So here is the first bit of backstory for Smoldering Decay. I have at least 2 more planned.
I'm envisioning these almost as journal entries, recorded to make sure that she doesn't forget, that what happened to her world isn't lost should she die.
So without further delay, onto the story:
Smoldering Decay:
[A Hero Sandwich Production]
Memories (pt 1)
I write this in hopes that I won't forget what drove me here. And that should I fall in battle this will serve as a warning of what may come for others.
I'm not sure what the difference is between the Ritki I know and the ones the heroes face here. All I know is that this place seems to be spared from the scorched earth policy we faced back home. Terra Volta isn't a radioactive slag pile, The Faultline dam still stands, the hospitals aren't smoking husks.
Brickstown was the first to fall, I still remember first tense few hours following the raid. At first we thought it was just a power failure, even the redundant generators in the basement have problems occasionally. Then the stories started to filter in. The heroes had managed to take down one of the raid ships. It was a purposeful crash. A pyrrhic victory. A spiteful loss. We never found out the cause behind it, all we know is that Brickstown turned into a blood bath that day. While the Ritki couldn't shut down the teleportation network, they could interfere with it enough to prevent long distance transports. Every hero in Brickstown who fell and didn't have a med station in their base, who weren't part of a supergroup, or couldn't be reached in time by fellow healers became one more statistic.
Oh we hit them back hard, one whole section of the mothership was reduced to a smoking skeleton the next day. But they saw the effect the loss of the hospital had on battles in Brickstown, it wasn't more than a week before Independence Port was hit. This time there was no question about the intent behind it. Even after the ship had been holed several time through by Statesman it kept going on pure inertia alone. The shields around the hospital didn't stand a chance against a few hundred tonnes of alien spaceship. It was all downhill from there. It didn't matter how hard we hit back, every blow they hit us with hurt more. Sure, the bombing runs weren't nearly as bad with fewer warships floating above us, but every one hurt that much more. The other hospitals quickly became overrun trying to pick up the slack. I even heard rumors of the same thing happening in Cap Au Diable, but I never had the free time to track down the truth behind that statement.
It was the fall of the Kings Row hospital that changed things. I don't know how it started, or if an official order was ever given, but the thugs and criminals just stopped showing up. I don't know if they were left to fend for themselves or if they were never given the chance, I never bothered to ask. All I know is that the drop in incoming bodies, and the freed up room in what used to be the secure ward, meant that the survival rate in the ER went back up. Not to it's pre-agression levels, but better than the 60% we used to be at. And things were looking up. Especially when the vanguard shot down two ships attempting to kamikaze into the base in the war zone.
And then of course the excrement already stuck to the fan had to fly off and hit me. I don't remember how many double shifts I ended up pulling, or how much caffeine I had running in my veins. But I know I was covered in more things than I could name and trying to trying to grab a few minutes of rest when the invasion alarm went off. We immediately started to port the long term patients to other hospitals. The ER got transformed into a relay center, if the arriving heros weren't going to die in the next minute they got relayed to another hospital.
Those few minutes of frantic activity will always stand out in my mind. Pulling people out of the teleporters, spraying them with disinfectants and derma-bond, and shoving them in the teleporters at the other side of the room. There weren't enough people to keep up with the influx, but we tried anyway. None of us were required to stay once we got the long term patients out of the hospital. We were even encouraged to go with them to one of the other hospitals; help them deal with the impending chaos. The other nurses and doctors didn't try and convince those of us that decided to stay behind not to. We all knew that someone had to. I always figured that I could do more good at ground zero, and hop in the teleporter at the last second if the ship was incoming. The truth is that in the chaotic mess of the teleporter room we didn't have a clue the ship was coming until half the ceiling caved in.
The collection of kinetically inclined heroes on the roof did the best job they could, unfortunately there was only so much they could do against several hundred tonnes of alien warship. Their efforts meant the warship careened into the side of the hospital instead of dead center. The sound was deafening, just this rumbling crunch of concrete and steel being forced in ways they were never designed to go. It was punctuated by pops and flashes of light as the two teleporters nearest the wall catastrophically failed. In some ways I'm happy I almost lost my vision to the exploding teleporters, it saved me from seeing what happens when a teleport goes very very wrong. The other two nurses were bringing the next hero in when the hospital got hit. By the time I got back on my feet, the fires and emergency lighting conspired with my damaged retinas to made everything look like it was covered in red smears.
The groans of the hero at my feet brought me back into focus. I had been patching up the worst of his bleeding before the crash, and now I couldn't see straight enough to finish the job. So I did the next best thing: get him to people who can. I had dragged him a little more than half way to the least damaged of the teleporters when I heard something that made me forget about everything else. The crackle of the fire in the corner turned into a screeching hiss of rapidly escaping gas. My adrenaline flooded brain quickly put 1 and 1 together and came up with a very unhappy 3. I hit the ground with my hands curled around my head as the 02 tank lit. There was a roar of flame and wash of light and heat as the fire suddenly got much worse.
After a few seconds I realized I wasn't dead yet; the tank didn't blow. I got back up and started to drag my patient to the teleporters again. By the time I got there I was glad I had to hunch over to pull him along. Standing up would put me head and shoulders deep in smoke. I tried not to think about way his suit was dark and sticky as I manhandled him into a rough fetal position in the center of the teleporter. Once I was assured he wouldn't lose a leg in transit I crawled to the control panel and the big breaker switch that had been grafted into the side of it. The switches were recent additions, along with the fast acting chemical batteries they were hooked up to. Once thrown it would dump enough power into the teleporter for one last use. You got sent to the last coordinates programed in, and you prayed that batteries hadn't been damaged.
I pulled the handle down and prayed to whatever deities were listening that I would make it to the other side.
----------
Good? Bad? Indifferent?
ETA: heavy warships, not musical ones
-Terry
-----
"so listen up boy, or pornography starring your mother will be the second worst thing to happen to you today"
TF2: Spy
I'm envisioning these almost as journal entries, recorded to make sure that she doesn't forget, that what happened to her world isn't lost should she die.
So without further delay, onto the story:
Smoldering Decay:
[A Hero Sandwich Production]
Memories (pt 1)
I write this in hopes that I won't forget what drove me here. And that should I fall in battle this will serve as a warning of what may come for others.
I'm not sure what the difference is between the Ritki I know and the ones the heroes face here. All I know is that this place seems to be spared from the scorched earth policy we faced back home. Terra Volta isn't a radioactive slag pile, The Faultline dam still stands, the hospitals aren't smoking husks.
Brickstown was the first to fall, I still remember first tense few hours following the raid. At first we thought it was just a power failure, even the redundant generators in the basement have problems occasionally. Then the stories started to filter in. The heroes had managed to take down one of the raid ships. It was a purposeful crash. A pyrrhic victory. A spiteful loss. We never found out the cause behind it, all we know is that Brickstown turned into a blood bath that day. While the Ritki couldn't shut down the teleportation network, they could interfere with it enough to prevent long distance transports. Every hero in Brickstown who fell and didn't have a med station in their base, who weren't part of a supergroup, or couldn't be reached in time by fellow healers became one more statistic.
Oh we hit them back hard, one whole section of the mothership was reduced to a smoking skeleton the next day. But they saw the effect the loss of the hospital had on battles in Brickstown, it wasn't more than a week before Independence Port was hit. This time there was no question about the intent behind it. Even after the ship had been holed several time through by Statesman it kept going on pure inertia alone. The shields around the hospital didn't stand a chance against a few hundred tonnes of alien spaceship. It was all downhill from there. It didn't matter how hard we hit back, every blow they hit us with hurt more. Sure, the bombing runs weren't nearly as bad with fewer warships floating above us, but every one hurt that much more. The other hospitals quickly became overrun trying to pick up the slack. I even heard rumors of the same thing happening in Cap Au Diable, but I never had the free time to track down the truth behind that statement.
It was the fall of the Kings Row hospital that changed things. I don't know how it started, or if an official order was ever given, but the thugs and criminals just stopped showing up. I don't know if they were left to fend for themselves or if they were never given the chance, I never bothered to ask. All I know is that the drop in incoming bodies, and the freed up room in what used to be the secure ward, meant that the survival rate in the ER went back up. Not to it's pre-agression levels, but better than the 60% we used to be at. And things were looking up. Especially when the vanguard shot down two ships attempting to kamikaze into the base in the war zone.
And then of course the excrement already stuck to the fan had to fly off and hit me. I don't remember how many double shifts I ended up pulling, or how much caffeine I had running in my veins. But I know I was covered in more things than I could name and trying to trying to grab a few minutes of rest when the invasion alarm went off. We immediately started to port the long term patients to other hospitals. The ER got transformed into a relay center, if the arriving heros weren't going to die in the next minute they got relayed to another hospital.
Those few minutes of frantic activity will always stand out in my mind. Pulling people out of the teleporters, spraying them with disinfectants and derma-bond, and shoving them in the teleporters at the other side of the room. There weren't enough people to keep up with the influx, but we tried anyway. None of us were required to stay once we got the long term patients out of the hospital. We were even encouraged to go with them to one of the other hospitals; help them deal with the impending chaos. The other nurses and doctors didn't try and convince those of us that decided to stay behind not to. We all knew that someone had to. I always figured that I could do more good at ground zero, and hop in the teleporter at the last second if the ship was incoming. The truth is that in the chaotic mess of the teleporter room we didn't have a clue the ship was coming until half the ceiling caved in.
The collection of kinetically inclined heroes on the roof did the best job they could, unfortunately there was only so much they could do against several hundred tonnes of alien warship. Their efforts meant the warship careened into the side of the hospital instead of dead center. The sound was deafening, just this rumbling crunch of concrete and steel being forced in ways they were never designed to go. It was punctuated by pops and flashes of light as the two teleporters nearest the wall catastrophically failed. In some ways I'm happy I almost lost my vision to the exploding teleporters, it saved me from seeing what happens when a teleport goes very very wrong. The other two nurses were bringing the next hero in when the hospital got hit. By the time I got back on my feet, the fires and emergency lighting conspired with my damaged retinas to made everything look like it was covered in red smears.
The groans of the hero at my feet brought me back into focus. I had been patching up the worst of his bleeding before the crash, and now I couldn't see straight enough to finish the job. So I did the next best thing: get him to people who can. I had dragged him a little more than half way to the least damaged of the teleporters when I heard something that made me forget about everything else. The crackle of the fire in the corner turned into a screeching hiss of rapidly escaping gas. My adrenaline flooded brain quickly put 1 and 1 together and came up with a very unhappy 3. I hit the ground with my hands curled around my head as the 02 tank lit. There was a roar of flame and wash of light and heat as the fire suddenly got much worse.
After a few seconds I realized I wasn't dead yet; the tank didn't blow. I got back up and started to drag my patient to the teleporters again. By the time I got there I was glad I had to hunch over to pull him along. Standing up would put me head and shoulders deep in smoke. I tried not to think about way his suit was dark and sticky as I manhandled him into a rough fetal position in the center of the teleporter. Once I was assured he wouldn't lose a leg in transit I crawled to the control panel and the big breaker switch that had been grafted into the side of it. The switches were recent additions, along with the fast acting chemical batteries they were hooked up to. Once thrown it would dump enough power into the teleporter for one last use. You got sent to the last coordinates programed in, and you prayed that batteries hadn't been damaged.
I pulled the handle down and prayed to whatever deities were listening that I would make it to the other side.
----------
Good? Bad? Indifferent?
ETA: heavy warships, not musical ones
-Terry
-----
"so listen up boy, or pornography starring your mother will be the second worst thing to happen to you today"
TF2: Spy