Author Topic: Message in a Bullet  (Read 14283 times)

Dubble_g

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Re: Message in a Bullet
« Reply #60 on: 26 September 2017, 19:21:23 »
29. QUIET RIOT

Euphoria tapped a small communicator around her wrist. “Nix, you in?”

“Oh yeah. I’m in. Textbook landing.”

They approached the door labeled ‘EMPLOYEES,’ Theresa in front, Euphoria following a distance behind. Theresa hitched her shoulder bag up a little, took a deep breath, and marched forward. She felt a trickle of sweat running down her back, making the grey DropShip crew overalls itch fiercely.

The doors slid open, revealing a desk faced in bullet-proof glass, behind which a patently bored guard sat, leading back in her chair, arms crossed across her chest. On either side of the desk were the chest-high pedestals of ID card readers, and behind them the blocky inverted U’s of body scanners. Beside them, trundling black conveyor belts whisked baggage into the dark caves of X-ray machines.

“DropShip crew?” the guard asked, not even looking at her. Theresa nodded. “Baggage through the machine. Swipe your card.”

Theresa placed bag on the conveyor through the scanner, then slapped her ID on the reader.

A light flashed red. It beeped rudely.

Theresa froze, staring at the machine. Pressed her card again. The light remained obstinately red. The guard frowned, stood up, walked around the end of the desk and over to the reader. A stunner rode on one hip, a snub-nosed autopistol on the other. “Problem?”

Reached over to take Theresa’s card.

“Not like that,” she said, flipping the card over and pressing it against the scanner again. “Other side.”

The card reader chimed and lit up in green. On the screen, her face and the name ‘Anna Chapman’ appeared.

Theresa mumbled her thanks, tried to walk casually through the body scanner on the other side of the card reader. The guard glanced at the screen, then waved her on. “Next.”

Behind her, the beep as Euphoria placed her own ID on the reader. “Good morning, Adept, sir. No need to put your bag through the scanner, sir. Have a good day, sir.”

In the depths of the megaserver stacks of Amity Palace, Anna Chapman’s entry was registered and cross-referenced with the Word of Blake’s dossiers on each citizen. Height and weight data from the body scanner matched. Cross-referencing her name against criminal records and lists of suspected dissidents was immediately flagged—but given the Word’s paranoia, there was nothing unusual in that.

Red flags only started to appear when video data was analyzed. Here was Anna Chapman, only a few minutes ago, in a completely different part of the city. Background data was brought up. Red flags multiplied exponentially. The woman was a chemical engineer—nothing remotely close to what was required for a DropShip crew. The assignment had been sudden, with no record of contact between the ship owner and Chapman.

New directives went out: ‘Anna Chapman’ was to be detained and questioned.

The waiting area in the spaceport was only half-full. With the advent of the Protectorate, most of the people in the departure concourse were DropShip crewmembers rather than passengers, seated or standing in clumps around scuffed plastic tables and benches. A few vendors sat idly behind neon-lit counters and holographic advertisements, their fermented algae drinks and mushroom salads largely ignored by the crews. Here and there were the new elite, Protectorate bureaucrats and overseers who had replaced the nobility, but wearing much the same clothes, and much the same expressions of disdain.

The two women walked through the concourse, the DropShip crew and the Word of Blake Adept, approaching the security checkpoint at the embarkation point. A pair of guards stood listlessly, pulse laser rifles slung across their chests and a bristleback at their feet, while a clerk sat at a counter, tapping through the data on each passenger or crew.

The security system in the spaceport appeared to be in no special hurry to turn off.

“Nix?” Euphoria brought up her wrist and hissed into her communicator, keeping her walking pace slow and measured.

“Wait one.” A metallic squeal. A muted blast. “Kind of busy here.”

A board listing departure and arrival times flickered and dissolved into a storm of static. The baggage scanner at one of the entry checkpoints ground to a halt, red lights flashing.

At the checkpoint in front of them, the clerk continued to click away, uninterrupted, on her noteputer.

Euphoria reached out and tugged Theresa’s sleeve, slowing her walk.

“Nix, we need the power off now.”

The guards looked at them curiously. One shifted his grip on his laser rifle, and began to walk towards them.

“The what? Oh, right, sure,” Nix sounded tired. “No problem. Nothing easier.”

The lights went out. Somebody screamed. Voices raised in confusion.

They were on again. Alarms started to ring, high and shrill. Metal shutters clacked down across the concourse exits. People scrambled out of the way to avoid being caught underneath. The guard in front of Euphoria and Theresa stabbed at his ear, muttering something over and over, then shook his head in disgust. He looked over to another guard, who gave a helpless shrug.

Euphoria strode towards the checkpoint. “Adept three-rho Emilia Clearing. Sitrep?” she barked at the guard.

The guard tore out his earpiece and held the offending item towards Euphoria. “Comms are out, systems are down. I’ve got no fracking idea what’s going on, Adept. Is it another terrorist attack?”

“Calm down,” she snapped. “If it is an attack, the first thing is to get this DropShip away. I want all the crew boarded, ASA-bloody-P. You two, get down to the tower and clear it for launch. And get people away from the doors, or we’re going to have a riot on our hands.”

The guards saluted. “Sir, yessir.” They scrambled off.

Euphoria glanced at Theresa, gave her a surreptitious thumbs up. She nodded at the tunnel beyond the checkpoint.

“Straight down there, don’t stop no matter what. I’ll head to the control tower.”

The alarms fell abruptly silent. A voice boomed from the speaker of every PA system. “Citizens, please remain calm. You are being sedated for your safety. Please remain calm.”

Someone in the crowd pointed up. Shouts of fear, disbelief.

“You are being sedated for your safety.”

A grinding sound echoed above their heads. They looked up, to see the slats across the air vents along the ceiling had all opened as wide as they could. People weren’t fools; they knew what had happened in Concordia. The crowd started to panic, surging towards the exits. Guards looked at one another in bewilderment, a few half-heartedly pointing their guns at the mob, others dropping theirs, joining the flight. Hands began to batter uselessly against the metal shutters across the exits.

“Please remain calm.”

Theresa looked at Euphoria, read the fear there. Euphoria met her eyes, and just shook her head. She reached for Theresa’s hand and gripped it tight.

“I’m sorry,” she said simply. “So sorry.” Tears in the woman’s eyes.

Theresa understood. Accepted it. So many people wanted her dead so badly, it had seemed almost inevitable. She’d been foolish to think it would end any other way. She squeezed Euphoria’s hand back, drew the other woman close, hugged her fiercely. “It’s okay.” It wasn’t evil, it was just people being people. Doing what they always did. “It’s okay.”

“You are being sedated for your safety.”

Overhead, the whirr of air blowers ramping up to full speed.
Author, "Inverted" (Shrapnel #4), "Undefeated" (#10), "Reversal of Fortunes" (#13) and "The Alexandria Job" (#15)

HABeas2

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Re: Message in a Bullet
« Reply #61 on: 27 September 2017, 00:05:42 »
 O:-)
Curses, you found me out. And I would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for you meddling kids.

 ???

- Herb

Dubble_g

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Re: Message in a Bullet
« Reply #62 on: 27 September 2017, 02:54:18 »
O:-)
 ???

- Herb

Hush you. I mean, me.
Author, "Inverted" (Shrapnel #4), "Undefeated" (#10), "Reversal of Fortunes" (#13) and "The Alexandria Job" (#15)

Dubble_g

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Re: Message in a Bullet
« Reply #63 on: 27 September 2017, 03:00:43 »
30. SHADOW AND LIGHT

The exhaust tunnels were massive, perhaps two dozen meters in diameter. A metal grill stretched across the surface of each one to keep people and animals out. The upward draft caused the planet’s orange dust to dance in twisting cyclones above each tunnel.

Nix stood at the edge, gripped the bars of the grill directly in front of him, and then and fired three short, controlled blasts from the arm-mounted laser, cutting free a roughly circular slice of metal. He tossed it away into the sand, looking down at the drop beneath his feet. The massive carbon-fiber blades of a double fan spun at the bottom of the shaft, 80 meters below, creating an intricate play of shadow and light. The suit’s sensors registered a strong updraft.

He watched a countdown in the corner of his HUD tick down to zero, and stepped off the edge into space.

The Purifier suit plunged down the shaft, buffeted by the rising currents. Nix flared the jets, keeping the battle armor vertical, feet down. He sighted at the conical hub at the center of the whirling fan blades and fired. Suit and hub were joined by a line of red fire, then the hub’s casing blew outwards in superheated shards.

The blades, now rushing up towards Nix’s feet with alarming speed, kept spinning.

“Shiiii—” Nix pumped the suit’s jump jets to slow his fall, aimed and fired again. The fan motor detonated like a grenade, fragments thrown clear by centrifugal force to ricochet like ball bearings off the walls of the tunnel. The blades started to slow. Not slow enough.

Time for one last shot, carving through the fan blades, snapping them free from the hub, creating a brief gap—and he was through, landing with a crash on the floor beneath the fan. The tunnel formed an L-bend, curving sharply, causing Nix to slip and skid, tumbling down the tunnel with a banshee screech until he made his left hand into a claw and dug it into the tunnel floor, slowing himself to a stop.

His taccom beeped for attention. He chinned the mike. Heard Euphoria’s voice. “Nix, you in?”

Nix looked up at the crippled fan, still slowing, half its teeth missing. Small debris tumbled down like intermittent rain. “Oh yeah,” he replied. “I’m in. Textbook landing.” Euphoria snorted skeptically, and clicked off.

Nix glanced at the HUD timer, and set off at a jog down the tunnel, footsteps echoing.

The server farm was cold, a few degrees above freezing. Four-meter high pillars of stacked black computer units marched in regularly-spaced rows down the length of the room like the columns of a Roman temple, ice-blue LED lights winking in thought, ropy tentacles of insulated wiring coiling down their length to disappear into the floor. 

Nix advanced cautiously down the center aisle between two columns. Cold mist swirled about the room, curling into random, chaotic shapes.

And some not so random.

There, an unnaturally straight line, as though the mist was flowing along the lines of a—

Nix ducked just as a red beam lanced out from the shadows. He snapped a quick blast in the direction of the beam, and then dropped, rolling along the ground. Two more lasers, eye-blinks of brilliant light, cut into the floor where he’d stood, each coming from a different direction.

Surrounded. At least three, then. They were aiming at the energy flare of his gun, Nix realized. He feinted left, triggered a blast from his laser, then rolled right, coming to his feet. Four lasers fired back, probing the darkness for him, slagging the floor and blasting into a stack of processors, setting them ablaze. Okay, more than three of them.

A smoke alarm began to honk. A shadow flickered in the light of the blazing computer stacks. He fired, rolled, fired again.

A blurry outline seemed to rock back, then slid down, growing more substantial as it fell, chameleon disguise derezzing in shimmering hexagonal patterns as the suit’s power failed, until its solid black carapace lay face-down on the floor, head smoking and shattered.

Answering laser fire stabbed through the air. Nix was on his feet, ducking around the back of the closest stack. He watched the mist for signs of movement. There. He dashed behind the next stack, putting himself behind them. Then spun around the opposite side of the stack, firing. Three blinding flashes of red light, right into the center of the moving mist. Another suit stuttered into view, its back arched, poised for a moment before it toppled over backwards.

Nix ducked back behind the pillar as return fire blazed, the whole stack of processors shuddering and swaying under the impact. He braced his legs against the wall, put his back to the nearest stack, and heaved. The pillar swayed, groaning, then toppled directly into its neighbor, setting off a cascade as the columns smashed together like monolithic dominos, blocky processors spilling from the racks in a slate-tip avalanche.

A humanoid figure was briefly visible, memetic coating scrambled as it tried to keep up with the shower of plastic and metal parts falling about it. Nix hit the figure once, twice in the center, watched it go down.

“Nix,” an urgent voice on his taccom.

“Wait one.” He rolled across the gap between two pillars, found his feet and dashed back across to the other side of the room, laser blasts now nipping at his heels as they learned to look for movement. He threw the suit into a forward roll as a blue particle bolt screamed inches behind him and impacted into the wall in a burst of lightning.

“Kind of busy here.”

He crouched, fired, ducked down again.

Some instinct, something seen out of the corner of his eye made him duck just as a fist smashed into the server he’d been crouching behind, scattering a jagged rain of plastic shards and wiring. He jumped over the next blow, hit a micro-burst of his jump jets, spinning the suit into a backflip, blinding the other with his exhaust. Nix landed facing the suit, brought up his right arm and pressed it against something solid. Fired. The blast punched straight through the abdomen of the other Purifier, folding it in half as it was thrown back off its feet, landing with a crash.

Nix’s shoulder was rammed back against the wall in a searing burst of light. Red lights winked in his HUD as he gasped in pain. He twisted away as two more shots slammed into the wall. Then he was up and sprinting, straight for the source of the closest beam, by the near wall. Lashed out blindly with his left arm, head-height, felt it connect. Nix’s suit shuddered from a glancing blow to the shoulder as the other flailed back. Nix grabbed for the head, brought it smashing into ferrocrete wall, creating a fist-sized crater. The other suit lashed out again, a lucky blow that caught Nix under the armpit, throwing him to the ground.

He aimed a kick where the thought the other thing’s leg was, cracking his foot into leg armor just as it fired, laser bolt going wide, the server stack behind him exploding in a shower of sparks. Laser bolts blazed out of the darkness, the other Purifier homing in on the shot, not realizing it was their own squad mate. Nix had the brief impression of a silhouette looming over him, caught like the after-image of a strobe light, its arms thrown up in agony.

There was a howl of anger, then a rush of footsteps, the last suit charging straight towards him, puffs of frost thrown up from where its feet pounded the floor. Nix bounced up, fired a burst of his jump jets to launch himself forward into a flying tackle. His injured shoulder slammed into armor, and pain exploded in nova-white light behind his eyes.

Both Purifier suits crashed to the ground. Nix rolled, heard a foot come down where his head had been. Kicked back, a glancing blow, metal squealing on metal. On his feet. A punch caught the side of his helmet. He reeled back. Another punch to the suit’s abdomen left him winded, breathless. Nix felt his suit crash against the wall. A kick landed on his knee and he fell sideways, landing heavily on one hip.

The enemy suit’s camouflage faded, deliberately switched off. It brought its gun up, pointing down at Nix, paused deliberately, then fired.

Nix twisted on the ground, brought his left arm up to shield his head. The beam sliced through armor, the prosthetic arm within, spending its fury on myomer muscle and titanium bone. Leaving Nix alive.

“My turn,” he growled, raising his own laser and firing.

A brilliant flare of light illuminated the room, blinding, searing. The other suit looked down, its left hand felt blindly at its chest, and found the smoking hole there. Then it fell to its knees, tried to lift its right arm. The head drooped and it toppled forward, sprawled across Nix’s legs.

Nix pushed himself up, panting heavily. He looked down at the stump of his left arm, the ragged hole of white-hot armor and melted polymer muscles. “Oh frack,” he muttered. “Not again.”

Euphoria again, voice that could cut glass: “Nix, we need the power off now.”

“The what? Oh, right, sure.” On the far wall was the power junction box. “No problem.” He leveled his laser without looking, still examining the smoking ruin of his left arm, and blasted the box to pieces. He let his laser fall. “Nothing easier.”

He struggled to his feet, and began to limp back towards the exhaust tunnel.

Now, it was up to them.
Author, "Inverted" (Shrapnel #4), "Undefeated" (#10), "Reversal of Fortunes" (#13) and "The Alexandria Job" (#15)

Nav_Alpha

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Re: Message in a Bullet
« Reply #64 on: 27 September 2017, 06:44:48 »
Nice work weaving the two simultaneous scenes. Very nicely written


"Hold your position, conserve ammo... and wait for the Dragoons to go Feral"
- last words of unknown merc, Harlech, 3067

Dubble_g

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Re: Message in a Bullet
« Reply #65 on: 27 September 2017, 19:27:05 »
@Nav_Alpha: Glad you liked it! Not done yet though...

* * *

31. ANTICIPATION OF LIFE’S FINER PLEASURES

“Reports of an attack in Amity Palace sir, at the central computer megaservers. A level one of battle armor is engaging.”

“A level one?”

“Yessir.”

“Oh dear, is that all?” He should be angry, but he can’t help but smile. He does so enjoy the anticipation of life’s finer pleasures. He pulls his red robe up over his head, revealing the hard grey plates over the skin of his chest. If you wanted something done right, he thinks. “You’d better get my ’Mech prepped.”

“Your ’Mech?” A note of puzzlement. “Yes sir, of course sir.”

He touches a panel on the wall and a small storage space rolls out. He pulls out a MechWarrior’s cooling vest and helmet. Sets the helmet on top of the piano. A thought occurs. “Which servers were attacked, Adept?”

A short pause. “Uh, spaceport security and traffic control, sir. We’ve already switched to backups though, sir. Minimal downtime.”

He pulls on the vest, fastening the clasps methodically, from top to bottom. “Are any DropShips scheduled to land or take off in the next  hour?”

A longer pause. “Yes sir. The DropShip Mileage May Vary is scheduled to take off in less than an hour. It delivered foodstuffs, and is returning with electrical parts, bound for Mirach.”

Yeager nods to himself. “Adept, I want the spaceport locked down. Full quarantine.” He picks up the helmet, starts for the door. “Agent CT in the ventilation system.”

“CT in the … But, our own men sir?”

“Full quarantine.” Yeager pauses with the door open. “See to it personally, Adept.”

Closes the door behind him with finality.


On the way to the ’Mech hangar, his way is blocked by two militiamen.

He waves for them to stand aside. They do not. They look intensely uncomfortable, but they do not stand aside. Yeager reads their body language—they are ready for a fight.

He halts in front of them. “You have three second before I—”

They interrupt him. Him! They dare to interrupt him. “Sir,” says one. “Could you please follow us sir?” The second one chimes in “Orders from the Precentor himself.”

Yeager grinds his teeth. “We are under attack you idiots. This is hardly the time—”

“Sir,” apologetic, but not backing down. Interrupting him again! Some people really do have a death wish, Yeager thinks. “The Precentor insisted you come with us, now sir.” Yeager sees their hands now rest on the butts of their pistols.

“And if I refuse?” he asks, already knowing the answer. “You are authorized to use force?”

“Sir, we would like to avoid a scene, sir, but you are being placed under arrest.”

“Then I’m afraid you’ll have to use force.”

The two men look at each other. This gives Yeager plenty of time to grab the first by his throat, lift him from the floor and throw him head-first against the corridor wall. The second draws his pistol, but too slow, these frail people are much too slow. Yeager’s hand clamps around the wrist, squeezing until bones snap. The militiaman sinks to his knees in agony, while Yeager calmly plucks the autopistol from nerveless fingers, turns it around, and shoots the man in the head.

The first guard is back on his feet, head bleeding from a gash down the side, and he fires at Yeager. At point blank range, there is no way he can miss. The bullet impacts against the dermal plating around Yeager’s chest and shatters. Bullet fragments scatter chaotically. One shard buries itself in the militiaman’s left eye. He falls back, hands clutched to his face, blood streaming from between his fingers.

Yeager looks down, aims the pistol at the man’s head, then reconsiders. He turns and walks away, towards the hangar, leaving the man on the floor. If he survives, perhaps he too will be blessed with new eyes, Yeager thinks, advancing humanity an inch closer to its destiny.

There is still the Precentor to worry about, but he will deal with that later. For now, there is the hunt.
Author, "Inverted" (Shrapnel #4), "Undefeated" (#10), "Reversal of Fortunes" (#13) and "The Alexandria Job" (#15)

Dubble_g

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Re: Message in a Bullet
« Reply #66 on: 27 September 2017, 19:32:53 »
32. SMALL MERCIES

Adept Salome went back to Tortuga once after becoming an Adept, to lead a raid on a local strongman’s compound. A girl named ‘peace’ had come home, bringing war. She’d found him hiding under the bed, greyed, melted with age, barely recognizable beneath the years. She’d hoped for something, what she didn’t know, fear, anger, recognition. But it had been too long, he’d had too many slaves to remember one escaped girl.

There weren’t any final words, any devastating exchanges where she revealed to him who had wrought his downfall, because her name wouldn’t mean anything to him. She just stood him up in front of the wall and shot him. There was no transition, the eye processed too slow: he just went from man to nothing in an instant.

She hasn’t killed a man since, but thinks she is about to, now.

“What’s this?” Salome asks, both knowing and dreading the answer.

Her squad has been posted at the entrance to the Harmony City Municipal Air Filtration Plant. There are a dozen men standing in the hallway outside who want entry, dressed in militia uniforms and pushing two carts laden with a dozen tall, grey cylinders. The cylinders are stenciled with “CT,” a serial number and a series of icons threatening dire things for should their handlers commit any one of a variety of idiocies.

“Sleeping gas,” the Adept says, straight-faced. “Now stand aside. Demi-Precentor Yeager’s orders.”

She closes her eyes for an instant, remembering the girl she’d found in the closet in Concordia. So. Salome's has been a hard, miserable life, worth little, meaning less. She feels no bitterness though. She is simply glad she has been granted this chance to at least prevent further wrong, maybe to find just a little grace. It started in the tunnels, it ends here.

Her eyes open. “This is unauthorized,” she replies, not moving. “Who is your commanding officer?”

The men standing behind the officer mutter to each other. Who does this Adept think she is? The officer grows angry, jaw clenched, his head bobbing forward with the force of emotion as he spits out his words. “Are you deaf or stupid? This is authorized by Demi-Precentor Yeager himself. Now you either move aside, Adept, or my men and I will make you move.”

Her hand rests on the butt of her needler rifle. “I’ll need to see some authorization.”

“I’ll show you my authorization bit—” He reaches for a pistol in a hip holster.

It is precisely the wrong word to use for the woman known as salope as a child. “Traitors!” She yells as loud as she can. This is very loud. She doesn’t know if her squad will hear or understand, but maybe the confusion will give her a few more seconds. She fires the needler from the hip.

Since she is firing from the hip, aiming slightly upwards, the flechettes tear straight through the chest of the officer, then into the face of the man standing directly behind him. Even as they fall she is pivoting, firing, filling the hallway outside the plant with a hail of needles, scything through the men like grass. Even wearing armor, their faces, arms and legs are exposed, and the needles find these weak points with murderous efficiency. The ones closest are all down, dead or maimed, those further away, shielded by the cylinders and their companions, are reaching for their own rifles, trying to wrestle them around to face her.

She drops her needler, empty now, and draws her autopistol, held with both hands, already bucking as she brings it up. She leans into the recoil, her face set, like a house-servant sweeping out a room. A man is hit in the throat, crumples, mouth moving soundlessly. Another is hit in the thigh, just below the edge of his armor, exposed as he shifts his stance to raise his weapon. The femoral artery pumping black blood as he falls, screaming.

There is a blow to her back, like a mule’s kick, and she falls to her knees. Two more, shoulder-height, spinning her around as she falls to the floor beside one of the carts. One of her own. Pale little Oliver, fellow Tortugan, his own pistol drawn on her. The cylinders partially shield her here, prone on the floor, and she is thankful for this small mercy.

It gives her time for one last act.

She places the barrel of the pistol against the skin of one of the cylinders, almost like a caress, and fires.

Her hand goes slack and her head flops back to the ground. Her last though is of the smiling face, the kind woman that found her. Salome hopes she would approve.

She doesn’t hear the hiss of escaping gas, she is beyond all hearing.

Soon, the others are too.
Author, "Inverted" (Shrapnel #4), "Undefeated" (#10), "Reversal of Fortunes" (#13) and "The Alexandria Job" (#15)

Kidd

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Re: Message in a Bullet
« Reply #67 on: 27 September 2017, 20:23:30 »
Brilliant stuff. And oh look, it seems The Man himself is one of your 'bots' ;D

Dubble_g

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Re: Message in a Bullet
« Reply #68 on: 27 September 2017, 21:52:35 »
Brilliant stuff. And oh look, it seems The Man himself is one of your 'bots' ;D

You guys aren't going to let me live that crack down, are you? Just because it was "dumb" and "demonstrably proven to be factually incorrect" sigh ... What can I say? Back when I had a blog (REMEMBER BLOGS, OLD PEOPLE?) I swear 99% of the traffic was bots. Possibly because it wasn't a very good blog, but um. Yeah.
Author, "Inverted" (Shrapnel #4), "Undefeated" (#10), "Reversal of Fortunes" (#13) and "The Alexandria Job" (#15)

DOC_Agren

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Re: Message in a Bullet
« Reply #69 on: 28 September 2017, 18:32:09 »
Old timers..
I remember before blogs were a thing...  are they still one?
This is well written 

Of course I could be a bot

"For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast, And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed:And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill, And their hearts but once heaved, and for ever grew still!"

Easy

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Re: Message in a Bullet
« Reply #70 on: 28 September 2017, 18:50:47 »
You guys aren't going to let me live that crack down, are you? Just because it was "dumb" and "demonstrably proven to be factually incorrect" sigh ... What can I say? Back when I had a blog (REMEMBER BLOGS, OLD PEOPLE?) I swear 99% of the traffic was bots. Possibly because it wasn't a very good blog, but um. Yeah.

Blogs?

Geocities BTech MUSE/MUX Webring,

...with EFNet irc:// telnet:// and TinyFugue connection links

I dunno if anyone wants to get into a old age contest with BattleTech players. There are people on this board who arranged their first tabletop games on rotary dial phones.
« Last Edit: 28 September 2017, 19:01:14 by Easy »

Dubble_g

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Re: Message in a Bullet
« Reply #71 on: 28 September 2017, 19:39:19 »
@DOC_Agren: I don't think blogs are a thing anymore ... Social media is the name of the game now. Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, um, Instagram maybe? Idk. Mind you, y'all laughing at me for the bot joke, never noticing that I have now stealthily gathered to me my ninja robot army. Tremble, meatbags, the robopocalypse is nigh!

It's like that Schwarzenegger movie with the killer robots from the future, forget the name... Kindergarten Cop maybe?

@Easy: Not a contest my friend. I've been playing since the 80s (box set with paper stand-up counters, baby, yeah!), but I'm sure there are those who still call it Battledroids and refuse to adopt this new-fangled "BattleTech" terminology.

* * *

33. LEAVING GROUND

In the spaceport, two women closed their eyes, hugged each other, and waited for death.

The first downdraft from the ventilators touched their skin. It felt cool. It continued to feel cool. It went on being inoffensively, mildly cool. Euphoria and Theresa opened their eyes, and looked at one another. Theresa reached down and pinched Euphoria’s skin.

“Ouch. What was that?”

“Just checking,” Theresa said, dazed. “We don’t appear to be dead.”

Around them, the tone of the crowd was shifting, terrified screams replaced by confusion, tinged with anger. Clots of guards were deep in argument with one another, gesturing at the ventilation system. One turned their laser rifle on the metal shutters and began carving a hole, until another grabbed the barrel, wrestling the gun downwards. Militiamen pointed weapons at other militiamen.

“Damn, this could end badly.”

“We need to talk them down.”

“No time, get to the ship.”

“No, one of us has to stay. If any shooting starts, it’s going to be a massacre in here.”

“You go, I’ll stay.”

“Hey, I can do this. I have to do this. I was born to do this. I won’t have more blood on my hands.”

“Are you crazy?”

“You’re too valuable to stay.”

“I can’t go. Not like this.”

“Yes, you can. This was always going to be the end, one way or the other. If you stay, you’ll die. Go, and live.”

“What about you?”

“I’ll find a way.”

"All of this for nothing--"

"Not nothing. You're worth more to the people back home than me. You know it."

“I can’t just go. Nix and the rest ...”

“You can. You must.”

The ROM Adept strode among the militiamen, barking orders, defusing the tension. They were happy to have an officer to follow. The system obviously malfunctioned, the Adept explained, organizing the men into squads to cut open the exits, allowing the people inside to file out, weary and fearful, but thankful to be alive. The Mileage May Vary was given immediate clearance to launch.

The DropShip crew member walked down the tunnel connecting to the ship. She glanced back, just before she entered, thinking she can just make out the Adept, hands on hips, the picture of command. She smiled to herself and boarded the ship, introducing herself to her new crewmates as they strapped themselves into acceleration couches. The DropShip’s engines roared to life and she feels herself pressed down even as she is lifted high, high above the world.

The Adept watched the flame of the DropShip engines flickering, dwindling to a vanishing point high above the dusty air, and nodded to herself.
Author, "Inverted" (Shrapnel #4), "Undefeated" (#10), "Reversal of Fortunes" (#13) and "The Alexandria Job" (#15)

Easy

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Re: Message in a Bullet
« Reply #72 on: 28 September 2017, 19:53:46 »
Quote
@Easy: Not a contest my friend. I've been playing since the 80s (box set with paper stand-up counters, baby, yeah!), but I'm sure there are those who still call it Battledroids and refuse to adopt this new-fangled "BattleTech" terminology.

The very first mecha game I played on tabletop was Mekton. One of the dudes from our regular weekly D&D group busted it out and said, "let's try this!". I played an actual BattleTech game with miniatures sometime in the early 90s and liked it alot. I didn't really get into the miniature collection, except for a basic lance or two, but I liked building dioramas. About a month in I constructed a map on a piece of 4x8 sheetrock and leftover building materials. Playing on it was alot of fun.

I don't want to distract from your story, though.
« Last Edit: 28 September 2017, 20:47:58 by Easy »

DOC_Agren

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Re: Message in a Bullet
« Reply #73 on: 28 September 2017, 20:50:31 »
Blogs?

Geocities BTech MUSE/MUX Webring,

...with EFNet irc:// telnet:// and TinyFugue connection links

I dunno if anyone wants to get into a old age contest with BattleTech players. There are people on this board who arranged their first tabletop games on rotary dial phones.

I still have 1 in the gameroom in my basement
"For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast, And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed:And the eyes of the sleepers waxed deadly and chill, And their hearts but once heaved, and for ever grew still!"

Dubble_g

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Re: Message in a Bullet
« Reply #74 on: 02 October 2017, 00:57:17 »
34. NOTHING NEW UNDER THE SUN

Nix fired the Purifier’s jump jets from the bottom of the exhaust tunnel, rocketing the suit up past the broken fan blades, through the hole in the covering grill, and out onto Schedar’s surface. Looking up, through the haze of dust he could make out the fading contrails where a DropShip had taken off, a looping parabola that tapered into nothing as it reached the heavens. Darkness was falling, the sky illuminated in its shimmering dance of red, orange and pink. He breathed a sigh of relief. She was gone. She was safe. He remembered his dream, of him standing on the rooftop of the office tower. Mentally he waved goodbye.

The ground shook beneath him.

A colossus strode from the swirling dust. A Helios BattleMech, weapons bristling from its arms and shoulders. A shape from his nightmares of New Avalon. Proof, he decided, that if there was a god, or fate or destiny, it had a wicked sense of humor. “You have got to be kidding.”

“Well, Mister Rei, I see it’s been a bit of a rough day for both of us,” Yeager’s voice boomed on external loudspeakers. “I seem to have lost my prisoner and my position, and you seem to have lost your left arm. Again. Becoming something of a habit, isn’t it?”

“Very funny, Yeager old buddy. I would clap, but …”

“Entertaining as ever, Mister Rei. I only wished I’d recorded your witticisms so I could play them back when you’re dead. Speaking of which, I think we both know how this goes,” Yeager said to Nix as the machine’s right arm aimed a tank-killing particle cannon at him. “I could say something like: ‘Surrender or die,’ but then it wouldn’t matter what you say because I’m going to kill you anyway.”

“Lacks originality.”

“Well, that’s life for you, Mister Rei,” Yeager said. “Nothing new under the sun. It’s big old hamster wheel for a few decades then kaput. So on that note: Surrender or …”

Nix triggered his jump jets just as the cannon spat a cobalt ball of fire, blasting a crater and melting the sand into glass where he’d stood. Nix sprinted, zig-zagging, then hit his jets again as soon as they recharged, bounding across the dunes. Memetic armor was useless in the thick dust, he knew. His life would depend on speed, and he had precious little of that.

Behind, the Helios turned and broke into a lumbering, earth-shaking run, firing brilliant streaks of green light that flash-burned the sand on either side of him. Another jump, over the top of a dune, then Nix cut right, sprinting again.

The Helios crested the dune, smoke belching from a shoulder-mounted missile launcher. Warheads arced down, scattering explosions like a string of firecrackers. A near-miss picked Nix’s suit up and hurled him sideways through the air, rolling and bouncing down the far side of another dune.

He shook his head, groggily, aware of the thunder of the Helios’s approaching footsteps. He got to his hands and knees, then paused. Oozing from the ground, all around him, rising into the air like ethereal snakes, were thin tendrils of blackness. Squid-storm. Nix found his feet and ran, deeper into the storm.

Yeager followed.

In his cockpit, Yeager watching the black smoke leaking out of the air, amorphous smudges of it seeming to multiply exponentially like a virus. Yeager swatted at it, experimentally, and saw it roil and twist in the air currents, some of it sticking to the surface of his armor like a limpet. He checked the HUD, but the system registered no damage, no heat buildup, no decrease in mobility. The only issue would be visibility: the stuff was opaque to normal sensors and thermal imaging. A man with superhuman sight, forced to fight blind. He smiled at the thought. All the better. It would make for a more interesting chase.

Nix dodged, left, right, but kept heading in the same direction. Towards the slot canyon near Noah’s hideout. If he could lure Yeager into the canyon, trap him there, then ignite the storm. He put his head down and ran.

Yeager followed the swirling wake Nix’s suit left in the squid-storm, black clouds flowing back around his passage.
Through the clinging, black fog Nix though he could see the narrow slash of the canyon. The external mics boomed with the sound of the BattleMech’s footfalls. The thing must be almost on top of him. He risked a glance over his shoulder, saw the thing barely a dozen meters behind. The left arm was raised aloft, then came whistling down. Nix risked firing his jump jets, leaping back, towards the Helios, as the arm buried itself in the ground where he’d stood. He angled for the thing’s head. Just like New Avalon.

The Helios twisted sideways, bringing the right arm arcing around, the PPC barrel smacking into the legs of the Purifier, sending Nix tumbling, crashing to the ground. The suit bounced once, rolled and was still. He looked up to see the BattleMech towering over him. “This seems familiar,” he muttered. He wondered if anyone was going to feel like strafing the Helios today. He doubted it.

“A fine chase,” Yeager’s voice boomed. “Sorry to see you go, Mister Rei, but it’s for the good of the species.”

“You’re a myopic, cross-eyed, evil windbag, you know that Yeager?”

“Evil? Look around you, Nicholas,” the gargantuan arm swept through the squid-storm, tentacles of the stuff coiling about it, plastering it with black goo. “Whose work is this? Who poisoned this world? Not the Word of Blake. This is what we will set people free from: the evil tyranny of the short-sighted, greedy, self-serving elite that allowed this to happen. This is what we’re going to burn out of the galaxy.”

“You’re talking about people, Yeager. My death won’t help that one way or the other.”

“No, perhaps not. You’re just a little flame in a universe full of stars. But then, it takes a spark to start an inferno.”
He fired his lasers.

There was a brief, blinding flash of light around the barrels.

The air exploded.

Yeager barely had time to open his mouth before a rushing wave of fire swatted the Helios like a doll, blasting the 60-ton ’Mech off its feet and pitching it onto its back. Missile ammunition roasted in the coronal heat and detonated, its tiny roar lost in the thunderous clap of the burning sky.

Yeager’s armored skin, enhanced lungs and kidneys, his metal eyes withstood the inferno for a microsecond, before giving way and being burned to ash, blown before the howling wind.

Nix, prone on the ground, was caught by the edge of the blast, thrown like a tumbleweed, bouncing and spinning across the sandy plain, straight towards the slot canyon. Each time he plowed into the ground a new red light joined a growing host of others crowding together across his HUD. He almost didn’t see the lip of the canyon until it was too late, making a wild grab for the edge, digging the barrel of his laser cannon into the ground like a makeshift oar, finding purchase, gritting his teeth as his body swung down like a pendulum to crash against the canyon wall. Then the cannon snapped and tore free and he was falling. It was a long way to the bottom of the canyon floor.

Fire flowed overhead like a molten river.

Its energy expended, the firestorm abated, turning into a fine rain of black soot and firefly-glowing embers. They swirled down around Nix as he lay. He envied their bright mayfly lives. From Huntress to New Avalon to Schedar, he’d fought his way from one side of human space to the other. Here, at the end, all he wanted was a little peace.

He thought of a woman’s face, that lost one, dead these many years, but found the memory had faded. That seemed right. There was another, but she too was gone, beyond the reach of hurt, safe in the halls of his memory. He smiled. Finally, he could put them to rest. Finally, he could rest, too.

The embers winked out and he followed them into darkness.
Author, "Inverted" (Shrapnel #4), "Undefeated" (#10), "Reversal of Fortunes" (#13) and "The Alexandria Job" (#15)

Sir Chaos

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Re: Message in a Bullet
« Reply #75 on: 02 October 2017, 11:24:52 »
Wow. Talk about ending the story with a bang.

What was that, though?
"Artillery adds dignity to what would otherwise be a vulgar brawl."
-Frederick the Great

"Ultima Ratio Regis" ("The Last Resort of the King")
- Inscription on cannon barrel, 18th century

Dubble_g

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Re: Message in a Bullet
« Reply #76 on: 02 October 2017, 20:11:49 »
@Sir Chaos: As mentioned earlier in the story, Schedar is so heavily polluted that it suffers from "squid storms," which are essentially airborne oil slicks. Firing lasers in the middle of a storm ignited it.
Author, "Inverted" (Shrapnel #4), "Undefeated" (#10), "Reversal of Fortunes" (#13) and "The Alexandria Job" (#15)

Dubble_g

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Re: Message in a Bullet
« Reply #77 on: 03 October 2017, 19:11:14 »
35. PRECENTOR III

20 August 3072

The planetary Precentor of Schedar holds his head in his hands. The noteputer on his desk displays the most recent in a string of headache-inducing reports. Half the militia in a state of near-mutiny. Two dozen men killed by their own nerve gas. A population on the brink of revolt. A riot only narrowly averted by a quick-thinking Adept, herself now among the missing. A wanted fugitive slipping their grasp. And one of the Manei Domini, caught on audio tape preaching heresy, now found dead.

There is a bottle of bourbon on the desk, and the bottle is half-empty. Beside it stands a glass. The glass is half-full.
The Precentor lifts the glass to take another drink, and notices the symmetry. He puts the glass down, and calls for his secretary instead. Things seen from another perspective.

He dictates a memo, of a heretical Demi-Precentor in league with the Federated Suns, who aided one of their people to escape by staging attacks on the civilian population of Schedar. He asks the secretary to read it back to him when he is done, nodding to himself. The HPG is still down, so he orders the message dispatched on the first available courier.

When the secretary has gone, the Precentor picks up the last of the bourbon again, and tosses it back.
Author, "Inverted" (Shrapnel #4), "Undefeated" (#10), "Reversal of Fortunes" (#13) and "The Alexandria Job" (#15)

Dubble_g

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Re: Message in a Bullet
« Reply #78 on: 03 October 2017, 19:12:37 »
36. STORYBOOK ENDING

Noah’s men brought the battered Purifier suit into the cavern on the flatbed of a trailer hitched to the back of Noah’s ATV. It took six men to lower the suit from the trailer to the ground. The metal plates were dented and warped, forcing them to carefully, gingerly, cut away the armor a piece at a time.

From within the metal cocoon, the form of a man took shape slowly emerged as the carapace was peeled away. Like a butterfly. He only had one arm. The other ended in a half-melted mess of plastic and metal. His skin was a mosaic of tattoos, which traced a history for those who could read. His face was peaceful.

“Nix? Nix?” the woman knelt over the prone body.

Something might have flickered behind the man’s closed eyes.

“C’mon Nix, give me a sign here.”

Nix’s eyes opened. It took a second for things to focus. There was an irregular, rocky ceiling, half-lost in shadow. And leaning over him, a face. A familiar face, and he felt a surge of affection, reached up with one hand to cup that face gently, watching her smile, feeling the tears wet his hand. “But you’re gone,” he whispered.

Theresa Sortek held his hand against his cheek. “Change of plans, Nix,” she said. “EE was on that DropShip.”

His eyes focused. “It is you,” he said. He stared up at her. “Why?”

“Because,” she sniffed, trying very hard not to feel sorry for herself. “The Federated Suns needs an intelligence officer with inside knowledge of the Word of Blake.” Deep breath. “More than they need a green MechWarrior leftenant fresh out of the academy.”

He closed his eyes, lying there on the floor. He let go her face, letting his arm flop down across his eyes, as if to banish the sight of her. For all his size, he looked quite small. “I suppose,” he said slowly. “You feel very noble, now.”

His anger made it easier. Let her outrage crawl on top of her self-pity. “I feel like, for once in my life, I’ve made the right choice, hell, that I’ve made any choice at all.” She straightened up, looking down at him. “Sorry to ruin your storybook ending, Prince Charming. But I’m not a princess, and I’m not yours, not anyone’s to rescue.”

Nix shifted his arm and looked up at her. A faint smile. “That sounds rehearsed. You tell all your men that?”

“Only the candy-assed sixers.”

“Get a lot of those?”

“One, but who’s counting?” She held out her hand.

He looked at it at moment, then clasped it with his right. Let her pull him to his feet.

- End
Author, "Inverted" (Shrapnel #4), "Undefeated" (#10), "Reversal of Fortunes" (#13) and "The Alexandria Job" (#15)

snakespinner

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Re: Message in a Bullet
« Reply #79 on: 03 October 2017, 19:50:26 »
A fairytale finish for the Wobbies, Nix and Lt Sortek.
But no nuke. }:)
Great story. O0
I wish I could get a good grip on reality, then I would choke it.
Growing old is inevitable,
Growing up is optional.
Watching TrueToaster create evil genius, priceless...everything else is just sub-par.

Sir Chaos

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Re: Message in a Bullet
« Reply #80 on: 04 October 2017, 02:31:42 »
*applause*
"Artillery adds dignity to what would otherwise be a vulgar brawl."
-Frederick the Great

"Ultima Ratio Regis" ("The Last Resort of the King")
- Inscription on cannon barrel, 18th century

Kidd

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Re: Message in a Bullet
« Reply #81 on: 04 October 2017, 02:42:24 »
"Encore, encore!"

Nicely done!

Dubble_g

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Re: Message in a Bullet
« Reply #82 on: 04 October 2017, 19:35:25 »
Thanks to Kidd, Sir Chaos, snakespinner, my horde of loyal bots, especially the Herb-III unit. Promise you won't be mulched, at least until the Herb-IV unit is developed.

No nuke, sorry snakester. Maybe I could pull a JK Rowling and reveal that Nix was actually a nuke the whole time. Wow. Really makes you reevaluate the story.

Not sure about an encore, Kidd. Kind of shot my bolt as far as things to say about the BTech universe for now I think. Might be something there about time, how the IP has all this history, this sense of time rushing by.

The other thing I'm interested in doing is a more nonlinear, lore-type approach to storytelling, like you find in video games such as Elder Scrolls, Dark Souls or Destiny. Where the story is presented in disjointed bits and pieces, in the history of an item or a folktale or an overheard conversation, and it's up to the reader to put the pieces together. I like that it's a more interactive format, but not sure how well it works in a forum. Might try and see.

I usually post a couple of notes after the story about the inspiration or research for the story. Not quite so much this time around:

Schedar is briefly described as polluted in one of the Dark Ages sourcebooks, I think, though I've dialed that up to 11 for the story.

Yeager's sect within a sect, that is deliberately trying to trigger a refugee crisis in the Inner Sphere since they've concluded peace is unachievable and humanity is at a dead end, is purely my invention, as a way to rationalize some of the WoB's craziness. A unit of ComGuards being dragged into the battle for New Avalon during the civil war is in the canon, though. Yeager's name comes from the German for hunter.

Felsa Sortek (Theresa's grandmother, Ardan Sortek's sister) is mentioned in the Sword and the Dagger, but her family line drops out of the canon after that, I think.

Nix's tattoos are inspired more by Russian mafia prison tattoos than Japanese yakuza ones. There's mention of MI6/the rabid foxes being involved in the fight on Huntress, where I've assumed they come into contact with their DEST equivalents and picked up & modified some of their habits. Nicholas "Nix" Rei's name contains two references to the number zero -- Rei one way to say zero in Japanese, and the nickname Nix is the other.

Inspirations for the story include the Nolanverse Batman movies, cyberpunk movies like Blade Runner and the Matrix, Shadowrun, the polluted world owes a little to Mad Max.

The running gag about the bourbon/Message in a Bulleit is all you guys' fault, though.
Author, "Inverted" (Shrapnel #4), "Undefeated" (#10), "Reversal of Fortunes" (#13) and "The Alexandria Job" (#15)

Nav_Alpha

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Re: Message in a Bullet
« Reply #83 on: 04 October 2017, 19:53:10 »
Loved it! Little sad to see this finish up.


"Hold your position, conserve ammo... and wait for the Dragoons to go Feral"
- last words of unknown merc, Harlech, 3067

mikecj

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Re: Message in a Bullet
« Reply #84 on: 04 October 2017, 22:12:45 »
Well done & thank you!
There are no fish in my pond.
"First, one brief announcement. I just want to mention, for those who have asked, that absolutely nothing what so ever happened today in sector 83x9x12. I repeat, nothing happened. Please remain calm." Susan Ivanova
"Solve a man's problems with violence, help him for a day. Teach a man to solve his problems with violence, help him for a lifetime." - Belkar Bitterleaf
Romo Lampkin could have gotten Stefan Amaris off with a warning.

snakespinner

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Re: Message in a Bullet
« Reply #85 on: 05 October 2017, 01:43:19 »
Always blaming us, your loyal bots.
Greatly enjoyed the story.
Now back to the bottle of Bulleit. O0
I wish I could get a good grip on reality, then I would choke it.
Growing old is inevitable,
Growing up is optional.
Watching TrueToaster create evil genius, priceless...everything else is just sub-par.

Dubble_g

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Re: Message in a Bullet
« Reply #86 on: 05 October 2017, 19:10:55 »
Thanks mikecj and Nav_Alpha for sticking with me, despite the length. Up to now I've aimed at Battlecorps fiction length (5,000 words) so this was my first attempt at something novella sized (30,000). Glad I was able to keep your interest.

My bots, of course, have no choice in the matter.
Author, "Inverted" (Shrapnel #4), "Undefeated" (#10), "Reversal of Fortunes" (#13) and "The Alexandria Job" (#15)

HABeas2

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Re: Message in a Bullet
« Reply #87 on: 06 October 2017, 21:52:53 »
Thanks to Kidd, Sir Chaos, snakespinner, my horde of loyal bots, especially the Herb-III unit. Promise you won't be mulched, at least until the Herb-IV unit is developed.

 :o

- Herb

Dubble_g

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Re: Message in a Bullet
« Reply #88 on: 07 October 2017, 20:29:54 »
:o

- Herb

Sorry everyone the Herb unit's English language module appears to be malfunctioning. Don't worry though I've been told the Herb series is "a bit less likely" to go on murderous rampages than the Nexus 6.
Author, "Inverted" (Shrapnel #4), "Undefeated" (#10), "Reversal of Fortunes" (#13) and "The Alexandria Job" (#15)

snakespinner

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Re: Message in a Bullet
« Reply #89 on: 08 October 2017, 17:55:48 »
No wonder you have started work on the new improved but cheaper model. ::)
I wish I could get a good grip on reality, then I would choke it.
Growing old is inevitable,
Growing up is optional.
Watching TrueToaster create evil genius, priceless...everything else is just sub-par.