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reddus-sideblog · 2 years ago

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M.E.R.C.s - Crossfire (Part 2)

“Lowe, it’s Ariadne. I’m in place. Get moving.”

Mellie dragged her hand through her long, unruly black hair before taking a breath to steady herself. She hefted her massive high-frequency weapon over her shoulder before touching the headset hooked around her pointed ear.

“Right.”

She turned to the other two M.E.R.C.s in the back of the rented delivery truck as she lifted the shutter to the rear cargo hold, “Holly, Terry, let’s go.”

The large devilkin, calico catgirl, and the scruffy human hopped out of the back of the vehicle and ran for the secure-access elevator that they had parked near. Despite being weighed down by gear the three of them made a brisk pace across the underground parking garage, their footsteps accompanied by the jangling and rustling of their equipment. As the trio approached the armored doors they slid open with a hiss, allowing them to rush in quickly.

“You knyow, I don’t think Ari’s ever been late when we’re running on a schedule,” said the catperson, checking the two hefty satchels she was carrying.

Her black and orange tail, tipped by a white splotch at the end, twitched in excitement as she surveyed the mess of wires, switches, and electronics bundled together in the packs she had brought with her. The two satchels were definitely the heaviest payloads that she was carrying, but the lithe chimera was also sporting a thin but concealing coat, which jangled ominously with her every movement.

“She likes her schedules, I mean she probably has a clock in her head, right?” pondered Mellie.

“Nyeah and a rod up her ass…” muttered Holiday.

The man next to the chimera, and in front of the devilkin, stared straight ahead into the elevator doors. He was armed with a few grenades, but only some expensive chaff-filled ones that sat next to extra petro-fuel canisters for his high-frequency axe. The human looked the part of a killer for hire, but something about him bothered Mellie in a way she couldn’t easily define. He looked perfectly normal, aside from his face being stitched up like he had recently survived a mauling. Terry was just another human man with stubble and scruffy, short black hair. His most defining feature, aside from the stiches, was his single cybernetic eye, and apart from that he distinguished himself very little from any other person Mellie had worked alongside over her mercenary career.

The devilkin adjusted the Mercenary-Contractor Association star on her body armor, making sure it was properly secured. Mellie’s armor covered most of her body. The ballistic armor was reinforced by strips of Hellforged metal, each with spikes that pointed out of her armor, giving off a fierce, Infernalite appearance. Her M-CA badge was secured to the middle of her chest, and each of her companions wore one too. Terry had his fastened to his left arm with a length of red ribbon, and Holiday wore hers as a belt buckle on her shorts. Keeping the heraldry of their mercenary contracting organization prominent was important, as it deferred legal ramifications of their actions to the organization they worked for.

Mellie liked Cash and Karsyn a lot more than Terry, but Bones was the one that called the shots for their team. He had assigned Terry to their group, so she wouldn’t argue about it. Even back when it had just been a four man team the older mercenary had made use of his subordinates with particularly clever strategies. If he said they needed extra M.E.R.C.s to get the job done then he knew best. It did almost feel like Bones had picked random mercenaries from a stack of M-CA contractors to Mellie, though.

The elevator slowed as it rolled up to the twentieth floor, labeled “Management Offices and Boardrooms”. The doors swung open and Holiday leapt out.

“This myust be my stop, I’ll just be a meowment!” proclaimed the explosives expert as she left the elevator.

The doors closed behind her, no doubt at the behest of the team’s android hacker. After a few minutes they opened once more, and Holiday, now two satchels lighter, pranced into the elevator. She shed her coat, revealing her truly enormous payload of deadly devices. Strapped across the calico catgirl’s chest was a bandoleer and belt weighed down by explosives of various types, ranging from high-explosive plastique charges to fragmentation grenades to incendiary bombs and even a couple of smoke grenades for good measure. Along with the ordnance she also had a number of wire spools, detonators, a roll of duct tape, and small pistol.

“Nyalright boltie, get us up to the top floor, we have business with the bossman,” declared Holiday into the camera in the corner of the elevator.

The elevator juddered for a second, sending the chimera sprawling before it started upwards rapidly. Mellie pursed her lips as she tried not to smile while helping her friend up. Terry watched the whole scene unfold before him blankly.

“There are still twenty minutes left on the file transfer, Lowe,” came Ariadne’s voice in Mellie’s ear.

“Gotcha, I’m sure that we can keep them busy for that long,” she replied.

“Make some noise, girls! Uh, and you too Terry,” exclaimed Bones through the radio.

Terry grunted an affirmative.

The M.E.R.C.s exploded out of the elevator when it reached the twenty fifth floor, with Holiday leading the charge. The elevator opened to the wide open, tiled floor that was populated by a handful of suit-wearing Power Motors Incorporated higher ups and a half dozen corporate security. None of them were quite ready for the high-explosive grenade that clinked and rolled across the floor into their midst.

The deafening bang of the device was like the report of a starting pistol. Before the dust settled Terry and Mellie had readied their weapons. Terry’s HF axe and Mellie’s huge, chainsaw-bladed HF greatsword roared to life as the two strode forwards, gunning their throttles. On the opposite side of the antechamber one of the corpsecs, bleeding from a number of lacerations given by shards of exploded tile, drew his pistol and began firing wildly at the mercenaries.

One of the shots actually landed. Mellie stopped in her tracks for a moment. The nine millimeter bullet had glanced off of one of the hellforged plates of her armor and gone right between two of her ribs. Across the lobby the security guard looked incredulous, unable to believe his luck.

“More where that came from, sootlicker!” he cried, his spirits raised by the lucky strike.

Emboldened by his successful hit he began unloading on the large, armored devilkin, even while she charged at him. He fired an entire magazine into the oncoming mercenary, and got part way through another one before her huge high-frequency weapon slammed down on his wrist.

“Knock it off!” she yelled, her ire clearly stoked.

The whirring teeth ripped right through the corpsec’s wrist, tearing apart skin, flesh, tendons, and bones like some sort of nightmarish industrial tool of mutilation. The force of Mellie’s strike bowled over the security officer, sprawling him onto the floor as his newly severed hand also tumbled across the tile floor, his pistol still clutched in hand. Once he finally realized what was happening he began screaming, joining the chorus of terrified voices that were caught up in the mercenary’s storm of violence.

Mellie quickly scanned across the lobby, Holiday was nowhere to be seen but Terry was making short work of one of the stunned corpsecs, while two horrified suits looked on in terror. Behind him one of the corpsecs hit by Holiday’s initial salvo stirred, and unholstered his weapon. Mellie’s feet were already in motion as she watched the laser blade activate.

The devilkin crashed into the guard like a freight train trying to make up for lost time. As she clenched the throttle the wickedly spiked weapon roared, and the chain of serrated teeth made cut after cut. First cloth, then armor, then skin and flesh, then bones and organs. The HF greatsword tore into the corpsec like a bloodthirsty demon, emerging on the other side of his torso in less than a second, coated in a slick new paint job of gore and crimson blood. A mess of meat, guts, and man were strewn in front of Mellie as she finished the sweep of her gigantic blade. The screaming only escalated, joined by a single voice that devolved into weak gurgling and then silence as True Death finally came to collect him.

Mellie looked over at her teammate. He seemed heedless of her intervention, and was caught up in maiming one of the fallen corpsecs. She didn’t say anything, but a simple acknowledgement would have made her feel a lot better about the situation. She sighed and looked around the devastated lobby, trying to calm her nerves. All of the corpsecs were brutally dispatched, a number of the PMI suits were also hit by Holiday’s explosive entrance, and the place looked like an abattoir. The unarmed corps were terrified, with all the ones who weren’t just reduced to gibbering pleading for their lives with the M.E.R.C.s. It seemed like they had been plenty noisy.

The noise was suddenly overcome by a pair of new voices. The twin jet scream of plasma blades overtook the panicked pleas of the terrified corps, and bathed the room in an otherworldly green light. Mellie turned to look at the interruption of the mercenary’s bloodshed. A pair of active plasma swords were held in the hands of a tall android bedecked in armor with the colors of Power Motors Incorporated. The two weapons projected a beam of crackling, blindingly hot plasma as the android brandished them at the mercenaries.

“End of the line, mercenaries,” came the android’s voice, his vocoder boosted to maximum levels to be heard over his weapon’s noise.

The devilkin grimaced. She hated dealing with energy weapons, and this brute would probably put her behind schedule too. Mellie approached slowly, keeping guarded as she closed the distance between herself and the threatening corpsec. She watched Terry out of the corner of her eye as she stepped closer. The other M.E.R.C. was staring down the android intently, though his face betrayed no emotions. The android watched them both, its cylindrical head having a number of cameras mounted on lateral tracks allowing it to do so.

Mellie revved the engine of her HF weapon, trying to pull the opponent’s attention to herself as she yelled in return, “Bit busy right now, toaster!”

Mellie’s taunt worked, though she almost wished it hadn’t. The android immediately began approaching, brandishing its intense weaponry, ready to strike. She readied herself for a forward slash, before letting go of the weapon as she swung, going instead to grab the android’s wrists. The feint worked, and as her massive weapon stalled out and embedded itself in the shattered tile floor the mercenary gripped the corp’s arms with all of her strength, attempting to crush the android’s spindly wrists. Mellie gave a toothy grin at the android’s blank face, practically gloating at the situation.

The android, however, did not yet see defeat. To Mellie’s horror another pair of arms unfolded from his torso, whose hands reached up to transfer the plasma weapons to themselves. The M.E.R.C. knew when a situation was going bad, and she invented an exit strategy. Forcing the android’s upper wrists together she swept his legs out from under him, using the momentum to throw the android over her shoulder and onto the ground behind her with a solid crash that further cracked the already broken tiles.

The corpsec android was still slowly stirring when Mellie was at her feet. She kicked the android over onto his back and grabbed all four of his arms. The muscled devilkin pulled. Hard. With the sound of ripping flesh and creaking metal the androids arms were wrenched back, the synthflesh coating its arms tearing apart as she wrenched at them. Terry took advantage of the restraining hold and charged forward, bringing his high-frequency axe down on the android over and over.

The first hit struck the machine’s right shoulder, making Mellie’s hold rip the destroyed upper limb out of the socket. This also led to her grip sliding free on his lower right arm, letting the android’s hand scrabble across the shattered ground, before wrapping around the unignited handle of his plasma sword. Terry’s second strike slammed directly into the android’s head, the high-frequency field crashing down into the cranial plating of the grappled machine. The grabbed plasma sword ignited, projecting its eerie green blade right beside Mellie as she continued restraining the android.

“Kill him dammit!” the devilkin lady yelled, losing her cool at the prospect of being sliced apart by a plasma blade.

The heavy axe hacked into its target as Terry swung again, splattering the ground with gushing white coolant as he went in for a killing blow. It struck home and the android went completely limp, releasing its hold of the sword, and leading to Mellie ripping more of his limbs out of his body as the resistance to her pulling ended. She sighed and let go of the dead android’s extremities, before thanking Terry.

“Thanks for the assist, we sure disarmed him, huh?” asked Mellie, cracking a smile at her own unfunny pun.

The other mercenary just nodded.

Mellie crossed over to where her thrown weapon had landed, inspecting it to make sure that her wild throw hadn’t damaged the highly customized implement. The huge armament was quite far from a baseline Pseudo Industries 5B-53 HF Greatsword, as she had used it for a few years at this point. Over time she had replaced the standard high-frequency field system with a chain tooth blade, and she’d added more appropriately Infernal spikes and blades to accentuate its deadliness. Along with that she’d overhauled the engine a number of times, before settling on a six piston V engine. It gave a lot of cutting power though it bucked a bit when she revved it. The bucking was manageable for her, though, and the increased slicing ability was ideal. Thankfully the weapon had landed relatively safely, and the only thing she could find wrong was one of the teeth being chipped.

Satisfied, Mellie opened her radio channel again, “Holiday, where’d you go?”

At the mention of the chimera’s name one of the suits lost their composure.

“We’re all going to die! That catperson was the Holiday!” she screamed.

Terry revved his HF axe threateningly, quelling any further exclamations.

“Oh I’m in the director’s office, just go left at the end of the entranceway, I’m in the room with the big doors, mew can’t miss it. I nyassumed that you guys could take care of the sit-mew-ation out there, and I didn’t want our man getting away,” she explained.

After getting Terry’s attention Mellie jogged down the hallway to the director’s office, leaving bloody footsteps in her wake. The hallway wasn’t long, and Holiday’s instructions were easy enough to follow. As she and her comrade entered the room the situation became apparent.

Holiday was sitting on the desk of Frederick Hopkins, director of the Illigan branch of Power Motors Incorporated. Next to her, still sitting at his desk, was Frederick Hopkins. The man was in a compromising position, as the chimera had him at gunpoint, taped to his office chair, and also had the smooth, bright yellow orb of a high-explosive grenade wedged in his mouth. It seemed like the explosive device was well and truly stuck in the director’s mouth, and it looked like it would be difficult to extricate. The director looked like a run of the mill corporate executive, dressed in a properly tailored suit, with a look of indignation written across his mustached face at the current circumstances.

The chimera patted the director’s well-balded head as she gracefully hopped down from the desk, slowly unspooling a wire as she walked. One end of the wire was wrapped around her finger, while the other was evidently tied to the grenade’s pin.

“Oh don’t mewve,” Holiday said to her hostage, “You’ll lose your head and we wouldn’t want that nyow, would we?”

To emphasize her point she tugged ever so slightly at the wire, making it taut for a moment. The director gave a muffled yell as the pin threatened to pull loose from the tension. Holiday laughed as she obviously relished his terror, making Mellie grimace. The devilkin liked her chimera friend plenty, and had even stuck by her when her juvenile acts of vandalism had escalated into more serious, explosive crimes over the years, but Holiday’s penchant for tormenting people never sat well with her. Still, she had a way of keeping people around.

“Good work Holly,” said Mellie pleased at how everything was going so far, “We just have to hole up here and wait until Ari has the stuff. Then we can walk out of here with your finger on the detonator, and it’ll all have gone according to plan!”

“Nyeah so, one small problem; he myanaged to use this before I grabbed him,” she said in a sour tone as she held up a broken pile of plastic and circuits, “I think it was a silent radio beacon. I busted it but he’s probably gonnya have some backup real soon.”

“Alright, I’ll tell Bones in a minute,” Mellie said, undoing the clasp for her helmet.

She touched the bullet holes around her body from the corpsec’s one-man barrage. She was bleeding a bit, and was starting to feel the pain from the injuries as her adrenaline surge was dying down. Mellie blinked a few times, realizing that she was seeing with a few more eyes than she normally did. The excitement and injuries had made her flesh demonize, revealing her Hellish heritage very evidently.

The devilkin woman’s face now sported two additional sets of eyes, one above and one below her normal ones. Mellie was glad that her demonization wasn’t anything too outrageous, she had known some devilkin whose hands turned to claws when they got worked up, or even worse, one who breathed fire when her anger was roused. The numerous eyes were enough to alarm the detained director, who gave a choked gasp of surprise at the sight of her inhuman face.

The M.E.R.C.’s curved, upwards pointing horns barely poked out of her fluffy, though now gore-drenched, mass of black hair, and her stubby, reptilian tail were her main, outwardly demonic features, aside from the occasional patch of scales that grew on her forearms and shins. Mellie did her best to calm down and steady her breathing. Her other, more useful demonic trait would have an easier time kicking in if she did.

There was a small pause as she slowed her breathing down, before a small “clink” from a piece of lead hitting the office’s floor that was just barely audible. It was followed by a few other bullets that were driven from Mellie’s body as her Infernal gifts kicked in. Soon the blood on her person was sucked back inside her wounds that began scabbing and scarring over in moments. After that all that remained of the injuries was the minute holes in Mellie’s armor.

“Nyan mew-llimeter, what were they thinkin-” exclaimed Holiday before she was cut off by a high-frequency axe chopping into her abdomen.

The roar of the weapon cut off the chimera’s statement, as Terry gunned the trigger, coating the floor with a spray of Holiday’s flesh and blood. Mellie watched in horror as the axeman pulled the weapon out of her friend’s gut with a sickening sucking noise, before he yanked the wire connected to the pin of the grenade in the director’s mouth. The director began screaming and thrashing, desperately trying to escape, before his head was blown apart into a red mist sprinkled with brain matter and bone.

Mellie had thought that she was frozen in horror at the mutilation of her friend and the utter sabotage of their mission, but she found herself swinging her own weapon down at the turncoat. The blade narrowly missed Terry as he stepped back, and it instead slammed into the deceased director’s desk, reducing the realwood furniture into an explosion of splinters.

“I KNEW I COULDN’T TRUST YOU!” Mellie roared over the din of their weapons.

Terry didn’t respond, and instead moved further back as she lept at him with a wide swing, attempting to bisect the silent human. Her weapon’s teeth instead tasted mostly air, though she did manage to nick his leg. The slash was far from fatal, and unlikely to slow him, but Mellie was encouraged by the injury. Her encouragement was halted by the all too familiar jingle of a grenade sliding across the floor.

Instinctually Mellie leaped away from the explosive, throwing herself behind a couch in the spacious office’s sitting area. There was a subsequent bang, but it was a lot more quiet than she had thought it would be, and it was followed by a steady hiss. The hiss of the grenade releasing smoke couldn’t mask the sound of Terry running away, or the fading sound of his high-frequency weapon’s engine idling.

Mellie keyed her radio, “Terry’s fucked us! He killed the director and took down Holiday! I’m grabbing her and pulling out, those reinforcements will probably be here any moment too. This whole mission is a wash.”

“Slow down, slow down. Reinforcements? Where’s Terry?” asked Bones, trying to get a hold of the situation.

Mellie explained as best she could. things were starting to go sideways, really fast. She quickly walked over to where Holiday was laying, in a puddle of her own blood and ruptured flesh.

“Alright, alright. Get yourselves together, girls. Ari, I don’t care if you need to blow a fuse, get those schematics downloaded yesterday. We’re moving up the timetable by ten minutes. Cash and I will provide whatever support we can from out here.”

Ariadne grumbled in Pythonian before confirming in Capital, “...right. I’ll see what can be done.”

Holiday was still clinging to life at Mellie’s feet, spluttering on blood as her hands scrabbled around in the mess that was her torso. She was looking for something, and was remarkably conscious for someone who was missing most of her internal organs.

“Holly! You’re gonna be o-”

“The detonator Mellie. For the stuff I put downstairs. Where is it?”

Mellie looked around the pile of ruined chimera meat and clothing, as Holiday’s movements got more frantic. After a few tense moments Mellie found the detonator in a fold of bloody, shredded clothing and handed it to Holiday’s clammy, clawed hand. She took it instantly, her fingers wrapping around the handle before popping open the safety cover and hammering the detonation button a number of times.

For a moment nothing happened, and Mellie’s anxiety grew, until there was a loud pair of heavy thumps. The building shook, the power flickered, and Holiday started cackling. The red auxiliary lights went on as the standard lights failed, and the gruesome spectacle of Hellish power began. Holiday’s body began pulling back together, giblets of flesh started getting drawn to one another, then chunks and blood conglomerated, followed by organ meat and bones. It all flowed back into her ruined body at a swift pace like a serpent spawned from the floor of a slaughterhouse, and before a few seconds were up the catgirl was whole once more. Mellie had seen the process a few times before, but it always made her stomach turn. Finally whole again Holiday sat up. Her shirt and bandoleer were utterly ruined and drenched in her own blood but she was physically no worse for wear.

“You’re OK!” proclaimed Mellie, wiping tears away from her eyes as all six of them welled up.

“Nyeah of course I’m OK. What else do I pay that demon downsec for? I don’t go to his temple to buy his shitty food,” said Holiday, unamused.

Mellie stood up from her squat and helped Holiday up with her. Mellie didn’t like the harm and death caused in the name of the demonic pact that Holiday maintained, but it did mean that her childhood friend got to stay alive. The specifics of the pact weren’t very clear to Mellie, but from what she did understand, if Holiday was ever threatened with death she could inflict harm on others to recover from the mortal injury she had sustained. There was a time limit, and some other conditions, but apparently placed explosives were seen as “legitimate” in the terms of the pact, and the method had become a staple in Holiday’s repertoire. The fallout from this practice had, naturally, led to the chimera being labeled a terrorist, and even “Public Enemy #1” now and again.

“Huh, looks like you set off the shutter system after all,” said Mellie as she thought out loud.

Holiday pointed a thumb back at the still very dead PMI executive, “Lets get mew-ving. I don’t want to be up here when that guy’s private army shows up,”

***

The cannon shell struck the Seabrisket with terrible force that tossed her passengers about like wet laundry in a washing machine. Accion gripped the strut next to him as the ship bucked and rocked from the impact. The armor was holding, but after a few more hits the stand tank’s cannon would turn the monitor’s armored hull into a floating tomb.

“We’re dead if that ST keeps hitting us, ma’am,” he said, keeping his intonation as calm as he could.

“I’m very aware of that, corporal. Schneider, full throttle. We need to get to that dock up there on the left, sink or swim,” ordered Sergeant Stone.

Schneider gave a hesitant acknowledgement before pushing the ship’s accelerator all the way forwards. Accion kept gripping the strut he was holding onto as the sudden thrust pulled him back. He hazarded a glance out the forward gunnery port. It was as he had suspected, the stand tank they were approaching was an AVM-19, a heavy vehicle by all accounts. The 15mm autocannon that the Seabrisket had on her fore mounting wouldn’t even scratch the armor on the tank.

Another round slammed into the Seabrisket, pushing her to the port, and sending spalling ricocheting throughout the crew cabin. The huge android suffered the least of it, but his flesh and blood companions were getting injured and disoriented. Accion scooted aftwards between the machine gunners and approached the raised command chair that had the sergeant, the chaplain, and the helmsman all gathered around it.

Corporal Schneider was out like a light after hitting his head on the ship’s dashboard, while Chaplain Eckord and Sergeant Stone were clinging to the command chair for dear life. Without Schneider at the controls the ship was listing to the left, on a collision course with a cargo dock that was much closer than the one the sergeant had indicated.

Accion, Stone, and Eckord all tried to grab the controls to correct their course but it was already too late. The Seabrisket rammed into the synthwood planks of the dock, wedging itself between the concrete pylons that held the planks up. Everyone was jerked forwards once more by the impact, as the monitor’s forward momentum ended very abruptly.

A few moments after the ship stopped Accion righted himself and looked over his squad mates. Theos was still dead, but it looked like the rest of the crew was still alive, just a bit shaken. Careful not to step on any of the other Holy Mercenaries, he made his way over to the portside armored hatch. The ship was now heavily tilted, with its port side lower than the starboard, leaving the deck of the crew cabin at a steep tilt. The armored door swung open freely with a rusty complaint, showing off an inglorious view of a gravelly beach at the bottom of a concrete canal wall.

The android gave a rousing shout, “Let’s go boys! We’ve gotta clear out, this thing isn’t going another inch, and we have a body to move!”

All six of the surviving mercenaries and their captive unloaded from the Seabrisket on the canal’s beach, and they began hiking upwards to the street at the top of the canal quickly. Accion carried the captured NCSDF captain, and the burden didn’t slow him down one bit. The tank was still about, and the lot of them were no match for its firepower. The top of the canal wall was only two stories up, but running up the nearby access stairs was furtive and desperate, as they were exposed, with only a chain link fence for “cover”. The street at the top of the canal’s bank led directly to the cargo dock that Sergeant Stone had originally indicated, along an asphalt path that was blocked in by a length of chain link fence and a red-bricked rear side of a warehouse. It was exposed, but with any luck the cargo ships and dock workers trying to make it through the combat-choked canal would block some of the SDF elements from pursuing them.

Accion realized that the noise of a chugging turbine motor and the moving water was not a cargo ship, rather it was the stand tank that was now pursuing the Holy Mercenaries. The armored beast was striding through the canal, rounding the cover of the cargo dock to get a line of sight on the Seabrisket. Having spotted the beached ship the ST opened up with its cannon before following up with a rocket for good measure. The combination of cannon shell and rocket penetrated the river monitor, striking her fuel tank and setting the whole ship ablaze with a fiery explosion large enough to send all of the mercenaries sprawling.

First to her feet, the chimera sergeant was already yelling orders as the ringing in each of the M.E.R.C.s ears died down.

“WE NEED TO MOVE OR WE’RE DEAD MEAT!” she screamed, waving her hand to get her men moving in the right direction.

They rose as quickly as they could, following her lead as she charged towards the relative safety of the dockyard. As they sprinted the SDF stand tank caught sight of the column of moving mercenaries, and opened up with its machine guns. Accion avoided the worst of it, but a number of shots hit Private Riley and Sergeant Stone. Their body armor, reinforced by their kevlar-weave HMB coats, did nothing against the rapid fire storm of heavy projectiles. There was nothing left of the private’s torso, but luck was on the sergeant’s side, as she stumbled forwards, only missing a majority of her right leg.

The sergeant screamed as she hit the ground again, dropping her shotgun and composure. Accion cursed and grabbed her as he continued his unbroken stride, now with renewed purpose and a doubled load, one of which was currently bleeding down the back of his chassis.

Stronger shoulders, not lighter burdens, he intoned to himself as he focused on getting out of the way of any further fire.

Accion flew down the stairs connecting the path atop the canal to the dock and kicked the flimsy aluminum door blocking off the dockyard with a solid kick. Having secured access for himself and the rest of the squad, Accion found cover between two stacks of cargo containers and administered what little aid he could to the sergeant. The rest of the survivors piled in behind him, keeping watch at either end of the narrow alley formed by the stacked storage containers. Sergeant Stone was somehow still lucid enough to be biting her own arm cursing from the pain, but if they didn’t stop the bleeding she would be off to Heaven soon.

Unbuckling one of the straps that kept his combat knife strapped to his thigh, Accion made a crude tourniquet that would stop the sergeant’s bleeding. The majority of the squad’s medical supplies were with Riley, but trying to retrieve those now would be suicide. The android instructed his superior officer to prepare herself before he applied the makeshift tourniquet. As he fitted the strap around her leg the horselady began hyperventilating, and when he pulled the loop of leather tight she was too out of breath to scream properly. After inhaling sharply she began screaming, loud enough to make Accion dampen his audio receptors.

The android had suffered his share of damage over his long lifespan, but with his simulated sense of pain he certainly didn’t experience it as viscerally as any of his organic friends seemed to. Still, the crisis was averted for the time being. The sergeant would need proper medical service, and a replacement limb, but she wasn’t going to die right away.

“Corporal, that tank is crossing the canal, it looks like it’s coming to poke around the ship’s wreck,” said Private Mills, the last remaining private-rank mercenary on the team.

“Fine, as long as we stay out of sight we’ll be alright. Once we get a chance we’ll move inland and get to Ecker Park, it’s in the next sector over, and that’s only a short run,” said Accion, assuming command while Sergeant Stone’s wailing died down to frustrated whimpering as she lost consciousness.

“Accion,” called the other corporal, motioning for the android to join him.

A look of concern concealed by bravado was plastered across Schneider’s face. Accion knew it was bad before he looked. A Newland City Self Defense Force patrol ship was pulling into dock, and unloading marines before it was even properly anchored. A full squad of fresh, eager soldiers were touching down on the other side of the dockyard, already looking for the Holy Mercenaries as they got on dry land.

An unfortunately familiar, rhythmic sound pulled Accion’s attention in the opposite direction. The stand tank was walking closer, following the canal wall the M.E.R.C.s had escaped along to the dockyard. The armored vehicle was striding towards them, and soon it would not only come upon their hiding spot, but it would also be in the perfect position to enfilade fire between the canisters, reducing each one of them to bloody shreds, like it had Private Riley.

In the face of oncoming death Accion steeled himself, purging his mental subroutines before taking a knee and pressing his fingers and thumbs together into a triangle to pray to the Machina. The steady footsteps of the ST were getting closer, and the yelling from the NCSDF soldiers was also approaching.

Deus Machina, send us a miracle, please.

#Ashlands RPG #M.E.R.C.s

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symbianosgames · 8 years ago

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Writing Indie Games Is Like Being a Musician. In the Bad Way.

The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.

"Our game is called Mystik Spiral. It is an indie interactive aggression about the evils of conformist corporate culture. Coming on Steam for Windows and Mac and as an XBox One console exclusive."

Over the last couple years, I've gotten a fair amount of attention for my articles about the Indie Bubble and the Indie Glut. (And even a GDC talk.)

Quick version of indie gaming history: In 2010 or so, due to a combination of factors (AAA creative stagnation, better development tools, better online stores to sell on), indie games caught on in a big way and made a ton of money. For a short time, getting the Golden Ticket and landing a game on Steam was guaranteed big cash. This was the "Indie Bubble" phase.

People who wanted to write a video game (i.e. everyone) saw this and went, "Hey, I wanna get rich following my dreams too!" There was a big pile-on. MANY indie games became available, more than anyone actually wanted. This was the "Indie Glut" phase.

At last, I can complete the trilogy of articles. Now we can look around and see where we've ended up, a phase which I suspect will be permanent. (At least until the Earth gets hit by a large solar flare and we get to start over.)

You can't deal with this business without grasping its fundamental reality. So it's worth wallowing in this topic one more time. A proper understanding of reality will help us process a lot of otherwise perplexing issues (like Apple or Steam charging devs to have games on their store, or the ever-present "discoverability problem).

To see where we are, let's talk about a long-standing rite of passage for young creative types: Starting a band.

I think this would be really funny if I knew anything at all about music. Can someone translate it into a Guitar Hero chart for me? I think it means I have to learn how to play the orange notes.

The Story of Being a Musician

For decades, many young, enthusiastic, creative people have worked through their dreams, energy, and youthful ambition by forming bands.

Why not? It's takes a fair amount of technical and artistic aptitude to learn an instrument, write songs, get gigs, press a CD, etc., so it's a good sponge to soak up excess ambition and energy. But it's not a prohibitive amount of energy, so just about anyone can start a band.

Usually, this band is a reaction against corporate pop culture. "Screw your plastic, AAA, mass-produced, soulless Katy Perry crap! We're going to create real art." This is an entirely worthwhile goal, even if it fails 99.999% of the time.

Of course, most bands die. After all, most bands are terrible. Even if they aren't, people grow older. They lose their energy. Their dreams die. Life intervenes. They get jobs as insurance adjusters or whatever. Their demo CDs get stuck in the attic, forgotten, and then they have kids. Who start their own bands.

Not everyone gives up, though. A tiny handful of bands, through a combination of skill, connections, and luck, become actual successes and make careers out of it. Other musicians make a living as freelancers or working in a business environment (studio musicians, corporate gigs, etc). Others, the damned souls, trapped between a lack of talent and an inability to quit, live long (looooong) lives as failed musicians.

Most quit (or do art as a hobby). This is ok. The world needs plumbers far more than it needs musicians.

But the hard inexorable math of the thing is this: There are far more people who want to make a living as a musician (actor, writer, dancer) then there are paying jobs they can occupy.

There comes a time when you have to face this. Disney movies and La La Land lied to you. There is a point where refusing to give up makes you stop being an admirable young spitfire and start being a cautionary tale.

Anyway, this is the basic cycle of the thing. For the last few decades, younger people with a certain amount of talent, energy, and time could soak all that into starting a band. A few prospered. The rest went on to other things.

The current location on Steam of the New Releases chart. (Artist's conception.)

You Probably Figured Out Where This Is Going

Getting together with some friends and writing a game is the new Starting a Band. I'm not saying this is going to happen. It already has.

Plenty has been written about the flood of games appearing on Steam. As I write this, 125 in the last week alone. More games than anyone wants, that's for sure. That's why Steam has made it very difficult to see all new releases. Let's be honest. Almost nobody cares to drink from this firehose.

Don't believe me? Check it out yourself!

It is very instructive to look at these new releases, which is why the site What's On Steam, which just shows all new releases, is useful. Take a look. New titles appear FAST. Most of them will bomb, and their creators will vanish from the public view forever.

Here’s a fun trick. Write down the most recent 10 Steam games released. Wait a month. Check their sales on SteamSpy. (Bear in mind you need a few sales to appear on SteamSpy at all.) You will see very few games that get any traction. Each of their creators is just another kid who started a band (and there's nothing wrong with that).

There's no need anymore to predict the endgame for the video game glut. It's happened. We're living it. Bands haven't gone away. There's still a billion of them. People making lots of video games won't go away. There'll always be a billion of them, offering their hot take of the procedurally generated Roguelike 2-D platformer (now in VR!!!!!).

This is why "Indiepocalypse" is such a useless term. Other fields have exactly the same situation, but nobody talks about the Musicianpocalypse or the Actorpocalypse or the Writerpocalypse. It's just part of life.

This is the new normal. So, if you are one of the doomed souls who is determined to make a living in this business, you must figure out how to deal with it.

Fun business tip! When you start seeing articles like this, you've already missed the boat.

Curation Won't Make a Difference

Here's what gets me about the situation. Often, when people talk about the flood of games on Steam, they act like it's mostly trash and Steam should just curate most of it away.

I wrote a whole article’s worth of stuff in this section, but this post is already stupid long, so I chopped it out to post on its own. I’ll bullet point it for you:

1. Steam doesn’t want to curate. They hate it. 2. Even if they did curate, at least half of the stuff would remain, because it’s good enough. It’d still be a flood. 3. A fee to get on Steam won’t change anything any more than the fee to get on iTunes did. In other words, not at all. 4. Steam and iTunes don’t have a discoverability problem. They and their customers are doing great. Developers are the ones who have the problem. Nyeah.

College Degrees In Game Development

Colleges are, for all practical purposes, businesses. They charge a fee and provide a product (your degree). Like good, practical businessmen, when they saw video games get hot, they jumped forward and generously offered to give you, in return for over $100K USD of post-tax money, a piece of paper that claims you know how to make them.

I've written about college video game degrees before. I don't have much more to add to that, except to say you shouldn't get one without being realistic about your chances.

You might have a lifelong career in video games. Hey, anything's possible. But video games are an artistic field. Writing a successful video game is HARD (like becoming a full-time musician), and a huge portion of the field burns out of it before they hit middle age.

Want a degree in video games? Fine. But you may want to approach it like getting a college degree in, say, playing the trombone. You might be one of the ones who makes it, but you'd damned well better have a solid Plan B.

Steam tried to get me to pay full price for an indie game. My face when.

Global Competition!

The competition in the vidya gaems biz is going to get even more gruesome. Development is starting to become far more of a global activity. This will mean not only more titles to fight, but more downward price pressure.

The Law of Supply and Demand already tells us that when there is a glut of supply (games) and roughly constant demand, prices will be pushed inexorably downward. (Which explains deep discount Steam sales and Humble Bundle.) I've sadly watched indie devs plaintively asking their fellows to join them in trying to keep prices high, only to see those efforts get ground to dust by the inexorable gears of Economics 101.

(Though I would note that if your business model requires Price Fixing to survive, it may be a bit flawed.)

But prices will get even lower, because you will increasingly compete against developers in the third world. Having a hard time competing now? Wait until you’re fighting someone in a country with 1/10 the cost of living of yours. Someone who can charge $1 USD a copy and still make out great.

Yeah. However pessimistic you were feeling about your game's chances before, it's even worse than that.

So What Does It Take To Succeed?

A really good game that feels fresh and new and is solid and also manages to, through going viral or really good PR work, get attention. Sometimes bands still get rich. So can you.

You just need to watch for those rare opportunities to make a game that says, "It's Like [Popular Thing], but [Some Small Change]." in a new way. "It's like Harvest Moon, but 16-bit." "It's like Minecraft, but 2-D." "It's like a JRPG, but with bullet hell shooter combat." “It’s like Huniepop, but more Huniepop.”

There will always be ways to get rich. All you have to do is be brilliant, spot the right opportunity at the right time, have at least a little luck, and then make an amazing product.

This is all getting depressing, so, to cheer you up, I added a picture of an adorable doggo.

My Grim Future

When the Indie Bubble happened, I made a bunch of money. More than I deserved. And then I saved it. I'd been around long enough to see both booms and busts, and I knew you had to save during the former to prepare for the latter.

But the games business for small developers (and if you are an indie developer who didn't write Minecraft, you are a small developer) is in a bust phase that won't end. So now I'm asking myself, "How am I, between new games and remastering old ones, going to stretch Spiderweb Software for 20 years and reach retirement."

It's scary. I don't know if I can do it. Our newest game, Avadon 3, didn't do that well. I think it's a really good game, and the people who bought it seem to like it. But there are new RPGs coming out on Steam every single workday, some of them are good, and you can only hold off so much competition before being overwhelmed.

Next year, I am going to write an all new game engine and series. I think it's going to be really neat and different from what I've done before, and I'm excited about it. But I'll tell you this: Its development is going to be LEAN AND MEAN.

I'm using as little custom art and music as I can. (Working title is "Unity Asset Store: The Game.") Any way I can cut costs and still maintain a constant art style and game quality, I will take it, and I won't apologize. This market doesn't allow for blowing money unnecessarily anymore, at least not for me.

If you criticize me for that, feel free. It's your right. I'll just think of the developers who, during the Indie Bubble, flush with easy Steam money, made fun of my development style TO MY FACE. Developers who are sadly no longer in business. While I keep plugging along in my humble little bottom feeder way.

My goal is to prove you can live an entire fulfilling career writing indie games. From college to old age, all the way through. I'm over halfway there. But man, the next two decades are looking like a long road.

I'm Done Writing About This

This blog has been focused on the indie business for the last few years, and I'm mostly done with that topic. I believe we are in a stable phase now, so there isn't much else to say. I think that most gamers don't actually care. They don't care about business stuff. They just want to talk about games and how awesome they are.

I write this blog to get attention for myself, because it's really hard for a small developer to get attention. From here on, I want to write outrageous funny things about games in the hope that I get a little attention and something goes viral and I pick up a handful of customers along the way.

Good luck to everyone in this business. Unless you're directly competing with me, in which case I wish you luck in some other business.

And if you want to make a living in games and need some advice, here it is: Write a VR game. It's TOTALLY going to be the NEXT BIG THING and not a faddish washout AT ALL.

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All of our delightful retro RPGS are out on Steam. I occasionally mutter on Twitter. My many blog posts are here.

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