Alpha-Omega

[Maharg67]

In Chapter Three and onwards FEAR has become JSET and a new force called FEAR has been introduced.

 

FEAR = First Encounter Assault Recon

 

JSET = Jupiter Space Expeditionary Taskforce

 

USGA = United States of Greater America

 

 

 

Martian Green Zone Settlement Hurandaven

 

Semi-Underground Zone, Megamachine Zone, Underground Zone

 

Semi-Underground Zone, all structures being at least two thirds below ground

 

Town Hall Centre (Complex extending out with Town Hall, Archives, Town Service, Museum-Library-Gallery, other)

 

Town Sheriff's Office, Jail etc.

 

Town Guard Base

 

Cooperative Centres of Trade, Distribution, Crediting, Manufacturing, Maintenance, Hydroponics and other

 

Public Service/Support Centres and Smaller Facilities

 

Quadplex, Duplex Houses and 4/on/4 apartment houses

 

Electric Trams (people, tray, box and other)

 

To be completed.

 

 

 

 

SPACESTATION FREEDOM

 

AXis Cylinder and Four (Spinning) Wheels

1st and 3rd wheels counter-clockwise while 2nd and 4th wheels are clockwise spinning

 

Axis North Pole

Computer Robotic Command Control Coordination

 

Axis = Transway and Service-Support

 

Wheel One = Administration

 

Wheel Two = Defence Security

 

Wheel Three = Accomodation

 

Wheel Four = Industry and Maintenance

 

Axis South Pole

Major Heavy Shuttle Port

 

:banana: :glare: :ohmy: :P ;)

 

MEGATON

 

Megaton is built around a crater but also a fortified missile silo bunker from which three of four Molemite ICBMs (intercontinal ballistic missiles) had been launched and one staid unfired in its cradle. The ICBMs dug themselves up through the dirt and then launched out into space.

 

The silo doors are closed again and covered by dirt. They are at the centre of the crater which destroyed the old fake buildings and much of the other structure above the silos.

 

Outer Megaton is built up around the sides of the big round crater, going upwards in levels and walkways, rampways and platforms. But away from the crater there is a big old still surprisingly solid wall that had once surrounded the grounds above the missile silo. The buildings are constructed out of scavenged peices left over by the crater, stuff taken from nearbye and stuff taken from a bunker.

 

Grand Hall: big multiple purpose shed with stage and screen.

 

Outer Megaton Town Council Centre: Mayor, Council Rooms, Offices, Depot, Public Office, other.

 

Houses on platforms; houses dug into crater side. Houses dug underground further into crater sides.

* Simms Family

* West Family

* Moriarty Family

* Harrington Family (non mansion)

* Church Family

* Other

 

Special: Harrington Mansion (3 levels + 3 basement levels + cliffside expansion)

 

Special Mercenary Families and Dormitories Area (Megaton Guards). Camp followers.

 

Sheriff's Department. Offices, small jail, small armoury, volunteer rooms, police dog kennel, other.

 

Community Centre: library reading rooms, gallery, school,

 

Common Houses; six basic female/male dormitories run for workers employed in Megaton. Includes basic bedsitter apartments for families and rooms for couples or those individuals with more money. Goes deeper into crater side.

 

Craterside Farm: a Co/Op farm with livestock, crops and an muttfruit orchard. This is way up on topside of the crater.

 

Craterside Workshops: a big building with a lot of workshops for pottery, leather work and much else.

 

Craterside Tannery. (A relatively small but important establishment; stinks!)

 

Common Ablutions. Two toilet-rooms and one bath-house.

 

Megaton Townguard Fort: barracks, training area, depot, garage-workshop, armoury

 

Megaton Defence Security Boundary (reinforced sentry-gun and turret equipped ring wall)

 

 

 

Free Trade Zone

* Caravan Outpost

* Orderhood of Compassion/Protection Outpost

* Regulators Outpost

* DCTek Outpost

* Union of Columbia Embassy

* Crosswayne Commonwealth Embassy

* Hot Cups: diner

* Brass Lantern: diner.

* Gogo Delights. Saloon.

* Craterside Welcome: brothel

* Craterside Supplies: a large old building now divided into five shops selling clothes/footwear, guns/ammo, general supplies, crafted Co/Op goods and odds/ends.

* Moria Brown's Craterside Emporium.

 

Middle Megaton: Upper Bunker Levels

 

Megaton Townguard Fort and Offices, Main Armoury

Megaton Security Offices

Megaton High Sheriff Offices, Jail, armoury, barracks etc.

Megaton Manufactories, Workshops, Workrooms

Megaton Hydroponics Centre

Megaton Classified Centres

*Megaton Research and Development Centre

 

Storage Depots and Vaultrooms

 

Middle Megaton Apartment Complex (apartments, service and support facilities)

 

Megaton Academy

 

Inner Megaton

 

Presidident's Offices

 

Elite Family Homes

Elite Service and Support Centres

Elite Pleasure Centre

 

Fusion Globe Generator

Robotic Android Centre

Mattercation Duplication Centre

Computer Centre

VR Centre

 

Elite Security Offices, Armoury, Barracks, Training-Programming

 

Other?

Edited December 23, 2009 by Maharg67

[Maharg67]

ONE

 

Bobby Bobalong awoke to find himself fully suited in a totalsuit that clad him head to toe in dark, dull silver fashion. The totalsuit was body tight. He stirred inside the zero gravity field and turned, twisted his body to face one glowing coloured plate inside the dull dark silver sphere. Then he read the odd shifting rainbow patterns there. Gently reached out and touched the plate.

 

Then he could see where the sphere was as it shot through space towards a blue green world past a great floating triple-wheel of a space-station where jury-rigged spaceships were parked to great jutting spokes from the cylinder shaped spoke. The wheels turned and made artificial gravity of sorts.

 

Then he made up his mind for change, the sphere slowed and curved abruptly in space and shot towards the spacestation. Then it vanished with a sparkling shimmer.

 

Bobby appeared naked in a cramped chamber half filled with lockers and his slimly muscular body was drawn by the crude artificial gravity to a standing position. As he stood there looking out of a porthole he remembered back when he had once been a normal human.

 

In the corner was a semitransparent cylinder shaped shower booth and inside a young slimly voluptuous woman was showering. He carefully opened the booth door, sliding it around and looked inside. The light brown skinned, dark brown haired woman smiled nakedly and soapily at him. Then she reached out and pulled him into the booth with her. The shower booth door slid closed with a thud.

 

Later she smiled warmly at him as she stood in a drying booth and she spoke in the language of Esperanto. “You are Alpha/A fertility and now I will be pregnant with a high genetic classed baby. Status advancement and special allowances plus a goodly hike in my salary. Why should I be angry, silly. Anyway I like sex.”

 

He turned away from the porthole. “There are quite a few spaceships out there.”

 

She gave him an odd look. “Refugees fled from Spacestation Progress where our citizen comrades do battle with zetan scum. Spacer Union is seeking alliance with the Lunarites even if change is demanded. How come you not know this which is known by everybody?” Then she shrugged. “You have to come from somewhere and a cutie like you is sure to be very recorded especially with your high level of fertility. Security is heavy hammering now that negotiations have begun and Lunarites are sending ark/shuttle to pick up excess peoples.”

 

Then she pulled him into the drying booth.

 

Later they slipped on jumpsuits. She wore dark dull pink and he dark dull blue. Each bore the label in Esperanto: UNITED NATIONS SPACESTATION FREEDOM but as she soon told him, the old United Nations had long ceased to exist. Spacestation Freedom kept its old name, was functioning quite well but needed repairs and upgrades. Then came black boots, black pouchbelts and gloves along with an odd transparent bubble helmet.

 

They went through a small airlock and into a big long gently curving hallway along with walked or rode on odd little bicycles people in the same kind of jumpsuits. Leza/091 was leading him to the nearest Common Cafeteria because she was hungry and wanted to grab something to eat before her next work shift.

 

Every so often they went through a set of double safety doors that could become airlocks in an emergency.

 

Leza/091 knew a fair few people and they knew her. They passed greetings, quick bits of gossip and a few women smiled extra warmly at Bobby. Now he was called Bobby/123. He came to a security checkpoint manned by two black jumpsuited and body-armoured security guards who had black armoured helmets. Leza/091 produced a security smartIDcard and then so did he. They also had their eyes and hands scanned. Bobby/123 passed with flying colours except that since he was marked Alpha-One Fertility the security guards wanted to know why he was in that sector.

 

He just grinned and held Leza/091 by the hand. The two guards frowned at him but they shrugged and let him move on.

 

“You are so sweet but up to something.” Leza/091 smiled at him as they kept walking hand in hand along the corridor. “Security will report you so if you are a smuggler or a rebel or something you had better beware. You know I can’t really help you with out getting into lots of trouble and stop looking at me that way with those lovely eyes of yours… okay I will help you.”

 

He smiled. “I am a human/alien hybrid of the Omniplexi.”

 

She sighed. “Oh damned, so sweet but just another poor insane young man. You know they say that sex is very good therapy.”

 

Bobby smiled and looked into her eyes. Then the two of them were no longer inside the massive structure of Spacestation Freedom but were inside the just as massive structure of the USSS Jupiter/Discoverer. A great globe fronted the mighty Solsystem ship that had been sent out to Jupiter and the Jovan Moons on both a publicly known mission and for secret purposes. Then a great tube swept back to a great cylinder of massive nuclear drives. Along this cylinder were no less than six slowly spinning wheels, each in turn moving the opposite direction to the next one. Great wings also projected out from the globe and each was dotted with weapons, instrumentation and other modules.

 

They stood together in a large piloting chamber and there was Bobby sitting in a special chair in a lightly armoured shipsuit. There were others there but he was pilot. There was the co-pilot, the navigator, two weapons officers, two science officers, communications and others.

 

Bobby gave her a sad smile. “That was me over a hundred years ago. Nearly two hundred years ago or maybe older than that. We were heading towards Jupiter. I do not know what happened to my comrades. Much of it is a blur now. There were 300 of us on the ship, all of us being gen-engineered metahumans with enhanced physical and mental capacities. But we were also expendable. 200 of us were in status-capsules at any one time. 50 were in virtual reality at any one time. The other 50 would be fully operational. Those in VR often operated roboremote units. We had a squadron of roboremote fighter-bombers, small rocketships bristling with firepower. We had fully immersive power armour suits or PASs. We had nuclear weapons. We had force-fields. We had use plasmaguns. We had smart-missiles. Closer to Jupiter we realised we were picking up multiple signals on our long range sensors and sweep-scanners. Then this happened.”

 

The battle was silent but the more dreadful for that. Great saucerships erupted and exploded, nuked in space. Great pulsating beams spat through the vacuum. Armoured figures fought each other, silently and gracefully, darting towards each other as they spat energy and solid projectiles at each other.

 

He shrugged. “We destroyed three big Zetan motherships, sent them to alien hell, and badly damaged two others. But I have only flashes of what happened to our spaceship. I think it simply disintegrated with one mighty blast of energy. How I got out, I do not know, and the Omniplexi has never answered my questions. All it says is ‘In time’ or ‘At the proper time’.

 

Then they were back in Spacestation Freedom. He shrugged. “The Omniplexi informs me that we saved the world from a major invasion of Zetan Imperial Military Forces including alien mercenaries and human-zetan hybrid horrors.”

 

She smiled richly at him. “That makes you a hero and a hero deserves a just reward.” Then she pulled him into a storeroom and closed, locked the door.

 

TO BE CONTINUED

[Herculine]

But what was the reward? :biggrin:

[Maharg67]

Sorry Herculine, I am far too naive to answer that question :whistling: :banana: :wub:

 

TWO

 

Star Marshal Drake sat in his special command chair in a small dark metallic chamber the second great spinning wheel of Spacestation Freedom. He was a big stocky man in light power armour and he had one artificial eye now hidden by a stylish black eye patch. The gen-engineered figure was examining a 3Dflatscreen showing an interrogation chamber where a young pink jumpsuit wearing Spacer of a woman was being questioned by a patient motherly type security officer.

 

Leza/091 giggled and then spoke. “He has such lovely eyes and he is super fertile. What could I do but just give in to my womanly impulses. Now I am pregnant which means lots of good things coming my way.”

 

Security Officer Tarsha/878 seemed to be having difficulty in getting through to the young woman just what were the implications were of becoming impregnated by a 200 year old human/alien hybrid who had once been a space hero, who had once supposedly died helping to save the home world from invasion.

 

Tarsha/878 smiled. “You know that you will be confined to special quarters and closely monitored, be given many invasive tests while you go through your pregnancy.”

 

Leza/091 smiled. “Do you think I can have an open credit line? I want to buy a pair of those just lovely red shoes I saw in the Luxuries Depot Shop.”

 

The security officer sighed. She looked down at a carefully placed 3Dscreen that the other woman could not see and studied some details. Then she nodded as if in understanding before she smiled at Leza/091. “Of course you can, my sweet. Now some nice women are going to escort you to Medical Section A52 where you will be made comfortable.”

 

Leza/091 suddenly lost her smile and looked distressed. “You do not need to send me to Medical. My brain damage problem is all fixed, I promise. I am important.”

 

The security officer took Leza/091’s hand into hers. “Now, you just relax. You are important now that you are pregnant with such a wonderful baby. You always were important.”

 

Lieutenant Harka walked into the room in light power armour and sat in a chair next to that of the Star Marshal. She noted the 3Dscreen and then the young looking woman frowned softly. “Security broke into the storeroom, as you know, and found Leza/091 sleeping in her jumpsuit on the floor. Next to her were four other identical sets of gear to that she was wearing plus all the items she had in her two smaller and one bigger pouch. There were even four copies of her set of cheap silver jewellery. All of it is authentic to the original and the only difference is a very small and subtle energy signature that is slowly fading away.”

 

“Bobby/123! Bobby Anderson! Space hero! Genetically engineered soldier and zero gravity combat specialist. Special piloting training-programming. IQ201+. Posthumous Star Cross Medal of Valour Gold Class. Died 2041AD close to Jupiter Outer Orbit. Cause of death officially unknown.” The Star Marshal sighed. “Real cause of death, we killed him and all his comrades. We sacrificed them because unknown to them their wondrous spaceship was a great big doomsday weapon. They were badly damaged, many were dead or dying but they were starting to retreat. They had destroyed three zetan motherships and badly damaged two others. But towards them came another two zetan motherships and two titanic xytotyx mercenary battlecarriers. Command voted on if to detonate the super weapon and I was the deciding vote; we detonated.”

 

Harka nodded. “I know, I was given access to your dossier remember. With the world weakened by world war, plague, famine and the rising oceans, we would have easily fallen to those four ships. You did the right thing and yet… in your place I would also feel bad.”

 

Drake turned to her. “Who said I feel bad. I feel fine. A few dead metahumans and I gained a big advance in rank, salary and a nice shiny medal to pin to my chest. Who the hell are you? Harka is an ice hearted b**** who feels nothing for nobody but herself. Like me she is limited immortal and like me she gained from what happened.”

 

Bobby sighed. “But it was all a lie. There were no more zetan motherships and as for the xytotyx having big battlecarriers in this part of the Multiverse, the idea is ridiculous. You destroyed us to gain from our deaths and to cover up the fact that you tried to use us to make a secret treacherous agreement with the zetans as allies against the rest of humanity. We blocked your treacherous message and we had evidence of your treachery to bring home with us.”

 

Harka smiled and then shimmered. Bobby sat there in light power armour he had taken after he had fed on Lieutenant Harka. The Star Marshal raised his right arm and went to fire the forearm-laser but Bobby plunged his pointed hand into the officer’s armoured chest. Drake screamed in shock and agony, then he vanished with a sparkling shimmer along with his armour and his other gear. For Bobby these were extra loot.

 

Bobby shimmered and now he looked just like Star Marshal Drake. He smelt, sounded and felt like him. He even had the same basic psychic signature and aura. He turned and walked out of the chamber.

 

TO BE CONTINUED

[Maharg67]

THREE

 

Lunar Federation Fighterships came silently, gracefully soaring into orbit around Spacestation Freedom. From their belly-clamps they released Troopships that darted towards various parts of the massive spacestation, then clamping against emergency airlock hatches.

 

No space defences were activated against the invaders.

 

Alarms were ringing through out the spacestation and frightened people were huddled in armoured panic-rooms. People had been vanishing mysteriously. Like that they were gone. They were Spacer Federation officers but also a diplomat who was about to meet with a VIP envoy from the Moon. The diplomat was then going to take the important woman hostage and threaten her with death unless the Lunar Federation sent two empty passenger shuttleships to the base. It was a stupid plan and that the diplomat was vanished was a relief to many middle rankers in Spacestation Freedom.

 

Security guards were hiding amongst the civilians leaving behind body-armour and weapons heaped in piles.

 

Space Marines stormed through hallways in assault power armour, moving fast and deadly with MXM10A3 pulserifles set to heavy stun. One held a short, heavy, stubby 20mmC recoil recycling smartgun. They advanced down hallways, checked rooms, checked panic-rooms and picked up hiding security officers but ignored the security guards.

 

Grey hairless gorillas, the CMs on the Second Wheel heard a scream of terror and agony. The platoon shot along a big gently curving main corridor and past open doorways, past abandoned carrycarts and bicycles, past deactivated cleaning robots and then they halted in a big hub-chamber with elevators and entrances to rampways.

 

Four space power armoured soldiers stood there, calmly, holding large black weapons. They made no move to attack the Space Marines. One stepped forward and cleared his visor. He was Bobby Bobalong and he spoke. “Justice has been done for now. JSET has returned. They called us that. They called us Jupiter Space Expeditionary Taskforce. They betrayed us. The truth is to be found right through out Spacestation Freedom in many forms. It is in the computer network-systems, in book form, in datadisks and in the minds of people.”

 

Then the four figures vanished with a sparkling shimmer.

 

Lieutenant Holane cleared his armoured visor and frowned hard. “Well there you go. Better than hunting bugs inside the moon anytime. So lads and lasses, lets go and get ourselves some more patrolling done and then hopefully coffee and bickies will be served. That is after I inform command of just what happened.”

 

Spacestation was now the property of the Lunar Federation which would absorb it along with other assets of the Spacer Federation to form a brand new nation called simply the Solsystem Federation.

 

It had been a bloodless victory for the Space Marines because they had got there only some other force had done the dirty work for them.

 

But none of these Special Forces soldiers thought for a moment that they had seen the last of JSET.

 

TO BE CONTINUED

Edited December 8, 2009 by Maharg67

[Herculine]

FEAR!

[Maharg67]

FEAR stands for First Encounter Assault Recon and is the name of a game based on the name of a special forces unit called FEAR.

 

But I have changed the name to JSET or Jupiter Space Expeditionary Taskforce and FEAR is now to be used for another force.

 

:unsure: :blink: :mellow: :verymad: :thumbsup: :rolleyes: :confused: :whistling:

 

FOUR

 

Star Marshal Hawk/Eye Samuels stood on the enclosed deck of the skyship as it raced through the Martian sky towards the distant blinking lights of Marsville. Great jagged metallic machines jutted into the air, non functional and defiant of known recycling technologies. Terraforming had not been completed but the world supported human life and introduced gen-engineered species. The great machines sheltered life be it human tribals or goats or tangleyup trees or others. Tribals were half feral and staid away from the ‘techies’, especially the increasingly powerful Federats.

 

When the human species had faced extinction in the Great War of most of the 21st Century, they had gone deep into hiding and then into suspended animation. Others had gone into suspension in the three big original Spacestations Freedom, Progress and Hope. Others had gotten as far as the Moon and even to Mars. The fate of most of humanity was unknown.

 

Hawk/Eye had helped to train the JSET super soldiers, all 300 of them, in various forms of specialist combat and survival skills. He had observed the great ship being assembled on the Lunar Surface and then being lifted into space. Then he and many others had fled underground when the attacks began on the Old Martian Colonies. He had gone into a status-capsule along with millions of others.

 

The Resurgence had been painful from the start with the Federation rising out of the status-capsules into overcrowded bunker complexes with too few resources. What had saved them? Vast ancient cave systems with water, with exotic and deadly flora and fauna, with ancient Martian peoples. Suncrystal and glowcrystal lit, they had become a new homeland for a long while.

 

The ancient Martians still dwelt peacefully down there.

 

It was the humans who had changed; Federation humans!

 

Haw/Eye felt the graceful curving turn of the Mach/2 speeding skyship, a gracefully dynamic but efficient shape of a special courier vessel. It was so new from the newest of the shipyards that it had not been given a new paint job or proper identification symbols. He had only gained its use because of the high priority of his mission; JSET had returned from deep space, from close to Jupiter and the Jovan Moons, but there was more. Ultra high frequency radio signals had become active from some point beneath the Martian surface and were communicating with some point in the DC/Wastelands of the Island of Columbia and the great city of Washington/DC. Federat satellites had pin pointed the exact point to be Wastelander settlement of some kind surrounded by a ring wall and centred by a great, almost smooth crater, a most curious place to have a settlement based. Prewar and Wartime Databanks were far from complete but indications were that the old United States of Greater America had once had an underground base there of some kind.

 

Hawk/Eye commanded an ultra secret Federat Special Force known as FEAR, First Encounter Assault Recon, and now he supposed that FEAR would have to deal with the return of a much changed JSET or at least some JSET survivors. It seemed that FEAR would have to do what no Spacers or Lunarites had done for decades and that was to return to the home world. Terra, also known as the Earth or Sol/3, was quarantined because of many reasons. The Mutagenic Plague had swept across the world as had the Red Plague. Nutronic super-weapons had wiped out populations while leaving buildings large intact. Disintegrator super-weapons had left other areas bare except for drifting toxic fog. Wastelanders of various kinds battled to survive against each other and mutamutants, beastfolk, rogue robots and other threats.

 

But FEAR/One would go down there to see just what was going on.

 

A musket ball wanged off the armaglass in front of him but it was just a tribal sharpshooter with a long barrelled musket-rifle reminding him that tribals did not like Federats. Federats were making moves against tribal raids on Federation Settlements and ground convoys. Colonial Defence Forces had driven back tribal war parties and had destroyed three of the worst kind of the cannibalistic Yu’Yuzucka. Even other tribals hated the Yu’Yuzucka.

 

Marsville was a domed city with a population of two and a half million plus people but most of it was underground and the farms were inside big suncrystal caverns while mining took place in some big glowcrystal caverns. It had a spaceport and a monorail, road transport hub. Great big track/trains would rumble over the Martian landscape on great crawler tracks, big locomotives pulling semiautonomous controlled track/wagons.

 

Martian climate was far more gentle now than it had been before Terraforming but it could still be most savage at times when the big storms came.

 

Then he saw the spaceport open field of dull metallic sheen stretching out over many kilometres. Hawk/Eye scowled for sitting on the field was a Confederat rocketship, old but reliable and much upgraded, dotted with Confederat markings and diplomatic immunity symbols. Since the Federation had won the brief but violent war with the Confederation, the Confederats had largely staid in their own territories on Mars. Federat Territories were larger but larger still were unclaimed wilderness and semiwilderness territories. There were also other nations out there.

 

If Confederat Security Intelligence had learned that something was up, they would have of course sent some of their best people to investigate. Marsville was the location of the Confederat Embassy as it was the site of other embassies.

 

Then he saw other foreign ships and knew what he feared had come true. Word had gotten out through informants and spies to these other powers. Not all were happy at the Federation’s swallowing up of the smaller Spacer Federation though it had been a long going process for years. This included not just the Confederation but the North Polar League and the Unified Citystates of Mars. But then there were the more powerful and normally neutral Clavers. While the Confederat, NPL and UCM rocketships were big, the great Claver saucership easily dwarfed the three of them together and was both bigger and more powerful than a zetan mothership. It was a Claver Battlestar.

 

Clavers dwelt through out the Belt on/in small planets and in great asteroid habitats. They did not normally involve themselves in the affairs of other Solsystem peoples and for them to do so was to show just how important they found the recent events to be.

 

But this was not to be the biggest surprise for there was, in the background beyond a loose collection of tramp-freighters, Traderclan traderships, local shuttleships, Federation Aerospace Force patrolships and other vessels, was the great sphere of an Omniplexi starship. Not only did it shine softly golden silver but it was featureless and it floated just above the space-field. It was easily beyond even the Clavers in its technological power.

 

The skyship continued its graceful sweeping turn as a supersonic jet-airliner took off from an airfield at the city’s airport. The grey dart shot through the sky on its way to distance Marsburg, a city that was even larger than Marsville but Marsburg was one of the citystates of the United Citystates of Mars.

 

Omniplexi? Omniplexi pressure had enforced peace through out Solsystem for many decades. The Zetan Empire had not dared to move beyond the Jovan Moons except in the form of peaceful envoy-ships, traderships and one research based mothership.

 

Omniplexi rarely came personally to the inhabited worlds of Solsystem. They sent envoy-probes or even just communications broadcasts.

 

Just what was going on?

 

TO BE CONTINUED

Edited December 8, 2009 by Maharg67

[Herculine]

You know, I now look forward to seeing new posts here more than I look forward to new episodes of my favorite television programs.

[Maharg67]

Thank you muchly Herculine but if you keep saying things like that I will have difficulty fitting my head through a normal doorway.

 

I enjoy writing every post largely because of you and others like you. You make it worthwhile.

 

FIVE

 

Jack’O’Man crouched on top of the red boulder but was hidden by a growth of tanglertree growing upside of the same jutting shape of rock. The young man’s brown metal armour blended well with the landscape, especially in the dull twilightish light of a long new style morning.

 

The whole area was a sea of jagged outcrops, twisted landscape, craters and mutated dark green plants. Scavengers, hunters, cannibals, bandits and others inhabited the Jagged Territories or just visited them.

 

But as he raised his binoculars he was observing something tougher, something organised as a platoon of Crosswayne Commonwealth Army soldiers were moving through the jungle and rock jumble in the distance. Brown fatigues, black helmets, black webbing of pouch dotted belts and black boots. DCTek supplied goods to what were little more than trained, paid thugs. The CCA soldiers were infamous for opportunistic banditry, taking captives as slaves, for murder, rape and many other crimes. Yet according to the Crosswayne Commonwealth Government, the CCG, they were almost saintly in their actions and it was others who were bad.

 

The CCA platoon was trespassing into an official No/Go Zone of the Cease Fire Treaty between the Crosswayne Commonwealth and the Union of Columbia. They were seeking to attack a group of Wastelanders, to murder, to rape, to enslave, to rob and then to leave false evidence that U/of/C forces had been the culprits.

 

Jack’O’Man was an Elite Regulator sent by Sonora Cruz herself, the Head Regulator, to stop the CCA incursions into the Jagged Territories and to get the ‘fingers’ of a number of wanted CCA soldiers. Photographs of dead bodies, including faces, were also acceptable. Jack’O’Man was going covert, wore typical mercenary gear including armour, and around him were other Regulators but also two local scouts who badly wanted to see the CCA stung. Both had lost kin to the Crosswayne scum.

 

The Regulators had laid out the ambush nicely.

 

The scum were spreading out, grinning in triumph as they approached what was looking like a small scavenger outpost, little more than a metal and plastic shack put partly inside the ruins of a building of unknown nature. As the soldiers approached they did so with arrogance, over confidence as they saw two young women in Wastelander casual tough gear putting tradegoods onto a table.

 

All CCA soldiers were men. The Crosswayne Commonwealth did not like women having guns with only some exceptions like ladies with low powered hunting shotguns or women bodyguards for estate ladies.

 

These men clearly knew what they wanted to do with these two women and none of it was remotely close to being good.

 

They had a mixture of powerful bolt-action rifles, big autorifles, autoshotguns and submachineguns. One held a light machinegun. These were standard type mercenary weapons as sold or traded away or even given away by the ever megaprofit seeking DCTek Corporation. The Regulators wanted badly to close down DCTek illegal weapons sales to anybody with the money or other goods to pay for them. Yet sometimes DCTek gave away weapons, other equipment and supplies for reasons that were hard to fathom. Jack’O’Man figured that somewhere in or behind DCTek were at least a few longer term thinking and cleverer minds and that was scarier than facing just short term thinking narrow minded greedy fools.

 

Jack’O’Man gave a signal and the two women vanished with a shimmer, their stealthboy stealth shields coming into operation. They dropped behind what looked like a normal stall table and into a hidden ditch protected by sandbags. At once the CCA soldiers reacted, they were at least that experienced, and opened up at the women.

 

Jack’O’Man moved his hand over to a small black box and flipped the safety off a red button. Then he pressed the button. Anti-personal mines flipped up into the air and exploded, spraying small deadly balls at the thug soldiers. Even as this happened he aimed his own autorifle and fired off a volley of bullets.

 

The enemy soldiers shuddered and dropped. Some fired off shots crazily into the air as they were killed but most simply died.

 

The Regulators emerged in armour and with weapons, including the two decoy women who moved now like trained killers.

 

An armoured battlebuggy hummed around a corner and came to a halt with a trailer. Another followed it, sans trailer. Photographing of faces, finger cutting, looting of useful items began. Weapons and ammo were taken and boots. So were undamaged helmets or bits of kevlar armour also along with Emergency Issue Coins, wrist-watches and much else. The left overs and the bodies were quickly buried in shallow graves and each was given a very quick ceremony of burial.

 

The scene was cleaned up as much as possible in a short time. Spent bullet casings and shotgun casings were picked up. Boot tracks were scuffed out. The platoon was to be seen, hopefully, as just vanished into mid air.

 

The battlebuggies left at a steady speed with electric motors humming. Electrics meant quietier going and much less chance of discovery. Soon the lightly armoured machines were gone.

 

TO BE CONTINUED

Edited December 8, 2009 by Maharg67

[Herculine]

*humble blushing*