Heavy Metal Thunder Read online

  “Alright, cock-smoker!” shouts the voice of the manager through a speaker on the robot. “If you don’t give up that suit, now, then I’m going to crush you with this machine!”

  “What are you going to do?” you say. “Make it box me up and organize me until I’m dead?”

  “Shut up! I’m controlling this thing from... a secret location! You better believe it’s more than enough to crush you to a pulp. So get naked!”

  The machine does look dangerous - and you don’t have a lot of time to get to those fuel lines.

  If you want to try to talk the manager out of this course of action, turn to section 221.

  If you are skilled in the use of Computers, you can use it against the machine by turning to section 426.

  If you want to try to somehow beat or evade the robot, turn to section 5.

  395

  The scared man stares at you for a long time. His gun lowers slowly.

  “Put your gun back up, idiot!” says the smiling revolutionary. “Hell is wrong with you?”

  “Ever since we were kids...” the other mutters. “Always pulling me along, getting me into stupid situations...”

  “What?” says the smiling revolutionary. He pauses in thought, then screams, “Damn you!” He turns slightly, his eyes waver to his friend - then the lawman fires over and over, drilling both men. They slam into each other, hacking on blood, as thick rivulets of blood spring out of them both. They crash to the ground in one another’s arms.

  You gain 1 XP for being such a smooth operator.

  Suddenly the lawman looks at you. “What?” you say.

  “Uh... well...” he stammers.

  “What?! Haven’t you ever wasted a ton of dudes before? Believe me, this kind of thing happens all the time.”

  “I, uh,” he says, trying to recover himself, gun shaking in his hands. “I gotta get outta here. Fight some crime, or something. Something.” He stares ahead and marches out of the room.

  “Right on!” you say. “Wha-a-atever, bro.” You search the bodies of the dead and find the following gear.

  Krieger-Colt Pump-Action Shotgun (Shotgun, bulk 3)

  4 Shotgun Shells (bulk 1)

  Cold Cock Auto (Handgun, bulk 2, has the serial number scratched off)

  4 Handgun bullets (bulk 1)

  When you are ready to hit the all-you-can-eat buffet (and scoop up some XP), turn to section 260.

  396

  You and the other two come to a crossroads in the hallway. The guard relays your location into his radio. “Okay!” the manager squawks on the other end. “The backup generator is down the hall that ends at the northside door. Those machines should come right up through the southside door... any minute now!”

  The guard nods to you, says, “I’m going to attach my grapple-rope to that northside entrance, so I can fire right into them as they’re coming.”

  “I - I’m going with you!” says the laborer, nodding to his companion and eyeing you distrustfully.

  You look about. “If we set our hooks in one of these side halls, we could hit the machines from their sides. They might be more vulnerable, and we could be out of danger ourselves.”

  “Yeah,” says the guard, “but what if they go right by us? There’d be vacuum coming in and if they got by us, we’d have one hell of a time trying to maneuver behind them. You got a point, man, but... I’m gonna face ’em head-on.”

  You consider that both plans have their strong and weak points. The guard and laborer run to their positions in the northside. You do not have long to decide, for you can already hear the rumbling of the deconstructors.

  If you want to set up beside the others and face the deconstructors head-on, turn to section 542.

  If you would rather latch your hook at the far end of a side hall and hit the deconstructors from their flanks, turn to section 91.

  397

  You grab of a chunk of something fierce. “Here boys!” you shout. “Fetch!” You toss the chunk into the mass. One dog gets plastered in the face and rolls down into the pack, knocking off several and causing others to fight wildly among themselves.

  While the dogs regroup, you dive under the pillar and push through the rubble. You hear several dogs jump down into the room behind you. You rise to your knees on the far side of the pillar. You feel ahead in the darkness and find a control panel. You pull a small emergency latch and an unseen door opens, flooding the chamber with light. You enter and shut the door behind you. The barking of the dogs disappears suddenly.

  You have survived your encounter with the dogs: Gain 2 XP.

  Turn to section 187.

  398

  You swing your weapon as the shrieking man swings his rifle. You catch him full in the face, silencing his bellows and stopping the momentum of his swing. He staggers backward, pupils dilated oddly, and you bash his head once more. He falls against a wall, blind from pain. You bring your weapon crashing down onto his temple, which caves in, and a geyser of cherry kool-aid spews from his mouth before he topples at your feet, dead.

  Turn to section 530.

  399

  The red emergency lights glare with portents of doom as you pass through the hall, wary of the manager. The hallway ends at a curving branch. Many doors are labeled for entrances to the docks. Strange, to think that a vacuum lies just beyond those walls. You follow signs along one wall until you come to a door marked, “DOCK COMM STATION - AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY BEYOND THIS POINT.”

  The dock command station is dark, but still has gravity and air. You notch your helm into place and click the light on. Unlike the gentle tan of the hallway, the command station is steel-grey. The room is huge, full of control panels, chairs, papers, equipment everywhere. A window covers the entire front section. You look out, see the vast expanse of a ruined dock. Blasted hulls float, charred and weightless. You even see a clump of red ice which may have once been a man. A large steel net rotates slowly just outside the window; you can use that, later, to haul your supplies through space.

  Far down the station you see two service vehicles and protruding fuel lines. You jog to the area and find steel canisters. You haul them to the fuel lines, then jam a line into one. The pump is labeled, “LIQUID HYDROGEN - CAUTION!” While you cannot remember if the Black Lance Legion used anything different for their machines, nothing really tells you otherwise. You turn the pump on and the canister jerks a little while the pump hums with life. You breathe a sigh of relief, then jam more steel canisters onto separate pumps.

  You take a quick glance at the equipment littering the room. Nothing seems useful - then you notice a bulky hand-held computer with a wide screen labeled, “STELLAR NAVIGATION UNIT”. Upon closer examination, it seems the device is full of star charts, maps of the Asteroid Belt, and even notes the locations of other STELLAR stations. The nearest station, another asteroid mining complex, while still incredibly far away, seems that it might even be along the same route taken by your Black Lance Legion ship, as well as the hunting Invader ship. Of course, the estimate is approximate; minor deviations in flight paths in space can end up at vastly different points. Still, the machine provides some hope, for the next station is a place to which you could journey and at least get some kind of ship.

  If you are skilled in the use of Computers, you can download the navigation data directly into your helm computer. Otherwise, you must take the Navigation Computer (bulk 3) with you. If you do not have enough room in your inventory, you must discard enough items to leave room for the necessary computer.

  The transport vehicles seem to be empty of fuel. In another corner you find a huge array of steel O2 tanks and an electronic handcart. While the fuel pumps hum, you haul oxygen tanks onto the hand cart, then push them into the hall near an entrance to the docks. You lift one off and carefully set it down - then, realizing your need for speed, kick the whole cart over and dump them all noisily into the hallway. You continue the process several times. As you work the robot moves back and forth down the hallway, gathe
ring food and water for you.

  Suddenly, an explosion rocks the hall. You panic for a moment, thinking the hull has been breached and that you will lose your supplies. Nothing happens. You jog down the hallway, then see smoke drifting out from the main comp station. You peer inside. The place is a mess, with hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equipment in shambles. Then you see a smear on the wall, something like hair plastered into ketchup. A severed finger juts out of the doorway. You enter and slip on something banana-peel style and crash to the floor. You look about. Either someone has chosen to dump a cartload of barbecued sausage links for a discount meat sale, or you have indeed caught the manager in your trap. Since there are no for-sale signs around, you’re betting on the latter. You laugh with relief, then continue on with your work.

  You and the labor-bot amass a ton of supplies. Perhaps an hour passes in this way. Then, without warning, the lights flicker and go black. Even the red alarms continue on for only a few seconds, before they, too, are cut off. The whir of the air conditioning system clicks off, and you rise off the floor slowly. You can hear rumbling, grinding, far away. The backup generators have been destroyed and more deconstructors are tearing their way through the station. The end is near. You kick off a wall and check the fuel canisters. You disconnect one, glad to see that it is full, then attach a line from your jetpack and refuel yourself. You seal the canisters, then kick them into the hallway and gather them near the rest of your supplies. The robot floats down a side hallway, treads moving uselessly, head whirling in confusion.

  Near exhaustion, your heart races with the hope of escaping this ghost station. You kick off and stop at the door to the ruined dock, so that you can follow through with the last part of your plan to escape from the ghost station.

  You gain 2 XP for killing the conniving manager. Turn to section 555.

  400

  You find Reika in a semi-private corner, sitting on a stack of boxes with a sullen look on her face. A window with a view of the stars is before her, but you have the impression that she’s not really looking. Her face looks pinched, hard, and her laborers’ coveralls look rougher than usual. You decide she’s probably had a rough life.

  If you want to talk to her, turn to section 346.

  If you don’t want to give her the chance to dump her problems on you, turn to section 492.

  401

  You fire and the laborer’s head whips back. The girl screams, then tears herself away from him as he crumbles into a heap on the floor, body twitching, blood pouring freely from his mouth and the back of his ruined head.

  “Smooth operator,” you mutter under your breath: Gain 1 XP. But the girl glares at you, her face contorted by several emotions at once. While she’s glad she is now safe, she’s extremely pissed that you fired a gun so near her head.

  She’ll get over it, you think. Cause she knows I’ll shoot her if she doesn’t.

  Be sure to erase one bullet from your inventory, then turn to section 479.

  402

  You glide over the silent, grey landscape to a field of waving tentacles. Your helm light flashes on the slender, monstrous dancers, each a little taller than a man. One quivers near your face and, creeped out, you step off and float backwards. Just then something like a vice slams shut on your ankle and jerks you to the side. Cursing, you see that some tentacle, much longer than the others, has wrapped around your leg and is pulling you toward its brothers.

  If you have a gun and at least one bullet, and want to blast the tentacle, turn to section 581.

  If you have a hand-to-hand weapon and want to use it against the thing, turn to section 101.

  If you want to try and wiggle free and fly out of its range, turn to section 343.

  403

  They don’t make ‘em like this anymore! The lock jumps around but does not shatter into a million pieces when you kick it. You have to hold onto the tops of the lockers to keep yourself from floating away.

  If you have a Strength score of 3 or more and want to really tear into the lock, turn to section 130.

  Even if your Strength is not that high, if you still want to show this thing that it’s not the size of the boat, it’s the motion of your foot slamming into it, turn to section 70.

  404

  You squeeze through the horrible confinement and come to a dark, open space: Gain 1 XP. You rise to your knees and feel ahead in the darkness and find a control panel. You pull a small emergency latch and an unseen door opens, flooding the chamber with light. You enter and shut the door behind you. The barking of the dogs disappears suddenly.

  You have survived your encounter with the dogs: Gain 2 XP.

  Turn to section 187.

  405

  Some ship fires its jets early. It only lasts for a second before they are turned off, but a cloud of thick black smoke rolls throughout the docking bay. The sweat of the laborers turns black and grimy, and the guards cough horribly behind you, choking on the fog of war. The hell kind of fuel does that old thing use? you wonder.

  A bloody lawman stumbles up to you. He seems strongly built, but his eyes are wide with fear.

  “Halt!” you shout. “The law ends where my territory begins.”

  “Please let me on board, bro,” he says.

  “For one thing, I’m not your bro. For another thing, why should I? What can you do?”

  “I’m a medic. Actually, I’m in pre-med. Pretty much, uh, I can do anything a doctor can do.”

  “You trained to fight, too?”

  “Not really, no. Never fired my gun, ever. I don’t believe in violence, see. I got attacked not long ago, almost killed, but I just ran.”

  If you want to let him on, turn to section 415.

  If you want to tell the lawman medic to heal himself on someone else’s ship, turn to section 198.

  406

  Before the Captain can react you cock and aim the massive shotgun, then give vent to a blast that sends him flying into the air, his torso torn to shreds. As he crashes into the ground a rain of blood showers down around him. You gain 1 XP for commandeering a ship. You may take the dead man’s Old School Revolver (Handgun, bulk 2) and 3 Handgun bullets (bulk 1) if you wish.

  You turn toward the ship. While the laborers stare at you in terror, the guards laugh. “Ahoy, Cap’n!” one of them shouts, high-fiving the other.

  Guess he wasn’t too popular around here, you think. “Back to work!” you shout.

  Be sure to erase 1 Shotgun shell from your inventory.

  Turn to section 379.

  407

  You seem to run through solid air, like in a nightmare. In horror you see the gun fire, deafening you, then the girl’s head jerks, splattering the man’s face and shoulder with blood. As the girl’s body falls you crash into her and, at the same time, the laborer jerks backward and fires at you.

  You try to move but the bullet slams into your side, drilling into your ribs and lodging there. You lose 7 Blood, but you may subtract your Dexterity score from this amount. Furthermore, your suit has been punctured. If you have any Sticky Fix, you must use one dose now to fix your suit; if you do not have any of this item, make a note that your suit has been damaged. Be sure to erase any ammunition that you used.

  If you have died, then you may Regenerate by turning to section 312, or, if you want to go back further, you may turn to section 179.

  If you survive, then the laborer stumbles and falls near you. “Well,” he says, regarding the dead girl, “we didn’t want no part in this world, anyway.” Then, with his face right next to yours, he presses his gun into the side of his own head - and fires.

  The explosion is deafening. “No!” you shout, as blood sprays all over your face. “Gro-o-o-oss!”

  But it is too late. Bucketfuls of brain matter spill all around you and, just before you scuttle away from the man’s body, you see his eyeballs roll around loosely in their sockets.

  You may take his Bloody Chrome-Plated 9mm (Handgun, bulk 2) and 3 Handgun bullets (bulk 1)
if you wish.

  Turn to section 166.

  408

  You open the door and enter. You see all manner of strange devices, most of them unfinished with spare parts scattered about. You see a dead man lying in the floor. He wears a scientist’s stereotypical white lab coat and a few gunshot wounds in his chest. A strange contraption is in his hands, and while you don’t know what it is it feels faintly malevolent in nature. You may take the Mystery Device (bulk 3) if you like.

  Just then an arrhythmic blue light flashes in the room from numerous bulbs. You hear a high-pitched whir. You do not feel well.

  If you have a Will score of 2 or more, turn to section 358.

  If your Will score is not that high, turn to section 302.

  409

  “This is gonna hurt,” you mutter, slamming your fist into the door control panel. As the electricity courses through your body, you wish that you’d just let the deconstructors roll through the backup generator: Lose 1 Blood.

  The door grinds open awkwardly, as if resenting your brutish tenacity.

  Turn to section 500.

  410

  After a cold walk through a maze of hallways, you find the supply depot. Rows of weapons and gear sit behind a fence where ship personnel go about repairs and take inventory. Behind the counter sits a slender lady with long, greasy hair, and shaded mascara around her eyes that gives her a hot-zombie look. She could have been a heavy metal model on Earth, but now she is a soldier in charge of gear distribution.