>>8587779
Fortunately at least the rat traps were moderately successful lately, the rare taste of animal flesh a necessary source of protein, vitamin D, and essential amino-acids, and as a combatant he had a good share of meat reserved for him.

The Ducts and everything in them was cobbled together from pre-war technologies. His father spoke to him about the Enlightment, of how Earth used to be an idyllic and peaceful world. He spoke about the preceding age of barbarity, when "man waged war with fellow man". It was quite ironic. The entire arsenal of a war-bent species destroyed in peace talks, and when an alien invasion finally comes along just a century later, you have to resort to adapting tiny bits of construction machines to be able to fling projectiles.

He never forgot the look in his father's eyes, the pride in his voice as he went on about the achievements of the human species. The good and the bad, the thousands of years of culture and wars and stupidity and brilliance. Now reduced to scavengers on the brink of extinction. His father was a being of an age past, born before the war, while he himself was a member of the resistance, war being his reality every day since birth, or at least since he was old enough to carry ammunition to the surface. The irony of that particular situation did not escape him, because here he was, twenty years later, still doing little more than... well, carrying ammunition.

>>8587785
There was a bit more to it, though. He was now a Gauss technician - a sort of a combat engineer. In addition to demagnetizing the squad's rifles when they jammed and carrying the Field Projector to counteract the Exon jammers from affecting the ordnance, the duties of a technician extended to cover carrying extra shells, picking up empty cases, and be an auxilliary spotter for the squad. Techs were more often than not experienced soldiers who would have otherwise made squad leader if it weren't for their specialist skill, and in fact they often were a second to the leader, by order of experience if not rank.

This particular squad, the Seventh Recon, was on their third patrol this week, holding position in an abandoned building. They had waited for the night cycle as per standard procedure, although it was rarely possible to discern anything resembling the Sun above the massive cover of cloud and debris. The clouds floated in the upper layers of the atmosphere for decades and showed no intention of receding any time soon. For some reason Exons seemed to be much more perceptive by day than the slight change in luminosity would explain.

So the 7th waited for the nightfall, if it could be so named, and only then did they painstakingly advance, avoiding detection, until they were at least two clicks away from the nearest Ducts access. They were on a scouting mission, but as always they had standing orders to try and ambush any lone Exon Walkers they encountered and loot it for parts. Their mission took them close enough to Hic Sunt Machinae to hope to bag at least one stray Walker, two on a good night.

At times like this, when his squad held the position, his job was to remain in cover and concealment until he was needed. So he had a lot of time to think.

So think he did.

>>8587789
In fact, he thought too much if his friends were to be believed. And he was inclined to believe them. Because lately his thoughts had been gnawing on him like a swarm of gnats. Because the more of the war he saw, the more he realized there was something that quite simply did not add up.

Most Resistance record was sealed, but he doubted he would be able to extract anything from it. No, no ideology painted sources for him. He knew that what little reliable information he had came from his father and the other older refugees from the columns of the Second Offensive. They had been born before the war, before the new regime. They remembered first-hand. No longer anyone left from that generation now, he knew. This was a world where a strong, resilient body and a young immune system were not optional.

So what DO we know, he started thinking as he snuggled closely to the rock wall and scanned the horizon absent-mindedly with his binoculars. What are the facts? We know that the Pulsar network was discovered and decyphered, indicating the existence of a vast network of extraterrestrial species. And we know that a delegation was sent from a Galactic Consortium. We know the delegation landed and interacted with us to discuss the terms of acceptance of the human species into the Consortium.

And we know that as soon as that happened, the end of the world came. The Biblical rain of brimstone poured down in a thermonuclear massacre - "war" would be too optimistic a word - exterminating all the major population centers on Earth.

Then the Exons landed and the true horror began.

>>8587811
His chain of thoughts was interrupted by a far-off explosion. Speak of the wolf, he thought, as there was no mistaking the Exon resonator weaponry. Judging by the sound of it it had to be a 4-gauge, detonating at a mile or so. No matter how hard you tried, you never really got used to the disturbing aftereffects of those unearthly things going off anywhere nearby. It was a sudden feeling of profound disjointedness, as if the mollecules of the ground, the air around you, and your own body, would each vibrate once or twice in its own direction - for a milisecond, no more, before reality reasserted itself and returned them to their normal place. Even from a mile away one still made you nauseus; a more nearby hit would somehow make your spine ache, make you want to throw up and somehow leave a metallic aftertaste in your mouth. The most a 4-gauge can accomplish is a severed or irreparably crushed limb on a direct hit, possibly a skull exploding inside out on a very lucky shot. But even that was more than enough. There was simply not enough food to feed useless amputees, and Contingency 5 was very clear on how to treat them.

Several Gauss rifles roared in response from the same general direction. It was another recon element, probably the Fifth judging by the area, doing the same thing they did only elsewhere. The sounds of skirmish died out soon enough. Humans conserved their ammo and knew better than to remain in position after firing, and Exons simply didn't believe in spray and pray.

>>8587819
The amplifier picked up the unmistakable racket of slick cybernetic limbs moving rapidly on rubble and asphalt. It was a click-click-click-tock, click-click-click-tock sort of sound. Any infantryman knew the subtle nuances that allowed him to identify one type of Exon from another by sound only, and yet, he had never heard this specific pattern before. He knew one thing - it was not a mere Walker chassis. Judging by the sound of it, there was a leg too many, the center of mass was too high above, and there were two extra repeats in the cycle. But it was too silent to be a Reaper and too nimble to be an Arbiter.

He cast a glance at his squad. Opposite him was the face of sargeant Richter. The level-headed, reliable, red-haired seargeant Richter. They had shared bed on occasion since they were practically kids. But not too often. Unwanted pregnancy in the Ducts meant the firing squad, after all, and they were both too smart for that. The overall atmosphere was not very conducive to romance.

He directed an inquisitive look in her direction, tapped his emper pack, and she nodded.

He knew it was a risk, but he turned the amplifier up anyway and left his concealment position slightly to get a better view of the bottom. He still couldn't make out the Exon chassis, but he didn't have to. Careful to avoid making extra noise as he shifted for a good position on the rubble, he primed and threw the emper in a slight arc.

>>8587827
To humans eyes and ears, nothing happened; he might as well have thrown a small metal cylinder. But the flicker on the Amplifier's screen a few seconds afterwards was a sign that the emper detonated successfully and saturated the vicinity with a short barrage of electromagnetic waves. He now had a complete 3d view of his surroundings independent of light level or jammers, and would finally be able to take a look at the mysterious Exon below them.

He had been right; it was no chassis they'd ever seen before. For a second he couldn't make out some of the more intriguing ornaments on the limbs, but as he counted the legs he started narrowing down the options. It had the numerous sensory appendages to match a Logistic, but Logistics had four legs and didn't have resonator weaponry. This was clearly a combatant. There had been too many actuators per limb - the closest thing Exons had to body-building, he guessed. But it also had many technorunes, clearly denoting it high up in the complicated Exon hierarchy.

And then recognition hit him; he had seen the design a few times in briefings, but he would never have thought he'd need to apply the knowledge in the field. It didn't make any sense, but it had to be true.

It was a Prefect.

He immediately tried to signal Richter but then he remembered the field manual didn't even have the proper hand signals for a Prefect. With his mind racing his hand was almost paralyzed for a precious second or two as he tried to figure out what to do, indecisively flailing his fingers like an idiot instead of a trained veteran. He regained his composure and just signaled "immediate danger - reposition" three times. Then, he remembered he still had his amplifier on and turned up. With a Prefect in vicinity. He had just effectively killed his squad and himself.

THE END.

>>8587842
Richter never got the chance to relay the command. A resonator round, obviously primed to phase through concrete and detonate upon emergence into a gasseous medium, brought havoc with inhuman precision in the midst of the squad.

You never hear the resonator going off, he remembered. The shockwave gets you before the sluggish signals can convey the information from your ear to the auditory cortex in your brain. What they don't tell you is that you never hear ANYTHING after a resonator goes off. Your ears don't ring, they just shut off.

A flash of light came next. He immediately tasted a trace of metallic tint in his mouth, and he swore he could smell beats and burning tire. His body was reduced to a helpless ragdoll, his skeletal muscles giving way to a flurry of impulses coming from the temporary oscillation of the nervous system. He became aware of the rubble racing towards his face. The ground fell on him with all the force an upside down planet could have. He felt his arm contort unnaturally. He was suffocating until the surrounding air rushed in to fill the vacuum, bringing a swarm of concrete pellets with it like some sort of reverse shrapnel. The world around him was spinning and distorted. He was nauseous. As he tried to raise his head, the sensation overwhelmed him and he lost his lunch to an uncontrolled bout of vomiting.

Then he turned and saw a picture that made him lose breakfast, too.

>>8587850
You wish.

>>8587854
Several of his squadmates were completely dismembered by the resonator. Not just missing limbs - missing chunks of torsos. Drops of blood and guts were still falling around. Alvarez and Brache were the unluckiest - they'd been displaced hard enough to fuse with concrete. Brache was the more unfortunate one, because he was still alive, half of him at least; his head and heart and right arm were still above the immersion line and that was all it took for him to keep functioning. One of the nasty side effects of displacement into solids is that there is no bleeding, no wounds, no sepsis. The circulatory system, if uncompromised, can keep a person alive for and days. To cause such mayhem, this was at least a 17-gauge, if not higher. Such destructive power on such a small frame! He had seen howitzers - that's Exon howitzers, not the makeshift human mortars - with less yield than this.

>>8587867

THE END.

>>8587867
He held on to this thought even as he saw the Prefect's frame jumping into the middle of his field of vision. Exons looked more like Daddy longlegs than anything else. Vicious, 10-foot tall daddy longlegs covered in inscrutable technorunes and cybernetic bodyparts, with three glowing red eyes - or cameras, the line kind of blurred with these guys - radially distributed around the sphere that was their core. They moved with inhuman precision and dexterity, and the Prefect in particular was a spidery hurricane of cybernetic limbs walking and impaling in perfect unison and optimum efficiency. Literally not a single step was wasted, every time a limb fell down it was to either impale another human or to release another leg of its assigned corpse. Exons always used a two-stab policy. The first stab to the torso to pin the target down and incapacitate it; the second one through the head to finish the victim off. A few squaddies managed to get an aim before they turn came, but their triggers resulted in frustrated, repeated empty clicks and swear words. He didn't need to consult the amplifier to know that the Prefect's inhibitor field was stronger than they'd ever hope to overcome.

continue.

>>8587881
Fourteen Exon steps - seven pin-downs, seven head-stabs - down the line, the squad was dead. He felt a somewhat higher pang of loss than usual when Richter was killed second to last, trying to prime the squad's precious pulse grenade. She almost - ALMOST - managed to pul the pin out, before an impaler limb punctured her heart. Even if she let go of the grenade in her death throes, there would be no chance of it going off because the secondary safety had to be released.

It was a good thing, he caught his instinctive self thinking, because if it exploded, he and everyone else in the block would be vapourized. His instinctive self was apparently too stupid to realize he would die in a matter of seconds either way. He was the only one left and it was just a matter of time before the Prefect realized...

Wait a second. The Field Projector is still on.

The Field Projector is still on, it is cranked to full power, and it is laying next to me. He didn't get a solid visual scan before jumping in, and he can't look directly at the Projector, not at this range, not with his sensitive Logisticator - class sensory equipment. It would be like a human staring directly at ten suns simultaneously.

He cursed his amazing luck for a useless gift that it was. The Prefect was effectively blind to him, and yet he was unarmed and unable to do anything without alerting the cybernetic juggernaut. He had a broken arm, and the sharp pain he felt every breath told him he had at least a few cracked ribs. At least his legs seemed to have regained function, for all the good that'd do for him.

>>8587881

THE END

>>8587903
In the meantime, at least the monstrosity had enough decency to put wailing Brache out of his misery with a disinterested motion of one of its legs while it scanned the horizon with its probes. He realized with horror that it was looking straight in the direction of the Ducts. It extended the comms antenna towards Hic Sunt Machinae.

He didn't pretend to know what was going on, but he knew that there had to be a reason a Prefect was here, and the reason couldn't be good. What little sketchy info they had about Prefects came from other settlements. There was only one footage of it in action and it was brought on foot from settlement of the Swiss Alps. There were no more human settlements on the Swiss Alps.

He didn't have to be a quick thinker to realize that if he didn't do something, the Ducts didn't stand a chance. If he did do something, the Ducts didn't stand a chance AND he would get killed. Damn. Why'd Richter have to get offed before he could get all heroic in front of her and shit?

He knew the instant the Field Projector moved, the Exon will be alerted. His only chance was to use the blindspot and run up to it before it could react. He had the element of surprise, two working legs, and a full backpack of Gauss shells.

No more thinking. Now is the time for action. He had a good life, he thought, and hey, there are worse ways to go than trying to tackle a motherfucking Exon Prefect.

>>8587914
With a scream and a flurry of curses, he ran forward, holding the field projector up. Of course it was impossible to try and surprise an Exon from behind - the three cameras on their central sphere were distributed to cover a complete 360 degrees of vision. But the leg nearest to him was still embedded in Richter's corpse. It worked. The creature was taken unaware. It started retracting its sensory probes hastily, and that's when he just knew, without thinking, they should be his target. This was a sign of weakness and he was little more than a screaming ape who sensed an enemy trying to hide its jugular. There was no thinking, only burning rage and millions of years of supressed instincts coming to surface. He threw the projector straight into the thing's sensory stalks and it got lodged in the network of cables. The monster recoiled with a shriek. His conscious self would tell him that the sound came from cybernetic components grinding against one another, not a verbalization of anguish, but the ape didn't care. He attacked an enemy and the enemy was screaming. It was afraid of him. It was retreating. That's all he needed to know.

"How do you like THAT, motherfucker? Huh? HOW DO YOU LIKE THAT?", he yelled, his sanity pushed back into the corner by the ape, as he jumped onto the nearest leg.

>>8587941
The thing miscalculated because of the extra mass on its leg and it stumbled, clumsily trying to regain balance and bring its two remaining spike-carrying legs to bear, but it seemed and sounded as if it was in immense pain. Noone has ever been this close to a living Exon. He knew their limbs were not designed to intersect too much, so as long as he clung to the inside of one leg he was safe from all the others. The alien started flailing desperately, hitting the ground and walls in ways that couldn't have been healthy for it. Just before he could have been thrown off, he grabbed a protrusion on its clattered bulk and the thing cracked open just a little bit to expose arcane cellular structure of the Exon's core. He half hoped to see a wire or a piece of electronics for him to shortcircuit, but he had dissected enough dead walkers to know that's not how these things worked. And he didn't even have a knife with him.

>>8587946
He clung onto the core until he was literally hugging the Exon, a fist-sized red eye-camera glowing furiously in his face. "What's the matter, faggot? TOO CLOSE FOR YOU?" he yelled and spat on the eye, jerked on the hole he made earlier. They fell on the side, the five limbs furiously extending into the sky and twitching like those of an angry overturned beetle. They landed not three feet away from Richter's corpse. He saw his chance and jumped to reach her grenade, but there was a method to the creature's madness, as it finally managed to move one of its legs into position.

The flash of pain was almost tolerable for a second or so.

>>8587954
He felt as if he was hit between his shoulderblades, followed by a searing sting in his back and a warm, tickly sensation went down his belly. He was pinned down to the concrete. Looking down he saw a spike protruding from his chest, roughly where his right lung was supposed to be. He didn't have enough air even to scream in pain. His arms were flailing but the grenade was out of his reach.

His eyes were red with blood and rage and the glow from the alien's eye. The Exon made no sound, but rather tried to wriggle free while still holding its prey down, its limb obviously stuck at an angle it was never designed to handle. The man saw the opportunity and the ape acted upon it. He shifted his entire body sideways and the tip of the limb broke off at the joint as he hoped it would. Although there was still the matter of a very sharp spike in his chest, he was free.

But then, so was the Exon.

don't you have a LJ or something to post your shitty writing in?

>>8587984

Ignore the agent of the eight OP.

Continue with the awesome story.

>>8587966
Of course, this didn't exactly hurt the creature. The blades were modular and designed to break easily at joints. He did no more than break off one of its fingernails. So he had to act quickly. He jumped at Richter's corpse but was knocked around mid-air almost making a full circle. This second time the blade descending on him came from his front and he could see it coming. He saw it was the leg with the broken-off tip again, and its jagged edge made for much worse pain than the surgical cut of the first impact. This time it hit his abdomen on the left side, possibly taking his spleen with it. But this somehow carried him those extra few inches in the direction of his jump. It pinned him down face up only a few feet away from Richter's corpse. He grabbed the grenade from her death grip and let out a grunt of pain and triumph. As he held it he saw it was primed for five seconds but safeties were still on.

The Prefect's body was towering above him, and he knew what was coming next. The first limb always pins down. The second one goes through the head. He was still a good yard away from the creature's central body. The leg that was to perform the execution rose. Its tip was still sharp and smooth, and smeared with blood and brain tissue of his colleagues.

>>8588003
And then the primal, vindictive ape came up with the idea the refined man would not have considered in a lifetime. He chuckled in the creature's face, or one of its three faces. Summoning the last of his strength, he took the flawlessly smooth leg which held him down with both his hands. They were red with blood, and so was his entire uniform and a good piece of concrete below him. So he took that leg, that very spike that was holding him down - and he started climbing.

He climbed it in a few powerful strokes, as if he would climb a rope at basic training, impaling himself further up the blade and he realized that the sudden strong noise was screams coming from his own throat. Had the creature extended its leg it would have been safe, but it seemed positively astonished with this turn of events and it hesitated for a moment. A moment that took him to impale himself three feet up the already shortened leg and get a firm grip on the crack in the central Exon body he made earlier.

Check and mate.

>>8588012
F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5 F5

>>8588012
"Compliments from Earth, you ugly son of a bitch", he coughed, blood pouring out of his mouth.

He slammed his fist holding the grenade straight inside the Exon's core, releasing the safety as he did so. The creature screamed again in its cybernetic tongue and started wriggling insanely, but it couldn't shake him off, the motions of the limb this close to the core weaker than at the periphery, like a man trying to use a pencil with his elbow. He held on desperately. He had no illusions; his strength was abandoning him, his vision was darkening, he lost at least two pints of blood, and he was suffocating. He knew he would die soon. He knew he couldn't hold on like this forever.

But he didn't have to. All he needed was to hold on for five seconds.

.

.

.

THE END (yes, really).

That was pretty fucking amazing.

>>8588041

Good job, OP. You write it. If so muchly awesome.

WRITE. A. FUCKING. BOOK. SET. IN. THIS. UNIVERSE.

NOW. RIGHT NOW. START WRITING THIS VERY FUCKING SECOND.

I only actually read your last post, this is really just kind of funny.

>>The creature screamed again in its cybernetic tongue and started wriggling insanely, but it couldn't shake him off, the motions of the limb this close to the core weaker than at the periphery, like a man trying to use a pencil with his elbow.

That is one of the ugliest run on sentences I've ever seen. This is laughable.

>>8587966
Oh, shit.

>>8588116
sage troll, u mad

Ho ho ho now I'm reading through the entire story. This shit makes L. Ron Hubbard look like Jack Vance.

>>8588116

Ignore the Eight, OP. You're fighting them with awesomeness.

10/10 would read again.

I liked it.

Write a book, make fucktons of money, and satisfy /tg/ for a moment. Win win all around.

>>8588280

>>Write a book, make fucktons of money

People do love reading trash!

>>8588326
Twilight is a best seller.

OP, you win 1 Internet

I liked it friend, if there are other stories i would love to read them

This is great stuff. The technical grammer stuff (like run-ons and changing frame of reference mid story) could be tweaked a bit, but I love the emotion and the technical explanation.

Also, ARCHIVE NAO!

archive please

Thanks for your request.
It has been added to our database and the thread will be archived as soon as enough request for that thread have been made.
This thread has been requested 1 times now.


C'mon guys lets do this!

>>8588488
link to archive request plz?

>>8588107
If I expand the continuity (I will) I'll post it on /tg/.

>>8588400
I am actually not a native speaker, yeah this piece sure could use editing. I rewrote some things in the end so it got kind of fragmented.

>>8588116
I am truly sorry and am committing seppuku as we speak. By which I mean, you know where the filter button is.

>>8588617

http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Childrens-Dummies-Rojany-Buccieri/dp/0764537288

>>8588400
>>8588427
>>8588488
Here you go, newfags.
http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive.html
Have a blast.

>>8588704
http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/8587779

>>8588617

i used the 4chan archive, 4chanarchive.org

>>8589222
Hi, you must be new here. Just use suptg from now on for all your /tg/ related needs.