Simlabs 4 sale, Cheep. Prices as Marked, All sales final.

Bob checked his weapon for the tenth time. He adjusted the straps on his web gear, and examined the seals on his gloves. He was green for EVA, so all he had to do was wait for the door to open.
It was getting routine by now. Bob’s company was divided into three chalks of sixteen marines each. The EVATs were loaded into the forward airlocks of the task force’s three assault shuttles, which had just folded into the system minutes behind the gunships. Out of his tiny viewport, he could see the Ishiman science vessel fold in, shortly followed by the UNS Musgrove. Ahead, the simlabs and the space platform hung ominously, begging to be opened and explored.
In the four months since Earth’s liberation, task forces just like Bob’s had been clearing out the space that had been left vacant by the retreating Cantharaan and Salrillian forces. The newly established border with the Cantharaans and the prophets of Salril left several hundred light years of empty space to clear, and the haste of the withdrawal left a lot of hardware to clear.
Bob’s batallion was attatched to the UNS Musgrove Task Force, along with the ISN 9774598, a research vehicle. The Musgrove Task Force was assigned to clearing the Simlabs and research institutions. The task force was on its third major installation. It was almost routine by now. Suit up, vacuum enable, flip the switch to green, and wait for the dropmaster to pop the tubes and land on the station, clear the rooms, scan the spaces, and make way for the techies to check it out.
Bob was waiting now for the launch order. He could hear the drop master calling ranges over the intercom. As chalk leader, he was the only one able to talk back directly to the drop master, and so he responded with an "Aye aye" each time a range was called. They were clearing out a large platform, and through the small window in his door, he could see the station getting bigger. The marines had all given greenlights for vacuum, and so at 500 meters, air was vented from the airlocks. There was no enemy fire, and the gunships were giving close fire support, so the outer doors opened to give the marines time to prepare. Bob triggered his mic, telling his marines:
"Chalk two, prepare to launch on my mark"
In his ear, the dropmaster was still calling ranges
"Five hundred meters, four hundred, three hundred, retro-fire in five seconds "
"Chalk two, prepare to launch on retrofire. Easy on the jets, lets make this one nice and smooth . Go!"
The ship jerked backwards, and the marines were clear of their airlocks. They covered the last two hundred yards quickly, holding their formation and retrofiring so that they landed with a light step. They formed up and moved quickly towards their target airlock. The electrics operator checked the panels.
"Just like the scans said, this station’s dead. No power, and I certainly don’t see any life signs. Why do we even bother clearing them? Why didn’t the Sals just scuttle them?
"Well these things are practically indestructible. I mean you can kill everyone aboard, but good luck destroying a well-built space platform. I bet this thing has been around for a few thousand years already, and I bet it’s got a few thousand years still in it. Besides, you know how all the others looked, the Sals trashed these stations. Anyway- get out of the way, and let a heavy open that door, the corps ain’t paying us by the hour."
Bob watched the huge, heavy EVAT suit pry open the door. All but two of his men were wearing light armor and suits for the close quarters inside the stations. He didn’t really care about the station anyway, it was just a precaution to clear it. The Sals had already ripped out its guts and vented it to space. It wasn’t nearly as important as the four unopened simlabs that the station had guarded. Bob couldn’t wait to get inside those.
"All in good time," he thought to himself, and, activating his image enhancement and his motion sensors, pulled himself through the door into the darkness.

------------------
NEW NAME FOR THE DREADNOUGHT
The Hard-Boiled Egg
Why?
Because she cant be beaten!

Dr. Vishak Darkk drummed his fingers on the console.
He was one of only 3 people on the whole ISN 9774598.
There was a pilot, from an Ishiman client race that was avian, and could still fly a little on low-g worlds. There was a captain, who was an Ishiman and a total coward. That zerbilite that came at us last week wasn't even a match for an EVAT, but he still freaked and burned a ton of fuel on hyperburning out of there.
Darkk was an Irthantan, a race of feline humanoids that had been saved by the Ishimans from Gaitori domination a long time ago. The planet was semi-independant, as Irthanta dislike taking orders from snackballs (their name for all non-carnivorous species). They also had a mandatory military training program, and all adults put in 2 years in the armed forces. Darkk had served his long ago, but his insticts for the hunt still seemed sharp.

He wanted out of the lab. The ship was built so he couldn't even see the other crew face to face unless he put on a spacesuit and went to the forward section of the hull. All he had to talk to were machines, and his primary form of entertainment was hacking the captain's account and deleting his files.

The same files.
Every week.

Predators do not handle boredom well.

"I DEMAND to be on this boarding party. There is no danger. The station's hull integrity is perfect, it has an atmosphere I can breathe, and there is nothing and noone aboard to attack us. There NEVER is. I want off. I want to run and jump some. I need out of this <untranslatable swear word> hulk."

Darkk was probably also feeling claustrophobia, something predators do not bear well either. His living and working spaces totaled barely the size of a college student's dorm room.

"Fine," the commander of the Musgrave finally sighed "you can go if you want. Just don't get your hypereducated furry face shot off."

Darkk snickered. There was nothing there to do that anyway. He put on a semi-armored space suit and went through his airlock. Finally, he'd get to move around again.

------------------
"Imagine a schoolbus full of teenage boys in the sun in the summer with the windows shut and the AC off, all high on PCP."
"You're that psychotic?"
"No, I'm more psychotic."

Aldus Starr had been floating motionless in his cell for four months. The gravity, along with the rest of the life support mechanisms, had been turned off when the Salrilians put the research operations in the system on hiatus. But this didn't matter to Starr; he had been the subject of Salrilian experimentation for nearly three years. During that time he had been carefully vivisected and reassebbled on an almost routine basis. Nanotechnology had chewed through him from the inside out, changing his structure on a molecular level. Starr was oblivious to this however-his consciousness had been shattered to the core when the nanites got to his brain and began to rebuild it. For the last eight months his world was a terrifying collage of disarrayed images, fractured memories, and nightmarish sensations. Without a perception of time, the dream lasted an eternity a second: a hell trapped in the limbo between life and death.

Outside the cell time seemed to have stopped. The starscape always stayed the same, since the simlab was stationary. The halls, once buzzing with the hum of life support, Salrilian chatter, lab equipment and the occasional whir of the slithering defense drones, were gripped by dead silence. By all logical reason, the Salrilians had left the lab and it's contents to die silently and be forgotten.

Starr hadn't died, though. Thanks to the nanites his body had been plasticized, myomerized, crystalized, and polymerized. So although his heart had stopped pumping, his metabolic processes ceased, and his nervous activity reduced to fleeting murmurs, he had been perfectly preserved. Theoretically, he could stay this way forever.

Then there was a ceiling. The nightmare ended and world came to with a sudden start. Aldus Starr had been freed from the dream given to him by the nanites. Thoughts flowed with superb lucidity now. His brain had appearently begun to function again. Something was a little off, though. Starr strained to figure out his surroundings. Nothing came. There was basic information; language, movement, mechanical processes, loads of data, but no memory. Nothing before this waking moment, but a gaping void where something, a life perhaps, should be.

Starr's body didn't seem to be there either. It might be, but he couldn't crane down his neck or even move his eyes to look. He was utterly paralysed with no feeling but a strange and painful tingling sensation. Starr's sleeping hell had given way to a conscious one; a perpetual present in which he could do nothing.

CLANG

Starr's senses were slowly sharpening when his ears recognized the first stimulation he'd had in perhaps an eternity. Something had struck the bulkhead of the simlab. Immediately following, another sound caught his attention. The dead stasis of the simlab was broken. A slght whir was moving down the hall just outside his cell, followed periodically by more of the same. Unbeknownst to Starr, a boarding party had made contact on the simlab, and the defense drones were headed to meet them.

(This message has been edited by Sargatanus (edited 04-26-2002).)

UHS Ranger, Visual Log 02230. Location: Zenda
"Man, why we gotta go so fast in this rickety ol' thing?"
"Cuz it ain't ours, boy, that's why."
"Hey man, you traded for it fair and square. You gave 'im yer freighter, and 'e gave you 'is gunship." Ketch muttered, "I think he got the better deal."
"Boy, y'think I got a freighter t' trade?" Sutherland let out a few guffaws at this, as if impressed by his own humor, to be followed by a nervous chuckle from Ketch.
"That, that's real funny, boss. Real funny."
"I think it's 'bout time you stopped callin' me boss, boy. I ain't the boss."
"Of course yer the boss. That's what you told me when you hired me. You the big man."
"Nah, the boss's much bigger than me. Look out there."

Slowly, a MkI Outpost grew on the screen amidst a field of rocky asteroids. No image appeared onscreen, but a voice boomed over the speakers of the Ranger.

"Welcome to our Pirate outpost. Please enjoy your stay, and realize that any irregular actions can and will be used against you in the afterlife."

"There's the boss, boy. You workin' for us now."

------------------
Using an MW3 Tight Beam since '99

Darkk's fingers flew over the keyboard.

"Ok, I've got life support up, in case anybody else wants to take off their portable hot-houses."

"Buddy, we keep these on anyway. If something's in here, we'll need all the protection we can get."

That argument didn't apply to Darkk. His suit wasn't in the least militarized. It was classified as "semi armored" but it wouldn't even stop a kinlaser rifle shot and Darkk knew it. Since it was made of memory plastic, he pressed its "fold up" button, and stored the resulting rectangle of plastic in his tool bandolier. Darkk took out his old ISN Marine Corps button. He'd been a General Combat Technician, E-level. His training had focused on getting a stubborn station computer online, cutting power to internal defenses, defusing bombs, planting charges, booby traps (placing and removing), and similar tasks. GCTs were assigned to small squads like this one where there was not room for more specialized technicians.

Darkk fingered his weapon. Very few ISN troops used a continuous-fire laser rifle, most perfered kinlasers that fired short blasts, but a small number knew the value in these weapons. They were the best against shielded infantry, shielded light armor, and did better against heavy armor than the lighter variants of grenade launcher. They took a great deal of steady-handedness to use, but Darkk's genetic heritige gave him that. He felt he could take on a whole squad of Audemedons.

Speaking of which... Darkk blinked at the computer screen.
"Boys, there are calls to the 0x468AF5A2 program register in this thing. That's a program for control of automated defense drones. Might be coming our way, if there are any."

The marines increased their readiness, guns pointed at every opening into the airlock atrium. Darkk focused his large ears. He could hear them coming.
"They're about 50 meters away."
"I can't pick up anything on the sensors."
"Maybe they're stealthed."
"35"
"That guy's just trying to freak us out."
"No, the sensors saw something. I can't find it now, but something's coming, and it doesn't look like a welcoming party of released hostages."
"I can hear gears, fans, and motors. It's the auds, and they're 15 meters and closing."
"10"
"5"
"3"
Darkk was puzzled. Every entrance to the room was 5 or more meters from him. Except...

Darkk leaped aside as the audemedon drone landed on all its rather pointy legs right where Darkk had been standing. He calmly placed the rifle against the Aud's vitally important visual sensors and fried them.

All the marines used their pack jets to jump to the walls. Darkk did 4 back flips and reached the wall in the same amount of time. He pulled a special flashbang from his backpack and threw it. It landed just as the rest of the Auds dropped through the ceiling.

Darkk's flashbang killed the visual and audio sensors of mechanical devices, a very clever trick thought up by the UNS Ares's chief technical officer, now head of the UNS Military R&D.;

With the sensors down, the auds were fiarly easy. Darkk checked the registry again. Still calls, but at least he didn't hear any more. They were probably elsewhere, readying ambushes. "Well," Darkk asked, "there are still more of them. Go on or go back?"

"On, you data-pusher."

"Certainly, snackball."

Darkk knew they were kidding, and so was he. He smiled as he remebered his few combat actions during his service. He'd always been fairly good.

------------------
"In literature as in love we are astounded by what is chosen by others." Andre Maurois

Sight and hearing became more and more acute, and with them also rose the tingling pain in his body. Starr could hear the subsonic whisper as the microscopic air recyclers turned on and could vaguely make out the movement of the air around them. Someone had turned on the life support system. A series of slight shudder also seemd to indicate that someone was battling the Audemedon defense drones. Occuring simultaneously with the thought of the Audemedons was knowledge of their structure, movements, interactions, and a host of other data. Starr seemd to know these things by instinct and didn't find it at all odd.

A host of drones approached and perched outside the cell. Two fixed into a mechanism in the wall and were transported through a panel to the interior. Starr could do nothing; It seemed that nothing in his body would work except for his pain receptors. He could only watch as the two audemedons bridged over him, locked a pair of their limbs, and produced a host of destructive tools pointed at the door. Outside the door, Starr assumed, the rest of the drone squad was setting up similar fortifications.

------------------
(url="http://"http://www.dissectional.com/swf/index.html") Dig a little deeper (/url)
(url="http://"http://www.axisnet.f2s.com")=Axis Software Integrated=(/url)

Chalk two pushed forward through the dark corridors of the dilapidated Salrillian station. The marines cleared hallways and small rooms by the numbers, checking each turn as they passed. They knew their tasks well. Darkk moved with the main body of marines, in the middle of the squad. Skilled in combat though he was, brash pride was something that he had learned to control. Nowhere near as armored as the marines moving through the halls, it wouldn't do to get tagged by a drone's kinlaser. A strong warrior is one that know's his limitations.

"Room clear."
"Roger. Checking hallway. Clear."
"Clear."

"Alright, we're coming upon on the first simlab. The schematics show this one was a virtual reality simulation lab. Big machines with lots of data." said First Lieutenant Nathan Caulfield. "By the numbers people. Check it and clear." Four marines breached the door, two jumped inside with weapons at the ready. Four more followed almost on their heels, checking the rest of the room.

"Left side, clear."
"Right side, clear."
Lt. Caulfield let out his breath. "Good work. Alright, she's all yours." he said with a nod towards Darkk.
Darkk stepped into the flashlight illuminated room, and glanced over the large banks of data storage devices and VR simtanks. A wealth of data was stored in those memory banks. Darkk knelt beside the massive data banks, pulling out a data uplink device. Next, he went to work on the terminals that accessed the huge file storage systems. Within moments, he was into the local file server. It was all he needed to download all the data off of those memory banks and onto the Musgrave. The data uplink device began to pull raw data from the data banks, compress it and send it to the ISN Musgrave. Darkk nodded to Caulfield, indicating that this task was done.

"Alright, Abrams and Vareel you two monitor this station. Everyone else, let's move!"
Two marines took up positions to watch the simlab in case anything came by to interfere with the data transfer. The rest of the marines began their rapid travel through the station. The second simlab was not far away, and hopefully they wouldn't run into any drones.

"Simlab 2. Biological research. By the numbers people."
With quick efficiency, the marines cleared the second simlab. The biological section was a morass of empty biotubes, dissection tables and hastily removed experiements. The rapid departure was quite apparent.

"Man, something stinks in here. I thought these places were supposed to be sterile?"
"Nah, you probably smellin' yo'self. You stink." jibed Melissa Samuels, PFC.
"Shut up Sammy. You ain't no spring daisy."

Caulfield cut them off "Both of you, can it. Make a sweep to see what's making the smell, some sample they spilled or something."
The two marines tromped off, following their noses. Caulfield waved Darkk into the room.
"Well, there's the data systems. Work your magic."
Darkk shot the Lieutenant a short smirk. "With pleasure." he said somewhat sarcastically. Whatever spilled, it was making one hell of a stench.

"Found it sir. Looks like some dead animal. Dissected looks like, and discared. Looks like the sals weren't much on neat cuts." The small corpse in a broken bio-bay was messily opened up at it's midsection. Lying on it's back, the ribs were spread non too neatly, with small pieces of flesh torn to dangle into the chest cavity.
"Groady. Looks like your mother Sam." said Abels.
"Hey man, the womb is sacred. Don't go there."
Once again, Lt. Caulfield interrupted their reparté. "Room is clear. We'll return to gather any leftover physical samples that may have been left behind after we clear the rest of the station. Samuels, Abels, you two stay on station. Move out." With that, the rest of the marines moved out into the hall, and the two PFC's were alone in the room.

"Figures, I get stuck with you. You smell almost as bad as that poor creature in the bio-bay." sneered Samuels.

"Whatever. This place is creepy. All kinds of gross medical experiments an' stuff."

"Yeah, freaky **** like that. Hey, did we check out those crates over there?"

"No, I don't think so. I bet Lt. Caulfield is gonna want to know if they're gonna need to be moved." grunted Abe Abels.

"You getting responsible on me?"

"No, you are. Ladies first." grinned Abe.

"Bite me ******* ."

"Don't tempt me. Now hand me that prybar."

(Mmm... I plan to bring in some non-ares elements into this RPG. However, I think it'll be a positive impact on the Ares universe. Kick my @$$ if you don't like it. )

------------------
"That was quick."
"Well you know, when you don't do it right it doesn't take as long."

Darkk walked on. Something about that room was wrong, somehow. The salrilians were very neat, usually. They considered untidyness a minor form of chaos. They hated chaos, the way Darkk hated being kept in that damn ship all the time. Hatred of chaos was the only really strong Salrilian emotion, aside from fear of death and the unknown.

He sniffed the air. Audemedon lubricants had a faint smell, but Darkk couldn't smell any of it in this part of the station. He sat down at a computer terminal. Bob walked over to him.

"What are you doing?"
"Something's not right. I'm not going any further until I know what it is, and since you'd be in a lot of trouble if something happened to me, you probably aren't either. Besides, this isn't the good kind of wrong."
"I didn't know there WAS good kind of wrong."
"There isn't to my knowledge, but I'm not excluding its existance."

Darkk looked at the computer. Time to guess the password. He guessed "Sthlith", the Salrilian word for scientist. It was accepted. Nothing like a good cultural attack. For all their intelligence, Sals could be pretty dumb.

Darkk spat an oath.
"Security program's locked and unmodifyable from this terminal. I've got control of the outer ring cameras, and you won't like this."
"Won't like what?"
"The auds are blocking all ways out. With really big barriers, plus fixed emplacements, plus dang large bombs as a last resort. They've also blockaded the inner section of the station, with a great deal more firepower. The inner-middle camera system doesn't seem to work. The outer-middle cameras report the Auds have cleared this section. We can either head in or out."
"Heading out would put us closer to rescue, but no closer to accomplishing our mission. Heading inward would have us go through territory we can't scan and then involve breaching the heavier defenses. Hmm..."

------------------
"In literature as in love we are astounded by what is chosen by others." Andre Maurois

Xitell stood near the entrance to a small lab near the marines' entrance point. He shifted uneasily, feeling as though something was amiss. His back plates ground together under his custom-made space armor and his non-standard blue beamer rifle shifted from hand to hand.

Xitell was of the Zhorl, a distant relative of the Greccha. Like Greccha, Zhorl were a sort of a combination reptile/insect, with more reptile-like attributes than insect-like ones. They had exoskeletons, and long, narrow heads. Zhorl, however, were basically humanoid, while Greccha had long, serpentine bodies with four legs. The Zhorl had had a rough start, originally forming a spacefaring culture and expanding quickly. However, after a major cataclysm disrupted interstellar travel, three groups of closely packed Zhorl planets formed their own governments. Finally, after long-distance space travel was established again, the three civilizations discovered each other and formed the Zhorl Trilliance. The nation is run by a very restrictive government, and so many young Zhorl strike off into space to seek their fortunes. Xitell was one of those who went in search of a more interesting, if not necessarily better, life.

Xitell's suit sensors picked up activity not far away. He tensed, lifting his organic-looking weapon. Then he heard skittering noises. Grainy, metallic skittering like gravel on a dinner plate. Without warning an Audemedon rounded the corner. Xitell dove forward, depressing the firing button on the side of the handle. An emerald-green beam bisected the Aud drone and scorched the opposite wall. Xitell retreated down the corridor, taking potshots at a few other Auds. After he'd retreated for a ways, the Auds gave up the chase and went back to their posts. 'Lead, this is Xitell. The Auds just overran my post and are holding position.'

------------------
"Parlez-vous jig jig, madam?"
"I must put my pyjamas in the drawer marked pyjamas."
- Under Milk Wood

"Parker! Johnes! Where the hell are you?"

Capt. John Roberts, CO, Charlie Company; 515th batallion, 76th Infantry, Space-Mobile, generally known as Cap'n Bob, was wondering where his rearguard had gotten to. The three chalks had rallied near where Darkk was scanning the terminal. The marines had created a perimiter in which Darkk was working, but two heavies were still unaccounted for.

Bob's Chalk had two heavy suits, which had been assigned to guard their extraction point. They were not responding. Bob was worried, because the heavy suits were generally accepted to be all but invulnerable to anything but anti-tank weapons, and carried sufficient firepower to destroy a small station. Moreover, they were physically strong enough to fight audemedon drones hand to hand. Whatever had taken out Parker and Johnes was something worth worrying about.

Bob went back to looking at the security monitors. Darkk had opened up some more video feeds, and was trying to find the lost marines, as well as a way out.

"The Auds look spooked. They're not just coverning our defensive perimeter, they're trying to lock down all the containments cell blocks. I think we may have stumbled on a really bad cleanup job. I think we need to work quickly to get whatever's left before the Auds clean it up."

Bob contemplated the situation for a moment, just as someone called contact over the radio.

"Allright. you have five minutes to link those video feeds to my squad leaders' HUDs, then we're off. Oh yeah, and I'd keep my suit on, I wouldn't want to catch Salrillian Flu, or whatever they've cooked up on this flying petri dish."

Bob opened his wrist panel and vacuum enabled his suit, setting it for biohazard mode. He then opened a channel to all his men

"Charlie Company, standby to move out. Vacuum Enable, we are entering Biohazard areas. Muster with your chalk leaders and await instructions."

Bob then moved to where contact had been made, to examine the wreckage. He checked his squadmember status on his HUD. No wounded, no KIA, just the two out of contact heavies. He got to the hallway, and saw the marines, faces hidden behind the armoured, reflective faceplates. on their helmets. Their helmet lights pointed at Bob for a moment, then panned back to the four splattered corpses. They were blasted beyond recogniton, though they were different than the other mangled bodies in the other simlabs.

"What was it, Caulfield?"

"I don't know sir, but they wern't auds. They were fast, we only caught them on the motion sensors a few seconds before contact. I think we'd be toast if it wasn;t for Samuels over there and the itchy trigger finger on her grenade launcher."

"Whatever they were, watch out, we may get to see more of them yet. Fall back to the main lab room, we're moving out."

Just then, Darkk called in again.

"The uplink's just about done, but I've found something you want to see. Look up camera 401-8741. I think its Parker and Johnes."

Bob called up the camera in his HUD, and saw the two heavies lying on the floor sprawled, while a dozen or so small shadowy figures seemed to dart around them. They looked almost like children, Bob thought, but he couldn't tell, the room was dark. just then, one seemed to see the camera, and for the moment before the image was lost, bob could see two huge, glassy black eyes staring into him.

Bob shook his head for a second, trying to rearrange his thoughts.

"Darkk, rewind that and send it to Caulfield, ask him if they were what attacked him. I'm going to brief the other chalks. You try and figure out what those things are. Look in the terminal. Stay with seargent Davies til I get back.

------------------
NEW NAME FOR THE DREADNOUGHT
The Hard-Boiled Egg
Why?
Because she cant be beaten!

Darkk sent the footage, and watched the data uplink reach 100% and vanish from the task bar, then sat down to cracking the root account's password.

It seemed that there were two big servers on the station running all the terminals, inner_core and primary. Darkk looked at the code on inner_core's accessor. It was behind a firewall, and could only be accessed by a terminal in an office at the center of the station. Wait, there was a patch that allowed access to something named expdev1322:aldus_starr which seemed to accept very little input, allowing only root_observer access, meaning that this "aldus_starr" thingy could see but not do, for the most part.

Of course, inner_core did all the really important stuff, station defenses, destruct sequence (unimplemented, but still there as a command option), communications, Oracular Network access...
Hmm. Darkk really wanted into that one.

Darkk couldn't do much about inner_core for the moment, but primary was easy enough. The station administrator had set the root password to his birthday, which Darkk had found in another file somewhere. Now he could see the files. He immediatly accessed the station admin's log.

Salrilian Translator Active
_
Cycle 0x156AF21 of station operation.
Lab help's getting restless again. They're beginning to suspect we're experamenting on them with the humans. I'm going to have to quell their fears again. If they figure out those things in the cylinders are halfbreeds, there'll be rioting. I don't have the forces to stop the <unknown term> if they turn on me. Fortunatly the network predicts they're not going to figure out how to read our minds for the next 20 years. I can sweet talk them until we bring in some nice heavy stuff to kill them all. Maybe a species-targated bioweapon, it's almost impossible to take them down physicly. You need explosives or a railgun or something. When we kill this batch, we'll apolgise to their homeworld, and hire another batch. They work great for specimin collectors.

...

Cycle 0x156AFF9 of station operation.
Command had us pull out after the humans took down the Cantharan Gateship. Some had their faith in the network shaken, so I had them executed. Just some factors outside the network's view. If we had enough data, it would have predicted right. I'm leaving the <unknown term> here. Tell them we'll be back soon, or that a relief crew will replace us. Yeah, that's the ticket. Personell rotation. That lie always works.
_

Darkk paused.

Darkk opened "Security:Internal:OrganismTracker.prog" and stared at the screen. The blue pixels represented audemedons. They were splotched all over the inner and outer security zones. Several red blips representing the EVATs and Darkk were distributed over the outer-middle security zone. What puzzled Darkk was the gray blips in one area of the outer zone and winking in and out of existance in the inner-middle zone. Diagnostics warned the detectors in inner-middle were mostly out, and those that worked didn't work well.

"Davies, we need to get the **** out. Tell Bob ASAP. There's all sorts of bad **** in here. This is a job for a full assault force, with maybe 3 or more ATRs worth. Staying here would be like standing on a land mine because it didn't go off when you stepped on it at first. Have him send somebody to gather up the fallen, and make a run for it. I'll look for another escape route."

------------------
"In literature as in love we are astounded by what is chosen by others." Andre Maurois

(This message has been edited by Fleet Admiral Darkk (edited 04-27-2002).)

Caulfield was leading the main column out to extraction, making as much noise as possible, and using a tremendous ammount of firepower as they cleared the way to safety. This was buying time, and drawing attention from the six volunteers that Bob had requested to search for Parker and Johnes.

Bob was on point, with the two marines behind him facing front left, and front right. The third in the column, Darkk, was running a sensor package, and the fourth was looking up at the ceiling. The fifth was carrying a heavy machine gun, and the last marine was facing backwards, checking behind the column as it snuck, somewhat speedily down the corridors of the station.

"Right up ahead, Sir" said Darkk, examining the layout map. "I showed three blips here a few minutes ago. They've died away now, but it could just be interference with the sensors."

"Aye." Bob raised his fist, signalling the marines to stop. They moved to as much cover as they could in the hallway, covering all directions, as well as their commander, as he slid up the right wall of the corridor towards the T-Junction.

Bob pulled a small tube from his belt and extended it outwards. He then turned it on and bent the tip at a 90° angle, sliding it just around the corner while he looked on through his HUD. The corridor looked clear. He checked the other direction as well, then the ceilings, then the floors. Then, he peered around the corner with just the side of his head. He then signalled for his men to move up. They moved back up with him, and the entire group turned the corner, moving down the corridor towards the airlock where the two marines had last been seen. The group moved quickly now, still being careful, but more eager to reach their fallen comrades. Bob reached the heavy door first, and found it locked and barred, despite the fact that the squads had jammed the door with iron rods and welded them in place. Now, it seemed that the doors were welded shut from the inside, as the motors inside only seemed to groan against the doors when Darkk tried to activate them.

"I can still read signs in there," Said Darkk, running his sensor over the door. "I don't know why you arn't picking up their suit's transponder on your comm., the suit generators are running."

Bob thought for a moment. He didn't really have time to sit stalled like this. There were Auds everywhere, and the transports couldn't hold station forever. He needed to get in.

"Jackson, can your burner get through this door?"

Jackson took his suits stethoscope and placed it against the door, knocking on it several times.

"Its way too thick, sir. I could try my saw, but that might not be enough either. I think the best way through is to blast it."

"Do it, Marine."

"Aye sir"

Dark shook his head. "So much for stealth" he thought to himself, as Jackson wired the charges to what he suspected were the weld points on the other side of the door.

------------------
NEW NAME FOR THE DREADNOUGHT
The Hard-Boiled Egg
Why?
Because she cant be beaten!

Darkk shuddered as Jackson placed the last charge. Who knew what was behind the door, besides the two down marines?

"All placed. Everybody stand back."

All 6 went to the last intersection and turned left. A muffled boom was heard.

Darkk tossed a "blind and deafen everything" flashbang so it bounced into the airlock, then folded his ears over his head to lock out the noise.

Another boom. Then weird, disturbing screams. Darkk and the others knew they'd hit the gray suckers again. Darkk leaned out just a little, ready to flinch back instantly. The 'lock was filled with grays that hadn't been there a second ago, holding their hands over their eyes. It struck Darkk that their eyes were probably as sensitive as they were large.

The marines dove out and lay down rocket and grenade fire, turning the gray unknowns into piles of innards. Darkk walked up to the heavies, and popped on a scanner.

"Messed up readings. These guys are in total comas."
"Great. This is gonna be hard to get out."
"We're right in the airlock."
"Take a look - the outer door's been welded too, and we couldn't blast it open with the carrier's main gun."

Darkk snickered. He banged on it softly.
"We can still open it."

He fired his laser rifle at the weld points, melting the welds. Despite what Bob thought, the welds weren't nearly as good as they looked. Then Darkk put his suit on. Finally, he walked over to the disabled heavies. These suits had a limited AI designed to make them able to evac if their owners had become incapacitated without the suit's becoming incapacitated, a fairly common occurance when a heavy removes his helmet when he shouldn't, or when a heavy goes nuts. Darkk punched a few buttons. The suits got up. Johnes's exectued its "open airlocks and run" AI, and Parker's executed its "follow" AI targeted on Johnes. The ATR would pick them up. Darkk and the others were about to let the air going out the airlock (they'd blown the inner door) blow them out to rescue, when a forcefield came up. The station's annoying inner_core computer had determined a hull breach had occured, and was now trying to seal the hole. It had, in fact stopped the air from escaping, but its calls for a damage control party had no one to go to.

Darkk sighed. They'd need another way out.

"Caulfield here. We've gotten out the airlock, but a forcefield just came up behind us. I can see the outside in the carrier's lights, and it's like the whole thing is covered with a forcefield microns from the hull."

"WHAT???"

"I can see multiple hull breaches, with new ones being made over the inner-middle sector's top. Something pretty heavy is going down there."

"Well we're not involved. Call the ATR over to pick up Parker and Johnes, they're not feeling well. We're going to have to find some way off this flying saucer deathtrap."

Darkk broke in. "The only way to shut off that field is to get to an inner_core terminal. I've mentioned there's only two. BTW, I've finally figured out what those things I diverted power for life support were. Stasis tubes of some sort. All of them in the inner-middle sector."

"You dumarse."

"Yeah, save it. At least they might kill the grays for us. They could kill each other and leave almost nothing for us to do."

------------------
"In literature as in love we are astounded by what is chosen by others." Andre Maurois

Nidok had been out in space for quite a few months now. The rumble of the engines behind him had become very normal. Being a Merc was never that great, but it paid well, and sometimes he got to loot things that actually had some value. Now he was working for the humans. He never had even though about them before, but now he was in their employ. Rather ironic, he didn't even know that they had existed until about a year ago. He himself was humanoid, and just about the same size of any average human, except that the dimensions of his body were slightly different, skinnier at the waist, broader at the shoulders. He flexed his hands, probably about twice the size of normal human hands, an extra finger to boot. The exoskeloton he was wearing whirred and hummed every time he moved, but he could feel the strength that it had, and liked how it supported his body. He flexed his hand again, just for effect. Then his scanner picked up the lab. Just routine, he'd been assisting the humans in capturing these for the last three months, same old, same old. The dot on his scanner screen got increasingly closer and closer, until he could finally see it, the stars glinting off its smooth metallic surface. There were three assualt transports sitting outside of it, a rather large Carrier, and some gunships floating nearbly. He raised them on the radio. "This is Nidok of Merc group Alpha7, codename Wolf 9, here to assist the capture of this science station; how is the operation proceeding?" The radio crackled to life, a response shot back from one of the vessels.

"We have lost contact with the boarding party, sensors have detected weapons fire and unknown life forms, assistance is required."

"All right, I'll go space-side as soon as I get there, Wolf 9 out."

Nidok touched what appeared to be a joint of the exoskeloton that was over his chest. A plastic like material came out from the various struts of the exoskeleton and covered the majority of his body. He put on his helmet. The small ship slowed to a stop just outside of the forcefield by the lab hull, and hovered. He grabbed a belt from behind his seat and a rather large looking rifle. The cockpit opened. He pushed himself off of the chair, and using some type of gravity driven device, he pulled himself in towards the station. From his belt he produced an object, about 8 inches long, metallic, cylindrical and rounded on one end. When he depressed an insert on it's surface, which was so flush with the surface as to be barely visible, a blue field about a foot and a half in radius projected from it. The forcfield around the lab suddenly became visible, sparking and glittering, and slowly fading away. A gap could be seen, the forcefield on its fringes was glowing much more brightly than the rest of the field around the station. He pushed himself through and onto the hull of the lab. He walked along the surface and reached the entry point that the marines had taken. It seemed all clear. He reached to his belt, and pressing a button on it, a shield extended itself around him. Reaching to the other side he pressed another button, and vanished.

------------------
"You will find that your device is highly non-functional...." - Bad Guy

(This message has been edited by Shrout1 (edited 04-28-2002).)

(You forgot the carrier, but more importantly, you forgot the forcefield. I'll assume you went in right before it went up.)

Darkk pushed the mirror around the corner slowly. In it he caught a glimpse of one of the grays. He fired his laser into the mirror, and it hit the gray in the eye. In the split-second before it covered the eye, Darkk saw the eye turn cyan, the color of the alien's blood. He guessed it had hemoraghed under the shock. Sure enough, the alien had stopped moving, and then breathing. Darkk waved them ahead.

(Edited-in note: Darkk stole the mirror from a Salrilian laser setup. He's got a few more as backup.)

"We're currently in the outer of 10 rings of corridors making up the inner-middle sector. We'll need to go through security rooms to reach the next set of corridors. The scanners report that the auds are successfully holding the security rooms, but are besieged by the grays and something else, which appears to be hostile to everything. According to the security programs, they're destroying everything from auds to grays to cleaner droids to potted plants. Also their threat rating is slightly higher than a gray's."

"How do the grays attack? I haven't seen them do anything..."

"That's because we get them first. These aren't combat trained, they're lab techs."

"Anyway, what the heck did they use to take down Johnes and Parker?"

"They're some kind of telepaths. They can do hypnotic and telekinetic stuff, on line of sight. Hypnosis takes a little time, and a subject that isn't all-out resisting. Since we're tring to kill them, they probably won't try it. Johnes and Parker never saw them coming, or didn't think they were a threat. They hypnotized the heavies into a coma."

"Great."

"The telekinetic attacks are pretty fearsome, but they have to build. The data tables say the new unknowns are using similar but more powerful telepathic attacks. The map represents them as gray-red blips."

Darkk repeated his mirror trick with the entry to this security room. Broken audemedons were everywhere, and a human woman was standing there, looking around. She was wearing a plain black Salrilian subject tunic, just like many other human and humanoid lab specimins. Darkk sighed and stepped out.
"Ma'am, it's not safe here. This station is currently in some kind of termoil. I'm gonna ask you to find a secure location and lock yourse..."

Bob yanked him back just as a blast of blue energy shot through the space Darkk had been occupying. "Darkk, most humans don't have uniformly GRAY skin, platnum hair, and solid black eyes."

Darkk shrugged. "Forgive a non-human his mistakes. I haven't worked with you too long, have I?"

More energy sizzled. "How in the darkness of the universe do we take her out?"

"I'm not sure. The eye trick probably works on grays only. This looks like some kind of freaky half-breed."

------------------
"In literature as in love we are astounded by what is chosen by others." Andre Maurois

(This message has been edited by Fleet Admiral Darkk (edited 04-28-2002).)

Xitell and a few of his squadmates had been assigned to guard a small room along a major corridor containing several control consoles. They were the extreme rearguard for Darkk and his team. So far it had been a boring job. He ran his armored hand along his beamer nervously.

One of his partners jerked. "Hear that?"
"What?" Xitell looked around.
"I think it came from inside." They looked into the room. Scraping sounds began to reverberate from one wall. Then, a metallic claw punched through the thin wall, and slowly tore a large hole through which the Aud drone climbed. It ignored the two marines. Xitell's mate hoisted his weapon, but Xitell put up a hand to signal stop.
"Let's see what he's doing first."
"All right." They waited. The Aud drone extended a plug device from one arm and inserted it into a computer linkup terminal. The computer terminal needlessly spoke aloud, and their helmet computers translated what it said.

"Accessing Self Dest-" A green force beam and a yellow pk bolt blasted through the air simultaneously and gutted the multiarmed robot. Xitell ran up, yanked the Aud's arm out of the link, and blasted the terminal with his beamer rifle. He then got on his suit comm. "Lead, the Auds are trying to blow up the station, over."

"Strange," said his partner. "The Auds are controlled by the computer, right? If the computer wanted to blow up the station, couldn't it just do it itself?"

"Maybe the Auds are malfunctioning. Given what we've seen so far that doesn't seem too far-fetched." The Human shrugged as best he could in his armored space suit.

They took up defensive stances.

------------------
"Parlez-vous jig jig, madam?"
"I must put my pyjamas in the drawer marked pyjamas."
- Under Milk Wood

(This message has been edited by Taeskor Cicion (edited 04-28-2002).)

Sounds were now coming through both audibly and intuitively for Starr. The sounds of distant combat mixed with another sort of sense which spanned a broad range of sense data that included a muddled composite of communication and emotion. Now he had both his fear and the collective fear of the more than a thousand inhabitants of the station to content with. Along with this rise of awareness came the continuing rise in pain. The tingling in his body had become a burning sting that now seemed to infiltrate his brain as well.

Starr could feel several hundred entities slowly making their way to the center of the lab, possibley towards his cell. These things didn't feel anything like what his memory told him a Salrilian or Audemedon should feel like. They didn't even feel like the entities that intruded through the bulkheads. They just felt... wrong. And appearently they were having some success against the fortified Audemedon drones. Their pressence was marked by a chaotic feeling of angst and bloodlust, and with each second that pressence crept toward him from all directions.

If only he could fight back, or run, or move, or even yell for help. But Starr was helpless. Or was he? If he could feel the others in the station then surely they could feel him. And since most of them were already headed roughy for his location, what could it hurt to try?

Starr concentrated as hard as he could on trying to make some kind of contact. The harder he concentrated, the more his pain rose with it. The pain rose to a climax and he released. It felt as thought he had managed to make a sort of thud or blip, and his vision confirmed that something had indeed spiked in the high spectrum of radio waves. Frantically and almost by instinct, he began to pulse out a message.

------------------
(url="http://"http://www.dissectional.com/swf/index.html") Dig a little deeper (/url)
(url="http://"http://www.axisnet.f2s.com")=Axis Software Integrated=(/url)

Darkk thought carefully. He'd have to get them out of this. Bob might could handle it given time, but they didn't have time. Rearguard reports indicated something wanted the station blown.

Blown...

Darkk tossed one mirror out along the floor. Being very durable, it bounced a little and stopped almost at the edge of the room where the hybrid was standing.

Darkk held up another mirror, and angled it so he could see the first. And in it, he could see the ceiling security turret. Perfect...

Darkk fired. The ceiling turret's fully charged plasma buffer exploded, and there were sounds of agony from the room, followed by silence.

One of the EVATs stepped out. The security room was a mess, the walls were buckled. The hybrid woman was lying on the floor, hair burned off, and some parts of her skin (especially her throat) bubbling purple - the color they bleed, guessed Darkk.

Suddenly Darkk noticed something on the wideband frequency scanner. Somebody was calling for help. In morse code, it said "a s here help me". "A" "S"? Aldus Starr?

Darkk pinpointed the location of the signal. A lab on the outer edge of the core.

"I think I've got a lead on that inner_core login we'll need."

------------------
"In literature as in love we are astounded by what is chosen by others." Andre Maurois

(Fixed my last post)

Nidok walked through the already blasted corridors of the lab, cloaked. Many many Auds were hiding behind bulkheads, waiting to ambush any unsuspecting victim who would be the first to cross through. He walked by some numbers of a small grey aliens, all with very large eyes, grouped together and moving throughout the corridor. Within his suit he could hear his own breathing, very mechanical sounding, as his apparatus fed him air and kept any noises from escaping the suit itself. He looked down at his arm, its color was inverted because of the cloak. The holo-display being projected from his multi-functional device that was strapped there said that the humans were still about 2 rings in and beyond a series of security rooms. Everything had gone well so far. He turned a corner. Suddenly, coming right at him was Audemedon perimeter security robot, hovering about 6 and half feet in the air, and moving very quickly. It slammed into the shield that was around him, sending him sprawling backwards and flinging the robot into the ceiling above where it was utterly smashed. However, the glow of his shield, and glitter of energy particles had illuminated him, and all the Auds in the room were closing quickly on his position. He stood up, beginning to fade out again. His form could be seen crouching, his body preparing to leap. The exoskeleton that he was wearing rocketed him all the way to the ceiling, where his suit stuck itself to the wall. The robots followed suit, many small ones hovering up towards him, and the larger ones turning their weapons upward. He pulled out his gun, now almost completely invisible again. Unfortunately, he couldn't stay that way, he had to defend himself. With one arm and his foot stuck firmly on the ceiling, he used his other arm to shoot his weapon. The room illuminated, blasts hitting many of the smaller bots as they made their way towards him. Then a high pitched noise could be heard, his gun stopped firing, he began to fade again. The noise grew, going from a whine to piercing trill, and then it released. The room lit up, and a huge blast went flying towards the largest robot on the floor. Its orange metal went flying, the robot shattered into a thousand pieces that scattered throughout the room. Nidok resumed picking off the small bots that were coming towards him, until one actually reached him. He reached out and batted it with his hand, his armor slammed into it and the force proovided by the exoskeleton flung the bot all the way back to the floor, tumbling out of control, where it slammed into the hard metal and ceased to function. He was getting tired of this. Taking off one more charged shot at the now largest bot, he leapt the 80 or so feet from the ceiling to the floor, landing with a satisfactory clang. He fizzled out again. This time, instead of just walking, he threw aside most of his precaution and bounded towards the group of humans, his suit pushing him there rapidly.

He rounded the last section of hallway and entered the corridor that had the humans in it. He also detected a Irthantan amongst the group, and was wondering what in the world one of those was doing here. He saw that the group was combatting some of the small grey creatures that he had seen congregating on the way in, and decided to help out. Still cloaked, he ran over to the group, they were not aware of his presence. They finished off a group of three of the creatures, but were seeming to have some troubles at the next junction, and were using a mirror and a laser to shoot around the corner. Nidok walked around the corner where they were hiding. What he saw shocked him. There were upwards of 50 of the creature all sitting there, waiting for the humans to make a bad move, and coming out from whatever cover they could find as soon as the barrage ceased. He reached to his belt, and pulled off a shiny metal canister. It was like a sphere that had been extended in its center, and it fit pretty cleanly in his large hand. He took it and loaded it into a large hopper beneath the barrel of his rifle. He cocked it and the spherical canister went flying, its halves shooting out the left side and landing on the floor. The humans looked over, eyes wide, and worried, wondering where the package had come from. Right them, he pulled back on the trigger and the room lit up with a fierce orange glow. A bright orange object whizzed across the corridor, and slammed into a wall about 75 feet away. There was an intense flash, and large energy explosion. All that was left were some charred corpses and some burnt out pieces of rubble. Nidok's figure was illuminated briefly and all the humans, and the Irthantan looked over at him. He faded away. Nidok put his gun back to his side and reached for his belt, pressing the button on its left side. His cloak disengaged and he reappeared. He looked over at the group of humans, and saluted sharply, "This is Wolf 9 reporting, how may I be of service?"

------------------
"You will find that your device is highly non-functional...." - Bad Guy

(This message has been edited by Shrout1 (edited 04-28-2002).)

Strelsau Orbital, Zenda

Limited industrial facilities were hard at work copying and improving upon the designs of the small human fighters that the pirate band could get their hands on. The few gunships' weapons arrays had been replaced with docking ports, to allow each gunship to function as a 3-fighter carrier. Plans had been laid out, and a raid was in preparation.

"And they expect us to board a Carrier with this ****?"

Edward "Silverman" Roberts had been one of the first to throw in his lot with the pirate group that had slowly been growing after Liberation. Earth was a nice thing to have back, but there's no cash to be had sitting around on it. Veterans of the Ares War had found themselves with two choices if they wanted to make a living: UNS service; Piracy.

The latter had looked like it would pay off.

Unfortunately, resources tended to be limited, and there were only so many people you could fool into giving you money. Now, it seemed like the best chance they had was a last-ditch assault on a patrolling Cantharan Carrier beyond the treaty boundary, and their forces were woefully inadequate for that task.

There were to be no tactics, no strategy. Fighters would be burning their way straight towards the hull of the Carrier, and, with luck, slowing themselves down to avoid death on impact. Then, it was the pirates job to crash a party that the Cantharans didn't intend on hosting...

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"Welcome to our Pirate outpost. Please enjoy your stay, and realize that any irregular actions can and will be used against you in the afterlife."