A Metamorphosis Alpha® play-by-post adventure run by supreme_arbiter
COMPUTER TIME LOG - DAY ONE
21:16:03 SEARCH AND DESTROY PROTOCOLS RUNNING
............TARGETS ALPHA IN RANGE
21:17:00 TARGETS ARMED; FIRE EXCHANGED
21:17:27 S&D TEAM 2 APPROACHING TARGETS BETA
............S&D TEAMS 3 & 4 ORDERED TO PURSUE
"That's an energy pod launcher, Arkady," Nike says, hurriedly. "I wouldn't recommend using it in close quarters. Just stay behind us for now. Let's move out!"
Percy and Sharneste exit the armory into---BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!---a shower of energy bursts in a huge assault by the 'bots. All of Percy's sensory inputs seem to be blocked out completely, and all he can think about is getting away: survival. The corridor seems silent and foreboding, and he can feel the pounding of his heart as its loud cacophony reverberates in his ears. Percy turns to run for cover behind Nike, Tinker and the others, who have taken up position in the hallway. Unfortunately, they only have one another to hide behind. He looks over his shoulder to tell Sharneste to hurry, but she isn't there.
Parts of Sharneste's body splatter onto Tinker as he lets his metal disruptor do the talking. Tinker's disruptor greets the head bot's right extender arm with a loud KABOOM as the arm disintegrates into tiny bits of goo. As Tinker continues to move backwards toward the lifeboat and fires again, Nike, Arkady, Percy and Chelydra move into the corridor with him. They flank him and move back as well. Soon Nike and Percy scout ahead for cover and/or escape (and/or Zhaxier) while Chelydra provides cover fire along with Tinker. The bots no longer pursue with as much aggressive vigor, most probably due to the fact that their prey are now armed and lethal. That, and unbeknownst to the ragtag medley of clones, the 'bots are waiting on reinforcements.
Gregory runs to the closest door and hits the open button. "Scan ID card please," a polite, sterile voice says softly. "This isn't good," he thinks, taking off for the next doorway. An animal-like scream resounds through the corridor. Rufus looks up quickly, as the all-too familiar smell of blood assaults his senses.
Amanda feels as if she will faint. Everything seems to move in slow motion as Gregory looks at the next door, looking worried. The scream brings her attention back to the hallway ahead. What she sees brings her senses back on line, full throttle. "Look! It's Nike!" she cries, relief in her voice. Ahead, her would-be rescuers are in a fight for their lives.
Zhaxier's first thought---to run past the 'bots and get to S8346 or to the lifeboat---might very well have been one of his last but for what happens next. They are hard to see amid the dust and smoke, especially with the surreal purple lighting: molten pieces of hot polymer and steel cover the corridor floor all around where the wall once stood. A clump of hot debris melts its way deep into his foot, causing pain that threatens to overwhelm his conscious mind. He screams involuntarily.
The sudden noise close by gives the security bots cause for pause. They look for blood, but there is none, so they began to search the hallway bit by bit before moving on. Their orders are to herd the humans, not harm them---that part of their original programming remains intact; they must verify compliance or face deactivation. But any other creature is fair game. And if they get one more kill today, they are top in line for upgrades that remove that cumbersome restriction on killing humans. The Watcher has so promised.
What do you do?
Rufus, with double grip on the polymer axe, weaves about and dodges the near catatonic human woman and tries to reach the better armed group, which is clearly under attack by the same forces which threaten his hide. Snarling at the intense fire from the boxes, Rufus is determined to link up with these new ones, and try and get out of this murder-ground.
Oh, if only he had an energy pistol, like the old Cougaroid weapons Master taught him to use.... He will have to stay alive long enough to secure one. In the meantime, this axe will have to do.
"Wrum wron!" he shouts to the human woman that always blathers, as he keeps pace and even begins to out distance the male in his group. "Gun...get gun..." is all that really occupies his mind at the moment.
"FRAK!" he yells as his foot erupts with blinding pain. At first he thinks he is shot. His mind, only having recently contemplated the grusome "Kaminsky" scene, eagerly spawns a subprocess to contemplate his own annihilation. But this wound is different from his former one---it continues to consume his flesh. As he kicks his foot free of the smouldering gobbet of plastic, his senses assault him. Bleuck! the smell of burning protein! Bleuck! the taste of ID card!
He realizes that he is huddled against an intact corridor wall. The hallway resonates with weapons fire and one horrible scream: Sharneste. "Dammit!" Zhaxier picks himself up and wrenches his thoughts free of his rampant imagination. "Must remain conscious," he determines, remembering waking up in the armory unblended. Hugging the right wall, he limps down the corridor toward the intersection...
...and the robots. He concludes that they have not yet detected him, and that's good. He shoots a glance behind him down the corridor, but it's hard to see anything through all the thick acrid smoke.
Abandoning his original plan as he passes a door, Zhaxier swipes his card and holds his breath, hoping it is not his last.
Tinker keeps firing at their pursuers as he backpedals. In between shots, his keen gaze punctures the smoke behind him and his pattern recognition software kicks into gear. He cautions the others ahead. "Heads up! Multiple heat sources further down. Three humanoid, two robotic. We'll have to go through them."
Gregory proceeds to make Amanda look calm and collected in comparison, as he totally loses it and begins running around the hallway like a chicken with its head cut off.
"Help, help! We're going to die, we're all going to diiiieeee!"
"...get gun.... Why are humanoids always so strange? ...get gun... get gun...," Rufus thinks as he struggles to extricate himself from the hysterical humans.
"Wret wror writ wrorefer wran!" Rufus shouts as he zags around the looney man. Rufus has nearly forgotten about his perpetual hunger... and that alerts him to the seriousness of the situation.
SA, is Rufus able to move up the hall to assist the others in battle with the security bots? He's not the kind of dog to hang out in a deadly shooting gallery when armed assistance is only a few (dozen) yards/meters away, y'know. :-)
I don't understand what the dog means, but I don't really have time to think about it either. Everything is happening so fast. My world is spinning out of control like an orbit that strays too close to a repelling fixed point and the strange man isn't helping matters acting like some crazed engineer. Without a second thought, I slap him hard across the face and it sounds like a gunshot. It stings my hand. "Snap out of it, man! I need the dumb man part of your brain here with me if we're going to stay alive. Now follow me!" I order. It isn't like me to take charge, let alone slap someone, but I do, and it even surprises me.
This is the stage where I start to pray.
"NIKE!!!" I yell almost out of reflex, my eyes already darting back and forth like a caged animal. Whether out of fear, sheer desperation, or both, I bolt towards Nike as I try to pull the man along with me. I have always felt safe with Nike and now I want a little bit of that safety back. I also know that numbers and integrating can only help us. The slap also reminds me of a kiss not that long ago. "Come on, we haven't lived this long to die now!!!"
Finally, the insane babbling female seems to have snapped out of her torpor. Rufus imagines that her slapping the human male is much like getting bit on the snout by Momma. Now the looney humans are following him as they all travel in the direction of the "reinforcements" presumably led by one named Nike.
"Wreesh! Wruts wrup writ wrat!?!" Rufus says to himself and all his ancestors (now obviously quite near him in his grave---er, dire---state).
Rufus is ready to leap over one of the dangerous boxes and ker-wack-it on the... uh, top of its box-ness with his newly found polymer axe thingy. "...ker-wack box, get gun... ker-wack box, get gun...," Rufus adds to his mental process.
Arkady tries hard to see ahead of them through the smoke and debris. "That lifeboat can't be too much further. What room number did the invisible dude say we are looking for?" he asks Nike. He cradles the pod launcher to his chest, careful not to do anything that is likely to set it off.
Gregory is totally stunned by the slap in the face---perhaps more so than is safe to stand around stunned, in the present circumstances. This woman is more than just a pretty face! Gregory follows her without voicing comment or protest, intent only on finding better cover from the security bots while he tries to come up with a backup plan to get out of this section if they can't reach the lifeboat.
COMPUTER TIME LOG - DAY ONE
21:19:11 SEARCH AND DESTROY PROTOCOLS RUNNING
............TARGETS ALPHA & BETA IN RANGE
21:20:00 TARGETS WELL-ARMED; DISRUPTOR FIRE EXCHANGED
21:20:27 S&D TEAM 2 APPROACHING TARGETS BETA
............S&D TEAMS 3 & 4 EN ROUTE
"What room number did the invisible dude say we are looking for?"
Nike replies, "S8346, but I don't think that's the launch bay," she pauses, pressing her body tight against the wall to give the bots a smaller target. A scream erupts ahead of them. "That sounded a lot like Mr. SmartAss," she thinks, worried about him in spite of herself. Then she thinks that she hears someone yelling her name. "Maybe this is getting to me," she ponders.
Taking a deep breath, she moves out and continues onward. "We've got to get the hell out of here." She addresses the rest behind her, "Ok everybody, let's speed this up! I'd rather face the one set of 'bots between us and the lifeboat than the ones behind us. Let's move!"
Chelydra, already thinking the same, moves ahead on the left side, while Nike begins moving through a dense area of smoke on the right. Tinker remains the last of the group, continuing to provide cover for the others, and moving with them.
Suddenly, Nike finds herself face to face with a Jackaloid. "Who are you?" she says gruffly, pointing her gun at him.
Amanda drags Gregory by the hand toward Nike and her compatriots, though Gregory seems to be following more of his own volition now, albeit still in a daze, as if he has made some sort of perverse peace with being blown to smithereens. From the sounds of weapon fire, and the fact that the bots aren't overtaking them as quickly, she reasons that Nike has raided the munitions depot whose location she blurted out during her capture. "Good," she thinks, "I hope they're kicking some Watcher ass to the nth degree."
"ACCESS GRANTED. HELLO ZHAXIER COLE."
The doors slide open, revealing a woman's sleeping quarters. The room seems to flow in three directions: to his left, to his right, and straight ahead, with the nexus being a larger homey area with lounging furniture and tables with photos. Doors grace the far left wall past an eating area, the far right wall past a study area, and straight ahead past the sitting area. Zhaxier steps into the room, and the doors slide closed behind him.
What do you do?
[Rufus switches groups:
"Wrym Rufus. Wrat wror wrerwris," Rufus says, ears perked up, tongue lolling, and tail wagging happily. "Wrurry! Wre wrar wrin wrig wrubble! Wrimmie wra wrun...," he pleads to Nike for a gun.
<pant-pant>
Arkady knows Nike is right. They need to head down the hall and seek refuge in the lifeboat, and there isn't a second to lose. He hurries after her towards the right side of the corridor. His eyes dart between Nike's body just ahead and the door numbers to either side of him, and back again. "S8346," he says to himself, over and over.
Reasoning that things can't get worse, and that an ally might help their odds, Nike pulls an extra gun---the special stun pistol---from her stash. "Here you go. Shoot the 'bots, not the humanoids." She rushes past him into the smoke.
"But watch out for our buddy 'bot," Arkady shouts, "He's the one blasting at the 'bots behind us!"
"Wroky Wroky...Wranx wrawrot!" Rufus exclaims, and grips the pistol in his right hand.
Percy risks a glance behind him and fires his newly acquired laser pistol down the hall, making sure to avoid Zhaxier's pet robot. He doesn't expect that he will hit anything---frak, he can't even see much with all the smoke and debris. But he figures it'd give the 'bots something else to dodge, or at least process.
Then, as he turns back forward, all of a sudden he remembers something, as the smell, sight, and sound of a dog---well, at least a dog-derivative---bursts onto the scene. He grins a big smile and turns to Arkady. "Waaiiitaminute! I just remembered---I like dogs!"
Just as suddenly as the appearance of his smile, triggered not only by the memory of a dog he once had, perhaps even on Warden, but also by the fact that he has regained a memory, the explosions quickly jolt him back to reality.
"Huh? Uh. Hm! Ah, reality!"
No dog of his ever asked for, much less received a firearm, Percy realizes as he becomes privy to Nike and the Dogoid's conversation. His last thought on the subject: "If this is what passes for getting back to reality, oh boy...."
Percy refocuses his attention upon staying in front of Tinker and behind Nike and Chelydra as the group continues down the hall. He notices Arkady's nervous glances at the room numbers and wonders when they'll reach their intended destination---or if they'll reach it.
Keeping the man close and my hand in his, we run onward as fast as we can. "What sane person can live in this place and not be crazy?" I tell myself.
"I've got a plan and it's as hot as I am!" I shout to him. "We keep running. It works for lemmings; it has to work for us." There is no rest for the wicked, because the wicked just run and run.
Gregory will allow Amanda to keep leading him by the hand, as he kind of likes it.... However, he breaks free as soon as he has Nike's group between himself and the security bots pursuing him. Live cover will do in a pinch, he thinks.
Zhaxier breathes momentary relief in the comfortable confines of the nameless woman's apparently abandoned abode. "Ugh," he shivers involuntarily. "Pink."
He quickly heads as far left as he can go, closing the distance to the hangar (and also S8346) and searching for the ubiquitous access panels through which he---or rather, his former incarnation---frequently entered and exited Warden's labyrinthine network of Jeffries tubes in maintenance runs. If there is a way around the ambush, this Blendoid is determined to find it.
Like Arkady, Tinker keeps an optical sensor out for S8346, betting that Zhaxier's casual mention of the sleeper room indicated his plan of action. What does the Blendoid know about that room? Dude may be a propulsion jock, but his actions sometimes point to a faulty thruster. Wasn't it his predecessor Zephram Cochrane that said, "Orthogonal, original thinking is the hallmark of a successful engineer... or a dead one."?
"But watch out for our buddy 'bot. He's the one blasting at the 'bots behind us!"
To underscore the drop ship pilot's point, Tinker gives the pursuing 'bots another burst of 'bot-bane from his M-3000.
Blindly running into an obvious trap does not seem to be the most strategic of choices, especially now that the 'bots behind them have slowed. If the human(oid)s ahead don't come up with something fast, he will not hesitate to blast a hole through the corridor wall for an alternate egress.
COMPUTER TIME LOG - DAY ONE
21:22:00 SEARCH AND DESTROY PROTOCOLS RUNNING
............TARGETS ALPHA & BETA IN RANGE
21:22:05 TARGETS WELL-ARMED; DISRUPTOR FIRE EXCHANGED
21:23:33 S&D TEAMS 2&3 APPROACHING TARGETS BETA
............S&D TEAM 4 EN ROUTE
"NIKE!" Amanda yells, moving quickly toward her former companions in the Enviro Room. It seemed like so very long ago.
"Amanda!" Percy exclaims, and for once, he seems surprised.
"Amanda!?" Nike and Chelydra say, turning and then becoming excited and relieved to see her alive and well.
"Thank God you're alright! And that G10 was one hell of a find. Thanks to your tip, we now have a fighting chance," Nike says grimly, waiting to fire another cover shot at the 'bots, who have now begun to hang back a little, firing only enough to maintain their position and prevent the human[oid]s from moving in their direction. She wonders to herself why they are doing so: is there a trap ahead? Are they being backed into a corner? Are there reinforcements coming, bringing the "heavy artillery"? Whatever the reason, Nike knows that it isn't out of the kindness of their shiny metal hearts.
Chelydra moves ahead to scout again, and Rufus takes his place in the backward-facing ranks, keeping an eye out for encroaching 'bots. Gregory, not having a weapon, moves with Amanda to the center of the group, keeping a lookout for any unpleasant surprises.
"Nike! Percy!" It's Chelydra from just ahead. "We've reached S8346; it's the next door up. Want to try it?"
[Group merge:
Zhaxier moves past the dining area. In a moment's time he reaches the access panel and his thoughts become solely focused on getting it open.
The panel is bolted closed on each of its four corners with steel bolts, and is approximately 2x2 feet.
What do you do?
S8346. That means nothing to Chelydra now. Somewhere he is sure lurks the buried knowledge of what the numbers mean. "All ship's rooms are coded by section and function. Within a section, numbers run...." It is all he can remember. He is certain that if he could remember how the doors were coded, he could find a better answer to the current situation than simply running away, or firing until their newly replenished ammo supplies run out.
He looks around the corridor for some clue that might help him to formulate a plan, or even a guess as to what is behind the door.
"Welcome to the party, Amanda," he calls. "It seems we have a few gatecrashers at the reunion, though. Must be from Tinker's side of the family."
Gregory is hesitant to speak up, for fear of drawing unwanted attention to himself, but there is something he is almost (literally) dying to know.
"I know this is a bad time for introductions and all, but I'm just wondering---since it seems we're all intent on reaching a lifeboat---does anyone have a card that will get us past the door, provided we can get around the advancing security bots? Just wondering...."
Gregory looks about the group of strangers nervously.
"I do." Nike says, moving more quickly. "Does anyone know exactly where Zhaxier went?"
Arkady eyes the newcomers with concern. "Are we being herded?" he asks no one in particular.
"Nike! Percy! We've reached S8346; it's the next door up. Want to try it?"
"Right behind you," Arkady says as he hurries towards them.
"...does anyone have a card that will get us past the door, provided we can get around the advancing security bots?"
"If no one had a card, would that stop you?" Arkady asks the newcomer.
Arkady has a difficult time asking that to Gregory's face, as Gregory keeps twisting to get Arkady between him and every weapons fire that comes their way. While ducking and weaving, Gregory replies, "Well... actually it just did a... few seconds ago when I was at... another door. Of course---yow, that was a near miss!---I don't happen to have the heavy ordinance on me... to blow open the door myself."
"I'm glad to be back with you Nike; I really missed you guys." My eyes tear up, but I try to hold the tears back and I bite my lip for a moment. I want to say more to Nike, but the time and place aren't right with everything that is going on at the chaotic moment. A couple of tears race down my cheeks, but I quickly wipe them away and compose myself, very happy to be back with Nike, now protected in the center of the group.
With the strange man at my side, I point to each person as I say their names to him. "That's Nike, she's in charge. That's Percy. That's Chelydra.
"Zhaxier, an invisible guy, is around here somewhere. If you see floating Cool-Mo-G sunglasses, that's him. Zhaxier used to be in my differential equations class. How could I forget a troublemaker with such a memorable name?"
I point to the man carrying the huge weapon, to the dog-mutant and to the robot. "I don't know their names. I think I said it before: I'm Amanda. What's your name?" I look at the strange man waiting for an answer.
Gregory = "strange man"
Percy raises a hand in a quick greeting as he is introduced to the crewman with whom Amanda has connected. He looks ahead to where S8346 is supposed to be, and checks for the robots ahead from which Amanda was running. The only thing he can think of is one hyphenated word. A word that describes the feeling he is having, and which was verbalized by Arkady:
"Are we being herded?"
"Pac-Man." He shakes his head and tries to remember the connection, but it is lost to him. Noticing the odd stares, he blurts, "Oh, sorry. Er, let's save the pleasantries for when we're not being shot at, huh? Captain, shall we?" he says nervously to Nike, indicating his desire to stay on the move, at least until the shots have stopped.
Percy tries to keep his back to the wall as much as he can, and fires toward the nearest non-friendly robot when he feels bold enough to test his marksmanship.
Tinker's digitally enhanced visual scans into the occasionally sparse dust clouds ahead show that the robots between them and the lifeboat have given up ground---and lots of it. Through wisps of thinning smoke and ashes, he detects Chelydra peering around the corner of the intersection near S8346, and two robots moving away from the intersection toward the lifeboat hangar. "Goaltending," he computes sadly.
"Wroky Wroky...Wranx wrawrot!" Rufus exclaims, and grips the pistol in his right hand.
Tinker frowns internally at the risk the Marine has taken in handing to a complete stranger a weapon that could be used against them. This lull in the robots' pursuit could have been timed with the insertion of an agent of the Watcher.... He keeps the Jackaloid in his peripheral vision just in case.
"Does anyone know exactly where Zhaxier went?"
Tinker registers Nike's question. As his hunch is just that, he doesn't answer.
"...since it seems we're all intent on reaching the lifeboat..."
"A good assumption, human, and one that it appears the Arnolds have made as well. While the 'bots behind us appear to be holding their ground, the pair ahead is moving away from us---toward the hangar. If they disable the lifeboat, we are dead in the water. I suggest 'nuking' them immediately with the grenade launcher."
Zhaxier sighs at the lack of his engineering tools. Going "commando" does have its downside. He tries his ID card in the slot on top of a bolt on the access panel, but the plastic card is not rigid enough to apply sufficient torque.
Whipping around, he spies the silverware on the dining room table, and snatches the knife. As he plies the knife's edge to the bolts, he notes that the firing outside has diminished substantially. The telltale "zing" of Tinker's metal disruptor punctuates the corridor din every now and then, giving him hope. "C'mon you bastard!" he coaxes a bolt.
COMPUTER TIME LOG - DAY ONE
21:24:02 SEARCH AND DESTROY PROTOCOLS RUNNING
............TARGETS ALPHA & BETA IN RANGE
21:24:35 DISRUPTOR FIRE CONTINUING TO BE EXCHANGED
21:25:56 S&D TEAMS 2&3&4 ATTACK MODE ENGAGED
............ELIMINATE ALL HUMANOIDS
"Nike! Percy! We've reached S8346; it's the next door up. Want to try it?"
Chelydra's query hangs in the air for a moment as he continues to move toward the mysterious room. "We have no friggin' idea what's in there---it could be nothing that would help us, and then we would be trapped in some room with no escape," he thinks, recognizing that one reason for taking that door is the primal need to get out of the line of fire.
"No," Nike says, now running down the corridor and hurrying everyone along. "We've got to get to that lifeboat, ASAP. Let's go people!" She is surprised that no one, especially Tinker knows where Zhaxier is, but there is no time for second-guessing right now. Percy is right: they have to speed this up and get the hell out of dodge.
Rufus joins Chelydra scouting ahead, with Nike close behind. Arkady and Gregory stick to the middle of the pack. Amanda stays close to Nike, and thinks she hears her say, "Holy shit, this is just like Waxmis 4." But in the noise and confusion, she isn't sure. She is indeed very happy to be back with the group. There is a certain safety in numbers. That is, after all, why she became a mathematician.
The ragtag band rushes down the corridor, and though the two scouts slow a bit in hesitation, Nike goes right past S8346 without stopping.
The silverware works well on the bolt, and soon all four bolts are loose. Hurriedly, Zhaxier works the bolts out and removes the panel. A 2x2 open space faces him, and he can see the innards of the tube system inside.
What do you do?
Visibility in the corridor has cleared a bit, since the 'bots have slowed their fire and pulled back some distance. It is still hazy (from small fires burning) but backup systems are working to put those out, so visibility will only get better (provided there are no more explosions) as time goes on.
The party is being fired on periodically from both sides, and though the 'bots on the hangar side cannot be detected (for what reason you do not know), they seem to be firing off shots about every 90 seconds. Every 30-60 seconds, a shot is fired from the opposite side. The blasts from the hangar side seem smaller and less powerful, though to the humanoids it isn't clear if this is due to distance or type of weapons fire. To Tinker, it is obvious that this is due to the types of weapons being fired.
Nike and the scouts go right on through the intersection (very carefully, of course).
The party, other than Tinker, is not sure of where the 'bots behind you are located. Tinker knows that they are very near the A&W depot, and closing, but at a slower rate than the party expects.
The 'bots out in front of you are not visible, and undetectable, at least at the moment. But Tinker guesstimates (based on the time differential between initial muzzle-flash and nearby explosion) that those 'bots firing weapons are approximately 150 yards ahead [well beyond the hangar doors --ed.]. From this analysis, Tinker also knows that the firing robots ahead have stopped their retreat.
The party is scattered from in front of room S8346 almost to the first doorways on the other side of the intersection.
The entrance to the hangar can be found at the double doors on the other side of the intersection, which Nike is now approaching.
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