DS- Chaos

The cockpit is rattled by a nearby explosion. A fraction of the chaos outside appears on the monitor. Muffled sounds of whistling shells and the crack of massive guns resonate throughout. Sweat droplets sparkle on the visor of my helmet, my breathing is heavy, and I fight to control the trembling of my hands on the joysticks.

They came out of nowhere. Mere hours after we lost contact with the moon, the massive fleet was breaking through the atmosphere. Of course, we were armed. The fleet situated the moon was a mere fraction of what was stationed on Earth. Our assailants’ arsenal rivalled if not surpassed the size of ours, but it’s our home we were defending, and we quickly grew desperate. The nukes soon started to rain upon the enemy. During the scramble, the order was “no mercy, whatever happens”.

All of the American fleet was upon them, and Europe’s vanguard was hours from the front line. The orbital fleet will start firing any second now. Meanwhile, we’re out here on the ground, to make sure these things don’t go anywhere. It’s not an easy fight, but one I’m determined to see through.

I launch my mech into the air, through the smoke and the chaos, take aim at the blurry shapes in the distance, and squeeze the trigger. My target explodes in a mix of metal, circuits and flesh. Whatever it is we’re fighting, they’re also using mechanized armours. Some of them seem to have four arms….

I land hard on the destroyed torso of another friendly mech, noticing the black edged hole through the cockpit. “Rest in peace, mate” My teeth are tense as I spit the words out.

A quick, repetitive beep resonates out of the console. The kinetic sensors. Something hits the left side of my mech, tipping me to the side. I turn my armour back to face my aggressor. A three eyed armour is walking towards me, a strange contraption in hand. He points it towards me, and the barrel starts to glow. A gun.

I press a button. The handle of my attack dagger slides from its sheath. I yank it out with my mech’s right arm, activate the rear thrusters, ejecting my valiant suit towards the enemy, and thrust my blade into the thing’s head. A flash of light erupts from the strange weapon’s barrel.

The next sight I see is the thing’s lights flicker and fail through the gaping hole in my cockpit plating, half of my vision obstructed, probably by my own blood. The right joystick my hand was holding is gone, replaced by a scorching combination of metal, fibre and flesh. The pain hasn’t hit me yet. I doubt it ever will. My body feels more and more numb as a dark liquid gathers on my pedals. What’s left of my vison blurs and goes dark.

……CHAOS-PANIC………..BATTLE-DESPERATE//666—————————//………………….

Sticking to my action/sci-fi/dystopian roots for this first foray into Speakeasy 2.0. Hope you guys liked it. Comments much appreciated!

 

DS Speakeasy 179-Void

I’ve come to love the silence. Only out here in space can one enjoy such peace. Unfortunately, this peace was soon to be shattered. I had abandoned the unmanned resource satellites yesterday,  following the asteroid belt back to the colony. The empty void of space, the predictable, familiar mechanical hisses and clicks of my armoured suit were going to once again give way to the unpredictable chaos of the crowd, the overly natural environment, with its animals, and its trees, with branches trying to grab you, imposing themselves upon you. How could anyone like this? The colonies, they say, were built to provide a home for Earth’s growing population, attempting to reproduce a familiar environment in the process. If Earth is as noisy, chaotic, dirty, and unpredictable as the colony hub, then I’d much rather stick to spatial duties. Humans are horrible to be around. They’re all rude, and violent, and egocentric and….

… I need a break.

I cancelled out my mech’s velocity relative to the asteroid belt, put my helmet on, switched off the hydrogen core, and opened the hatch, letting myself float out into space, a mere cable holding me to the seat of my cockpit. The distant sun was illuminating the millions of rocks that composed the belt, the rays playing and dancing on the metal of my suit. I held my right hand in front of me. Four gloved fingers and a thumb were moving in my field of view. Deep breath. Why do I exist? Why are clones necessary to Humankind? They have too many people to start with, so why add more mouths to feed? Sure, we’re more adapted to 0-G environments, what with the fancy genetic augmentations and all, but why go through all the trouble of creating a new species? Why didn’t they just genetically modify some of their own people? Are they that lazy? Willing to create a new life form, just to avoid doing some dirty work?

I sighed. My HUD indicated me that I wasn’t supposed to be back at the spaceport for another six hours. The colony was very close. I was surprised it couldn’t be seen yet. Without thinking it through any further, I turned towards the sun, and let the vague sense of heat drift me to sleep…

…until a metallic click against my visor woke me up. Something bright and golden was spinning slowly right in front of me. A bullet casing. Startled, I swiped it away with my hand, only to realize I was surrounded with the little golden metal tubes. Hundreds of them, perhaps thousands, drifted all around me.

I felt my stomach drop. Something was horribly wrong. I returned to my mech, turned the main power on. It had been 1H since I last checked the time. Meanwhile, I had drifted closer to the colony, yet it was nowhere to be seen. My mech slowly burst to life. Screens turned on, engines revved, and electricity flowed. Music to my ears. After a few moments, the sensors went crazy. It seemed the asteroid belt was filled with huge chunks of metal and steel and organic matter where the colony should have been.

As I got closer, signs of battle became evident. Fragments of ships were drifting about, crushing asteroids in their wake. Mechs similar to mine were torn and lifeless, floating in the empty void of space. Soon, carcasses of skyscrapers and civilian homes floated about, dotting the sky with eerie images. As I got closer still, bodies started to appear. Some of them were disfigured, maimed and partially annihilated by the battle, but others were too well preserved, almost as if they were about to start moving again. Once I had reached what was supposed to be the heart of the colony, I had already seen horrors beyond count.

Where I stood, bits of plants, cars, buildings, and bodies were all too abundant. I stood there, wide eyed, looking at the still death that surrounded me, motionless, breathless. Something moved into my field of view. A tree. One of the elements of nature I had grown to resent, floating, leafless, through the remains of the colony. It was revolving slowly. After a few seconds, it had completed a semi rotation, revealing the woman whose body lay impaled by its branches…

 

//……………………………………DEATH//SPACE=SILENT::SCREAMS//………………………………………………..//

First post in a while. Here, a somewhat sociopathic space colonist comes back from a mission, only to find his/her home destroyed. Definitely not my usual character! Comments appreciated!

 

DS YW176- Desolation

Everything hurt. It seemed every nerve in my body felt like the best way to hurry me back to consciousness was to scream pain at my brain. The cockpit was mostly intact, but the sheer strength of the impact is what got me. As I looked to my right, I notice my peripheral monitor was shattered. At least that explained why the right side of my body was covered in blood. Shrapnel is the bane of mechanised armour.

Heartbeat- slow. Pilot has regained consciousness.

I grunted as I sat back in my seat. No time to waste. I brought a status report of my mech up on the screen. Looks like I wasn’t the only one in bad shape. Hydraulics for the right leg were badly damaged, perhaps beyond repair. The left arm was basically torn off. Thrusters won’t be able to reach maximum efficiency. At least there were no leaks. Thank god there were no leaks.

As far as weapons went, my rifle was god knows where, my assault knives forgotten in the armoury during the scramble, and my magnum was low on ammo. The only weapons that were still fully operational were the wrist mounted light machine guns. Talk about firepower. I turned on the main camera, grabbed the joysticks, and powered my robotic armoured suit back to life. I felt my eyes widen, as the rest of my body froze in a mix of surprise and terror. Suddenly, I wished I hadn’t turned the camera on. To say the moon base was annihilated would have been an understatement. Those bastards took a whole chunk of the moon with them. All that was left of the sprawling military complex was a couple floating rocks. In the lunar sky, cadavers of ships where slowly drifting down to the surface. Hundreds, if not thousands of destroyed mechs lay on the surface, lifeless. A quick glimpse at the comms told me I had lost the signal of all my squad, including Commander Carter, as well as mission HQ. The sensors couldn’t pick up a friendly signal for hundreds of kilometre. I had been very lucky.

Heartbeat- normal. Pilot focused.

I threw my mech into combat speed, pushing what was left of the thrusters to their limit. Unable to achieve flight, I found myself leaping from crater to crater, some of them eons old, some very recent. I was headed for the equatorial comms relay. Earth had to know something had attacked us, clearly with the intent of leaving no survivors. They had taken us by surprise, and had the ability to do so again. The distance to cross was phenomenal, but despite missing some thrust, space armours were fast. The sophisticated inertial dampeners and the genetic modifications I had received at birth easily allowed me to surpass sonic speed, without turning me into a milkshake.

Heartbeat- fast. Adrenaline levels rising

The situation didn’t improve though. As I got further away from the battle field, the sky began to clear. The Earth was piercing the horizon. My sensors were able to extend their reach, no longer impeded by the leftovers of the battle. Quickly, my radar started to send alerts to me. I was picking up a number of large heat sources between me and the Earth. I focused my sensors on it. The image appeared on my screen. My blood froze in my veins.

Thousands, if not tens of thousands of huge ships doted the sky, their silhouette invisible without a filter. They were headed to earth at battle speed. Their architecture wasn’t earth-like. They could not have been built under the constraints of gravity. This wasn’t a rebellion from the colonies. No. This was a full-fledged invasion force.

Heartbroken.

:…………………………….WEAPONS//warfare…………EMOTIONS//driver.of.will…………………..::

Man what a great summer. It’s good to be back, though. To start the school year off with a bang, here is a quick sci-fi piece, stepping away from the action heavy pieces and trying something a bit more on the descriptive end of the spectrum. Hope you enjoyed! Comments, criticism, random thoughts, and advice is welcome!