The Gaming Outpost

“Rogers, wake.” The buzz-cutted Marine eyes clicked open, and he sat up in his bunk. It was a characteristic of augmented humans that they went from one state, such as sleep, to another with a mechanical certitude.

Rogers frowned, and flipped in a somersault out of the bunk hole to ran barefooted down the corridor to the cleansers. With a grimace, he saw the left and right lights glowed on both sides of the passageway. He took left first, believing in getting it over with.

Inside a tiny room, autostraps locked him to a wall of duralloy, and then long memory metal strands found each and every hole in his integument (not normal skin, but something that could stop a ten megawatt laser pulse or a fifty gram projectile at three thousand feet per second) including the ones the docs had added. They went in, and cleaned him out.

Shaking, he waited for the last strand to retreat from his crainial cavity by way of a tiny hole cut above his nasal cavity, and forcing himself not to scream, he waited until his pulse was no longer thundering in his ears.

Then across the corridor, and to the typical shower and buff that left him looking like a spit-shined product of Terra. He was not, of course, he was a verser, a visitor from outside the timeline. The shower even dressed him in the dark blues of a Pammy, or Power Armored Marine, Terran, Brigade 14.

Once that was done, he took five minutes of personal time to pray. Any time he was woken up when the hyperdrive was still thrumming was bad, bad news. He needed help, not that many would have believed it. After all, he had the Terran Sun with Galaxy Cluster, along with fourty-four other medals.

He looked like the Marine Dream, which was ironic because in his home timeline, he had been regarded as a ne’erdowell. It was just that in his home, he had been a square, and the society had wanted a circle. They wanted drones who would accept whatever was told them, and say thank you. Roger Hamlin had never learned how to smile when someone fed him a line.

So he was very grateful for that scriff-enhanced video game that had blown him into a wider, and wilder reality, that of the Multiverse.

Fully dressed, both internally, and physically, and most importantly spiritually, he exited the cleaning chamber, and marched down the corridor to the briefing room. He knew he was supposed to be here, it was what one did. Now, he could have changed, even demanded a different location. The Captain of the Dread Fist would forgive a man with the galaxy cluster a fair number of eccentricities. But, diversity is not so much a strength as a source of division, and inefficiency.

He knew what to do, they knew what to do, and both sides had absolute confidence in the other side. Roger walked in, and sat down, and turned to the front of the room where as expected a briefer, a young ensign, and the sub-captain sat. The ensign had the facts, and the sub-captain signified that this was for real, and had authority to make any neccessary changes.

“We found a Forerunner outpost.” Ensign Willton said, flicking on the holo above the table. “It went active when we entered the sector.”

Roger’s eyebrows rose. Finding something of the Forerunners was not common. Most of the time it involved massive searches of astronomical sources, and zetacycles of computer analysis. Hearing that one up and announced itself was enough to explain the strain lines around the sub-captain’s mouth.

“But this was…” Roger began as his brain began at the problem. The Dread Fist was near the Outer Rim but not in unexplored territory. And then he saw the knowledge in the other’s eyes. Sure Terran ships had entered this sector before. but a verser, well, this was the first time a verser had.

“We do not want to let the Outies,” The nickname was for the barbarian fleets that roamed the deep dark, “Know that we saw it. That will give us more time.”

And with that, Roger knew what was up. The Outies had a very healthy respect for Forerunners, which seemed strange to the Terrans, but the typical Outie would be very cautious unless he thought he was racing Terrans. So, if in a maneuver pioneered by his own fool self, the Dread Fist were to launch him from a torpedo tube while in hyper, why he could tumble through madness, and fall into normal space, and then sleep the next three months it took for him to coast sort of near the Forerunner outpost.

With practically zero energy, a black body almost, he could sneak right past the overly cautious Outies, and snag the prize right in front of them. If he could convince the outpost to cooperate.

“So when do I get shot?” He asked with a sigh.

“Twenty minutes.”

It took fifteen minutes for him to get suited up in the clamshell body armor that enabled him to shrug off tank shells, and leap small buildings with a single bound, or in this case fly through hyperspace.

In four more, he was in the tube, and his snarling at himself had faded, as he knew it would. When danger came, he got cool. This was extremely dangerous. He took the moment for a last prayer, and then spoke.

“Ready for launch.”