OK, so its not really a sale. But I am moving. Not physically, of course, but to another server. I am tired of Blogger's constraints, so I will be moving this site over to Wordpress, which I like more. I won't be taking this incarnation down, but I won't update it any more, for that, you guessed it, you'll have to go to Wordpress. So, without further ado, here's the link:
http://pawnstorm.wordpress.com
Well, it seems that my trip to New York screwed up my schedule more than I thought it had. I've also been seeing if I could mess around with the Blogger template a little (no luck so far). What all of this means is that my story post for the week will be pushed to next week, which is good, as I'm writing combat for the first time, and I want to get it right. Sorry about that.
[ Read More ]I need you to believe me. I'm in danger. There's this man, he has a striped red shirt, glasses- Hey! I'm serious here. OK, OK, I'll start at the beginning.
It was a joke, an innocuous, harmless little joke. My friend Rudy, he sent it to me. How could anyone expect it to be taken seriously- a guy named Waldo who, for a "nominal fee", said that he could take out anyone, anytime, anywhere. Even his logo was absurd, a little drawing that was clearly in violation of the Where's Waldo copyright. That's right, you remember him, searching through page after page trying to find that naive tourist.
So we flipped a coin, and Rudy won. Or rather, as it turned out, lost. The page was surprisingly smooth, and it was only a couple of minutes before we had taken a hit out on him, with me agreeing to foot the bill.
Don't look at me like that. How could we have possibly known what would happen?
Fast forward a few days, to the weekend. Rudy and I are sitting at a little burger joint called Mo's that overlooks this odd little enclosed park in Downtown San Francisco. The two of us were finishing our shakes and talking about the Literary Theory class that Rudy was taking when he stopped in mid sentence.
"What the . . ." he said as his hand shot up to his neck. He winced as tugged at something, and his hand came away with what looked like a tiny dart.
I was about to ask what it was when Rudy's face went stiff, eyes wide, and his head crashed down, forehead shattering the plate that now only held a couple of fries. I jumped back and out of my seat, panicking and looking for someone to help.
That was when I saw him. Red striped shirt. Glasses. Fuzzy hat. And that ubiquitous sign of tourism, a camera around his neck. It was Waldo. He was smiling and putting what looked like a pen back in his pocket.
It wasn't like the movies, thankfully, I was treated well by the cops. When they found the dart they let me go.
I don't exactly know how I got back to my apartement, but I did. I was still in shock when I opened the door, and at first the note on the floor didn't register. I don't know how long I just stood there before picking up the envelope. Inside the envelope was an invoice.
I owed Waldo $5,000. Unfortunately, the vast majority of my worth was located in the twenty in my pocket, which I only had because Mo's didn't charge for the meal.
Still on autopilot, I changed my clothes so that I wasn't spattered with ketchup before leaving the apartment. I didn't want to be around when Waldo came to collect. Slowly, it all came together. Those books that I had so eagerly pored over as a child, they weren't just entertainment, they were advertisements. I sprinted down the hill to the Borders, and started poring over the books.
The more I looked, the more disturbing it got. Something was going wrong in every one of the pictures. Letting animals out at the zoo, probably paid for by PETA. Sabotaging commercial airliners. In some cases, it even appears that he is directly involved in the enslavement or genocide of entire races and peoples.
Then I got to Waldo World, and my throat went dry. There they were, thousands of the killing machines, an unending tide of Waldos. I hesitate to even think of the implications.
That's why I'm here. You see, I know your secret. You're his handler. You have to understand, this was only a joke, a joke that went bad. Let my work something out with you, an installment plan or something. I can have you paid off in a year or two, and-
What do you mean that he's gone rogue!
An orange circle appeared in the corner of Devi's vision, and the conversation in the lounge skipped a beat as the same thing happened to everyone else. A few people, those who had duties when the ship went to alert status, got up and left, but things returned to normal before they had left the room. Devi was almost finished with her coffee when the screen that covered an entire wall of the lounge flickered and changed to a view of the outside. In the center, there was an odd looking ship, a long cylinder that appeared to be rotating on its axis.
"Oh shit!" someone, or maybe several people at once said as they saw two torpedos streak towards the odd ship. The first one hit, and there was the green flash of the shield collapsing. The second one hit, and Devi's stomach wrenched as the explosive decompression caused by the torpedos ripped the ship apart.
"What the hell was that? It couldn't have been military." Kenichi said, military ships were heavily compartmentalized to prevent what they had just seen. He was taller than Devi, she only came up to his chin, and his dark hair was tied in a qeue behind his head, making him look more like a researcher than a tech.
"Why do you always ask questions that I can't answer?" Devi asked, shaking her head. He had been her shipmate on several occasions since they had first met in Tech School, fifteen years ago, and he hadn't changed in that time.
"It's better than the alternative." He had always been of the opinion that asking too many questions was better than not questioning at all, even if it did lead him to ask some stupid questions.
"Either way, we'll both be on shift soon," she said. They were both due on the main Launch Deck in ten minutes.
"Good point." The two mugs clinked together as he grabbed both of them with one hand to carry them over to the receptacle, always the polite one.* * *
"Something's up," Kenichi said as the two of them walked onto the Main Launch Deck, blending in with the others who were coming on shift as well. "Officers never come out here unless they have to." He nodded to the black uniforms that were at the center of a large group of orange-clad Techs, all of them clustered around what looked like some sort of shuttle. The entire group of them was dwarfed by the sheer scale of the Deck, grey flooring stretching in either direction, punctuated by various lines and symbols.
"What the hell is that?" Devi pointed at the shuttle. "We don't have anything like that." The craft was too large, not slim, like the Tiburon Shuttles, and the wings were too short, as if it were incapable of atmospheric flight.
"What was that you were saying earlier? About certain questions?" he said, smirking.
"Shut it."
As they approached the Chief for the shift so they could check in, a contingent broke free from the crowd. Two of the officers, and six Security in grey uniforms, who Devi hadn't noticed before, were leaving the Deck. It looked like they were escorting someone, but she couldn't make it out from the distance.
"What's with the Greys?" she asked, gesturing towards the Security contingent, when they reached the Chief.
Chief Hadlin shrugged. "They found that in a sweep of the wreckage. You're the best Drive Tech I have this shift, so you get the honor of being the first to check it out before the spooks get here." He turned towards Kenichi. "I need you to check up on Shuttle AX-3." There was a long-standing rivalry between the Techs and the Research Division, the Spooks, and she would have to work fast.
"I'll get started, then," she said, and glanced at Kenichi. Hadlin nodded, and she started to make her way towards the odd ship.* * *
It turned out that the reason that the ship looked odd was because it was odd. The wings were only there in order to mount thrusters, and the reason it was so bulky was due to it being constructed out of ceramics, rather than a nano-composite. The engines were odd as well, more like ancient ramjets than anything that had been designed in the last millennium or so; it was definitely a short-range vessel. Devi told Kenichi all of this in the lounge after the shift was over.
"So it was archaic?" he asked, taking a sip of his brew.
"Yeah. I couldn't even find an Interface. That thing would have to be controlled manually, if you can imagine that." She frowned and shook her head.
"Almost sounds like we should check for it in the Archives."
"You might have a point there," she said. "I'd like to see whatever was flying it, though."
"Command'll probably keep the whole thing sealed tighter than an airlock." He finished his brew. "I've got another shift coming up, so . . ."
"Sorry to see you go so early," she said, raising her mug. "I'll just have to drink for the both of us, then."
She didn't get much time to relax, a few minutes after Kenichi had left, Hadlin sat down across from her.
"Chief." Devi was wary, she and the Chief had never been close, so it was a surprise to see him here.
He took a drink from his mug. "Devi, how many times have you been up for Ratings?" he asked.
"I don't know, sir. Six?"
"We're off duty, call me Andrew." Devi didn't know what to make of this odd lack of formality, and her puzzlement must have shown, because he immediately started talking again. "Devi, what I'm getting at is that you should have made Chief by now. Years ago, actually. Why haven't you?"
Devi had had this discussion before, never with Hadlin, but it always came up during Ratings. "You want to know why I haven't made chief yet? Is that it?"
Hadlin got defensive, sitting back in his chair and letting go of his mug to run his hands through his shaggy brown hair. "Don't get me wrong, its your career, do what you want with it. But you make my life harder, you know that? You should have your own crew, but instead, I have to tell you what to do, and that pisses me off. Every second I spend with you is a second that I should be spending with some green tech, who, unlike you, I should be telling what to do."
It was Devi's turn to be on the defensive. She was used to dealing with the Ratings boards by now, with all of their "help us help you bullshit", but something about Hadlin's honesty got through to her. It didn't last long, though. "Sir, with all due respect, I don't want to have to hold some green tech's hand. I like working on stuff, solving problems. I don't want to have to spend most of my time doing what the Academy should have done in the first place--."
"That's not fair and you know it." Hadlin took a long swig from his mug, nearly finishing it.
"No, its not, but that's too bad. And I'm sorry if I make your job more difficult than it needs to be, I really am, but that's too bad as well."
"I can't say that I'm surprised, frankly," he said, his chair scraping the ground as he stood up. "But just think about it, OK."
"I'll think about it, sir." She took a drink, and looked down at her mug. When she looked back up, Hadlin was halfway across the lounge, heading for the exit. As he looked back and frowned, she couldn't help but think that the conversation she had just had with him would come back and bite her.
Caden was tired. He was unshaven and his clothes had long since lost their original color, now little more than a patchwork of dirt and bloodstains. His appearance did not bother him, however, the campaign was finally over and the only thought in his mind was that of returning home to his wife, Tara. It was only a matter of hours before he would be on the ridge overlooking the town, and shortly after that, he would be home.
The other men in the company were silent, all of them afflicted by a communal sense of anxiety. Occasionally, one of the greener soldiers would try to start a conversation, only to be immediately silenced by the gazes of the surrounding veterans.
Although it wasn't until well after nightfall that his company reached the ridge that looked down on Helena, Caden knew immediately that he was home. The saltwater smell that had been gradually building over the last few miles reached a critical mass and made itself known, and with every breath he felt as though life itself were slowly seeping back into his body. With it came the pounding of the waves, and when he looked around, it was as though the the smells and sounds of home were gradually leaching out the anxiety that had been consuming the men.
Caden paused for a moment, letting the rest of the company go ahead before descending towards the town. For some reason that he had never been able to untangle, he always hesitated before this final leg of the journey. It didn't last long though, and with a smile on his face, he followed the rest of the men towards home.
The windows of his house were dark. This came as no surprise to him, Tara usually went to sleep early, and Caden had on several occasions returned from a campaign only to find her asleep. He was careful to be quiet as he dismounted, he didn't want to wake her until he had gotten a chance to clean himself up.
He was several paces from the door of the stable when he heard footsteps coming down the path that cut across his property to the main square. They were running, from the sound of it. Maybe she wasn't asleep, after all. He turned around, ready to embrace her, but it was not his wife running down the path, but rather it was his wife's sister, Andrea, carrying a lantern that was threatening to sputter out.
"What is it?" he asked, confused. Where is Tara?
She hugged him, and he could see that there were tears streaking her face. "Tara is dead."
Caden pushed her back, almost instantly regretting it. "What . . . That can't be."
"She had a fever. At the end of the summer," she said, her voice halting, as though she were experiencing it for the first time.
"But that was months ago." She didn't say anything, just stood there, tears flowing down he cheeks. "How could I not know?"
He didn't know how long the two of them stood there, the awkward and painful silence stretching out. Caden knew that he should break down and cry, or fly into a rage, something- anything. All he felt, however was a coldness settling onto his shoulders, heavy as any armor he had ever worn.
"I- I don't know. Thank you for telling me yourself. I'm sure that you'd rather be home with your husband." She nodded, turned, and started to head back up the path.
Somehow, he managed to stable his horse, Akati, and put away his tack and saddle. He didn't remember any of it, but he found himself standing in the main room, waiting for something that would never happen again. Is this even home anymore? He had never realized it, but at that moment felt it acutely, a house is nothing but a pile of wood and nails, but a home is something else entirely.* * *
Caden had gotten used to seeing the temple empty since he had gotten home a few weeks ago. It was the largest building in Helena, big enough to contain the entire town during holidays, the walls on the sides gradually tapering in towards the altars at the front of the room. The sensation of emptiness was only increased by the sound of his boots clicking against the polished wooden floor. He knelt in front of the marble sculpture of Arkos.
Arkos, protector, Caden began his silent prayer, as he had done each day for the past month, please grant me this, my one request. Tara has been taken from me. I know that all things have their time, and that I will see her again, but I cannot accept that I was denied my chance to say goodbye. Name your price and I will pay it. All things shall be as they once were.
After finishing his prayer, Caden got up and started to leave the temple, refusing to think of what he would do if the god did not answer his request.* * *
Caden was sitting in his chair in front of the fire. It had been several months since his return now, and he had started to build a life again, with all that it entailed: going out with the fishing fleet, attending social events, and all the thousand-and-one things that occupied life but were rarely noticed.
"Caden." The voice came from no direction, but filled the room anyway, making Caden's hairs stand on end. It was not unusual in any way that he could pick out, but it said his name exactly as he heard it inside his head, somehow. The voice was not talking to someone named Caden, it was talking to him and only him.
He looked around the room, and found that the room was bright, missing the dancing shadows usually produced by the fireplace. Standing in the doorway was a man, or at least something that had a man's shape. Whatever it was, it clearly was not human, it's face was white, but with a blue tint, and it's androgenous features were too perfect, as though they had been carved from marble. It was cloaked in an inky blackness that suggested but did not confirm human form, and it seemed to stand perfectly still.
The thing spoke again, and again there was that resonance, as though it were speaking directly into his mind. "I am Arkos, and I have come to grant what you asked, provided you pay the price."
"Anything." A spark of hope flared inside of Caden as he said this, over the past few months, he had given up hope.
"Good," Arkos said, sounding somehow pleased. "I will grant you one day to say goodbye to your loved one, but first you must do something for me."
Arkos moved, seeming to glide, stopping at the table in the center of the room, between Caden and the fireplace. The god placed an envelope on the table, seemingly produced out of the nothingness that covered its body.
"You will travel by land to Land's End, and from there to Crest Island, where you will deliver this letter to the head priest at the temple there. You will stop at all of the temples that you come to along the way. Tell them of your quest, they will be expecting you, and will have instructions for you. Do not open the letter, or your life is forfeit and my offer will be revoked. All things shall be as they once were"* * *
The light of the morning sun coming through the windows awoke Caden. He was cramped and uncomfortable from having slept in the chair, but felt well rested nonetheless. He started to question the events of the previous night but stopped when he saw the letter sitting on the table. He got up and walked to the kitchen, making a mental list of the things that he would have to do that day in order to prepare for his journey.
I was planning on having the next section ready yesterday, but that didn't happen, and part of the reason was that I didn't have a set day to have it finished. The solution to all of this is a schedule, so from now on, I will try to get a new story out every Monday. Have a great weekend.
[ Read More ]At first, none of us took it seriously when management announced that they were going to be replacing us with zombies. We all thought it was some sort of sick joke. Sure, we knew they wanted to replace us, but with technology or something, not zombies. And then we met Bob.
You see, Bob was a zombie. Not like in the movies, though. Sure, he ate brains, shambled, and did the typical zombie stuff, but he also worked at S-Mart. We never figured out how, but it worked. When he was on the clock, open to close, seven days a week, he wouldn't so much as drool on you.
At first, Bob scared the hell out of us. The obvious conclusion was that the company was planning to use Bob to turn the lot of us into a shambling, decomposing army of retail employees who didn't require breaks or health insurance. Rumors were even started to the effect that we would eventually be used to attack competitors. Not a pretty picture, really.
Those fears proved to be unfounded, however, as a more chilling truth sank in. Bob and the other zombies that joined him on the selling floor were simply better employees than us. They worked longer, harder, and didn't complain about lack of decent pay or benefits. In a rational world, it would be fantastic, think of all the lives that are sucked dry by menial jobs. As things are, however, this wasn't the case, we needed these pointless, soul-crushing jobs.
There was some talk of actually becoming decent employees, taking pride in our work. Fortunately, it didn't get far. After all, compared to upper management, Bob and his fellow undead were downright sympathetic by comparison, and even if that weren't true, Bob was better liked than the vast majority of upper management. All of which meant that simply working harder was not an option. Faced with this bleak situation, what choice was there?
We formed a union. All of us, even Bob. When presented with the idea of being able to eat the annoying customers, Bob joined enthusiastically, for a zombie, that is.
You probably wonder how it went.
Well, you never want to mess with a zombie on a picket line, it gets ugly.
OK, so far I really like this New Blogger thing. The only problem is that I can't seem to figure out how to enable extended posts (where it shows the first paragraph or so, and then has a link to read the whole thing), so you're just going to have to deal with long posts for the time being.
[ Read More ]Sig's hands were sweating as he waited outside the Captain's office. A message from his System appeared, projected onto his retinas by tiny machines embedded in his optic nerves, asking him if he wanted it to release drugs into his bloodstream to calm him down. He visualized a red X, silencing it. Drugs, no matter how advanced, took off your edge. Instead, he called up techniques that had been drilled into him over a decade ago. Taking deep, steady breaths, he focused, drawing himself to the present, disassociating himself from the future and the past.
As he tried to calm himself he looked at his reflection in the opaque glass wall that he was facing. The last few months had been lean, and it showed, which was probably for the best, when he was well-fed, he lost the intensity granted to him by his slightly hollow cheeks. He had cut off most of his hair for the interview, and for a moment he thought that he was looking at a picture of his younger self. He ran a hand through his slightly spiky blonde hair, and let his gaze drop.
The meditation worked, as it always had, and he had no idea of how much time passed before the door to his left slid open with a sound like decompressing gas. A man stepped through the opening, and if Sig hadn't known better, he would have thought that the man was in the military. The man was older than Sig had expected, probably in his 60's. His face was blocky, and although it appeared that the years had taken some of its sharpness, it had been compensated with hardness. The man had clearly been through his share of situations and hardships, but it was clear that adversity had not gotten the better of him, his bearing made it clear that he was in command. The man was clearly the Captain, and so was the one who would decide if Sig would be part of the expedition.
"Sigurd, I presume," he said, his voice deep, the muted growl of an engine.
"Yes, sir." Sig got out of the chair and shook the Captain's hand. The Captain turned, leading the way into the office, and indicated a chair between the desk and the door. As Sig took the indicated chair, the Captain sat down as well. The desk was utilitarian, the only thing on its surface a placard, the name Balthus Abrams etched into the dark metal. The rest of the office was decorated in a similar vein, the only attempt at decoration being the blue-and-white technical drawing of the Javelin that completely covered one of the walls, and there was no doubt in Sig's mind of its purpose.
"So, why do you want to join my expedition?" The captain asked, his eyes briefly becoming unfocused as he reviewed some piece of information on his System, presumably Sig's application.
"I've always wanted the opportunity to--"
"Bullshit," the Captain cut Sig off. "If I wanted someone who would tell me what they thought I wanted to hear, trust me, we wouldn't be sitting here right now. So tell me, why would someone like you want to sign on to go who-knows-where, with with all that it entails?"
Despite the artificially controlled climate aboard the station, Sig felt chilled. "What it comes down to, sir, is that there's nothing for me here, just memories that I'd rather forget."
"That, I can believe," the Captain said. "Still doesn't tell me why I should pick you, though."
"Sir, I have experience on--"
"Frankly, I don't give a damn about your experience. I already know about your experience. What I don't know is why you think you deserve to be on my crew." The Captain's words took Sig like a blow to the stomach, and several heartbeats passed before he could muster a response.
"Because I'm willing to fight for what I believe in." Sig looked the Captain in the eye as he said this, and apparently he had said the right thing, because the Captain smiled. Sig was just starting to relax when the Captain's face hardened again.
"But your side lost," the Captain said, leaning forward and drawing his words out slowly and deliberately.
"That doesn't mean that we were on the wrong side," Sig said, trying not to get angry.
"Good," the Captain said, leaning back. "We leave in two weeks."* * *
Some pilots describe space as a crushing blackness, the darkness a suffocating blanket and the stars mere pinholes bleeding light from the Outside. Sig had never been one of those pilots. To him, the void was freedom, a place where the only rules were those imposed by mass and acceleration. Dangerous, yes, but a thing to be respected, not feared.
Sig always tried to be the first one out after a jump, he never really believed that everything was OK until he saw it with his own eyes. This jump had been particularly difficult. It wasn't that the process or even the experience had changed since the war, but that this time it was a one-way trip. Even if they had wanted to, without a gate, it would take centuries to make it back to known space. This was what he had wanted, but it didn't matter, it was one thing to leave, another entirely to be incapable of returning.
"JS-1. Do you copy?" The voice was from the Javelin, and as Sig turned to take a look at it, awe-inspiring in its scale, a massive cylinder spinning on its axis. If not for the various lights mounted on it's surface, it would merely be a swath of blackness in an otherwise starry expanse. It was the biggest ship he had ever served on, the military relied almost entirely on much smaller ships, the realities of space combat made anything the size of Javelin impractical..
"This is JS-1. All clear," Sig replied. The JS-1 was miniscule in comparison with the Javelin, with room for only the pilot. No weapons, no jump drive, minimal shielding, basically a bunch of sensors strapped to an engine. It wasn't elegant, but it got the job done.
Sig's System indicated that he had been heading away from the Javelin for nearly fifteen minutes before the image on the EMA started to resolve. Except for a couple of gauges and the various controls, the only feature of the cockpit was the EMA screen, where the ship's systems combined all of the input from various electromagnetic sensors into a display that represented the ship's surroundings, fooling the eye into thinking that it was seeing three dimensions. He glanced down, and wasn't surprised to find that he was still too close to the Javelin to get clear readings, the massive ship's distortions were creating artifacts all over the EMA.
It took another two and a half minutes for the artifacts to clear up, the indistinct shapes gradually converging until there was only the Javelin, represented by a long cylinder, and the JS-1, represented by a tiny cluster of pixels only notable because they were in the center of the display. He tapped the screen, and everything shrunk down as the view expanded. He blinked, and for a moment just stared at the EMA, unable to make sense of what he was seeing. There was a third ship, more than twice the size of the Javelin, a few hundred kilometers away.
"Javelin, this is the JS-1. Do you copy?" Sig tried to keep his voice even as he spoke, but knew that he failed.
"This is the Javelin. Go ahead, JS-1," came the reply from the other ship.
"Are you--" Sig began, and then saw two dots leave the third ship, one after the other, heading for the Javelin. "Shit! Torps! Put up your Screens!" The comms officer started to reply but was cut off by Captain Abrams, who was yelling commands. The EMA flickered and there was a blast of static as his connection was abruptly severed by the Javelin's screens.
Sig wanted to shut his eyes but couldn't. He had seen it before, the first torp would take out the Screens, and the second would destroy the ship. The two torps came in to view, glinting in the cold light of the stars. The first one hit the Screens, and the Javelin was briefly surrounded by a green halo as the Screens went down. The second torp hit the ship at the midpoint of the cylinder, and Sig bore silent witness as the ship, which he had started to think of as his new home, disappeared forever.
His first instinct was to power down and wait for a rescue sweep, but he knew that there would be no sweep. Not from his people, anyway. That only left two options, wait for death, or let himself get picked up by whoever had torped the Javelin.
Yes, yes, I know, its on Blogger, which sort of makes it a blog. But I don't intend to do much, if any, actual blogging. Instead, what I am planning on doing is to use this site as an online home for my work. Hence, none of that "this was my day, isn't my cat cute" stuff. So don't get upset if you don't find that here.
Shit. This was a blog post, wasn't it.
