Post
Fri Apr 14, 2017 4:10 pm
#20
by Talvieno
TURN 2
Buck
Before you get moving, you look behind you to make sure the station wall you've just punctured isn't regrowing. It doesn't seem to be, fortunately, so you begin to enact your "Grand Plan": blow the place to hell.
Diving toward the archway, you try to orient yourself to where you can drop the bomb - but the controls of your ship are finicky at best. The RCS thrusters seem to be aligned wrong, or... well, something isn't right, and you're not much of a pilot anyway. Spinning, you just barely keep from clipping the wall - right as a plasma shot crashes deafeningly into your right robotic arm, shattering it and flinging shrapnel at the glass of your cockpit canopy. You hastily drop the bomb, and then start trying to fly away. As you do, one of the colossal tentacles growing out of the wall uncoils rapidly toward your ship; you fry it with the microwave beam at full power and it goes haywire, shaking and shuddering as it flails about. You avoid it and shift out of its range.
And then you get fried, as another triple plasma shot crashes into the back of your CASKET, almost sending you careening to the side.
It seems like it's about time to pull out, cut your losses, and detonate the nuke. You did only just get here, but what's the point of staying besides seeing what you could learn? With this idea in mind, you begin fiddling with your hacking controls as you pilot your ship toward the wound you and your "nameless" companion made in the station wall. Interestingly enough, their tech seems to be somewhat outdated. You're able to pull off bugging their software with little trouble: you learn that in this particular chamber, they have six triple-barreled plasma turrets, and two of them are down for maintenance. It's not like it matters, though - you're about to blow them all to kingdom come.
But that's when you crash headlong into the fleshy outer wall of the station, half-embedding your CASKET in it. You don't have enough speed to get back out, and you missed the tiny entrance you made completely. For the time being, you're still stuck inside the cultist station.
You hear a low, ominous chanting emanating from the room behind you; the walls begin to pulsate with a red glow, like luminescent veins of blood.
You really want a drink.
Lemons
You smile. This is going to be so much fun.
As Buck gets ready to drop his bomb, you fly closely past the turrets, buzzing them as you try to get their attention. After you're sure at least two of them are firing at you, you loop back around and do a fast, calculated sweep of the cultists' little shelf. You manage it perfectly - you're just a couple feet from the ground as you fly past, and manage to directly ram (and splatter) at least six different "space wizards" before gliding back into the open air above the chasm. As you fly past the archway, though, you see Buck's bomb tipping off of it, beginning to slip over the side. It looks like it'll probably fall onto the balcony below - and then possibly into the chasm, but it's hard to tell for sure.
Another shot or two flies past you, dealing no damage; the turrets seem rather slow to track. As long as you stay ahead of them, it doesn't seem like they have much chance of hitting. This pleases you. With the bomb set, though, your job is done; you bank your ship and fly back toward the entrance you made, preparing to ram it. However, it's not closing back up; you're able to skillfully maneuver your ship straight back through and to the other side.
The station falls behind you as you put yourself at a safe distance, and then switch your screen's view to your Command Center. It seems Buck is having some trouble escaping; he's crashed into the outer walls of the station. You don't think he's going to make it back out - he doesn't seem to be nearly as good a pilot as you are. Worse than that, he's been hit at least twice, even despite your trying to draw their fire. There were a lot of turrets in there anyway.
You stop and think about the cultist "magic". As far as you know, it's probably just some kind of glorified field emitters. Magic isn't real. Everybody knows that. In that case, there's probably not much the cultists can do to you - as long as you're in your CASKET. They might try to boil your blood, sure, but if you keep moving, you're pretty safe.
Buck isn't though. You'll have to think of some clever way to get him out, so he can detonate the bomb... preferably before the turrets nail him.