Vetch trailing from one of its blank faces, its back side and under its abdomen.
FUCK!
Surreal. The gooey body slurps through the hole, and balances on two of its three haunches. Then the six fingers extend, on a giant bone like shaft that reaches further than seemed possible. Crossing the distance at a blinding speed unexpected of something so large and brutish.
The hand moves with fluid and elegant grace. The fingerish things of the Fist reach out and encircle him. It clutches him tight in a six fingered claw.
I can’t shoot it. A blast from the Ouroboros at this range would kill Big Bro for sure. I hold my fire and charge forward.
The Fist wastes no time, first it smashes Big Bro into a wall. Then the ceiling, and finally the floor. Blood stains them all.
Big Bro’s pathogen armor is hard enough to punch through the metal walls, exposing chunks of utility foam sandwiched between the outer layers of metal. Puffs of steel-gray and utility-fog yellow blossom in the air where the Fist slams him into the walls, his pathogen armor pulverizing the steel and utility foam.
Already the slurping mass is retreating back through the hole in the wall.
I shove the muzzle of Your. Turn. To. Die. into the joint where the retractable arm meets the abdomen.
Not a word from Big Bro. I’m close enough to see into his eyes. This is how we lost Six-by. His eyes are open, glassy. I can’t say if he’s alive or dead.
“NO!” I am screaming at the top of my lungs.
One of the Fist’s two misshapen skull like heads is focused on me. Its flat, impossibly smooth featureless slate-for-a -ace stares at me. Deep within its body it is making a weird gibbering clickety-noise. I swear it’s laughing at me. And then the skull melts, losing its rigid form, turning to some thick clay that squishes into its body and presses through the hole in the wall.
I pull the trigger,
KA-BOOM!
Firing into the joint. Blasting the fucking thing to holy hell. The blast rips through it and tears through a chunk of the ceiling and wall behind it as well.
The Fist pivots on one of its great haunches and kicks me, full in the chest. Too quick to block. I fly, ass over elbows back down the hall. The thing disappears through the hole I just blasted in the wall. Hauling what I’m all too afraid is the cadaver of Big Bro clenched tight in its doom grip.
The structural integrity must be compromised because directly to my left the wall collapses. Behind me and to the right a section of wall falls inwards. The ceiling above caves in.
The vurkers must have stored something on the level above us. Barrels and vats of whatever the hell they had up there crash down.Some roll down the corridor. Some break open and spill their contents.
Holy shit. The stuff is igniting on contact with the air. Chemical fire erupts around me. Liquid fire is falling from the ceiling, pooling on the ground.
My pathogen is throwing alarms I’ve never seen. The temperatures are insane. 2400 degrees C. 4352 F. 2673.15 Kelvin.
This place is turning into a fucking inferno.
The fucking steel of the flooring catches fire. Fucking steel. I didn’t know steel could catch fire.
It’s hot enough not even a pathogen is safe.
The gencel is empty. The Ouroboros is a useless waste of matter in this state. It’s not equipped with razor wire or a secondary weapons system. When the power runs out its just another lump of metal and composite.
As it is, I’m not sure what I could do with it. Maybe get in a biggest dick contest and win first prize? Other than that, it’s not much use here.
If I was ever going to pogue out, this would be a great time to do it.
If it is my fate to spend what remains of my life crying myself to sleep wishing I was the person I was meant to be, but too afraid to become… Now is my chance.
Fuck that.
I wish I’d paid more attention in school. I grip the Ouroboros by the firing tubes and drag the stock through some of the super-hot flaming liquid pouring from the vurker’s chemical vats, coating the butt of the gun.
Super fuck. As I’d hoped, the metal and composite catch fire. Burning at some insane temperature that redlines even a pathogen’s protection.
Fuck yeah, two-handed I swing what was once Your. Turn. To. Die. Now rechristened deadweapon, a fiery demon’s sword. How long its fire will rage I have no idea. No time to waste.
There is only one path, the path forward.
I charge ahead. Full speed. Screaming at the top of my lungs.
Screaming for violence. Screaming for hell. Screaming for Omen and Deamos to find me.
More than a little scared. More than a little berserk.
Hoping against hope my fucking pathogen can withstand the flames.
I storm through the flames. My pathogen is having a shit fit–
Some part of me disconnects. Secretly disappointed about the big dick contest. I could have been a contender.
If you want to know what it felt like to be set on fire, fuck you. If it’s so important to you that you have to know what it feels like to writhe in agony and pain then stick your own damn hand in a fire and you can write about it all you want in your own shitty apocalypse.
When I snap back I’m out of the flames. The heaviest dose of you won’t feel a thing and that’ll do little monkey, that’ll do I’ve ever felt in my life coursing through my veins.
Fuck, fuck, fuck. I’m on fire. But I’m alive.
Behind me the fire still rages. Intense.
Ahead I hear the buzz of razor wire. I recognize Omen. He’s practically buried into the thing’s gut. Carving away with violent swings of his holocauster, seeking ichor, Wrath burrowing deep into one of its haunches. Malevolent strands of vetch whipping at random. Some seek to kill, others to repair the heavily damaged Fist.
Deamos is here as well. His razor wire biting into the arm that holds Big Bro. As precise as a traumist’s scalpel, First Strike slicing it lengthwise. Once more, seeking ichor.
There is blood everywhere and piles of ropy vetch litter the hall. But there is no spoor. Already the vetch is coming together, reforming.
Somewhere in this foul monster there is ichor. And we will find it. We’re gonna spoor this fucker now. We’re gonna rip that motherfucker apart.
I leap onto the back of the Fist, deadweapon in hand, its chemical fire still burning hot. Pull myself up to straddle one of the faceless skulls. I raise deadweapon above my head, a two-handed stroke.
“Regenerate this, asshole!” I bash away, pounding it’s other fucking head. Raining blows one after the other until the skull thing caves in. Splattering vetch and fire everywhere.
None of us were unscathed. Slowly dying as this fucking Fist refused to spoor and die. I have no idea how long it would have lasted. Forever if we had the stamina, but we didn’t.
I’m not making this up. Damnedest thing I ever saw.
I didn’t know what it was. It was like something out of a nightmare. A wet gurgling wrongful thing slithering on its belly along the ground. Too scared to live, too angry to die.
Bleeding from the chest down–hardcore fucker no doubt if that’s how he freed himself from the gurney–screaming for all he was worth:
“Everyday is a bugfuck festival!”
It was Six-by.
I have no clue what he was yelling about. I don’t know what a bugfuck festival is either. And I don’t intend to find out.
Six-by crawled to us. One of the devil’s own failures. Cast into the forgotten pit of the Abyss where the devil hides his worse mistakes. A vile creature of slime and shadow and eternal vicious hatred.
He hadn’t come to die. He came to join the fight. He wasn’t wearing his pathogen. He didn’t carry Girls In White Dresses. He was barehanded.
Armed with only the most psychotic look I’ve ever seen in a man’s eyes. And that hellish thing that had once been his arm bone, gnawed to a grotesquely sharp point.
He wrapped his legs around one of its foul hau
nches, hugging tightly with his one hand. Six-by stabs the thing, piercing the base of its haunch. It’s not a foot, just a tremendous bulk of hardened shale.
Six-by stabs on. Pounding the base of the haunch with his mutilated arm.
This is the madness.
He is sitting naked, tortured in spools of vetch slowly killing his exposed flesh.
Vetch lacerates into his skull. His skin purple and the color of blood. His skin foams before blistering then popping. The vetch travels beneath his skin, pulling it off his face.
His face contorts, twisting in horrible fucking anguish.
He’s not giving up… Six-by’s fingers open and close.
Fuck me but that vicious bastard refused to die. Six-by stabs on. Shouting the same word, over and over again.
“Die.. Die…DIE!”
I have never seen anything so horrifying in my life. The cilia penetrate his skin and the abhorrent sounds of his subcutaneous tissues being vacuumed as they devour him fill the air, loud and sickening. His face a shrivels like a wet bag as they suck collagen and fat from beneath his skin.
Six-by is still stabbing with the mutilated nastiness that was once his hand
Ichor spills out.
His ferocious stabbing is frenzied now.
“Die! Die! DIE! *DIE!*”
He’s killing the fucking thing with his ruined hands. Trading hunks of his bloody bone for its ichor blackened vetch, ripped from its carcass, the alien cilia wiggling and wrapping around his arm. He keeps stabbing, almost obscured by a veil of deadly vetch, he is reduced to a ghostly, tormented thing that refuses to die.
Spoor, glorious spoor!
How long we tarried there I do not know.
Finally Omen broke the spell.
“Easy friend, leave off.” Omen said, putting his hand on Six-by’s shoulder. “It is finished. We won.”
I know who the real hero was that day. Six-by collapsed, comatose.
Chapter Thirteen
Aftermath
call sign: Deamos
unit type: space marine
location : Debron IV
* * *
THE FIST OF DOOM?
It’s dead.
Not dreaming. Not playing dead. Not lurking in the shadows. Not coming back when you let your guard down. Dead as in all life failed. Dead as in gone and never coming back.
If you are wondering what I did after Six-by spoored the Fist of Doom, I did exactly what anyone would have done in that situation.
I roused 4Skin and Ironside from That Aggressive and together we gathered the carcass and all of the vetch and ichor. Burned its death spot with chlorine fire. A corpuscler couldn’t have done a better job. Then we carted the remains to a far corner of the base and lit it on fire.
Then burned the ashes again.
We ruined that bastard for all eternity.
The vurkers rebuilt both the extractor and the gassery, then worked through Thredfall. They hit quota for both energy and material, plus a little extra.
Thred was a bitch for first fall, and some of them are busted pretty bad, but every single one survived.
We’re here by the skin of our teeth, but the base is up and the supply chain is established.
Most Vicious… Was wrecked.
Omen can’t walk unless he’s wearing his pathogen to deaden the pain. His hamstring completely tore free from the femur. It’s just muscle tissue. Nasty, but he’ll be back in action once a blood wagon arrives. Somehow I don’t think anyone reading this will be shocked to hear that. Of course, he chafes at being kept out of the action, but it’s good for him. Keeps him hungry.
Big Bro is alive, breathing on his own even. I think he broke every bone in his body. We moved him to a makeshift medical ward some of the vurkers built after they got the fires under control. He’s not getting out of bed until he sees a traumist, but he’s about as tough as they come. I think he’ll pull through.
Hangman. Is alive. He’s burned to hell and back. When we tried to pull him out of his armor all that came out was his skin. It just slid right off his flesh. He’s not going to make it unless he gets immediate major medical attention. How long he has, I can not say. I have to stress there’s not a damn thing we can do for him but keep his armor powered and hope it’s keeping him alive and putting him to sleep until he gets medical care. He hasn’t attempted to communicate with anyone since the fight.
Get a blood wagon down in the next sync and Six-by might survive. Your call. No promises.
…
And Six-by…
I am an asshole. There will be bad blood between us.
But if you don’t pull through…
“You did good, brother. You did real good.”
Glossary
Apocalypse, The • aka Humanity’s Suicide Note, a community generated wiki containing the stories of the daily lives of the men of the Third Space Marine Recon Expeditionary Force.
blood wagon • a medical vehicle unit, the blood wagons are two-man medical teams of traumist and corpuscler. The traumist is the senior most medical unit on the battlefield and using their vast collections of donor material can regenerate human units from even the most heinous injuries. The corpuscler scours the battlefield(s) looking for human tissues, organs and other recyclable parts to provide an easy source of raw materials for use by the traumist in their surgeries.
corpuscler • a medical unit, assigned to a blood-wagon, working under the supervision of a traumist. The corpuscler’s chief responsibility is scavenging the battlefield for any biological matter that can be stored and recycled for later medical procedures/resuscitation efforts. In addition to their primary duties, corpusclers can perform basic first aid during battle, stabilize wounded combat units, transport them to a blood wagon and assist a traumist with more complex recoveries, greatly increasing the efficiency of a blood wagon unit.
Dark Triad • a failed Jericho Trumpets structure where one of the four matrix endpoints malfunctions, collapsing the protective area of the quad and greatly diminishing the zone of safety on the battlefield to a small triangular area around a central focal point.
ethicist • a non-combatant unit that accompanies every Marine fire team. An ethicist coordinator unit is required or the Marines in the fire team will go berserk and can not be controlled. A berserk marine is harmful to anything and everything on the battlefield (himself, his friends, the Kraggit, …). Ideally, every fire team has 5 marines and their ethicist. The 5:1 ratio is optimal, a 10:1 ratio is standard, and a minimum 25:1 ratio is mandatory. Any ethicist attempting to coordinate more than 25 marines is susceptible to madness and will cause all of the marines in his care to go berserk. This descent into madness can not be reversed.
extractor • a generic structure and the foundation of a material acquisition supply chain. The accumulated material can be used to build new vehicles, ships and structures or repair existing ones that have been damaged or worn from overuse. Different types of specialized extractors are required to accumulate mass from various environments (atmospheric, oceanic, arctic, surface, subterranean, deep space etc.) and in harmony can speed the acquisition rate of the supply chain.
garrison • a structure to house combat units during Thredfall, aka maggot colony, garrisons are built with protective shielding to block the harmful effects of thred.
gassery • a generic structure and the foundation of a energy acquisition supply chain. The accumulated energy can be used to power weapons, vehicles, structures etc. The efficiency of the supply chain can be enhanced with a variety of upgrades (condenser, clarifier/purifier, distillery, mint).
gencel • generator cell, incredibly dense power supply shared by most Marine weapons/structures/devices.
irregular orbit • aka protected-space, any coincident orbit balanced between kernel-space and user-space. Items, ships, units etc,. in an irregular orbit can not interact with or be detected by units in either kernel-space or user-space.
Jericho Trumpets • aka Trumpets of J
ericho, a structure deployed in matrices of four overlapping fields of concentrated pitch shifted signals called “quads”. Krag units entering a quad and exposed to these frequencies become ‘Corrupted’ and are forcibly pulled from protected-space into real-space. Any Human unit daring to venture outside of the protective confines of a quad perishes immediately from faster-than-light Krag massacre units.
kernel engineer • a non-combatant unit, aka kernels, are an absolutely essential knowledge worker, can also perform any action a vurker can, though at 1/2 the speed. The presence of an unassigned kernel engineer (not actively researching an upgrade/repair procedure) will speed vurker activity by 50%.
propaganda officer • a non-combatant unit, librarians of The Apocalypse.
thredfall • a by-product of the Trumpets of Jericho. The exact phenomena that causes thred to fall is still not well understood. As the thred-cycle progresses during thredfall the actual strands of thred change color from quicksilver to a dirty gray hue, causing some observers to refer to it as “failed light”. Thred is both a toxic as well as a corrosive substance and inflicts severe damage to both Krag and humans alike.
traumist • the most competent and highest ranking medical unit on the battlefield, from the vast troves of human body parts stored in their blood wagons, traumists can restore the health of virtually any still living human no matter how damaged, back to fighting condition.
vurker • a non-combatant unit, aka 100% ‘ers, Virtual Workers are highly customizable construction units that can build and repair most buildings and vehicles. Vurker units are also required to operate most supply chain operations (mass extraction, gassery purification, minting etc).
The Maggot Colony Page 6