| From: | ANGLISS BRIAN EDWARD <angliss@****.Colorado.EDU> |
|---|---|
| Subject: | IFV Team Escape, Maxim raid part 7 |
| Date: | Sun, 10 Mar 1996 22:20:27 -0700 (MST) |
>>>>>[Well, Jasmine is still nowhere to be seen, AJ's still sequestered
himself away in the clinic helping keep people alive and repairing their
bodies, and Gunny is unconscious, so I guess it still falls on me to tell
AJ's story. Diana would, but....well, she's got other things to think about
these days. I'm sorry, but this drek is all second hand, so I could get
stuff wrong. I took notes on our way back from Cambodia, but we'll see. I'm
sure that Jasmine and AJ will correct me if I'm wrong.
Well, I guess the best place to start is right after the two groups got
separated by the explosion of the Thug. As we went one way, AJ, Gunny, and
Jasmine went the other, and we had a Collussus MBT bearing down on us.
Apparently, they went off and angled toward the motorpool and then the
housing areas beyond it. Well, I guess Gunny had one RPG left, and he
decided to use it on the Collussus and teach Maxim a lesson about armor
they'd never forget. The three of them ran until they reached the edge of
the motor pool, and they just barely got out of the way of the Collussus.
As it went by, Gunny got a good look at it's rear end, the part that usually
has the least armor, except maybe the top or the bottom. Well, he fired the
fraggin RPG at the Collussus, and AJ said that it flew good and true too.
But something apparently went very strange, because it never hit. It just
broke into pieces as it was nearing the rear of the tank, almost as if it had
been cut by monowire. Jasmine figured that the only thing that could have
done that was lasers. I guess Slash'll have to add the upgraded APZ to his
list of new Maxim weapon system improvements.
Well, Gunny didn't like that one bit, but before he even had a chance to run,
he got shot. Not by any bullet though, but by the Collussus's APZ system
which had not only just chopped an RPG into slices, but also tracked the RPG
back to it's place of origin. And Gunny just didn't move fast enough, or
maybe it didn't matter and the APZ tracked his movement. I don't know, and
it doesn't really fraggin matter either. Gunny got shot, a couple of times,
and the only thing that saved him from probably being cored and killed was
the smoke from the fire, the gunfire, the Thug, and everything else that was
burning around them. I guess it probably scattered enough light that instead
of cutting gunny into small cubes of flesh, it just burned him really badly.
Apparently most lasers do the most damage by vaporizing small amounts of
flesh. Well, Gunny had some good sized craters, a couple of which were near
enough to major arteries that he needed immediate medical attention. He
couldn't have been with anyone better: an MD and a snake shaman healer.
Jasmine was better suited in this regard than AJ, so she healed him a little
to keep him from bleeding to death, and then the three of them got moving
again.
Well, the Collussus didn't come back around to finish them off for some
apparent reason, probably the assault on the west perimeter, and so they
proceeded relatively safely until they ran into a squad of Maxim military
troops. Jasmine again saved the day, with her every useful invisibility
spell. Luckily, none of the squad were astrally perceiving at the time, but
that changed pretty quickly. You see, by this point the deckers were gone
from the system, so Jasmine's well timed invisibility had a pretty short half
life. But they weren't spotted by a camera, Jasmine figures, until just
before they reached the housing units. So far, even with Gunny wounded, they
were doing pretty well. Now all they had to do was get through the perimeter
somehow without getting killed. I said that they'd been spotted, but I
didn't mention that Gunny laid down some suppression fire and some smoke
grenades too to cover their escape, and then they disappeared as well as they
could down into the housing units. It was a lot safer than being out in the
open, but every unit had something like 10 or so armed Maxim employees.
Sure, they were probably too scared to come out and threaten these three,
but they were still there. And yet again, Jasmine kept things going. She
cast her invisibility again to keep them free from prying mundane eyes, and
they advanced slowly and cautiously.
It was about this point that they heard a rumble from the northwest, which we
all know was the nuke bunker being blown. What also happened was Ripley
activated the minelets, and off to the northeast, they started small
explosions, as well as muted screams above the sounds of combat to the
northwest. Jasmine said that Gunny had to physically restrain her from
rushing in that direction to help the people stepping on the minelets. AJ,
before he buried himself in his clinic, said that Jasmine looked and acted
REALLY fraggin upset, which I can understand. Gunny helped drag Jasmine
away toward the south, where AJ was heading, and they started hearing the
sounds of pursuit behind them. I guess the distractions were confusing all
right, but not confusing enough. Jasmine said that she was getting really
tired maintaining the invisibility spell, and that it just wasn't going to
keep them hidden from the troops who were on their tail and were probably
being guided by Maxim security riggers using security cameras and sensors,
so she summoned up a city spirit, which she used to confuse the drek out of
the pursuing troops. It didn't last long, but long enough for the three of
them to get close to the perimeter.
Jasmine said that, off where the road and minelets were, they heard some
really nasty sounds, like the whine of an ACV. They didn't come across it,
I guess, but it was probably the hovertank we passed on the way in, by one
of the chopper pads. The three of them had gotten around a tower and were
nearing the edge of the perimeter when AJ supposedly told Gunny to put a
couple of grenades in the nearest perimeter tower. Well, Gunny's a good
shot, so I guess he did so and pretty well too. Jasmine said that the three
of them, after the explosions probably killed everyone in the tower, rushed
toward the part of the perimeter that it was originally guarding. AJ told
her to place some charges the two outer tower supports and then blow them
when she was ready. Well, Gunny noticed something that was a little
unpleasant. Remember those recon trids Slash showed us, the ones with the
really pretty 10cm flagstone step between the perimeter fence and the inner
hedge? Well, there was a second one on the inside too, and Gunny found that
it was lined with claymores, or rather a new variation on the classic
claymore design. You'll have to ask him yourself, because it's his area,
not mine. But these were facing inward, so Maxim had designed their
perimeter to be able to kill people inside too. Swell corp. Makes me glad
I got driven out when Velli took control.
The hedge was obviously put there to funnel people through the gaps beneath
the towers, and it was good sized. Well, Jasmine said that she made a
mistake there. It wasn't that she went through the gap, but that she let
herself brush the edge of the hedge. It caught her clothing, and in the
process of trying to get herself disengaged, not only did she get herself
more caught, but a squad of Maxim troops caught up to them, and a couple of
patrols from outside caught up too. Gunny was apparently running out of
ammo. Nobody expected a running firefight the entire time we were in the
facility, but that's what happened to most everyone. Jasmine finally just
got angry and tried to rip herself out of the edge of the hedge, which did
more damage than it should have. It seems that the hedge is not only thorned
with directional thorns like a porcupines, but it's branches are really
fraggin tough. AJ ran up and sliced the plants with his spurs and cut her
out, but they had to leave the barbs in. That turned out to be a mistake
too, but it didn't hit them until later.
Jasmine said that, while Gunny was doing ok keeping the inner troops busy,
she was getting shot at from the external patrol. AJ had lost his bow too,
and he can't shoot for drek anyway. Before Jasmine set explosives on the
tower supports, she called back her spirit, which was still around, and set
it to scare the drek out of the guards inside. It worked, too, until some
Maxim shaman banished it, so Jasmine said. The guards running like drek
gave Gunny the chance to shoot at some of the patrols outside the fence.
Until another drekky thing happened, which fraggin near was the death of all
three of them. A barghest came around howling. And AJ was literally just
standing there, on the other side of the hedge, not doing anyone any good.
Until he faded away. Jasmine said that she didn't dare catch a peek into
Astral space, but that he probably misted on them, and Gunny fraggin near
hit him when he appeared next to the barghest and slit it's throat with his
spurs, and then he turned his hands on the patrol guards and didn't leave a
single one alive. They were not expecting to have a man appear in their
midst, but it happened, and it cost them their lives.
Well, Jasmine said that she'd gotten the charges set and ready to detonate by
this point, and on AJ's signal, blew them. Down came the tower, crashing
down way too short of the fence to break down even the inner perimeter fence.
AJ had stopped moving again, but the guards inside had come back. Gunny
apparently had an idea of what AJ had planned, and so they broke off some of
the supports and the busted armored supports off the tower platform's walls
and moved them quickly over toward the fence. AJ vanishes again, and pops
back on the inside of the fences, and on his idea, Jasmine summoned another
spirit, this one a field spirit. She got it to do some manual labor, and
next thing it's stomping through the no-man's land between the two fences,
setting off everything and drawing fire from the automatic gun ports too.
None of it hurt the spirit, of course, and with AJ's help, Jasmine set some
of her explosives around the base of the inner fence. Luckily for Gunny,
while AJ and Jasmine were working on the escape, he was using the weapons he
pulled from the wreckage of the tower to keep the troops' heads down.
Machine guns are good for that.
The only problem with Jasmine setting the charges was that the inner fence
was electrified, so I guess she placed them somehow around some of the
supports which were insulated from the fence itself. When she was ready,
she blew the supports, and the fence began to bend and twist. Jasmine said
that she had the spirit force the fence to the ground and then AJ just laid
some of the debris across the first fence. Gunny followed pretty quickly,
keeping the troops at a distance as best he could with the HMG and belt of
ammo, and they got to the outer fence. Jasmine said that AJ slashed through
the outer perimeter fence with nothing more than his spurs, and that it was
like a hot knife. But she also said that he hesitated for an instant and
that she saw his hands were beginning to shake, like an athlete's after
they've been working out for a LONG time. They got through the outer fence
without troubles, but they still had one more barrier; the land mines.
Jasmine was about to ask the spirit to help when suddenly there was a
fireball grounding through it. It caught everyone it was so large. This is
what hurt Gunny the most, I think, as the belt of ammo he was wearing
started cooking off on him. If he'd not already used all his grenades, he'd
probably not have left the field of battle alive. As it was, he had to
throw the HMG and ammo a long ways and still got hurt bad. Jasmine got
burned and hurt, but no where near as bad. She said that she was lucky her
explosives didn't get ignited, because that would have hurt really bad. And
AJ just sat there shaking, almost as if the fire didn't phase him at all.
That's when Jasmine said that two spirits came up to them, both friendly, I
guess. One was a storm spirit and the other a prairie spirit, and they said
that they'd help the three of them through the minefield. Too bad that it
was also about this time that a couple of Maxim troops poked their heads
around the remains of the tower. Jasmine said that what happened next was
extremely, "disturbing" was the term I think she used. AJ fell to his knees,
grabbed his head, and screamed. Jasmine said that the scream was like
nothing she'd ever heard. The howl of a Banshee and a Barghest were not so
terrifying, she said, and that the sound was like a combination of all the
primal fears of mankind combined somehow into a single vocalization. She
said that AJ would understand the reference, since he made her watch the
fraggin movie, but that it sounded like the sound of "ultimate suffering"
from an old flat movie from the 1990s, only worse by far. When he stopped
screaming, he looked up at them and said "Get the fuck out of my way." Gunny
grabbed Jasmine and told her that he was hungry again, that he'd seen the
look before. And Jasmine described how AJ looked then to me and said that
she'd likely never forget it. She said that his face had gone pale, almost
like a sheet of paper, and that his eyes had gotten almost sunken, black, and
bloodshot. She said that his hands looked suddenly skeletal, as if the skin
had shrunk around his bones, and that his fingers looked longer and as pale
as his face. She said that his body seemed to almost grow and shrink in
stature at the same time, and that the most terrifying thing about him was
how his body and stature changed from that of a man to a that of a predator
seeking
prey. He didn't look human, she said, and then he bared his fangs behind
lips that had gone grey instead of red, made some sound that was between a
growl and a howl, and leapt at the guards something like 20 meters away.
They saw him coming, and Gunny tried as best he could to keep them from
killing him, but he didn't seem to care. Jasmine said that she was
fascinated, almost in the same way someone is fascinated by a car wreck. AJ
just charged the fraggin Maxim troops, who were wearing combat armor and
firing rounds at him. And he got shot too, repeatedly, but it was like he
didn't feel it, Jasmine said. And then he reached them and killed them. He
slashed at all of them with his spurs. Jasmine said that it was disgusting
as he literally put his fists through the armor and the troops wearing it.
There was soon only one man standing, and AJ screamed in pain again and
collapsed to the ground right in front of the guy. All around him his is
squad, dead, and the killer collapsed right in front of him. So he did what
any smart person does: he tried to make fraggin sure that AJ was dead. Too
bad AJ wasn't. He leapt up off the ground and grabbed the poor fragger by
the helmet and then tore open the breastplate of his mil spec armor with his
bare hands. Imagine that, tearing open hardened milspec armor without even
the aid of his spurs. And AJ buried his face in the poor fraggers neck and
fed. Jasmine said that she couldn't watch, and Gunny put his body between
her and AJ, but that she could still hear the sounds of AJ feeding and just
the sounds were enough to make her retch. Before he came back, she said
that she heard the sound of a head being taken off, and Gunny confirmed it.
Jasmine said that the whole episode took less than maybe 15 seconds, yet when
AJ came back he looked just the same as he had before he had screamed the
first time, except he had more blood on his hands and... on his face too.
Jasmine said that, while the two spirits were helping them through the
minefield and keeping them from stepping on any mines, AJ kept saying
"Goddamn it, not again." and "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." and "No
more. I
can't let this happen anymore." But it was about this point that Maxim
finally decided to pull out the stops, and they set off the claymores in a
last attempt to keep the three from getting out alive. Jasmine said that
they were lucky because they didn't know exactly where they were at that
point, but that they blew a whole line of claymores. She said that AJ, who
was in the back mumbling to himself, shouted "NO!" and drove forward,
sweeping both Gunny and Jasmine in front of him. He took the full brunt of
a claymore mine in his back. The concussion was the last straw for Gunny,
who passed out from blood loss and hasn't woken from the coma yet. Jasmine
lost her hearing for a little while, but she was fine a couple of hours
later. But AJ was fraggin near dead. Somehow, even after all the wounds
he'd taken, something kept him alive. Maybe it's the bioware he's had
implanted, maybe it's the fact he'd just eaten, maybe it was just his
willpower, but something that would have killed anyone else just left him on
death's door instead of inside the building.
Jasmine said that there was a few other problems, but that Ripley's drones
found them about at that point and the magical team sent a couple of local
free spirits to help them out. They all got out with the magical team, but
that's another story and not mine to tell, even though I was there.]<<<<<
-- Foxey Roxey <22:20:50/03-10-57>
