"Goliaths look much more badass than they actually are"
-Bob_The_Newt
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| The Turbo Newbie Trilogy : Part 3b - Command Decision | | | Author: | | | IP: | bc-pgr-aXXXX | | Date: | 07/25/00 12:07 | | Game Type: | Starcraft | | Labels: | none | | Report Rating: , # of Ratings: 3, Max: 9, Min: 7
Lifetime Rating for RhinoAssUgly: 7.8333 |    | Read "The Turbo Newbie Trilogy : Part 1" here.
Find "Part 2 - Glory Daze" here.
See "Part 3a - The Calm Before the Swarm" here.
... and don't go telling me how redundant it is to link BACKWARDS through a series, 'cause I'm damn well aware. =) Anycrap, I give you the final installment. I hope it was worth following.
Part 3b - Command DecisionNo helmet. It was like being pelted with buckets of squirming gravel. Bacco wanted to cuss a blue streak, but whirring all around him, they’d have been down his throat in seconds. Pushing off the wall, squinting against the onslaught, he limped a few steps through the buzzing shroud. He felt bare. His impaler lay somewhere on the sandy, unfinished floor, swallowed and forgotten.
The dim outline of the bunker doorway seemed an illusion, but it was there. “Out! Out! We’re dead here!” Mooley yelled as he plunged from the churning deathtrap, pushing Styles before him.
Bacco choked, not believing what he saw.
Williams lunged for the exit.
Biks’ fingers flew with a precision born of desperation. His helmet sat balanced on the gun port, glinting. Quickly. Dropping the heavy shoulder mounts, he unlatched the leg brackets, trying not to fumble. The C-14 lay aside, abandoned to make quicker progress with both hands free.
“We gotta get of clear the cloud,” Mooley hollered, “or we’re done!”
Styles gagged, his eyes squeezed shut, the repulsive blizzard of tiny Zerg flooding over him. He, too, had no helmet, no weapon. Not even a shirt with sleeves. Mooley shoved him from behind, refusing to let the little man stop. He cracked one eyelid. The pouring mass jumped. It was an odd sight, seeing the dark swarm shift as one, a leaping shadow amongst darkness. Styles screamed, insects pelting his tongue. The zergling came down hard, slamming him to the sand as unexpectedly as a sniper’s bullet.
Bacco hobbled through the door, halfway down the ramp. The others were gone. The swarm showed no sign of receding. Putting a gloved hand over his mouth, he did his best to shout into the comm. They had to stay inside! Futile. Helmetless, fully exposed to the discord, Bacco was again deafened. The thunderous drone of leaping, clicking insects drown out any hope of receiving a response.
Bounding through the swirling masses, they came.
Bacco drew his own sidearm and backpedaled frantically, nearly tripping on the ramped incline.
Bickerson scrambled across the Arclite, armor shed save kevlar, weapon in hand, sidearm on side, nearly pitching off the tank as he slid to a stop by the hatch. Cranking it open, he did a quick survey inside. The red glow of the interior did nothing to hide the mutilated corpse sprawled across the floor grate, split from groin to throat, rended chest cavity glistening. The face was contorted and white, even in the semi-dark a mask of agony.
Broodlings. If there had been a Queen earlier, Bickerson had missed it.
Leaping down, avoiding the grisly remains, he crouched, his eyes darting.
“Get back inside! Mooley, Will!”
The comm crackled in his ear. Bacco was barely audible.
At least they were still alive. Only a matter of time. Biks needed to be fast, but being dead definitely wouldn’t help to further the cause.
He couldn’t delay long, but the odds were stacked that the Queen’s children remained. Broodlings usually didn’t wander far from their departed host. Not right away, anyhow. If
they were here, they were hiding. Slipping the impaler’s strap over his shoulder, Bickerson withdrew the colt from his belt. Hypersonic spikes rebounding hypersonically. That was the last thing he needed to see, right now.
“Styles!”
Mooley was running as best the CMC allowed. Styles moaned, his breath escaping. The zergling thrashed maniacally, it’s sickles rising and falling in tandem. An instant past, the
gap was closed. Not stopping, Mooley howled and opened fire, sheering it’s head off in a fine mist of blood. Even as it fell, he tackled the still twitching corpse and crushed the dead zergling to the desert with all his strength.
Styles lay motionless.
There, gone, always advancing. Phantoms amidst the swarm. Bacco emptied the colt at the charging Zerg as he retreated, dry firing twice before ejecting the clip. He doubted a single hit. Kicking the door closed, Bacco quickly reloaded as he strained to spot his lost rifle through the cloud. Behind him, the bunker door rattled, jarred in it’s frame by frenzied attackers. The assault. Where was Graves’ frontal assault? The bastard had to be watching this, relayed through the satellite.
Nearly tipping forward in panic, Bickerson staggered to his feet, legs wobbling. A cold stream of adrenaline surged through him. The thing, curled around his wrist like a
grotesque centipede, ripped into his forearm. A peripheral blur from the right, that’s all it had been, scuttling across the poorly lit control panels. Only just having raised his hand in reflex, the broodling had scarcely been kept from his throat.
“Sonofabitch!”
Crying out in pain, Bickerson swung his arm in an arc and smashed the creature against the floor, at the same time jamming the handgun into it’s soft underbelly, the shots
reverberating painfully off thick metal walls.
They always came in pairs. The second one was just as quick.
Styles was gone. A blood-soaked husk. The ling beneath him was still, battered into the sands. Around him, the milling fog of insects continued to chatter and swirl. Maddening.
Rolling too his knees, Mooley turned just in time to catch the next zergling full on in his arms, like a disobedient family dog licking the face of it’s master. Gnashing, the thing rattled against him, it’s sinewy muscles straining as it fell upon his chest. The impaler barked, firing meaningless bursts into the bug blackened sky.
Clear. Alive. Unharmed. Williams broke free, plodding to a stop, gasping like a near drown swimmer sucking gulps of sweet, moist air. He had fled towards it. The shape of the Arclite beyond the eddy of Zerg. The tank was there, Bickerson’s gunshots resonant from within even above the hum of the dark swarm. One, two, three. Nothing.
Deserted in pieces along the tread, a standard issue infantry powered combat suit, the helmet glinting on the gun port.
“Bickerson? Bik?” Williams wheezed, at first shuffling, then bounding toward the artillery, praying the man still wore his commset.
Zerglings rushed from the cover of milling darkness, charging after.
His eyes watered. The swarm was thick here, buckets of gravel. Floundering away from
the buckling door, Bacco glimpsed the half empty bandoleer through a shift in the reeling
masses. Bickerson’s grenades. Snatching them up as he passed, he spun with his back to
the far murder hole. Outside, directly behind, something clambered and collided with the
bunker, immediately tearing away with impervious hooks. The metal squealed as it gave.
Bacco scrambled to the center, beneath the stinking mutalisk, below the darkened skylight.
Eyes brilliant, mandibles working, it slashed against Mooley’s armor, tearing deep, soon
joined by a second. His tendons remained firm, the impaler’s empty chamber snapping, dry
and hollow against the desert sands. He’d paid his penance. He hadn’t screamed.
Bickerson flopped into the command seat, blinking through the blood pouring from
ragged gashes beneath his hairline. The second broodling had struck even before the first
could drop from his forearm. Latching onto his ear, wet against his face, over and around
his neck. He hadn’t given it time to strike. He’d shot it off his own head, for a brief
moment appearing as a man suicidal, resigned to spilling his mind across the flickering
bright monitors adorning the walls. Over the comm, his name. Williams’ voice. It was a
welcome sound. Bickerson adjusted his mouthpiece, tossing the handgun aside as he
leaned across the control array. “In the tank, Will, I’m all right!” He scanned the board.
Just like the sim. The Confederacy’s loudest grenade launcher.
Bacco was shaking, angry, terrified.
Other men’s voices came and went; murmurs, unintelligible. Mooley? Will? Someone was
still in communication with someone, meaning someone somewhere was still in a state of
alive. Zerglings screeched, now distinct above the buzzing torrent, crumpling sheet metal
echoing their cries. The bunker was a heartbeat away from breached.
“Graves, where are you, you shit!?” he spat, no longer bothering to cover his mouth. The
commander didn’t reply. Bacco’s head swam, a swell of peaceful gray blooming behind his
eyes, threatening to drag him down to unconscious. Gripping the bandoleer, he set his jaw,
his eyes now wide and clear despite the parasitic swarm.
Shrieking, the doorway exploded from it’s hinges; the dim, rectangular outline now
obscured by whipping silhouettes.
Hearing both Bickerson’s winded response and Bacco’s fervent cursing, Williams stopped
short, just yards away from the siege tank. Sensing an easy kill, the zerglings kept on, their
prey oblivious, back fully exposed.
“Keep away! Gonna send one downtown!” Biks warned.
The Arclite boomed to life. The shockwave sent Williams staggering.
With a thunderous vibration, the entire siege tank bucked, nearly knocking Bickerson from
his chair. Here comes the hurt. Whistling over creep, the shell dropped, leaving a hatchery
ruptured and bursting. A towering spire shattered and fell, crushing structures below. Zerg
ran wild, moved in packs, frantic. Something beeped, cranked, an automated reload
sequence humming to life. Biks gripped the panel, pumping his fist at the flashing view
screen. “Shelling resumed!” he hooted, hoping to signal the oncoming assault from
homebase. “Bring it!”
Reaching back, this time ready, he strapped himself in for the next blast.
They cast shadows from high above, suddenly there. Winging from the heavens, the pair
of forgotten mutalisks attacked with a blazing sun at their backs, unseen. The tank was
defenseless.
That’s when Williams started screaming.
He was alone in the swarm, in a place playfully known throughout ranks as ‘death shed’. Bacco dodged backwards, avoiding the first of the lings as it sprang from the cloud. More appeared. Diving to his left as another cleaved past, he fired three shots. Two rang off metal walls, one passed harmlessly through a murder hole. Clean misses. His head was heavy. Splintered and split. The vision in his swollen eye had all but left him.
Bacco did not rise. “Fuck you, Shirly ...” he muttered weakly, finally complacent, all remaining vigor drained and gone.
In his ear, as he lay on his side with bandoleer and colt in hand, feeling the sand on his
cheek, someone wailed. The kid. Williams. It was perfectly clear, like an epiphany.
She came to him then, calmly, a soothing mother midst the death and slaughter. Her voice,
reaching the fallen marine even moreso than the stark terror of Williams strangled cries,
flowed crystal clear above all else.
“Nuclear launch detected.”
Something punctured his suit, pinning him to the ground.
There had never been a frontal assault.
His lower back flared with a sudden jolt of withering pain.
Indeed, they had been a distraction, but one never intended for a final push against the
enemy.
He was alive with suffering, broken ribs slicing his lung.
Graves had needed them, had needed the Zerg occupied. The threat of continued
bombardment had been cover enough. Cover enough for the specter.
The dark swarm continued to leap and churn. Bacco’s eyes, wide and staring, were dull.
Deafening. Roaring unchecked across creep, fields, cliffs, proceeded by scalding winds
and howling apparitions, the great cleansing light washed, ending all in a brilliant ivory
heat the color of God.
Expendable. Incidental. Insignificant.
Graves, Harmen Schroeder, Commander of Red Battalion, 23rd sub-section of
“Razorback” Gamma Squadron, victorious.FIN.More Mofo'in GoodnessAftershiz : Well, that's that. By far the most straight, off the top of my head writing I've endured since high school. Any feedback (be it positive or otherwise) would be really super fantasic. If you've got a comment you think'll diminish you in front of your peers (i.e. RAU, I reeeeeally wanna put an icecube on your nipple and watch it melt), send 'em to 'rhinoassugly @hotmail.com' ... really though, seriously ... thanks to all for the inspiring comments I've already recieved, they've kept my resolve solid through "The Process".
And, most of all, thanks for reading. Cheers.
07.25.00 |
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