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Suicide Kings Prologue: Meet Your Hero
Posted By: Neil Yudsponwy<mark_price@hotmail.co.uk>
Date: 5 November 2008, 2:57 pm
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Submitted for the HBOff "You're doing it Write" Child's Play charity drive by Phaedrus.
Story of my life. As dimestore philosophies go I suppose the passive innocence of, 'that's just the way the cookie crumbles', would be appropriate. But fuck appropriate and doublefuck the defeatist pap from namby pamby philosophers shrugging at the leftover crumbs being sprinkled from the hands of fate.
She could have been the one, man, she could have been the one.
What is the point of a cookie that crumbles before you can even unwrap her!
'Hi, is this seat taken?
Well I'll just sit here and keep you company til your friend comes back.
The name's Merv: Mervin Clyde. MAC Station Field Target Convergence Operative –squad leader of the Warsaw team to be precise. I know it's a mouthful but play your cards right tonight, honey, and you'll realise that so am I.
You might have heard of us under any of our other half-dozen or so nicknames: MAC-rats, MAC-splats, space lemmings, suicide kings, ship zits, galactic floaters and Maccie Ts. The list is as far and as wide as a meathead's imagination, so it generally gets stuck after all the gross ones, the penile ones and finally, the faecal ones.'
'In theory our job is incredibly simple, since MAC staff couldn't hit earth from a geostationary orbit, they need a serious headstart on the competition. That's where we come in, we're the guys charged with the task of throwing a wrench in the Covenant war machine.
We board via modified drop pods that pierce the weaker sections of a ship's hull, once on board our role is to stop the engines long enough for the platform to get a lock on and incinerate the lumbering son of a bitch.
Like I said, incredibly simple in theory but in practice, things tend to get a little complicated -not to mention simply incredible from time to time.
It's not in our nature or our job description to live a long and prosperous life. Just as sure as a hypothetical smile in the sky created a sumptuous babylonian garden copiously filled with little green apples, the kind often pilfered by highly evolved naked apes.
We aren't known for our longevity in worktime, playtime's another matter.
Mission-wise, think sprint not marathon.'
'I don't mind really, I mean, I could never commit to even a twelve month subscription of my favourite jazz rag and it certainly beats the anxiety felt by the massive debt of mortgage repayments. Not that we MAC-ops are shy of commitment, slightly demented or lacking in moral integrity.'
'Of the thirty-eight, sixteen-man squads in Earthspace theatre, we only have eight former Helljumpers. Brainboil-in-the-can hotheads don't take too kindly to the transition. Thus most ODSTs don't come to us when they retire, they either die of boredom or from sharkbaiting with their own limbs.
I've known some of Hell's Lot whose hearts have stopped at the mere mention of 'sentry duty'. The comedown is just too much of a drag for 'em.
You have to be a cool customer in our line of work: speed, patience, active camo and a lot of incendiary devices win the day.
We go in lightly armoured and fully expecting a fight.
No opposition we've ever encountered has flatly surrendered at sixteen kamikaze clowns brandishing guns and demanding they stall their thrusters. Even when the engine is put out of action, with the MAC round swinging in and the smart ones getting the fuck off Dodge, you do still get crazy-mad Covenant stalwarts looking for some action and practicing headshots on deserters. It makes for some bizarre scenes of purple on purple head explosions I can tell ya.'
'Prior to the job, when you're in the chamber with the lava-lamp style biogels swashing about the pod, it can be quite peaceful. We may look and sometimes feel like hi-tech floating turds but there's a lot of thought go into being one of those turds.
The Gunrunner used to fire us in was once piloted manually, but with military cutbacks and artificial intelligence not suffering from motion sickness, the ride in is now as emotionally fulfilling as a soapbox sitcom from middle-America. At least when the operator was human you could sense, beneath the smarminess, a heartfelt splash of honesty in the sentiment of:
"Good luck and Godspeed, you fancy douchebags!"
Although to be fair, artificial intelligence isn't known to scream for said God and crack under the pressure of seeking out a targetside amidst a hail of plasma fire.'
'Ship zits still got you chuckling, huh? Sounds funny but I'm not that fond of the moniker myself. It stems from the impression our expendable capsule leaves on a ship, especially with all that foam bubbling and solidifying at the seam. At least as a ship zit we hit our target. When we don't, well, at least we get a laser-etched placard on the side of the station. I've already bagsied my plot. I've had a mould made from my pert derriere and I'm going to have it mounted right above the Warsaw's main cannon! Firm? You can find that out for yourself later on honey.
'Oh I get it, you're wondering what a MAC-op from the Warsaw platform is doing this far south of the river? It's all a bit technical for a lady.'
'Hey, if you can handle the jargon, I'm sure I can handle the boring explanation. See it's like this, you've heard and maybe been into slipspace. Well, there are a number of universal rules concerning astrophysics that apply to travelling in slipspace. Like no passing through black holes, no flying through planets or stars. Mainly objects that are so dense that they make an impact in the cronosphere of slipspace.
'Cronosphere? It's like the relevance of time and spacial definition in relation to slipspace, not exactly the perfect marriage of our space time continuum but a definite love tryst with dirty weekends thrown in.
It can be bit of a blur in there sometimes, get it?
Alright, suit yourself.'
'Our solar system has a set of algorithms that keep all the planets in constant motion around the sun, the UNSC and the Earth Trade Federation use it to determine their end of the Intergalactic Slipspace Code. This thing's big and it's heavily co-ordinated.
Anyway, like I was saying, the planets and the sun form barriers in getting to earth which prevent attack from certain directions beyond the solar system. Their orbital cycles determine where we position our defences. We're like one big gladiator of a planet and the other planets serve as our shield.
Now we of the MACs, we're like the big guns with Niagara cajones. All firing at once in a direction we're certain will make an inpact; well that would just be about the mightiest sword you'd ever see.
Since that single Covenant ship came through yesterday, wrecked New Mombasa and then hightailed it out of here just as fast, all the platforms are being manoeuvred and concentrated on the direction it left in.'
'How do they know which direction it left in? I knew you'd ask that!
Slipspace signatures are detected by a discharge of highly ionised, white crystal trinkets that pass for a limited time through normal space. Originally the crystal forms a protective cocoon around the vessel prior to entry and post exit. In fact, if you're unlucky enough to be in front of a ship exiting slipspace, you'll see a white cloud of vapour appear before being freighttrain'd into dust. I don't know how it works, if I did, I wouldn't be a MAC-rat, I'd be a scientist.'
'So what do you think? You wanna make it with the king, tonight? We could all be slaves tomorrow.'
The mark lifts her head out of her hands and raises her arms off the table between us, clearly bedazzled at my carefully crafted spell.
A smile gives a glimpse of pearl white teeth, the slight of her lips accentuating the shine of her lipgloss.
And she says as sweetly as cotton candy made for the ears.
"I think you're full of shit."
'But that's not a no, is it?'
The klaxon blares out before she can reply and the canteen goes to hell with a vivid crimson glare; the food was never any good down here anyway.
If this is a drill, I'm going to issue a complaint and demand to be reimbursed for the legwork of my Herculean serenade.
The calm voice, schmoozing from the speaker and currently being ignored by the general pandemonium, reassures me that this:
"Is not a drill."
Story of my life. My chance to get laid goes up in smoke the minute the Covenant decide to invade.
As she leaves my sight and looking hot in her heels, I can only think of one thing:
She could have been the one, the guys will never believe me but she could've been the one.
Guess I need to be going too, duty calls…
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