Shadow Part2: Debacle
Posted By: MasterSushi<mastersushifp@hotmail.com>
Date: 18 September 2004, 9:09 AM
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Author's note
A note about rank. They don't use standard military ranks. In Tetrao the ranks can be roughly generalised into three groups. The first group are the fighters. They are split into many groups depending on their fighting style. On each operation a temporary Squad Leader is appointed. The second group are the scientists and physicians. They are some of the most important personnel. The third group are the Masters. These include Training Masters, Mission Masters, High Masters and many others.
Enjoy!)
Shadow knocked on the physician's door. He thought about the last mission. They had just got back and he didn't know what was on the disk he had quickly handed in or whether it was of any use. He waited a few minutes pondering the mission and what they may be requested to do next. No doubt it would be to do with the new aliens they had come across.
The door opened and an Asian girl walked out the white room. As she walked past he noticed a large scar on her left arm. A balding man with glasses wearing a long white doctor's coat welcomed Shadow into the room. "Come in Shadow."
"Doctor." Acknowledged Shadow. Shadow stepped into the room. It was small and contained several desks with medical apparatus such as biofoam, medkits, syringes and bandages. Shadow sat on a single chair opposite a desk.
"Can you strip down to your waist Shadow?" Shadow did as he was asked and the Doctor Smoy's eyes widened as he saw the amounts of scratches and wounds the covered Shadow's figure. His chest was clearly solid muscle under the skin but the usual contours across the chest were rudely interrupted by large, crimson gashes. The doctor composed himself and covered some of the deeper wounds with bandages. "I'd like to do some more tests on your...abnormalities. This way please." Doctor Smoy led Shadow through a door on the opposite side of the room, on this side of the wall was a roofless room with a ladder leading up to a solid platform. "Could you go up to the platform please?"
"Of course." Shadow stood below the ladder and rocked onto his reels. Then with tremendous speed he swung onto the balls of his feet and propelled himself upwards. Shadow leapt eight or nine metres up the ladder. The doctor stood in awe. He was a new doctor and was interested in the reports Dr Sporen had left him. From what he had read Shadow could jump 9.74 metres up and absorb a shock from a 15.73 metre drop. He had to see this for himself.
According to the reports this was because of Shadows deformed body. It was only slightly visible from the outside mainly due to the way he walked but was very noticeable in the X-rays. shadow had very thick 'plates' of muscle which were interconnected loosely. He was missing several bones, ribs especially. He had slightly longer toes and thinner feet and like almost all of the members of Tetraodontidae, he was very tall. Not unusually tall, but taller than the average man.
"Would you like to jump off it now?" Shadow had reached the platform and stood there patiently.
"Yes sir." He flung himself off the platform, spreading his body presumably to slow himself down. The doctor flinched slightly as Shadow hit the floor feet first with the rest of his body following suit. The landing was startlingly quiet with only a slight exhale as he regained his posture. Doctor Smoy cleared his throat and took a few steps forwards,
"That'll be all. Just take it easy." Shadow nodded but Smoy knew he would never take it easy.
Shadow entered the briefing room with two other people. Inside the room were four people like him, a scientist who he knew to be Doctor Starlington and Mission Master Shoten. MM Shoten wore an eye patch over his left eye, which had been badly wounded during an unarmed combat training when the Mission Master was younger. Shadow and the other men stood around a square table with a map of a large encampment on it. MM Shoten and Dr Starlington stood at the head of the table, a large screen behind them glowed a pulsated slightly a dull black in colour.
"What's up?" growled one of the heavily built men. MM Shoten shifted aside so that Dr Starlington could move to the side of the screen. The screen flashed on,
"Your objectives will be explained to you in a minute but first we must inform you of other things." The screen showed the creatures Shadow and his team had encountered. It revolved and showed a large wound in the back of its armour but it was other wise unscathed. It had pale grey skin and a four jawed mouth. Its armour was black, thick and leathery looking. It had dark pitted eyes and tentacle like appendages hung from the back, sides and top of the thing's head. The gun then flashed onto the screen along with photos of the bullet creatures. The gun was black like the rest of the armour and had a crude stock. The bullet creatures were a shiny black and looked like short, fat worms. Short, sharp teeth could be spotted on one side of them.
"Have you given them a name?" asked Shadow,
"Immani. That's the plural, it's one Immanis." replied the Dr. The map on the table rose slightly, the hologram creating contours and valleys. "This is one of their larger bases. They have no walls and the buildings are more sophisticated. On the disk you found me," he gestured to Shadow, "are these." The screen on the wall changed to schematics of teardrop shaped ships and horseshoe shaped ones. Other ships accompanied them one by one, some with rings around them, others with limbs jutting out from the sides. "These are not tribulation weapons, neither do they seem likely to be used by the Immani. These vehicles and ships use primarily plasma technology, a technology that far surpasses firing bugs out of basic rifles. Which means someone must have given it to them. We need you to find more disks. There should be some in this building." He pointed to a long building near what appeared to be a town square in the middle of the base. "Recon teams have told us that it seems to be a library of archive but they couldn't get close enough to do anything about it. They've buried comms and radio transmitters around the beach to the west of the forest for you." Shadow saw the encampment was in another forest. MM Shoten started to speak up.
"This is purely a stealth mission. Take as few guns as possible. Kill as little as possible and make sure you get those disks. Squad Leader on this mission will be Virus. Go suit up." Shadow lifted his head from the hologram map. He was the best. He should be Squad Leader. This Virus had better be really good. Shadow turned and walked to the changing rooms with the rest of the men.
He and six other fighters undressed to their underwear. Shadow knew that many others were very religious here. One or two of the soldiers had the word 'REPENT' scratched onto their backs probably done with their combat knives. They slipped into their ninja-like clothes. He looked around at his team and a spark of light caught the corner of his eye. Virus was placing a silver cross around his neck. Shadow walked up to him.
"Could you paint that black or something?" Virus turned so they were nose to nose.
"Why?" protested Virus.
"The glint could give us away. At least put it on under your shirt." Virus pushed him back.
"I've heard of you. Shadow isn't it? I'm in charge of this team so you better get used to it." A fire boiled inside Shadow. The idiot's inanity could get them killed. He had nothing against religion, the opposite in fact. He didn't want to believe in it though; it frightened him. If it was true he would go to hell almost certainly and that thought chilled him to the bone. "Let's go team." called Virus. They marched chanting the usual chant.
"DAMNED be the infidel.
DAMNED be the heretic.
DAMNED be the devils work,
DAMNED be the FOOL!"
More religious words. But were these just an attempt to justify their killings? Maybe a futile attempt to trick God to think what they were doing was right. Shadow would never know until he died and that wasn't going to happen soon. He wouldn't let it.
Ona Morderee stood in the dropship with two veteran Jackals and some even more unworthy, lower class Jackals. He wondered why the Exalted One had sent such a low ranking Elite such as himself for a dishonourable assignment in an ambassador role. His Eminence had told them only sketchy details. The aliens they had trying to get to join the Covenant crusades had been recently attacked by worthless fiends. The Holy One probably wants to use them as bait so that Ona and his squad could have the honour of slaying the nameless ones. In the meantime Ona was told to work as a diplomat trying to gain a bond with the squid headed creatures, swapping technology and such. Apparently the last disks that they had given to the things had been stolen and if it were up to Ona he wouldn't give the pitiful creatures anymore of their blessed technology and find a more powerful race to befriend. He stood patiently in the dropship, waiting to land.
Virus and his team stood on the archive building and were trying to find a way in. The day was cloudy and Virus' pendant hadn't given them away yet. But the clouds were quickly dissipating and Shadow had a bad feeling the team would be spotted as soon as they had totally disappeared. There was a trapdoor on the roof of the building and they finally managed to pull it open. Shadow was chosen to drop down and take what he could. There were a few Immani in the library but that was nothing to Shadow. He whizzed from table to table around the hexagonal columns with disks in them until he found a section with no one near at all. In this section was a large crate. It had a ceremonial looking lid and he couldn't open it with just his hands. Shadow checked the large window on his right to make sure no one was there, then he pulled out one of his knives and used it to easily break off the lid. Inside were neat rows of pentagonal disks. He pulled out as many as would fit in his pouches and a drawstring bag on his side and prepared to escape. As he turned the sun hurt his eyes and Shadow felt the natural heat against his face. The sun. No!There was shouting from behind him and doors crashed as the Immani rushed outside. Shadow waited a few seconds before leaping up through the trapdoor to see the commotion. Two of his team lay unidentifiable on the floor as thousands of small black bugs crawled in and out of their flesh. On the ground below him three more pairs of legs were visible under large hound like reptiles. They were similar looking to the Immani, the same tentacle appendages and two pairs of mandibles. They had a hunched back due to the powerful hind legs and thin front legs. The creatures ripped of large parts of his squad mate's skin and the pool of blood on the floor widened every second. One of his team was MIA, the others KIA. He jumped off the building and ran to the forest as fast as he could. Sweeping through the trees he reached the beach at the edge of it. Two Immani stood in front of him. Shadow pulled out two knives and skewed them each in their stomachs then he thumped the knives again through their foreheads. He scrambled around in the sand trying to find the comms. He looked upwards to see five other aliens charging towards him. Four of them were birdlike with strange beak-like mouths and some had feathers on their head. Strange shields on their wrists flickered on. Two were orange the other an eerie blue. They were roughly just under five foot tall by the looks of it, but what worried Shadow more was the large blue creature charging towards him...
To be continued...
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