-Starcraft
--Dead on Delivery
---Chapter 5: Do Not Open
"What now?"
"I don't know... hit it harder."
"I hit it as hard as I could. Nothing is comin' out."
Yeah... this sounds like two idiots who are about to blow themselves up. Crick and Orange to be more specific. They were pounding on the nozzle in the back frantically, trying to get it to release some of its contents. After thinking about it more, I had begun to regret suggesting the idea. After all, what if there's some new neurotoxin inside? Or some nuclear weapon that is designed to blow up and take half a planet with it? I tried to think of things Zerg and Protoss would want, but I kept coming up with was Terran weapons designed to blow when someone screwed with the trailer.
"Okay, one last time."
There was a ringing metallic clank as Crick took another swing at the nozzle with a sledgehammer we found in a nearby maintenance shed. I could see the sweat on his face, and the exhaustion. Safe to say, we had been working on it for awhile. Orange had the same perspiration, except his was nervous sweat. The kind associated with people trying to disarm a bomb.
"Let's turn the nozzle back and forth again." Orange suggested. "Just... don't hit it."
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention. We had flipped the nozzle open like I planned to do back at the oasis. But nothing came out. Our next thought was that it was stuck or something.... whatever was inside. That's what brought us to Crick hitting the thing with a sledge.
"What you worried about? This thing can withstand a Scourge attack!"
"That's what Derringer said. But he's the same guy who said this escort mission would be no problem."
That brought up a good point, and Crick suddenly stepped away and looked up and down the trailer nervously. Scratch was sitting on a boulder watching the two work. He must have been thinking, because his Marine and Firebat partner didn't seem to care that he wasn't doing anything.
"This is god damn ridiculous." I muttered.
"Shut up Raleigh. You don't have any better ideas. I know it."
We'll see about that. I headed toward the cab where all the diagnostic systems were set up. Maybe there was some switch to give me a readout of the inside. If these systems were as sophisticated as Derringer said it was. I don't think it'd be too hard to figure out what we were hauling. Crick and Orange took a breather while I began to mess with the little handheld monitors near the ceiling. It was reading green... I think. It had read green this entire trip actually. Even when the Zerg were taking potshots at it. Maybe it was busted?
"What the hell you doin' Raleigh?" Crick yelled from the back of the trailer.
I was smacking one of the monitors. Trying to get it to change colors or react or something. Then I hit it so hard it popped right out of the place it had been lodged in. It looked like the whole top part of the truck cab came down. Soon I saw why. It was fake. The whole set up was fake. I looked over it slowly. The monitors had two modes. On or off. It did nothing else, and the wires didn't lead anywhere like I thought they did. I threw the piece of junk out of the cab to the floor of the cave and looked toward the dashboard where there were two more of those monitors.
At that time, Scratch had opened up the passenger door to look in and called over the other two. They examined the part I had torn out, and then turned to watch me tear out the last part of this bogus set up. We could see it then. A switch on the dashboard. It had two buttons. One button read "Open", and the other button read "Close".
"Well, well, well. Lookie here. Derringer is turning into a bigger asshole every second. Press the 'Open' button Raleigh."
"Are you insane? What if it's some bomb?"
"Hey, you wanted to find out what it was. Now press it."
I looked to receive similar glares from Scratch and Orange. My breathing stopped. These guys were suicidal... But I pressed the round yellow button anyway. A whole hell of a lot of noise began to emanate from the trailer behind us. I got out and joined them as they watched parts of the trailer slide away, like weird garage doors. Now there was nothing hiding the insides of this thing. We could see it, we could see what the Zerg and Protoss were after. And damn, it was bright.
It reminded me of sardines. Only instead of some Earth fish, there were these strange blue and red crystals packed wall to wall. You could see some lighting or sparks or whatever go from point to point. In fact, it almost looked like a liquid with crystal chunks inside. Anyway, we knew why the nozzle wasn't letting anything out. It wasn't designed to be let out that way. We moved around to the back, and saw that the nozzle was just as fake as the monitors in the truck cab. On the very back, the ladder was designed to fall away if someone had a power drill, and there was a large door that reminded me a sewer hatch. It looked like... if someone were to give it a couple good turns. That crystal stuff would be everywhere.
"Looks like minerals."
"Yeah, charged with some strange energy."
"It's Khaydarin Crystals. Not minerals." Scratch corrected.
"Look, whatever it is, it looks unstable." I pointed out.
"Now... I bet the Toss' would want this back. It is their crap after all. But why the Zerg?" Crick asked.
We all stared at it a bit longer. Khaydarin Crystals? It had something to do with the Toss'... But still, what the hell makes these things different from mineral formations? As far as I could gather, Protoss were real sensitive about stuff that belonged to them. But like Crick said, why the Zerg? I said before, they got no problem with funding their massive swarm serving the Queen of Bitches... I mean Blades. Seems like a whole lot of trouble just for some crystals...
"Look, whatever man. Let's just deliver this sh-"
Orange got halfway through his sentence before a hideous scream cut him off. A Zerg scream. God knows what from. But whatever it was, it wasn't going to shake our hand and give us presents.
"Holy shit. That came from the entrance. How the hell did they..."
"Don't ask questions Orange, we suck at answering them anyway! We need to find out where these tunnels go. There's got to be another way to the surface." Crick yelled.
We all split up to check walls and random monitors all over the place to find some schematics of the cave. I knew they had some on hand judging from the readout we saw in the control room. It was now just a matter of accessing it from down here. I should have figured Scratch would beat us all to it and tell us to get in the truck.
"Yo Scratch! You ride shotgun! Make sure Raleigh knows where he's going!"
Crick and Scratch had now switched places. Now the Ghost was in the passenger seat while the Marine rode on top of the trailer. Oh man, I hope he knew what he was doing... I wasn't going to say it, but I thought it was a bad idea.
"Let's go punk! Punch it!" Orange shouted as the screams got louder.
We were really moving as I turned off into a gaping tunnel and pounded the pedal with my foot. Even with headlights, the cave was like an abyss and swallowed it up. We could maybe see a meter in front of us before never ending blackness resumed. Oh yeah, then there was the trailer we had opened. Those crystal things made a blue aura surround the truck and pretty much lit up the immediate area around us. We stuck out like a sore thumb in that dark tunnel. I think I saw some stalactites and I just hoped Crick was on his stomach or something.
"Turn right here." Scratch commanded.
Man, with that creepy Ghost voice, it wouldn't matter if I knew a better way. I would just follow his instructions so he wouldn't hurt me. Scratch could probably whip out a knife and slit my throat before I could scream. Anyway... the direction he had pointed out was a rough one as the truck began to shake like an earthquake was going on. Turns out we were plowing through rows of stalagmites. I seriously prayed some horribly memorized hymn that we wouldn't bust the truck up this way. We had to keep moving, or we'd be Zerg food. And those twisted screams were constant reminders. Those bastards almost sounded giddy that they had found us.
"Yo Crick you see them?" Orange asked via the com set in his helmet.
"Hell! I can't see my gun up here! Someone find a smoother road! Before I throw up!"
With the crackly radio sound and everything, Crick's demand came off more humorous than serious. I almost laughed, if it weren't for Scratch next to me. It would be a nervous, unstable laugh, and then I'd just look crazy. Even though we had been on this trip from hell for awhile, I still felt they would kill me if they thought they had to. Best for me if I didn't give them a reason. Not even the slightest consideration. I had to act like a tough Marine guy or the next Ghost guy down the road... even though I was furthest from anything on a Terran military force.
"Hard left Raleigh! Hard left!"
This is where I messed up. I couldn't see where Scratch wanted me to turn, so I began to turn casually. Then I saw it, and really turned the wheel to compensate for overshooting. This just jackknifed the sucker, and we got really screwed. The whole thing decided to slide right into the cave wall and we could all hear was the breaking of rock and the groan of twisting metal. Hell, we even heard Crick scream as he was thrown to the ground and off the trailer. The passenger side of the cab was now pressed up against the cave wall, so the only way we could have gotten out to check on Crick was through my side.
Yeah, Scratch and Orange shoved me out as soon as they could manage and jumped out to check on their Marine buddy. I pushed myself up off the ground and heard the scream of a million pissed off Zerg... closer than ever before.
"Oh shit! They're gonna catch up with us!" Orange yelled.
I saw Crick stumble out from behind the trailer where he was tossed. His white suit looked black now and he was heading toward me with his fist cocked.
"Oh come on! I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" I pleaded.
He didn't hit me like I expected, he just grabbed me by the collar and nearly lifted me off the ground.
"Get this thing running again, or I'm gonna make Orange cook you alive!"
I almost fell on my ass as he pushed me away. I could see now, that Crick, Orange and Scratch were gonna hold off the Zerg as long as they had to. This was a stupid move in my opinion. Three guys never got anywhere when the Zerg numbered in the billion. But who cares, I had to get the truck unhinged from the wall. No doubt there were plenty of crevices for complicated mechanical parts to get jammed in. At least the engine was still running. But I couldn't even get my feet on the pedal when a large crack spilt the air.
Scratch had made a Zergling a head shorter. Soon Crick and Orange were into the whole thing as the fired down the way we had just came. The most prominent thing was Orange's flames. Almost blinded me since the cave was so dark. Still, the sudden burst of light also caught some Zerg off guard and Crick wasted no time filling them with holes. But all this success was temporary, I knew. Eventually the really ugly guns of the Zerg force would make their way down here. Like the Hydralisks... And that Defiler I saw. Holy hell... I hope that thing wasn't among the pile of carcasses Crick, Orange, and Scratch were making.
Man, I had to stay focused with getting this thing off the side of the wall. I accelerated only to go nowhere, and instead cause a hideous grinding noise to echo throughout the cave. My next plan was reverse and this was a bit more successful. Slowly the truck began to push the trailer out into the main path. When I had freed the whole thing and lined it up with the turn Scratch was talking about. I had a big grin. Then a headless Zergling rolled across the hood and scared me half to death. I looked to see those bastards were trying to jump over Orange's flames, and Scratch was picking them off mid-air.
But there was too many. One landed right on Crick and brought it's scythe arms back to take his arms off. Crick shot his rifle up and caught the two scythes just in time. But I don't know if you're well associated with Zerglings, they have two pairs of arms. The other set was freed up and began to claw away at Crick's suit. Scratch was too busy treating the other Zerglings like clay pigeons to notice. Orange couldn't help without cooking both Crick and the Zergling. So without thinking, I jumped out and got my revolver ready...
"Crick! Don't move! I shouted."
"#$% you Raleigh!" He yelled back in a panic.
Still, with him squirming and all, I aimed my revolver with both hands at the Zergling's head. My eyes were squinted, I remember, and the sweat was rolling down and stinging like crazy. Somehow I pulled the trigger anyway and got a good shot to drill right between the Zerglings eyes. It paused, jerked around like someone had shocked it and fell dead to the floor. Crick leapt up, picked his rifle off the ground, reloaded, and proceeded to blast that sucker into ten different pieces.
"What was that? Some kind of crack shot?" He was angry, and surprised at the same time.
"Hey, I never said I was a bad shot with my revolver. I just said it was old!"
And that was the truth. You can imagine, that in my free time I set up rocks and other stupid targets to blast with my stupid gun. It was easy to hit what you were aiming at. It's just most of the time, targets in this sector are armored with some tough crap, so aiming doesn't do you much good. We got lucky today.
"Just... get back in the truck!"
Crick pulled a grenade and threw it so it would ricochet off the cave ceiling. Scratch and Orange had retreated to the truck, having found too many targets to take out at once. When that bomb went off, we watched as the whole area came down around us. I barely got the truck out before the whole thing collapsed. Even as we kept moving down the tunnel, we could hear rocks and other collapsing crap behind us.
"That was nice. We should throw grenades more often."
"Hope you enjoyed it. Cause that was my only one."
Oh man...
"God damn... I don't think I can take much more of this. It only takes one of them things to do you in..." Orange stuttered in a nervous fit. "Never signed up to be hunted like a god damn fox."
"Here, have a smoke. Calm down."
Crick handed Orange a cigar and lit it up. Humph. If the reason why Crick only had one grenade was because he had smokes in the other pouches. I was going to kill someone... We quieted down after our encounter with the Zerg back there. If we were lucky, that cave in would force them to burrow for a couple hours. I hoped days. But it usually doesn't take Zerg long to dig anywhere. Then we saw the most beautiful thing in the world. Light at the end of the tunnel. Symbolically or literally. Take your pick. We didn't care.
But shit man. That sun was bright. It must at least been a minute before I could make anything out. We were on the other side of the mountain heading in the direction of Anchor Rock. According to that map up in the control room... We had a long drive across more desert and finally a snaking canyon even deeper than the one where we met Fahren... that reminds me. Fahren. Man, he wasn't around for long. I saw the guy... once? I think? And some Zerg does him in. What a life.
I was about to say something to Crick when a deafening explosion went off somewhere ahead of us. Dust was everywhere and before any of us knew that the hell was going on. We had driven headlong into a smoking crater. The only thing that could do that much damage right off the top of my head was a Shock Cannon round... Holy shit. A Shock Cannon! Some crazy bastard was shooting at us. Out here! After just escaping the Zerg. What the hell was this? Perpetual close encounters with death?
Through the dust and the smoke left over from the blast I could see guys with guns surrounding us. And then after holding my hand above my eyes to shield some light. I could make out Fahren. He was alive! But unfortunately... very pissed for some reason...
"All right you backstabbing sons of bitches! Git out of that truck! Before we turn you all into cannon fodder!"
What the #$% was going on...
-To be continued...
--Next Chapter: Now from All Sides...
