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The Other Ones by The hand of Bob
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The Other Ones: Awakenings
Date: 21 May 2004, 6:55 PM
"Crap."
That's what he felt like. Cold, naked, and itchy crap. But crap none the less. The being cold and itchy didn't bother him so much. Being naked, well it wasn't the greatest feeling in the world, but it was tolerable. Now waking up inside a glass and metal coffin with no idea how he got there, or even who he was. Well it...
"Sucks," he answered aloud
Actually it did a lot more than suck, but he was to polite to say such things aloud. And if he started spewing such obscenities he wouldn't be able to stop. Anyway, he had more important things to do than go insane, like getting out of his coffin.
This however was not that big of a problem considering the large button labeled: "Push to Open" in large black letters. Which was what it gladly did popping the glass door up and open with a hiss of air and no sign of protest. Stepping onto the metal floor was a bad idea. It wasn't so much the cold metal that sent icy jolts up his legs. But, the pains, aches and cramps that came form not using his muscles in a long time.
A noise startled him out of trying to get rid of the aches and pains that still clung to his legs. That's when he finally noticed his surroundings. His coffin was one of about a dozen others exactly alike each with a thin layer of frost on the glass and a vaguely human shape inside. Most coffins were placed like his underneath the shadows of two metal catwalks that ran the length of either side of the room. There in the center of the room was a rectangular column with digital readouts and gauges that seemed to be monitoring two other identical coffins. There was also what looked to be a monitoring room set about level with the catwalks, but it looked empty except for several machines placed throughout the room.
"Huhhhh!"
This time it was louder and he was able to get a general direction of were the sound was coming from. Moving around was easier now with the cramps worked out of his legs. But trying to push down the feeling he was in a large refrigerator, was getting harder and harder.
After the sound had repeated once more, he discovered an unthawed coffin with a person inside. The person was a man is his early twenties, clean shaven, with black hair, and also naked. Finding a similar "Push to Open" button on the exterior of the coffin, he freed the man.
"You okay?"
Instead of answering the man stumbled out of his coffin onto the floor and began to puke up a thick milky liquid.
"You'll be okay it'll pass in a minute or two."
He'd suffered the same thing after waking, but no helpful person had come along to let him out of his coffin to gracefully puke all over the floor (He hoped they had some strong window cleaner). After a about three minutes he did finally stop puking.
"So what is this place?" He asked. After the man had wiped the remains of the stuff off his mouth and stood up.
"Looks like cryostorage to me, but I have no idea what that crap is! " The man answered, gesturing to the liquid.
He had no idea what the liquid was either, and only remembered that "cryo" had something to do with cold.
"So where are we?" He asked.
"Beats the hell out of me," the man answered.
"The names Richard. What's yours kid?"
Before he could reply the right wall exploded. The shockwave hit, making Richard slip on his own vomit, and crash into the floor. He was thrown back, but was able to brace himself against a coffin by the central column. The explosion had destroyed five of the coffins along the wall; even tossing one women out to be impaled on a fallen girder. Then some type of coolant canisters began to rupture throwing shrapnel across the room. The secondary explosions destroyed another coffin and cracked the coffin he was hiding behind. And to his surprise they suffered only minor injuries. His ears were ringing and he had a small gash across his back caused by ricocheting shrapnel . Richard looked okay, except for a cut over his left eye and a very singed ass.
"Oh man, it feels like some one tried to barbeque my ass." Richard got back to his feet, wiping vomit off.
It did smell like burning hair and ass. Which would have been a lot more funnier if he couldn't smell the burning chemicals and the sickly-sweet smell of roasting flesh. Outside the room a klaxon started blaring.
"We should get out of here."
Richard suggested.
"Yeah, that wou-Hey!"
"What?"
"That women just moved!"
He said, gesturing to the cracked coffin by the column. Some type of gas was hissing out of the cracks in the glass obscuring some of his vision, but he could still see the woman thrashing around inside.
"Is she dying?"
"No, she'll be alright. But the rapid unthawing is gonna give her one hell of a headache."
Richard answered, shielding his face from the gas to press the release button. With the lid raised he got his first clear look at the woman. She was wasn't bad looking. Maybe in her late twenties early thirties, short brown hair, and a tattoo on her arm of some type of aircraft and something about a sword. She had sat up blocking his view, so he wasn't able to get a glimpse of it. A naked woman was sitting right in front of him, and the only thing he was interested in was her tattoo. But then again the smell of burning flesh isn't exactly a turn on. He couldn't say the same for Richard who was staring openly and had actually a small amount of drool in the corner of his mouth.
"Oh, my head."
"Damn."
"What? What happened?"
"Uh... nothing, you just unthawed to quickly, it'll pass."
She had finally got out of the coffin and took her first look around at the destruction. She had turned around and looked like she was getting ready to ask a question when she noticed Richard leering at her.
"Hey, my eyes are up here."
"What? Oh sorry."
"Jackass."
"Hey, It's a compliment."
"No, it's an insult to jackasses, jackass."
"Well screw you bitch."
After a minute of insult trading he got bored of it and went to check out the rest of the room. The other side of the room turned wasn't that interesting but he did find a door. It was motion activated but the thing jammed half way open. He tried to squeeze through but the ceiling had collapsed on the other side and had scattered debris and fire was spraying out of a set of pipes making it impossible to escape. So he pulled his head back inside and began to investigate the rest of the room. There wasn't much left, there was another door that wouldn't open at all, some type of large striped canisters in the back of the room, and that was it. It looked like they would need to go stand on one another's shoulders to reach the catwalk and go through the monitoring room.
The other two had stopped shouting at each other after she had kicked him in the shin. So he figured it would be a good time to tell him his idea, when she started complaining about her head hurting.
"It feels like some one hit me upside the head with a pelican."
He didn't understand why she would say pelican, instead of a bus, or a truck, or something along those lines. Maybe she had gotten hit upside the head with a pelican at one point in time. But it was the funniest thing he had heard all day. Hell, it was the funniest thing he had ever heard (He tried remembering things that had happened before he woke up. But they were mostly images, never anything longer than about a minute plus they were stupid stuff like; a animal or stuff form a movie. Nothing important like who he was or what he was doing here.) He stopped himself from laughing but he still made a choking noise. This startled her. Apparently she had been to busy insulting Richards mother to notice him, even though he had walked by her several times
"Who the hell are you?"
"Don't know."
"What are you doing here?"
"I don't know."
"How the hell did you get here?"
"I don't know."
"You don't know?"
"You know, I get the feeling that I'm repeating myself."
She studied him for a moment then turned and walked over to what looked like an intercom. Pushing a button she spoke into the speaker.
"Yo, any body out there."
He was standing close enough to here background noise from over the speaker. There was some static, the sound of high caliber automatic weapons firing, the yells of wounded men, and another wining noise that he couldn't make out. The sound of an explosion echoed over the speakers followed by a loud burst of static. The woman jumped back cursing and covering her ears. The speaker stopped hissing static and cheering shouted out the alarm klaxon, followed by a voice.
"Drew! Your awake! We've got Covenant all over the ship, you okay down there?"
"No Covenant yet. But there was an explosion, it destroyed about half of the Cryotubes down here." (So that's what they were called)
"Shit, I'll be there in a minute."
"Wait," he shouted.
"What?"
"The ceiling in the hallway collapsed there's fire all over the place out there," he answered.
She muttered something he didn't catch and pushed the speaker button again.
"Cutter!" She shouted into the intercom. "You'll have to come through the observation theater, the hallways blocked."
There was only static, then the speaker beeped twice. Maybe it was confirmation and Cutter had gotten the warning. Or maybe the stupid thing broke, the only thing to do now was hope and pray. It would be great time to know if he was religious.
Some deity, power, or God of intercoms must of been paying attention, because in five minutes a man wearing a yellow jumpsuit and carrying an Assault rifle showed up in the Monitoring room. He motioned for us to get back and then tossed some type of blue sphere against the glass, it started glowing bright blue. He didn't know what the hell it was but he shut his eyes and covered his head. The explosion that followed showered them with glass, but did no real damage. He looked up to see Cutter lowering a silvery rope to the ground and tied it off to some monitoring device.
Cutter climbed down and greeted Drew.
"Come on we need too unthaw the others."
"We have a problem," Drew stated.
Since arriving Cutter hadn't took his eyes off Drew. It wasn't the stare Richard had given her earlier, he look more concerned than anything else. Maybe they were a couple or something.
"I know, the Covenant have overrun the ship," he answered. (So they were on a ship)
"Yes, but look over there," Drew said turning his head in his and Richards direction.
"There not s'pose to be here," Said Cutter dumfounded.
"Ya' think."
"If we live through this Keyes is gonna kill me. How'd hell they get onboard?"
"You mean you don't know!" Richard screeched.
Cutter's reply was lost in the second explosion. The column in the center of the room shielded Cutter and Richard from the brunt of the shockwave. But He and Drew were in the open with out any thing to protect them. He was closer and was thrown farther, straight into Richards coffin. The coffin's padding cushioned him from getting hurt to badly, but he could still feel his brain knock against his skull. Drew wasn't as lucky. She wasn't as close to the explosion, but it still had enough force to pick her up and throw her into the side of the column.
Fire and metal rained from the ceiling as Cutter rushed to pull Drew out of the way of a falling beam. He watched as Cutter checked the extent of her injuries. The man was speaking far to fast, and he only caught a few words; concussion, something about pupil dilatation, and the repeated thanks to God for letting her live. She was alive but all the other coffins had actually been turned into coffins. With the exception of two farthest away from the explosions, and one of those had a hole in it were shrapnel had pierced it.
"Cutter," he said gently shaking the mans shoulder. "We have to leave now."
"No, not yet. I have to save those people too." He looked over to Richard and said "Come on I'll kneed a hand."
But it was useless, Richard was in shock; he had wet himself, his eyes were fixed unblinking on one spot, and he was mouthing the same obscenity over and over, but no sound emerged from his throat.
"Hey man, snap out of it. We need your help," he said, shaking the man.
This didn't help, Richard began to emit a terrified almost inhuman whimpering and curled up into the fetal position.
"He'll recover once we get them outta here. Come on, you'll have to help me."
He got up to help Cutter.
The Other Ones: Ch. 2: Autumns Fall
Date: 1 June 2004, 8:29 PM
The Other Ones: Autumns Fall
They had escaped the cryostorage with two new members. Basil a scarred tough looking soldier, who was on point with Cutter's Assault rifle. Behind Basil was Cutter carrying an unconscious Drew. Then came himself being used as a crutch by the other new member. He didn't know the other soldiers name, but he wasn't half as threatening as Basil, since he only stood about 5' 6. He was carrying the same energy pistol that had given him the leg wound (The previous owner; some sort of barking alien midget in red armor, was now lying at the bottom of an elevator shaft). And in the very back of the group was a completely recovered Richard. Basil had given him another scrounged energy pistol and forced him to watch their backs. Which was a bad idea in his opinion.
But who listened to a...he didn't even know his age. He had caught a reflection in his coffin (he still thought of them as coffins) glass lid, and figured he was around sixteen or eighteen. Richard interrupted his thoughts with another stupid question directed at Basil.
"Hey man, any chance we can get some clothes any time soon?"
"Stow the belly aching soldier." Basil answered.
"But I'm not a soldier, I'm an engineer."
"Fine, since your not a soldier." he paused and muttered "Thank God." under his breath. "Shut the hell up."
He didn't like the idea of walking around in his birthday suit during a firefight either. But he was an outsider and a civilian, so he didn't think he'd get a better response out of Basil. But luckily the other soldier was thinking along the same lines he was.
"Hey, L T"
"What is it Marine?" Basil responded. ( So they were Marines)
"I like to show it off as much as the next man, but I'd prefer not to give the Covies such a big target."
"You've got a point. Alright, let's head to the crews quarters."
They'd walked on for some time without incident when they heard a woman's scream coming from an intersecting hallway. Basil took up position on the left side of the hallway. Using his help the other Marine took cover on the opposite side of the hallway behind an over turned barrier. Green bolts of energy began to hammer into wall. The woman screamed again, this time in pain. A woman wearing a yellow jumpsuit similar to Cutter's turned down the hallway, and ran towards the Marines. She was followed by three midgets in black armor firing near misses, clearly enjoying tormenting the woman. Seeing the Marines the aliens ended their game by shooting the woman in the back of the head. Before the dead woman had even hit the ground, Basil and the other Marine opened fire. The lead midget went down from an energy shot to the head. The other two were ripped apart by Basil's Assault rifle.
"Come on we need to keep moving," Basil said.
When he came to the woman the Marine bent down with a wince, and closed her eyes and began to say a prayer. While the Marine prayed he walked over to the dead midgets and retrieved two of the fallen energy weapons. One of the midgets wasn't completely dead, and was trying to put its intestines back in. He shot it in the head. It spasmed and died. Basil looked back, and looked like he was going to say some thing but saw the other Marine praying. He closed his mouth then opened it again.
"Don't waste ammo son."
They went down two more corridors before finding. the crews quarters. They split up to find some thing to wear
He had checked three rooms before he found a with clothes that would fit him. He moved aside some military uniforms, a dress uniform, and found a outfit more to his liking. It was a pair of black cargo pants, a gray shirt, and a brown jacket. There was a pair of sneakers in the bottom of the closet. But he decided to go with the steeled towed combat boots instead. He also found a shoulder holster and some pistol clips. He looked around but found no pistol, and the energy pistol wouldn't fit. He put it on anyway, it had a place to store the clips and he could always find a pistol somewere else. He tucked one of the energy weapons behind his back and kept the other one in his left hand (he was right handed, but the Marine was on his right side).
After getting dressed he went out into the hallway and found the Marines in camouflage and body armor, Richard had found a badly fitting red jumpsuit, and Cutter had dressed Drew in a black flight suit.
"Alright ladies lets get the hell outta here," Basil ordered.
They had went down several floors and about a dozen hallways before they found something that stopped them dead in their tracks. It was a window with a view of space and a planet (it looked like a large gas giant). That by itself amazed him but there was something even stranger. Orbiting the planet was a ring at least several thousand miles in diameter. The ring looked like it had grasslands, deserts and even several seas and lakes.
"What the Hell is that thing?" Richard asked Basil.
"I don't know but were getting ready to find out." Basil answered.
He was right, it looked like the ship was headed in the direction of the ring. He could see what looked like lifeboats leaving the ship. A giant electric blue beam stabbed into one of the fleeing ships, vaporizing it.
"We should hurry up," Cutter said impatiently.
The others started moving. But he still stood there staring at the ring.
"Come on we should catch up," the Marine he was supporting said.
"Well Toto I guess were not in Kansas anymore," He said to himself.
He took a step forward but the Marine just stood there staring at him.
"How did you know my name." The Marine asked.
"What?"
"My name. It's Toto," He stated.
"Toto..."
"Yeah, but I'm from New York, never been to Kansas."
"Okay... Uh, nice to meet you... Toto."
"Come on were falling behind," Toto said taking a step forward.
"Hurry up, the doors' closing!" Cutter shouted.
They ran in a shuffling fashion, and turned the corner to find the door closing. One part of the door was rising out of the floor and the other descending from the ceiling. The door was clear and he could see both Basil and Cutter urging them to move faster. Richard had aperantly taken off. They couldn't both make it, he could leave Toto and jump through the rapidly closing gap, or...
Toto wasn't a big man, not that heavy either so when they where about three feet away he shoved Toto with all his might. Toto landed on his stomach half way through the door. Basil grabbed one arm, Cutter the other, and jerked him through. As soon as Toto's legs were through they let go. Toto skidded a good six feet before he hit a dead midget and came to a stop.
There was only and a half foot of space left and no way he could squeeze through. Basil's arm reached for him, he grabbed it shook it once and shoved it back.
"Nice knowing you," he said.
The Door closed. Basil slammed the Assault rifle's butt against the door once, then he stood back and saluted him. Some other Marine stepped out of a door way shouted some thing he couldn't here and went back inside. Cutter started beating on the door to get his attention, then started to point at a nearby service entrance, then motioned to the hallway on the other side of the door. He understood, nodded once and headed that way. He stopped near the entrance to pick up an Assault rifle from a dead Marine, he checked the ammo counter (empty), activated the flashlight and went through the door.
He had a gone about a hundred feet when he found an exit. He turned the corner and found a large humanoid alien in bulky green armor (he'd seen a couple of taller ones with blue or red less bulky armor and figured this was just a different type). He dropped the Assault rifle and fired two shots at the alien with the energy pistol; one hit him in the back of the head and the other hit him square in the back. Or they would have, except they hit some type of energy shield. The thing was turning around and looked pissed (actually it had some type of gold visor and he couldn't see it's face, but he knew he'd be pissed if some one shot him in the back of the head). He fled back down the service tunnel and wasn't followed. In his haste he had made a wrong turn and ended up in a completely different corridor littered with bodies.
He had know idea where he was, the ship was getting ready to crash, and he had know idea how to get off the ship. He was getting ready to head back through the tunnel when he heard gunfire and the sound of an energy weapon. He headed in that direction and found a Marine and one of those tall guys fighting over a larger bluish purple energy weapon. An energy grenade fell off the Marine and was activated. He tried to shout a warning, but the thing detonated. The explosion touched off more grenades leaving no trace of the Marine or the alien.
He wondered the halls for a while, looking for some type of map or sign. He passed through a mess hall where there had been heavy fighting. He left the mess hall and found another corridor. It looked the same as most of the others had; bullet ridden walls, blood stains, and dead bodies (three midgets, each having died from a single shot to the head). There was one difference though; a blue triangle on the floor was pointing through a doorway. He couldn't read it (florescent blue blood and gray matter from the midgets had been splashed onto it). But he'd been looking for a sign, so he went trough the doorway.
He gone about twenty feet when he emerged into a room filled with computers. He walked around an entire wall showing various readouts and views of the ring. And found out where he was; it was the bridge. There was a large screen showing the position of the ship (it was called the Pillar of Autumn), the ring, and what looked like the Covenant ships. But what caught his attention was the large domed viewport showing the ring backlit by the gas giant.
He watched as the ring got closer and closer. The ship vibrated from another hit from one of the Covenant ships. It looked like he was screwed either way; the ship was going to crash into the ring or the Covenant were going to blow it out of the sky.
"What the hell," he said setting down in one of the pilots chairs.
"I'm gonna die one way or another might as well have a good view."
He sat back, and waited for the world to end.
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