"If there are any probes down range, please beep entertainingly when shot"
-Mark4
|
| A story | | | Author: | | | IP: | p127.netXXXX | | Date: | 07/05/00 07:07 | | Game Type: | Starcraft | | Labels: | none | | Report Rating: , # of Ratings: 0, Max: , Min:
Lifetime Rating for The belt: 5.0000 | | The story
Chapter I
Warmth. All around. Dark, soothing. Movement disturbs slumber. Begin to move towards movment. Move silently. Daylight glimmers. Shimmering redforms move closer. Crouch. Redforms come closer. Don't see. Leap. Knock one redform to ground. Sink claw into chest. Heat everywhere as blood sprays. Disoriented. Second redform attacks. Wounds leg. Leap again. Land in cover. Redform cannot see, is searching. Dozens more of me come near. Encroutch on redform. Still it doesn't see. All of me attack. Small me grapple with redform, knock to ground. Larger me move into area. Now safe. Wound in leg begins to heal. Move through cover with rest of me. Hear movement. All of me move forward quickly, stalking the sound. A towering strangefrom is ahead of us. Spears of heat come from arms. Am confused. The me attack, leap at strangeform. Strangeform turns too fast. Some small me dead. Strangeform attacks me with heat spears. That particular me is dead. Other me move in. Large me attacks the strangeform. The large me attacks with the blades out of its back. Forces back the strangeform. Strangeform not hurt from attack. Do not understand. Many dozen small me attack from behind. Ah! NOW strangeform begins to hurt. Wait, the large me is no longer part of me. Attacks the many small me. Confused! Small me run away from the strangeform. All of me avoid strangefrom for now. Sink into safety. Warm all around. Dark. Confused...* Lietenant Danforth sat scorched, cut and panicked by the wrecked goliath. His advance scouts had been taken out by burrowed Zerg, but he didn't know where, they'd been taken out too fast. The damn things had been crawling all over the entire area, under the cover of the bushes. Danforth thought to himself, "Oh this is brilliant, this is. We can't see them, but they can see us. Very fair. Very well balanced." He frowned to himself. Something had distracted them though, they should be all over us by now. Mother of God, he KNEW they shouldn't have attacked a Zerg hive when it was this advanced without air cover! The only easy way to deal with these bastards was to get them to stretch their perimeter to the point where they couldn't mass enough units to take out you attackers. Currently they were fighting dirty. They had burrowed all over this sector, and were steadily waking up and then gutting his soldiers before they knew what was happening. Each soldier they kille! d easily would be about eight less of them in a firefight. He had to get air support in here fast and bomb the hive. The Zerg should pull back and help rebuild it and defend it. Unfortunately, air support was busy... *Redforms close now. Found redform hive. Child me soon to be adult me. Then attack. The child me have extended the safeground enough for more structures to be built. More structures, more me. Flying me are healed from attacking strangeform. Strangeforms confusing. Not many here though. That is good. The me are pleased. All of the me move to redform hive. Small me first, followed by large me. The command-me are to travel in the middle of the me. They have other me travelling in their bellies, ready to attack the redforms. Without the command-me, the me cannot hear. Command-me are valued. The me move in.* Danforth prepared the automated defenses and rallied his remaining troops. "Everybody is to stay within the main base until this ends. The bugs are everywhere, many burrowed, and we can;t tell where we are. This mission wasn't given enough priority to have any Ghosts assigned, so we can't find them that way, and we can't nuke them. The bastards didn't believe how big the hive is. The Zerg will probably be here any minute, so we have to man the tank-towers. This is not going to be fun. A final word, everyone has to be careful when you take out Ultralisks and those Overlords, those parasites will kill you so fast you won't know what happened. I shit you not. Move out." The Zerg broke cover faster than expected. The little zerglings moved too fast for all of them to be taken out, and there were dozens of them. Sanchez took out eight of the little suckers before the group reached him, and Bunny managed to get the others. Sanchez needed a medic, but would probably pull through. The tank towers began to fire at larger targets in the distance. Danforth knew what they would be. The zerglings were a suicide attack force to see how prepared they were. The big guns would be coming now. Five hydralisks broke cover at once, and made for the soldiers. They obviously could tell that they couldn;t dent the towers alone. The first hydralisk was cut down by heavy weapons fire before it got through the defenses. The others got close enough to attack. A mouthful of acid spit finished Sanchez, he wouldn't need that medic after all. Danforth decided there were very few worse ways to go, writhing and screaming about his eyes before the acid ate thro! ugh to the brain. He shuddered, despite himself. Danforth ducked suddenly and fell back in his foxhole. The wall above his head was studded with three inch thick, chitinous spines. You couldn't take your eyes of hydralisks for a minute. All of the hydralisks were dead now, but several of his men were dead. Christ. Two ultralisks and an overlord broke cover. One of them made for the towers, leapt into it and knocked it over. The other one stayed to defend the overlord. The overlord released its cargo of defilers which dealt to the rest of the towers. Danforth opened fire on the disgusting brain/jellyfish hybrid. Its fetid flank ruptured in a purplish ichor, and it slumped to the ground. The remaining tower fired at the ultralisk and scored a lucky hit. Body parts rained down. Danforth felt a screaming pain in his gut. He looked down in horror and saw one of the slimy black forms of one of the parasites. He tried to scrape it off hurriedly, but it cut a hole in ! his abdomen. Its head went into the hole, it violentlly twitched twice and disappeared into his gut. Danforth started convulsing like a hooked fish and screaming his lungs out. Literally. Perhaps there was a worse way to go, after all...
Chapter II
Bunny saw the parasite rip a small entrance into Danforths guts, and the Lietenant convulse like a hooked fish as the parasite tore his innards to paste. She screamed at the loss and mercifully shot the screaming lietenant in the head. The screaming stopped. She retched in disgust as she say his stomach move and shift as the parasite continued its now useless work. Bunny had no time to deal with that now. She looked back into the fray. The Zerg were closer now, attacking in larger packs. If the bastards encircled the base they were finished. Already Bunny could see the distant dots of defilers and mutalisks moving towards the base. The had to move fast. A dawning relisation like ice water down her spine struck Bunny; she was in command. "Lets get out of here! We've lost the field till we can get air artillery in here. Get everyone into the buildings, we're moving out! Anyone gets left behind, I will personally send someone back to get them. Alone. Unders! tand?" The dirty, frightened face of the platoon, HER platoon, looked at her briefly, before darting into the buildings. Bunny bellowed, "Keep manning the defensive towers to keep them at bay as long as possible." The remaining soldiers, there weren't many, crowded into the more heavily armoured buildings, which lifted off. Some of the smaller ones on the periphery incinerated some of the Zerg as they ran after their escaping prey. Bunny looked down at the research center, and all of the other buildings she and her team had spent weeks setting up. What a waste. She turned her head as her genetically altered eyesight picked up some Zerglings dragging Danforth's remains away. What a waste. The idiots at Command had sent a group of fairly green soldiers onto a planet with a hive of that size? Stupidity. The only guaranteed way to deal with one like that was to take it out from orbit with a battlecruiser. And they'd been told to attack on land. A sudden thought occurred to Bunny. "Mother of God! We got the specialists out, didn't we?! TELL me we got the Specialists out!" A corporal started to stutter, panicked bye Bunny's rage. "You kn-know t-t-their orders, lieutenant, they stay to sabotage the building and to hide in the shielded crawlspaces." "You idiots! Not from the Zerg, no one knows how the zerg see, they'll find them and feed them to their young! All the other specialists in the Force were told to disregard those orders when it comes to the Zerg!" "They didn;t believe the stories, lieutenant. We've never faced the Zerg before." Bunny put her head in her hands. Goddamn newbies. The stupid kids, barely worthy of the term Specialist, who thought they new what was best for them. Probably had ideas of glory too. They had no idea what they were in for...
The drone me flew toward the remnants of the Redform Hive. The Me did not know why the redforms left part of the moving hives behind, but the overmind had found usefull things left behind too. The drone landed on the side of the largest captured building, and slowly dissolved into a thick, pinkish fluid. The fluid dripped from the building, and eventually hit the soil. It took nutrients from the soil, and fibers formed throughout the fluid still on the building, anchoring it. Fibers grew into crevices and cracks, broke windows, or just went through doors. It began to grow into the building. The Zerg forces were calmly massed outside the buildings now, in case any redforms tried to escape. A hatchery had already formed, and new larva were already spreading the creep, making the Zerg forces secure while they captured the buildings. In the dark of the corridors, zerg moved, unseen, in the infinite shadow. They could see everything, outlined firmly in silver filigree, t! he electromagnetic lines that cover eveything. The floor and walls were cold, too, so their predatory heat sense was not guiding them. One of the specialists in his "safe" hole, watched with bated breath as a massive hydralisk slithered past. He hissed into his com-link. "Thats the third one to go past, they mustn't be able to see me." The news was the same throughout the network of captured buildings. The specialists felt very secure and proud of themselves; no one had ever had the oportunity to study the zerg this close before, or so they thought. They'd get a commendation for this. They kept thinking this as the pink fibers rapidly grew down the tunnels and corridors of the structures. You see, the zerg hadn;t missed them, they knew were every single terran was. They didn't need to attack them. The overmind had other plans.
Meadows slept in his comfortable hole. He was warm. Unusually warm. It hadn't been this warm the other three nights, it was as if the building was being insulated by something. Or else something was producing a lot of heat. A final chilling though occured to him. Or both. He opened the lid to his hole slightly. He couldn't see anything in the stifling gloom, and so flciked on his torch. The air was oppressively still in the corridor, and there was an unpleasant acrid smell in the air. He jumped down from his position and landed with a thump on the floor. His first tentative steps didn't have the usual clicking timbre of boots on metal, it was more, slimy. Meadows turned his torch down. The floor was covered with a thin layer of goo, glisteningly wet, and, he shuddered, pulsating. It was on the walls too, and had nearly reached his hole. Meadows scrambled up the wall and into percieved safety. Then he noticed the damp spot in the weld of the metal above him. Me! adows prodded the damp spot tentatively with his torch. In response, more of the thick fluid started the slow drip to the floor. Meadows began to panic. He hit the damp spot with the butt of his gun, and the metal broke. A slow moving rush of the fluid cascaded out, coating his clothes and pooling around his feet. He grunted in disgust and started to brush it away. Sudden protein fibres formed in the goo and tightened. The sudden attack pulled Meadows off his feet and he crashed to the floor in the pooled fluid. Meadows struggled frantically to sit up, but he was gripped to tightly by the protein fibres. He was breathing heavily, and the warm, organic stench coming off the fluid made him retch. The fluid began to move slowly before his eyes, moving towards his head. It reached his mouth; he shut it. It soon reached his nose, and was sucked in by Meadows' panicked breathing. More moved up over the back of his head and went into his ears. After that, Meadows heard ! his gurgling screams through a thick blanket, muffling every sound.
Soon the ooze reached it's target, and grew through his brain. Meadows ceased to be Meadows. He was part of the Me.
Chapter III
Bunny sat motionless in the cavernous belly of the battlecruiser. She had been able to shower and eat decent food for the first time in weeks. She also felt safe. The ship had a degree of security that Bunny had not felt when on the planet. On the planet you new that they were out there, Prots or the maggots. Either way, you could FEEL them out there, and that eventually, they'd come after you. That certainty of confrontation wore at the morale after a while. Bunny personally had no gripe with the Prots, they had acted in a decent manner towards the terrans, so she felt no animosity towards them. Bunny did what she was told though. What she felt for the maggots could not be described... And now she was inexorably going back to finish them, with the full force of the Terran space corps. Bunny wished that made her feel better about this. One of her younger marines had died on the way back from the godforsaken rock; one of the parasites had imbedded itself in hi! s shoulder. The parasites died a matter of minutes after crawling from their dead host, but they made those minutes count alright. When they died, their bodies near explosively decomposed, they dissolved into a milky soup of bacteria, probably designed by somebody to kill the victim with the ensuing infection if the parasite hadn't finished the job. The surgeons had tried to cut out the gangrenous tissue, but he was too far gone. They'd let him die peacefully on the table, no rescusitation. Bunny had seen the report, "worse case of post injury infection seen in his career. A flesh eating bacteria had been released into the wound, and had spread throughout the chest cavity." It wasn't pleasant. Bunny now had full clearance and command of all units in the area, cause she was the highest ranking officer who had been there. Bunny was tempted to nuke the entire site from orbit, but some of the bastards always survived. That was the Zerg creed: Some of them always survive.
The massive fleet of buildings landed in a cleared area on the forest world. The tank towers and other units spread out to clear the area of any burrowed surprises; the Ghosts would see to that. The plan Bunny had in mind was to send all forces going to the hive there by air. There were too many burrowed Zerg between the bases for them to arrive stealthily by foot, and too dangerous. First, though, she had the onerous task of checking on the abandoned base, to see what could be salvaged. She whipped round at the sound of a roar and weapons fire. The Ghosts had found something. Overhead a attack group of Wraiths screamed on their way to the hive, they shimmered and cloaked as they moved. Wise to avoid surprises. Hopefully the Zerg would pull back to defend the base, leaving the marines to their work. Hopefully. There was a cry from the side of the clearing. Some humanoid figures lurched into the camp. It was the survivors of the Specilalists. As Bunny ran closer, ! she saw something was terribly wrong. The closest person to her was covered in a fine layer of crusted fluid, covering everthing apart from the eyes. The eyes had a horrible, haunted look that Bunny would remember for a long time. Then it happened. The first one of the survivors ran into a mass of troops coming from the mess hall and exploded. Body parts and blood rained down. Before anyone else could react, the other zombie survivors broke and scattered into all directions, running into massed troops or onto exposed units. Then they exploded. The stunned troops opened fire; the rest of the zombies were killed before they could reach their targets. Bunny moved to the closest one. Carefully she reached down and shut his eyes, his staring, horrifed eyes, the only human part of him left. This was one of those wars where no one got through in the same state of mind as they started. Bunny could tell.
Chapter VI
Bunny looked at the carnage the Zombie terrans had wreaked. Five marines were dead, one tank was badly damaged, and they hadn't even known the Zerg were capable of that. Christ. Bunny gritted her teeth, climbed into her combat suit and yelled, "Saddle Up! We're moving in. Only way to be sure the maggots can't pull any more dirty tricks is to waste them first. Manson! How's the Wraith bombardment going?" "Meeting nominal resistance, Lieutenant, if we're going to move in, now is the time." Bunny didn't need to be told twice. The ground shook from the sound of the redform weapons. The me rushed back from their hiding places to defend the hive, but they were not moving fast enough. Flying ships of the redforms were attacking the hive of the me. The Me was upset at the pain its buildings felt. This only added urgency. More and more units uprooted themselves from the ground where they had rested and moved in a flowing tide of alien life, killing anything that got in their way. The dropships approached the zerg hive, followed closely by their entourage of attack ships. The fighters broke off and started a systematic bombardment of the landing zone, hopefully to kill any buried Zerg. Bunny's platoon deployed with out problems; if there had been any Zerg, the bombardment either killed them or scared them off. The platoon started to move carefully towards the hive. The Goliath's moved first, a solid buffer before the infantry. Then came the assorted infantry, marauders, firebats, and the others. There were Ghosts there, but of course, you couldn't see them. After that came the tank towers to help pen in the base, and finally the mighty Arc-Lights. More and more fighters screamed over head towards the base, and far in the distance was the ominous black lump of the battlecruiser. It was scheduled to arrive last, and sterilise the base, if any remained. Bunny had a feeling there would. The troops reached the edge of the hive; there was precious ! little defense. Bunny didn;t like not having any defense. A few of the tank-towers deployed at the edge of the base to offer protection while the invasion was being prepared. Bunny wanted to do as much of this from the air as possible; she'd seen what creep did to non-Zerg units. Now that she had the defensive perimeter prepared, Bunny ordered a few units to move in. They sank in the creep up to their wastes; movement slowed to a crawl. Something launched out of the creep with a firebat hel in its grasp. It was too be to be a basic Zerg, but normal units moved. The firebat was slowly crushed as if in a vice, then the creature sank beneath the creep again, taking the corpse with it. The other firebats incinerated the area where the trap-beast had been, digging a hole in the creep, and killing the beast, firebat still held in its jaws. More cautiously this time, they proceeded through the creep. Eventually, the organic lumps of buildings loomed ahead. The Goliaths op! ened fire with their missiles, which thumped into the buildings in pillars of flame, and gouts of purplish blood. Bunny was unnerved, she'd forgotten the buildings bleed. One of the buildings collapsed sideways, and through her suit magnification, Bunny saw the arteries stop pulsing. One down, she thought, unknown more to go. More fighters screamed overhead, and launched missiles into the hive. Three more buildings exploded. Where the hell was the defense? Zerg just don't LET their hive die! They were plotting something. Her platoon moved forward and she saw what is was. Suddenly dozens upon dozens of mutalisks soared out of the creep and launched themselves upon the Wraiths. Two Wraiths were down before they knew what was happening. Mutalisks were usually not a problem for Wraiths, uness they had numbers. Bunny had never seen so many of them. A few of them distorted into Guardians, and moved toward the platoon. The platoon dived for cover and opened fire as th! e sluggish beasts came for them. The guardians took the fire and were marginally unharmed. Great stretches of the creep were scorched from their weapons fire. Three more guardians were down, but there were more on the way. The platoon started to fall back towards the tank towers. In a parting blow the arc-lights anchored themselves and let rip. The mutalisk fleet was easily cut in two by the blasts. After what seemed like hours, they reached the relative safety of the tank towers. Then the ground Zerg arrived. They poured from the center of the hive like a dark tide, and started moving rapidly towards the encirclement. They had been waiting for exactly this situation. The overmind was just too fucking bright! The towers and arc-lights started pounding the tide, killing hundred of them, but there were more than they could kill. Suddenly several blue orbs fell into the zerg forces, detonating and showering Bunny's platoon with body parts. Several dragoons moved out! from behind cover where a distant Arbiter had been hiding them. They opened fire on the encrouching tide, along with the towers and the arc-lights. The tide was turned. Several twelve-foot Prot warriors walked into the clearing. Most walked through, watched in awe by the terrans. They didn't spare Bunny or her platoon a second glance for the most part, but one moved towards Bunny. It didn't speak, but Bunny heard a tonal chorus of many voices whispering, "We have a common goal. They cannot be allowed to survive. You have fought well, little human, now it is our turn." Bunny staggered as the presence left her mind. She'd always heard that telepathy was a voice in your head, but that was a voice in your BODY, you resonated to it. She could no more have ignored the message than flown. Bunny sat down, exhuasted, and set down to watch the Prot advance. This was going to be interesting...
Chapter V
Bunny slumped exhausted at the side of a tank and watched as the solemn, towering Prot warriors moved toward the Zerg tide. The smaller Zealots leapt into the fray, flipping forward into the mass of the Zerg. Shimmering blades of light so bright that they could hardly be seen without pain extended from their arms, and they hacked and slashed with emotionless precision at their shrieking foes. The Prot warriors moved with economy of motion, as if in an intricate ballet rather than a battle to the death. The Zerg were not having a good time, but there were too many of them to be beaten easily. They were having great difficulty attacking the fast moving and lethal warriors, but mistakes were something the Zerg were allowed. Some would die, but for each mistake they made, another creature would take its place. The Prots only had to make one each, and it would be over. Now the High Templars entered the battle. Bunny saw one go into a reverent crouch, spread its arms! and unleash bolts of mental energy, shattering Zerg like eggs. The others started similar carnage. One of the Zealots made a mistake. A leaping Zergling caught him in the chest and knocked him off his feet. As soon as he was down, the horde closed in. One of the High Templars raised his arm and a hydralisk was levitated out of the fray and slammed into a ultralisk. Bunny had seen its scythe-like claws smeared in vibrant blue blood. Suddenly the ultralisk it had hit viciously attacked the other creatures around it, scattering body parts around it like torn paper. Soon the mind control loosened, but it was too late. The overmind had already registered the rogue Ultralisk as a threat and it was swarmed under. Now the dragoons opened fire on the fringes of the battle, blowing substantial craters in the ground, and forcing Bunny and her crew to duck as sharp chitinous shrapnel and spines showered down. Bunny leapt to her feet. "What the hell are we doing! Open fire on! the fringes in the same places as the Dragoons. They may not need help, but we are sure as hell going to give them some." The towers and the arc-lights opened fire, spreading the carnage. A thought occurred to Bunny, and she dove into the tank. Minutes later she appeared decked in the heavy, blood-red armour of the Firebat. She dove into the fray, leaving her stunned comrades behind. If it was one thing she had learned, the Zerg didn't like fire. She was able to open a path in the distracted Zerg with sheets of flaming napalmic-plasma, sending burning Zerg flopping and shrieking before the flames consumed them. Finally she reached the place where the Zealot had gone down. He was still fighting, the arm blades still slicing and spearing the nightmare creatures around him. The blades were not as bright as they had been, and faded from time to time. He was hurt. Bunny released a jet of napalmic-plasma at slightly above head height, singeing the Zealot, but coating on! the Zerg attackers. They scattered from the wounded Prot, and that was all Bunny needed. She dove forward and wrapped his six foot arm as much around her shoulder as she was capable of doing. Bunny tried to drag him from the battle, but she hadn't taken into account his weight. This was a twelve-foot Prot Zealot, and not lightly built. She didn't have a hope. Bunny left him in a seated position and kept firing bursts of plasma to keep the Zerg distant. Bunny felt a growing pressure from behind, and saw that the Zealots shields were charging again. The wounded Prot lumbered gracefully to his feet, and regarded her solemnly. Bunny felt a choral whispering in her mind, but felt it wasn't directed to her. One of the High Templars noticed the message, and both Bunny and the wounded Prot were lifted from their feet, and carried to the side of the battle field. Immediately the wounded Zealot was surrounded by other Prot soldiers, and Bunny was left standing with the High T! emplar. Bunny felt the choral, crystalline voice again. "A human save one of us? Unusual. You share the mindset of the Pure, little human, and we are surprised. It is rare for the Pure to be surprised. Rare indeed. Perhaps there is more to your race than we had previously imagined. You fought well before, but now showed considerable bravery to save one of the Pure, an enemy. Confusing." Bunny didn;t know what to say, and couldn't decide whether the gentle but forceful prescense had probably already read whatever she was going to say from her mind. The towering Prot surveyed Bunny again, and slowly walked away. Bunny nearly collapsed in the exhaustion that she had been fighting. "If only we could understand each other better," she thought, "but the people at Command won;t listen to that, the Prots are a threat, a threat to be beaten. We are fighting what could be our greatest allies. That's people for you." Bunny collapsed sideways into a deep sleep, and thats where she was when the medics found her.
Conclusion: 1.Bunny was saved by the medics
2.bunny fought for people to change their minds against the protoss
3. bunny was assassinated
well? what do you think? comments, pleaz
|
|
|
|
Home
Forum
Starcraft Tournaments
