OBT Forum

OH HELL YES!!!

This is getting better and better.  Don't stop! 

 

  so now you have Aliens and the guardians of the cylons!  Looking forward to see how MA will twist this story.  Wonder if the father of cylons will get a chance encounter a face hugger

“Prince, Anubis Actual,” the wireless spoke into the pilot’s helmet.  “I don’t like this talk of hostile lifeforms—the fourth Raptor is on the way down with full external loads.”

“Copy, Anubis Actual,” Hamish answered.  Since the small Battlestar normally carried only two Raptors, the Admiral had asked for volunteers for two more—and aggravated by the actions of the media, Hamish had volunteered.  So had Racetrack, who was flying the second of three Raptors loaded with Marines—but not fully loaded.  They still had room for eight survivors among them.

“Coming up on the beacon, Prince,” Jester called out from the ECO station.  “All Marines stand ready for deployment—arming cannon pod,” he continued and Prince saw the weapons station console come to life.  Each of his Raptors carried just the one pod for this flight, but weight considerations with a full troop bay meant his other hardpoints were empty.

“It sure isn’t a vacation world, Prince,” Jester said.  “High winds, barely breathable air, cold, lack of surface water . . . penal world maybe, but who in their right mind would colonize this place?”

“Certainly Acheron is a nasty bugger of a planet, Jester, but it does has a certain charm to it—and if those sensor readings are accurate, looks as if there is a sizeable amount of tylium ore in the crust.”

“Didn’t say it wasn’t a valuable world, Prince, but damn if I would want to live here,” he paused, “coming up on the lower edge of the cloud cover . . . now,” he said as the Raptor finally descended into moderately clear air.

“Hello,” Prince whispered as he saw the rough colony laid out below him.  And his DRADIS showed the location of the automatic landing beacon ahead.  And something else—there was a massive structure in the distance, easily twice the size of the Great Pyramid on Virgon.  “Would you look at that,” he whispered.  “Whoever these people are, they can build, Jester.”

“Recording,” the ECO reported.

“Excellent,” Prince answered and then he blinked.  “What the . . .,” he whispered and he triggered his flood lights as he went to hover mode.

The sudden bright light illuminated the ground below—and a sea of writhing creatures bared their fangs at the Raptor high above them.

“FRACK!” cried the Marine commander—Lieutenant Tamara Mayne.  “There are hundreds of those things down there!”

“And they are moving toward the colony structures,” Jester said tightly.  “I think we need to get down and grab our passengers and get the frack out of here, Prince.”

“I do believe you might be correct, old boy,” Hamish said quietly. 

“Marines, I want a perimeter around the landing pad!  Unload the heavy weapons,” snapped Tamara.  “If it ain’t human, kill it!”

“Looks like a welcoming committee,” Prince said as he approached the pad and set down.  A single human male was standing there—looking very nervous.  The hatch was open even before the skids touched the tarmac and the Marines flooded out with weapons at the ready.

Tamara walked up to the waiting man, “Lieutenant Tamara Mayne, Colonial Marine Corps—where are the rest?”

Bishop nodded—her Greek was atrocious, but he managed to translate the gist very quickly.  “They are coming now—the xenomorphs are very dangerous, Lieutenant.  Their outer carapace resists small arms fire and their blood is highly acidic in nature—what Colony are you from?”

“Libran,” she snapped.  “This just gets better and better, Marines—we need to take them down at range.”

“I am not familiar with that Colony—or with your dropship,” Bishop said in a confused voice.  “Is this all that you brought?”

“Raptors can hold eight troops plus the crew—I brought myself and fifteen Marines; you did want a place to sit on the ride to orbit, right?”  She considered the man—he was unarmed.  She unbuckled her pistol, and offered it to him.

He shook his head.  “I am not a Marine, Lieutenant Mayne.  I am a . . .,” he began.

“Ma’am, folks coming in!”  the platoon sergeant barked.

Tamara and Bishop trotted up to the perimeter as four adults—one carrying a child—came hurrying in.  Three wore uniforms and armor, but all four were carrying weapons.

Bishop spoke.  “They neither speak nor understand your language, but I can translate.”

“Tell them to get the kid aboard a Raptor,” she said, and then she cursed.  “Marines!  North-east!” she shouted as she raised her heavy rifle and began firing at the on-coming wave of alien creatures.

Her guests needed no translation of that as they turned and three of them began adding their fire—the fourth of the strange looking Marines held a weapon that literally belched a stream of burning gel into the creatures.

Tamara blinked at that, but she didn’t have time as the creatures just kept coming and coming—she was switching magazines and watching in shock the carapaces of the creatures shrugged off some of the rounds.  But not all.  And she smelled the stench of their acid blood and saw it melting away the edge of the tarmac with incredible speed.

“DANGER CLOSE!” shouted Prince over the wireless and Tamara and the Marines pulled back—a Raptor in the sky swooped down and fired a salvo of rockets into the creatures, momentarily breaking up the wave.

“GET ABOARD!” she yelled pulling on the arm of one of the stranded humans—the Marine turned around and for a second, Tamara thought he was going to shoot her, but he nodded as she pointed to the Raptors and yelled to his people.

“There are two more!” Bishop said, as he pointed at Gorman and Burke—Burke running for his life while Gorman backed up, firing his pistol in the aliens chasing him and throwing grenades.

“SUPPRESSIVE FIRE, NOW, GODS DAMN IT!” Tamara yelled.

The Fleet Marines laid down a withering barrage, and the strangers added their own grenades to the mix—Burke screamed and he went down, holding his leg, but Gorman lifted him with one hand and continued to stagger towards the pad.  The Marine she had grabbed ran forward—with one of his companions, and then a second who cursed.  Tamara couldn’t understand the words, but she could tell he was cursing.

And behind her she heard a scream as one, then a second, of her Marines was torn apart by the claws and teeth of these creatures.  She spun and fired a burst into three fighting over the first Marine—the second was being carried away, and she offered a quick prayer as she draw a bead on his body and put a bullet in the man’s chest.  She’d want her men to do the same for her, if it came to it, after all.

The strangers picked up the two injured men and retreated firing behind them as they came.

“Make it fast, Leftenant Mayne,” Prince broadcast, “these things are encircling the pad.  Racetrack and Burner are ready to lift—just you and our guests left.”

The fourth Raptor swooped in again—and if the rocket pods were empty, the two cannons pods were not.  High explosive tracer shells ripped through the attackers on either side of the retreating Marines and then they were there and Jester was helping them up and into the hatch.

“GO!” screamed Tamara as she grabbed the edge in one hand sat on the deck, still firing at the creatures charging through her bullets.

The Raptor rose up, even as Racetrack and Burner hovered thirty meters up—their cannons adding fury and flame to the sea of creatures below.  And then the Raptor shook—hard—and Tamara raised her rifle at the creature that had leaped ten meters from the ground to the wing and snarled at her.

CLICK.  The firing pin fell on an empty chamber and time seemed to stand still as a slime-coated pair of inner jaws snapped out towards her face—to meet a shotgun blast that caused her ears to ring.

She screamed as the acid blood of the creatures coated her legs and then her guests hauled her inside and Jester sealed the hatch as Prince punched it for orbit.

Jester opened a survival pack and dug deep, extracting a brown package that he shook and tore open and he said, “This is going to hurt like all the hells,” and then he poured a red powder atop of the acid burning holes through her suit, clothing, flesh, and blood.

Tamara screamed in agony—and then she passed out.  But the substance stopped the bubbling acid cold.  The evacuees laid her on the deck and one of them held his fingers to her throat; he felt a pulse and he nodded.  He babbled something in a language that Jester didn’t understand and held out one hand, but at the moment, the language didn’t matter, so Jester just smiled and he clasped the man’s hand and shook it.

Here we go action and something worse than cyclons.

Prince’s eyes locked onto the warning lights that suddenly began to flash and he cursed.  “JESTER!  Port APU just died; we’re losing pressuring on the number three Tylium tank as well—and RCS clusters 2, 6, 7, 10, and 11 just went off-line!  I’ve got a warning light on the landing skids—they have failed to retract.”

“It’s not instrumentation,” Jester replied as he stood wiped the fog from the hatch window and looked outside.  “Prince, we’ve got great big holes all across the port wing, directly over the APU housing,” he reported.

“Prince, Racetrack,” the wireless said.  “You are streaming fuel.”

“Cutting tank three from the loop—sealing lines and dumping fuel,” the pilot said, and then he sighed with relief.  “Fuel pressure stabilized.  Anubis, Prince, declaring an emergency, maneuverability compromised, request landing instructions.”

“FRACK!” yelled Racetrack.  “Prince, one of those . . . things . . . is clinging to the under-carriage and trying to dig inside!  He’s pulling apart the hull plate like it is wet paper!”

“We’re in hard vacuum!  What the frack?” asked Prince in a stunned tone.

Bishop nodded back in the troop bay.  “Reports state that they can survive in vacuum for at least a few minutes—they are a fascinating species.”

“Hold your course steady, Prince,” said Racetrack as she slid her Raptor in behind and below his . . . and Prince closed his eyes and muttered a short prayer. 

“Please tell me you aren’t going to . . .,” he began and then Racetrack’s gun-pod began to flash and the Raptor suddenly shook hard.

“GOT ‘EM!” said Racetrack, and then she paused.  “Eh, Prince.  I kinda blew away your port skid—sorry.  Oh crap, his blood just sprayed all up inside the hull!”

More warning lights began to flash and alarms sounded, and Jester spoke up.  “Main Bus C undervolt warning—shut down all nonessential electronics,” he commanded.  “Main Bus B in the yellow.”

“Shutting down DRADIS and all non-essential electronics,” Prince replied.  “Starboard skids are retracted and bays closed.  Fuel pressure steady,” that the Gods for small favors, Prince thought as the interior lights flickered and dimmed.

“Prince, Anubis Actual,” the wireless broadcast.  “You are clear for immediate landing in Bay Four—emergency teams standing by.”

“Copy, Anubis; we have casualties on board.  Be advised, we may have uninvited guests clinging to the hull.”

“The surgery is ready, Prince—Marines will be at hand once repressurization is complete.”

“All non-essential systems off-line,” reported Jester.  “Frack, the battery charge is still failing—Main Bus B is now critical undervolt, I’ve got master cautions on Main Bus A.  We’re shorting out power somewhere.”

“Affirmative, Jester,” said Racetrack.  “There is a hole in the battery well directly beneath the troop bay where that creature was trying to get inside.  I guess the splatter from his blood is doing a number on the cells.”

Jester exhaled deeply.  Raptors had a large number of very powerful batteries stored beneath the deck allowing for constant operation on long-duration flights even when the engines were shut-down.  Recharged by the two Auxiliary Power Units when the main engines were off-line, all power was channeled through the heavy—and toxic—banks of batteries from the main generator before being distributed among the systems.  And sometimes, battle damage would result in the acid from those batteries entering the troop bay—hence the presence of the acid-nullification powders in the survival kit.  “Copy, Racetrack,” Jester said.  “Prince, I’m shutting the batteries out of the power loop completely—starboard APU is on-line for direct feed . . . NOW,” and he sighed as the warning and caution lights died away and the interior lights increased in illumination.

“That did it, Jester.  Port and ventral RCS clusters are still non-responsive—landing the bird is going to be a bit sticky, so get the passengers to assume crash positions.”

Bishop nodded and he translated.  One of the passengers—one of the Marines—began to rock and say words in a soft voice that sounded to Jester pretty much like someone whining, and then another snapped at him and the first quit talking.  But he kept on rocking back and forth from his seat on the floor.

“Set fire suppression to automatic—and let’s trigger the manual on landing as well,” Prince said, “just to be on the safe side.”

“It’s the only way to be sure, with the damage this bird has taken,” Jester agreed, as he adjusted his controls and tightened his straps.  He lifted a plastic cover over four manual switches and put his gloved fingers atop of them.  “We will lose power the instant I trigger manual fire-suppression, so tell me when we’re down, Prince.”

“Copy that, Jester,” the pilot said as he approached the bay.  Unlike the larger ships in the Colonial Fleet, Anubis didn’t have an actual flight deck—she had small hanger bays along her flanks.  So landing a damaged bird was tricky—come in too hot and the Raptor would crash into the far bulkhead.  Too slow, and the difference in orbital speeds might slam them into the aft bulkhead.  Added to the danger was that unlike a proper flight deck, Anubis had full internal artificial gravity in her landing bays.  The Virgon Prince blinked away sweat as he rolled the Raptor so that his undamaged starboard RCS could be used to brake and adjust course.

He glided into the bay and squirted the RCS clusters rapidly . . . and they responded.  The Raptor slowed, and as the small vessel crossed the gravity plane, it fell towards the deck, slamming down hard, the single working ventral cluster firing constantly to slow the impact.

“NOW!” Prince said, and Jester triggered all four manual fire suppression systems.  Both APUs and the twin engines were flooded with foam, along with fuel tanks and lines.  And the interior and exterior lights died as power failed with the batteries off-line.  Slowly the bay doors closed and Jester watched as the outside pressure gauge began to climb—when it reached the green, he yanked the hatch open and he smiled at the sight of emergency crews rushing into the bay—and armed Marines.

“Nice landing, Prince,” he said.  “Frack me if I wouldn’t rather be fighting the Guardians instead of those critters down there.”

“You have got that bloody well right,” Prince replied.

Despite my longing (heh-heh) to include xenomorphs more in this story, this is their last appearance.  (Or is it?)  I have used the setting of Aliens just so we have an Earth that has the capability of fighting the Guardians, without assuring either side of an immediate curb-stomp.

The story is going other directions from this point.  I don't know if you are going to happy with that or disappointed, but we aren't going to be seeing the xenomorphs (or Predators, or the ancient alien astronauts) any further.

MA

Thank the Gods. The Xenos would have been a distraction.

Very nice MA, just a thought but if you need more Earth ships/hardware the Twilight:2300 setting is in the same tech range.