StarDestroyer.Net BBS

A bit of writer's block has Promethium in Paradise on the back burner for now, but I am still working on things in between preparing for finals. So here is a semi-original tale, I like to call the Fall of Man, no relation to the videogame. Hope you enjoy.

Fall of Man

Part 1: Big C

Chapter 1: Debrief

They looked better than they had yesterday. This was to say that they looked like they’d been through hell, but only the top three layers instead of all nine, repeatedly. A few hours of intensive medical care, sleep, and a few good meals had done wonders for the only people who knew what exactly had happened out in that field.

While technically the highest ranking member of the group, Pilot Geoff was smart enough and green enough to know that his rank was honorary, so he deferred to Major Novak. Besides, despite the fact that his physical injuries were the least of the five, like all Horror pilots, especially green ones, talking was the last activity he should be doing right after a big battle.

Of course, Major Novak was probably the worst off of all of them; his body barely held together by medical tape and stitches after the pummeling it had gone through. The rest of his crew was in pretty rough shape too, but unlike him when their tank was disabled their hatches had not crumpled shut, trapping them in the burning vehicle for an extra minute. He looked like he would only speak up if he wanted to correct details, and his crew was not in much better shape.

So that left Captain Akira to try and explain what had happened. This was both good and bad. It was good because as a Ranger she had an excellent memory for detail. It was bad because as the only person to start off on foot, she had been no where near the main fighting. Thus her report would be sketchy at best. Plus, despite all that went into making a Ranger capable of surviving where a Horror flight, four tank squadrons, and three mechanized infantry battalions had not, she had still lost an arm less than 24 hours ago.

“So tell me, why is it out of the 1265 soldiers at that position, only 5 came limping back,” General Halsey asks, no venom in his voice, just honest curiosity.

“Sir, I did not personally see the action, but from discussions with my colleagues and simple elementary guesswork during the fight, I can safely say that we hit multiple Avatar squadrons supported by barracudas,” Captain Akira explains.

“Two Dagons, three Hydras, and a Squid, sir,” Lieutenant Avery, Novak’s driver, coughs out.

“Squids aren’t Avatars, Avery,” Lieutenant Kodak, the gunner in the tank crew, points out.

“Wasn’t a Squid,” Geoff says at barely above a whisper, adding on, “But it was an Avatar.”

Letting the slip in military decorum go for the still somewhat rattled group, Halsey asks, “Is that your opinion as a Horror pilot Geoff?”

“Yes sir,” Geoff says with his voice hoarse and strained, no doubt from the involuntary screaming he had suffered.

“So what was it then, pilot?” Halsey inquires gently.

“It was to a Squid what a Dagon or a Hydra is to a barracuda, sir,” Novak interjects, saving Geoff’s exhausted vocal cords from further explanation. Geoff just nods his confirmation.

“It killed one of our Horrors before we even knew what was happening. The other four were forced to ignore the other Avatars just to hold it back, leaving the tanks to fight them unsupported. Colonel Ramirez decided to sacrifice the infantry to the barracudas to let the tanks have a chance against the Avatars. We kneecapped the fuckers, but it cost us half our tanks and the fish fuckers swarmed us… uh, sir,” Avery explains, only barely realizing he was talking to a two star general near the end.

“Yeah, I was down to using APFSDS rounds against infantry at the end, having expending all other rounds, sir,” Kodak adds in.

Halsey frowns at this. Standard load out of a Mk. III Sharkeater tank was ten case shot, ten HEAT rounds, ten APFSDS, twenty short-range fire-flower rounds, and two thousand .50 rounds for the coax machine gun. Expending all anti-infantry and HEAT ammunition meant ridiculous expenditure of ammunition, although in this case it was probably completely justified.

“I can confirm overwhelming presence of infantry sir. I can’t comment on the decisions of the Horror squadron or of Colonel Ramirez, but even without the presence of the enemy Avatars we would have been hard pressed simply by sheer numbers of barracudas, many of them armed with anti-tank gear,” Akira adds in.

“What about the fight between the Horrors and this… super-Avatar?” Halsey asks.

Geoff shudders before clutching his right arm spastically and saying, “It took my arm after killing everyone else, sir.”

Nodding, Novak says, “I had other things on my mind, but I kept an eye on the Horrors throughout the battle, sir. That thing… it tore through Nightmare Shields like they weren’t there. Its very presence nearly blew out our tank’s shielding, and whenever one of the personnel carriers was lost the infantry would go bugfuck nuts if they were within 100m, and line of sight at any range was just as bad.”

“Obviously why Captain Akira did not see anything,” Halsey notes.

“Affirmative sir,” Akira confirms. “My personal shields failed early on in the battle just from the presence of the enemy Avatars, so I avoided the main battle and provided sniper cover whenever I could, mostly by killing AT crews trying to flank our positions.”

“Okay, so now for the big question. How did you survive?” General Halsey asks, a bit more seriously now.

“My scope censored most of it sir, but the last Horror besides Geoff somehow managed to bring down the enemy’s Nightmare Shields at the cost of his life. We put our last two APFSDS rounds into the thing and barely slowed it down before it came charging for us. Kodak rerouted the main cannon’s capacitors into the shields and right when it picked us up he fired. Blew out all of our electronics, but it knocked the fucker flat on his ass…” Novak explains before Halsey interrupts.

“Wait… go back there… the enemy Avatar picked you up?” Halsey asks incredulously.

“One handed,” Geoff says with a shudder.

“Big fucker sir. Honestly, if we had known we were being jammed as effectively as we were, we would have run rather than stay and fight. As it was, we thought we were fighting a holding action until reinforcements came, or possibly even a rear-guard action,” Novak explains.

“So Pilot Geoff was mostly incapacitated, your own tank was damaged, and Captain Akira was, aside from not being outfitted for anti-Avatar work, was not in the area. So how did you escape?” Halsey asks.

“Geoff went completely bugfuck nuts sir. He tackled the fucker and then began ripping it apart with one arm. The remaining barracudas went off the deep end and tried to fight a Horror with their bare hands, but by that point the Avatar was already disintegrating like a dead Squid, so those that weren’t smashed underfoot eventually came to their senses and ran off,” Novak explains. For his part Geoff just nods sheepishly. Berserker rampages amongst Horror pilots were a well-known secret in the military, but under the circumstances Halsey would probably let it slide and just send Geoff for general psych evaluation with the other survivors.

Eyeing Captain Akira’s missing arm, Halsey asks, “And at what point…?”

Sighing in embarrassment, the Ranger says, “Some of the barracudas were fleeing towards my position and I was forced to engage them in close quarters combat, which statistically favours them. I took out three of them with a fragmentation grenade, one with my rifle, and then was forced into hand-to-hand with the final one. Bastard bit my fucking arm off before I knifed him. Sir.”

Halsey accepts this with a shrug. Rangers had done stranger things in the past before.

“Okay, I’ll want a complete AAR from all of you within a week of being cleared fit for duty by the medical and psychiatric staff, but until then you’re all on official medical leave. Dismissed,” General Halsey says, and all those capable of saluting do so before leaving.

Outside the general’s office, Geoff smiles faintly and says weakly, “We have to stop meeting like this.”

Raising his left eyebrow, his right being under a swath of bandages, Novak says, “I thought yesterday was your first combat deployment?”

“We all met six months ago during the Battle of the Chicago March,” Akira states, her memory like a library database.

“Really?” Kodak asks.

“Yeah. I was in one of the refugee convoys…” Geoff begins.

I've decided to make this story follow a non-linear narrative, which is to say that I'll reveal plot points in whatever order I feel like. This chapter will also reveal another source of inspiration for this tale. I'm not quite sure yet if this story will be actually set in the Mythos or just inspired by it.

Chapter 2: The Horror

They told him it would itch, that when he first woke up everything would be strange, that the whole world would seem different, that he would be more sensitive to everything.

They never told him just how bad it would be though. His first thoughts after waking up from the surgery was that he was on fire, that instead of doing what they said they would, they had instead dragged him out into the middle of a field, doused him in gasoline, and set him on fire.

It was obvious from the restraints that they had anticipated this happening, so his wild thrashing did him little harm, and if he was not mistaken, he also had a bit in his mouth to keep him from biting off his own tongue. Almost immediately though, a blessed coolness spread through his body, and soon he relaxed, no longer feeling as though he was on fire.

Within about thirty seconds of awakening, a doctor arrived to look over him. Taking one look at the machines he was hooked up to, the doctor nods and says, “Very good, the nano-surgeons are getting better I see.”

He mumbled something through the bit while the doctor propped up the bed.

“Hmm… oh, well, the procedure used to knock the patients on their ass for weeks, sometimes even months, but now a little morphine-4, a few hours rest and a few minor adjustments and you’re fit for duty in no time,” the doctor states while moving Geoff forward to look at the back of his neck. The motion causes Geoff to twitch involuntarily, and he realizes that the burning sensation earlier was simply the itch of the sheets on the hospital bed against his skin.

“Quite remarkable really,” the doctor comments while pulling out a long, thin, metallic probe. “In two hours they replaced your entire peripheral nervous system and a good chunk of your central nervous system.”

This fact was new to Geoff, and he expressed his discomfort at learning this emphatically through the bit.

“I know, they never tell you these things, but don’t worry, there is no lasting damage. The pain you experienced when you woke up was simply your body’s way of telling you it was confused. You now can handle considerably more bandwidth, so to speak. However, you don’t need most of it for day to day living,” the doctor says while inserting the probe into the hole in the back of Geoff’s head. A few quick twists later, and instead of feeling like he was cooled off, Geoff felt nearly comatose.

“Sorry they couldn’t do that for you during the surgery, but every patient is a little different, so you have to be awake for the final calibration. Thankfully they whipped up this nifty auto-delivery system for the m-4 last year, so instead of having to wait for someone to figure out the dose manually you can feel relief within seconds,” the doctor says cheerfully, putting the probe away.

Geoff mumbled something unintelligible even to him.

Pulling out a data pad, the doctor begins to scribe a few things and says, “I’ll get the restraints in a second and then give you an m-4 neutralizer, but first let me make a note of your calibration data for the techs. Wouldn’t want to experience that kind of wake up call again, now would you?”

Finishing up, the doctor quickly and professionally removes the bit and restraints and then presses a few buttons on one of the machines, causing the sensation of swimming through dreams and champagne to begin to lift from Geoff.

“Feeling better?” The doctor asks.

“Wha?” Geoff murmurs.

“That’s what I hear the most. But in any case, I suppose you’re wondering about that whole replacement thing, right?” The doctor asks.

“Yeah,” Geoff agrees.

“Okay, now they probably dazzled you with technobabble bullshit, but basically the normal human nervous system can’t handle the processing speeds of a Horror, so aside from installing a neural interface, they also removed your medulla oblongata, spinal cord, and every nerve outside your brain, replacing them with superconducting body temperature nanowire and other fun stuff. It’s all organic, and your immune system has already been reprogrammed to accept it, so don’t worry about rejection. They did this because they needed room to fit some extra cybernetics inside your skull and the brain stem is sufficiently simple that they could replace it with a smaller, artificial version. They had to replace everything else because the interface zone between biological and technological nerves takes up the most room, so a double interface would negate all of the space saving they were trying to do in the first place. Thus everything south of the medulla had to go,” the doctor explains.

Blinking a few times and wondering at the strangeness of the sensation, Geoff asks, “Does that mean I have to keep coming in for repairs?”

Shaking his head, the doctor says, “No, the system is self-repairing, and in fact it will continue to grow, eventually replacing all of your nervous system.”

“WHAT?” Geoff screams.

“Calm down,” the doctor says in a tone of voice that says that he’s done this many times before. “The process is slow, occurring at the same rate as cell replacement. Your brain is constantly rewiring itself; this system just makes sure that it uses the best possible wire for the job. If you’re really concerned, you can talk to a cyber-ethics and philosophy specialist, who can go into more detail than I can as to how this won’t turn you into a robot.”

Some what mollified, Geoff relaxes, only to note with some concern that his fingers are twitching involuntarily. Lifting an eyebrow, the doctor pulls out the probe again.

“This happens sometimes. The new techniques retain the majority of the reflexes and muscle memory so we don’t need to retrain you to use your body, but there is occasionally some fine tuning by the body… okay, yeah, nothing to worry about. Incidentally, if you used to play an instrument before the surgery, you’ll probably need a few weeks of retraining to get full fine motor control back,” the doctor says after checking a few things.

Slumping back down, Geoff asks, “So what now?”

Reaching under the bed, the doctor pulls out a vacuum sealed pack of clothes and throws them at Geoff, saying, “I now declare you fit for duty, so put those on and report to your assigned Horror Bay.”

“That’s it?” Geoff asks incredulously.

“That’s it,” the doctor replies, before walking off, probably to see to another patient.

Ten minutes later and Geoff was still wondering about that, but now he was in a formless blue jumpsuit, scratching the cool metal of the implant at the back of his skull where he would be plugged into the most incredible weapon system ever devised by human hands.

He then quashed that thought, remembering the battle between Major Novak and the enemy Avatars, which for all intents and purposes fought like Horrors on the battlefield. Knees on a combat system implied the capacity for kneecapping, which was what the tanks tended to do very, very well. Because of the joint, the knees had less protection and inertial dampening than the rest of the system, so they were the perfect targets for immobilizing an Avatar or a Horror. Once on the ground, an infantryman with a satchel charge could finish the job. Or at least, that was how Novak had explained it.

Still, walking into a bay full of heavily armoured humanoids armed with all manner of oversized implements of destruction, it was very easy to be overawed by them. And they didn’t even have their Nightmare Fields or Shields on yet!

Seeing Geoff enter the bay, an official walked up to him and asked, “Name?”

“Uh… Geoffrey Jaspers,” Geoff says.

“Ah, another new guy. Well, follow me and we’ll fit you to a sarcophagus,” the man says.

“Sarcophagus?” Geoff asks nervously.

“You’ll see,” the man says with an evil grin. Geoff follows nervously behind to an area where large metal boxes are stored, looking indeed like large, upright sarcophagi.

“Hop in there kid,” the man says, gesturing inside. Taking a step forward, Geoff steps into the dark metal box, and then looks at the man for further instruction.

“This is going to feel a little weird, but don’t worry about it,” the man says, pressing a control on the side of the sarcophagus, closing the lid on Geoff, sealing him in darkness. For a moment a flash of claustrophobia takes over, but then something hot and cold at the same time stabs into the back of Geoff’s head.

The first thing Geoff notices is that everything has a strange warp to it, the room outside a bit too small and twisted, like he is looking through a lens with a very slight curvature and imperfection to it. The second is that he can’t feel his body, nor move his arms and legs.

“Don’t panic in there kid, your voluntary nerve impulses have been rerouted from your own limbs to the limbs of your Horror, which you don’t have yet,” the man states, his voice a bit off, but giving Geoff the final clue as to what had happened. He was viewing the outside world through the external camera of the sarcophagus.

Trying to control his panic, Geoff says, “Oh.”

“Don’t worry though, we’ll get all that sorted out right quick,” the man says, gesturing for a crane operator to move over to pick up the now occupied sarcophagus.

“Now that you’re one of us, you get to be on our little secret kid,” the man says as Geoff is picked up and moved slowly through the bay towards a large vacant area with a hatch in the floor.

“You see… we don’t build Horrors the way the propaganda films say we do, all that stuff is just the production of the external battle armour and the weaponry. I mean, you ever wonder why we make giant walking robots with this technology, and not things like, say, tanks? Or why we build external guns instead of integral ones?” The man explains from behind a guardrail while Geoff is lifted out over the closed hatch.

“Well… the truth is, Horrors are the way they are because they grow that way. Good luck kid,” the man says before pressing a large button, opening the hatch to reveal what was beneath while the crane began to lower the sarcophagus.

They had already cut his microphone, so his screams did not disturb anyone when the amorphous black mass reached up and grabbed his sarcophagus, hauling it under, into that inky black mass. For a few brief seconds Geoff experienced every nightmare, fear, and bad experience he had ever had simultaneously, before his mind simply shut down in denial of the worse things that were filling up his head.

Eventually, Geoff came to, but this time, it was as a ten metre tall killing machine crafted out of the worst nightmares his mind could come up with. The amorphous black goo had evolved to suit his dark, subconscious demands for something that could rend and destroy all that stood against him. He had four eyes that saw colours he had never before dreamed. He had claws that he could use to fight one on one with a T-Rex and expect victory. He could run faster than most tanks.

But best of all, he could feel the Nightmare Engine lurking just beneath the surface, ready to be used at a moment’s notice, ready to inflict pain and suffering on others like a mad dog quivering at the end of its chain to attack. With his Nightmare Field he could fill the minds of his enemies with thoughts that would paralyze them, make them claw at their own faces to try and get the terrible sensations out. With his Nightmare Shield, he could use the lesson he had learned in his rebirth to not just deny the nightmares of others, but to deny their bullets and bombs too.

Geoff was a god!

Just as it had begun, the thought ended as an external override caused the torso of the Horror to blossom open and reveal the sarcophagus at the centre, and then for the sarcophagus to open, ejecting Geoff in a spray of amniotic fluid. Landing hard on a net there just to catch him, he looked up as several cranes began to stack brand new armour and weaponry for the brand new Horror, while technicians gathered to install it.

The man that had done this to Geoff was there, bottle of something in his hand. Passing it to Geoff, he says, “Don’t try and speak, your larynx is probably like a steak run over a belt sander right now.”

Sprawling over on his back, Geoff looks up at the hulking mass of unnatural flesh, and finally, truly knows why they call them Horrors.

Now that's just cool.

Now that I've given this universe's handwave for why it has giant humanoid fighting machines, I present the tanks. Also, if you want, try and guess just what the Horrors are actually made from, seeing as they're probably the most obscure Mythos element so far.

Chapter 3: The Tank

“Shit ass motherfucker, take this fucking cunt fucker you donkey shit fucking, douche sucking piece of your mother’s cum-stained ass fucked diarrhoea pad!” Lieutenant Kodak howls gleefully while blowing an enemy tank away. Kodak wasn’t allowed a radio unless it was an emergency, because he was a distraction on the battlefield.

Of course, inside the tank Novak and Avery still had to listen to Kodak’s coprolalia, but then again he had to put up with their various psychological disorders as well, so they had all learned to put up with it. Over the years since developing the problem, Kodak had learned to only mutter the stream of obscenities that poured out of his mouth whenever he got into a tank, but in the heat of battle he often forgot to control his voice.

Strapped into his command chair, neural interface helmet over his head, Novak watched the kinetic penetrator punched through several centimetres of plasma metals and nano-ceramics sandwiched together to make the Chobham armour of the last century look like soft butter. Slowed down to transonic speeds by its passage through the armour, the round, now more like a ball of liquid metal than a shaft of tungsten wrapped in a layer of plasma deposited hafnium diboride with a nano-diamond penetrator tip. Of course, considering the fact that they hit the magazine, this was a very desirable state of affairs.

“Target destroyed! Next target at TDP 6, one round canister then a burst of the coax. Avery, move us forward in support of 3rd platoon, one quarter speed,” Novak orders while compulsively fingering the gold disc around his neck. It might have once been a coin, but years of worrying it had worn it down and forced Novak to have several layers of new gold plasma deposited just to try and slow down the destruction of his lucky charm.

The engines hummed, driving the tank forward at twenty kilometres per hour over the broken terrain that had once been a moderately sized Midwest town before the dark times came and people began abandoning such places for the relative safety of the Arks. Now it was the site of an intense pitched battle between the forces of the Republic of North America and the Nameless Ones, one of the larger cults that had joined in on the butchery started by the barracudas twenty years ago.

“Eat my fucking high velocity spooge you fucking yellow shit stains!” Kodak cries out before sending the impulse to the gun to fire through his own neural helmet. Up in the turret, the capacitors, charged up by a fusion reactor independent from the one reactor in the chassis, dump an obscene amount of electrical energy into the superconductors of the main cannon, accelerating the canister shot to hypersonic velocities. Containing thousands of tiny, twisted discs of high strength ceramics sharpened to a razor’s edge. The attack, while having little chance of penetrating tank armour is extraordinarily anti-personnel in nature.

The building that had been housing an entire company of Nameless infantry simply disintegrated in a massive arc as the tiny whirling blades cut through rotted wood, crumbling concrete, and rusty iron as easily as flesh and body armour. A few hundred metres behind the ruins the few discs that had not met significant resistance exploded as their ablative layers failed and air resistance destroyed the cores and thus the aerodynamic shape. Some crews called canister shot ‘cracklers’ because of the sharp bang and flash of light associated with the discs reaching their limit.

Along the edge of the destruction zone, yellow robed fanatics stumbled out, confused and dazzled by the destruction and the light show put on by the plasma trails generated by the chunks of ceramic moving at speeds normally associated with orbital mechanics. This put them right in the sights of Kodak and his machine-gun, along with the guns of 3rd platoon.

“Constellation has detected another enemy tank at position- FUCK!” Novak cries out as a crew with an anti-tank missile launcher rushes out of cover to take a shot at the rear armour of the tank. The yellow of their robes obscured by liberal applications of grey dust, the two showed considerably better tactics than most of the Nameless, giving them a shot their comrades probably would have never had.

It only took a second to set up and deploy the launcher, and another to aim and fire, which was two seconds too soon for the tank to respond to such an attack. Still, Avery did his best to swing the more vulnerable rear armour away from the attack. It was not enough to avoid the missile though, and a warhead that would have been considered hardened bunker busting by earlier generations slammed into the tank and lifted one of the treads into the air with the blast.

The whole world spun and the crew were thrown hard against their restraints. Amazingly though when Novak opened his eyes he was still receiving data from the tank, and better yet, his HUD showed that they were all still in one piece and sheltered in a burned out husk of a building. Doing a quick review, Novak quickly comes to one single, inescapable conclusion.

“Avery, did you drift the tank?” Novak asks incredulously.

“The missile did most of the work,” Avery replies depreciatingly.

“When we get back, remind me to find the engineers that designed the drive-train for the Mk. III Sharkeater so I can personally thank them,” Novak replies.

“Will do sir,” Avery replies cheekily.

Opening up a radio link, Novak says, “This is Major Novak, I have just been hit by an ATM, Nightmare shields are down to soft status. Constellation data has been updated. Please assist.”

Outside there is a series of explosions, and a few seconds later the constellation data Novak is receiving is updated to show the elimination of the target. Shortly after that Novak hears over the radio, “Thanks for the assist back there major, just returning the favour.”

Recognizing the voice of Lieutenant Romero from 3rd platoon, Novak says, “Thanks anyway. Okay, Avery, get us out of here and get us into flanking positions with the enemy tank…”

Suddenly the radio crackled to life and the voice of Lieutenant General Halsey was heard to say, “Attention, this is a general pull back order. Enemy Avatars have slipped the main battle line and are now heading for the refugee convoy. All tanks are to break off attack and move to engage the Avatars at point Alpha. Infantry are to support the break off and then move to assist if possible.”

“Titty-fucking Buddha on a shit dildo!” Kodak cries out upon hearing the news.

“Can it Kodak! We lose the convoy then there was no point to this battle. Avery, get us to where we need to go, top possible speed,” Novak orders.

“Yes sir,” Avery answers perhaps too gleefully. Avery’s disorder was stunt driving with a fifty tonne main battle tank. The only reason he had not been hauled off of the front lines already was that he was very good at his job.

“Don’t get ahead of the other tanks. There’s no way in hell I want to attack an enemy Avatar alone,” Novak says, unwittingly painting a large target upon himself for the Fates to take a shot at later.

“How many cocksucking leghumpers are there?” Kodak asks while they begin the breakout from the burnt out town.

“Constellation says two Kings in Yellow, one armed with a neutron cannon, the other with a Staff of Madness,” Novak replies.

Having joined up with the rest of their squadron, Avery’s lead foot putting them in the lead, they begin crossing a bridge one at a time so as to not over stress the aging frame. Any other tank commander would have berated his driver for driving too fast over the bridge, but Novak had long ago learned to let Avery have his fun the way he learned to ignore Kodak’s swearing.

Today that saved them all when a 300mm HE shell landed in the middle of the bridge. A slower tank would have been hit directly, and as it was with the bridge collapsing around them, only the fact that Avery was crazy enough to not panic and keep going saved them from being dumped in the river. Still, the fact that Avery chose the more dangerous looking part of the bridge just so that he could jump the tank would probably earn him a verbal reprimand later, despite the fact that it turned out to be the better course of action.

Once his teeth stopped rattling from the landing, Novak radioed, “Colonel, please advise.”

After a moment’s pause, Lieutenant Colonel Anderson replies, “Keep going, the mission is time critical. Join up with Squadron 6 while we find another crossing point.”

“Acknowledged sir,” Novak replies with a hint of bitterness. He understood the order, but he also knew that basic training drilled into them one very basic fact. The best way to attack an Avatar was combined arms with tanks, Horrors, infantry, artillery, and close air support. The worst way was unsupported tanks, which was still better than any method not involving tanks or Horrors as SOP demanded unsupported infantry, artillery, or aircraft to just run from Avatars.

Novak and his men were being sent to try and distract the Avatars with their deaths long enough for the others to catch up.

Gritting his teeth and rubbing the disc near manically, Novak says, “Let’s go Avatar hunting.”

Chapter 4: Hush

Geoff was drained, emotionally and physically, and after the quick reunion with the fellow soldiers with whom he had an entangled fate, he left for the one thing that made his life bearable, his private suite. Despite the glamorous appeal the propaganda tried to wrap around the Horror pilots, one merely had to look at pictures to see that they were all haunted by what they saw. With the traits that made a pilot rare and only appearing at random, the only way to get pilots was to offer a large benefits package.

The trip out of the barracks and through the outer habs of the fortress city called the Colorado Ark took only a few minutes on the high speed train system, nearly empty at this time of day, gave Geoff a little time to relax and try and come to grips with what had happened less than 48 hours previously.

The soft hum of the train and his quiet breathing stood in stark contrast to the shriek of metal and Horror flesh tearing and his own involuntary screams in the dark of the sarcophagus. His arm twitched spastically in memory of the event. How too the smooth plascrete lines of the train tunnel differed from the blasted wasteland outside. Here, within the walls and shields of the city, people could go about their lives, peaceful and happy, while outside, nothing sane lived.

Just like Chicago.

A silent tear fell at those memories, but Geoff quickly suppressed them. Some part of his mind told him that he had buried something important there, and he knew that his dreams would be haunted again. Not that he would get much help. If he complained too much or he started to become suicidal, all the authorities would do would prescribe him drugs while off duty to keep him stable.

Post traumatic stress disorder was considered an asset for Horror pilots.

His lips twitched at the thought at what his friends had gone through. It was said that every last soldier in the RNA suffered from some sort of mental disorder. For most, only combat stress could bring it out, something to do with the lack of heavy-duty Nightmare Shields out in the field, but a good percentage also suffered from more standard ailments, the effects of seeing people, friends and comrades, die, most of the time quite horrifically.

The barracudas were recent additions to the list of foes the Colorado Ark fought, their primary enemies being the Nameless from the Western side of the Rockies and the Northmen raiding down across Canada from their Arctic citadels, but those groups were still quite awful. The Nameless, with their awful brands and symbols, converting those that they captured in terrible orgies of violence and depravity, forcing former friends to become near mindless fanatics. The Northmen, with their strange ice weaponry, freezing people solid and then feasting cannibalistically on the frostbitten remains.

The mad were guard the sane from worse madness, and the sane had no sympathy for them. Quite the bitter irony.

Getting off at his station, Geoff was amused at how people would hush as he passed, afraid of the uniform he wore and the haunted look in the hollows of his eyes. Afraid of him. Frankly, he didn’t blame them. He carried the stink of war upon him mentally, if not physically. It was the smell of blood and smoke and split entrails, and the fewer people who had to know it, the better.

Eventually he left the transit terminal and exited out into the quiet, upper middle class neighbourhood where he lived. Space was tight even before the arrival of the refugees, so it was still an apartment complex like most of the living space in the Ark, but it was a nice one with large rooms and thick walls, and the neighbourhood was nice and neat and orderly with fresh green parks and neatly maintained streets.

But best of all, one could see the sun from here. True, it was obscured directly most of the time by other, richer neighbourhoods, but seeing as they were within the Pyramid instead of the Block, plenty came through or was reflected off of other buildings to give the impression of sunlight most of the time.

Entering the foyer of his apartment, Geoff silently waved at the guard sitting at the front desk, who merely nodded. A former soldier, he had simply broken down one day and been discarded like a damaged part, easily replaced. He was lucky though in that he could still function in ordinary life, and had managed to secure himself an easy job where while the pay was lousy, he at least got to live away from the despair of the lower levels, part of his pay being a small apartment in the basement with his wife and children.

Geoff wondered if he should feel bad that he only felt sympathy for the man he knew, despite the fact that there had to be tens of thousands with identical stories in worse positions. Of course, the fact that the guard was the one giving him the sympathetic looks was the worst bit, because it was not misplaced.

Horror pilots did not break, were too precious to break. Breaking implied that there were pieces left over afterwards. They either died in battle or were given two quick, merciful .45s to the back of the head after they were finally used to the point of annihilation.

Geoff wondered which one would be his fate before dismissing the thought. Neither option was pleasant.

Riding the elevator up to his apartment on the thirtieth floor, listening to the muzaked turn of the century thrash metal grindcore piped into the car with mild annoyance. He might be crazy, but whoever had butchered the song, no matter how little he might have thought of the original, deserved to be shot.

Exiting the elevator, he walked down the hall, the only other person one of the maids quietly vacuuming the greyish-beige carpet, dull enough to not show stains easily but bright enough to look high class. He nodded to her politely, and she returned the gesture, sharing the same broken look as the guard downstairs. He might not know her story, but he could guess. Again, he found it ironic that most people who worked in the background here had lost a piece of themselves outside in that nightmarish landscape, away from the happy, sane people, and yet here he was, more damaged than most, and he was probably one of the richest and most influential people in the whole building.

Opening the door to his apartment by placing his hand on the biometric lock, he went inside, taking off the coat that identified him as a Horror pilot, and then went to his bedroom and sat down on the bed, staring out the window at the city and just beyond, the peaks of the Rockies and open air.

As he sat in silence, Cassie came in quietly and settled onto his lap. She was wearing his clothing, which considering the size difference between the two of them meant that all she had on was one of his shirts draped over her shoulders like a tent, a sure sign she was stressed. And why shouldn’t she be? The past week since he went on deployment must have been hell on her, especially when they called to say that he was hospitalized in battle.

For the first time that day though, a smile broke his face that was not ironic. Having to pull her off that bridge, kicking and flailing, was the worst moment of his life and the final thing needed for him to go to the recruiter, looking for a way to get her out of the camps as quickly as possible. As it turned out, he had got her far, far away from the kind of environment that caused her to panic, caused her to try and complete the task she had started before Geoff found her.

Gently raising her chin with his hand, his fingers running over the bullet scar that had taken her vocal cords and nearly took her life, he looked deeply into her brown eyes, and told her without words that it was alright, that he was here now. No words had passed between them, not even a one sided conversation, since he had become a pilot. She had no voice, and he would probably permanently lose his as well before the year was out.

Besides, there was no need for words. They had both lost good chunks of their humanity, her in the bayou plantation hells of Louisiana, him in the man made abomination against nature called a Horror. Thus, their non-verbal body language sometimes bordered on the animalistic, at least in Geoff’s mind. Not that he cared, for while he suspected the apartment was bugged, no one cared what he did so long as he was still capable of fighting.

Cassie leaned into his chest and closed her eyes, content with the world so long as he was still in it, and he rested his head on hers, happy just to have the warmth of another person next to him rather than the cold wetness of a Horror sarcophagus.

Eventually he drifted off to sleep, exhaustion and contention lulling him away, away to that city beneath the waves that haunted his dreams, the place that should not- could not- be real, where the monsters lurked, tormenting him with the impossibility of their existence.

This time though, when that great squid headed monstrosity opened a hateful, rheumy eye to stare at him, he stared back, and was not afraid, for the socket was empty, the eyeball held crushed in Geoff’s hand. The other monsters screamed hateful in the lightless water, but their protests were useless. He had wounded their god.

Already some were whispering that he had to be god to do that.

Geoff woke with a start, rousing Cassie from her slumber as well, the two of them having fallen asleep and slumped over onto the bed. For just a moment, Cassie’s eyes were frantic and inhuman, no doubt thinking she was back in one of those camps where the barracudas ruled. Her fingernails began to dig into Geoff’s chest in terror, and would have drawn blood if not for the shirt he wore. This had happened before, but staring up at her, it was a full three seconds before she regained her sense of time and space and relaxed, collapsing onto him and curling up tightly.

For a moment Geoff wondered why she felt so hot against his body, until he realized that his whole body was cool and clammy for some strange reason, although it probably explained the prolonged panic attack Cassie suffered upon waking. Lots of bad memories involving cool and clammy skin there.

Putting an arm over her and wrapping the sheets about the two of them, Geoff hoped he wouldn’t have any other dreams that would wake her like that.

Creepy. I don't know what this is from, but it's good.

Huh? Has this only been dead for two weeks? Ah well, I blame finals and writing ADHD. I might never resume this, I might do so tomorrow, but basically this whole setting was kick started by me seeing this:



My first thought was of course "Cooooooool!", followed by me looking into the RPG. Not seeing much information at the time, I started dreaming up my own version of humanity struggling its last against the horrors of Lovecraft in the near future. Because as stupid as mecha are, there is just something innately awesome about getting in a fist fight with a gigantic horror from beyond the stars with a giant robot.

Was... was that a shoggoth mech? At any rate, you've got my attention.

Man, where were you guys when I had inspiration ? And yeah, they grow the Horrors using a shoggoth-like organism as the base with a human acting as the central nervous system through a cybernetic link and buffer system. The capacity to successfully interface with a Horror is based upon genetic factors that appear randomly within all human populations, resulting in the military taking anyone who has the potential as a pilot, which has resulted in some interesting hold-overs from when the Horror program was originally envisioned as a special forces rather than a desperate stop gap measure against enemy Avatars.

Actually, if you guys don't mind the somewhat slightly spoilerish nature of such a thing, I might write up a sort of technically glossary to try and get the juices flowing again.

Very intriguing short stories and setting, Academia Nut; the Nameless Ones sound like a WH40K Chaos cult, the Avatars seem to be gigantic demonic monsters and the barracudas are their demon spawn footsoldiers (like the soldier demons in Gears of War). The Horrors are psychic constructs related to the hinted at paranormal disaster and Arks are fortified cities holding out against the supernatural evil that is threatening humanity. Does my speculatory rambling make sense?

You're half right, and half wrong Big Orange. More specifically, while it would have a bit of a WH40K feel, that is because they share a similar root in the style of their horror, that being H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos. While 40k borrows implicitly in the way of its distant, uncaring gods who seek to destroy humanity as an incidental to their mad plots, I'm borrowing more explicitly. If you look up some of the mythos material, specifically the names of the Avatars I'm using, you will see exactly what I'm getting at.

But you did get the Arks spot on. In fact, I'm thinking of calling them Arkologies, just to make them a second order portmanteau.

I'm bored and need to reorganize my thoughts for this story, so here's a little tech discussion.

Nightmare Technology

Nightmare technology is based off of the generation and control of Helsinki Radiation, named after the first university to detect this strange form of energy. Uncontrolled Helsinki Radiation is often described of as propogating in macroscopic wave-functions some consider eerily similar to higher order electron orbits, only on the metre instead of the picometre scale. While discussions on the fundamental nature of Helsinki radiation have more or less ground to a halt as most concern has gone into simply using it, there is no resolution as to whether the radically non-Euclidean geometry is a result of higher dimesnion mechanics or some other, possibly stranger mechanism.

Helsinki radiation is strange in other ways in that it breaks normal particle-wave duality, giving it peculiar interaction properties, the biggest one being that it only interacts with other objects when they are in a what would be described as a primarily wave-like state. The most common interactions cause what has been described of as "premature quantum decoherence", which is to say that it breaks down superposition faster than would normally occur, which ironically causes a loss of interaction with many systems as they become more particle-like. Or more simply, Helsinki Radiation interacts poorly with normal matter and energy, but tends to screw around with some very basic interactions. On a more practical level, Helsinki Radiation will tend to penetrate the natural electromagnetic shielding of the human skull and then disrupt the gestalt electromagnetic patterns generated by the brain, causing sleep loss, disorientation, headaches, mental health break down, psychosis, and death, depending upon intensity and duration. Thus the appelation "Nightmare" attached to applications of Helsinki radiation.

The official unit of measure for Helsinki Radiation is the paavo (SI abbreviation Paa), which is defined as the root-mean-square of the flux in a three dimensional volume of 1m^3, a strange measure for a strange energy that does not behave like normal forms of radiation. However, this unit tends to be "large", so the more common unit of the giger is used. The giger is 1 micropaavo, the name being derived from the colloquialism of the first handheld detectors being called "Giger counters" by those that morbidly pointed out the similarity in design and function to Geiger counters and the name of a certain 20th Century artist known for his strange works. Here is a summary of a range of radiation levels and their effects.

1 pPaa (1 microgiger)- Lowest level currently ever detected, within a specially isolated chamber. Results of experiment were deemed classified
100 pPaa (100 microgiger)- Background radiation before the dark times, sources unknown but suspected to be a combination of terrestrial radiation, solar activity, and cosmic activity. Ideal levels for inside of RNA Arkologies.
36.7 nPaa (0.0367 giger)- Official count of the first measure of Helsinki Radiation, detected in an experiment performed at the University of Helsinki
700 nPaa (0.7 giger)- Official cut-off point for where radiation levels begin to interfere with human brain activity. Short term effects are near undetectable, sometimes just a tingle for particularly sensitive people, but long term effects include the development of paranoia and obsessive compulsive behaviours
850 nPaa - 1.27 μPaa (.85-1.27 giger)- Standard operating range for the inside of a Shark Eater tank. Short and long term effects similar to minimal exposure levels, but take less time to develop
5-70 μPaa (5-70 giger)- Background radiation levels within the wasteland. Short term effects can include headaches, temporary disorientation, and the occasional pseudo-epileptic outburst. Long term effects include severe paranoia, various neuroses, and with sufficient exposure complete psychotic breaks with reality
500 μPaa - 300 mPaa (500 - 300,000 giger)- Typical output range of a Nightmare Field for a Horror or an Avatar. Short term effects include hallucinations, dissociative fugue states, manic behaviour, and psychotic breaks that may range in duration from a few hours to permanently. Long term effects are invariably psychosis and death.
28.781 Paa (28.781 megagiger)- Specific output of a King in Yellow Avatar's Staff of Madness. Duration is very brief, but effects typically involve permanent violent psychotic behaviour. No known reason for the very specific and precise output.
1 TPaa (10^18 giger)- Localized output of a typical Nightmare Shield. Note that this is only within the shield itself, radiation levels typically drop away to a few giger above background levels within centimetres of the event horizon. See Nightmare Shields for effects.

One other peculiarity of Helsinki Radiation is the "Seeing is believing" effect. Theorized to be a combination of the radiation "hitching a ride" on wave-like photons and the holes in the skull formed by the eyes, the seeing a point source of Helsinki Radiation is known to cause extra damage to the human brain.

Nightmare Shields- Used by Avatars, Horrors, Arkologies, and RNA armoured fighting vehicles, these shields generate a localized breakdown of the wave nature of the space-time continuum itself, creating what is sometimes defined as "particulate vacuum". Along the event horizon of the shield, nothing exists and nothing can pass between the two sides. In practice, a perfect shield is impossible as this would blind and constrain whatever is being shielded, along with being incredibly power intensive to generate, so a semi-permeable membrane against the outside world is a better description of what is actually formed. In normal parlance, the shield can be "hard" or "soft". Hard blocks physical attacks and isolates the inside of the shield from external Helsinki radiation, while soft only blocks Helsinki radiation. The RNA produces three types. Type I shields are only available to Horrors, as the generator is actually an organ within their Horrors. These are by far the best form of Nightmare shield in terms of power efficiency and the definition of the field, which affects how well the energy is applied. Type II shields are the massive generators used to protect the Arkologies from the effects of the wasteland and from outside attack. Type III are the small, relatively inefficient systems used on AFVs to protect the crews. Curiously enough, the RNA and other human governments are the only ones to use Type IIIs, with enemy vehicles relying instead upon physical armour for protection (the crews tend to already be insane), and in instances of captured vehicles being used by enemy forces, the shields are invariably turned off.

Nightmare Engine- A strange organ within Horrors that act as a power plant, Nightmare Shield generator, and Nightmare Field projector. Capable of directing the Helsinki Radiation engine through the field projector, Horrors can disrupt enemy formations by causing the members to literally go insane (or at least moreso than they already were), collapsing into comas or turning upon one another.

---

Wow... that quantum physics course seems to have done bad things to my brain. Well, anyway, sorry about my technobabble, I think I'm now primed to pick this story back up again.

Stuff of this depth is the sort of thing that people should get money for, Academia. World's unfair, though.. bummer.

Keep it up anyway.

Chapter 5: Training

They had completed “upgrading” his Horror, which was to say that they had encased it in heavy armour to give it a little extra protection, hard points for the weapons to be installed, and a way to conceal the disturbing nature of the beast. It now looked considerably less organic and spiky and more robotic and blocky.

In the days since he had first stepped into the sarcophagus, Geoff had been slowly coming to grips with the experience and acclimatizing to his new home in the Pyramid. He had also discovered to his bemusement the various, ultimately futile, attempts by Internet generals to classify the various forms of Horrors. They had come up with all sorts of model numbers and such, but ultimately each Horror was unique and only the external armour tended to stay similar, but in the way individually fitted suits of full plate armour stayed similar.

He had also spent his time with Cassie, and discovered that when she wasn’t a suicidal, depressed wreck of a human being, she was actually rather a bit of a kinky slut. This of course worried Geoff and left him felling confused and somewhat ashamed at times, but they had managed to come to a compromise at intensive, clothing optional snuggling sessions. Geoff would still sometimes sit and stare out his window, wondering if his actions were right, but Cassie liked to interrupt such brooding in her own way.

It was amazingly difficult to feel angst when a naked woman was pressing her bosom against your shoulders and nibbling at your ear.

Of course, when sitting in a flight suit designed to be easily washed of various organic fluids waiting to get into a gigantic monster sculpted by your greatest fears, angst came with an ease and alacrity that made Geoff wonder why none of the pilots were wearing make-up other than Bob. And Bob was a drag queen. Who dressed like Marilyn Monroe. In combat boots. While piloting his Horror.

“You ready kid?” One of the ground crew asked, gesturing to the now complete work on his Horror, gleaming in its brand new gear.

“No,” Geoff admits, but gets up anyway.

“Good. I have yet to meet anyone who actually is ready to get into one of those things,” the man says, patting Geoff on the shoulder reassuringly.

Gulping nervously, Geoff nervously approaches the ladder leading up to the open sarcophagus sticking out of the chest, sections of armour plate open to allow ingress and egress from the Horror. Looking nervously at the claustrophobic space, he puts one foot inside before turning to the crew assigned to him and asking, “I know this must seem abrupt and rather ill-timed, but am I allowed to decorate the inside of the sarcophagus?”

Shrugging, the crew chief says, “It won’t matter, but yeah, so long as there is no danger of flying debris, you can damn well do whatever you want to the inside or outside of your Horror. It never makes the news, but one guy painted his Horror bright pink with flowers and glitter and even got some lace and frills. Scariest fucking thing I have ever seen.”

Thinking about that for a moment, Geoff shudders and wonders at what the experience of Horror piloting would unlock within him.

Stepping fully into the sarcophagus, he watches in mute dread as the walls close around him, sealing him in darkness. Like the first time he was within the horrible metal coffin, there is a sharp pain at the back of his head, cold and yet hot at the same time. And then, he was no longer Geoffrey Jaspers, refugee turned wannabe soldier, he was Geoff, Horror! He was no mere pilot when inside the sarcophagus, he was the Horror itself, and what a heady experience that was.

It wasn’t quite as bad as the megalomaniacal thoughts of godhood when the Horror first formed, and he suspected it had to do with the armour around him, but he would be a liar if he said that the experience didn’t feel absolutely incredible. He would also be a liar if he said that he didn’t want to kill things in a wide variety of violent ways.

That was perhaps the most peculiar and terrifying thing about the entire experience. He was hearing whispers in the back of his head, perhaps not actual voices, but urges nonetheless, that made him want to go and do some very dark things. It was, surprisingly, not as psychotic as he thought it might be, as he did not actually want to do said things to everyone, just his enemies. That which scared him the most was that he couldn’t be certain that the urgings originated from the Horror.

“You okay in there kid?” The crew chief asked, absolutely tiny from Geoff’s vantage point several metres up, with a host of sensory systems that gave him probably twice as many different ways of viewing the world as his standard five senses. Three to four times as many if you counted the various forms of electromagnetic radiation as different from sight. The data input was immense, yet somehow, probably those extra implants that required Geoff losing his original nervous system, he could handle and interpret it all.

Geoff went to say something, but then paused as he realized that he did not remember the man’s name, and for some reason it struck him that he needed to know his symbiote’s name. He was then struck about thinking about another human being like that. He almost would have preferred to have thought of the man as a servant, but the thought came unbidden and it was rather like considering the ground crew like Egyptian Plover Birds, useful creatures to scratch his back and keep him healthy, but ultimately beneath the concerns of the crocodiles they serviced.

Finally he responded, “Umm… I’m doing weird.”

Nodding, the chief replies, “Weird is okay, so long as you can talk and have no intention of eating us.”

“Well then how would I get good dentistry?” Geoff asks half jokingly, wondering why he had said such a thing and if anyone would catch the reference, and if anyone did if they would be offended.

Fortunately, none of the ground crew seemed to get the reference, and the chief just said, “I’ll take that as a no.”

Geoff wanted to laugh, but rather he found his thoughts drifting. How did he think of other people while inside the Horror? Cassie immediately rose to the surface, and the thoughts that came unbidden to him made him glad that there was several feet of armour plating and alien organic matter between him and anyone else, seeing as he was certain that his face was blushing hard enough to radiate in the visible spectrum. At least he didn’t think of her as beneath him, although he was unsure if he had ever been into any of those fetishes before.

“Okay kid; let’s see if you can actually move that thing,” the chief prompts, continuing with, “Start by raising the arms.”

For a moment Geoff is paralyzed, unable to act, until he realizes that he’s thinking about trying to move his arm, rather than actually moving it, and he would have never been able to move his own arm trying it that way. So instead, he just moves his arms, and the Horror responds as if they were his own, which in a way, they were.

Nodding, the chief then says, “Okay, now try to stand up.”

Again, a moment of doubt paralyzes him, until he just stands up, he this is a bit different from simply raising his arms. Various strength-to-mass ratios mean that at ten metres in height, the Horror cannot under normal conditions have the same motion dynamics as a human being. That said, various inertial compensators mean that the Horror could actually behave in a far more poised and graceful manner than a human being ever could, what with Geoff capable of altering his centre of mass almost at will.

If he knew how to properly use said compensators.

Thus Geoff got up in a rather ungraceful manner as he tried to get up from a sitting position like he normally did, only to discover that the Horror would not move like that, and then for him to instinctively activate the inertial compensators to get the desired performance, only to over correct and end up practically leaping about like some sort of idiot before he finally found his balance and stopped moving, standing stationary and upright.

Nodding at this, the chief says, “I’ve seen worse in my time. Now go on and head on over to the firing range, where you can practice using your Nightmare Engine and not fry all of our brains.”

Nodding at this, Geoff begins to take a few tentative steps towards the large shielded room that had more in common with an aircraft hangar than a firing range. He eventually settled into a sort of hunched gait, rather ungainly in nature and appearing rather feral to those outside, but it seemed to come the most naturally to Geoff.

Entering the firing range rendered on giant scale, Geoff watched as enormous blast doors began to close and shields began to spring up to keep out the unpleasant effects of a Horror in full combat mode. The ground crew had moved to a heavily armoured observation post overlooking the firing range.

“Okay, on the platform before you, you will find a standard assortment of Horror sized weaponry, ranging from the somewhat impractical yet still useful Nightmare Sword, to the popular Mutilator shotgun and Slayer battle rifle, toping out with the uncommon Angel of Death sniper rifle and Hellfire rocket launcher,” one of the crew explains, referring to the wide assortment of weaponry that looked like infantry gear scaled up. This was actually misleading as fusion reactors could not scale down to give infantry anywhere close to the power these guns did. These weapons had more in common with the ones on tanks than any sort of infantryman.

Except of course for the Nightmare Sword, but that was a rather exotic weapon that only made sense in the context of a Horror, and even then saw little use. Melee combat was rather idiotic when you had access to weaponry that was really only restricted by the curvature of the Earth and could see through most obstacles. Still, the simple weapon had an allure that caused Geoff to pick it up first, considering it.

The weapon in its current form was little more than a simple coil of superconducting matter wrapped in an armoured sheath, but if a Horror Pilot knew how to use it, a blade best described of as a hole in the universe would spring forth, a modification of the Nightmare Shields for decidedly more offensive purposes. Tighter and more focused than a normal shield, only Nightmare Shields had a hope in hell of resisting that awful cutting edge. Apparently the weapon design had been transmitted from the Beijing Ark shortly before contact was lost ten years ago.

Wondering where all this knowledge was coming from, Geoff set the sword aside, knowing that he couldn’t use it, and instead picked up the Slayer battle rifle. Simple and rugged, it was the standard weapon of the Horror, basically an auto-fire rail gun; it was capable of hosing down a target with 300 supersonic rounds a minute, fed from a detachable magazine carrying 100 35x80mm diamond tipped tungsten-steel rounds, powered by an independent internal fusion reactor, with sufficient fuel for 20,000 rounds, and refuelling was possible in the field. The superconductors in the barrel would begin disintegration after 100,000 rounds, but the barrel could also be swapped out in the field. In all, it carried significantly less punch than the main gun of a Mk. III Shark Eater tank and less versatility, but the higher rate of fire and ammunition capacity made it a good choice for a Horror.

Figuring now that he was receiving this information through his cybernetic link to the Horror, Geoff just shrugs, a decidedly more intimidating action by the enormous Horror than by a human, and brings the weapon up to his shoulder. While possessing no form of sight, it is a moot point considering that targeting reticules and range information immediately pop into view in Geoff’s sight. Asking for an iron sight on one of these things was like asking if one could attach a cane to a rifle, seeing as how the only way Geoff would be without this targeting information would be if he were blind.

At the far end of the firing range, holographic targets began to spring up, and Geoff began shooting them, almost bored by the clinical nature of the task. The Horror did not breathe, the gun had no kick once he figured out how to apply inertial dampening to it, and he instinctively could calculate ballistics to a degree normally only artillery crews cared about, but in fractions of a second.

He knew that his ground crew, and others, were watching, carefully assessing how he handled the weapons and his temperament with them. For the most part, the weapons bored him, but he quickly found that he enjoyed the mayhem of the Mutilator, which was basically a 120mm cannon firing case shot, and the nuclear afterglow of the 4.5mg of antimatter in the Hellfire missile launcher made him smile. He was also consistently drawn by the allure of the Nightmare Sword. He still had no idea how to use it, but he was sure he would figure it out.

“Okay, that’s enough for today Geoff,” the crew chief says over the radio, and Geoff knew that if a faceless killing machine could look disappointed, his Horror did.

“But I just got started and…” Geoff begins.

“You’ve been in there for seven hours now kid and you’re pumping out almost 60,000 giger in Helsinki Radiation from your Horror. We’ll come back tomorrow and do more tests and start with your Nightmare Engine training, but you’re probably an assault specialist by inclination,” the chief says, causing Geoff to pause and consider this.

Putting down the Mutilator, he flexes his clawed, man crushing hands, and wonders why the need to rip and tear flesh is so strong in him, until he remembers that dark night back in Chicago when he and a section of piping had giving two barracudas a demonstration of why the word “medieval” belonged to humans, and not them.

He suddenly very much doubted that the urgings at the back of his mind came from the Horror, or at least not entirely. The raw power available to him just brought it out from his normally timid mind.

And it scared him that no one would care about this so long as he did it to the enemy.

Excellent quality. Man, you got any other writing? Like, stuff not online, paper I mean. I'd love to get my hands on some of that, judging by the quality of this story so far.

I do most of my writing on the computer, and I haven't been published at all, so I don't really have anything on paper, except for this one story I was working on in late December/early November when my computer died, but that one was a bit insane by even my standards. While I think it was well written, I'm still not quite sure what catalyzed the idea of a Harry Potter/Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's crossover in the first place.

Hmm... some tense errors are popping out at me, but beyond that it's fairly good.

Yeah, sorry about the tenses as always, I honestly can't see them. If you see anything paticularly glaring and grating that you can't let it go, just PM me or something and I'll clear up the mistake.

It just takes practice to start noticing it. Then you become like Pick, and can't help but bring it to other's attention.

Also, some sentence structure is a little odd. I'll go over it later, right now I need to write a paper.

Today's game is, as usual, spot the Lovecraft references, as that will make understanding this a hell of a lot easier. Enjoy.

Chapter 6: Rebirth

The doctors had been seen, and he was healthy. The psychiatrists had been talked to, and he was sane enough to keep going. The reports had been filed, and his superiors were happy, their bureaucrats fed with their daily recommended intake of paperwork. All that was left was to repair his Horror.

Crew Chief Sergio and Technical Specialist Griffin were in the Horror bay waiting for him, his Horror set off to the side, its ruined armour stripped away to reveal the ravaged biological body beneath. The fight with the Squid Avatar had left the Horror looking less horrific than it did pathetic. It’s black, alien flesh had been monstrously twisted and pulled by the gigantic Avatar ripping the right arm off, and great rents and tears were visible everywhere, although the leakage of internal fluids had long since ceased.

The loss of an arm was too great for the Horror to regenerate on its own, so there was only one option for repair: introduce fresh material to the Horror. This however meant that the new material would have to be reformatted and sculpted by the pilot. A process that meant a repeat of the same traumatic process that had birthed the Horror in the first place.

Only this time the pained thrashing would be done by a ten metre tall killing machine with a fully operational Nightmare Engine capable of ripping holes in space-time and shattering men’s minds with but a look. For obvious reasons, this process was going to be done inside a shielded bunker. A shielded bunker that probably would have looked like it was used to test the yield of thermonuclear warheads indoors to a 20th century observer.

“Kid, I’ve got to hand it to you. My daddy used to tell me about how he managed to total his daddy’s Jaguar the first time he took it out, but I think this is the first time a rookie has gone out on patrol and come back that close to death without actually being dead,” Sergio says humorously, trying to lighten the mood in his own way.

Nodding, Geoff smiles, not wanting to speak despite knowing that this may be the last time he has his original functioning vocal cords. He had become a miser with his voice, and he had already decided that if today was the day he lost his voice, his last words were “I love you,” said to Cassie as he left the apartment. Not that the crew particularly minded. Silent pilots were common.

Entering the Horror, Geoff feels the instincts of the Horror more strongly than ever, the cybernetic restraints removed for repairs and to allow for proper bonding of the new material. The best description of what he felt was “pissed”, in both the American and British usages of the term. He was both supremely angry that his enemies had done so much damage and threatened his symbiotes, pets, comrades, and mate, and incredibly light headed from all the damage, making him feel more than a little drunk.

Giving confirmation over the radio, Geoff waited patiently as enormous restraint closed about the Horror, and keeping his instincts to escape under control, allowed himself to be moved into a special repair facility. The Horror seemed to respond to his fears more than usual, trembling with him as the enormous blast doors began to close with glacial slowness and inevitability, their enormous mass capable of shrugging off a point blank nuclear strike.

And then Geoff was alone, sealed behind several metres of armour and shielding, the only openings the hatches to the pre-Horror tanks, which were now opening next to him, revealing the agitated mass of black protoplasm beneath. From one of the tanks, a pseudopod was shot out and made contact with his Horror.

…discontinuity…

The cancer had eaten away at her body, spreading and growing to every system until the doctors had given up, the chemo and radiation therapy no longer giving any tangible benefit and causing her untold pain. So she had retired to a hospice to live out her final days in relative peace. She could no longer see or move, and was rarely lucid, but when she was, she could still hear.

She had been moved. Somehow she knew she was no longer in her bed at the hospice, perhaps because the sounds had changed. Gone was the soft quiet of the place and the sound of the wind in the trees outside and the shuffle of people out in the hall, replaced by an endless sea of breathing and artificial noises, harsh and strange. She felt like she was back in the hospital, and that scared her. She had specifically asked to just be allowed to pass away. What was happening?

“I trust these specimens will be suitable for your work?” A gruff, unpleasant male voice asks.

In response, there is a strange fluted piping noise, thin and eerie that sent shivers up and down her spine, followed by a dull, hollow, artificial voice that says coldly, “Your ambition and ruthlessness never ceases to bring amusement, ape.”

“Hey, you came to us,” the man points out, his voice hard and accusatory.

Again, the piping plays, followed by the machine voice replying, “That we did ape. Despite your barbarous, primitve natures and crude bodies and minds, you are still preferrable to our hated enemies.”

“So are they good or not?” The man asks in annoyance.

“The specimens are acceptable. Evolution has shaped the crude clay we once discarded, making it both harder and easier to work with. We have forgotten much, but still we know how to shape the flesh,” the machined-piper, as she was beginning to think of it, answered.

“Good. And you can shape it the way we agreed upon?” The man asks gruffly but in a more placated tone.

A pause, and then either the source of the voice moved or there was another one, because the position of origin of the voice changes. This one says, “We can shape it as you have asked, far be it for us to try and teach foolish apes what to do as our last act of defiance on this world.”

“Oh shut it and get to work. It’s your own damn fault for not knowing how to control your own creations, something any decent engineer can tell you how to do,” the man replies hotly.

“Ignorant ape! Your kind would have been exterminated long ago if not for our mercy!” The machine-piper screeches furiously.

“I think you mean ‘society collapsing because your construction equipment rebelled’. And yes, my brain is sophisticated enough to recognize the irony of our evolution being safe from you because the progenitors of the weapons you will help us build destroyed all but one of your cities. Now get to work you lazy starfish,” the man says before leaving the room, the sound of a door closing heralding his exit.

There is then some rather indignant sounding piping, followed by a looming presence next to her, and the sensation of movement as something begins to wheel her bed… somewhere else. Somewhere filled with piping fluting noise, muffled human voices, and an endless array of machine sounds.

And then something strange, certainly not a hand, picks her up, and tosses her casually through the air. Terrified, she wishes she had the strength to resist, or even to scream out, but all she can do is wait.

And then she hits the water…

…discontinuity…

Nano-fabricated titanium-steel bonds tear like paper as his body spasms in a convulsive fit, the metal already strained near failure by the alien, inhuman flesh expanding to a size far beyond what was meant to be contained. His form, only vaguely humanoid before, begins to take on awful detail.

Hundreds of tiny, human sized mouths and eyes began to sprout across his slimy, tarry body, gnashing teeth and gibbering their outrage and pain. Atop the body, a massive, animalistic and alien head forms, flanked by eight enormous eyes glowing with sickly inner light and split by a great mouth filled with razor sharp teeth that would make a tyrannosaurus cower in awe.

And then, sprouting like unholy strands of gorgon hair, dozens of tentacles grow from around the muzzle, drawing the eyes and mouths up from the body into their awful, twisted mass. Twitching and writhing like an agitated anemone, the tentacles probe about in the air, providing a near three-dimensional view from all the different angles being looked at, and accurate taste of the air from all the mouths.

And then the Horror, half again as tall and twice as massive as before, marches up to the blast door, and begins to take it apart, at first slamming massive fists into the ceramic-metal composite, before bellowing in horrific rage as only small dents are formed. Infuriated by the slow progress, the tentacles begin to sway and move in a very comples pattern, the wailing of the mouths changing to structured, rapid-fire chanting, and the blast door begins to change.

Materials begin to twist at a fundamental level, severing bonds and connections, transforming solid, unyielding metal into dust, and near sun proof ceramic into mud. As the door begins to disintegrate, he impatiently starts to claw away collapsing segments, his need to take revenge on those on the other side growing with every moment.

Slaves! Insects! Worms! Bacteria! They thought they could stop him? They thought to defy, to restrain him? Their suffering would know no end, for he was…

He was…

He was?

Rising from a sea of subconsciousness, Geoff, strengthened by an animalistic hatred rising from the very bowels of the Horror, performed the psychic equivalent of a headbutt to an ancient being of god-like power. Weakened by endless sleep, the shielding of the city, and the wound already inflicted, the invading presence reeled back, and the connection snapped. Permanently. The power invested in trying to create a new Avatar had stayed, so the mortal now had the strength to forevermore banish the presence from his mind.

The Horror stopped its assault on the door and stumbled back, clutching its head, screaming in agony as Geoff reasserted his identity and dominance. Collapsing to the ground, the awesome monstrosity had its chest open up and spew Geoff to the cold, unyielding floor three metres below, where he landed with a thud, drenched in thick, near tar-like fluid that stank of rotting fish and sour wine.

For several minutes he just lay there, trying to wrap his head around what had happened, until eventually he noticed that a squadron of Horrors was standing over him and his Horror, weapons ready to open up at any moment, while the humming sound of tanks notified him to the fact that at any moment enough firepower to make a battleship blush with embarassment would be opened up on him.

Holding up his hands, he croaks out, “Uh… that was different.”

As he is taken away for evaluation and his Horror hauled off for examination, a thought comes to him, and he immediately pauses and waves Sergio over while frantically scribbling something down.

“I want this on the armour somewhere,” he wheezes before being taken away.

Looking down at the paper, Sergio reads.

That is not dead which can eternal lie
And with strange aeons even death may die…
But I have become death, destroyer of worlds
AND I’M STILL HERE

Yeah, this one goes on the reading list

For those interested, I was originally thinking of having Chapter 7 a character development chapter, but I got a bug in my head, so I think the next section I write will be Chapter ??, which, even with this story's anachronistic style is a bit out of place, but it will feature a large battle sequence. I figure this story needs more ridiculous, over the top fighting at some point, so why not now?

I am also open to suggestions, bribes, and other such sundry things about what you might like to see next.

Were those barracuda soldiers talking off screen before they threw the terminally ill feral woman into the water? I have the impression of barracuda being very tall roughly humanoid figures of athletic build but sheathed toe to toe in fish scales with shark eyes, spiky fins and shark mouths (in addition to domed heads and biomechanical bits sticking out of them).

No, this is roughly what the barracuda looks like (which you are close on the description of):



While what was talking off screen was something more like this:



For your reference, and something to read while I work on the next bit, please see the Complete Works of HP Lovecraft, specifically "At the Mountains of Madness", "The Call of Cthulhu", and "The Shadow Over Innsmouth", which are all the most directly relevant to this story-arc.

Dude!

Duuuuuude...

Dude.

Evangelion + Lovecraft ?



Genius!

This is even better than the the stupid crappy-sorta gnosticism of the show, and I love your technobable integration of CoC game mechanics. Instant development of psychosis for everyone!

I wonder what Cassie's reaction to Geoff's transformation will be, as it progresses. "Why, sir, I do say you have that Innsmouth look." And of course you have refined the absolute moral dilemma of the mythos to its pure form here. 'Can I sacrifice my sanity, my soul, my humanness to save the unknowing and uncaring masses of humanity?'

Any plans for some Delta Green conspiratorial goodness? Maybe some Mi-go or Shan? Or Ghoulish outbreaks within the Arks perhaps? The Arks themselves kinda remind me of scenes from FF:Spirits Within, which is a good thing I think. So Chi-Town bought it? No Emperor Prosek I then?

The tanks sound cool, but I'm having trouble picturing them. Are we talking Dominion Tank Police or Ringo style SHIVA here? Oh and why do they send out unprotected infantry? I mean I get that the APC/IFV has a nightmare shield that somewhat protects it's dismounts, but... How about some Masume Shirow landmates or tachikoma? Or better yet; CP 2.0.2.0. style full conversion metal heads with attendant psychological problems.

Anyway, good stuff here. I wait with baited breath.