volume of his voice raised so it overpowered Bill’s.

“Yeah, she did,” he said reluctantly.

Hearing this, Manganator’s suspicion became a theory. He reached down, stepping through the puddle of blood to get closer to her feet. Squish Squish. The bottom of his soles began to soak in the thick liquid. Grabbing a hold of her boots, he unbuckled one of them deliberately. The texture of the boot was smooth and crisp under his finger, like they were brand new.

Removing it from her foot, he examined the sole, and then rose, walking with the boot over to the kitchen. He checked it for a steel toe and sole, and satisfied that there was no metal on the shoe, he opened the door of the microwave.

“What are you doing, Brian?” Major Hammel asked in confusion.

“I’m making boot stew, Bill,” Manganator replied, placing the boot into the microwave. Setting the timer for a minute, he waited as the boot turned around on the little circular platform.

Suddenly, there was a popping noise, and a wisp of smoke rose from the base of the boot.

Manganator quickly removed the boot from the microwave, examined the source of the black smoke, and took out his knife from his jacket pocket. He began to carve into the book, and it wasn’t long before he found it.

“A tracking device and audio visual transmitter,” he said respectfully, holding it up for Bill to sea.

“Holy BBQ... that’s U.N. tech!” Bill said, taking it from Manganator’s hand. “What are we going to do?”

“Follow me, I got a live one,” Manganator instructed, getting up. He left bloody boot-prints in his trail as he headed back to his apartment.

But in his haste, he had left the door open, and the red-haired girl was gone.

“She couldn’t have gone far!” Manganator shouted.

“Marine squads one through five, please suite up with all haste and report to the port’s common area. Marine squads six through ten, secure the port, and ground all ships,” Bill ordered over his radio.

All over the port, Marines rolled out of bed. They had some of the most rigorous training the U.N. would offer, but it would still be at least 10 minutes before they were ready.

Manganator ran down the dark, steel, box-like passageway towards the lone window that overlooked the common area, one of the few sources of light that the cheap apartment hallway offered.

The apartment hallway was on the second floor, which made it a decent vantage point, so he used it to observe the scene below him.

Nothing below seemed out of the ordinary, but before he was about to turn around and head down the narrow staircase, he caught a reflective glint from the corner of his eye from one of the dark alleys.

He threw himself to the ground just as the air above him simmered from a heat-based energy projectile, burning the top of his head. The bulkhead it struck had a two inch hole bored into it, and was leaking liquid metal.

“hug...” Manganator gasped, scrambling backwards. More shots rang out as the sniper wildly tried to strike his target. The wall below the window was punched in from shot after shoot, and soon the fire was piercing through into the hallway.

Manganator threw himself from one side of the hallway to the other. One shot soared right through where Manganator had been just a moment before. “Damned 3d thermal!” Manganator exclaimed.

The square below the near-abandoned apartments, hearing the laser discharges was thrown into a panic as civilians rushed to escape the port.

------------------------------------------------------





Joined: 06 Jun 2005
Posts: 861
Location: Massachusettes

PostPosted: Sun Jan 06, 2008 12:40 pm

As Manganator scrambled back, he threw a door open, hoping to somewhat delay the deadly heat-based sniper rounds shooting through the hallway, but it proved little respite, shattering off of the wall with one blow to the hinges. The hallway was showered with burning chunks of frame and jagged shrapnel.

The thermal sniper was the perfect assassin’s weapon, it could be plugged into any electrical source to generate it’s heat rounds, and without need of rounds, it was very lightweight. Not to mention, it’s shots were very quiet. To the outside civilians, it would almost seem like the apartments were exploding spontaneously, not as a result of any sniper.

“Sir!” Bill shouted urgently, ushering him inside one of the apartments with his free hand, his other holding a heavy officer’s pistol.

But holing up inside one of the rooms would not buy them much time, rather it would leave them cornered even more than they were already..

And so, after frantically looking from side to side, Manganator leveled his pistol and discharged a round into the heating system. Steam poured from the water based heating mechanism, clouding the hallway with hot air which made thermal targeting impossible. Manganator stumbled, not able to see his own legs.

“Bill! Call us some support!” Manganator shouted over the whine of the escaping air.

But already, they had company. Manganator heard booted footsteps heading up the stairs. Blinded by the steam, he tried to visualize the hallway in his mind, and shakily pointed his pistol towards the corner that led to the left-heading descending stairwell (the only entrance), and waited in silence.

As soon as he heard the footsteps stop, he discharged five rounds, starting low and well into the wall, and moving up and to the right until he had cut a swath right through the top of the stairwell.

His pistol easily cut through the thin bulkhead which had provided the corner behind which his assailants hesitated, and he heard dull thumps as their bodies fell down the stairs.

“Hold it right there!” one distressed voice called out from the end of the hallway. “This is the UN police! Drop your weapons!”

Oh BBQ, those were police?

“This is commander Manganator of the third fleet!”

“We cannot confirm that you are a commander until you drop your weapon and come out of there!” the voice pressed.

“I cannot confirm that you’re a police division!” Manganator shot back.

“Look here! Drop your pistol or we’ll just shred you apart, got that?” the man shouted.

Manganator scooted further into the hallway, crawling into the adjacent room. Bill was huddled there, still holding his pistol, shielding himself from the white vapor that nearly left him sightless. “What’s going on?” he asked frantically.

“Not sure, get marines here ASAP,” Manganator whispered back.

“THAT MEANS NOW!” the man shouted from the hallway again.

“Got to go,” Manganator said, giving his CO a pat on the shoulder. Feeling a sticky sensation, he knew the body was close, and crawled forward grabbing the steel tray with the waffles still on it.

“Coming!” Manganator shouted over his shoulder.

“Drop your damn weapon first!” the voice called out.

“Ok!” Manganator answered, throwing the platter into the mist. He then moved forward slowly, quiet enough not to be heard above the hissing escape of the steam which still poured forth and draped the hallway in a blinding veil.

He moved forward until he could just see the platter in his view, as a box-like shape just barely apparent in the smoke.

And then he saw the bare outline of an arm reaching down to pick it up. The hand made contact with the tray, and the policeman’s fingers felt the sticky syrup under his fingers.

“What the...” he began to say, when Manganator leapt forward. The policeman’s other hand, holding a pistol, reached forward to aim at him, but Manganator had already closed the distance, and grabbed the man’s hand, guiding the shot far wide, ricocheting harmlessly into the smoke.

The man tried to pull his arm back, but Manganator held it firm, stepped in, couched the man’s wrist against his body with one hand, and drove down with his elbow into the man’s outreached elbow. While he did this, Manganator kicked the man’s leg out from underneath him. Crying out in pain, the pistol fell from his hands.

The man was in pain, breathing sharply from the attack. His other hand, free from the arm-bar, groped at his side, and Manganator heard the hum of electricity and the faint blue aura as a stun-stick was activated.

Just as he felt the attacker throw his weight behind a strike with the stun-stick, Manganator stepped behind him, releasing his hand, and sweeping out his last foot with a kick to the ankle, Manganator grabbed the back of his head and slammed it into the bulkhead. The man fell immediately went limp and slumped to the ground.

Manganator knelt down, and felt the metallic UN policeman badge. Cursing softly, he confirmed it by finding the mandatory authentic police identification in his right pocket.

Manganator stopped, hearing something at the base of the stairwell. “I’m sorry, but you men are not authorized to go up there!” he heard one light voice insist.

“Wait, let me get my papers,” Manganator heard another man growl. About two seconds later, two energy shots sounded out and two bodies hit the ground. Oh BBQ... I just cant catch a break...

Manganator’s heart began to race. Whoever this was had the balls to take out the police. What had he done to inspire such a desperate attempt on his life?

The assassin, or assassins ascended the stairway. Manganator could almost feel them getting closer, even though he couldn’t hear them. He felt a single bead of sweat drip down his nose. He was disoriented by the steam, and let himself lie on the deck.

He grabbed stun-stick from the limp Policeman's' hands, and edged to the corner of the stairway. He could feel the electricity dispersing in the misty air around him, giving him little shocks.

His heart pounded. He couldn’t tell where they were on the staircase. His pistol had begun to feel slippery in his hand.

---------------------------------------------





Joined: 06 Jun 2005
Posts: 861
Location: Massachusettes

PostPosted: Thu Jan 10, 2008 3:46 am
Manganator was beginning to feel light-headed, the rush of the fight pumping through his veins in overdrive. The deprivation of his senses was a great ally in this fight… where he only had to buy enough time for his men to arrive.

But he felt a fear seize him, first a whisper, get louder and louder.

He closed his eyes, and clenched his hands around his two weapons. I’m going to survive! He told himself, his clothes now soaked with vapor. I’m going to live through this!

First, he needed to know what he was facing. Gingerly, he took his stunstick, which emitted a strong blue aura, and slowly edged it from behind the corner, so whoever was approaching could see its light through the heavy fog.

There was just a moment’s pause before a torrent of laser fire erupted from the base of the stairs. The hot beams singed the air as they flew, and flew close enough to his arm for it to feel the heat. One shot hit well into the wall with the intention of shooting him through it, but the angle was too sharp, and it ricocheted.

He crawled backwards urgently, feeling the moister begin to soak his pants. At first he wondered if he had pissed himself, but dismissed that as he felt with his hands the puddles beneath him. Puddles.

He turned his head to his electrical stun stick, and figured a plan that anyone outside of his distressed state of mine would have thought of a while back.

He shook his head calmly, concentrating his scattered thoughts, and got onto his feet, slowly progressing down the hallway, past the punctured heater, and using his memory, made his way back to Bill’s apartment, feeling the walls.

His stunstick sparked dangerously with all of the free-floating vapor, but Manganator paid it no mind. All he concentrated on was the steady progression of footsteps up the stairs. Seeing the bodies, they were moving slowly. It should be enough time.

Bill was no longer in the doorway as he felt his way inside, but his radio was still there. Strange.

Manganator picked it up, taking note of the progress of the attacker's boots on the stairwell. They reached the top of the stairwell.

As he picked up his radio, he blind-fired absent mindedly, pausing only long enough to hear a muffled curse. “This is commander Manganator requesting a status on the marine response team sent to my location, over.”

Someone turned the corner and began to fire back, one shot streaked by the doorway, warming the air by Manganator’s face.

“Marine captain Anderson here sir, ETA is just under a minute, over.” Confident that the real danger had passed, Manganator smiled, and blind fired some more.

Soon, he would find out the real identity of his attackers, and he couldn’t wait.

Then, he heard numerous heavy footsteps. The attackers were charging him!

Blind firing some more, he heard a thump as one hit the ground, and then ignoring the inaccurate shots that whizzed by the door frame, he lobbed the stunstick into the puddle below the broken heater.

He heard someone let out a throaty, pained yell. The voltage running through the water was enough to make most people’s muscles unresponsive, which means they would collapse into the puddle like an unsupported sack, unable to move, forced to endure the torturous volts running through their bodies.

But strangely enough, he heard more laser discharges, and the marines still hadn’t arrived, but they were close, he could hear them ascending the stairway.

He crawled deeper into the apartment. “Bill!” Manganator shouted, looking from side to side. “BILL!”

He couldn’t see much as he moved forward, laser blasts still echoing behind him, sending strobes of red light through the room.

At the last of these discharges, he caught the faint outline of his CO crumpled down in the corner.

Concerned that perhaps he Major had been struck by a glancing laser, he rushed to his side, and checked his pulse, but it was normal. Hammel’s eyes flickered open.

“Did you have a panic attack, Bill?” Manganator asked the older man.

His unfocused eyes twirled in their sockets, looking in all directions. “Wasn’t I just… sitting over… doorway.”

“Comon buddy, let’s go,” Manganator said comfortingly, grabbing his arm and helping him to his feet. Bill was dizzy, so he needed to walk him to the doorway. The heavy man weighed on him.

When he entered the hallway the stunstick was deactivated, and the marines had occupied the hallway. The U.N. Marine was one of the best armored and trained people in the armed forces. They carried light, automatic projectile weapons, as well as high-powered energy pistols, also along with combat knives, particle vision, night vision, and thermal vision viewers.

“Report,” Manganator ordered.

Anderson, the marine captain spun around, hearing Manganator’s voice. He could tell it was him simply by how he reacted, since the marine headset he was wearing made it impossible to see his face.

“Sir, This is Captain Anderson; we’ve secured the premise as ordered. All enemy are dead, and we have one wounded, sir.”

“They’re all dead?” Manganator asked. “Didn’t you at least try to get one alive?” Surely, the Marines knew to capture one for interrogation!

“Sir! It’s even worse than that. There is not one assailant with his head still intact, sir!”

“You shot them in the head?” Manganator questioned sharply.

“Sir, the one that was still alive did it himself, and then shot himself in the head, sir!” Anderson answered.

“Captain Anderson, sir, I’ve found a policeman’s badge up here!” one marine called out.

As Anderson went to check it out, Manganator grabbed him on the shoulder firmly. “The attackers shot up a police squad while we waited in the apartment,” he told the captain slowly.

Anderson looked him in the eyes, and then assumed a tone soft enough so that the others would not hear. “And the bodies at the top of the stairwell?” he asked.

Manganator looked at him seriously, straight in the eyes. “In the fog of war, there are a lot of shots fired into the dark.”

Anderson nodded. “I’ll make sure to collaborate the fact that the assailants were the ones to strike the policemen in my report, sir.”

At the Captain’s words, Manganator felt a weight lift from his shoulders. “Ok then, let’s retrieve the dead…”

---------------------------------------------------





Joined: 06 Jun 2005
Posts: 861
Location: Massachusettes

PostPosted: Mon Jan 14, 2008 2:58 pm

(Hey dirt! You're in kittens war! Do I get any diplomatic kudos for writing this? Razz I'm Zacko there... don't hurt me ;D )

The Marines wasted no time in taking a few pictures of the area for documentation, from which they would eventually be able to create a 3-d recreation, and began removing the bodies.

The dead policemen would be carried to the Starbase’s now quite-empty police station, and the bodies of the attackers would be taken onto the Starcruiser for further investigation.

In absence of the Police force, it was now the duty of Manganator’s marines to file the report to the U.N., which was a very fortunate thing for Commander Manganator. The death-toll among innocents in the last few days had been very heavy.

The sight of fully armed Marines carrying dead bodies was an unusual one, even for a Starbase so close to the uncharted wings. And so, The hallways on either side were lined with spectators, any of whom could be another assailant.

Manganator and the Marines scanned the crowd urgently for any sign of a firearm.

It would be impossible to look through all of them, so Manganator watched their eyes, looking for any signs of malevolence.

In front of them was a busy intersection, acting as the main channel from the markets, and the port. Manganator could already see his crewmembers rushing from the Market district, making their way to the ship, urgently dressing or eating on the way.

And across the intersection was the line of Marines that were holding the port.

All he had to do was make it another twenty yards, and he’d be out of danger. He gave Bill, still at his side, an affirming nod, and set off through the mass of bodies. He thought that the eye contact was for his CO, who was still pale and breathing sharply, but in a way it was for himself as well. The last hours had been trying. The entire time he had been fighting, his body had been trembling. Just one mis-step could have led to his death.

But it was over now.

“Someone’s been stabbed!” The shout jerked Manganator back to the true reality. He and his men were being assaulted by an unknown organization.

“Bill, head back to the ship,” Manganator muttered. He turned back towards the yell, parting bodies as he walked against the tide. Manganator was scared, but he’d had enough.

There was only so much frustration he could take before throwing away his fear of death. And he was pissed.

“All personnel other than Marines onto the ship!” he bellowed. Seeing that the civilians that obliviously walked among them did not heed his order, he grabbed his pistol and fired a loud piercing shot into the air.

“Civilians clear the area!”

The square was thrown into even more of a panic as scores of civilians finally decided to heed his order. They were fools not to already be inside, Manganator thought. But, of course, they were civilians.

From the corner of his eye he saw a glint of steel, and then a hooded civilian bump into Communication’s officer Benson, who was still half-dressed. Benson took a few more steps, and then collapsed onto the deck, a puddle of blood pooling at his lower-stomach.

“Everyone down!” Manganator shouted, but it was too hectic, only a few people closest to him actually ducked, and the square was still too crowded and confused for Manganator to see the attacker, so he rushed forward, pulling out his radio.

“Marine squads, be on the look for a civilian with a knife and a dark-brown hood!” he shouted into the mic, as he urgently parted bodies.

Moving quickly to where he had seen the civilian disappear, his eyes looked down to see the same dark-brown hood, worn and stained with a few drops of blood, was laying, discarded, on the floor.

He moved to it, and began looking in all directions around him, seeing only a mass of bodies. He felt a fear suddenly grip him. He was exposed. His attacker was somewhere... Somewhere...

“I’ve already hacked your radio’s channel logarithm,” he heard a voice say. Then the slightest tickle on his lower back.

It was a girl’s voice. But it was the cold killer’s intent in her voice that worried him.

He spun around, pistol in hand, but could not tell any civilian in the crowd apart from the others. All rushing in different directions... their heads turned towards the floor. He tried to see which ones were female, but by the time he began checking faces, he knew she was gone.

In the distance, there were a few marines here and there, but they could not help him, there wasn’t enough time. There wasn’t enough...

As he turned, he caught someone’s eye. It was closer than he’d thought, and with a few brisk steps she was right next to him. He had begun aiming his gun when she ducked. He momentarily lost her as another panicked civilian bumped his way by. The moment he caught site of her again, she was closer.

There was a indiscernible motion and then a dull pain in his hand that held the pistol. He heard it clatter to the deck, but didn’t feel it drop. And then a sudden flash of steel as the long, slightly curved knife lunged out at him from between folds of cloth.

Everything was in a blur, but for some reason it all seemed very slow. He threw his weight, dodging to the side.

As he moved, he bumped into another Marine, knocking him to the ground. Somehow, before the hand swiped horizontally at his leg, he grabbed it. The female assassin let out a surprised gasp. His eyes connected with her catlike blue eyes for just a moment, and caught a flash of long brown hair.

But then other matters made him avert his gaze. She pushed. He lost another inch.

The blade was wobbling, getting closer and closer, blade pointed towards his gut. She had two hands pushing. One holding the knife like an untrained child holding a fork, and the other pushing the butt of the dagger.

Manganator’s one hand grasping her wrist was losing ground. He could no longer feel his other hand, except to feel the warm blood drip onto his pants.

Clueless, marines walked around him, looking in all the wrong directions. The one he'd knocked off his feet was just re-orienting himself. The blade was too low, too close to both of their bodies for anyone else to see.

He wanted to cry out, but felt if he let the air exit his tensed lungs, he’d lose that little bit of strength which kept the dagger two inches, one inch away.

As he struggled, his foot repositioned itself for more support, and he felt the pistol underfoot. With a good deal of weight on the foot, he slipped on the pistol and dropped to the ground. The stab wildly shot out, and he felt a sharp pain on his stomach.

He fell to the bulkhead, the pistol uncomfortable on his backbone.

She fell with him, knife held high.

She tried to stab him in the neck, he moved his crippled hand in the way. The blade pushed right through, although he couldn’t feel it. The blade pushed through his palm, and he could see it’s tip exit the back of his hand. He gave a little ground, letting her try to force the knife to his neck.

He met her eyes, and she met his. She gave a cocky smile. The blade was just millimeters away, his neck tingled where he felt the warm drips of blood from his useless hand.

The marine had recovered, and leveled his gun to take the shot. By the time he would fire, it would be too late. Manganator pulled his good hand from under his back, pistol in hand. The blade gave one last lunge, Manganator brought the pistol up, firing repeatedly as he did so.

First into her leg which was locked solidly on his waist, again into her pelvis, into her lower stomach, into her chest, into her neck. From behind him, he heard the marine fire shots off as well, and Manganator was splattered with the woman's blood.

Her body fell forward, and Manganator gave his last ounce of strength to avert it from his neck, stapling the uncharacteristically sharp knife to the deck. He breathed heavily.

He had stared down death through the glint of a blade. It had been close, but how long would he stay this lucky?

------------------------------------------------------------

Posted: Thu Jan 17, 2008 6:30 pm

“I don’t really care about the technical aspects of this, Patrick. I’m sure you could talk me through your textbook if you needed,” Manganator said, glancing over at the weighty old-fashioned medical book on his desk, and wondering why the old doctor simply didn’t store it in his computer logs.

“But, I only care about one thing. That is my hand, and its functionality.”

The medical bay was a poorly lit, untidy mess, which was amazing considering the entire system was computerized. For some reason, the lights were always slightly blue, casting a strange light over the dark-plated room.

But if any doctor could manage such a mess, it was Patrick O’Brien. His organization problem was made up for with his experience, however. And this latest wound certainly wasn’t his first visit.

Fastening his flexiglasses, Doctor Patrick O’Brien’s wrinkled face contorted into a grimace as he turned the bloody and swollen mass of flesh over in his probing hands. “What’d you try to do? Jack off a knife?” the doctor asked.

Manganator snorted.

“Well, the medics did a good job of cleaning this and sealing it with clotting foam… there will be no infection, but I’m sorry to say the nerves and tendons have been completely severed.” As he said this, he squeezed beneath the thumb’s joint, a sensitive pressure point, and elicited no response from the hand.

Does this mean I’ll be lame for the rest of my life? Manganator wondered, feeling a deep sense of hopelessness begin to settle in his gut. His strength and coordination had always been so important to him.

“What does that mean?” Manganator asked softly, eyeing his crippled hand with distaste.

“That means you will have no use of it, period.” O’Brien said harshly, gazing at him with a pair of fierce grey eyes. Those eyes held no escape, no comforting words, only the grim truth.

“Is there anything I can do?” Manganator asked with callous desperation.

“Well you could have nerve reconstruction done, which is an incredibly long, painful, and usually fruitless process, or you could get a mechanical hand attached. That’s painful and long as well, but generally not as fruitless.”

“But it’s not the same.” He looked down at his crumpled hand again, trying to will it into motion. It was ichy, even though it had no feeling… he could almost feel the circulating air in the room tickle his hand, but the nerves were completely detached.

“Remember Ace Jones? Even though he could no longer serve as a pilot, his mechanical replacement worked fine after a while,” Doctor O’Brien stated with a flicker of awe in his eye. “The perfect union of man and machine.”

“Ace Jones’ wife also took the kids, and he shot himself,” Manganator added dryly.

“Oh well at least he shot himself. That proves the hand works, doesn’t it?” the doctor added with a dark chuckle.

“I’ll see if your machine fetish is shared with my planetside doctor, O’Brien. In the meantime, let’s see if we can keep this lump of stinking flesh from falling off of my arm, ok?” Manganator asked.

“We should probably just cut the damn thing off,” O’Brien said to himself, his arthritic hands gingerly mousing through the drawer to find a crude bandage, which he began to wrap around Manganator’s hand.

Manganator glanced over into the next room, seeing the pale feet of a dead man drooped in the middle of the doorway. “How did the autopsy go?” he asked.

“That girl knew what she was doing,” O’Brien said with a gruff appreciation. “She severed their spines, from the nature of the wounds; I could tell the strikes were clean and very quick. I haven’t gotten to pancake woman, yet, but she’s due as soon as I get through all the injuries these damn Marines got from all of their damned bar visits.”

The shipmen had dubbed the dead blond “Pancake Woman”, after one chuckling Marine discovered a pancake still stuck to her thigh when they loaded her onto the stretcher.

“What were their names?” Manganator asked, suddenly feeling ashamed that he did not know the identities of his deceased shipmen.

O’Brien looked down on a list, squinting his eyes through his glasses. Manganator was amazed O’Brien could read his own illegible scrawls, with poor vision, no less. ”Private Henry Codginson and First Sergeant Peter Cole, don’t know if you believe in coincidence, but both of these boys…”

But Manganator was already heading out of the door. “Henry Codginson, Peter Cole… Henry Codginson, Peter Cole,” he muttered to himself, determined not to forget.

Hearing that the doctor was still talking, Manganator shouted over his shoulder. “Sorry doc, we gotta get this ship in vacuum, we’re in a hurry!” He met the irritated look in the doctor’s grey eyes and gave him a smile before turning the corner.

Honestly, Manganator couldn’t wait to get out of the medical bay ever since O’Brien had finished taping his hand. The sight of dead bodies had always made him queasy.

“Sir!” Shipman snapped salutes to him as he passed. It was strange that they all knew who he was, but he barely knew any of them.

It was funny, wherever he was in his ship, even though he had walked it’s dark-metal hallways numerous times, he still could hardly distinguish one hallway from another. But judging from how long and how fast he’d been walking, he judged that he was about…

BOOM! A huge rumbling crash echoed through the hallway. Manganator felt himself get thrown forward, as a huge force slammed into his back, launching him through the air, and smashing him into the floor. What the hell? Manganator thought, completely disoriented.

His ears were ringing painfully, and the hallway had gone black. Not to mention, he landed the wrong way on his ankle. Fortunately, it only hurt a little. He got up and immediately collapsed as the dull pain intensified and a crack sounded from it.

Broken.

He pulled out his radio, breathing raggedly and still covering his left ear with his free hand. “Report.”

“Sir,... en a... internal detonation,” Manganator barely heard his CO report. “We’re venting atmosphere.”

Judging from how long I’ve been walking, I’m past sector 11. “Seal the entire sector... seal it off,” Manganator shouted. He felt his vocal chords burn from the shout, but to his ears it seemed no louder than a whisper.

Looking up, he saw the solid metal blast doors drop down. Apparently I’m still in sector 11, Manganator thought grimly. Well this sucks. Now locked, Manganator could feel the slight breeze as atmosphere was being sucked from the hallway.

It was draining the heavy black smoke, but it was also draining his oxygen.

He tried to get up on one leg, slowly pulling himself to his feet with his only good hand.

He looked in both directions, frantically trying to find a vacuum suite, or someone who knew the section better than he did. As soon as he looked behind him, he saw a crumpled body on the deck, face up.

She was mumbling softly, still alive, but her face was riddled with shrapnel, and both of her eyes had been pierced with twisted metal. Manganator hobbled towards her steadily.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“I was until you screamed in my ear!” she shouted back, attempting to sit up and open her eyes. Manganator resisted the urge to laugh.

"What's you're name?"

"Luna"

---------------------------------------------------------------

Posted: Sun Jan 20, 2008 5:57 pm

A steady warning siren sounded in Section 11. The section had been sealed off completely from the rest of the ship. Obviously, it had been some kind of explosion. But there was no storage of fuel or munitions large enough in the medical bay to create such a large blast. That left only two possibilities, a stow-away or a traitor. But for now, Manganator had to focus about his own survival.

Manganator glanced down at his radio only to see that it had no possibility of connecting with his CO and getting the blast doors opened for just a few seconds, but that was not possible because the heavy blast doors were also equipped with an electromagnetic shield, and so the radio remained dead.

Manganator did not have much time to despair over this development before the lights flickered. That’s right, power, communications, even fuel lines have been re-routed from this sector, Manganator realized.

They would probably only have a few minutes of power from the Sector’s individual emergency power-source before the lights and heat ceased to function.

“What’s your name, kid,” Luna asked, looking up at him with two ruined eyes. Manganator stood, in a few moments of surprise, even as the oxygen rushed out of the chamber around them.

Kid? That’s right…blind, she couldn’t possible know who I am.

“I’m Brian,” Manganator replied in a somewhat lighter voice.

“Well then, Brian, I figure we’re about to die,” Luna said cheerily, trying to wipe the dripping blood from her eyelids with one hand, as she supported her sitting body with the other. “Damn, I’m blind, aren’t I?” she asked, glancing up again.

“Ya, shrapnel,” Manganator replied.

“Oh, strange… can’t feel a thing,” Luna said offhandedly, leaning against the wall. She was wearing the regulation-black female officer’s uniform, which fit snugly to her short and small frame. The hair style was strange for an officer, though, and seemed to be well-maintained, in stark contrast to the normal female officer’s more Spartan haircuts.

“What division are you from?” Manganator asked.

“I oversee the engineering and maintenance divisions,” she replied with a contemptuous laugh. Obviously doesn’t enjoy the job.

“The sector’s been sealed, and we’re venting atmosphere,” Manganator explained, hoping that she might be able to come up with a plan that could save both of their lives.

“No BBQ,” Luna replied gruffly. “Just because I can’t see anything doesn’t mean I’m stupid.”

Manganator smiled, not having to hear the “sirs” added to the end of every address was quite liberating. It reminded him of the old days. Certainly, there were upsides to conversing with a blind shipmate.

Even though he couldn’t see Luna’s eyes, he could tell she was deep in thought.

He hoped that maybe, an officer on his ship of her caliber would be able to think of some way to get them back safe into the rest of the ship.

“I’ve got it,” Luna said finally.

“What?” Commander Manganator asked hopefully, beginning to feel the air getting thinner.

“There’s a local storage area in this hallway! I’m sure the marines patrolling it are dead, and it’s bound to have some pretty good confiscated alcohol, or maybe even some stims. We could get really high and then see if it’s possible to survive by holding your breath in space!” Luna suggested.

Let down, Manganator exhaled in defeat, and dragged himself to the wall, slouching next to her.

“Do you have a plan that won’t result in our deaths?” Manganator asked softly. Luna’s smile eased from her face.

“I can’t think of anything,” she whispered sadly. “We’re probably going to die.” She buried her face in her arms, staining the cuffs with the blood from her bleeding eyes. She soon began to sniffle softly, muffled by her arms. She removed her head from her arms finally, and felt under them with her small fingers. “It’s weird. I’m blind, but I can still cry,” she said raggedly.

“Damn… if only we could get that door closed,” Manganator said wistfully.

“Closed? What do you mean?” Luna asked, looking his way urgently.

Manganator was taken aback, and had to collect himself before replying. “W-well the door connecting us to the rest of Section 11 is open, and that’s where our atmosphere is escaping,” Manganator explained.

Hearing this, Luna’s face lit up. “I thought this area had been breached, but it’s just the sector, you say?”

“That’s right,” Manganator said.

“Well then we can seal this hallway off from the rest of the sector. We can do that even if we are cut off from the rest of ship’s systems.”

“But the sealing procedure locks all door controls,” Manganator interjected.

“A simple lock won’t keep me from it,” Luna said with a cocky grin. “Wait… first, tell me if you see a blue box-shaped device on the ceiling.”

Manganator looked up. “Does it have a flashing red light?” he asked.

“Yeah, that’s it. That’s our Co2 filter. It will act independently on its own battery power and keep this room from running out of oxygen.”

Luna struggled to lift herself up, and looked down to where Manganator was. “Are you coming?” she asked.

”I broke my ankle,” Manganator replied.

“You baby,” she muttered. Manganator was quite surprised when Luna grabbed him from beneath the armpits and hefted him into the air. Her small hands gripped like pincers on his armpits which supported his entire weight, making him wince in pain, and he was face to face with her destroyed eyes.

Soon, they arrived to the terminal. She groped the wall with her hands, and found the small latch, which she undid and pulled out a small keyboard.

“I want you to tell me if I make some kind of spelling mistake, or put in one too many spaces or something, okay?” she asked.

“Got it.”

She immediately put her hands on the terminal and began to type, but none of the words made any sense. He’d never been a programmer, but it didn’t seem like she was typing in what she intended.

Looking at her hands, he saw the cause of this problem. “You’re typing one letter too high!” Manganator shouted.

“Oh whoops,” she said, deleting what she had just written.

Manganator began to feel lightheaded as Luna hacked away at the keyeboard, and no longer focused on what she was typing. The amount of oxygen in the room had been steadily declining the entire time from both the escaping atmosphere and the fires that raged deeper within the sector. He began to feel dreamy when he heard a loud crash.

When he looked up, the doorway which had been leaking their atmosphere was closed by a solid metal door-frame.

“You’ve done it! Now we only have to wait,” Manganator said with a triuphant smile.

“Don’t celebrate yet,” she said grimly, slipping back down next to him. “We don’t have a heating unit here, and unless Commander Manganator is astute enough to notice that this area is retaining pressure, we won’t be rescued.”

“I have a feeling he wont notice for a long time,” Manganator replied, chuckling to himself.

They sat in silence for a few minutes. The room was steadily getting colder. It was first just a sensation, then a mild annoyance. But soon the cold was beginning to permeate Manganator’s clothes, and into his body. At about this time, Luna began to shiver, and so, after a slight hesitation, Manganator nudged in closer, and put a single arm around her shoulders.

He felt her tense up rigidly, and then relax having drawn from him a few inches. “Do you have any family?” Luna asked.

“I got a wife and kids to return to. And they’re all I’m thinking about right now,” Manganator said, already feeling the warmth from her body help heat his numb arm. “Why? What about you?” he asked.

“I… don’t have family,” she muttered.

“Well at least you have friends, right?”

“Not many…”

Having said this, she finally put one of her arms around him, and they both waited in the cold for the door to open and help to arrive.

The light flickered again, and then failed.

------------------------------------------------------------------

Posted: Mon Jan 21, 2008 2:40 pm

Manganator liked the feel of a fresh set of clothes on his body. Before this morning, it’d even been a few days since he’d last shaved or showered. But now he was back to normal, clean shaven and sharp. He ran his fingers down his neck, not feeling a single point of resistance.

Smooth...

He didn’t quite enjoy the feel of a wheelchair, but with an ankle that was both fractured and sprained, and a completely useless arm, that was something beyond his control.

Not to mention, he was forced to remain in a mechanical wheelchair because only one of his hands was operational. He dreaded to think that he was beginning to look like Admiral Hanson, the dreaded 80 year old Admiral who refused to retire, zipping around corridors on random inspections, shouting orders and insults.

Not paying attention to what was ahead of him, Manganator collided with a plain-clothed maintenance worker, who unfortunately was carrying a large tray of hot cheese soup. The near-boiling liquid landed onto his legs, and Manganator fell from his wheelchair, screaming obscenities.

“I’m so sorry, sir!” the wide-eyed worker exclaimed, standing indecisively.

“BBQ BBQ BBQ BBQ BBQ!” Manganator cried out, rubbing his pants and hoping that the hot liquid would somehow get pushed by his hands.

Eventually, the pain subsided, and Manganator glanced up to see the terrified worker. “Oh, don’t worry about it. I’m not a cranky person. I’m still young,” Manganator said.

The worker continued to stare at him fearfully.

“Isn’t that right?” Manganator snapped.

“Uh... ya... yes, sir!” the man hastily replied, straightening himself out.

Manganator climbed painfully back into his wheelchair and got ready to head off.

“Uh sir? My Manager is probably not going to believe I spilled the soup on you, so you write me a note or call him or something?” he asked in a soft voice.

“Are you hugging serious?” Manganator questioned, glaring at him a few seconds before zooming away. Covered with cheese soup, Manganator finally crossed from the Sector one, the bridge, into Sector 5, which had served as their replacement medical facility.

Sector 11 had been completely destroyed, and most of the medical personnel had been killed, including Patrick O’Brien, who had been a member of Manganator’s ship crew for five years.

Fortunatley, most of the marines had medical training, and one in ten was a medic, so the medical personnel could be replaced, but then there was the matter of surgery...

Manganator entered the storage room, which had been rigged with auxiliary red-tinted lighting, and cleared of all weapons, food, and equipment, and progressed towards a table in the center of the room, which had a few medics crowded around it.

“What’s the situation, men?” Manganator asked.

Luna lay, sedated on the table, with everything covered except the top of her face. Bloody surgery tools and twisted pieces of metal lay in a tray next to the table, sitting in a blueish cleansing liquid.

“The shrapnel’s all out, but the eyes will are beyond saving,” the young marine medic answered, glancing back at Luna. “The nerves are still there, but that’s above my field of surgery, I’m sorry.” It’s strange, with shaved heads Marines all look the same.

“I guess it’ll have to do,” Manganator said with a grimace.

“One strange thing, sir,” the marine added. “She doesn’t show up in our manifest.”

“Well that is strange... considering I’m certain I’ve seen her here before,” Manganator answered.

“Sir!” Manganator glanced down at his wheelchair, hearing Hammel’s voice over the radio. He picked it up.

“Manganator here,” he said clearly.

“We’re making our next warp in ten minutes,” Hammel informed.

“Understood, I’ll get back to the bridge in a few minutes.” Manganator glanced back to the eyeless woman on the table, feeling something nag him about her.

“Bill, we got a woman in the treatment center that doesn’t show up in our manifest,” Manganator said, glancing down at Luna again.

“Well that’s a problem, Brian,” Hammel answered, “I mean... it was probably a stow-away that was responsible for that blast, that may be her.”

“She said her name was Luna,” he said absent-mindedly.

“Oh, well there must be some kind of mistake!” Hammel declared immediately. “Luna’s been with the ship for about a year... I’m pretty certain.”

“Really? Well I thought she looked a little familiar.”

“Ya, definitely. The computer’s been a little glitchy since the fight, don’t worry about it.”

Reassured, Manganator clicked off his radio, and hastily wheeled his mechanized wheelchair back to the bridge, going so fast that a few of his shipmen didn’t even have the time to salute.

Giving his palmprint to a small, waist level, blue scanner, Manganator rolled into the bridge. He got a few st

User avatar
Luna
Posts: 1873
Joined: Wed May 10, 2006 6:09 am
Location: The Galaxy of Life

Post by Luna » Mon Feb 18, 2008 5:10 am

Posted: Mon Jan 21, 2008 2:40 pm

Manganator liked the feel of a fresh set of clothes on his body. Before this morning, it’d even been a few days since he’d last shaved or showered. But now he was back to normal, clean shaven and sharp. He ran his fingers down his neck, not feeling a single point of resistance.

Smooth...

He didn’t quite enjoy the feel of a wheelchair, but with an ankle that was both fractured and sprained, and a completely useless arm, that was something beyond his control.

Not to mention, he was forced to remain in a mechanical wheelchair because only one of his hands was operational. He dreaded to think that he was beginning to look like Admiral Hanson, the dreaded 80 year old Admiral who refused to retire, zipping around corridors on random inspections, shouting orders and insults.

Not paying attention to what was ahead of him, Manganator collided with a plain-clothed maintenance worker, who unfortunately was carrying a large tray of hot cheese soup. The near-boiling liquid landed onto his legs, and Manganator fell from his wheelchair, screaming obscenities.

“I’m so sorry, sir!” the wide-eyed worker exclaimed, standing indecisively.

“BBQ BBQ BBQ BBQ BBQ!” Manganator cried out, rubbing his pants and hoping that the hot liquid would somehow get pushed by his hands.

Eventually, the pain subsided, and Manganator glanced up to see the terrified worker. “Oh, don’t worry about it. I’m not a cranky person. I’m still young,” Manganator said.

The worker continued to stare at him fearfully.

“Isn’t that right?” Manganator snapped.

“Uh... ya... yes, sir!” the man hastily replied, straightening himself out.

Manganator climbed painfully back into his wheelchair and got ready to head off.

“Uh sir? My Manager is probably not going to believe I spilled the soup on you, so you write me a note or call him or something?” he asked in a soft voice.

“Are you hugging serious?” Manganator questioned, glaring at him a few seconds before zooming away. Covered with cheese soup, Manganator finally crossed from the Sector one, the bridge, into Sector 5, which had served as their replacement medical facility.

Sector 11 had been completely destroyed, and most of the medical personnel had been killed, including Patrick O’Brien, who had been a member of Manganator’s ship crew for five years.

Fortunatley, most of the marines had medical training, and one in ten was a medic, so the medical personnel could be replaced, but then there was the matter of surgery...

Manganator entered the storage room, which had been rigged with auxiliary red-tinted lighting, and cleared of all weapons, food, and equipment, and progressed towards a table in the center of the room, which had a few medics crowded around it.

“What’s the situation, men?” Manganator asked.

Luna lay, sedated on the table, with everything covered except the top of her face. Bloody surgery tools and twisted pieces of metal lay in a tray next to the table, sitting in a blueish cleansing liquid.

“The shrapnel’s all out, but the eyes will are beyond saving,” the young marine medic answered, glancing back at Luna. “The nerves are still there, but that’s above my field of surgery, I’m sorry.” It’s strange, with shaved heads Marines all look the same.

“I guess it’ll have to do,” Manganator said with a grimace.

“One strange thing, sir,” the marine added. “She doesn’t show up in our manifest.”

“Well that is strange... considering I’m certain I’ve seen her here before,” Manganator answered.

“Sir!” Manganator glanced down at his wheelchair, hearing Hammel’s voice over the radio. He picked it up.

“Manganator here,” he said clearly.

“We’re making our next warp in ten minutes,” Hammel informed.

“Understood, I’ll get back to the bridge in a few minutes.” Manganator glanced back to the eyeless woman on the table, feeling something nag him about her.

“Bill, we got a woman in the treatment center that doesn’t show up in our manifest,” Manganator said, glancing down at Luna again.

“Well that’s a problem, Brian,” Hammel answered, “I mean... it was probably a stow-away that was responsible for that blast, that may be her.”

“She said her name was Luna,” he said absent-mindedly.

“Oh, well there must be some kind of mistake!” Hammel declared immediately. “Luna’s been with the ship for about a year... I’m pretty certain.”

“Really? Well I thought she looked a little familiar.”

“Ya, definitely. The computer’s been a little glitchy since the fight, don’t worry about it.”

Reassured, Manganator clicked off his radio, and hastily wheeled his mechanized wheelchair back to the bridge, going so fast that a few of his shipmen didn’t even have the time to salute.

Giving his palmprint to a small, waist level, blue scanner, Manganator rolled into the bridge. He got a few stares from the operators, and techies that were used to seeing him strut onto the server snapping salutes.

He rolled to the middle of the bridge, saluting just a few of the men he passed, and rotated his chair to the viewscreen. “Have the calculations been inputted?” Manganator asked.

“Aye sir!” Hammel called out, nodding to the navigation’s officer.

“Then launch on my mark,” Manganator said. He picked up his radio as he always did, and set it to the ship-wide channel, so his voice would carry across the entire ship’s speakers.

“We’re prepping for warp, everyone get ready.” At least my voice still has some authority... even if my body is a broken mess.

“Ok... Mark.”

Even a few seconds after Mangantor gave the order, nothing happened. “What’s going on?” Manganator called out.

“The warp program is reading an error,” Navigation officer Leary called out nervously. Apparently, the ripples from his episode with Lt. Nixon were still being felt in the bridge.

“What’s the error?” Manganator asked.

“It’s just a glitch sir, it says that the path is blocked, but our visual sensors and nav computer show clearly that we got a straight shot. I could override if you want, sir.” the man said quickly.

“No...” Manganator said. “Fire the photons.”

---------------------------------------

Posted: Wed Jan 23, 2008 6:05 pm

“Sir?”

“FIRE NOW!” Manganator shouted, turning on the weapon’s officer.

The grizzled Wordsworth, with sudden flash of understanding coming over his eyes, realized Manganator’s hunch, and quickly input the command. With a push on his controls he sent three shots of concentrated plasma from the frontal cannons.

Manganator and the rest of the deck watched the brilliant shots with grim anticipation as they arced closer to the warp point. Just as he felt that his suspicion had been proved incorrect, three bright flashes illuminated the deck through the already polarizing steelglass.

The plasma had obviously made contact with something, just a moment before passing through the warp.

Explosive clouds rippled over an oddly shaped ghost image, revealing the true shape of what they’d actually hit.

“Damned avengers,” one crewman whispered under his breath.

A few seconds later, there was an even greater explosion, at least four times larger than the first, which quickly grew, shooting shrapnel and bits of avenger into different directions. A few clattered against the hull.

This time, the crew reeled from the unexpected explosion, throwing themselves back from the steelglass, even Manganator flinched. Around the explosion, a few more rippling shields flickered into view. There are at least four of them, Manganator observed.

“What the hell was that?” Hammel asked.

“Either that avenger was carrying incredibly high munitions, or there are cloaked mines in play,” Manganator answered coldly. Because their ISC’s battle scanners were on a tower in Section 11, which they had cut off from the rest of the ship, they would be fighting blind against these avengers.

“Sir, we have incoming self-propelling projectiles on our 6 o’clock twenty degree-,” began one of the technical operators, a plump blond who’d been on the bridge for about a year.

“Nukes,” Manganator interrupted. “Give me our battle-map!”

On the front screen, a large map popped. Their large ISC was shown by a white dot, while missiles arced towards it from multiple directions.

“Impact of the first in thirty seconds, sir.”

“Sir, I may be able to try to rig up some makeshift sensors from our warp-drive’s particle readout!” another glasses-wearing young technical operator shouted.

“Do it,” Manganator said quickly.

He then took just a moment to observe the enemy nukes arcing towards his ship. There were six, and it didn’t look like those were the end of the payload.

“Engage our thrusters, put us accelerating down at 90 degrees,” Manganator ordered, thinking quickly.

“Aye sir!” Navigation’s officer Leary input the commands, and the ship began to fire it’s thrusters.

“Fire a nuke from our tail,” Manganator said next.

Without thinking of why he was ordering them to fire a nuke straight towards nothing, Wordsworth began to make the calculations and soon there was a slight rumble as nukes flew free from their housings.

“Now go dead, and fire our countermeasures on my mark,” Manganator continued.

Seeing a few enemy nukes track the heat signatures of his own wayward nukes, Manganator waited for just a few moments before giving the order. “Mark.”

The ship went black around them, consoles dimmed and lights deactivated, leaving the ship only with the light that filtered through the steelglass. Just in front of the view port, a spinning countermeasure wandered aimlessly along, spinning and creating a false representation of a ship’s heat signature.

4 more nukes still tracking, the crew held their breath. If just 2 of the nukes struck with their ship the way it was, they’d be trouble.

“Five seconds until first impact,” the blond operator said in a hushed whisper. It was a strange thing to do, considering sound and vibration had nothing to do with the nukes tracking systems.

Manganator stared at a single nuke coming from the port, who’s thruster roared towards him like an angry wasp, hoping that it was locked onto the spinning countermeasure in front of them, and not the ship.

At the last moment, it seemed to veer wide, and struck the countermeasure, illuminating the bridge, and rocking the ship with a shockwave.

Good for them, not good for the countermeasure.

That’s one down.

Looking down, Manganator saw the blips were just a sliver from overlapping with his ship, and braced himself.

Another rumble sounded from the back end, as another nuke hit a countermeasure. A few seconds later, there was another blast, this time from the starboard, and yet still no impact. That left one nuke.

“Two seconds until last nuke impact,” the operator said.

“one”

“zero”

The bridge was enveloped in silence as they all waited for the impact, but it never came. Just on the other side of the door, Manganator could hear shouts of celebration.

“Ok, get us out of this dead-man’s float, Sergeant Leary,” Manganator ordered.

The navigation’s officer happily obliged, activating the thrusters.

But the red lock-on warning light on the display that activated when the ship was being tracked, had not deactivated itself.

“Oh BBQ,” Manganator managed to say, seeing a nuke blip that had missed it’s countermeasure redirect towards their thrusters.

Just a moment later, there was a jarring impact, which caused the displays around the terminal to spark, and people and loose items to hit the deck. From the shock, Manganator’s head whiplashed into the display.

Disoriented, he struggled to regain his bearings. Blood dripped onto his legs, even as he held a single hand over his nose to try to prevent the leakage. “Put us in a wide arc around Delta Ephelia IV to the adjacent warp point!” Manganator shouted, some of the words spilling from his mouth sloppily, as if he were drunk.

The planet was just a bit to the port side of their destination, the warp gate, and so flying wide of it would be a bit of a detour. Just enough of one for the avengers to believe they could catch up.

“Aye…” Leary mumbled, inputting the command gingerly. One of his fingers was broken.

Soon, the rattled ship lurched into motion, heading away from the avengers, and heading to the other warp point. More nukes streamed towards them, but they had been fired too late, their minimum detonation triggers would explode them before they even got close. All nukes had been programmed with them to prevent stray nukes that had not locked on from accidentally smacking into ports, planets, or civilian ships.

Undoubtedly, the avengers were chasing them, but the ISC’s speed was far beyond that of the avenger, so it would be an easy escape. But Manganator wasn’t interested in escape.
His fist clenched tightly, his knuckles white. Manganator wanted blood. He’d had enough of running.

“We will be stopping once we’ve rounded the planet,” Manganator said calmly, wiping the blood from his nose on his sleeve.

--------------------------------------------

Posted: Thu Jan 24, 2008 5:10 pm

“Aye sir,” the wounded Navigation’s officer confirmed grimly. They entered a smooth burn around the planet. It would be just above a minute before they were in place.

“In the meantime, you,” he said, pointing to the blonde haired techie who’d given him the countdown on the nuke impact.

Her eyebrows lifted in confusion.

“Lauria... is it? I want you to give me a readout on the avenger’s likely position had they cut across the other side of the planet in an attempt to cut us off, by calculating their top speed and time elapsed and putting into account 5 seconds hesitation.”

As her fingers began to hack away at the keyboard, the Starcruiser decelerated into it’s stationary position close to the planet’s pole.

“The magnetism should keep the enemy’s sensors from detecting us,” Manganator informed the rest of the crew.

“I’ve got the readout, sir,” she said quickly.

“Good, put your equation on our combat map with the estimated position.”

“Roger.”

With just a few more keytaps, five white dots appeared on the map, advancing around the short side of the planet. They were getting close. It was time.

“Ready fire of nukes 2-5" Manganator said next.

“Primed, and unlocked,” Wordsworth said a few seconds later.

“I want you to fire them on a low burn just a hair on the outside of this planet’s moon,” Manganator said, pointing where he wanted them in leu of the exact coordinates. At that speed, the nukes would hardly be able to run down an avenger... but that wasn’t his intention.

“Sir, you do know that our nukes won’t track the cloaked ships with our scanners out of operation?” Wordsworth asked.

“I know,” Manganator growled, silencing the weapon’s officer.

There was some more typing, and then a soft rumble as the three nukes launched. They seemed to go out at a painfully slow speed, but if Manganator had timed it up right...

The deck crawled with anticipation as the eyes of the idle technical operators watched the battle unfold. As many times before this one, they had no idea what was going through Manganator’s mind, and that was how he liked it.

He watched the display, waiting for the nukes on the outside of the small moon and the predicted path of the pursuing avengers to get in just the right positioning.

“Fire three photons into our slowburn nukes!” Manganator shouted.

There was a flurry of typing followed by a loud Thwap as the torpedoes soared from their housings, quickly catching up with the slow moving nukes, just as they reached their closest point with the moon.

“And now fire our remaining nukes at high burn in direct orbit with the planet!”

This time, the nukes screamed out at inescapable velocities.

The small moon, which sat lazily above the planet, was illuminated by a large series of nuclear explosions directly on it’s outside as the torpedoes caused the nukes to explode. There was a bright flash, and a shockwave. The small moon first lost bits and fragments, but soon it shattered, shooting a shotgun of small and medium-sized rocks towards the planet surface.

The wide hailstorm yielded Manganator’s prey. Five ship’s shields shimmered, shielding the ships from the impacts of the fragments from the moon’s explosion. A medium sized chunk slammed directly into a ship, and with a bright flash it’s shield failed. The ship was thrown aside by the force of the rock, and there was a small fireball as it’s fuel ignited. The fireball seemed to smolder, and then the ship was shot towards the planet’s surface by another large explosion on it’s wing. It’s path was shown by the trailing flame as it entered the planet’s atmosphere and began to burn.

That’s one.

A grin came over Manganator’s face as the nukes swept in. Some of the avengers attempted to maneuver away from the incoming missiles, but it was too late.

The first nuke locked in on the shield source, and slammed into the lead avenger, cracking it’s shield promptly and engulfing it in a fireball.

The next shot past the ship it had targeted by some quick maneuver, and re-locked on another avenger in the back, barely hitting the side. This sent the avenger into a spin, and shieldless, it’s explosion decorated the side of a large falling rock.

He managed to see one avenger, fire a burst of plasma into one of the falling rocks, and then fire it’s nuke, shattering the large rock into many smaller ones. The avenger then darted among the rubble in a wild attempt to escape the nukes. But no pilot could fly his way through those falling rocks.

“Fire the photons into that mess,” Manganator shouted to Wordsworth. Just as he said this, his last nuke detonated on another unlucky avenger with a thump.

Photons arced from the ship, blowing the rocks into even smaller pieces, and putting fireballs in the sky. It was a cage of fire and shrapnel that even the best flyer wouldn’t be able to survive.

Closer to the planet, the rocks began to enter the atmosphere, burning like many deadly drops of crimson rain.

Manganator felt pride rushing through his body again, for the first time in a while. He felt energized.

“Sir, there’s one ship still semi-intact, but it seems to be dead in space, and falling to the planet,” one operator said in awe.

Manganator quirked his head in confusion. “It’s shields?”

“Nearly full, sir, but the thrusters and cloaking seem to be offline for now.”

Manganator was impressed. Perhaps the same pilot who shot his way through the middle of that larger rock.

“Approach with caution. Let’s see if we can get that ship into our bay... maybe finally find out what the hell is going on.”

As they approached, the avenger still did nothing, slowly being pulled towards the planet. “Ok, edge in and prepare the boarding craft to do some tugging so we can wheel her in,” Manganator said.

But before the boarding craft could be launched, the avenger suddenly came to life and veered towards the ISC, ramming it’s nose through the outer hull right next to the bridge. “Jesus Christ!” one surprised man shouted.

“This is Duece! You may of heard of me!” a wild voice roared over the unrestricted radio channel.

Manganator looked over at Hammel and gave him a slight nod. Hammel picked up his receiver and began to issue orders to the Marine squads on standby.

Manganator, wanting to buy some time, slowly picked up the radio. “This is Command actual,” Manganator said calmly.

“You think you’re one smart son of a I love you man!, don’t you?” the voice shot back. “Well here’s news for you, I got an armed nuke that I can punch right through the hull of your precious little ship. Now we don’t want this to end badly, so you better keep the marines off me, got it?”

Grinding his teeth, Manganator nodded his head to Hammel, who picked up his radio and called off the Marines.

“Ok, now I want you to...”

“Sir, I got in,” one of the technical advisors shouted. Manganator grinned and activated his radio.

“We’re not going to be doing anything,” Manganator said into his radio with a smile.

“By hell you wont!” the pilot shouted from the other end. “You don’t and I’ll burn your ship up with this nuke, pall.”

Manganator looked over at the display of the avenger and chuckled. “You don’t have a nuke, you don’t even have your weapons.”

“Yes I do,” the man shot back.

“Well... in the least you don’t have your firewall operational anymore, because I just hacked your ship, Duece,” Manganator explained.

“Oh...”
-------------------------------------------

Posted: Mon Jan 28, 2008 5:32 pm Post subject: Reply with quote Edit/Delete this post Delete this post View IP address of poster
Of all the sectors of the Starcruiser, the brig was the most grim. And this wasn’t just because of the fact that it was packed with jail cells and disheartened prisoners, set to be unloaded at earth, where most of them would serve decades in prison, and others would likely be executed.

It was because place was just awful in general.

It stank like urine and vomit, a smell that never quite washed out, and the floors were constantly being dirtied by the most permeating stains the human body had to offer.

There was often trays of tools in the dark hallways, filled with all kinds of goodies, like buckets for waterboarding, little knives, hand restraints, speakers to play aggravating music to prisoners 24/7, some of the tools fruitlessly resting in disinfectant, which itself was always a few shades darker than normal, the tint of blood.

All of this within the standards set by the UN law “prohibiting torture”.

Fortunately though, the ship had no professional torturers. The marines who’s duty it was to go through with the interrogations never relished the practice... well at least most of them didn’t, anyways. Manganator had been a marine, he knew that the psychological screening didn’t filter out all of the bad apples.

He finally wheeled his way into the solitary cell that had been squared away for their special guest. Duece.

With his ship fully hacked, it hadn’t been hard to get him out of the ship, but that didn’t keep him from trying to run from the marines to assault a maintenance worker.

Captain Anderson, the young marine who had been charged with the interrogation was standing in the corner breathing heavily, sweat running down his scowling face, which was odd considering the Marine was in very good shape.

Duece was on his hands and knees, bleeding from his face, and making a sound somewhere between a haggard cough and a laugh. It was hard to distinguish any facial characteristics from beneath the sheen of blood, but Manganator could clearly see the look of cocky defiance painted in his pointed stare and over his sneering lips.

Judging from the injuries Duece had sustained, and the rate of Anderson’s breathing, Manganator deduced that he had interrupted a pretty good beating.

“Working him over pretty well, eh Anderson?” Manganator asked with an amused grin. The Captain’s eyes flashed with a bit of regret. Anderson was the type that didn’t like to lose control of his emotions, and was generally very well guarded.

“He has quite a mouth on him, sir,” Anderson said defensively.

“Your... mom has quite a mouth.... on her...” Duece mumbled with another half-laugh, sticky matted blood dripping from a busted lip.

Anderson answered Duece’s allegation with his steel toed boot. Exhaling sharply, Duece reeled, flipping over from the force of the kick to the side of his chest.

“Hey Duece, you hungry?” Manganator asked with the prisoner still laying there.

Duece’s eyes remained closed, his body motionless save the steady heaving of his slim torso.

“Yooo hooo!” Manganator mocked, wheeling closer. “You wanna eat something?”

His eyes fluttered a bit, and then opened, looking at Manganator with distaste. “Depends on what you got, crippie.”

Manganator felt a flare of anger, but laughed it off.

“I’m not going to make you eat your own feces you know, although technically I could... wouldn’t be against the rules.” Manganator waited to see the prisoner’s response to this threat.
After a long pause, Duece replied with deliberate clearness, completely lacking his previous sarcasm. “We’re both rule-breakers, you and I. Only difference between the two of us, is that you sold your soul to become the UN’s I love you man!.”

Anderson wound up to strike, but Manganator held up his arm to stop him.

“And right now you’re my I love you man!, what does that make you?” Manganator asked.

“Free,” he spat. Manganator felt like he was going to like this man.

“Get us some pizza,” Manganator told Anderson offhandedly.

“Sir, are you sure that...” Anderson objected.

“Yes! Pizza!” Manganator said, giving the Marine captain a glare. Anderson fumbled, as if he were tripping over words to say, and then saluted and left the cell, walking briskly.

Duece laughed again.

“What’s so funny?” Manganator questioned, wheeling a bit closer.

Duece shook his head, and stretched his back, gingerly struggling himself into a sitting position, which was quite difficult with his hands bound.

“You made a big mistake, crippie boy,” he muttered darkly, rising to his feet.

“First of all, I’m old enough to be your father. Second of all, I made no mistake, and thir...”

Manganator was unable to finish before Duece flung himself forward wildly, tied arms raised over his head like a hammer. But his midair jump stopped abruptly as Manganator kicked him as hard as he could in the ribs with his metal cast.

The force hurt just a bit on his heavily sprained ankle, but it apparently hurt Duece a lot more. “Thirdly, I’m not hugging crippled. At least not crippled enough to get held hostage by a restrained, beat up, washed out pilot,” Manganator shot, rubbing his sore ankle with his good hand.

Duece, thoroughly defeated, slumped against the bulkhead. “I’m hungry,” he whispered reservedly.

“Pizza’s comin.”

They waited in awkward silence for a bit longer, when Duece finally broke through.

“I see the black tattoo on your index finger,” he said, pointing to the black mark on Manganator’s trigger finger, a common marine tattoo. “You were in the marines?”

“Ya. That was a long time ago,” Manganator replied.

“I have a lot more respect for the marines than the straight-to-a-ship’s helm richboy assholes.... What got you so far up in the ranks that you had to become a flying fairy anyhow?”

Manganator smiled.

“It’s a long story.”

-------------------------------------



PostPosted: Thu Jan 31, 2008 7:15 pm

The Story

20 Years Prior

There were just five of them in the tent. It was just one of the tents in a small clearing that they had come across a few hours before dimness turned to darkness, but it wasn’t yet lights out, and as Brian Manganator found out after just a few of their missions, playing cards in Dirt’s tent with some of the guys before lights out greatly improved the quality of his sleep.

It relieved the tension, comforted him that he would not have his throat slit in the middle of the night, and helped him keep out of the dark trap of self-pity, because it reminded him that he was suffering with brothers, and there was no doubt to the old phrase “misery loves company”.

He had been in the Marines just a year, and already he taken a full 360. He had gone from loving the Marines, to hating them, to loving them again. In fact, those were only the larger trends, Brian just wasn’t going to bother counting all the times he had gone from one mind-set to the other.

Being in the Marines was an experience that only someone who had been engaged in a tumultuous love affair could empathize with.

Indeed, the Marine core had been married into Manganator’s life. It controlled where he was stationed, what he did, who he killed, how he dressed, even how he spoke.

And the Marine corpse was a real I love you man! to boot. Not the emotional kind that freaked out once a week. The Marine corpse was a real hardcore, controlling kind of I love you man!.

“That is completely hugged, man,” Bill Hammel exclaimed, his plump face more amused then sympathetic. He had always been a bit of an chia pet, liked to screw with people, liked to make jokes at the expense of others...

“I know, man... I know...” the misty-eyed Joel Pierce said drearily, still holding the crumpled letter in a hanging, limp hand.

“Hey, you did say that you and your friend back home shared everything, didn’t you? Maybe when you get back you two can share your girlfriend,” Bill added, his round brown eyes sparkling mischievously.

Joel’s fist clenched tightly around the letter. It didn’t take a physiological examiner to see that Joel was really feeling hugged up.

Joel was the typical tall lanky country boy with golden-brown disheveled hair, who’d arrived from underdeveloped Mars eager and grinning stupidly, completely unaware of just how dumb it looked with his missing front teeth. They’d quickly forced him to get a replacement tooth, and to lose the smile, but he’d always retained just a little humorous spark in even the darkest environments... until now.

“Hammel, why do you have to be such an chia pet, you fat BBQ?” Rob finally said with disgust.

Rob was the righteous, philosophical member of the group, which was quite ironic because he was also the only atheist. A well-built Italian from New York, his features were quite distinguished, but most distinguishing of all was his poofy hair which neither fell to his shoulders, or stood straight up like Cookie’s, but rather went... out.

When the other guys visited prostitutes, shot at trees, or scratched their asses, Rob kept himself busy by reading, writing, and debating with most often unwilling opponents in the most unimportant of topics.

“Hey, I was just sayin...” Hammel said defensively, holding up his hands as if the gesture somehow distanced him from the matter.

“Ya, well just can it!” Rob shot back, shaking his head.

“Look at him man, are you some kind of dumbass. You cant see how he’s hurting?”

Joel, who was clearly crying at this point, said nothing. He only remained silent and still as a tear dripped from his eye. “I... should go,” he whispered pausing mid-sentence to noisily suck the dripping liquid from his nose.

Distraught, and embarrassed, Joel got up walking almost dreamily as if he couldn’t believe the reality of the harshness around him, and left the tent.

“Nice hugging going,” Rob snapped barely as the tent flap fell back down.

Bill, still smiling like a dope, only shook his head stubbornly, obviously thinking that he still hadn’t said anything wrong.

“Hey where’s dirt?”

The four looked around the tent for their party host, but it took them a few seconds before Rob located him passed out on the ground, in the fetal position, still holding the empty Tenthon vial in his hand.

“hugging painkillers man...” Manganator said with a frown.

The purple vialed Tenthon was the abused drug of choice in the Marines, because it was made so readily available by the U.N..

The war against the Renegades was growing more and more unpopular. The Senator’s heroic stands on supporting a new few hundred billion in funding to provide “needed medical equipment” had earned a few senators another term in their precincts, and cost some more their’s, but didn’t do much to reduce Marine casualties.

That didn’t stop the Senators from making their outrageous claims, and cooking their statistics, however.

Sure, the equipment was helpful, but generally, you don’t save a man’s life who’s had the bottom half of his torso blown off by a rigged explosive, or had a plasma shot punched through his lungs.

As always, there were two wars being waged: The grunt’s war, and the political war.

But, unlike Rob, Manganator generally tried to avoid thinking about those kinds of things. He liked to keep his mind focused on not getting killed.

There was a noise. Something if Manganator had not been attentive he would not have heard. It was a soft crack, just like some sentry had clapped in the distance. But considering that the marines were just a part of a 30 man unit in the middle of a Renegade hotbed was enough to put Manganator’s nerves on edge.

He reached to his side, feeling the smooth metal of his MA-25 rifle (Modern Assault) . He never kept it far. Hefting it in his hands, he felt the familiar lightweight frame rest in his arms like a girlfriend’s embrace, comforting and gentle.

And he thumbed the safety.

Outside, the night had already fallen, casting a permeating darkness across the forest clearing in which they had set camp. On all sides, solemn trees stood uncomfortably close, bushes rustling with small animals... or Rennies.

Most of the guys, following Manganator’s lead, recovered their own weapons, mostly MA-25's with a few PW-4's, lightweight dull-black energy pistols that could scorch their way right through body armor and exit the other side.

And they listened.

It happened at least once every night. Someone would get spooked, and the others would be on edge, but it hardly ever evolved into a real ambush.

Hardly.

Whoever had first clapped really started it up now.

And now other’s joined in. From all different directions. The tent flashed as if it were being spotlighted by someone with ADD, and Manganator, knowing that the flashes would cast shadows of anyone standing inside, dropped to the ground.

Rob, fumbling with a magazine still in a standing position, was not so observant. A whistling round tore through his leg, causing him to topple with a loud groan. Manganator could feel the splatter on his weapon, and on his face.

He knew that he would need to get out of the tent. It was an easy target.

Hastily pulling his combat knife out of it’s sheath on his thigh, he ripped a line in the tent, and rolled into the void-like night, praying his enemies didn’t have thermal.

---------------------------------------

Posted: Sun Feb 03, 2008 6:24 pm

Manganator lay prone, his body as low against the ground as it could possibly go. It had been just a few minutes since the surprise nighttime assault began.

Gunfire from concealed positions continued to rake swaths up the camp, which itself was in a depressed clearing in the middle of a thick forest, surrounded on all sides by wooded hills.

Of the thirty men in the squad, Manganator had seen at least five dead.

Normally, the Rennies were never this upfront. In any conventional scraps, the Marines could simply call in surgical air-strikes which, from orbit, could calculate the difference between men twenty yards apart.

However… for some reason no air support had yet arrived.

A spray of gunfire whistled by Manganator’s head, causing him to cringe, but the shots were only a wild spray, and pattered the dirt over his shoulder.

Manganator bobbed slightly as his lungs pushed up to make room for air in his chest. His vision was narrow, and his adrenaline was giving his eye sweeps a frantic wartime ADD that kept him very confused.

He wildly opened fire into the hills, but the only thing his gunfire accomplished was to give away position, and he was forced to scramble back, crawling on his stomach as a hail of fire peppered where he had just been.

Huffing, he urgently scanned the camp for a sign of any friendly rifles. The first few men his eyes happened upon were lying dead, or wounded. It seemed the entire unit was cowering as deep within their tents, or small divots in the ground, as they could.

And that made what he saw next even stranger. Just a few yards in front of Manganator, emerging from between two tents, Joel ambled calmly, in a fully upright, slow paced walk.

Wearing no armor, and not even bothering to bring his rifle all the way to his eyes, Joel answered the muzzle flashes on the hills with careless replies. With each report and the coinciding flash, Manganator was struck by the grim carelessness in Joel’s eyes.

Were he in a calmer, more familiar state of mind, it would have struck Manganator to run forward, and tackle the man to the ground before his careless suicidal attitude led to his death, but in his panic-filled state, all Manganator thought to do was stare in amazement.

By some kind of divine intervention, the shots were still flying wide of Joel, but the swaths were getting tighter, kicking up bits of dirt at Joel’s feet, and popping small holes into the stiff-fabric tents on either side of him.

Finally one shot struck him, knocking his shoulder back slightly like a light playful tap on the shoulder. Joel, unabated, continued to fire. In the next series of muzzle flashes, Manganator could see a smile on his face.

By the time the next muzzle flash shone like a strobe across the camp, Joel was tackled to the ground roughly by a large hulking figure that Manganator could only identify as Sergeant O’Malley.

Manganator vaguely remember the earth-shattering shouts that passed from the well-toned Sergeant over coms, and wasn’t surprised that he could hear the sergeants angry voice shouting Joel into his senses even as sharp gunfire rang out around them.

Perhaps his voice was too loud.

There was an explosion of light as red and orange flames broiled from a hurled object, engulfing the Irish Sergeant and the shaken country boy in one fiery swipe. Immolated, the Sergeant began to frantically spin his large body on the ground, trying to find respite in the wet ground, but Joel’s burning body simply sank to its knees, and slumped down.

Manganator leveled his rifle, and put the Sergeant out of his misery with a clean shot to the head, ending the man’s throaty baritone yells with a sharp crack.

Manganator suddenly wondered if perhaps he had taken the shot too early. The flames had only covered a patch of his Sergeant’s body, and perhaps it could have been put out.

Then he saw a light flicker, characteristically different than a muzzle flash, and closer. It was another firebomb being lit by a Rennie, to be thrown into the camp. Probably the same man who’d thrown the first firebomb that torched O’Malley.

Manganator pivoted his rifle, aimed just beneath the flaming torch, and squeezed off five quick shots.

There was a huge explosion of blossoming flame as bomb after bomb exploded, adding to a large ball of fire which baked the screaming attacker alive.

Manganator leveled his rifle on the burning man, who continued to cry out, as if begging for a small bit of mercy, but at the last second, removed his finger from the trigger and turned his rifle into the air, watching the man’s thrashing limbs settle down into a smoldering pile.

He didn’t get long to wait before he had to begin trading fire with the other entrenched Rennies in the surrounding hills. A bullet clanged as it buried itself into a thin-metal equipment chest Manganator had been using as cover.

His adrenaline beginning to tone down, Manganator regained enough of his senses to find Terrance, a soft-spoken private, firing off shots just a few yards behind him.

But there was something strange about the private that Manganator couldn’t quite place. In a few frantic moments, he found out what had been bothering him.

Terrance was wearing his head-gear, the Hopolon Interactive Combat Visor. As rounds flew by him, Manganator patted his head, feeling suddenly vulnerable. Not only was it bulletproof, but it also tagged friendly and unfriendly contacts via satellite, and could zoom in with thermal and night vision.

In all the rush of the ambush, Manganator had forgotten all about it.

He wasted no time to scramble back to his tent, and launch himself inside. Rob had bandaged his own leg, and was firing deliberate aimed shots to the south, completely ignoring Manganator as he began to rummage through his bag.

As soon as he grasped it, he fumbled to secure it on his head, and soon was peering through the slightly darker view of his visor.

Feeling that it had been occupied, the helmet came to life. Manganator reached to the side of the helmet, and quickly activated the thermal viewer. The visor quickly shifted from mostly black to bits of red and orange as it began to pick up the heat signatures around him.

“This is Gamma Alpha 240-4963, hailing Hawkeye,” Manganator said into his communication’s piece, which he had set to broadcast directly to the closet supporting ship in orbit.

“Hawkeye come in, we are in need of sky support,” Manganator pressed.

“Channel’s dead,” Rob shouted, firing off a few more shots.

“What?” Manganator asked.

“The entire relay hud is down,” he explained, pointing up at a ship in orbit neither of them could actually see. “Everything that we relay through them is offline.”

Manganator narrowed his visor view on Rob, and found that Rob was not being tagged as a friendly.

-----------------------------------------

Posted: Mon Feb 04, 2008 6:32 pm

Many long hours passed before the crimson son rose in the Eastern sky of Alpha Ari III, casting a bloody glow across the devastated Marine camp. Throughout the night, the fighting had been fierce. Unable to wipe the Marines out from their positions, the Renegades had attempted to storm the encampment three times.

Each time, Manganator felt like they had only barely been repulsed, only leaving a few dead comrades to lay against the Marine positions, or decorate the barren ground with their entrails.

The Marines were hanging on by the skin of their teeth. The Renegades had them covered from all sides, with heavy MG’s, and a handful of prowling snipers. Thankfully, at least one thing was demonstrated during the night ambush: they didn’t have thermal.

But that would mean now, in the rusty glow of the rising sun, the Rennies would gain yet another advantage, and the odds were only stacking up higher and higher. Since the assault began, 13 of the 30 Marines had died. Almost no one was uninjured.

But the fleet was just overhead. If they hadn’t noticed the fight by now, surely they’d noticed when the Marine squad failed to report in.

Manganator knew he was one of the few squads on the planet that had been assigned to scout out the enemy’s processing facilities and mines to see if the planet was worth glassing. Essentially if it would cost more to expend the lives of marines like himself to seize the lucrative processing facilities unharmed, or to scorch the planet with superheated plasma and thermal-nuclear missiles.

They had approached the planet in their troop transport on the magnetic pole, to mask their descent from enemy sensors, and had barely made it a day’s march towards the planet’s main settlement, when all of this BBQ happened.

Manganator glanced over to Rob, the gaunt, black haired Italian, scruffy after just a few days without shaving, who had been obsessing over the hasty biofoam job he’d done on his wounded leg. Red blotches soaked into the material marking where the bullet had passed through. The biofoam would seal and disinfect the wound, but it had a downside. It was very itchy.

As he picked some of it away, he decided to strike up conversation.

“Why do you figure we got no air support?” he asked, his hardened foam cracking as he managed to chip some of it away.

Manganator glanced up at the wispy red clouds wistfully. “Some kind of jamming, or equipment malfunction?”

“I doubt it, man,” Rob said haughtily, the tone he always took when he felt he had a superior understanding of a debate topic.

“Well what’s your theory, wonder boy?” Manganator shot back angrily.

Rob gave him one of those What crawled up your giraffe and died? Looks, and Manganator realized that maybe he’d snapped a little too hard. Bags were showing under Rob’s eyes, and Manganator figured his were equally afflicted.

Neither of them had slept, tempers were high.

As if he were revealing a great mystery, Rob preluded his theory to not one, but two strokes of his unshaven chin, and looked up at the sky.

“Well I figured that just ten capital ships was a really light load for this kind of operation,” he finally said.

“How do you figure?” Manganator asked skeptically.

“We both know that the UN high command knows exactly what they’re doing, correct?” Rob asked.

“The spooks got it to an efficiency, that’s for sure,” Manganator replied, “but I still don’t see your point.”

“Well for a battle group of ten ships, we didn’t get an Admiral to lead the fleet, which was odd. Admirals are usually assigned to fleets just five big, let alone ten. Remember the Osiris op?”

“Still don’t see your point.”

Rob shook his head impatiently. “What I mean... is that the spooks and Admirals... they look after each other,” Rob said quietly with a dark smile.

Manganator’s objections went silent as he paused to consider Rob’s point. An Admiral would normally lead up an operation of this size. The only reason why one wouldn’t come is if they knew there was some kind of danger that they didn’t relate, or some mis-step that Manganator couldn’t see intelligence making.

Rob continued, “Not to mention, operations and assaults on the Renegades have been in a lull for a while. We cease all offensive operations for a month. A whole MONTH, and the operation they launch coming out of that wait is this little poke?”

“Ten ships. Not the twenty-five of a battle group that would really be a devastating loss to the UN fleet,” Manganator slowly said.

“Just enough for perhaps... bait?”

“Does anyone know where the food is?”

Manganator turned to see Dirt crawling in behind the jostled boxes which made up Rob and his barricade. Unlike the others, Dirt had gotten a good rest.

“Got the munchies?” Manganator asked jokingly.

“Yeah, something like that,” Dirt replied lazily, not returning Manganator’s half-laugh. He parked himself next to Manganator, and leaned against the barricade.

The two sat in silence for a few minutes, before Dirt. Laughed to himself and scooted away on the muddy ground. “Where’s he going?” Rob asked inquisitively, trying to crane his neck around a fallen tent.

A few minutes later, Dirt returned, dragging the corpse of a Rennie. Upon closer inspection, it was a kid no older than fifteen, shot clean through the head and multiple times in the legs. And the corpse stank.

“You throwing that over the barrier? It smells like Hammel ate some rotten eggs and ripped giraffe,” Manganator exclaimed, covering his mouth.

“Na, just wanted to see if the snipers were zeroed in on this barricade,” Dirt answered indifferently.

Before Manganator could inquire as to how he would do this, Dirt, dragged the body to the edge of the barrier, and grabbed a pale clammy hand.

Rob and Manganator watched as he slowly raised the dead boy’s hand above the protection of the barrier, and rested it on the top. All three waited in anticipation to see if a shot would ring out.

Five seconds passed and nothing.

“Ok that’s enough, now get that stinky little-“ SPLAT. Manganator hadn’t heard the gunshot, but the bullet cracked the air around them and slammed into the hand, splattering thick blood onto the three.

“You chia pet!” Manganator cried out.
-----------------------------------------------------------

Posted: Mon Feb 11, 2008 5:10 pm

A heavy white blanket of fog had settled over the battered encampment. It was now mid-day, about twelve hours since the attacks began. What left of the encampment’s structures was strewn on the ground as a part of one of the makeshift barriers, or smoldering from firebombs.

Manganator was just one of the eight still alive. This realization was enough to justify a sigh of relief. As long as I’m alive, there is hope.

But Manganator was holding his breath.

1... 2... 3... 4...

He timed his shot perfectly, making sure to aim for the farthest man in the back of the enemy formation. The shot popped like the snap of a rubber band.

Struck by a high-velocity round, the enemy in the farthest back of the formation fell, clutching his bladder. Because of his rotating hips, his location in the column, and Manganator’s flash suppresser, none of his friends would know where the shot had come from.

The shot was a fatal one. The only difference was that it was a slow death compared to a headshot. But it was slow enough and debilitating enough to lead the Renegade’s friend to try to pick him up and bring him to safety. As his friend hefted him over his shoulder, Brian put a round into his knee.

The two fell like a sack of bricks.

The enemy squad, now knowing that they were the targets of directed fire, decided against saving the two men, and fled, disappearing into the fog, and quickly disappearing from Manganator’s thermal viewer. One paused in moral indecision long enough for Rob to put a shot through his head as Manganator finished the man who’s knee he’d wounded.

It was the first prod they had attempted in Manganator’s line of fire for a while, and it had cost them three men, and it had cost Manganator three rounds of ammunition in his MA-25.

“I only have twenty-three shots left,” Manganator grumbled.

It wasn’t their ammunition that was the problem per se. It was the fact that their flash-suppressors were grained for only their own MA-25's threads. If they used another weapon, the muzzle flash would alert them to the many snipers lurking above the fog, which was essentially a death sentence.

Manganator had been deprived of a night’s sleep, which would have been fine if it had been a battle, but it had turned into a waiting game, but apparently, no matter how long they waited, help would never arrive from the sky.

Sleepy, grumpy, and without any kind of bathing or showering, Manganator was a complete mess.

But he was a focused mess.

Still boring his eyes down the length of his barrel, he turned in surprise as he heard movement behind him. It was Kat, the only female Marine in their unit. She was laying down on her stomach, apparently having crawled across the camp.

Like many other females in the corps, when it came to her appearance, she had made no attempt to present herself as a sex object. She had a neatly trimmed head of short hair, which she had died black, but was a lighter blond at the roots, and dark hazel eyes. Of course, he could see none of it because of the polarized visor on her head, but the swell at her chest gave it away.

She had soft features compared to the guys that one might even be able to define as “cute”, but she made up for it with the fights she picked.

She had made it quite clear in training that she would not tolerate anyone slapping her giraffe. Jerry had gotten a strangulated testicle to attest to that fact. When Manganator had asked him about it, he’d only replied with a few well-placed words “Steel toed boots hurt”. He didn’t talk about it much, but the point had been made, regardless.

“What’s goin on guys, I heard the shots,” she whispered.

“A probe, five strong, three down,” Rob grunted back, talking in short choppy thoughts. For him, the pain of the wound on his leg had gotten worse. The biofoam had now stained through red, and it had begun to smell of infection.

Kat nodded. “We got a poke a few minutes back as well, we downed one.”

She was cut off by a few blasts of machine-gun fire. The three ducked their heads to the ground as rounds whistled above them. “Wild shots,” Manganator said, talking in near conversation volume to be heard over the rattle.

The firing subsided, only to replaced by a man in the distance shouting curses violently, although unintelligibly.

“Lost a friend, perhaps,” Manganator wondered.

“Undoubtedly,” Rob said.

In between shots, Manganator her soft pat pats in the crisp ground as another person slowly walked in from where Kat had crawled.

Brian quickly identified the man as Dirt. He was holding his helmet in one hand and his weapon in the other, scratching his short, brown hair with the muzzle of his gun.

“What is it Dirt,” Manganator asked in a hushed whisper. He ceased the scratching, and seeing that nothing was going on, thumbed on his safety.

Dirt replied in his normal tone, which was noticeably louder. “Nothing, just heard the shots, figured I’d come to see the action.”

“Will you keep you voice down?” Kat hissed.

“Why?” His eyes sagged down at her and then up again, as if eyeing some undesirable mess he didn’t feel the need to clean.

“Whatever guys, I’m sure Hammel is shitting his pants without me to keep him company,” Dirt muttered, shouldering his weapon.

Kat muttered at him as he walked, curses muffled behind her visor, which, like all the other visors, was deprived of the long range communication’s device because there were no ships in orbit to relay the signal.

Manganator had no sooner returned his eyes to his sights, when, without the sound of a weapon’s discharge, he heard a single round streak overhead. There was a dull splat sound as it slammed into Dirt’s chest.

He stood steady, looking down as if he couldn’t tell what had happened. Then as he went to speak, blood began to spurt from the hole in his chest, and from his mouth.

He slumped to his knees as another shot struck his shoulder.

“DOWN!” Rob shouted, fully moving himself behind the barrier. Kat threw herself with them. The three were huddled behind the small barrier, and watched Dirt as he struggled to move.

There was no way that they’d be able to fit Dirt behind the barrier as well. It was too low, and too narrow. And Manganator knew that the sniper was waiting to finish Dirt off. He was waiting for one of them to stick their hand out to pull him in.

Dirt stopped, and looked to Manganator, chuckling softly.

“I got…” he began, coughing up some globs of blood only for his smile to return to his face “I got seven of them last night, even though I was high… I wonder how many.. I would be,” another fit of coughing overtook him, before he continued, “I would be worth… if I was sober.”

No one said anything.

Dirt didn’t seem to mind, and just stared up at the sky. “Hey guys,” he finally said. “If I see a light, I’ll blink my eyes.”

He died moments later with his eyes wide open.
-----------------------------------------------

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Post by Luna » Mon Feb 18, 2008 5:11 am

Posted: Sun Feb 17, 2008 5:19 pm

Thank you all my loyal readers! I hope this was worth the wait.

The thermal-based sniper fire had reduced their options down to just a few. They could stick to cover, and allow themselves to be overwhelmed with no chance of fighting back, they could surrender, or they could run away.

Manganator’s hands twitched against the trigger anxiously. Luckily, he had engaged his safety.

“What are we going to do?” Kat asked, her slender body still splayed across his legs. He moved his legs a little, feeling her weight begin to uncomfortably compress the arteries in his legs, making them tingle.

“We don’t have any choice,” Manganator growled. “We gotta make a break for it.”

Kat and Rob’s visors both turned to his. They knew what this would mean.

For Rob, his chances of escaping on a near-crippled leg were slim. For Kat, just like Manganator, this meant a run directly through the enemy position. “Won’t they see it coming?” Rob asked, itching consciously at his biofoam caste.

“No... they wont see this coming,” Manganator said, trying to combat the rising fear in his own gut. It was the fear of death, a feeling Manganator got only when he felt the emptiness of the abyss directly at his back.

One step and he would fall.

And then, in desperate, frantic thought, inspiration struck.

“Rob, pass me that Rennie breather that you salvaged,” Manganator said at once. Rob shrugged and passed it over, a stout weapon that had actually made a good catch for Rob, because it’s compressed air projectile system made for no muzzle flash, and thus could be used without giving away his position.

Manganator ejected the clip with a quick push with his index finger, and then popped out the chambered round, completely emptying the weapon.

With the weapon ready, he placed it on the ground, and then rummaged through the ruck-sack he had been carrying.

He pulled out the two Claymore 2’s he had been carrying, finally glad to find a use for them. With a killing distance of 100 meters, the Claymore shot a shower of round ball bearings out in a single direction that cast a swath of death dreaded by all soldiers, but they hadn’t been practical when most of the engagements of the day occurred on Manganator’s-assigned flat stretch over distances of 150 meters. That had now changed.

He flipped the two Claymores over the barrier, mindful not to let his hands slip into the sniper’s line of fire.

Rob and Kat watched in awe, as Manganator strapped the Claymore’s detonators to Dirt’s back, and then propped his now-clammy body up against the barrier, setting up a rifle in his pale hands.

The thermal-scoped sniper would see that the dead body no longer had heat, and wouldn’t fire, if Dirt’s heat signature was present at all this long after his death.

As he frantically worked to set up the detonator, Rob quickly viewed the obscure plain with a single quick look through his scope, and brought his head back before the sniper could fire.

“Brian,” he whispered, looking alarmed. “They’re coming.”

Manganator nodded, still working. With the detonators on Dirt’s back rigged up, he grabbed the “breather” weapon, pulled out his side-arm, put it to the side of the air-gun, and fired.

With it’s compressed CO2 air tank punctured with a sharp metallic “clang”, it began to spew cold, white gas into the air. Manganator dropped his pistol, grabbed the punctured air-gun and doused himself, Kat, and a very surprised Rob in the white smoke.

“That should mask our heat signatures, at least a little,” Manganator huffed, breathing away from the CO2 filled air.

Without warning, he grabbed Rob by the ankles. “Let’s go!” he urged.

He got up first, Kat was right after him, and they ran for it. At first, the cold gas on their bodies worked, and the sniper didn’t fire as they scrambled away, running so hard that they barely gave their feet a chance to push off of the leafy ground, but that only lasted about 10 seconds. Then the sniper began to fire.

The first shot whizzed wide, and then, as they felt the sniper’s fire begin to zero in, there was another discharge. Manganator looked back, and saw Dirt’s body fall back from the force of a bullet striking his chest, fired by one of the approaching attackers.

The moment Dirt’s body hit the ground, the detonators were triggered, and there was a loud slamming sound and a quick flash of light as thousands of deadly metal balls were sent screaming through the air.

Manganator did not pause to watch the inevitable destruction, and continued to hobble away.

He made it to the end of the camp before he stopped, breathing heavily from exertion. “Put me down, you chia pet,” Rob finally grunted. Manganator abided, allowing Rob to gingerly return weight to his wounded foot.

“What happened!” Bill Hammel asked. Manganator turned around, he had not seen the chubby Marine approach.

“Thermal sniper and enemies closing in on our back end,” Manganator answered.

Bill’s round face paled. “What are we going to do?” he asked.

Manganator unshouldered his MA-25, and clicked off the safety. “Run for it. Put on your helmet, Bill.”

He nodded repetitively and choppily like he was trying to rattle his brain and quickly secured the helmet. “Ready?” Manganator asked more loudly.

“Ready!” Kat answered, a few yards to his left, hunkered down behind another barrier. Two more marines near her, behind the same barrier, also gave Manganator a confident nod.

Returning their nod, Manganator reached down to grab Rob, and heft him over his shoulder again, but the man swatted his hands away.

”No,” he stubbornly said, shaking his head. “Not this time.”

Manganator retracted his hands, meeting eyes with Rob. He knew just as well as Manganator that if he carried Rob, he would have close to no chance of making it. It wasn’t a betrayal, nor was it a cowardly thing. It was just cold calculation.

Manganator gave his comrade a pat on the shoulder, and a grenade.

“Thanks. I’ll do my best from here,” Rob said.

Manganator looked to his side, gave the thumbs up to Kat and the other three marines, and then counted off with his fingers.

3, 2, 1. They all jumped up, and with adrenaline pumping through their veins like gasoline, they vaulted their barrier and made a break for the valley. The enemy took a while to fire, probably taken off guard by the sudden charge.

One flash appeared as the first enemy recognized the charge, and bullets passed through vegetation and bark with a hiss, but after a few well-aimed shots from Rob, who was still stationary behind cover in the base, the shots ceased. Manganator found himself rushing through thick green all around him, barely slowed, even though his feet sank into the mud, and his feet kicked through tangled twigs.

He ran past the first man he saw, and was unable to fire, because he had passed him so quickly. The second man he was ready for, and fired a few sloppy shots, one of which struck the man in the foot. He dropped to the ground.

But all surprise that their attack had ever had was lost, and fire was coming in from all sides, pelting them from every direction. Manganator dropped to the ground just as a fellow Marine dropped with a hole through his throat.

Huffing, Hammel crouched down right behind him, and Kat began to return fire. Shredded leaves and spattered dirt filled the air as fire raked up and down their small divot in the earth.

It was a miracle that only one man had been hit, but that would not last.

Firing wildly with one arm, Manganator grabbed Hammel by the scruff of his neck, sprinted forward, and jumped over a small growth of bushes into a fast-flowing river. Right before they hit the water, he exhaled, and quickly reached up to his mask to engage “vacuum mode”, which would make the mask air-tight.

His lungs mostly empty of air, he began to sink just as the cold wet shock of water hit him. He immediately submerged and began to kick. He felt some dull jabs as bullets, slowed by the water, bounced harmlessly off his skin, and looked up to see Hammel had engaged his vacuum mode as well, and was struggling to stay below the water, his buoyant fat making things difficult.

Manganator kicked, looking up at the shimmering surface of the water. There was another neat splash as the slim form of Kat entered the water, followed by another hail of bullets, and then a dull belly-flop as a dead Marine hit the water, not moving. The seeping crimson which stained the water attested to his leather wounds.

Manganator closed his eyes, the intrusive cold of the water pressing in on him from all sides, and kicked his legs

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Jwilson6
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Post by Jwilson6 » Mon Feb 18, 2008 5:29 am

:shock: :shock: :shock: :shock: :shock: :shock:


WOW.... I just copied it into word... its 70 pages long and its not even over yet ?


sorry man I'm not reading that

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Post by MuTAnT » Mon Feb 18, 2008 8:31 am

I posted right in the middle of that but Luna deleted it =(

Anyway yeah I was gonna say that's pretty long. It's a short novella now I reckon ;)

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Post by Luna » Mon Feb 18, 2008 9:53 pm

MuTAnT wrote:I posted right in the middle of that but Luna deleted it =(

Anyway yeah I was gonna say that's pretty long. It's a short novella now I reckon ;)
Sorry Mutant, I did that to keep it all together when I found out I couldn't copy it into one post. I figured people would complain about the gap I left. It wasn't easy to just copy and paste it to begin with. Took some time to complete. I normally wouldn't delete something like that. :)

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Post by Manganator » Tue Feb 19, 2008 2:26 am

Jwilson6 wrote:
Manganator wrote:
Deathreape98 wrote:Could you put it all in the first post, for convenience of new people reading it?
They would never read it.

That would be about 45 pages worth of stuff in one block.
Well I am never going to flip through 9 pages to read it

PUT IT ALL ON THE FIRST PAGE DAMNIT!!
WOW.... I just copied it into word... its 70 pages long and its not even over yet ?


sorry man I'm not reading that
See?

Oh, and Luna. Thank you for all the interest you've taken in the story, and all the little moddish tweaks you've given it.

I just hope you're not deleting any criticism :)

Dont worry everyone... I'll keep writing for you all.

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Post by Luna » Tue Feb 19, 2008 8:33 pm

I've only copied and pasted your parts Manganator. I wouldn't delete any comments unless they were outside the boundaries of acceptability. I did however delete some of the dribble that happens when you copy/paste posts. Mostly code that appears talking about user IP, edit, delete and such. It would have made it harder to read. I just left the date of the post and the post intact.

Keep going with the story. Most of us have been reading as you post chapters so we don't have to catch up and are waiting to find out what happens next. :)

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Post by Stklr » Tue Feb 19, 2008 11:31 pm

If I had your power Luna. :wink:
I could rule the world!!! MUAHAHAHA!!!

And keep going with the story!!!

Add me later!! >_>

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Post by dirt » Sat Feb 23, 2008 9:58 pm

So wheres this going mag? Suspense is killing me, and you guys have been underwater for way too long!!!!one!!1!!1

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Post by Manganator » Mon Feb 25, 2008 12:40 am

(Very short, I know :D, but I figured it would be a great place to leave off.)

In the sanctuary that the depths of the river provided him, Manganator was safe from the steady patter of bullets and hurled explosives for the first time in days.

In that way, the oppressive weight of the watery cage on his body was more of a reassuring hand on his shoulder than a danger.

And he hadn’t been the only one to make it out. Hammel had managed to breath out some air, and was now low enough to have complete safety from above.

Kat was kicking as well, a little further back, but Manganator thought he had seen a red trail escaping from her leg.

Just a single wound in the bulletstorm they had journeyed was certainly not the worst possible outcome, however, they were blessed to have such a good outcome from their escape.

The rest of their unit was not so lucky, however. Rob, Dirt, Joel, and the rest of them would never escape their final resting place in the tropical divot they had all called hell for the last moments of their lives.

It was hard to see anyone or anything through the polarized visor and the strong untamed river currents, but one thing was visible above all else.

The sun shone brightly over the river, lighting the surface of the water afire with golden-blue light. From below, within the murk of the river as they floated by, it looked so beautiful and promising.

There was an intrinsic beauty in the horror that the surface of this particular planet posed, and indeed… almost in the whole conflict. The firebombs burning men and material, bullet tracers streaking swaths through the air, and lighting up the darkness. It was like watching the artful killing of prey by the predator, the timeless beauty of death.

That’s all it was, an artful diversion. Souls cast asunder by man’s most advanced form of entertainment. In a world where every organism is dying the moment it breaths it’s first breath, war was the greatest thing anyone could ask for.

A quickening push to the other side. The curiosity of that was, anyways… Manganator’s reason for joining the Marines.

Manganator closed his eyes. He was afraid of the world around him, and the uncertainty it posed, and all to willing to retreat within the safety of his own meaningless mental wanderings.

And then he felt the jarring impact which sent shocks through his head, as he was suddenly stopped in mid-current by a large solid object, which, on his back facing the surface, he had completely missed.

His head stopped, but his body kept moving, and so it flipped around, spinning aimlessly like a crippled freighter. His eyelids turned to led as a debilitating wave of numbness washed down from his head down his spine to his feet.

And he blacked out.

He felt himself rising towards the light, and little tugs at his arms by invisible hands. He opened his eyes to blackness, entering the void and muttered one groggy thing in the face of the voice from the wind.

“What the hug now?”

When he woke up, he left his eyes closed and felt an anxiety like he had slept for 12 hours, and was afraid that if he opened his eyes, he’d see the grim, disappointed face of Sergeant O’Malley giving him a stern look.

But he remembered there was no commanding officer, there was no morning patrol. Or was that whole mess a dream?

He chanced it to open his eyes, and after the initial painful blur of white light subsided, he found himself in a bedroom.

He was weak, his head was throbbing, and there was enough blankets covering his body to weigh him down even in good health. He moved his head to try to find an exit, but as he turned it, he almost felt it shake, like his brain was a grinding metal box mounted precariously on a spring, smashing into the walls of his skull.

He ground his teeth as the pain washed over him, and feeling sick, decided not to try to move again. He closed his eyes, wishing he had not woken up, but found that the pain made it impossible to get any kind of relaxation.

So he sat there, wondering exactly how screwed he was.

And just when he got a small measure of comfort, rapid footsteps approached his room from the hallway. He groaned and decided that he would not try to open his eyes and identify the latest interloper.

“Mister!” he heard a small boy’s voice probe inquisitively.

He snorted a terse reply, not in the mood for much else, still with his eyes closed. Then he felt a jab to his eyelid.

“God damn it! What the hug kid!” he shouted, eyes still closed. The kid’s feet scurried back from him in fear, and then there was a loud vocal explosion that only a child could muster.

“He’s awake!”

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Post by dirt » Mon Feb 25, 2008 1:42 am

Please continue :>

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Post by duece » Mon Feb 25, 2008 2:22 am

dirt wrote:Please continue :>
yes please.

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Post by Deathreape98 » Mon Feb 25, 2008 2:39 am

@Lunas post

Daaaamn! Looks like it's going to take me a while to read that tomorrow o-o

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