Win a beta key with creativity! - Page 12

On March 25 2010 16:18 ThundaHawk wrote:
Here's my submission! Enjoy.
thundahawk_@hotmail.com


FIVE YEARS
A StarCraft II Fan Fiction by ThundaHawk
--

We've got five years, stuck on my eyes
Five years, what a surprise
We've got five years, my brain hurts a lot
Five years, that's all we've got

- Ancient Terran musician David Bowie, deceased, circa 2023.
From the Album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars




--

KILL THEIR WORKERS!

The voice buzzed between Bo's ears, echoing back and forth. Just like a jackhammer. Like an itch he couldn't scratch.

His lenses were fogging up, again, and he couldn't see shit. Holstering his twin P-45 Scythe Gauss Pistols, Bo rubbed his mask. Again.

That ought to buy some time, he thought. Or did he? It was becoming increasingly difficult for the Reaper to distinguish his own thoughts these days.

Planet Geffon swam back into view all at once, flooding Bo's visor with images of dead oak trees, fungal growth, and the same black, ichorous pools of oblivion that had swallowed Elbrecht whole the day before. Elbrecht always had a sense of humor: in fact, he'd been laughing right up to the point when a Zerg critter upped and dragged him into the swampy abyss. A fart joke had been his undoing. Elbrecht loved fart jokes.

The alien air stank with a foul pungency that could only be described as alien. Bo's respirator tubes whined in protest: if they leaked for even an instant, he would surely die as fuzzy blue spores entered his lungs and had themselves a party. Another Reaper, Illik, had found out the hard way a week before. Now, the Reapers reinforced their suit tubing with duct tape.

Bo checked his fuel tank. Half empty.

Green mists rolled over the swamp and, once more, his lenses started fogging up. His stomach ached, his vision swam, and for a second Bo clutched a deuterium-eight demolition charge close against his chest, wondering what it would be like to just... vaporize in a blaze of glory. Clean, hot, and instant. Searing relief from the nightmare. Kaboom.

Job's not done yet. Nobody goes home until the job gets done, scum!

Ah, yeah. That voice took him back a ways.

--

The loudspeakers were unapologetic in their loudness.

"FIVE YEARS, ladies! Five years! For five years, now, the Reaper Corps has been up and runnin' and, for five years, not ONE goddamn piss ant individual has made it out alive! Not even ONE!"

Torus IV. The "Icehouse". A cold steel prison facility with even colder inmates. This was where they trained Reapers to fight and die.

Down in the Pit, Bo stood beside his fellow convicts and ne'er-do-wells, bracketed against the floor like a mannequin in a museum. Sharp metal restraints covered them from head to toe: the people in charge didn't give two shits about creature comforts.

"Hell, we've yet to have a single Reaper make it past SIX MONTHS!", boomed the voice once more. "Six months! That's pathetic!"

A heavy steel door slid open on the balcony above, and through it rolled a living corpse on wheels. "Zander the Duke", they called him. His face was an implacable mask of stretched-back flesh, his arms were charred stumps, and his legs (of course) were wheels. Rusty, creaking wheels.

"Yesterday, this piss ant Administration guy comes planetside and starts questioning me about this very thing! 'Mister Duke', he says, 'given the, ah, colossal casualty rates incurred by your Reapers, might you perhaps consider the Reaper Program a failure, sir?'"

Nobody said a word. The Duke went on.

"Failure!? Fuck that shit! I kicked his ass right off the planet, I did! Reapers! We are not training you for suicide, and we are NOT training you for failure! I'm training you to WIN, goddamn it! If you die out there, it's because you're WEAK. You're bleeders! Back when I was a Marine, I'd have KILLED to get the deal that you're getting! Two years of service to win back your freedom with all debts repaid? Hell yes, sir! Sign me right up, sir!"

The Duke rolled down a ramp and onto a gantry which, in turn, lowered him into the pit. Beside Bo, an inmate chuckled. He stopped laughing when a guard's rifle butt took out all his teeth. Blood flew everywhere, but Bo didn't flinch. The corpse, this "Duke", said there was a way out. That was all he needed to hear.

"Do you think I ENJOY watching you all die, gentlemen!? Do you think me and my boys take pleasure in reading out the KIA lists? Course not! Your freedom isn't being dangled in front of you like a carrot on a stick: it's real! You just hafta earn it!."

--

Bo wiped the blood off his mask.

Yesterday's raid had left him with a quarter tank of jet fuel and three fellow Reapers. They'd cleaned a Zerg hatchery inside out with their demolition charges, slaughtered the drones, and burned the bodies. The Reapers were drenched in alien blood from head to toe and, still, Command had redirected them towards the main Hive.

Shit wasn't fair. For a second, Bo even found himself missing the Torus IV and the Icehouse. At least they got fed back there.

--

Old wheels-for-legs treated his Reapers like dogs. Do a trick, get a bone. Remember my whistle, and you've earned yourself some chow.

Tonight, nobody was getting a bite until everyone recited the Reaper credo a hundred times over. "STRIKE HARD, STRIKE FAST, and ALWAYS KILL THE WORKERS!"

"So, gentlemen," croaked the Duke, "say you've just crested a cliff face with those lovely jet packs we've provided and you see one of them fancy pants Zerg bases down in that there valley. What's your first priority, gentlemen?"

"Kill their workers." All in unison.

"I can't hear you!"

"KILL THEIR WORKERS! Sir!"

"Again!" The Duke smiled gleefully as they all jumped through the hoop.

"KILL THEIR WORKERS! KILL THEIR WORKERS! KILL THEIR WORKERS!"

The Duke swore by his mundane techniques. The Reaper candidates were routinely pumped full of narcotic stim packs and drugged straight out of their minds. By forcing them into repetition he was, in effect, creating an army of drones in order to kill Zerg... drones.

The effect was profound.

As effective as the stims were, however, they were a no-go in combat on account of psychosis. Once upon a time, a stimmed-up Reaper named Feder went totally ballistic inside his base and ended up killing half a dozen SCV operators. When they finally brought him down, he just kept muttering "KILL THE WORKERS". And that was the end of that.

Once upon a time, Bo asked the Duke why the Zerg need to mine gas.

"Shut your fucking face, son! That science ain't none of your business, y'hear? Are you a scientist?"

No, sir. I'm a criminal. This one time, back on Mar Sara....

"Then stop trying to act like one! It's their job to figure out how that there stuff works, and it's your job to KILL THEIR WORKERS. Y'hear?"

Yes, sir. Kill all workers, sir.

Bo received a double-dose of stims over the next month for that little month. After that, he didn't think so free.

The day Bo shipped off from the Icehouse, the Duke actually apologized for having him drugged silly. Said it was for the best. No time to think out there in the field, he said.

"Kill their workers, son! Kill 'em all, I say, and one day you'll earn your freedom."

Engines howled. At that moment, Bo was happy to watch as Torus IV vanish into space. He was eager to leave the Duke behind and earn his freedom among the stars.

--

Now, all Bo wanted was a hot meal and some stims. They'd made him dependent.

Bo activated his jet pack and his squad mates followed suit. The device came to life with a roar, spitting fire and scorching the underbrush. In unison, the Reapers sailed over another poisonous death swamp and hurtled themselves atop a craggy plateau. They'd been trained well, at least.

Before them loomed the Zerg Hive with its writhing carpet of lavender mucous, the aptly named "creep". All manner of nightmarish structures surrounded the Hive: one resembled a mutilated ribcage; another looked like a colon turned inside-out on itself. It was as if someone (or something) had purposefully designed the Zerg buildings to appear revolting to human eyes. Zergling patrols skittered about the creep. This would not be easy.

If Elbrecht were here, he'd have cracked a joke about the Reapers' short range and their need to get close to the enemy. But Elbrecht was dead.

Still, it seemed a cruel joke. Their orders were explicit: using all available means, they were to neutralize the enemy's resource line. Only then would Dropships come to extract them.

If they're even out there, that is.

We are not training you for suicide!. So said the Duke, so adamantly, nestled safely in the relative safety of his fortress several galaxies away.

A long time ago the Duke might have been a Marine, once, but he had no clue how bad things had gotten on the front.

He didn't know about the horrors that Bo and his unit had seen. Every day and every week for the past four months, they'd lived it and-- now-- Bo just wanted out.

Fuck Planet Geffon. Fuck the Zerg. Fuck the Terran Reapers Corps!

Forget freedom: Bo just wanted not to die. He wanted more options than walking into a deathtrap on one hand and being executed for desertion on the other. He had no such luck.

Finally, MacKinley's voice called out over the radio, breaking the silence.

"Twelfth battalion just called the ball. It's on, you chicken shits. Time to kill us some workers."

No such luck. No choice at all. A low, heavy rumble broke out in the far distance. Bo heard the trademark sound of Crucio Siege Tank fire and Battlecruiser engines. He swallowed back his horror and broke into a sprint alongside the other three Reapers. They were all assholes (MacKinley, especially) but, aside from that fact, they were also Bo's only companions. They were his fellow inmates, caught up in the same insanity that drove them towards their doom. Out here, his brothers in arms were all he had.

The Reapers left the plateau with a mighty leap and-- yelling GERONIMO at the top of their lungs-- hurtled towards the unsuspecting Hive, their jet packs blazing noisily behind them.
Their dorsal fins hummed, slicing through the air with the greatest fluidity.

Supersonic death on wings.

--

Bo hit the ground running. Lars and Curt landed beside him, gauss pistols drawn.

Here and there, Zerg eggs burst to life. Four Zerglings ran straight at Bo. BANG BANG BANG: his Gauss pistols tore them to shreds.

For what they lacked in range, the Reapers had firepower in spades. Wielded akimbo, their "Scythe" pistols wreaked havoc among the little Zerg critters that sprung up from seemingly nowhere to defend their Hive cluster.

Still, the Zerg came on.

Bo turned around just in time to see Curt vanish beneath a sea of claws and chattering teeth. No time to stop. He kept on running, and the Hive drew closer.

Kill their workers!, went the voice. Kill them all!

Five Zerglings leap at Bo from behind a fleshy mound, screaming their alien gibberish. He killed two of the creatures in midair with well-placed gauss rounds that punched through their chitin, through carapace, and straight through their tiny brains.

The remaining Zerglings swiped at Bo's exposed flank. With lightning reflexes, he spun around on his toes and fired a jet pack burst. The throttle carried him away from his assailants. Guns blazing, Bo reduced the Zerglings to biological mush beneath a withering hail of fire.

His fuel gauge was bottoming out. Bo shut off the valve and ventured a look around.

Lars was gone, too, impaled by the razor-sharp spines of a Hydralisk. Firing his jet pack, MacKinley landed atop the beast's wide-brimmed head, crushing it into the creep, and emptied a magazine into its face. The monster went silent.

"Well?", cried MacKinley, "what are you waiting for!? Let's kill some goddamn workers!"

Almost subconsciously, Bo found himself nodding in agreement. All around them, the Hive buzzed with activity. The sharp chittering of Zerglings had become replaced by venomous roars and mammoth wails. The main Zerg army had become aware of the Reapers' shenanigans, and it was without a doubt pissed off. They didn't have much time left.

--

They recognized the telltale blue glow of a mineral field almost immediately.

"Target in sight!", called MacKinley into his vox. If High Command were around they'd pat him on the back, no doubt, for having gotten this far.

Several dozen Zerg harvesters-- "Drones", they called them-- scurried to and fro as they gathered their resources, oblivious to the carnage about to take place.

Bo let the training take over. With a primal roar, he loosed his Gauss Pistols and laid waste to the crab-like critters. MacKinley followed suit. One by one, the Drones began to explode in puddles of blood and guts. Spent casing flew everywhere.

KILL THEIR WORKERS! For great freedom!

Something eventually keyed the Drones into motion, however, and together they rushed the Reapers in unison. With a heavy boot, MacKinley stomped one creature in the face and shot another to pieces. Still the Drones came on, completely unfazed by the deaths of their comrades.

Barely half a dozen Drones remained, now. Bo felt his heart race as he kept pouring it on. Adrenaline shot through his veins. Beside him, MacKinley laughed a demented laugh. "Get some, bitches! Get so--"

Then the horror returned.

Without warning, MacKinley found his voice cut short. The vox was suddenly filled by crackling, gurgling horror. Bo watched, aghast, as a titanic Zerg monstrosity on six spindly legs pierced his squadmate's armor with its long, slender talons.

He had never seen such horror. Effortlessly, the creature lifted the poor skewered Reaper up high and tore him right in half.

Bo stood there, paralyzed by fear, as the six-legged monster turned its attention towards him. His blood ran cold. He wished he had some stims on hand to guide his hand, but wishes were just that. Wishes.

He wanted to run.

Run? Run where?

Bo checked his fuel tank and realized he wouldn't get far at all. One way or another, this was it. He wished that he were back at the Icehouse. He wished to see the Duke again so that he could look right into the bastard's misshapen face and scream "THIS IS SUICIDE, you bastard! There isn't any escape plan and there never was! You sent us in there to DIE!"

Get your ass back to reality, son.

But he wasn't dead! Not yet, at least. That realization alone propelled him into action.

In five years, nobody had survived past six months. Bo would change that. He didn't need an escape plan: he was the escape plan. He would not die. Not here, not today. He was a Reaper. Death incarnate.

The Zerg Queen shrieked and, retching backwards, spat a volley of spines in Bo's direction. He dove backwards, narrowly a quick exit. The Queen charged.

Bo fired up his jet pack once more. The device croaked in protest, sputtering as it slid him backwards against the creep. He fired away at the oncoming monster as fast as his fingers would allow. Bo didn't aim and, frankly, he didn't have to: the thing was as big as it was ugly.

It was all useless. His Gauss Pistols were never intended for use against an armored hide, and most of his shots simply ricocheted off the Queen's ridged carapace.

Bo's jet pack died out, finally, and the Queen lunged forward with its mandibles barred. At the last possible second he rolled aside, narrowly avoiding impalement. Rising to his feet, Bo emptied his remaining rounds into the Queen's flank. It took him a moment to realize that he might as well have tickled it.

Again, the Queen lashed out with its talons and, again, Bo barely managed to avoid the lethal strike. This time he dodged forward, rolling straight under the creature and emerging on the other side. The Queen slowly pivoted in place to face him, taking its time to size up the lone human that had defied it so.

The Queen howled once more, as if it knew it had Bo on the ropes. Down and out. Defeated.

This time, though, there was no horror.

Bo unceremoniously tossed his spent Pistols aside and rubbed the fog from his lenses.
With a toothy grin, he looked the Queen right in its beady little eyes and he laughed.

"Fear the Reaper Man," he growled.

The beeps grew steadily louder in increments.

Then, all at once, the clutch of D-8 charges stuck to the Queen's bloated green abdomen by duct tape exploded and lit up the night sky like a fireball.




Blizz, buff Reapers back to usefulness plaz!