Posts
THE WAR CORP.
By Wayne Webb
CHAPTER 3.5
The team moved through the atrium to the
next obstacle, once they were all through the airlock, gravity was switched off
and the entire group began floating. The room beyond the airlock was big enough
to allow them all there at once, but still have plenty of space above them.
The group floated aimlessly for a minute
before the sound of air escaping came to them and a red light started flashing
across the room. A door opened in the wall near them and a compartment opened
up showing there were oxygen masks inside, and small metal tanks attached to
each one.
There were now fifteen men in the team,
having lost two members on the first two stages of the gauntlet. Liam was
enjoying the weightlessness of the room, it reminded him of the moment when the
pod takes over your body and you hang between being connected to your nervous
and being fully offline from your body.
That haunting moment he could never forget
when all pain and sensation is switched off and you exist as a conscious state
for a split second before being blacked out for repair and recharge, the state
of bliss and enlightenment from being on the cusp of death and in the doorway
back to life.
Like the moment he craved this too was all
too fleeting and short before purpose interceded and gave them the task they
needed to complete to survive.
Oxygen was running out of the room and
there were fourteen masks for fifteen men. There was no indication of how long
they needed to last with this canned air, nor any idea of where to go next once
the masks were in place.
Sharpe and Brodie started distributing the
masks until there were only two masks left, and three men floating with the
three between them. The rest of the team all had their own masks on and there
was still plenty of oxygen in the room as the three men stared at each other,
daring or challenging each other non verbally to be the one to break.
The sound of air escaping intensified and
grew louder, faster all at once. There was no respite where the man/men without
masks could breathe the room air for longer. They were going to run out of
oxygen fast, the pumps taking it away from them were working overtime to empty
the space as quickly as possible.
Liam ordered his two squad leaders to put
the masks on and reluctantly they obeyed orders, the self sacrificing need in
them to protect the leader, and the team overridden by the need to obey
objectives set in the game.
Liam had no intention of dying without
oxygen, his sense of self preservation was strong, beyond the programming and
the directives he wanted to die but not a stifling and claustrophobic end like
this one, each breath a clawing agony of fear. He desired wounds, tears and
rents in his flesh that blinded him in the level of intense pain they
delivered. Suffocation was unattractive in the painless discomfort it would
likely bring. Already his lungs were beginning to tighten and his chest
compress like a weight was on it, thumping him down and in on himself.
There were a couple of injured people on
the team, they were not badly injured but they would be slower and harder to
use effectively in the next engagement when they would be up against a team
with a similar level of experience and ability.
Of
the two men he targeted, one had leg injuries and one had a wounded right arm.
One would be less mobile and the other less of a weapon in battle. Either could
be useful and either could be a handicap, but they could not both live if he
needed their oxygen.
Sharpe and Brodie were under orders to take
and keep the masks; the rest of the team had taken them on their own
initiative.
Faced with the need to reduce the team
numbers by at least one more member and the desire to preserve his own life as
a directive, he moved both team members to a spot along the wall just a little
further beyond where the main group was and ordered the team to hold their
positions.
One of the men was a Liam like he was, but
that made no discernable difference to the decision to execute him, the Liam
Nine Three was injured in his legs and that made him more dispensable.
There was little oxygen in the room now and
Liam Zero Six was getting dizzy, spots forming in his eyes as he took aim and
fired a round at his identical twin team member. The bullet tore into the side
of the man’s head and clipped the straps that held the mask on, damaging it as
it passed through.
The executed Liam unit was dead and
floating in space as protests echoed in the chamber from Brodie as he saw the
process being undertaken. Liam Zero Six could not hear the words, but he
understood the tone. He was losing consciousness and his head was pounding as
the blood surged through his temples, his lungs straining for more air.
The Matthew One One with the wounded right
arm took the mask off the floating dead Liam and held it firmly on the nose and
mouth of the floating and barely living Liam until the wracking gasps brought
enough air back into him to regain control and consciousness.
The Gravity in the room reasserted itself
shockingly fast and the fourteen men fell bodily to the ground, thumping hard
and fast on the new down direction, which had been a wall when the walked into
the room, but was now the new floor.
The blood and brains splattered with a flat
smacking noise from the dead Liam’s open wounds. The blood had filled a large
levitating pocket of fluid in the zero gravity, holding a single shape the
collapsed under it’s own weight when gravity was reapplied.
The nearby team members fell into the smear
of red on the floor, and brushed it off casually as they stood carefully,
trying to not slip through the slick red fluid all around them.
The body, now subject to gravity, bled more
profusely now that the pressure was back on and the position it fell into was
upside down.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Feel free to leave any comments about the project - but be aware I won't be taking suggestions, requests or feedback on the content or style of writing - I want to write what I want free of any one else's issues.