2005-02-01 09:31![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
digitaldiscipline
digitaldiscipline[incomplete, two or three scenes pending, from a dream last night]
A small squad of 'saurs was shambling through the barracks. These
were late-stage carriers, which made them somewhat predictable: they'd
be fragile but highly contagious, and prone to suicidal charges. I
dropped two from the far end of the hallway, and was drawing a bead on
the remaining ones as they picked up speed when they were abruptly
liquefied by a hail of gatling fire from a side room.
Marines are seldom subtle.
I made my way cautiously towards where the burst had come from, and
was disappointed. Rodriguez was manning the gat, but she was almost
gone; the brown infection mucous had sprayed over much of her uniform
and all over her head, and despite the suit, some must have gotten
through, because she was rigid and shaking, and then she began to
scream gibberish and obscenities. I pulled back quickly before the
convulsions made her hit the trigger, and added another name to the
list of people I owed the 'saurs for.
We called 'em Arnosaurs for no real good reason. It grew out of ARNO,
which probably stood for something dull and scientific from First
Contact. To my unit, it was an acronym for Alien Reproduced Nuisance
Organism. Either way, they didn't look much like dinosaurs; their
mouth was articulated across the top of their head, and they secreted
a high-tensile ooze from a few places that acted like organic pockets
or bungie cords. I guess calling them shit demons was just deemed too
unpolitic.
Regardless of what they were called, they'd gone well beyond being a
nuisance with their last change, and were close to wiping us out.
Maybe they'd picked up the idea from War of the Worlds, trying to kill
humanity off by infecting us with some pathogen.
Even a mute grunt like me could see this was a really, really stupid
idea, when the vector was to infect themselves with something that
made their skulls so brittle at the last stages that stifling whatever
their equivalent of a sneeze was would cause their head to explode.
Messy, and nasty, and probably not as effective as whatever alien
egg-head imagined it would be.
[aside to RA: nothing to do with DF, that's something else altogether]
A small squad of 'saurs was shambling through the barracks. These
were late-stage carriers, which made them somewhat predictable: they'd
be fragile but highly contagious, and prone to suicidal charges. I
dropped two from the far end of the hallway, and was drawing a bead on
the remaining ones as they picked up speed when they were abruptly
liquefied by a hail of gatling fire from a side room.
Marines are seldom subtle.
I made my way cautiously towards where the burst had come from, and
was disappointed. Rodriguez was manning the gat, but she was almost
gone; the brown infection mucous had sprayed over much of her uniform
and all over her head, and despite the suit, some must have gotten
through, because she was rigid and shaking, and then she began to
scream gibberish and obscenities. I pulled back quickly before the
convulsions made her hit the trigger, and added another name to the
list of people I owed the 'saurs for.
We called 'em Arnosaurs for no real good reason. It grew out of ARNO,
which probably stood for something dull and scientific from First
Contact. To my unit, it was an acronym for Alien Reproduced Nuisance
Organism. Either way, they didn't look much like dinosaurs; their
mouth was articulated across the top of their head, and they secreted
a high-tensile ooze from a few places that acted like organic pockets
or bungie cords. I guess calling them shit demons was just deemed too
unpolitic.
Regardless of what they were called, they'd gone well beyond being a
nuisance with their last change, and were close to wiping us out.
Maybe they'd picked up the idea from War of the Worlds, trying to kill
humanity off by infecting us with some pathogen.
Even a mute grunt like me could see this was a really, really stupid
idea, when the vector was to infect themselves with something that
made their skulls so brittle at the last stages that stifling whatever
their equivalent of a sneeze was would cause their head to explode.
Messy, and nasty, and probably not as effective as whatever alien
egg-head imagined it would be.
[aside to RA: nothing to do with DF, that's something else altogether]
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