I Am Not A Soldier 3

To my right, about two klicks from where I was crouched in the ash and hidden from view by a low, blackened ridge, a projectile battery of some kind was pounding away, firing in our general direction, but the shots were all passing high over my head with furious buzzing whines and I figured the aliens had panicked and started firing at the column of smoke ascending lazily from our pod.

            Raising my right arm, I launched a micro-probe from one of the magazines concealed in my forearm plate. The tiny ‘bot drifted up into the trembling air on a mini a-grav floater, twitching as it activated it’s guidance fans and I switched my main viewscreen over to its tiny cameras. For a half second my head spun as I tried to orient myself to the new vantage point—my body felt like I was suddenly ten meters in the air and rising. The ‘bots cameras gave me a sweeping view of the battlefield: a tumbled land of black, symmetrical ridges and tall needle-thin towers that looked like something you’d find in an oil refinery. A thin sheet of ice and snow dusted everything and stirred fitfully in the stiff breeze, obscuring the ground surface.

To the west another volley of missiles were rising from some sort of industrial complex—the arching vapor trails were graceful enough, but the launch site looked like it had been abandoned fifty years back. Maybe twenty klicks away on the northern horizon—the planet was a small one, much smaller than its gravity suggested, and from the ‘bots vantage point the horizon looked unnaturally close—crouched a higher mass of oddly angular hills. Those hills were our target.

            The area between our position and the hills was lousy with fighting and half-obscured by rapidly spreading banks and columns of smoke and flame. From fifty meters up I counted another twenty battery positions like the one I’d just spotted and a few scattered sniper nests—well hidden, but the ‘bots infrared cam picked their locations out as nicely as coal on fresh snow. A dozen primitive flyers were rushing in from the launch area, helicopters of some sort that were hugging close to the ground. But not close enough. Some of our gang who’d landed closer to the launching zone opened up as the choppers passed overhead. Two of the birds just shattered in midair, spitting flame and metal in all directions and their comrades scattered in all directions like a flock of pigeons—but not fast enough. Three more blew apart before they’d slipped out of range.

            This was barely gonna merit the term “battle”.

            Switching the ‘bot to autonomous mode, I ducked low and cupped a hand over my ear—a useless gesture, encased as I was in armor, but old habits are hard to break. “Boots, do you copy?”

            “What’s the sitch, DA? Rogers is already moving.”

            I relayed what I’d seen, all the while scanning the flashing air above my head and trying to ignore the rapid chatter of the nearby emplacement and the whine of the bullets. That damn battery would not shut up!

            When I was finished, Boots began rattling off orders. “I’m joining Rogers and we’ll pave the way north clean so Westover and Tiang can follow us in with the zero-two-zero for support-and-cover—though why the hell Cent-Ops sent us down with the ‘Peater I’ll never know. Vlad will follow us in about two klicks behind—he’s got the Sabers and Apaches on the phone, but the other squads and the Gambler are giving him fits. Some type of cachanga jamming. You’ll cover our back sides, following behind Vlad; but first I want you to go serve that battery crew their huevos for lunch. Read me?”

            “Loud and clear, sir.”

            “That’s Boots to you, mierda, and don’t forget it. And remember DA, minimal casualties. We’re here to win hearts, minds and information, not lay this alien crap-shooters out in body bags.”

            “Copy that, Boots.”

            “Good hunting then. Chime in when you’re finished.”

            The line went dead and I sank lower, hunkering down in my suit. This was it then. A thousand lightyears of travel and five months of training and it all came down to this one moment. I wasn’t ready. I still wasn’t ready, even after all the drills and practice and endless hours of work. Somehow, deep down in the center of my gut, I knew that I would never be ready. Oh hell. I am not a soldier.

            It wasn’t that I was afraid to die. Not right then. My armor was too good, my weapons too powerful, and all this freaks could throw at us were metal bullets and a few nukes. It’d be a cake-walk. No, what I was afraid of was what I could do to them. I’d seen a lot of accidents during the first few weeks of training, bones broken, limbs torn off, heads stoved in—all because we hadn’t learned yet how to control the armor. I still had nightmares about those first hundred hours, when not a day passed without someone I knew dying.

            I didn’t want to do that to anyone, alien or human. What’s worse, I wasn’t sure if I could do anything like that. I’d never been a violent person, even back on Earth. What if, when it all came down to it and one of my mates’ lives was on the line, I didn’t—couldn’t—do what needed doing? How could I live with that?

            Thankfully, my orders right then and there were crystal clear—put the battery out of commission fast, and do it without killing. That much, I could do. Taking three slow breaths, I switched the VMR over to non-lethal rounds and breathed one last prayer before vaulting straight up into the pale sky.

            My armor-enhanced jump rocketed me up and past the steady stream of projectile fire—despite my suit’s constantly adjusting chameleon skin, whatever was manning the gun battery must have spotted something as I raced skyward, because the tracer-illuminated firing line spasmed unsteadily towards me for a half-second before settling back to continue shooting uselessly over the smoking ‘pod.

            Fifty meters above the ground the suit’s thrusters kicked in, kicking me higher still. Despite the shifting veil of snow obscuring the ground below, the air around me was perfectly calm, a frostbiting -40° C according to my suit’s thermometer. Higher still, the sky above me was a roiling mass of flaming clouds and expanding explosions—all that the Gambler had left of the second volley of enemy rockets.

            Scanning the ground between my dangling feet, I quickly spotted the gunnery nest. Wedged tightly into a crater that had blown a hole into the crest of one of the strange, symmetrical ridges that all seemed to radiate out from the compound Boot’s and the others were heading towards. My HUD highlighted the squad—little more than red-shaded dots at this altitude—leapfrogging down a deep defile between two of the ridges.

            The gun-battery was a joke. From where I was—still rising higher—it looked like we’d definitely managed to catch the aliens with their pants down. Besides the crater itself, a thin wall of rubble piled around the crater rim was the only visible concession to defense. Focusing on the crater I mentally locked the suit onto the nest and then let the nav-computer take over. The armor’s internal gyros spun me over so I was suddenly falling face-first towards the ground. For a moment everything was silent, except for the soft sound of the thin air whistling past my external microphones. Then my thrusters roared back to life and I was suddenly a one-man meteor shower streaking towards a cruise-controlled collision with the gun-battery.

            Two hundred meters above the gun nest my HUD started identifying targets—four smaller blips clambering over the gun emplacement and a fifth hostile that seemed to be directing the operation from the opposite wall of the crater. A smaller side-screen was projecting the course of my flightpath, and if things held steady for 0.2 seconds longer I’d bull’s-eye the crater dead center, landing right in the middle of the targets.

            One tenth of a second later the internal gyros kicked in again, flipping me right-side-up just as the thrusters gave a final blast, slowing my spine-shattering descent to a merely led-breaking fall—nothing the armor couldn’t handle.

            I landed in a crouch, legs splayed wide and balanced on one palm, VMR held high, dust and grit and snow kicked up from the thruster-fire swirling around me in a raging maelstrom so thick I should have been blind. Should being the operative word here.

            Snapping the VMR down into an active firing stance I whirled around towards the larger, final target my HUD had identified. The crater was still too choked with flying sand and snow to see anything on my own, but my suit’s infrared viewers painted the chaos with more than enough detail. My target was a weird gecko-like creature, glowing orange and yellow in the infrared and frantically trying to claw its way up the rubble embankment of the crater rim with at least eight pairs of limbs, shrieking in a piercing wail almost too high to hear. I snapped off a single round—a varient of rubber bullet designed for maximum non-lethal stopping power—and nailed the lizard what I guessed was it’s torso. The thing dropped immediately and rolled back down the slope towards me.

            Something slammed into me from behind, pitching me forward. My legs tangled in the lizard-thing’s mess of arms and legs and I went down hard. Something beneath me gave way with an audible SNAP and I bit off a hoarse curse. The last thing I wanted was to crush the lizard I’d already managed to drop.

            Using my own momentum, I turned my fall into a roll, the suit’s powerful steel muscles actually pushing me up the hill. The weight on my head and shoulders suddenly released and something—whatever had slammed into me—gave a strangled scream. I whipped my head around just in time to see my attacker slam spread-eagle into the crater wall and stay there, unconscious or dead. At the moment, I couldn’t find the energy to even care which it was.

            Lurching upright I jerked back around towards the gun, bringing my VMR up just in time. The final three targets were charging directly towards my, screeching with weirdly child-like voices. They were identical to the alien that had jumped me—some kind of weird bugs that looked something like what you’d get if you threw a shrimp, a praying mantis and a centipede into a blender. The smoke and dust had cleared enough for me to see them in the visible light—slug white bugs with translucent carapaces wearing some kind of primitive armor, almost like the Kevlar stuff old Earth SWAT teams used to wear. They were short, none of them standing any more than a meter tall, and I would have laughed at their attack if they hadn’t all been so obviously bent on killing me.

            I managed to pull off two quick shots before the bugs were on top of me. The first slug took the nearest alien clean in the chest from only two meters away, blowing it back against the gun battery with a sickening crunch. The second shot actually blew one of the second bug’s arms right off, but the thing just kept coming, barreling into me like a hammer; but this time, I was ready.

            By the time the third and final bug had slammed into my chest, I’d activated my suit’s electrostatic defense skin. A thousand volts arced across the surface of the armor, and neon-blue bolts of electricity curled around the two bugs, both of which went stiff as boards, jerking and twitching like puppets on a string until I finally powered the defense field down. Groaning and still twitching, but thankfully very much alive, the two aliens went limp and fell to the ground.

            My lungs burned like I’d just ran a marathon and my pulse was a thunderstorm in my ears. Sweat stung my eyes and more than anything I just wanted to lay down and sleep the next couple hours away.

            Instead I called in.

            “Boots, this is DA calling in.”

            A few seconds later the sergeant responded, voice crackling and skipping with static. “Copy that DA. What’s the word?”




Questions:

1. How was the action in this scene?
2. Any problems with blocking, or was the environment pretty clear?
3. I'm trying to reveal the nature of the planet slowly. Is it working, or do you feel like you still haven't scene enough?
4. The dialogue is my lame attempt at sounding 'military-ish'. How is it? Any suggestions?
5. Anything else?

I Am Not A Soldier 2

Ok, here is the second part to my sci-fi short story. It picks up right where the other one left off.
____________________________________________________________________

The drop-pod itself is like a gigantic onion—as it screams down, successive layers of braking flaps less than ten nanometers thick blossom open like flower petals. The atmospheric drag on the flaps is unbelievable—the things light up like Roman Candles on the Fourth of July and burn completely away in less than a hundredth of a second. Then the next layer of brakes flares open, and then the next. Bam. Bam. Bam. You get the picture. The bottom line is, by the time the drop-pod is five hundred meters above the surface it’s decelerated to about 1000 meters per second—depending on the atmosphere of the planet and some other stuff only engineers really care about.

At that point the ablative shielding on the pod’s nose has boiled away and the retro-rockets kick in, firing a magnetoplasma pulse for 0.01 seconds, slowing the pod down to a survivable speed and—coincidentally—frying anything within 100 meters of the target zone.

Now, nobody could survive any of this—not the gut-wrenching acceleration out of the ship or the spine-shattering deceleration half a second later—if it weren’t for the miracle of artificial gravity. A-grav is another handy bit of tech we inherited from the trash that pasted Earth—not that it makes up for losing our homeworld, but it does make life a little easier. A net of a-grav projectors ring the inner chamber of the pod, working like sixty during the descent phase to cancel out the g-forces rattling through the pod. The only problem is the computers running the projectors can only process so fast, so about one percent of the g-forces still make it through the null-field—and that one percent is enough to rattle your teeth out of their sockets. But at least you make it down the gravity well alive.

Of course, this whole process was theoretical. Nobody—at least, no human—had made a drop before. We, the spaceborne marines of the UFS Ruin’s Gambler were the first.

           

            The whole drop process, from start to finish, flashed through my mind as I settled into my cocoon between Boots and Rogers and snapped my VMR into the forward bulkhead

Rogers was already grumbling about his stomach but I tuned him out and tried to focus on the muted sound of the cocoon latching onto my armor. I hadn’t said a prayer in months—losing everything had kind of tarnished my opinion of the Big Guy upstairs—but I figured now was as good a time as any to pick up the habit again.

Please God, get us out of this alive. And help me not to puke during the drop. Amen.

Behind me, Westover had produced a fist of cigars and was passing them out to Bergstrom and Tiang.

“I saw this on an old movie once.” I could practically hear the nut grinning through the radio as he passed three more cigars forward to us. “Always gotta have a cigar for the victory celebration. Some crap about fat ladies and singers.”

“Bucha!” Boots’ faceplate popped open long enough for him to drag the cigar across his upper lip. Eyes rolling up, he sighed contentedly. “This is a Cubano! How’d you sneak these on board, basura?”

The question elicited a nasty chuckle from Westover. “I put them in a plastic bag and swallowed ‘em before we were herded off Earth. Getting them back, that was the hard part.”

There was a collective groan through the com-frequency and Boots dropped his cigar, face twisting in a horrified grimace as his helmet snapped shut. “Westy,” he choked out over the radio, “if we make it down in one piece, I’m gonna kill you.”

“Ah, common Boots. I was only teasing.”

The crimson prep-light switched on and my timer started pulsing in the corner of my vision. Twenty seconds to drop.

Above my head, a bank of vents slide open and with a hiss a thick gray cloud of nano-bots splashed down over me. Hurriedly stowing my cigar in my utility pack—I didn’t care what Westy had done with the things, I wasn’t going to let a genuine Cuban cigar go to waste—I shut my eyes and tried to regulate my breathing, just like they’d trained me.

The foggy nano swarm quickly filled the cabin, so thick I couldn’t see Boots, Rogers or the bulkhead twenty centimeters in front of me. Then the fog was inside my helmet and I could feel the invisible machines sliding down my throat and filling my nostrils, thick and oily. I closed my eyes and my chest went cold as the swarm filled my lungs and I started to gag—we’d already done this twice in training, but each time was just as bad as the first—but I could still breathe, even if it felt like my lungs had been pumped full of water, so I fought the panic down and tried to settle further into my cocoon.

“This is it, boys.” Boots was all business again, as calm as ever. “Either the shortest trip we’ll ever make, or the longest. Hooah!”

Ten seconds to drop.

Without warning the soft, cloudy nano swarm turned hard as concrete, freezing all of us in place. My brain and body rebelled instantaneously, every muscle and cell screaming with a panic I could barely contain. There was no air! I can’t breathe! The thought screamed furiously between my ears, and I wanted to scream with it, only I couldn’t. My jaw was locked in place too.

Only I could. The nano swarm kept a constant, even flow of oxygen passing through my lungs, and even worked to keep my blood circulating through my immobilized heart. Gradually, as my trembling body realized it was not asphyxiating, I regained control.

Now for the hard part.

Five second to drop.

The ship-wide frequencies were alive with chatter, scan-techs keeping up a constant flood of information about conditions dirt-side, officers calmly passing orders to all parts of the ship, defense crew chiefs cutting in every now and again to report on closing missiles or other threats.

“Surface winds decreasing to twenty meters per second.”

“Prepare for a front portside burn, ten seconds.”

“Ready for burn, sir.”

“Two bogeys at three hundred kilometers!”

“Target acquired—neutralized.”

            I was so caught up in the action that I almost forgot about the drop. My timer finally reached 00:00:00 and a warning siren began wailing. I had a half second to wonder if I’d feel anything when we launched—and then a force like a million tons of lead slammed into my chest, knocking the nano-propelled wind right out of me. My cocoon groaned around me, the webbing and padding creaking in protest. The pod began to bounce and rattle, vibrating hard enough to make me wonder if the ship was falling apart around me. A sound like a train whistle—only a thousand time louder—filled the cabin, and then another force every bit as strong as the first slammed into my back, throwing me against my shoulder restraints. Something exploded just beyond the forward bulkhead—the retro-rocket, I realized dimly—and I pressed further into my restraints until we finally came to a sudden, screeching halt.

            I wanted to die. Every part of my body was burning in agony, and I just wanted to lay back and die, but the pod was already unfolding, the nano swarm evaporating in a gray-black haze, and the harsh light of this new, alien world burning through my helmet’s cameras.

            Boots was already up on the edge of pod, framed by columns of roiling smoke and bright shafts of cold, blue-tinged light, the skin of his suit already shifting to blend in with his surroundings.

            “Let’s move boys!” he shouted, twirling his free hand above his head. “Go! Go! Go!”

            My cocoon popped open and I lurched forward, jerking my VMR free and cursing as I clambered past Boots to begin securing the area—that’s my job, along with Rogers, who was already ducking over the opposite end of the pod. Behind me, Westover was helping Tiang assemble the heavy weaponry, and Bergstrom was crouched beneath Boots, shouting across half a dozen frequencies as he frantically tried to establish communication with the Gambler and the other squads.

            The retro-rocket had burned clear an area the size of a football field, leaving on strange charred shaped I didn’t recognize and ankle-deep ash that puffed up in fine clouds as I tried to wade through it. Tried, because gravity on this rock was about 70% what I was used to, and despite hours of training during the past weeks, I was nearly falling with every step. Finally, after what seemed like hours, I forced my body into the weird half-jog half-jump that we’d been taught, and made for the edge of the blast zone.

            Explosions were rocking the ground on all sides, making keeping my feet extra-difficult. The alien suckers on this rock were a primitive lot—all they had to throw at the Gambler were chemical missiles with fissionable warheads. But they had a lot of these missiles, and it looked like they were using them up as fast as they could. From my position, I counted at least thirty columns of smoke and flame arcing high up into the sky—the exhaust columns of enemy missiles, and they were all converging on an invisible point almost directly over my head—the Gambler’s position in low orbit.

            My ship wasn’t sitting still though. Even as I craned my head back to look, razor-thin lines of fire began to radiate from the Gambler’s unseen position, lancing out at each and every climbing missile. With a thunderous roar, huge explosions began to shatter the thin sky as the enemy rockets detonated prematurely.

            “DA, is your side clear?”

            Boots’ urgent call jerked me back to the job at hand. “Half a second, Boots, and I’ll know.”

            I reached the edge of the burn scar and began scanning the perimeter, VMR couched against my shoulder, my HUD flicking through visible, infrared and x-ray wavelengths, alert for any signs of movement.

            To my right, about two klicks from where I was crouched in the ash and hidden from view by a low, blackened ridge, a projectile battery of some kind was pounding away, firing in our general direction, but the shots were all passing high over my head with furious, buzzing whines, and I figured the aliens had panicked and started firing at the column of smoke ascending lazily from our pod.

Questions:

1. How was the action towards the end? Could you visualize what was happening?
2. Up to this point I've purposely been fairly vague about the planet they're landing on. Do you feel like I've given enough details to keep you reading, or does it feel like it needs more fleshing out?
3. How is the dialogue between the characters?
4. Does the main character, DA, seem interesting to you, or is he pretty 1-dimensional?
5. Other comments and general impressions.

I Am Not A Soldier 1

            I am not a soldier.

            Usually those words hold some comfort for me. In the rec-hall I repeat them over and over for hours on end while nursing an endless stream of bad beers alongside my squad.

I am not a soldier!

The words are a prayer, or maybe a nursery rhyme, and at night when it’s quiet they roll back and forth inside my head until I fall asleep.

I AM NOT A SOLDIER!

But standing in the ready-room, with my armor climbing up my legs and the klaxons blaring and the crimson emergency lights bathing everything in blood, the words were a roar growing louder and louder between my ears until finally—mercifully—my helmet closed over my face and I could let it all out in one long scream that the guys wouldn’t hear. They’d think I was cracking up, and I that’s one thing I could never live with. Because even more than I didn’t want to be a soldier, I didn’t want to let the guys down. I’d known one of them for a total of six months and the rest for half that, but they were already family. They were all I had left, now that Earth was gone.

A million emotions were tied up with that one fact—Earth was gone—memories and feelings I couldn’t afford to wade through right then, so I shoved them back to wherever it is they hide in my head and jerked my rifle off the rack.  The gloves of the TTA-suit transmit tactile senses like texture and temperature just like a second skin—heck, better than my own skin—and the feel of the blocky grip of the VMR-1 in my hand was like a firm handshake from an old friend. But I swear to you, I am not a soldier.

The in-suit systems of my armor kicked in as I formed up with the rest of the squad, constellations of symbols and light flickering to life, my HUD pasting my view with glowing, translucent icons and status bars: the health status of my mates, distance to the bulkhead walls all around me, latest updates to our orders, and the ticking clock steadily marching towards drop-time. Smaller windows just within my peripheral vision show right, left and rear views.

A cool chime toned in my right ear—the armor letting me know it had completed the digital link with my neural port. Using half-a-dozen mental commands I flipped through the armor’s infrared, ultraviolet and x-ray imaging schemes, just to make sure they worked.

By then our NCO was pacing back and forth in front of us, giving one final inspection before we piled through the round portal behind him into the waiting drop-pod.

Rafael Quintana Carranza was the only real soldier in the whole group, and he had beat three of the other guys to the ground before we’d dropped the whole “Sergeant” act and just called him Boots like he wanted. Back on Earth—back when there was still an Earth—he pulled five tours in Nigeria with the 101^st Airborne. Tall for a Mexican, he’s got a nose that looks like its been broken three or four times and a nasty scar across one cheek where some Nigerian douche-bag tried to add to his smile with machete—all of which was hidden by the flat, polished steel faceplate of his helmet.

Creepy things, those TTA-suits. There’s no viewport that you can see, no visor that lets you look a trooper in the eyes and read what he or she is thinking. The faceplate is completely opaque, and like the rest of the suit it’s painted over in a molecule-thin layer of nano-particles that act like a chameleon’s skin, blending in with any background. Basically making a guy invisible. Tiny cameras and sensors too small to see ring the helmet and feed data straight to the trooper. I had to admit it was a pretty slick system. Too bad it was made by the same alien crap-shooters who’d blown our home away.

“No use repeating your briefing again.” Boot’s voice came out cold and neutral, filtered by his armor’s comm-system. “You heard the big-brass. Whatever mierda lives down there dirt-side has intel we need, and they’re not giving it up. Not willingly, at least. We’re in this for the long haul. Winning over hearts and minds and all that jazz.”

Boots nodded at the scattered chuckles from some of the squad.  I wasn’t laughing. My stomach was doing crunches and I was too busy trying not to puke. Inside my helmet, that would be a mess.

I am not a soldier. I am not a soldier.

Seeing that there were no more questions, Boots shouldered his VMR and made a quick, two-fingered gesture towards the open portal.

“Right then. Load up!”

Orbital insertions are a tactician’s worst nightmare. But you wouldn’t think so at first glance. Up front, the problem seems pretty straight forward: how do you get a bunch of jarheads from point A to point B alive and ready to fight? Simple, right?

Well, as always, first appearances are deceptive.

Problem number one is point A. It’s a ship—a big ship—orbiting roughly five hundred klicks above the planet surface. Now that ship might be trucking along at a good clip—maybe about seven thousand meters per second—but in space combat that’s basically a standstill. So there it is, a big, fat, thousand-meter sucker moving at a constant velocity with nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. Any idiot with something as primitive as a chemical rocket and a nuclear warhead can take a potshot at it—and believe me, you’d be amazed out how many idiots there are in this galaxy.

Problem number two: your group of ruggedly handsome troopers have got to pile into a smaller ship—and remember, in space smaller always equals less protection—and get down to point B, which is any old spot dirtside.

Now, gravity is already helping out, pulling you down to the surface; but whatever puny acceleration local gravity can cough up isn’t going to get you moving fast enough to avoid all of the really nasty things being shot at you: x-ray and gamma lasers, nano-swarm clouds, auto-drones, guided missiles, smart-flak and kinetic kill devices . . . you get the idea. And your tiny drop-pod has to travel through five hundred kilometers of this with nothing to hide behind but a few paltry clouds. Maybe. If the weather is cooperating. All of this means you have to be moving fast. Damn fast. Gravity just isn’t enough.

So the drop-pod doesn’t just undock from its big carrier ship. Oh no. It gets fired from a launch tube, which is actually just a nice military euphemism for ‘really big rail-gun’. By the time the drop-pod exits the ship it’s traveling at almost relativistic speeds—something like 0.001c or 300,000 meters per second. At that rate, you’d be ramming face-first into the dirt after just one second—fast enough to avoid most of the nasty things flying at you . . . but also fast enough to separate all your atoms into their constituent particles. So, obviously there are still some issues to work out.

Every void space in the drop-ship (and yes, that includes the troopers’ void spaces) is filled with a nano-gel that forms a semi-solid, oxygen-permeable foam that stabilizes the ship’s interior during acceleration and deceleration.

Ok, sorry for posting this so late. This is the beginning of a short story concept I've been brewing on for quite some time. A few things to keep in mind while reading it: 1) You're not supposed to know why the main character doesn't think he's a soldier yet. It'll come. I promise. 2) I realize that the second section of the story may go directly against what I was telling David about info-dumps. Give me your opinions as to whether it seems too much like an info-dump, or whether the narration is active enough to keep it interesting. 3) I know it ends abruptly. Sorry.


Questions:
1) This is the first time I've tried 1st person. Does it work? Any problems that you see?
2) Give feedback like Colton said to on his recent post
3) General Impressions