Thursday, September 4, 2014

NoRunners And A Mirror Universe Part VI

“Here goes nothing pal, I haven’t told you the best thing about Claymore yet either; let me have his weapons do the talking.  Claymore, help your brother!” I shout over the commlink as searing light lances out from his Flavian Spear and every mod I have made to my Skriag demonstrates that yes, it can pull off an almost (but not quite) 30% crit-kill… or would, if everything on the shot had been calibrated correctly, which it wasn’t, so I curse a bit and pull some switches letting the Rocket Rolls and Ursa Strike roar, conveying in their way my own frustration at the laser weaponry having not been set up properly.  If nothing else, the howl of the vaporized ozone kinetic impacts might push those… things… back towards the gate even if it didn’t damage them much.  Of that handful of Mecha, two had holes sliced through them from grazing shots which had connected…

“The good news is these jackasses aren’t invincible; the weird news is that” I say, referring to how the exposed circuitry seems to be grafted together cybernetics on an organic seeming circulatory system which is doing its own version of auto repair by seeping goo around the “wounds” while the severed cable fibrilles twist and crimp themselves back together into bundles before our very eyes.
The other 3 of the five had dodged every shot.

“They’re nimble Drake, prolly want to use something with high precision!”
It becomes evident that if we are going to make any headway against these scouts, that we’ll need some kind of a solvent to burn through their auto repairing goo.  Something like a Chem Thrower...

Meanwhile: (From Patrick’s perspective):
I stood by in Apocalyptor waiting for the pickup. Mycobacter had called me and my Jadoon in for help and Niodes. Apocalyptor was rather restless and was doing more buzzing than usual in my head through the interface pickups.

“Eldritch mecha you said, I remember those. Ancient enemies of all they were, stormed across the galaxy bringing mutation and death to all who encountered them.” Apocalytor told me. “Creations of the so called Negaverse, mecha that should never have been. They move like lightning, having to do with antigrav and dark matter engines for the speed and versatility. More than a match for most common mech as we know them.”

“Do they have a weakness or some means of knocking them out?” I had to ask just in case we actually encountered one of these things, and from the sounds of it there was a good chance.

“Yes of course, everything has a weakness,” was his reply. “Aim for the central eye where some are concerned, joint clusters should they be of the multi-limbed kind, and as close to down the barrel of the main cannons as you can should they be heavily shielded. In each case you will hit the central nerve system of them by striking the brain or motherboard, motivators and nervous system, or in the case of shooting down the barrel, direct ammo overload which should blow the whole thing wide open.”

I couldn’t help but notice the smug tone in my insect mechs “voice”, he was looking forward to this. “You realize there will in all probability be beast machines involved and on our side to boot, I want them left alone…Understood?” I had to make sure Apocalyptor knew that he wouldn’t be dropping into a free for all zone and knew in advance to keep his weapons cool around his ancient enemies.

“Understood Writer”, he answered. “I will do my best to make sure you and your companions; yes and their mechs as well come out as unscathed as possible.”
Well it was the best I could ask for given the circumstances, so I made sure to have everything he just told me recorded and ready for transmission when we got going on this mission. Wouldn’t you know it just in time as our ride was showing up. I put the Jadoon into motion and wondered what the hell I was getting myself into.




Submitted by Mycobacter, Drake Noum Scvientist, Pat Willis # 712744, 706289, 224534