The eye beams dim to wire thick beams, almost nothing, still too much light. A Juggernaut has sensor suites, and their technicians are infamous for replacing organic eyeballs with wider spectrum scanners. I may as well be driving through Walmart on an electric scooter with a dozen air horns blaring.
Except today I rolled all sixes. Walmart is empty. No one is present. In fact, all lights are off and most the equipment is gone. This isn’t a real bunker, just an ammo cache.
“Thank god.” I mutter.
Stacks of rockets with red and yellow hazard striping on the nosecones rise into the air. High explosive warheads. Too large for a human to move or carry. Hundreds of empty crates line the walls and floor, autocannon ammo of various calibers, all empty. I quickly scrounge through the bunker, finding a flechette pistol and two thousand rounds. Which really sounds like a lot until you realize the ‘pistol’ is the size of a briefcase, not really a pistol at all. Instead it's a miniaturized railgun that fires steel spikes -sewing needles- with fins duck taped on. Highly efficient on space and ammo, but worthless against armor. Which is probably why the Technocracy loves these pieces of shit. No disgruntled tech can damage their precious machines. But hey, it’ll go bang. I won’t get sodomized by the first rat who looks my way. Or the damn iguanas!
Relief sends me into a fit of cackles, stroking the steel pistol as I close my eyes and laugh, taking a few steps towards a row of steel near the back. I’m in space, talking to voices in my head, on an alien world, and I just found a railgun.
“Is this real life?”
This moment doesn’t feel real. Cackles fill the silent bunker echoing as artillery and missiles explode across the world.
I’m one person, against an entire world of assholes. What can I do? My cracked lenses fog up.
“I need a new helmet.” I say aloud, cutting off my laughter.
The words return me to a normal place. Tickling the flashtraining’s desire to complete my mission.
That’s right, the mission was to get a weapon and fight back. Cmon Apollo! Work the problem.
“Alright. Stay alive. I can kill any Tulverians now. But they can kill me. Find armor. Juggernauts can kill any armor, so find a bigger gun, kill all Juggernauts. Easy. Just like teching up to thors.” I say.
Once again I turn towards crate mountain. In the dark it looks like a vehicle of some kind, but there are piles of gear and crates of odds and ends keeping it concealed. My foot snags on something soft, cartwheeling me face first into a pile of lukewarm fabric. Flash training did an excellent job of desensitizing me to war life, but the pile of earthlings in gasmasks sends a shiver down my spine. This isn’t right. We shouldn’t be here. Buuuutttt, the pile is kinda bouncy… A great place for a nap if I weren’t fresh from the cryotubes. Without thinking I swap my helmet for an unshattered one, careful to transfer all data and setting between the two. Its easy, helmets are designed to be scavengable so the transfer is nothing more than tapping them together in the correct orientation.
Cognitively I know something inside me has cracked. Some ancient mechanism to prevent emotional trauma from killing me. I’ll probably pay for it with a life of PTSD, but for now I open my chat log.
>Human Apollo: I have biomass. Let me know when you’re ready.
I stare at the words I've mentally typed, surprised at how easy it was. Then inhale before sending. Survive, beat back the Technocracy and save earth. Maybe then I can get laid. Simple as. Well, and maybe punch Bazzhole in the cock-er spaniel. I wonder if he was drafted too? Whorely is probably knocked up and back on earth. From her brother no less! Ick. Maybe I should be grateful to them, if not for their cheating I’d be pining for them both, wishing with all my heart they were with me now. Lying distractions likely to get me killed.
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>Straingineer Zazathur: send 100 kilos cant hide more in
>Straingineer Zazathur: cant hide more
I touch the bodies, mentally tagging them for Praetorian’s teleporter. It’s absurdly easy on my end. I need physical contact but after that I just look at the item and mentally think ‘mark’, then they appear with a faint outline overlaid. Out of stubbornness I try to mark myself. Nothing whatsoever occurs.
The first body vanishes, then after a delay the second goes after. I hesitate a moment, but only one, before stripping them of everything, my inner and outer layers are made whole once more. Then to top it off this squad was at least given weapons. One glance tells a sordid history with the sharpened shovel, red oxides coat one edge, something I hope is rust, but I know better than to try and remove it. One is holding a slender blade, something I once saw Baz call a ‘Fairbain-sykes fighting knife’ whatever that is. Beating someone to death is low on my list of desirable outcomes, but Sage Yurten is capable of the deed. Once in training the instructors brought us cloned technocracy soldiers and made us stab them to death as a team building exercise. The single worst day for wig outs.
“Does flash training make you schitzo? Or just bring it out? Whatever, I need a real gun. Something along the lines of a dragoon’s phase disruptor cannon or a Technocracy pulsed ion accelerator. And… armor.” I say aloud, searching through Technomancy crates. Most are locked with keypads. Not all that durable but that’s not the point. Keypad locks are merely the warning stickers for those who know. If I try to force the crates open then an explosive charge will detonate, ruining whatever is within the crate and my face for good measure.
“Man, flash training is super useful. I’d be dead without it. If I ever get back to earth… NO, WHEN I get back to Earth I need to steal that tech. We’d be able to catch up earth scientists overnight!” I say, rummaging through unlocked crates.
Missiles and gauss rounds are what I find, all munitions for the rolling buildings they call Juggernauts. No way can I use these, even with power armor I can’t carry or launch such high caliber projectiles. Outside the artillery barrage redoubles. Shells following the Juggernaut’s path. One artillery hit won’t knock out Juggernaut, since artillery comes from the top the treads are relatively safe too. But arty could destroy enough guns to make it combat ineffective, forcing a retreat or giving infantry squads a chance to hit them with focused laser fire and anti tank warheads. A few dozen of those badass bitches is enough to knock out anything unshielded.
>Straingineer Zazathur: crap i need an immediate teleport!
>Straingineer Zazathur: Eugenic Hitlerinaina is counting babies!
>Straingineer Zazathur: Feck!
>Straingineer Zazathur: make one zergling and the census bureau shows up
I stare at the text, giggling at whatever a ‘eugenic hitlerina’ is. What a term. Almost sounds like a cranky Abathur, the geneticist from Starcraft who engineered hundreds of beneficial mutations within the zerg swarm. Though he could never quite overcome their greatest weakness, lemon juice.
>Praetorian Panoptes: Zergling? NO. Not on my ship, we have internal defenses. Thena? Want a puppy?
>Human Apollo: A puppyling? THAT’S what you call a WARRIOR? Feck it. I don’t have a choice. Send it. It’ll listen to me right?
>Straingineer Zazathur: Only one way to find out. I’ll tell em to play nice.
>Praetorian Panoptes: say something if they misbehave.
I note how Panoptes switched from the singular to the plural. What exactly has he been cooking?
>Human Apollo: You bet I will.
Two blue ripples appear in space time, almost like a protoss warp in animation, but way faster and less sparkly. Both creatures materialize in seconds. Spines run down their quadruped backs, talons digging into the bunker’s floor as they scent the air. Elongated snouts full of teeth slip open. Like a wolf’s maw, if said wolf had two rows of shark teeth and sabertoothed canines protruding above and below their jaw.
“Sit!” I say, forgetting that I'm wearing a sealed gas mask.
No way they can hear me-
-Both creatures sit, leaning back onto their haunches. Spinal ridges elongate slightly unsheathing four bone spikes with some kind of pressurized fluid contained within. These quadrupeds are anything but zerglings.