Heavy Metal Thunder (14 page)

If you have survived, turn to section
530
.

You push open the door and shine your light on the
scene of a killing. Blood and bank notes hover around the bodies of three men. All
three are dressed in green coveralls. One man’s head, absent of face, has been
bashed in by a heavy iron wrench that twirls on an axis all its own. One man’s
throat is laid open, his eyes wide with accusation, his face still contorted
with rage. The third man holds a bag from which bills trickle out like a slow
fountain, and a heavy industrial blade sits sheathed in his chest.

Something tells you that this money is now so much
wasted paper, its symbolic power having been drained by... something.
The ushering out of an old order.
You can’t quite remember.
These men worked all their years for a fraction of the wasted wealth here.
Something came to this place and broke down the order and routine of their
lives.
Something so terrible that these men, friends and
coworkers all, threw away their humanity and died as wild beasts.

You notice a mirror on the wall, broken and bloodied
in the fight. You regard the person you see inside it.

Turn to section
98
.

You flip the bodies around and turn out their
pockets. You find the following items that may be of some use. You may take or
leave what you like, just
be
sure to adjust your
inventory accordingly.

Spool of String (bulk 1)

Worker’s Wallet (bulk 1)
(Contains an ID card, a torn ticket stub for a concert, some debt cards, and a
list of people that this person was angry with.)

Your body cries out for oxygen.

If you have a
Dexterity
score of 2 or more,
turn to section
86
.

If not, turn to section
64
.

“Oh?” she says. “How can you be sure?”

“I feel driven to make it back home, if that ship is
my home. I feel an overpowering need to warn them about the Invader ship on
their tail.”

“Yeah, but that’s all emotional. I’m sure every
crazy person who’s living in a delusional fantasy-world feels like they’re
doing what’s right.”

“Well...”

“Maybe you were brainwashed by someone. Heck, maybe
there is a Black Lance Legion, and they brainwashed you into thinking it’s
necessary to risk your life to crawl through space just to save their ass.”

“You’re not the first person to think I’ve been
brainwashed.”

“Oh yeah?
Who else thought that?”

“Just some dudes I had to kill in the last
Stellar
station. They got in my way, though, so it’s not
really murder.”

She laughs loudly, says, “You are a crazy person!
Mister Wiggles, that’s exactly the way a crazy person thinks.”

“Hell,” you say, “so maybe I am.
But
as long as there’s some kind of hope...
I mean, isn’t it a given that
the ends justify the means, so long as your intentions are just? Isn’t that the
bedrock of rational conduct?”

“You think they had the right to brainwash you?”

“I’m not saying they did or didn’t. But listen, the
way I see it, as long as I’m sane enough to be right about where my ship is
going to be, and we’re not just flying towards nothing, then everything will
work out okay.”

“Let’s hope you’re right,” she says, smiling
genuinely. The smile looks strange on her face, unpracticed, and while it looks
slightly like an uneven smudge, it also looks real.

You gain
1 XP
for having a conversation with
someone who isn’t a complete phony.

If you are skilled in
Navigation
, turn to
section
230
.

If you do not have this skill, or choose not to use
it, but
Arturo
the
Navigator
Poet
is with you, turn
to section
12
.

Otherwise, turn to section
203
.

You run at the thing full-tilt. You time your steps
at the last moment. The door opens right in front of your face. You kick off,
hard, sending your feet flying over and behind your head. The door slams shut
just as you hit the ground on your back on the far side of the door: Gain
1
XP.

You run to the end of the hall and turn a corner. A
door lies there. You enter it and leave behind the mist of destruction: Gain
1
XP.

Turn to section
223
.

There comes a day, a horrible day, when your water
runs out. You make only minor corrections to your flight course, for only a
little fuel sits at the bottom of your jetpack fuel tank. You know you cannot
last much longer. A death’s head grin settles on the flesh stretched across
your skull.

You wake from a long sleep to some strange beeping.
You check your helm computer and hear yourself scream: The Stellar Corporation
space station is nearby.

You have survived this horrible ordeal where many
others would have given up: You gain
1 XP.
Savor it while you can.

You make tiny adjustments to your course, laughing
with manic glee. Just as your jetpack begins to sputter on empty you see the
lights of the station ahead. It is the most beautiful thing in all existence,
an uneven sphere of hardened steel, a shield against the void, with sharp
lights all along its surface and the lights of ships hovering around like
fireflies. If you were not such a badass, you would cry.

If you have temporarily lost any
Will
points,
you may now restore them.

As you near the station, your helm computer beeps
ominously. You look into the distance. Several stars wink out,
then
reappear, as something dark moves past. Your helm
computer squawks,
then
identifies the dark shape in a
series of red highlights and overlays: It is an Invader ship, a long, organically
curving monstrosity thousands of feet in length. Guns line its hull and its
great energy output can only indicate that it is shielded electronically. It is
painted black, the same color as space. Ice stabs into your blood and hatred,
terrible hatred, flares inside your skull and burns behind your eyes.

Furthermore, your helm computer reports that this is
the very same Invader ship that is following the tracking beacon attached to
the ship of your comrades. It has gone slightly off course in order to casually
waste the Stellar Corporation space station. The people there have no weapons
to fight the Invader. They will surely die, as will your hope of finding a ship
to reach your allies in the Black Lance Legion.

You blast your jets, burning off the last of your
fuel to reach the station before it is annihilated.

Turn to section
312
.

“Just how good are you at controlling that robot?”
you say.

“What do you mean?” says the gruff voice of the
manager.

“What I mean is, you’re not a laborer,
you’re
a boss... probably spend more time telling people
what to do with the robots, rather than actually controlling the robots
themselves. Do you think you’ll be able to kill me that quickly when I run by?
Cause I’ll tell you this: I’m running straight to the central comp station once
I get by this thing. Are you gonna try to tell me that’s not where you’re
controlling the robot from?”

“Well, I’m not!”

“Doesn’t matter,” you say, casually. “I’m gonna run
in anyway and blast whoever
is
in the comp station. So I guess it’s a
good thing that you won’t be in there to get your head blown open.”

There is silence on the other end. The robot stands
idle.

“Give me control of the robot,” you say. “I’ll tell
it to gather supplies, nothing more. And we can settle our differences later.”

You wait, ready to run. Suddenly the robot backs
away and seems to relax, then says, “THIS LABOR ROBOT UNIT SET TO COMPLY TO NEW
USER’S VERBAL COMMANDS.
STANDING BY.”

You let out a great sigh, glad that you were able to
outwit the manager. “Alright, robot,” you say. “Pick up all those food stuffs
there and set them down outside the docks, near the dock command station. And
gather all the water supplies out of that side room and set them down in the
same area. Got it?”

“YES, SIR,” says the robot. It rolls forward and you
move out of its way as it bends to organize and lift several of the food boxes.
Next the fuel lines.
You jog down the hall while the
robot continues its work.

You gain
1 XP
for use of your Stat and a
further
1 XP
for overcoming the robot.

Turn to section
475
.

You and the guard lie in the floor of a hallway,
exhausted. He turns to you,
then
rips the oxygen mask
from his face. You are about to make a comment about the battle when he
suddenly jumps on top of you and raises his fist in the air. He is unarmed, but
beefy - and he means to betray you by pounding you to a pulp and then pouring
out your squishy remains from the space suit, so that he can steal it for
himself.

You will have to kill him if you want to live.

If your
Dexterity
is 3 or more, you can try
to grab one of your guns and blast him by turning to section
226
.

Otherwise, you can fight him off with
a ...

Blade
- section
368
,
Mace
- section
212
,
Spear
- section
385
.

Or, you can fight him with your bare hands by
turning to section
336
.

“Please,” she says, “I want to pay you back for
defending us against them. I want... to give you...” You pull her toward you
and press your lips into hers. She melts against you and you run your hand down
the curve of her back. Your tongues lap up against one another like two shaved
kittens wrestling sensuously. She hums warmly into your mouth.

One of her hands slithers against the zipper at your
throat. She pulls it down, slowly - and the sound of the tiny metal teeth
unclasping rings like an alarm in your skull. You instantly grab her small hand
and squeeze it, hard.

“What’s wrong?” she says.

“I... don’t know!”

“Don’t you... want to?” Her face becomes a mask of
hurt confusion shining in the starlight. You get the impression that, really,
she does not care one way or the other.

But you do. “It’s cool, it’s cool,” you say. But you
cannot move to release the zipper.

“Well?” she says.

“It’s this suit,” you groan. “I think I’ve been, uh,
programmed to keep it on. That way, any time I’m not on my ship, I’ll be ready
to fight.”

“God,” she says, “that’s sick.”

“The price of freedom is constant vigilance.”

“That didn’t even sound like you when you said it!”

“It’s pretty good programming, I guess,” you say.
“But maybe, uh, maybe I could just kind of... rub up against you...”

She giggles, says, “Listen, when the “war” is over,
then maybe you can get naked and maybe I’ll let you rub something on me. But
until that day...” With that, she smacks her lips against yours once more,
then
leaves.

Damn
, you think.
Kind
of disappointing, but at least I’m not a virgin anymore! I think
. You gain
3
XP
for possibly losing your virginity.

Turn to section
571
.

The deconstructor jerks sideways and your knife
scrapes
along its surface, scratching up its paint-job. A
tentacle whips up, slapping you in the side of the head. Your skull jarred, you
raise an arm and deflect another heavy blow. Ducking to avoid another blow, you
trip and fall into the monster, pinning it to the ground. As it smacks you
about the neck and head, you stab, over and over, until you pierce a vital spot
under its belly. You jerk the blade about inside the deconstructor, ruining its
innards. It dies heaving under you.

You have lost
3 Blood.
If your Blood has
fallen to zero or less, then you look down and realize that you were stabbing
yourself the whole time. The last thing you see before you die is the monster
running away, terrified to have encountered such a psychotic freak.

If you have survived, turn to section
298
.

You scream a terrible
battlecry
and slam into the old man, lifting him off the ground and smashing him into a
wall. You can barely hear the others hollering behind you; they seem far away.
Revulsion boils in you as you crush the old man, glaring at his twisting face.