dp.4
MEGAZONE 23
"It's not the one bullet with your name on it that you
have to worry about; it's the twenty thousand-odd rounds
labeled `occupant.'"
--Murphy's Laws of Combat
SATURDAY 5 OCTOBER 1991
It was a standard Saturday in the Wedge; Ben was sitting
in the first booth from the mailboxes, getting his stuff
ready to play Morrow Project. Zoner was in the next booth
over preparing some kind of report and munching on a
sandwich. Most of the Wedge Rats were around. Kei and Yuri
were discussing close-combat techniques with Tim. fnord
"You know," Kelli was telling Kevin Tefft, "I get the
absolute strangest feeling about those two..."
Rich stood up and shielded his eyes with a hand, peering
out over the Quad. "Hey...what frat around here wears red
and gold?"
"None that I know of," some generic personage replied.
"Why?"
"Because there's about a million guys in red and gold
windbreakers marching this way--and...hey! THEY'VE GOT
GUNS!"
Rob Crocker jumped to his feet and sprang to the
windows; he peered out as well. "I'll be damned. There are
a lot of 'em, aren't there?"
"Who are they?"
"I don't know," said MegaZone, joining them at the
windows, "but that's John Coyle in the lead--"
"The Knights of the STRAIGHT and Narrow Path!" ReRob
shouted.
"Red alert!" Crocker yelled. "ReRob--activate the
defense shield. Ben, Kevin, Zoner--man your weapons!
Everyone else, battle stations! Prepare to repulse
invasion!"
ReRob jumped up behind the Wedge booth near the broken
wall and slapped his palm onto the fire alarm. This wasn't
an actual alarm switch, but the box that gave out the alarm
sounds; it had another purpose. Its activation threw the
Wedge into emergency red alert status and activated the Wedge
defensive shield.
Outside, Coyle ordered the front ranks to open fire.
<<Soldier of Fortune, Loudness>>
Too late; as the first few ranks of Knights opened up
with their laser rifles, which for all the world looked like
AK47s, the shield was already up. The bolts burst harmlessly
on the forcefield, appearing inside the Wedge as blue dots on
the shield.
"Hey Kevin, look. Blue dots," ReRob announced.
"Oh, shut up," said Kevin as he ran to his battle
station. With near-anime synchronizedness, he, MegaZone, and
Ben all wound up and kicked the three small Wedge tables in
the middle. They popped open, the Wedge windows flipped
down, and their weapons emerged. On either side were Ben and
Zoner's weapons, 20mm M61-A1 Vulcan gatling guns; in the
center was Kevin's, a double-barrelled, reactor-powered,
plasma-fired flamethrower.
Ben slapped on his gunner's helmet, adjusted the mike,
turned on the motor for the rotary barrels, and announced,
"Wedge Gun One! Ready!"
Zoner did the same. "Wedge Gun Two! Ready!"
Kevin put on his oven mitts. "WedgeFlame One! Ready!"
Meanwhile a computer voice was announcing loudly "RED
ALERT. RED ALERT. THE WEDGE IS ON RED ALERT." The Wedge
lights turned red. A Red Alert signal flashed on the Lower
Wedge windows/liquid-crystal viewscreen. Crocker popped open
the principal Wedge booths and a hand from below started
passing the emergency defense M-16s to the general populace.
Wedge Rats took up positions behind the other tables, behind
pillars, behind trash cans, anywhere they could contribute to
the defense of the Wedge if the forcefield failed.
The Coylians reached the barrier, which extended from
the Wedge to the curb; they began pouring laser fire into it.
It was a tough device, designed and installed by the
legendary First Wedge Rat whose name has been lost to
history; even so, it couldn't handle such an onslaught of
force for long. Not without blacking out Worcester County.
"We have got to get a better power source," said Zoner
as he opened fire with his Vulcan.
"Well, there's always the radioactive sludge that was
DAKA," Ben suggested, activating his own weapon.
"Great idea!" Zoner shouted. "It'd be better than
Protoculture if we got the resonances right!" (wub wub wub)
Macquivr took his station behind the furthest small
Wedge table to the east and, picking up a PA mike, began a
play-by-play account of the action.
The shield was starting to fail. A Coylian stepped up
to it and, point-blank, began hammering it with laser bolts,
hoping to break through at one specific point. That was
incredibly stupid; two streams of blue-white flame and twin
rivers of depleted uranium converged on him and baked,
roasted, pureed, chopped, and shredded him to a state quite
beyond simple mere death.
"Gaaah," said Q, "like have some hot flaming brutal
destruction."
Alec walked in with a pizza, asking who had ordered it;
Crocker paid, then handed him an M-16 and proclaimed him
drafted.
The screaming legions of the STRAIGHT and Narrow Path
charged the shield, battering it with laser fire and the
stocks of their guns. It began to fold for real.
"ReRob!" Ben screamed. "The shield's failing!"
"Degauss it!" ReRob told him.
"Got it!" Ben took one hand off the butterfly grips of
his weapon long enough to slap the fire alarm switch hanging
on the airlock next to him. The shield pulsed, rainbowing in
that pattern of colors called Psychedelic Yawn by some
authorities on the psychedelic, and then solidified,
temporarily reinstated. Most of Worcester blacked out.
One Coylian soldier had penetrated the field during the
degauss; he was inside Ben and MegaZone's arcs of fire and
under Kevin's. Screaming like a madman, he ran up the
extended Wedge window and leaped in an incredible leap over
the flamethrower, tackling Kevin to the floor. They rolled
across the Wedge through a trash barrel in a tangled heap of
limbs and laser rifle. The Knight screamed and jumped to his
feet as he realized who he had just tackled.
Howling with despair, the soldier raked the Wedge with
full-auto laser fire, making everyone drop to the deck; one
of his bolts slammed into the shield generator, which, with a
shower of sparks, exploded. Then he ate his laser's muzzle.
Thoroughly gross.
"The shield's down!" MegaZone screamed as Coylian after
Coylian poured in an incredible wave toward him. He kept the
triggers down; shell casings flew over his shoulder in a
never ending smoking stream. Sweat poured down his face.
They overran the end of his weapon.
"I can't hold!" Ben disappeared under a thrashing horde
of them; Zoner followed, trying desperately to retreat and
dragged down by sheer numbers. Someone screamed "DIE, Wedge
scum!"
"We're outnumbered!" Crocker screamed as he opened up
with his M-16.
"Don't think of it as being vastly outnumbered," pfloyd
offered. "Think of it as having a very wide shot selection."
Truly wild combat in the Wedge ensued; Crocker et al.
opened up with their M-16s while Ben and MegaZone kicked and
thrashed madly, with the desperate ability of people with
little or, in Ben's case, no real training but lots o'
adrenaline. The Knights' windbreakers were body armor; they
could take four or five M-16 hits before blood was drawn.
Pfloyd shouted something about buying Teflon ammo next time,
which Crocker promised to make a note of and pick some up at
the local death 'n destruction shop reeeeeal soon.
Ben was flat on his back, a Coylian's sneakered foot
pressed to his throat; the world was starting to turn red and
spots were swimming in front of his eyes as his fingers lost
their strength and slid from the Knight's ankle.
He heard a terrible wet KRUNCH and thought his neck was
broken. My God, he thought, I'm dead and I don't even
realize it yet.
Then the Coylian slid off him and he could breathe
again. He forced himself up on an elbow and looked; the
Knight of the STRAIGHT and Narrow Path was the one with the
broken neck. Kei had grabbed him in a nifty half-nelson-like
maneuver and quite neatly rotated his head 180 degrees.
He would've thanked her, but she was too busy, so he
just fell back to the Lower Wedge wall. With no weapon, it
was about all he could do.
Zoner was still, somehow, on his feet; he grabbed whole
handfuls of Coylians and slung them away from him with
desperate strength. Suddenly a pair of arms grabbed him from
behind, the fingers laced over the flesh of his throat;
oxygen stopped coming in. He reached back; other arms
pinioned his own. He tried to walk forward; something was
holding his legs. A horde of the Coylians struggled madly to
keep him down.
Three well-placed laser shots drilled the ones holding
his neck and arms through the faces as Yuri came to his
rescue; released, he kicked his way free and made it to the
Wedge wall with Ben. There were no more guns; all they could
do now was watch.
"Damn romantic, isn't it," Ben choked through a
partially crushed throat. "They fight...we watch."
"Well, they're better at this anyway. About all we're
good for is getting ourselves killed."
"I know...doesn't stop me from feeling like a total dick
though...and thanks for your optimistic evaluation of our
battle prowess."
"Don't mention it."
The first wave of Coylians were almost all dead, mowed
down by the Wedge Commandos' fire; many of them had tripped
and crashed over Ben and Zoner's five-foot piles of
shell casings and been trampled by the second wave, including
John Coyle himself, who had been shot many many many times
(Crocker alone put a full clip into him) before being ground
underfoot by his own troops. But they fought like madmen.
Kei and Yuri disengaged themselves and fell back, not
because the combat was too heavy, but because they were well
and truly tired of being groped by the Knights (remember,
STRAIGHT and Narrow) before killing them. Better to use
ranged weapons to melee in this case.
Ben saw his opportunity; he rushed forward as Kei
slammed a knee into a Coylian's nose and grabbed the
warrior's falling laser rifle. Then, backpedaling rapidly,
he sprayed the horde with laser fire, giving her time to
disengage. Tossing a second liberated rifle to Zoner
alleviated Yuri's tactical disadvantage as well.
The situation looked grim; of all the Wedge Rats, only
Zoner, Ben, Kei, and Yuri had functional ranged weapons. The
Commandos were out of ammo and the third wave of Coylians
were advancing, heedless of the losses created by the
merciless laser fire. Fritz and Tim were fighting them hand-
to-hand now, and despite their truly superhuman skill and
strength, were soon overcome by sheer numbers and flattened
into the carpeting. (=|-])
"Oh hell," Crocker shouted. "KNOCK!" He wolfed the
slice of pizza in his left hand as his right ran the M-16
out of ammo for the last time, then took his 1/2-level fireball
spell from his jacket, pulled the pin, and threw. BLAMMO!
The blast scattered dead and dying Knights almost back to the
curb. And still they came.
Kei pulled a minigrenade from its pouch on her left hip,
the last grenade either of them had since the Battle of DAKA;
she set it to impact and sent it spiraling into the middle of
their thickest clump. It had the desired effect; that
explosion sent Coylians back to the stone in the middle of
the Quad.
The last wave of Coylians, the thirty warriors remaining
from a once-proud armada, charged through the window,
screaming "Honor or death! Honor or death!" Ben's rifle
overheated. Laser fire filled the Wedge. Erik Swimm
screamed and dropped, a laser hole burned through his left
shoulder.
"Yuri!" Kei shouted. "(Oh how I hate to do this)--the
Card! Now's the time!" Then she turned to Ben and muttered,
"Down. On the floor. Now."
"Shit, Kei--!" Ben cried as he dropped to the carpeting
and put his hands over his head. "It's never the time for
the Bloody Card," he told her as she joined him on the floor.
Yuri took a small metal card from somewhere in her
uniform. The stats and performance of the device immediately
flashed to MegaZone's mind:
The Bloody CardTM is a device roughly equating the dimensions
and weight of a playing card. It is made of a tungsten-
titanium alloy with a monomolecular edge. Its ion drives can
sustain it for two hours at a time at true airspeeds
exceeding one hundred kilometers per hour, and it has
rudimentary psychokinetic control. It is somewhat
inaccurate, but quite effective for crowd control, and
popular among those with a flair for the dramatic.
As soon as this thought finished flashing through his
mind Zoner simply muttered "Oh shit" and kissed the carpet.
She cast, and the Bloody Card howled out in a deadly
arc, the sound of its ion drives sending chills up and down
the spines of the Wedge Rats.
The Card screamed in a crescent of death, sending gouts
of blood fountaining into the air as it swept along the line
of Coylians at around throat level. Its arc carried it
through all but the last, who raised his rifle and sighted on
Yuri. The Bloody Card was heading out toward the mailboxes,
unable to turn tightly enough in the narrow end of the Wedge
to return.
Harold Mackiernan, better known simply as h, came
strolling around the corner just then; the Bloody Card was
heading straight for him. With nary a second thought, he
snagged the gore-streaked weapon out of the air, pocketed it,
and flicked a small white card of his own at the final
Coylian.
Distracted, the last Knight of the STRAIGHT and Narrow
Path caught the card offhand and looked at it. The only
thing on it was a large black 1. He flipped it over.
YOU CAN DIE NOW.
"Thank you," he said to h, and promptly keeled over,
dead.
"This is yours," said h, and he tossed the Bloody Card
to Yuri.
"WE WON!" Crocker shouted, raising his M-16 defiantly.
"WE WON!"
The Wedge erupted in a tremendous cheer. And there was
much rejoicing!
"Hey," said Rich as he and the others finished lining
the dead Coylians up on the Quad, "Coyle's not here."
"What do you mean, he's not here?" Crocker demanded,
slinging his M-16 and walking over. "And where the hell are
Ben and Zoner?"
"I've checked all the bodies twice and John Coyle is not
among them. And I don't know where they are either."
"That's impossible. I put a full clip into him! He was
trampled under a hundred soldiers. I think Zoner hit him a
couple of times! There's no way he could've been evacuated
in all that confusion..."
"...so where the hell is he then?"
"I don't think we ought to tell Ben and Zoner about
this just yet..."