| From: | Brian Angliss <angliss@*****.COLORADO.EDU> |
|---|---|
| Subject: | The dead walk....again? |
| Date: | Sat, 11 Jan 1997 00:15:17 -0700 |
the target wasn't Humanis this time. A little variety is nice.
Don't ask me where I found this, you really don't want to know.
+++++Begin Video Record Playback+++++
Darkness, for mere instant before your mind gets used to the sensorium
data it is being fed, and then the thermographic with ultrasonic overlay
kicks in. You see what appears to be a hallway, dark visually, but with
several humanoid figures which, by size and thermal signature, appear to
be three humans and an orc. Unfortunately, thier bodies are cooling down
rather rapidly, an indication that they are very dead. The ultrasonic
reflection indicates some form of armor, probably hard security of some
kind, but without better lighting, you can't tell who the armor belongs
too. The corridor, in addition to being dark, is filled with smoke.
The view changes suddenly and you're looking down another corridor where
three figures are firing submachine guns down yet a third corridor. It
is dark here as well, but there is no smoke. However, the camera for
the third corridor, if there is one, does not appear to be operational,
because the view remains. Suddenly, all three figures slump over, as if
knocked unconscious. But then you notice that thier bodies have begun to
cool as well, indication that something just killed all three people, a
dwarf and two humans in armor, instantly. The camera zooms in on the
corner as a figure, elven or human, rounds the corner. He or she is not
wearing hard armor, instead it appears to be a longcoat of some kind, but
again the ultrasound cannot distinguish the details. Then the camera
suddenly goes blank, as if turned off.
+++++ End Video Playback +++++
There's more, but some decker running interference for whoever that was
shut off the camera. What's next is the truly interesting part.
+++++ Begin Video Playback +++++
And there was light, lots of it, and you are looking out at a storage
area. If you remember your hazardous materials symbols correctly, then
what you're looking at is a chemical nightmare. All around the camera,
as it slowly pans, are stacked canisters, some obviously marked VX,
SARIN, and a few which have no marking except for a biohazard symbol.
The camera view goes to multiple views, and you're now seeing the
corridor immediately outside the room, the doorway, and the still panning
camera inside the room.
The doorway is obviously heavily reinforced, and it appears to be warded
in some way with shamanic symbols. In several languages, there are
warnings not to enter and about the contents of the chamber, as well as a
sign: To Be Incinerated.
The corridor outside the room is wide and about 20 meters long, with two
cubbys on either side of the door where there are two Steel Lynx drones,
each mounted with dual-feed miniguns. The corridor is also lined with
various obvious weapon implacements and the end appears to guarded by
three people wearing military-grade armor and carrying battle rifles.
You recognize the insignia now, even if you didn't before - Pueblo
Military. The flashing red lights of intruder alarms are unpleasant to
the eyes, and the guards are obviously ready for something coming toward
the room.
At that point, one of the guards just collapses in much the same way that
the prior soldiers did. The others open fire at someone down the
corridor, and the sensors indicate that something just collapsed. Over
the comm channels, you hear "That wasn't so hard. Target killed, 14
rounds of APDS pumped into him. Looks like that suit didn't do him much
good." As one of the guards heads cautiously out of sight, another
camera comes on-line, and you see the creeping guard approaching a bloody
body lying on the floor.
"Approach with caution."
"Of course." The soldier puts two more rounds into the man's head from
nearly point blank range, and most of the head is now missing. From
what's left of it, it appears like the man was wearing a dress coat and
suit, and had brown hair.
Suddenly, the body changes appearance, and a Souix soldier, wearing the
Wildcat patch and with the markings of a shaman appears, with wounds
mirroring the original wounds. The guard jumps back and starts to shout
something when his words are choked off to a gurgle. An arm has
appeared, almost as if out of no-where, and lifted the guard up off the
ground by his neck, and the second arm, carrying a periscope-type device,
pushes the battle rifle aside. The guard back at the access corridor
begins firing at the man, dressed in a nearly spotless clean dress coat
and charcoal grey suit, but the first guard's body is interposed between
the bullets and the target. Unfortunately for the guard, some of the
bullets do penetrate the heavy military armor, but the sickeningly loud
crack of several snapping vertibre makes the APDS moot anyway.
Still holding the body as a shield, the man does something and the last
guard collapses as well. Unfortunately, the guard's helmet falls off
when he hits the ground, and an unnaturally bleached-white skull and a
pool of multicolored liquid begins pouring out of the armor, almost as if
the guard had been melted in his armor, leaving nothing but the bones,
teeth, and cyberware.
The man drops the dead guard, and walks nonchelantly up to the other
guard, stepping around the puddle, and walks to the door. He looks at
the magical symbols, and a creature appears at his side. It appears to
be made of garbage, glows slightly, and is leaving slighly corroded
footsteps, the sure hallmark of a toxic earth spirit. Slowly, almost
carefully, it attacks the door and slowly, the door is bent open. When
it's open enough, the symbols suddenly glow as the man glares at them,
and a faint shimmering in the open space disappears.
On the interior camera, you see the man step through and look around
carefully. Out from under his jacket he pulls two small canisters, which
he attaches to the VX canisters. He also removes a small glass vial from
an interior pocket, which he shakes up. It's color changes, and he
attaches it to a third VX canister. He removes the two canisters and
places them into his jacket again, and leaves.
On the corridor camera, you see that the drones are still inactive, as
are all the automated defenses, a sure sign of decker intrusion. But you
also see about 12 soldiers, wearing fully sealed armor and carrying
weapons from battle rifles to assault shotguns to an LMG, and they're
ally waiting to get a shot at their target. The first target they get is
the spirit, however, and in the ensuing melee, 4 of the soldiers get
killed before someone finally banishes the spirit. But the distraction
was enough to let the man get into position, and the soldiers start
dying, and rather unpleasantly at that. 3 of them collapse immediately,
followed by a fourth with a gash in his armor which also appears to have
cut into his stomach. The four remaining soldiers begin a slow retreat,
only to be killed one by one, until the last soldier's morale shatters
and he flees in terror.
The man walks calmly forward to the corner, where he is spun and thrown
around by dozens of bullets, only to disappear as the illusion is
dropped. But then you see something which is very unusual. One of the
bodies, around which a pool of blood has formed, begins to move again.
Is it possible that the person is still alive? Then you see a second,
and a third, followed by the armor which has only bleached white bones
within it. This man is animating the bodies somehow. The bodies all
rise to thier feet and slowly begin shambling toward the corridor which
the bullets were coming from, and continue coming from. Grenades pound
into the bodies, blasting arms and heads and feet off, yet the bodies
advance, a wall of animated death moving up the corridor, pushing the
soldiers ahead of it. This continues until the bodies leave the camera's
area.
The view changes suddenly, and you're outside under cloudy skys. There's
a good 10cm of snow on the ground, and it's very cold. The camera is
recording flashes within a fenced but not currently well patrolled
perimeter. As the few remaining guards are pushed back out of the
underground compound, a figure appears in silouette atop one of the few
buildings. A small explosion is heard, followed by several secondary
explosions, followed almost instantly by a new alarm klaxon - Chemical
release warnings. While the automatic safeguards appear to be in place,
everyone who was still in the area and not in a chem-sealed suit begins
to choke and collapse as the VX hits their systems, killing them.
Everyone except the figure, though, standing atop the building in a coat.
Then, suddenly, he's gone.
+++++ End Video Playback +++++
You don't want to know how I got that, or where it came from. As there's
been no word on massive amounts of people dying from VX poisoning, I'd
say that the decker running the system was careful to leave the automatic
lockdowns which seal a building against a release alone. But it'll be a
cast-iron bitch to clean up again, or to gather evidence.]<<<<<
-- Trideo Pirate <00:15:28/01-11-58>
