Heavy Metal Thunder (34 page)

The sight that greets you is pure madness incarnate.

Turn to section
444
.

“Whatever,” says the
laborer.
“We don’t want
no
part in your world.” Horrified, you
hear the gun blast and see the girl’s head jerk. Blood splatters onto the
laborer’s chest and he drops the girl’s limp body. Before you can react, he
puts the gun to his own head.

“Stop!” you shout. “Don’t do it!
You’re wasting
bullets!
” But it’s too late - the man fires, blowing his brains out like a
rainbow that comes in only one color. His body falls in a twitching heap beside
the woman he loved. You may take his
Bloody Chrome-Plated 9mm (Handgun, bulk
2)
and
3 Handgun bullets (bulk 1)
if you wish.

Turn to section
529
.

While you have no idea what the creature is, you are
sure, despite the limits of your memory, that no such things were ever
discovered in your solar system before the Invader came. You reason that the
creature must have been brought with them for some purpose. You have some
memory that many savage creatures were brought by them and dumped on Earth,
mostly to sniff out and harass rebellious human beings. This creature has made
no aggressive movements toward you. If it is not here to trouble humans, then
it must be here to benefit the Invader. Perhaps they harness or develop such
creatures for food? You know that most ships, both human and Invader, are made
in space and are bound to space; ships that can land on and take off from
planets are expensive to make.

If this is a farm
,
you think,
then
I might as well eat some
alien produce
.

But you wonder if, perhaps, the thing is harvested
for more than just food. You gain
1 XP
for the use of your Intelligence.

If you wish to land on the surface of the creature,
turn to section
181
.

If you wish to avoid touching the surface, you can
fly around the thing close enough to get a good look by turning to section
356
.

The hall seems industrial, imposing, as if built in
a different time or by a different mind than the one that designed the former
hallway. You stalk to the end of the hall and turn a corner. You see a strange
sight: A long, metallic coil of tubing hangs from the ceiling, jumping about
wildly. Its end burns hot; burn marks line the wall and floor where the thing
makes contact. You have no idea if the device is a trap or some kind of welding
tool. Another coil of tubing lies in wait near the end of the hall.

You walk down the hall. Another hallway connects
from your left. You see more of the pink mist that way. It is heavy and clings
to the floor. Just then a large cleaning machine turns a far corner and races
toward you. It shifts erratically from left to right and you wonder just how
you will dodge it. It speeds into the pink mist and spreads it about, vacuuming
it up. Then you hear an eerie sizzling noise. The rubber tires of the cleaning
machine melt into goo. The steel hull of the thing bubbles and darkens. The
thing lurches forward unevenly,
then
collapses into
the mist, cooking like some robot’s meal.

I’ll be sure not to go that way
,
you think.

You hear powerful vents click to life. The mist
shifts wildly,
then
expands as more of the stuff is
pumped into the area. The stuff spreads in all directions - including your own.

You haul ass down the hall toward the writhing metal
coils.

Turn to section
451
.

“How so?”
Reika
says. Something brightens in her eyes.

“The bullets couldn’t touch the ship because of its
shield. The shield is an electromagnetic, invisible barrier operating on a
certain frequency. I don’t understand the technology myself, but I know that
even high-powered lasers can’t break through, not without knowing the
particular shield’s frequency. Our own ships use the same technology.”

“So what do you do?”

“That’s where the Jetpack Infantry come in. Theoretically,
we fly out from our ship to meet the enemy, and they do the same. Infantry
against infantry, hand to hand. The infantry tries to reach the enemy ship and
then hack through its shield, cutting temporary holes with weapons charged with
their own electromagnetic fields. Swords, maces, spears, things like that, and
they’re not cheap to make, I’ve heard.
The soul of a soldier is in his
weapon
, they say. But it takes some time to hack through those shields,
time when the enemy can shoot an infantryman down, so by way of distraction our
own ship will send out several small bomber ships. These ships will fly around
at high speeds and fire missiles at the big capital ship, and some of these
missiles are equipped with the same expensive charged fields as our own
hand-to-hand weapons. Some of them could cut through the field and damage the
capital ship - so it has to assume that they all can, and spend a lot of time
shooting the missiles down. That gives an infantryman time to get through the
shield and then hack into the ship itself. From there, the troops have to fight
their way to the enemy’s shield generator, which is always in a different place
in each ship, mind you, and then destroy the shield generator.

“After that, they have to fight their way back out
before their own ship fires its lasers and blasts the enemy ship out of the
sky.” You finish, surprised that you knew even that much.

“That’s pretty amazing,” she admits, “
if
it’s
true. Are you sure it’s true, though? You say yourself that you’ve got some
kind of amnesia.”

You pause, unsure how to answer.

“Anyway,” she says, “do you remember any of the
day-to-day stuff from your time in the Legion? Like, what it’s really like?”

You say...

“Listen, I’m pretty sure I’m not crazy.” Turn to
section
122
.

“I vaguely remember living under a system of
complete tyranny.” Turn to section
79
.

Everyone settles down for a meal. You must subtract
1
Food
for every person on the
Narrenschiff
,
including yourself.

Toward the end of the meal, Buford makes fun of
Cletus for pecking at his food like a scrawny bird. “Hell,” spits Cletus,
reacting violently to the accusation, “I could eat you under the table. And then
eat the table, too!”

“
Lyin
’
sumbitch
!”
says Buford, galled at the wild boast. “You got a
li’l
stomach cause
yer
a
li’l
man.
Always have been.”

“You think I can’t eat
more’n
you? Well let’s settle it, right here, right now.”

“You’re on,” sneers the beefy mercenary. He turns to
you suddenly, says, “You in,
boah
?”

Only an eating contest will decide who
is the better man
. Your first instinct is to say no to such
a contest, since your food is limited. However, you realize that these two
brutes will have to be cowed eventually. This could be a good way to assert
your dominance, or even get some XP out of the situation. Both of the men are
physically imposing, so there’s no telling what would happen if you tried to
stop them from getting their way.

If you want to bow out of the Food eating contest,
turn to section
168
.

If you want to show them
who’s
the better eater, turn to section
8
.

If you want to tell them nobody’s going to use the
Narrenschiff’s
limited supplies for something that
idiotic, turn to section
322
.

“Tired o’ this shit!”
Buford declares loudly. “This here’s bullshit!
Ya’ll
hear that? This here’s a
buncha
bull...
shit!
”

Not to be outdone, Cletus stomps around with his
chest puffed out, shouting, “Man, if
they’s
aliens
out there, I’m ready
for’m
to take me ’way!
Tired o’ this shit!
”

“You
sumbitch
!
Who’s
fault you think this is? I
seen
you
slurpin
’ up our food like it was
nothin
’!”

The two face off, their chests and
noses nearly touching.
“You rotten
bastard
,”
hisses Cletus. An air of menace and hostility settles in the small room. It
becomes difficult to breathe. “How dare you say I been
eatin
’
more’n
my share.”

“
Boah
, who you thinks been
rationin
’ out the goods an’
keepin
’
us alive this whole time? It’s been
me
who’s
leadin
-”

With that, Cletus jumps chest-first into Buford and
pushes him away. Buford flies at his friend with a wild haymaker; his huge
fists disappear in a blur only to reappear next to Cletus’s nose, crushing it
unmercifully. Immediately you rise up and push the two away from each other
with great difficulty, shouting, “Gentlemen! Please! There’s no reason to fight
each other!”

The two calm somewhat. Then Buford turns to you
slowly and, eyes
slitted
like a snake’s, says,
“You’re right, no reason for us two to fight. Hell, way I see it, this here
mess we’re in is
all
your
fault.”

“The Invader -”

“Don’t try to pass the buck!” Cletus screams,
then
pushes you to the ground roughly.
“Always
tryin
’ to blame someone else!
Well no more!
No
more!
”

You look up at the two burly mercenaries. Hunger and
frustration have drowned out whatever capacity for reason these two have.
Madness has set in. Only blood can end this debate.

The two mercenaries charge at you, and they mean to
kill you.

If
Reika
and the
three
laborers
are with you, turn to section
224
.

If only
Reika
is
with you, turn to section
569
.

If only the
three
laborers
are with
you, turn to section
378
.

If none of these people are with you, turn to
section
387
.

“Get the hell out of here, pig,” you say, sneering
at the lawman. “The revolutionary forces run this show now.”

While the smiling revolutionary cackles, the lawman
shouts, “Are you insane? Is everyone on this station
crazy?!
”

“Well,” you say, stalling for time, “sometimes
normal things look insane if it’s a crazy person who’s looking at them.” You
stare the man down, hoping that if he leaves then the so-called revolutionaries
will calm down. “You’re the problem. Just leave.”

But the hands of the gunmen still shake, and the
tension coils harder, tighter, threatening to explode.

Add your
Will
and your
Charisma
stats.

If the total is 8 or more, turn to section
327
.

If the total is 7 or less, turn to section
357
.

You are carried through dark hallways.
Faces before you.
You hear yourself speaking. Time passes as
you fade in and out of consciousness.

When you come around again, you are in a dull grey
medical room lit by a few dingy bulbs hanging from the ceiling. You are propped
up in a padded, leaning chair, covered in several thick blankets. A doctor in
layers of grey wool and a toboggan speaks with some others, men in Legion black
and grey.

“There’s dehydration, signs of muscular atrophy,”
says the doctor, shaking his head at the others. “If he’s come a fraction of
the distance claimed then we’re going to see psychosis, mental degeneration, no
doubt about it. And this alien food he’s eaten, there’s just no telling -”

One of the soldiers, a small hard-faced youth, says,
“If we don’t verify his claims now, if we fail to question and cross-examine -”

“The wild claims made by this AWOL grunt,” says
another soldier similar to the first, “are very out of the ordinary, you
understand. Paperwork regarding various forms of punishment
need
to be filled out sooner rather than later, so that they can be processed in a
timely manner, if punishment is indeed in order.”

“Don’t care, don’t care, don’t care,” says the
doctor, as if he has been arguing for a long time.