Galactic Dawn: Running Story of the Starcraft&Metroid Campaign, 2005.
Chapter 2: Human Resources.
Private Joseph Mericor sat hunched on the
edge of his favorite chair, his gaze fixed intently on the area described by the
iron in one hand and the small strip of solder in the other. The light in his
quarters flickered momentarily every time he would move a little, and eerie
wisps of smoke rose steadily around his face. Fire and metal at once contained
danced at his beck and call to affect the creation of the artifacts of his mind
into the reality he shared with his friends and enemies. The reality, they would
not be able to ignore unless they themselves were illusions, because while the
clandestine embraces Mericor’s ideas, the effect of his devices are never hidden
for very long, nor ever, ever silent.
This device would not itself explode, as most of Mericor’s favorite toys do.
This was a simple component for the shell of a grenade that he guessed he would
later have occasion to lob, along with a few dozen of its brothers, at whatever
terrible baddies are in the way, or chasing after us. Who it is didn’t matter:
the boom would love them just the same, he thought. So while Mericor had no
notion of the enemy who gets his prize, he was after a fashion well prepared for
their coming. A smile crept precisely across Mericor’s face as he neared the
last node. He would be ready. He would be ready and they would not be.
The light suddenly swept violently around the room as the lamp crashed to the floor. A noise at the door had startled Mericor from his trance-of-creation and caused him to bump the desk. His favorite chair, in characteristic fashion, collapsed once again. Joe was on his feet, and answered the caller.
-Private Mericor? I am Human Resources Prefect Zetal. Your security squadron, under the command of commander Raynor, is governed directly by my hiring division, and you may remember seeing me or another HRP when you first took this assignment. You are correct to assume that this is not a social call.
The man was short and thin. Mericor marveled at his being able to carry around not only the clipboard, but also the pen that Zetal possessed. Mericor did indeed remember the last HRP he had seen, and also remembered how his insides had looked. But this man was not the enemy to be killed under rules of engagement, and Mericor’s smile had not returned thus. Zetal resumed after conducting himself into Mericor’s quarters.
-Do you not have the commissary lamp that
every barracks is supposed to have?
-Oh, it’s around. I prefer the spotlamp on my desk for doing my work. Too much
ambient light can distort my vision and I need perfect concentration to…
-Enough. I have my own light.
Mericor felt the
sudden push from all around that accompanied every other minor psionic event he
could remember. He must have been paying little attention before to have missed
the fact that his unwelcome guest was one of a plurality of humans with the
ability to harness psionic energies. Mericor decided to take the conversation in
a more directly aggressive direction with a small demonstration of his own.
Mericor had the presence of mind to be able to first recognize the evocation and
invoke his own as a counter.
-What the deuce? Why isn't my light working?
-I said I prefer the dark. Talk.
-Your irregularities will be the death of your career with BSL, Private Mericor.
I should remind you that you have come none too far already, and yet you stand
on the naked edge of my tolerance.
-Your tolerance? Just how much authority did the company vest in the robes of an
HRP?
Zetal paused for two beats, and continued with the same tone.
-The facts, Private Mericor, will apparently have to wait. You can review these
pictures at your leisure later, while I describe them to you now. This is
company equipment in undesirable and often directly detestable condition. Our
sensitive tools are not your playthings, but like a restless child, you show no
restraint in transmogrifying working apparatus into egg timers. This is
unacceptable, and it isn't all.
Mericor peered carefully at the next photograph, having already recognized and
given a private grin to the timers he had made out of what had, after all, been
defunct equipment. Even in the dark, the portent of the image reached out to
Mericor and chilled his breath. He could not find words.
-That is correct, Private, we were there for that episode as well. I have signed
you up for psychological evaluation. Should you fail to attend, I cannot
guarantee that BSL will be merciful in hiding this from Tarsonian authorities.
Certainly the company will fire you. You can understand now why they had to send
the nighttime-guy; this photograph only recently came to our attention. Consider
carefully.
A more thinly veiled or heavy-handed threat Mericor had never felt. His calm was
disturbed enough to not notice his unwelcome guest's second, and this time
successful, attempt at summoning light from psi. The hard light splashed all
over the room, throwing the picture in an ominous and potent glow: the truth
that he knew had been a lie. Mericor could always remember the nightmare if he
tried, only before it had felt only ephemeral. The picture made it possible, and
the possible made the nightmare horrifying.
There were tall green lights all around in his dream, and men with no-faces
inside of hoods, labcoated men, passed back and forth in steady pulse. They
found their posts and worked with meticulous quiet. Mericor peered in their
green green rooms to see unfamiliar equipment giving off inhuman sounds and
unreadable numbers. The pathological hum disturbed him. A wind kicked up, and in
the next room over Mericor could feel the heart of his dread hammer against the
wall. It was the one that had grabbed him. Grabbed and held on. Held on and
brought the cold, the pathological nonphysical cold. More pulse, more hum, more
hammer. Impelled to see the metroid once again, Mericor could not stop himself
from walking right through the wall. Embrace the cold of the spirit, the portal
to hell in the monster of the real. What he saw in the room of the heart of his
dread was not the monster he expected. Inside the cells that had housed alpha
metroids were now people. Children, women, some non-humans that he could
recognize, and only guess that they were also women and children. Some of them
were clearly dead and preserved. The labcoats did not seem to distinguish,
although what they did with the living and the dead never transpired in
Mericor's sight. Dread melted into fury, and he felt himself smashing the
delicate wall of the closest cell. The labcoats all turned and stared and
watched. Mericor held the thinly-robed and now barely breathing woman in his
arms. With his shins on the floor, he peered into her eyes, and there saw the
horror he had felt from inside the room. That's what these people were. They,
like he, had been drained by the monster of darkness. The woman he remembered as
sister, dying in his arms, dying as a willful choice to life with the threat
that permeated the next room. Mericor looked at the next room, the portal
creeping open to show a green light, the shadows of fangs dancing on the wall.
It had been a persistent nightmare for a number of months for Mericor, but it
had never felt as lucid as now holding the picture. How had Zetal produced this
picture? It could not have happened that the tableau Mericor had imagined had
been captured on film, but the familiar security stamp spoke true. How did they
have a picture of him holding that woman?