Heavy Metal Thunder (30 page)

You lose
6 Blood
from the assault, but you
may subtract your
Strength
score from this amount. Furthermore, your
suit has been damaged by the buckshot, and if you have any
Sticky
Fix
then you must use one dose of it now. If you do not have any Sticky Fix, then
make a note that
your space suit is damaged.
If
your
Blood score has dropped to zero or less, then you reach around to your back to
check if you are bleeding; when you pull your hand back, you find you are
holding a slab of your own intestinal tract.
That’s
funny
,
you think before dying,
I
don’t remember getting any sausage from the cafeteria
. If you wish to
Regenerate
,
you may turn back to section
312
, or, if you wish to
restart further back, turn to section
179
.

If you survive, turn to section
254
to continue your trek to a ship docking bay.

You underestimated the amount of time it would take
you to search the room without air. You kick and flop about awkwardly in the
room of floating bodies. Eventually your body, lacking its most vital resource,
floods your awareness with a sense of incredible pain and want: Lose
1
Blood.

Turn to section
360
.

“Not so fast, Gramps!” you shout. You blast him in
the chest, once, and he stumbles sideways before he crashes to the ground at
your feet. He gags as red gushes from his shattered chest. Then he lies still.

You gain
0 XP
for wasting the old man.
Damn
,
you think to yourself,
I thought it would feel better than that
. Guilt
creeps into your system.
He was probably a bad person
, you decide.
Was probably mean to a lot of people in his life.
Probably
.

Be sure to erase 1 bullet from your inventory. You
may take the dead priest’s
Bowie Knife (Blade, bulk 1)
if you wish.

“Damn, dude,” says the laborer. “That was pretty
heartless, don’t you think?”

The girl looks at you in fear. The laborer forces
the gun to her temple once more, and she grits her teeth in fury.

If you want to stare down the laborer, point your
gun at his head, and demand that he let the girl go, turn to section
495
.

If you have at least one bullet and, emboldened by
your murder, want to take a shot at the laborer, turn to section
517
.

If you want to back out toward the door and leave
this crazy scene, turn to section
254
.

Your jet flares to life and you swing around in a
loop, blood charging in your veins like a crazed herd of horses. As you come
over the top of the sniper’s wall he sees and tries to finish reloading his
long rifle in time to blast you out of the sky.

If you want to attack him with a gun, turn to section
375
.

If you want to slam into him and take him head-on,
with or without a hand-to-hand weapon, turn to section
286
.

You blast the giant drill-bits from the
deconstructor, one by one. Each topples down into the beast’s hungry maw,
grinding as it digests itself. Eventually the thing’s head is bald and ruined;
it stops in its tracks, aware that it has been damaged and is in need of
repair. The other passes up its comrade; you see the guard drop his empty
rifle, which is shattered amid the drills. The guard curses and yanks off his
belt of grenades,
tears
the pins from all of them, and
drops them down into the deconstructor’s mouth. They disappear - then the
thing’s insides pop and flash, smoke drifts from the thing’s head, and it
topples backward, ruined, and smashes into the other. They both slide back
toward the vacuum, shrieking as their metal sides bend and crush into one
another, then nearly seal up the breached hallway. You and the guard fall to
the
floor,
newly reoriented. Exhausted, you both crawl
into another hallway.

You gain
3 XP
for successfully destroying the
deconstructors. Be sure to erase the amount of ammunition that you used.

Turn to section
126
.

You bow down low under the weight of the device, but
you do manage to stop your fall: Gain
1 XP.
You can see dogs jumping
just a few feet below you, running back and forth, barking madly. The platform
you are on connects to a hallway that stretches around the left side of this
chamber. In the distance, a heavy concrete structure, support for some wall
long gone, has fallen into this hallway and destroyed much of it. You reckon
that you could reach this structure, climb to the top of it, and enter a
hallway at the top that goes deeper into the station.

You jog down the hallway. The barking of the dogs
renews itself, louder this time. You look below and see two dogs, vicious black
Buskaners
, are already making their way up the fallen
concrete support beam. The beam descends down into darkness, but by the dim
light that reflects from the bottom you can make out more dogs running about
the base of the thing. You run faster.

You reach the ruined end of the hall, collapsed
under the weight of the support beam. The two
Buskaners
stalk up the thing, picking their way carefully and growling all the while.
They are perhaps twenty feet away from you, and now more dogs are climbing up
the structure.

If you have a
Handgun
and at least
3
Handgun bullets
, you can fire at the two lead dogs by turning to section
118
.

If you want to stay here long enough to confront the
two dogs, turn to section
190
.

If you want to climb onto the beam and begin your
ascent, turn to section
151
.

The men immediately stop and stare at you. “Damn,”
says one.
“Looks like we’d better give ourselves up.”
You’re not sure why, but he’s smiling.
Must be a nervous
reflex
, you think.

“
Naw
,” says another. “He’s
just the official bullet inspector. So... how’s this one look, Chief?” With
that, the man fires his rifle and blasts you in the gut. Strangely enough, it’s
more embarrassing than painful.

As the men laugh, they fire at you, blowing open
meat and veins and separating limbs from joints. You lose several hundred Blood
during the assault; once you see your intestines spilling out from your
ruptured suit, you lose count.

You have died a true hero, fighting for law and
order in a universe that cares about neither.

THE END.

Regeneration:
If you want to start again, you may return to sections
377
,
or
312
, or even
179
if
you want to go farther back.

Zelda holds the wrist of your suit lightly and pulls
you to a small, private corner of the ship. She looks out a long, narrow
window. Many stars lie in the darkness.

You stand with her a while, mostly looking out the
window but occasionally glancing at her shining hair and her rounded ass. Once
she looks at you and, not sure if you are caught, you blush. She smiles and
laughs but you are not sure at what.

If your
Charisma
is 3 or more, turn to
section
579
.

If your
Charisma
is 2 or less, turn to
section
16
.

“Hey Padre,” you say, “
just
how do you figure into all this?”

“Just want some medical supplies, alright?” says the
priest, flicking the knife back and forth as he glares at the laborer.
“Definitely don’t want to see what it feels like to stab someone to death
before I die, oh-h-h-h no, that’s not what I’m about, friends.”

“You know what his part is?” shouts the laborer.
“He’s a priest, so he’s going to marry me and the woman of my dreams!”

“Bullshit!” screams the girl. “I hate you! I hate
all of you!
Even the idiot who just walked in!”

Who’s she talking about?
you
wonder.
Is there someone else in here?

“Put down the gun, then,” says the priest, a slow
smile spreading, “and I’ll marry you both.”

Tension coils up in your gut as you try to think of
a solution to a problem that seems, at its core, completely unreasonable.

(Note that you don’t necessarily need any bullets if
you just want to draw your gun as a bluff.)

If you wish to say, “All I want is supplies, too,”
and try to convince the priest to bum rush the laborer at the same time, turn
to section
164
.

If you wish to charge the laborer and tackle him
yourself, turn to section
419
.

If you have a gun, you can draw it on the laborer by
turning to section
308
.

If you have a gun, you can draw it on the priest by
turning to section
149
.

If you want to try to convince the laborer to let
the girl go, turn to section
447
.

If you have any
SD
damage, and have no
Sticky
Fix
to repair your suit, then the void bleeds you for that much
Blood.

The eight of you fly into the hole. Darkness
overwhelms you,
then
helm lights turn on, showing
pools of floating dust and debris and many dark, ruined passages on all sides.
Strange bodies float by, horned guards and personnel, long bearded faces,
unnatural colorations and skin tones that are either unique to their kind or
the result of the vacuum’s terrible work on the flesh.

“Except for them horns,” says one man, “
them
devils almost look like people.”

“Satyrs,” mutters Sybel, his voice a black whisper. “Satyrs
come to dance and play a game with the most dangerous species.”

“They’re devils,” says Uther. “Now shut up
everyone.”

You settle down in a hallway with flickering lights.
A tiny bit of gravity tugs at your feet. You follow the Commander until you
come to a four-way intersection. As the Commander calls a halt, a voice comes
over the common channel, choked with panic, and says, “There’s an Invader team
inside the
Penelope!
Bastards slipped through. Intercept, intercept...”

Commander Uther turns to the team, says, “We
gotta
hurry, then. If they take out our shield generator,
you can bet this ship won’t wait for their boys to make it out safely. We
gotta
get theirs, and get out, before they do. I’m gonna
split us up into two teams of four. Sybel, Marcus, guy with no name, you three
are with me.
Heimdall
, you’ll lead the others.”

The man Marcus says, “I’m not babysitting some dog,”
as he nods toward you.

“Stow that,” says Commander Uther. “You’re not
responsible for him. If he dies, he dies.”

Talking about me like I’m not even here
,
you think, boiling inside.
I hope something terrible doesn’t happen to that
guy Marcus
...

Three hallways stretch out before you. Sybel points
some device at them,
then
says, “Getting some energy readings,
big heat signatures...” then points down two of the hallways. “One is probably
the engine room, which we don’t need to find, and the other is probably the
shield generator, which we want.”

“No telling, at this distance,” says Uther,
dismissing the readings. “These places are like labyrinths. Hell, it’s probably
down the hall that
isn’t giving off any energy reading.” He thinks for a
moment,
then
says, “
Heimdall
,
you boys take that hallway there.”

Commander Uther points down one hallway with a positive-reading.
“SIR!” says the second-in-command,
then
floats away
with three other fanatics.

As Uther looks down the other two halls, Marcus
says, “Let’s let the
dog
sniff out the right way.” Sybel glances at you.

“Marcus,” says Uther, “why are you being such a
dick?”

You know what the man is doing. If you choose and
things go badly, he’ll have someone to blame. But you are less afraid of what
Marcus thinks of you than you are of getting killed inside an Invader ship.
Might as well play along with this man’s little game.

If you want to suggest the hallway on the right,
which has a positive energy reading, turn to section
202
.

If you want to suggest the hallway on the left,
which has a negative energy reading, turn to section
145
.