Hello. This is a short story written by myself. It's based on Cortex Command and I would say is a little bit of a tribute to my favourite side-scrolling blow 'em up ever. :)

Constructive (but not OTT) criticism is appreciated.

The story is called 'Bunker'.

It is a story of two lost souls, trying to get back home. One of these souls is a lone Coalition soldier, his squad horribley killed. The other soul (if robots have souls. Do clones even have souls? What the hell is a soul?) is a helpful robot with a tendancy to be snarky and sarcastic at times.
Occasional harsh language is used. Violent themes, too. (But you all like that good stuff. ;). )


[[CURRENTLY UNFINISHED, WILL CONTINUE EDITING PERIODICALLY.]]
--
-Prologue-
The rocket's passenger room shook violently as Corporal Talon and his squad of Coalition soldiers entered orbit. A red light shone dimly down onto the cramped room, illuminating the hidden faces of the clones. The low rumble of the engines and the piercing of the atmosphere could just be heard through the impact resistant walls.
"Touch down in 20..." A robotic voice announced through Talon's earpiece.
"You all know the drill." The clone sergeant sat across from him began.
"18..."
"We're here to provide security for a small-time mining operation."
"16..."
"The base is still under contruction and a brain hasn't been implemented yet."
"14..."
"That means don't mess up, or you'll make all Coalition clones look like a bunch of idiots. Understood?"
"12... ERROR! ERROR!"
Talon's squadmates all began to look around frantically at eachother as their rocket began to shake more violently than it was supposed to.
"What? What's wrong?" One of them shouted in panic.
"Coordinates are incorrect." The robotic voice continued. "Mayday, mayday. This is drop rocket Sierra Foxtrot One Eight, broadcasting to tradesta-"
An extremely brutal smash sounded from outside the ship and a sharp alarm began to ring loudly inside the craft. The sounds of the engine going into overdrive and the exterior stabalization jets, along with the screams of panic going on inside the ship, were almost deafening.
Before Talon could realise what was happening an extremely bright, white light shone into his eyes for just the slightest moment.
And then...
Blackness.


-Chapter 1-

Talon awoke to the feel of concrete beneath him and the sound of a large fire nearby. The smell of smoke and burning flesh soon entered his nose.
Talon tried to lift him self off the ground but he quickly realised he couldn't even move his legs. Wondering if he had lost them he glanced down his body. An enormous pile of burning wreckage had just spilled over onto him. He was trapped. As he examined the wreck further he soon realised it was the remains of his drop rocket. Bits of the rest of his squad could be seen in and around it.
"Oh crap." Talon wheezed.

He tried to pull himself out from under the wreckage once again but to no avail. Talon collapsed limply to the ground. He lay there for several minutes, totally still, gathering his strength.
Just as he was about to pull himself away once more he spotted something. A robot was standing mere inches away from his head, glancing curiously at him.
"Do you require some assistance, sir?" The robot asked, offering Talon his hand.
"Clear this wreckage off of me, will you?"
The robot walked slowly over to the wreckage on top of Talon's legs and began to clear it off piece by piece until Talon eventually slipped free.
"Glad to have been of service, sir. May I help you with anything else." The robot chimed.
"Yeah. Where are we?" Talon asked, wiping the blood and oil off of his trousers.

"Unknown." The robot replied.
"Oh, well that's certainly helpful. Thanks for that."
"You are welcome, sir!" The robot chimed happily once more.
"Are you the pilot drone for the rocket?" Talon asked, looking gravely at the wreck next to them.
"Affirmative, sir."
"Not a very good one, are you?"
The robot did not reply.
"Yeeeah." Talon looked away and examined his surroundings. "We need to get out of this hangar. It stinks."
"Sir, I suggest that we locate an operational computer terminal and send our coordinates to the tradestar." The robot suggested, pointing down the corridoor.
"Well that's a good plan and everything, but we're unarmed. There could be anything in this facility." Talon explained. "This planet is dangerous."
"Oh no! Crabs are so terrifying!" The robot said quietly, waving his arms in a sarcastic manner.
"What?"
"Nothing, sir! I have a sidearm here. Emergencies only." The robot said in it's usual monotone voice, extending the pistol to Talon.
Talon took the gun, shook the oil off of it and cocked it.
"Alright then. I suppose we should get moving."
The two ventured out of the hangar, into the unknown tunnels. The building's dim tunnels were cool and dank. Small puddles and odd plants dotted the ground and walls.
"This place hasn't been set foot in for a long time." Talon mumbled.


-Chapter 2-

The clone and the robot walked warily through the progressively darker tunnels. Talon held his pistol close at hand and his companion followed noisily, his robotic joints creaking and buzzing.
"By the way. What do I call you?"
"Serial Number 1055657845 dash 255965." The robot replied as if it had recited those numbers.
"How about I just call you robot?" Talon suggested, shaking his head.
"Onboard the tradestar I was referred to as Pilot Drone 116. You could call me PD 116, if you like." The robot replied.
"Alright." Talon grinned. "PD 116 it is."
Talon and PD continued through the corridoor until they hit a junction. A large, moss covered sign was stuck delicately to the wall. An arrow pointing left read control station. The arrow pointing right read Clone Tubes.
"The control station should have a terminal we can use." PD stated joyfully.
"What even makes you think that this terminal will be powered, let alone working?"
"It's something called hope. Maybe you should get some." PD mumbled.
"What did you say?" Talon asked, glancing at the robot.
"I said my rocket's scanners picked up functioning power outputs shortly before we crashed."
"Oh, right. Well that's good. Lets get a move on then."
Talon set off to the left at a brisk pace, running steadily through yet more long, dark tunnels. PD kept pace but soon after Talon suddenly stopped.
"What is it?" PD asked as he approached.
Talon was staring at the remnants of an odd looking robot. A four-legged machine with a small gun mounted on the front lay totally still on it's side in a puddle. It's legs hung limply downward. Behind it a large, yellow metal shell was resting on the ground. It was badly charred and severely dented.
"Looks like bullet impacts."
"The device is an Dummy class Dreadnaught anti-infantry robot. It is inoperable." PD explained. "They are heavily armoured. Nothing insignificant could have destroyed this."

"Looks pretty old now. Probably got left behind when they left this facility. Lets keep going."
After climbing past the remains of the old dreadnaught Talon and PD 116 continued on. It wasn't long before they found yet more wreckage of yellow robots. Heads, arms, legs and other bits of robotics were strewn all through the hallway. The small puddles that once only dotted the corridoor now made large pools.
"Oil." said PD.
"Oil? What?"
"The puddles. It's oil."
"So you're saying some robots bled out all over these hallways?"
"Yes. I would assume that either this once was a dummy installation or that dummies attacked it."
"I suppose we'll find out when we reach the command room." Talon replied, pointing to a sign which said 'Control Station' inside a big, downwards facing arrow.
Talon immediately jumped down the open hatch in the floor. PD followed behind and peered down the hole.
"Is it safe?" PD shouted.
"Yeah." A voice replied up from the hole. "Shine a light down here would you?"
PD crouched and leant further over the edge. A small torch mounted into his head turned on, revealing Talon standing in a deep puddle of oil and bits of robotics.

"Come on down!"


-Chapter 3-
[[OTW.]]

Read more like a movie script or a TV pilot due to excessive dialog. Not to mention that it is impossible to follow your dialogue due to lack of tags. A tag is the part where you establish what character spoke or thought and how the words are communicated. "Why did the chicken cross the road?" asked the blue clone. Italics is dialogue, bold is the dialogue tag. Do you need them every line? No, of course not, but with the amount of dialogue you're using I'd suggest at least using them every few to re-establish precedence.

The story is lacking in creativity, also. I can't really help you, there. You have to develop that on your own. One thing that bothered me was when you introduced PD 116. You had a character that was introduced as a mindless drone, but then you give it to ability to express creativity by making its own nickname. There was a mismatch there that just didn't fit. Maybe change it to the main character deciding "That's an annoying name, I'll just name you PD 116." If you really want the robot to be able to self-identify, then you need to establish the character as having an identity when it is introduced.

Something else was the countdown sequence. You forced the pace of the dialogue too much. Again, while this is okay in film to have something in the background--that doesn't translate to literature well. You established the beginning of the countdown. That's good. Now stop interrupting your dialogue with numbers. Maybe do: "And then I say this," said this character as the timer counted down to 10.

You have a lot of grammatical and editorial errors--enough that I really don't want to go through them one by one. Just as some tips though: there is such a thing as overusing commas. Frequently, new writers tend to insert commas where they would pause while speaking. Written word is different from spoken word. In writing, a comma is used to separate subject-verb phrases. It's not to delineate pause. The proper way to denote a pause or break in dialogue is an em-dash (two consecutive dashes, --). Also frequently used in lieu of commas are colons and semi-colons, although I would suggest reading up on their proper usage.

Similar to the above, you are using carriage returns (read: the Enter button) excessively. Every sentence does not and should not be on a different line. Step back and look at the structure of this post. You have coherent thoughts of multiple sentences constrained within paragraphs sorted by relevance. You just have a single thought and then a line break. There's no cohesion to thought, just jumbled dialogue. This can be a useful literary device in many instances but not in general storytelling. A lot of new writers abuse the carriage return because it gives an appearance of length and breadth of story which a word count can denounce. For example, while your story has 85 lines and 1200 words. On the other hand, this review is only 19 but is made up of 800.

I wouldn't list those paragraphs as chapters. While I realize this is a short story and as such the scenes will be short--there's no reason to list them as chapters. Just use a line of dashes or something to separate scenes. On this topic, you don't really do a good job of transitioning thoughts or scenes. The only reason I'd even know that a "chapter" was over was because of your headers. A "chapter" never really ended, anyway. You had a chapter end with: "We're at a tunnel" then it started with "I'm walking into the tunnel."

You use adverbs way too much. Almost 40 of them in 1200 words. Way, way too much.

Also I would advocate removing your actual name from the subject. Not wise on the big bad internets.

Lastly, and please don't take offense to this, but: What level of education are you at? I'm not asking this to make fun of you, I'm asking so that I have a grasp of what educational grasp of writing you have. The standards of writing prose are different based on age and I don't want to try to force advanced concepts on younger students.

Note: Please refrain from yelling at me for being critical. I think the established protocol for fan-derivative works is "If you post it, critiques will come." I like to think of myself as a amateur copy editor.

Hopefully this was helpful considering I burned 20 minutes of time at work doing it, lol.

Haha, thank you for the reply. I must say, now that you point it out I can see so many flaws in this post. It was a one off thing I did while I was in the mood. It was more of a time killer than an actual attempt. :)

I also didn't spell check it, which probably would have helped but I don't tend to use that any more since the computer believes that things like "colour" and "honour" are spelled without the U. It also makes other mistakes (damn you, yanks.) which I grow tired of recorrecting after spellchecking.

As for the robot, as soon as I started giving him dialogue I saw the flaw in his character and in regards to the adverbs, I do tend to over use them alot.

Thank you for the feedback, it's appreciated.

=D
I like reading stories, yours is very good until now.
Plus, it has images!
I'd like to give some sort of constructive criticism, but I don't have any problems with it.