| From: | ANGLISS@****.PSU.EDU |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Finally! |
| Date: | Fri, 22 Oct 1993 01:49:54 -0400 |
edited)
Sensory log from FM's greasy big fingers(literally-she was working on Baby).
So, after only almost two weeks, or is it three, here is the final installment.
*****Upload Edited Sensory Feed*****
Frag, its Piper.
Piper? Who the frag is Piper?
My ex-best friend from the Army and the reason I left and took Baby with me
Great. Just what I needed to hear...
Nex, shut the frag up and reload.
AJ, if YOU want to do the firing, come on up here and TAKE MY PLACE!
Uh.... I'll just shut up now.
As the argument simmers behind your meat body, your senses are expanding to
cover the entier area around you. You see the traces of the battle that raged
not much earlier in the skys around you. The fires and damaged trees and
other signs show up to your sensors as bright blotches. But your expert
ID system is down, Nex is reloading far too slowly to be of much real use, as
he is falling a whole 45 miliseconds behind. And your outboard weapons are
either useless due to damage or empty due to combat. You register that the
Gunner's Pintle in the rear is damaged and the electronic targeting system
is down, and that you are low on ammunition, but the weapon and the gunner
Hellblast are still available. Nex is in the main turret, sitting at the
Commanders position and manning the missile reload ports and the Minigun. You
personally have control of the main guns, the rotary cannons, and the missile
launcher if Nex ever get's it reloaded.
Aj, you got another of them 1.5 million missiles? If ya do, gimme!
One more, and one HE missile, and two AGMs. That's all you got, Nex. Sorry
FM. You used all the others.
You perform an inventory and discover that he is correct. In the first battle
and this one, you actually have burned 20 missiles and over 3000 rounds of
ammunition. You make a mental note to thank Moriarity for the extra missiles
just as your sensors make out the first flash of another panzer, another GMC
Banshee, on a very gradually converging course, and matched exactly in speed.
"I see you, FM. Do you see me?"
Of course, Maxine. I couldn't miss that design of yours if you painted it over
with 20 coats of paint.
Piper's Banshee is colored to match the surroundings, but has a single extra
design on it beyond the UCAS Army sigil. It has a stylized pipe leading off
the rats to another land. You remember that she always loved the symbol as it
supposedly meant that she was leading her enemies off to the netherworld.
"Yes, I thought you might remember. You are a rat now, FM. And as I said,
it is time to pay the Piper"
With the last word, you register a launch of a missile and cannon fire directed
at you. You make a wild portside turn, throwing Nex against his harness and
AJ into the bulkhead again. The missile misses, but the cannon shots hit you
hard, taking large chunks out of your armor and sending a feedback through your
body that you register as numerous needles being driven into your chest and
arms and eyes. The damage is severe enough to destroy the fragile circuitry
that runs the Ruthenium coating you wear, and you become totally visible.
"Ahhh... Got you, and that was but a sneeze."
Everybody ok?
Yep.
frag no, but I'll live with the bruises...
just a little shaken.
You begins to evade, and Hellblast and Nex do thier parts well. With all the
tracers and expended ammunition, you are not sure of hits unless you register
a sound from Maxine, and she is very quiet. You and she dance around each
other like two balerinas in the Nutcracker Suite, only made into drunk
balerinas. Gunfire and missiles are exchanged until you get a surprise.
FRAG! Missile!
You bank hard right and elevate the nose, rising into the sky only to find a
missile bearing down on you from above. You manage to rock yourself over on
your side and minimize damage from the missile by taking it on the nose where
you have improved the armor yourself. However, you have now lost some
directional control, and you no longer have any ECM or ECCM. You not only can
be seen easily, but targeted and shot out of the sky easily.
Taking a very quick inventory, you notice that Hellblast is no longer firing
due to having run out of ammunition totally. Nex has only 250 rounds remaining
and you have only the AGMs and 20 Autocannon rounds. The battle here has been
going on now for over 10 minutes, and by your estimation, they have only 4 missile
remaining and far too much ammunition.
FM, we are going to die.
AJ, shut the frag up. We won't die, cause the universe won't have me to pick
on anymore if we do! And the universe loves fraggin with my smeggin head too
much to do that.
Owowowowowowowowowowowowowwwwwwwwwwwwww!
Huh?
You figure that they may actually be right this time. Maxine knows every move
you do, and has anticipated most of your actions enough that you now have only
one real choice. You begin to climb into the open sky, a suicide move for a
damaged panzer, and Maxine knows this.
"You know the writing is on the wall, FM? Glad to see it. I'll make your
deaths quick and painless..."
She follows you up and just as she pulls in behind you for the final kill, you
begin a power dive. Suspecting that you are trying to escape, Maxine follows
and gains on your rear. You register autocannon fire, but are too involved
with this your only chance to escape and if you were to turn aside your plan
would surely fail.
Remember the Inverter, Maxine. Remember...
As you radio the last message you will ever send to Maxine, you pass not only
the speed of sound, but begin to pull a hard rise. Your skin, already damaged
and strained, begins to pull loose from the bulkheads and if you don't
complete this theoretically impossible maneuver within the next 10 seconds, you
will tear apart. You continue to rise as Maxine levels out and tries to follow
suit. You continue up and over, completing a loop, inverted, that is not
possible for a Banshee. Apparently the designers never realized they were
wrong.
NOOOOOO!!!!!
As you come down off the loop, Nex and Hellblast are not feeling very well,
as neither are you. The five G loop has given Nex a nosebleed and his eyes
have all but disappeared into his head. His face is black and blue, and his
skin seems pulled back from the skull. Hellblast appears similarly, and AJ
was spared the problem with his unique body.
As you fall, still partially inverted, you trigger the AGMs optically(your
sensors have failed too) and see them track out toward Piper, missing but still
forcing it to leave it's escape track and enter your firing arc. Nex, barely
conscious, utilizes the anti-air varient in the cupula for the Minigun and
sends every round his weapon has left off toward Piper, as you fire both
cannonssimultaneously at Maxine too.
Penned in with the recent missile attacks, Maxine is unable to maneuver and
is caught unawares by the gunfire. You first see the minigun rounds track up
the nose and hit the turret, then the cupula, then back down toward the less
heavily armored Gunner's Pintle. You get emmense satisfaction to see the
armor peircing rounds and tracers virtually punch through the Pintle. There is
no gunner still alive in the mount.
Yeeeaaaahhhhhh... Got im.
Then you watch as your still firing cannons make contact with the nose as well
and tear huge chunks from Piper's armor. The chunks become utter devastation
when the rounds intersect the turret. Metal explodes out with a suddenly
bright thermo flash whose origin you'd rather not think about and you register
massive internal explosions as ammunition explodes.
iiiiiiiiiiiIIIIIIIIIIIiEEEEEEEEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeeee.-
A long scream is suddenly cut off when you, still descending from your high G
loop, see the fuel and missiles finally explode, the reloads within the main
compartment first, followed by the cargo compartment, then the external
hardpoints explode, crushing the Banshee's armor like a hydraulic press
crushes an aluminum can. The final explosion rips the panzer into shrapnel
that nothing flesh could possibly survive.
Frag, FM...
You notice as you reduce speed and head off towards the nearest border that
Hellblast has come into the main compartment and collapsed against the wall.
His shirt is bloodied and appears to be literally bristling with shards of
armor from the damaged Pintle. Nex releases his harness and almost literally
falls from the cupula into the waiting arms of AJ, already with the onboard
medical kit open and operating.
*****End Sensory feed*****
Well, that's the end of that. Finally. We don't have to worry about that
anymore.]<<<<<
-- Moriarity(01:48:27/10-22-54)
