FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Sojus Wars: Grimmerspace Dreams

By Stephen Landis

Grimmerspace © Iron GM Games

Earth Hegemony and the Sojus Wars universe © Stephen Landis

Disclaimer: This is a Grimmerspace crossover fanfic that contains mild spoilers for the Abattoir 8 adventure, a promotional sci-fi horror adventure involving insane cannibals, homicidal robots armed with farming and slaughterhouse tools, more gore and brutality then a Clive Barker flick, and a couple of other things I deliberately skipped over in the interest of keeping this story relatively short. The protagonist is a troubled space marine in an unrelated space opera novel I’m writing. Viewer discretion is advised. And for those following this on the Grimmerspace forums, YES this guy and his gear is extremely over-leveled for this adventure. And NO, I do not have a Starfinder character sheet or a stat block for him.

Boston, Earth, 2112 AD…

It was a cool evening in the Boston Megatropolis on Earth, capital world of the Earth Hegemony. Towering buildings of smart glass and advanced alloys glistened in the bright moonlight and halo of promotions for everything from interplanetary travel agencies to government colonization efforts. All manner of entertainments could found, from holographic theaters to virtual reality sports, but for one particular group, tonight’s entertainment was decidedly more… antiquated.

“So what are we playing tonight?” Jonathan Fortsmith asked as he sat down at the sleek polymer dining room table. A blond-haired junior officer in the Hegemony Ranger Corps, Jon was enjoying a short shore leave on Earth before sent out on assignment again. An assignment that would be a story for another book...

“Well since you can’t stay long before the Rangers ship you out again Jon, how about a one-shot?” Rob, the game master for their roleplaying group, suggested as he sat down at the head of the table and started skimming game titles on his electronic reader.

“Please, no more tabletop games from the Awakened era. I don’t understand how people could stay sober playing that West Coast post-modernist crap.” Alex replied, sitting across from Jon and crossing his arms in protest. Jon couldn’t blame him but wasn’t sure if he was in the mood to argue with Rob either. 2014 AD to 2023 AD was a miserable period for entertainment. The entire West Coast had gotten high off of some deconstructionist ideology and made the rest of the world miserable until the entertainment monopolies were broken up in the mid-2020’s by a combination of new competition, militant fandoms doing everything short of armed revolution, and new advancements in crowdfunding and promotional strategies that helped out the indie scene.

“Relax, this is a third-party game from that period. They’re generally better.” Rob replied casually. That improved Jon’s mood, in that time you either went third-party or independent if you wanted something that was actually good. Even then, you often needed to ban the Awakened from your table if you didn’t want those West Coast racists scaring people off.

“So what ARE we playing?” Alex asked, getting curious.

“Abattoir 8, published by Iron GM Games in late 2021… I think. Sorry the e-doc is a reprint that forgot the original publishing date and I don’t remember it off the top of my head. Anyway, this was a promotional adventure for what would become the Grimmerspace franchise.” Rob explained, a positively evil grin crossing his face that immediately reminded Jonathan of an old warning, “When the Game Master smiles, it’s already too late.”

“Isn’t that the sci-fi horror mega-franchise that peaked in like 2078 or something?” Jon asked. While his interest in horror lied more in ancient folklore and the cybermyths of the early 21st century, it was always fun to trace the past to the present.

“Yep, the one and the same. All good things have to end eventually but not a bad run for something that started as an Open Game License franchisee delayed by the 2020 pandemic.”

Jon briskly rubbed his hands together. “Alright, does this adventure come with pre-made characters or do we have to whip up some while we wait for the rest of the group to get here?” He asked as the final preparations began in earnest...

The game lasted well into the night, the party successfully conquering the horrors that had plunged the fictional orbital slaughterhouse into darkness before the group finally called it a night. Jonathan Fortsmith barely felt his covers before falling asleep in his bed…

When Jonathan opened his eyes, the blond man found himself in his Paladin-class exoskeleton and strapped into the cargo webbing fastened to the alloy wall of what appeared to be some sort of cargo pod or shipping container. Quickly removing himself from the webbing, he stepped onto the floor and nearly jumped at the sound of his Coil Gun Mk 5 clattering next to him. Instinctively picking up his CG-5, he automatically went through the motions of inspecting the metal and polymer rifle and checking the magazine before popping it in and loading a round into the electromagnetic barrel. Primary weapon ready and in hand, he quickly took inventory of the rest of his equipment and scanned his surroundings.

In addition to his rifle, he had his MP-2 sidearm, his “Talon” combat knife, and three additional magazines for both coil gun and mag pistol. No grenades, no medkit, at least his helmet was hung up on a handy hat rack nearby. Just a threadbare infantryman load-out and no idea what he had gotten himself into or how he got into it.

The room was an empty room that only reinforced the theory that he was in a cargo container of some kind. No chairs, no furniture of any kind except for the cargo webbing along the walls clearly designed for securing fragile objects. The ceiling was studded with some kind of nozzles he couldn’t identify, overall if he had to take a guess he was in a shipping container for either agriculture or some sort of mining although neither of them made complete sense with what he had to go off of.

Lastly, a porthole window in along the wall opposite of where he was restrained caught his eye. Looking out into the depths of space, he managed to see enough to confirm that not only was he in a cargo pod but the pod was the only thing separating him from cold vacuum. Not only that but it looked like the only thing propelling and steering this giant crate was Newton’s Three Laws. Unnerving to watch but the Earth Hegemony used similar systems to connect asteroid colonies to each other so odds were he was safe. On the positive, his current course was taking him closer to a large space station and a small cloud of space ships in orbit around it. Perhaps he could get some answers there.

As the support craft and visiting ships came into view, Jon saw the airlock open up on one vessel. A crewman walked out, completely naked and grinning like a fool, before jumping off into space and freezing to death with that insane grin on his face.

“What in the actual hell?” Jonathan swore as he took a step back. Yet before he could spend anymore time reflecting on what he just saw, the cargo pod echoed with a jarring clang that was as much felt as it was heard. He had docked with the station. Quickly putting his helmet on and walking out the door with his weapon at rest, he stepped onto the facility and promptly wished he hadn’t.

Red emergency lights flickered as he stepped onto the station loading dock, everywhere he looked was the evidence of a battle that clearly did not go well for the inhabitants. A hastily assembled barricade formed out of vending machines and office furniture divided the room, weapons were left abandoned on the floor, and gore was splattered across the walls. Yet there were no bodies, none to be seen. Which was odd because there was certainly more blood all over the place then could realistically fit into one person. Something was definitely wrong here, a feeling that the sound of the cargo pod he arrived in slamming shut behind him didn’t help alleviate.

With his weapon raised and his armor’s subsystems all reporting positives on his heads-up display, he took a step further into the room and scanned his surroundings. No threats, no signs of life at all, and several doors fanning off of the loading dock in various directions. The doors were unmarked except for a keypad with a card reader and bright green light over the door frame. Signs pointed to one as a unisex bathroom and another leading to station security, the latter was as good of a place as any to look for someone or something that could tell him what happened here and how he could escape.

Fortsmith had almost finished climbing over the barricade when it appeared. The door leading to security automatically opened with a faint whoosh and an alien beast appeared. The… thing, whatever it was, resembled a large tan-colored pig with four eyes. Half of its face looked charred and blinded as it regarded Jon with a pretentious snort before turning around and disappearing behind the automatic doors.

On reflex, the Ranger followed after it, only to find no trace of it as he walked through the door and into the narrow hallway separating the loading dock from security. Looking to his left and his right to try and track where the creature disappeared to, he shook his head and gave up before continuing on into station security.

The moment he stepped into the next room, a blaring klaxon went off with a siren-like whine loud enough to wake the dead. Audio dampeners in his helmet immediately switched on and saved him from being deafened. Quickly looking around, he found the appropriately labeled emergency shutoff and pulled the black and yellow level to silence the klaxon. Audio dampeners switched off just in time for him to hear an intercom announcement. “Attention farm workers, security alert in Logistics has been canceled. Repeat, security alert in Logistics has been canceled. All staff resume your normal shifts.” A clearly electronic announcer ordered over the station intercom as the high-pitched whine of an electric saw echoed from somewhere before promptly vanishing.

The Hegemony soldier shook his head. “Stupid, stupid. Security system’s still working. If whatever did this didn’t know I was here before, they do now. Least it means we don’t have a brownout, security’s usually the first thing to go to keep the artificial gravity and life-support working.” He mumbled to himself and took a more detailed look at his surroundings now that the immediate problem had been resolved.

Station Security was most definitely where the passengers went to have their passports stamped and their intentions declared. Other then the doors leading out into the rest of the station, a security camera wrapped in a plastic bubble, and the security scanner that ratted him out, there wasn’t really anything of interest in this room. See one area where travelers are queued up for arrival and departure, you’ve seen them all. Four doors, including the one he just walked through, connected the room to the rest of the station. Yet curiously the green lights over the doors had changed to red except for one over the door leading to what was labeled the guard’s barracks and break room.

Already suspecting what this change meant, Jon turned to try and go back the way he came and found the door refused to open. Checking the keypad, he counted the number of digits it took and ran some basic combinations through the door before giving up. None of the codes worked which meant that he needed to start looking for a key. It also meant that someone was screwing with him, whether because someone thought he was a threat or because that same someone was a threat, he didn’t know.

Looking behind him to make sure he wasn’t being ambushed, he turned his gaze back to the camera and wordlessly considered what to say before silently showing the camera his raised middle finger. If they really were a threat, they were going to find out very quickly that there was plenty more where that came from. No matter, sooner he found that key, the sooner he could track his captor down and get some answers...

Well if there was a key in the guard barracks, he wasn’t going to find it in any reasonable length of time. As soon as he opened the door, he was immediately confronted by a horrible mess. It looked there had been a massive struggle in the room at one point then something else came along and made an even bigger mess of the room. The smell of fresh animal waste trickled past his atmospheric filters, something was nesting in here. Flashbacks of being jumped by native wildlife while trying to hunt down alien marauders on multiple planets played in his mind.

Jonathan promptly shut the door the instant his brain processed that information and turned around to look at the security room a second time. Nothing changed and nothing tried to sneak up on him while his back was turned. The only unlocked door was the wrecked barracks. He looked up at the unblinking camera and the mysterious person behind it.

“I know exactly what you’re trying to do and you can fuck right off. Either open another door or come down here and show me your face.” Jon ordered, walking over to a nearby security desk and taking a seat behind it.

The camera remained silent but the door immediately next to the guard barracks unlocked with a change from red to green. Another restroom judging by the universal symbols on the door. One way in, one way out, and a handful of places to ambush a lone Ranger on a creepy space station. Still, until he found a damn key he was stuck arguing with what could just as easily be an AI as it could be a person. So into the bathroom he went… maybe a station worker left their badge on the sink or something.

Walking into the small restroom, the first thing Jon noticed was that something BIG seemed to have rampaged through the room, jamming one stall shut and causing water to spray out of the other open stall. A wide red blood trail ran beneath the dividing wall between the two stalls and water was spraying everywhere. Hugging the far wall more out of a concern that whatever caused the station to fall into chaos was in the water then getting his military-grade power armor wet, Jonathan walked around the spray and looked around until he found a maintenance access panel on the far wall. Popping it open and turning off the valve inside it, he shut off the water and looked at the room a second time. There was nothing to be found. There was only one place left to look...

Armor servos whined as Jon effortlessly ripped the jammed door off of its hinges. What he saw inside made him immediately drop the sundered door in shock, the metal slab landing on the tile floor with a resounding clang.

Inside the stall were the corpses of two people, what he could only assume were a man and a woman. Someone killed them, dismembered them, then reassembled them into a macabre display. Two severed heads, each of them gazing into each other’s eyes, sat atop two corpses that had been butchered and stacked into neat little squares wrapped in their own clothing, tied tightly with little slipknots. Giant sausage tubes for arms completed the look. Behind the mutilated couple were the words “Love is…” painted in blood with a large brush.

The sight nearly made Jon vomit inside of his helmet. Shaking his head to clear it and forcing himself to focus, he began to search the corpses. No pockets on the female but a medical bracelet identified her as Shara Tanqui. The male had one pocket on a shirt that held an ID card on a lanyard identifying him as Reiger Mannich… an ID card with a scannable smart chip beneath Reiger’s picture.

“Well at least I found a key” The armored Ranger grumbled as he hung the lanyard around his neck and cleaned the blood off of it. Nothing attacked him, nothing waited for him as he turned away from the macabre sight in the bathroom stall, and nothing interrupted him as he picked up the torn stall door and gently propped it up against its hinges. Disgust and fear soon turned to anger as he left the bathroom, someone was going to PAY for this.

The security room was unchanged as he returned from the bathroom. The unknown controller immediately locked the bathroom behind him and tried to bait him into going into the wrecked break room again. Jonathan replied by walking to the door he originally entered from, waved the dock manager’s ID badge in front of the card reader, and walked back out into the hallway separating security from the loading dock.

Taking a right in the hallway and walking through the door at the end, he turned and walked into the first door on his left. Storeroom, one that was almost as badly ransacked as the guard barracks, but a few minutes of careful searching produced some anti-toxin serums and MREs that were still sealed in their packaging.

Pocketing these in a storage compartment in his armor, he turned around to see a large drone scurry past the doorway and down the hall. Weapon raised, he carefully crept out and quickly swept the hallway. Nothing but the red emergency lights and an occasional flicker from the primary lights. Progressing further down the hallway, he came to a t-intersection with a long, curved corridor that appeared to run the length of the outer of the station section.

Turning right with his rifle at the ready, he walked down the curved corridor and kept walking, making a mental map of the station section as he went. As he went, Jonathan became aware of something following him. Something large and organic from the way the foot falls echoed against the metal floor. Yet whenever he turned around to look, the door would always be shut and locked behind him, the lights would go out or worse, flash in a disorienting strobe that turned everything into a slideshow.

Still, it didn’t take too long for him to return back the loading dock where it all began. Roughly thirty minutes and he had determined that the logistics section of the station was shaped like a giant circle or an analog clock and if the loading dock was the three o’clock position, then there were access points to the rest of the station at the eleven, twelve, and one o’clock positions. Twelve o’clock went straight to the command module but some sort of accident caused the whole tunnel to depressurize. While his armor could certainly handle a little space walk, overriding the safety protocols without sucking everything including himself out into space was a bit outside of his skill set. Which left climbing up via “Meat Packaging” or “Automated Harvesting” at the eleven and one o’clock positions respectively. From the few station maps he could find on the walls that weren’t splattered in illegible amounts of blood, either of them would take to the command center so long as he didn’t mind what other nightmares waited for him.

Seeing that whoever was playing hide and seek with him was not interested in having a conversation and telling him what happened to the place, Jonathan turned on his heel and began to backtrack towards the northern quarter of the logistics section. Unlocking the door, Jonathan immediately saw the quadruped drone standing roughly fifteen feet away. The Ranger barely made out the name plate labeled SCHWANGG and the large rifle built into the machine’s chassis before it took a shot at him. A high-caliber round pinged off of his armor before he quickly replied with a three-shot burst from his CG-5 and hide behind the door frame. “SCHWANGG” took two of the three metal slugs and at least one of them apparently hit something important, causing the drone to collapse with a high-pitched squeal and an audible clang of metal on metal.

Jonathan had just released the breath he had been holding when he felt a sharp jab and a brief jolt that barely got through his armor from somewhere behind him. The armored soldier turned around and found himself looking directly at one of the station workers. Jon had a distinct feeling this was the guy that had been jerking him around for the past couple hours.

The station slaughterhouse worker was a big, squat human-looking man, Fortsmith guesstimated he weighed at least four-hundred pounds and not all of that was muscle. Bald, with beady little eyes that seemed to dead to the world except for a psychotic glint. Seemed to be Caucasian, if that word even meant anything wherever the hell this place was, and a name tag proclaiming “Hi, I’m Thrask!” on a gore-streaked rubber apron.

All this was processed in the seconds it took Thrask to register that his electric prod had no effect on the suited warrior and raised the prod up to use it like a club. Jonathan replied by grabbing the weapon by the shaft and yanking it out of Thrask’s hand before giving the big man a exo-assisted kick to the gut.

Staggered and shoved back several feet, Thrask grunted and focused his attention on a weapon that had completely escaped Jon’s notice until now, so focused was the latter on giving himself some space to breath. The menacing slaughterman saw was a device that definitely was a slaughterhouse tool. Two whirling saw blades on the business end of a machine that rested neatly over Thrask’s forearm came to life with an electric whine.

Discarding the prod alongside the rifle he dropped in the initial scuffle, the olive-clad Hegemony Ranger drew his sidearm and gripped it with both hands as he leveled it at Thrask’s head. “Drop it RIGHT NOW!” He bellowed at the big man.

“YOU CAN’T HAVE THE PROMOTION! IT’S MINE!” Thrask shouted back before trying to charge Fortsmith, weapon raised.

Jonathan fired twice, both bullets finding their mark and burrowing through Thrask’s forehead before exploding outside the back of the bald man’s skull in a splatter of blood and gray matter. The Ranger stepped to the side, narrowly avoiding getting pinned by Thrask’s corpse.

As the mad butcher fell to the ground, an eerie silence fell over the area. Jonathan recovered his weapons, checked the magazines, and walked on. After considering the past five minutes or so, Fortsmith decided that cutting through Automated Harvesting was a great idea. Surely a giant greenhouse couldn’t be as bad as a slaughterhouse with even more whirling blades and insane butchers….

“Fucking space corn… or is it wheat? Either way, I can already see where this is going.” Jonathan grumbled as he entered the Automated Harvesting silo. He was partially right, Automated Harvesting was an automated agricultural facility devoted to growing plants. The problem was that the facility was devoted to monocrop agriculture and growing some sort of tall cereal crop with each stalk floppy but strong, about as thick around as a fresh tree sapling. Each stalk was about twice as tall as he was and were growing as far as the eye could see in any direction. Grow lights in the ceiling above him produced a warm yellow light while the plants themselves glowed with a pale azure half-light and waved clusters of dense seed clusters at him. A giant spiral ramp connecting this floor to the next loomed above the plants in the center of the field.

Already startled once and back in something resembling his element, Jonathan slowly kept through the field, careful to avoid disturbing the plants too much and listening carefully for any signs that he was being chased. His pistol had been holstered and his CG-5 was switched to semi-automatic with enough left in the current magazine to give whatever was waiting for him a very bad day.

Ears open, he heard nothing at first. Gradually, the metallic sound of a sharp blade slicing through air and space wheat stalks alike began to grow louder and louder as he moved through the field. He had just entered a clearing at the base of the ramp when he saw the source of the noise between the stalks. A crab-like robot the size of a dog was working the fields, cutting down stalks for other workers or robots to harvest them later from the look of things. It seemed engrossed in its work and paying no attention to him as he crept out of the fields and headed towards the ramp upward.

Jonathan tried to avoid doing anything to attract their attention as he started his climb upwards. He still had plenty of ammunition but he also had no idea how many of them there were or if they would respond to an intruder. Best to not provoke any unnecessary fights and just slowly creep up until he was at the top of the silo…

The first field soon disappeared beneath him as he continued to climb up and up, the plants growing considerably taller as he finally ascended to the second level. Arriving at the second field… his luck ran out as the harvester drones in the clearing at the second level landing had turned around for some reason and ended up looking right at him. Dressed in olive-green power armor, he stood out like a sore thumb against the gun metal gray of the ramp and the spire.

“Nothing to see here, return to your duties.” He ordered in the most officious-sounding tone he could muster. It had a snowball’s chance of working but it was still worth a try.

It did not work. The two drones turned right around and started racing towards him menacingly squealing something about “pest eradication” as he readied to defend himself. A loud explosion echoed from the next level up and someone screamed on an intercom overhead.

“YOU DADDY FUCKER! I WAS THIS FUCKING CLOSE! FUCK! FUCK! FUCK!” The person screamed over the intercom before the device went silent. Apparently he was not the only one having a bad day.

Already pumped, Jonathan threw himself into combat once again, downing one of the crab-like drones with a single aimed shot through its electronic eye before turning on his heel and lining up the other one for a shot before dropping that one as well. Sweat had begun to bead on his forehead as he heard the unmistakable sound of the drones down on level one start to climb up the ramp and the ones above him start to work their way down.

With stealth out the window and only one way out, Jon pressed forward. Firing at the drones ahead of him as he continued to climb upward, his rifle roared as he mentally tallied off the number of rounds he had remaining. Thirty rounds in a single CG-5 magazine, he had just popped a fresh mag into his gun before entering Automated Harvesting, and each harvester robot was currently “one shot, one kill.” Inconvenient but not a significant threat to his survival… not yet at any rate.

Soon he arrived on the third floor, the smoldering wreck of a harvest robot was hooked up to a mess of cables leading to a nearby computer terminal. Several robots had broken off from the group coming down to attack Jon to focus on a small prefabricated hut at the edge of the grain clearing.

Jon’s rifle fired with a mighty roar as he focused on the four attacking the hut before turning back to the ones coming after him. One, two, three… and a miss as he felt a solid metal blade connect with the back plates of his armor. Metal clanged against metal and threw off his aim. Fortsmith immediately fired off another round and turned around to deal with the robots behind him as his second shot connected with the last of the hut attackers.

Continuing to run up the spiral ramp and charging into the oncoming robot swarm, the battle boiled down to aim and shoot, aim and shoot, aim and shoot. His gun screamed louder and louder as he took down one target after another. Armored exoskeleton carried him swiftly up the remaining three floors and provided a powerful kick when a drone got too close, sending more then a couple off of the spire with a mighty boot. Soon the spiral ramp was covered with the wreckage of downed robots, Automated Harvesting was behind him and the station’s command center awaited him….

Passing through the command center airlock, the mood immediately changed. Arriving in the middle level of a three-story module, a spiral staircase connecting the foyer to the living quarters below him and the flight control center above, the atmosphere was thick as he spotted the blood splatters on the walls and floor. The hair on the back of his neck stood on end as if something sinister had just transpired here. Soon the armored Ranger realized he was not alone...

The survivors dwelling in the station’s command module stuck their heads into the open stairwell connecting the main floor to the rest of the unit, looking like a twisted cartoon as they all watched him enter through the module airlock with a crazed look in their eyes and fresh blood dribbling from their mouths. Jonathan stared back at them, his visor rendering his face expressionless as he switched his CG-5 to automatic and slid his index finger between the trigger guard and the trigger.

A long second passed then the survivors flooded into the main floor like an ocean wave, each of them whispering “stay” over and over in a tone that implied something horribly sinister. On the level above him, a single voice shouted “LEAVE!” Jon didn’t need to be told twice, pulling the trigger and opening fire on the horde of crazed cannibals.

Half of his attackers died almost instantly as solid metal slugs were electromagnetically propelled through the front of the mob, pierced their bodies, and penetrated the cannibals standing right behind them. The survivors rushed forward and tried to dogpile him with sheer numbers. Greedy hands tried to find purchase on his power armor as Jonathan briefly fell to his knees under the sudden weight. Servos whined as he rose back up and threw his attackers off of him.

His gun was immediately back in his hands, belching hot metal as more crazed station workers blossomed in a shower of crimson before collapsing dead on the floor. Jon himself was a ballet of death as he took down his foes one after another. His CG-5 was soon abandoned for his combat knife, slicing through unarmored flesh and showering him in crimson blood. Jonathan moved like a man possessed, punching and stabbing his way through the horde until suddenly there were none.

His olive green armor covered in blood, Fortsmith cleaned off his knife and collected his rifle. For a flickering instant, the slain cannibals were replaced with the sprawled corpses of vulpine humanoids. One group of cruel psychopaths for another… Jon shook the image out of his head and calmly walked up to the flight control center.

Somehow he was still surprised to find that the flight controller, the only one that could unlock the shuttle that would allow him to escape, was yet another cannibal that had been heavily chewed on. Whether the chewing was self-inflicted or not, Jon couldn’t tell nor did he particularly care so long as this madhouse was behind him.

“Leave?” The flight controller asked simply.

“Leave.” Fortsmith replied just as succinctly. Somewhere in the background an alarm began to blare…

Jonathan Fortsmith woke up to the blare of his alarm clock as he lay atop his bed, sunlight streaming through his apartment window. His head was slowly starting to pound from a combination of the alarm clock and a hangover. A chemical aftertaste filled his mouth. “Damn it, was there something in that soda?”