The D1 Effect Chapter 8
As told by Captain John Leeroy of Mars
We ran for what seemed like an hour, but probably only for a total of 5 minutes, through the infamous bayous and swamps at Joiren. We knew very well what would hapen to us if we didn't make it to one of the IRA factions' equipment bases in time, but I choose not to think about. All I choose to think about was surviving, then killing whoever sent us here. Then kill their entire species. Kill.
Fourtuantly, at the mouth of a greenish stream tributary of the swamp, we encountered a supply depot that was about the size of a house and completly silver. There were only two guards keeping watch outside of it that were milling around in their suits, but several howitzer platforms lay un-manned on the side of the complex. I was guessing that at the first sign of danger, a dispatchment of soldiers would take control of the howitzers and start lobing heavy artillery shells at whatever they saw.
I dove underneath a bush and started surveying other information, such as the best place to strike and when to do it. The rest of them came panting in, diving underneath crops of radioactive bushes near me. I glanced over at Pete and asked, "May I?"
"You are the master here, Condor, the command is yours," he responded surely.
I turned to Jake and Marco, and gave them both an obsolete form of chaingun, but powerful enough to do what I wanted them to do. "Know how to use these?" They glanced down at them and nodded.
"Marco, head behind that rock over there, and Jake, you position underneath that crop of foliage. At the first sign of danger, start firing to the Howitzer platform nearest to you. Don't bother with the one on top of the base, that one is under repairs and shouldn't be opperational for a while, or at least 10 minutes."
I then turned to Incinerator, "Incinerator, follow my lead and disable the security functions at the back of the base. Pete, you come with me into the base and neutralize the guard inside." He gave me an uneasy look. Neutralize usually meant kill, and as soldiers, we tried not to kill our own species.
"When I give the signal, Incinerator, Jake and Marco will race around the complex and receive their suit. Understood?" They nodded. I let out a sigh of relief.
"Execute!" I said in a low voice, and stealthily crept my way around the base, keeping as low to the ground as possible. Incinerator and Pete mimicked the way I walked in an attempt to keep from being noticed. Fourtunatly, the plan worked perfectly up to that point, and within a couple minutes, Incinerator was fumbling around with the crude and primitive security panel for the back entrance.
"Almost got it, wait a second..." He said quietly as Pete and I urged him on. We had about 7 minutes left.
"Yes!" He cried quietly, and a "click" was heard as the door unlocked. We stood there for a moment, not used to manually opening a door, looking like fools before we figured it out. Pete and I leveled our chainguns into the supply depot's main chamber. A good thing was that there weren't any soldiers in the vacinity, but there were a lot of cameras and defense lasers set up to shoot at anyone that tried to come in without clearance.
And we didn't have the clearance.
Within seconds, a thousand different alarms sounded and laser mounts turned towards our position. They fired.
"Owww!!" I cried in pain as my left leg was immidiatly singed from laser fire. Before I could get completly diced by the lasers, Pete pulled me out and slammed the door, while Incinerator furiously punched keys on the crude security system.
As I lay there moaning with pain, Pete was yelling at Incinerator. But I couldn't make out a single word. I was fading fast and furious. Blood poured out of my leg.
** Such the horrible species our race has evolved to. They don't even give the courtesy of a painless death. **
Falling, falling, falling. I lay there, barely concious as Pete and Incinerator managed to switch off the lasers, but I couldn't do anything about it. Paralysis lasers, now that's an innovation. A deadly, heartless and cruel innovation. I felt ashamed to be part of this cold, cruel race that I thought to be so perfect earlier on in my life.
And then, before I could fall no longer, the entire world went blank.
*********************
"Ugghh," I moaned. At least I moaned and was concious. Barely, anyway.
Trying not to think about what would happen if I didn't get into a suit on time, I fluttered my eyelids to see a display of information unfurl across my line of vision. There were several forms of alternative vision that I could switch to, such as infared, ultravilot and nightvision, and a HUD displaying targeting information and radar readings. All very crude, but effective for what we wanted to do.
But, then it clicked. I was alive! I hadn't gotten the accelerated form of Lukemia, and I was alive in one of the anti-radiation suits. You don't know how it's like to come back from the dead, one minute your knocking on heavens gate, then the next, you are free once more! I smiled a weakened smile, but I was too exhausted to attempt to get up.
Past all the transparent data and info, I saw Pete, Incinerator, Jake and Marco standing around me, talking casually, with Incinerator giving more of a briefing to the kids. All of them were tucked neatly into the green and brown, camouflaged perfectly to the swamps. The suits looked skin-thight enough to morph in, but I couldn't morph inside the plutonium oxide buble, and it would shatter the protective helmet if I did.
"Hey, Condor woke up, good thing to," I heard Pete say into my head. That wasn't a familiar feeling. Then I realized that bio-mics hadn't been invented yet, not for another 300 years at least, so it must have been from a radio! Crude. Primitive. But it would suffice to our needs.
"Yea," I said weakly in a failed attempt to get up. Pete and Incinerator then helped me and eventually I stood dizzily erect.
"You okay? We bandaged you leg before you died of blood loss. You might bee dizzy for a while, because we didn't save much of the blood that poured out, but you'll live, for now anyway," Incinerator comforted.
Pete then said, "Lucky for you that Incinerator doubles as a field-medic."
"You might have to wait as much as 15 minutes in order to heal. I accelerated your red blood cell reproduction rate in order to gain the blood to go on."
15 minutes? That was supposed to be long? Ya', right.
"So, I'm assuming that we won the battle?" I asked.
"Affirmative, however, when the alarms went off, 4 gunmen came out of hiding to the howitzers and started firing at us. These guys," Pete gestured to Marco and Jake who smiled, "saved the day by the backup plan. They knocked out the 2 side platforms, and killed," he winced before he went on, "the gunmen who were working on the top howitzer."
"Right," I said weakly, but not nearly as weakly as before. I already started to feel more blood churn through my empty body.
"Wait, what did you do to stop the accelerated blood cell reproduction, Incinerator?" Pete asked.
"I implanted a gene which kills the cells which have accelerated reproduction when Condor's body reaches it's top capacity."
"Good," Pete said thoughtfully.
We waited around for the 15 minutes I needed to heal myself, chatting away. Marco and Jake started talking as well, because they knew of some of the prototypes for these suits. According to them, they once broke into a top-secret military base and saw a couple of the suits in one of the labs. They gave us little information, but it was obvious by now that they weren't naive and young; they were battle-hardend warriors with maybe even more battle experience than us.
All the time I was feeling better and better. It was obvious that Incinerators plan had worked to kill off the reproducing cells, because even after a half-hour, I didn't explode with maximum capacity.
"Well, now here is the ultimate question that everone has been dying to here, what do we do know?" I asked, eager for battle, but not against my own kind.
"We gather the neccessary equipment to survive, and then wait for stage 2 of the D1 effect. We fight off any enemies we come across," Incinerator explained.
"Well, what exactly is stage two?" Jake asked.
"In the D1 effect, according to theory, you can only be in one time zone for 10 hours maximum, then you are thrust backwards in time," Incinerator said.
"Backwards in time? By how much, according to your theories?" Marco almost sneered.
But I ignored that remark, "We are geussing from 20 to 100 years into the past. You should be familiar with the age that we go into."
"Yes, we should. Anyway, lets get our stuff and go into the swamp. Other factions will likely attack this base before too long, and we couldn't possibly hold it by ourselves," Jake ordered. It was odd for him to order us around, but he was experienced as well.
"I take command when we are in the swamp, okay with you Pete?" I announced.
"Fine with me, as long as you don't get us killed," he responded.
"Okay, get all the gear you need," I said while gesturing over to a weapons and equipment rack, "We need the laser assualt rifle, whatever these round things are-"
"Grenades," Jake filled me in.
Grenades? Oh, ya'. They were banned from used in the allied sectors, so we never had seen one before. They seemed very quaint, but I didn't want to see what happend when I pulled the ring off of it.
"-and a pair of these personal air-tanks," I finished. We took was we needed and walked outside, with our primitive laser rifles held high into the air.
"Onward!" Pete cried as we dashed into the fog and into the imfamous swamps at Joiren.
A/N: Sorry about any spelling mistakes, spell check not working again. Next installment we find where the others are and the swamps of Joiren 's battles conclude.
As told by Captain John Leeroy of Mars
We ran for what seemed like an hour, but probably only for a total of 5 minutes, through the infamous bayous and swamps at Joiren. We knew very well what would hapen to us if we didn't make it to one of the IRA factions' equipment bases in time, but I choose not to think about. All I choose to think about was surviving, then killing whoever sent us here. Then kill their entire species. Kill.
Fourtuantly, at the mouth of a greenish stream tributary of the swamp, we encountered a supply depot that was about the size of a house and completly silver. There were only two guards keeping watch outside of it that were milling around in their suits, but several howitzer platforms lay un-manned on the side of the complex. I was guessing that at the first sign of danger, a dispatchment of soldiers would take control of the howitzers and start lobing heavy artillery shells at whatever they saw.
I dove underneath a bush and started surveying other information, such as the best place to strike and when to do it. The rest of them came panting in, diving underneath crops of radioactive bushes near me. I glanced over at Pete and asked, "May I?"
"You are the master here, Condor, the command is yours," he responded surely.
I turned to Jake and Marco, and gave them both an obsolete form of chaingun, but powerful enough to do what I wanted them to do. "Know how to use these?" They glanced down at them and nodded.
"Marco, head behind that rock over there, and Jake, you position underneath that crop of foliage. At the first sign of danger, start firing to the Howitzer platform nearest to you. Don't bother with the one on top of the base, that one is under repairs and shouldn't be opperational for a while, or at least 10 minutes."
I then turned to Incinerator, "Incinerator, follow my lead and disable the security functions at the back of the base. Pete, you come with me into the base and neutralize the guard inside." He gave me an uneasy look. Neutralize usually meant kill, and as soldiers, we tried not to kill our own species.
"When I give the signal, Incinerator, Jake and Marco will race around the complex and receive their suit. Understood?" They nodded. I let out a sigh of relief.
"Execute!" I said in a low voice, and stealthily crept my way around the base, keeping as low to the ground as possible. Incinerator and Pete mimicked the way I walked in an attempt to keep from being noticed. Fourtunatly, the plan worked perfectly up to that point, and within a couple minutes, Incinerator was fumbling around with the crude and primitive security panel for the back entrance.
"Almost got it, wait a second..." He said quietly as Pete and I urged him on. We had about 7 minutes left.
"Yes!" He cried quietly, and a "click" was heard as the door unlocked. We stood there for a moment, not used to manually opening a door, looking like fools before we figured it out. Pete and I leveled our chainguns into the supply depot's main chamber. A good thing was that there weren't any soldiers in the vacinity, but there were a lot of cameras and defense lasers set up to shoot at anyone that tried to come in without clearance.
And we didn't have the clearance.
Within seconds, a thousand different alarms sounded and laser mounts turned towards our position. They fired.
"Owww!!" I cried in pain as my left leg was immidiatly singed from laser fire. Before I could get completly diced by the lasers, Pete pulled me out and slammed the door, while Incinerator furiously punched keys on the crude security system.
As I lay there moaning with pain, Pete was yelling at Incinerator. But I couldn't make out a single word. I was fading fast and furious. Blood poured out of my leg.
** Such the horrible species our race has evolved to. They don't even give the courtesy of a painless death. **
Falling, falling, falling. I lay there, barely concious as Pete and Incinerator managed to switch off the lasers, but I couldn't do anything about it. Paralysis lasers, now that's an innovation. A deadly, heartless and cruel innovation. I felt ashamed to be part of this cold, cruel race that I thought to be so perfect earlier on in my life.
And then, before I could fall no longer, the entire world went blank.
*********************
"Ugghh," I moaned. At least I moaned and was concious. Barely, anyway.
Trying not to think about what would happen if I didn't get into a suit on time, I fluttered my eyelids to see a display of information unfurl across my line of vision. There were several forms of alternative vision that I could switch to, such as infared, ultravilot and nightvision, and a HUD displaying targeting information and radar readings. All very crude, but effective for what we wanted to do.
But, then it clicked. I was alive! I hadn't gotten the accelerated form of Lukemia, and I was alive in one of the anti-radiation suits. You don't know how it's like to come back from the dead, one minute your knocking on heavens gate, then the next, you are free once more! I smiled a weakened smile, but I was too exhausted to attempt to get up.
Past all the transparent data and info, I saw Pete, Incinerator, Jake and Marco standing around me, talking casually, with Incinerator giving more of a briefing to the kids. All of them were tucked neatly into the green and brown, camouflaged perfectly to the swamps. The suits looked skin-thight enough to morph in, but I couldn't morph inside the plutonium oxide buble, and it would shatter the protective helmet if I did.
"Hey, Condor woke up, good thing to," I heard Pete say into my head. That wasn't a familiar feeling. Then I realized that bio-mics hadn't been invented yet, not for another 300 years at least, so it must have been from a radio! Crude. Primitive. But it would suffice to our needs.
"Yea," I said weakly in a failed attempt to get up. Pete and Incinerator then helped me and eventually I stood dizzily erect.
"You okay? We bandaged you leg before you died of blood loss. You might bee dizzy for a while, because we didn't save much of the blood that poured out, but you'll live, for now anyway," Incinerator comforted.
Pete then said, "Lucky for you that Incinerator doubles as a field-medic."
"You might have to wait as much as 15 minutes in order to heal. I accelerated your red blood cell reproduction rate in order to gain the blood to go on."
15 minutes? That was supposed to be long? Ya', right.
"So, I'm assuming that we won the battle?" I asked.
"Affirmative, however, when the alarms went off, 4 gunmen came out of hiding to the howitzers and started firing at us. These guys," Pete gestured to Marco and Jake who smiled, "saved the day by the backup plan. They knocked out the 2 side platforms, and killed," he winced before he went on, "the gunmen who were working on the top howitzer."
"Right," I said weakly, but not nearly as weakly as before. I already started to feel more blood churn through my empty body.
"Wait, what did you do to stop the accelerated blood cell reproduction, Incinerator?" Pete asked.
"I implanted a gene which kills the cells which have accelerated reproduction when Condor's body reaches it's top capacity."
"Good," Pete said thoughtfully.
We waited around for the 15 minutes I needed to heal myself, chatting away. Marco and Jake started talking as well, because they knew of some of the prototypes for these suits. According to them, they once broke into a top-secret military base and saw a couple of the suits in one of the labs. They gave us little information, but it was obvious by now that they weren't naive and young; they were battle-hardend warriors with maybe even more battle experience than us.
All the time I was feeling better and better. It was obvious that Incinerators plan had worked to kill off the reproducing cells, because even after a half-hour, I didn't explode with maximum capacity.
"Well, now here is the ultimate question that everone has been dying to here, what do we do know?" I asked, eager for battle, but not against my own kind.
"We gather the neccessary equipment to survive, and then wait for stage 2 of the D1 effect. We fight off any enemies we come across," Incinerator explained.
"Well, what exactly is stage two?" Jake asked.
"In the D1 effect, according to theory, you can only be in one time zone for 10 hours maximum, then you are thrust backwards in time," Incinerator said.
"Backwards in time? By how much, according to your theories?" Marco almost sneered.
But I ignored that remark, "We are geussing from 20 to 100 years into the past. You should be familiar with the age that we go into."
"Yes, we should. Anyway, lets get our stuff and go into the swamp. Other factions will likely attack this base before too long, and we couldn't possibly hold it by ourselves," Jake ordered. It was odd for him to order us around, but he was experienced as well.
"I take command when we are in the swamp, okay with you Pete?" I announced.
"Fine with me, as long as you don't get us killed," he responded.
"Okay, get all the gear you need," I said while gesturing over to a weapons and equipment rack, "We need the laser assualt rifle, whatever these round things are-"
"Grenades," Jake filled me in.
Grenades? Oh, ya'. They were banned from used in the allied sectors, so we never had seen one before. They seemed very quaint, but I didn't want to see what happend when I pulled the ring off of it.
"-and a pair of these personal air-tanks," I finished. We took was we needed and walked outside, with our primitive laser rifles held high into the air.
"Onward!" Pete cried as we dashed into the fog and into the imfamous swamps at Joiren.
A/N: Sorry about any spelling mistakes, spell check not working again. Next installment we find where the others are and the swamps of Joiren 's battles conclude.