Re: Crashed Hive- Mountains east of TP forums.
Burrtio slowly turned to the other two Lurkers, hands raised in the air. Both Lurkers had their respective weapons trained dead centre on him, and stayed like that for a moment, before the gun wielding man sighed and lowered his weapon with a chuckle. The sword wielder soon followed suit.
“If I wanted to kill you, I wouldn’t have bothered with the warning. Besides, as you noted, we wouldn’t have a chance.” He walks over to the woman who is now on the ground again, still screaming her lungs out and banging on the inside of the suit.
“Oh, give it a rest, would you? You’re not getting out like that.” Unfortunately for the ears of Burrito and the Lurkers, she did not. Fortunately for the reader, everything she says has been removed by the obscenity filter. Considering what I'm letting through, that says something.
The man bent over the back of the fallen suit and turned it over.
“Ah, look, would you turn away? It’s bad enough that you know the suits exist, I’m not going to let an enemy soldier watch me disable one,” he says, as he begins fiddling with the front of the suit, while the other Lurker makes sure Burrito has turned around. “I’m David, by the way. And this is *THUNK* AHH! The fuck was that for!?” The sword Lurker removes the flat of its blade from the top of David’s suit’s helmet. Nothing seems to be said for several moments, but David responds anyway – presumably they have some form of inter-suit communication system.
“Oh come on, what kind of intel is a name- Yeah, yeah, I got it already! He’s already heard me call you Morg, so I suppose that’ll have to do for a name, for now… Aha!” with a small flourish, David pulls something out of the suit – not that Burrito was in any position to see, but he certainly heard the difference as the rabid woman’s disturbing cries were finally cut off.
“Finally. Now, to turn the other parts on…”
Not too much later, an alarm starts.
“Ah, crap. And here I was enjoying the quiet… Looks like they know we’re here. Damn it, it’s going to take a little while to get the suit’s auto-movement working. I can’t exactly let this psycho control it. Look… if anything shows up while I’m fixing this, Morg is the only one who could fight back… basically, we’d be screwed.” This earns him another hit with the flat of the blade.
“So… err… mind sticking around? It’ll only be a few minutes, I swear. I know these things like my own skin.” He continues working before abruptly answering what is presumably something said by Morg, his tone distinctly not his usual cheery one, “The reason, I’m, ‘so enamoured’ with them… is because if you do something wrong… these ‘impenetrable suits’ become impenetrable coffins, with a very short air supply. That,” punctuating his statement by tearing something from the suit, “is ‘why I’m so enamoured with the suits’.” For several moments afterwards, there was an awkward silence broken only be the faint sounds of David working on the woman’s suit.
Morg went over to the bodies David and the woman had been hiding behind, trying to shake it into wakefulness. The bodies are TP members, unconscious and apparently hit by several stun blasts. When Morg fails to get a response, David looks over to Burrito and asks,
“Look, those TP members aren’t moving much. Those were only stun weapons, so they should be fine, but Morg wants you to check for a pulse anyway. We’d do it ourselves, but…” He holds up his metal covered hand as an answer. When Burrito checks, the TP members are all dead.
“What the hell… those are stun weapons, they shouldn’t be able to kill… damn, I guess there’s a limit to how many shots someone can take.” Morg doesn’t seem to like something about his response, and runs over and picks him up by the neck of the suit. Several moments pass of what is likely conversation, but Burrito is kept out of the loop, as even David seems to have gone into ‘intersuit com only’ mode. Finally Morg lets David drop, who mutters something under his breath and gets back to work.
David suddenly spoke loudly out of the blue, again. He seems to have a habit of doing that.
“Burrito! Now I remember who you’re supposed to be. Goddamn, we really didn’t have a chance.” He says with a chuckle. “That also explains why she knew you,” likely referring to the woman whose suit he was working on. “She’s been around since the war. We pretty much all hate you - to an extent -,” he says with a grin evident in his voice, “but she takes it rather… personally.” David pauses. “She’s not usually… no, that’s bullshit, she’s always like that, heh. Ooof,” he went, as he got Thunked again. A short time later, David gives another abrupt response to Morg. Burrito has is beginning to anticipate them.
“Don’t be so melodramatic. Machine intelligences don’t just randomly go insane, it’s impossible. You can’t make it start attacking friendlies without re-writing the code, and I’m just fucking with the wiring. Damn movies can’t be bothered to show how machine intelligence really works. Isn’t that right… err… suit. …Alright, I forgot the name of the program that runs these things. Ah, never mind. It’s in the list of commands on the other side of the suit – and I’m not going to stop work just to look at it.”
More time passed, and another alarm sounded, this one different. A few moments are spent in silence.
“Yeah, I heard it too. Did you hear what it said, though? Part of it sounded like ‘destruct’.” A minute passes, and the warning is heard again, only slightly different. A somewhat panicked David adds his observations.
“Oh yeah, that was definitely ‘self destruct’. …I’m speeding up.” another minute passes. “It’s counting down. Burrito, looks like you can forget about melting the core, the wraith are doing it for you. …Damnit, I don’t even know how long we’ve got.” Some bright lights show on parts of the suit woman’s suit. Burrito can notice the difference even despite facing the wrong way. “Oh, thank crap! It’s working! …Right, now, let’s see here. Activate, activate… ah! Right.”
“CABAL, Activate!” The suit with the woman still inside, likely still banging and screaming if what Burrito had seen of her was any indication, lifted itself off the ground and stood up.
“By your command.”
“CABAL, protocol five, designation… three? Or was it six – no, three, definitely three.” He cleared his throat and tried again. “Khm hmm hm, CABAL, protocol five, designation three!”
“Imputed; protocol five, designation 3. Accept or de-“
“Accept! Good god, we’re in a hurry here!”
“By your command.” The suit moved into what Burrito could assume was it’s designated position in the group. David gave another of those half responses – a nod, and “Yep, and hear, too.” He forcefully moved the now machine-operated suit to face Burrito. “Look, it’s your most hated member! Say hi! HehahahahaAgh!” you think he’d learn after the third hit. Burrito gets the feeling that this relationship might have been going on for awhile.
“Alright. I don’t know who you’re with, but we’ve got an evac near here and I’ve no idea how long is left on the counter. I’m not sure if we’ve got the space – give me a minute, I’ll see how many of the others are left.” He stands for several moments, but instead of engaging in radio conversation, he soon mutters “What the fuck…? Come on, junk, work… damnit!”
“Morg, my radio’s down, yours? … Shit! What the hell… oh, for - don’t tell me…”
“CABAL, special features!”
“This suit contains a radio jamming unit, status, currently active.”
“CABAL, shut down the radio jamming unit!”
“By your command.” Burrito’s radio immediately springs to life with chatter from Copper.
“…w in about 15 minutes and we'd like to leave. Shrike, you get ready to get out of here, too. Hopefully, we'll see you back at the city soon enough.”
“Did she say fifteen minutes? Oh shit, that’s not a big buffer. We really should get going now. …Burrito, how close are they? If you can’t get there in time, come with us. Commander says we’ve got space.”
The announcement by Sparky came over the speakers before Burrito had a chance to respond via radio.
“Six minutes only… Can’t they make up their goddamn minds? Morg, call in the evac now, we don’t have time to sit around waiting for them to show up after we get there. …Shit, Burrito, the backup’s out of the question. We’re too close to the core. We can’t get to their Strikecraft hangers or the ground exits in time. Looks like the only way you’re getting out is through our evac – and we have to go now.” And with that, the Lurkers began their hurried rush to the evac.
Meanwhile, in the one-Lurker group...
The leech creature writhed in pain, deforming into a blob-shape.
“Ha! Take that!” Strangely it seemed to be growing and had fallen towards him, but that did not concern the overjoyed Lurker.
“Eat electric current, you The world went black.
In Krell's group, the last group of Lurkers, it was Ethan, weighed down by both his heavy weapon and the victim under his arm, who was at the back. “Guyyys… a paralysing glyph, please… they’re catching uuup…”
“There’s no more mana.” Rambo replied. “I’ve no idea what happened to it, maybe the hive just isn’t that good for casting in?”
“Alright, what’s plan b? …Krell?”
“I’ll tell ya what plan b is, it’s a WMC ‘n coke.” This seemed to panic Ethan quite severely.
“NO! Don’t!” A Thembrihkal tentacle lanced for the lagging Lurker, but a well-bounced disc from Aya sent it back before it could reach Ethan.
“The only other option is I turn around ‘n hold ‘m off.”
“That’s suicide.”
“I know.” Krell says, and by his voice it would seem that he thought a fight to the death was the best thing in the world. It would be harder convincing him not to risk his life than it would to go into danger. Fortunately one smidgen of logic from William stopped him –
“You’re carrying two victims. You’d have to put them down, and when they get you they’d take the innocents too.”
…
I…HATE…Psychics.
“Scrap plan c. And we’re all out of SDG’s, so there goes plan d.” Krell said. “That leaves b or e. WMC… or run, faster. The evac isn’t that far.” Apparently Krell had spoken too soon, for another metal tentacle from the leading Thembrihkal lanced for Ethan – only to find air, as a psionic force propelled him a few hundred meters into the wall the group was running at. Quickly extracting himself, Ethan continued running some meters ahead of the group.
“Thanks, Will!” His only reply was a small nod, largely unnoticed amidst the chaos.
It seems the announcements had gone unnoticed after the Lurkers turned off their outside mic, leaving the suit completely noise insulated – shutting out both the Thembrihkal’s roars and the announcements. Fortunately, they were going for their evac anyway.
David’s voice came over the suit com.
“Krell, there’s a member here, we’re thinking of evac-ing him with us.”
“What? Why? Sure –and I’m a little busy here!”
“There’s a member squad in here, this guy’s one of them. He was doing some stuff, killed some wraith, and now he needs evac cause the whole hive’s going to blow-”
“WHAT?! When was this!? Who the hell did that?!”
“Sir, it’s been on the hive announcements for nearly four minutes now.”
“The outside mic’s are off! For the whole squad!”
“What the hell did you do that for?”
“We’re being chased down by a large group of bloody tentacle bastards that are screaming their inverted heads off. WHY WOULDN’T I TURN THE MIC OFF, MORON!!”
“Look, just get to the evac. There’s only about six minutes before the ship goes into orbit, and not much after that before it goes up in the other sense. Contact everyone and tell them to get going.”
“Alright everybody, we have a six minute timer before this ship becomes an inescapable death-trap. I’d tell you to leg it faster, but that’s not really possible now, is it?”
Now, for that other squad. What the- oh, you’re kidding. No. Son of a bitch. Don’t give me ‘unit lost’. Son of a bitch, Don’t give ME ‘unit lost’. Bullshit!
“…Our third squad… is down. Systems of the only suit are completely unresponsive. Looks like he and any of those TP members still with him are going with the ship. …Or maybe they’ll make it to the Stirkecraft bays... You never know.” At least that poor bastard isn’t privy to that bit of news, Krell thought, looking at the panicked TP member running nearby. Krell turned on the outside speakers for a moment to say,
“Double-time, boy! We’re almost there. No lagging behind now!”
