Content Warning: This story contains some disturbing themes and graphic content. Reader discretion is advised.
Jotter O'Hallorahn raised himself slowly upright and tried to establish what the hell was going on with his life.
It had been two whole days since the incident at the ranch, the incident which ended up with two good men dead, one other horribly mutilated and Jotter near on both simultaneously. If it hadn't been for his friend Rufus and a handy 160c Phasor 350 stun-grenade he'd had embedded in his utliities belt, Jotter would most definitely have been sustained casualty no. 3687 Caucasian.
And that worried him, that worried him alot.
It wasn't so much the caustic burning pain at the nape of his neck that was irking him, as the sight of his brand spanking new flak trousers torn at the knee with jagged singed cloth at the edges. Damn that son-of-a-bitch RETRO-Sniper. If he'd only being paying more attention to the proposed internal route of the original plan rather than allowing his curiousity to get the better of him and wandering down a pegasus chute, then none of that would have happened. Three hundred and sixty nine bucks those fine state-of-the-art breeches had cost him as opposed to the standard one fifty for the regular issue specials he so detested. I mean, you had to be sure they were really gonna stick by you - serve you well and faithfully through all that every day carnage and bullshit that was such an omnipresent feature of the job. And one thing he had learned was that standard issue clothing was only missing one major feature and that was the adjective sub before the name. He'd seen men torn apart below the waist due solely to thirty seconds exposure to caustic thermo rays so favoured by the elite divisions of the Carcas Foot Soldiers. Now that shouldn't happen - that was a fierce fucking waste of resource. There was no reason for it either. All it took was an upgrading of the coating so favoured by special division. Those boffins down the lab had come up with a damn fine mixture - effective to the max, especially good against installation gas but almost as fine for caustic-combatting. Jotter himself had ordered his own private stash to be installed in the mess-tent of his station-sector. He'd thought this to be a most suitable hiding-place and one not likely to be rumbled by the enemy or, almost as bad, plundered by Hevy Pulsar Croppers fresh out of homebase and aching to make it back by Christmas to their loved ones.
Loved ones. Gimme a break, thought Jotter. Loved by who? Certainly not him - he hadn't loved a damn thing in his life. Except the war - except combat...
The soggy gas-saturated fog of putrid toxic nausea was now slowly lifting from the surface of the battlefield and Jotter was able to discern the shapeless huddled forms of row upon ragged row of felled beings, their bodies ripped apart with all the aclarity of a wooden puppet. At the very periphery of his vision he could see the imposssibly dark mass of the Piper HQ and he prayed to God that Moby and the boys had been hot on his tail or he was a dead man.
A sound. High and sharp. A wail more like. He strained against the dirt to hear it.
Like nothing he'd ever heard before - what the fuck was it?
A boom - close-by, yet muffled followed by a distinct whooshing noise like the start-up motor of a washing machine.
Jotter's antennae was immediately activated and not in a good way.
Son-of-a-bitch!! Feverishly and in no small amount of haste he reached down to his ankle boot and jerked open the external flap of his security-bracelet. The gratifyingly cold heavy steel of the lead stock-round for his Martin 590c Heavy-Artillery Mop Gun tumbled outwards into his hand and he clasped his good right hand gratefully round it.
The thing that was making the sound was getting nearer, much nearer. Jotter knew he had precious little time, perhaps even less than he thought.
In no small haste he raised the mop gun up over his good right thigh and pulled back the activator bolt. It was oily with grime and left a thin green film of it on his fingers. With aching slowness, he slowly began to feed the obscene steel slug into the chamber.
He was still doing it when the gargantuan and really quite awesome hulk of a Pegasus Storm-Rodent reared its stolid form not four feet from Jotter and in one deft, yet devastatingly accurate movement, severed both of his legs below the knee with the blade of his chrome-alloy surgical steel meat-cutter (modified for combat purposes).
Before Jotter had time to contemplate the ultimate effect of this action on his newly acquired three hundred and sixty nine bucks state-of-the-art flak trousers, the polished blade came down again and severed his head from his body.
They say that a severed head can see for thirty seconds post-decapitation.
Jotter found out for sure.
But as for what he discovered.
Not even the Renal 45-90 Flux-Capacitator can store that kind of info.
THE END
