Leaderboard

"There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens: a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance..." -Ecclesiastes 3:1-4 I knew things had gotten bad when the nuke started talking to me. "Hey, MacTavish," the Nuclear Fission Explosive grunted cheerfully, waggling its tail fins in greeting. "Feelin' a little under the weather there, are ya?" "Feck off," I wheezed back, suppressing a scream as the styptic powder covered my wounds. "I'll live." "Yeah, yeah, for now," the nuclear weapon replied, rocking on its chassis in response. "But y'do seem to be outta options here, Tavish. You're a Head'a Security without any Security to call on, an acting-Captain without a station to command, and you've got a nuke without any codes to make it work. Kinda missing some important parts there, eh?" "Ain't dead y-" I tried to say with false bravado, interrupted by a sudden gasp of pain as the acidic xenos blood reached something important. Fumbling for my makeshift medkit, I popped the top from a blank pill bottle and swallowed a handful of pills, choking them down a dry throat rubbed raw from exertion. "Still. Feckin'. 'Ere." "You're choking down random pills in the hopes that one of 'em will make ya right again, buddy ol' buddy ol' pal," the nuke chirped, seemingly oblivious to my tears of pain. "And it's only a matter'a time before those aliens come back an' finish ya off, Mac..." As if to underscore my hallucination's imagined words, my eyes twitched towards the eastern end of the Bridge and a sudden shift inside the darkness there. I'd triggered the Bridge lockdown, so heavy blast doors kept the xenos from simply overrunning me, but the craftier alien bastards had taken to tunnelling through the walls. One xenos had nearly gotten me that way, and I was still flushing its "parting regards" out of a gaping wound in my left shoulder. I snarled to myself, hefting my riot shield and slapping myself upside the head, cursing my fading vision. "It's nothin'. Clear." I turned back to my imaginary friend, smacking it with the butt of my shotgun. Three tons of carefully-machined explosive lenses sat on its own custom-made trolley, surrounding a hyperdense core of refined plutonium-239. "Stop lyin' tae me," I told the nuclear weapon. "I'm only animated by a figment of your imagination, buddy," the bomb responded merrily. "If I'm lying to you, it's only because your fragmented consciousness can't suss out up from down at this point. But seriously, MacTavish, pull up a chair and have a seat, because we really need to have a talk about your future." The laugh spilled out, surprising us both, but a few more chuckles followed it, until I'd almost collapsed to the deck howling. I laughed louder than the hooting evacuation alarms, cackling until the tears streamed down my dirt-streaked face. This was it: a nuclear bomb was lecturing me about "future planning." I'd well and truly snapped. "Hey, bud. Am I a joke to you?" I've no idea how a stationary, station-ending bomb could appear affronted, yet from from my angle the weapon's rear fins almost seemed like arms perched on hips. "I'm tellin' you, ya gotta get with the future here." "Sure. Right." I slowly picked myself up off the floor, tucking my combat shotgun under one arm and cranking my riot shield to full extension. A moment of mental effort activated my anti-drop implant, and my hands clenched around my weapons with a literal deathgrip. "Future. Sure. Talk." The bomb let out a long, winding sigh as I slowly hobbled to the center of the Bridge, supporting myself on the towering riot shield. "I've gotta give ya some credit, you've lasted longer than damn near anyone on this station. Might be the last one left, even. Still, between the sickness and the face-eatin' aliens, your odds of livin' through this are..." "Non-existant. Already bloody aware," I hiss, glancing through security camera feeds. They only showed me more of the same depressing images as before: mutilated bodies, showers of gore, broken machines, and too few dead xenos piled among the carnage. "Either I get eaten by xenos face-fuckers, or I explode from CentComm's little live-fire testing. 'Tis bloody nothin' tae live for, either way - what's the feckin' point?" "Nah, bud, that's the point!" the nuke chirps. "Most folks, they don't get to choose when and how they're gonna die - a shuttle accident out'a the blue, sudden solar flare, the works. And really, a shuttle accident's kinda a shitty way to go, ainnit?" I shrug, both literally and figuratively numb as the painkillers kicked in. "But not you, MacTavish. You sent your survivors away, and then you held here. Coulda run - shoulda run, really - but you decided to hold out here. And I gotta give you some credit, you've made these bugs bleed for me. This is enough blood an' guts spilled to make me feel downright appreciated, I'll say that much." Its invisible eyes flicked around the dimly-lit room, and the corpses piled across it. I'd locked down the station's bridge, with the nuclear weapon and authentication disk still inside. The room served as a long shooting gallery, and the nuke (and my own warm body) served as both lure and threat to the lethal xenos. They'd come from every angle, fore and aft, and I'd made them pay for each and every inch. I'd killed five of the bastards myself, and a few more had fallen to the "experimental bioweapon" which Central Command had deployed to wipe out the creatures. All good, except that the geniuses over there had deemed the station's nuke "too dirty" and had decided to use us as live-fire testing for their bioweapon instead. Turns out, their little toy crossed species. "Aye," I coughed wetly, feeling blood pooling at the back of my throat. "Made a stupid choice-" "A brave choice!" the bomb declares. "-a feckin' boneheaded one," I shoot back, "an' now I'll bleed out an' die on this pisser of a station." I wince as something important in my belly heaves and burns, doing my best to suppress the tears. "How's that fer a feckin' future?" "Well yes, you'll die here," the nuclear weapon replies airily, waggling its tailfins in response. "The question is how you want to die, and how ya want to be remembered. This is the stuff of holovids, MacTavish; 'a lone Security holdout dies snarling in the face of certain death!' You've got the makings of a legendary last stand here, pal." I chuckle, wincing as the pain worsens. "An' I should give two figs about it...why?" "Well, there's royalties-" "I hate most of me family, an' NT will probably take the rights anyway." I sigh, drumming my fingers across my shotgun's trigger guard. "I only had meself tae live for, so who the feckin' hell would I die for?" The attack, when it came, took mere seconds. One moment I was resting my weight forward on my towering riot shield, my combat shotgun pointed forward at the shadowed Captain's quarters, and the next I was facing down a half-ton of teeth, claws, and murderous attitude. A bulbous face scrabbled at my helmet, the 'tongue' inside it spitting acidic saliva against the hardened visor. Massive claws raked at my midsection, my shield and armoured trenchcoat only offering limited protection. I toppled backwards, my shield and gun still held in a vice grip... Auto-senses dampened my hearing as the shotgun boomed, the alien raking at me arching backwards as the buckshot connected. Acidic blood sprayed down like rain, and I could feel my teeth gritting behind my visor as the sulfurous stuff dripped into every chink and weakpoint in my low-profile armour. I refocused my eyes, re-sighted my waving gun barrel on the chitinous mass above me, and pulled the trigger again. More light, more sound, more sprays of lethal acid. I pulled the trigger again and again, lost in a haze of pain and rage, until reason intruded to remind me about the meaning of the repetitive *click* *click* *click* Mentally deactivating my anti-drop implant, I slowly rolled myself out from under the dead alien. "Oof." I let the dry shotgun drop with a clatter and slammed my riot shield on the deck, grasping it with both hands and weakly levering myself upright. "'Nother one down." Metallic clapping noises interrupted my reverie. "Very good, HoS MacTavish! You might not have been able to keep your station secure, but you've at least kept me safe and sound," the nuclear bomb chirped happily. I grimaced at the ever-present reminder of my madness, wishing I'd been more careful earlier about labeling the pills I'd snuck from the Medbay. "Now, about your future..." "Ain't got one," I interrupt brusquely, slowly hobbling over to the Captain's chair on the bridge and dropping into it with a sigh. I bring up the console screen, cursing under my breath as the message queue shows an empty list again. "I just wanted those bloody nuke codes-" "Sooooo, you don't care about how you go, but you were willing to sacrifice yourself to destroy this entire station in nuclear fire?" the bomb queries. "Methinks thou dost protest too much, Officer." "I..." For the first time in years, I'm at a loss for words. I busy myself cleaning a pitted wound around my neck, my hallucinations leaving me in blissful peace for a minute or two. I'm the one to break the silence: "Aye. Mayhaps there's nae any point to the 'verse; per'aps it's all just a sick feckin' joke." "So why care?" the bomb presses, its jovial tone gone. "If there's no point to anything...why do something?" I shrug, adjusting the makeshift armour plates across my back. "Gotta make 'em true. Even if there's nae any truth or justice out there, the only way there'll ever be any is if we choose t'make some." "Live for something," the nuke whispers reverently. "And die for..." "The crew," I respond, hefting my backup laser and feeling it thrum to life. "I'll save who I can, an' get justice fer the ones I couldn't." I shuffle across the deck, my steps lighter than they'd ever been before. "I'll show 'em that someone cares, that some other poor bastard on life's journey was willin' to give 'is all for strangers." I gently lean against the nuclear bomb, imagining that I could feel the annihilation contained inside. "Fer the colonies in distance from 'ere, fer the other poor bastards in spittin' distance from the bugs. I'll hold 'em here, contain the infection, let 'em live out their lives in peace." "Now that," the nuke intones, "is a future worth bleeding and dying for." A light on the end of the bomb pulses, and my eyes follow it to see chitinous shapes massing again behind the burned-out door. I nod, for once in agreement with my hallucination. "Aye." I square my shoulders, planting my shield and aiming my laser. "COME ON, YE BASTARDS!" I snarl. "COME AN' HAVE A GO IF YE THINK YE'RE HARD ENOUGH!" ------------- After-action transcript, MSgt Kearney, Trans-Solar Federation Marine Corps: "...our pinpointers led us to the station's nuke on the Bridge. We'd seen some carnage in the hallways, but this was somethin' else, man. One nuclear bomb, one dead human, and a fuckin' sea of dead xenos..."

probably attempt to hiss and end up biting my tongue

From the same round: Zixqu sitting in his office with his new pet fox, which he named Quximu. Zixqu, Runtime and Quximu, along with what was left of the Command staff in the shuttle cockpit, about to depart.

This guy exists somewhere between dream and reality, mind and matter. ...Or in my case for my profile cause hes pretty cool lookin. (props to those who recognize some bits of his outfit.)

bad art tbh uwu