Free Heavy Metal Thunder by Kyle B. Stiff Page A

still
going on , you think.
    The least-damaged station looms before you. You see
a host of shattered windows and walls punched open all along its rounded
surface, like a great black rotten apple. The words STELLAR MINING COLONY A1C
are painted in large letters. Your jetpack bucks and shudders. You steer
towards one of the holes, then ease off the gas.
    Breathing becomes an aching hell. The hissing in
your helmet is like a serpentine assassin coiled about your neck and chest,
crushing the life out of you.
    You throw your eyes on the drones crawling on the
station’s hull. They scurry about methodically, mechanized scavengers feeding
off the corpse of a dead organism. Two of the machines are large, with bulky
jets at their rear, a host of legs at their center, and many spinning drills at
their heads. You count six smaller machines, with arms like jointed tentacles
and quick eyes that peer about sneakily. One of the larger machines bores a
great hole in the side of the station and crawls inside. The others follow. One
of the smaller robots freezes, turns, and looks at you. You curse its red eyes, then make a few corrections to your flight path. The
charred hole, dark inside, looms before you. The jetpack sputters lamely, then stops altogether. You enter the darkness.
    Turn to section 55 .
     

79
    “How so?”
    “They tell you when you to wake up, when to sleep. How to think, how to fight, who to fight. When
you eat, if you eat. But it’s... difficult to remember the particulars.”
    “Sounds terrible,” says Reika ,
withdrawing.
    “I remember bits and pieces of recorded speeches,
stuff we listened to. Someone, an older man, said something about the reality
of the universe. That it was a warzone, a killing field, that every species is set against one another and that only the species that could
organize and fight as a whole had any chance of survival.”
    “That sounds awful. I don’t want to live in a world
like that.”
    “There might not be a choice. Take it or leave it…
dreaming about anything else might just be a distraction. Probably doesn’t
sound anything like what those revolutionaries back at the station believed in,
huh?”
    “Actually, it kind of does. Organize or else, that was their motto. Morality as dictated by the party, and the individual didn’t have to worry about guilt
or control of their own fate because the party gave them a vision of tomorrow.
And to make that peaceful vision a reality, you have to commit all sorts of
violent atrocities.”
    You think for a moment, then say, “Maybe all
struggles are just clashes between groups of tools being manipulated by
power-players who sit back and rake in the benefits. And all those
power-players, no matter what they espouse, are inherently pretty similar.
Still, I’m not about to let some Invader unzip and shit in my solar system.”
    “Even if the individual units,
friends and enemies, are similar to yourself?”
    “Even if. They’d do the same, if I came to their home armed for war.”
    “I wonder if there is any other way to live your
life,” she muses. “I used to dream of freedom. A place where I could go and
live the way I want to live, with others who want the same. You know, people
who don’t need masters hovering over them constantly, keeping them from
anything that’s dangerous or weird.”
    “What are you talkin ’
about? You were free at that station, until the Invader came. I know how cushy
you people had it.”
    “It’s not freedom,” she says, somewhat
condescendingly, “if you can’t buy drugs and own sweet guns.”
    “That’s crazy,” you say vehemently.
    “Just because your taskmasters tell you what
“sanity” is doesn’t necessarily rule out the fact that
they may be insane themselves.”
    “We’ll see about that,” you say, then smile at her sideways.
    You gain 1 XP for having a conversation with
someone who isn’t completely shallow.
    If you are skilled in Navigation , turn to
section 230 .
    If you do