This story is based off the novel 'Armor' and is used without
his permission. All character used herein are owned by thier
respective owners and also used without permission. Do not attempt
to sue me as I have no money whatsoever and therefore be kind of
pointless.
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Part 1
TTTTT EEEE N N CCCC H H IIIIIII
T E N N N C H H I
T EEE N N N C HHHH I
T E N NN C H H I
T EEEE N N CCCC H H IIIIIII
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Chapter 1
He sat by himself and drank. This was kind of strange since
he had no problem with people. Come right down to it he liked
people and more recently had come to miss them somewhat. He knew
that he had the type of personality that let him make friends
easily enough but yet here he was sitting alone drinking. <Maybe
I'm just suffering from a bout of shyness> he thought to himself.
He then chuckled at his weak attempt at self-delusion. He knew
exactly what it was.
From his little nitch at the far end of the long bar, he
observed everyone entering and leaving the very busy lounge
area. He recognised a few from where he was trained. Training is
where it had started manifest. That is where he had started
feeling the odd sensation of mist decending upon him setting him
apart from all the others in the mess hall. It was a dull
metaphysical type of shock at first, a reation welling up from the
very core of his being. He had somehow felt....no, he had somehow
KNOWN that they were all going to die.
He shook his head and finished off his drink. If he was in
the mood to be honest with himself he would have to admit to
himself that his chances of survival were no better. No better at
all.......
He paid the added credits for a full bottle as well as the
little extra to take it out of the lounge area. It was
absolutely against regs on a battle cruiser to have a bottle in
one's possession outside the designated area. But on the eve of a
drop many many things were possible. As he noticed the hour of
the drop slowly creep nearer, he noticed alot of his compatriarts
start taking thier boozing alot more seriously.
Outside the bar wasn't much better. Plenty of bottles had
been bribed out tonite. While the ship waasn't one big blow
out, there were enough small get togethers and enough crew
business going on to make it almost impossible to find a nice
quiet spot to sit and ponder. After a while he got into a flow of
drinking and hunting.
After over an hour of walking the halls of the gargantuan ship
he found himself standing next to the center template strut in
Drop Bay Four. Drop Bay Four was the largest room on board ship
and, since the Nerima was largest warship, the most immense room
in space. It was two hundred meters long and eighty wide. All
around him layed out in checkerboard style where the sqares that
were the drop assignments. It was from here that everything
started. Many thousands of men and women would de sent into battle
from this very room . The overhead was at least ten stories
above him and cris-crossed with cranes that would lower the
instruments of war into position. <This is a hell of a large
room> he thought to himself. Bigger than the Great Hall back at
his second home. He remembered walking down the walkway, for the
corination, with butterflys in his stomach and later when
he......<ENOUGH of this,> he thought to himself <that's all behind
me now and far, far away.>
He sighed and shook his head, as he pearched himself up on the
center strut. He layed down on his back and tried to see the top
of the bay and failed. "Enough woolgathering" he said alout "time
to get to some serious thinking, time in fact really srcutinize
the situation." He took a hefty swig from the bottle and gave a
very cynical laugh. "Fact is we don't stand a snowballs chance in
hell." Fact was that almost everyone in Fleet these days was a
rookie. At last count sixty percent and rising. That meant six
months of advanced training. Nine months in the military all
together if you were lucky. Not much hope there.
Still, the equipment was top notch and many were quite good
with it. He found out, much to his suprise, that he was naturaly
proficiant with, of all things, the powered combat armor. Most
people found the power armor utterly alien and couldn't bring
themselfs to react in a fairly normal way. But he, and a few
others, took to them perfectly becoming the long sought after
combination of man and machine working in perfect harmony. <How
odd> he thought, <I that I have such bizare gifts. Me who has fit
all of Fleets hopes.....>. And from there the drunken fog that
had settled upon him caused his thoughts to slip back into the
past like it does with most drunken, terrifed humans. He layed
back on the template strut, stared at the cranes above him, lit a
cigerete, and steadily sipped from his bottle. He feared. The
hours passed.
Lovers in the nooks and nitches surrounding the outer
perimiter of the drop bay took advantage of the sexually
intergrated warrior class. They moaned, groaned and grasped at
each other. It was a passionate if unorganised effort by each of
them to push the tension strung present into the unimaginably
horror filled future. After a while they would take a break from
thier labor, light the last of thier smokes, and drink the last of
thier drinks. And before thier thoughts turned inwards upon
themselves each and all noticed the glow of a cigerete ember
coming from the lone figure laying on the center strut in the
middle of the vastness of Drop Bay Four. They would then wonder
what in the bloody hell he was doing there.
Tenchi alone, and unaware of anyone else or thier curiosity,
wondered the very same thing.
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AUTHORS NOTES
Hello again to all those in Fanfic land. Just a quick status
note. Washu's New boyfriend chapter 4 is undergoing a rewrite as I
had a brainstorm while conversing with PMasters <oh by the way I love
the shorts you just put out ^_^ > As I stated in the opening I'm
basing this story very closely to John Steakley's book Armor. For
those of you not familiar with the book it's like Starship troopers
(the book not the movie) and is a WHOLE lot more grim. There will be
2 parts with the first part having apoximately 18 chapters. I'm
still figuring out how to divide up part 2 as it's larger than part
1. Sorry there's no action in this first chapter but it's setting
the mood for the rest of the story. Things will pick up from here
slowly but surely (I promise). Of course all C&C is welcome as it
help to improve my writing style and of course catch spelling errors
and such.
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Power corrupts.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Petty power corrupts all out of proportion to actual power.