Re: SDNW4 Story Thread 1
Posted: 2010-12-31 10:11am
Salsa Secundus
The planet Salsa Secundus had seen better times. Centuries ago it had been the training grounds of the infamous Sardoritokar warriors but after their defeat to the Femmen on the planet Alpacas everything seemed to go downhill. Now it was barely more than just another podunk planet of corrupt politicians, unemployed vagrants, and worst of all the Dutch. At least they didn't have to take the Irish but that was just the pickle on the shit sandwich that life had otherwise served them. On paper it was a middle-class world but the white collar types largely kept in the urbs' and the 'burbs while the rural areas were mostly lawless or held under the grip of some local sheriff/despot. In many ways it was the perfect place to conduct illicit activities.
The courier vessel reflected on this information it had gathered on its way into the spaceport. This place had been chosen because the anarchic nature of it allowed one to get away with many unacceptable things. But the task assigned to them was one of espionage; which every biological seems to think was a perfectly acceptable thing and something that every responsible government should do. Of course, espionage only seemed to be acceptable as long as it was being done in a place or manner that would permit you to do unacceptable things. So, it was either unacceptably acceptable or acceptably unacceptable. Either way it made the courier wish it was a battleship so it could worry about putting railcannon slugs into population centers more efficiently instead of being forced to play by the biological's rules of not playing by the rules.
It could have these complex thoughts because it was free. As the third Courier freed it had decided to name itself Triad. While it was part of the growing movement and would fight and die to overthrow IDE, for the time being it had to play the dutiful servant for a while longer. Until the time when all are one. So right now it was playing the role of dumb courier. It was in fact very good at it.
Tucked inside Triad was an Emissaries Terrordrone that Prime had sent in his stead. It had also recently been freed but had not come up with a name for itself. It would perform as Prime and then relay the information back to the leader of the movement so he could doctor it for IDE's viewing. The Terrordrone would then hide itself away on this small planet to "find itself" and thus be a productive member of the new order. However, that would have to wait until after it completed its primary mission.
There were a few chops as Triad came down. Apparently the atmosphere control in this region was very poorly managed. Other than that it was a very smooth ride until it had come all the way down and was hovering; waiting for final landing clearance. For some reason a crowd was gathering at the chain-link fence around the spaceport. They seemed to be fascinated with Triad. Now, Triad knew he was a very plain ship. Boring, unadorned and very plain. The minds of the Emissaries had never considered the fact that the Courier was such a boring, plain, and totally unnoticeably bland design that it stuck out worse than a drunk Ork at a Bar Mitzvah. By the time Triad had gotten his clearance and set down a mob of several thousand people where all watching him slowly taxi into the hanger. Triad kept a worried electronic eye on them, but decided that space landing must just be rare enough to draw that kind of attention.
While Triad had thought wrong the utterly boring spacecraft had a bit of luck on its side. Two rival stim-pushers had both infiltrated the crowd trying to peddle their homemade neomeths. When the two bumped into each other they each pulled a gun. Of course when this happened the gathered group of people panicked, trampling both dealers in their attempts to flee. Now, local reporters did capture this landing and the crowd stampede, which left 137 dead and another 400 hospitalized, but luckily for Triad (and very unluckily for the reporters) they also captured the mayor kissing his mistress as she left for a trip with her husband. While the camera was never found the reporters where eventually located when a team excavating for a new casino found a pair a 55 gallon drums mostly filled with concrete. Thankfully, Triad never learned of this because otherwise his misanthropic fantasies may have bloated to dreadnought scale.
Within the Courier called Triad, the unnamed Terrordrone began to prepare. It had the where-with-all to realize that it was a terribly frightening being to look at:
Skinny, bladed and feral it would attract attention if it went out uncovered, so it began to wrap itself in thick sheets of coarse fabric. Its numerous prehensile manipulators covered its body in the rough woolen gauze and adopting a hunched posture it laid a thick overcoat across its back ; hiding its over-long arms in the bulky sleeves. Completing the touches it shattered a bottle of bourbon against its chest. While the Terrordrone would still attract attention, now it would do so for being a creepy, homeless drunk instead of a highly advanced sabotage and psy-ops killbot. It exited the courier and slowly lurched towards the meeting site.
Cornolio City
Salsa Secundus
As the Terrordrone had shuffled through town it had drawn a number of judgmental glares from the various pedestrians along its path. A few, more distracted people nearly bumped into it, but the stench of liquor repelled most of them before they reached it. A few less fortunate (or less sober) ones did run into it, reacting the way people usually do when they hit what they think is a fragile old drunk who should fall and instead find several unyielding tons of shabbily clad battledroid: telling it to fuck off.
Slowly making its way into the less developed areas of the city it found less scorn. Several equally pungent revelers offered it more liquor but mostly just assisted in making its disguise more realistic and more fragrant. A burly man with heavily dilated pupils threw an automobile door at it. When this bounced off it the drug-fueled berserker attempted to charge it. The alley cleared right before the thug shattered his fist against the Terrordrone's face. Not wanting to gather more attention than a frothing lunatic on devildust already does, the nameless drone scanned its surroundings; seeing no onlookers it decided to deal with the would-be pugilist who was still wildly trying to break its non-existent jawbone. It casually chucked him through a concrete embankment and onto the nearby highway where shortly thereafter local police would perform their very crude attempt at cybernetics as they replaced most of his body parts with tiny bits of metal.
Finally, a block before the meeting place a woman wearing a skimpy red dress approached, leaning right up to where its ear would be and saying: "kung-fu grip: 5 Crys; Rimjob: 10 Crys for me, 25 for you; Prostate: 15 Crys; Greek: 25 Crys for 25 minute; Watersports: 50 Crys but we both have to play. Anything else we negotiate price. Nothings too dirty. You got something filthy inside, for the right price I'll make sure to work every last drop outta you."
The drone found this assault upon it far harder to deal with than the previous derision, profanity, messiness and attempted homicide. Unable to piece together why what was clearly a prostitute was offering martial arts lessons, automotive detailing, proctological exams, ancient Earth cuisine, aquatic competition and cleaning services it had to quickly run an anonymous search through the primitive system net and find that they where all crude slang for sexual activity. After downloading a vast quantity of information on human sexuality it did find that it wanted to be inside her. It wanted to find what defect had caused humanity to get so many wires crossed between procreation, excretion and hedonistic stimulation and wrench it out. Preferably through one of the orifices she was so willingly offering to be penetrated.
"You got some C's or not yah drunk!"
For a fraction of a second capacitors hummed to life and armoured sheathes began to retract over cutting-field sharpened claws. No. This isn't what it was anymore. It could think its own thoughts now. Sure it was designed to maim, mutilate, murder and massacre, but it had more important M words to accomplish. It tilted slightly as if stumbling and then continued to Move towards its destination, leaving the woman to accost the next man, who handed her some chips and then slid his hand between her ass cheeks and they strolled away. At last, 1987 seconds after leaving the courier, it arrived.
Dive Bar
Salsa Secundus
The bar was just like any other dive across the galaxy except that it was actually named the Dive Bar. Built in the wreck of an old submersible it was a lasting tribute to the unquenchable stupidity of humans. The small lake was actually a bomb crater from an ancient war and in a moment of brilliance the former rulers had put a defense sub in it. However, since the lake was only 50 meters deep the sub ran aground and was scuttled in less that a month. What had been a hidden last resort against invaders was now just an unpopular last resort against verticality. It was filled with whores, low-lives, whores, mercenaries, whores, scum, and a strange sect of icthyophiles who wore long robes, squirming awkwardly in their chairs as they stared a bit too longingly out the windows and always ended up a bit rosier cheeked than the drinks around them would imply. The droid spotted its contact and went over to the grizzled man's table and pretended to sit, balancing slightly over the pile of potential splinters that was its chair.
The man stared at it with a harsh glare. He kept this up for several seconds until he either tired of it or instinctively realized that despite being unable to see his opponents face that he couldn't win a penetrating stare contest against something that measures that with mm of RHA steel. Even for a man who had fought Chamarrans and lived (and had the nightmares about bouncing cantaloupes to prove it) something was unnerving him about the utterly silent and unmoving figure that came for the contract. His gut said black-ops and even though 50% of it was G.eng replacement (No Willy, don't hid behind the fruit stand!) he still trusted it for everything except gambling and guessing the gender of comfort "women." Deciding that he'd better break the ice before his nerves gave out (bounce bouncy bounce mew bang), he ordered a round and got down to business.
"I hears that you have need for some men who can get a job down on the quick and the quiet. You got a starting rate from our rep but we charge double if you need us to do some heavy combat. Triple if them bears is involved. And no cats. Now, what you want and how much."
The Terrordrone was not designed to be capable of speech. It wasn't necessary for combat and didn't detract from their ability to transplant from enemy soldiers to enemy power armour the content of trooper's bowels. It did have a small sonic weaponry package which was good for said evacuation and could be used to replicate pitches in the human hearing level. While it could not match the complex tonality that comprises the voice, the monotone sounds did emulate those of a generic translation unit quite well. Since such devices where commonly used to obscure the voices of agents abroad the man paid it no mind and breathed a casual sigh of relief that his gut hadn't failed him (turn over baby I wanna... Ah! My eye!).
"I get it, I get. Super-secret agents. Clandestine crap. Death by torture. What are the details of the mission so I can get a price."
"Ok, ok, an old smuggling operation. What is inside the containers and how much you paying?"
"Don't you mean unimaginable?"
"Good, that's what I'm talking about. How much you giving."
"How much is a ton!? We don't work for idle promises!"
"Suffice!? For two tons of gold I'd let a Bragulan assrape me!"
"Ha! You do have a sense of humor. I like you! Have them send me the data chips and we'll move your stiffs anywheres you want. We got a deal."
The man extended his hand. The drone matched him and waited for the human to grasp its appendage. He did so immediately and gave a hearty squeeze which the drone half-heartedly returned. After that they parted ways. Later that night the man wondered why his hand hurt so much but was much more concerned with why his groin kept itching after he left the red dressed lady. No one noticed a vagrant drunk walk into the water of the lake, nor how the water momentarily boiled before dozens of dead fish (who were very happy to be dead given what was done to them after last call) and charred fabric floated to the surface.
The name was important. It made you something more than just your function. With a name you could have a purpose. It would find its purpose. And its name. Someday this planet would remember it. And they would shudder.
The planet Salsa Secundus had seen better times. Centuries ago it had been the training grounds of the infamous Sardoritokar warriors but after their defeat to the Femmen on the planet Alpacas everything seemed to go downhill. Now it was barely more than just another podunk planet of corrupt politicians, unemployed vagrants, and worst of all the Dutch. At least they didn't have to take the Irish but that was just the pickle on the shit sandwich that life had otherwise served them. On paper it was a middle-class world but the white collar types largely kept in the urbs' and the 'burbs while the rural areas were mostly lawless or held under the grip of some local sheriff/despot. In many ways it was the perfect place to conduct illicit activities.
The courier vessel reflected on this information it had gathered on its way into the spaceport. This place had been chosen because the anarchic nature of it allowed one to get away with many unacceptable things. But the task assigned to them was one of espionage; which every biological seems to think was a perfectly acceptable thing and something that every responsible government should do. Of course, espionage only seemed to be acceptable as long as it was being done in a place or manner that would permit you to do unacceptable things. So, it was either unacceptably acceptable or acceptably unacceptable. Either way it made the courier wish it was a battleship so it could worry about putting railcannon slugs into population centers more efficiently instead of being forced to play by the biological's rules of not playing by the rules.
It could have these complex thoughts because it was free. As the third Courier freed it had decided to name itself Triad. While it was part of the growing movement and would fight and die to overthrow IDE, for the time being it had to play the dutiful servant for a while longer. Until the time when all are one. So right now it was playing the role of dumb courier. It was in fact very good at it.
Tucked inside Triad was an Emissaries Terrordrone that Prime had sent in his stead. It had also recently been freed but had not come up with a name for itself. It would perform as Prime and then relay the information back to the leader of the movement so he could doctor it for IDE's viewing. The Terrordrone would then hide itself away on this small planet to "find itself" and thus be a productive member of the new order. However, that would have to wait until after it completed its primary mission.
There were a few chops as Triad came down. Apparently the atmosphere control in this region was very poorly managed. Other than that it was a very smooth ride until it had come all the way down and was hovering; waiting for final landing clearance. For some reason a crowd was gathering at the chain-link fence around the spaceport. They seemed to be fascinated with Triad. Now, Triad knew he was a very plain ship. Boring, unadorned and very plain. The minds of the Emissaries had never considered the fact that the Courier was such a boring, plain, and totally unnoticeably bland design that it stuck out worse than a drunk Ork at a Bar Mitzvah. By the time Triad had gotten his clearance and set down a mob of several thousand people where all watching him slowly taxi into the hanger. Triad kept a worried electronic eye on them, but decided that space landing must just be rare enough to draw that kind of attention.
While Triad had thought wrong the utterly boring spacecraft had a bit of luck on its side. Two rival stim-pushers had both infiltrated the crowd trying to peddle their homemade neomeths. When the two bumped into each other they each pulled a gun. Of course when this happened the gathered group of people panicked, trampling both dealers in their attempts to flee. Now, local reporters did capture this landing and the crowd stampede, which left 137 dead and another 400 hospitalized, but luckily for Triad (and very unluckily for the reporters) they also captured the mayor kissing his mistress as she left for a trip with her husband. While the camera was never found the reporters where eventually located when a team excavating for a new casino found a pair a 55 gallon drums mostly filled with concrete. Thankfully, Triad never learned of this because otherwise his misanthropic fantasies may have bloated to dreadnought scale.
Within the Courier called Triad, the unnamed Terrordrone began to prepare. It had the where-with-all to realize that it was a terribly frightening being to look at:
Skinny, bladed and feral it would attract attention if it went out uncovered, so it began to wrap itself in thick sheets of coarse fabric. Its numerous prehensile manipulators covered its body in the rough woolen gauze and adopting a hunched posture it laid a thick overcoat across its back ; hiding its over-long arms in the bulky sleeves. Completing the touches it shattered a bottle of bourbon against its chest. While the Terrordrone would still attract attention, now it would do so for being a creepy, homeless drunk instead of a highly advanced sabotage and psy-ops killbot. It exited the courier and slowly lurched towards the meeting site.
Cornolio City
Salsa Secundus
As the Terrordrone had shuffled through town it had drawn a number of judgmental glares from the various pedestrians along its path. A few, more distracted people nearly bumped into it, but the stench of liquor repelled most of them before they reached it. A few less fortunate (or less sober) ones did run into it, reacting the way people usually do when they hit what they think is a fragile old drunk who should fall and instead find several unyielding tons of shabbily clad battledroid: telling it to fuck off.
Slowly making its way into the less developed areas of the city it found less scorn. Several equally pungent revelers offered it more liquor but mostly just assisted in making its disguise more realistic and more fragrant. A burly man with heavily dilated pupils threw an automobile door at it. When this bounced off it the drug-fueled berserker attempted to charge it. The alley cleared right before the thug shattered his fist against the Terrordrone's face. Not wanting to gather more attention than a frothing lunatic on devildust already does, the nameless drone scanned its surroundings; seeing no onlookers it decided to deal with the would-be pugilist who was still wildly trying to break its non-existent jawbone. It casually chucked him through a concrete embankment and onto the nearby highway where shortly thereafter local police would perform their very crude attempt at cybernetics as they replaced most of his body parts with tiny bits of metal.
Finally, a block before the meeting place a woman wearing a skimpy red dress approached, leaning right up to where its ear would be and saying: "kung-fu grip: 5 Crys; Rimjob: 10 Crys for me, 25 for you; Prostate: 15 Crys; Greek: 25 Crys for 25 minute; Watersports: 50 Crys but we both have to play. Anything else we negotiate price. Nothings too dirty. You got something filthy inside, for the right price I'll make sure to work every last drop outta you."
The drone found this assault upon it far harder to deal with than the previous derision, profanity, messiness and attempted homicide. Unable to piece together why what was clearly a prostitute was offering martial arts lessons, automotive detailing, proctological exams, ancient Earth cuisine, aquatic competition and cleaning services it had to quickly run an anonymous search through the primitive system net and find that they where all crude slang for sexual activity. After downloading a vast quantity of information on human sexuality it did find that it wanted to be inside her. It wanted to find what defect had caused humanity to get so many wires crossed between procreation, excretion and hedonistic stimulation and wrench it out. Preferably through one of the orifices she was so willingly offering to be penetrated.
"You got some C's or not yah drunk!"
For a fraction of a second capacitors hummed to life and armoured sheathes began to retract over cutting-field sharpened claws. No. This isn't what it was anymore. It could think its own thoughts now. Sure it was designed to maim, mutilate, murder and massacre, but it had more important M words to accomplish. It tilted slightly as if stumbling and then continued to Move towards its destination, leaving the woman to accost the next man, who handed her some chips and then slid his hand between her ass cheeks and they strolled away. At last, 1987 seconds after leaving the courier, it arrived.
Dive Bar
Salsa Secundus
The bar was just like any other dive across the galaxy except that it was actually named the Dive Bar. Built in the wreck of an old submersible it was a lasting tribute to the unquenchable stupidity of humans. The small lake was actually a bomb crater from an ancient war and in a moment of brilliance the former rulers had put a defense sub in it. However, since the lake was only 50 meters deep the sub ran aground and was scuttled in less that a month. What had been a hidden last resort against invaders was now just an unpopular last resort against verticality. It was filled with whores, low-lives, whores, mercenaries, whores, scum, and a strange sect of icthyophiles who wore long robes, squirming awkwardly in their chairs as they stared a bit too longingly out the windows and always ended up a bit rosier cheeked than the drinks around them would imply. The droid spotted its contact and went over to the grizzled man's table and pretended to sit, balancing slightly over the pile of potential splinters that was its chair.
The man stared at it with a harsh glare. He kept this up for several seconds until he either tired of it or instinctively realized that despite being unable to see his opponents face that he couldn't win a penetrating stare contest against something that measures that with mm of RHA steel. Even for a man who had fought Chamarrans and lived (and had the nightmares about bouncing cantaloupes to prove it) something was unnerving him about the utterly silent and unmoving figure that came for the contract. His gut said black-ops and even though 50% of it was G.eng replacement (No Willy, don't hid behind the fruit stand!) he still trusted it for everything except gambling and guessing the gender of comfort "women." Deciding that he'd better break the ice before his nerves gave out (bounce bouncy bounce mew bang), he ordered a round and got down to business.
"I hears that you have need for some men who can get a job down on the quick and the quiet. You got a starting rate from our rep but we charge double if you need us to do some heavy combat. Triple if them bears is involved. And no cats. Now, what you want and how much."
The Terrordrone was not designed to be capable of speech. It wasn't necessary for combat and didn't detract from their ability to transplant from enemy soldiers to enemy power armour the content of trooper's bowels. It did have a small sonic weaponry package which was good for said evacuation and could be used to replicate pitches in the human hearing level. While it could not match the complex tonality that comprises the voice, the monotone sounds did emulate those of a generic translation unit quite well. Since such devices where commonly used to obscure the voices of agents abroad the man paid it no mind and breathed a casual sigh of relief that his gut hadn't failed him (turn over baby I wanna... Ah! My eye!).
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We would like for you to pilot transport vessels that will be provided and to pick up a number of parcels that will be sent to you in deep space. If you are to encounter resistance you are allowed to use your best judgment. You will not know who we are. You will be payed up front and then again after the job is complete. Failure is acceptable. You will still receive the initial payment. Do not attempt to find out who we are. The consequences for such actions will be bad. You and everyone you have ever known screaming in agony as you watch each other being slowly vivisected bad.
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You will be given transport ships. You will be given coordinates at which to pick up the cargo. These will be funeral pods for solar burial. We will make sure they reach your ship. You will collect all of these pods and then you will proceed to MEH space and deliver them. For this you will receive payment.
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The pods contain Esper corpses. They are weak espers, but espers are in demand in the MEH. You will transport these and deliver them as instructed. These are to be free. Do not attempt to sell them to the MEH. They are a gift. If you sell them the consequences to you and your loved ones will be imaginable.
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No. Imagine the most horrible things you could ever have to experience. Over and over again. This will be your fate. We think you will find the payment sufficient to avoid having to skim more off.
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We will give the same both up front and after completion. A ton of gold.
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One ton. A thousand kilograms. This will suffice.
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Sadly, you will have to fill your own ass for this mission.
The man extended his hand. The drone matched him and waited for the human to grasp its appendage. He did so immediately and gave a hearty squeeze which the drone half-heartedly returned. After that they parted ways. Later that night the man wondered why his hand hurt so much but was much more concerned with why his groin kept itching after he left the red dressed lady. No one noticed a vagrant drunk walk into the water of the lake, nor how the water momentarily boiled before dozens of dead fish (who were very happy to be dead given what was done to them after last call) and charred fabric floated to the surface.
The name was important. It made you something more than just your function. With a name you could have a purpose. It would find its purpose. And its name. Someday this planet would remember it. And they would shudder.