System Shock, page 1

Consciousness flowed back into my mind with the patient deliberation of a pot of coffee being boiled on that old slow-drip automatic machine back at Camp Lajune. I dimly stared at the images the monitors presented me with- empty corridors, wrecked walls, and broken machinery. In the back of my head, it dawned on me that I was on board the Von Braun, a newfangled lemon produced by our friends...the Tri-Optimum Corporation, engineers of such disasters as the Citadel Station tragedy. Great. I remembered just before reassignment, another leatherneck was packing up to head to Io.

�Hey Adams, you heading onto that POS that they�re strapping the Rickenbacker to?�
�Yeah, first trip faster than light. One small step for man and all that.�
�The Rickenbacker�s a good ship, heavy destroyer. But the Von Braun... she�s a giant scrapheap. I guarded construction. Best of luck guy, but you�re probably just going to sit around while the Navy tows her home.�
�Better luck than YOU, chump. I barely survived Io.�

The memory ended abruptly, with a giant gap between then and now. I looked around, peering outside the cryotube, astounded. Clearly, this was the Von Braun. My body felt different, but I passed it off to being frozen for...well, I have no clue how long. I stepped out of the tube unsteadily, reaching with one arm to keep my balance, the other going to my pistol. Ol� trust...no, wait. I had one of the newfangled laser pistols that Tri Op gave to their rent-a-cops. The armorer didn�t know # from candles. I took another experimental step, and almost fell flat on my ass. I heard a voice in the background. A woman�s voice, coming through a one-way radio in my skull. I shivered involuntarily.

�This is Dr. Janice Polito of the Computer Ops Staff of the Von Braun. You�re safe for now. You�re recovering from the effects of surgery and are unable to remember the events of the last few weeks. Something�s gone very, very wrong- an unknown force has highjacked the ship. That�s why you volunteered to be implanted with some experimental cyberware. Rely on your cyber-interface, it might just save your life. Come up to deck four. Can you remember that? Deck four. They�re after us both now.�

Staring out the large bay windows, something was clearly wrong. The cryo recovery room was in shambles. There was a big pool of blood on the floor, with a trail leading off into a back roof. Out the window, a dish on the nacelle smoldered and bent. I heard metal creak above me, and dove out of the way. An overhead duct almost fell on me as a hunk of satellite dish hit one of the huge windows. It shattered, and I felt a brief tug before the forcefield activated. Then, Janice was screaming. I was moving. I made it to the small control alcove before half the ceiling hit the ground. I saw this Navy guy, all busted up and pretty obviously dead. Almost all the machinery was smashed to #. There was a heavy wrench still in his hand, and a few nanite tokens in his pockets. I grabbed both- my pistol wouldn�t last forever, and I was damn hungry. Who knows, maybe I�d find a vending machine or something. At any rate, I saw that a whole bunch of heating duct covered the ladder leading out of the room. In the background, I heard a mechanical voice chime in over the room�s speakers, telling me I had sixty seconds until the room depressurized.

Now, this was clearly bad. I had sixty seconds to put a door between me and hard vacuum, and judging by the size of the shrapnel that hit the ship, the whole section as compromised. I swung the wrench back, and smashed the duct out fo the way. Then, I was scrambling up the ladder...

DE