A Whore at Dread Harbor Ch. 00 - CYOA Intro 01

It was a dangerous firefight, and you took a number of minor wounds in the process, but you managed to get her aboard a small shuttle with the coordinates to the GDF Bastion's fallback position punched in. It was a risky gamble, but you counted on the Goblin's shoddy security protocols and chaotic nature to allow her to slip through the lines to safety. She waved at you from the cockpit as the shuttle lifted off, tears in her eyes as she whispered a quiet thank you through the glass.

You might die a terrible death on this station, but at least you'd managed to save Corani's life.

K) Take her with you on your mission.

After a moment's hesitation, you handed her your sidearm. You wanted to protect Corani, but you couldn't afford to spare your ever-dwindling resources on a risky extraction mission. You'd already had a number of close calls and near misses during your harrowing journey, and time was working against you. You had no choice but to trust her.

You did your best to show Corani the ropes: how to hide, where to go if cornered, how to stay calm in a life or death situation. You instructed her to always save a last bullet in the chamber... just in case. Corani was intimidated by your curt orders and frank assessment of the dire situation on Dread Harbor, but she did her best to stay positive.

As days passed you came to count on the morphed Catian, sleeping just a little sounder when she took watch. You grew closer to one another, sharing tiny details of your life and chit-chatting in the few quiet moments you got between dodging Goblin patrols and crawling through air ducts. Your survival situation worsened a bit, as now you were foraging for two, but the small comfort she brought as the only other sane person on the station steadied you.

For better or worse, she would accompany you for the rest of your mission on Dread Harbor.

* * *

Days passed. Food became scarce, and your ammunition dwindled down to almost nothing. Scavenging trips grew more harrowing and less fruitful. You were closing on your second week onboard the doomed station, and it was becoming obvious you couldn't keep this up for very much longer. Your life descended into a kind of surreal delirium: hours of frantic action punctuated by a few stolen minutes of sleep between expeditions.

You were always on the move, always just one step ahead of your pursuers. As time passed, you came to notice a growing awareness of your presence on the part of the Goblins. The longer you lingered in a single area of the station, the more reactive and aggressive their patrols became. More than once you were forced to abandon old hiding spots and move to a new part of the station, hounded at every turn by slavering mutants.

You made a broad circuit around the superstructure of the station, learning the Goblins' patrol routes, gathering valuable intelligence on their strengths and weaknesses. By now you knew Dread Harbor and its invaders well enough to construct a rough estimate of the Goblin's relative strength and concentration.

You realized that the Goblin's power was not as overwhelming as it first seemed: a well placed strike team could wreak havoc on them if timed to the right moment. You were a walking treasure trove of tactical information, assuming you could get word of it back to the GDF Bastion.

...Which itself was a dangerous assumption. "Were they even still out there?" Was an uncomfortable thought that stalked your waking hours through the blood-drenched halls of Dread Harbor. Had you been abandoned? Were these the last days of your life? You compartmentalized those gloomy concerns and continued onwards.

Now that you were running low on supplies, a difficult choice presented itself. You wouldn't last much longer on the station without extraction, but without concrete intelligence as to the GFP's plans, you had no idea when or where that extraction would come from.

There was no alternative: you had to find a way to get back in contact with the Bastion.

The task turned out to be more daunting than you realized. The Goblins had wrecked or cannibalized much of the circuitry and machinery of Dread Harbor. Internal communications systems were almost nonexistent, and the few that were still operational were located on a remote section of the base absolutely crawling with hostiles.

After scouting the possible approaches, you concluded that there was no way you could make it safely to the communications center and make it back out alive. Thinking fast, you decided on a more roundabout solution. You snagged a mechanic's abandoned short-range spacesuit, exiting a local airlock and spacewalking the necessary distance without incident. One well placed satchel charge saw the Goblins in the control room sucked out into the vacuum of space.

Time was of the essence. You hacked the systems in Zero-G and put out an open call on secure GFP channels. After a minute of frantic silence, the comms crackled. You let out a whoop of joy as the shocked voice of your commanding officer echoed in your helmet.

You wasted little time in informing him of the dire situation on the station. While there were undoubtedly some lingering survivors lurking in the depths of Dread Harbor, those numbers were dwindling by the day. If a rescue mission was not attempted soon, there wouldn't be much of a station left to save.

After a short pause you were routed directly to the command bridge of the GDF Bastion, where you conversed with the Captain regarding your options. A full complement Battlefleet of the GDF's Northern Command led by Admiral Gorsouch was inbound and would warp into the system before the end of the week.

The Bastion had been lurking in the local asteroid field ever since their retreat, scanning from afar and coordinating with GFP forces. The Goblin raiders remained in orbit over Dread Harbor, and until the station's defenses were neutralized or mitigated, any direct approach by the Bastion before the battlefleet arrived was suicide.

You conferred with the Captain, asserting that the survivors on the station wouldn't be able to hold out in time for the battle fleet's arrival. If you were to finish your mission and save innocent lives, you had to act now.

Calling the Bastion and its crew in on a suicide attack on Dread Harbor was out of the question. The Bastion might be capable of going toe to toe with the Goblin's starships, but they had no chance of getting in close to support a second boarding action if the station's defenses were still active.

Time was running out.No matter what choice you made, you knew you were condemning someone to a grisly death.

* * *

What did you decide to do?

L. Attack now. Send in an Assault Marine strike team from the Bastion to secure and disable Dread Harbor's star base defenses.

You couldn't do it: you couldn't just abandon the survivors of the station to another week of this hell. You didn't know how you were going to survive another week at this point, and you were trained for this. It was now or never.

You convinced the Captain to dispatch an elite strike team of her best Assault Marines. Using your extensive knowledge of the station's dangers, you directed them to an abandoned, depressurized hangar bay only a few hundred yards away from the control center of Dread Harbor's defense grid.

The mission was simple: secure the control center, turn Dread Harbor's guns upon the Goblin fleet, and bring the GDF Bastion in for the coup de grace. Assuming they could scatter the Goblin fleet before the assault team was overwhelmed, the Bastion would then have free reign to make supported boarding actions all across the station.

You met the Assault Marine shuttle the next day in the hangar. After an emotional reunion with your fellow soldiers, you joined them in the assault upon the Control Center. The speed, ferocity and surprise of your attack was total, and for a brief moment it seemed like you would pull the mission off without a hitch.

...And then the roaring klaxons of the stationwide alarm sounded.

What followed was the most frightening six hours of your life. While the combat engineers worked under fire to turn the guns upon the Goblin fleet in orbit above you, a horde of mutated monsters rushed your position. You and your fellow Marines did your best to fortify the entrance to the command center, but you had mere seconds before the first wave of flesh crashed over you.

You fought for your life in the din of blood and gunfire. You listened to the terrible screams of agony as men you had known for years were ripped to pieces right in front of you. For every Goblin slaughtered, it seemed like two would take its place.

The battle became a rotating sequence of fire, engage, hand to hand combat, then retreat to the next fallback position. Each time you retreated you came to the next line with half the men you started with, winnowing your numbers more and more as the mutants pressed you into an ever tighter box around the master controls of the defense grid.

The GDF Bastion leapt into the fray, smashing through the makeshift Goblin blockade as Dread Harbor's capital ship guns roared in response. Caught between a Cruiser and a space station's defense platforms, the Goblin fleet was smashed to pieces. The Bastion closed in on the station, depositing a third attack force to strike key positions all over the station you'd identified as weak points.

Just as the last wave of mutants was cresting in preparation for a final charge, reinforcements arrived. You were down to just five men and a few spare clips of ammo by the time the rescuers reached your position.

You were extracted to the Bastion and given emergency medical treatment for your wounds. More than two dozen marines had died in the attack, with more than a hundred to fall in the coming days due to ambushes and booby traps. By some miracle you had survived, though the trauma of the experience would linger in your nightmares for the rest of your natural born days.

The GDF Bastion did not have enough manpower to cleanse the entire space station of Goblins, but they were able to secure a number of key positions in its superstructure. In the days that followed, they began the process of clearing out resistance, discovering dozens of survivors lurking in the station's inner depths. A number of them had managed to ferret themselves away in the nooks and crannies, holding out just long enough for help to arrive.

By the time the GFP Battlefleet arrived in the system, the process of clearing out Dread Harbor was well underway. With reinforcements now pouring into the station from all directions, the remaining Goblin resistance crumbled. It would takes months, possibly even years to cleanse the station of their taint. But with time, life could return to this bleak place.

You had done it. You had completed your mission. Dread Harbor was safe.

Nothing would ever be the same for you again.

M. Hold out until the Battlefleet arrives. Gather more intelligence and maximize the GFP's chances of success.

Risks were one thing - hell, this very conversation was a risk; but you couldn't take the chance that a dangerous surprise attack might fail and get everyone killed. The longer you waited here, the sooner the Goblins would discover your location. You were too valuable to the overall mission, not because your life mattered in any significant way, but rather the knowledge contained in your brain.

The GFP had a very by-the-book method when dealing with a Goblin invasion. But weeks spent onboard Dread Harbor had convinced you that the traditional approach was suicide. The Goblins had prepared defenses, they had laid traps, worst of all: they had developed new and terrifying monsters not logged in the GFP's bestiary. If the fleet followed protocol, a lot of good men and women would die in the attack.

A tense discussion with the Captain followed, wherein you both agreed to wait for the Battlefleet to arrive to make your next move. However, you would not be idle in the meantime. With a concrete date of arrival and a limited timeframe, you became the linchpin of the GFP's plan to retake Dread Harbor.

You spent the next week softening the station's defenses for the imminent invasion: you sabotaged locking mechanisms, disabled manual access to sections across the station, and hampered the Goblin's operations wherever you could.

The Bastion left a number of supply dead drops across the station for you to access, keeping you going just long enough to complete your objective. At the Captain's direction, you planted a number of bombs in key choke points in preparation of the final assault.

You were nearly killed more than once as the Goblins tightened their security cordon around you, scouring the station's underbelly in a determined search for your whereabouts. You were forced to watch in silent agony from hiding as desperate survivors were dragged from their hideouts by Goblins who had stumbled upon them while looking for you. You were grateful beyond words when the day of the Battlefleet's arrival came, as by then you had been penned into your last hiding place like an animal, mere hours away from capture and death.

The rattling boom of a dozen explosive devices going off in the distance signaled the start of the assault. The GFP fleet warped into the area directly overhead the station, catching the Goblin Fleet completely by surprise.

Before they could scramble their forces, the Goblin fleet was scattered, with Dread Harbor's anti-ship defenses disabled by concentrated fire from the fleet before they could be activated. Waves of surgical strike teams landed in perfectly-timed operations all across the station.

Scattered Goblin ground forces, responding to the chaos ran right into death traps and choke points you'd identified for the Fleet days before. The battle rapidly turned into a slaughter, and within a few hours half the station had been captured. It took less than three days before the station was completely under GFP control, with the minuscule Goblin survivors fleeing screaming into the lower decks of the station, to be hunted down one by one like the animals they were.

The Goblins were beating down the door to the location of your final holdout when help at last arrived. You fought a short, vicious combat with the few that got through the door before the assault squad assigned to extract you burst into the room with shotguns and grenades. You were heavily injured, brought in a near-comatose state to the Bastion as emergency medical personnel fought to save your life. It was a near-run thing, but you awoke nearly a week later to the sight of the GDF bridge staff giving you a standing ovation around your medical pod.

All in all, the mission was a success. GFP personnel had suffered extremely light casualties in comparison to the threat that had been posed by the Goblin fleet and Dread Harbor's formidable defenses. The attack had been a strategic master stroke, and your Captain assured you that medals and promotions were forthcoming in your immediate future.

Such good news should have made your chest burst with pride, but it had proved to be too little, too late for the civilian survivors of the initial Goblin onslaught. As security teams swept through the flesh-labs and nurseries of the Goblin's awful experiments, they found no survivors. The station was saved, but the people who had once lived there were gone forever.

You had done it. You had completed your mission. Dread Harbor was secure.

And nothing would ever be the same for you again.

* * *

Weeks of recovery in the medical wing of the GDF Bastion followed your harrowing adventure. It took several days for your body and mind to adjust to the idea that you no longer had to be constantly aware, constantly on edge. More than once you awoke from a shallow sleep shouting at the top of your lungs, reaching for a gun that wasn't there. The unfortunate habit would dog your sleepless nights for years to come.

Corani came to see you the minute you were well enough to have visitors. you broke down into tears and embraced each other, finally realizing that your shared nightmare was over.

You spent hours talking excitedly back and forth with your fellow survivor. The two of you shared an immediate emotional bond, a friendship forged in fire that few could understand, but would last for the rest of your lives. You clung to each other like stranded orphans lost at sea.

You listened intently as Corani told you about her own medical diagnosis. After a thorough examination, the doctors concluded that the physical changes that had been inflicted on her body by her captors were likely permanent. The fused prosthetics and surgical modifications made to her skeletal structure were so dramatic that they did not know how to safely reverse the process without killing her. You watched with an ache in your heart as Corani wiped away the tears through her brave smile. "This" was who she was, now. For better or for worse.

Corani explained that she didn't have anywhere to go. She had no one left, no family to speak of anymore. To your surprise, she asked if she could stay with you. To your even greater surprise, you agreed.

Corani's awkward smile and quiet presence at your bedside steadied you, and despite the pleasant chat you found yourself dozing. She made you feel safe, promising with a wry smile to "take the first watch." Without realizing it you had drifted off to sleep, the first real rest you'd had since your mission first began.

When you were well enough to stand, you were visited by the officers of the fleet in an elaborate medal ceremony. In front of all the assembled officers, the Captain of the GDF Bastion hailed you as a hero. Admiral Gorsouch himself presented you with the Star of Zylorni, the highest military honor the GFP could bestow for bravery in the face of overwhelming odds. You were promoted to Major on the spot, with scuttlebutt saying you were on the fast track to the upper echelons of the GFP's command structure.

You had done the impossible: you had succeeded in your mission, and earned all the praise and accolades you had dreamed of growing up as an impressionable youth on your home planet. Thanks to you, countless lives had been saved. Thanks to you, Dread Harbor was recovered. You were a hero.

None of it mattered to you anymore.

Something had broken inside you on Dread Harbor. No living being with a conscience could have survived the ordeal you had without mental and emotional scars, and yours ran deep. Memories of the horrors you had witnessed and the faces you had failed to save haunted your waking hours and robbed you of your peace of mind.

You reluctantly returned to active duty, assigned to a brigade patrolling the safer sections of Dread Harbor. You rarely left your command post, coordinating patrols and minimizing the risk of casualties at all times. It was boring, safe work. But you were a constant nervous wreck. Your commanding officer soon realized you were no longer cut out for work detail, and requested a transfer to another posting. His letter stated 'irreconcilable trauma' as the reason for the transfer.

You countermanded the request; Dread Harbor still needed you.