A Crash

    Had a few busy weeks between work and other hobbies, so this is an apology. I have an update started but it isn't polished enough, and I'm hoping to make it longer in order to make up for the lateness.     Hell maybe we'll even finish it  ...

     Another screech from the Conglomeration as he left the room, trotting back the way he had come. And another screech. "You lost bud, you can't get me," he threw back over his shoulder at the creature. Weird that it kept crying out though, he figured something that size would break through the wall or something rather than call out.      Then he heard the snarls coming from a ways away down the hall to his left and it snapped into place. ' Of course, the fucking thing is calling for help.'  And with that thought he bolted, arm swinging like a useless piece of hose. He was going to have to figure out how to fix that if he survived the next couple of minutes. He made it back to where he left Graves and... He was gone. He could have sworn he had left him right here. Right past the sparking light and the corpses. There seemed to be no sign of the man either, there was no footsteps or drag marks through the detritus and gore on the deck. What a weird dev...

            MESSAGE SENT     Okay, that was all he needed. Time to go.       He sensed movement behind him. He rolled his head on his shoulders and spun around to face the Conglomeration, which no longer seemed dazed. This seemed to be a problem he was just going to have to deal with.. He chuckled to himself and pulled his axe.     "You and me seem to have an issue," he told the mass of flesh, teeth, and tentacles. "But I told everyone what happened to us. You won't survive if you get to the surface. They'll know how to defeat you!"       Kevin's voice rose to a yell in his final words, but the monster made no return conversation, made no acknowledgement that it even understood. That made sense though. It was a thing of mad hunger and primal instincts, there was no way it would have talked to him. no way to respond to hi- Oh shit.     He ducked again as a tentacle whipped at him, sli...

    A strange sensation - though maybe not quite as strange as being hoisted upside-down towards impending doom - was the breeze he felt in his nether region as he was hoisted upside-down towards impending doom. The bottom edge of the gown he had woken up in was now tickling his nose as the Conglomeration dragged him, bare assed, toward its nearest mouth.     He rubbed at his tickling nose with his hand and something hard and metal cracked him in his face before his knuckles could touch his nose. This caused two things to happen: first, his lip split open and blood started pouring out of his mouth; and second, he realized that he still held - and almost dropped thanks to his startled state - the pistol. He had a weapon in his hands that he could use to escape.  Somehow... Probably...     Blearily, blood dripping up into one of his eyes - being upside down was weird - he aimed his pistol towards the Conglomeration, shot once, thought better of it, then ...

    I hope you all have a wonderful holiday. I'm using some off time before Christmas to catch up on writing, but (obviously) there's no post today.     Love you all

    Kevin bolted toward the nearest corpse, ducking below a leathery tentacle as he ran.The monster was surprisingly quick for it's massive size, and he was almost knocked from his feet or captured a few times  as he made his way to the fallen security officer, an auburn haired woman who had once been toned and well tanned despite her time in face - she was now missing an arm, as well as most of her abdomen - and ducked under another tentacle as he checked her for ammunition.     Please, please. Not that pocket. Not that one. Please. Roll away from a slamming  tentacle. Search more G ot it!  A thigh holster with a one magazine for the pistol. Helpful, though only in the slightest.     He was shoved back into a wall by a thrashing tentacle - the air knocked from his chest as he was crushed against a server tower. He had been momentarily distracted. The tentacle aimed for him again, attempting a grab, and he flung himself to the floor, pulling ...

    Kevin typed into the console querying an overload procedure. Maybe there was an electrical pulse he could send through the system that would take out the Conglomeration - oh, look, there was the proper noun - and hopefully not fry the ability to send his information. That sounded farfetched as he thought it. Maybe there were explosives...       He looked around the room he was in for at least the fourth time - nothing explosive in here - and then scanned the room behind the glass. There weren't any of the red barrels in the room that signified something that would explode in fire. The hard drives could explode electrically he supposed, but he wasn't sure that he wouldn't destroy what he needed. Looking up... oh, okay, a catwalk. He could maybe drop that down onto the Conglomeration's... Well head didn't seem like the right word, but it was the closest.     Who designed this place?     Okay, so catwalks were usually bolted to somethin...

    Kevin inserted the drive into an open port in the console in front of him, ignoring the horrible sight of the conglomeration eating his friend, trying not to think of exactly what it was. Was it the final form of the fungal freaks he had been fighting? Was it their patron? Their god? Didn't he just  say he wasn't going to fixate on it? Why wasn't the drive connecting?     He tapped the console and the screen - which had been a cheery, compliant blue-green - shifted suddenly to a blazing red. The type of red that exclaimed "YOU FUCKED UP!" while physically saying something calm like: "There has been an unexpected error. Please attempt to blah blah blah. "      Learning about himself some more, that was nice. He evidently had little patience for computers. That was progress.     The "important text" indicated by the aforementioned "blah blah blah" in this case was "Please contact a system administrator for bypass through the ma...

     The databanks through the windows looked the same for the most part. the difference in the room was that every flat surface was covered in some sort of fungus. The racks, the floors, even a small temporary desk he had seen an engineer working at before this all happened.      Worse still, in the center of the banks was another large toothy maw. This one was different than the other monstrosities he had been dealing with since he had awoken - he wondered what time it was - which all had a single mouth, a single set of eyes, and two legs. This... conglomerate was the only word that came to mind, it had an uneven amount of eyes scanning in all directions; at least half a dozen gaping maws, gnashing their teeth in the air; and several flailing limbs, none of which could hold the thing's substantial girth, even combined.     He noticed that around the conglomerate were the corpses of dozens of his of his fellow crew and the smaller toothy monsters...

 Deadlines have often been an issue for me, and when they're self imposed deadlines, they seem a little easier to work around. "I know the guy that made these deadlines and he's a pushover, I don't need to keep up with it." And for a while I did fine, and in fact was ahead for a bit, which I thought would help with moments of writers block or being busy. And so here we are. Writer's block did me in a bit, and then distractions abound. I started playing more Warhammer and painting miniatures and I got deep into Baldur's Gate 3. I've since completed most of Baldur's Gate (over 80 hours played and I feel like I'm barely into Act 3, not to speak of the other playthroughs), and my Warhammer painting is... Well we won't talk about how many models I have to work on still (that's a lie, its over 300), but the desire to paint ebbs and flows. So, I'm starting to gather all the threads again and I've started getting back into my writing. T...

    The doors whooshed open, emitting a foul stench from beyond, and he was reminded of the long dead ground cover of a young forest shortly after it rained.      A brief memory of hiking a mountain trail, looking down over a valley dotted with colorful aspen trees hit him and faded almost as quick as it came on.  He'd apparently loved the outdoors before he woke up.     He covered his nose and mouth to attempt to block the smell as he encountered the small space. Adjacent to this room - the main console of the comms array - was a massive room full of console towers.     "The entirety of the human experience and all of Earth's history" said the tech next to him. "Everything from Norse mythology, to the Chernobyl disaster, to first contact protocol. No matter where we end up, we have it all."     And why are there so many towers? Surely everything could fit on a smaller scale than this?" Kevin didn't know much about computers - ...

     Crawling toward Graves wasn't a long trek, but in his mind it took forever. Everything hurt, every minor movement, every slow stretch toward the next bit of forward momentum, every breath , was like knives being thrusted into his flesh.      This was not how he thought his day would go...      Finally, reaching Graves he assessed the damage. Bone had snapped and now protruded from the masticated muscle and torn flesh. To fix this, if it could be fixed at all, they would need a full medical suite and a surgeon. The latter they had no access to at the moment. They have to find one when they landed Earth-side. For now...      Kevin unclipped the rear admirals belt and removed it, quickly wrapping it above the remains of his arm. He cinched the belt tight above the wound. Evidently this part of his medical training was a core memory, or something unconscious, because he had no no flashes of memory from when he learned it. Whic...

    Graves leapt over Kevin, throwing his weight and the point of his shoulder into the Alpha, preventing the massive teeth from clamping down on Kevin. With the momentary distraction, he slammed two of his remaining rounds into the shotgun's port and brought the barrel up. As he did - it took no more than five seconds - Graves who had been yelling in anger, began to yell in pain. He fell away, his entire right arm still in the creature's mouth. Kevin shot the Alpha point-blank, and thought the bony protrusion on its cranium blocked part of the shot, the rest of its face was mutilated. The creature roared in pain. He racked the next round and  fired again, making sure to bring the monster down.     He flipped the shotgun and grabbed it by the barrel in mid-air, then swung it like a bat as he turned to his left. The makeshift bludgeon whistled over the crumpled rear admiral's head, connecting with a solid whump into the final beast. It was in mid-jump when the st...

    Now the question was whether he should move back to where he had cover. From there he and Graves could probably defend against the onslaught that would come when they made themselves known. He started crawling back to cover.     The light above him sparked again, showering him in sparks. One of the hot embers hit him on the exposed bit of his skin on the back of his neck, and he swatted it away. A yelp of pain willed itself into his throat, but he didn't let it escape. That would have been a problem.     A series of shots rang out from where Graves was hunkered, and snarls and roars sounded behind him. 'Fuck.'  He rolled over, a string of curses pouring from his mouth as he brought the Breaker to bear. Already the  troop of fungal beasts - for what else could they be - were sprinting toward him at full tilt.     He started firing in bursts, unleashing spouts of fiery death from the barrel of his rifle. A few rounds here meant a small...

    It was hard to tell from here what sort of cooling system the rifle would have. Personally he thought he would prefer if it had expendable heat sinks. While that did limit the amount of rounds he'd be able to fire before it was essentially useless, the standard venting process could be not only time consuming, but also dangerous if he wasn't careful. He knew more than a few soldiers who had the telltale burn scars on their hands. If it was the newer model he would still have to find cartridges, because he wasn't already worried about a scarcity of ammo.     He glanced across at Graves again. The rear admiral could provide him covering fire if the situation went FUBAR, and if Kevin moved quickly and quietly enough, he would be fine. This of course, assumed he would be luckier than the rest of his day had been going.     "Graves" he stage whispered across the hall, glancing toward the monsters, just in case. "Graves!"     "What" came the repl...

 No excuses, I just didn't write one. Part 23 will be posted in two weeks, on schedule

    Kevin glanced over at Graves and noticed he was stiff as a board, with wide eyes and he had seemed to have lost some color from his normally mocha colored skin. He looked at least twice as scared as kevin felt, and that meant a lot.     He took a deep breath to try and settle his nerves, and for the shortest moment it worked. And then he returned his view over the top of the copse of mushrooms and the feeling of borderline panic reintroduced itself to his psyche.     ' Alright, think.' He spoke internally, looking at the stretch of hall that terminated in the horde of creatures that wanted to kill him. A mass of fleshy, bony mushroom monsters with rows of gnashing teeth and claws that would rip him and the Rear Admiral to tiny pieces as they were - ' No, no. None of that. Focus on how to get past them.'  Did he really need to get past? They could just leave it would be fine. 'No... It isn't. We need to warn Earth, regardless of whether or not I ca...

    The walk to the comms array was uncharacteristically quiet for the events of the rest of the time that he had been awake - and somehe it was almost worse. So in his mind it wasn't too strange that he felt a sense of relief at the next attack of the toothy monsters. Graves noticed them first, coming in a group of four, and Kevin brought his pistol to bear. They were just outside of range for a shotgun blast to take one out, but since ammo conservation was going to be important, he was okay with the smaller firearm.      After his first shot felled the first monster - Graves had sent a shot wild above the group - and the other three broke off into a run, splitting as much as possible. They all ran generally toward the pair of men, but this hall being a bit wider than the one before - a vague memory of pallets being moved through this area came to mind - and with the now common mushrooms growing in thicker groupings near the middle of this hall rather than the ...

    Returning to Rear Admiral Graves took no more than two minutes all told, and he hadn't been missed. Graves was checking the hall outside of the bridge for anything that might mean them harm an, and judging by the not-quite relaxed way he held the weapon, he didn't see anything. As Kevin moved up by and then past him, the Admiral fell into step, and they walked in silence.       As they moved to the comm center, they searched for signs of the toothy creatures that had been plaguing the, almost surprised that they hadn't been attacked again. But no , Kevin thought to himself, this isn't surprising at all.  If Blanchard had been right, he would be walking into the belly of the beast, and he was sure that the creatures could bide their time and wait for their meals to come to them. But this is too quiet. There should be some - any - where are they?     " Like a crypt."     Kevin turned and looked at Graves, who did not seem to reali...

    "Codes, codes, codes," he thought aloud. "The codes will be here somewhere." Kevin searched through the drawers of the desk in the office of Captain Andere. The man's body was cooling downstairs, and he had given him a mission, though not all of the means to complete it.     As he was looking through a few drawers in the trophy case behind the desk - stacked with medals of valor, photos of what had to be family and friends, and small odds and ends - he accidentally knocked over a model ship - the placard had said SSV Normandy - and that's where he found it: taped to the underside of the ship's base was a command code that could only be the self destruct sequence.     Interesting hiding place...     For a brief moment he wondered what other secrets were hidden here, but knew there was no time for that now. Maybe next time he had a chance to raid a superior officers things he would have more time. He ran off, back down the stairs and headed out ...