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Language:
English
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Published:
2015-05-06
Updated:
2015-05-09
Words:
2,209
Chapters:
2/?
Comments:
2
Kudos:
5
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5
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284

On Some Backwater Planet

Summary:

It seems to be your typical 'summoned to another world' story. Only, the main character is first stuffed into the PTSD-filled braincase of an ARM Commander, then punted into the one Planet well capable of killing him with its mind. This can only end in tears. Or hilarity.

Notes:

(See the end of the work for notes.)

Chapter 1: Prologue [00]

Chapter Text

Prologue [00]:


The screams of trillions echo still. Within me, they are forever captured in their final moments.

I should have gone mad long ago.

And in fact, I did – in those millennia of total war, I was a creature of hate and spite. But the "I" that existed in this watery grave was different from the "myself" that fought in that futile doctrinal conflict. It was my body that slaughtered those worlds, and the memory of atomics ripping asunder a world of rust and iron linger in the hollows of my mind.

Yet mad, I am not.

I remember the taste of hot chocolate at midnight (the ringing sound of bombers diving).

I remember the ignored pang of hunger as the screen scrolls by with an updated story (the whirr of plasma cannons firing from behind the hills).

I remember the Christmas with the family (they're dead, all dead, no one's left).

I remember dying under the rubble (lasers biting into my chest).

Light, blinding light, as everything ends.


Yet instead, there I lay, in the crushing lightless depths. Why?

Who cares?

It's cold.

It's fine.

Why should I get up?

The war's done.

We thought we'd won, when we finally broke through to the enemy's homeworld and shattered it along with their last commander. After millennia of conflict, peace at last.

But even in defeat, their malice knew no limits. And so, drowning in our victory, we were unmade.

A galaxy died, with a whimper.

Why should I get up?

The "me" that did not know war can barely keep it together.

The "me" that lived through that war is tortured by the thought of survival.

I'm alone.

It's dark.

I'm done.


Hm?

For countless eons I've slept. Yet for the first time, something pierced my solitude.

Forgotten circuits suddenly blazed with alertness. Combat protocols suddenly erupted with blinding urgency, a torrent of insistent clamor sluicing into the back of my skull. I ignore them. Passive sensors treated the surrounding ocean like a second skin. Light and radiation filtering through the depths hinted at something messy happening up at the surface.

… should I?

The "me" that did not know war still remembered the concept of altruism.

The "me" that lived through that war hoped that this is the enemy.

Clouds of silt erupted around me as I stood up for the first time in however many centuries.

Light flooded the deeps. First, a strip of green from a head that looked far too much like a bucket. Then, blazing green, from an arm that ended in a massive open barrel. For a few moments, I watched dancing green particles spiral around my inhuman exterior, cleaning my body of grime and crusted oceanic life.

Meanwhile, my body once more experienced slow resurrection. Warmth. Heartbeat. Somnolent Fluid slowly drained out of my veins to be replaced with freshly synthesized blood.

For the first time in centuries, I inhaled. Pain lancing up my ribs made me feel like laughing, which only added to the pain, which only added to the hilarity. I only stopped when my suit shocked me with a defillibrator.

I looked at my left hand, mortal flesh again.

I closed my eyes and extended my arm, a Commander again.

Streams of green particles shot forth towards the ocean floor. An outline formed of teleported photons formed.

And so I laid down my first Metal Extractor.

-o-


Meanwhile, on a backwater planet, a CORE Commander has finished building a Metal Extractor.
- the death knell to many a wanky science fiction versus debate


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