Heavy Metal Thunder (45 page)

You have survived your encounter with the dogs: Gain
2 XP.

Turn to section
187
.

Some ship fires its jets early. It only lasts for a
second before they are turned off, but a cloud of thick black smoke rolls throughout
the docking bay. The sweat of the laborers turns black and grimy, and the
guards cough horribly behind you, choking on the fog of war.
The hell kind
of fuel does that old thing use?
you
wonder.

A bloody lawman stumbles up to you. He seems strongly
built, but his eyes are wide with fear.

“Halt!” you shout. “The law ends where my territory
begins.”

“Please let me on board, bro,” he says.

“For one thing, I’m not your bro. For another thing,
why should I? What can you do?”

“I’m a medic. Actually, I’m in pre-med. Pretty much,
uh, I can do anything a doctor can do.”

“You trained to fight, too?”

“Not really, no.
Never fired my
gun, ever.
I don’t believe in violence, see. I got attacked not long
ago, almost killed, but I just ran.”

If you want to let him on, turn to section
415
.

If you want to tell the lawman medic to heal himself
on someone else’s ship, turn to section
198
.

Before the Captain can react you cock and aim the
massive shotgun, then give vent to a blast that sends him flying into the air,
his torso torn to shreds.
As he crashes into the ground a
rain of blood showers down around him.
You gain
1 XP
for
commandeering a ship. You may take the dead man’s
Old School Revolver (Handgun,
bulk 2)
and
3 Handgun bullets (bulk 1)
if you wish.

You turn toward the ship. While the laborers stare
at you in terror, the guards laugh. “Ahoy,
Cap’n
!”
one of them shouts, high-fiving the other.

Guess he wasn’t too popular around here
,
you think. “Back to work!” you shout.

Be sure to erase
1 Shotgun shell
from your
inventory.

Turn to section
379
.

You seem to run through solid air, like in a
nightmare. In horror you see the gun fire, deafening you, then the girl’s head
jerks, splattering the man’s face and shoulder with blood. As the girl’s body
falls you crash into her and, at the same time, the laborer jerks backward and
fires at you.

You try to move but the bullet slams into your side,
drilling into your ribs and lodging there. You lose
7 Blood
, but you may
subtract your
Dexterity
score from this amount. Furthermore, your suit
has been punctured. If you have any
Sticky
Fix
, you must use one
dose now to fix your suit; if you do not have any of this
item
,
make a note that
your suit has been damaged.
Be sure to erase any
ammunition that you used.

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

If you survive, then the laborer stumbles and falls
near you. “Well,” he says, regarding the dead girl, “we didn’t want
no
part in this world, anyway.” Then, with his face right
next to yours, he presses his gun into the side of his own head - and fires.

The explosion is deafening. “No!” you shout, as
blood sprays all over your face.
“
Gro
-o-o-
oss
!”

But it is too late.
Bucketfuls
of brain matter spill all around you and, just before you scuttle away from the
man’s body, you see his eyeballs roll around loosely in their sockets.

You may take his
Bloody Chrome-Plated 9mm
(Handgun, bulk 2)
and
3 Handgun bullets (bulk 1)
if you wish.

Turn to section
166
.

You open the door and enter. You see all manner of
strange devices, most of them unfinished with spare parts scattered about. You
see a dead man lying in the floor. He wears a scientist’s stereotypical white
lab coat and a few gunshot wounds in his chest. A strange contraption is in his
hands, and while you don’t know what it is it feels faintly malevolent in
nature. You may take the
Mystery Device (bulk 3)
if you like.

Just then an arrhythmic blue light flashes in the
room from numerous bulbs. You hear a high-pitched whir. You do not feel well.

If you have a
Will
score of
2 or more, turn to section
358
.

If
your
Will
score
is not that high, turn to section
302
.

“This is gonna hurt,” you mutter, slamming your fist
into the door control panel. As the electricity courses through your body, you
wish that you’d just let the deconstructors roll through the backup generator:
Lose
1 Blood.

The door grinds open awkwardly, as if resenting your
brutish tenacity.

Turn to section
500
.

After a cold walk through a maze of hallways, you
find the supply depot. Rows of weapons and gear sit behind a fence where ship
personnel go about repairs and take inventory. Behind the counter sits a
slender lady with long, greasy hair, and shaded mascara around her eyes that
gives her a hot-zombie look. She could have been a heavy metal model on Earth,
but now she is a soldier in charge of gear distribution.

“Name?” she says. For some reason she does not seem
especially thrilled to see you. You glance down at the shiny counter and see
your reflection. You look skeletal, black spots circle your eyes, and your long
hair looks wild and unhealthy.

“Mister Wiggles,” you say, feeling even worse.

Fortunately the chick is too tired from working to
laugh at your name. After consulting her computer, she says, “No one by that
name exists. He’s dead.”

“Try serial number thirteen.”

Her eyes brighten.
So cute.
“Oh, I’ve got a note about you.
The Nameless Wanderer
, it calls you.
Pretty badass temp name, huh?”

“Ma’am, yes ma’am.”

She digs around beneath the counter and you take the
opportunity to lean over and study her ass. A worker in the back glares at you
openly but you do not retreat until she rises once more. The woman throws a
heavy space suit onto the counter, says, “Brand new suit. Yours was about to
fall apart. It was more Sticky than suit!” The suit is brand new, free of
creases and blood stains. You notice the yellow rectangle badge, the sign of a
grunt. The lady soldier has the blue badge of ship personnel. How nice it would
be to rub those two badges together...

“Beautiful,” you say. “What about my jetpack. How’s
it
doing
?”

“It’s going to take months to fix it. Sorry!”

Horrified, you say, “But I rode that thing for a
hundred thousand miles to get back to you! Back to the ship, I mean! What if
the Invaders attack soon?”

“I’ll do you one better,” she says, winking. She
slams a new jet pack onto the counter, a model somewhat sleeker than your
former. “This here’s your reward for actions most badass on the field of
battle. You’ll like it. Increased fuel efficiency, greater control, and it’s
lighter than your standard issue.”

You heft the piece of equipment in your hands. With
it, you can now carry
3 more bulk
than before,
increasing your max
bulk from 12 to 15.

“And your old helm,” she says, passing the thing to
you. You note the dent in its side, the gift given you by your killer. You
wonder if you will ever get the chance to pay him back.

She hands you a box containing the rest of your
gear. She points out the row of gear behind her and says that you can barter
for any of it. All available gear can be traded on an item for item basis (that
is, lose one item, gain one item), except the Charged hand-to-hand weapons are
worth two items, whether you gain or give one. Since field-generating charged
weapons are the tools of the infantryman,
you must have at least one charged
weapon
before you leave this room.

Furthermore, you
must also have at least one gun
on your person before you leave this room.

“As in life, nothing here is free,” says the girl.
“Except for bullets.
You can take up to
2
bulk
of bullets
, in any combination you want. Pretty
sweet, yes?”

“Ma’am, yes ma’am.”

Despite what she said earlier, the nice lady gives
you
1 item for free.
If your
Charisma
is 3 or more, you can
verbally butter her up and squeeze
1 extra item
from her supply. If you
have an
Alien Sniper Rifle
, now would be the time to trade it in since
you have no use for it. It is worth one item. Furthermore, if you somehow made
it all this way with the
High-Power Implosion Grenade
, you notice that
it is missing from your stockpile. Apparently the higher-ups didn’t like you
carrying around non-regulation gear, but you learn a valuable lesson about
keeping an eye on your goods: Gain
1 XP
and erase the item from your
inventory.

Items Available for Barter

Charged Short Sword (Blade, bulk 2
,
costs two items)

Charged Mace (Mace, bulk 2
,
costs two items)

Charged Lance (Spear, bulk 3
,
costs two items)

Standard Issue Rifle (Rifle, bulk 3)

Black Legion Sidearm (Handgun, bulk 2)

Martial Law Shotgun (Shotgun, bulk 3)

Standard Armor (Defense 1, bulk 2
,
see below for Armor rules)

Standard Hard Armor (Defense 2, bulk 2
,
costs two items)

Bottle of Liquid Valium (bulk 2
,
heals 3 Blood, 2 doses)

Sticky Fix (bulk 2
,
fixes 1 SD, 3 doses)

(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.)

When you finish gearing up, an alarm sounds
throughout the ship. “That means everyone to their stations,” says the girl.
“And if what I’ve heard you said is true, then I doubt this is a training run.”
The girl begins loading a shotgun,
then
accepts a
bulletproof vest that another worker hands her.

“You think you’re gonna need that?” you say as you
put your space suit on.

“If any Invader infantry get in here, they’re not
gonna know where the shield generator is. They’re as likely to come here as
anywhere, and I’m sworn to protect all this crap.”

“Then I’ll have to do my job so you won’t have to,”
you say, eyes glinting with excitement.

She grins, hard and feral. “Go spill some blood,
boy. Better hurry and find your unit.”

Then you remember - you have no idea where or what
your unit is.

To haul ass out of the supply depot, turn to section
7
.

You aim and blast the sides of the deconstructor.
Steel panels peel away, sparks shoot from ruined circuits and stream into the
void. Finally, you blast something vital in the machine, and it grinds to a
halt. Far away, you hear a series of explosions, and the other deconstructor
crashes into its dead brother; most likely, the guard has just used his
grenades. The machines grind against the hallway, tearing into one another.
Before you can shout in victory, your line snaps loose from the wall and you
fly toward the machines - and, worse yet, toward the vacuum from the breach in
the wall. You crash into something, skull jarred, sure that you will be pinned
by the sliding machines.

The ruined hulks screech to a halt in the ruined
hallway, plugging up the hole from which they came. Miraculously, the hole was
sealed before you could slip through it. You drop to the ground, exhausted.

You
raise
up and stumble
over the wreckage. You see the guard, alone, crawling toward an open doorway.
You join him and the two of you collapse in a new hallway, bodies wracked by
adrenaline.

You lose
2 Blood
from the battle, but you
gain
3 XP
for destroying the deconstructors.