Savage World

I Sharks“Tommy please! Open the door!” Lisa's scream was muted by the seal of the airlock door and while he couldn't hear her, it was easy to tell what she was saying. Tom stared helplessly at her, feeling each dull thud of her fists against the small window as if they were stabs to his own heart. An explosion thumped behind Lisa and belched a ball of plasma fire. Under any other circumstances, the electric blue columns of flame rushing towards her might have been considered beautiful, but at this moment, it gripped him with horror. Death reached the others behind her first, devouring their flesh with such ferocity, they barely had time to scream before disintegrating into the wall of fire. At that moment, Tom saw the realization dawn on his lover's face. In the seconds before the plasma engulfed her, heat so intense any sweat was sucked dry, Lisa nodded. She understood. She knew. Jesus f*****g Christ, she knew… … and then she was gone, swallowed up in swirling tongues of sapphire heat. Tom thought he saw her start to scream but the sound never penetrated the roar of the fire or the thick safety hatch. Her gold hair, which he so relished between his fingertips during their lovemaking, ignited, giving her the halo, she used to swear she'd never earn. For a second, the mottled greenish blue hue of the fire gave his Lisa wings before enveloping her completely. From an angel to a living candle, fair skin now translucent and burning out too damn soon. Later, he would curse himself for not acting faster and spare her the pain, but it didn't matter; he would pay for his sin every night in his dreams. Not for failing to save her, but because he let her burn. And she'd known, she'd forgiven him in her last moment for his ultimate betrayal. * * * “TOMMYYYYYYYYYY!!” Major Thomas Ian Merrick sat up in a cold sweat, shaking like a dog shitting razor blades, head pounding, trying to remember where the f**k he was. For a few seconds, he was still on that blazing ship, trying to save it as the plasma fire consumed the engineering deck. As the nightmare diminished, the scattered neurons in his brain regrouped to remind him where he was. In a supply closet. Or, rather, his supply closet. In a whole other nightmare. The closet had become 'his' because he'd commandeered the space to get a little privacy from the rest of the ship. The tiny room reeked of disinfectant and dust, with barely enough space to sit down or stretch one's legs. His back was pressed against a shelf, the edges digging into his shoulder, but it locked from the inside and, as far as Tom was concerned, it was f*****g heaven. Beyond that door was hell. He needed solitude and, on this ship, packed to the rafters with the remains of human civilisation, privacy was a luxury no one had in abundance. When he stepped past the door, he would return to the overcrowded, transformed cargo space he shared with the rest of his company. Once upon a time, a company commander could be assured of his own private quarters, but those days were over. Space on any ship in the fleet was at a premium and his comfort was not a priority. In here, surrounded by the shelves of cleaning fluid, rags, and other janitorial necessities, Tom could hear the ever-constant hum of the ship's engines through the walls. Until this voyage, he never realised how much he loathed that b****y sound, now it added to the unquiet chaos on the decks of the ship. At least in here, he was given a temporary reprieve from the noise, where he could drink himself into a stupor and not think about Lisa, the woman he was forced to sacrifice to save the ship. * * * A short time later, he got to his feet, legs tingling uncomfortably until the circulation resumed normal programming. Clusters of pain pulsed in his temples and the rotgut he'd been drinking had left a dead cat in his mouth. Steadying himself against the steel bulkhead, he searched the floor and found his grey, sweat stained t-shirt and pulled it on. Running his fingers over his close-cropped dark hair, he tried to fake some semblance of grooming, even if there wasn't much there to put right in the first place. After a similar inspection of his face made him realized he was in desperate need of a shave, he frowned. Water, like everything else on board was rationed to the point where two-minute showers were considered a luxury and no one would dare suggest using any of it for a shave. Probably why all the women on board were wearing long pants and granny knickers. The thought made him snigger until he stepped into the chaos outside. * * * In its day, the HMS Rutherford was a strictly military transport ship. She spent her time ferrying soldiers from one end of the system to the other, chasing down those mad Earth First bastards who were determined to halt mankind's colonisation of Sol by any means necessary. This usually meant disrupting mining operations on Calisto or the Ananke Cluster by using bombs and other acts of terror. The Rutherford, or Ruthie, as she was more commonly known, was four hundred meters across and comprised of ten decks with a state of the art EM-Drive, capable of travelling at half the speed of light. Aside from transporting soldiers, she took passengers and equipment from Earth to the colonies and had a crew capacity of one hundred and fifty. At present, she was carrying seven hundred. When Tom stepped out of his supply closet, he walked straight into those seven hundred people who were mostly civilian refugees from Europa Colony. While seven hundred might seem high in the confines of the Ruthie, it was eclipsed by the number of how many were left behind. Being on the front line of the boarding process ensured the faces of everyone left behind were burnt into his memory. Like they had when the sun went nova. The noise level rose the instant he stepped into the hallway, into an assault on his senses. A group of children running past him, somehow managing to play in all this s**t, made him pause and he watched them disappear down the corridor. The noise dulled into a roar just as the smell assaulted him. Even with the ventilation system working at capacity to keep things fresh, nothing could prevent the stink of so many bodies. Throw in water rationing and well… It smells like a b****y barn, he thought, not for the first time. Walking along the passageway, Tom no longer noticed the objects tacked against the walls and along the deck, turning the bulkheads into memorials for those left behind. There were photographs, toys, keepsakes, scrawled names against the grey steel and notes, left by mourners still shell shocked by the new world order. Tom no longer saw their faces, only their shapes disappearing into the walls, like living wraiths. They in turn gave him a wide berth as he walked by, because everything about Tom Merrick said, 'go away'. He was six feet of compact muscle, maintained by years of hard military discipline. Forever wearing a day's growth on his face (even when there was water), he wore a scowl made worse by his intense hazel eyes. If that wasn't enough of a deterrent, the uniform he wore certainly was. Tom was a lifer and lifers were hard bastards. While it was easy to pigeonhole him because of his appearance, his sympathy for their situation would have surprised them if they'd known about it. Tom found it obscene he considered himself lucky to have lost his parents before Earth was destroyed. His mother passed years before his enlistment and his father followed her a decade later. Throughout this f****d up situation, he counted himself fortunate he was spared losing them the way most of the population had lost family, by the lack of space. Although, truth be told, if Johnno Merrick had met his end in the nova, Tom would have lost no sleep over it. That bastard deserved to burn. * * * At six feet four, Gunnery Sergeant (aka Gunny) Derick Rickman looked like folded origami as he sat in a quiet corner of the cargo hold retrofitted for his unit, reading one of Tom Merrick's books. Trying to get lost in its pages, he raised his blue eyes at the rumble of voices intruding on his concentration. With no such thing as privacy anymore, Derick made do with the knowledge at present, this was as good as it was going to get. Luckier than most because he came out of Earth's destruction with a brother who still lived, Derick knew most people had lost everyone they ever knew. Luke, who was currently on the Olympus, had made it onto one of the ships, unlike their parents and baby sister Lily. Thinking about them made his heart ache and he consoled himself with the thought they were with his older brother Chris now, and eventually he'd see Luke again. BANG! Derick jumped, startled by the noise. It had come from the centre of the room where one of the occupied chairs around the square table normally used for poker was lying flat on its back. He looked up just in time to see Corporal 'soon to be Private' Ozymandias Washington, flip the table out of his way and lunge for Private Linus Voight. Cards, glasses, and poker chips cascaded to the deck as Ozzy landed on Linus, forcing the others to back away to get clear of the fighting. Only Private Alain Dupree made any effort to intervene, trying to drag Ozzy off the former Heir infantryman before the fists started flying. The other players opted to watch the show and those who were disinterested in the game earlier were now coming to egg on the two combatants. Cursing under his breath, Derick jumped to his feet and stomped over to the impromptu arena. Under any other circumstances, Sergeant Joshua Jackson, whom everyone called Jazz, would have dealt with this situation, but Derick had spied Jazz leaving the room to go for a jog around the ship, so this was now his lot to deal with. “WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON!!” Derick's bellow was so loud and uncharacteristic, the two men froze, fists c****d as if they were about to duke it out to Queensbury rules. The rest of the platoon was equally shocked, accustomed to this from their sergeant and the Major, but not from their even-tempered gunny. They gaped at him like fish panting for air. If he wasn't so damn pissed, Derick might have found the scene funny. He was the antithesis of a typical lifer Marine and definitely not the average Gunnery Sergeant. He didn't bark for no good reason. In fact, in Tiger Platoon, Derick was the reasonable one. The Major could strip paint with a glare, or flash you a T-Rex's sneer right before he ripped you a new one. Nope, Gunny Derick Rickman was who you came to with your troubles, who'd talk you down when you wanted to blow yourself out of an airlock. An outburst from him was nothing to take lightly. Even if he wasn't standing almost six feet four, with a solid build, a chiselled jaw, intense hazel eyes and a flop of hair that defied Marine regulations no matter how many times he cut it, Derick towered over most of the Sharks. While he looked just as hot, sweaty and smelly in his fatigues and canoe-sized boots, the authority he commanded was something they were all conditioned to obey. Of course, it would be these two, Derick thought as he grabbed both Ozzy and Linus by the shoulders and yanked, as if he were pulling apart two brawling kids in the playground. “Are you f*****g kidding me?” He shoved them apart in opposite directions. Linus stumbled backwards before he was halted by the body of Private Ren Richards, a stunning redhead with wild, wild hair. She shoved Linus back towards Derick, her face twisted in annoyance as if she couldn't believe this s**t either. Derick met her gaze fleetingly and saw her shaking her head. Meanwhile, Ozzy did a little better. He didn't lose his footing and straightened up, almost matching Derick in height.