All the little lost boys and girls (Update: 26/5/12)

Swindle1984 · Post by **Swindle1984** » 2011-02-21 04:09am

Oh wow, I haven't listened to E Nomine in years. Might be worth looking up again.

Bladed, still have to say, this is genuinely one of the best non-professionally written stories I've ever had the pleasure of reading (the other being Lights Out, which was finally published just this year). You might look into publishing some day.

Also, I've been trying to figure out where your avatar came from for a while now. Care to clue me in?

RecklessPrudence · Post by **RecklessPrudence** » 2011-02-23 02:18am

Well, they haven't had a new album since '04, so you may have heard all their stuff already, but I only discovered them a few months back, so I'm really enjoying them at present.

Also, I looked at my last post and it sort of starts and then just rambles off on tangents - I guess proof that you shouldn't post while feverish, even a mild one?

Bladed, since I didn't say so last time, let me just state how good this is, and that I really wish I had read Children of Heaven when it was still available. When you get published, I'm sure you'll let the board know, but could you shoot me a pm in case I miss it so I can buy your work, whether it be this, CoH, or something else?

Swindle1984 · Post by **Swindle1984** » 2011-02-23 04:39am

What was Children of Heaven about? I've seen references to it throughout this thread, but I seem to have missed the opportunity to read it.

More creepy-ass space recordings to listen to while reading this thread:

Pluto

Io (it gets a really... odd, pattern from 6:20 on)

Pulsar

And some random musical selections that may or may fit the mood of the story:

Someone's Cursing Someone Else from Gurren Lagan

Reaver's Theme from Firefly

What Once Was Lost from Halo

Alien Corridors from Halo

Perfect Night from Trigun

Blue Summers from Trigun

Get Out Alive by Three Days Grace

Couldn't find any good run-and-gun heavy metal that fit the combat scenes.

And, to avoid cluttering Bladed's thread with unnecessary drivel, I believe I will refrain from further posts until the next chapter is finished.

Bladed_Crescent · Post by **Bladed_Crescent** » 2011-02-23 11:53pm

First of all, a thanks to everyone who posted the music and the fucked-up creepy eerie interesting planetary transmissions.

Reckless Prudence wrote:Bladed, since I didn't say so last time, let me just state how good this is, and that I really wish I had read Children of Heaven when it was still available. When you get published, I'm sure you'll let the board know, but could you shoot me a pm in case I miss it so I can buy your work, whether it be this, CoH, or something else?

Thanks - glad you're enjoying the story. No promises, though. If I made one, I'd probably forget, so you're just going to have to take your chances.

[quote=""Reckless Prudence"]Let me just say, not a recommended combination - or rather, highly recommended to get the full impact. Especially with your own somewhat fever-disconnected thoughts and the story's Veers and Gemma succumbing.[/quote]

I can't get it out.

It's in me and I can't get it out. I cut and cut and it won't come out. I can't find it. It has to be there. I have to find it.

I can't get it out.

I need to find it. Someone... someone else. I can find it in them. I can find it and then I can cut it out. Then I'll know where it is.

Then I'll be better.

Swindle1984 wrote:What was Children of Heaven about?

The short answer: humanity's first contact* with alien life and the repercussions thereof. "The night never ends."

Plus, it has posthuman space lesbians. (If I didn't bring it up, Shroom or Mr. Coffee would have...)

Bladed, still have to say, this is genuinely one of the best non-professionally written stories I've ever had the pleasure of reading (the other being Lights Out, which was finally published just this year). You might look into publishing some day.

All this praise is going to give me a swelled head... I might start thinking I'm infallible.

...nah. That'll most definitely probably never happen.

.....

KNEEL! KNEEL, YOU WORMS! KNEEL BEFORE YOUR GOD!

.....

'scuse me. Bit of a cough there.

Swindle 1984 wrote:Also, I've been trying to figure out where your avatar came from for a while now. Care to clue me in?

From here. Adonihs has some very nice work.

Working on the next chapter now, hope to get that up by the weekend, though I'm also trying to polish off Dragon Age: Awakening in prep for DA2, so we'll see how that goes...

And, since I've been far, far later than I'd like in the last few updates, this is my contrition: an excerpt from an upcoming chapter (that I've bumped back through 4 word files), that will shed a little bit of light on current events*:

*Not current events as of right now, but "current" as in when it'll be posted...
Spoiler

Bladed_Crescent · Post by **Bladed_Crescent** » 2011-03-01 11:15am

And so, the first week of Primal's stay on DROP 47 comes to a close. Some questions are answered, some are left open, and perhaps some new ones are raised...

Day seven, and you know you'll never see heaven.

Coming up: mudfeet and spacers working together, and the Watcher's stratagem.

Chapter 48:

Day seven:

“Personal record, Wednesday the... uh... no, Tuesday. Or Wednesday? Whatever. Today’s the... the, uhm. Computer, what’s the date? Really? That can’t be right. Okay, just put it in. Let’s start over.

“Uhm... personal record: It’s happening. We can’t stop it. If I have to... I’ll... but only if I have to. I won’t... I won’t. No. I saw sickbay, saw men and women I would have trusted with my life strapped down and sedated, or screaming until they’d gone hoarse. Knife wounds, bullet holes and burns, claw marks. Every day’s another altercation as the crew acts out. I can’t believe... I can’t understand how it all fell apart so fast. They look at me for answers and I can’t think of any to give them. I can’t even remember their names. I don’t recognize any of them. I can’t even remember her face.

“I want to sleep, but I can’t. Every time I close my eyes, there’s a new doubt. Something else I have to think about. If I don’t, if I don’t remember it, I’ll... I’ll... I don’t know. But there’s something there, behind my eyes. Whenever I close them, it’s there. I can’t... I don’t have the words. But it’s there, and it’s getting closer. I can’t sleep. Not until I remember.

“Why can’t I remember?

“And everyone else... they won’t get to me. I’ll destroy the ship first... if-if that’s what it takes. I can’t trust anyone now. They’re all diseased, like rats, scrabbling over one another, biting and filthy. I won’t let them get to me. I’ll destroy the ship first, blow the hell right out of this hangar, spit right in the Imperium’s eye. I won’t let that plague get me. It won’t happen. We’ll all burn first. There’s no better way for a solider to die, I think.

“The people outside – they’d thank me, if they knew what I was doing. I’m sure of it. It’s better this way. No disease. No drooling poisons. No claws or teeth. Just one moment of pure, white heat. Nothing to remember. Nothing waiting beyond it. That’s how it should be.

“I guess that’s it, then. We’ll all have to burn.

“I’d better get started. End record.”

~

It announced itself with the grinding of ancient gears and the deep, throbbing klaxons that filled the thin, cold air of North-4 Hangar. Startled scientists, crewmen and soldiers looked up as the station’s voice stuttered its way through a standard alert, warning all dockworkers and servicers to prepare standard maintenance and decontamination procedures, and the officer on duty to present themselves to the incoming vessel’s captain.

That last bit might have been someone’s idea of a joke.

Shouting over the sounds of confusion and building panic, Jane marshalled the people outside Primal into fire teams, dispersing them away from the frigate – not that it would much good, but keeping them penned in would just present easy, clustered targets for the hostile’s guns. And it would be hostile, Godfrey told herself. There was no reason to think that these newcomers would be friendly. Still. There was that spark of hope, a single glimmering wish amongst the dreary certainty that things were getting worse.

The inner doors began to trundle open, ill-serviced metal groaning and shrieking as the massive armoured slabs of North-4’s airlock ground their way apart, allowing it to slide into the hangar’s thin air.

It was blade-shaped, but wide – like a shark’s tooth, with stubby forward-swept wings. Its hull glistened like iridescent scales, the play of light and colour over the sleek metal surface both disorienting and painful to look upon, as if it were subtly shifting its form, angles stretching or shortening, corners sharpening or softening and any attempt to bring these changes into focus made it seem as if the hull snapped back to its original form. And still, in the periphery of your vision, you could almost see it moving.

Weapons pods and sensor nodes broke up the disturbing symmetry of its form, some sort of dual cannon mounted in the craft’s ridged spine, missile racks and smooth, sculpted turrets hanging beneath its wings. Under the nose and the black, polarized sheets of its off-center cockpit, spotlights snapped on, cones of harsh white brilliance playing over the darkened corners of the hangar, sweeping over broken drydocks, gantries and landing pads seemingly at random.

“Orders, Control?” Jane asked of Primal’s commanders, but no directions were forthcoming. Not in words.

So far, the intruder didn’t even seem to realize Primal and her people were there. That changed the instant the frigate’s point defence turrets swivelled to track the pinnace; with grace that would have shamed a mayfly, the snake-skinned vessel whirled on Primal, pencil-thin beams of blue-green targeting lasers glinting from its underslung guns; theater. They were letting the mercenaries know that they had weapons as well. Steam vented from rocket pods, vector surfaces rose and fell like a serpent’s quills as the newcomer hung in mid-air, the hisses and pops of its maneuvering thrusters almost like the warning growls of some cornered beast.

Neither vessel fired, but Jane could feel the hairs on the back of her neck stiffen and a bead of sweat rolled down her spine as Primal and the intruder stared each other down, the frigate’s handful of point defence turrets shifting ever so slightly as they followed the pinnace’s movements, neither willing to fire first. In open space, she would have given the outcome to Primal, but here at such close quarters, the result would be mutual annihilation. The gleaming vessel began to drift away, rising further into the bay, its hull darkening and becoming indistinct as it ascended into the shadowed upper reaches of the hangar, the tracking lasers that stabbed down the only sign of its presence and even those soon blinked off, leaving no hint of its existence. Jane strained to see some further indication of the vessel, but her armour’s autosenses showed her the same thing as her own eyes: nothing. It was if it no longer existed.

“Where is it?” someone murmured. “Where did it go? You saw it, right? You saw it, LT.”

She didn’t answer.

Seconds ticked by and then minutes, with still no sign of the hostile pinnace. Someone on Primal had forgotten to retain comm discipline and Godfrey could hear the nonstop conversation coming from the frigate’s bridge as officers cursed their instruments, the hidden vessel and each other for their inability to find it. Someone was asking after the colonel; Shelby interrupted, telling the speaker to keep searching for the intruder.

“Orders, Control?” Jane repeated; again, nobody answered her.

The hangar was big, yes. But it wasn’t so big that a single shuttle should be able to hide from the sensors of a full-up starship, not this close. Where was it? Jane almost jumped when the hangar doors began to open again, the inner set drawing apart like a gap-toothed maw as the pinnace descended back out of the shadows, gliding into the open airlock. Like before, any thought that it gave to Primal’s existence seemed fleeting at best, unwilling to challenge the cowering beast. And they were cowering, afraid to leave and face the unknown ship that hunkered outside the station, a snake lying in wait outside a rabbit’s burrow.

Jane could hear someone on Primal’s bridge urgently whispering. “Take it. Take it. Take the shot,” until captain Shelby’s snarled reprimand quieted the speaker. The doors began to grind shut again, leaving the frigate once again alone in its burrow, afraid and insane. Weak. The trooper heard a voice in her ear and, realizing that it wasn’t one of Primal’s bridge crew, turned to face the speaker, a soldier whose name she couldn’t quite place at the moment – he was a new hire, one who’d signed on only two months before this mission.

“LT,” he whispered in a hushed, breathy tone. He wasn’t wearing his helmet and his skin was pasty and splotched, rank trails of sweats giving it a greasy sheen. “Who are they?”

She shook her head slowly. “That’s not the question, private.”

“What? What do you mean?”

Alistair, one of her Ghosts, answered for her. He chuckled, the static-riven noise rasping out of his helmet’s speakers. “It means who they are ain’t what you should be wondering.” Like Jane, his eyes were on the upper reaches of the cavernous hangar. “Me, I’d worry about what they came for. And what they left behind.”

~

“I told you not to make fun of me. Laugh now. Go on. Laugh. Laugh God damn you! It’s easy, here. I’ll you how. Just turn your lips up like... there. So laugh. Laugh.”

~

Blood.

revulsion/need

Sister.

hatred/love

Mother.

terror/submission

Gemma paced back and forth like a caged animal, her body stretching, aching and spiking with pain. The hunger was back. She’d fed until she was gorged, until her belly was swollen and she could barely move, hating herself even as she craved another bite, desperate to sate the grotesque hunger. It had only been a short reprieve; buying her less than a day as the needs of her still-shifting body ravaged her metabolism.

More.

She could still hear the crack of his bones as she’d snapped them in her hands, her desperation to suck the marrow from them. That she’d wanted to.

His name was Cho.

She stopped and screamed then, long and loud, digging her claws into the back of her scalp as she clutched her head, feeling her skin split under their razor touch. Blood flowed down her neck, down over her back. She lashed out blindly, throwing herself into the walls, feeling the layers of spread give at each blow, feeling the resistance of the metal beneath the fleshy corruption with each impact. She staggered back from the force of impact.

Yes. Yes, that would do.

This time, she backed further up and threw herself against the wall even harder, sacs of stinking liquid bursting, spraying their rancid contents over her.

Again.

Again.

Again. Tattered and pummelled strips of spread hung off the slate-grey bulkhead and she shook her head to clear it from the dazing effect of the impacts, but before she could dash her skull against the wall, someone grabbed her – something with reedy arms and a gurgling noise that came from its split jaws. She screamed again, despair and frustration stoking her rage and she spun, newfound strength ripping her out of her assailant’s grip. All she could see was red, all she could feel was the need to kill, to eat and she slashed at it, shrieking in hoarse, high-pitched fury as she tore and pummelled and kicked and clawed until nothing was left of it but twitching gobbets of meat. “Hate you!” she screamed, not even knowing who it was that she was talking about. The mutated girl who’d done this to her. Her friends and shipmates who’d abandoned her, or the face that she’d seen staring back from a broken piece of glass. “I hate you! I hate you! I hate you!!”

Before she even knew what she was doing, she’d crammed a morsel into her mouth, stuffing herself with kin-flesh.

There was movement nearby and she growled without even realizing it, looking up warily from her kill. Her sister (no!) was there, moving towards her with a sultry, smooth gait. “Smiling girls and rosy boys all come and buy my toys, monkeys made of gingerbread,” she sidestepped the pooling remains. “And sugar horses, all painted red.” A beat. “Sister’s playful,” the killing-thing reprimanded. “Poor gardener,” she giggled, crouching beside Gemma and brushing a bloody lock of hair over the other girl’s ear, ignoring the petty officer’s feral hiss.

“Yes, it’s yours,” she assuaged the other woman, stroking her cheek with the back of her hand, her unnaturally long fingers caressing Gemma’s burning skin. “Eat.” As Gemma chewed, the other girl made a pleased noise. “Good girl. Pretty. Like me. We’re both pretty now. Aren’t we?”

hate/love

revulsion/need

terror/submission

“Yes,” Gemma said, swallowing a mouthful of blood and shredded meat. “Pretty.” She laughed, an edge of hysteria in the sound as she remembered a nursery rhyme her mother had sung her to sleep with. “I’m a pretty little Dutch girl, as pretty as can be. And all the boys in the neighbourhood,” she looked around at all the shambling forms that filled the garden. “Are crazy over me.”

The other girl purred, nuzzling closer and Gemma leaned against her, the comforting scent of her sister’s body filling her nostrils.

home

~

“Where arrrrrre you? I know you’re there, darling. Sweetheart. Love of my life. Light of my universe. Wheerrre are you? No one’s going to find us, not this far down. It’s just youuuu and me, honeybunch. If they’re even looking. Where are you? If you come out, I’ll make it eeeeeasy. I know you’ve been spreading lies about me. I know you’ve been spreading other things, too, you fucking whore. McGravey? Really? Yes, that’s right. I know about you and him. Did you go onto your knees for him? Did you drop on all fours, you bitch? I bet you did. Come on out, honey. Pudding pumpkin sweetie. Dearest. I just want to talk...”

~

In the upper reaches of the maintenance hangar, a killer crouched.

A flickering emergency light pulsed weakly. It had been replaced only recently, one dying bulb swapped for another by a maintenance drone who neither knew nor cared about the station’s current state of affairs. It simply trundled along its pre-programmed repair route, somehow avoiding the curiousity, malice, boredom and need for spare parts that had claimed so many of its brethren. It, however, continued on its route, day after day and year after year, wobbling on faulty gears and using shaking manipulators that had long since lost fine motor control to extract burned-out bulbs, place them in a charger that was fortunate if it could make them last for more than a day, and fumble a new light back into the socket.

The killer was glad of the shifting light; total darkness, just like full illumination was too... constant a state for its shade to work at full effectiveness. Blacklight vision and enhanced scan modes might be able to pick up the subtle signs of its presence, but the throbbing light robbed any chance of visual identification as eyes and scanners continually adjusted to the difference in illumination. Not that there was any real chance of being spotted from this far up. Still.

The killer shifted slightly, bringing its longrifle to bear, minute movements allowing it scan over the bay, the link between the weapon and the killer’s armour allowing it to see exactly what the sensor at the tip of the barrel saw, as it if were so close to the New Ones that it could touch the beads of sweat on their skin. The killer felt its skin crawl, though the sensation stemmed from equal parts revulsion and desire.

Do not eat. Burn. Shoot. Cut. Tear. Bullets and blades. Plasma and laser. Use teeth if you must, but do not eat. One of Father’s Laws. It was not easy keeping to it, but that was the point. You can be better. He had believed this, when none of the Old Ones had. Father, the killer intoned a silent prayer as it selected a target, its breath slowing, pupils dilating slightly.

Now.

The killer let out a slow exhalation as it squeezed the trigger.

~

One moment they’d been speaking and the next, his brains were splattered over her face. For an instant, Jane was left wondering what had just happened, until her soldier’s mind caught up with her. “Down!” the trooper roared at the shocked soldiers and civilians, her bellow scattering them to cover faster than their stunned minds could process what had happened, the trooper already moving as her helmet snapped back up to cover her head. “Everyone down! We have a sniper! Black!”

“Here, LT,” Cynthia vaulted a makeshift barricade. “Where’s the shooter? Do you have a bead?”

Jane’s suit AI was already playing back the fatal shot, automatically calculating the angle of attack. It highlighted probabilities, superimposing the best-guess line onto Godfrey’s vision and she canted her head towards the site, dropping the data to Black. “There.”

The other trooper zoomed in, her longer-range weapon ready to cut down the hostile shooter. “No one there, LT.”

“Find him,” Jane hissed through clenched teeth. “Find that son of a bitch. Control, we need a sweep of the upper levels. I need you to unshackle some HKs. No. No, you’re not listening to me – we have hostile snipers. What? No, we need – no, shut up, you little shit. Get me Colonel Paclan. Then find him or find Shelby, but get me someone who can get me some fucking support or quarantine or not, I am going to come in there and choke the life from you!” She signed off with a snarl. “Black?”

“Sweeping. Scanning. Null contact, LT. Still searching.”

As sensor and eye strained to find some trace of the shooter, Jane already knew it would be futile. The killer was gone. This was not a prelude to an attack. At least, not yet. It was a single bullet, a single target chosen at random. It was a message.

You aren’t safe.

A high-pitched howl filled the bay and a pack of twisted, four-legged monstrosities skulked out of the shadows. Once they’d been someone’s hounds, but now their re-made flesh trembled and twitched, ropes of drool flowing from distended jaws. Maybe they’d arrived by coincidence, or maybe they’d sensed the sudden disorder in the defenders’ ranks. With yips and barks, the pack spread out, slithering and slinking towards the mercenaries. We aren’t safe, Jane thought as she snapped her cannon into a ready position. But were we ever?

~

“Colonel, what are you doing?”

“Ah, Captain Shelby! It is Shelby, right? Yes? Good. Come and give me a hand, would you?”

“What are you doing, sir?”

“Oh, just trying to cross-link these circuits and bypass some command restrictions, but ships – well, tech in general – has never been my strong suit.”

“You haven’t been sleeping, have you, sir?”

“Not in four days. Could you pass me that spanner?”

“Sir, I need you to stop what you’re doing.”

“What? Why? Don’t you know what I’m trying to do?”

“Yes, sir. I do. So does Engineering and our AI. I just thought you’d rather speak with me.”

“Then you should understand. Don’t you, captain? Haven’t you seen the medical reports? The security reports? All of the reports? Any of them?”

“I have, sir.”

“We’re dying, captain. Nearly a hundred people trapped outside. Three hundred inside. It’s spreading through Primal. Discipline’s broken down. If they’re not muttering, they’re coughing. If they’re not coughing, they’re fighting each other. Security can’t help. We’ve got mercs and civilians tearing each other apart.”

“Help’s coming.”

“Oh, don’t you give me that bullshit. Save it for the crew, captain. You and I both know that even if our transmissions got out of the Mists, it’ll take weeks – months – to get another ship here. We’re, excuse me – aghack! – dying, Sheltry.”

“You’ve said that, sir. Please, step away from the panel.”

“Or what? You’ll shoot me?”

“If I have to, sir.”

“You little shit. What the fuck do you think you’re preserving here, Shelton? We’re not making it out of here. I’m going to give us a warrior’s death. Quick and clean and we strike a blow against this monstrosity.”

“There’s still hope, sir.”

“You – hurk – really think so? You’re a fool. The Mists have killed us, captain. They held us down and that fucking traitor Veers put the knife in. We’re not coming out of this.”

“I know, sir. Please step away.”

“You know? Then what are you fighting for? How can you go on, knowing that?”

“For the people that come after us.”

“And how many of the dead ships captains’ thought the same thing? How many of them hoped rather than doing what they should have done? Ripping the heart and soul out of this place instead of cowering in the dark like lambs. Lambs as the wolves circle.”

“It doesn’t matter. I won’t let it matter. I won’t let this... this infection spread.”

“You’re not just talking about the disease, are you Sheldon?”

“Not... not really, sir.”

“And a colonel who’s lost his faith – the man who is supposed to be an example to all others to look to... if that man believes that he has to kill all the men and women under his command... what little is left of morale won’t survive it. That’s more virulent than any bug, isn’t it? ...answer me, captain.”

“Yes, sir. I-”

“Don’t apologize. You’re right. So. What are you going to tell them?”

“There’s blood on the walls. Fights we can’t stop. Whatever Veers did, whatever he... birthed, it’s spreading. I don’t know if we could before.... Even outside, things are getting worse. I don’t think anyone will notice. If they ask...”

“It will be a warrior’s death?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. That’s good. This place.. it’s an abomination. They did something here, Shelby. They did something and it’s always whispering, always there. Scratching at the back of my mind. They shouldn’t have... this place, it needs to stay buried. It needs to stay a myth or a nightmare, but we can’t let it become real, you understand? It’s hungry and awful and whispering and chewing and... and it’s winning.”

“I know, sir.”

“The crew – they were good people, once. Some of them still are, you know? But now... don’t trust them. Any of them. Shelby... you do it. You have to stop this poison from spreading. It has to end here. Can you promise me that?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good man. Good man. Find someone you can still trust. Make it end here, captain.”

“I will, sir.”

“Good. Good. I think... I think I’m ready.”

“It’s been an honour, sir.”

“Thank you, captain. Keep the faith. For both of us.”

Swindle1984 · Post by **Swindle1984** » 2011-03-02 04:17pm

I'm imagining the space marine from the Doom comic getting dropped into DROP 47, going into ripandtearripandtear mode and dying horribly before the second page ends.

Still, he's crazy enough for the place.

The Doom comic

Sky Captain · Post by **Sky Captain** » 2011-03-03 05:50am

Arrrgh I'm starting to feel the hunger. I feel the urge to slice, to devour, to feed the hunger.

Grimnosh · Post by **Grimnosh** » 2011-03-03 09:19am

Swindle1984 wrote:I'm imagining the space marine from the Doom comic getting dropped into DROP 47, going into ripandtearripandtear mode and dying horribly before the second page ends.

Still, he's crazy enough for the place.

The Doom comic

I don't know, you might try Killboy from Deff Skwadron for crazy enough for the place. Of course with him, he'd probably clean out DROP 47 before you know it.

bilateralrope · Post by **bilateralrope** » 2011-03-03 02:55pm

Grimnosh wrote:
Swindle1984 wrote:I'm imagining the space marine from the Doom comic getting dropped into DROP 47, going into ripandtearripandtear mode and dying horribly before the second page ends.

Still, he's crazy enough for the place.

The Doom comic
I don't know, you might try Killboy from Deff Skwadron for crazy enough for the place. Of course with him, he'd probably clean out DROP 47 before you know it.

40k Orks in general would probably consider DROP 47 good fun. Especially when they find things that reassemble themselves.

Swindle1984 · Post by **Swindle1984** » 2011-03-05 02:22pm

bilateralrope wrote:
Grimnosh wrote:
Swindle1984 wrote:I'm imagining the space marine from the Doom comic getting dropped into DROP 47, going into ripandtearripandtear mode and dying horribly before the second page ends.

Still, he's crazy enough for the place.

The Doom comic
I don't know, you might try Killboy from Deff Skwadron for crazy enough for the place. Of course with him, he'd probably clean out DROP 47 before you know it.
40k Orks in general would probably consider DROP 47 good fun. Especially when they find things that reassemble themselves.

"Ay, chums! Dese tings luvs ta play! An' ya don' even gotsta worry bouts dem dyin' on yas, dey gets back up ta play ag'in!"

Bladed_Crescent · Post by **Bladed_Crescent** » 2011-03-11 11:03am

Swindle 1984 wrote:I'm imagining the space marine from the Doom comic getting dropped into DROP 47, going into ripandtearripandtear mode and dying horribly before the second page ends.

"You are HUGE! That means you have huge guts! Here comes the night train!"

Sky Captain wrote:Arrrgh I'm starting to feel the hunger. I feel the urge to slice, to devour, to feed the hunger.

The author of this work of fiction assumes no responsibility for any mutations, physiological, mental and/or behavioural changes, nor impalement, disemboweling, decapitation, laceration, mauling or consumption of readers and/or friends or family members of said readers.

Grimnosh wrote:I don't know, you might try Killboy from Deff Skwadron for crazy enough for the place. Of course with him, he'd probably clean out DROP 47 before you know it.

Swindle 1984 wrote:"Ay, chums! Dese tings luvs ta play! An' ya don' even gotsta worry bouts dem dyin' on yas, dey gets back up ta play ag'in!"

"Oi! Dis wun 'ere ate Blitzgragga's face an' e's trin' t' claw me eyes out! Oi'm gonna call 'im Snaps! Aw, lookit Snaps kill all dem grots! 'E's precocious, 'e is!"

Swindle1984 · Post by **Swindle1984** » 2011-03-15 03:45pm

Clearly, we're in need of a new chapter.

Clearly.

Mr. Coffee · Post by **Mr. Coffee** » 2011-03-17 10:18pm

Swindle1984 wrote:And, to avoid cluttering Bladed's thread with unnecessary drivel, I believe I will refrain from further posts until the next chapter is finished.

Seriously, please shut the fuck up until the next chapter is posted. As much as I believe BC deserve praise for his writing, every time you post without him posting a chapter is like a gigantic cock tease when I look at the Fics forum. So kindly stop fucking posting until he makes a new chapter, goddamnit.

Swindle1984 · Post by **Swindle1984** » 2011-03-18 08:16am

Mr. Coffee wrote:
Swindle1984 wrote:And, to avoid cluttering Bladed's thread with unnecessary drivel, I believe I will refrain from further posts until the next chapter is finished.
Seriously, please shut the fuck up until the next chapter is posted. As much as I believe BC deserve praise for his writing, every time you post without him posting a chapter is like a gigantic cock tease when I look at the Fics forum. So kindly stop fucking posting until he makes a new chapter, goddamnit.

Get over it.

Mayabird · Post by **Mayabird** » 2011-03-18 06:59pm

Kindly do cut the crap, people. You're distracting from the terrifying monsters.
[line 2]

Bladed_Crescent · Post by **Bladed_Crescent** » 2011-03-25 04:03pm

In this chapter: temporary alliances are made and old friends are re-visited.

Coming up: Mother's day... and all her children.

Chapter 49:

“Don’t move.” There was no anger in Abigail’s voice. No panic. No alarm. No rising tones of terror. There was only the flat monotone of a killer.

“I won’t,” the thing in front of them said, blinking against the lights glaring into its red eyes. It raised a hand, squinting. “Please... it’s hard to see.”

“Yeah. That’s a shame,” Abigail’s voice didn’t waver and neither did the barrel of her gun, her finger on the trigger. The barest touch and girl in front of her... well, they’d see what kind of healing she could take. “You look familiar. Which ship were you on?”

“Mackenzie, Gemma. Petty Officer First Class, assigned to APSS Primal,” she replied. “You’re mudfeet? Kerrigan’s mudfeet?”

“Yes,” Shannon said; she was standing to Abigail’s right, closer to Mackenzie than the Darkknell was comfortable with. She knew how fast these things moved, if she didn’t know this particular type and she didn’t want Hayes any closer. Unfortunately, that damned Halo curiousity was getting the better of her. “You’re lucid.” Shannon gestured and Abigail thumbed down the flashlight’s brightness, the women’s blacklight vision snapping up in the dim light. “I didn’t expect that.”

Putting the lie to that assessment, Mackenzie cupped one bladed hand to her mouth and giggled, a bubbling laugh that had more than a touch of insanity in it. “No,” she corrected the Halo. “I’ve eaten. There’s a difference.” She cocked her head over at the still-burning remains of the sentry. “It was old. I know that. How do I know that?” She gave her head a shake. “They know you’re here. Not here here, but the mother knows. Soldiers are coming.”

“Soldiers?” Shannon asked.

Gemma shook her head. “Oh, you haven’t seen them. Hunters and scouts. Sentries and guardians. Workers and hunters. Soldiers and praetorians. And me and my sisters. And the brothers. We’re the newest.” She looked up, suddenly nervous. “Are there more?”

Shannon cocked her head over her shoulder, sharing a quick glance with Abigail before she answered. “Some.”

“But not here?”

“No.”

The petty officer nodded. “Good, that’s good.” She mumbled something under her breath, so softly that even Abigail’s autosenses didn’t pick it up, but the Darkknell saw her ‘little sister’ stiffen, suddenly grateful that she hadn’t heard what Mackenzie had said. “You can’t stay here,” the warped woman whispered. “They’ll find you. They’re agitated. My sister... if she knew you were here...” Those dark, ugly killing blades flexed. “She might listen. The brothers... none of them are new. They were the first. They don’t remember. They don’t want to remember... It hurts to remember...” she was lost in her reverie for several seconds before her attention snapped back to the mercenaries; there was no sensation of movement. One instant she was looking away, the next her head was up and her gaze flicked from Shannon to Abigail. “Why did you come here?”

“Do you know who the Watcher is?”

The red eyes darted furtively. “No. I know Unity. I know Gorger. I know Mother and Leviathan and Ogre. I don’t know Watcher.”

“He’s another survivor.”

“Oh. One of the f- one of Lost.”

Shannon nodded, choosing not to comment on Mackenzie’s slip. “Yes. One of the Lost. Something was taken from him and we’re trying to get it back.”

“I don’t know anything about that. It must have been one of the others.” Gemma frowned, as if trying to articulate a thought and failing at it. “What was taken?” Then, before either woman could answer: “No. No. No time. We have to go. The sentry... if they didn’t hear it, they’ll smell you. Like machines. Cordite and blood. Oil and burning. We have to leave.” When she looked up, her expression was earnest, desperation etched across her features. “Will you follow me?”

Abigail’s snapped response died halfway out of her mouth at Shannon’s raised hand. “Yes,” the corporal said.

Gemma smiled, but the grin never reached her eyes. “Okay.”

~

It wasn’t that far, really. Just a little way down the corridor that Mackenzie had come from. Their destination was a secured maintenance hatch, its worn metal surface incongruous amongst the fleshy corruption that covered the walls. “You and your... siblings use this,” Shannon said delicately. It sounded like a question, but it wasn’t. “Not the others.”

Gemma nodded, gently tapping an access code into the flashing panel with the tips of her talons. “They don’t know how. Some of them know how to open, how to close, how to hide. Not much more than that. We keep it working,” she confirmed. “When the hunger’s gone, when we can think, we can be clever.” Another unbalanced giggle.

PO First Class Mackenzie G technical specialist assigned to APSS Primal crewer not soldier no combat experience

“But it’s easier to think in terms of ambushes and tactics then technical specifications.” Another question that Shannon already knew the answer to, but one she asked anyways. What had happened to Mackenzie... it was wrong. Worse than just becoming another mindless Turned. It hurts to remember.

The hatch whined open with the creaking and squealing of ancient gears and Gemma looked over her shoulder, slightly confused. “Yes.” She shivered. “You don’t know. You can’t know. All there is, is the need. You can still think, you can still remember... I know the rest of my crew. I do. I see their dead faces every day. I’ve killed them knowing who they were. You think you can resist it, but you can’t. It makes you... makes you need.” Without waiting for a response, she swung herself into the crawlspace. “This way.”

Abigail stepped forward, but before she followed, her voice clicked through the comm to Shannon. “You sure about this?”

“No.”

“Good enough,” the mercenary managed to squeeze herself and her arsenal into the cramped accessway, following their guide.

~

It was dead and had been for some time. Whether it had been male or female was hard to say. There wasn’t enough of its face left to make that kind of identification, its chest was a bloody, shattered ruin and Cynthia didn’t feel like taking off her deceased shipmate’s pants just satisfy her idle curiousity. The trooper reached out, touching one finger to the dark shaft of metal protruding from the dead figure’s belly, an aerodynamic spike that matched the other two in its chest and the one in its skull, nailing it to the bulkhead. Each impaler had been fired with sufficient rapidity that the impacts had been all but simultaneous, and forceful enough to hurl their victim back and pierce the station’s thick walls.

A thick, bubbling giggle drooled out of the woman’s lips as she activated her comm. “Lieutenant. Black reporting.”

There was a pause before Godfrey responded. “Go ahead, corporal.”

“No survivors,” the Ghost whispered into her comm. “All dead. Might be some. Can’t find them. Blood trails everywhere. Caught where they hid. Dragged off. Turned everywhere. Familiar faces,” she crouched, a troll covered in plate mail. One of the dead crewer’s legs had been torn off, and small, disfigured footprints led away from the kill site. “Eyes are watching. I can feel them. Following their sweep. They’re moving deeper into the station. Nothing left.”

“Can you track them?”

Black made a considering noise, switching scan modes as she stared at the floor. There, almost covered by the pooling blood, was the tread pattern of someone else’s boot. Someone else had been by; a feral looking for something to scavenge, or the killer, inspecting its handiwork? “Only by the bodies. Good at killing. Better at hiding.”

“Don’t get too close. I need you.”

Cynthia made a noise that, being generous, one might have described as a purr. Being accurate, it was an awful, wet sound that was more akin to a growl than anything else. “Yes, LT.”

“Be strong, corporal. Keep moving. Stay alert.”

“Strong,” Cynthia recognized the challenge in the lieutenant’s voice. “Always.”

“Good.”

~

“So,” Abigail’s voice clicked in Shannon’s ears. “Tell me we’re not actually crawling through a too-damn-small work shaft following a completely bug-fucked psychopath. With claws, Three. Have I mentioned the claws?”

“Not recently.”

A beat. “You trust her?”

“Not... completely.”

“But some. Jesus. You can look at her at that... that thing and you trust it?”

“Yes.” Shannon paused, trying to put all the information running through her head into words. “She’s insane, Four. Whatever happened to her, it’s changed her. She’s dangerous and she’ll lose control. But for now, we have to use her.” A thousand little details. The fear in her eyes, the desperation in her voice. The revulsion – no, the terror – at the word ‘soldier’. Shannon didn’t want to meet anything that could provoke that kind of reaction in Mackenzie, and if they stayed in the hallways, they surely would.

“This day just gets worse, doesn’t it?”

Shannon didn’t have an answer for that. “Yes,” was all she could say, squeezing down the whispering dread in the back of her mind and, even worse, the anticipation beneath it.

~

He ran. He ran faster than he ever thought he could, diving, rolling and scrabbling through bloody, charred stinking mud and debris as a cone of fire washed out of the silver-armoured killer’s weapon, so intense that he could feel the heat through his armour, temperature alerts flashing urgently as the killer hauled itself back up to its feet as the inferno licked back into the nozzle of its weapon, its helmet canting towards him.

He fired another barrage, the hurricane of shells sparking against the nigh-impenetrable armour, the impacts throwing off the killer’s aim, buying him enough time to fumble a grenade into the underslung launcher on his rifle.

“This isn’t your fight,” the thing grated through its helmet. “You should run.”

“Fuck you,” he answered as he pulled the trigger.

Louis jerked awake, pulling himself out of his restless slumber. He blinked, trying to clear away the after-images of the flames of a burning city reflecting against shining metal plates. It took him a moment before his brain caught up with the reason why he’d woken. “What?” he shook himself, clearing the cobwebs from his mind, scratching at the back of his head. “I’m awake, what is it?”

Emily’s face was drawn and she put a finger to her lips. “What?” Louis asked again, softer this time. And then, he heard it. Low, heavy breathing. Wet and rumbling, the noise was coming from just outside the door, slow and patient. Louis felt his guts twist as his fogged brain eventually recognized that sound.

Unity.

~

“This is not good, this is not good at all, oh dear. Systems access is still down.” The Watcher tapped yellowed fingernails against the chassis of an aged computer system, licking his thin lips. “No contact in some time, either. Something’s gone wrong. It has, I know it.” He shifted his attention over to another screen, where the hulking corpse of a soldier in heavy armour lay against the bulkhead, spent shells scattered on the deck, the trooper’s chestplate pierced by a single, swift killing blow. Daubed on the bulkhead above the dead soldier was a message that, if few on the station could read, they understood all the same.

“Not yet,” the old man whispered with a fierce shake of his head. “Not yet, I still need them.” Arthritic fingers danced painfully over cracked and faded keys, still trying to see, still trying to reach into the isolated sector. “Don’t fail,” he urged the daughter and the little moth. “Don’t fail. Not until you do what you need to.”

“Father?” a small voice interrupted.

The Watcher barely turned to acknowledge his visitor. “Yes, Gisine?”

“I brought you something to drink,” the girl said, putting a battered mug of lukewarm water on the end of one console.

“Thank you, Gisine,” the old man said. “Was there something else?”

“They haven’t come. Shouldn’t they be here by now?”

The intensity in the Watcher’s eyes faded for a moment and he spared a moment away from his rows of security screens and espionage feeds to look at one of his stolen daughters, but he didn’t say anything until the girl pressed. “Do you know?” Unspoken: you always know. “There’s so much happened... the Turned and the eyes... I was... I... I’m worried.”

The Watcher put one bony hand on the child’s shoulder. “I know you want your new family. They may have turned back, seeing all the commotion. I’m watching for them.” He tried to smile kindly, but his was no longer a face capable of that kind of assurance. “I’m sure we’ll hear from them soon. Go play with the others. I’ll let you know when I find something.”

He turned away, his attention one more on his screens and comm feeds. “When I know something,” he whispered.

~

“How-how...?” Louis could barely make the words form, remembering that thing as it slunk towards them, its flesh forged from screaming corpses, the malice in its eyes. It was just some fucking animal, it was...

...intelligent. That was what the corporal said. She’d said it was smart – but how smart? Smart enough to track them all this way – had it been following them the whole way, loping through the tram tunnel after them, squeezing and digging its way through the obstructions they had had to circumvent... It couldn’t be that smart. It couldn’t. He was hearing things, they’d left that fucking monster in the dust and-

He almost jumped as the door groaned. The thing outside pressed its full weight into the metal barrier, gears squealing. A sound that had no business coming from an animal’s throat rumbled out: consideration. It was thinking. It was thinking.

Thoom.

Unity battered its armoured skull against the door. Lutzberg almost screamed, but Emily clamped her hand over the petty officer’s mouth just in time, whispering fiercely into his ear, none of the three survivors willing to move. It didn’t repeat the blow, not right away – it was still testing, trying to provoke a reaction. It didn’t know where they were, not yet. Maybe it does, maybe it’s toying with us, like that thing knocking on the door...

Thoom. Harder, more insistent, but it still wasn’t putting its full strength into the blow.

The abomination growled, the sound rising and falling as it paced up and down the hallway, thinking over the situation and Louis heard deep whuffing noises as it sniffed the air, trying to determine where its prey had gone. Then, a disappointed growl. The quiet stretched. Ten seconds. Then twenty. Thirty. A minute.

“It’s gone?” Armin whispered in a small voice, further muffled by Emily’s hand. “It’s gone?”

“Is it?” it took Louis a moment to realize that he’d been the one to speak. He listened to the near-silence, the faint, distant cries of the Turned, so much quieter than they had been. The hum and click of air circulating through the vents. The soft, desperate breaths of his two remaining wards, but there nothing beyond the background noise of the station. Was it actually gone, or was it just lying in wait for them?

“Beta Nine to Three and Four,” Louis whispered. “Be advised that we have had hostile contact. We’re secure for the moment, but our location is compromised. Unknown hostile forces.” Had he already made this report? Or had he only meant to? He couldn’t remember. “And...” it felt ridiculous to say the name aloud. “Unity. Please advise. I say again, we have hostile contact.”

There was only a hiss of static in reply.

~

The maintenance tunnel opened into a room filled with machines: pumps, computers and various other mechanisms intended to monitor and maintain the plants that normally filled the hydroponics facility. Like everything else, they were worn and beaten and showed signs of repairs – even cruder than those the mercenaries had seen in the ferals’ machine ship, many of them scored by clawmarks and dented by the frustrated pounding of fists. The spread was still here, but restricted to small clusters in dank corners or hanging in patches from the ceiling and walls. Faded status indicators blinked and gleamed from cracked displays as holographic charts flickered and danced from malfunctioning projectors. The hydroponics section was beginning its ‘day’ cycle, ancient glow panels starting to activate in an imitation of a sun’s nurturing light. “This is where it happens,” Mackenzie said, her eyes flitting over the control boards. “Where we make things grow.”

Shannon nodded; in addition to the crudity of the repairs, most of them were recent – only years old, if that. Some of the refurbishments in the Masks’ machine shop were decades old. The comparison was telling. New. The ferals had had been jerry-rigging their equipment for centuries, replacing and rebuilding whatever broke down. In here, this had only been going on for a handful of decades. She didn’t like that implication. She liked the readings she was seeing even less. The machines were running beyond capacity, diverting water and nutrients into the hydroponics bay at levels far beyond what even an overgrown facility should have required. She tapped a few keys, bringing up systems history. Nutrient levels had only recently spiked – within the last day – but before that, they were still abnormally high. Something was using all that food and water and now, it was using even more.

“Safe here,” Mackenzie said. “The others don’t like it in these places. The noise unsettles them, the scents confuse them. Only we come here.” She knelt, picking something on the floor up. It was a plastic dinosaur, most of the colour washed out of its hide and the tip of its tail missing. Mackenzie bubbled out another unsettling giggle. “Oh, sister. You always forget to pick up your toys.” Setting the toy on one of the patched-together computer consoles, the petty officer looked back over her shoulder, her head turning far more than it should have been able to. “I don’t know where my brothers are, but they’re hunting. I don’t think they’ll be back soon. My sister’s out playing. If I don’t go to meet her, she’ll come looking.” One black talon pointed at another maintenance tunnel. “You can move through the gardens with these.”

She turned back the way the group had come, slipping past the mercenaries. “I hope you find what you’re looking for, but I don’t think you should have come here. Mother’s awake and the rest of the family is here. They’ll find you.”

“That’s it?” Abigail asked. “You’re just going to fuck off now and go... play?”

Gemma laughed, the sound high-pitched and unbalanced. “I can smell the sweat on you, mudfoot. I can smell your blood and hear your heart pulsing.” She splayed her hands open, looking at the long killing claws of her fingers. “You’re not safe with me. Not for much longer.” She shut her eyes, turning away. “I want... I want to die. But I can’t. I can’t make the words. I don’t want to die. It won’t let me. I won’t.” She laughed again, no more calming than the first and she flashed a mouth of sharp, pink-stained teeth at the other women. “I’m not asking for that mercy, private. I can’t. If you tried, I’d have to fight you.” This time her laughter devolved into something almost like a sob. “I can’t ask and you can’t give. So I’m leaving. Before I get hungry.” She looked past the mercenaries. “I hope you find what you need,” she repeated. “I hope you live. But I don’t think you will.”

“Will we see you again?” Shannon asked.

“Only if I want you to,” Gemma said as she turned away, crouching to crawl back into the maintenance tunnel. She paused. “Not for nothing, but you should know: no one cries for help here,” she offered. “No one calls for help.” With that, she slithered back into the darkness. A moment passed and then, faintly, they heard her start to sing:

In marble walls as white as milk,
Lined with skin as soft as silk;
Within a fountain crystal clear,
A golden apple doth appear.
No doors there are to this stronghold –
Yet thieves break in and steal the gold.

Abigail’s helmet canted towards Shannon. “Shannie,” she began softly, then trailed off with a shake of her head.

Shannon nodded, checking her display. The signal from the locket was close. “Down,” she said. “We need to go down.”

~

The Watcher moved his fingers over the keyboard, still trying to reach into the dead zone that surrounded North Hydroponics, but he knew it was futile. All outside connections had been cut, all wireless nodes smashed and cables severed in the failed attempt to forever seal the garden off from the rest of the station. “Idiot. Fool,” he cursed through his dry, cracked lips. “You had to leave them there. You had to do it.”

However, systems inside the dead zone still worked. After a fashion, of course. They still carried the damned parasite program that gave His children such unfettered access to the station, could still be coddled and cudgelled by those with sufficient skill. But they were still dead to him, dead to anyone not within the failed quarantine. And that was the problem, wasn’t it?

But not for much longer if the daughter did what he thought – what he knew – she could. “It’s all right,” he said to a woman whose name he couldn’t remember. “It won’t be much longer. Then you can rest. And then, then I can finish my promise. His daughter will help me. Sin will lead us to salvation.”

A yellowed nail tapped one of his many screens, showing nothing but a possible exit point from the dead zone. “No, no. I’m sure it will work. I’m sure. Life and death are the best motivators. Did you tell me that? Or maybe I told you... it’s all right, though. I know what to do. I know. What I promised I would. And then...” he chuckled, dry and brittle. “And then, I guess we’ll see if she really is his blood.” He smiled at the screen, recalling another face. “I haven’t forgotten you either, little moth. But I know that you’ll burn. I just wonder if she’ll be the one that does it. After all, if she’s his... betrayal’s in her blood. She will turn on you, little moth. Do you know that? Would you believe me if I told you?”

The Watcher leaned forward and licked his cracked lips. “As the girls like to say,” he whispered to the unseen survivors. “You’ve a pocket full of posies. All that’s left is to all fall down.”

Themightytom · Post by **Themightytom** » 2011-03-25 04:57pm

Alright man enough veiled hints already, lets see some plot significant shit go down. We've been marinating for weeks!

Darth Nostril · Post by **Darth Nostril** » 2011-03-25 05:06pm

"It hurts to remember" Oh man poor Gemma, that really is living hell.

Darth Nostril · Post by **Darth Nostril** » 2011-03-25 05:07pm

Themightytom wrote:Alright man enough veiled hints already, lets see some plot significant shit go down. We've been marinating for weeks!

It's all plot significant shit, even the sometimes seemingly non-sequitor flashbacks, it all ties together.

Bladed_Crescent · Post by **Bladed_Crescent** » 2011-03-31 06:49pm

Themightytom wrote:Alright man enough veiled hints already, lets see some plot significant shit go down. We've been marinating for weeks!

You want more? Coming right up...

Darth Nostril wrote:"It hurts to remember" Oh man poor Gemma, that really is living hell.

And with that, you can see why the Crying Girls take refuge in madness. They still have their minds, still have all their memories and thoughts, all subordinate to - as the estimable J Schreiber might call it - the Sickness, have to listen to it whispering to them in instinct and desire every moment of every day. They know what they've done. They remember every moment, every slash, every bite and every mouthful. They're only truly lucid - for whatever value you give that term - after after they've eaten, and given their food, being able to think clearly just after doing that is no boon at all.

Or, in far less wordy fashion: it hurts to remember.

Bladed_Crescent · Post by **Bladed_Crescent** » 2011-03-31 06:51pm

In this chapter: What crawls into my garden?

Coming up: Every mother has her favourites.

Chapter 50:

The hydroponics bay was its own special kind of horror. During DROP 47’s heyday it had been a five-chambered facility that ran almost the entire height of the North arm. The primary growth facilities had formed the four points of a square, with a primary control facility between them, interconnected by smaller hothouse, special-climate, storage and maintenance rooms. Multiple decks high, the growth facilities had been interwoven with gantries, walkways and open elevators to provide easy access to each level and whatever crops had taken root there. The air had been hot and humid with the buzz of pollinating insects, smelling of vibrant, verdant growth, of fruit ready to be plucked from the vine and vegetables ready to be pulled from the soil.

Today, the Northern Hydroponics Facility had very little in common with what its designers had envisioned. Multiple bulkheads had dropped, turning what had once been a wide-open area into a maze of dead ends, hidden corners and winding, circuitous paths, each filled with their own unique brands of brutal death.

Towering racks, shelves and greenhouse chambers had all been shattered by the weight of the growth spilling out of them, chugging pipes straining to feed the pestilent growth. Walkways had been broken by strangling spread of infested plant life, bulkheads had bulged and cracked like neglected concrete and thin fronds poked out of the ruptured seams, reaching for the artificial sun. Insects still buzzed, pollinators and carrion-eaters.

DROP 47, like all large-scale installations was intended to be a largely self-sustaining closed ecological loop, with multiple redundancies and many forms of providing potable water and nourishment. The ‘yoghurt box’ of microbial growth. Hydroponic ‘salad machines’, even the ‘Sushi maker’... Shannon suppressed a shiver at the thought of this disease reaching the station’s aquaculture tanks what changes it would make there.

Any spaceborne water purification system relied on a mixture of mechanical, chemical and biological means to eradicate waste and pollutants from the crew’s drinking water. As far as the latter went, microbe-filled sewage cisterns were the heart of the system. Edible cyanobacteria and spirulina formed algal blooms nourished by lights fed from 47’s titanic reactor core and the station’s own waste and created a microbial food web that provided a never-ending supply of digestible – if not palatable – high-protein nutrition. Organic compounds and dead matter were broken down and fed back into nutrient systems, providing the fertilizer necessary for 47’s crops to grow, biomatter cycled over and over as the tormented star writhing at DROP 47’s heart poured vital energy into the system, heat transfer conduits and environmental controls keeping the temperature stable as long-build glow panels refused to die. Of course, algae was hardly an appetizing meal. That’s what DROP 47’s food stores and hydroponics bays were for.

There were hints of green amidst the glistening fleshy hues of red, pink and brown, unfurled leaves that twitched up to the artificial sun, pulsing stalks that quivered as they drank deep of the bounty fed into them, stretching vines and tendons wrapping around walkways and rafters, breaking through their cages and reaching ever higher, condensed liquid dripping down their trunks, glistening roots criss-crossing the floor, part of the spread. Biological pumps – creatures that Shannon prayed to any merciful god that would hear her not to have been human – beat rhythmically, like bradicardic hearts as they kept food and water running into the garden.

Fused into the towering plants were human forms, stripped of all characteristics except sightless eyes, sagging jaws and swollen stomachs. Honeypot ants, the Halo realized with a fresh surge of horror. Like insects that stored food for their brethren, these... creatures had...

“We’re going to destroy this place,” she said, her hands balling into fists. “We’re going to bring it down and wipe out every last one of these... these fucking abominations.” Shannon’s head never moved as she shifted through scan modes, drinking in every detail of the infested hydroponics facility. A little thrill that she didn’t manage to suppress shivered up her back, making her breath catch in her throat.

Abigail looked over at Shannon, remaining silent for a moment. “How do we start?”

“We finish the mission,” the corporal replied. “Then,” she didn’t acknowledge the dark joy whispering in her ear, but she didn’t deny it, either. “Then everything here burns.”

~

Abigail went down first, sliding the last few meters and coming out in a crouch, her carbine up and tracking. She didn’t use the light this time, unwilling to do anything to give away their position. “Clear,” she said, listening to the scuffing and scraping as Shannon followed her ‘big sister’ down the air vent. “Mind the drop.”

They were on the lowest level of the hydroponics facility now, using Gemma’s tunnels to evade the swarms of Turned; the infected petty officer seemed to be playing them fair so far – while the creatures might make use of the air vents and maintenance tunnels to skulk through the station and ambush their prey, they didn’t like the ones that led into rooms with active machinery. The crawlspaces that they did travel were easy to identify – this close to such choking growth, they were overgrown and filled with the spread, whereas Mackenzie and her ‘siblings’ kept their access routes relatively clean. Farther away from this contamination, that distinction obviously didn’t exist, but right now it had allowed the women to avoid at least two encounters with the bay’s inhabitants. Each had been a pulse-pounding moment when the soldiers crouched in the dark, listening to a monster’s wet rasps and the squishes of its mismatched feet in the spread, so close that it seemed impossible that it didn’t know that they were there, only able to breathe again once its footsteps had faded away. Even Abigail’s habitual aggression was restrained, and with good reason.

They were everywhere.

Dozens – hundreds – of them, misshapen bodies slouched and stalked through the overgrown room, wearing ghastly remnants of their human faces. Twisted limbs twitched and quivered and warped throats issued growls, moans and too-human sighs as the horde swarmed through the hydroponics bay, snapping and screaming at one another. Swarming through doorways, skittering out of vents. Every step had to be watched and every corner of the room held potential adversaries. If Gemma hadn’t showed them those passageways, they would have been found and torn to pieces by now. Abigail pushed Shannon back into an alcove, squeezing in with her, watching as another of the half-torso creatures, much like the one they had stomped to death – had it only been yesterday? Or had it been longer? – crawled along the wall, following by a pair of scouting Turned, one of which had once been a child. The trio scurried over to a closed vent in the walls, the hunter using one arm to lift the grill and allow its smaller charges inside, following them a moment later.

The walls were bedecked with sagging, torn sheets of flesh that had once held this grotesque colony, sustained like their vacuum-bred cousins: pulsing veins bringing in a trickle of food to the sleeping horrors. Abigail and Shannon had watched as slumbering Turned had awoken, cutting themselves out of their cysts, the burst cocoons spilling foul-smelling liquid everywhere, quivering muscles straining and twitching as the effects of their hibernation wore off and they lurched to join the rest of the agitated horde.

We did this.

Winged creatures fluttered through the rafters and mezzanines, barking scouts winding through the press of bodies as frenzied hunter forms hissed and grappled with each other, tearing inconsequential gashes in one another’s flesh.

How many? Abigail had to wonder. How many people had had to die to create this kind of... of army. She could hear the hitch in Shannon’s breathing through the comm and winced, realizing that her ‘little sister’ didn’t have to guess that. Even worse, Shannon had to have noticed what Abigail had seen: some of those Turned were human enough to identify, to still be recognizable as the people they’d killed in North-4. “Don’t look at them,” Abigail whispered as she carefully opened the hatch to another maintenance tube. Through it, she could hear the comforting sound of a whining, dying machine and saw the tunnel itself was blissfully clear of the spread. “Don’t look at them,” she repeated, knowing that Shannon wasn’t listening to her, that the younger woman was remembering each detail of those monstrous, murdered faces.

“I... remember them,” it was a horrified whisper.

“I know. Now come on. Come on Shannie.”

~

Something had changed.

She could feel that it had. More than just scanner readings, she could feel it on some atavistic level, a predator’s innate instincts.

Jane took a moment to unlock her helmet, feeling it slide back off her face with a clicking of joints. The cool air felt good on her sweaty skin. The trooper knelt on the deck, resting her elbows on her knees, brushing a strand of damp brown hair back over her ear. Her armour kept her alive, but it also separated her from the world around her. She’d never thought about it, not before coming here, but data displays, infrared scans, motion sensors – it wasn’t enough. Not always. She’d never made a kill in her bare skin; she’d always thought of her armour as her skin. It gave her strength and speed, let her walk through fire that would kill a squad of lesser soldiers and she was grateful for it. Sometimes, though – sometimes, you just needed to let the wind kiss your cheeks.

Or what passed for wind here.

The trooper remained still for a long moment, listening to the darkness around her. It was different. She wasn’t being hunted, but something had changed. The hydroponics facility was the last place that she wanted to go, but it was where she was picking up radio transmissions. She didn’t know what was being said, or who was saying it – the jamming was scattering that, but it was coming through on Artemis frequencies. At least two point sources, one of which kept popping up every few minutes, perhaps trying to contact the first and having no luck of it.

Jane’s comm gear was more advanced than standard mudfoot equpiment, so she might be able to break through the jamming, but the lieutenant didn’t bother. It would only give away her position. They called out in the voices of the people you knew. That was how she’d lost Alistair. Even if it wasn’t a trap, she knew nothing about the distant speakers. They could have gone F-2, or they could be ferals – this was close to Whiteface territory. Better to wait. Better to have them in her sights first. Two promises, each one determining what she’d do. Kill the infected; seal the breach. Protect the living; keep them safe.

The woman stood, her helmet closing back around her skull, bringing her blacklight up. She licked her lips. Almost there. Then she’d know which promise to keep.

~

Every garden had a gardener and it was just as true here: they were spindly things, little more than skin stretched over malformed bones, their delicate hands split into fingers of many shapes and functions, most of which could only be guessed at. They scurried up and down the obscene plant stalks like spiders, tending to them – clearing away parasites and pruning aberrant growths, or pulling out languidly twitching tendrils to wind about fresh substrate. As Shannon watched, one of the gardeners climbed up to a honeypot, its strange fingers twitching and vibrating against the honeypot’s bloated skin. The once-human thing’s jaw sagged open and the gardener’s own mouth split apart, a tubular probocsis forcing itself down the honeypot’s esophagus. The gardener’s entire body pulsed as its slurped up the contents of the honeypot’s gullet, its own belly swelling as it did so.

They had both been human once. Every hour spent here showed some new permutation, some new re-imagining of the human form, twisted by this infection like clay figures in a disturbed child’s hands. An ecosystem forged from insanity. “It takes pieces,” Shannon whispered the feral’s words over again, only barely noticing Abigail’s reaction as she unknowingly mimicked the man’s voice. “And puts them back together.” Her cheek burned and she blinked as words she didn’t remember reading came to mind.

...the R-series is as frightening as it is exhilarating. Contrary to all biological law, it can infect not only living tissue, but dead and necrotic cells. Any biomatter can be used, if only to provide raw materials and food to developing R-types, but if the host’s genetic material has not denatured or deteriorated substantially, the R-series is capable of using it, of incorporating beneficial traits into the current host and any organisms that that particular host infects itself. We’re still looking into...

Shannon didn’t even realize how tightly she was holding to the mezzanine railing until she felt it creak in her hands, the metal bent and twisted by her Halo-bred muscles. She pulled back, deeper into the shadows and watched as the gardener-thing scuttled back down to the ground, wandering over to a hunter breed, the creature’s jaws splitting open and writhing, infective tongues sliming over its jagged teeth as it waited for the gardener to feed it.

Nothing here is pure.

Something rattled in the vents overhead and Shannon looked back at her squadmate. “We need to keep moving.” Ahead of them, the tracking signal continued to beckon and they climbed into another ‘safe’ crawlspace to follow it.

~

Something in this garden was breathing. Above the hisses and moans, below the buzzing of insects and the dull drone of ancient air circulation systems, they could hear it, heavy and groaning, as if it were simultaneously struggling for breath and slowly waking up. No, that wasn’t right. There was discordance in the pattern. It wasn’t one thing creating those deep, wheezing wafts of filthy air. It was two. One was softer; distant and rhythmic. The other was all around them, its heavy, uneven breaths spewing through vents and respiratory orifices. Organs and fleshy structures moved in impossible ways, as if they were all part of a larger organism. Shannon turned away as a particularly deep exhalation spewed gobbets of loose spread and moisture out of an air vent, globules of flesh spattering on her armour.

It didn’t seem aware of them, if it was even capable of that – it was just a simple interconnected nerve net, presumably the biological equivalent of the machinery in the rooms they passed, there to regulate and control the organic systems that maintained the infested hydroponics bay. Shannon wondered what function it performed in areas that didn’t require such control, then decided that she didn’t want to know.

Their target was in the closed section up ahead, the only access through one of the infested passageways, thankfully empty as the women crawled through on elbows and knees, Abigail cursing under her breath as her arsenal kept getting her stuck, but she managed to worm her way after her ‘little sister’.

Taking a deep breath of her own, the Halo slipped out onto a catwalk and looked down at a lunatic god’s vision.

Abigail swore softly, a Darkknell profanity that simultaneously involved religion, incest, bestiality and uses for farming implements not normally considered by those who purchased them. Shannon could only agree with her ‘big sister’s’ summation, unable to find her own voice, remembering what Mackenzie had said: I know Mother...

Mother.

Unlike her smaller relatives, it was all too obvious that this... thing had once been a woman. A soldier, a scientist, a doctor or historian. Perhaps it had even been one of the feral women that infested DROP 47. Now it was an abomination, a living, corpulent nightmare. Unlike many of its ‘sisters’, it still had hair, a dark pelt of black? brown? locks that hung down its back and over its shoulders, greasy and unwashed in who-knew-how long, slicked back from its far-too-human face. Its eyes were mismatched; one was the red of the infected, the other was yellow, the colour of jaundiced tissue. Her – its – arms were mutated, armoured lesions and scales rising through the skin, the flesh of its forearms darkened and leathery. Her double-thumbed hands were thin and her fingers were almost delicate with black, curved nails – long and sharp, but undeniably nails rather than Gemma’s claws. The expression on its face was dreamy, almost content, as its torso slowly weaved back and forth, moving in time to music only it could hear. It was naked and its pendulous breasts bounced and jiggled with the creature’s undulations.

If that was where you stopped, then you could be forgiven in thinking it was as human as Petty Officer Mackenzie. Until your gaze fell below its waist. Just below the bellybutton this... thing took on a whole new dimension and its true purpose was manifestly obvious. A breeding machine. Tumourous flesh bulged and pulsed with the stirrings of the creatures gestating inside its wombs. Larger than a battle tank, the creature’s massive torso was riddled with currently-closed orifices, like a living wasp hive, pupae twitching and shuddering within its body. Powerful tendrils rose from its flesh, waving in the air, or reaching down to support the gardener-things that scuttled over its body. If it had legs, Shannon couldn’t see them.

Two pair of deadly bone-scythes had ruptured from its back, laying at rest against its shoulders like jagged, plucked wings – defensive weapons, should this creature’s army of retainers ever fail it. Feeding veins lay criss-crossed over its bulk like fat worms, there to nourish the newborn. Tall breathing tubes extended from its back and bulky abdomen, shivering slightly as they drew in air in the soft, constant whooshing that Shannon had heard before. More tendrils hung down from the infested ceiling, pulsing rhythmically as they drew in food, connected to the base of the respiratory structures.

As Shannon watched, the mother-thing’s torso shivered and her smile widened into beatific glee as something akin to maternal pride lit her features. She opened her fang-filled mouth, her lower jaw splitting in half, tongues and mouthparts creating something that sounded like – that was – a command and a pair of gardeners scuttled to one of her labial openings, scalpel fingers cutting open their mother’s body, skeletal arms reaching into her and pulling forth a struggling, hissing form, uterine waters spilling out as her torso pulsed, expelling her latest child. As she did so, she shivered obscenely, mewling with a monster’s iteration of joy, she cupped her breasts, sharpened fingernails digging into her skin as her offspring was born, pulled from her misshapen body and borne to the spread-covered deck.

This one was different. Its flesh was smooth and even, unmarred by the haphazard mutations that had formed its fellow Turned. Its fingers wriggled – fingers, not claws and its forearms flexed. What Shannon had initially taken for a ridge of bone was actually one of those scythe-like blades, held back in some kind of socket; as the newborn spasmed, they extended over the backs of its hands, as lethal as those of its hunter kin. As the gardeners pulled it to its feet, it looked at itself, every limb and every muscle twitching as if it were unable to remain still. Shannon swallowed; there was nothing human in that face. It had two eyes. It had a mouth and, after a fashion, a nose. But there was nothing human there, less than what she’d seen in the grotesque features of the other Turned.

The newborn moved. Neither woman even realized it until it had happened. One moment, it was standing there, trembling and seizing, the next... it was still there, still in the same hunched pose, but one of its killing blades was suddenly red and dripping and, before their eyes, one of the gardeners fell apart.

Still fidgeting and shivering, the newborn looked at its kill and its jaws split in a lipless smile that was far too wide and exposed far too many sharp teeth. Its head snapped towards the second gardener. Another twitch and the slightly-built Turned was suddenly off the ground, impaled on the newborn’s other blade, hanging limply, staring into the eyes of its killer. It did not react; it simply waited.

Twitch.

The gardener’s head came off and the newborn let the body slump from its blade, snapping its head towards the others around it, that same smile on its face. With a growl that shook the deck, its mother caught its attention. The newborn cringed for an instant, then straightened and yowled back in challenge, gnashing its teeth, spittle spraying from its mouth.

The mother flicked one of her tendrils and sent the newborn flying. A blur of movement and it was back on its feet, its chest quivering from where it was repairing the organs its mother had pulped and the bones she had crushed, drool and pink froth spilling from its snapping jaws. It was impossible for the mother to turn her entire bulk towards the newborn, but her torso did move, mismatched eyes watching the recalcitrant creature, her hands splayed and scythes rising higher, unfurling in response to her child’s aggression.

The smaller Turned paused and stepped back as its mother faced it and it dropped its gaze, its killing blades sliding back into its arms. The parted halves of the mother’s lower jaw closed and her scythes lowered. She extended a hand out towards the newborn. It crawled towards her in obeisance, tongues flicking in and out as it tasted the pheromone-laden air. Climbing her bulk, it came eye to eye with her and, like any mother would, she reached out and stroked her child’s cheek, her own tongues slithering up and down its flesh, licking it clean. As she did so, the newborn began to calm. It slid sedately back down to the deck, casting a final look over its shoulder before trundling off to join the others, the gardeners it had hewn reassembling as it passed.

“What...” Abigail could barely make herself speak. “What are we looking at, Shannie?” Her next words all came out in a rush. “What did we just see.”

Shannon couldn’t answer right away, waiting for the chills that had run down her back to fade, her logical mind to reassert itself over the part that wanted to dig a hole and bury herself in it and never come out. “We just-,” her voice cracked and she somehow managed to get it back under control. “We just saw a soldier get commissioned, Three.”

Post by **LadyTevar** » 2011-03-31 08:05pm

You would have to add a Brood Mother. You really WOULD have to add a brood mother.

*twitch shiver twitch* Gods below, you really are fucked in the head, you know that? Worst of all, there's a sick twisted logic to the ecosystem that makes it all the worse

[R_H] · Post by **[R_H]** » 2011-04-01 03:15am

Oh, that's nasty.

...the R-series is as frightening as it is exhilarating. Contrary to all biological law, it can infect not only living tissue, but dead and necrotic cells. Any biomatter can be used, if only to provide raw materials and food to developing R-types, but if the host’s genetic material has not denatured or deteriorated substantially, the R-series is capable of using it, of incorporating beneficial traits into the current host and any organisms that that particular host infects itself. We’re still looking into...

Human and non-human alike?

Bladed_Crescent · Post by **Bladed_Crescent** » 2011-04-02 12:06am

So, I trust all the questions regarding just what the 'gardens' are have been settled, yes?

Lady Tevar wrote:You would have to add a Brood Mother. You really WOULD have to add a brood mother.

Or something near enough, I suppose.

She's symptomatic of what our un-named woman on Primal realized: the R-types are changing. Slowly, perhaps, but steadily. New forms are being - ah - assembled, more complex (and dangerous) Turned are appearing. Infectors, Crying Girls, soldiers, praetorians, Leviathans. And, of course, dear sweet Mother. Hmm. I think I'll call her Tia.

The more biomatter they have access to, the faster this process can occur. Imagine the possibilities.

Someone certainly did. But who and for what? You don't get that much. Not yet, anyways.

Ah heh heh heh.

Gods below, you really are fucked in the head, you know that? Worst of all, there's a sick twisted logic to the ecosystem that makes it all the worse

Thanks; I'm not a biontologist (as my friends like to call me) for nothing. I did a bit of research into space-based food webs and then thought, "Well, how can I make it even worse?" The answer was obvious. And it didn't involve 'impertinent mechanical squid'. hehehe!

Human and non-human alike?

I'd thought the later was rather obvious by now, starting with the formic acid that that one Turned used on Abigail, the scout in the hospital, the spread and the pack of Turned hounds that attacked Primal's people. It takes pieces. And puts them back together. Perhaps at one point the infection was more limited in the hosts it could infest, but now? Well, I've alluded to the fact before that the Coalition was right to try and search out DROP 47 on nothing more than rumours, and I've still got flashback chapters that show exactly what the Imperium was aiming for with at least two of its projects. As I said before, imagine the possibilities...

There is beauty in this, do you see it? Symmetry.

You'll excuse me if I see little beauty in watching people rip each other apart.

And that's why you're not in charge of this project. You're only seeing the trees, not the forest. There is so much more in this than simple bloodshed. Umbra, do you understand? It will give us everything.

Swindle1984 · Post by **Swindle1984** » 2011-04-02 07:29pm

Fuck fire, acid, and bullets, what these people need is the biggest nuclear warhead they can get a hold of.

StarDestroyer.Net BBS

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