Someone invoked my name in this thread. This pleases me.
Yesterday I dreamed that someone posted an omake for BAHHSCQ. It was surprisingly coherently written, considering that it was in a dream.
I have attempted to reproduce its contents to the best of my memory below.
Tayta's Nuclear Fever Dream
The ceiling had been torn asunder by Type Zeroes during the First and Second Battles of Sydney, allowing you to see the night sky if you looked through the gash at the right angle. Lightning raged impotently beyond the swirling veil of the clouds, a pale imitation of the nuclear hellfire that burned through the Arcology mere hours earlier.
Naturally, the Parallax powered armour suits your platoon wore were vacuum-sealed to keep out all those nasty radioactive isotopes. Failing that, just before deploying into the combat zone, you'd been dosed up with some of the most powerful anti-rad concoctions ever synthesized inside a Valkyrie's storage space. And then there was your comprehensive suite of implants, which worked to preserve your body's fragile vanilla systems in mysterious ways you still didn't understand after reading the specs. Need to inhibit symptoms of radiation poisoning? There's an implant for that!
Truly, an impressive amount of human and eldritch effort had gone into the technology which allowed you to stand idly inside the bombed-out, irradiated hallways of Sydney's residential tower. The fact that there was still even a tower was further testament to this, albeit reduced to its exotic material superstructure. Long hallways wrapped all around it, their former gloss shining once again under banks of fluorescent lights newly reinstalled by UN Army engineers, only somewhat marred by the occasional residual ion shadow.
At present, you were guarding said engineers while they argued over whether to attempt buffing out the stains with a plasma cloud generator, or simply wait for a Valkyrie to get around to using their Impeller to physically separate the ions from the walls. Personally, you weren't sure that they should bother. Chasing away shadows wouldn't bring back the dead.
Something pinged your motion tracker, but before you could raise either of your arms to shoot at it, your comms suite automatically interrogated and accepted its IFF codes. The tension of being inside an Arcology dead twice over was almost able to overpower your natural soldierly tendency towards boredom, but this time was not that time.
"Hey, Stewart," one of the two returning soldiers greeted you over laser comms, raising her arm casually – an altogether more dangerous gesture when you considered just
what was currently mounted on it. "Miss me already?"
"Like ionized rations, Martin," you easily returned. "Still no signal down there then?"
"Not one bar," the other infantryman, Pierce, answered. "AGs blasted all the relays on their way out. We've got the Spiegels for comms, but those are essential traffic only."
"That's a shame. You're missing out on the UNCG session of a decade."
"Really?"
"Oh, yeah," your current partner-in-lounging, Daniel, answered for you. "Pakistan just showed off their brand new nuke-sub. Very shiny, got room for over a hundred SLCMs with MIRVed warheads. India's going fucking ballistic over it… no pun intended."
"Damn, for real?" Martin shoved her way into your midst. "Link me up, I wanna see."
"Me too," Pierce added; and so the four of you were huddled together, powered armours plugged into each other and the nearby relay, so you could watch international politics unfolding on the big screen. Well, small screen really.
"Oof, savage burn," Martin remarked. "Almost nuclear hot, that one."
"You say that, but check it out, this cold war's turning hot!" you commentated. "How will this latest international dispute end? Find out after the commercial break!"
"Great Battle in the streets, UN Ambassadors fistfighting in the sheets," Pierce chortled.
"Oh, but what's this?" Daniel asked rhetorically. "Australia is wading in to break them up! Go, go, Pax Australis!"
"All hail Australia!" you cheered, and then frowned at the holograms playing over your HUD. "Do mine eyes deceive me, or is that a fucking Akubra?"
"I think so," Pierce said. "And look, I think that's a whip he's got in his hand…"
"Seriously?" Martin shook her helmeted head. "Way to represent us on the world stage, old mate…"
"I feel like this just became the kinkiest press conference in history…" Daniel muttered.
"Oh yeah, get in there you fuckin' legend!" you whooped.
"Bloody oath, mate," Pierce also shook his head. "Never thought I'd see something like this in my life…"
Your motion tracker pinged again, and all of you abruptly disconnected from each other to stand up straight again.
It wasn't the Antagonists. It was something much worse.
"You boys and girls having a good laugh, then?" Sergeant Walker's voice chastised you from your internal speakers. "In case you've forgotten, the eyes of this Arcology's dead are upon us."
"Not at all, Sergeant," you answered smoothly. "The scattered radioisotopes of the dead can rest assured that we're keeping a vigilant eye on what used to be their Arcology."
"Is that right? Well then, I'm sure you won't mind heading down there to say hello. It's your turn to patrol."
"Yes, Sergeant," you responded obediently, not wanting to ruin your social credit score through insubordination.
"No way," Daniel complained over the laser comms as the two of you walked away and Walker chewed out the comrades you'd left behind. "That shit was just getting epic!"
"Don't worry, India and Pakistan will still be there when we get back. I think."
Daniel chuckled, and then the two of you settled into silence as you marched down the corridor to the elevator. Your combat reconditioning suppressed all sensation of vertigo as you hopped into the open shaft without a care in the world. An instant later, your suit thrusters fired to slow your descent, depositing you on the lower levels with the gentlest caress of a feather.
This section of the Arcology was a mess. Every surface was slick with rainwater, which poured into the upper levels from rents blasted in the armour plates by directed-energy weapons and eventually drained down here. The surviving illumination panels flickered in time with pulses from secondary generators overlooked by the Antagonists, the post-mortem spasms of a dead Arcology. Your Geiger counter clicked wildly, and suddenly you regretted that offhand radioisotopes comment. Checking your armour's comms, you unsurprisingly received a
BANDWIDTH LIMITED – ESSENTIAL COMMS ONLY alert.
As if to emphasize the lack of signal, a flock of Spiegel logistics UGVs trundled past, trailing more fibre-optic cables behind them. With little else to do, you followed them.
There were more of those ionized silhouettes down here. You found yourself keeping an idle eye on Daniel's telemetry as you walked past them. The restructuring was supposed to subdue such sentiment, but you'd known him since your UN Peace Enforcement days in Korea. It'd been a long time since the two of you had played at doctor and policeman, but some things never changed.
"You think they're really going to rebuild this place?" he broke the silence after a while.
"Hm? Well, sure, why wouldn't they?" You couldn't shrug in your armour, so you tried with your voice. "It's not like the location's less valuable just because it's been nuked a few times."
"True. I heard that Murdoch wants to turn it into his personal theme park. He wants to one-up Vo after that whole #DarwinDinos stunt she–"
"Wait, wait, just, hold on for a second." You weren't sure you'd heard correctly. "That old geezer's
still alive?"
"Well, yeah!" The gossip seemed to brighten Daniel's mood. "Haven't you heard? He says he's gonna live to seven hundred thousand years old using ValkTech (trademark). I gotta say, I believe him."
"Humans haven't even been alive for seven hundred thousand years," you pointed out. "We might not even be alive in seven, the way this war's going."
"Ooh, be careful," Daniel chortled. "That sort of talk might get you arrested for sedition, you know."
"And spreading conspiracy theories about Murdoch won't?"
"What do you mean theories?
Everyone knows he secretly runs UN South East."
"Well okay yeah, but you can't just
say that."
"I know you, U-NO-MI, but when there's no signal data is free~"
You sighed and turned away from him. Some things never changed, indeed.
The two of you continued to descend deeper into Sydney's lower levels. In the back of your mind, you marvelled at the irony of what you were doing. Hunting down straggler Antagonists who'd missed the evacuation sirens, just like they did to the humans. It was almost enough to make you anthropomorphize them a little. Did biomechanical aliens from another dimension exchange idiotic banter among themselves as they trudged along on uneventful patrols to root out the enemy? Maybe idiotic beeps and boops…
Around the next corner the halls were completely dark, save for a single ray of light out of a doorway. There were no contacts on your radar or motion tracker, but you sidled up to it carefully nonetheless.
The light was coming from an extraordinarily brightly-lit space of some kind, with high ceilings and a long walkway running down the centre. Fabricated carpet gave way under your boots, and fabricated chairs scattered all over the place, providing ample clutter for Antagonists to hide behind. There was some sort of podium at the far end, and the tables were covered by exquisitely-patterned cloths.
No contacts.
As you started to maneuver around all the furniture to clear the room, something caught your eye. It was a little plastic sign that had been blown over into the corner. Turning it up, it read:
Wedding of
Helen Thompson
and Michael Crawford
You stared at it for an uncharacteristically long while.
"Nice to see that people are still joining together in holy matrimony," Daniel remarked, coming up behind you, "what with the End of Days being upon us and everything."
"I think that whole
'til death do us part thing might've happened a lot sooner than they thought, though," you managed to rejoin, unsure why
this civilian casualty in particular seemed to be bothering you so much.
"Sure looks that way. Which reminds me, when are you getting married already? We're not gonna be young forever, y'know."
"Daniel, you and I are both lean, mean, war-fighting, AG-killing machines. We don't do marriage."
"Liza would like to disagree with you."
"Then she can come here and–" Something glinted in the corner of your eye. Checking your sensors showed nothing moving, no radar signatures. "What's that over there?"
"Not sure." Daniel's posture shifted, and your armour detected him activating his laser rangefinder. "Looks like… bones?"
"Let's check it out."
The two of you circled the altar warily, arm-mounted weapons levelled. As far as you could tell, it was a perfectly ordinary and intact human skeleton, lying spreadeagle at the centre of a ring of spotlights.
Just the skeleton. It was glowing a little, and your Geiger counter promptly spiked.
"No scorch marks," Daniel observed. "And look, the floor's clean under it. No stains."
"None," you agreed. "Wonder how that might've happened. Some sort of new AG anti-biological weapon? Like, excite the molecules of the human body so that they vaporize, but not so hot that the skeleton is left alone? Bone has a higher melting point than flesh, right?"
"That'd just cause the body to explode and leave blood splatter everywhere," Daniel argued. "And it's not like AGs would clean it up afterwards."
"True." You pondered it for a few moments more, and then shrugged. "Oh, well. Must be some scientific phenomena we haven't heard of yet. Let's go."
"Sure."
Your motion tracker pinged, and you heard the sound of boots clanking and actuators whining. Turning, you were just in time to see another squad of power armoured troops entering the room. Their IFF codes checked out, but the unit insignias on their shoulders were… interesting. What was a medical unit doing all the way down here in Antagonist country?
"Corporal," a Lieutenant Sandberg opened a laser comm channel to your suit. "What are you doing in here?"
What a strange question to ask. "Patrolling for stragglers, sir."
"I see." There was a pause while the medics fanned out to secure the room. "We've got this under control. Return to your patrol."
"Yes, sir." There wasn't really much else you could say.
"What was all that about?" Daniel asked you on laser comms as soon as you moved past them and out of the room.
"Dunno." You watched the dots on your motion tracker. They appeared to converge on the altar, and stay there. "Must be some major scientific discovery the UN wants to pan out. Top secret stuff run by top men."
"That'd make sense. I can really see how an irradiated skeleton is going to contribute to the war effort."
"It makes more sense than UNOMI trying to cover up one of Murdoch's failed attempts to counteract the ageing process. That's what you were gonna suggest, wasn't it?"
"You said it, not me."
"Smartass." The dots moved back and forth across the screen. "Well, I doubt they'll let us stick around here any longer. Let's go."
"Yeah, let's. Maybe we'll actually find some Antagonists to kill."
"That'd be nice, wouldn't it?"
And so the two of you continued further downwards, just two soldiers hunting for their life's meaning in the bombed out, irradiated husk of what was once the very pinnacle of human engineering.
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No, I don't really know what it means either.
"
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