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Suicide Kings by Neil Yudsponwy
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Suicide Kings Prologue: Meet Your Hero
Date: 5 November 2008, 2:57 pm
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…
Suicide Kings: Ch-1: Lame Logistics and Locker Room Nightmares
Date: 10 December 2008, 10:47 pm
Exiting the canteen offers a pretty damning verdict on humanity.
The women and children first policy would really be taking effect if they could navigate around the virtue-reticent males that were elbowing everyone out the way. The tale pretty much tells itself when you're surrounded by screaming chicks and wailing brats and ninety-percent of the Cairo's recovered lifeboats have been re-launched.
Thankfully or ruefully, I'm not possessed of the common sense of most folk, even if I do spend my time mingling through the panicked crowd grabbing the occasional boob. The knowledge that we're heading for different shores is enough to keep me smiling in the most awkward of tit-grab scenarios; Hell, this could be their last moment of existence or their greatest run for freedom, why should a pervert pawing at their breasts even register on their panic-stricken minds.
Run Cindy, the exit is in front of you and here sweetie, give some of my love to mamma(ries!).
From down the last heavily polluted hallway to our makeshift changing room, I see Jimmy sticking out the doorway, tapping on his trusty comboard.
The instant he sees me, my Super throws his arm up in the air and promptly loses his stylus in the maddening crowd; spinning his hand at me to get my ass in a high gear.
So I'm not exactly dashing like it's the end of the world as we know it; more saunter than sprint and more casual stroll in the park checking out the mayhem than purposeful quick-march.
I slide past him and since he's pissed off at losing his inkless pen, he just can't seem to help himself. I get a slap across the back of my head:
"You'd be late for your own funeral, MC."
I shrug my shoulders as a diminutive member of the Warsaw Echo team saddles up next to me, holding out two grenades.
"I was kind of hoping I could maybe skip it altogether." I reply, ignoring the little guy.
"Fat chance." Jimmy spits as he closes the door and leaves the cacophony of noise and his beloved stylus out in the cold.
The soundproof door blocks out most of the siren's migraine-inducing noise. Those alarm bells are only for those people with a chance of survival, for everyone else it's business as usual; comforting to know that platforms have the option of informing their inhabitants of impending doom.
The changing room lent to us by the Cairo's staff once played host to a function suite, probably the kind used for celebrations, but with plasma scorch marks on some of the walls and floor, the last party must have been a real blast. The ceiling is made up of perforated polystyrene tiles to make it look business-like, when in actual fact; it looks exactly like every other dreary functionary room barring the collateral damage –which if the Covenant had their way would be mandatory in all human quarters.
Because all the dorms were taken with refugees and the working hangars with the wounded, this was all we could get.
The suite has fiftteen men half-naked and some of them hurling abuse at one another, a psyche-up that's always confused me. Trooper's chest-bouncing their buddies and telling them an Elite's gonna copulate with their mother's anus if they don't kill something real badass.
Heaven forbid that guy's pod misses its target; he'll be tormenting himself until his oxygen runs out.
With the sudden change in ambience, I can hear what the little trooper beside me is saying as I reach the table with all my stuff splashed over it:
"Sarge?" He holds out the two incendiaries in the palm of his hand like a greedy orphan wanting more.
"C'mon trooper, it's not the first time you've been seen holding a pair of balls in your hand, is it?"
And since I'm Warsaw Alpha Leader and mini Mac Op is Echo, his lost ammo isn't my beef.
I look over to the other side of the room, over to Martin Boyd, Warsaw Echo Leader, my arch-rival and brown-nose –I should really refer to him as brown-head because sometimes, like a pantomime horse, I can't see where Jimmy ends and Boyd begins.
I hate him because I don't respect him, I don't respect him because he's an asshole. Period.
I can't respect any man that spends his only weekends off ironing out the creases in his socks and underwear instead of getting himself shitfaced and the ladies knickerless.
He hates me because of a particularly curious incident at the Christmas party last year; so I thought the only reason he wore a black velvet and diamond-studded eye-patch was to look cool and it turned out to cover an eye infection he picked up from childhood that went terribly bad and killed off the surrounding skin as well as the eyeball.
Like I explained to him when he slugged me at the time, it's one of those things you have to see to believe.
I shout over to One-eyed Boyd:
"Hey Pencil-head, one of your clowns is missing some gear."
Boyd stands there in his perfectly-smooth boxer shorts, looking down a nose that was inspiration for world record-breaking ski-jump ramps and sneers:
"He ain't one of mine."
I cock my head back to the little grenade-fondler.
"You're not?" I ask incredulously. I think I'd have noticed a pygmy in my squad.
"73619025 D: Private Mark Price of the Warsaw Alpha, sir; have been since day one."
"I thought there was a height restriction for Mac Ops and Service Personnel?"
At least there should be in my squad.
"It was rejected under the Human Rights Act on the grounds of infringement." The little guy says all matter of factly."
"Oh." I say boringly.
"Back in the Draconian era of 2012." He adds grumpily.
It isn't difficult to look over his head at another of my Team members.
Looking every inch the running athlete and with thighs bigger than pygmy's head; Alexander 'Lynx' Lexington is my Team's Ace in the deck.
Everyone thinks he got the moniker lynx because of how fast he can run, but I know better. He came from a neighbourhood so poor and with such low education grades; they just called him that because he has two X's in his name.
If I display favouritism towards the kid it's because he's my favourite.
Young, gifted and black, the boy's either at the target engine when the hit is made or blazing a trail out of the hull when the Mac round's soaring in.
"Lynx."
I give him a quaint smile and deliver an indistinct head-nod towards pygmy in the middle.
"Help me out here, would ya?"
Alex just shakes his head.
"Sarge you crack me up, eight-man squad –that includes you– and you don't even remember Pipsqueak."
The name rings a chorus of muted alarm bells and if I can remember correctly, I once told him he climbed obstacles like old people get it on.
"Aah Pipsqueak, now I know who you are."
"Yes Sir, sometimes you refer to me as Dead-meat or Small-fry. I've put in several complaints regarding your frequent derogatory remarks and constant persecution because of my small stature.
And not wanting to cast aspersions upon the friendship between you and our Managing Director, but I've put in a transfer request and I seriously doubt I'll get it."
Not only did I forget him, but I also forgot how irritating and camp the little bastard can be.
I pat the little fella on the head and start getting out of my civvies and into my liner suit.
"Good luck with that, Pipsqueak."
I guess it's because he's fully dressed and feels a tad brave in the Mac Op gear, or just because it goes really well with his egregious personality that the mini-Mac Op is still badgering me over his lack of grenades.
And then I take a look around and see that everyone is pissed off at their lack of equipment.
Aside from the obvious 'I can't find my other boot', 'I can't get the liner's zipper to come up over my stomach' and the much quieter shout of 'I need lube for my anal tube, dude!' There are the more serious grenade gripes and ammo altercations; guys literally snatching mags and up to fisticuffs at dawn with a circle of handbags around them.
I dish out a serious:
"Knock it off boys, before I have to open a can."
A couple of them eye one another scornfully, but things appear to simmer down on my side of the room.
Maybe logistics forgot to bring some stock over from the Warsaw Platform; we're not the only other foreigner aboard the Cairo Main Station to have been sent in to help eradicate the last Covenant attack force, so it might be that some of our stock's been lifted back to the Warsaw –it's not that uncommon.
Jimmy looks concerned, standing there with sweat patches beneath the arms of his shirt getting bigger and bigger by the minute, arguing with a couple of more persistent moaners.
"Three mags and four grenades: that shit is fucked up, Jay. I joined Mac Op to kill some shit not keep an eye on my gun counter."
The liner of my suit feels a little tight but the zipper sails easily over my stomach and right up to my chin.
I call Jimmy over while I get busy constructing my armour, starting with the load-bearing boots and their patented Flea Heel mechanism pistons that support the rest of the heavy exoskeleton. As well as bounce me out of trouble spots from time to time.
"You okay, Jimmy?"
Jimmy the Saint has always been good to Mac Ops, ever since he was appointed the supervisory role of Managerial Director for Field and Target Convergence Operations; overseeing everything from Tactical Strike-Points, Pod Materials Inspections through to pesky budget reforms to all-round Agony Aunt and Secret Anal Lube Supply. The man does it all and usually does it with a saint-like smile.
I call him the Saint because the man gets chewed to bits for us in budget meetings, explaining why we need things like guns and anal lube.
The committee is presided over by desk-jockeys and pen-pushers always seeking out new ways to cut tax-spending and line their own pockets. You can usually read it in the small print of their bonus claims, stating their need for greed via statistical evaluations they've compiled that basically say: the taxpayer should not be made to pay for the guns that defend them; that money should come to us because of the hard-work we're doing to undermine them. So there!
And the cuts are in place before you can say: is that a Covenant Destroyer I see heading this way?
Occasionally, when I'm out of beer tokens, there's nothing on the box or they just plain won't let me in the Gentlemen's Club because of credit issues, I go down to a couple of these meetings to kill some time.
I remember once, an idiot on the board actually asked why we needed side-arms to blow up Covenant engines. As if just bursting through a ship's hull won't go unnoticed by anyone in the room. As if the suit's active camouflage doesn't fail every now and then due to their stupid reforms and the fact our maintenance crew has been whittled down to two, they also want to take away our only line of defence other than our legs; which, I'm sure by some way of pouring cash into their pockets, is probably what the committee is working on next.
I've always found Jimmy to be a stand-up guy but at the minute he seems completely out of touch, a sense of hesitation with everything that he does that was never there before.
"Jimmy, you're off in the land of the fairies, what's going on?"
But before Jimmy could halve his problem, Kurt steps between us and there's nothing innocuous about Kurt. Standing seven foot nine inches tall and built like a Cargo Bay P-5000 Power Loader, I have no idea how ONI missed the big guy –that I personally nicknamed 'Beastman'– for their Orion project.
"Sarge?" He groans like the emission roll of a C709 starting up and I daren't ignore his oversized ass that has broken more toilets sitting on them than a backlash of unfulfilled teenage cyber-emo-punks have vandalised with their puny arms, mascara, nail varnish and Converse sneakers. The only guy I know to punch a Brute and live to tell the tale –thankfully, we're on the same side.
I reach up and slap him in the midst of a muscle group more commonly known to the much smaller species of Homo sapiens as the shoulder.
"What can I do for you, Beastman?"
Somewhere in the palm of his hand there are two small balls and looking almost pea-sized amongst the great hulk of human flesh and hand lines.
"They is only giving me two grenade."
He's as sharp as a button in the bottom drawer of a knife shop but when you piss him off, he's an atom bomb in your front room. I do my best to tactfully navigate a whole minefield of wrong answers like the detonation trigger of 'what the fuck do I care, bitch?!', the priming trigger of 'good luck with that, Pipsqueak', and the ever so slight backhanded slap of 'Jimmy don't love you no more, Kurt'. None of which will help our situation with a Covenant attack on the horizon.
Allay and appease are the order of the day for my towering volcano of testosterone.
"It's just a logistics problem, big guy, put your suit on and we'll find you some more before we board the Gunrunner. Now don't go punching any holes in things and we'll sort this little problem out, okay?"
Kurt has a face like thunder but thankfully returns to the child-like table with all his stuff on and proceeds to get ready for our mission. Even if the table is the same size as mine and it is he that makes it look child-size.
Jimmy frowns like there's no solution. He puts his arms up in the air and sweat patches on parade, asking for calm and everyone's attention:
"I want everyone to continue getting ready with the minimum of fuss while listening to what I have to say…"
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