hear that other sound, that MY jaw hitting the floor.

  

AWESOME! Keep it coming!

-Scot

**********
February 28, 2229
Our Final Stand


"It was a good plan," One said. "It's a shame it didn't work better."

The first part had gone perfectly. Five had restored power to the elevator just as we sent it up at maximum speed.: the heavily reinforced elevator car had sped upwards at an insane rate of speed like a bullet through a gun barrel, smashing Yor to bits as it raced upwards through the descending robots.

In my plan, it would have gone all the way to the top and been sent back down again for another run against the reinforcements. We would have been able to use it as a kind of battering ram for two, three shots before it finally broke done from the strain.

What actually happened was that the Yor just started hurling themselves down into the elevator shaft en masse. They smashed to bits by the dozens, but each one was like a rock being thrown into a flivver intake. By the time the elevator was halfway up, the drive wheels were wrecked. It grinded to a halt three-fourths of the way up, and then the Yor leaped down and started cutting through the roof again.

"Six," One had said, and the big guy had run up with a welding torch, closed the lower doors, and burned them shut. "It was a good plan," she'd said to me, "it's a shame it didn't work better."

"It didn't seem to do much of anything," I sighed.

"It bought us a little time. That might be all we can ask for." She turned to the others. "Ammo check."

"Nothing," Five said. "Just my brains and my rig."

"Half a box," Six reported. "Not much, but I'll make it count."

"Half a dozen in the gun, two reloads of ten each," Seven said.

"One clip," I said, "Twenty rounds."

"One round, then, down to knives and teeth," One said. She looked down at her plasma pistol then tossed it to me. "You'll need this. Five. Hand over your rig and get out of here, not much you can do now."

The Snathi ran over and unstrapped a remote from his back, handed it to me and showed me the controls. "This blue one, here, is rigged to a set of explosives arranged around the spire. This red one, here, is rigged to collapse this tunnel. When everyone else is dead, you need to set off the blue one first, then run inside and press the red. That'll slow the Yor down enough that they won't bother following you. By that time, they should have more important things to worry about." He tossed it to me, and I caught it in unsteady hands. "If they do keep coming, use One's plasma pistol to destroy the sphere too. It might help." He ran up the wall and opened up one of the tiny ventilation grilles near the ceiling. "Yad Chia Kalia."

"Yad Chia Kalia," One replied. She gave Five a firm salute. The little Snathi returned the salute gravely and disappeared into the maze of ventilation ducts.

"Wait. . . what more important things? And what do you mean, when we're all dead?" I asked.

"The Yor will never stop coming if they know one of the Tir-Quan is alive down here. You're the only one who has a chance of surviving this battle." One unslung her sword and extended it to its full length, standing there like a samurai from an old movie, her hair rustling in the gentle breeze from the ventilation ducts. "We need you to take the sphere back to Alliance High Command, or failing that, destroy it entirely. Under no circumstances must the Yor be allowed to take it back, or the fleet will be lost."

"The fleet. . ." Things started to click together in my head. "You said this was the key to winning the war."

"The moment Five shut it down and Six removed the sphere from the spire, the Yor interdiction field around the planet went down," One said. She grinned at me fiercely, the smug, satisfied grin of a cat who's just caught a mouse. "The Yor aren't the only ones who can set a trap. We knew they'd want to capture a Tir-Quan so badly they would allow us to entrap ourselves. And so we have. But in the process, we took more of the bait than they ever expected we would. They never thought we'd ever make it far enough to capture the Interdiction Field Generator, and now they're panicking because they've just detected the fleet of Victory-Class cruisers and Lightning Transports that were massing just out of their sensor range, waiting for the signal to strike. In three days, the skies around Lentz are going to be filled with more Terran ships than the Yor have ever seen in their lives, and they will take this planet and show those mechanical freaks what 'fleshlings' can do when they put their minds to it."

There was a loud slam as something big and heavy smashed into the elevator doors. "They won't use guns, not in this close proximity to the Field Generator, and as long as they have a chance of putting it back online. We're nearly out of ammo, so this is going to come down to hand-to-hand," One said. She turned back to the doorway, priming a grenade. "When it does, you run and hide. You haven't been to the TQ center yet. You can't dodge bullets."

"Wait, wait, wait!" I shouted. "There has to be another way, you can't just expect. . ."

"Sovek Yad Chia. Yad Chia Kalia." Seven said. She smiled wanly at me, looking up from her rifle. "It's ancient Arcean. It means, 'Your life is all. My life is nothing.' It's what they told us when they first handed over the plans for the Tir-Quan training center. It's about half a truth at best, but it's still a good motto."

I didn't have much to say.

The pounding got louder, and now we could see the faint red glow of the Yor cutting torches could now be seen through the heavy reinforced duranium doors. "Hey, One?" Seven asked. "Considering that we're in deep shit now. . ."

"Do whatever you want," One sighed.

"Mmmm, thanks, sweetie." Seven unzipped her uniform: really really REALLY low, and then she did something very unladylike that, as a gentleman, I feel obligated not to tell you about. "There's nothing like a good firefight to get the blood really pounding," she purred.

"Degenerate harlot," One grimaced.

"Frigid spinster," Seven retorted.

"Whore."

"Bitch."

"They're coming," Six interrupted.

"Mmmm, so am I."

"Shut up."

"Make me."

The doors burst open, and the Yor attacked.

While I appreciate your sentiments, there, are, at most, only one or two installments remaining in this series, so stickying it now would be pointless. Still, I'm glad you liked it and hope I didn't suck too much .

The curse of being the writer is that you see everything you could have done better

Awww, thats too bad. Whats your next story to be?

themocaw, have you ever considered writing a novel (if you haven't already)? You should.

**********
February 28, 2229
Hell


Funny thing was, I didn't have time to be scared. I was too busy fighting like hell.

The Yor burst in like an exploding waterballoon, flooding into the corridor like cockroaches. They were immediately met by a lance of flame from Six's cannon that tore the first wave to shreds, and by sniper rounds from Seven's rifle that blew them to pieces. That didn't last much more than a minute and then it was down to hand to hand.

The Yor couldn't use guns: I was at the end of the corridor crouched over the Interdiction Field Generator Core, blazing away with my largely ineffectual laser pistol until I ran out of ammo, and any stray shot could hit it. They had to fight their way through three Tir-Quan hand-to-hand.

One hundred of them, three of us.

Poor them.

It's hard to describe the way a Tir-Quan fights, but the best way to think of it is, it's like a dance. The three of them moved like one, covering each other's backs, striking out like a whirlwind, each movement was a picture of grace, without wasted motion. They each brought their own aspect to the dance: Six was simply brutal, slamming the Yor back with his useless cannon, at one point picking a Hunter-Killer up by the head and crushing it with his bare hands. One was like a machine, or a wild beast, her body seeming to bend and float, catlike reflexes dodging the enemy's cutting blades by bare millimeters. Seven somehow managed to bring a kind of sultry sensuality to her movements: even while slicing a Yor apart with its own nano-whip, she made it look good.

It couldn't have lasted more than a minute or two, and then One yelled, "First Charge!" and I hit the detonator: not the one that would collapse the tunnel, but one that set off a series of claymore mines in the ceiling tiles. A shower of ball bearings tore through the Yor ranks, halting their attack and clogging up the corridor with their sparking, mangled carcasses. "Grenade Out!" One shouted, and the three of them primed and hurled EMP grenades in unison. There was a loud zish and a flash of white light, and then things got quiet, except for a thin haze of smoke from the dying Yor.

"Status Report!" One shouted. "Green!"

"Yellow," Six muttered. He had an arm clutching a deep gash on his left upper arm, staunching it with a field dressing soaked in coagulant. "I'll be fine."

"I'm good," Seven sighed, and then she slumped to the ground.

One ran over to her. There was a lot of red on the ground under her body and more was coming out every second. "Shit," One growled. "Six, Jar Sulith, Kilik. . ." She stopped in the middle of taking a field dressing out of her belt pack, pressed two fingers to Seven's neck. "Shit shit shit. . . Xaxii Farth!" She emptied her belt pack onto the ground, rummaged through the supplies until she found the automatic defibrillator. She didn't have to open up Seven's uniform, but she did have to wipe away some blood to apply it over her chest. The debfib device made some beeping sounds, and then it started going through its automatic cycle, desperately trying to restart the Tir-Quan's heart with carefully measured electrical pulses. Based on the color of the lights, it didn't seem to be working that well.

"One, Fel Fikkath," Six said. He'd picked up a Yor plasma torch and was jiggering with the trigger mechanism, rigging it up to his wrecked cannon. A quick test burst, and a jet of blue-white flame emitted from the makeshift flamethrower.

"In a minute!" One yelled. "Steve, get the hell up here!"

I ran up to the two girls, trying not to step in the blood. "Shears. Field Dressing. Artificial Blood Analogue. Shock Suppressant. Anesthesia. Use them." One pressed the medical supplies into my hands and took up position next to Six on the wall of Yor corpses, accepting the makeshift flamethrower as the big guy started jury-rigging another weapon. "Hurry!"

I couldn't see much of the battle, aside from One shooting plasma flame from her position on the baricade and Six tearing Yor plasma torches from the hunter killers and jury-rigging them into guns. I was too busy trying to save Seven's life. Cutting away her uniform was hard going: that fabric was surprisingly tough, and it ate up the shears like they were gravel.

I'd just finished rigging up a whole crapload of blood analogue on an IV drip when Seven's eyes fluttered open. "Ouch," she whispered.

"How ya doin', babe?" I quipped nervously.

"F'rgot to duck," Seven sighed. She glanced down at her tattered uniform, saw that I'd cut most of it away. "Like wh y'see?"

She looked like a mess. It physically hurt to see that gorgeous body torn up so badly, and the field dressings made her look like a patchwork horror movie monster. "Couldn't keep my hands off of ya," I said.

She smiled weakly. "Wait 'ntil 'm feel' bett', an' I'll show you how it really works." She sighed and closed her eyes, and I nearly panicked, but the defibrillator didn't change color to red and start its sequence, so I figured she was fine. I gave her a shot of shock suppressant, and some anesthetic to keep her unconscious, and carried her into the spire room, out of the way of the firefight.


**********
March 9, 2229
TQSC "Carlos Hathcock"


I asked One if she thought I could have done something differently when I took Seven out of the line of fire.

"There's no way you could have known," One said.

"I should have known. I should have kept a closer eye on the Core. I should have been more careful."

"You did your best. That's all we could have asked for. The rest," One said, "was just bad luck."


*********
February 28, 2229 (Iteration One)
Hell


I'd dropped Seven off in a safe corner of the spire room when I heard the clacking sound behind me, and I knew we'd been tricked.

The thing about biological beings is that it's hard to really effectively play dead, because your heart keeps beating and your lungs keep breathing. Yor have no heart and no lungs.

Some of the "corpses" weren't dead after all: they'd been laying there biding their time and waiting for their opportunity, and they saw it when I left the corridor to drag Seven to safety.

One and Six never saw it coming. The Yor hit them from behind and tore them to pieces in an instant, those monomolecular blades cutting through flesh and bone like a steak knife through butter. They didn't even have time to scream.

I knew we were dead. I went for the detonator, but the Yor were faster, and my hand was off at the wrist before I could hit the button. A pair of cutting shears plunged into my chest, and I dropped like a rag doll. Before the world went black, I saw two things. One was the Yor picking up the Core and carrying it over to the spire to turn the Interdiction Field back on. The second was a Yor Drone picking up Seven's unconscious body. I wondered why they didn't finish her off, and then, just before it all went black, one final thought passed through my dying mind.

They'd succeeded in capturing a Tir-Quan alive.

Click.

It was a very interesting story. To bad everybody died.    

Dude, every AAR you write.....i'll read!!

dude!!  YOU ROCK!!!   

Yea as am i...i'm sure all will be revealed,

As will I, brother!