| From: | ANGLISS BRIAN EDWARD <angliss@****.Colorado.EDU> |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Nuke Team Escape, Maxim raid part 5 |
| Date: | Sun, 10 Mar 1996 20:20:28 -0700 (MST) |
last
of the simsense I've been given. I don't know exactly what happened after
the end of this, but feel free to inform us peons.
+++++ Begin Simsense Download +++++
Again, you feel a little disoriented as you return to the life of another
person, a female street samurai, in the heat of battle. The first sense you
regain is tactile, as your hands reach out and grab the sharp edges of rock
and concrete punctuated here and there with bent rebar. The next sense is
smell and taste, so similar that you can literally taste the smell of burning
aviation fuel and ignited gunpowder. Next is sight, but your eyes have
shifted their spectrum into the infrared to enable you to see the edges of
the hole you are climbing through. You are all set for your hearing to
return next, but it doesn't. It takes you an instant for you to remember
that you are deaf, from the blast of ultrasonics that nearly killed you.
In front of you the night sky is black as coal in the infrared, until your
cybereyes switch back to low-light as the head of your instructor appears in
front of you and helps you out of the cramped hole. The short explosives
expert gestures and takes off running toward the far armory perimeter fence.
Even through your barely operational cyberears, you still hear the sounds of
violent explosions near the airfield behind you. Your internal chronometer
is counting down, and you have 4.678 seconds until the distraction group
fires their rockets and then only 18 seconds before the rockets impact their
targets. You see that the ninja is limping slightly, likely caused by the
ultrasonics. In front of you is almost 200 meters of bare ground and bunker
roof to cross without being killed, and at least two of you are wounded. In
front of you, the edge of the jungle lights up with obviously magical fire
that ignites the damp jungle with a more mundane flame. When the magical
flash fades, it leaves in it's place only the muzzle flashes from guards and
drones firing out at the jungle.
In your cybereye, the last telltale from your team goes black, and beneath
your feet you feel the ground vibrate slightly an instant before hear, as if
from a great distance, the rumble of an explosion. You know that, within
seconds, a second explosion will happen that could very well blow you off
your feet if the short expert's calculations were off. You dive to your feet
and you see your instructor drag down with him the glider team's mage. The
explosive expert is with the nuke expert, and they are both falling to the
ground in a manner that could injure them both. The ninja and the wounded
man also crouch down, and just in time too. Beneath you the ground literally
jumps from the force of the explosion only 70 meters behind you. You brace
your body for the overpressure wave, but a second later, it hasn't arrived
and you've not been bombarded by concrete fragments. Looking behind you as
you begin to rise to your feet, you see a small cloud of dust rise from the
area where there used to be a bunker containing nuclear weapons. You're
still alive, so they were successfully destroyed, although the small plume of
dust means that you'll have to undergo some decon when you get out, if you
get out.
You help the mage to his feet again and you begin running again toward the
next bunker over, the bunker which your now dead second in command happened
to land on before. Before you reach it, however, you hear the reports of
mortars and distinctive whipsnaps of railguns firing. Less than a second
later, the land is plunged into daylight as the flare shells ignite and
begin a long, parachute constrained descent. Your eyes adapt almost
instantly, switching from the ultraviolet to visible spectrum. The mage is
not so lucky, as he slaps his hands across his eyes and stumbles,
flashblinded. It shouldn't be permanent and should fade in a couple of
seconds, you know, but for now you're in what amounts to daylight, in the
open. Your instructor and his associate rush forward and help the mage the
last 15 meters to the edge of the bunker. You take a very quick survey of
your surroundings and see four more suits of armor leaping over the
concertina wire armory fence on the far side of the destroyed nuke bunker.
Two suits are extremely odd, barely visible, and all four move as if they
are powered. Another Maxim Quad, no doubt, and they're coming after you.
Off to the southwest you see several Maxim military troops advancing
carefully along the edge of the next bunker, and, after sending a burst
their way to scatter them, you follow the rest of the team up to the top of
the bunker. You're still nearly 150 meters from the armory fence, however,
and you know that you'll come under fire long before you reach there, only
from the armory guards if you're lucky, and from tanks and mortars if you're
unlucky. The seven of you continue to run, your instructor taking the lead
and you bringing up the rear. From your elevated position, you can see the
jungle's edge and the perimeter better. Something is definitely going on,
but from the distance, you still cannot be sure what. Maxim is still firing
mortar shells at the killzone, and you can see the explosions and fires being
started by exploding white phosphorous and incendiary shells. All you can
see are perhaps three dozen people being foolish enough to assault the
perimeter directly. You continue to advance across the roof of the bunker
and quickly reach the other side with the aid of the mage's spirits and
muscle enhancing cyberware.
Unfortunately, as your instructor begins to descend the far edge of the
bunker, something forms up just to his left. The shape appears to be made
of trash, chunks of concrete, sections of pipe, and dirt. It glows slightly,
almost as if it's radioactive, and it suddenly reaches out and throws your
instructor aside as if he's a rag doll. Your instructor falls, with at least
his right arm broken, at the base of the bunker embankment, 20 meters short
of the armory fence. It strikes out again at your instructor's associate,
who spins and begins to fire it as well. As you begin to fire at it, it
strikes the nuke expert's weapon from his hands, breaking his left wrist.
The weapon, now lying on the ground, seems to dissolve away as the spirit you
know to be toxic from similar encounters just lurches at you and throws a
pseudopod of dripping and glowing dirt at you. You leap to the right in a
vain attempt to avoid the spirit's attack, and brace for the jarring impact
that will likely shatter your armor and your ribcage in the process, but it
never comes. You continue your roll and turn to see the ninja, still
limping, recovering from his swordstrike which removed the pseudopod from the
rest of the spirit. The spirit recoils and then lurches at the explosives
expert, who isn't fast enough to get out of the way. Almost faster than you
can follow, the spirit engulfs the hapless man.
You know that your HK227 won't do anything to the spirit and you could hurt,
perhaps even kill the engulfed explosives expert, so you begin to rise. As
you do so, you feel a sudden, burning pain in your left side and you see a
sudden, ultraviolet flare in a beam extend forward from your side into the
jungle. The pain is severe, but your internal status displays indicate that
the wound affects only the muscles. No organs have been punctured by the
laser. A second beam appears and punches itself through the spirit,
vaporizing a small amount of its body, but doing very little else. The mage,
still shaking slightly from the appearance of a toxic spirit, casts some
spell. The effect is immediate, and your still malfunctioning ears hear a
scream that sounds as much like the gurgle of toxic waste from a factory pipe
as a scream. At almost the same instant, something manifests between you and
the rapidly approaching Maxim Quad. The spirit takes the shape of a cloud of
mist, which will effectively shield you from the laser effects, you hope. In
the second before your view is occluded by the spirit, you see that two of
the armor suits are standard CVR-7 powered armor, but the other two are very
different. What little you see indicates that they are covered in what
appears to be polished blades. The entire surface of the armor, and the
blades appear to be shifting. You also see what can only be a helmet slaved
laser mounted on the left shoulder, and what appears to be a possible weapon
port on the back of each bladed forearm, and then the spirit totally blocks
the view.
With the spirit there, you rise to your feet and turn toward the spirit,
which has apparently disgorged the man it had engulfed. Luckily for him, his
armor was partially chemically treated, because his exposed skin is covered
in severe chemical burns. He's unconscious, but not dead yet. The mage is
barely upright after casting his last spell, and the ninja has engaged the
toxic spirit in melee combat with his katana, a battle that appears to be a
stalemate. You've not even reached the perimeter of the armory, yet the
appearance of the spirit between you and the Quad means that the magical
team knows you're here. In front of you another spirit, this one in a human
form, manifests, and you barely hear it say "Hi there. Who's first?" You
gesture toward the explosives expert, and the spirit turns to him. It almost
seems to grimace, and then it picks up the man and lifts off the surface,
flying him over the fences and toward the jungle's edge. Another spirit
appears, but this one looks more like a panda than a human man. Instead of
saying anything, it shambles over to the toxic spirit that is slowly beating
back the ninja, and for an instant they lock into combat in the physical
before they both disappear into the astral.
The mage, still swaying from near exhaustion, finally collapses. The wounded
glider pilot and the your instructor's associate rush down the embankment to
aid your instructor as best they can. As you and the ninja grab the only
barely conscious mage and drag him toward the relative safety of the
embankment, you catch sight of a small spot of IR light, and you roughly
shove the ninja, who almost got out of your way, and the mage down the
embankment. You feel more than see or hear the descent of a smart mortar
shell as it follows the target designation laser and detonates mere meters
from where you stood less than a second before, spraying white phosphorous
all over you, the mage, and the ninja. Your armor has protected part of
your body for the instant, but the burning chemical will soon burn its way
through your armored clothing and burn your skin as it burns your exposed
flesh already. A second shell impacts a few meters farther from you, likely
deflected by the smoke the white phosphorous is creating as a side effect,
and the explosion blows all of you off your feet. You feel the tear of
shrapnel as you fall, and your last sight for several seconds is the nuke
expert falling as well, with his entire right side bloody from shrapnel. You
can hear the screams of pain that issue from at least three mouths, including
your own, even as your are innundated rapidly in more water than could
possibly come from anything other than a watercannon. You realize as you are
slowly running out of air that a large, possibly great or free water
elemental has engulfed the three of you and is literally washing the white
phosphorus from your skin. Even so, you three will be scarred unless healing
can be applied to your wounds almost instantly. Almost as suddenly as the
elemental appeared, it disappears, leaving the three of you clean and soaking
wet, but alive. Your instructor is still unconscious from the toxic spirit's
blow, the nuke expert is lucky to be alive but rising to his feet slowly, the
wounded glider pilot was the furthest from the exploding shell and he's just
dazed, the mage is unconscious, the ninja appears to be in extreme pain, and
the pain you are feeling is beginning to affect your thought processes.
Shell shock is already hitting you, and you're not even out of combat yet.
This is far worse than the worst Desert Wars conflicts you've been involved
in, even with Saeder-Krupp and Aztechnology. This upstart corporation is
significantly more dangerous militarily than even your team was prepared for.
Without your hearing, it's difficult to hear what's going on around you, but
you doubt that things are going well. Shells have stopped raining down on
the west, but you can still hear the sounds of railguns with the added sounds
of missiles and cannons firing. Then you see why, in the form of rocket
engines arcing in over the ridgeline to the west and north. If the magical
teams have done their work, then Maxim won't have too many elementals
remaining, yet something's obviously engaging the rockets. These are the VX
simulant warheads, and you hope that they drive some of the guards into a
panic so you'll find your escape a little simpler. Only one of you has made
it out at this point, out of 7, and the spirit should have returned by now.
Just as you think this, you see the panda spirit reappear, with singed fur
and a damaged paw. It gestures toward your instructor, who is obviously next
in line of needing medical attention, and the two with him lift him onto the
spirit's back. This spirit takes off as you peek your head over the lip of
the embankment in time to see the mist spirit finally be destroyed. You are
again facing four figures, but this time they are advancing more cautiously.
Frag radio silence, you think, they obviously know where we are. You say
"Quad coming. Get moving!" The two nuke experts grab the unconscious mage
and you guide the ninja toward the concertina wire fence. You pull your last
two grenades from your webbing, set them to proximity, and roll them back
toward the embankment as you continue putting space between you and the
bunker. You're nearly near the embankment when the two nuke experts spot
something. Your instructor's associate and fellow HALO jumper stops, braces
himself with the help of the wounded glider pilot, raises his SPAS-22, and
fires at something through the perimeter. Through the haze of WP and
shrapnel induced pain, you can barely think straight never mind see what he's
shooting at, but you see something explode briefly. It takes a second to
register what the explosion was, and then you remember that the outer
perimeter is patrolled by roaming Pixie targeting drones. Obviously, this
is what targeted you before. At this point, the star shells that were fired
by the mortars and cannons finally burn themselves out and the world is
plunged, after a final flickers, into blessed half-light again.
Only this time, the terrain looks more like a scene out of Dante's Inferno,
with explosions as something keeps setting off landmines outside the
perimeter fences, fires in the edge of the jungle, the back lit white smoke
of white phosphorous and thermite fires in the killzone between the jungle
and the fences, and the nearly blood red glare from the fires sparked around
the facility. But by far the most disturbing thing of all is the figures you
had caught sight of for the first time less than a minute before. With the
falling of darkness, you finally get a sense for just why the Maxim towers
are wasting thousands of machine gun rounds firing at them. Before you are
several dozen humanoid figures are advancing through the minefield at the
fence as if nothing can stop them. But the comparison of the figures to
people ends there. Some of the figures are missing heads, yet the continue
to advance. Some are on fire, yet they continue to come at the fence. Some
have so many holes in them that you can see thermite ignited fires through
their legs or torsos, yet they keep coming. Some have even had both legs
blown off, yet they reach forward with their dead arms and pull themselves
toward the fence. And yet all the ammo the towers are firing at them only
seems to slow them down. Once in a while, one actually get's cut into enough
pieces that it stops, but this doesn't appear to be happening too often.
You can feel your jaw hanging open, and you are dimly aware of the rest of
the team around you reacting similarly, even through the pain all of you must
be feeling at this point, including the hardened UCAS specialist who has,
presumably, seen beings like these before. You think that these things are
abominations against nature, even more so than the man you know organized
this entire raid, who at least has some intelligence and would have the
decency to die if thrown into a fire. These....things keep on coming toward
the perimeter with a single-mindedness that only a mindless zombie could
possibly duplicate. Another shocking realization hits as you crouch down
quickly and shout "DOWN!!!" at the others, who duck quickly. Behind you,
where you laid the grenades and where the white phosphorous fire is only now
starting to die down, two proximity fused grenades detonate, catching one of
the Quad members in a dual explosion that, hopefully, kills him. However,
the same explosion draws the attention of one of the towers, which responds
to it with a spray of LMG autofire. The nuke specialist turns and throws a
grenade that detonates, spewing smoke and effectively shielding you from the
tower's FOV for at least the time being. The first spirit returns, followed
by the panda and then one other that looks like an elephant. The panda
indicates that it can carry two of you, and you and the ninja climb onto it.
The mage goes with the first, human-like spirit, and the two nuke experts are
picked up by the elephant spirit. You all take off, up and out of the
facility.
You are nearly out of the facility no more than a second later when you see
something floating before you, something obviously alien and dangerous. To
your admittedly untrained eye, it appears to be a spirit of some kind, yet
it appears to suck up everything, even the light by which you are trying to
observe it. The mage, apparently having regained some semblance of
consciousness, sends his last remaining elemental, a decent sized fire
elemental, at it. The black hole creature barely even winks as it just
seems to consume the energies of the manifest fire elemental. Two of the
spirits sprint away from it, almost as if they are afraid of this creature,
but the panda you are on can only move so quickly. The void moves up behind
you, and then vanishes as something attacks it from astral space.
Apparently, something has appeared to keep it distracted while your spirit
helps get you away. In front of you, however, another spirit appears.
This spirit is probably another free spirit, much like the one you are on,
but it is human. You see that it is wearing a light blue suit over a dark
blue dress shirt, with wingtips and a turquoise bolo tie. The spirit you
are on stops and looks at it, and then it literally disappears from under
you, dropping you and the ninja unceremoniously to the ground. You are not
sure what happens, but you are immediately aware of where you are. You and
the ninja are literally laying on the ground in the middle of the minefield,
with fires and zombies around you, and with bullets riddling the ground
around you as well. If you didn't know better, you'd say that this part of
the perimeter looks an awful lot like the surface of the moon: cratered and
void of all life. The blue suit clad spirit hovers a mere couple of
centimeters above the ground and comes up to the ninja. It crouches down,
picks up his head, and says "Tsk tsk, my young friend. And to think, you
were doing so well too. It's a shame that you'll die more than once. I'm
sure the last time was extremely pleasant for all concerned." The ninja
mouths something that you can't hear, and then lunges and strikes out at the
spirit, hitting it and knocking it back. All you can hear is the laughter of
the spirit, almost as if in your mind, as it absorbs every magically assisted
blow the ninja can land on it. The spirit stands and puts its back between
the ninja and the perimeter behind you, and then fades away with the words
"Smile, your on candid camera." The ninja, not understanding, looks up at
the perimeter fence less than 20 meters in front of him and behind you, gets
a look of terror on his face, and then stops moving altogether, turning to
stone right before your eyes. The basilisk behind you cannot do the same to
you, however, as you have your back to it. But it's only a matter of seconds
before the guards accompanying the basilisk mow you down and end your life.
Around you appears the faint shimmering of a manifest spirit. You hear it
say "Lobster said to keep you guarded, because he doesn't want you to step
on any mines." and you smile and step forward to the frozen ninja. As you
step forward, the shimmering disappears and you hear a quiet chuckle,
obviously the voice of the spirit that allowed your teammate to be petrified,
and it says "Gotcha." before it fades away. Too late to avoid putting your
foot down, you hear a very quiet but suddenly very loud "click."
And the simsense cuts off, leaving you with nothing less than the sound of an
explosion and the feeling of torn flesh, bone, and organ from the waist down.
+++++ End Simsense Download +++++
That's it. So, what happened to the lady? Did she die? How about the
ninja? What the frag happened to this?]<<<<<
-- Trideo Pirate <20:18:29/03-10-57>
