Previously: A break in at the Secretary General's place. Oooo spooooooky stuff. Now for something completely different.
Johanna U.N. Peace Keepers Base, Washington D.C., North America May 17th, 2157
The railgun cracked hard as the bullet left the chamber. The gun shot backwards, jabbing itself hard into Ten’s shoulder, hitting that familiar calloused area. So many recoil shots from the rifle had almost completely numbed that spot on her shoulder. She could have the nerve damage repaired, but that would just make the action of shooting the railgun in the future that much more painful. Many soldiers had joked that they were surprised that the gun simply didn’t blow her away.
Ten was a fairly small woman, standing only about a hand shorter than the Sarge. And Sergeant Pixie—she stifled a giggle—was not a tall woman. Every time she thought of her commanding officer’s name she could not help but laugh. She briefly wondered why the Sarge hadn’t tried to put her foot down on people using that moniker.
Ten saw the puff of dust as the railshot slammed into the ground and she gritted her teeth in frustration. She traced the path of the bullet from the distortion through the air, and adjusted her aim. The computerized auto adjuster in the gun was only good for so much. The gun flickered a laze on the target every five or so seconds, and the scope would readjust itself according to the wind, the distance, the elevation, and about a dozen other factors that came into dealing with sniping. She glanced down the barrel, checking the hardsights. The gun looked like some alien weapon. A long flat barrel graced the front of the gun about a centimeter thick and five centimeters wide. The twin superconducting rails followed along the central barrel, passing a charge down the two rails, causing the gun to fire slugs out at almost eight kilometers a second. But even for Ten the computer in the gun could only account for so much. Sometimes you just had to pray and hope the shot went right the first time.
She adjusted her aim according to the external ballistics the last shot had shown and exhaled all the breath out of her lungs. In her mind she recited a Psalm. Psalm 143 to be specific. In your unfailing love… She shifted her aim up just a little to account for a slight pull from a sudden change in the wind. Silence my enemies… An itch manifested itself on her chin. She ignored it. Destroy all my foes. She lightly squeezed the trigger. For I am your servant.
The rail gun roared and she watched the bullet streak to the target hitting it less than a second after firing. She smiled as this time the shot sunk home, blowing the hay target apart in an explosion of debris. Snipers seemed to be by nature a religious lot. Maybe there was some sort of aspect of the divine destroyer, killing targets at will and without fear of retribution. Or maybe it was because they felt it was divine intervention to have the ability to stop or start a war with a single shot. She checked the range on her heads-up display.
Instead of a standard scope like the sniper rifles of years past had, the gun simply had a small internal camera with a tiny lens, so as to prevent glare flashes. That camera fed to a heads up display that hung in front of her right eye, notifying her of wind speed, distance, and several other details. The tiny opaque screen currently read one-point-five kilometers. She noted the tiny icon indicated remaining power reserves in the rifle was getting low and blindly grasped around in front of her for a spare while keeping her eye on the next target. Several moments passed and she found no charge pack within arm’s reach. She finally opened her left eye and the heads-up display turned off, coiling back to the side of her head. No packs left, she thought, scanning the ground.
Ten stood up holding her gun to her side like a staff and dusted her uniform off with her spare hand. Gathering the spent charge packs on the ground into her arm, she turned toward the equipping station for the sniper range. The entire zone had been set off specifically for sniper firing and at the moment she was the only one using several kilometer long firing zone. As she walked toward the equipping station she saw a familiar face standing to the side. Sergeant Pixie stood to the side of the equipping station with one arm across her chest while the other helped purse a lit herbal in her lips.
Ten set the empty charge packs on the station so that the quartermaster in charge could get the solar rechargers working on them and used her long barreled sniper rifle as a walking stick as she walked over to Pixie.
“What’s the word, Sarge?” she asked.
Pixie turned to face her as if she was surprised to see Ten standing there. Pixie looked her up and down before she pulled the herbal out of her mouth and tapped the charred end off that flittered to the ground.
“Good firing out there, Ten,” Pixie observed.
“Thank you ma’am.” Ten responded, wishing the Sarge would get to the meat of what she wanted to say.
“Company inspect in four hours. I need you back at the barracks getting the place cleaned up. I want to be able to eat off that floor!” Pixie said with stern tones.
Ten simply nodded. Why hadn’t she called? Or sent someone else over here? Ten knew that Pixie seemed to enjoy her command, and she was very hands on, sometimes more than necessary. She saluted and left the range, shouldering the gun as she jogged off towards their barracks.
Pixie watched Ten jog off into the distance before she pulled out some binoculars to inspect the shots on the range. Each shot had been at a minimum of a kilometer and a half, and/gu none were much further than beyond it. If I recall, the record for a sniper shot on a confirmed kill was two and a half. But that record was made back during World War Three. She wondered if anyone could make it now. Ten might be able to if she really tried for it.
She put the binoculars back on the stand where the quartermaster was cleaning the power packs off with a rag. She spent another moment gazing over the range, then dropped the herbal to the ground and smashed it under her boot. She caught the quartermaster glaring at her as she littered the ground with the debris, but she disregarded his look and walked out of the shooting range, heading for the Commissary. There was a meeting tonight with all the non-commissioned officers and above, but beyond that, she had the rest of the day to herself. Such meetings happened irregularly enough to leave her slightly curious to what it was about.
She passed by the vehicle garage and paused for a moment as a machine caught her eye. The motor crews had been performing some heavy maintenance on the Katzenmeir super heavies this week and one lay almost completely gutted out in one of the large scrapyards. The monstrous tanks easily weighed one-hundred metric tons if not more, and they had the presence of some construction vehicle, not a war machine. Their massive treads spread out their tremendous bulk over the ground, keeping the vehicles from sinking into the ground. Pixie admired the war machines for a moment. These had never actually been deployed in the battlefield since their inception. These models were maybe only two or three decades old, and they showed very few signs of damage. The tanks almost seemed to be in pristine condition.
The three turrets lay disassembled to the side of the tank on a large tarp. The wiring for the tremendous twenty-pound railgun was spread all around the motor bay coiling from the interior of the machine to the actual cannon, and the two smaller auto-cannons had also been disassembled to their component parts as the machine crews manually cleaned them. She noted that the machine-guns on the left and right flanks were still resting inside the tank, awaiting their own maintenance.
The smaller guns used the same type of weapon technology common in the infantry Baldwin rifles. The guns fired a complex round, consisting of a copper bullet that the shaped charge detonated at the back heated to a molten state. The copper spike ripped into its target, impacting like an explosive charge, ripping it apart. The interesting issue with the weapon was the harder and more resistive the target was, the greater damage it suffered, but Pixie wasn’t quite sure on why that was. Infantry personal armor as a result had been changed to more protect against other weapons such as flechette launchers as the bullet proof vests were getting soldiers killed.
The ones on the side of the super heavy tank were able to fire such copper bullets at rapid fire, and each easily held a magazine of several thousand shots. Pixie simply nodded in respect to the great machine.
The rest of the motor pool was silent as workers moved around, cleaning and maintaining equipment. The crews for the machines seemed to be engaged with other duties elsewhere. The walkers such as the Dire Wolves and the Hunters lay resting, ready for their crews to jump inside at a moment’s notice. She saw a familiar face, Captain Adrian Tanaka, climbing down from the cockpit of his Dire Wolf. He waved down a mechanic that was still scrambling about the yard and said something to the man before he finished his descension. Adrian dusted his hands off, and looked around the yard before he caught Pixie in his view. He waved at her and started walking towards her.
She waved back and walked up to join him. The short man pulled the gloves off his hands as he approached her with a grin on his face. Pixie met him about halfway across the motorpool. The two embraced like old friends, and then Adrian pulled out an herbal and offered her one as well. Pixie waved him away. She already had the bitter aftertaste in her mouth from the last one, and she now wanted to find something minty to get the taste out. She didn’t know why it was that she smoked those things. Must just be nerves. Smoking seemed to be an almost exclusive military habit now. She had rarely seen any civvies outside light up.
“What’s the word, Captain?” Pixie asked, being careful to address him by his superior rank. He had never actually said anything about the rank difference, but she was careful all the same.
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Illusions of Control Chapter 2, First Part
Continuing on, we just met Maaka, another of the protagonists in his job as Liaison to Tam Laboratories. Dr. Tam was showing off his invention of the Gravity inductor engine. But all is not well. This post is a tad long, but I felt that breaking it up would reduce the suspense happening in the scene. At least the suspense I hope to portray in the scene.
Chapter 2
“In actual terms of damage and loss, the Third World War was easily the most devastating of any two wars in the history of mankind. Many historians have pointed to the First World War for parallels including the extreme nationalism felt by many countries, the harbored resentment and ancient grudges held by numerous nations, as well as the system of alliances and treaties making nations that would never have found a reason to fight each other, kill each other’s citizens. The main sides incorporated into the war were many. Asian Ultranationalists, Western Separatists for the Americas and Europe, the U.N. and its coalition of vassal countries as well as several others. Ultimately, the incredible financial burdens facing many of the belligerents as well as a looming global energy crisis, allowed the U.N. to strike hard and fast, using both technology developed by internal scientists as well as an intelligent military plan cooperating with cunning diplomacy allowed the U.N. to win the war, and finish uniting the planet.” – A Brief History of the World, Vol. 7
House of the Secretary General, Vienna, Austria, May 16th, 2157
Sergeant Michael Sedgewicke shifted from one foot to the other as he tried to stifle a yawn with his hand. As it abated, he ran the same hand through his short blond hair. He wouldn’t deny that the graveyard shift for security at the Secretary General’s house was an easy job. At least it was easy until you found yourself struggling to stay awake at one in the morning, he thought glumly to himself.
Still there were worse jobs that he could be at, and he had a fairly good deal running here. Stand around, occasionally play cards when he was in the control room, walk around. Real simple stuff. When his shift was over in three hours, he could go back to his bed and drift off into a nice restful sleep. He yawned again this time before he could instinctively raise a hand to cover it. Stop thinking about bed, he thought. You’ll only make yourself more tired.
He looked back towards the house. To call it a house subtracted from the grandeur of the structure. A mansion. That was more appropriate. The building was fairly large, constructed in a standard Carrollian style with Roman influences as well as some more modern styles. It had been traditional for the Secretary-Generals to live here during their term, dating all the way back to Secretary-General Gorchakova. Some government leaders had stated that it was an outdated tradition and that the Secretary General should be located somewhere more reasonable for government business like Beijing or D.C.
Michael didn’t know for sure what the exact reason was that no Secretary-General had moved, but most claimed they were just honoring the memory of Secretary General Gorchakova by remaining there. He certainly wouldn’t complain to live in a house like this even if the commute for work involved a scramjet journey almost every morning and night. The mansion was enormous and more than one person had compared to Windsor Castle in London, but the King’s palace was still about a third larger.
There had to be hundreds of rooms inside the building, and most were being used as offices or bedrooms for guests of the U.N. visiting Vienna. Hundreds of staff kept the building clean and well kept, and Michael knew at least three dozen security guards roamed the perimeter with hundreds of Blue Helms stationed less than ten minutes away at the Kronburger Military Base.
The front law had been perfectly trimmed during the day’s work. The little automated mowers had done a fine job at last. The past few weeks, the small robots had been malfunctioning and leaving a massive patchwork patterns all over the yard. The issue had been causing both the gardeners and mechanics no small amount of headaches trying to fix the issue. Apparently they had solved it earlier today. Michael casually walked among the flower beds, with his hands held stationary behind his back. This section of the lawns was more dimly illuminated than other sections, supposedly not to damage the flowers, but he still had a decent view over the grounds even given the poor lighting.
The mansion was located along the outskirts of Vienna. Surprisingly, the urban growth hadn’t approached and surrounded the structure in the century or so that the mansion had stood rooted on this spot. Michael wondered if there was any particular zoning reason behind the building staying at the outskirts, or if the fact was just nothing more than a sheer coincidence. As Michael walked, he noted that the trees up against the perimeter fence seemed to sway in the springtime air. He looked to the sky to see if he could spy any storm clouds coming in. it was about the right time of the year for a seasonal thunderstorm. The auroras however seemed to cover the entire expanse of the sky, but he couldn’t spy any dark and angry clouds that signaled a coming downpour.
The silence was broken by a sudden voice speaking on his ear-com. The little imbedded chip in his ear could be tuned to any appropriate frequency, and right now the only reception it was to receive was directly from the security control room inside the mansion.
“Sedgewicke, this is control, respond,” the voice said. He recognized the soft feminine voice as being Captain Sophie Dubois, the security chief at the manner. He was surprised it wasn’t one of the controllers talking to him and if the security chief was the one signaling him, he had better respond quickly. He wasted no time in calling back a reply.
“Sedgewicke here, go ahead Control,” he said in a tired voice.
“Yeah, uh we need you to move to uh,” she yelled something unintelligible to someone else in the control room. A brief moment later she responded. “We need you to redeploy to Sector 7 along the outer wall. Let us know if you see anything, or hear anything out of the ordinary while you are moving there as well as respond when you arrive.”
“Roger that control, do we, ah, have a problem?” Michael asked as he picked up his pace, jogging to Sector 7. Sector 7 was another zone of the garden about one hundred meters away on the south side of the building. Splayed out across a large serene pond were several artificial islands in this section of the botanical gardens.
“One second, Sedgewicke.” There was a pause on the other end, and Michael slowed his step just a moment. He didn’t want to walk into a situation without some information to the trouble at hand. “Sedgewicke, perimeter alarm was tripped, but security cameras show nothing in the area. It may have just been a stray animal, but we’d still like confirmation.”
“Roger that control,” Michael said as he arrived at the islands area. He walked over onto one of the small bridges over a small stream. The trickle of lightly flowing water filled the air, as well as the fine scent of lilac blossoms along the streambed. He brought out his MP-HG, holding the small handgun in one hand while he flicked the flashlight on in his other hand. The LED light shone brightly, turning the dark areas of the island area to daylight as the light shone over it. He cautiously moved from island to island, looking behind every bush and all along the fence line. Situations like this had always made him nervous. The security systems were supposed to be very advanced, but if something tripped it and avoided being seen, then there was a problem. Finding nothing, he called back to Control.
“Control, this is Sedgewicke. Area is clear. I’m not seeing anything. Musta been an animal or a light breeze,” he said.
“Confirmed, Sedgewicke. Keep a watch for at least fifteen to guarantee a clear sweep,” Dubois’s voice instructed.
“Got it, Control. Out,” Michael said. He lowered the gun back into its holster but kept the flashlight out as he prowled back over the bridges towards the direction he had come from. While it was irregular for an alarm to be tripped, animals tripping the alarms were not an occurrence without precedent. Technicians promised to fix the system so that it only was activated when a person crossed through, but so far they had not delivered on their promises. As he crossed one of the bridges, a flash of movement out of the corner of his eye caught his attention. He spun immediately, bringing the flashlight up to bear in one hand while grasping for his gun in the other. Even as he faced the direction he had seen the movement, he saw nothing but a wind rustling the leaves in the thick trees. As the accompanying sigh of relief left his breath he immediately came to a realization. There was no wind to rustle the leaves. The bushes went silent even as he stepped forward toward the foliage, keeping his gun raised.
He took each step as quietly and cautiously as he could. His finger rested lightly on the trigger and he kept the flashlight aimed high. He stopped a hands breadth away from the tree and paused for a moment, waiting to see if whatever animal was there would reveal itself. Nothing happened. A sudden flicker of movement out of the corner of his vision, and he spun. Even as he turned, he twisted his ankle on the edge of the pavement and collapsed with a yell of pain. The flashlight spiraled through the air, casting bright light all across the grounds and into his face, completely destroying his night vision. The gun clattered against the pavement and skidded across the walk before falling into the water with a defined ‘plunk’. He cursed several times, but stopped when his eyes caught the water. The light from the LED flashlight shone across the face of the pond as large ripples wafted across the water, before colliding with the waves from the splash of his gun. Something had just taken a step through the water. His neck craned up toward the manor, and through his dimmed vision an odd shape, bipedal in nature, was silently bolting for the house.
Without hesitating, he activated his com, and screamed in, “Code 347! Code 347! Intruder on the premises!”
Less than heartbeat later, floodlights shone all around the compound, and the shouts of security filled the air. Michael cursed as one light made direct contact with his still dilated pupils and he cursed as he covered his face with his arm. He reached around for the flashlight, and once he had located it, he turned it off and stuffed it in his pocket. At the same time Michael scrambled forward with his other arm, sifting through the water until his hand grasped around the handle of the gun. The MP-HG was a miracle of technology. Beyond all the different types of shots and ammo it could use, the weapon was virtually indestructible, never jammed, and was completely impervious to water. He shook the gun dry, and glanced back toward the building now that his eyes had adjusted to the bright light. The figure he had seen darting toward the building was nowhere in sight, and concern covered his features. He suddenly realized that Dubois had been roaring in his ear.
“What is it?! What did you see?! Damn it, Sedgewicke, respond!”
He caught his breath and responded as he jogged toward the house. Alright lights inside the building were flaring up, and security personal were out on the law, some jogging towards him. “I didn’t see them completly. Someone was hiding in the vegetation, and they jumped me. They crossed the uh… southern island area, and I saw them heading to the mansion before your firking lights blinded me.”
Men were shouting out on the grounds now, and he saw some had grabbed some of the more potent Baldwin rifles. It seems security was taking any security breach deadly serious. He scanned the grounds, now that he had regained his composure, looking for his assailant. Nothing of note jumped out at him, until he saw it. The door on the third floor balcony the door to the Secretary-General’s room, hung on its hinges, wide open. The lights on the room remained off. They’re inside.
“They’re inside! Breach on south side! Third floor balcony!” he yelled into his microphone.
“Damn it! Personnel to Perrone’s room! Get the Sec-Gen to the bunker!” Dubois shouted.
Michael breathlessly charged inside the building, throwing the door open with a gesture. He slammed a flechette clip in the gun and flicked the safety off Perfect for indoor combat, flechette shells were the next stage evolution of the shotgun shell. Instead of firing little barrages of shot, flechette rounds fired a package of tiny barbed spikes. The barbs didn’t leave as much internal damage as a shotgun shell, but they would shred anything they hit, causing massive blood loss on the target.
“Proximity alarm tripped, third floor library!” a nameless Control agent shouted into the channel.
“Sanderson, Locke, Taylor, Wells, get the Sec-Gen to the bunker! Brown, Jordon, Vinge, cover the grounds!” Dubois continued shouting orders to all the security personnel directing them inside the building and getting the officers to take up stations. She then directed Michael directly to the library up on the third floor. He coolly ran up the stairs, not even breaking a sweat as he hit the top floor.
Even as he reached the library he noted the door hanging open. Another two security personnel joined him, one holding another handgun up towards the door, while the other cradled a Baldwin rifle in his hands, thumbing the trigger. Michael didn’t pay attention to who they were before he started towards the room. He counted down from three to zero with his fingers, and then charged into the room, flashlight and gun raised, not even checking to see if the other two had followed. Beyond all the furnishings, the room lay vacant. He fumbled for the light switch on the wall and when he hit the button, the room was immediately flooded in illumination. Michael immediately saw one of the windows hanging open to the outside.
“Control, intruder exited through the West Library window,” Michael reported in.
“Copy that, Sedgewicke,” Dubois responded.
Another voice came on. “Control, package has been delivered to the bunker. We’re holding down inside. Door is locked.”
Michael let out a sigh of relief. Antonio Perrone, the Secretary General was safe in the bunker below the mansion. There was an emergency elevator in his room that led straight to the bunker and the facility was at least fifty feet underground with ad was being held shut with incredibly powerful electromagnet locks.
“Did he see anything” Dubois asked. “They went right through his room.”
“Uh, negative control. Papa Dog wasn’t aware anything was wrong until we grabbed him. He was just getting up to see what all the fuss was about,” the voice responded.
Michael looked out the window, along the sides of the building. Nothing. Not a sign of anything unusual. His brow curled in frustration and he slammed the window shut, locking it. He and the other two security guards moved out of the library and turned the light off before shutting the door. The moment the door hit shut, another voice, one of the controllers spoke on the frequency.
“Ah, Sanderson, did you guys just mess with the cameras?” the voice asked.
Sanderson was the one who had responded from inside the bunker. He responded a second later. “Negative, Control. Why?”
“We’re getting some static of… wait… camera feed is down!” the controller yelped.
“Get them back up!” Dubois’ voice chimed in.
“I can’t. Hard line is cut!” Michael frowned. While wireless technology had taken over the electronics of the world, cabled technology still was valuable for secured objects. A jammer could kill any wireless signal, but a hard line had to actually be severed in most cases to bring the machine out of commission.
“Sedgewicke, get some guys down there, now! Sanderson, let me know what’s happening!” Dubois’s voice came in as frenzied as the security commander seemed almost on the verge of panic.
Michael raced for the closest access to the bunker. There were several access points, both elevators and standard staircases, throughout the building, stationed for evacuation no matter where you were in the house. The elevator in the Secretary-General’s bedroom was locked down now that Sanderson and the others had used it. The next closest evacuation point was another elevator just down the hall in Perrone’s study.
Sanderson’s voice came on a moment later and fear laced his voice. “They’re outside! Someone is tapping on the door. I think they’re trying to get in!”
Michael found the elevator and waited only for the two others to get inside before he slammed the button that would bring them to the bunker. The elevator roared down at an incredibly high speed, before hitting the bottom, jerking to a powerful stop. In the event of an emergency, the first thing to go is comfort, Michael thought as the door sprung open.
They all stormed out into the hallway, weapons raised as they spun to face the bunker door. The hallway was abandoned with nothing but doorways to other evacuation points at the large metal vault door at the end. Nothing moved in the corridor. The camera at the corner, facing directly towards the vault kept its eternal vigil up, while its connection cord hanging limply to the side. An evacuation door to the surface to Michael’s left was held ajar. He cursed. Not less than thirty seconds had elapsed between Sanderson’s frantic cries of the intruder trying to break in and his arrival and they had missed the intruder anyway.
“Control, area is clear, intruder gone back up. Access staircase to uh,” he struggled as he remembered. The doors weren’t labeled down here. It came to him.
“Access staircase 247, to the atrium!” He shouted the last bit as he threw the door open and charged up the stairs, taking them two at a time until he reached the top. There the door was also held ajar.
“C’mon control. This guy only cut one camera! Who are we dealing with?” he breathless asked as he scanned around the open central court of the building’s atrium.
Wide windows covered the high ceiling and small well trimmed bushes and topiaries covered the ground. The lights had at least been turned on in this area, and Michael knew there were at least four security cameras watching the area. They had to see something!
Dubois came on the channel, but her voice was ragged and she didn’t speak for a few moments, as if choosing her words carefully. “We don’t know. Cameras aren’t getting anything decent. Thermal, starlight, standard, nothing more than shapes moving. They know where every camera as and they keep maneuvering perfectly to avoid giving us anything beyond a flicker of a figure. We can’t even follow them through the house.”
The hackles on the back of Michael’s neck rose as she spoke, and he spun to see another almost familiar flicker of movement down a hall. He knew that hall was fairly long, but it was U in shape, and the other end would come right out into the atrium. He gestured for the other two security guards to wait at the outlet for the hallway, and without double checking to see if they were following his orders, he raced down the hallway.
His footsteps collided hard with the ground, echoing off the walls all around him as he raced around the corner. Even as he turned, he saw that one of the windows was hanging open, and he mentally cursed but even as the profanity entered his mind, he stopped dead in his tracks. The glimpse he caught was brief, but it frozen him in his place. The curtains rustled as the intruder stepped through, but Michael caught his first clear glimpse of the intruder, or at least part of the intruder. A lean and narrow leg ending in a multi-suckered foot like an organic suction cup. It had three toes splayed out 120 degrees from each other, and the skin was scaly like a lizard with a dark green color on all of it. The glimpse lasted less than a second and then the invader was gone.
It took Michael several moments to catch his breath but he finally forced his body to move forward. He cautiously planted one foot in front of the other until he reached the window and summoning all his reserves of strength, he peeled the curtain open, looking back over the southern island area of the property. He caught a glimpse of a form disappearing behind the fence along the perimeter, and with that, it was gone.
Questions
1. Was is suspenseful? Did it flow quickly or slowly?
2. Did it feel logical and thought out? or did the character do things you didn't think they would?
3. Any other impressions, types seen, etc.
Chapter 2
“In actual terms of damage and loss, the Third World War was easily the most devastating of any two wars in the history of mankind. Many historians have pointed to the First World War for parallels including the extreme nationalism felt by many countries, the harbored resentment and ancient grudges held by numerous nations, as well as the system of alliances and treaties making nations that would never have found a reason to fight each other, kill each other’s citizens. The main sides incorporated into the war were many. Asian Ultranationalists, Western Separatists for the Americas and Europe, the U.N. and its coalition of vassal countries as well as several others. Ultimately, the incredible financial burdens facing many of the belligerents as well as a looming global energy crisis, allowed the U.N. to strike hard and fast, using both technology developed by internal scientists as well as an intelligent military plan cooperating with cunning diplomacy allowed the U.N. to win the war, and finish uniting the planet.” – A Brief History of the World, Vol. 7
House of the Secretary General, Vienna, Austria, May 16th, 2157
Sergeant Michael Sedgewicke shifted from one foot to the other as he tried to stifle a yawn with his hand. As it abated, he ran the same hand through his short blond hair. He wouldn’t deny that the graveyard shift for security at the Secretary General’s house was an easy job. At least it was easy until you found yourself struggling to stay awake at one in the morning, he thought glumly to himself.
Still there were worse jobs that he could be at, and he had a fairly good deal running here. Stand around, occasionally play cards when he was in the control room, walk around. Real simple stuff. When his shift was over in three hours, he could go back to his bed and drift off into a nice restful sleep. He yawned again this time before he could instinctively raise a hand to cover it. Stop thinking about bed, he thought. You’ll only make yourself more tired.
He looked back towards the house. To call it a house subtracted from the grandeur of the structure. A mansion. That was more appropriate. The building was fairly large, constructed in a standard Carrollian style with Roman influences as well as some more modern styles. It had been traditional for the Secretary-Generals to live here during their term, dating all the way back to Secretary-General Gorchakova. Some government leaders had stated that it was an outdated tradition and that the Secretary General should be located somewhere more reasonable for government business like Beijing or D.C.
Michael didn’t know for sure what the exact reason was that no Secretary-General had moved, but most claimed they were just honoring the memory of Secretary General Gorchakova by remaining there. He certainly wouldn’t complain to live in a house like this even if the commute for work involved a scramjet journey almost every morning and night. The mansion was enormous and more than one person had compared to Windsor Castle in London, but the King’s palace was still about a third larger.
There had to be hundreds of rooms inside the building, and most were being used as offices or bedrooms for guests of the U.N. visiting Vienna. Hundreds of staff kept the building clean and well kept, and Michael knew at least three dozen security guards roamed the perimeter with hundreds of Blue Helms stationed less than ten minutes away at the Kronburger Military Base.
The front law had been perfectly trimmed during the day’s work. The little automated mowers had done a fine job at last. The past few weeks, the small robots had been malfunctioning and leaving a massive patchwork patterns all over the yard. The issue had been causing both the gardeners and mechanics no small amount of headaches trying to fix the issue. Apparently they had solved it earlier today. Michael casually walked among the flower beds, with his hands held stationary behind his back. This section of the lawns was more dimly illuminated than other sections, supposedly not to damage the flowers, but he still had a decent view over the grounds even given the poor lighting.
The mansion was located along the outskirts of Vienna. Surprisingly, the urban growth hadn’t approached and surrounded the structure in the century or so that the mansion had stood rooted on this spot. Michael wondered if there was any particular zoning reason behind the building staying at the outskirts, or if the fact was just nothing more than a sheer coincidence. As Michael walked, he noted that the trees up against the perimeter fence seemed to sway in the springtime air. He looked to the sky to see if he could spy any storm clouds coming in. it was about the right time of the year for a seasonal thunderstorm. The auroras however seemed to cover the entire expanse of the sky, but he couldn’t spy any dark and angry clouds that signaled a coming downpour.
The silence was broken by a sudden voice speaking on his ear-com. The little imbedded chip in his ear could be tuned to any appropriate frequency, and right now the only reception it was to receive was directly from the security control room inside the mansion.
“Sedgewicke, this is control, respond,” the voice said. He recognized the soft feminine voice as being Captain Sophie Dubois, the security chief at the manner. He was surprised it wasn’t one of the controllers talking to him and if the security chief was the one signaling him, he had better respond quickly. He wasted no time in calling back a reply.
“Sedgewicke here, go ahead Control,” he said in a tired voice.
“Yeah, uh we need you to move to uh,” she yelled something unintelligible to someone else in the control room. A brief moment later she responded. “We need you to redeploy to Sector 7 along the outer wall. Let us know if you see anything, or hear anything out of the ordinary while you are moving there as well as respond when you arrive.”
“Roger that control, do we, ah, have a problem?” Michael asked as he picked up his pace, jogging to Sector 7. Sector 7 was another zone of the garden about one hundred meters away on the south side of the building. Splayed out across a large serene pond were several artificial islands in this section of the botanical gardens.
“One second, Sedgewicke.” There was a pause on the other end, and Michael slowed his step just a moment. He didn’t want to walk into a situation without some information to the trouble at hand. “Sedgewicke, perimeter alarm was tripped, but security cameras show nothing in the area. It may have just been a stray animal, but we’d still like confirmation.”
“Roger that control,” Michael said as he arrived at the islands area. He walked over onto one of the small bridges over a small stream. The trickle of lightly flowing water filled the air, as well as the fine scent of lilac blossoms along the streambed. He brought out his MP-HG, holding the small handgun in one hand while he flicked the flashlight on in his other hand. The LED light shone brightly, turning the dark areas of the island area to daylight as the light shone over it. He cautiously moved from island to island, looking behind every bush and all along the fence line. Situations like this had always made him nervous. The security systems were supposed to be very advanced, but if something tripped it and avoided being seen, then there was a problem. Finding nothing, he called back to Control.
“Control, this is Sedgewicke. Area is clear. I’m not seeing anything. Musta been an animal or a light breeze,” he said.
“Confirmed, Sedgewicke. Keep a watch for at least fifteen to guarantee a clear sweep,” Dubois’s voice instructed.
“Got it, Control. Out,” Michael said. He lowered the gun back into its holster but kept the flashlight out as he prowled back over the bridges towards the direction he had come from. While it was irregular for an alarm to be tripped, animals tripping the alarms were not an occurrence without precedent. Technicians promised to fix the system so that it only was activated when a person crossed through, but so far they had not delivered on their promises. As he crossed one of the bridges, a flash of movement out of the corner of his eye caught his attention. He spun immediately, bringing the flashlight up to bear in one hand while grasping for his gun in the other. Even as he faced the direction he had seen the movement, he saw nothing but a wind rustling the leaves in the thick trees. As the accompanying sigh of relief left his breath he immediately came to a realization. There was no wind to rustle the leaves. The bushes went silent even as he stepped forward toward the foliage, keeping his gun raised.
He took each step as quietly and cautiously as he could. His finger rested lightly on the trigger and he kept the flashlight aimed high. He stopped a hands breadth away from the tree and paused for a moment, waiting to see if whatever animal was there would reveal itself. Nothing happened. A sudden flicker of movement out of the corner of his vision, and he spun. Even as he turned, he twisted his ankle on the edge of the pavement and collapsed with a yell of pain. The flashlight spiraled through the air, casting bright light all across the grounds and into his face, completely destroying his night vision. The gun clattered against the pavement and skidded across the walk before falling into the water with a defined ‘plunk’. He cursed several times, but stopped when his eyes caught the water. The light from the LED flashlight shone across the face of the pond as large ripples wafted across the water, before colliding with the waves from the splash of his gun. Something had just taken a step through the water. His neck craned up toward the manor, and through his dimmed vision an odd shape, bipedal in nature, was silently bolting for the house.
Without hesitating, he activated his com, and screamed in, “Code 347! Code 347! Intruder on the premises!”
Less than heartbeat later, floodlights shone all around the compound, and the shouts of security filled the air. Michael cursed as one light made direct contact with his still dilated pupils and he cursed as he covered his face with his arm. He reached around for the flashlight, and once he had located it, he turned it off and stuffed it in his pocket. At the same time Michael scrambled forward with his other arm, sifting through the water until his hand grasped around the handle of the gun. The MP-HG was a miracle of technology. Beyond all the different types of shots and ammo it could use, the weapon was virtually indestructible, never jammed, and was completely impervious to water. He shook the gun dry, and glanced back toward the building now that his eyes had adjusted to the bright light. The figure he had seen darting toward the building was nowhere in sight, and concern covered his features. He suddenly realized that Dubois had been roaring in his ear.
“What is it?! What did you see?! Damn it, Sedgewicke, respond!”
He caught his breath and responded as he jogged toward the house. Alright lights inside the building were flaring up, and security personal were out on the law, some jogging towards him. “I didn’t see them completly. Someone was hiding in the vegetation, and they jumped me. They crossed the uh… southern island area, and I saw them heading to the mansion before your firking lights blinded me.”
Men were shouting out on the grounds now, and he saw some had grabbed some of the more potent Baldwin rifles. It seems security was taking any security breach deadly serious. He scanned the grounds, now that he had regained his composure, looking for his assailant. Nothing of note jumped out at him, until he saw it. The door on the third floor balcony the door to the Secretary-General’s room, hung on its hinges, wide open. The lights on the room remained off. They’re inside.
“They’re inside! Breach on south side! Third floor balcony!” he yelled into his microphone.
“Damn it! Personnel to Perrone’s room! Get the Sec-Gen to the bunker!” Dubois shouted.
Michael breathlessly charged inside the building, throwing the door open with a gesture. He slammed a flechette clip in the gun and flicked the safety off Perfect for indoor combat, flechette shells were the next stage evolution of the shotgun shell. Instead of firing little barrages of shot, flechette rounds fired a package of tiny barbed spikes. The barbs didn’t leave as much internal damage as a shotgun shell, but they would shred anything they hit, causing massive blood loss on the target.
“Proximity alarm tripped, third floor library!” a nameless Control agent shouted into the channel.
“Sanderson, Locke, Taylor, Wells, get the Sec-Gen to the bunker! Brown, Jordon, Vinge, cover the grounds!” Dubois continued shouting orders to all the security personnel directing them inside the building and getting the officers to take up stations. She then directed Michael directly to the library up on the third floor. He coolly ran up the stairs, not even breaking a sweat as he hit the top floor.
Even as he reached the library he noted the door hanging open. Another two security personnel joined him, one holding another handgun up towards the door, while the other cradled a Baldwin rifle in his hands, thumbing the trigger. Michael didn’t pay attention to who they were before he started towards the room. He counted down from three to zero with his fingers, and then charged into the room, flashlight and gun raised, not even checking to see if the other two had followed. Beyond all the furnishings, the room lay vacant. He fumbled for the light switch on the wall and when he hit the button, the room was immediately flooded in illumination. Michael immediately saw one of the windows hanging open to the outside.
“Control, intruder exited through the West Library window,” Michael reported in.
“Copy that, Sedgewicke,” Dubois responded.
Another voice came on. “Control, package has been delivered to the bunker. We’re holding down inside. Door is locked.”
Michael let out a sigh of relief. Antonio Perrone, the Secretary General was safe in the bunker below the mansion. There was an emergency elevator in his room that led straight to the bunker and the facility was at least fifty feet underground with ad was being held shut with incredibly powerful electromagnet locks.
“Did he see anything” Dubois asked. “They went right through his room.”
“Uh, negative control. Papa Dog wasn’t aware anything was wrong until we grabbed him. He was just getting up to see what all the fuss was about,” the voice responded.
Michael looked out the window, along the sides of the building. Nothing. Not a sign of anything unusual. His brow curled in frustration and he slammed the window shut, locking it. He and the other two security guards moved out of the library and turned the light off before shutting the door. The moment the door hit shut, another voice, one of the controllers spoke on the frequency.
“Ah, Sanderson, did you guys just mess with the cameras?” the voice asked.
Sanderson was the one who had responded from inside the bunker. He responded a second later. “Negative, Control. Why?”
“We’re getting some static of… wait… camera feed is down!” the controller yelped.
“Get them back up!” Dubois’ voice chimed in.
“I can’t. Hard line is cut!” Michael frowned. While wireless technology had taken over the electronics of the world, cabled technology still was valuable for secured objects. A jammer could kill any wireless signal, but a hard line had to actually be severed in most cases to bring the machine out of commission.
“Sedgewicke, get some guys down there, now! Sanderson, let me know what’s happening!” Dubois’s voice came in as frenzied as the security commander seemed almost on the verge of panic.
Michael raced for the closest access to the bunker. There were several access points, both elevators and standard staircases, throughout the building, stationed for evacuation no matter where you were in the house. The elevator in the Secretary-General’s bedroom was locked down now that Sanderson and the others had used it. The next closest evacuation point was another elevator just down the hall in Perrone’s study.
Sanderson’s voice came on a moment later and fear laced his voice. “They’re outside! Someone is tapping on the door. I think they’re trying to get in!”
Michael found the elevator and waited only for the two others to get inside before he slammed the button that would bring them to the bunker. The elevator roared down at an incredibly high speed, before hitting the bottom, jerking to a powerful stop. In the event of an emergency, the first thing to go is comfort, Michael thought as the door sprung open.
They all stormed out into the hallway, weapons raised as they spun to face the bunker door. The hallway was abandoned with nothing but doorways to other evacuation points at the large metal vault door at the end. Nothing moved in the corridor. The camera at the corner, facing directly towards the vault kept its eternal vigil up, while its connection cord hanging limply to the side. An evacuation door to the surface to Michael’s left was held ajar. He cursed. Not less than thirty seconds had elapsed between Sanderson’s frantic cries of the intruder trying to break in and his arrival and they had missed the intruder anyway.
“Control, area is clear, intruder gone back up. Access staircase to uh,” he struggled as he remembered. The doors weren’t labeled down here. It came to him.
“Access staircase 247, to the atrium!” He shouted the last bit as he threw the door open and charged up the stairs, taking them two at a time until he reached the top. There the door was also held ajar.
“C’mon control. This guy only cut one camera! Who are we dealing with?” he breathless asked as he scanned around the open central court of the building’s atrium.
Wide windows covered the high ceiling and small well trimmed bushes and topiaries covered the ground. The lights had at least been turned on in this area, and Michael knew there were at least four security cameras watching the area. They had to see something!
Dubois came on the channel, but her voice was ragged and she didn’t speak for a few moments, as if choosing her words carefully. “We don’t know. Cameras aren’t getting anything decent. Thermal, starlight, standard, nothing more than shapes moving. They know where every camera as and they keep maneuvering perfectly to avoid giving us anything beyond a flicker of a figure. We can’t even follow them through the house.”
The hackles on the back of Michael’s neck rose as she spoke, and he spun to see another almost familiar flicker of movement down a hall. He knew that hall was fairly long, but it was U in shape, and the other end would come right out into the atrium. He gestured for the other two security guards to wait at the outlet for the hallway, and without double checking to see if they were following his orders, he raced down the hallway.
His footsteps collided hard with the ground, echoing off the walls all around him as he raced around the corner. Even as he turned, he saw that one of the windows was hanging open, and he mentally cursed but even as the profanity entered his mind, he stopped dead in his tracks. The glimpse he caught was brief, but it frozen him in his place. The curtains rustled as the intruder stepped through, but Michael caught his first clear glimpse of the intruder, or at least part of the intruder. A lean and narrow leg ending in a multi-suckered foot like an organic suction cup. It had three toes splayed out 120 degrees from each other, and the skin was scaly like a lizard with a dark green color on all of it. The glimpse lasted less than a second and then the invader was gone.
It took Michael several moments to catch his breath but he finally forced his body to move forward. He cautiously planted one foot in front of the other until he reached the window and summoning all his reserves of strength, he peeled the curtain open, looking back over the southern island area of the property. He caught a glimpse of a form disappearing behind the fence along the perimeter, and with that, it was gone.
Questions
1. Was is suspenseful? Did it flow quickly or slowly?
2. Did it feel logical and thought out? or did the character do things you didn't think they would?
3. Any other impressions, types seen, etc.
Saturday, July 17, 2010
A fun little tool
Which famous writer does your style seem to match?
http://iwl.me/
I got Douglas Adams. Apparently it looks more at word usage and sentence length as well as some punctuation. Just something funny I saw.
http://iwl.me/
I got Douglas Adams. Apparently it looks more at word usage and sentence length as well as some punctuation. Just something funny I saw.
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Chapter One continued
Landon wanted the rest of chapter 1 and what landon wants, Landon gets.
Recap: Pixie was off sulking in her own private room, dreaming of a man, Maaka, who left her when they were both in Basic. Quite sad really.
Tam Laboratories, Washington D.C., North America, May 15th, 2157
Warrant Officer Maaka Makoare looked over to his companion, Colonel Jonathon Newton. The tall and lanky man seemed completely oblivious to everything happening around him. The man was build like a scarecrow. His gaunt frame seemed to consist of nothing but skin and bones. Maaka however was wise enough to know that such a facade was nothing more than an illusion. Even at well over sixty years of age, the man was a graceful as a viper. Each step he took, each motion he made spoke of someone far more dangerous than they seemed to be.
Rather than speaking to Colonel Newton, Maaka simply busied himself with looking through his notes. The papers consisted of dry and boring requisition orders, bills, blueprints, and a whole melange of other engineering and accounting information all mixed together thanks to some bumbleheaded secretary who hadn’t the smarts to sort them properly before sending the documents to him. Dee-tee-eff, he grumbled to himself as he flipped one section of a requisition order back to right side up and put the sheet in order with the rest. For what wasn’t the first time, he wished that the U.N. would hurry up and convert to paperless alternatives. True, there was an advantage in having everything in paperwork. Such documents were much harder to create copies or forgeries. But it seemed ridiculous that he had to sort through this cluttered mess
Maaka’s job was not to play around at being a glorified secretary to the Colonel. He was supposed to be his first assistant in terms of basically everything. Maaka didn’t care for the term gopher, as in “go for that, go for this”, but he couldn’t think of better description. He most definitely was not a paper pusher. His thoughts were suddenly interrupted from a familiar voice.
“Working hard, Warrant Officer?” Dr. Emmanuel Tam asked.
“Just about usual, sir” Maaka responded.
Times was he would have been completely startled and unable to speak when addressed by a man such as Emmanuel Tam. Dr. Tam was widely considered to be one of the smartest inventors in the world, as well as among the richest people alive. When speaking of him, comparisons were always made to people such as Nikola Tesla, Albert Einstein, and several other billionaire entrepreneurs or scientists. Dr. Tam had always been respectful enough to address him by his position rather than just Maaka. He was familiar enough with the Colonel however that each addressed each other by their first names.
The genius of Dr. Tam was what had given power to almost every city on the planet. The massive powercasters were now a common sight, regardless of where you were in the world. Even here at his laboratories, the local powercaster stood only several hundred meters away. Dr. Tam had joked that primitive movie studios had once held water towers on their grounds. Instead of a water tower, his laboratory had a powercaster connected to a below-ground fusion reactor that powered the majority of D.C. instead.
Beyond powercasters and more efficient fusion reactors, Dr. Tam had also contributed heavily to the space program, and it was largely thanks to him that the U.N. had sent men back to Mars and already had them en route to the Galilean satellites around Jupiter. His laboratory was the largest private technology contractor to the U.N., taking in billions of Geos every year in funding.
And Colonel Newton was the U.N.’s Chief Liaison to Tam Laboratories, deciding what projects were worth funding, and what was not. Maaka was pleased to know that he had a hand in such decisions now a well.
“What have you got for me, Emmanuel?” Colonel Newton asked in his dry voice. “You could hardly contain your excitement when you called me.”
“Ah yes. Well, I can’t exactly tell you it out here. I’ve been… ah… keeping it out of the public workers ear,” Dr. Tam said, sounding both excited and nervous. The man ran a hand through his silvered hair as he spoke. He was a light man, probably a little more heavy set than Colonel Newton but still lanky. He was dressed in a long lab coat, and underneath it he wore his standard turtleneck sweatshirt and khaki cargo pants. Ever since Maaka had started working here he had worn the same setup. Maaka suspected that Dr. Tam’s wardrobe hadn’t changed much in the man’s several decades of life.
“Then lead to where we can discuss it,” Colonel Newton said, gesturing with his hand.
Maaka had never thought he would one day find himself working alongside the sides of Dr. Emmanuel Tam, nor Colonel Jonathon Newton. Colonel Newton was not as well known as was Dr. Tam, but those who styled themselves military historians were certainly aware who he was.
The U.N.’s current incarnation was only about a century old and the organization was still a work in progress. A century ago the outfit had been nothing more but a ramshackle alliance between several countries while most countries disregarded it entirely. The world’s superpowers had decided to drop away from it, seeing the U.N. as an ineffective relic from another age that was unable to serve as an appropriate peace broker during the titanic conflict raging around the world known simply as World War Three.
But two intelligent and shrewd individuals in the U.N. saw the opportunity they needed to turn the organization from ramshackle coalition to a powerful global organization. Those two individuals were well known throughout the world now and each one’s name was spoken with a voice of reverence and respect. Secretary General Irina Gorchakova and the supreme commander for the U.N. Peacekeeping forces, General Heinrich Katzenmeir.
Between Gorchakova’s shred political manipulations and Katzenmeir’s flawless tactical plannings, the U.N. broke out from Asia which had served as its power base since 2030, and began executing what was simply called the G-K Plan. As the war raged on throughout the world leading to the deaths of millions, the U.N. wisely remained neutral, and maneuvered throughout the globe, using money and resources drawn from numerous wealthy benefactors to find countries on the verge of collapse. The war had depleted so many third world countries of their money and resources, that anarchy was less than a step away. Gorchakova’s plan was simple. The U.N. would wait until the country was on the verge of collapse and then the U.N. would arrive, offer aid and support in return for nothing control of the government. Given the only alternative was anarchy and total economic collapse many countries grudgingly acquiesced to the request, and only five years after beginning the plan, the U.N. found itself in control of the entirety of the Southern Hemisphere and almost 50% of the Northern.
Once it had established such a populous power base to work from, Katzenmeir took charge, drawing army recruits from the billions that the U.N. now governed over, creating an army of immense size. Katzenmeir continued subjugating smaller countries and conquering larger ones until the U.N. found itself in control of the world and the war was over less than ten years after the plan began. Katzenmeir and Gorchakova were hailed as heroes for uniting the planet and stopping the conflict even if some could argue with their methods.
Colonel Newton factored into the situation quite simply. After the world was united, General Katzenmeir moved throughout the government finally settling with taking control of the space program. While there he constantly kept a cadre of younger officers, the “Think Tank” as it was called, around him at all times. He had such a group during his time as Supreme Commander, but with his transition into politics and the semi-private sector, the situation demanded a new setup. Colonel Newton had been younger than Maaka was then, but he had been probably one of the most influential members of the Think Tank.
To have a connection with someone who had been handpicked by the Old Bear himself was hard to believe. In fact it—
“Warrant, did you hear me?” Colonel Newton asked looking at Maaka with his brow furled in scrutiny.
“Sorry sir. I was distracted by these papers,” Maaka said, not missing a beat in finding an alibi for his deep thinking.
“Nevermind. It’s a non-vital issue. I’ll ask later,” Colonel Newton said, looking back towards Dr. Tam.
Dr. Tam let the two of them through the labyrinthine corridors of the laboratories. The walls were a glistening pristine white, and were interrupted every so often by a plain white door with a number on the side. Maaka knew that the number stood for something explaining what was in the lab, but he had no idea what any of the numbers stood for. Trade secret of some kind, he thought. All around them lab technicians, engineers and other scientists bustled about their tasks with only a few senior personnel bothering to acknowledge Dr. Tam in hushed tones as they hurdled past off to some unknown task elsewhere in the building.
Dr. Tam remained silent throughout their walk as he led them hopefully to his lab, but from the way he held himself, Maaka saw that the man easily three times his own age was as excited as a six-year old, and Maaka felt his own anticipation rise as a result. By sheer virtue of his position he was able to be exposed to some of the most advanced technology in the world. Objects and electronics that were kept at maximum secrecy were nothing more but an arm’s length away. Just shut up about it. That was rule number one.
Dr. Tam led them to a nondescript elevator and Maaka followed Dr. Tam and Colonel Newton inside. The magnetic accelerators on the rails of the elevator sent the pod shooting down to the underground testing center. So it was going to be a prototype then? It would have to be. The only technology that was to be found this far belowground was prototypes. What did Dr. Tam have a prototype of that we don’t know about? He thought he was completely aware of all the ongoing projects at the laboratories.
A split second after the elevator began the descent; he felt the crushing g-forces as the elevator slowed back down. They had descended almost one hundred kilometers below the surface, and had transversed the distance in less than eight seconds. Maaka gave it no mind as the door hissed open, and Dr. Tam strode through it.
They continued down another featureless hallway, with large iron doors covering the walls this time around. Each one was covered in locks and sensors, but Maaka sincerely doubted that anyone could have gotten this far down into the complex without any authorization. He had passed at least two dozen security scanners throughout the building. Eye scanners dotted virtually every crossroad and t-junction in the building and armed security forces were stationed only a minute away from virtually every spot in the building.
Dr. Tam led them to the end of the hall to a nondescript door. He pressed his thumb up against the scanner, while simultaneously holding his face forward. Another eye scanner came down and took images of his retinas. He winced as the thumb scanner then pricked his finger drawing a small sample tissue for a DNA analysis. The automated systems were satisfied that Dr. Tam was authorized for this area, and the door clanked and shuddered as electronic magnet locks disengaged themselves. The automated systems silently creaked the door open, and Dr. Tam boldly strode inside.
Maaka wasn’t exactly sure what he was looking at. A massive mechanical structure sat in the middle of a room. Numerous tubes sprang out of its monstrous carapace connecting to the walls. Whirs and clicks came from the accompanying machinery, but the machine was silent beyond that. Everything in the room was focused down on this machine, but Maaka could not figure out what it was.
“This, Jonathon, is the future,” Dr. Tam said with eyes full of glee as he spread his arms wide.
Colonel Newton looked to Dr. Tam and then started to walk towards the machine. His first few steps were cautious, but when Dr. Tam didn’t prevent him from going close to the object, Colonel Newton approached much more quickly. Maaka was unsure whether even Colonel Newton knew what it was, and the man gave Maaka no clues as to his thoughts.
Colonel Newton looked to Dr. Tam expectedly for answers, but neither said a word. Even then, the gaze that passed between them seemed to communicate something that Maaka didn’t know. He suspected that Colonel Newton had some theories about the identity of the object but did not want to right out ask what it was. Finally Maaka broke the silence.
“What is it?”
Dr. Tam, still brimming with uncontained excitement walks over and put his hand on the machine, patting it like a proud parent. Dr. Tam wasn’t married, but Maaka suspected the paternal feeling wasn’t that far removed.
“This,” he said, “is a gravity induction engine. A very fresh prototype.”
“A gravity inductor?!” Colonel Newton exclaimed, his cool exterior disintegrating as his eyes almost seemed to pop out as he looked at Dr. Tam. “When were you making this? Where were you making this? You said you didn’t think one could be made!”
Gravity inductor? The name sounded familiar to Maaka but he couldn’t place it properly.
“I was wrong. It was only two years ago. I was taking a shower, and the uh… process itself sort of popped into my head. I was only playing with the design as an on-again off-again project while I worked on other things. I didn’t think it would go anywhere but I made a uh... major breakthrough about two months back. I almost haven’t left the lab since.”
“How did you get it to work?” Colonel Newton asked.
“Well, I will admit that the technology is far cruder than I would have hoped for.,” he walked over to one of the tubes connecting to the wall. “The particle accelerator is also far larger than I had initially planned. I had to feed the inductor directly into the main accelerator for the laboratory to get it working. This is not a portable prototype”
Maaka was completely lost now. He had considered himself far luckier than he suspected that he had as much of a clue about how the technology in this lab worked. But he wasn’t so sure about this one. Dr. Tam was going into full techno-jargon now as he explained the intricate workings of his machine to Colonel Newton. He slowed his thoughts down and took the words apart. Gravity inductor? Simply a gravity inducer? Is that what he means?It seemed simple now.
“…and so this machine simply siphons off the gravitons from the reacted particles in order to create the field. Unfortunately there isn’t much manipulation I can perform,” Dr. Tam was saying.
“So it creates gravity fields?” Maaka asked, taking a risk at sounding stupid if he asked the wrong thing.
“Essentially, yes. But you can only create localized fields. Flying cars, personal levitation packs. Shields against weaponry, the possibilities of this are almost limitless.” He turned to face Colonel Newton as his face split into a grin. “Far enough along, and you could create a star drive to leave the solar system and move at a reasonable generation ship rate!”
“Does it work now?” Colonel Newton asked.
Instead of answering the question, Dr. Tam walked over to the side of the machine where a button pad lay resting on the surface. It was tethered to the machine with just a rudimentary rope. He pressed the button, and immediately the machine began whirring and buzzing. Maaka almost braced himself for an explosion as the sound reached an apex, and he winced and closed his eyes. An odd sensation instead came over him and he opened his eyes.
He was now floating in the air almost two feet above the ground. He wiggled around futilely as he tried to change his position. Dr. Tam and Colonel Newton were just as well floating above the ground, and Dr. Tam was holding on to tether attached to the machine. More specifically he was holding on to the button.
“Right now, it’s just generating a field above us roughly equal to the planet’s own gravity pull. But it’s so small; it only extends for about the size of this room. And it…” he said before being interrupted.
The machine cut off with a sputter, and everything in the room immediately plummeted to the ground. Maaka landed on his rear with a painful thump, as did Colonel Newton. Dr. Tam evidently had learned from previous experiences with the machine and instead landed on his feet. All around them tools clattered to the ground as they hit the floor.
Dr. Tam laughed the laugh of an exuberant child, as he helped Colonel Newton to his feet. “Ahem. As I was about to say, it doesn’t last tremendously long. It burns through fuel like crazy. And I’m sure our power bill is going to skyrocket.”
“This is… this is tremendous, Emmanuel,” Colonel Newton said, struggling for words. “By God, if you haven’t cemented your legacy enough as is, this certainly will.”
Maaka had to agree with Colonel Newton’s statement as he rose from his sitting position on the ground. He wondered how this would change the world. Just another step towards the future. An odd thought fluttered to the front of his head from some unknown region of his mind. Pixie… if she could see me now. But he was quite sure she didn’t want to do anything with him at all. He sighed as he looked back to Dr Tam who was still grinning like a loon.
Recap: Pixie was off sulking in her own private room, dreaming of a man, Maaka, who left her when they were both in Basic. Quite sad really.
Tam Laboratories, Washington D.C., North America, May 15th, 2157
Warrant Officer Maaka Makoare looked over to his companion, Colonel Jonathon Newton. The tall and lanky man seemed completely oblivious to everything happening around him. The man was build like a scarecrow. His gaunt frame seemed to consist of nothing but skin and bones. Maaka however was wise enough to know that such a facade was nothing more than an illusion. Even at well over sixty years of age, the man was a graceful as a viper. Each step he took, each motion he made spoke of someone far more dangerous than they seemed to be.
Rather than speaking to Colonel Newton, Maaka simply busied himself with looking through his notes. The papers consisted of dry and boring requisition orders, bills, blueprints, and a whole melange of other engineering and accounting information all mixed together thanks to some bumbleheaded secretary who hadn’t the smarts to sort them properly before sending the documents to him. Dee-tee-eff, he grumbled to himself as he flipped one section of a requisition order back to right side up and put the sheet in order with the rest. For what wasn’t the first time, he wished that the U.N. would hurry up and convert to paperless alternatives. True, there was an advantage in having everything in paperwork. Such documents were much harder to create copies or forgeries. But it seemed ridiculous that he had to sort through this cluttered mess
Maaka’s job was not to play around at being a glorified secretary to the Colonel. He was supposed to be his first assistant in terms of basically everything. Maaka didn’t care for the term gopher, as in “go for that, go for this”, but he couldn’t think of better description. He most definitely was not a paper pusher. His thoughts were suddenly interrupted from a familiar voice.
“Working hard, Warrant Officer?” Dr. Emmanuel Tam asked.
“Just about usual, sir” Maaka responded.
Times was he would have been completely startled and unable to speak when addressed by a man such as Emmanuel Tam. Dr. Tam was widely considered to be one of the smartest inventors in the world, as well as among the richest people alive. When speaking of him, comparisons were always made to people such as Nikola Tesla, Albert Einstein, and several other billionaire entrepreneurs or scientists. Dr. Tam had always been respectful enough to address him by his position rather than just Maaka. He was familiar enough with the Colonel however that each addressed each other by their first names.
The genius of Dr. Tam was what had given power to almost every city on the planet. The massive powercasters were now a common sight, regardless of where you were in the world. Even here at his laboratories, the local powercaster stood only several hundred meters away. Dr. Tam had joked that primitive movie studios had once held water towers on their grounds. Instead of a water tower, his laboratory had a powercaster connected to a below-ground fusion reactor that powered the majority of D.C. instead.
Beyond powercasters and more efficient fusion reactors, Dr. Tam had also contributed heavily to the space program, and it was largely thanks to him that the U.N. had sent men back to Mars and already had them en route to the Galilean satellites around Jupiter. His laboratory was the largest private technology contractor to the U.N., taking in billions of Geos every year in funding.
And Colonel Newton was the U.N.’s Chief Liaison to Tam Laboratories, deciding what projects were worth funding, and what was not. Maaka was pleased to know that he had a hand in such decisions now a well.
“What have you got for me, Emmanuel?” Colonel Newton asked in his dry voice. “You could hardly contain your excitement when you called me.”
“Ah yes. Well, I can’t exactly tell you it out here. I’ve been… ah… keeping it out of the public workers ear,” Dr. Tam said, sounding both excited and nervous. The man ran a hand through his silvered hair as he spoke. He was a light man, probably a little more heavy set than Colonel Newton but still lanky. He was dressed in a long lab coat, and underneath it he wore his standard turtleneck sweatshirt and khaki cargo pants. Ever since Maaka had started working here he had worn the same setup. Maaka suspected that Dr. Tam’s wardrobe hadn’t changed much in the man’s several decades of life.
“Then lead to where we can discuss it,” Colonel Newton said, gesturing with his hand.
Maaka had never thought he would one day find himself working alongside the sides of Dr. Emmanuel Tam, nor Colonel Jonathon Newton. Colonel Newton was not as well known as was Dr. Tam, but those who styled themselves military historians were certainly aware who he was.
The U.N.’s current incarnation was only about a century old and the organization was still a work in progress. A century ago the outfit had been nothing more but a ramshackle alliance between several countries while most countries disregarded it entirely. The world’s superpowers had decided to drop away from it, seeing the U.N. as an ineffective relic from another age that was unable to serve as an appropriate peace broker during the titanic conflict raging around the world known simply as World War Three.
But two intelligent and shrewd individuals in the U.N. saw the opportunity they needed to turn the organization from ramshackle coalition to a powerful global organization. Those two individuals were well known throughout the world now and each one’s name was spoken with a voice of reverence and respect. Secretary General Irina Gorchakova and the supreme commander for the U.N. Peacekeeping forces, General Heinrich Katzenmeir.
Between Gorchakova’s shred political manipulations and Katzenmeir’s flawless tactical plannings, the U.N. broke out from Asia which had served as its power base since 2030, and began executing what was simply called the G-K Plan. As the war raged on throughout the world leading to the deaths of millions, the U.N. wisely remained neutral, and maneuvered throughout the globe, using money and resources drawn from numerous wealthy benefactors to find countries on the verge of collapse. The war had depleted so many third world countries of their money and resources, that anarchy was less than a step away. Gorchakova’s plan was simple. The U.N. would wait until the country was on the verge of collapse and then the U.N. would arrive, offer aid and support in return for nothing control of the government. Given the only alternative was anarchy and total economic collapse many countries grudgingly acquiesced to the request, and only five years after beginning the plan, the U.N. found itself in control of the entirety of the Southern Hemisphere and almost 50% of the Northern.
Once it had established such a populous power base to work from, Katzenmeir took charge, drawing army recruits from the billions that the U.N. now governed over, creating an army of immense size. Katzenmeir continued subjugating smaller countries and conquering larger ones until the U.N. found itself in control of the world and the war was over less than ten years after the plan began. Katzenmeir and Gorchakova were hailed as heroes for uniting the planet and stopping the conflict even if some could argue with their methods.
Colonel Newton factored into the situation quite simply. After the world was united, General Katzenmeir moved throughout the government finally settling with taking control of the space program. While there he constantly kept a cadre of younger officers, the “Think Tank” as it was called, around him at all times. He had such a group during his time as Supreme Commander, but with his transition into politics and the semi-private sector, the situation demanded a new setup. Colonel Newton had been younger than Maaka was then, but he had been probably one of the most influential members of the Think Tank.
To have a connection with someone who had been handpicked by the Old Bear himself was hard to believe. In fact it—
“Warrant, did you hear me?” Colonel Newton asked looking at Maaka with his brow furled in scrutiny.
“Sorry sir. I was distracted by these papers,” Maaka said, not missing a beat in finding an alibi for his deep thinking.
“Nevermind. It’s a non-vital issue. I’ll ask later,” Colonel Newton said, looking back towards Dr. Tam.
Dr. Tam let the two of them through the labyrinthine corridors of the laboratories. The walls were a glistening pristine white, and were interrupted every so often by a plain white door with a number on the side. Maaka knew that the number stood for something explaining what was in the lab, but he had no idea what any of the numbers stood for. Trade secret of some kind, he thought. All around them lab technicians, engineers and other scientists bustled about their tasks with only a few senior personnel bothering to acknowledge Dr. Tam in hushed tones as they hurdled past off to some unknown task elsewhere in the building.
Dr. Tam remained silent throughout their walk as he led them hopefully to his lab, but from the way he held himself, Maaka saw that the man easily three times his own age was as excited as a six-year old, and Maaka felt his own anticipation rise as a result. By sheer virtue of his position he was able to be exposed to some of the most advanced technology in the world. Objects and electronics that were kept at maximum secrecy were nothing more but an arm’s length away. Just shut up about it. That was rule number one.
Dr. Tam led them to a nondescript elevator and Maaka followed Dr. Tam and Colonel Newton inside. The magnetic accelerators on the rails of the elevator sent the pod shooting down to the underground testing center. So it was going to be a prototype then? It would have to be. The only technology that was to be found this far belowground was prototypes. What did Dr. Tam have a prototype of that we don’t know about? He thought he was completely aware of all the ongoing projects at the laboratories.
A split second after the elevator began the descent; he felt the crushing g-forces as the elevator slowed back down. They had descended almost one hundred kilometers below the surface, and had transversed the distance in less than eight seconds. Maaka gave it no mind as the door hissed open, and Dr. Tam strode through it.
They continued down another featureless hallway, with large iron doors covering the walls this time around. Each one was covered in locks and sensors, but Maaka sincerely doubted that anyone could have gotten this far down into the complex without any authorization. He had passed at least two dozen security scanners throughout the building. Eye scanners dotted virtually every crossroad and t-junction in the building and armed security forces were stationed only a minute away from virtually every spot in the building.
Dr. Tam led them to the end of the hall to a nondescript door. He pressed his thumb up against the scanner, while simultaneously holding his face forward. Another eye scanner came down and took images of his retinas. He winced as the thumb scanner then pricked his finger drawing a small sample tissue for a DNA analysis. The automated systems were satisfied that Dr. Tam was authorized for this area, and the door clanked and shuddered as electronic magnet locks disengaged themselves. The automated systems silently creaked the door open, and Dr. Tam boldly strode inside.
Maaka wasn’t exactly sure what he was looking at. A massive mechanical structure sat in the middle of a room. Numerous tubes sprang out of its monstrous carapace connecting to the walls. Whirs and clicks came from the accompanying machinery, but the machine was silent beyond that. Everything in the room was focused down on this machine, but Maaka could not figure out what it was.
“This, Jonathon, is the future,” Dr. Tam said with eyes full of glee as he spread his arms wide.
Colonel Newton looked to Dr. Tam and then started to walk towards the machine. His first few steps were cautious, but when Dr. Tam didn’t prevent him from going close to the object, Colonel Newton approached much more quickly. Maaka was unsure whether even Colonel Newton knew what it was, and the man gave Maaka no clues as to his thoughts.
Colonel Newton looked to Dr. Tam expectedly for answers, but neither said a word. Even then, the gaze that passed between them seemed to communicate something that Maaka didn’t know. He suspected that Colonel Newton had some theories about the identity of the object but did not want to right out ask what it was. Finally Maaka broke the silence.
“What is it?”
Dr. Tam, still brimming with uncontained excitement walks over and put his hand on the machine, patting it like a proud parent. Dr. Tam wasn’t married, but Maaka suspected the paternal feeling wasn’t that far removed.
“This,” he said, “is a gravity induction engine. A very fresh prototype.”
“A gravity inductor?!” Colonel Newton exclaimed, his cool exterior disintegrating as his eyes almost seemed to pop out as he looked at Dr. Tam. “When were you making this? Where were you making this? You said you didn’t think one could be made!”
Gravity inductor? The name sounded familiar to Maaka but he couldn’t place it properly.
“I was wrong. It was only two years ago. I was taking a shower, and the uh… process itself sort of popped into my head. I was only playing with the design as an on-again off-again project while I worked on other things. I didn’t think it would go anywhere but I made a uh... major breakthrough about two months back. I almost haven’t left the lab since.”
“How did you get it to work?” Colonel Newton asked.
“Well, I will admit that the technology is far cruder than I would have hoped for.,” he walked over to one of the tubes connecting to the wall. “The particle accelerator is also far larger than I had initially planned. I had to feed the inductor directly into the main accelerator for the laboratory to get it working. This is not a portable prototype”
Maaka was completely lost now. He had considered himself far luckier than he suspected that he had as much of a clue about how the technology in this lab worked. But he wasn’t so sure about this one. Dr. Tam was going into full techno-jargon now as he explained the intricate workings of his machine to Colonel Newton. He slowed his thoughts down and took the words apart. Gravity inductor? Simply a gravity inducer? Is that what he means?It seemed simple now.
“…and so this machine simply siphons off the gravitons from the reacted particles in order to create the field. Unfortunately there isn’t much manipulation I can perform,” Dr. Tam was saying.
“So it creates gravity fields?” Maaka asked, taking a risk at sounding stupid if he asked the wrong thing.
“Essentially, yes. But you can only create localized fields. Flying cars, personal levitation packs. Shields against weaponry, the possibilities of this are almost limitless.” He turned to face Colonel Newton as his face split into a grin. “Far enough along, and you could create a star drive to leave the solar system and move at a reasonable generation ship rate!”
“Does it work now?” Colonel Newton asked.
Instead of answering the question, Dr. Tam walked over to the side of the machine where a button pad lay resting on the surface. It was tethered to the machine with just a rudimentary rope. He pressed the button, and immediately the machine began whirring and buzzing. Maaka almost braced himself for an explosion as the sound reached an apex, and he winced and closed his eyes. An odd sensation instead came over him and he opened his eyes.
He was now floating in the air almost two feet above the ground. He wiggled around futilely as he tried to change his position. Dr. Tam and Colonel Newton were just as well floating above the ground, and Dr. Tam was holding on to tether attached to the machine. More specifically he was holding on to the button.
“Right now, it’s just generating a field above us roughly equal to the planet’s own gravity pull. But it’s so small; it only extends for about the size of this room. And it…” he said before being interrupted.
The machine cut off with a sputter, and everything in the room immediately plummeted to the ground. Maaka landed on his rear with a painful thump, as did Colonel Newton. Dr. Tam evidently had learned from previous experiences with the machine and instead landed on his feet. All around them tools clattered to the ground as they hit the floor.
Dr. Tam laughed the laugh of an exuberant child, as he helped Colonel Newton to his feet. “Ahem. As I was about to say, it doesn’t last tremendously long. It burns through fuel like crazy. And I’m sure our power bill is going to skyrocket.”
“This is… this is tremendous, Emmanuel,” Colonel Newton said, struggling for words. “By God, if you haven’t cemented your legacy enough as is, this certainly will.”
Maaka had to agree with Colonel Newton’s statement as he rose from his sitting position on the ground. He wondered how this would change the world. Just another step towards the future. An odd thought fluttered to the front of his head from some unknown region of his mind. Pixie… if she could see me now. But he was quite sure she didn’t want to do anything with him at all. He sighed as he looked back to Dr Tam who was still grinning like a loon.
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Four Cries Break the Silence [Prologue 3/3]
Here's the last part of the prologue . . . a little long at 2700 words. The whole prologue taps out at 7200 words, so it probably needs some trimming. Here's some questions I'd like specifically answered:
1) How are the transitions between action sequences (in the room, leaving the room, in front of the crowd, leaving the village, etc.)?
2) How is the dialogue, especially near the end?
3) Did you enjoy the description of the action?
4) What are your impressions of Uthar? How would you describe him?
5) Did the ending feel too rushed, or too slow, or just right?
6) General impressions.
Sky-blue eyes fluttered weakly and Uthar felt himself breathe for the first time in what seemed an eternity—she’s alive—and then his Lenora was looking up at him with eyes deeper than the sea.
“Uthar.” Her chest was heaving, and the words came out thick and wet sounding. “He’s alive. My little boy is alive.”
For a half-second Uthar could only stare at her in confusion—boy? what under the Ward is she talking about?—and then his heart skipped a beat as comprehension flooded him and he jerked around to stare woodenly at the still-screaming girl who was cupping a baby—his baby—to her chest. The child she held was wrapped in a small woolen blanket. He’d bought the fine Darnasan wool from a merchant five months ago on a trip south to Corson Hold; sky-blue was his Lenora’s favorite color and her face had lit up like summer dawn when he’d presented it to her. She’d given every free hour to making the blanket, humming to herself as she sat and knitted by the oven for warmth. She’d always been cold, these past few months—
A ragged growl, sounding more animal than man, tore from Uthar’s throat and he pushed the stray thoughts aside. Tried to brush them aside—it was as easy as sweeping away boulders with a brush-broom—but he kept at it, focusing on the tiny head and velvet ears that were just visible between the blanket and the girl’s chest. Both hands gripping the bed frame, he pulled himself upwards, cursing his trembling muscles and trying to hold his thoughts together. The blasted girl was still screaming!
Keep it together, man! Your wife and child are in the balance!
He’d taken no more than two wobbling steps around the bed and cleared less than half the distance to the girl, when her head snapped forward, white eyes drained of all color and feature locking onto Uthar’s and boring into him like an awl. He opened his mouth to calm her, but the words died in his throat.
The girl rose up off the blood-stained floor, her golden hair and tattered dress flaring around her as if billowed by an unseen wind. Jaw hanging slack, Uthar took a step back, one hand coming up to shield his eyes as her milky eyes began to glow, burn, with a brilliance that flared in an instant from a spark no brighter than a candle to a fire more fierce than the noon-day sun. Wind howled through the house, dead air suddenly churned by a hurricane’s force, that buffeted Uthar from all sides. Waves of heat rolled off the girl, the air buckling and warping worse than it ever did above Uthar’s forge. Cold seeped into his bones, and from the corner of his eye he saw ice creeping up the walls and bedposts, frosting over the windows. The earth beneath his feet trembled. Grimacing, he gripped the bed-frame to keep himself steady, and took another step forward. Another step towards the girl.
With a sudden move the girl lifted Uthar’s boy skyward, toward the unseen stars, and her head tilted back once more. She opened her mouth, and light and words burst out, the sound louder even than the wind that howled in Uthar’s ears: “He has come! He has come! Behold the Spear of the Ancients and the Scion of the Blessed.”
The voice rose higher still, till even the storm screaming around Uthar paled to a whisper. It crashed like waves against him, threatening to tear his knees out from beneath him. He took another step.
“Behold a Hope Forgotten and a Salvation All Men Fear.”
Closer. Another step closer.
“By His right hand the Master World shall be shattered, and with His left all Creation shall be gathered in.”
Uthar closed his eyes against a light so bright it burned.
Closer.
“From His gaze shall the Shadow flee, and in Him alone shall the Devourer know fear.”
Another step . . .
“The Spear of Ancients has come. He has come! Through Him alone shall all Life be saved.”
With one last ragged scream—a girl dying, an entire world dying—the girl went limp in the air, the blazing halo of light that was literally burning out of her frail body flickered out, and with a shuddering gasp that wracked her whole body, she fell into Uthar’s outstretched arms, the baby still cradled against her motionless chest.
Hissing in pain—the girl’s body burned iron fresh from the fire—Uthar dropped to his knees and set the girl down as gently as his trembling arms could. His baby wide-eyed but silent inside the already-smoldering blanket, and—fearing the heat was suffocating the child—Uthar pulled the tiny child out as quickly as he could, the wrinkled head cradled gently in the palm of his hand. Casting the blanket aside he stood—and none too soon. Halfway to his feet, the girl’s body burst into flames, withering to ash even as ice radiated outwards across the floor from where she lay.
Uthar shouldn’t have been able to look away from the charred remains at his feet, should have been weeping on floor for all the death he’d seen this night, but he had eyes only for his son. His boy had stopped crying almost immediately after Uthar had picked him up, and now lay quietly awake, deep gray eyes unfocused and blinking lazily and one miniature hand knotted in a fist that couldn’t close around Uthar’s thumb. The tiny creature was perfect, as perfect as Lenora—he even had Lenora nose! Uthar realized he was chuckling, chuckling and cooing to his boy. It was wrong, the Faith strike him dead, wrong to laugh when lives had been lost in his own home, but he could not stop. The Ward be praised! He was a father!
He was so absorbed in his son, that he did not hear the bells for several minutes; after the raging storm of noise that had engulfed the room only moments earlier, Uthar was surprised he could hear anything. Only after half of Matham’s bells had joined in did he look up, wide smile slipping from his face as he stared out the window into the darkness. The turmoil of earlier—the buckling earth and twisting . . . twisting everything—would have been more than enough to wake the village and send them into a panic, but with calm restored folk should be returning home, not ringing bells in the dark.
There was a sound behind him, and Uthar turned to find Renan stepping into the room, long face drawn and pale. “Faith,” the farmer said, pausing on the threshold and taking in the shattered room with a long, unblinking stare. “Faith, Uthar. What happened in—” he shook himself and straightened, visibly steeling himself. “No, it doesn’t matter now. We have to go. We have to leave now.”
Renan moved towards the bed, leaving a stunned Uthar staring at his back.
“By the Ward!” Renan said, looking over his shoulder in shock at Uthar. “What happened to Lenora?” The man must have known Uthar was in no state to respond—Uthar felt like everything around him was moving fast as lightning while his own thoughts were mired in mud, moving too slow by half—because he didn’t bother waiting for an explanation. Instead, he wrapped Lenora in the blankets as best he could then, picking Uthar’s wife up in his long arms, he turned and prodded Uthar towards the door with a gentle kick.
“Move it man, or you’ll lose more than a house and forge tonight.”
Still too lost to protest, Uthar moved forward numbly, all of his faculties focused on the tiny life he held in his arms, and the equally precious life Renan carried behind.
In the front room, the makeshift bed Nilana must have occupied was empty, bloodied sheets scattered on the floor around it. The front door was wide open, letting in the cool of the night, the frantic ringing of bells—somewhere amid his hazy thoughts, Uthar realized the ringing was growing louder, more frantic—and a strange orange glow that was too strong to be starlight. Could it be dawn already? How long since he’d stumbled into the room? How long since the world had gone mad?
Renan kept pushing from behind, forcing Uthar through the room and out into the night. What awaited them outside, Uthar could not have imagined, not in his wildest nightmare.
Matham was burning, a madman’s pyre that lit up the night, radiating from the village center—Uthar could see the chapel’s squat tower silhouetted by the dancing flames—spreading out through among the houses, leaping from roof to roof, greedy fingers of red and orange that roared with their own storm of noise above even the cry of the bells. And there were other noises on the night air: screams and shouts, the harsh clang of metal on metal, and the roar of beasts. Smells assaulted Uthar as they moved out onto the low porch, ash and soot, and the darker scent of blood.
Three dozen men, women and children were gathered in front of his house, huddling close to his door like a frightened flock and murming nervously to one another. The growing fires at their backs cast their faces in shadow, but even shocked as he was, Uthar recognized them: the Family, all that was left of it after nearly three thousand yeas of hiding and running and dying. Thirty-six souls who had been rooted out again this very night. Families who, if they survived the next few hours, would have to take to the roads and seek out a new home. The women were doing most of the talking, heads together, whispering to spare the children listening to dark words on an already dark night. Every man and boy over sixteen carried a weapon of some sort; hunting spears and bows for the most part, though Uthar spotted a sword here and there. They looked every bit as nervous as the women, but any man would have noted to his surprise that the men, even dressed as farmers and the like, seemed to know what they were about.
“Keep moving, man,” Renan muttered from behind, nudging Uthar forward again.
For his part, Uthar barely noticed. Dorlein Eldun was standing someway back in the press of bodies, clutching three children to her as best she could, her face—what Uthar could see of it—drawn and anxious and failing to hide a growing fear. He opened his mouth to tell her that her husband was dead, stricken where he stood by whatever force had shaken the world, but the words would not come. Faith, if she didn’t know by now, then Evin had not survived the turmoil either.
The Family parted ranks to let Uthar and Renan pass, revealing a single handcart parked just outside the gate. Nilana was already bundled up inside the cart bed, and Renan stepped carefully past Uthar to lay Lenora down beside her. Uthar roused himself enough to cradle his child in one arm and arrange Lenora’s blankets with the other. His wife’s eyes were closed, had been closed since she’d spoken to him in the house, but her color was good and her breathing steady. Silently, Uthar offered a prayer in her behalf.
Holy Faith and Mighty Ward, let her live to raise my son. Let her live.
Meanwhile, Renan had turned to the assembled Family, raising his arms for silence, for all the good it did.
“What under the Ward has happened?” a man behind Uthar—it sounded like Caern Aydon, but Uthar didn’t care to check—yelled over the roar of flames and muffled sounds of fighting; both of which were drawing nearer by the moment.
“How were we found out?” Another voice cried out.
For a moment the assembled families dissolved into a dozen panicked conversations, men grumbling and fingering their weapons, women weeping or glancing worriedly over their shoulders at the burning village, children crying.
Renan shot a glance at Uthar, but he barely noticed. By rights he should be leading the Family, the charge had been his for nearly ten years now; but he couldn’t think, couldn’t bring his thoughts into any sort of order. Faith, was he to lose his family on the very night it was begun?
“We’ve all a dozen questions,” Renan said loudly, apparently giving up on Uthar and turning back to the Family. “And not a single answer between us. The short of it is, we were found out, and our time here has run out. The Faith save those of our neighbors that may be saved, but we’ve our duties and oaths to attend to. We’re leaving. Now; this very minute.”
“Where? Where under the Ward can we go?”
Again, Renan looked to Uthar, his deep-set eyes pleading silently. Something in that look roused Uthar, something in the way Renan’s shoulders slumped, as if the man had already given up. Tucking his baby boy tight against his chest, Uthar raised a hand and turned on his heel, gazing levely and silently at the folk about him, until all fell silent again. His thoughts had come back into focus, though he couldn’t say when or how, and suddenly he knew what needed doing.
“South. We are heading south, this very moment.” He nodded to Renan, and the tall farmer darted to the front of the handcart and hauled it up by its long handles. “We’ll walk until we find a safe place to hide, to begin again. We are the Family and we’ve done it before. The Faith willing, we’ll live to do it again.” Beyond them, the chapel tower collapsed with a deafening screech of crumbling stone and shattered timbers; a column of flame blossomed in its place, roiling skyward and bathing them in an even harsher glare.
Shielding his eyes with one hand, Uthar suited his own words, placing his baby gently in the cart, nestled between the two women, and settling in at the back of the cart to push while Renan began pulling. It was only then that he noticed the other babe nestled in Narina’s arms, another boy, by the looks of it, Renan’s son. Bitterly, he wondered if two new lives could make up for the blood that was being spilled at that very moment.
“Move out,” he grunted over his shoulder, his voice coming out more harshly than he’d intended. “We’ll keep to the woods as best we can until we’ve put some distance between us and our hunters. Those with weapons . . . you know your duties. Screen the women and children and keep a sharp eye out for any pursuers.”
The Family left Matham—left the only life most of them had known, left the homes their fathers had raised when the Family had first come to the village—at a jog, moving as silently as a group of thirty village folk can. Uthar never knew what miracle guided them out of the firelight and into the woods unseen, nor what power steered them through the dark night safely . . . but he never once stopped praying, not once through the long hours, though his knees felt like wet leather and his tongue as dry as cotton after only a quarter hour of pushing the cart through the tangled forest.
Two hours passed before the glare of burning Matham faded into darkness; two hours before the roar of the fires and the screams of the dying fell silent. Two hours, and the night closed in around them completely, a ragged band of poor folk stumbling through the trackless woods.
It was only then, when the darkness was complete, that Uthar’s child began to cry. It was a wailing sound, more piercing than any baby’s wail he’d ever heard, and was joined almost immediately by Renan’s boy, who cried just as loudly.
The two tiny voices intermixed, echoing weirdly amongst the trees, until it seemed to Uthar that two more small voices had joined the first. Four cries in the darkness. Four cries to weep for a world that would never be the same.
Four cries to break the Silence.
Sunday, July 4, 2010
Chapter 1
Alright, we just established the start of the story. The start involved the plotting and planning of three different factions, the Marauders, the Game Masters, and the Shai empire as they slowly drew their plans together to defeat the hated Dominion.
So lets get down to business with chapter one.
I apologize if it seems a bit long at 2500 words. But I didn't see any way I could split it without it ending up being too short or ending at an awkward point of time
Chapter 1
“In history, many more optimistic fellows than I have dared to call the planet a utopia. As much as it pains me to say this, I don’t think that we have passed that boundary yet. Inequality and ignorance still permeates the consciousness of, unfortunately, a fair part of our citizenry. Many others have still however pointed to the massive scientific and social developments all over the planet as proof of our perfection. People are happier than they ever have been. They seem to have found their peace at last. In saying this, I am reminded to speak a few words about what I would consider to be the greatest evils of mankind. These evils are not lifestyles, nor are they even certain people or types of people. They are the unholy trinity of oppression, ignorance and chaos.” Doctor Emmanuel Tam’s commencement address at Oxford, Class of 2149.
Johanna U.N. Peace Keepers Base, Washington D.C., North America May 15th, 2157
Three years? That seemed about right. Has it really been three years? It seems like it was only a month ago. Sergeant Whitney Blackburne stood near the window of her room, looking out amongst the lights of the city that glowed all around her. The massive arcologies at the mall loomed as if they were gargantuan monoliths that eclipsed the sky, standing well over a kilometer and a half towards the heavens. The prodigious structures glowed like great night lights, illuminated from the windows of a hundred-thousand inhabitants. Each building was a self sustained ecosystem where an individual could spend their whole life inside the building and never have to leave. It was common for an arcology to be the home for fifty-thousand to one-hundred thousand people if not more.
She casually ran a hand through her spiky bubblegum pink hair. Her locks had been kept dyed that way since she had been fifteen, almost a decade ago. The outlandish color had given rise to the nickname that had become routine usage to the soldiers around her. It had originated back with a drill sergeant when she had been taking basic training. Even now Pixie could picture him standing right in front of her, glaring down at her as if she had personally insulted his mother. She could hear the rasp of his voice, smell the taste of his foul breath as he scowled down at her.
“And what the hell is this in front of me?! Some kind of damn pixie?!” he had roared, almost deafening her from his tone.
Pixie. The name had stuck. At first she had fought against her fellows adapting such a diminishing moniker. The tag was demeaning and nothing more than an embarrassing aspect of mockery and derision, the last thing she needed. Maaka Makaore had thought no such thing. He had told her that he found the name to be prize, something wonderful. He had complemented her on it! At that point, she had almost let her hair revert back to its dusty blonde color just to get people to drop the moniker, but Maaka had convinced her to keep her hair as it was.
Maaka Makoare. He had been her only friend through the entirety of basic. The only person who had managed to see past her hardened exterior into the person that she had truly been. The two of them had stayed in the same squad by some miracle of fate after completing basic. Both had been promoted to Corporal on the same week. They were exclusive sparring partners, even becoming known as the “Dangerous Duo” a rather lackluster title, considering both of them were masters of several martial arts.
And then came command school. The Katzenmeir School of Military Command or K-Com as it was more commonly called by the enlisted soldiers. The school was the most prestigious and well-known of tactical command schools in the world today. For a soldier from the standard enlisted ranks to simply secure a spot at K-Com was unheard of. But Maaka had been the first to suggest they both go for it. She had been rather wary of the whole concept, unsure as to whether or not she was even decent commissioned officer material. She had only enlisted to get the appropriate credit for a complete tuition payment to the secular university of her choice. Becoming a commissioned officer was a massive lifestyle change, completely rewriting her plans for her own future.
Finally she had relented, giving in to his constant appeals to her own sense of ambition. They had finally taken the plunge almost three years ago. She and Maaka had applied, taken the tests and waited for the results. As could be expected, Maaka got in. It would have been surprising had anything else happened. Maaka was incredibly smart, a gifted tactician, and a charismatic person. All of those qualities and more were perfect for what the Peacekeepers wanted in a commissioned officer.
But she on the other had had not been what they wanted. The actual results send back to her had proclaimed that she “was of sound tactician mind” and declared she was “a gifted diplomat” but that her own aptitude for intelligence was “not what they are currently looking for”.
The nerve of them! It made her blood boil even thinking about it now. They had actually suggested that she wasn’t smart enough to be a commissioned officer. My grades in high school hadn’t been anything to brag about, true, but they were certainly no indicator for future achievement. She had later broken several fingers in her right fist and had been completely in the dark as to how this occurred. Maaka had informed her she broke them when she put her fist through the nearest wall, shattering the support board right where she contacted. Hey had tried to console her, and told her to simply apply again at a later date.
She had thought that Maaka would at least be generous enough to reject the offer until they both received it and they both could go. The duo had become fast friends, in fact, Pixie had hoped they would become more than friends. That was why his decision was received much in the same manner as a deadly disease when he told her he was going to take the offer and go to Vienna where K-Com. She may have expressed certain profanity towards him that she regretted now. She knew now that he certainly couldn’t be blamed for taking the offer. The commission was the opportunity of a lifetime and many other applicants would call him a fool for rejecting such a proposal. But she had refused to talk to him after that. She had even refused to see him leave, instead she stayed in her bunk, refusing to talk or see anyone. As a result of her insubordination, she had ended up on latrine duty for almost two months for refusing to show up at roll call, slacking on her various tasks and other infractions
A year later, the minimum length of time between retakes, she had tried applying again and received the exact same letter back. She hadn’t bothered to apply since then. Why should I? It’s not like I would receive anything different this time around.
She hadn’t received the smallest amount of contact from him since. I wonder if he even remembers a thing about me. It was probably unlikely. He hadn’t sent her any sort of mail since leaving. Well, that’s not completely true, she thought to herself. A week after Maaka had left she had received an email from him. She had deleted it without even reading it after she saw the by-line.
A snore broke her concentration as she visually traced the lines of the jagged skyline. Pixielooked back at the bed in her room. Rank hath its privileges. A private room for the squad commander? Some other non-commisioned officers might call her mollycoddled from her commanders. She didn’t care either way. The room was decently sized, better in any case than the lodgings she had been put up in previously. The man she had brought back still lay on the bed and his clothes lay discarded in a pile on the floor. She tried quickly to remember his name. Conrad? Something along those lines. She didn’t really care what it was. The only reason she had led the man here was an attempt to restore some semblance of the feeling with Maaka had been here. The Maori’s presence had been comforting and peaceful. Such experiences and feelings were a sensation she yearned for now, and she was pursuing that satisfaction once again. The man on the bed—Conrad—hadn’t brought anything approaching a quanta of happiness, and she was believing that such feelings were now long vanquished and lost to the past.
She pulled the blanket she held up around her, as if trying to cover her nude from unseen prying eyes. She quieted such anxieties away. The window was one-way tinted which meant she could see outside, but no one could look in. Even though she knew very little of the man from what he had said at the bar, she hadn’t felt many qualms about doing what she had with him. It was her body to use, not anyone else’s. She had taken the appropriate medication. She certainly couldn’t get pregnant, or if the man was the carrier for some disease, contract that as well. Only a brief thought twittered in her head that such guarantees had not been as concrete in the past as they were now.
She brushed those thoughts away and turned back to look towards the skylights of the city. Vehicles out on the streets rushed by at breakneck speeds, uncaring of anything except getting their passengers to their destination as quickly as possible. Their automated systems constantly linked with the cities own neural traffic network, keeping millions of millions of vehicles speeding through the streets, automating every movement, planning every stop to guarantee a quick transit to God knows where
Heh, God. Such matters of religion had certainly led to some interesting debates between her and Maaka. The sheer concept of a giant magic man in the sky granting favors to those who did what he wanted and hurling destruction down at those who didn’t was ridiculous to the extreme. Since she had left home, she had also left the Catholic faith she had been raised in. The severing of ties hadn’t been due to anything the priests had done or said. The once tarnished Church had since mended its ways and continued being a powerful organization even in the face of a united world state. She could even commend them for much of the humanitarian efforts that they had spearheaded in decades past. But such doctrine was not for her. I just simply see no proof for the existence of God, she thought. And what she couldn’t see or feel, she didn’t believe.
But Maaka, still a devout Catholic, had lengthy discussions with her going into all hours of the night ranging from topics covering morality to personal choice and fate, and even touching on topics of history. The man on the bed—Conrad—certainly hadn’t been good for talking, that much she was quite sure of. The only person she ever dealt with now was Ten, the squad sniper, and she was sometimes far too reserved to get into a half decent discussion. The little Afrikaner was a devout and religious woman, a little eccentric in Pixie’s opinion, but she definitely wasn’t Maaka.
No one else could replace Maaka. That was the problem she faced. She didn’t even know where he was now. K-Com was only a two year school, and then usually the graduate was assigned to assist a senior commissioned officer before moving on from there. He could be at Intelligence Command in Beijing; he could be at Tactical Command in Vienna. Hell, he could even be here in D.C. There was certainly no small amount of Blue Helm installations here. She briefly wondered what he had been promoted to now. Lieutenant? Captain? Probably the latter. Captain Maaka Makoare sounds about right.
She wondered what he would think of the sound of Sergeant Blackburne. While she never admitted it to anyone around her, Sergeant did have a nice ring to it. She had her own squad now, and she thought she was doing quite well with it. She had only gotten the promotion a year and a half ago, and felt that she had fit into the position like someone wearing a perfectly fitted glove.
Out in the sky there was a sudden flare up of color that caught her eyes. She had seen the auroras virtually every night that she had lived here in D.C., but the sight of the glowing waves of light that oscillated across the vast expanse of the sky still made her gaze with wonder. The glowing colors shifted from green to brown as well several splashes of bright blues and deep red. If I recall, the first two deal with oxygen and the later two with nitrogen. She smiled from remembering it correctly. Not smart enough for K-Com indeed.
She looked to the gleaming power-caster that stood almost as tall as some of the arcologies, standing off to the side of the Mall. The massive tower looked like some sort of mimicry of the Eiffel Tower, with a colossal spherical emitter at the top of it. Once auroras had been restricted to the Northern and Southern Poles, only functioning from varying amounts of charged particles interacting with the planet’s atmosphere. But the powercasters, the brainchild of the world-renowned genius Dr. Emmanuel Tam, had changed all of that.
Powercasters worked by some arcane concept that Pixie was quite sure she didn’t know, only that the powercasters directed power all over the city, ending the age of wires and cables and allowing people to activate all sorts of technology no matter where they were in the affected area. One of the byproducts of the technology was that by flooding the air with charged particles the powercasters caused auroras virtually over every powercaster in the world. And given that the planet had over 70% coverage, seeing a perfectly empty sky was becoming rarer and rarer.
Still, the shifting colors were just about as beautiful as a perfectly empty night’s sky. And given the massive light pollution here in the middle of D.C. she was glad she was at least able to see something interesting in the sky as opposed to just blankness.
She tried to hold back tears as she watched the sky. Damn you Maaka. Why did you have to leave? She didn’t know if she cried because she hated him or because she still loved him, but it wouldn’t be something that she wanted anyone in her squad to know. She wiped her face with the blanket and continued gazing up at the sky, seeing the lights shift and morph high above them.
Questions I would like you to answer.
1. World Building? is there enough? or too much?
2. Now that you have read it over, what nationality do you think maaka is?
3. What do you think about the character of Pixie? Whiny? Depressed? Interesting? Non-existing?
4. Any other initial impressions of things that made you think. Please differentiate between things you think should have happened now in this entry or stuff you know could happen later.
So lets get down to business with chapter one.
I apologize if it seems a bit long at 2500 words. But I didn't see any way I could split it without it ending up being too short or ending at an awkward point of time
Chapter 1
“In history, many more optimistic fellows than I have dared to call the planet a utopia. As much as it pains me to say this, I don’t think that we have passed that boundary yet. Inequality and ignorance still permeates the consciousness of, unfortunately, a fair part of our citizenry. Many others have still however pointed to the massive scientific and social developments all over the planet as proof of our perfection. People are happier than they ever have been. They seem to have found their peace at last. In saying this, I am reminded to speak a few words about what I would consider to be the greatest evils of mankind. These evils are not lifestyles, nor are they even certain people or types of people. They are the unholy trinity of oppression, ignorance and chaos.” Doctor Emmanuel Tam’s commencement address at Oxford, Class of 2149.
Johanna U.N. Peace Keepers Base, Washington D.C., North America May 15th, 2157
Three years? That seemed about right. Has it really been three years? It seems like it was only a month ago. Sergeant Whitney Blackburne stood near the window of her room, looking out amongst the lights of the city that glowed all around her. The massive arcologies at the mall loomed as if they were gargantuan monoliths that eclipsed the sky, standing well over a kilometer and a half towards the heavens. The prodigious structures glowed like great night lights, illuminated from the windows of a hundred-thousand inhabitants. Each building was a self sustained ecosystem where an individual could spend their whole life inside the building and never have to leave. It was common for an arcology to be the home for fifty-thousand to one-hundred thousand people if not more.
She casually ran a hand through her spiky bubblegum pink hair. Her locks had been kept dyed that way since she had been fifteen, almost a decade ago. The outlandish color had given rise to the nickname that had become routine usage to the soldiers around her. It had originated back with a drill sergeant when she had been taking basic training. Even now Pixie could picture him standing right in front of her, glaring down at her as if she had personally insulted his mother. She could hear the rasp of his voice, smell the taste of his foul breath as he scowled down at her.
“And what the hell is this in front of me?! Some kind of damn pixie?!” he had roared, almost deafening her from his tone.
Pixie. The name had stuck. At first she had fought against her fellows adapting such a diminishing moniker. The tag was demeaning and nothing more than an embarrassing aspect of mockery and derision, the last thing she needed. Maaka Makaore had thought no such thing. He had told her that he found the name to be prize, something wonderful. He had complemented her on it! At that point, she had almost let her hair revert back to its dusty blonde color just to get people to drop the moniker, but Maaka had convinced her to keep her hair as it was.
Maaka Makoare. He had been her only friend through the entirety of basic. The only person who had managed to see past her hardened exterior into the person that she had truly been. The two of them had stayed in the same squad by some miracle of fate after completing basic. Both had been promoted to Corporal on the same week. They were exclusive sparring partners, even becoming known as the “Dangerous Duo” a rather lackluster title, considering both of them were masters of several martial arts.
And then came command school. The Katzenmeir School of Military Command or K-Com as it was more commonly called by the enlisted soldiers. The school was the most prestigious and well-known of tactical command schools in the world today. For a soldier from the standard enlisted ranks to simply secure a spot at K-Com was unheard of. But Maaka had been the first to suggest they both go for it. She had been rather wary of the whole concept, unsure as to whether or not she was even decent commissioned officer material. She had only enlisted to get the appropriate credit for a complete tuition payment to the secular university of her choice. Becoming a commissioned officer was a massive lifestyle change, completely rewriting her plans for her own future.
Finally she had relented, giving in to his constant appeals to her own sense of ambition. They had finally taken the plunge almost three years ago. She and Maaka had applied, taken the tests and waited for the results. As could be expected, Maaka got in. It would have been surprising had anything else happened. Maaka was incredibly smart, a gifted tactician, and a charismatic person. All of those qualities and more were perfect for what the Peacekeepers wanted in a commissioned officer.
But she on the other had had not been what they wanted. The actual results send back to her had proclaimed that she “was of sound tactician mind” and declared she was “a gifted diplomat” but that her own aptitude for intelligence was “not what they are currently looking for”.
The nerve of them! It made her blood boil even thinking about it now. They had actually suggested that she wasn’t smart enough to be a commissioned officer. My grades in high school hadn’t been anything to brag about, true, but they were certainly no indicator for future achievement. She had later broken several fingers in her right fist and had been completely in the dark as to how this occurred. Maaka had informed her she broke them when she put her fist through the nearest wall, shattering the support board right where she contacted. Hey had tried to console her, and told her to simply apply again at a later date.
She had thought that Maaka would at least be generous enough to reject the offer until they both received it and they both could go. The duo had become fast friends, in fact, Pixie had hoped they would become more than friends. That was why his decision was received much in the same manner as a deadly disease when he told her he was going to take the offer and go to Vienna where K-Com. She may have expressed certain profanity towards him that she regretted now. She knew now that he certainly couldn’t be blamed for taking the offer. The commission was the opportunity of a lifetime and many other applicants would call him a fool for rejecting such a proposal. But she had refused to talk to him after that. She had even refused to see him leave, instead she stayed in her bunk, refusing to talk or see anyone. As a result of her insubordination, she had ended up on latrine duty for almost two months for refusing to show up at roll call, slacking on her various tasks and other infractions
A year later, the minimum length of time between retakes, she had tried applying again and received the exact same letter back. She hadn’t bothered to apply since then. Why should I? It’s not like I would receive anything different this time around.
She hadn’t received the smallest amount of contact from him since. I wonder if he even remembers a thing about me. It was probably unlikely. He hadn’t sent her any sort of mail since leaving. Well, that’s not completely true, she thought to herself. A week after Maaka had left she had received an email from him. She had deleted it without even reading it after she saw the by-line.
A snore broke her concentration as she visually traced the lines of the jagged skyline. Pixielooked back at the bed in her room. Rank hath its privileges. A private room for the squad commander? Some other non-commisioned officers might call her mollycoddled from her commanders. She didn’t care either way. The room was decently sized, better in any case than the lodgings she had been put up in previously. The man she had brought back still lay on the bed and his clothes lay discarded in a pile on the floor. She tried quickly to remember his name. Conrad? Something along those lines. She didn’t really care what it was. The only reason she had led the man here was an attempt to restore some semblance of the feeling with Maaka had been here. The Maori’s presence had been comforting and peaceful. Such experiences and feelings were a sensation she yearned for now, and she was pursuing that satisfaction once again. The man on the bed—Conrad—hadn’t brought anything approaching a quanta of happiness, and she was believing that such feelings were now long vanquished and lost to the past.
She pulled the blanket she held up around her, as if trying to cover her nude from unseen prying eyes. She quieted such anxieties away. The window was one-way tinted which meant she could see outside, but no one could look in. Even though she knew very little of the man from what he had said at the bar, she hadn’t felt many qualms about doing what she had with him. It was her body to use, not anyone else’s. She had taken the appropriate medication. She certainly couldn’t get pregnant, or if the man was the carrier for some disease, contract that as well. Only a brief thought twittered in her head that such guarantees had not been as concrete in the past as they were now.
She brushed those thoughts away and turned back to look towards the skylights of the city. Vehicles out on the streets rushed by at breakneck speeds, uncaring of anything except getting their passengers to their destination as quickly as possible. Their automated systems constantly linked with the cities own neural traffic network, keeping millions of millions of vehicles speeding through the streets, automating every movement, planning every stop to guarantee a quick transit to God knows where
Heh, God. Such matters of religion had certainly led to some interesting debates between her and Maaka. The sheer concept of a giant magic man in the sky granting favors to those who did what he wanted and hurling destruction down at those who didn’t was ridiculous to the extreme. Since she had left home, she had also left the Catholic faith she had been raised in. The severing of ties hadn’t been due to anything the priests had done or said. The once tarnished Church had since mended its ways and continued being a powerful organization even in the face of a united world state. She could even commend them for much of the humanitarian efforts that they had spearheaded in decades past. But such doctrine was not for her. I just simply see no proof for the existence of God, she thought. And what she couldn’t see or feel, she didn’t believe.
But Maaka, still a devout Catholic, had lengthy discussions with her going into all hours of the night ranging from topics covering morality to personal choice and fate, and even touching on topics of history. The man on the bed—Conrad—certainly hadn’t been good for talking, that much she was quite sure of. The only person she ever dealt with now was Ten, the squad sniper, and she was sometimes far too reserved to get into a half decent discussion. The little Afrikaner was a devout and religious woman, a little eccentric in Pixie’s opinion, but she definitely wasn’t Maaka.
No one else could replace Maaka. That was the problem she faced. She didn’t even know where he was now. K-Com was only a two year school, and then usually the graduate was assigned to assist a senior commissioned officer before moving on from there. He could be at Intelligence Command in Beijing; he could be at Tactical Command in Vienna. Hell, he could even be here in D.C. There was certainly no small amount of Blue Helm installations here. She briefly wondered what he had been promoted to now. Lieutenant? Captain? Probably the latter. Captain Maaka Makoare sounds about right.
She wondered what he would think of the sound of Sergeant Blackburne. While she never admitted it to anyone around her, Sergeant did have a nice ring to it. She had her own squad now, and she thought she was doing quite well with it. She had only gotten the promotion a year and a half ago, and felt that she had fit into the position like someone wearing a perfectly fitted glove.
Out in the sky there was a sudden flare up of color that caught her eyes. She had seen the auroras virtually every night that she had lived here in D.C., but the sight of the glowing waves of light that oscillated across the vast expanse of the sky still made her gaze with wonder. The glowing colors shifted from green to brown as well several splashes of bright blues and deep red. If I recall, the first two deal with oxygen and the later two with nitrogen. She smiled from remembering it correctly. Not smart enough for K-Com indeed.
She looked to the gleaming power-caster that stood almost as tall as some of the arcologies, standing off to the side of the Mall. The massive tower looked like some sort of mimicry of the Eiffel Tower, with a colossal spherical emitter at the top of it. Once auroras had been restricted to the Northern and Southern Poles, only functioning from varying amounts of charged particles interacting with the planet’s atmosphere. But the powercasters, the brainchild of the world-renowned genius Dr. Emmanuel Tam, had changed all of that.
Powercasters worked by some arcane concept that Pixie was quite sure she didn’t know, only that the powercasters directed power all over the city, ending the age of wires and cables and allowing people to activate all sorts of technology no matter where they were in the affected area. One of the byproducts of the technology was that by flooding the air with charged particles the powercasters caused auroras virtually over every powercaster in the world. And given that the planet had over 70% coverage, seeing a perfectly empty sky was becoming rarer and rarer.
Still, the shifting colors were just about as beautiful as a perfectly empty night’s sky. And given the massive light pollution here in the middle of D.C. she was glad she was at least able to see something interesting in the sky as opposed to just blankness.
She tried to hold back tears as she watched the sky. Damn you Maaka. Why did you have to leave? She didn’t know if she cried because she hated him or because she still loved him, but it wouldn’t be something that she wanted anyone in her squad to know. She wiped her face with the blanket and continued gazing up at the sky, seeing the lights shift and morph high above them.
Questions I would like you to answer.
1. World Building? is there enough? or too much?
2. Now that you have read it over, what nationality do you think maaka is?
3. What do you think about the character of Pixie? Whiny? Depressed? Interesting? Non-existing?
4. Any other initial impressions of things that made you think. Please differentiate between things you think should have happened now in this entry or stuff you know could happen later.
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Four Cries Break the Silence [Prologue 2/3]
Offering his thanks one last time, Uthar leapt back through the gateway and sped around to the back of the house, calling off Nob with string of curses that sent the hound scampering back to the smithy with its tail between its legs.There were two horses hitched to the post behind the house, but Uthar barely saw them.
Faith, she had to be all right.
He pounded up the low stone steps and was two full strides into the house—the door just crashing open behind him—when he abruptly found himself being propelled back the in the opposite direction.
On tiptoe Widow Hafwood wouldn’t have been able to do up the top button of Uthar’s shirt, but ancient women more than made up for it in sheer force of will. Her knobby hands were empty, but she may as well have been switching Uthar across the seat of his pants for how quickly she forced him back out the door.
“Fool man!” she spat when she had him back on the steps, one hand tugging her dark shawl tighter across her thin shoulders, the other boxing Uthar’s ear with all the strenght of a woman half her age. “I’ve sent off half the village searching for you, and now you’re too late.” She glared lightning at him over her hawkish nose, head shaking in resigned irritation. “The Cleansing was good and done an hour ago, and where were you? The Ward take you and all men; not an ounce of patience between the lot of you. If you’d waited here in the yard as you were told you’dve been able to see the missus afore the parting started.” Uthar opened his mouth to protest him, but it did him no more good than if he’d tried to turn back the sun with his own arm. The Widow quashed his words with vicious glare, a well aimed kick at his shin and a final, “Not another word out of you, Uthar Hardric. You’ll see Lenora and your child soon enough. Now you wait out here as you were told, and don’t let me hear so much as a peep out of you. There’s women’s business needs doing inside this house tonight.”
The Widow planted a frail-looking arm on his stomach and gave him one final, not-so-frail-feeling push off the steps, then turned and shouted back into the room, “You hear me, Masters Givens and Eldun? Women’s business in this house, and we don’t need any of your meddling.” There was a brief scuffling of boots on the floor inside followed by muffled protests, and then the Widow was propelling two more men out the door.
“You three wait as your told, and you’ll be called for shortly,” the whisp of a woman said, her scarecrow form silloutted in the bright rectangle of the open door. She snorted at them collectively, and then grumbled, “Go try and make yourselves useful, though I doubt you’ll manage that without supervision.”
The door slammed shut, leaving the three men in darkness.
“The Widow is a forceful woman,” the man on Uthar’s right—Evin Givens—said after a long, silence-filled pause. He clapped a hand on Uthar’s shoulder a steered him around away from the door. “Your wife is fine, Uthar, a far sight better than my Anida was with our first child.”
Uthar nodded absently, and tried to give the burly man an acknowledging smile. He was sure it came off crooked.
If he noticed, Evin gave no sign of it—the man was already fishing around in his coat pockets, probably for his pipe—and Matias Eldun cut in heartily, “Aye, she looked more than fine, man. A fine woman, to be sure, and a fine mother for the child.”
Evin had his pipe out now, and was fumbling to light it. He paused long enough to give Uthar a significant look. “‘Tis a momentous birth, Uthar. A momentous birth. Faith, how long as the Family been looking forward to this day?”
Reflexively, Uthar glanced over his shoulder, checking to make sure none of the native folk of Matham were nearby. The Family had been living in Matham for nearly a quarter century, but small villages breed long memories—or so the saying went—and the Family tried hard not to give other folk any reason to remember that the Hardrics and the others hadn’t always lived in Matham.
Master Eldun was nodding in agreement with Evin, his close-set eyes gazing up at the night sky. “And you proved us all wrong, my boy.” He sighed, a long tired sound that for some reason made Uthar look back towards the house worriedly. “Lenora has made a fine addition to the Family. I’ll be the first to admit that not everyone was pleased with your choosing Lenora—but then, the Family always grows nervous when its time to mix in new blood.”
Bristling, Uthar turned back to Matias. “Meaning no disrespect, sir, but I didn’t marry Lenora for her blood.”
“And thats just it, Uthar,” Evin cut in, scratching at his short-cropped beard with the stem of his pipe. “You were head over heels for Lenora, we could all see it. And seeing as how your choices would affect the whole course of the Family, some in the Council thought as you weren’t using your head . . . not enough, so to speak.”
“But, all’s well that ends well,” Matias drawled, latching an arm around Uthar’s broad shoulders and smiling to himself. “The Blood has been strengthened, and now you’ve an heir to carry our hopes.” That bright smile faded, then disappeared completely. “All our hopes and fears.”
Uthar opened his mouth to point out that Lenora wasn’t exactly through the thicket yet, when suddenly the world . . . lurched.
There was no other word to describe it. One moment Uthar was standing with Matias and Evin in the cool night air, the wind sighing through the trees beyond them, stars shining bright as jewels just above the treetops, and then next moment he was on the ground, writhing in agony as the world compressed around him, reality twisting until he could no longer see, he could no longer breathe. His longs screamed at him, burning inside his chest, and he opened his mouth, trying desperately to suck in air—but none would come. It was as if the very air had turned to stone. He clawed at the dirt with both hands and felt the earth beneath him buckles, steel bending between an invisible vise. He couldn’t see anything, his head felt like it was being torn apart from the inside out, and his heart seemed to be trying to claw its way out of his chest. He opened his mouth to scream—
And abruptly the world relaxed, sprining back to normalacy, like a wadded up banner suddenly unfurled to in the wind.
Sagging back to the ground, Uthar stared up at the night sky wildly, chest heaving and ears ringing. The night was alive with sound, birds screaming and thrashing in the trees, and voices too—Matham had come wide awake, folk flinging open doors and windows, rushing out into the street. The harsh sound of women and children and even men crying out in pain and terror assaulted Uthar on all sides.
Lenora . . .
With all the force of the ten pound hammer he used in the smithy the thought came crashing home. Head still spinning, Uthar twisted around and forced himself forward, scrabbling on his hands and knees.
Lenora . . .
“By the Ward, Evin! Speak to me Ev!”
Uthar turned to see Matias craddling a limp Evin. The other man looked up at Uthar, blood running freely from his nose and ears. “He’s dead, Uthar. By the Faith, he’s dead. What was that?”
Uthar barely heard him. “Lenora.”
The word tore raggedly from his throat and he turned back to the house. Nothing could be done about Evin, the Faith protect him. But Lenora could still be saved.
He was halfway back to the house when it happened again. Everything buckled—the earth, the sky, Faith even his mind—and Uthar crashed to the ground again. This time he did managed to scream, but it was a roar of frustration rather than fear.
Lenora!
Stunned, Uthar clawed his way back to his feet and staggered towards the door, hands outstretched. By some miracle he made it up the steps, but then it was all he could do to lean against the door and not fall over. His trembling hands fumbled at the latch, but he couldn’t seem to direct them, couldn’t make them work. His thoughts were muddled and cloudy, he could barely remember where he was. Cursing thickly, he leaned back and threw himself against the door, shoulder lowered. The oaken door shuddered in its frame, but held firm. Roaring, Uthar crashed into it again, and again. Once, twice, three times—with a splintered snap the door caved and Uthar fell into the room.
A third time the world twisted, contorting in on itself like some kind of nightmare knot—only instead of a rope, creation itself was the cord—and Uthar fell to the floor. Faith, he felt like he was being squeezed through the eye of a needle!
When it was over, when he could breathe and see and hear again, Uthar struggled to his knees. He tasted blood and when he put a hand to his nose his fingers came away bright red. His ears were ringing.
Widow Hafwood lay sprawled out on the wooden floor, hands covered in blood and some other sort of fluid, eyes wide and staring, mouth ajar and blood leaking from the corner of her lips. Dazedly, Uthar crawled towards her—unsure, even as he moved what he intended to do—and then the ringing in his ears faded just enough for him to hear another voice screaming.
A young girl was standing by the bed, head thrown back and throat rattling with an unending, almost inhuman scream. She was the Widow’s apprentice, Uthar had seen her before, he knew her family, but for some reason he couldn’t bring her name to mind. For all her wild screaming, the girl’s body was cupped protectively around something that Uthar couldn’t see; but he couldn’t spare the time to wonder what it was—he had eyes only for the woman sprawled amid the twisted, red-stained blankets, her golden hair a sweat-matted tangle plastered to her forehead.
“Lenora,” he croaked as he pulled himself hand over hand along the bed opposite the screaming girl. “I’m here, Lenora.”
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