-from the personal impressions of Jesu-Esau "Simmer" Oberreiter, as retrieved from the onboard emergency recorder patched to his installed bonepiece
When the plant collapsed, and the toothy worm-thing crawled out of its ass, like it was shitting itself, and leaving a husk behind, I nearly freaked. I mean, I've heard about a lot of nasty alien stuff, but even on the xenopr0n virt-expos, I'd never seen anything like that. I thought Jane was going to freak, but she was yelling at Prime to watch out. I don't know why Gunny and Prime kept pushing her out of the way, and trying to do her job. She was the expert on alien life-forms, she was the chief medical officer, she knew the most about how to deal with threatening unidentifiable monstrosities. Gunny was a fucking delivery-man, and Prime a goddam psy-freak, for Nell'ura's sake. Both of them were beneath her, yet they tried to push past her, shoulder her out of the way, and then do her job wrong. The funny thing was, she seemed perfectly willing to let them be macho idiots. She just let them walk into the stupidest situations, when I just knew that she could've warned them. I almost think that she thought that they deserved whatever they got, for getting in her way, and presuming to even speak to her, let alone talk down to her.
The brown, toothy worm-thing lunged at Gunny. I had been trying to pull Jane back, out of the way (I was just as guilty of trying to "save" her constantly), but I grabbed her blaster hand, and I could see that she was finally fed up. She punched me hard, in the mouth, with her other hand, and when I let go of her gun hand, she flipped the blaster around and cold-cocked me across the face with it, cutting my cheek. I dropped to my knees in pain, and despair, but she turned quickly and kneed me in the nose. This stunned me, and I fell forward, face down, into the loose soil. As I did, she brought the butt of the pistol down hard on the back of my skull. I saw bright hot lights turn pink and lime-green, then bright blue, then black. My fucking head was pounding. Why was she doing this? I was just trying to help.
"The next one of you assholes who touches me or gets in my way fucking dies."
She turned back towards Gunny. The monster had indeed lunged at him, while Jane had been kicking my ass, because I had heard the shotgun go off three times, I had heard Prime scream, and now I heard Gunny making gurgling noises. Slim by this time was just sputtering and moaning softly to himself. Blood was in my eyes. My head swam. My face was ruined. My ears rang. I heard the thing making disgusting, suggestive, utterly hideous sounds, like a man having relations with a rodent. Gunny's gurgling was much more muted. Prime was still screaming. I heard Jane discharge her blaster again and again. Then I heard her say "Fuck it," and I heard the blaster being tossed down. I heard Jane's steps leading away. Gunny had stopped gurgling, and Prime was yelling, "No... No... Getthefuckawayfromme!" and I knew the thing had turned on him, as the sounds it was making had reached a frenzied climax, which subsided as Gunny had gone silent. I heard, rather than saw, Prime try to run away, and I heard his screams intensify as the worm-thing caught up with him. I had never heard a man scream himself to death before. It is a terrible sound. I kept blinking and rubbing my eyes, but I still couldn't see. I heard the thing reach the peak of its killing frenzy again, and I knew it would finally turn on me, when I heard Jane's running bootsteps. 'Finally', I thought, but she stopped some distance away. Then I heard her say it.
"Hey... you. Wanna play?"
The thing was finished with Prime anyway, I could hear his screams become moans of surrender, then I knew the worm-beast must be lunging for Jane, and then I heard the roasty, toasty sound of a flamethrower blasting something to fricasseed giblets, and I smelt the almost-appetizing smell of burnt abomination. This made me retch, and I lost my lunch, there on the ground, but mostly all over my best fieldwork suit. That got me really mad, so I just started screaming.
I guess the thing wasn't dead. It ate my face off while Jane burnt us both to a nice crisp.
My estate will be pressing charges against all parties involved.
entered into evidence in the action J-E Oberreiter, (dup.) vs. Haos Redro Holdings, Tumbo Industries, Dr. Johae Ha, et al
((Arch PM'd me to say Simmer's out, due to lack of time.))
((Simmer is for all intents and purposes, dead.))
((Slim, Gunny, and Prime are all critically injured.))
((Ned, Jed and Shin are still missing.))
((The Hivnuas plant and its demon-spawn are likewise deceased.))
((TNW and Jane are pretty much no-worse-for-the-wear.))
((The dropboat is pretty much destroyed, except TNW managed to save the ascender stage (a short-range lifter pod that will get them far enough away from the object to get picked up by a dropship, if they were able to call for such.)))
((They don't know what they are supposed to do, beyond searching for the mysterious Übergeist, (and their missing friends) and caring for the wounded.))
((@Syntac: The drone was quoting someone.))
((@Plague Bringer: Yes, mostly scifi and comics; not published yet.))
((@Kaleo: An obscure volume of a scholarly work largely unheeded in the Querulous pocket-omiverse. But someone knew where they were going and what they might face.))
