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The Nightmare of the Doomed ( Prologue: The Nightmare Being)
Posted By: Raptros c76<GekSliver@nyc.rr.com>
Date: 24 November 2004, 12:19 AM


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The Nightmare of the Doomed

( If any of you do a search, and find a series known as "The Raptros Saga," this has nothing to do with it. However, I wrote that also. Consider it scrapped by me.)

An Elite sat in a cell in an insane asylum. This was for the obvious reason that he was insane. The question is why? The answer is that he was one of the few survivors of a fiasco stemming form a very badly planned campaign. First, let us see who this pitiful creature is. He is at least 2 feet shorter than most Elites. This is because of shrinking body material caused from his shaking and his unwillingness to eat. In fact, the only way he survives is through a tube that is stapled into his flesh. Why don't the Covenant take him out of his misery? Because he has information that provides a vital clue to destroying the Flood. To understand this, we must first see his past.

It started on a Covenant cruiser. He was a technician, and he was one of many scanning the planet below. His station was set up to find the genetic patterns of complex life forms on the planet to match it against known gene patterns, and find out what creatures inhabited it. He was having trouble with his. Every time he scanned, he got a garbled set of patterns, some of them incomplete. He showed it to his commander.

"Sir, I keep getting these weird patterns."
His commander glanced at it, and replied, "Ignore it, it's probably just a couple of glorified microbes."

If only they had known the truth. Then the whole problem would not have happened. For, the gene patterns he had picked up where the type of patterns one would get off of a Flood infection, for the original DNA of the host does not get erased, but overlaid, and usually randomly. If they had remembered this simple and well-known factor, they would not have landed, and the nightmare would not have begun.

When they landed, they were set on upon at once. Many were killed. Many were infected. Many were dragged off to be eaten. Several escaped. Our hero, whose name, incidentally, was Raptros. In fact, he was a clone, bioengineered to fill a certain job on the ship, and was the 76th one. His full name therefore, is Raptros-c76. As he tried to escape, while the Flood were taking full advantage of this ship, he saw something. A type of mutation so incredible, yet so important to understanding how the Flood worked, and how to combat them, that he realized he had to escape, to bring this knowledge to the current leaders of the Covenant. He then saw something else that drove him insane, but equally important. He became desprate, and eventually realized how he would do it. He would use the slipspace drive system, and hurl himself, with no protection, to the nearest port of safety. He eventually got his chance, and nearly died using it.

When he arrived, he was immediately taken to the leader of the base, who interrogated him. What he got is the story above, and it did not go any further into what secrets he had seen. So, he was locked up. Every day, he was interrogated. Every day, he still did not answer. He was still too psychotic to understand any of what they were saying. So they put him on a ship, and brought him to one of the more populated, more civilized worlds, in the interior of the covenant empire. He was treated there, and slowly they began to get more information. What he had seen was some sort of hive mind monster, a creature that joined the minds of all of the Flood creatures, making them work tactically. He had been able to see how it created a gigantic mind that thought as one, and commanded all of the Flood. He had realized that destroying these, by tracking the specialized genetic patterns in it would disrupt the Flood's communication, and would make them disorganized and open to destruction. The thing that had driven him insane was far more important than this, and he hinted at it, but never revealed it. The interrogators understood the cryptic hints to the dark secret, but could not fully puzzle it together.

His hints all fell in the same pattern. Here is something of one of the important ones.

First, the lead in: "I have seen it, the (something in a weird language.)
Second, a hint at to what it appeared as: "A giant monster, a collection of infections, a container of vile sacrilege."
Third, a description of its function: "It creates, it controles, it warps physics itself in order to rule all."
Fourth, a yell of horror with a reference to someone: "It has her, It has her! Why?! Why?!"
Finally, a scream of pain, then he struggles, and falls in a coma, which always lasts 43 hours, 43 minutes, and 43 seconds.

Each time he does this, the message gets more and more cryptic, more worrying, and less understandable. The leaders are becoming worried that the Flood have created some sort of monster capable of powering a ship into slip space. The treaty between the humans and (this particular faction, a large one, (created among other factions after the covenant government collapsed)), could not have come at a better time. They prepared for the worst, and the worst would come.....

{i] to be continued

(I hope you like this one. This is more of a prologue, which serves to help lay the setting for the story to come. And yes, there will be actual characters in the story.)





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