Heavy Metal Thunder (43 page)

During the fight you lose
14 Blood
, though
you may subtract the number above from this amount. You may also subtract your
Defense
rating, if you have any.

If you die, then you may
Regenerate
by
turning to section
312
, or, if you want to go
further back, section
179
.

Your ears ring painfully and you cannot quite make
out Buford’s reply, but the two
fall
on each other
like wild animals. In the two minutes it takes you to recover and drag yourself
to your knees, you see Cletus prone and bloody beneath Buford, writhing in
pain. Your vision clouds over in a red haze and you run full-tilt at Buford’s
back.

You leap and your knee crashes into the back of his
fat head, smashing his face into the wall. As in a dream you see yourself
rearranging the man’s face, blow by bloody blow, until something like soup
pours out of his head. You turn and see Cletus crawling away in a trail of smeared
blood. You limp over to him and grind your foot into his neck. While his body
twitches on the ground you lean against a wall to breathe.

Turn to section
341
.

The laborers clamber up the gangplank, shoulders
drooping and hair clinging to their sweaty faces. You nod to them and slap one
on the shoulder as they pass. “Thanks a lot,” you say. “Good work, gentlemen.”

One of them nods to you wearily, a sad half-smile on
his face.

Probably lived here their whole lives
,
you think,
and now they’re leaving it behind. And the last thing they did
here was the same thing they’ve been doing all the time - sweating away for
someone else, just to survive, in the hope that things would get better. And
these guys didn’t complain, either
.

These guys may live at the bottom of the
barrel, but no human being deserves to be target practice for alien scum
.

“THIRTY SECONDS TIL OPENING,” says the voice of the
intercom. You enter the
Narrenschiff
and seal
the door behind you.

Make a note that the
Three
Laborers
are with you.

Turn to section
427
.

You consider the fact that maybe the Invader ship
knew that your own ship was close by, and so left a sniper team to intercept you
here. Perhaps there are other such teams on other asteroids. But you consider
another option as well. You know that Invader culture is highly militaristic,
Spartan, and heartlessly disciplined. You know from personal experience how
difficult it is to spend time in space with nothing between you and the void
but a few layers of padding. Perhaps these two were left out here as a sort of
punishment - they may have been thieves, goldbrickers, retards, homosexuals, or
any sort of life form that a draconian culture would hold in disregard.

Perhaps they were not the elite badasses you thought
they were. You gain
1 XP
for using your training to make an educated
guess about these soldiers.

You slowly bend down to remove their helms. Though
disfigured by the effects of the vacuum, you can still make out their features.
The faces have enough human traits to disturb you, but are alien enough to
disgust as well. Their faces are longer than a human’s, with long noses that
end thickly. Their eyes are
slitted
, slightly
upturned at the far ends. Bovine comes to mind. The mouths are decidedly human,
save for slightly elongated eye-teeth that can only be called fangs.

The sniper has finer features than the other; his
coloration is a pale red, his hair and beard darker red. The fighter is
squatter, thicker, and his skin is bluish, though it is difficult to tell if
this was his original color due to the effects of the vacuum, and his hair and
beard are jet black.

The longer you look at the strange faces, the more
human they look. But one thing about them makes them truly alien - both have
long, curved horns that jut out from their skulls. Even their helms are
designed not to fit around their heads, but rather are made in two pieces that
lock together, one in front and one in back. The horns are the color of bone;
they are bone, extensions of their skulls.

You cannot make out any features on their eyes, for
they have been completely ruptured by the vacuum.

Their bodies are humanoid, though their legs seem
slightly long. You rip off their boots and note that they have only two large
toes tipped with thick, yellow-brown nails. Their heels seem highly arched.

“Satyrs,” you mutter under your breath. “The demons
we are fighting... are satyrs.”

As you search their bodies, you find that the
fighter wears a set of armor under his space suit. You may take his
Hard
Vest (Bulk 2, Defense 2)
if you wish.

(If this is the first set of armor you have found,
then armor works like so: When you lose Blood, you will be told if you may
subtract your Defense rating from the amount of your Blood loss. If the text
makes no mention of subtracting your Defense rating from Blood loss (for
instance, if you lose Blood due to starvation, or due to a blow to a part of
your body not covered by armor), then, of course, you may not subtract your
Defense rating from the Blood loss.)

You pry the field-generating short sword from the
fighter’s hand. The weapon hums in your hand. Field-generating weapons are the
special advanced-technology weapons used by infantrymen to hack through the
invisible shields of large vessels. Charged weapons are much better than inert
weapons. You may take the
Charged Gladius (Blade, bulk 2)
if you wish.

You may also take the
Alien Sniper Rifle (bulk 3)
if you wish, though it does not seem to use your own caliber of ammunition. You
have the feeling that you can trade it for something else when you reach your
home ship.

A search of the sniper’s hideout reveals a stockpile
of oxygen tanks, frozen food, tanks of water, a shelter much like a collapsible
Wilderness Void Tent, and even some liquid hydrogen fuel. You gather the stuff
up behind you, but you are determined not to make another ship-less journey.
You set off in search of the ruins of the
Narrenschiff
,
praying that she can be salvaged.

Keep in mind that if you have any
SD
damage,
the void bleeds you for that much
Blood
. If you die, then you may
Regenerate
by turning to section
312
, or if you want to go
further back, section
179
.

Turn to section
351
.

You dive under the beam. You hear the slap of scores
of dog feet as the animals pour into the room behind you. You pull yourself through
rubble, dust, shards of glass. The dogs yip like banshees herded into a
meat-grinder. You can hear them fighting at the bottlenecked entrance behind
you. The hole you crawl through gets tighter, tighter, until it feels like you
are in your own grave.

If you have
a
Dexterity
of 3 or more, turn to section
404
.

If you have
a
Dexterity
of 2 or less, turn to section
9
.

With one hand you grab his arm roughly,
then
place your helm against his with an ominous clink. You
are almost sure that you are smiling. You cannot help it.

“H-hey,” says John Christian, blinking rapidly.
“You’re the guy with the... uh, the guy that, with the memory problem, right?
Amnesia, right?”

“That’s right,” you say, smiling maniacally.

“H-heard about you,” he says, smiling nervously.

“Yep.
Some things, I can’t remember at all. Other things, oh-h-h,
I remember them
real well
.”

John Christian swallows in a dry throat, then says,
“Listen man, my jetpack, it’s busted. Radio too. Can you… think you can give me
a push to the ship? I’m... I’m stuck out here, man...”

Something about the man seems incredibly sad.
Pathetic.
It is a wonder that this is the same man that you
distinctly remember tried to kill you. You remember nothing of your childhood,
not even anything about your own brother
Kregus
. But
of all your memories, your subconscious saved that one image - the image of
this man screaming psychotically as he swung a mace into your head - for you to
keep with you through all your long and horrible journey.

If you have a change of heart and want to push the
man back toward the ship so that he will live, turn to section
446
.

If you want to kill the man who tried to kill you,
turn to section
382
.

The guard leads you deeper into the station. You
come to a locked door and he punches a combination into the keypad. You enter
and see shelves full of boxed goods and weapons, though it looks like others
have already picked the place over. You and the guard tear open boxes and find
the following things that might prove useful.

STELLAR Guard Standard Issue Rifle
(Rifle, bulk 3)

8 Rifle Bullets (total bulk 1
;
see table below)

STELLAR Officer Handgun (Handgun, bulk
2)

15 Handgun Bullets (total bulk 1
;
see table below)

(3) Tasty Rations (Food; each has a bulk
of 1)

Utility Knife (Blade, bulk 1)

Heavy-Duty Wrench (Mace, bulk 3)

Sticky Fix (bulk 1)
(This handy life-saving item patches up damage done to space suits in an
instant, even while in the vacuum, with enough for
2 uses.
)

The guard grabs up a heap of ammunition, but does
not load his rifle in front of you. He slaps on a helmet too big for his head,
then
spins it around while making a nonsense sound.
Unfortunately none of the law enforcement armor can be fit under or over your
Black Lance Legion suit.

As you stuff ammunition into your utility belt, you
note the weight of it. Even ammunition has bulk. See the table below for how
much bulk ammunition takes up. Note that bulk is applicable even for 1 bullet;
for example, 15 Handgun bullets would weigh 1 bulk, while 16 Handgun bullets
would weigh 2
bulk
. This table can also be found in
the
Rules Index
in the back.

BULK
OF BULLETS TABLE

Handgun
bullets: 15 bullets = 1 bulk

Rifle
bullets: 10 bullets = 1 bulk

Shotgun
shells: 5 shells = 1 bulk

You notice a locked bin in the room. You kick it
soundly, but it does not open.

If you have the
Workers’ Keys
, you may try to
open the bin with them by turning to section
508
.

If you do not have this item, or do not want to try
to open the bin, leave the supply room by turning to section
515
.

The air is whipped from your lungs and is replaced
by ice. You try to warm your limbs, but they go numb. Then your eyes freeze in
your skull, and the image of your comrades flying away is frozen into your
vision.

Few are the dead who go happy to their graves. You,
at least, die smiling, a hero who will be remembered for as long as your
species survives.

THE END.

You may
Regenerate
by turning back to section
161
.

You start down the long hall to the ruined docks and
the dock control room, where the fuel lines are. You hear the whir and clatter
of heavy machinery. You freeze in your tracks as a robot fork lift rounds a
bend in front of you, then turns to face you. Its dome sensor locks on you, and
several appendages click and spin menacingly around its two heavy lifting
beams. It spins about on its wide treads, nearly blocking the entire hall.

“Alright, cock-smoker!” shouts the voice of the
manager through a speaker on the robot. “If you don’t give up that suit, now,
then I’m going to crush you with this machine!”

“What are you going to do?” you say. “Make it box me
up and organize me until I’m dead?”

“Shut up! I’m controlling this thing from... a
secret location! You better believe it’s more than enough to crush you to a
pulp. So get naked!”

The machine does look dangerous - and you don’t have
a lot of time to get to those fuel lines.

If you want to try to talk the manager out of this
course of action, turn to section
221
.

If you are skilled in the use of
Computers
,
you can use it against the machine by turning to section
426
.

If you want to try to somehow beat or evade the
robot, turn to section
5
.