Betrayals (A Scythian Short)

BrikWars fiction in long-prose form. Trigger warning: Walls of text

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Re: Betrayals (A Scythian Short)

Post by The Shadowscythe » Thu May 15, 2014 5:12 am

Another explosion - another Veritech ripped to shreds by combined Meson bolt fire - Shadowscythe turned on his boost systems and evaded another infernous volley as Lord Warheads IFF transponder appeared on his hud display. Another gout of laser and missile fire ripped through the underground tunnel as the two veritechs combined their fire - Lord Shadowscythe could feel the anger and hatred building in his mind, in his heart - everything had gone to hell in a fucking handbasket. A mission he hated after a path of betrayal had him back to back with a man he wanted to grind so far beyond dead that not even the writers of history would know who he was. Surrounded by eldritch beasts and obscene creatures lead by a nascent mind of an ancient evil.

He let out a bloody, primal roar of anger as even more laser bolts and beams flew through the air. Blood, heat and fire.

" - well if you are going to be nothing but impertinent then here is the ultimatum. This is the last stop between worlds. None of them can stop what has happened - but some can stop the end of all thi-"

The Cavorite emplacement far above finalised its power systems - locked and loaded its safety interlinks and then released as terrajoules of power built up from geothermal and fusion generators far beneath vomited forth power to the weapons capacitor systems, which then fed the raw power into a beam emitted - directly into a chunk of Cavorite the size of a small house. Within less than a nanosecond the Cavorite beam formed and fired its beam down onto the Scythian fighter beneath - turning kilometers of barren rock into atomised nothingness as it then vaporised concrete and metal until it finally connected with the fighter within.

Lord Shadowscythe halted in fear for a moment as he recognized the orange hue of the Cavorite beam around him, he was ground zero to his own doom - his atoms would be ripped apart, and his only hope would be in not being able to feel the pain of his own death.

Except he didn't.

Within the boxes latched to the fighters hull - Carefully refined globes of Cavorite reacted - a beam shunted through another reality grinding relentlessly against the very skin of the Cavorite within - a defense mechanism to protect the eeping molecules of another reality against our own fought for dominance in a universe where neither should be.

An unrelenting force up against an immovable object.

The skin of the universe - trying to defend against a pair of fractures that should never have been forced up against each other, did the only thing it could.

It cracked.

One nanosecond, two veritechs where alone in amongst a horde of alien terrors fighting against the end.

The next nanosecond - nothing.

An explosion that had not been seen since the birth of the primal moon erupted from the skin of reality - expanding ever outwards until it violated kilometers of rock and metal - finally lurching out of the moons surface as a pillar of blinding not-light, ripping through everything in its path - an explosion 5 kilometers around and almost half the moons width cut through stellar gases and atoms until it blinked away.

The rest of the base vented its oxygen out from the newest fissure in its vast and broken skin, dragging Shraag Thralls out into space before what little gravity remained could hold them down, but the two veritech fighters where nowhere to be seen.

A ripple in time and space echoed off itself for a moment//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

- Discontinuity -

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////and then folded back on itself.

"THIS WAS NEVER SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN!"

From the epicentre of the moon shattering craft a single red dot blinked into existence moving at high speed out towards the stars.

Its occupant waking from an eternity long sleep, the death of one timeline and the emergence to another, he blinked his eyes open and tugged at the controls.

Lord Shadowscythe, in his own body, in his Veritech fighter in full flight mode - in the encrusted, blasted remains of the Tiara moon. Pieces of orbital platforms and elevator shafts drifted past cold, dead corpses and frozen blood, frozen bone. The Britannians had been destroyed utterly, mind, body and soul. There was no sign of Stormsword One, or any of the other Scythian Samurai fighter wing. He was split between two points of horrifying reference. On one side, the dead moon, filled with Shraag thralls - the other side? A fully armed and operational Shraag Death Sphere.

He cycled through what remained of his weapon systems, he had nothing to fight that kind of impending doom. With one option left, he opted to run.
-- WARNINK -- LINK BELOW IZ KNOWN TO CAUZE HEMMORAGE --
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Re: Betrayals (A Scythian Short)

Post by The Shadowscythe » Thu May 15, 2014 5:31 am

He jolted the control yolk left and right again as the fighters engines pushed their very limits - unrelenting speed against unrelenting force as the Shraag Death Sphere opened fire with capitol ship grade firepower against a single manned fighter.

FTL aperature after FTL aperature opened around him, the Shraag's Meson bolt cannons would usually open an FTL portal inside their target and open fire on the unprotected innards of kilometre long battleships and dreadnoughts, gutting them utterly while sitting behind an unendurable wall of nothingness, shrugging off enemy fire while everything around them burned to ash.

But against the speed of a single fighter? Meson bolts the size of his own craft erupted into realspace as he dodged and jinked in every direction, fists of metal burst against the Tiara moon as they missed Shadwscythe completely, others continued into the space around him to be propelled forever onwards into the endless void.

There was only so long he could keep this game going, eventually his senses would dull, his thrusters would fail, his engines would burn out and he would be hit. He would die. Here and now, and prophesy would come to an abrupt end.

His HUD display shot warning after warning as the Meson bolt firepower started growing ever closer to him, 100 meters became 50, 50 became 20, 20 became 10, 10 became 5 - he was getting slower, the attrition against his piloting skill was winning.

Which was when the shot, the shot that was 1 meter away from his very cockpit window - twisted and bent in mid-air.

Only then did the HUD display read what he almost flew past - a point of concentrated gravity hanging in space, almost invisible, undetectable, but many at S.O.N.I had hypothesized about without having a chance to research one first-hand.

An Immortal Core, the Immortal Core of the recently deceased Lord Warhead - who had been almost on top of the explosion when the Cavorite reaction had taken place.

He yanked the controls and transfered the Samuari fighter from fighter to mecha mode and turned end on end and lined himself up with the Core, reaching out with one hand he took the indomitable object and grasped it in a cold titanium plated fist, the HUD display showed warnings of gravity related fractures - so he over-rode them and locked the fist around the object and jolted to one side as another FTL aperture opened up almost directly in front of him - he could see the immense cannon on the other side, revolving on a massive gimble deep within the hull of the Death Sphere. There was only one shot at this, all or nothing. Do or die.

So he raised the other arm of the Samurai Mecha, Laser cannon rifle in hand. And opened fire.
-- WARNINK -- LINK BELOW IZ KNOWN TO CAUZE HEMMORAGE --
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Re: Betrayals (A Scythian Short)

Post by The Shadowscythe » Thu May 15, 2014 6:11 am

One moment he was looking down a circle of lightening in space, down the barrel of a massive cannon held within a system of gimbles and revolving apparatus within a space of non-euclidian spires and arches, smothered in the endlessly moving clattering of Shraag drones, thralls of the Eldritch beast.

The next, power built up within the barrel of a rifle, and a beam of blue light shot forth - like an insect before a monolith of power, the Samurai fighter let rip with a single blast of laser fire - through the FTL opening, and down into the barrel of the other cannon.

For a split second, there was nothing - and then the internal workings of the Meson bolt cannon began to melt and warp, metal heated up, turning orange, red, then burning white. Vaporised internally, the Meson Bolt Cannon exploded like a fragmentation grenade the size of an office block - fire and slithers of liquid metal burst in every direction as the weapon exploded like a volcano, annihilating Shraag Thralls in their thousands as a wall of fire shot out of the FTL opening before it shattered like glass and resolved back into real space. In the distance, the Death Sphere loomed like a second moon before it wavered for just a moment. Something internally seemed to change, something that couldn't be seen - and then, it happened. A tower of flame rocketed out of its surface, an internal explosion that had gutted a large portion of the vessel and finally reached space.

And the debris kept going. The intangible wall of nothingness that forced enemy lasers, cannon rounds, bullets, missiles and beams to dissolve into nothingness had been destroyed. The sphere was vulnerable.

He now had a weapon.

And at least a small chance of escape.

His resolve strengthened for a moment as he held his ground, not moving an inch as the sphere stopped burning internally, the vacuum of space had simply removed all the oxygen needed for fire to burn through. A moment later - it seemed to retake its previous sheen, an affect of the mind that filled the gap no machine could, the impenetrable wall had returned - its guard was up once more, seconds away from going back on the offensive.

He checked the charge of the Laser rifle, enough for once last blaze of glory, and enough missiles left for one last volley. He was scraping the barrel for the last of his own offensive options.

Which was when the Deathsphere surrounded his field of vision with FTL openings, every single Meson bolt Cannon onboard the ship was trained solely on him, all at the same time.

Simply opening fire would remove one gun, but the rest would still kill him - shredded apart by mountainous combined fire.so he opted to fire something else instead.

Pushing throttle connections opened, the engines burst into full glorious life as he thrust himself forward - the Scythian Veritech Samurai fighter disappeared from space and re-emerged inside the bowels of the Shraag Death Sphere, catalytic speed carried him past a gun barrel the size of a military frigate and past reloading mechanisms the size of a small house, down past gimble mechanisms and power cores keeping the FTL mirror system open, past non-euclidian spires and arches and into the depths of the ship. Into the belly of the beast.

Unfortunatley for the Shraag, its thralls still had their weapons locked firmly on him as he moved through to the interior of the ship. Sensor systems followed their computerised methodical path as the titanic cannons revolved on their mechanisms, targeted him.

And opened fire.
-- WARNINK -- LINK BELOW IZ KNOWN TO CAUZE HEMMORAGE --
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Re: Betrayals (A Scythian Short)

Post by The Shadowscythe » Thu May 15, 2014 6:30 am

Without any other words to describe it, the world around him simply fell gravity and motion combined with each other to devastating effect as the Meson bolt cannons throughout the ship opened fire simultaneously at Lord Shadowscythe while he was still inside the ship.

Arches and spires twisted, jumped and fell away from each other as the ships internal structure simply fractured in a million directions. Shraag drones died in their thousands, either killed in the first blast, crushed, grinded, split, stabbed, shattered or burned to death as their birth vessel simply chewed itself to pieces on its own mass.

Lord Shadowscythe, eyes wide open in shock and fear, jolted and dodged between chunks of metal the size of small countries as the cataclysmic death of the ship surrounded him, up, down, left, right, forward, back, the centre of hid HUD marked the only local point of reference, the Tiara moon far beyond the walls of condemnation and death that surrounded him. Somehow, an escape from the belly of the beast.

Bloody seconds passed, vast rivers of fire erupted around him as power cores exploded like ball bearings - Shraag drones swarmed over the points of destruction, absorbing the blasts with their own corpses in an effort to try and control the damage.

He moved up, across, down - tunnels of falling steel in every direction as he then halted himself, reversing the thrusters and coming to a stop as a continent sized bulkhead slammed down in front of him, followed by another behind.

Trapped, he jolted sideways between the chasm created by the two vast plates as he saw the one in front of him begin to melt, turning white hot.

Then white blue. Expanding outwards at speed.

An antimatter reaction?!

The continent sized plate exploded outwards in a shower of exotic particles, as the burning fury passed - he pushed his thrusters up to the point of contact and lined up between the falling pieces of burning ship for long enough to see a familiar shape shoot past trough the stars beyond.

Red, Angular, Long neck and big, heavy engines. Two Antimatter projector turrets and enough point firepower to wipe out a fortilla of frigates.

A Scythian Rigel Kentaurus class Destroyer.

Stormsword One.
-- WARNINK -- LINK BELOW IZ KNOWN TO CAUZE HEMMORAGE --
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Re: Betrayals (A Scythian Short)

Post by The Shadowscythe » Thu May 15, 2014 7:17 am

"Stormsword One! Stormsowrd One This is Lord Shadowscythe! Samurai flight One! Can you read me? CAN YOU READ?!" He yelled down an open comm channel on as many frequencies as his Samurai fighter could transmit as he bolted across another chasm of twisting metal and fractured towers as oxygen and fire twirled around into swirling vortexes of destruction.

"-ay again-"

Another tower of metal came falling down in front of him.

"-ormsword One, say again?"

A geometric walkway of multi patterned spires shattered across his vision like a vase smashing into the ground into a million ever falling pieces.

"-nknown contact, we are Danger Close. Please Identif-"

A split second opening presented itself as one spire collided with another an a pathway to the outer hull appeared for a moment, pushing the engines to their limit once again and bolted towards the gap, pushing ahead of a crushing death by mere milliseconds.

"Stormsowrd One! This Is Lord Shadowscythe! I am inside Danger Close target with mission vital asset, Provide Covering Fire! Make me a hole Kato!" He yelled through a moment of static free transmission.

"Received! Making a hole sir!" Kato's familiar voice returned as the sphere rocked and turned once more.

He held for just a moment as the metal before him burned away - another antimatter projector blast cutting a chasm through armour and bulkheads as they annihilated all material in their way before they then wrought the entire superstructure of the ship with fire and death.

At that moment, he gunned the engines once more as twisting metal and girders formed massive teeth that gnashed and clawed around him - beating the tide of fire and doom as he shot out of the Shraag Death Sphere and back into space, not stopping to look back as his IFF transponder identified Stormsword One and Stormsword One did the same in turn, his HUD display started to show the familiar markings of missile paths, fire corridors and target markers as the battlenet system fed information across to his own screen he opened another channel.

"Kato, I am pulling in to dock. Myself and one other survivor are all that's left, spool the FTL drive and prepare to jump back to Lord Warheads co-ordinates the moment I am tethered!" He yelled down the channel as he pulled closer to the ship he called home with each passing second.

"Rodger that sir, spooling FTL drive now" Kato replied as the channel closed and The Samurai fighter drew closer and closer to an external docking arm, tense moments passed as the arm made connection and Stormsword One wasted no time, the entire ship flashed out of reality and re-ermerged light years away in an instant.

What little could be called of a mission, was finally complete.
-- WARNINK -- LINK BELOW IZ KNOWN TO CAUZE HEMMORAGE --
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Re: Betrayals (A Scythian Short)

Post by The Shadowscythe » Thu May 15, 2014 7:26 am

The one called Loveless looked up from the moon below, a single, unprotected human figure against the vacuum of space and the light of dead stars, and for the first time in an eternity he felt nothing but anger.

His psionic abilities, first gathered from his heritage, honed by the Immortals and then empowered by his greater self - a sphincter of the Sraag, they had shielded him from the blast. His drone however had not been so lucky, each drone was a part of a synapse, part of a greater whole that would eventually re-awaken itself. Loosing some was a simple affair, cell regrowth of a galactic scale conciousness. Loosing this many was the psychic equivalent of taking a brick to the face, and it was compounded on top of the damage to the Death Sphere far above. Somehow the Mortal fleshling had caused cataclysmic damage to the vessel - rendering it completely useless. Its own force of gravity was tearing it apart. Not in an age so long that mortal minds could put a date to it had a death sphere been completely destroyed, yet these . . . savage, weak and primitive underlings had managed it. The worst insult was that the most damage was done by but a single creature!

Not an army, an armada, a last stand, the death of a species, but a single member of a primitive race, meant to be expunged, wiped away like bacteria from the surface of reality! He forced his mind outwards and caught a face, a name "Lord Shadowscythe"

He had taken his quarry, the fellow Immortal one he had sensed here, and destroyed an entire death sphere, and escaped alive.

Another Emotion passed through his mind, a welcome burning that had not been felt by the mighty creature in an eternity. A welcome change.

It smiled at this new emotion.

Vengeance . . .
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Re: Betrayals (A Scythian Short)

Post by cleanupcrew » Thu May 15, 2014 9:20 pm

I find military/battle fics hard to write because I just don't have the ingenuity you do.

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Re: Betrayals (A Scythian Short)

Post by The Shadowscythe » Fri May 16, 2014 1:45 am

Colette wrote:I find military/battle fics hard to write because I just don't have the ingenuity you do.
As I said before, these ideas don't pop into my head as written word, more like scenes from a film that I then have to transfer into written word. This is mostly just time and practice old chappe, having enough time yesterday to go on a posting spree and finish off that arc was a massive help to me because I can now move into the other two thirds of this tale, which I find massively exciting because large chunks of it are not battles. Intrigue and plot are abound. Just as soon as I finish these next three 14 hour shifts at work.
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Re: Betrayals (A Scythian Short)

Post by Theblackdog » Sat May 17, 2014 1:32 pm

I'm reading this while imagining Lord Shadowscythe in his Catholic schoolgirl costume, and it's hilarious.
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Re: Betrayals (A Scythian Short)

Post by The Shadowscythe » Sat May 17, 2014 1:42 pm

Theblackdog wrote:I'm reading this while imagining Lord Shadowscythe in his Catholic schoolgirl costume, and it's hilarious.
Japanese school girl costume. Gotta get it right man.
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Re: Betrayals (A Scythian Short)

Post by The Shadowscythe » Wed May 21, 2014 3:54 am

. . . beep . . .

A voice faded in an out of a comforting darkness, the world drifted into swirls of light, colour and vivid life before fading back out again in a blanket of comforting warmth and distance.

. . . beep . . .

A memory glittered past, a childhood spent running through fields of corn and wheat. Joy. Laughter. Nostalgia. The smell of hot chocolate.

. . . beep . . .

A fireplace in an old, small house. Kept tight with keepsakes and mementos. An old lady laughed, the smell of a cooked dinner. Gravy. Favorite Teddy bear. A hug. A passing of time.

. . . beep . . .

Schoolyard. Play! Running, talking, fun! Teacher! Maths! Desks! Drawing!

. . . beep . . .

Accident. Grav-car crashed. Hospital. Dad. Gone. Forever.

. . . beep . . .

Secondary School. Scythian History. Holding hands under a table. Fleeting Kiss. FTL algorithms for beginners.

. . . beep . . .

Graduation. Pride. Laughter. Tears at not seeing friends again. Wish dad was here.

. . . beep . . .

Scythian boot camp. Navy. Intelligence. Running. Mud. Fear. Point, Follow, Fire! Top of class.

. . . beep . . .

Fleet Intelligence. Own ship one day. Pride. First Tour. See you soon mum. See you soon Nana. I'll Keep Safe I promise.

. . . beep . . .

Home in three months. Nana passed away. Tears. Pain. Loss.

. . . beep . . .

Rain. Why does it always rain at funerals?

. . . beep . . .

Second Tour of duty. New Ship. New faces. S.O.N.I.

. . . beep . . .

COMBAT ALERT ONE! ALL HANDS BRACE FOR IMPACT! THE CAPTAIN IS DOWN! MEDICAL TEAMS TO THE BRIDGE! THIS IS ACTING CAPTAIN! ALL GUNS! FIRE AT WILL! I REPEAT! FIRE AT WILL!

. . . beep . . .

Medal. Pride. Loss. Promotion. Admiralty Board.

. . . beep . . .

Immortals. War. Fear.

. . . beep . . .

Ereberus Three.

. . . beep . . .

Ereberus Three.

. . . beep . . .

Ereberus Three.

. . . beep . . .

PAIN. PAIN. PAIN. PAIN. PAIN. PAIN. PAIN. PAIN. PAIN.
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Re: Betrayals (A Scythian Short)

Post by The Shadowscythe » Wed May 21, 2014 4:43 am

Eventually, her eyes opened and adjusted to the harsh light of the room, slowly and surely. In the background she could hear the progressive beep and boops of life support machines and monitors that flooded the room as she opened her eyes fully and took in the space around her.

She turned her head to one side and then the other as she found that she was alone in the room, the air was cool and dry as if it had not been lived in for at least a day or so. She tried to move her arms, pushing them down to her sides - they responded to her call and pushed herself up in the bed and eventually sat up in the bed. She wondered for a moment where everyone was before a twitch caught her eye - the bedsheets where moving , just the tiniest of movements back and forth.

Kialya concentrated for a moment and found that the twitch had stopped, and then a twang of fear kicked in - her last memories where of waking up in a bed. This bed, and finding that she had no legs left from above he knee down.

Yet here she was, wiggling her toes.

Almost too afraid to lift the bedsheet, she instead concentrated again - and found that not only could she wiggle the "toe" once more, but she was wiggling all her toes, on both feet - then she was wiggling her feet back and forth at the ankle, slowly at first, but gaining speed with each time they moved.

Then, she started to slowly, but surely pull back the sheets.

Scars crossed both of her thighs and up across her hips and in various patterns across her stomach, eventually meeting in a conjoined pattern at the base of her spine and then all the way up to the back of the neck. Her fingers traced the route between well worked scar tissue and skin grafts that covered and healed the worst of the damage until eventually they worked their way down back to the leg - to some type of synthetic gauze material that seemed to weave its way into the flesh, visible under the skin as some type of criss-crossed metallic weave that disappeared inside her leg on one side, and ended in a dull metallic sheen on the other. Eventually she mustered up the courage to fully lift away the sheet and took in the sight of her new limbs.

Made of the same dull gray metal, they seemed to follow the same lines as her former legs - her body shuddered for a moment at how much precision they seemed to have been machined with, worked to match the curves of her body all the way down to the ankle, which ended in what looked like an almost human foot that ended in three toes instead of her former five.

For what seemed like hours she just sat, and watched and moved her new legs - a stretch here, a wiggle there - concentration seemed to fade into natural movements as she realised the phantom limb sensation had been fooled into becoming the new control mechanism for her feet. Sensation pads in the based of the foot fed back into nerve endings, so where phantom limb told her there should be a floor - the sensor pads backed up with a feeling of solidness. As she turned on the bed and put her new feet on the floor, there was indeed a floor - her legs told her this floor was nice, and solid - and ready to be walked on.

Which is when she lifted her weight off the bed and attempted to take a step.

And fell promptly onto her face.

She rolled over and cursed, the blood pressure and heartbeat monitors she was still attached to spiked and Assyrian medicea technicians came running into the room to help her to her feet as she cursed and cursed again. It wasn't her new legs that failed her, but her body - which seemed to be slower than before, as if her bones where somehow made of lead.

Eventually, sat back on the side of the bed, the various techs went about their tasks, she caught utterances of "Poly-bonding" and "Ceramic grafts" how her system had "adapted faster than anticipated to the new systems" and other blurbs of jargon and what she had pushed aside as crap, until she looked up and past them to a familiar face stood in the doorway.
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Re: Betrayals (A Scythian Short)

Post by The Shadowscythe » Fri May 23, 2014 8:47 am

"Now, I've been into a lot of fire-fights, and served under a lot of officers - but I have never, ever seen such a lazy officer as yours truly. I mean really, a week. Asleep? That has gotta be a record." Harkins spoke up with a sarcastic attitude from the doorway, casually leaning into it as Medicea techs came and went. He seemed to hold an aura about himself that it was the single most effortless thing in the universe to do while every monitor and alarm in the room went off, alerting every single member of medical staff within a deck radius that their linked occupant was dead.

Their occupant however, was very far from dead as the Medicea techs went about their tasks of checking pulses and blood pressures and wound areas.

"Well, this is no way to wake a girl up in the morning. where are my flowers? my breakfast? My morning coffee?" Kialya joked weakly as the medicea techs finished their tasks and she pushed herself up fully onto the bed.

"Lost in the post about three jumps back, just after you went under the knife" he said as he slinked into the room, narrowly avoiding one tech who went off in a rush for more 'IV fluids' and then past another who detached a nearby monitor, he managed to casually slide into the chair next to the bed and picked up the nearby flipchart and speed-read through the top page, pretended to read through the nest few pages and then set it back down again on the tableside he picked it up from.

"But seriously, how are you feeling?" Harkins asked as he met her gaze between the techs.

"Like I had a fight with a grav-truck full of bricks and lost . . . " she managed to meek out into the room as the last of the techs cleared out of the way.

"Quaram said the same thing when he lost his leg. An Immortal black hole grenade inside a boobytrapped gun, they knew we had orders to take samples of as much tech as possible. So the bastards set them to blow the moment a non-recognised user picked them up, or even got fraking near them." He said, looking down into his hands as he picked invisible dirt out from underneath his nails.

"Grenade -vs- stairs, the endless fight" Kialya uttered half-jokingly as she stared down as the dull metallic legs that now dangled over the side of the bed.

"He did find a couple of upsides to it though, that poly-ceramic stuff they have to bond to your bonds so they can take the prosthetics? damn near unbreakable bones, and the legs themselves? You can take off those outer plates and have weapon holsters in them, or pouches. Imagine being able to go into a firefight without a gun, you tap your heel and BAM! gun in your hand." He said, he was starting to waffle on as Kialya simply stared at her feet, wondering how she would adapt to having a grand total of six toes.

"Of course, there is the other upside - you'll look damn good in shorts, the whole "Pirate chick" thing is in this year" He said, testing to see if she was paying attention.

"Hey-wha?" She said, snapping herself out of his half-conversation "What do you mean Pirate chick?"

"Well lets face it, the whole peg-leg thing only goes so far, but you have two gods-damned peg legs, all you need now is the eye patch and the parrot and you'll be set!" He said, half-chuckling at his own joke "In fact, anyone got an anti-matter blade around here? I might just take my own leg off so I can be part of the trend!"

The only response he got from the room was from a lightly frumpy looking Assyrian Medicea tech who shot him a look that simply spelled out "Go on punk, make my day".

Kialya eventually eventually looked back up from her feet to harkins and started to utter the words coming into her head "Thank you, for coming back"

"We've all been waiting for you, Me, Quaram, Larrissa. I just happened to be here at the time." He said non-nonchalantly as he shrugged the conversation off "We kinda became your caretakers while we waited for you to come back around."

"You did?"

"Yeah, partly off our own backs. Partly because of this" He said as he reached around to his back pocket and pulled out a miniature dataslate - it contained few details besides their four names, a time, a date, and the instructions to head towards Scythia One.

"That's the Emperors Ship" She uttered in a sharply drawn breath.

"Yep, it would seem that we four have a mission. Maidens only knows what he wants from us - he must have been keeping tabs for a while now." Harkins replied "But in two days time, that's where we need to be. So get ready."

"Harkins, I can hardly walk" Kialya replied.

"In that case, I guess this is where three Scythian Marines come in." He replied, with a grin that filled her emotions with a feeling of undistilled dread.
-- WARNINK -- LINK BELOW IZ KNOWN TO CAUZE HEMMORAGE --
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The Shadowscythe
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Re: Betrayals (A Scythian Short)

Post by The Shadowscythe » Wed May 28, 2014 3:28 pm

(Right then ladies and gentlemen, you will have to forgive me for this one - i have recently laid my hands on an iPad which has lead to a new learning curve that should allow me to return to posting on a semi-regular system. I was cut off access from the works laptop along with every other member of staff due to reasons beyond our control, and the combination of 14-24 hour long shifts made it difficult to do almost everything else. So yeah. IPad. Story. Stuff.)

Kialya was beginning to understand that her relationship with the floor had reached a new stage in their respective lives, for each two or three successful steps across the floor, she would be greeted with a sudden and fateful collision as gravity and mass combined to bring her and the rubberized floor together with a resounding "thud" that would he followed up with a stream of Scythian curse words and expletives.

For what was the last of many attempts that afternoon, she let herself drop to the floor and stayed there as the stims that got her to her feet at the start caused the blood to pound behind her eyeballs as she took deep, heavy breaths while trying to ignore the large collections of yellow and purple bruises forming across her body, both the seen and unseen ones from the sweat soaked T-shirt and jogging shorts she had donned for the task.

After a minute or so of heavy breathing, slowing her heartbeat down and returning to a normalized rhythm a gloved hand suddenly appeared over her vision. Harkins had taken it upon him to be part mentor, part teacher and part drill instructor for her return to the walking world. Exuding confidence out of everywhere she was sure confidence could come out of and even a few places she thought he couldn't. He had been giving her baby steps, careful encouragement, words of support or utter hell depending on how she had been doing at the time. Now, six hours into getting back into the swing of getting to her feet and using guide-rails to get used to the feeling of the new legs, she was put to the task of walking once more.

She took his hand with one of her own, using the other to push her now vastly augmented weight up from the floor. One of the worst things she had to get used to was the poly ceramic grafts to her skeletal structure that allowed her system to handle the stress of the prosthetics grafted directly onto her body. Waking up and finding out you weighed twice your previous body weight was playing hell with her balance and depth perception, causing her to suddenly feel clumsy and out of kilter with her senses, as if her body had somehow rebelled against her and gone through a second adolescence while she was under the surgeons knife.

After this was how the new legs operated, she had gone through it in her head many times over. The direct nerve graft allowed the minds own "phantom" limb to drive the new ones without the feedback loop that prevented much older replacement limbs from being able to track their movements fully. Now her own mind was driving the legs to move as a natural rather than conscious thought, her brain was telling her that her legs should end above the knee and that the imagined phantom limbs where not there at all, and these cold metallic replacements she could feel where just ghosts of machines, that she was going to fall over at any minute as her ghostly thoughts of legs disconnected from the real thing and just decided to take a walk all on their own.

Which would result in another, all too familiar connection with the ground.

As she rose fully to her feet, she uttered out a breathless "thanks" to Harkins as she steadied herself. She had less than two days to get this right, and regain her officers composure. Get back into the game and back onto her literal 'feet'

A short breath in, a sharp breath out. She looked over to Quaram and Larissa in the far corner of the physiotherapy lounge and then up ahead of her again.

She could to this. She had to do this. Even if it was the hardest thing she had ever done.

Screw the fraking floor.

She took another step.
-- WARNINK -- LINK BELOW IZ KNOWN TO CAUZE HEMMORAGE --
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The Shadowscythe
Touch my cloud song and I will fuck you up
Touch my cloud song and I will fuck you up
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Re: Betrayals (A Scythian Short)

Post by The Shadowscythe » Thu Jun 05, 2014 5:05 pm

A day and a half passed with numerous bruises, knocks and bumps as Kialya adjusted to the new prosthetics, learning at first to stand as the Assyrian medicea techs adapted the phantom limb nerve reception into fine motor skills and them the hard work of starting to learn how to walk again. Then Harkins, Quaram and Larissa took the term literally as they "walked" her through relearning how to walk. Various stages of the process where cut loose through adaptive AI systems that where uploaded into her Scythian officers neural interface helped her to relearn her "baby steps" before moving onto taking faster paces, eventually running at speed on the physiotherapy treadmill until she ran out of breath, sweating the last of her exhaustion out on the padded floor as a hand shot into her vision holding a bottle of water already for her.

"You did good today, get some water down you. You'll need to get some sleep before the briefing" Harkins said as he sat down cross-legged on the floor next to her.

She took a few gulps of the water before letting out a short breath and pulling herself up to a sitting position

"Any idea what we should be expecting?" She asked allowed before taking another gulp of water and waiting for the reply.

"Not a maidens-damned clue sweetheart" Quaram answered from behind her "we've all been watching as he's sent dozens of us of on dozens of missions around the galaxy, go here. Retrieve that. Kill him, her, it, whatever. All we know is that half the galaxy seems to be buying into his manufactured mixture of prophesy, quantum bollocks and intergalactic wankery. The other half seems to be setting up for wars on every front. Seriously, even the Assyrians here don't know what they are here for. All they know is that they seem to be on direct orders from their own empress for . . . Something. The whole thing is riding on the hope that some how doing his will do . . . Something."

He let out a long strained breath as he rolled his eyes, fighting back the urge to give in to complete and utter sarcasm.

"The only thing we do now at the moment is, wherever he does send us. Expect shit to hut the fan. On an industrial fraking level."

Kialya took another gulp of her water in silence as she tried to achingly push her mind forward into what her potential future might hold.
-- WARNINK -- LINK BELOW IZ KNOWN TO CAUZE HEMMORAGE --
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I WARNED YOU, DIDN'T I WARN YOU?! BLAME RAYHAWK DAMNIT.
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