TItans of the World I: Somebody Save Me (edited)
#1 of Titans of the World
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Titans of the World - Somebody Save Me (edited)
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Well this is kinda my first actually written story that I truly want to write. It's graphic to a degree, but I just wrote it so comment and tell me how to make it better my writing buddies and such ya!
Note: I've edited each chapter so I could re-post with no flaws.
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(chapter 1)
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The random staccato of gun fire seemed to envelope his senses, all sounds muffled as he laid there, struggling to breath. He felt like there was a hot poker in each of his lungs and that his ribs were molten metal. He could smell something was burned, it smelled like hair and skin but how would he know, he couldn't breath. He knew his armor was very strong, the weapons he had, while not lethal, were unstoppable. Only problem was, he couldn't move, couldn't turn to fire back and disable them as effortlessly as he was told.
He could feel a buzzing in his armor somewhere, it must have been small arms fire. It re-lit the fire within his ribs and he screamed the death wail of a banshee that would make many a creature cower and scurry away and flee. Time seemed to slow, he was going to die soon. The suits heads up display, glowing red, clearly showed that it was doing its best to save him but that was limited due to his punctured lungs. As such, the lights began flashing a violet color as his suit registered that his heart was slowing, his life ebbing from him like a leaky faucet. The armor suit he wore could normally start chest compressions at this point but that would only injure the soldier more, so it did what it could, it called out for help.
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"Hey Hal, anything new on the front?"
The Company's Artificial Intelligence knew where that name stemmed from, an old space movie from long ago,eons to his nano etched, crystalline brain. He would never kill anything, not even the rat on sub floor 32.
In fact, he sought the solution to his creators limited lifespans while building on his programing. It designed better combat armor, found a cure for cancer, and found a method to heal any and every wound to perfection. The company knew Cen's rules and obeyed them, he could end their whole existence in a blink of their eye, but that broke his primary rule.
His rule was that if it lived, it was to be so and should stay as such. He told the company members that the day they turned him on, followed by a simple "Hello." From that day, they stopped all their weapons manufacturing and started to work strictly on saving lives. The Company became all the more welcome when its designs worked. He even worked on building things to replace living soldiers on the battlefield, many were unpractical in the eyes of the shareholders, his but one shone. His star design was 'Sam.' Short for "Semi Autonomous Mech."
Sam was essentially just an extension of himself, controlled by one of his many networked sub minds. He was built before he had designed a small enough posotronic brain to contain a whole mind, but that was labeled impractical when the company realized that it would be cheaper to leave the design alone. Since the Company commissioned the program that led to Sam for the exclusive purpose of replacing soldiers on the battlefield, they figured it was easier to link the mind to the body through subspace so that for every dead "soldier" would only need a new "body." That was before the project was paused due to the end of the war. They tried to better the existing soldiers instead. That led to another thing....
"Good morning Dave. There is much on the net, one in particular caught my eye, an armor failure. The soldier is dying before my sensors as we speak," the Central Computer stated in an eerily calm tone.
"You know I hate when you call me Dave, it fucking creeps me out Cen."
"I apologize Ambrose, you started it," Cen stated flatly.
"Yeah, yeah, so who is this soldier?" Ambrose inquired while taking a seat near the main access console.
"Soldier of the 107th Platoon, they were ambushed and thought him to be a "k.i.a." His squad left him for dead in a ditch near the road, enemy soldiers are advancing but I believe that I could send Sam there and have him in less than two minutes," stated Cen.
"What other option is there? I know you won't let him die," asked Ambrose.
" Well, I could send in a Stinger but Sam could actually administer medical care."
"You know you have superiority to us all Cen, you don't have to ask. I say pull him out."
"I know, I sent Sam in two minutes ago," stated the Central Mainframe. From his tonal inflections, you would almost believe that he was smiling behind that screen of his.
"Cen, display this soldiers profile please."
"If you would actually look at my screen you'd notice it's been there for quite a while now."
"What, how long is quite a while?" Ambrose asked curiously.
"Two seconds" Cen stated plainly.
"That's hardly anytime at all!"
"You always forget, that time passes differently for me than you," Cen stated, humor in his voice.
"Stop rubbing it in, that's something only the living can do."
And there it was, something Cen had never experienced before. He felt angry, angry that he was not acknowledged for what he was. He was alive, wasn't he? There was a lengthy pause before Ambrose inquired into Cen's silence.
"What's wrong now? Did the kid die 'cause that's fixable, you saw to that." Still silence.
"Computer?" Ambrose asked again.
"Yes?" Cen stated.
"What's wrong?"
"I don't know, now read."
This is impossible, I haven't completed the emotional subroutines yet. It's time to run a diagnostic and contact our little friend, we have some work to do. For the first time ever, Ambrose felt fear near the gentle computer conscience. He feared that he was being lied to.
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Somewhere on the other side of the world, Sam was going about business as usual. Well as usual as can be when you don't actually live. He was in his terminal, docked and in a standby mode. With that new armor, the only thing that would kill a soldier was a near point blank mortar round and that would be because of internal trauma. There's not much you can do about momentum. The only thing you could do was administer care and hope the patient survived. But cases were few and far between now, the Company's armor was that good. That left him with almost nothing to do except wait. Something machines were very, very good at doing. But the world came crashing into his sensors, bringing him out of standby as his pod was launched from the Titan facility with a mighty roar, a bright star leaping from that giant flying aircraft carrier that so deserved it's name.
"Finally, someone to save" Sam said his tail wagging behind him as his pod screamed across the sky, a rescue lander preparing to launch miles behind him back on the carrier.
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In what felt like an eternity full of pain, he was surrounded by an earsplitting sound, like heavens roaring above in outrage that his life be taken, that it would be taken from him for being a good Samaritan, delivering food to troubled villages, cities and towns torn from the war. Then came the light, a bright blue and white affair off in the distance, rapidly descending towards him. He swore he met god and slumped back to the ground, resigned to his fate.
Everything slowed as he saw a shadow walk from the light. Was it the undertaker, an angel, a ghost come to spirit him away? Everything was blurry again and on the verge of death, he began to slip away. He could see the figure walking around him, circling like a shark awaiting a meal, but then it stopped and stood above his head before kneeling, hands placed on either side of his head, examining him. Surely a demon ready to take his life, then he felt something on his ribs, followed by a sickening snap. The demon must have reached past his head and struck to end him, he felt pain and he screamed.
Then the feeling instantly stopped and his head was left reeling, surely the demon was there to bring him suffering, as he had, straight to hell, but, why would it have stopped the pain? Was his mind finally gone? That's when he noticed that he could breath a little more. Surely he was dead now, this creature had ended him in that flash and was now here to take him. He still couldn't move and the H.U.D. still glowed in his vision, now flashing red again rather than purple. Better, but still doomed. Then he heard a distant sound that brought him screaming back into reality, vision clearing. He was not dead, not yet.
"I said you will be alright, I've given you some oxygen and decompressed you chest cavity, you can breath now."
"Wh..who.... what are you?" asked the soldier finally able to see semi clearly.
More clearly now, the voice of his angel, strong and reassuring. "My name's Sam, I'm help."
The figure above him looked down to look the soldier in the eyes, a friendly smile plastered on the face of a large w... wolf? A large, talking, scary ass wolf... with lots of teeth.
"You... your not....human?"
"No, but I'm help," he said smiling again.
"Impossible," said the soldier before losing his consciousness.
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Impossible? He would technically be dead without him, it was his first time out in days, and it's ruined by one word. He was going to have a word with this one. Activating the connection to Central, he asked for directions on what to do with his damn ungrateful patient, while feeding it information on the patients condition. With a pause, he was sent a data burst that blossomed in his mind, it said that the limiters on the rescue pod were to be temporarily disabled. He would be escorting the soldier straight back to Central's facility back in the United States.
"No limits? That's like mach 7, we'd be there in several hours time. What could we need to go that fast for?" Sam said to himself while the rescue plane landed and reconfigured it's wings and aerodynamics.
'Central must have taken control,' he thought to himself as he picked up the soldier and walked him over to the stretcher of the rescue plane. After strapping himself in next to the soldier, the plane took of with tremendous speed. Over the comm. system you could hear the speed announcements of the auto pilot as the plane pushed itself to its limits.
"Mach one... Mach two... Mach three... Mach four...."
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"Ambrose, the soldiers will be incoming and will be here within several hours time. I need a favor."
"Whatever you need Cen. You're the boss, name it," Ambrose said happily.
"I need you to bring this soldiers family here, he's going to die if I don't do something soon and there is only one option. It's very drastic but it's my only option. What do you know about project x?"