Heavy Metal Thunder (35 page)

The other soldiers, unmistakably pencil-pushers,
speak all at the same time to the doctor. You get the impression that they want
to interrogate you to determine the truth of your story, but the doctor seems
overly protective.

Though you do not remember telling your story, you
must have. You clear your throat, then say, “I’m not lying.”

The pencil-pushers look at you as if insulted by the
interruption. “This informal committee will determine the validity of your
claims.”

The door slams open without warning. Everyone jumps
- then salutes.

A tall man with short black hair and a pointed beard
enters. He has cool grey eyes and bloodless lips. The man’s black uniform and
sweater are only slightly neater than anyone else’s, though he has several pins
and medals on his breast. You know at once that the man is Captain Numitor, highest-ranking
officer on the
Penelope’s Vengeance
. Several armed guards escort him.
You salute without thinking, and several intravenous tubes clatter against your
arm and chair.

“Stop saluting, gentlemen,” he says, and you detect
some sort of aristocratic accent. He nods to you, says, “You’re the man who
crawled through hundreds of thousands of miles in space to warn us about the
Invader ship?”

“SIR YES SIR!” you shout.

“Don’t shout at me,” he says, though not rudely. Very
calmly the Captain says, “Your story checks out. We’ve found what must be a
tracking beacon attached to our hull. Good work.
Very good
work, son.
What’s your name?”

“Uh, sir, Mister Wiggles, sir.”

The room grows still. Just then you notice a squat, muscular
man in the corner, a bald man with a great black beard. He is staring at you
with disturbing intensity. You vaguely remember that the man had something to
do with your training. He may have been in charge of training new recruits.

Captain Numitor turns to the man, says, “Faustulus,
I was under the impression that Black Lance Legion personnel are to receive new
names worthy of the species.”

Faustulus jerks, seemingly embarrassed, then says
quickly, “Ah, sir, there were... a certain situation... ah, disciplinary
measures, you know...”

“I see,” says Captain Numitor. “Well whatever the
man’s done in the past, that’s over. He’s alerted us to an imminent attack and
put himself at great danger to do so. Besides, the Mister Wiggles that we have
on file is, I’m sure, listed as dead, along with the other men we lost in the
Stellar harvesting operation.”

“Yes, sir,” says Faustulus.

“Put in a new name for him.”

“Yes, sir, I’ll get right on the paperwork,” says
Faustulus, bowing his head slightly. Numitor salutes casually and Faustulus,
the man who trained you and gave you the name Mister Wiggles, leaves the room
in a hasty shuffle.

Captain Numitor regards you with his cool gaze for a
moment, then says, “Any questions, soldier? You’ve earned the right to ask.”

“Sir, may I leave here and walk around a bit?”

“Absolutely not,” says the doctor.

“If you feel up to it,” says Numitor, “then yes, of
course.”

With that, Captain Numitor turns to leave. His eyes
lose focus, as if he’s already planning something that has nothing to do with
you and your problems. “Sir!” you say, embarrassed by your own outburst. “Has
the tracking beacon been destroyed?”

The Captain pauses at the door and while the
pencil-pushers glare at you for your rudeness, Captain Numitor says, “No. No,
it has not. In fact, it’s where it always was. And we’ve slowed down slightly.”

“Sir?”

“Well we’ve got to say hello to the enemy sometime,
haven’t we?” Captain Numitor flashes something like a smile, then leaves.

You rest for a moment. While you do feel tired, the
doctor’s intravenous fluids and medicines have strengthened you up greatly:
Restore
8 Blood
and any
temporarily lowered stats
to their
maximum.

Turn to section
473
.

You feel a slight prick as the needle goes through
your suit and into your arm. Then - searing pain. You jerk away instinctively
and the needle, still mostly full, is torn from your arm. Your arm burns, the
muscles twitch uncontrollably,
then
the room starts to
spin. You can make out the face of the doctor, leering, full of hatred. You
grasp the sides of the examination table to keep from falling,
then
throw up onto yourself. You lose
3 Blood
from
the terrible poison he has injected into you. Moreover, you temporarily lose
1 Dexterity
and
1 Strength
point.

The doctor lunges toward you and you manage to wrap
your hands around his wrists and hold him back. Sweat rolls down his face in
torrents and his lips contort like a madman’s. The doctor is not well and
he
is trying to kill you
.

Turn to section
241
.

“Stand down, peckerwoods,” you say.

“But you heard what he said!” Buford shouts,
pointing at Cletus. “You heard that
ol
’ boy as good
as I did!”

“I can hear you both,” you say, “and all I hear are
two dumbasses without the sense to know we’ve got only a little food and a long
way to go before we can find any more. We’re not wasting any food just so you
guys can escape the illusion of your own impotence for a few minutes.”

“Huh?”

“Can’t you just have an arm wrestling contest?”

“It would be a waste of time,” says Cletus, “
cause
I’d win, easy.”

“Like hell!” says
Buford.

You turn away from the two as they battle for alpha
male status. You have avoided disaster for now, but hauling two people like
them on such a desperate mission worries you to no end.

Turn to section
143
.

The weight of your jetpack, the crumbling of the
wall, and your own clumsiness conspire against you. You lose your grip and fall
backwards. You slam into a loose section of floor, which breaks free, then you
roll, fall, and crash front-first into a hard tiled floor: Lose
2 Blood.
The dust and rubble from your fall sprinkles onto you.
Open pipes bathe you in cold water.

You take a moment to get your bearings. You are in a
demolished restroom which opens up near the bottom of the dark crater. You can
see an exposed section of twisting hallway to your left, in the direction that
leads deeper into the station. The hallway turns too often to see the end of
it. Just then you hear scrambling just below this room’s opening; the dogs are
leaping up and down, splashing and barking madly, desperate to get at your
throat.

You pull yourself up painfully,
then
run into the hall to your left.

Turn to section
65
.

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
shipless
journey unless you must; you set off in search of the ruins of the
Narrenschiff
, praying that she can be salvaged.

Turn to section
351
.

A sharp warning licks
at the back of your neck and, without thinking, you turn about in a tight loop.
You see that two Invaders with a net stretched between them were sneaking up on
you. In a flash they fly by you and you lash out with a swing that destroys the
neckpiece of one of the Invaders. He drops his end of the net as he desperately
tries to hold in the oxygen leak, and the other cuts his losses and bails on
his comrade.

Meanwhile the first Invader flies at you, his mace
ready to bash your skull in.

You must now compute a number that will determine
the outcome of the battle. This number is your
Strength
stat added to
your
Zero G Combat
stat. If you have the
Jetpack
Skill
,
add 2 to this number. If you are trained in
Weapon Proficiency: Hand-to-Hand
,
and it is with the weapon you are using, add 3 to this number. If, for whatever
reason, you are fighting
unarmed
, subtract 5.

During the battle you lose
7 Blood
, though
you may subtract the number you calculated from this amount. You may also
subtract your
Defense
rating from this amount. However, if you lose 3 or
more Blood, then you also lose
1 SD.

If you die, then you may
Regenerate
by turning back to section
161
.

If you survive, then you and your enemy circle in
wild arc before you lock hands,
then
lash out with
your weapons. For the split second that you are together, it seems you stare at
his curving horns and shadowy helm for an eternity. Then there is a flash, a
blast of heat, as you knock something off of his jetpack. The
insides of his suit ignites
and his body freezes moments
after the inferno takes his life.

You gain
1 XP
for the use of your skill, and
3
XP
for killing two Invaders. You may take the enemy’s
Charged Mace
(Mace, bulk 2)
if you want.

As you try to get your bearings, you realize that
you have drifted far from the main battle. A cloud of shattered armor and frozen
corpses surround the melee between the two large ships. Just before you can
rejoin the battle, you notice that someone else has drifted as well. The
infantryman’s jetpack sputters,
then
dies, as the
person drifts. He is far away and your helm cannot properly identify him, so
you fly closer, thinking that if it is a human then he needs help, and if he is
an enemy then he will make an easy kill.

When you come within range of the wounded unit, the heavy
metal music in your ears seems to grow dim, and your heart thunders ominously,
for your helm identifies the casualty as John Christian.

Turn to section
532
.

You and Buford stare at one another as you roll
around furiously in this feast of the mad. Buford eats an entire bin of bacon
and ketchup and comes out looking like he was in a terrible accident. You feel
your own stomach extending painfully, pressing up against your spine and
unnecessary organs not directly involved in the eating process.

You feel as if you are dying, but you can tell that
Buford is also in great pain.

“Stop,” Cletus moans from the floor. “Pull out...
before someone... gets hurt...”

“
Neber
,” mutters Buford,
food spilling out of his sickly face moments before he crams it back in. “
Narben
...”

If your
Strength
is 5 or more and your
Will
is 2 or more, turn to section
574
.

If your stats are not this high, or you want to stop
before you seriously injure yourself, turn to section
458
.

The lawman pauses for a long time. “Fine,” he says
suddenly. “But I’m going for backup.” With his gun trained on the
revolutionaries, he sidesteps slowly toward the door. You move away so that he
can leave and file a formal complaint against the revolution. (You gain
2 XP
for psychologically overpowering the lawman.)

“Wrong way,” says the smiling revolutionary.

“Huh?” says the lawman.

“The exit is -right here!”

With that, he fires his shotgun. The lawman, only a
few feet from you, flies backward in a spray of bodily goo. You jump at the
sound of the blast,
then
the killer turns to you. He
shouts out, “
UuuwwWwwWWWwwaaAAaaa
!!!” and, while
unintelligible, you have no doubt what he means to do with you.

You dive to the floor as he fires again, destroying
a chair near you.

If you have a gun and at least one bullet, you can
return fire by turning to section
568
.

If you don’t have a gun, or you don’t have any
bullets, you can scramble for the dead lawman’s gun by turning to section
57
.