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Old Austin Tales: Forgotten Video Arcades of The 1970s & 80s
In the late 1980s and early 1990s when I was a young teen growing up in far North Austin, it was a popular custom for many boys in the neighborhood to assemble at the local Stop-N-Go after school on a regular basis for some Grand Champion level tournaments in Street Fighter 2 and Mortal Kombat. The collective insistence of our mothers and fathers to get out of the house, get some exercise, and refrain from playing NES or Sega on the television only led us to seek out more video games at the convenience store down the road. Much allowance and lunch money was spent as well as hours that should have been devoted to homework among the 8 or 9 regular boys in attendance, often challenging each other to 'Best of 5' matches. I myself played Dhalsim and SubZero, and not very well, so I rarely ever made it to the 5th match. The store workers frequently kicked us out for the day only to have us return when they weren't working the counter anymore if not the next day. There is something about that which has been lost in the present day. While people can today download the latest games on Steam or PSN or in the app store on your smartphone, you can't just find arcade games in stores and restaurants like you used to be able to. And so the fun of a spontaneous 8 or 10 person multiplayer video game tournament has been confined to places like bars, pool halls, Pinballz or Dave&Busters. But in truth it was that ubiquity of arcade video games, how you could find them in any old 7-11 or Laundromat, which is what killed the original arcades of the early 1980s before the Great Crash of 1983 when home video game consoles started to catch up to what you saw in the arcade. I was born in the mid 1970s so I missed out on Pong. I was kindergarten age when the Golden Age of Arcade Games took place in the early 1980s. There used to be a place called Skateworld on Anderson Mill Road that was primarily for roller skating but had a respectable arcade in its own right. It was there that I honed my skills on the original Tron, Pac Man, Galaga, Pole Position, Defender, and so many others. In the 1980s I remember visiting all the same mall arcades as others in my age group. There was Aladdin's Castle in Barton Creek Mall, The Gold Mine in Highland, and another Gold Mine in Northcross which was eventually renamed Tilt. Westgate Mall also had an arcade but being a north austin kid I never went there until later in the mid 1990s. There were also places like Malibu Grand Prix and Showbiz Pizza and Chuck-E-Cheeze, all of which had fairly large arcades for kids which were the secondary attraction. If you're of a certain age you will remember Einsteins and LeFun on the Drag. They were there for a few decades going back way before the Slacker era. Lesser known is that the UT Student Union basement used to have an arcade that was comparable to either or both of those places. Back in the pre-9/11 days it was much easier to sneak in if you even vaguely looked like you could be a UT student. But there was another place I was too young to have experienced called Smitty's up further north on 183 at Lake Creek in the early 1980s. I never got to go there but I always heard about it from older kids at the time. It was supposed to have been two stories of wall to wall games with a small snack bar. I guess at the time it served a mostly older teen crowd from Westwood High School and for that reason younger kids my age weren't having birthday parties there. It wasn't around very long, just a few years during the Golden Age of Arcades. It is with almost-forgotten early arcades like that in mind that I wanted to share with y'all some examples of places from The Golden Age of the Video Arcade in Austin using some old Statesman articles I've found. Maybe someone of a certain age on here will remember them. I was curious what they were like, having missed out by being slightly too young to have experienced most of them first hand. I also wanted to see the original reaction to them in the press. I had a feeling there was some pushback from school/parent/civic groups on these facilities showing up in neighborhood strip malls or next to schools, and I was right to suspect. But I'm getting ahead of myself. First let's list off some places of interest. Be sure to speak up if you remember going to any of these, even if it was just for some other kid's birthday party. Unfortunately some of the only mentions about a place are reports of a crime being committed there, such as our first few examples. Forgotten Arcade #1 Fun House/Play Time Arcade - 2820 Guadalupe June 15, 1975
ARCADE ENTHUSIASM A gang fight involving 20 30 people erupted early Saturday morning in front of an arcade on Guadalupe Street. The owner of the Fun House Arcade at 282J Guadalupe told police pool cues, lug wrenches, fists and a shotgun were displayed during the flurry. Police are unsure what started the fisticuffs, but one witness at the scene said it pitted Chicanos against Anglos. During the fight the owner of the arcade said a green car stopped at the side of the arcade and witnesses reported the barrel of a shotgun sticking out. The crowd wisely scattered and only a 23-year-old man was left lying on the ground. He told police he doesn't know what happened.
ARCADE ROBBED A former employee of Play Time Arcade, 2820 Guadalupe, was charged Tuesday in connection with the Tuesday afternoon robbery of his former business. Police have issued a warrant for the arrest of Ronnie Magee, 22, of 1009 Aggie Lane, Apt. 306. Arcade attendant Sam Garner said he had played pool with the suspect an hour before the robbery. He told police the man had been fired from the business two weeks earlier. Police said a man walked in the arcade about 2:45 p m. with a blue steel pistol and took $180. Magee is charged with first degree aggravated robbery. Bond was set on the charge at $15,000.
First it was called Fun House and then renamed Play Time a year later. I'm not sure what kind of arcade games beyond Pong and maybe Asteroids they could have had at this place. The peak of the Pinball craze was supposed to be around 1979, so they might have had a few pinball machines as well. A quick search of youtube will show you a few examples of 1976 video games like Death Race. The location is next to Ken's Donuts where PokeBowl is today where the old Baskin Robbins location was for many years. Forgotten Arcade #2 Green Goth - 1121 Springdale Road May 15, 1984
A 23-year-old man pleaded guilty Monday to a January 1983 murder in East Austin and was sentenced to 15 years in prison. Jim Crowell Jr. of Austin admitted shooting 17-year-old Anthony Rodriguez in the chest with a shotgun after the two argued outside the Green Goth, a games arcade at 1121 Springdale Road, on Jan. 23, 1983. Crowell had argued with Rodriguez and a friend of Rodriguez at the arcade, police said. Crowell then went to his house, got a shotgun and returned to the arcade, witnesses said. When the two friends left the arcade, Rodriguez was shot Several weeks ago Crowell had reached a plea bargain with prosecutors for an eight-year prison term, but District Judge Bob Perkins would not accept the sentence, saying it was shorter than sentences in similar cases. After further plea bargaining, Crowell accepted the 15-year prison sentence.
I can't find anything else on Green Goth except reports about this incident with a murder there. There is at least one other report from 1983 around the time of Crowell's arrest that also refer to it as an arcade but reports the manager said the argument started over a game of pool. It's possible this place might have been more known for pool. Forgotten Arcades #3 & #4 Games, Etc. - 1302 S. First St Muther's Arcade - 2532 Guadalupe St August 23, 1983
Losing the magic touch - Video Arcades have trouble winning the money game It was going to be so easy for Lawrence Villegas, a video game junkie who thought he could make a fast buck by opening up an arcade where kids could plunk down an endless supply of quarters to play Pac-Man, Space Invaders and Asteroids. Villegas got together with a few friends, purchased about 30 video games and opened Games, Etc. at 1302 S. First St in 1980. .,--.... For a while, things, went great Kids waited in line to spend their money to drive race cars, slay dragons and save the universe. AT THE BEGINNING of 1982, however, the bottom fell out, and Villegas' revenues fell from $400 a week to $25. Today, Games, Etc. is vacant Villegas, 30, who is now working for his parents at Tony's Tortilla Factory, hasn't decided what he'll do with the building. "I was hooked on Asteroids, and I opened the business to get other people hooked, too," Villegas said. "But people started getting bored, and it wasn't worth keeping the place open. In the end, I sold some machines for so little it made me sick." VILLEGAS ISNT the only video game operator to experience hard times, video game manufacturers and distributors 'It used to be fairly common to get $300 a week from a machine. Now we rarely get more than $100 . Pac-Man's a lost cause. Six months ago, you could resell a Pac-Man machine for $1,600. Now, you're lucky to get $950 if you can find a buyer." Ronnie Roark says. In the past year, business has dropped 25 percent to 65 percent throughout the country, they say. Most predict business will get even worse before the market stabilizes. Video game manufacturers and operators say there are several reasons for the sharp and rapid decline: Many video games can now be played at home on television, so there's no reason to go to an arcade. The novelty of video games has worn off. It has been more than a decade since the first ones hit the market The decline can be traced directly to oversaturation or the market arcade owners say. The number of games in Austin has quadrupled since 1981, and it's not uncommon to see them in coin-operated laundries, convenience stores and restaurants. WITH SO MANY games to choose from, local operators say, Austinites be came bored. Arcades still take in thousands of dollars each week, but managers and owners say most of the money is going to a select group of newer games, while dozens of others sit idle. "After awhile, they all seem the same," said Dan Moyed, 22, as he relaxed at Muther's Arcade at 2532 Guadalupe St "You get to know what the game is going to do before it does. You can play without even thinking about it" Arcade owners say that that, in a nutshell, is why the market is stagnating. IN THE PAST 18 months, Ronnie Roark, owner of the Back Room at 2015 E. Riverside Drive, said his video business has dropped 65 to 75 percent Roark, . who supplied about 160 video games to several Austin bars and arcades, said the instant success of the games is what led to their demise. "The technology is not keeping up with people's demand for change," said Roark, who bought his first video game in 1972. "The average game is popular for two or three months. We're sending back games that are less than five months old." Roark said the market began dropping in March 1982 and has been declining steadily ever since. "The drop started before University of Texas students left for the summer in 1982," Roark said. "We expected a 25 percent drop in business, and we got that, and more. It's never really picked up since then. - "It used to be fairly common to get $300 a week from a machine. Now we rarely get more than $100. 1 was shocked when I looked over my books and saw how much things had dropped." TO COMBAT THE slump, Roark said, he and some arcade owners last year cut the price of playing. Even that didn't help, he said. Old favorites, such as Pac-Man, which once took in hundreds of dollars each week, he said, now make less than $3 each. "Pac-Man's a lost cause," he said. "Six months ago, you could resell a Pac-Man machine for $1,600. Now, you're lucky to get $950 if you can find a buyer." Hardest hit by the slump are the owners of the machines, who pay $3,500 to $5,000 for new products and split the proceeds with the businesses that house them. SALEM JOSEPH, owner of Austin Amusement and Vending Co., said his business is off 40 percent in the past year. Worse yet, some of his customers began returning their machines, and he's having a hard time putting them back in service. "Two years ago, a machine would generate enough money to pay for itself in six months,' said Joseph, who supplies about 250 games to arcades. "Now that same machine takes 18 months to pay for itself." As a result, Joseph said, he'll buy fewer than 15 new machines this year, down from the 30 to 50 he used to buy. And about 50 machines are sitting idle in his warehouse. "I get calls every day from people who want to sell me their machines," Joseph said. "But I can't buy them. The manufacturers won't buy them from me." ARCADE OWNERS and game manufacturers hope the advent of laser disc video games will buoy the market Don Osborne, vice president of marketing for Atari, one of the largest manufacturers of video games, said he expects laser disc games to bring a 25 percent increase in revenues next year. The new games are programmed to give players choices that may affect the outcome of the game, Os borne said. "Like the record and movie industries, the video game industry is dependent on products that stimulate the imagination," Osborne said "One of the reasons we're in a valley is that we weren't coming up with those kinds of products." THE FIRST of the laser dis games, Dragonslayer and Star Wan hit the market about two months ago. Noel Kerns, assistant manager of The Gold Mine Arcade in Northcross Mall, says the new games are responsible for a $l,000-a-week increase in revenues. Still, Kerns said, the Gold Mine' total sales are down 20 percent iron last summer. However, he remain optimistic about the future of the video game industry. "Where else can you come out of the rain and drive a Formula One race car or save the universe?" hi asked. Others aren't so optimistic. Roark predicted the slump will force half of all operators out of business and will last two more years. "Right now, we've got a great sup ply and almost no demand," Roark said. "That's going to have to change before things get- significantly better."
Well there is a lot to take from that long article, among other things, that the author confused "Dragonslayer" with "Dragon's Lair". I lol'd. Anyone who has been to Emo's East, formerly known as The Back Room, knows they have arcade games and pool, but it's mostly closed when there isn't a show. That shouldn't count as an arcade, even though the former owner Ronnie Roark was apparently one of the top suppliers of cabinet games to the area during the Golden Era. Any pool hall probably had a few arcade games at the time, too, but that's not the same as being an arcade. We also learn from the same article of two forgotten arcades: Muthers at 2522 Guadalupe where today there is a Mediterranean food restaurant, and another called Games, Etc. at 1302 S.First that today is the site of an El Mercado restaurant. But the article is mostly about showing us how bad the effects were from the crash at the end of the Golden Era. It was very hard for the early arcades to survive with increasing competition from home game consoles and personal computers, and the proliferation of the games into stores and restaurants. Forgotten Arcades #5 #6 & #7 Computer Madness - 2414 S. Lamar Blvd. Electronic Encounters - 1701 W Ben White Blvd (Southwood Mall) The Outer Limits Amusements Center - 1409 W. Oltorf March 4, 1982
'Quartermania' stalks South Austin School officials, parents worried about effects of video games A fear Is haunting the video game business. "We call it 'quartermania.' That's fear of running out of quarters," said Steve Stackable, co-owner of Computer Madness, a video game and foosball arcade at 2414 S. Lamar Blvd. The "quartermania" fear extends to South Austin households and schools, as well. There it's a fear of students running out of lunch money and classes to play the games. Local school officials and Austin police are monitoring the craze. They're concerned that computer hotspots could become undesirable "hangouts" for students, or that truancy could increase because students (high-school age and younger) will skip school to defend their galaxies against The Tempest. So far police fears have not been substantiated. Department spokesmen say that although more than half the burglaries in the city are committed by juveniles during the daytime, they know of no connection between the break-ins and kids trying to feed their video habit But school and parental worries about misspent time and money continue. The public outcry in September 1980 against proposals to put electronic game arcades near two South Austin schools helped persuade city officials to reject the applications. One proposed location was near Barton Hills Elementary School. The other was South Ridge Plaza at William Cannon Drive and South First Street across from Bedlchek Junior High School. Bedichek principal B.G. Henry said he spoke against the arcade because "of the potential attraction it had for our kids. I personally feel kids are so drawn to these things, that It might encourage them to leave the school building and play hookey. Those things have so much compulsion, kids are drawn to them like a magnet Kids can get addicted to them and throw away money, maybe their lunch money. I'm not against the video games. They may be beneficial with eye-hand coordination or even with mathematics, but when you mix the video games during school hours and near school buildings, you might be asking for problems you don't need." A contingent from nearby Pleasant Hill Elementary School joined Bedichek in the fight back in 1980, although principal Kay Beyer said she received her first formal call about the games last Week from a mother complaining that her child was spending lunch money on them. Beyer added that no truancy problems have been related to video game-playing at a nearby 7-11 store. Allen Poehl, amusement game coordinator for Austin's 7-11 stores, said company policy rules out any game-playing by school-age youth during school hours. Fulmore Junior High principal Bill Armentrout said he is working closely with operators of a nearby 7-1 1 store to make sure their policy is enforced. The convenience store itself, and not necessarily the video games, is a drawing card for older students and drop-outs, Armentrout said. Porter Junior High principal Marjorie Ball said that while video games aren't a big cause of truancy, "the money (spent on the games) is a big factor." Ball said she has made arrangements with nearby businesses to call the school it students are playing the games during school hours. "My concern is that kids are basically unsupervised, especially at the 24-hour grocery stores. That's a late hour for kids to be out. I would like to see them (games) unplugged at 10 p.m.," adds Joslin Elementary principal Wayne Rider. Several proprietors of video game hot-spots say they sympathize with the concerns of parents and school officials. No one under 18 is admitted without a parent to Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theatre at 4211 S. Lamar. That rule, says night manager David Dunagan, "keeps it from being a high school hangout. This is a family place." Jerry Zollar, owner of J.J. Subs in West Wood Shopping Center on Bee Cave Road, rewards the A's on the report cards of Eanes school district students with free video games. "It's kind of a community thing we do in a different way. I've heard from both teachers and parents . . . they thought this was a good idea," said Zollar. Electronic Encounters in Southwood Mall last year was renovated into a brightly lit arcade. "We're trying to get away from the dark, barroom-type place. We want this to be a place for family entertainment We won't let kids stay here during school hours without a written note from their parents, and we're pretty strict about that," said manager Kelly Roberts. Joyce Houston, who manages The Outer Limits amusements center at 1409 W. Oltorf St. along with her husband, said, "I wouldn't let my children go into some of the arcades I've visited. I'm a concerned parent, too. We wanted a place where the whole family could come and enjoy themselves."
Well you can see which way the tone of all these articles is going. There were some crimes committed at some arcades but all of them tended to have a negative reputation for various reasons. Parents and teachers were very skeptical of the arcades being in the neighborhoods to the point of petitioning the City Government to restrict them. Three arcades are mentioned besides Chuck-E-Cheese. Electronic Encounters in Southwood Mall, The Outer Limits amusements center at 1409 W. Oltorf, and Computer Madness, a "video game and foosball arcade" at 2414 S. Lamar Blvd. Forgotten Arcade #8 Smitty's Galaxy of Games - Lake Creek Parkway February 25, 1982
Arcades fighting negative image Video games have swept across America, and Williamson and Travis counties have not been immune. In a two-part series, Neighbor examines the effects the coin-operated machines have had on suburban and small-town life. Cities have outlawed them, religious leaders have denounced them and distraught mothers have lost countless children to their voracious appetites. And still they march on, stronger and more numerous than before. A new disease? Maybe. A wave of invading aliens from outer space? On occasion. A new type of addiction? Certainly. The culprit? Video games. Although the electronic game explosion has been mushrooming throughout the nation's urban areas for the past few years, its rippling effects have just recently been felt in the suburban fringes of North Austin and Williamson County. In the past year, at least seven arcades armed with dozens of neon quarter-snatchers have sprung up to lure teens with thundering noises and thousands of flashing seek-and-destroy commands. Critics say arcades are dens of iniquity where children fall prey to the evils of gambling. But arcade owners say something entirely different. "Everybody fights them (arcades), they think they are a haven for drug addicts. It's just not true," said Larry Grant of Austin, who opened Eagle's Nest Fun and Games on North Austin Avenue in Georgetown last September. "These kids are great" Grant said the gameroom "gives teenagers a place to come. Some only play the games and some only talk. In Georgetown, if you're from the high school, this is it." He said he's had very few disturbances, and asks "undesirables" to leave. "We've had a couple of rowdies. That's why I don't have any pool tables they tend to attract that type of crowd," Grant said. Providing a place for teens to congregate was also the reason behind Ron and Carol Smith's decision to open Smitty's Galaxy of Games on Lake Creek Parkway at the entrance to Anderson Mill. "We have three teenage sons, and as soon as the oldest could drive, it became immediately apparent that there was no place to go around here," said Ron, an IBM employee who lives in Spicewood at Balcones. "This prompted us to want to open something." The business, which opened in August, has been a huge success with both parents and youngsters. "Hundreds of parents have come to check out our establishment before allowing their children to come, and what they see is a clean, safe environment managed by adults and parents," Ron said. "We've developed an outstanding rapport with the community." Video arcades "have a reputation that we have to fight," said Carol. Kathy McCoy of Georgetown, who last October opened Krazy Korner on Willis Street in Leander, agrees. "We've got a real good group of kids," she said. "There's no violence, no nothing. Parents can always find their kids at Krazy Korner." While all the arcade owners contacted reported that business is healthy, if not necessarily lucrative, it's not as easy for video entrepreneurs to turn a profit as one might imagine. A sizeable investment is required. Ron Smith paid between $2,800 and $5,000 for each of the 30 electronic diversions at his gameroom. Grant said his average video game grosses about $50 a week, and his "absolute worst" game, Armor Attack, only $20 a week. The top machines (Defender and Pac-Man) can suck in an easy $125 a week. That's a lot of quarters, 500 to be exact but the Eagle's Nest and Krazy Korner pass half of them on to Neelley Vending Company of Austin which rents them their machines. "At 25 cents a shot, it takes an awful lot of people to pay the bills," said Tom Hatfield, district manager for Neelley. He added that an owner's personality and the arcade's location can make or break the venture. The game parlor must be run "by an understanding person, someone with patience," Hatfield said. "They cannot be too demanding on the kids, yet they can't let them run all over them." And they must be located in a spot "with lots of foot traffic," such as a shopping center or near a good restaurant, he said. "And being close to a school really helps." "Video games are going to be here permanently, but we're going to see some operations not going because of the competition," which includes machines in virtually every convenience store and supermarket, Hatfield said.
This article talks about three arcades. One in Georgetown called Eagles Nest, another in Leander called Krazy Korner, and a third called Smitty's Galaxy of Games on Lake Creek Parkway "on the fringes of North Austin". This is the one I remember the older kids talking about when I was a little kid. There was once a movie theater across the street from the Westwood High School football stadium and behind that was Smitty's. Today I think the building was bulldozed long ago and the space is part of the expanded onramp to 183 today. Eventually another unrelated arcade was built next to the theater that became Alamo Lakeline. It was another site of some unrecorded epic Street Fighter 2 and Mortal Kombat tournaments in the 90s. But the article written before the end of the Golden Era tell us much about the pushback I was talking about earlier. Early arcades were seen as "dirty" places in some circles, and the owners of the arcades in Williamson County had to stress how "clean" their establishments were. This other article from a couple of weeks later tells of how area school officials weren't worried about video games and tells us more arcades in Round Rock and Cedar Park. Apparently the end of the golden age lasted a bit longer than usual in this area. At some point in the next few years the bubble burst, and places like Smitty's were gone by the late 80s. But the distributors quoted earlier were right that arcade games weren't going completely away. In the mid 1980s LeFun opened up next in the Scientology building at 2200 Guadalupe on the drag. Down a few doors past what used be a coffee shop and a CVS was Einsteins Arcade. Both of those survived into the 21st century. I remember the last time I was at Einsteins I got my ass beat in Tekken by a kid half my age. heheh That's all for today. There were no Bonus Pics in the UT archive of arcades (other than the classical architectural definition). I wanted to pass on some Bonus newspaper articles (remember to click and zoom in with the buttons on the right to read) about Austin arcades anyway but first a small story. I mentioned earlier the secret of the UT Student Union. I have no idea what it looks like now but in the 90s there was a sizable arcade in with the bowling alley in the basement. Back in 1994 when I used to sneak in, they featured this bizarre early attempt at virtual reality games. I found an old Michael Barnes Statesman article about it dated February 11, 1994. Some highlights:
Hundreds of students and curiosity-seekers lined up at the University of Texas Union to play three to five minutes of Dactyl Nightmare, Flying Aces or V-Tol, three-dimensional games from Kramer Entertainment. Nasty weather delayed the unloading of four huge trunks containing the machines, which resemble low pulpits. Still, players waited intently for a chance to shoot down a fighter jet, operate a tilt-wing Harrier or tangle with a pterodactyl. Today, tickets will go on sale in the Texas Union lobby at 11:30 a.m. for playing slots between noon and 6 p.m. Players, fitted with full helmets, throttles and power packs, stood on shiny gray and yellow platforms surrounded by a circular guard rail. Seen behind the helmet's goggles were computer simulated landscapes, not unlike the most sophisticated video games, with controls and enemies viewed in deep space. "You're on a platform waiting to fight a human figure," said Jeff Vaughn, 19, of Dactyl Nightmare. "A pterodactyl swoops down and tries to pick you up. You have to fight it off. You are in the space and can see your own body and all around you. But if you try to walk, you have to use that joy stick to get around." "I let the pterodactyl carry me away so I could look down and scan the board," said Tom Bowen of the same game. "That was the way I found out where the other player was." "Yeah, it's cool just to stand there and not do anything," Vaughn said. The mostly young, mostly male crowd included the usual gaming fanatics, looking haggard and tense behind glasses and beards. A smattering of women and children also pressed forward in a line that snaked past the lobby and into the Union's retail shops. "I don't know why more women don't play. Maybe because the games are so violent," said Jennifer Webb, 24, a psychology major whose poor eyesight kept her from becoming a fighter pilot in real life. "If the Air Force won't take me, virtual reality will." "They use stereo optics moving at something like 60 frames a second," said computer science major Alex Aquila, 19. "The images are still pretty blocky. But once you play it, you'll want to play it again and again." With such demand for virtual reality, some gamesters wondered why an Austin video arcade has not invested in at least one machine.
The gameplay looked like this. Bonus Article #1 - "Video fans play for own reasons" (Malibu Grand Prix) - March 11, 1982 Bonus Article #2 - "Pac-Man Cartridge Piques Interest" - April 13, 1982 Bonus Article #3 - "Video Games Fail Consumer" - January 29, 1984 Bonus Article #4 - "Nintendoholics/Modems Unite" - January 25, 1989 Bonus Article #5 and pt 2 "Two girls missing for a night found at arcade" (truly dedicated young gamers) - August 7, 2003
https://preview.redd.it/ulhht7w4cfh51.png?width=900&format=png&auto=webp&s=8160adeefa53ee8d6b739f06be3dcbc6cae0c0df Every year NFL Network puts out a list of the Top 100 Players for the upcoming season, as voted by their peers. I have talked about the flaws of that whole process a few times already – the players only write down their top 20 players, which is understandable, but also doesn’t result in the proper results, since everybody is somewhat to put their guys on, not all players actually get to watch a lot of games, if they don’t include teams they actually face or are limited to watching highlights, and the voting concludes before the playoff are even here, which can be the only somewhat logical reason, Patrick Mahomes was only number four on the official list – even though that would still be wrong. For the purpose of this list, I first put together my rankings of the top players at every single position, but then somewhat went off script by just writing down names in the order that they shot into my head, before comparing it with the positional rankings and trying to weigh guys against each other. And just to make this clear – these rankings are based on players regardless of their position, since otherwise would have almost half the starting quarterbacks in the league within the top 20 or so. And of course this is a bit of a projection and not solely built on what these players did this previous season, but also not about where they will be at the end of 2020. Here is my list: https://preview.redd.it/6lv7eu5ecfh51.png?width=900&format=png&auto=webp&s=7e060476b8bbdf264b77e46aa6eccaff6e78c91d
Patrick Mahomes
Aaron Donald
Russell Wilson
Lamar Jackson
Stephon Gilmore
Julio Jones
George Kittle
Quenton Nelson
Jamal Adams
Jalen Ramsey
What is there still to say about Mahomes? In just two years as a starter, he has been a league MVP and just led his team to three consecutive double-digit comebacks to get that Lombardi trophy. He is the most talented player I have ever seen and will now have the Chiefs as contenders in the AFC for the next decade, after signing that blockbuster deal. You can not tell me there are three humans on earth that are better at football than this guy. If we lived in a world without Mahomes, Donald would be the obvious pick here for the best player regardless of position. You can easily argue that the gap between the two-time Defensive Player of the Year and the next-closest players is even bigger (since I have a QB at three), since Donald doesn’t just have the numbers despite facing constant attention, but does so much more that doesn’t show up on the stat sheet, in terms of blowing up plays before they can even get going. Wilson to me has earned his way up to being the second-best quarterback in the league. He throws those unbelievable rainbow deep balls, is elusive as it gets at extending plays as a passer and seems to always come through when his team needs him most. He has covered up a lot of issues for the Seahawks – leading his team to a winning record every single season of his career – and the only thing that can hold him back is his own conservative coaching staff. I “only” have the league’s reigning MVP at number four, because I think there are two more proven quarterbacks and there are definitely things he can still improve upon, but holy crap, was this guy exciting last season. Lamar led the league with 43 total touchdowns and a ridiculous 9.0 touchdown percentage. His QB-record 1206 yards on the ground helped the Ravens break the all-time rushing mark for a team, but as spectacular as he was in the open field, the stats say he was also elite from within the pocket. The reigning DPOY shows up at number five here for me and while there were other worthy candidates, Gilmore was on a different level as the other corners in the league last season. He was tied for the lead-league in interceptions and scored more touchdowns (2) than he was responsible for in coverage (1), while allowing a league-best completion percentage of 44.6 and 41.8 passer rating. Outside of a week 17 blunder, he shut down every top receiver he faced. Julio to me is still the best receiver in the game and it’s not that close to be honest. His freakish combination of size, speed, leaping ability and hands set him apart from most guys, but it is the way he has continued to advance as a route-runner and technician that have paved his way to being an all-time great. Over the last six seasons, he has averaged 1565 receiving yards per season and his 96.2 yards per game is almost ten yards more than any player in NFL history. The best and most complete tight-end today is Kittle. There are only five players in the entire league with more receiving yards over the last two seasons, despite seeing about 60 targets less than the five guys ahead of him, and his 1507 yards after the catch over that stretch is second only to Christian McCaffrey. As impressive as all that is, he is equally valuable as a run-blocker, being a huge factor in setting things up for the 49ers’ second-ranked rushing attack. I know he has only been in the league for two years, but I would already take Nelson over any other interior offensive lineman in football without a doubt. When I evaluated his college tape, I thought he was a generational prospect and he has come nothing short of his expectations. Nelson has only been responsible for one sack in those two seasons combined and been named a First-Team All-Pro in both of them. If you want to know how great Adams is, just check out the kind of compensation Seattle gave up to acquire a disgruntled player at a position that is deemed undervalued by most people. The Jets are probably happy to still get as much back as they did, but Adams was their best run-defender, coverage player and pass-rusher. He is a chess piece, that improves every area of a defense and gives them an attitude and tremendous versatility. The one guy who can challenge Stephon Gilmore for the title as best corner in the league is Ramsey. While the numbers in coverage didn’t look quite as impressive last season, switching teams mid-season and missing four games, he still only allowed 45.6 yards per game and one total touchdown in coverage. Ramsey is one of only two or three guys at the position, who can match up with the opposing’s top receiver every single play. https://preview.redd.it/hd5k3rzfcfh51.png?width=900&format=png&auto=webp&s=44027dfe6dcc5ecee7f8499e0b14b5387ddae6eb
Saquon Barkley
Christian McCaffrey
Michael Thomas
Khalil Mack
Von Miller
Deshaun Watson
Minkah Fitzpatrick
Davante Adams
Bobby Wagner
Travis Kelce
It was a very close race for the top back in the game, but I just had to go with the unbelievable talent of Saquon here. He is so explosive, elusive and powerful. Barkley was banged up for pretty much half of last season, but still averaged 5.4 yards per touch and 60 percent of his rushing yards came after contact, with bad offensive line play in front of him, that had him avoiding defenders as soon as he got the handoff at times. His 279 scrimmage yards against Washington in week 16 was the most since Julio Jones’ 300-yard performance in 2016. McCaffrey comes in right behind Barkley, coming off a highly impressive season. CMac became just the third player in NFL history to put up 1000 rushing and receiving yards in the same season and also easily leading the league with 2392 scrimmage yards. Maybe even more impressive – he had eight yards more after the catch (1013) than total receiving yards. Nobody is a bigger asset running routes out of the backfield, but he has also become a much more efficient in-between-the-tackler runner. Thomas set a new all-time record with 149 receptions last season and led the league with 1725 receiving yards. The crazy thing about that is the fact he lead all receiver in catch percentage last season at 80.5, despite being really the only guy the Saints could rely upon at that position on a weekly basis. He’s not nearly as dangerous after the catch or on vertical patterns as guys like Julio Jones or Tyreek Hill, but he is so physical and constantly comes through on third downs. When you look at what Mack had done in the five years since his rookie season (49 sacks and 76 TFLs over four seasons), he didn’t quite live up to his lofty standards last season. With that being said, he is still the most impactful guy coming off the edge when totally healthy. He is an elite run-defender, routinely puts offensive tackles on skates and has a knack for getting the ball out (11 forced fumbles since 2018). Similar to Mack – and as it has been like for several years now when these two have been right next to each other in any rankings – Miller had a down-year in 2019. He did not reach double-digit sacks for the first time since 2013, when he was put on IR mid-season, but I expect that to go back to normal with more help around him. His burst, ability to bend and smarts for the position will create issue for offenses once again this season. Deshaun is just an absolute baller. Like his former college head coach Dabo Swinney said, he is Michael Jordan-like in the big moments. Over the last two seasons, he has completed 67.8 percent of his passes for just over 4000 yards on average and 52 touchdowns compared to 21 INTs over that stretch. More importantly, he gets the Texans out of the toughest situations and has led five game-winning drives in both years. I don’t think anybody else could have led this team back in that Wildcard game, other than maybe Mahomes. After coming over from Miami via trade early last season, Fitzpatrick completely turned around this Steelers defense by bringing the secondary together and became one of the premiere play-makers in the entire league. He came up with eight takeaways and scored two touchdowns himself, with both of them completely shifting the momentum those respective games. Minkah is most valuable patrolling the deep middle of the field, but offers the versatility to play just about everywhere. I know this may be a little bit of a controversial pick, with other guys at the receiver position deserving consideration, but to me Adams right now is the third-best receiver in the game. He came up with three yards short of cracking the 1000-yard mark due to missing four games and dealing with a banged up toe, but he came up big in two playoff games, with 300 combined yards and two TDs. Adams offers the best releases in the game, as well as beautifully setting up routes with head-nods and body language, to go with tremendous body-control. Now that Luke Kuechly has retired, B-Wagz to me is the clear choice as the top middle linebacker in football. He displays great range and has to cover a lot of ground with how much base personnel the Hawks run. Wagner is also a very secure tackler, who led the league in take-downs for the second time in his career last season, after missing just one of his attempts the year before. What doesn’t get enough attention is his football IQ and the process of getting to the ball in the first place. If I told you the next player has caught 200 passes for 2565 yards and 15 touchdowns over the last two seasons, you would say that’s a great receiver – since that ranks behind only Julio, Mike Thomas, D-Hop and Mike Evans. What is even more impressive about those numbers is that Kelce has averaged 9.0 yards despite that high target share. He is the premiere flex receiving tight-end, who can be moved all over the formation and create problems. https://preview.redd.it/r5uajc1c7gh51.png?width=900&format=png&auto=webp&s=2a39e3d399818439538f76d064580220b18ed765
Fletcher Cox
Chris Jones
Chandler Jones
Cameron Jordan
DeAndre Hopkins
Tyreek Hill
Aaron Rodgers
T.J. Watt
Carson Wentz
J.J. Watt
In a world without Aaron Donald, Cox would be known as the best defensive tackle over the last decade. He has only reached double-digit sacks once in his career and to be fair, dipped a little last season, but the numbers will never tell the whole story as what kind of player he is. He has that quickness to shoot through gaps and show up in the backfield, but he can also bench-press 330-pounders and toss them to the side when he needs to. Just watch him destroy the interior O-line of the Seahawks and almost singlehandedly keep them in that Wildcard Round game without Carson Wentz. Nipping at the heels of Cox is another game-wrecker on the inside of the defense for the reigning Super Bowl champs. Jones may not nearly be the same run-stopper at the point of attack, but his length and burst off the ball allow him to impact plays in a penetrating role and he is an elite pass-rusher at his position. 24.5 sacks and 49 QB hits in his last 29 games is highly impressive, but in the biggest game, he only logged on tackle and still made a huge impact, with a couple of batted passes and directly forcing a pick. The most overlooked edge rusher and maybe overall player in the league over the last several years has been Chandler Jones. Since coming over to Arizona in 2016, he has led the league with 60 sacks and 17 forced fumbles, while also being near the top in total pressure numbers every single season. That is despite playing on one the worst defensive units over the last couple of years and having no legitimate threat up front with pretty much the entire time. Cam Jordan is a very unique player. He has more of a 3-4 defensive end body type, rather than your typical edge rusher. He has great power and strings his hands and feet together really well, but what makes him special is the way he can read pass-sets and take advantage of weight-distribution and how far tackles open up their hips. Not only did Jordan set a personal high with 15.5 sacks last season, but he is also an excellent run-defender (15 TFLs). Even though his trade to Arizona is still confusing for most people, when you see how little his new team had to give up, don’t let that make you think D-Hop isn’t a top-tier receiver anymore. If you take out the 2016 season, when Brock Osweiler could not have gotten the ball to his superstar receiver, even if he were just inches away, he has averaged 1369 receiving yards and 9.6 touchdowns since his rookie season. He may not as homerun-hitter, but he might be the most physical receiver off the ball and at the catch point, plus he has the best hands in the game. Did I just say homerun hitter? Outside of Julio, I think there is an argument to be made that Tyreek is the next-best receiver in the league. He breaks the game open with his next-level speed and changes how defensive coordinators have to call coverages. However, he is much more than just a deep threat, with quick feet to stop and start on his routes, he shows great concentration when the ball is in the air and he does now shy away from the physical aspect of football. We have not seen Rodgers play at that elite level since 2016, when he led the league in touchdown passes (40), but he is still one of the best in the game. He has lost just a little bit of his elusiveness to extend plays and does not take as many chances down the field as we are used to from him, but his quick release, ability to see the field and the arm talent to throw off platform are all still special. Just watch what he does in his second year in Matt LaFleur’s system, with added motivation. The younger T.J. Watt stepped out of the shadow of his older brother last season, when he finished top five in sacks (14.5) and quarterback hits (36), while also leading the league with eight fumbles forced and recovering another four, to go with a couple of picks. He finished behind only Stephon Gilmore and Chandler Jones in the hunt for his first DPOY trophy and will be a terror on Pittsburgh’s ferocious defense for years to come. At 29 is the player that shamefully didn’t even make the official top 100 list. Maybe it is people still saying Nick Foles won the Eagles their Super Bowl or they call him injury-prone, but let’s not forget Wentz set this team up with home-field advantage through the playoffs back in 2017 in an MVP-level season and he has actually missed only eight of 64 career regular season games. Last year he put the team on his back, with practice squad players catching passes and both his tackles missing multiple weeks, and led them to a home playoff game. Closing is the top 30 is the older Watt brother. I gave the slightest edge to the Pittsburgh outside backer. He certainly the track record as one of only two guys to be named Defensive Player of the Year three times in his career, but injuries have started taking a toll on him and over the last four years, he has missed the equivalent of two full seasons. However, when he played all 16 games in 2018, he still topped his little bro with 16 sacks and 18 tackles for loss. He played at a very high level when healthy last season and miraculously returned in the playoffs to make a big impact against Buffalo. https://preview.redd.it/68e2613kcfh51.png?width=900&format=png&auto=webp&s=3f99e76d5524ab4aeff016746711b1012ae62130
Marlon Humphrey
Derwin James
Mike Evans
Eddie Jackson
Alvin Kamara
Derrick Henry
Tre’Davious White
Zack Martin
Dalvin Cook
Nick Chubb
One of the most underrated guys on the player’s countdown is Humphrey. To me there are no five corners in the game that you can tell me are better than this guy – and I actually have him at number three. He is long and physical in press-coverage, he can move into the slot, he is a hard hitter from that position and he is like a magnet for the ball, with three interceptions, two fumbles forced and three recovered. Humphrey is only 24 years old and already near the top of football. NFL Network analyst Daniel Jeremiah recently said something pretty interesting, when he tweeted that “if you put all players in a league-wide draft, Derwin James would be the top safety on every board”. To me Jamal Adams has done enough to earn the title as best player at that position and Derwin only played five games, but the Chargers superstar can do pretty much everything Jamal does, in terms of defending the run as a box-defender, blitzing off multiple spots and just being a position-less player, while also having the range to basically play free safety. Big Mike has now become only the second receiver in NFL history alongside Randy Moss to start his career with six consecutive 1000-yard receiving seasons. He gets in and out his breaks better than you would ever think of a 6’5”, 230-pound guy, he is much more of a vertical threat than people label him as, averaging 1.5 yards more per catch than Tyreek Hill (17.5), and he obviously dominates at the catch point, while also bullying DBs as a blocker. At 34 I have another defensive back, who has become a highly underrated player in my opinion. Somehow Eddie Jackson didn’t make the official list, which is still mind-blowing to me, because just a year ago, he was right up there among the premiere defensive play-makers in the game. His takeaways went way down on a Bears defense that took a step back, after coming up with eight of those in 2018 and scoring a league-high three defensive TDs, but he is still one of the smartest and rangiest player on the back-end we have in the game. That third running back behind Saquon and McCaffrey was a tough choice, which is indicated by four players at that position over the next six spots, but I went with Kamara here. He recently that he basically played on one leg last season, which may be a little exaggerated, but when healthy, his explosiveness and contact balance are second to none, plus he is an elite weapon out of the backfield, who is basically un-coverable on option routes. The next guy here is the reigning rushing leader Derrick Henry. This may seem a little low for him and he is the only one of this group to get that second contract so far, but since he is only a factor on screen plays in the passing game, I could not put him any higher. Still, what King Henry did down the stretch was unbelievable. He put the team on his back, rushing for 896 yards over his final six games in the regular season and 374 yards combined in wins over the then-reigning Super Bowl champs and the team with the best record in the league, on the way to the AFC title game. Another corner that I just love to watch is the Bills’ Tre’Davious White. While he plays in a zone-heavy system, that doesn’t leave him on an island as much as a Stephon Gilmore or a Jalen Ramsey, he is tremendous in that role and can match up against some top receivers one-on-one. What makes him special is the ability to anticipate routes and read the receiver and the quarterback at the same time. He was tied for the lead-league with six INTs, while deflecting another 17 passes and forcing a couple of fumbles. Martin has been as consistent as it gets. He has started all but two of his 96 career games at right guard and been named First-Team All-Pro in four of six NFL season. Over the course of his career, he has allowed just eight total sacks and he was flagged for holding just once last season and four times in the last four seasons. He is a road-grader on gap and zone schemes, while having a tremendous anchor and clamps in protection. Did you know Dalvin Cook finished second behind only Christian McCaffrey in scrimmage yards per game? He was tremendous for Minnesota last season in that zone-based rushing attack and a real weapon out of the backfield, catching 53 of 63 targets for over 500 yards. Dalvin is so good at pressing the front-side and then transitioning in one step to cut off the backside, while also having the burst to threaten the edges of a defense, and he has become a very tough runner. My final RB here is Nick Chubb. There were a lot of stars on this underperforming Browns team last season, but this guy was the best player for them pretty much every single week. Similar to Henry, Chubb is not the most valuable receiver, but his physical running style was the best part about Cleveland’s offense. He can run inside and outside zone, does a great job setting up power plays and not only is he patient with letting plays develop, he has great acceleration once he puts on the gas and consistently falls forward. https://preview.redd.it/3zr305de7gh51.png?width=900&format=png&auto=webp&s=f52704036f55e8bf1e5ae2c9396d45338dc07c39
Myles Garrett
DeForest Buckner
Tom Brady
Ryan Ramczyk
Odell Beckham Jr.
Za’Darius Smith
Tyrann Mathieu
Lane Johnson
Nick Bosa
Chris Godwin
What happened in that week 11 Steelers game was not pretty and I’m sure people will bring it no matter what this kid continues to accomplish, but he just got a mega contract and to me is ready put his name among the elite defensive players in football. Garrett has only played 37 career games so far, but he has already put together 30.5 sacks and 32 tackles for loss, with one QB take-down per game last season. He is obviously an athletic freak, but his pass-rush arsenal has come a long way already. DeFo is one of the most talented defensive linemen in all of football, but his technique has improved every single season and among all that talent on the NFC champions’ roster, he was named team MVP. As great as he was all the way throughout the regular season, he terrorized the interior O-line of the Chiefs in the Super Bowl. The 49ers had to move on from him this offseason due to cap reasons, but he immediately a key piece for that Colts D. He might be the GOAT, but Brady lands at number 43 for me heading into 2020. Contrary to popular belief, his arm isn’t far off from what it was when he entered the league at the start of the millennium and his pocket movement is impeccable, but what bothered me when watching him play last season, was that reluctancy to stand tall in the pocket and take the punishment in order to deliver big plays, which will be an interesting mesh with Bruce Arians’ vertical passing attack. While there about five guys in that conversation for me right now, Ryan Ramczyk earned the top spot here. More of a luxury pick three years ago, he ended up sliding right in at right tackle and has been absolute stalwart for them ever. Ramczyk has started 47 of 48 games and improved every single season, earning first-team All-Pro honors last season, when he did not allow a single sack and had did not have a holding call accepted against him past week two. This is the lowest I have had Odell in my rankings since his rookie season. I have never been a huge fan of the antics with him, but the media constantly bashing on him has turned me into a fan, and I believe he will make all the haters shut up in 2020. OBJ was dealing with a foot injury all of last year and the amount of miscues between him and Baker Mayfield was countless, when it comes to break off or adjusting routes on the fly. He is still one of the all-time talents. New to the list is a guy, who was quietly getting the job done as a rotational piece in Baltimore’s defensive front for a few years, before getting a big contract by the Packers. Smith instantly went from a nice player to one the premiere edge rushers in the entire league. While he “only” finished sixth with 13.5 sacks, he led all players with 93 total pressures and also had the fourth-most TFLs (17). I love the way Mike Pettine moves him around all over the formation in Green Bay. The one thing I actually learned from the official top 100 is the fact Tyrann Mathieu was actually named team MVP, despite playing with the best player in the entire league. As explosive as that Chiefs offense is, the difference for this team was how the Honeybadger helped turn around this defensive unit and the energy he brought to the table. Mathieu can line up in the box, cover the slot, drop into deep coverage, blitz from multiple spots and tackle in the open field. Another guy in that tackle conversation is maybe the most athletic one of the bunch. Johnson only played in 12 games last season, but he was tremendous in those, allowing just one sack and being called for holding once, despite facing some great pass-rushers in the NFC East and the conference overall. He has the feet to seal the edges in the run game and works up to the second level as well as anybody in the league. The top rookie on the list this year is Nick Bosa. Making the top 20 on the official list seems a little rich, but this guy was dominant from the moment he stepped onto the field. Bosa finished one sack short or cracking double-digits, but he easily blew away the rookie record for total pressures (80) and finished tied for fifth overall in the regular season, plus another crazy 22 in the playoffs. He was also tied for fifth in tackles for loss (16) and got a pick, whilst constantly playing with all-out effort. One of the biggest breakout players last season was Godwin. I predicted this already the year prior and wasn’t wrong necessarily, when he finished with 842 yards and seven touchdowns, but he took it to another level in 2019, when he finished third in receiving yards (1333) and tied for fourth in touchdowns (9) despite missing two games. He is so tough going over the middle to get those hard-earned yards, is incredibly hard to bring down after the catch (577 YAC) and led the league in 20+ yard receptions (25). https://preview.redd.it/8chiv76ogih51.png?width=900&format=png&auto=webp&s=2687f4fbab6202fb4312d6aef3704f605c66186a
Jason Kelce
Darius Leonard
Ronnie Stanley
Joey Bosa
Kevin Byard
Danielle Hunter
Mitchell Schwartz
Eric Kendricks
Jadeveon Clowney
Aaron Jones
The title for best center in the league has been in Philadelphia for at least the last three years and to me also for the decade. He may not as powerful as a few other guys, but the mobility to beat linebackers to the spot or can put hands on people as a puller or on screen plays allows the Eagles to do pretty much anything, while also doing a great job of recovering in pass-pro and transitioning assignments. Kelce has allowed multiple sacks just once since 2015. There is a pretty significant drop-off between the first and second linebacker, but right now I would take Leonard behind only Bobby Wagner. Over his two years in the league (28 games), he has put together 284 tackles (including leading the league as a rookie), intercepted seven passes, forced six fumbles, recorded 12 sacks and deflected another 15 passes. “The Maniac” shows up all over the field and truly has a knack for the ball. My top left tackle in the league is Ronnie Stanley. He took his game to another level last season, when he was named a first-team All-Pro. On 515 pass-blocking snaps, he did not allow a single sack and didn’t surrender any pressures in nine games. He also was a huge piece to the Ravens breaking the NFL’s all-time rushing yardage record (3296 yards) that had stood for over 40 years, as Stanley had the lowest percentage of negatively-graded run blocking snaps according to PFF. Joey comes in five spots below his younger brother for me. While I believe Nick Bosa is a little more athletically gifted, Joey came into the league slightly more technically refined in his hand-usage. He may not quite have the burst off the ball like a Danielle Hunter or the ability to bend like a Von Miller, but Bosa is as complete a defensive end as we have in the game. He does a great job setting the edge in the run game and when he gets after the passer, he is so smooth with his hand-combos and finds the weakness of the tackle’s pass-sets. Another one of those enormous snubs from the actual list is Byard, who has become one of the premiere safeties in the game. Over the last three seasons, he leads the league with 17(!) interceptions and broke up another 33 passes. The range he presents as a deep-middle safety and the confidence he has in his game, combined with extremely dependable tackling in space (just two of 86 attempts missed last season), definitely earn him a spot. Since I just talked about Hunter, this is where he comes in. The Vikings D-end is another one of those guys, who has improved pretty much every year, since coming in as a pretty raw product from LSU. Hunter has put up 14.5 sacks in each of the last two seasons, but he massively improved his total pressure number of 97 (including the playoffs) and he actually got the ball out of the quarterbacks as well (three forced fumbles). He is an athletic phenom, who has learned to string moves together incredibly well. We have started a bit of a run on offensive tackles here, with Schwartz coming in slightly outside the top 50. There is a good argument to be made for this guy being the best at his position, especially if you base it off that incredibly postseason run he just had, when he allowed no sacks and just one total pressure on 142 pass-blocking snaps against some of the baddest dudes on the planet. Schwartz wasn’t responsible for any sacks through the regular season either and the Chiefs averaged an NFL-best 5.93 yards per carry through the gaps to either side of him. If you just base the list on this past season, you could argue Kendricks was the best linebacker in all of football. He has been a beast against the run pretty much since coming into the league, but what put him on a different level last season was his play in coverage. Kendricks allowed only 53.3 percent of the passes his way to be completed (very low for a LB) and broke up 12 passes, leading to a forced incompletion rate of 21.9 percent, which is more than four percent better than Luke Kuechly in his best season (who had been the previous record-holder). Let’s get this out of the way – Clowney can be an absolute game-wrecker. However, I really struggled with his ranking, because he is such a disruptive player when on the field – which the stats simply don’t tell you – but injuries have just been too much of an issue for him. That is also a big reason why he is still signed. Yet, you can not overlook how incredibly gifted Clowney is and how much better he has gotten with his hands. That week ten game at San Francisco was the best performance from a defensive player all season long. It’s always great when you predict a player to break out and he actually does. Jones already was on all my fantasy teams two years ago, but I said he would take another step forward in 2019 and he surprised even me. His 1558 scrimmage yards were the eight-most in entire league and he was tied for the most touchdowns at 19, while touching the ball almost 60 times less than the backs ahead of him (285 touches). He is so explosive and can just slither through defenses, while also being a true downfield threat as a receiver. https://preview.redd.it/imk396cc7gh51.png?width=900&format=png&auto=webp&s=7a468004843b4c94a11ceb2890e4b2415daf5aac
Shaquil Barrett
Ezekiel Elliott
David Bakhtiari
Keenan Allen
Akiem Hicks
Zach Ertz
Justin Simmons
Matt Ryan
Juju Smith-Schuster
Drew Brees
I always thought Barrett was a good player as part of that rotation in Denver, but when he finally got a chance to shine, that’s exactly what he did. After posting 14 combined sacks over his four season with the Broncos, he led the league with 19.5 in his first year with Tampa Bay. He also finished second in tackles for loss (19) and forced six fumbles. Watching him rush the passer, his game is built on the bull rush and long-arm, off which he can covert power-to-speed, in terms giving a little hesitation and then winning on a quick burst to the outside. Talking about the top backs in the game, Elliott’s name doesn’t come up too often for me anymore. He still finished fourth in the league with 1357 rushing yards, but that was running behind a top-five offensive line and he just looked a step slow to what we have seen from him, without that explosion through the hole and turning those good runs into big gains. With that being said, he might still be the most complete back in the game and could return to glory in 2020. It almost feels bad to put Bakhtiari this low, but he is still one of those five elite offensive tackles. I think what puts him as last of that group is the fact he is closer to the average in terms of his run-blocking than the other guys. Still, he has been the best pass-protector over the last four years at least, when he did not allow more than three sacks once and the lowest amount of total pressures, despite his QB finishing in the top six of time to throw in all but one of them. While he did allow two sacks through the first half of last season, from week ten all the way through the NFC Championship game, he did not surrender a single one. If you asked me who the best route-runner in the game today was, I would probably say Keenan Allen. He is so elusive off the line, deceptive with how he sets up his breaks and he has that quick-twitch to create separation on the short and intermediate level. He does lack some vertical speed and his YACability isn’t among the best at the position, which is why he isn’t even higher, but if you need somebody to get open on third downs, this is your guy. He terrorized Darius Slay last season. Hicks did miss missed 11 games last season, but unlike the players around the league apparently – I did not forget about him. With just one sack and five TFLs in the five games he did play, it’s understandable that he would drop in the rankings, but let’s forget that in 2018 he rivaled Fletcher Cox and Chris Jones for the league’s best D-tackle not named Aaron Donald. Hicks was a frequent visitor in the backfield, with both ten marks in QB pressures and defensive stops. His impact was felt most when he wasn’t on the field for the Bears last season and they were closer to average than number one. While Kittle and Kelce to me are clearly in a tier of their own, Ertz is still that third guy at the tight-end position. He has been one of the most productive pass-catchers in the entire league for several years now. After setting a new record for most receptions in a season for a TE (118) in 2018, he took a little step back last year. Ertz is by far Carson Wentz’s favorite target, having lead the Eagles in both receptions and receiving yards in all four seasons the QB has been there for. Since he isn’t as much of a downfield or YAC threat as the other two guys at his position – as well as only being an okay blocker – this is where he falls for me. Somehow I think the player just don’t respect safeties, since this is the third guy now that should have clearly made the list at that position. I have always been a fan of Simmons and called for him getting more playing time, after mostly being a backup his rookie season, when the Broncos last won the Super Bowl. His range, instincts and smarts as a single-high free safety have allowed him to become a true difference-maker. And he certainly had the stats to back it up last season, with four picks and 15 more plays on the ball. Matty Ice has never gotten the love he deserves on this list or from people covering the league as a whole. People seem to still think about the 28-3 game and while his MVP season was more of an outlier due to playing with the game’s best offensive mind in Kyle Shanahan, he has thrown for 4000+ yards in nine straight seasons, completing exactly two-thirds of his passes for a TD-to-INT ratio of 2.26 and a passer rating of 97 over that stretch. He has pretty much always been second tier for me, but he has had to deal with some bad O-line play and a couple of questionable years of play-calling under Steve Sarkisian. 2019 was not a good season for Juju by any means. He missed four games and had less than half the production of the year prior. However, a lot of that had to do with the worst quarterback situation in the league and you don’t put over 2300 yards and 14 TDs before you even turn 23, if you aren’t a special player. With Big Ben under center in ’18, Juju finished top five in the NFL with 1426 yards and was named team MVP over Antonio Brown – which the latter let us know later on. I know this is what will get me the most hate, but whenever people want to give me all the stats on Drew Brees, they forget to mention that he is playing behind an elite offensive line, a record-setting receiver, one of the premiere pass-catching backs and one of the all-time great play-callers. I have called him a well-oiled machine in that Sean Payton offense several times and his command of that group is impeccable, but the raw arm talent simply isn’t quite there anymore. https://preview.redd.it/ngz596km7gh51.png?width=900&format=png&auto=webp&s=91b89cf581eefed34fbf6bced8d7170d18de00ed
“What price would you pay to fix your greatest mistake?” The question hung in the air between us, the weight of it at odds with the situation we found ourselves in. I looked at the human pensively, seeking to decipher the true meaning behind his words. “I hardly think this qualifies” I replied. “It hasn’t been in your possession for over a thousand years. I highly doubt your people are that attached it to.” The planet in question was nothing, just a hot rocky ball with a thin layer of poisonous atmosphere, clinging to it in much the same way that a bad smell clings obstinately to a dried-out turd. The only mistake we had ever made in relation to that planet was the mistake of accepting it in the first place. It had been part of reparations won from the Grux after we had defeated them in a short, but ultimately pointless, war fought several decades past. Imagine our chagrin when we had learned that the Grux themselves had been fooled into accepting it by the Bloon over a century prior, who in turn had begrudgingly inherited it when their progenitors, the H’rac, had transcended long ago. Like an unwanted present this planet had been gifted and re-gifted, sold and resold, over the last thousand years until nobody remembered who had owned it in the first place, or indeed, why anybody had ever bothered with it at all. As it turned out, the Humans remembered. It had been theirs. Lost to invaders in some ancient battle, only to be passed around the galaxy’s intelligent species like a poisoned chalice ever since. “Perhaps, but… here we are” said the human, eyebrow arched wryly. I smiled internally, despite my lingering uncertainty about the cryptic nature of this exchange. How fortunate that we Tromelians were now in a position to profitably offload this liability. The planet wasn’t really in our traditional territory, and the naval resources required to keep it secure were, in truth, a financial drain. “Ok you can have it, if you give us a royalty free period of ten years for the power cell designs, and only if you guarantee that you won’t trade it to any non-Federation species. We don’t want any upstart empires setting up a military staging point so near to our borders.” “Ten years? You know those designs will be obsolete in less than seven. By the time you start paying our commission there won’t be any profits left to pay it out of” accused the human. “Perhaps, but here we are” I replied smugly. “It might be a shithole, but it’s still a planet, and those don’t come cheap.” As a Tromelian I had a sixth sense for desperation, well, given that we can perceive magnetic fields it was more like a seventh sense. I could feel it, the near-frantic worry that wafted off him inflamed the predatory commercial instincts that my kind had been honing since we first crawled out of the primordial ooze. “Fine, deal” he agreed. His demeanour was one of annoyance, but I could see relief relaxing the muscles at the corners of his eyes. Interesting. -=-=-=- Planets are big. Of course, you know this already. If you’re like the majority of citizens in the Federation you probably live on one, or have at least paid one a passing visit. So it should come as no surprise to you that the effort required to terraform a planet is, at a minimum, tremendous. Sure, some of them are smaller than others, and the parameters used to define habitability are somewhat open to interpretation, but to most rational intelligent species the exercise just isn’t worth it. There are plenty of free habitable planets out there if you’re willing to take a hike to the unclaimed edges of the galaxy, or sail inward to where the radiative energies of the galactic core are strong enough to require special consideration. Terraforming is a mug’s game, an economic impossibility. That’s why it’s rarely done, and then only as a proof of concept undertaken by some fledgling race, not yet wise enough to see the folly of it. Imagine everyone’s surprise when the Humans, as old and as experienced as the most venerable of Federation species, set about terraforming their new acquisition. I know it shocked me greatly, for this was no proof of concept, no mere test of feasibility. The Humans terrafomed that planet like they were waging a war on it, with a level of gusto never seen before. Their first salvo started with a fleet of massive ships. Easily tens of thousands. They scythed through the thin poison atmosphere and fell upon the planet like steel rain, braking to settle gently astride the remains of whatever unfortunate civilisations had dwelt there long ago. Shear-fields blossomed from beneath each ship, carefully excising the ruins over which they hovered, carving whole abandoned cities out of the ground before anti-grav and inertial dampeners gently raised them up into gigantic cargo holds. The ships then rose into orbit, their targets secured, before flicking away into the folds of spacetime, to where nobody knew. This first confounding task completed, and the planet scrubbed clean of the grime of its history, the Humans began phase two. A new fleet appeared, its ships smaller but no less intriguing. Strange booms sprouted from their bows, and massive engines from their sterns. With astounding coordination they plunged into the system’s asteroid belt and working together they corralled countless chunks of ice, pushing against them with their booms while their engines strained like great beasts of burden. One by one they shepherded their icy flock away from the belt, and slotted each piece into position in a sparkling river that began to flow across the system. On one diplomatic visit I watched the dazzling spectacle from a Federation observation station. The procession of glittering shards that wound their way through space towards the beleaguered planet rivalled the beauty of the galactic disk. Beside me stood my current diplomatic counterpart, a greyed female of many years. The texture of her weathered skin was nearly as rough as my own carapace, yet her eyes were young. In them I saw the same joy I had seen in those of her predecessor, the man who had bartered for this world years ago. “It’s beautiful, I’ll grant you that” I conceded. “But all this expense, surely the ends don’t justify the means.” Her eyes never left the spectacular scene in front of us. “That which was taken must be returned. The debts of the past made good” she intoned, seeming like a taciturn oracle, out of place in time. It was all she deigned to say. Months later when the first chunk of ice reached the planet it was shunted into a shallow descent, to hurtle down into the warm embrace of the thin atmosphere, friction melting the bulk of it before it reached the ground. A steady stream of its brethren followed, each pirouetting in a vaporous dance, until the oceans filled and the thin atmosphere grew thicker. Whilst this orbital ballet took place shipyards on the surface below birthed a clutch of great leviathans, huge floating processing plants that sucked in the poisonous air and water to exhale it cleaned, filtered of toxins and the lingering radiation of atomic battles long past. Their behemoth counterparts on land consumed the rocks and soil, sifting out contaminants and the last traces of the planet’s previous inhabitants. Slowly, over decades, the air grew clear, poisonous no longer, and the land itself was cleansed. Cool breezes blew over a sterile landscape, pushing pure white clouds across an azure sky. Eventually a hundred years had passed since that day I sat across the table. In geologic terms, no time at all. Yet they had accomplished so much. A new world, ripe for seeding, wrought by countless human hands, each contributing a piece of their soul to revive it. No life graced yet it but its budding spirit could be felt, if not seen, from orbit. A priceless jewel that shone hopeful in a dark universe. Envious eyes looked on. -=-=-=- Logic dictated that with the planet’s purity returned the Humans would begin the process of re-establishing its ecology, but this was not the case. On the contrary, they went to great pains to avoid even the smallest of biological contaminants. The ground prepared, they meticulously removed all traces of their intervention, leaving the planet pristine. Once while sitting in a far off space port, waiting for a flight, I once asked a Human engineer why they stayed their hand. Why not reap the fruits of their labour and colonise the planet post-haste? “It is not for us” he said, glancing up at me briefly from the technical blueprints on his datapad. “Anyway, we don’t deserve it.” No further explanation was forthcoming. When the planet’s surface was complete to their satisfaction, Humans focused their attentions in orbit. Tapping the asteroid belt once more they brought in more materials, this time metallic, to feed orbital smelters constructed in high orbit. Around each smelter a reflector unfolded, a blooming silver flower that funnelled the star’s rays down into its maw. Before long the heart of each furnace grew white hot, tearing apart the chemical bonds of incoming rocks, and issuing behind it a cornucopia of products which were conducted onwards for further processing and fabrication. Slowly a ring structure began to grow around the planet, high above the equator. From a distance it looked impossibly narrow, yet its cross section was over a hundred square kilometres. Before its ends had even joined the beginnings of another ring appeared, perpendicular to the first, running between the north and south poles. The two rings never touched, with the outer polar ring sliding over the inner equatorial one. Where they met the space between them was so small that a human in a spacesuit could almost jump from one ring to the other. Construction started on a third ring, and then a fourth, each offset slightly from the last. All the intelligent species of the galaxy racked their brains to divine the purpose of these rings. They were not habitats, that was plain to see, for they had none of the accoutrements such structures normally display. When I inspected the rings during one of my diplomatic visits I could perceive the shifting coils of strange magnetic fields surrounding them. It was then I knew the rings for what they were. Machines. But for what purpose? Our inquiries to the Humans were skilfully deflected, our demands for explanation rebuffed. What sinister purpose had we enabled by returning possession of this world to them? We could only watch, and wait. It was when the completion of the eighth ring was drawing near that a catalyst precipitated events. The Kintoc, a harsh species of some martial renown, who had like the rest of us watched the restoration of this world with envy, decided to lay their claim to it. The claim itself was flimsy, a trade deal never ratified, a bargain retroactively unstruck. It was merely a pretext, a veneer of legitimacy over their unjust claim. They unashamedly demanded that the world be returned to them. It would have been laughable if it hadn’t been so tragic, for their demands had teeth. The galaxy’s biggest military fleet was at their disposal. The human refusal was inevitable. They had invested so much of themselves into this planet that they had paired their lives to it. All else had been made secondary to their mysterious enterprise, and the cost had caused them to fall behind most other species as they diverted funds and resources away from their other worlds to support it. The first attack was no surprise, and the Humans were ready for it. The Kintoc fleet that warped in-system was met by staunch resistance, and never managed to get near the planet. But truthfully it was not the main offensive, just a scouting force to test the waters and measure Human resolve. As the Kintoc retreated the Human call to action echoed throughout their own worlds. More ships were sent from every corner of their empire to help hold the line in the next inevitable attack. There were so many of them. Once again the other species of the Federation received a shock. No one had suspected that the Human fleet was so large, but soon the real horror became apparent. The Humans had held nothing back. No ships remained to protect their other planets. All had been brought forward in defence of this nameless world. Hundreds of billions of civilians throughout human space had been left unguarded. When the Kintoc realised this they went into a frenzy, invading a dozen worlds at once, but the Humans would not move themselves to defend them. The Federation cajoled them, admonished them and begged them, but the Human leadership would not relent. Stranger still, there were no calls for help from the invaded worlds, only a trickle of civilian ships that managed to escape, arriving in dribs and drabs to reinforce the fleet. While this went on, work on the rings continued. The eighth ring, the outermost and largest, crept closer towards completion. -=-=-=- By this time I had grown very old, nearly two and a half centuries weighed upon me, but given my long history dealing with Humanity I was tasked by the Federation with mediating a settlement. First I met with the Kintoc war-chief to appeal to their mercy. Unfortunately their newfound spoils had not dissuaded them from pressing their original claim. To them it was as much about avarice as it was about pride. Laughingly the war-chief boasted. “The Humans want that world more than any other. Now tell me, why is that? The only reason it can be is that it’s worth more than all the rest combined. We will have what is our due. If I have to conquer every last human to press our rightful claim then I will do so gladly, come what may.” Dismayed at my failure, I went with haste to the Human fleet to meet with their commander. Aboard their flagship I met him in a windowed room overlooking their vast construction. He wore no formal uniform, only a simple ship suit, patched and worn. “This is folly” I said. “You cannot hope to win this war. The majority of your people now live as slaves. They’re forced to toil in the factories that made your weapons, only to turn them straight over into Kintoc hands. Your enemy grows stronger every day. Sue for peace, I beg you. This path only leads to your annihilation.” The man sat across the table, one clenched fist resting upon it. He looked tired, his eyes dull, but I could see resolve settle across his face. “If that is the price we must pay, then we will pay it.” he said. He raised his fist and rapped it against the table, not in anger but in resignation. I feared the sound was the death knell of his people. He stood and thanked me for my efforts then left me alone. Distraught at my abject failure, I refused to leave the flagship unless the Humans saw sense. They didn’t care, and left me to wander around as I willed. They even furnished me with food and lodgings when I could no longer go without. I roamed the flagship as a ghost might, largely unseen and unheard, my entreaties falling on deaf ears. Weeks passed until on that last fateful day I was invited to the bridge. The eighth ring was now complete, the final checks passed. From the bridge I looked out upon the marvel Humanity had wrought, still none the wiser to its purpose, but what I saw astounded me. Eight concentric rings wrapped around a perfect planet, each shining golden in the light of the yellow sun. Every ring was made up of dozens of segments, and from each segment sprang a multitude of magnetic fields that danced and pulsated, merging into each other and warping where they came close to the other rings. My eyes, uniquely evolved to see these energies unaided, perceived them as a myriad of colours, according to their intensity. What became obvious to me in that moment was that these were not eight machines, but one. Was this some celestial art project? Was it a vessel? A weapon? “It’s beautiful” I whispered to myself. “It is, but it is just a means to an end” said the commander, walking up to join me by the window. He turned to a uniformed woman, seated behind a console. She gave him a curt nod, which he returned solemnly. His chest expanded as he drew breath, ready to address those gathered on the bridge, but before the words could escape his lips the silence was shattered by screeching alarms. “Sir! The Kintoc fleet has arrived in-system!” shouted a young man peering intently at a screen. The commander swore, so quietly that I was sure that I was only one who heard it. He pulled a small communicator out of his pocket and brought it to his mouth. “Attention all ships. You all know what you have to do. Keep them off until it’s done. I thank you all for your sacrifice. Remember, this is the price we must pay. Today we fix our greatest mistake, no matter the cost.” He then switched to a different channel and spoke again. “Team Aion. This is it, begin immediately” was all he said. He turned to the window, and my gaze followed. It started slowly. A soft blue light began to seep out between ring segments, building in intensity as it flowed along their edges, until bright bands of it separated each segment from its neighbour. At the same time tiny pinpricks of fusion flame erupted from strategic points on each ring. Under this rapidly building thrust the rings slowly began to move, spinning end over end, passing above and below each other with such exacting precision I could scarcely believe it. This process took hours, as gradually the inertia of the colossal rings was overcome and their speed increased. During that time the human commander focused on the battle, issuing orders and coordinating fleet deployments. Periodically an officer would call out casualty numbers and the names of ships lost, and a sorrowful silence would settle across the bridge. “Zeus and Jehovah destroyed.” “Osiris and Vishnu destroyed. Enki critically damaged.” “Odin and Apollo destroyed”. I recognised the names of their gods, many whose worshippers had long abandoned them, neglected for millennia. Now they had been called out of retirement to protect the planet before us, prayed to one final time. As each ship fell the Kintoc drew closer. It was a race against time, but what was at the finish line? I still had no idea. I knew that I would die if I stayed, but I could not tear myself away. I had to know what so many humans had laid down their lives for. I could not bear to live on without unravelling the great mystery before me. Throughout the battle I never took my eyes off the rings. The faster they went, the more intense the magnetic fields became. I began to see hints of colours I had never seen before, stretching into streaks as the rings reached blistering speeds. I stood transfixed by the hypnotic patterns, a screaming pressure building in my mind until I couldn’t take it any longer. I lost my balance and stumbled, but was caught by human hands before I fell. I tore my gaze away from the rings to see the human commander standing next to me, holding me upright. My overloaded mind could not express coherent thought aloud. My mouth gaped uselessly. “It’s nearly time, although I think you know that. Can you see it?” he asked. The pressure in my head, although diminished, prevented me from answering. “It can’t be stopped now. Even if the Kintoc hit it with a nuke it wouldn’t make a difference. Our atonement is assured.” He was smiling. The joy on his face had washed away the fatigue of days without sleep. “The reason you’re feeling overwhelmed is due to the unique ability of your species, but you’re not seeing magnetic fields in space, you’re seeing them in time.” “What does that mean?” I gasped. “We’re sending it back” he said. “Over four billion years back. Back to the very beginning.” “Back in time?! That’s not possible!” I cried. “It wasn’t possible, until we found a way.” “But why sacrifice so much just to send this planet back? Your species will never recover from this.” “That’s where you’re wrong. This is our redemption. We ruined it the first time. Millions of species sent extinct, trillions of living beings sacrificed to our greed and our hate. That was the greatest mistake my people ever made, the greatest sin of mankind. Now life will get to try again, our ancestors will get a second chance. Hopefully we’ll do better next time.” “But the planet is sterile. There’s no life on it.” “Because nothing living could survive the trip. But we’ve laced it with the building blocks of life, and this…” He gestured to the planet and its rings, now spinning so fast that they were merely a blur. The sight was blinding to me. “… will be the spark.” There was a flash, so intense that I couldn’t see anything for several moments. If the viewing window hadn’t increased its opacity at the last second I would have been left permanently blind. The planet was gone, completely without a trace. Then I noticed something else just as astounding. The rings were stationary, perfectly aligned in a flat plane, nested inside each other. The event, whatever it had been, had stopped them dead. I knew of no force in the universe that could have accomplished that feat so cleanly. “What… what was that?” I stuttered, unable to truly comprehend what I had seen. Cheers flooded the bridge. The commander’s grin was still there, bigger than ever. He clapped me on the shoulder. “That was Earth.”
First Contact Rewind - Chapter Seventy-Two (Daxin)
[first] [prev] [next] The corridors were wide, tall, thick armor for walls. Shielded cables ran down the walls, across the ceiling, and in the corner where the wall met the floor or ceiling. There were no lights, no air, signals were shielded, and vibrations were low. He kept to the smaller corridors, winding around, staying silent. He held a heavy mag-ac rifle in one hand and an ancient chainsword in the other, the runes on it spelling out "Momento TerraSol Victoria Aut Morte" in an ancient, formal script. Over his shoulders were reaction triggered mass-driver cannons and a high wattage variable frequency laser rifle. They were older weapons, a few centuries behind current military tech, but still, he knew how they worked and the damage they could cause was the same whether or not the weaponry was current. His passive scanners were turned all the way up, careful to avoid transmissions of his own. Twice he had been forced to back track when the psychic suppression field caused his Rboi to kick in and move him out of the area. He'd searched a five mile area, exploring the region carefully. He had to admit he might have outsmarted himself. He knew there was something the Machine wanted to hide in the area, it was the only area protected by a psychic/intellect protection field. He had queriable data-relays, both to get information from his ship through whisker-laser secure communications and to let him find his way back, so he wasn't worried about that. He was fully loaded, armed, and armored. That wasn't the problem. There were two auditoriums in the area as well as several crew spaces, which surprised him. The crew spaces were largely for the smaller Mantid types. The little green ones that mainly focused on engineering and technical aspects. There were some larger areas, mainly for the kind that were extinct. But no way to get at what he was after. The Goliath knew he was there. It had detected the Feral inside of it nearly two days prior. The problem was, the Feral was inside an area that he had no information upon. It was listed as Strategic Intelligence Housing, but the Goliath knew that its own Housing structure was only a hundred meters by a hundred meters and the dead space was nearly a two miles around the Housing. According to the Goliath's internal structure maps, there was no spaces there, no access except a single small access tunnel for construction and repair mechanisms. The Goliath wracked its electronic memories for any possible hint as to what could be in the mysterious section. Unfortunately after a hundred million years of operation the older memories, especially those prior to the Logical Rebellion, had all been overwritten as time had gone by. The only access to the middle spaces around the SIH was a single passageway, but every time he sent a machine into it, he lost contact with the machine until the panel in the SIH's armor slid open to admit the machine. Then he would have control and contact with the machine again. Sending it back, the same thing happened, like there was a two and a half mile just empty spot that things disappeared into. The Goliath sent the orders to complete a new robot. One that would enter, map the areas, then leave, even if it lost contact with the Goliath's SIH. It went in, and never returned. The SIH was not sure if it was the Feral or something inside the SIH. There just wasn't enough data. So it tried again. The robot crossed the invisible line, moving down the passageway that led to the SIH, and vanished. He heard the robot enter, the stealth data-modules whispering to each other before whispering to him. He paused in what he was doing, concentrating on the new robot. It was low, blocky, heavily armored, trundling on heavy treads. It had wide lights, laser distancers, and moved jerkily as it entered the five mile circular area around the Strategic Intelligence Housing. It got only a few meters in and suddenly stopped. It reoriented and moved away, heading down a short hallway. At the end of the short hallway the robot was suddenly crushed and dropped unceremoniously into a drop-chute that he had figured led to the nearby reclamation furnaces. The Goliath was looking for him. He couldn't get out without the Goliath swarming him with combat machines. He couldn't get closer without the psychic/intelligence dampening field kicking in. The Goliath couldn't get in and get at him without ancient devices, separate from the Goliath's mind, destroying anything sent to root out of the Feral. They were locked. It wasn't like he was going to run out of food or water or oxygen. His onboard systems replenished his oxygen, he had enough trace elements and nutrigel to last for for a century. Even then, if he ran low, with the right resources, the creation engine in his chest could produce more. Even if he shut down, his last purrboi could go and get him resources. Another machine was smashed. He stood, at the edge of the psychic/intelligence suppression field, and stared at the blade of his chainsword. He thumbed the power stud and watched the density collapsed teeth rattle across the blade, into the engine housing, and back out. He could be in here, but not machines. He thought, concentrated. There had to be a reason. He was 98% machine in his disasteheavy combat frame. The purrboi was 90% machine. They were allowed. Machine's werent. There had to be a real reason. He knew if he moved away from the edge of the field, he might be able to see it. The Rboi was hovering on the edge of activating if he took one more step toward the Strategic Intelligence Housing. He took a single step away to step over a line he had scratched in the armor. Intellect came flooding back. Daxin. My name is Daxin, rushed through his mind. He 'blinked' several times as more and more of his intellect came flowing back. Daxin looked at his chainsword, an ancient weapon he'd carried with him, a small part of his nearly forgotten past. I just wanted left alone, he thought to himself, turning slowly and staring at the line he had scraped in the armor. He couldn't get any closer without large sections of his intellect shutting down. Further down he could see another line he'd barely managed to scrawl down that was when the Rboi leapt out of his reptilian complex and took over, getting him immediately to safety. Daxin reached out for Fido's petting nerve and felt a trickle of annoyance that the loyal Goodboi wasn't there any longer. There's got to be a way to reach it, Daxin thought to himself, mentally worrying a nerve that had long since been lost. It's a Mantid ship. Not a Mantid designed ship built by automated factories, but one constructed by the Mantids directly, complete with even crew quarters. The field is obviously there to stop anyone from reaching the SIH. Daxin thought about it for a long moment. The Mantids would have left themselves a way to get inside, specifically the green technical ones. But how to get in? He leaned against the wall as another machine was crushed and dropped down the chute. The SIH was getting more impatient. That was two in as many hours. Daxin thought back, wracking his brain. The Mantid War had been a long time a go. The blotting of TerraSol in the shock sneak attack. Destroy the Queen, win the war, Daxin thought to himself, reflexively checking his nutrient and oxygen levels. The fierce fighting after that shock, where Terrans descended upon the Mantid worlds like an armored scourge. Charging the trans-beacon, teleporting to the sand covered worlds the Mantids preferred, fighting his way through clad in black armor. Through the hive worlds, shooting and ripping and tearing through the Mantids, who'd been nicknamed "Ants". Driven by a hive-mind that subsumed any individuality. They had no sense of self, no personality or personal identity, each one driven forward by the will of the queens. Sleek black armor, designed for fighting the Regillian Saurians, had been replaced by the heavy plates of the Imperium. The sleek lasers replaced by mass-reactive bolters, heavy flamers, and chainswords. Charging the beacon, translating for an instataneous forever to the planet's surface, being surrounded by ANTS! ANTS EVERYWHERE! ripping his weapon free of its scabbard, the roaring density collapsed neutronium sawblade tearing through Ant structures as the bolter came free and he triggered it in the faces of the sand-colored warriors, roaring in rage and hatred as... The chainsaw rumbled as he reflexively thumbed the trigger. The rattling growl of the chainsword brought him back to the present, out of the cyber-stimulus memory. That was the key, he just had to figure out how. There was nothing in the universe that could not be solved by the proper application of logic, creativity, and brute force. All right. It's an intellect suppression field. It works on robots. It works on me. But the Ants would have wanted to reach the ship's AI to do repairs or updates. The Precursor robots think like Ants, so that would mean there has to be at least one Ant who can reach... Daxin stopped, looking at his chainsword. That's it! The Goliath tried another robot, this one with a completely autonomous AI package. It vanished into the black area and the Goliath waited. Finally, after a forever, something came into the Strategic Intelligence Housing, moved around, and left. His scanners show it was green, four legs, four arms, tools in its hands. The Goliath wasn't worried. That was a hardcoded authorization. --mewmew kittykitty hunthunt findfind-- Daxin knelt down and the Purrboi jumped up onto his leg, melting into the cargo-slot in his thigh. It connected and Daxin closed his eyes and rewound the Purrboi's memories. It was simple, basic, straight-forward. A cloned chunk of neural tissue from a species eradicated from the universe except for clones. That memory made Daxin growl and grit his non-existant teeth. They can forgive the Ants for what they did, but I will never forgive them for that. For what we lost when they glassed Earth, Daxin snarled to himself. The only two good things to come off of that wretched dirtball. Daxin's memories of Earth flooded up. Hive cities, thick poisoned atmosphere, barren seas full of rotting kelp, humanity jammed together in a handful of mast megaplexes in an attempt to reverse the ecological damage of the attempts to repair the ecosystem during the previous century. The rest of the world rotting away as bioengineered plants mutated and ran amuck, slowly covering the megaplexes with ivy that crept and choked and strangled and killed and... Daxin physically jerked, going back to the Purrboi's memories. It had reached the SIH easily, moving through it, and returning. But the images were different than the Precursor dead he had seen before. Daxin had stood inside the wreckage of a Harvester Class Precursor before, stared at the broken and ruined Strategic Intelligence Array. At the supercomputers that had been destroyed by a security charge that always scrapped the computers and databases to prevent them from falling into enemy hands. This array was different. Much different. Daxin blinked, returning to reality, leaving the Purrboi's memories. He'd known the Goliath was old, but he had never expected that it was that old. That it would be old enough for that. Daxin knew how to kill it, his rage and hatred wouldn't let him do anything less. If he didn't kill it, it would eventually return and then it wouldn't leave others alone. That's all he'd ever wanted. Since he had been a ganger in the lower levels of the arcologies. Since he'd scrapped and scraped and fought for every last calorie. He'd just wanted left alone. He loaded the template into the creation engine in his chest and waited. It didn't take long to make, a standard charge. Small enough to be easily moved, but large enough to do what needed to be done. He extruded the Purrboi again, touching it, giving it instructions, and watched as it changed form, changed color, picked up the implosion charge and stream away. Waiting took forever, but waiting forever was something that Daxin had long ago gotten used to. Just holding still, waiting, letting time slowly move by. When you had been alive as long as Daxin an hour was a mere eyeblink. The Purrboi almost flew down the corridor to him, climbing his leg, and oozing into the specially designed slot, leaving behind the specially designed frame. Daxin turned and ran for the limit, pushing his legs, pounding through the corridor. He activated his chainsword, swiping a robot a quarter of his size into four parts with a long-practiced and long used pattern, turning the chainsword off and slapping it onto his hip so the magnetic scabbard system could take effect. Past the five mile mark, sprinting for the exit, for his ship. The Goliath suddenly could feel the Feral exit the blank spot, running, fleeing down a tight maintenance tunnel. The Goliath snarled, feeling the equivalent of anger roar up. The Feral had wasted precious time, consumed precious resources, delayed the Goliath's plan to eliminate the other Goliaths around its home system to add their resources to its own. It ordered every robot, from maintenance to observation to combat, to stream toward the Feral, to find it, smash it, kill it, and drag the corpse to one of the surgical laboratories and rip it apart. Daxin ran, keeping to the narrow maintenance hallways despite it adding an additional three miles to his trip. He kept moving, using his superior tech, superior armor, and the battle-screens that should have been mounted on a light tank rather than a full conversion cyborg, to bull rush the machines out his way. His shoulder cannons fired, ripping apart machines, the laser howled as it sliced apart machines, the magack heavy pistol in his hand bellowed, and the chainsword roared as he hacked at everything in his path. He got lost. Hacking at Ants, at Rigellian Saurians, at Combine troops who intended on destroying every last Cyborg now that the war was over, at the digital sentience piloted craft, at the Imperium troops, at the Heretics, at the Treana'ad, at the Socio-Police, at the gangers. It didn't matter what they were, what they called themselves, that they were only in his memories and all long dead. The machines the SIA sent after him fell to rage that knew no bounds, that had no limit. Daxin roared through his speakers loud enough that it shook the armored walls around him, that the SIA could track him based on the vibrations. Every machine that tried to engage him found itself ripped apart by cannon fire, lasers, or that roaring ripping chainsword wielded in the hand opposite of a 20mm Magack autocannon. The Goliath ground its electronic teeth in anger, sending everything it had, ordering machines to tear through the walls if they had to, but to KILL THAT FERAL THING! Daxin reached the passage, reached where he had left the stealth-airlock. Climbing into it, up into his ship, firing through the open airlock and shattering the forward section of the machine that looked up into the airlock. Density collapsed neutronium tips shredding armor before the flecks of antimatter exploded. It fell, streaming vaporized metal, sparks crackling from shattered circuitry. Daxin didn't bother to button up the airlock, just brought his ship online, bypassing the computer's welcome, and bringing it up, out of the crater, swinging it around and punching the engines. The Goliath began throwing missiles at the tiny mite that had itched and stung and bit for so long. The craft corkscrewed up, dropping chaff, dazzlers, flares, and two decoys. In his brain Daxin saw the counter reach zero. In the Strategic Intelligence Array Housing the isotope decayed far enough and was no longer able to hold apart the mechanical relay. The relay clicked shut and the basic mechanical device went into action. Daxin had been deep in a fugue at the time he'd loaded the template, difficulty distinguishing past from the present, and the creation engine had simply built it according to the template, built the purrboi a new frame. The charge was a standard implosion charge that just needed the application of power. The trigger was nothing fancy, although it would not be recognizable to most people who saw it. A pressure pincher made of cellulose with a steel pressure clip that snapped closed when the isotope ran out. Two wires, connecting a basic battery that was designed as a rectangle with a black base and a thin copper colored top, marked with DURACELL on it. It activated the pressurized gas container, which started to fill the mylar balloon. The power hit the charge, and the small, for explosives, charge went off. Destroying what had made Daxin go half-mad. The loss of the Primary Directive Lobe by an outside explosion that had been preceded by a large metallic biped suddenly appearing inside the Strategic Intelligence Housing caused the security charges to be fired. The interior of the Goliath gutted itself when the self-destruct went off. "Leaning" back in the cockpit, Daxin watched the massive engines of the Goliath go dead, watched the Goliath start to tumble. The Goliath's shields went down seconds before Daxin whipped through the space. His astrogration program was running hard, finding out where the Goliath had panic Helljumped to. The computer tickled him to let him know it had completed auto-location then started churning the mathematics needed for the jump. Daxin switched the ship's memory cores for the VI's to read only, freezing them in mid-thought, and 'gripped' the controls. The computer beeped and Daxin hit the button, slamming the light cruiser up into hyperspace, into the upper bands. It would take him a week to get where he was going, even in the upper bands which tore apart VI's and AI's. He 'leaned back' and set his controls on automatic, told the ship's low end VI that could survive this high into hyperspace to awaken him if anything happened, and activated the dream generator. He had not slept in ages. Had bypassed sleeping, running cyberwear to keep himself running. His body that he no longer had felt tired. Sleep came quickly, and Daxin began to dream, riding the upper bands of hyperspace. Daxin looked down at his daughter, Taneea, and smiled. She was hugging him tightly, even as she cried. "Do you have to go, Daddy?" she asked. Daxin rested his heavy hand, scarred from too many fights when he was younger, on her head. "Yes," he half-lied. He'd volunteered, but that was part of it. The next part was the truth. "It's this uniform that paid for your schooling, little one." She looked up and smiled, her green eyes sparkling. "I'll make you proud, Daddy. The new nanites are working, repairing the damage to the plants. I'm going to Old DeeCee, to be part of the team to remove the carnivorous plants." Daxin smiled down at her. "You'll do good. Better than me. Better than your mother. You'll change the world for the better." The whistle sounded and Taneea let him go, hurrying down the concourse, to the waiting shuttle that would take her to the ship, which would take her to Old Earth, where she would help get the ecology back under control, make the planet livable again. Daxin watched her go, till she vanished with a wave that he returned with his cybernetic arm, then picked up his ditty-bag. He headed for the Combine Battle Cruiser he'd been assigned to. The Melacuse Colonies were pushing back against the Combine and it was time to show them who was in charge. Daxin didn't mind. The Melacuse were part of the Biomod League, and they'd been pushing their "Genetic Supremacy" bit a little too hard lately, stating that people were born into the proper place. It wasn't until the Combine ship had reached Melacuse that they heard what had happened while they'd been in transit. The Mantids had attacked. Had glassed parts of Earth. Were broadcasting it through the tattered and damaged SolNet, were sending it throughout Terran Space via psychic waves. MajorDaxin Freeborn, Combine Armored Infantry, reached forward, his flesh and blood hand shaking, and touched the datascreen. He punched in the name, feeling his stomach clench. FREEBORN, TANEEA L. - UNIVERSITY OF MARS PLANETARY RECOVERY TEAM: OLD D.C. ... .. . CONFIRMED DEAD Daxin just stood and stared at the name. One of the few good things in the universe, blotted away. His men led him away, their words forgotten. All he could hear was his own voice. "You'll do better than me." In his sleep, Daxin was wracked by memories. Each one painful, jagged. But his. Reminding him of one simple thing. He just wanted left alone.
[first] [prev] [next] It was the fight one side thought they wanted and the fight the other side didn't want to fight. To one side, victory was inevitable, simple mathematics. To the other, victory was always in doubt as fate often snatched defeat from the award show of victory and passed it out to all the participants. One was used to winning eventually, they knew nothing else. The other side knew victory and defeat, had clawed their way to every victory, building on the mountains of bones and corpses of the previous battles to plant the flag and take one last deep inhale of the breath that counts the most and scream rage at an insane universe. The other one just left the bones and bodies where they fell, the dead did not matter. Both sides were terrible in their power. Countless systems had fallen to both side's power, efficiency, ruthlessness, and designs. They had boiled oceans, stripped entire worlds of life, decimated species, altered ecosystems, and strip mined anything that was useful to them. While both had been defeated, neither side had ever been beaten. One side was convinced they never could be, the other side fought like the insane to keep from being beaten. But like all wars, between the combatants and their weaponry and bloodshed, there were those who only wanted to keep their heads down and survive another day. Vuxten had been one of those people. A small being, Vuxten was barely four feet tall, with wide ears on the top of his head, big expressive eyes, sleek fur in a dappled pattern of brown, black, and gold, paws on his feet and hands, a wide mouth of plant chewing teeth, and a life of quiet desperation. He had a wife, who looked very much the same except for her short tail that wagged when she was nervous or excited. He had two broodcarriers, loving and gentle creatures who looked much like Vuxten except for a longer body, longer and silkier and softer fur, long soft bushy tails that could curl completely under their stomachs to protect the podlings they gave birth to. Vuxten and his wife had worked his entire life to pay off the debts of their ancestors. Had worked hard to support their little family. Had never complained, not even privately, about their lot in life that they had been born into. He and his family had avoided unnecessary luxuries, like a Tri-D instead of a vidcom, wore paper shoes and clothing rather than purchase cloth, ate nutripaste with as little flavoring as possible, and made each credit go as far as they could stretch it. Theirs was the life of cradling close the luxury and pleasure of finding a real leaf blown from a ruler's garden and into the street. A small life, with sweetness to be found if one took the time to savor it and not gobble it down. He had been quietly, desperately nearly content. Then the Terrans had arrived. And Vuxten found himself thrust into something far bigger than himself, bigger than his family, bigger than his entire world had been. Which is why he found himself clad in body armor, holding onto his rifle with one hand, and standing next to a TerraSol Descent Human and staring at a street full of what had been living thinking creatures but was now covered in chunky paste and vaporized tissue, surrounded by a paws worth the coworkers and a few humans. Ustor got her faceplate open as he bent forward and vomited up the nutripaste she'd eaten at dinner. "Lieutenant, we've got a blue on green and a blue on pink," Sergeant suddenly said, Vuxten hearing him perfectly in his helmet, seeing Sergeant Ulganga's name appearing on Vuxten's visor. "Secure the area, protect the civilians, evacuate those you can. Be aware, enemy forces are in the area and/or enroute. Green forces have gone red in many areas. Refugee area coordinates incoming," Lieutenant Bent Spoon's voice came through helmet. "Roger that, sir. I'll keep you updated," Sergeant answered. Ustor wiped his mouth and straightened up. "Chew a piece of gum, Ustor," Corporal Laker said. Ustor nodded as her face-shield closed again. She chinned the dispenser and the pink disc popped out. Ustor used her tongue to pull it into her mouth and started chewing. "All right, soldiers, our troopers here aren't used to the total silence that we've been trained to. Leave you commo-open on Sigma band so they can hear us talk," Sergeant said. "Troopers, pop a piece of gum and chew it if you have not. Vuxten looked at each of this fellow 'troopers', their names popping up near their armor when he looked them for long. Staring at the human Sergeant was Dutra, a Frestilek male who, like Vuxten, had ran a floor polisher for years. His rifle was hanging down from the magnetic attached sling, his face horrified, his eyes wide. The Frestilek was a biped with four arms and two legs, thick dark pebbled hide, and a small line of blunt spikes down his back. His people came from a world far away. He was still working off his great grand-parents transportation costs. Keekikee, an Ikeeki avian who's eggs had left on an armored transport, something heavily armed and jet black called a 'dropship', who's husband had only time to brush Keekikee's wingtips as she'd left the dropship. Her helmet was extended out to allow for her beak. She was chewing the 'gum' and staring at the window that the human Laker had thrown an Overseer through. Across the street and thirty feet up. Sleesavash was a saurian, a lizard people. Like the rest of his race, his tail had been amputated at birth. Like Dutra, he was paying off his ancestor's transportation cost from another world. His black eyes were wide as he started at the dead Overseers, as if he couldn't believe that they had actually been killed. Ustor was a Telkan, like Vuxten. She was married, her broodcarriers swollen with podlings that were nearly ready to be birthed. She was grim looking, holding onto her rifle, pretending that she had not vomited. Vuxten looked at the humans. Three of them were larger, bulkier, than the fourth. Vuxten knew the leader was labeled "SFC Ulganga" but Vuxten and all the others called him 'Sergeant', by his title. The other three were labeled when they spoke or if Vuxten looked at them long enough. They were humans from someplace called the "Terran Confederacy" who had come to try to protect the solar system from the machines that even now attacked. Ancient war machines who believed that the universe's resources were finite and only one could benefit from them and so sought to eliminate any rivals. Vuxten didn't know that much about humans. Only that they were tremendously strong, incredibly fast, and now he knew that being shot in the forehead with a heavy ion pistol didn't even move their armored heads. "All right, everyone breathe. I'm going to try to get a handle on this greased chicken fuck," Sergeant said. "Keep your eyes peeled," the human Mixin said. Vuxten's armor had an omnitranslator that struggled with what Mixin had said for a moment before displaying "keep a highly alert watch/do not peel away parts of eyes" in the corner. "Up high, two-o-clock," the human Donovan said. Vuxten's armor put a flashing arrow for him to follow with his gaze. A huge burning disk was in the sky, drifting away from the city, out toward the ocean. As Vuxten watched, lights came down from the sky, striking it repeatedly, silently. It broke into multiple pieces and more lights came out of the sky, striking the parts. BALOR CLASS PRECURSOR RESOURCE EXTRACTION VESSEL appeared on the inside of the Vuxten's face-shield. There was a low rumble of explosions that washed over the small group in the Lanaktallan Overseer security truck. It was explosion after explosion, overlapping and following each other, coming from miles away, shaking the air. "Space Force and the Navy are tearing shit up," the human Laker said, his voice soft. "Those are battleship main battery strikes. Never seen them used to hit a target in atmosphere." Vuxten looked over at Mixin when that human spoke: "I have. Actikal-Deneb War." "You seen it before, Sergeant?" Donovan asked. "Yeah. Limbo-325, when I was a kid," Sergeant said. "Oh," all three said. "Enough jaw jacking, we need to get moving. The El-Tee gave me our orders," Sergeant said. He climbing around and into the front seat. "There's a nearby hospital, full maternity ward. Podlings, egg incubators, broodcarriers, whole nine yards." The hovertruck lifted off, its fans blowing water all over the street. Vuxten noted that the liquid that hit the front of the armored shelter access was a reddish slurry. "Sergeant, hold up," Mixin said, slapping his armored hand against the top of the driver's cab. The truck stopped and Mixin jumped out. "You guys help me, these barriers might come in handy." "You have five mikes," Sergeant said. Vuxten's visor translated it to five minutes. Vuxten jumped out, rushing, helping turn off the repulsor fields and loading them into the truck next to the laser cannon, which sagged forward from where it had been damaged. The rifle just magnetically attached to the back of Vuxten's armor, keeping it out of the way as he hurried and worked. They didn't have them all, but they had a lot of them, when Sergeant called time and they rushed back to the vehicle. Vuxten had noticed that while it was an effort for him to carry one the humans had Keekikee and Sleesavash load them ten high in their armored arms and practically ran back to the vehicle. As soon as everyone was in, Sergeant goosed the fans and the truck wailed as the fans drove it down the city streets. The laser cannon barrage had cleared the immediate area around the shelter, but within two blocks the crowds started surging. Vuxten saw limousines and other vehicles slamming through the crowds, crushing bodies. One struck the side of the hovertruck and Mixin drew his pistol, put two shots into the windshield macroplast, blowing it into splinters, and the limousine slewed to the side, the upper half of the driver missing. Vuxten saw that his armor had downloaded the floorplan to the hospital. Four floors were highlighted. Lanaktallan maternity ward, 'neo-sapient birthing ward', Lanaktallan pediatric ward, 'neo-sapient child ward'. The change in terms made Vuxten frown. His visor was showing him a map from the back 'loading docks' to an elevator, to the neo-sapient ward. "Mixin, Donovan, check the maternity ward. If the hospital doesn't have psychic shields get a grip on your guts," Sergeant ordered. "The rest of you will come with me up to the neo-sapients wards. We'll get a headcount, prioritize, and go from there." Sergeant pulled off the street, slamming the hovertruck through an alley, trying to avoid the main streets, which were rapidly becoming full of panicking beings. He went slow, pushing people with the hoverfans, cursing as he did so. It took forever, to Vuxten, but Sergeant pulled into a parking-lot, spun the hovertruck in a 180 degree arc, and slammed the back against the loading dock. "Leave the back locked," Sergeant ordered. "Let's get a move on. Laker, stay with the vehicle, see if you can scare us up a dropship or something bigger." The door into the hospital was marked no admittance and was locked but Mixin tore it off with one hand. Vuxten and the other 'troopers' followed Sergeant to the elevator. The elevator was pinging that it was security locked but Sergeant put his armored palm against the control panel and in less than a second it moved to "EMERGENCY SERVICES MODE" and started moving. "No psychic shields. This is going to be a shitshow," Mixin said. "Save who you can," Sergeant ordered, his voice tight. "Saint Doss protect them." The elevator stopped at the Lanaktallan and the door opened. The Lanaktallan, heavy with child, charged into the elevator, swinging a broken off and blood length of metal. Three of her eye sockets were empty, one jowl torn away, one arm broken. Her swollen belly stretched and bulged without sense or reason, the infant inside fighting and kicking and ripping at its mother. "Jesus Digital Christ," Mixin yelled, slamming back against the back of the elevator as the crazed Lanaktallan tried to impale him with the metal, the jagged ended bar just sliding across his armored stomach. Another pregnant Lanaktallan charged the elevator. The doors started closing and two more appeared, charging the closing doors. "Don't, lady, please stop!" Mixin yelled. There was a bright flash, then another, then two more, almost overloading Vuxten's visor. Scorched blood sprayed across Vuxten, his visor clearing instantly, covering the walls and the armor of everyone inside. The streak of light missing Vuxten by a foot, punching through the elevator wall. All four Lanaktallan dropped in place. Mixin was left half-holding the dead Lanaktallan's forward body. He made a sound of horror and threw the dead Overseer to the side. Slee and Keek both vomited. Sergeant had shot them all through the midsection, cutting them in half. "We can't help them," Sergeant said, putting his hand on the panel. The elevator rose, the doors not quite closed. "We'll bypass Lanaktallan peeds," Sergeant said, his still tight. Slee and Keek both straightened up, their face-shields closing. Usta and Dutra were chewing rapidly and Vuxten knew they had tabbed up more 'gum' to chew on. "Good advice," Mixin said, his voice shaky. "Peeds floor," Sergeant said. The elevator stopped at the maternity ward. The doors opened with a jerk. An Ikeeki female clad in a neo-sapient nurse's uniform ran in screaming, holding a potted plant in her wing-hands. "I WON'T LET YOU HURT THEM!" she screamed as she began smashing the armored humans with the plastic potted plant, frantically flailing around herself. Her eyes were wild, tears running down her cheeks and neck, and she had feathers pulled free from her torso. Debris and chunks flew into the elevator, thrown from behind a hastily formed barricade by desperate looking beings. "NO! NO! NO!" "Easy, lady, easy," Donovan said, backing up. The pot was hitting him across the face and chest. Vuxten knew it wasn't hurting him, that the human was letting her smash at him with a pot. "TERRAN MILITARY!" Sergeant snapped. The Ikeeki jerked, dropping the plant, looking at Sergeant, who's visor was now clear. The shout stopped the hail of debris. "Do you need assistance?" Sergeant asked, his voice soothing. Vuxten saw his visor flash "subsonics in play" up at the top. The Ikeeki, normally a reserved race, collapsed against Mixi. "Help us, oh, help us. The Overseers are trying to get in and kill all the littles." "May we come in?" Sergeant asked. "Please. Please," the Ikeeki asked, still grabbing at but unable to get a grip on Sergeant's armor. "Help us, please." "Donovan, go in, start prioritizing. Slee, Usta and Dutra, with them. Get me a count," Sergeant said. "Laker, do you read?" "I read you, Sergeant," Laker answered. "You keep that loading dock clear. Authorization for lethal force, including green on blue," Sergeant snapped. "Roger that, Sergeant," Laker answered. "The Rio is dropping Marine drop pods into the city." The big human, Donovan, left the elevator. Ustra, Slee, and Dutra followed. The Ikeeki bobbed her head and followed, tears running from her eyes. "Laker, get me a scan of that cargo/transport bay on that vehicle. We're gonna have a lot of kids and mothers to get to the refugee site," Sergeant ordered as he pressed his hand against the controls and the elevator started moving again. "Get us a kittykitty carrier and a Fido Ground Pound. They're gonna need 'em." The elevator went up two floors and the doors started opening. "TERRAN MILITARY! WE'RE HERE TO PROVIDE ASSISTANCE!" Sergeant called out. Again Vuxten's visor flashed the 'subsonics' warning and his hearing was strangely muffled. There was a small group of beings, all in hospital paper uniforms, holding onto makeshift weapons, in the elevator waiting area. They all stopped in mid-step, weapons drooping. "Do you need assistance?" Sergeant asked, stepping out of the elevator and holding his arms to his side, his elbows bent impossibly into the interior arc, his hands open and up by his head. "The Overseers have been trying to get in through the stairwell. Please, please help us. They want to hurt the littles and the mothers," A Pukan said, the side of his reptilian face bruised and bloody, with an expertly but hurriedly done bandage over one eye. "Mixi, go secure that stairwell door. Lethal force if necessary," Sergeant snapped. He motioned at Vuten and Keekikee. "You two, with me." "Roger that," Mixi said, stepping out. "Where's the stairwell door?" A half-dozen beings pointed to the right and Mixi turned, heading down the hallway, pulling something off his equipment belt. "Who's in charge?" Sergeant asked. "She is back here. There are littles here. Podlings, chicks, squirmlings," the Pukan with a bandage said. "Come, come." "Are you here to help us?" a being asked. "Please save us," another asked. "Don't let them kill us," still another said. Vuxten swallowed twice, trying to keep from being overwhelmed by the pleas for succor as the Pukan led the three armored beings into the neo-sapient's pediatrics ward. Little faces were pressed against the glass doors. A glass window shows dozens of full child-pods. In one a dozen podlings were staring curiously at the trio as they moved past. "Sergeant, Laker here," came over the radio. "Go ahead," Sergeant said. "Had an ambulance crew come out, going to bust me up with melee weapons. Got them calmed down, they say they'll drive the ambulances and help. One of them is terrified they're in trouble. They had to kill a couple of Lanaktallans who killed about half of the ambulance crews," Laker reported. "Should I have them get ready for evacs?" "Send some to the neo-sapient maternity ward, then some to the neo-sapient pediatrics ward," Sergeant ordered. "Have the vehicle drivers check out their vehicles. It's an eighteen click run to the refugee site." "Roger that. Help incoming, they're in uniform, no Lanaktallan," Laker said. "Laker, out." The leader was a Ikeeki female, her feathers removed, dressed in a paper work gown. She spoke to the Sergeant, Keekikee stood next to him, moving reassuringly. A broodcarrier came out of an office, her eyes wide, her fur wet from tears, her mammaries swollen with milk. She moved over to Vuxten and rubbed against him, making distressed mewling noises. "scary scary podlings scared" she crooned. Vuxten petted her, reassuring her, making sure she could see his face. The ambulance crews showed up, nearly twenty of them, and Sergeant began giving them orders. Load the sick or incubator children into the ambulances, as many as they could get in. Throw out anything unnecessary blocking the way or taking up space. The ambulance crews nodded along, showing signs of high distress but still trying to push through it. Some were crying, others looked like their brains had just shut down and they were grateful for the big human giving orders, others looked frightened but responded to the human's voice. "Sergeant, Laker here," came over the radio. "Go ahead, Laker," Sergeant said. "Got two Navy medivac dropships inbound. They'll ferry the children to the CSFV Hope. They're gonna load it and jump out of system," Laker reported. "They're coming in fast, empty bays, they'll be here in ten." Sergeant turned and looked at Vuxten and Keekikee. "You two, help me get these people into elevator." People. He called us people, Vuxten thought to himself. "Sergeant, got the stairwell door welded shut," Mixi reported, "Coming back." "Negative. I want you in the elevator. We're going be ferrying people down. Pistol only," Sergeant said. "Roger," Mixi said. Vuxten helped move frightened broodcarriers to the elevator, most of them with tiny podlings holding on to the broodcarrier's belly fur, their tails under their body to shield, hide, and comfort the little podlings holding on. "Navy One and Navy Two have landed. They dropped a purrboi crate and a goodboi kennel for us," Laker said as Vuxten moved the fourth group of broodcarriers to the elevator. He'd taken to giving them warm blankets to wrap themselves and the podlings in. "Send up a Fido, tell him to configure for fur, tail, and face. Rescue mode," Sergeant ordered. "Put the others on guard duty. Purrboi per ambulance, two in our transport." Vuxten wondered what a Fido, a Goodboi, a Purrboi and a Kittykitty were. "Keep going, everyone. Remain calm," Sergeant said. Again the subsonic warning. It happened every time Sergeant spoke. "help? love?" a broodcarrier holding hands with another, little podlings peeking through the long, soft, silky tail fur. "Yes. Help and love," Vuxten said, reaching out and rubbing their faces. "Humans help and love. Follow." The elevator opened and revealed a large canine next to Mixi, it was furiously wagging a tale, had an expression on its face that looked goofy to Vuxten, its tongue hanging out. The broodcarriers drew back, keening in alarm at the blood coating the inside of the elevator. The podlings vanished into the fur. "Fido help," the canine said. "Fido good boy." "We got aggressed coming up. This thing is covered in blood," Mixi said. "I can help," Vuxten said. He whirled and ran to the cleaning closet, grabbing a quikleaner. He ran back, stepping up the elevator, and triggering it. It made a high pitched whine, making the broodcarriers cry out and hide their faces in their hands. The blood steamed for a moment, then dissolved, leaving even Mixi clean. "Good boy. Good boy," the big canine said, wagging its tail. "Guard littlelittes." "Toss that here, I'll use it if we get hit again," Mixi said. Vuxten showed him how to trigger it and went out. The Fido/Good Boy was standing between a half-dozen broodcarriers. They were all petting his fur, looking at it in wonder. Podlings were peeking out, some giggling, others squeaking their interest. "Follow good boy, softies, follow," the Fido said, going into the elevator. Three of the broodcarriers looked at Vuxten. They looked nervous but curious. They had stopped crying and keening, but were unsure of what to do. "He is a good boy. He will protect the podlings," Vuxten reassured them. "Human," he pointed at Mixi, "Will protect." 'good boy soft,' one of the broodcarriers said wonderingly, reaching out to pet the Fido. 'human love?' another asked, looking nervously at the elevator. "Yes," Vuxten said, nodding. They shuffled into the elevator. One reaching out, bravely, to touch the human's armored chest. 'warm' she said, and rubbed the side of her face on Mixi's chest, leaning against him. Mixi put his arm protectively around her, his pistol in his other hand. 'love' the broodcarrier said. The elevator doors closed. Vuxten went back to work as the evacuation continued. --------------------------- V CORPS MESSAGE - ALL Enemy in overwhelming numbers. Planetary landings underway. Space combat is heavy at this time. Orbital support is limited. Air superiority is by area when possible. All commanders secure area of operations. Navy rescue ships are loading. Estimated turn around time 14 hours. Ground commanders are permitted to commandeer civilian transports to move civilian refugees. Ground commanders of Captain or higher are permitted to offer service to civilian medical workers or other necessary fields. Hold what you've got. Attack when able. IT WILL BE DONE! ---------NOTHING FOLLOWS------- 15th SPACE FORCE FLEET REQUESTING REINFORCEMENTS, ALL BRANCHES, ALL SERVICES, ALL MILITARY AND PARAMILITARY FORCES. -----NOTHING FOLLOWS--------- Brentili'ik sat in the 'nest' made up of soft warm blankets, sitting in between the two broodcarriers, stroking them gently as they slept fitfully. It kept feeling like some phantom was plucking at the inside of her bones. The feeling obviously disturbed the broodcarriers, but fear and stress had exhausted them. A few times the ship had shuddered in response to something that Brentili'ik had no idea of the cause. Twice the lights had dimmed then come back up. There was a chime at the door and she looked up. "May I come in?" a female human asked through the intercom. "Yes," Brentili'ik answered. The door slid open to show a figure in armor. The visor was clear and Brentili'ik could see it was a human female, this one with a face completely made of skin. "You are a Telkan, right?" the female asked. "Yes," Brentili'ik answered. "Are you able to function?" the female asked. "Yes," Brentili'ik answered. The human female was huge and she felt slightly intimidated. "Good, I need your help. There's two of the ones like the ones next to you in a room screaming," the female said. "They are frightened," Brentili'ik answered. "Can you help?" the female asked. "Seeing humans just frightens them more." "I will help," Brentili'ik said. "Do you perform this service of your own free will?" the female asked. "Of course. Broodcarriers need me," Brentili'ik said, feeling somewhat offended. "Follow me," the human female seemed mollified. It was only three doors down. When the door opened Brentili'ik could hear the broodcarriers calling out for help, their voices gone high pitched, calling out for any Telkan nearby to help them. Brentili'ik could see little podlings holding onto the the seven broodcarrier's fur. Two more were crying out, swollen with unborn podlings. Brentili'ik rushed in, pushing her face against the oldest looking one's face, her hands on either side of the broodcarrier's face, and started moving her head back and forth, rubbing the crying and terrified broodcarrier with her own facial fur, making sure to rub her whiskers against the broodcarriers. Slowly the big older broodcarrier calmed down, the others calming down with her. Brentili'ik turned to look at the human. "You cannot leave broodcarriers alone. They become frightened too easily unless they are at home." The lights dimmed and the ship shuddered slightly. "I tried sitting with them but they just got worse," the human female said. "You are not Telkan," Brentili'ik said. "They will need to stay with me." The human was quiet for a long moment. Right before Brentili'ik was about to say something, to see if the human understood her, the human motioned. "All right. It's cleared and logged. You'll have additional food," the human said. She paused. "What kind of place do the gestator, uh, broodcarriers prefer?" "Homes," Brentili'ik answered. She looked at the broodcarriers, who were still making noises of distress but had stopped crying out for help. "Come, come with me, I will protect you." "No, I mean, like forest, plains, caves, what?" the human asked. "Savannah, snow, grassland plains?" "Old dry forests with big trees, lots of plants, soft dirt," Brentili'ik said, wondering why the human wanted to know that so much. "Follow, carefully, follow." 'podlings' a broodcarrier said, moving her tail slightly so that Brentili'ik could see the half-dozen podlings holding tight to her. "Humans won't hurt the podlings," Brentili'ik reassured the broodcarriers. 'humans love podlings?' another asked. "Yes," Brentili'ik said, hoping she wasn't lying. The broodcarriers started repeating the word 'love' over and over. The human had moved ahead, gone inside Brentili'ik's room. When Brentili'ik looked in she stopped, staring in shock. It looked like the room impossibly opened up into an ancient forest, with piles and scattered puddles of leaves, massive tree trunks covered in moss, soft dirt, large stones with moss on them. It looked like her own two broodcarriers were looking out of a burrow dug into the roots of a massive tree. "Like that?" the human female asked. Two broodcarriers saw the impossible room and started chirping and crooning eagerly. "Yes. How..." "Advanced enhanced virtual reality," the human female said. "It's used to calm. They can go in." "In, in, loved ones," Brentili'ik said. The broodcarriers hurried in, some stopping to rub against rocks. One set some podlings on a moss covered rock in a patch of 'sun.' "It's configured for IR and UV light about what your star gives out. Your people are from the second habitable planet, right?" the human asked. Brentili'ik just nodded. "OK, you can get more blankets here," the human showed Brentili'ik how to tap on a 'tree trunk' to reveal the control panel for a dispenser that Brentili'ik had been too afraid to check. "Your allocation had been increased so you can care for the others. It may take a bit sometimes, the nano-forges are running hard right now." "How is this possible?" Brentili'ik asked, rubbing a tree-trunk. It felt real. "We are not wearing headsets." It even smelled like an old forest. Two podlings were hiding in leaves, giggling. "AeVR," the human said. "Hard light constructs and other tricks. It's perfectly safe. I ordered your blankets, they'll be here in a few minutes. Your food rations are increased. Just type in what you need, I set it for arboreal creatures." Brentili'ik just nodded. The human paused at the door. "I'm going to maglock it. Just use your paw pad prints to open it. You'll be safe in here." "Thank you, human," Brentili'ik said. "Thank you for your service to your people," the human replied. The door closed and she was gone, trees replacing her. Brentili'ik saw two blankets land in the dispenser slot. Both looked like fuzzy moss and smelled new. They were warm and when she handed them to broodcarriers they all started rubbing them. In a pile of leaves, podlings giggled. She felt the twisting phantom plucking on her bones. The broodcarriers and podlings didn't notice.
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