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Out of Space and Time
A tale of Horror and Suspense in the Battletech Universe
by Jason M. Knight (Deathshadow) |
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In all my years, I have never seen nor experienced such horror. There are no words for what passed through my mind as I fired a single shot into the creature’s forehead, the hydrostatic shock of the heavy gyro-jet slug completely disintegrating the creature’s pulpy upper torso. I found myself moving about in a fog, but with the help of the ROM agent we dragged the remains to an airlock and set it adrift. We hastily discussed what we should do, and agreed it would be best if nobody ever knew what or who we had found.
Over the next couple days cleanup operations took place. Dislodging the various bodies from the ships components turned out to be the grisliest work, and indeed I think we spent as much time cleaning up vomit as we did flushing the remains into space. Polly, the ROM agent and I spent much of this time together. While we grew quite close during that time, we never spoke of what had happened that first day. Somehow, she never quite looked at me normally, but considering what we had seen I could hardly blame her.
The craft itself turned into a major prize, with several intact fighter craft aboard as well as a fairly well stocked parts supply. At the end of the first week the Com Guards detached their newly acquired dropship and began a burn towards the zenith point. While I was sorry to see Polly go, I felt more secure with her gone as I had begun to fear she would be unable to keep her mouth shut about what we had encountered. Many in our group had talked about killing the Comstar crew and taking their prize, but Chops put a stop to that talk real quick, as doing so would have made enemies of every other pirate in the system. The pirate bands had a good thing here, and there was no reason to ruin it. Inside of a month we had the Dark Victory completely up and running, and transferred all of our operations to it. By selling off the old jumpship we were able to repair the drive seals, buy a second dropship and recruit enough fighters to make ourselves a major force. Inside a year we had managed to go legitimate, garnering a contract with House Kurita to operate as mercenaries off of Wolcott under assumed identities.
Since those events some fifteen years ago I have dreaded the possibility of returning to New Vandenburg. Command passed to me with Chops death nearly ten years ago, and we still use that same captured warship as our base of operations. My force is pursued by what seems like the entire Word of Blake fleet and while I am uncertain why they have chosen to come after us, I find myself tempted to turn ourselves in. There is no choice though, as jumping back into the hands of the Blakists is certain death. With their war-fleet arrayed behind us we can only hope to outpace them towards the rim. I know that I should not dwell on what happened or what has not yet come to pass, but I am certain going forward dooms us all as well. I shall never forget the face of that hideously deformed monster as I fired that shot, a perfect mirror of my own. |
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