Just saying, enough nukes to cause any sort of dust-cloud-induced cooling also is going to induce a drastic heating event afterwards because that much in the atmosphere knocks out the ozone layer since chemical decomposition is a rather important part in how the atmosphere cleans itself of such debris and it would take much longer to replenish the ozone lost from that than it would for the smoke to clear.
"Hold formation, Bravo. Balmung at your six on attack vector." The radio chirped in both of the jeeps plowing through a field full of sunflowers. Behind them, a roaring ramjet was belching superheated air just above the petals. Charred plants held the missile loft with a thin cloud of ash as it flashed between the two jeeps. Things moving over three times the speed of sound tend to not be anywhere very long. "Contact in 3... 2... 1..."
The ground shook gently, though far too gently for the jeeps to notice as they leveled flower after flower. A modest shockwave pushed the flowers a bit just a moment before the jeeps emerged at the far end of the field, a smoking ruin of a helicopter lay just outside the border fence. It was a reinforced chain-link affair, crowned in razor wire, and the gate really wasn't going to stop these jeeps.
"That's a good hit, control. Sweeping for containment." The lead jeep made a loop around the wreckage and particulate sensors on the hood checked for anything out of the ordinary. "Bird was clean, we don't see any movement. Probably unmanned, don't bother with medics. We've cleared the fence, in position. Bravo out."
"Affirmative, Bravo. Alpha is in position as well. Cleared for disembark and proceed to your primary target." While the smoldering wreckage was tested, the second jeep rammed into the gate and popped the poorly maintained fencing clean off the hinges. The lock, however, performed admirably, keeping each side connected as they fell off the fence under the jeep. It was quickly followed by it's partner before they came to a stop next to a smaller outbuilding of the complex. Some Cyrillic characters adorned the door, but everyone in the jeeps simply knew it as Building-B and the site of their objective.
Four figures poured out of each jeep and advanced on the door. They didn't even need a breaching charge as it seemed to be unlocked. There was a guard's post just inside, but it appeared to be empty. If the helicopter had scared off everyone, this might be easier than anticipated. Then again, maybe they were just all burning records, as if it mattered.
"Bravo Actual to Control. We're in the building, seems deserted."
"Proceed to objective."
"Affirmative." They swept through the building, meeting no one before the stairwell and taking it down two floors. Here, they found a corridor with a lot of white paint and windows. Room after room filled with laboratory testing and examination equipment. Again, it was empty. This was about the time when the hair would start to stand up on the back of everyone's neck as they advanced down the hallway, checking room numbers until they turned a corner and found a space filled with offices and a lot more opaque walls. Stifled noises prompted them to kick open a door, but it was just laboratory animals. Same with the next room, and the third one. They checked all of them just to be sure.
Room 341, on the other hand, didn't contain any test subjects. It was a rather large room, much colder than the others. The door was a soft airlock, but they didn't particularly care as they just marched through the doors and looked around the boxes stacked up along the perimeter. Mundane supplies. The center of the room, however, held another room. One constructed entirely of glass and filled with more storage, all similarly transparent and housing many small vials filled with, well most of it they didn't know, but probably unpleasant.
From some pocket somewhere, a black box with a suction cup found it's way onto the glass door. There was a bit of a squeal after that, then the glass just sort of collapsed. Alarms sounded. Two men entered the inner chamber and scanned over the cases, not taking anything. "Sampson! Get me into that computer, I need to know if they were checked out. They aren't here. Jenkins, double-check."
The man barking orders and his partner in the vault took their time looking through every vial again, even checking for ones out of order. Presumably the one named Sampson dropped his rifle and sat down at the computer by the door and started doing his thing, cracking through the security. It was much easier since Alpha had been going for the central servers and security office and had managed to get them a backdoor into the system already.
"Found them, sir! Sort of."
"What do you mean, sort of?"
"The vials were checked out this morning for a transfer."
"What? By who? Where are they going? This is the last lab on our list."
"Dr. Dmitri Sarkenov, sir. Head of Operations. There doesn't seem to be a destination logged here. He just took them."
"Damnit. Get this vault prepped for cleansing." The man who certainly seemed to be in charge stepped out of the vault and two more stepped in, placing small doughy bricks all over. "Control, this is Bravo Actual. Target is missing. Taken by a Dr. Sarkenov, do we have a position on him? He can't have been gone more than three hours."
"Please stand-by, we're looking for him." Their only chance for a quick recovery is if the doctor hadn't thought ahead and still had his lab RFID tag or mobile phone with him. "Where's he headed, Bravo?"
"No idea, Control. Isn't this their last facility?" The group lacing the vault with explosives tapped him on the shoulder and he nodded. "Go get the second vault down on level 4."
"Found him, Bravo. Tracking his mobile on M04, east of your position. Pushing the feed to you." The HUD on his helmet updated with a larger map, showing the mobile moving away from them. "Command would prefer if you could take him alive. Pushing personal details."
The HUD lit up with photographs of the doctor, his vehicle registration papers, residence information, anything Control thought might be handy to track him down. "Bravo-Two, get your team wrapped up. We need to leave. Push your detcodes over to Alpha, they're on clean up duty."
A quick affirmative echoed back through the radio and everyone was back outside in a few minutes, the doctor putting even more pavement between them in the meantime. They practically jumped into the jeeps and floored it as they filed back out the gate and made a beeline for the road that linked them up to the highway. They had sirens to stick to the top of their jeeps for this kind of occasion. They didn't actually have authority to use sirens this way, but people generally just got out of the way, they didn't stop to see if it was really a police cruiser or ambulance.
The jeeps weren't particularly designed for high-speed pursuit, though their target wasn't really moving all that quickly. The screen on the dashboard showed them making slow progress. Then again, this was mid-afternoon and traffic was starting to pick up. Perhaps that's why their target was so slow. "Control, can we get a visual on his vehicle?"
"That's a negative, Bravo. No assets in the area and we aren't cleared for the airspace."
"Acknowledged." A quick punch to the glovebox and the jeep had pulled out around into the margin, wailing the siren louder and trying to make time around the piling traffic. The cars at a standstill flew past them while the sirens blared and they finally gained significant ground on their target. "Sampson! Get your head out there and see if you can find him. Black Daewoo."
"I think I've got 'im, sir! Center-lane." He held up his rifle to let the feed from his scope get a look at the rear end, trying to piece together a glimpse of the plate number. "Do you see this?"
"Yeah, give it a minute." The jeep was hurriedly processing the feed, slicing up frames and putting together the plate image between glimpses as traffic moved slightly. "That's a 70% match. Good enough for me. Bravo Actual to Bravo-Two. Move up ahead and stop traffic, we've got our mark."
"Roger that. Bravo-Two moving to stop traffic."
And it didn't take particularly much to stop traffic. Once someone with a siren was trying to wedge into the traffic flow sideways, leaving 2 lanes disrupted, the third was crippled as people tried to avoid the blockade. Bravo Actual's vehicle stopped as close to beside their target as it could, three of them disembarking and moving through the piled up cars and trucks towards one in particular, with driver prespiring far more than this chilly spring afternoon would merit, glancing back at his back seat quite frequently.
"He's running!" A rifle was leveled in the suited man's direction before a hand swatted it back down and another man leaped over the hood of a car to chase him down. It didn't take long at all before the well-dressed fugitive was on the ground with his hands bound behind him.
"Pursuant to World Health Organization Mandate 2083-1, you are hereby under arrest for transport of hazardous contaminants. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you for prosecution. You also have a right to trial and any affiliated rights under the local legal system. Do you understand?" After no reply, he repeated himself in Slavic language before hoisting the captive to his feet and leading him back towards the car. "Bravo Actual to Control. Dr. Sarkenov in custody."
"Solid copy, Bravo. Did you recover the primary objective?" Just then, a case was pulled out of the backseat covered in biohazard warnings.
"Confirm that." They cracked it open and scanned through the contents. Three vials labeled Variola major and another V. minor. All were intact and a thumbs up was flashed towards Bravo Actual, leading the doctor back to their jeep and he nodded. "That's affirmative, Control. Primary objective secured, still contained."
"Good work, Bravo. Local authorities will be responding shortly. Recommend you exfil immediately."
"Sampson, you take the doctor's car. Rendezvous at target site. We'll pick you up there and proceed to exfil." Sampson nodded and climbed into the confiscated Daewoo, still running. "Bravo-Two. We're finished here. Get back to the target site. Don't take the highway."
So I dug this up from an old RP back in the day. It's a lovely example of a lot of things not to do, but I'll leave y'all to tear it apart. Things got cluttered and obnoxious, so we called it a day. Enjoy.
Deep in a Liversanian lab located on a remote research facility, a group of Technicians suited up for a routine experiment. Standard environment suits to avoid any contamination of the results or potential harm to the Technicians, though it had been decades since a laboratory disaster had occurred. They were testing a new microbe to be used as a counter agent for diseases and were designed to stimulate cell repair. This particular test was in regards to its survivability, it was intended to be an on-the-field device, and as such would need to survive high temperatures and trauma; they were simulating such effects on it today. They swiped their keycards and the airlock opened to receive them with a hiss. The air was exchanged and the opposite side opened. They entered the lab optimistic; so far their project had worked perfectly, meeting every benchmark.
"Test 1A, flame resistance. Exposing to a Class 1 flame for 10 seconds." The Technician cues another in the room. He picks up a metallic container and walks over to a dais in the middle of the chamber. A button on the top ejects a crystal Petri dish. The Technician places this on to a support on the dais. A few key presses on a console open up a red flame from the center of the dais. The crystal allows the flame to pass through and affect the contents. Microscopes monitor the microbe, nothing happens. "Test successful." The flame shuts off. "Test 1B. Class 2 flame." The tests continue with varying flame temperatures, only at clear flame does it begin to wither. The Technician places the Petri dish at the bottom of the container and it is sucked into it and with a hiss it is frozen. Little did they know that they just caused an adverse and completely unplanned for possibility. Within the container, the microbe morphed and with the heat it stored, overcame the cryogenic gasses, trying to keep it stifled.
With the next batch of testing beginning, the Technician retrieved a new source to test. This one was raw heat testing. While they tested, the damaged microbes broke their growth restrictions began multiplying, quickly filling the Petri dish and began generating enough heat to damage the cryogenic parts enough to release the gasses keeping them stifled and the heat allowed them to multiply faster. The lack of expansion space led to the microbes devouring one another. This in turn led to the microbes mutating into killing machines, those that could destroy the others surviving longer until they were in turn devoured. Eventually, they reached their peak and continued multiplying, shattering the dish and overflowing into the container.
As the Technicians moved on to the next series of tests, one of them went to fetch another container of microbes. Little did he know that the previous container had spilled out into the holding bay and coated the container the Technician just grabbed. His hand was immediately swarmed and penetrated by the microscopic organisms built to help the Liversanians. They immediately went to work multiplying and spreading throughout his body, doing their job. The only problem was that they didn’t recognize the difference between good and bad organisms except the Liversanians, which they must support. Because of this, there were no immediate effects noticeable to any in the room. They continued tests, this one involving a laser emitter, testing their resistance to concentrated light, the laser was bumped and the Technician’s arm was nearly severed, but the odd thing was that he did not even bleed from the wound, the bone grew back into place and was outwardly restored, until it looked as if nothing had happened aside from the gash in his suit.
“Johnson! You’re arm! Look at it!” The puzzled Technician looked at his arm and a look of amazement came over his face. “What on earth did you do? Get out of here and see to that arm.” Johnson did leave, but seeing how he saw nothing wrong with his arm, didn’t go see a doctor, instead he went back to the cafeteria to have a nice cheese sandwich, for you see, Johnson, loved cheese, in fact it was the most important part of his diet to him. Unfortunately, cheese is a cultured food, made from animal products, so the microbes didn’t like it. They didn’t like the bread either. So they destroyed it before it could be digested. In time, Johnson began to suffer from malnutrition. It was too late before they ordered him to the quarantine bay and had doctors examine him, he’d left the microbes all over the facility and they had spread to others, even the very doctors trying to find out what was going on.
In days the entire facility was infected, feeling similar effects of malnutrition and uncanny healing, for the Liversanians. For any other race living in the facility, the microbes viewed as hostile organisms, and began to destroy them from the inside out, a terribly gruesome, but better way to die compared to what the Liversanians were in for. But with the unusual deaths and filling quarantine bays, the facility’s AI decided that something was going terribly wrong and locked down the facility before any reports could be made out.
The sudden lockdown and blackout was a little fishy to the Liversanian High Command back on Spolium. Since there were many extremely important and powerful experiments going on there, they feared an enemy invasion. With little intel to go off of and absolutely no clue what they might be facing, they sent in an elite unit of soldiers, armed with every possible weapon they could carry and plenty of explosives. The team was dropped in via drop pods onto the Ring; conventional landing was inadvisable due to the ambiguous nature of the mission. They approached the research facility to find it vacant on the outside, lights and fans, everything down. In fact, if not for their commander assuring them this was operational days ago, they might think that it had been abandoned for a long time it was so dormant. They plant a charge on the door and blow it off its hinges.
Of course, the computer wanted the facility locked down so it activated the facilities secondary security features. Turrets and traps all over the facility activate and target the intruders while the microbes take this chance to flee their prison and onto the Ring. The soldiers decide to head for the control room and get the turrets shut off before they get killed. But being an elite group, they have no trouble disabling the turrets as they find them in their push for the control room. Oddly enough, whether by the defenses, or the problem, none of the facilities prior inhabitants are spotted on their way to the control room.
The soldiers reach the control room and shut down the security measures. The commander decides to find out what’s going on and accesses the computer’s records and brings up the last week. “Alright, sir. It appears that the repair-microbe broke containment and spread throughout the facility. It seems to have worked in only responding to Liversanians; the other scientists here began to decay while still alive.” The soldier shuddered. “But it appears that the computer became concerned also at the rapid rate at which the food supplies were diminishing and malnutrition cases rising. The microbes seem to have been the culprit, those inside the Technicians thought the food were harmful organisms and those outside thought the same of the uneaten food, destroying both. But the repair functions worked perfectly, as malnutrition took its toll and destroyed cells and organs, the microbes repaired them. Psychological examinations showed that the constant state of starvation while unable to die destroyed their sanity. They’ve been reduced to instinctual creatures.” The soldier was puzzled at the silence that fell upon the room.
“You can stop telling us, we found one…” in the doorway stood a terrible looking Technician, thin to the bone, face caved in and a blank stare on his face.
“Open fire! Kill that abomination!” The bolts of cooled anti-matter reactions flew from the muzzles of their weapons and found their marks, tearing countless holes through the diseased being. They healed immediately. “What’s going on? Get a grenade at its feet.” One of the soldiers tossed a high explosive grenade and they all hit buttons to activate personal shielding as the blast goes off, knocking off a leg and arm and half the doorway, but it didn’t seem phased. “I don’t care what you do, just kill it!” A fury of weapons went at it, and an energy blade happened to find its way to the former Technician’s neck, decapitating it and the body collapsed to the ground. “Get outside! We need to establish contact. Try to shoot at the head before closing in.” The commander tapped a few commands into the terminal as they ran out of the room.
They fired into another abomination’s head and it went down. Without a functioning brain, it appeared that the microbe couldn’t sustain a functioning body. Thank goodness development hadn’t gotten to repair of the brain. The team blasted through a facility that now seemed filled with the ghouls. They made it to the outside and caved in the entrance, sealing the abominations within. “Johnson, get that radio set up.” One of the soldiers began to assemble an antenna to radio their ship. “I want a dropship here in 10 minutes.” The commander checked his datapad in his arm plate. He looked out into the woods that surrounded them and was shocked at the state of decay that the trees and bushes were in. Even the grass under their feet was dying. Before long he noticed a dropship falling from the sky. They boarded it and just in time, the facility detonates, sending shreds of metal flying into space. The detonation continued around the Ring, separating the sheets of metal until the star it housed destabilized and went supernova as the dropship entered a cruiser and it made the jump to hyperspace, the explosion of star gasses flying out on its coattails. Little did they know they just spread the microbe much further and faster than it ever would have without their intervention.
From the moment they stepped onto the cruiser, they doomed the Liversanian race. They took off their helmets and were infected, they opened the door to the dropship and spread it through the cruiser and when the cruiser docked, it was spread to the station and later the planet. From there, trade ship and military vessels, spread the microbe further. The explosion of the Ring sent the microbes there flying off into space, spreading it that way too. Colonies of it also began to form in space and passing ships would get covered in the microscopic infestation and spread it even further. A galaxy-wide epidemic was in full force in under a month.
A prominent military planet realized the outbreak for what it was and quarantined themselves from the rest of the universe. Pure energy shields surrounded the planet and every peripheral, guns blazed at any who tried to ignore their wishes. This last bastion of the Liversanians worked zealously to find a way to stop the microbes. Everything from freezing planets to glassing them, nothing seemed feasible or likely to work. The infestation was ever spreading outward, tainting the universe with the Liversanians’ folly. They finally decided that the best option would be to completely vaporize high spreading planets on the edges of the infected area to try and stop it. So without warning, they made use of their equipment and warped massive stars into the middle of systems and pulled all the worlds of the system into it, killing the microbes along with billions of inhabitants. It happened so quickly, that experiments in progress had no time to be ended, causing 100s of gateways to other Realities and Anomalies to end up inside the stars. People in research and habitation constructs through the portals found their structures flooded with stellar energy, destroying everything in its way; perhaps not even infected areas were sacrificed. Countless systems were lost in this manner, quadrillions of lives ended and centuries of advancement ruined, but not lost in vain, their plan seemed to have halted the infection’s advance. Within their perimeter, every planet was infected, the inhabitants of the only safe world watched in horror as every living thing on the planet died, once beautiful green worlds slowly turned brown and dead. It was at a horrible cost, but they seemed to have won. They relaxed.
What they did not take into account was the microbe’s ability to survive almost anywhere, even in the cold, vacuum of space. Colonies of the microbe formed and floated off-world, past the ring of quarantine and infected other worlds, spreading again. The military leaders could not understand how this happened and as they watched the universe get destroyed by this thing and they thought of fellow Liversanians, living such a terrible existence in constant pain, but immortal. The decided the only thing left to do was activate the rings and eradicate all life and the microbes with it. They broke quarantine and sent soldiers in fully enclosed suits to the eight Fortress Worlds.
“We’re deploying in drop pods. We’ve got no intell on the extent of the infection on this planet, so take the safety off before you get down there. You all know what you mission is so if there comes a time where a sacrifice is needed, don’t hesitate to do so. That is all, now get down there and show us that your training hasn’t been a waste.” The platoon stepped down into the pod bay and climbed into their assigned pods, checking their weapons one last time before the door came down and sealed them in. A small explosion could be heard as the pods dislodged from their housing and plummeted to the surface, on the border of the industrialized hemisphere. The pods hissed open and the soldiers jumped out with a well practiced precision and established a perimeter as the last few pods hit the surface. “Good drop men, move out. We’ll need to hit the equatorial gate.” The soldiers set out south, meeting no infected along the way. They reached the gate within a few hours and entered the industrialized sector to find a few crazed Sentinels which were quickly dispatched. They made their way to a teleportation terminal and warped into the Ring control room.
“Alright, Phillips, give me the access code.” Another soldier tossed his commander a crystal cube which he put into the panel. Light spilled from the cube and the terminal roared to life, holographic controls flickering on and a series of displays popped up. “This is it men. Today, we die as heroes. We will give a chance back to this universe at the cost of our own lives. Fret not in your death here, as it is for a worthy cause. Now, let’s go complete our mission!” The commander grabbed a crystal cube that the console had ejected and pocketed it. He grabbed his rifle and stepped out the door and looked out into the street before him. “Oh crap…” Thousands of infected stood before him and he reloaded his weapon.
“Nichols! I could use some support!” A soldier spins around and locks onto his target and fires a rocket over the shoulder of his comrade and ripped a few Infected to shreds that were closing in on the swamped soldier, letting out clip after clip, a massive pile of Infected in front of him. They were making steady progress, a few soldiers hacking and slashing their way through the wall of Infected with energy blades, counting on their comrades to keep the way open behind them. Their trust was well placed, the 20 soldiers kept the Infected back and moved up, their field of fire slacking behind and the gap closed up around the platoon, simply walking over their fallen brethren. They left hundreds of dead Infected behind them and countless empty clips.
“Phillips! Bring down that tower!” A trio of soldiers forced their way over to a tower on the side of the road.
“Charges!” Phillips held out his hand as another soldier tossed him a satchel charge. He strapped it to the tower and ran.
“Get out of the way!” They ran back to the group, slicing down all between them and the rest of the platoon. An explosion is heard and a shockwave rips through several Infected as the creak of twisting metal and a dull thud tells them they hit their mark, a score or so Infected crushed beneath it and a good hundred or so trapped on the other side.
They fought on for hours, the ranks of the Infected never seeming to thin, even though over a thousand of them lay dead on the ground. “Men, get into that building, I need to find out where we are.” They began to push toward the building, using a rocket to open the door and clear out the Infected around it. “Everybody inside!” The commander stood by the entrance, heavy machinegun in hand, blasting away and mowing down any Infected that tried to get near.
After everyone got in, the commander followed, “Get those bookcases in front of the door!” The troops complied and one of them set a grenade trap. They moved up the stairs, dispatching a few Infected still inside and got to the roof.
“Good work men, we’re about halfway there.” He looked around the skyline; the Infected filled his view, from horizon to horizon. An explosion was heard.
“Sir, that was my trap, they’ve got through the door.” The commander sighed and motioned to move out along the rooftops as Infected began moving up the stairs.
“Across the rooftops men!” The commander directed them to a close rooftop next to their current roof as the Infected smashed their way through the barricade they made at the door. Cooled antimatter ripped through several skulls, the falling dead made a secondary barricade while the men jumped across to the next roof and made their way across the next. Rounds whizzed from the front of the column back to support the soldiers in the back.
Their progress was steady and uneventful, aside from the Infected chasing them, until they reached a roof without any nearby, a mere block from the bridge. “Crap! The bridge is right there…” The commander looked over the edge of the building and saw a flood of Infected below them. He looked behind and saw the previous rooftop already flooded. “Okay, small arms aren’t gonna get us there.” A few of his men smiled and pulled out their heavy weapons. “Get ready to repel.”
A few heavy machine guns were set up on the edge, two of which were pointed to the previous roof to keep them back, they loaded in ammo belts and waited for the order to open fire while other soldiers with rocket launchers, grenades and other heavy weapons prepared their weapons. “Alright, a standard clear and repel. Open fire.” Dozens of rockets impacted the road below, detonating exponentially and the road was cleared as machine guns roared to life and grenades rained down. The road wasn’t even distinguishable after all the smoke settled, by then soldiers with energy blades had reached the ground and were taking out any that made it through the bath of machinegun fire. Slowly, the platoon repelled and got to the bottom of the building, holding off the Infected until they were ready to move on.
Eventually the moment came and they proceeded down the road in the same manner that they repelled, with overwhelming explosive force. There was no need to preserve the road because of what they were about to do. Explosions cleared the way forward and machine guns held off the rear. Grenades supplemented both. They made their way to the bridge and got across it, dropping satchel charges along the way. After they detonated them, they watched the fragments fall into the bottomless pit over which is used to stand. “We made it. Just into the building and down to the control room.” The artificial island was strangely, but pleasantly devoid of life, the defenses seemed to do their job well.
The soldiers pile into the lift and the commander hits a button, lights flickering to life and the lift dropped. They took this time to look over their weapons, say their last goodbyes and prepare themselves for what they were about to do.
One of them notices a crack in his armor; he runs a quick biological scan as his face drops. “Sir, I’ve become infected. I understand if I’ve become a problem to the platoon,” his voice comes through clenched teeth and bit back tears. He knows he was going to die anyway, but this was terrible realization. He waited to be handed a pistol from his commander.
“It doesn’t matter. It takes 2 or 3 days at a minimum for it for take full effect, we need 10 minutes.” The soldier’s face lit up for a moment until he saw the grief of realization from his commander. The lift clicked into the bottom of the shaft. “Not again,” before them laid another few hundred Infected. “How did they get in here?! I thought we had security measures to keep everything out! Well, we can’t exactly destroy this place, so watch your fire.” The commander loaded his rifle and began firing into the Infected, killing a handful before they turned to attack.
A fury of rounds flew from the lift across into the Infected, dropping them like flies to the cold metal floor. The platoon moved forward, clearing a path to the glowing terminal at the end of the room. But for every Infected they killed, another entered through the destroyed doorways. As they proceeded, one of the soldiers got separated and swarmed, sporadic machine gun fire followed until the click of an expired magazine was heard after which a few pistol rounds went off before screams of pure terror shook the soldiers to their hearts until they remembered they’d meet the same fate if they didn’t keep up their own efforts. And so their slow, but steady progress continued until they reached the console.
“Keep a perimeter and watch each other, it’ll take a moment to get this fired up.” The commander began rapidly pressing buttons and a huge hologram popped up, it showed the Rings above the planet. The hologram continued around the room to show the Rings above the other planets until 16 Rings were rotating in the room. In the holograms and up in space, the energy nodes fired to life and began to fill the energy canals with power that encircled the rings and booted up their key components. Since the activation command had come from a weapons terminal, their destructive devices began to prime. In between each pair of rings in the hologram, a sphere faded into vision, at the core of the spheres, a bright light began to grow as a low rumble began to fill the room. The Infected seemed distracted by the sudden display of light and sound and it gave them a few moments to reload while the Rings booted up. New displays popped up and showed statistics of the various rings. One of the holograms began to flash wildly as it showed a capital ship drifting towards it, doubtlessly disabled by the microbe. It crashed into one of the energy nodes and caused it to detonate, a bright flash filled the room, blinding everyone for a few seconds until it died down and revealed the Ring was now in pieces.
“Blast! We lost a Ring to a ship!? That’s ridiculous! It’s nearly the size of a planet and something 4 times smaller than a moon destroyed it!”
“Sir, the weapons were priming and it did hit an energy node as best we can tell. But please, we need to fire them before anything else happens, sir.”
“I suppose you’re right, everything seems to be warmed up. Let’s give this universe a fire works show they won’t soon forget! Say your good-byes men, nay, brothers. And if there’s something after this, may we all meet again. If not, I guess this is the end. See ya.” He shoved the crystal cube into the console and smirked as the console lit up and sent out signals to every Ring remaining and activated the massive weaponry systems built long ago and used only once. But there was no question if they’d work. The Liversanians never made anything half-baked and these systems were given top of the line maintenance and preservation devices to make sure they lasted, but now they would never be touched again by Liversanians. A tear formed in the commander’s eye as he realized this, but the happiness that he had completed the single greatest mission of any Liversanian commander ever, he had saved the universe from a plague his own people had unleashed. For this he wept, but he was making it right.
A single codex on each of the Fortress Worlds, the only ones left in the universe only there to aid the Rings, blinked open and awakened. With their massive processing ability, they took in everything around them and in an instant; they mapped every object in the universe. The information was sent up into the Rings into their massive memory capacitors, filling them almost to the limit. Every device in the Ring was activated, every computer, every Sentinel, everything was tapped into to process the information and get it to the right device. The massive burst of activity that occurred over the course of a second used more processing power than the Empire had used in the past 3 years. That was all, the Rings were ready. A second set of capacitors were charged and in a moment, 1.21 jiggawatts of power flashed into every device instantaneously. A ball of energy forming from a quartet of energy beams. This was siphoned into massive holes in the side of the planet and merged with the overcharge of power in the planet’s core while the dispersion matrix focused. The Shatterblast Cannons zeroed in on every object they needed to and readied to fire. Reality generators fluxed and warped extra power around them in preparation for their activation. Finally, biolabs readied their construction tools to complete the final phase of the Ring’s activation. The spheres of energy at the center of the Rings surge out and the planet sprays out a huge shockwave of energy that forms itself into a sphere as it goes out to cover the universe in its mighty power.
Back in the control room, the Commander begins to laugh as he sees the energy spilling down the lift and pouring into the room and disintegrating the Infected before passed to him and his soldiers and wiping them from the face of Reality. The Shatterblast Cannon then activates and hits the planet and wipes out everything else. This process continues from world to world, moon to moon, starship to starship, until every object is hit with the shockwave, then the Shatterblast Cannon and finally with a wave of reality to warp it back to a somewhat “natural” state. This continues onto every object in the universe, completely removing any scrap of life and the effects made every planet resonate as if it were a star, every moon glowed like a light bulb, the universe glowed with the left-over energy from the Rings.
The Parasites on their beloved Bagoda saw the wave coming and had only a small inclination of what it was before it wiped them from their planet. The Queen believed herself safe in her bunker until the Shatterblast hit and removed here from existence.
The remaining Semperfi knew perfectly well what the wave was and welcomed it, believing their Almighty Bob to have sent it to take them away. There was no one hidden away in bunkers surprised when the Shatterblast hit, but the Reality burst had the greatest effect on them, mending the Reality that was destroyed.
The Spores had no idea, not even noticing their demise until it hit them, wiping every one of them from the universe without warning. Such simple and uncultured creatures had no idea the Liversanians commanded such power.
The remnants of the Zakatuan wondered at the wave, as it was near identical to the Great Ring, but more powerful. Many believed it blasphemous as they were destroyed. Even the Flood that had survived aboard derelict ships were destroyed, this had finished both the Zakatuan and Liversanian debacles at once.
Even the elusive Renor in their Unreality were hit suddenly by the Ring’s activation. A gateway between Unreality and Nonreality had long remained open, and a portal to Nonreality was left open after the infection, destroying even their advanced civilization.
The final effected creatures were the Arrnti. A small residue was left from their time distortion and the combination of energies ripped it back open and when the Reality wave hit, their brain chemistry was altered, nothing more, though this was a detrimental effect, as it caused them to completely forget their technology and devices.
Now that the Universe was void of life, it had a chance to start over. To spark this, the biolabs manufactured centillions of the simplest bacteria and packaged it into pods to let them survive until they hit a planet or something for a chance to survive. They were released into the universe to give it a chance at life again. The Liversanians wouldn’t see it again, but maybe something else would make it.
But that's not exactly the point of choice in a sandbox game. If you need something to eat with, do you want to pick between a salad fork or a dinner fork? Or between a fork and a knife? Options shouldn't be cosmetically different, they ought to offer some different sort of functionality. A horse is a pig with a different face. I'd rather have something we don't already have, or maybe just fix the derpy pig mechanics. Minecraft is a game of grand options, not petty ones.
Mojang may not have announced a release date for it, but they've definitely talked about this ModAPI for quite some time now. Apparently
Korihor's suggestion is pretty close to what they mean to do. The API is more so that Bukkit will be the vanilla server and we won't need a separate implementation. It's not for mods in the traditional sense, just for pretty much the same stuff Bukkit plugins do.
I'm not so sure I support horses on the notion of being repetitive. What would a horse do? Probably just for riding. Maybe some other sort of powering a mill or something, but that would be an awful lot of changes. Horses are for riding but we already have pigs for riding. Pigs are also for food, but cows are better and cows are differentiated because of leather and milk. On the other hand, maybe leather could be stolen from cows domain (cows seriously need nerfed a bit, probably) and then horses are for riding and leather, differentiating them as a different thing and making the idea better. It's not about the animal being unique. It's about keeping uses unique. Minecraft could also have a plethora of different kinds of swords, but really one is all you actually need.
However, my steed is currently named Hamlet. I can't think of a good name for a horse, except for Horace, but that's lame. No one names their kid Horace, not even horse parents.
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PS: I like how they don't increase post counts on this board. It means that my title never changes. Can't believe I only now noticed that.
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Unfortunately, I'm tempted to post, but it's still an isolated colony no one particularly cares to pay attention to.
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The ground shook gently, though far too gently for the jeeps to notice as they leveled flower after flower. A modest shockwave pushed the flowers a bit just a moment before the jeeps emerged at the far end of the field, a smoking ruin of a helicopter lay just outside the border fence. It was a reinforced chain-link affair, crowned in razor wire, and the gate really wasn't going to stop these jeeps.
"That's a good hit, control. Sweeping for containment." The lead jeep made a loop around the wreckage and particulate sensors on the hood checked for anything out of the ordinary. "Bird was clean, we don't see any movement. Probably unmanned, don't bother with medics. We've cleared the fence, in position. Bravo out."
"Affirmative, Bravo. Alpha is in position as well. Cleared for disembark and proceed to your primary target." While the smoldering wreckage was tested, the second jeep rammed into the gate and popped the poorly maintained fencing clean off the hinges. The lock, however, performed admirably, keeping each side connected as they fell off the fence under the jeep. It was quickly followed by it's partner before they came to a stop next to a smaller outbuilding of the complex. Some Cyrillic characters adorned the door, but everyone in the jeeps simply knew it as Building-B and the site of their objective.
Four figures poured out of each jeep and advanced on the door. They didn't even need a breaching charge as it seemed to be unlocked. There was a guard's post just inside, but it appeared to be empty. If the helicopter had scared off everyone, this might be easier than anticipated. Then again, maybe they were just all burning records, as if it mattered.
"Bravo Actual to Control. We're in the building, seems deserted."
"Proceed to objective."
"Affirmative." They swept through the building, meeting no one before the stairwell and taking it down two floors. Here, they found a corridor with a lot of white paint and windows. Room after room filled with laboratory testing and examination equipment. Again, it was empty. This was about the time when the hair would start to stand up on the back of everyone's neck as they advanced down the hallway, checking room numbers until they turned a corner and found a space filled with offices and a lot more opaque walls. Stifled noises prompted them to kick open a door, but it was just laboratory animals. Same with the next room, and the third one. They checked all of them just to be sure.
Room 341, on the other hand, didn't contain any test subjects. It was a rather large room, much colder than the others. The door was a soft airlock, but they didn't particularly care as they just marched through the doors and looked around the boxes stacked up along the perimeter. Mundane supplies. The center of the room, however, held another room. One constructed entirely of glass and filled with more storage, all similarly transparent and housing many small vials filled with, well most of it they didn't know, but probably unpleasant.
From some pocket somewhere, a black box with a suction cup found it's way onto the glass door. There was a bit of a squeal after that, then the glass just sort of collapsed. Alarms sounded. Two men entered the inner chamber and scanned over the cases, not taking anything. "Sampson! Get me into that computer, I need to know if they were checked out. They aren't here. Jenkins, double-check."
The man barking orders and his partner in the vault took their time looking through every vial again, even checking for ones out of order. Presumably the one named Sampson dropped his rifle and sat down at the computer by the door and started doing his thing, cracking through the security. It was much easier since Alpha had been going for the central servers and security office and had managed to get them a backdoor into the system already.
"Found them, sir! Sort of."
"What do you mean, sort of?"
"The vials were checked out this morning for a transfer."
"What? By who? Where are they going? This is the last lab on our list."
"Dr. Dmitri Sarkenov, sir. Head of Operations. There doesn't seem to be a destination logged here. He just took them."
"Damnit. Get this vault prepped for cleansing." The man who certainly seemed to be in charge stepped out of the vault and two more stepped in, placing small doughy bricks all over. "Control, this is Bravo Actual. Target is missing. Taken by a Dr. Sarkenov, do we have a position on him? He can't have been gone more than three hours."
"Please stand-by, we're looking for him." Their only chance for a quick recovery is if the doctor hadn't thought ahead and still had his lab RFID tag or mobile phone with him. "Where's he headed, Bravo?"
"No idea, Control. Isn't this their last facility?" The group lacing the vault with explosives tapped him on the shoulder and he nodded. "Go get the second vault down on level 4."
"Found him, Bravo. Tracking his mobile on M04, east of your position. Pushing the feed to you." The HUD on his helmet updated with a larger map, showing the mobile moving away from them. "Command would prefer if you could take him alive. Pushing personal details."
The HUD lit up with photographs of the doctor, his vehicle registration papers, residence information, anything Control thought might be handy to track him down. "Bravo-Two, get your team wrapped up. We need to leave. Push your detcodes over to Alpha, they're on clean up duty."
A quick affirmative echoed back through the radio and everyone was back outside in a few minutes, the doctor putting even more pavement between them in the meantime. They practically jumped into the jeeps and floored it as they filed back out the gate and made a beeline for the road that linked them up to the highway. They had sirens to stick to the top of their jeeps for this kind of occasion. They didn't actually have authority to use sirens this way, but people generally just got out of the way, they didn't stop to see if it was really a police cruiser or ambulance.
The jeeps weren't particularly designed for high-speed pursuit, though their target wasn't really moving all that quickly. The screen on the dashboard showed them making slow progress. Then again, this was mid-afternoon and traffic was starting to pick up. Perhaps that's why their target was so slow. "Control, can we get a visual on his vehicle?"
"That's a negative, Bravo. No assets in the area and we aren't cleared for the airspace."
"Acknowledged." A quick punch to the glovebox and the jeep had pulled out around into the margin, wailing the siren louder and trying to make time around the piling traffic. The cars at a standstill flew past them while the sirens blared and they finally gained significant ground on their target. "Sampson! Get your head out there and see if you can find him. Black Daewoo."
"I think I've got 'im, sir! Center-lane." He held up his rifle to let the feed from his scope get a look at the rear end, trying to piece together a glimpse of the plate number. "Do you see this?"
"Yeah, give it a minute." The jeep was hurriedly processing the feed, slicing up frames and putting together the plate image between glimpses as traffic moved slightly. "That's a 70% match. Good enough for me. Bravo Actual to Bravo-Two. Move up ahead and stop traffic, we've got our mark."
"Roger that. Bravo-Two moving to stop traffic."
And it didn't take particularly much to stop traffic. Once someone with a siren was trying to wedge into the traffic flow sideways, leaving 2 lanes disrupted, the third was crippled as people tried to avoid the blockade. Bravo Actual's vehicle stopped as close to beside their target as it could, three of them disembarking and moving through the piled up cars and trucks towards one in particular, with driver prespiring far more than this chilly spring afternoon would merit, glancing back at his back seat quite frequently.
"He's running!" A rifle was leveled in the suited man's direction before a hand swatted it back down and another man leaped over the hood of a car to chase him down. It didn't take long at all before the well-dressed fugitive was on the ground with his hands bound behind him.
"Pursuant to World Health Organization Mandate 2083-1, you are hereby under arrest for transport of hazardous contaminants. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you for prosecution. You also have a right to trial and any affiliated rights under the local legal system. Do you understand?" After no reply, he repeated himself in Slavic language before hoisting the captive to his feet and leading him back towards the car. "Bravo Actual to Control. Dr. Sarkenov in custody."
"Solid copy, Bravo. Did you recover the primary objective?" Just then, a case was pulled out of the backseat covered in biohazard warnings.
"Confirm that." They cracked it open and scanned through the contents. Three vials labeled Variola major and another V. minor. All were intact and a thumbs up was flashed towards Bravo Actual, leading the doctor back to their jeep and he nodded. "That's affirmative, Control. Primary objective secured, still contained."
"Good work, Bravo. Local authorities will be responding shortly. Recommend you exfil immediately."
"Sampson, you take the doctor's car. Rendezvous at target site. We'll pick you up there and proceed to exfil." Sampson nodded and climbed into the confiscated Daewoo, still running. "Bravo-Two. We're finished here. Get back to the target site. Don't take the highway."
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Deep in a Liversanian lab located on a remote research facility, a group of Technicians suited up for a routine experiment. Standard environment suits to avoid any contamination of the results or potential harm to the Technicians, though it had been decades since a laboratory disaster had occurred. They were testing a new microbe to be used as a counter agent for diseases and were designed to stimulate cell repair. This particular test was in regards to its survivability, it was intended to be an on-the-field device, and as such would need to survive high temperatures and trauma; they were simulating such effects on it today. They swiped their keycards and the airlock opened to receive them with a hiss. The air was exchanged and the opposite side opened. They entered the lab optimistic; so far their project had worked perfectly, meeting every benchmark.
"Test 1A, flame resistance. Exposing to a Class 1 flame for 10 seconds." The Technician cues another in the room. He picks up a metallic container and walks over to a dais in the middle of the chamber. A button on the top ejects a crystal Petri dish. The Technician places this on to a support on the dais. A few key presses on a console open up a red flame from the center of the dais. The crystal allows the flame to pass through and affect the contents. Microscopes monitor the microbe, nothing happens. "Test successful." The flame shuts off. "Test 1B. Class 2 flame." The tests continue with varying flame temperatures, only at clear flame does it begin to wither. The Technician places the Petri dish at the bottom of the container and it is sucked into it and with a hiss it is frozen. Little did they know that they just caused an adverse and completely unplanned for possibility. Within the container, the microbe morphed and with the heat it stored, overcame the cryogenic gasses, trying to keep it stifled.
With the next batch of testing beginning, the Technician retrieved a new source to test. This one was raw heat testing. While they tested, the damaged microbes broke their growth restrictions began multiplying, quickly filling the Petri dish and began generating enough heat to damage the cryogenic parts enough to release the gasses keeping them stifled and the heat allowed them to multiply faster. The lack of expansion space led to the microbes devouring one another. This in turn led to the microbes mutating into killing machines, those that could destroy the others surviving longer until they were in turn devoured. Eventually, they reached their peak and continued multiplying, shattering the dish and overflowing into the container.
As the Technicians moved on to the next series of tests, one of them went to fetch another container of microbes. Little did he know that the previous container had spilled out into the holding bay and coated the container the Technician just grabbed. His hand was immediately swarmed and penetrated by the microscopic organisms built to help the Liversanians. They immediately went to work multiplying and spreading throughout his body, doing their job. The only problem was that they didn’t recognize the difference between good and bad organisms except the Liversanians, which they must support. Because of this, there were no immediate effects noticeable to any in the room. They continued tests, this one involving a laser emitter, testing their resistance to concentrated light, the laser was bumped and the Technician’s arm was nearly severed, but the odd thing was that he did not even bleed from the wound, the bone grew back into place and was outwardly restored, until it looked as if nothing had happened aside from the gash in his suit.
“Johnson! You’re arm! Look at it!” The puzzled Technician looked at his arm and a look of amazement came over his face. “What on earth did you do? Get out of here and see to that arm.” Johnson did leave, but seeing how he saw nothing wrong with his arm, didn’t go see a doctor, instead he went back to the cafeteria to have a nice cheese sandwich, for you see, Johnson, loved cheese, in fact it was the most important part of his diet to him. Unfortunately, cheese is a cultured food, made from animal products, so the microbes didn’t like it. They didn’t like the bread either. So they destroyed it before it could be digested. In time, Johnson began to suffer from malnutrition. It was too late before they ordered him to the quarantine bay and had doctors examine him, he’d left the microbes all over the facility and they had spread to others, even the very doctors trying to find out what was going on.
In days the entire facility was infected, feeling similar effects of malnutrition and uncanny healing, for the Liversanians. For any other race living in the facility, the microbes viewed as hostile organisms, and began to destroy them from the inside out, a terribly gruesome, but better way to die compared to what the Liversanians were in for. But with the unusual deaths and filling quarantine bays, the facility’s AI decided that something was going terribly wrong and locked down the facility before any reports could be made out.
The sudden lockdown and blackout was a little fishy to the Liversanian High Command back on Spolium. Since there were many extremely important and powerful experiments going on there, they feared an enemy invasion. With little intel to go off of and absolutely no clue what they might be facing, they sent in an elite unit of soldiers, armed with every possible weapon they could carry and plenty of explosives. The team was dropped in via drop pods onto the Ring; conventional landing was inadvisable due to the ambiguous nature of the mission. They approached the research facility to find it vacant on the outside, lights and fans, everything down. In fact, if not for their commander assuring them this was operational days ago, they might think that it had been abandoned for a long time it was so dormant. They plant a charge on the door and blow it off its hinges.
Of course, the computer wanted the facility locked down so it activated the facilities secondary security features. Turrets and traps all over the facility activate and target the intruders while the microbes take this chance to flee their prison and onto the Ring. The soldiers decide to head for the control room and get the turrets shut off before they get killed. But being an elite group, they have no trouble disabling the turrets as they find them in their push for the control room. Oddly enough, whether by the defenses, or the problem, none of the facilities prior inhabitants are spotted on their way to the control room.
The soldiers reach the control room and shut down the security measures. The commander decides to find out what’s going on and accesses the computer’s records and brings up the last week. “Alright, sir. It appears that the repair-microbe broke containment and spread throughout the facility. It seems to have worked in only responding to Liversanians; the other scientists here began to decay while still alive.” The soldier shuddered. “But it appears that the computer became concerned also at the rapid rate at which the food supplies were diminishing and malnutrition cases rising. The microbes seem to have been the culprit, those inside the Technicians thought the food were harmful organisms and those outside thought the same of the uneaten food, destroying both. But the repair functions worked perfectly, as malnutrition took its toll and destroyed cells and organs, the microbes repaired them. Psychological examinations showed that the constant state of starvation while unable to die destroyed their sanity. They’ve been reduced to instinctual creatures.” The soldier was puzzled at the silence that fell upon the room.
“You can stop telling us, we found one…” in the doorway stood a terrible looking Technician, thin to the bone, face caved in and a blank stare on his face.
“Open fire! Kill that abomination!” The bolts of cooled anti-matter reactions flew from the muzzles of their weapons and found their marks, tearing countless holes through the diseased being. They healed immediately. “What’s going on? Get a grenade at its feet.” One of the soldiers tossed a high explosive grenade and they all hit buttons to activate personal shielding as the blast goes off, knocking off a leg and arm and half the doorway, but it didn’t seem phased. “I don’t care what you do, just kill it!” A fury of weapons went at it, and an energy blade happened to find its way to the former Technician’s neck, decapitating it and the body collapsed to the ground. “Get outside! We need to establish contact. Try to shoot at the head before closing in.” The commander tapped a few commands into the terminal as they ran out of the room.
They fired into another abomination’s head and it went down. Without a functioning brain, it appeared that the microbe couldn’t sustain a functioning body. Thank goodness development hadn’t gotten to repair of the brain. The team blasted through a facility that now seemed filled with the ghouls. They made it to the outside and caved in the entrance, sealing the abominations within. “Johnson, get that radio set up.” One of the soldiers began to assemble an antenna to radio their ship. “I want a dropship here in 10 minutes.” The commander checked his datapad in his arm plate. He looked out into the woods that surrounded them and was shocked at the state of decay that the trees and bushes were in. Even the grass under their feet was dying. Before long he noticed a dropship falling from the sky. They boarded it and just in time, the facility detonates, sending shreds of metal flying into space. The detonation continued around the Ring, separating the sheets of metal until the star it housed destabilized and went supernova as the dropship entered a cruiser and it made the jump to hyperspace, the explosion of star gasses flying out on its coattails. Little did they know they just spread the microbe much further and faster than it ever would have without their intervention.
From the moment they stepped onto the cruiser, they doomed the Liversanian race. They took off their helmets and were infected, they opened the door to the dropship and spread it through the cruiser and when the cruiser docked, it was spread to the station and later the planet. From there, trade ship and military vessels, spread the microbe further. The explosion of the Ring sent the microbes there flying off into space, spreading it that way too. Colonies of it also began to form in space and passing ships would get covered in the microscopic infestation and spread it even further. A galaxy-wide epidemic was in full force in under a month.
A prominent military planet realized the outbreak for what it was and quarantined themselves from the rest of the universe. Pure energy shields surrounded the planet and every peripheral, guns blazed at any who tried to ignore their wishes. This last bastion of the Liversanians worked zealously to find a way to stop the microbes. Everything from freezing planets to glassing them, nothing seemed feasible or likely to work. The infestation was ever spreading outward, tainting the universe with the Liversanians’ folly. They finally decided that the best option would be to completely vaporize high spreading planets on the edges of the infected area to try and stop it. So without warning, they made use of their equipment and warped massive stars into the middle of systems and pulled all the worlds of the system into it, killing the microbes along with billions of inhabitants. It happened so quickly, that experiments in progress had no time to be ended, causing 100s of gateways to other Realities and Anomalies to end up inside the stars. People in research and habitation constructs through the portals found their structures flooded with stellar energy, destroying everything in its way; perhaps not even infected areas were sacrificed. Countless systems were lost in this manner, quadrillions of lives ended and centuries of advancement ruined, but not lost in vain, their plan seemed to have halted the infection’s advance. Within their perimeter, every planet was infected, the inhabitants of the only safe world watched in horror as every living thing on the planet died, once beautiful green worlds slowly turned brown and dead. It was at a horrible cost, but they seemed to have won. They relaxed.
What they did not take into account was the microbe’s ability to survive almost anywhere, even in the cold, vacuum of space. Colonies of the microbe formed and floated off-world, past the ring of quarantine and infected other worlds, spreading again. The military leaders could not understand how this happened and as they watched the universe get destroyed by this thing and they thought of fellow Liversanians, living such a terrible existence in constant pain, but immortal. The decided the only thing left to do was activate the rings and eradicate all life and the microbes with it. They broke quarantine and sent soldiers in fully enclosed suits to the eight Fortress Worlds.
“We’re deploying in drop pods. We’ve got no intell on the extent of the infection on this planet, so take the safety off before you get down there. You all know what you mission is so if there comes a time where a sacrifice is needed, don’t hesitate to do so. That is all, now get down there and show us that your training hasn’t been a waste.” The platoon stepped down into the pod bay and climbed into their assigned pods, checking their weapons one last time before the door came down and sealed them in. A small explosion could be heard as the pods dislodged from their housing and plummeted to the surface, on the border of the industrialized hemisphere. The pods hissed open and the soldiers jumped out with a well practiced precision and established a perimeter as the last few pods hit the surface. “Good drop men, move out. We’ll need to hit the equatorial gate.” The soldiers set out south, meeting no infected along the way. They reached the gate within a few hours and entered the industrialized sector to find a few crazed Sentinels which were quickly dispatched. They made their way to a teleportation terminal and warped into the Ring control room.
“Alright, Phillips, give me the access code.” Another soldier tossed his commander a crystal cube which he put into the panel. Light spilled from the cube and the terminal roared to life, holographic controls flickering on and a series of displays popped up. “This is it men. Today, we die as heroes. We will give a chance back to this universe at the cost of our own lives. Fret not in your death here, as it is for a worthy cause. Now, let’s go complete our mission!” The commander grabbed a crystal cube that the console had ejected and pocketed it. He grabbed his rifle and stepped out the door and looked out into the street before him. “Oh crap…” Thousands of infected stood before him and he reloaded his weapon.
“Nichols! I could use some support!” A soldier spins around and locks onto his target and fires a rocket over the shoulder of his comrade and ripped a few Infected to shreds that were closing in on the swamped soldier, letting out clip after clip, a massive pile of Infected in front of him. They were making steady progress, a few soldiers hacking and slashing their way through the wall of Infected with energy blades, counting on their comrades to keep the way open behind them. Their trust was well placed, the 20 soldiers kept the Infected back and moved up, their field of fire slacking behind and the gap closed up around the platoon, simply walking over their fallen brethren. They left hundreds of dead Infected behind them and countless empty clips.
“Phillips! Bring down that tower!” A trio of soldiers forced their way over to a tower on the side of the road.
“Charges!” Phillips held out his hand as another soldier tossed him a satchel charge. He strapped it to the tower and ran.
“Get out of the way!” They ran back to the group, slicing down all between them and the rest of the platoon. An explosion is heard and a shockwave rips through several Infected as the creak of twisting metal and a dull thud tells them they hit their mark, a score or so Infected crushed beneath it and a good hundred or so trapped on the other side.
They fought on for hours, the ranks of the Infected never seeming to thin, even though over a thousand of them lay dead on the ground. “Men, get into that building, I need to find out where we are.” They began to push toward the building, using a rocket to open the door and clear out the Infected around it. “Everybody inside!” The commander stood by the entrance, heavy machinegun in hand, blasting away and mowing down any Infected that tried to get near.
After everyone got in, the commander followed, “Get those bookcases in front of the door!” The troops complied and one of them set a grenade trap. They moved up the stairs, dispatching a few Infected still inside and got to the roof.
“Good work men, we’re about halfway there.” He looked around the skyline; the Infected filled his view, from horizon to horizon. An explosion was heard.
“Sir, that was my trap, they’ve got through the door.” The commander sighed and motioned to move out along the rooftops as Infected began moving up the stairs.
“Across the rooftops men!” The commander directed them to a close rooftop next to their current roof as the Infected smashed their way through the barricade they made at the door. Cooled antimatter ripped through several skulls, the falling dead made a secondary barricade while the men jumped across to the next roof and made their way across the next. Rounds whizzed from the front of the column back to support the soldiers in the back.
Their progress was steady and uneventful, aside from the Infected chasing them, until they reached a roof without any nearby, a mere block from the bridge. “Crap! The bridge is right there…” The commander looked over the edge of the building and saw a flood of Infected below them. He looked behind and saw the previous rooftop already flooded. “Okay, small arms aren’t gonna get us there.” A few of his men smiled and pulled out their heavy weapons. “Get ready to repel.”
A few heavy machine guns were set up on the edge, two of which were pointed to the previous roof to keep them back, they loaded in ammo belts and waited for the order to open fire while other soldiers with rocket launchers, grenades and other heavy weapons prepared their weapons. “Alright, a standard clear and repel. Open fire.” Dozens of rockets impacted the road below, detonating exponentially and the road was cleared as machine guns roared to life and grenades rained down. The road wasn’t even distinguishable after all the smoke settled, by then soldiers with energy blades had reached the ground and were taking out any that made it through the bath of machinegun fire. Slowly, the platoon repelled and got to the bottom of the building, holding off the Infected until they were ready to move on.
Eventually the moment came and they proceeded down the road in the same manner that they repelled, with overwhelming explosive force. There was no need to preserve the road because of what they were about to do. Explosions cleared the way forward and machine guns held off the rear. Grenades supplemented both. They made their way to the bridge and got across it, dropping satchel charges along the way. After they detonated them, they watched the fragments fall into the bottomless pit over which is used to stand. “We made it. Just into the building and down to the control room.” The artificial island was strangely, but pleasantly devoid of life, the defenses seemed to do their job well.
The soldiers pile into the lift and the commander hits a button, lights flickering to life and the lift dropped. They took this time to look over their weapons, say their last goodbyes and prepare themselves for what they were about to do.
One of them notices a crack in his armor; he runs a quick biological scan as his face drops. “Sir, I’ve become infected. I understand if I’ve become a problem to the platoon,” his voice comes through clenched teeth and bit back tears. He knows he was going to die anyway, but this was terrible realization. He waited to be handed a pistol from his commander.
“It doesn’t matter. It takes 2 or 3 days at a minimum for it for take full effect, we need 10 minutes.” The soldier’s face lit up for a moment until he saw the grief of realization from his commander. The lift clicked into the bottom of the shaft. “Not again,” before them laid another few hundred Infected. “How did they get in here?! I thought we had security measures to keep everything out! Well, we can’t exactly destroy this place, so watch your fire.” The commander loaded his rifle and began firing into the Infected, killing a handful before they turned to attack.
A fury of rounds flew from the lift across into the Infected, dropping them like flies to the cold metal floor. The platoon moved forward, clearing a path to the glowing terminal at the end of the room. But for every Infected they killed, another entered through the destroyed doorways. As they proceeded, one of the soldiers got separated and swarmed, sporadic machine gun fire followed until the click of an expired magazine was heard after which a few pistol rounds went off before screams of pure terror shook the soldiers to their hearts until they remembered they’d meet the same fate if they didn’t keep up their own efforts. And so their slow, but steady progress continued until they reached the console.
“Keep a perimeter and watch each other, it’ll take a moment to get this fired up.” The commander began rapidly pressing buttons and a huge hologram popped up, it showed the Rings above the planet. The hologram continued around the room to show the Rings above the other planets until 16 Rings were rotating in the room. In the holograms and up in space, the energy nodes fired to life and began to fill the energy canals with power that encircled the rings and booted up their key components. Since the activation command had come from a weapons terminal, their destructive devices began to prime. In between each pair of rings in the hologram, a sphere faded into vision, at the core of the spheres, a bright light began to grow as a low rumble began to fill the room. The Infected seemed distracted by the sudden display of light and sound and it gave them a few moments to reload while the Rings booted up. New displays popped up and showed statistics of the various rings. One of the holograms began to flash wildly as it showed a capital ship drifting towards it, doubtlessly disabled by the microbe. It crashed into one of the energy nodes and caused it to detonate, a bright flash filled the room, blinding everyone for a few seconds until it died down and revealed the Ring was now in pieces.
“Blast! We lost a Ring to a ship!? That’s ridiculous! It’s nearly the size of a planet and something 4 times smaller than a moon destroyed it!”
“Sir, the weapons were priming and it did hit an energy node as best we can tell. But please, we need to fire them before anything else happens, sir.”
“I suppose you’re right, everything seems to be warmed up. Let’s give this universe a fire works show they won’t soon forget! Say your good-byes men, nay, brothers. And if there’s something after this, may we all meet again. If not, I guess this is the end. See ya.” He shoved the crystal cube into the console and smirked as the console lit up and sent out signals to every Ring remaining and activated the massive weaponry systems built long ago and used only once. But there was no question if they’d work. The Liversanians never made anything half-baked and these systems were given top of the line maintenance and preservation devices to make sure they lasted, but now they would never be touched again by Liversanians. A tear formed in the commander’s eye as he realized this, but the happiness that he had completed the single greatest mission of any Liversanian commander ever, he had saved the universe from a plague his own people had unleashed. For this he wept, but he was making it right.
A single codex on each of the Fortress Worlds, the only ones left in the universe only there to aid the Rings, blinked open and awakened. With their massive processing ability, they took in everything around them and in an instant; they mapped every object in the universe. The information was sent up into the Rings into their massive memory capacitors, filling them almost to the limit. Every device in the Ring was activated, every computer, every Sentinel, everything was tapped into to process the information and get it to the right device. The massive burst of activity that occurred over the course of a second used more processing power than the Empire had used in the past 3 years. That was all, the Rings were ready. A second set of capacitors were charged and in a moment, 1.21 jiggawatts of power flashed into every device instantaneously. A ball of energy forming from a quartet of energy beams. This was siphoned into massive holes in the side of the planet and merged with the overcharge of power in the planet’s core while the dispersion matrix focused. The Shatterblast Cannons zeroed in on every object they needed to and readied to fire. Reality generators fluxed and warped extra power around them in preparation for their activation. Finally, biolabs readied their construction tools to complete the final phase of the Ring’s activation. The spheres of energy at the center of the Rings surge out and the planet sprays out a huge shockwave of energy that forms itself into a sphere as it goes out to cover the universe in its mighty power.
Back in the control room, the Commander begins to laugh as he sees the energy spilling down the lift and pouring into the room and disintegrating the Infected before passed to him and his soldiers and wiping them from the face of Reality. The Shatterblast Cannon then activates and hits the planet and wipes out everything else. This process continues from world to world, moon to moon, starship to starship, until every object is hit with the shockwave, then the Shatterblast Cannon and finally with a wave of reality to warp it back to a somewhat “natural” state. This continues onto every object in the universe, completely removing any scrap of life and the effects made every planet resonate as if it were a star, every moon glowed like a light bulb, the universe glowed with the left-over energy from the Rings.
The Parasites on their beloved Bagoda saw the wave coming and had only a small inclination of what it was before it wiped them from their planet. The Queen believed herself safe in her bunker until the Shatterblast hit and removed here from existence.
The remaining Semperfi knew perfectly well what the wave was and welcomed it, believing their Almighty Bob to have sent it to take them away. There was no one hidden away in bunkers surprised when the Shatterblast hit, but the Reality burst had the greatest effect on them, mending the Reality that was destroyed.
The Spores had no idea, not even noticing their demise until it hit them, wiping every one of them from the universe without warning. Such simple and uncultured creatures had no idea the Liversanians commanded such power.
The remnants of the Zakatuan wondered at the wave, as it was near identical to the Great Ring, but more powerful. Many believed it blasphemous as they were destroyed. Even the Flood that had survived aboard derelict ships were destroyed, this had finished both the Zakatuan and Liversanian debacles at once.
Even the elusive Renor in their Unreality were hit suddenly by the Ring’s activation. A gateway between Unreality and Nonreality had long remained open, and a portal to Nonreality was left open after the infection, destroying even their advanced civilization.
The final effected creatures were the Arrnti. A small residue was left from their time distortion and the combination of energies ripped it back open and when the Reality wave hit, their brain chemistry was altered, nothing more, though this was a detrimental effect, as it caused them to completely forget their technology and devices.
Now that the Universe was void of life, it had a chance to start over. To spark this, the biolabs manufactured centillions of the simplest bacteria and packaged it into pods to let them survive until they hit a planet or something for a chance to survive. They were released into the universe to give it a chance at life again. The Liversanians wouldn’t see it again, but maybe something else would make it.
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However, my steed is currently named Hamlet. I can't think of a good name for a horse, except for Horace, but that's lame. No one names their kid Horace, not even horse parents.
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