Story - Osprey

[bill512]

<i>Osprey - A story about an Osprey attack fighter that winds up on a strange swamp planet, shipwrecked, where an even stranger lizard like species eats their prey through sex (Facesitting and Death).</i>

Chapter 1 - Misjump

"Stay in formation." "I got engine trouble Jerz." "Hold on buddy, here they come."

There were seventeen Osprey attack fighters in Claw formation. Twenty clicks ahead were more than twice that many Thargoid attack drones dispatched from the mothership. They were half the size and twice the speed, but their armor was weak. Three heavy cruisers and one frigate were engaging the mothership in a hot losing battle. It was the Ospreys assignment to keep the flury of attack drones off their backs. If they got through they'd be even more devistating. They were the last fighter squadrant left for fifteen light years.

The Osprey was the Federations flag carrying fighter, the head of its class. Her designers gave her two of the most powerful engines known to exist for a ship its size. During the "War of Reckoning" with the Empire, when Emperor Duvall realised he was losing, in an act of cowardace he hyperspaced fifty nuclear warheads towards the disputed systems base station and planet, Station McKinley and McKinley Mine. Nothing could catch them except three Ospreys the governor had just purchased not two weeks prior for his defense inventory. One by one the missiles were destroyed before they reached their target. The chase made Galcop headlines and history. Were only one to get through, Station McKinley, and its 250,000 inhabitants would have surely died, not to mention the millions on the planets surface.

Twenty clicks to intercepting fighter wings meant only seconds. You had to fire way beyond your range to hit, because once the drones got close enough they were gone. So you had to fire at nothing, and hope the drones hit your beams or your missiles. It wasn't so much a case of intercepting a target, as it was hoping something hits your fire. The Thargoid Attack Drone accompanied every Thargoid ship. It was a robot about the size of the old Falcon fighter. They were equiped with a single pulse cannon up front, and an AI (Artificial Intelligence) that outclassed even the best pilots in both the Federation and the Empire. They were smart, small, fast, and devistating. And each mothership had well over a hundred. But they weren't without weakness.

"Fire!" Each Osprey unleashed its ferocious payload. Under their wings they had four missiles, and just below the nose was a one megawatt beam laser, military ribbon. From Claw formation it looked like a giant hand had unleashed a magicians magic. When the drones entered, six never came out the other end. For some reason as yet unknown, Thargoid drones never maintained a formation. When they attacked they came from all angles, fast and furious. And they always seemed to fire from behind. That much of their strange alien philosophy the humans understood. They liked to get in behind, lock on, and engage because of their speed and maneuverability. There wasn't any fighter in existance that could out maneuver a Thargoid Drone tail. But there was a tactic that always seemed to spook them, just enough to get another chance: They didn't like hyperspace.

The tactic was called "Op Ambitious." After hyperspace capable attack fighters made their first sweep and the drones got to dreweling in behind ready for their slaughter, fighter wings would engage their hyperspace engines, forming bright white clouds around their hulls. Under any other conditions the idea would be foolish, lighting youself up for a shot. The logical thing to do would be to rely on the Ospreys black and dark brown camaflage. She was equiped with a super high tech hyperspace module that prepared hyperspace for transit in half the time. It was dangerous, but kept better odds than being in the sights of a Thargoid Drone. Then once the cloud was ready to take hold the engine was cut off, and bright white electrified smoke clouds, like flares, were unleashed in their wake. The Thargoid Drone did everything it could to stay away from them, including ramming themselves into one another. The strange thing about it was that the clouds were harmless. With cloud preparation incomplete they were nothing but electrified plasma storms. But for some reason Thargoid AI had deemed them dangerous.

"Cut off failure!" "Reinitialize!" "Eject!" "No luck, I'm ejec..."

[bill512]

Chapter 2 - Three Days

Hyperspace is bright and hot. No one knows why, because there's no reason why. But its nonetheless bright and hot. Chief Willard floated effortlessly above his ship, its canopy gone, its cockpit exposed with its many flashing emergency lights and deep dash. The ships ejection system had embedded in his back a DRSE (Distress Release Space Entrypod), that in microseconds had exploded around his whole body a plastic bubble of special radiation resistant plastic, and then seconds after that filled up with an insulation gell all around him in his suit. The gell was not only transparent and cool, but it contained a specially formulated hallucinogenic should it ever be needed. All Willard had to do was remove his helmet and drown, and the gell would have a hybernation effect on his system. Shutting him down for years, if necessary, while keeping his body safe and cool. The gell was the pilots best friend after ejection. It turned Willard into a three meter long capsule that maintained its plastic skin the same way skin heals a wound. Were something to puncture through, it would harden exposed to space and keep its integrity. It would even stop bleeding. In some ways it was even safer than metal hulls.

Hyperspace was also spooky. Its stigma was one of phantoms and demons. The fact that the Thargoids thought just as well made it even more so. After ejection the explosive bolts threw clear the thick transparent canopy of the Osprey, and Willard saw it hit the edge of the hyperspace cloud barrier surrounding him and his ship. It disintegrated like a fine piece of paper held to a flame. Whenever hyperspace engaged on any ship, the technological priority was to remain still, and all ships cut their main engines and engaged their thrusters to keep a steady zero momentum. This was even true for pilot ejection systems. Ejection systems for hyperspace fighters were designed to just barely throw the pilot clear of the ship, and then stop. It was precisely Willards current predicament that was the reasoning.

But technology could do nothing about the psychology of hyperspace. Willard was in a circumstance he thought terrifying, and his worst nightmare. Around him not twenty meters away was the hyperspace edge. The cloud barrier. Beyond that was what humanity had been guessing and theorizing at for nearly a thousand years. A place more mysterious than god himself. His first instinct was to return to the ship, but DRSEs weren't equiped for maneuvering, intentionally. With the canopy gone, the ship was technically useless. Willard none the less tried, pushing outwards the plastic bubble that surrounded him, as if he could swim. When he gave up he started a log through his voice activated helmet computer.

"(Heavy breathing) Chief Jack Willard, service number 49872, Federation Osprey Defense Squadrant Beta at Vega 3 Valhalla. We were under heavy Thargoid Drone attack. My hysperspace engine malfunctioned at cut off and I've misjumped. I can see my ship right in front of me, but I can't reach it. The canopy is gone and my DRSE has engaged. I'm thinking of taking the dope."

"(Heavy breathing) In three days I'm going to exit hyperspace I don't know where. I'm dead. I'll probably end up in the middle of nowhere. After I'm free of the cloud I got three choices. I can take this pocket knife and cut through the DRSE, erasing all my chances at hypernation, and thereby a humane death. That way I can somehow get back to the ship and run a scan to see if there's any chance of survival out here. I don't have any more hyperspace fuel, but I still have half a tank left of maneuvering. That's assuming I can get there. Three meters may as well be a million. But so long as I keep it slow and buckle in, I should be ok. Or I can take off my helmet and take the easy way out. The thought of what lays ahead scares the hell out of me. And finally, I can relax and wait. My god its spooky out here. I can wait it out and not jump to any conclusions. I hope the guys did ok against those damned drones. Shit I'm tired. Log off."

Chief Willard went to sleep.

[bill512]

Chapter 3 - Face of Horror

Oh life... even the most rancid and disgusting. It is a thing to behold. There's a spell in the old dungeons and dragons magicians spell book called "Hells Flesh", or something like that. When a magician casts this spell rock and everything else turns into a black crawling, creepy, eyeballed, gak gurgle and goo. Eating everything in sight. Even the ugliest of monsters get chewed up by twirling vine and tentacle that just wants to eat. It's the grossest thing your warped imagination could ever fathom, and always brings a smile to the face of a D&D fan. Or maybe its the second grossest. The first has got to be space, and inorganic nothing. Absolutely positively nothing, forever.

That cute little lizard critter held tight with all his might on that little piece of twig. His blue eyeballs scanned his range for bug, and maybe a fellow lizard, to eat. He was hungry and in need of a friend for his lonely gut. But something caught his eye. Something up in the heavens. A bird of some kind, buzzing so close and so fast that it took that cold blood a long time to say "hey .... what's that?" Then a torrent of air sucked him up in tornadic leaf and sand. And a shock wave of thunder boomed, and that little critters body was flung around like a dog gone freak of nature, wingless but airborn, landing upsidedown in a whole different ball game.

Willard held tight on that joystick, moving his twenty five ton monster steady towards the soft ground. The landing gear touched down but he kept his hand on the throttle, gently easing her weight on that soft brush that may not even hold a man. There was swamp everywhere on this planet. After he was satisfied he cut the throttle, and the suspension kicked in bouncing that elegant arrow head up and down a few times until it came to rest, its high pitch whine of its turbines squeeled down to silence. A big grin on its face.

Willard got lucky, big time. Not only was he probably one of the first pilots to softly touch down an Osprey attack fighter without a canopy, but his misjump brought him to planetary company, and an atmosphere at that. A place of wonder, and the fellowship of life in a vast and endless gambit of chance and nothing. He sat in that cockpit a happy man. More familiar challenge lay ahead of him. A challenge that gave him life's opportunity, like it did everything else. He pulled off his helmet and took in a deep breath of what was probably going to be his new home for a while. Until he found a way to make Hyperspace fuel out of bugs.

He punched up a preliminary short range scan on the dash boards tiny center console. The readings all jumped off the scale. There was life here alright. Lots of it. Plant, animal, single cell, insect, arachnid, and a few others. "Mass of man." He said, and the computer filtered out all those creatures smaller than a man. It was still off the scale. "Technology." He said again, and for nearly a thousand clicks in every direction that ships sensors looked for signs of intelligent life. Surprisingly it came up positive.

There was a village thirteen clicks from here. At the stroke of a key a tiny robot probe launched from the middle of the fuselage. It shot up like a flare, then darted towards the village Willard had on his console. Immediately the screen flickered into a cameras view, where trees wized by in fast flight. Then in a few seconds the village came into view. There were huts and wagons, but no signs of life. No, wait. There was something there. "Enhance grid 17." And the screen zoomed in on something sitting by a fire. By god, it looked human. "Jesus Christ, don't tell me." Willard said.

It was a man's height, but with a magenta like skin color. It was wearing some sort of trowsers. It had two arms and two legs, and a head facing away. But there was something else. A tail. A human doesn't have a tail. And the tail looked like it had scales. Lizardy scales. Willards face was glued to that tiny cockpit screen. His eyes wide in excitement, disappointment, then excitement again. He had company.

But then quickly and suddenly the thing turned around, and Willard got a magnified high resolution view of the face. A face of horror.

[bill512]

Chapter 4 - <i>Swamp Witch

Black Water Hady lived back in the swamp where the strange green reptiles crawl
where snakes hang thick from the cypress trees like sausage on a smokehouse wall
where the swamp is alive with a thousand eyes and all of them watching you
stay off the track of Hady's shack in the back of the Black Bayou

Way of the road from Hady's Shack lays a sleepy little overtrovy town
talk of swamp witch Hady lock you in when the sun goes down
rumors of what she done and rumors of what she do
kept folks off the track of Hady's shack in the back of the Black Bayou

One day brought the rain and rain stayed on and the swamp water overflowed
mosquitoes and the fever grabbed the town like a fist
and Dr. Jackson was the first to go
some said the plague was brought by Hady there was talk of a hanging too
But the talk got shackled by the howls and cackles in the bowels of the Black Bayou

Early one morn between dark and dawn shadows filled the sky
there came an unseen caller on a town where the sun gone by
square that was found a big black mound full of gak gurgle and goo
whispering sounds as the folks gathered round the came from the Black Bayou

There ain't much pride when you're trapped inside a slowly sinking ship
it soaked up the liquid deep and green and the whole town took a sip
fever went away and the very next day the sky began to bloom
let's thank old Hady for saving our town we'll fetch her from the Black Bayou

A party of ten of the towns best men headed for Hady's shack
said swamp witch magic is useful and good and we're going to bring Hady back
they never found Hady, they never found the shack,
and they never made a trip back in

Cuz as a bochman's note found tacked to a stone said:</i> "Don't come look'in again."

[bill512]

Chapter 5 - Like Thargoid

Even in the thirty first century things remained relatively the same. Men were still men, macho and out for a place in the overall schemes of things through power and war. And women were still women, quiet and submissive to the temporary fantasy like power struggles of men. Feminism had long sense died out as quickly as scat smell-enhancing chocolate, and most things about the sexes remained stagnant. Even disparaged.

Years ago, when humanity first came in contact with what was now the ominous Thargoid threat, the women of Beex were infected with a strange insectoid spy. A creature that turned out to not even be a Thargoid at all, but a Thargoid slave. A creature that climbed into their beds at night and inhabited their wombs, where it grew into a womans sexual gratification parasite, hooked into their reproductive organ and blood streams, and made them pursue men like predators. The women of Beex ate their men alive by climbing onto their faces and letting the strange Thargoid minion reach into their mouths, brains, and bodies to digest their thoughts and their DNA, and report that information back to the Thargoid Imperium. The Beex women were helpless to prevent the onslaught, given the creatures insatiable desire that it projected into them, making them feel the most extreme and gratifying of orgasm in all their lives. The story was so horrific that it set back the clocks on relationships between the sexes a thousand years. And as the war progressed, and it became more and more evident that humanity was going to lose, it became even worse. Women were mankinds nemesis. It seemed almost as though fate had written in the cards that a male and a female human union and understanding would never be permitted. They were too powerful.

Willard was the same way. He couldn't help himself like so many others. First the apple, and now the uncontrollable urge for sex, women were bad for humanity. Bad for victory, despite ninety nine percent of their body being him. But as he looked into that center console his worst Thargoid spy nightmare became reality not thirteen clicks away. Because that gruesome humanoid, lizard like creature was in the process of eating. Between its legs and underneath its tail was an animal of some kind, half its size. It turned that ugliest of ugly face back down to what it had underneath its butt. A creature in pain. A creature that was somehow being devoured by the organ it had right next to what it finished digesting. It'd reach down with its mouth to shoot in its venom, then sat up and slowly screwed. The creature quivered and screamed, and with a few presses of a few buttons Willard witnessed the thing implode, magnified. It was hideous.

"Thargoid bastard ..." He said. "Oh shit!" And Willard turned the cameras angle to another creature pointing upwards with its claw, and moving its huge toothy gape. "They see it ... shit!" He ordered the probe to move away and self destruct, and considered his options.

"Did you think that there wasn't going to be trouble, Willard? Did you think it was going to be easy?" "I thought it wasn't going to be like Thargoid."

[Heckron]

?

[Durango24]

Uh,
Was this board changed to " Mistress Destinys Sci-fi board" in the 24 hour period I had been away? @_@;;?!

[bill512]

my apologoies ladies and gentlemen, my stories are losing their appeal. I'll get back to this one eventually.

The facsitting in this one isn't actually until the very end. The guy goes on the run, and the storyline is mostly his lonely day and night dreaming about the girlfriend he left behind. That's why I was getting into the social platitudes and all that.

Eventually when he runs out of ammo and time, he's eaten by one of the facesitting, hallucinogenic venom crocodiles. And in the final scene when he dies, the croc takes on the look of his ex.

[Durango24]

Not a problem. We all make mistakes. ^-^