The Nightstalker and its six escorts accelerated in pursuit of the cloud of fighters. The Eye was on tactical, and reviewed the sensor reports.
"Five thousand, six hundred and forty-three marks, accelerating at eight standard gravities from Suburbia Prime. They're sticking together." The Eye paused for a moment, and a cloud of tiny false-color dots covered the bridge's main view-screen.
Jolt, sitting in the captain's chair, narrowed her eyes. "Their energy storage capacity is limited. If they're going to jump, they'll have to do it soon."
She regarded the cloud of mauve-colored dots. "Do we have fragment bombs?"
The Eye checked her armory display. "Yes, sir, we do."
"Give me a rack of torpedoes with frag bombs. Thresher, relay that to our wingmen. Let's take as many of them out as we can while they're still vulnerable."
Thresher was at the communications station. "Done. They'll fire at our command."
Jolt turned to the First Mate, who was standing beside her. "Fire at your discretion."
The First Mate tensed and turned to a console. "Transfer fire control now."
The Eye complied, tapping buttons on her tactical console. "Done."
The First Mate entered an attack plan, explaining as he manipulated the controls. "If I understand you correctly, Captain, you wish to deploy the bombs just in front of the leading edge of fighters, resulting in kinetic kills as the targets accelerate into the shrapnel."
Jolt nodded. "Precisely."
The First Mate consulted his display. "Between our launchers and the other six ships, we have forty warheads for the first salvo. All racks loaded -- firing."
From the sides of the blade of the spade-like Nightstalker, small cylinders rolled from the launcher racks on the side. The escorting corvettes, stubby cylinders with a pair of movable, wing-like struts with thrusters on the end mounted on one side next to a heavily-armored bridge module, fired more missiles into the cloud of ordnance from their single launcher racks opposite the bridge.
Computers traded targeting information, then the thrusters of the missiles ignited. A standing wave of neutrino pairs was constrained on one side by a nanoscopic gravity gradient, created by a thin film of stable strange matter. To oscillate at its desired wavelength, the standing wave had to attempt to push the barrier out of its frame of reference; the magnetic moment of the neutral gravity band gap skipping forwards through space-time generated blinding light and heat, which was conducted away from the apparatus by a cloud of vaporizing coolant. The missiles skipped forwards through space, leaving a trail of glowing gas.
An additional set of band gaps closed around the standing wave, this time producing thrust not in ordinary space-time, but in the curved and distorted dimensions of hyperspace. The missiles seemed to curve away as their thrust vectors were forced into a time-line with a non-zero imaginary component, disappearing from the local light-cone on a partially time-like path to their targets. This similarity to a naval torpedo, skimming under the surface of an ocean, led missiles with faster-than-light thrusters to be called "torpedoes".
The torpedoes completed their brief parabolic skip in imaginary time slightly ahead of the front of the cloud of fighters. A charge of chemical explosive sent kilogram-sized chunks of iron into a cloud of kinetic impactors.
The fighters were already traveling at a quarter of the speed of light, following a common vector out of the Suburbia system. The oncoming projectiles vaporized the few fighters that were struck; the survivors scattered, and the advance halted as the formation began to dissipate like a cloud.
Jolt watched the screen as the interrocitor observed the flashes of the exploding fighters. The computer collated the casualty figures to her command display. "Excellent. The first salvo literally decimated the targets -- 10 percent casualty rate."
Thresher, manning the communications station, registered hails from a group of a dozen torpedo frigates patrolling the Suburbia system. With the advance of the fighters temporarily halted by the barrage from the faster corvettes, these vessels could surround and bombard the cloud of small vessels, closing off the escape vectors for the small ships. "We have fire support -- I think we have them bottled up."
The Eye scowled. "Wait a minute -- something's coming!"
Twenty huge battleships materialized from deep hyperspace, re-entering normal space-time in a scattered cloud that rapidly approached the cloud of fighters. The neutral particle cannon of the Reyll war-ships fired.
The beams faded away, twisting away into hyperspace, and re-appeared as scorching beams of energy that struck the approaching corvettes. One bolt struck the Nightstalker amidships, disrupting the main power reactor. The Eye cut the throttle rather than deplete the ship's supply of stored energy, as did the other corvettes. "Twenty marks -- out of nowhere! Main power down, recovery in thirty seconds. Breaking off pursuit."
The surviving fighters -- some five thousand ships -- returned to their former vector, approaching the battleships. Jolt and the First Mate watched as the fighters triggered their jump drives and disappeared, one by one, from the screen.
Showing posts with label Honor Guard. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Honor Guard. Show all posts
Sunday, October 7, 2007
Friday, September 21, 2007
Left Behind
A second episode, the theme music swells again and you're watching a pile of smoking rubble that used to be a fortified entrance to the East Pole police station on Suburbia.
Jolt was still looking at the skies as The Eye approached her. "Jolt? Are you all right?"
"What just happened?" Jolt turned to look at The Eye.
"It looks like M-Seven just launched their attack. We need to scramble!" The Eye was agitated.
"Where's Thresher?" Jolt turned back to the police station.
"I'm up here!" Thresher, lying on his chest, legless, peeked over the edge of the police station roof. "Don't worry about me, get after them!"
Jolt ran towards the smoking crater that used to be the entrance to the installation. "No way!"
She leaped into the air and flew up to Thresher's position. The cyborg had retracted his chainsaw; the bottom half of his body was missing. He pushed himself up and turned his head to look at Jolt, reaching for her with his right arm. She grabbed his extended hand and lifted it over her shoulder, supporting his torso with her other arm. "I'm not leaving a friend behind!"
They rejoined The Eye in the courtyard, and proceeded to the barracks. In a room adjacent to the lockers a scout suit waited in its creche. Jolt had the arm and shoulder assembly unmounted and the breastplate opened, then carefully manhandled Thresher into the apparatus. The breastplate resealed and the spinal sensor array that would normally sync up with neural impulses in the lower back bound to Thresher's control bus.
Thresher stepped out of the creche, and walked in a circle to test his improvised legs. "Thanks a bunch, boss! Now let's get a move on!"
They strode purposefully towards the dry-docks, entering the underground complex leading to the landing bays. Rejoined by the crew of the Nightstalker, the First Mate turned to Jolt. "They found Arsenal's body at one of the blast sites. It appears he's dead."
"I was afraid of that." Jolt doubled her pace. "He has a bad habit of walking into ambushes."
They took their positions on the bridge of the corvette, strapped themselves into their chairs, and prepared for take-off.
The spade-shaped starship started with a jerk, hovered in the air for a moment, and then shot straight up into the air, blade first, leaving the stricken police star-port behind. The horizon curved beneath the Nightstalker as the sky went black.
Once retrieved, Arsenal's hand-held computer had already sent its final message. Jolt reviewed the simulation of the fighter and forwarded it to The Eye, who was at the helm. "Anything on sensors? Have the fighters jumped already?"
The Nightstalker was joined by a half-dozen other corvettes that were sweeping the space around Suburbia Prime for traces of the swarm of one-man star-ships. "Not yet. We've got them!"
"Initiate pursuit -- we're going hunting!" Jolt's eyes narrowed as she braced for acceleration.
Jolt was still looking at the skies as The Eye approached her. "Jolt? Are you all right?"
"What just happened?" Jolt turned to look at The Eye.
"It looks like M-Seven just launched their attack. We need to scramble!" The Eye was agitated.
"Where's Thresher?" Jolt turned back to the police station.
"I'm up here!" Thresher, lying on his chest, legless, peeked over the edge of the police station roof. "Don't worry about me, get after them!"
Jolt ran towards the smoking crater that used to be the entrance to the installation. "No way!"
She leaped into the air and flew up to Thresher's position. The cyborg had retracted his chainsaw; the bottom half of his body was missing. He pushed himself up and turned his head to look at Jolt, reaching for her with his right arm. She grabbed his extended hand and lifted it over her shoulder, supporting his torso with her other arm. "I'm not leaving a friend behind!"
They rejoined The Eye in the courtyard, and proceeded to the barracks. In a room adjacent to the lockers a scout suit waited in its creche. Jolt had the arm and shoulder assembly unmounted and the breastplate opened, then carefully manhandled Thresher into the apparatus. The breastplate resealed and the spinal sensor array that would normally sync up with neural impulses in the lower back bound to Thresher's control bus.
Thresher stepped out of the creche, and walked in a circle to test his improvised legs. "Thanks a bunch, boss! Now let's get a move on!"
They strode purposefully towards the dry-docks, entering the underground complex leading to the landing bays. Rejoined by the crew of the Nightstalker, the First Mate turned to Jolt. "They found Arsenal's body at one of the blast sites. It appears he's dead."
"I was afraid of that." Jolt doubled her pace. "He has a bad habit of walking into ambushes."
They took their positions on the bridge of the corvette, strapped themselves into their chairs, and prepared for take-off.
The spade-shaped starship started with a jerk, hovered in the air for a moment, and then shot straight up into the air, blade first, leaving the stricken police star-port behind. The horizon curved beneath the Nightstalker as the sky went black.
Once retrieved, Arsenal's hand-held computer had already sent its final message. Jolt reviewed the simulation of the fighter and forwarded it to The Eye, who was at the helm. "Anything on sensors? Have the fighters jumped already?"
The Nightstalker was joined by a half-dozen other corvettes that were sweeping the space around Suburbia Prime for traces of the swarm of one-man star-ships. "Not yet. We've got them!"
"Initiate pursuit -- we're going hunting!" Jolt's eyes narrowed as she braced for acceleration.
Saturday, September 15, 2007
The Main Event
Bearcat, Red Menace, and Killotron closed in on the final concrete wall protecting the police base. Killotron stopped, and prepared himself to rake the top of the wall with plasma bolts from his forearm blasters, as Red Menace rose to cover the point position Bearcat was taking at the wall.
Bearcat tensed to leap over the wall as Red Menace rose into firing range.
Honor Guard was rushing in through the gap between the office installation and the inside of the wall. Thresher advanced, covered by a hovering Jolt guarded by The Eye, at her left.
Red Menace thrust her arm towards Thresher, and a small golden needle, made of a holmium alloy covered in a thin, shiny yellow oxide layer, trailing a hair-fine thread flew from her palm, wobbled for a moment, then shot out at hypersonic speed into Thresher's hip section.
The young girl triggered a Z-pinch. A powerful magnetic field contracted, driving a hundred billion amperes of current into its own induced field over the wire, which vaporized into a conductive plasma. Thresher's ceramic hips detonated, sending his legs and his torso flying -- resistance was, in this case, futile.
The air stank of ozone. Jolt rushed Red Menace, and jigged hastily to the side as Killotron locked his blasters on to her. Red Menace gestured towards Jolt, and a powerful magnetic flux built up around the flying heroine.
Jolt swerved suddenly in mid-air, tumbled drunkenly, and corkscrewed into the ground just inside the compound wall as her negatively-charged body was caught in Red Menace's magnetic flux.
Meanwhile, on the roof of the installation, Thresher double-checked his vital signs. The lower half of his cyborg body was missing, but his brain, liver, kidneys, heart and lungs were functioning again -- the magnetic pulse had briefly knocked out his life-support, but a watchdog system had brought it back on-line.
Red Menace rose into the air, and targeted the armored door of the installation with a second golden needle.
Thresher pushed himself over, onto his chest, and extended his forearms back to the battlefield. A chainsaw blade extended from his left forearm, and his gaze locked on to the hovering Red Menace. He dug the chainsaw into the gravelly roofing polymer and gunned the motor.
Another tearing blast of electricity vaporized the doors, blasting a hole into the front facade of the squat concrete building.
He skidded towards the edge of the roof, just before the wall of the smoldering crater in the front of the building, aiming his right forearm at Red Menace.
A tennis-ball sized lump of white fluff followed by a superconducting tether arced towards Red Menace. Caught in her magnetic field, the ball spun around the young girl soldier, wrapping her in a superconductive tether.
Red Menace fell from the sky from a height of about three meters. Flopping on the ground, she struggled with her bonds just outside the wall. The superconducting coil suppressed her magnetic fields and bound her tightly; the more she tried to use her powers to free herself, the tighter the tether would compress her magnetic field.
Thresher grinned at the edge of the building as The Eye glanced up to him. "Got her!"
Bearcat leapt down from the wall and confronted The Eye, who drew one of her diamond knives as she reached for a flash-bang from her utility belt. He lunged, and she leaped into the air above him, tossing a small canister in front of the feral monster's face.
It detonated, creating a halo of light around the beast's head for a fraction of a second before he fell on his face in the dusty courtyard. The Eye landed between Bearcat's splayed legs. Drawing her second knife, she hamstrung him with simultaneous thrusts.
"You... beat me." Bearcat gasped, writhing in pain on the ground.
"And people get on my case for stating the obvious." The Eye countered, and ran to the wall.
Killotron swept his guns over the edge of the wall as Red Menace continued to struggle with her cocoon of super-conductive tether. The Eye climbed up the wall, hanging over the inside edge. She reached into her utility belt and took a handful of flash-bangs.
She lobbed the bombs into a loose arc, scattering them in Killotron's field of vision. Five simultaneous flares of brilliant white light overloaded his visual receptors. Vaulting over the wall, she leaped into a roll that took her to the robot's feet. As she righted herself at the end of the roll, her legs pumped and drove her towards the momentarily confused Killotron.
She drove her left knife into Killotron's sensor array in his metallic mushroom-shaped head, which sparked and died. Killotron staggered and fell to his knees.
Inside the smoking crater where the doors of the police station had been, Demonslayer stood in her exoskeleton's pulpit-like cockpit. Her calves extended into the upper thighs of the bipedal apparatus, and her forearms slot into the biceps of the upper pair of a quartet of artificial arms.
She stepped forward towards the wall, and her right pair of arms brandished an enormous, T-shaped piece of metal. Demonslayer paused for a moment, and two meter long blade of pulsing ectoplasm formed from the artifact. She swung her out-sized energy blade at the wall, and the concrete exploded outwards, making her an improvised gate.
Demonslayer grabbed the softly moaning Bearcat by the scruff of his neck and dragged him towards The Eye and the blinded, sparking Killotron. She made a blocking gesture in The Eye's general direction with her free left pair of arms, and a wall of force swept The Eye off her feet.
"Come to my voice, Killotron! We are defeated." She turned to The Eye, who was struggling to her feet. "You're the winners. You won."
With three soft pops, Demonslayer and Bearcat, Killotron, and Red Menace were teleported from the battlefield.
Jolt came to slowly, and got to her feet hesitantly. She walked through the hole Demonslayer blasted through the wall to The Eye, who was pointing up into the sky.
Above them, first tens and then hundreds of lifted off from the twilight urban wasteland surrounding the police station. Jolt screamed.
"WHAT'S GOING ON? WHAT'S HAPPENING?"
The sky was thick with candy-colored fighters, lifting off into orbit.
Bearcat tensed to leap over the wall as Red Menace rose into firing range.
Honor Guard was rushing in through the gap between the office installation and the inside of the wall. Thresher advanced, covered by a hovering Jolt guarded by The Eye, at her left.
Red Menace thrust her arm towards Thresher, and a small golden needle, made of a holmium alloy covered in a thin, shiny yellow oxide layer, trailing a hair-fine thread flew from her palm, wobbled for a moment, then shot out at hypersonic speed into Thresher's hip section.
The young girl triggered a Z-pinch. A powerful magnetic field contracted, driving a hundred billion amperes of current into its own induced field over the wire, which vaporized into a conductive plasma. Thresher's ceramic hips detonated, sending his legs and his torso flying -- resistance was, in this case, futile.
The air stank of ozone. Jolt rushed Red Menace, and jigged hastily to the side as Killotron locked his blasters on to her. Red Menace gestured towards Jolt, and a powerful magnetic flux built up around the flying heroine.
Jolt swerved suddenly in mid-air, tumbled drunkenly, and corkscrewed into the ground just inside the compound wall as her negatively-charged body was caught in Red Menace's magnetic flux.
Meanwhile, on the roof of the installation, Thresher double-checked his vital signs. The lower half of his cyborg body was missing, but his brain, liver, kidneys, heart and lungs were functioning again -- the magnetic pulse had briefly knocked out his life-support, but a watchdog system had brought it back on-line.
Red Menace rose into the air, and targeted the armored door of the installation with a second golden needle.
Thresher pushed himself over, onto his chest, and extended his forearms back to the battlefield. A chainsaw blade extended from his left forearm, and his gaze locked on to the hovering Red Menace. He dug the chainsaw into the gravelly roofing polymer and gunned the motor.
Another tearing blast of electricity vaporized the doors, blasting a hole into the front facade of the squat concrete building.
He skidded towards the edge of the roof, just before the wall of the smoldering crater in the front of the building, aiming his right forearm at Red Menace.
A tennis-ball sized lump of white fluff followed by a superconducting tether arced towards Red Menace. Caught in her magnetic field, the ball spun around the young girl soldier, wrapping her in a superconductive tether.
Red Menace fell from the sky from a height of about three meters. Flopping on the ground, she struggled with her bonds just outside the wall. The superconducting coil suppressed her magnetic fields and bound her tightly; the more she tried to use her powers to free herself, the tighter the tether would compress her magnetic field.
Thresher grinned at the edge of the building as The Eye glanced up to him. "Got her!"
Bearcat leapt down from the wall and confronted The Eye, who drew one of her diamond knives as she reached for a flash-bang from her utility belt. He lunged, and she leaped into the air above him, tossing a small canister in front of the feral monster's face.
It detonated, creating a halo of light around the beast's head for a fraction of a second before he fell on his face in the dusty courtyard. The Eye landed between Bearcat's splayed legs. Drawing her second knife, she hamstrung him with simultaneous thrusts.
"You... beat me." Bearcat gasped, writhing in pain on the ground.
"And people get on my case for stating the obvious." The Eye countered, and ran to the wall.
Killotron swept his guns over the edge of the wall as Red Menace continued to struggle with her cocoon of super-conductive tether. The Eye climbed up the wall, hanging over the inside edge. She reached into her utility belt and took a handful of flash-bangs.
She lobbed the bombs into a loose arc, scattering them in Killotron's field of vision. Five simultaneous flares of brilliant white light overloaded his visual receptors. Vaulting over the wall, she leaped into a roll that took her to the robot's feet. As she righted herself at the end of the roll, her legs pumped and drove her towards the momentarily confused Killotron.
She drove her left knife into Killotron's sensor array in his metallic mushroom-shaped head, which sparked and died. Killotron staggered and fell to his knees.
Inside the smoking crater where the doors of the police station had been, Demonslayer stood in her exoskeleton's pulpit-like cockpit. Her calves extended into the upper thighs of the bipedal apparatus, and her forearms slot into the biceps of the upper pair of a quartet of artificial arms.
She stepped forward towards the wall, and her right pair of arms brandished an enormous, T-shaped piece of metal. Demonslayer paused for a moment, and two meter long blade of pulsing ectoplasm formed from the artifact. She swung her out-sized energy blade at the wall, and the concrete exploded outwards, making her an improvised gate.
Demonslayer grabbed the softly moaning Bearcat by the scruff of his neck and dragged him towards The Eye and the blinded, sparking Killotron. She made a blocking gesture in The Eye's general direction with her free left pair of arms, and a wall of force swept The Eye off her feet.
"Come to my voice, Killotron! We are defeated." She turned to The Eye, who was struggling to her feet. "You're the winners. You won."
With three soft pops, Demonslayer and Bearcat, Killotron, and Red Menace were teleported from the battlefield.
Jolt came to slowly, and got to her feet hesitantly. She walked through the hole Demonslayer blasted through the wall to The Eye, who was pointing up into the sky.
Above them, first tens and then hundreds of lifted off from the twilight urban wasteland surrounding the police station. Jolt screamed.
"WHAT'S GOING ON? WHAT'S HAPPENING?"
The sky was thick with candy-colored fighters, lifting off into orbit.
Sunday, September 2, 2007
Axle and Wheel
The perimeter alarms at the police station noticed the intruders as they approached, three marks, moving slowly and inexorably from the outer ring of sensors. Troopers rushed to their barracks and retrieved their suits of powered armor. Seventeen young men and women disappeared under shells of plastic and metal, pulled over-sized guns from gun racks, mustered into a four-by-four square as their commanding officer performed a last inspection before combat.
The three marks pulled closer.
Orest Kelrast, once a captain, sat sobbing in a folding chair, arms crossed on a cheap table, his head lying on his crossed forearms. He was too busy feeling sorry for himself to notice Demonslayer sit up in her bed and open her watery blue-grey eyes.
The monitor on the view-screen behind her was unchanged -- she was still asleep.
"Stop with the tears, it is unbecoming for thee." Demonslayer approached the table.
Orest looked up at her, his face stained with tears, his eyes filled with horror. "You're awake."
"No. Not really. There is a sense and logic to dreams. If you can dream awake, you learn when things need to happen."
Outside, five snipers took positions at the concrete wall surrounding the police station. They carried bazooka-sized long rifles, and covered the arc where the three were approaching.
Six troopers launched. Backpack thrusters activated -- the troopers flew in a ballistic arc towards the intruders.
Half-way to the targets, one of the trio -- Killotron -- raised his arms, as if to catch the inbound troopers. An improbable array of guns folded out from his robotic limbs, and began to fire, filling the sky with plasma blasts.
Two troopers were shredded instantly. Four landed, readied their over-sized guns.
Inside, Demonslayer sat at the table with Orest Kelrast, holding him transfixed in her watery yet firm gaze.
"As for you, Kelrast... you come from a military family, yes?"
"Yes. How did you--"
"Your name. Before the bombs burn the home-world, the knights of the dark wizards called themselves 'thralls' -- 'kel' in the old language -- of their dreadful masters. You, your father, your father's father -- you all have been sacrificing yourselves for evil men who would be gods."
Orest was silent. He straightened his back, tried to look Demonslayer in the eye. His face was stained with tears.
"They taught them honor, and pride, married them to the fairest women, sent them to die for their ambitions. They would die, alone and unmourned on the battlefield, once the people found the courage and wisdom to join together and take them down." Demonslayer continued.
"And now we come to you. You, sad little man, so unworthy of love. Nasty, needy little men like you don't deserve to be cared about. All you can do is make others suffer."
Kelrast sat, helpless. Demonslayer retrieved a vial from beneath the table.
"I kept this in case they sent me to one of the places they will be sending you. They will read your mind, discover you know nothing of value, and torture you until you think of a capital crime -- and then you will die, a traitor in disgrace. It is a poison. Embrace death that you may learn the value of life."
Orest Kelrast stared at the vial. His lower lip trembled.
Outside, the last of the troopers tried to bring his gun to bear as Bearcat leapt upon him. The monstrous atavism twisted the trooper's helmet back and forth until his gun arm went limp, wringing the trooper's neck beneath his articulated armor. Bearcat cast the trooper aside, turned to his comrades, and asked, "Gotta can openah?"
Inside, Orest Kelrast reached for the vial. His face had tightened, and he looked at Demonslayer intently.
Outside, the snipers fired. Flechette shells sped towards the trio of attackers, burst in mid-air, began to spread out into a deadly wall of needles -- then fell to the ground as Red Menace's eyes flashed a brilliant green.
The snipers chambered their second rounds.
Inside, Orest raised the vial to his lips, hesitated for a moment, and sent the contents flying into Demonslayer's face with a flick of his wrist. Demonslayer kicked the table, lifting it into the path of the liquid.
Outside, a rack of rockets extended from Killotron's back. "The virtue of a sniper is his aim / That every shot will fall the same / But in virtue's arms does vice lay / He doesn't think to move away!" Five guided missiles launched from the robot's back, twisting in the air, homing into the hardpoints on the final concrete wall. Five warheads detonated. Fortifications and snipers disappeared in a cloud of shrapnel.
"Yer poo-tree suckth," quipped Bearcat.
Inside, Orest Kelrast's death rattle echoed in the grim concrete room. Demonslayer stood, whispering killing words under her breath. On the far wall, her vital signs registered deep, relaxed sleep.
She gestured, and a large metal case appeared in the room in a cloud of mist. She opened it, and retrieved her weapons.
Outside, the trio approached the wall. Red Menace rose into the air, and, in her loudest voice and best Corporate, cried --
"CAN HAS DEMONSLAYER NOW!?"
The three marks pulled closer.
Orest Kelrast, once a captain, sat sobbing in a folding chair, arms crossed on a cheap table, his head lying on his crossed forearms. He was too busy feeling sorry for himself to notice Demonslayer sit up in her bed and open her watery blue-grey eyes.
The monitor on the view-screen behind her was unchanged -- she was still asleep.
"Stop with the tears, it is unbecoming for thee." Demonslayer approached the table.
Orest looked up at her, his face stained with tears, his eyes filled with horror. "You're awake."
"No. Not really. There is a sense and logic to dreams. If you can dream awake, you learn when things need to happen."
Outside, five snipers took positions at the concrete wall surrounding the police station. They carried bazooka-sized long rifles, and covered the arc where the three were approaching.
Six troopers launched. Backpack thrusters activated -- the troopers flew in a ballistic arc towards the intruders.
Half-way to the targets, one of the trio -- Killotron -- raised his arms, as if to catch the inbound troopers. An improbable array of guns folded out from his robotic limbs, and began to fire, filling the sky with plasma blasts.
Two troopers were shredded instantly. Four landed, readied their over-sized guns.
Inside, Demonslayer sat at the table with Orest Kelrast, holding him transfixed in her watery yet firm gaze.
"As for you, Kelrast... you come from a military family, yes?"
"Yes. How did you--"
"Your name. Before the bombs burn the home-world, the knights of the dark wizards called themselves 'thralls' -- 'kel' in the old language -- of their dreadful masters. You, your father, your father's father -- you all have been sacrificing yourselves for evil men who would be gods."
Orest was silent. He straightened his back, tried to look Demonslayer in the eye. His face was stained with tears.
"They taught them honor, and pride, married them to the fairest women, sent them to die for their ambitions. They would die, alone and unmourned on the battlefield, once the people found the courage and wisdom to join together and take them down." Demonslayer continued.
"And now we come to you. You, sad little man, so unworthy of love. Nasty, needy little men like you don't deserve to be cared about. All you can do is make others suffer."
Kelrast sat, helpless. Demonslayer retrieved a vial from beneath the table.
"I kept this in case they sent me to one of the places they will be sending you. They will read your mind, discover you know nothing of value, and torture you until you think of a capital crime -- and then you will die, a traitor in disgrace. It is a poison. Embrace death that you may learn the value of life."
Orest Kelrast stared at the vial. His lower lip trembled.
Outside, the last of the troopers tried to bring his gun to bear as Bearcat leapt upon him. The monstrous atavism twisted the trooper's helmet back and forth until his gun arm went limp, wringing the trooper's neck beneath his articulated armor. Bearcat cast the trooper aside, turned to his comrades, and asked, "Gotta can openah?"
Inside, Orest Kelrast reached for the vial. His face had tightened, and he looked at Demonslayer intently.
Outside, the snipers fired. Flechette shells sped towards the trio of attackers, burst in mid-air, began to spread out into a deadly wall of needles -- then fell to the ground as Red Menace's eyes flashed a brilliant green.
The snipers chambered their second rounds.
Inside, Orest raised the vial to his lips, hesitated for a moment, and sent the contents flying into Demonslayer's face with a flick of his wrist. Demonslayer kicked the table, lifting it into the path of the liquid.
Outside, a rack of rockets extended from Killotron's back. "The virtue of a sniper is his aim / That every shot will fall the same / But in virtue's arms does vice lay / He doesn't think to move away!" Five guided missiles launched from the robot's back, twisting in the air, homing into the hardpoints on the final concrete wall. Five warheads detonated. Fortifications and snipers disappeared in a cloud of shrapnel.
"Yer poo-tree suckth," quipped Bearcat.
Inside, Orest Kelrast's death rattle echoed in the grim concrete room. Demonslayer stood, whispering killing words under her breath. On the far wall, her vital signs registered deep, relaxed sleep.
She gestured, and a large metal case appeared in the room in a cloud of mist. She opened it, and retrieved her weapons.
Outside, the trio approached the wall. Red Menace rose into the air, and, in her loudest voice and best Corporate, cried --
"CAN HAS DEMONSLAYER NOW!?"
Saturday, August 18, 2007
The Hidden Base
Arsenal suspected that this last site might be the right one when he felt a ward spark as he approached the front gate. He checked his communications implant, but it didn't work at all.
He looked carefully at the front gate in the crumbling, three meter high concrete wall. He shook his head, and opened the latch slowly, letting the door swing open. His left hand was balled into a fist -- hovering next to it was a glowing ball of plasma. He closed his eyes, probing the facing corners on the other side of a concrete barrier wall with his powers, but there was nothing there for him to find. Bracing his left hand in his right like a pistol, he and his glowing ball of plasma entered the courtyard.
He walked slowly, taking even, regular steps, pausing to scan behind the irregular clumps of rubble that dotted the courtyard. After a few paces, he came to an area where the dirt and debris were noticeably less weathered. With his right hand, he triggered the sound recorder on his hand-held computer.
"Arsenal here. I found a site protected by a ward, which disabled my comms implants. It appears to be deserted, but there is evidence of recent activity. I see a depression in the ground, approximately the size of a shipping container."
His eyes traced a path scraped into the ground, as if someone or something had dragged the container to the middle of the courtyard. He examined the rough, dusty ground, and then concentrated for a few moments.
"It appears that shipping containers have been moved to an underground chamber. I believe that there is an elevator platform in the middle of the courtyard, and my scans indicate a large underground area, approximately the same size at the courtyard. Entering now."
He passed through the ground into complete darkness, quickly finding the chamber. Setting down in a clear area, he used his powers to probe the darkness. He used his powers to turn on the overhead lights, illuminating the chamber with a grid of overhead spotlights.
The room was filled with shipping containers; line-of-sight was limited, even with the illumination. Arsenal walked to one of the containers, found the consignment number, and checked the number on his hand-held.
"I've found a shipping container belonging to one of the lost vessels. It looks like stolen goods were processed here. I'm going to see what's inside."
Arsenal walked to the end of the container, concentrated, and the large metal door on the end swung open. He used the plasma ball near his left hand as a flashlight to illuminate the interior of the container. A mock-up of a cockpit sat between two large pads, connected by cables to a cubical white box, which was attached to a pair of tripod-mounted projectors in the lower corners of the far side of the container.
"It appears to be a flight simulator. I see a cockpit and control yoke between two accelerator pads, a holographic display, and a control computer. I'll try to find out what scenario they were running on the computer."
He extinguished the plasma ball, sat in the cockpit and looked at the while cube, concentrating. The model cockpit rose into the air as the accelerator pads flickered to life. The holographic projectors displayed the hazy gray-blue surface of a planet as the simulated vessel accelerated, pulling away into a higher orbit.
"I've patched the simulator's state. It's an orbital attack scenario. I'm recording this now. As you see, the tactical displays indicate that the fighter is approaching the target..."
A small dot rose above the horizon, and grew larger.
"Sedgewick Station. The Corporate HQ. They're going to attack Sedgewick Station."
A few moments later Arsenal emerged into the chamber. He took his hand-held, composed a message containing he data he had acquired, and then examined it carefully. He arranged to have the message sent to Jolt, and, after a moment's hesitation, Admiral Kelmorran, who was responsible for the garrison at Sedgewick Station.
The FTL comms interface had been destroyed by the ward, but a short-range radio adapter was still working. He thought for a moment; there was a power distribution station nearby which offered an access point. He scripted for a few moments, arranging to have the message sent as soon as his hand-held could access a public network.
He looked up sharply as he finished the script -- there was a sudden change in air pressure in the underground chamber.
Someone had teleported into the room.
He looked carefully at the front gate in the crumbling, three meter high concrete wall. He shook his head, and opened the latch slowly, letting the door swing open. His left hand was balled into a fist -- hovering next to it was a glowing ball of plasma. He closed his eyes, probing the facing corners on the other side of a concrete barrier wall with his powers, but there was nothing there for him to find. Bracing his left hand in his right like a pistol, he and his glowing ball of plasma entered the courtyard.
He walked slowly, taking even, regular steps, pausing to scan behind the irregular clumps of rubble that dotted the courtyard. After a few paces, he came to an area where the dirt and debris were noticeably less weathered. With his right hand, he triggered the sound recorder on his hand-held computer.
"Arsenal here. I found a site protected by a ward, which disabled my comms implants. It appears to be deserted, but there is evidence of recent activity. I see a depression in the ground, approximately the size of a shipping container."
His eyes traced a path scraped into the ground, as if someone or something had dragged the container to the middle of the courtyard. He examined the rough, dusty ground, and then concentrated for a few moments.
"It appears that shipping containers have been moved to an underground chamber. I believe that there is an elevator platform in the middle of the courtyard, and my scans indicate a large underground area, approximately the same size at the courtyard. Entering now."
He passed through the ground into complete darkness, quickly finding the chamber. Setting down in a clear area, he used his powers to probe the darkness. He used his powers to turn on the overhead lights, illuminating the chamber with a grid of overhead spotlights.
The room was filled with shipping containers; line-of-sight was limited, even with the illumination. Arsenal walked to one of the containers, found the consignment number, and checked the number on his hand-held.
"I've found a shipping container belonging to one of the lost vessels. It looks like stolen goods were processed here. I'm going to see what's inside."
Arsenal walked to the end of the container, concentrated, and the large metal door on the end swung open. He used the plasma ball near his left hand as a flashlight to illuminate the interior of the container. A mock-up of a cockpit sat between two large pads, connected by cables to a cubical white box, which was attached to a pair of tripod-mounted projectors in the lower corners of the far side of the container.
"It appears to be a flight simulator. I see a cockpit and control yoke between two accelerator pads, a holographic display, and a control computer. I'll try to find out what scenario they were running on the computer."
He extinguished the plasma ball, sat in the cockpit and looked at the while cube, concentrating. The model cockpit rose into the air as the accelerator pads flickered to life. The holographic projectors displayed the hazy gray-blue surface of a planet as the simulated vessel accelerated, pulling away into a higher orbit.
"I've patched the simulator's state. It's an orbital attack scenario. I'm recording this now. As you see, the tactical displays indicate that the fighter is approaching the target..."
A small dot rose above the horizon, and grew larger.
"Sedgewick Station. The Corporate HQ. They're going to attack Sedgewick Station."
A few moments later Arsenal emerged into the chamber. He took his hand-held, composed a message containing he data he had acquired, and then examined it carefully. He arranged to have the message sent to Jolt, and, after a moment's hesitation, Admiral Kelmorran, who was responsible for the garrison at Sedgewick Station.
The FTL comms interface had been destroyed by the ward, but a short-range radio adapter was still working. He thought for a moment; there was a power distribution station nearby which offered an access point. He scripted for a few moments, arranging to have the message sent as soon as his hand-held could access a public network.
He looked up sharply as he finished the script -- there was a sudden change in air pressure in the underground chamber.
Someone had teleported into the room.
Sunday, July 15, 2007
This Could Be Anywhere
The East Pole, now in crepuscular autumn light that would last for seven cycles, was a drab gray expanse of buildings, many abandoned, some hosting small packs of squatters who lit fires for cooking, warmth and light. The columns of smoke from their shelters rose straight up slowly to be driven away by the planetary jet stream.
The former site of a warehouse, long since burned to the ground, was now a collection of tents, forming a fragile sort of fortification. On the side facing the causeway, a half-dozen sleek space-craft were parked in front of the tent city, the vessels garishly decorated with bright, primary-color paint-jobs and huge spoilers.
A seventh vessel parked in the lot, and a young man in an improvised flight suit stepped out of the cockpit. He did not remove his helmet, and proceeded to the ring of gray-green tents.
Just inside the tents, a tattered collection of cast-off people slept on mats, as a huge view-screen blared a soap opera set in the prosperous and temperate equatorial regions of Suburbia, where the wealthy controlled vast manors and squabbled among themselves. On the walls were posters in primary colors, decorated with slogans like "PEOPLE ARE NOT PRODUCTS" and "LIVE AGAIN", stylized upraised fists, and a simple, squiggly sigil, an M and a 7, arranged to look as if the right descender on the M were a lightning bolt.
It was a simple logo; other posters encouraged residents of the shelter to spread the word by spray-painting it on abandonded buildings. Many had done exactly this.
A burly, bear-like older male watched the shelter. He waved the young man thorough to the inner courtyard of the tent city.
The young man bowed his head as the tent flaps opened and he saw the communal fire-pit in the middle of the courtyard. Here the fellowship feasts were held, where the lost and the lonely taught and sang songs forgotten generations ago and learned the strange language still remembered in fragments by their great-grandparents.
He proceeded around the firepit, crossing it on the left side. A flap opened on the tent facing him, held by an absurdly large hand ending in triangular black claws.
While the guard in the common room was large, the guard in the temple was gigantic; if he were physically capable of standing fully erect for more than a few moments, he would have easily been twice the height of his colleague.
"Thu come inn. I am Bearcat. Da mithstresh ish waitling."
The monster's fangs gave his speech a lisping quality. His eyes were gentle, but his face was a rough parody of the young man's, with heavy brows and powerful jaw muscles. The young man hesitated for a moment, but quickly regained his composure and entered the tent.
Bearcat nodded directly to the camera, and the floor descended into a hangar-like undergound complex. It was dark, illuminated only by overhead spots. Outside a polka-dot grid of yellowish light, the hall was in deepest darkness.
A voice came from that darkness, speaking an alien tongue.
"Pee my nah ghey peh zhnolazh. Nah dey medzh yo nagada. Djodo mah ghey?"
Convenient sub titles were added in post-production.
(You are not the one, but you will do nicely. We are being watched, secrecy is paramount. Do you understand?)
The young man hesitated for a moment, and then spoke.
"Umm. Snow my a delidoh. Nop peh-ha..." The young man struggled to find a word, and before he could stop himself, he said "...umm."
(Yes, proceed. I am a carrier of a message. How can I -- yes, proceed.)
A light came on in the darkness. An old woman sat on a folding chair, wearing a remarkable hat; a skullcap of bone-colored cloth with a veil in the back and two flaps, flipped down over the eyes. The flaps were decorated with a simple, stylized pattern of an eye in black ink.
"It is regrettable that Corporate culture keeps you from your proper tongue. A better hesitation word is 'erm'. In addition, forgive me for not removing my hat. It is for dreamingfor which I sit in the dark. You, of course, need not remove yours."
The young man was chastened, and sunk his head. "I apologize, Demonslayer. Honor Guard is coming! They will be landing soon, near here."
"I am aware of this. Don't panic. It is not your concern." Demonslayer sat back in her chair.
As Bearcat came up behind the young man, a second form emerged from the darkness with heavy, metallic footsteps. It was a robot, a very large one, another parody of the Fe Arran form in shiny alloy, curves and angles.
Its had two glowing yellow lights where the eyes should have been; they glowed like a campfire, flickering to orange, and were strangely mesmerizing.
"Today I salute you, reckless youth facing death. Know now it awaits you, empty space takes your breath."
"Very pretty, Killotron. Now shut up before he wets himself." Demonslayer reclined back into a sleeping position. "Bearcat, see him out. Pleased to meet thee."
Approximately one thousand kilometers above their heads, the Nightstalker began its descent. The hull, for what it was worth, was pristine.
Jolt was still in command, and did her best not to look nervous. To her right, the First Mate scanned the rest of the crew. Thresher didn't need an acceleration chair, but the Eye and Arsenal did.
The Eye was optimistic, but Arsenal was badly shaken. He had restored the ship to its former state, but not completely; the state of the internal registers in the ship's computers no longer matched the data in memory. Every single system failed, nearly simultaneously.
Nearly everyone agreed that while the superficial damage was gone, the Nightstalker still needed some time planetside to ensure that critical systems were still working. Feeling guilty, Arsenal resolved that he would not make the same mistake again.
Suburbia loomed large below, and the sphere gradually became a horizon. A powered descent down a military corridor began, and the crew was tense.
It was over rather soon. The star-ship dove through the sheath of insubstantial flame, entered the frigid upper atmosphere, fell beneath the clouds decelerating as the planet's gravity began to clash with the artificial gravity aboard the Nightstalker.
A few moments later, the spade-shaped starship hovered over the military starbase, and, silently, descended to the cheers of a waiting fire crew.
"All crew, prepare to disembark." Jolt relaxed visibly, and Honor Guard filed out of the bridge to the dull gray landscape of urban ruin in which they would be spending the next cycle.
The former site of a warehouse, long since burned to the ground, was now a collection of tents, forming a fragile sort of fortification. On the side facing the causeway, a half-dozen sleek space-craft were parked in front of the tent city, the vessels garishly decorated with bright, primary-color paint-jobs and huge spoilers.
A seventh vessel parked in the lot, and a young man in an improvised flight suit stepped out of the cockpit. He did not remove his helmet, and proceeded to the ring of gray-green tents.
Just inside the tents, a tattered collection of cast-off people slept on mats, as a huge view-screen blared a soap opera set in the prosperous and temperate equatorial regions of Suburbia, where the wealthy controlled vast manors and squabbled among themselves. On the walls were posters in primary colors, decorated with slogans like "PEOPLE ARE NOT PRODUCTS" and "LIVE AGAIN", stylized upraised fists, and a simple, squiggly sigil, an M and a 7, arranged to look as if the right descender on the M were a lightning bolt.
It was a simple logo; other posters encouraged residents of the shelter to spread the word by spray-painting it on abandonded buildings. Many had done exactly this.
A burly, bear-like older male watched the shelter. He waved the young man thorough to the inner courtyard of the tent city.
The young man bowed his head as the tent flaps opened and he saw the communal fire-pit in the middle of the courtyard. Here the fellowship feasts were held, where the lost and the lonely taught and sang songs forgotten generations ago and learned the strange language still remembered in fragments by their great-grandparents.
He proceeded around the firepit, crossing it on the left side. A flap opened on the tent facing him, held by an absurdly large hand ending in triangular black claws.
While the guard in the common room was large, the guard in the temple was gigantic; if he were physically capable of standing fully erect for more than a few moments, he would have easily been twice the height of his colleague.
"Thu come inn. I am Bearcat. Da mithstresh ish waitling."
The monster's fangs gave his speech a lisping quality. His eyes were gentle, but his face was a rough parody of the young man's, with heavy brows and powerful jaw muscles. The young man hesitated for a moment, but quickly regained his composure and entered the tent.
Bearcat nodded directly to the camera, and the floor descended into a hangar-like undergound complex. It was dark, illuminated only by overhead spots. Outside a polka-dot grid of yellowish light, the hall was in deepest darkness.
A voice came from that darkness, speaking an alien tongue.
"Pee my nah ghey peh zhnolazh. Nah dey medzh yo nagada. Djodo mah ghey?"
Convenient sub titles were added in post-production.
(You are not the one, but you will do nicely. We are being watched, secrecy is paramount. Do you understand?)
The young man hesitated for a moment, and then spoke.
"Umm. Snow my a delidoh. Nop peh-ha..." The young man struggled to find a word, and before he could stop himself, he said "...umm."
(Yes, proceed. I am a carrier of a message. How can I -- yes, proceed.)
A light came on in the darkness. An old woman sat on a folding chair, wearing a remarkable hat; a skullcap of bone-colored cloth with a veil in the back and two flaps, flipped down over the eyes. The flaps were decorated with a simple, stylized pattern of an eye in black ink.
"It is regrettable that Corporate culture keeps you from your proper tongue. A better hesitation word is 'erm'. In addition, forgive me for not removing my hat. It is for dreamingfor which I sit in the dark. You, of course, need not remove yours."
The young man was chastened, and sunk his head. "I apologize, Demonslayer. Honor Guard is coming! They will be landing soon, near here."
"I am aware of this. Don't panic. It is not your concern." Demonslayer sat back in her chair.
As Bearcat came up behind the young man, a second form emerged from the darkness with heavy, metallic footsteps. It was a robot, a very large one, another parody of the Fe Arran form in shiny alloy, curves and angles.
Its had two glowing yellow lights where the eyes should have been; they glowed like a campfire, flickering to orange, and were strangely mesmerizing.
"Today I salute you, reckless youth facing death. Know now it awaits you, empty space takes your breath."
"Very pretty, Killotron. Now shut up before he wets himself." Demonslayer reclined back into a sleeping position. "Bearcat, see him out. Pleased to meet thee."
Approximately one thousand kilometers above their heads, the Nightstalker began its descent. The hull, for what it was worth, was pristine.
Jolt was still in command, and did her best not to look nervous. To her right, the First Mate scanned the rest of the crew. Thresher didn't need an acceleration chair, but the Eye and Arsenal did.
The Eye was optimistic, but Arsenal was badly shaken. He had restored the ship to its former state, but not completely; the state of the internal registers in the ship's computers no longer matched the data in memory. Every single system failed, nearly simultaneously.
Nearly everyone agreed that while the superficial damage was gone, the Nightstalker still needed some time planetside to ensure that critical systems were still working. Feeling guilty, Arsenal resolved that he would not make the same mistake again.
Suburbia loomed large below, and the sphere gradually became a horizon. A powered descent down a military corridor began, and the crew was tense.
It was over rather soon. The star-ship dove through the sheath of insubstantial flame, entered the frigid upper atmosphere, fell beneath the clouds decelerating as the planet's gravity began to clash with the artificial gravity aboard the Nightstalker.
A few moments later, the spade-shaped starship hovered over the military starbase, and, silently, descended to the cheers of a waiting fire crew.
"All crew, prepare to disembark." Jolt relaxed visibly, and Honor Guard filed out of the bridge to the dull gray landscape of urban ruin in which they would be spending the next cycle.
Sunday, July 8, 2007
The Show Must Go On
The episode began, the well-known theme tune to "Honor Guard" played on your viewing device as a distant shot of the Nightstalker, recorded by an interrociter camera feeling reflected light from some three light years away on Sedgewick Station through a nanoscopic crack in hyperspace, zoomed in to show the stricken garden spade shaped vessel, and zoomed further to an airlock on the right side of the hull.
Thresher stepped out of the airlock and into deep space, extended his right arm, and fired a grabber on a trailing line from his bulky mechanical forearm. The spongy ball clung to the hull of the Nighstalker a few hundred meters ahead, where greebles sparked beneath a blackened and blasted section of grey hull plating.
He reeled in the line, pulling himself along the hull. In theory, Thresher could have used his thrusters to fly over to the damaged section, or simply walked along the hull. In practice, tethers looked cool and were marginally safer.
The cyborg approached the damaged section of hull. Neural impulses that, under more hospitable conditions, would have been speech were converted into data and sent back to the ship.
"Thresher here. I've got some serious arcing under this panel -- I don't think isolating the damaged conduit helped."
"Understood. I'll tell the Chief that the starboard control bus is flaky." It was Jolt's watch; she was on the bridge, coordinating repairs.
Thresher's metallic feet locked on to a section of undamaged hull and his mechanical left hand folded into his forearm and a chainsaw blade extended from the back of his hand. Working carefully, he used it to remove the brown and black mottled section of damaged hull, exposing a partially melted junction between two networks of conduits. Thresher surveyed the damage. "No way we're landing like this. These pretty sparks mean we're leaking gas."
"The only drydock in jump range is down Suburbia's gravity well. It's the East Pole or we spend the next weeks getting our sorry asses towed back to Sedgewick Station." The First Mate of the Nightstalker was a dashing young Fleet officer, one Benito Franco, fresh from the Executive Officers' Academy. His stentorian delivery of damage reports and gung-ho military attitude made him a significant supporting character.
He turned to Arsenal, who was sitting in a chair, reviewing his notes on a small handheld terminal. "Can you get us into the atmosphere with your force field?"
"Yes, sir, I can. The most conservative approach would be to provisionally patch the hull breaches and try to turn everything off in the damaged areas. I'll surround the Nightstalker with a screen and we'll do a simple powered descent in police airspace. That way, even if my screen should fail, we'd be able to make a controlled surface landing."
"Thresher says we have deep internal damage. Those pirates really kicked the crap out of the Nightstalker." Jolt was sitting in the command chair in the center of the bridge, which she turned to face Arsenal and the First Mate.
Jolt was a mutant -- the surface of her body produced vast amounts of static electricity. She wore a skintight matrix of actuators, sensors, and capacitors embedded in a suit that contained her electrical discharges and enhanced her strength and reflexes and powered an antigravity belt and thruster pack. She was a marvel of plastic surgery, an impossibly statuessque perennial pin-up, unapproachable and untouchable.
"I have another option. I believe I can patch the ship's state." Arsenal paged through his notes.
"What do you mean?" Jolt was impatient.
Arsenal continued. "Before Commander Cody commandeered the Nightstalker, I was practicing using my scanning powers on the ship. I discovered something interesting -- objects have a kind of suprisingly memorable being-song. If I can remember a little bit of the song, and play it back into the original matter, I can restore its previous thermodynamic state."
"Boo. Technobabble." Jolt shrugged.
Arsenal looked a little peeved. "I did my best to make it acessible. I originally wanted to call my object-memories a being equation I use to interpolate the state equation--"
"It doesn't help." Jolt drummed her gloved fingers on the armrest of the captain's chair.
Arsenal looked at his notes briefly, then looked up. "I can restore the ship to its state before it was commandeered."
"You're kidding!" Jolt looked surprised. "Well, why not? Let's give it a try!"
"There are risks. I've never patched state on anything as complex as the Nightstalker. I suggest we treat it as an emergency field repair, and have the ship thoroughly tested on the surface." Arsenal looked up from his notes.
"Sounds good. Do it now!" Jolt looked impatient.
"It might not work. The ship could be left in a state our technicians cannot repair." Arsenal flipped through his notes, desperately trying to summarize.
Jolt interrupted him, calling the Eye in engineering. "Hey, Eye! Are we gonna die in the next half-hour?"
The Eye appeared on the viewscreen. She was a lithe female with cream-colored fur. Her eye-sockets were covered with mirrored implants, and a large, oval amulet in the form of an eye was attached to her upper torso. "My sources say no."
Jolt turned to Arsenal. "Just do it."
"Very well." Arsenal fell into a trance.
The lights dimmed and then began to flicker madly. A strange, irregular vibration shook the starship. A few moments later, the lights went out.
Arsenal looked up from his chair, a somber look on his face. "Oh, crap."
Thresher stepped out of the airlock and into deep space, extended his right arm, and fired a grabber on a trailing line from his bulky mechanical forearm. The spongy ball clung to the hull of the Nighstalker a few hundred meters ahead, where greebles sparked beneath a blackened and blasted section of grey hull plating.
He reeled in the line, pulling himself along the hull. In theory, Thresher could have used his thrusters to fly over to the damaged section, or simply walked along the hull. In practice, tethers looked cool and were marginally safer.
The cyborg approached the damaged section of hull. Neural impulses that, under more hospitable conditions, would have been speech were converted into data and sent back to the ship.
"Thresher here. I've got some serious arcing under this panel -- I don't think isolating the damaged conduit helped."
"Understood. I'll tell the Chief that the starboard control bus is flaky." It was Jolt's watch; she was on the bridge, coordinating repairs.
Thresher's metallic feet locked on to a section of undamaged hull and his mechanical left hand folded into his forearm and a chainsaw blade extended from the back of his hand. Working carefully, he used it to remove the brown and black mottled section of damaged hull, exposing a partially melted junction between two networks of conduits. Thresher surveyed the damage. "No way we're landing like this. These pretty sparks mean we're leaking gas."
"The only drydock in jump range is down Suburbia's gravity well. It's the East Pole or we spend the next weeks getting our sorry asses towed back to Sedgewick Station." The First Mate of the Nightstalker was a dashing young Fleet officer, one Benito Franco, fresh from the Executive Officers' Academy. His stentorian delivery of damage reports and gung-ho military attitude made him a significant supporting character.
He turned to Arsenal, who was sitting in a chair, reviewing his notes on a small handheld terminal. "Can you get us into the atmosphere with your force field?"
"Yes, sir, I can. The most conservative approach would be to provisionally patch the hull breaches and try to turn everything off in the damaged areas. I'll surround the Nightstalker with a screen and we'll do a simple powered descent in police airspace. That way, even if my screen should fail, we'd be able to make a controlled surface landing."
"Thresher says we have deep internal damage. Those pirates really kicked the crap out of the Nightstalker." Jolt was sitting in the command chair in the center of the bridge, which she turned to face Arsenal and the First Mate.
Jolt was a mutant -- the surface of her body produced vast amounts of static electricity. She wore a skintight matrix of actuators, sensors, and capacitors embedded in a suit that contained her electrical discharges and enhanced her strength and reflexes and powered an antigravity belt and thruster pack. She was a marvel of plastic surgery, an impossibly statuessque perennial pin-up, unapproachable and untouchable.
"I have another option. I believe I can patch the ship's state." Arsenal paged through his notes.
"What do you mean?" Jolt was impatient.
Arsenal continued. "Before Commander Cody commandeered the Nightstalker, I was practicing using my scanning powers on the ship. I discovered something interesting -- objects have a kind of suprisingly memorable being-song. If I can remember a little bit of the song, and play it back into the original matter, I can restore its previous thermodynamic state."
"Boo. Technobabble." Jolt shrugged.
Arsenal looked a little peeved. "I did my best to make it acessible. I originally wanted to call my object-memories a being equation I use to interpolate the state equation--"
"It doesn't help." Jolt drummed her gloved fingers on the armrest of the captain's chair.
Arsenal looked at his notes briefly, then looked up. "I can restore the ship to its state before it was commandeered."
"You're kidding!" Jolt looked surprised. "Well, why not? Let's give it a try!"
"There are risks. I've never patched state on anything as complex as the Nightstalker. I suggest we treat it as an emergency field repair, and have the ship thoroughly tested on the surface." Arsenal looked up from his notes.
"Sounds good. Do it now!" Jolt looked impatient.
"It might not work. The ship could be left in a state our technicians cannot repair." Arsenal flipped through his notes, desperately trying to summarize.
Jolt interrupted him, calling the Eye in engineering. "Hey, Eye! Are we gonna die in the next half-hour?"
The Eye appeared on the viewscreen. She was a lithe female with cream-colored fur. Her eye-sockets were covered with mirrored implants, and a large, oval amulet in the form of an eye was attached to her upper torso. "My sources say no."
Jolt turned to Arsenal. "Just do it."
"Very well." Arsenal fell into a trance.
The lights dimmed and then began to flicker madly. A strange, irregular vibration shook the starship. A few moments later, the lights went out.
Arsenal looked up from his chair, a somber look on his face. "Oh, crap."
Saturday, June 16, 2007
As Seen On TV
Thresher looked up from a panel on the bridge of the Nightstalker, Honor Guard's patrol ship. He was a veteran powered armor trooper who was ambushed by a Reyll pyrokinetic; unlike many other casualties, he opted for superior replacement parts for his lost limbs.
"All right, kid -- listen up. I just sent you an arming code for your tac nuke."
On the view-screen, a shaken and nervous Victor pulled a beer-can sized grenade from his utility belt.
"Got it."
"You know what to do, Ensign. Hit him before he closes in!"
"Yes, sir!"
The young super-soldier in training flipped open the breech of the stubby grenade launcher, inserted the cartridge, and snapped the chamber closed. Control computers in the gun and the ammunition exchanged credentials; circuits energized within the shell and the gun. A blast of electrical energy drove the metallic sabot covering the physics package down a superconducting rail, driving the shell out of the barrel at a velocity carefully calculated to be slightly below the speed of sound.
"Duck and cover!"
The soldiers assumed the position, rolling into lethal armored giant pill bugs; their hard suits might have protected their bodies from the radiation in the event of a premature detonation downrange, but the shock wave from an atomic could easily tear an articulated limb from a main battle suit.
One kilometer downrange, the physics package produced a chaotic magnetic field inside the core of some few hundred grams of neptunium, drawing together the isolated paramagnetic clusters that formed around the super-heavy dopant atoms. Thousands of tiny super critical points formed, evenly distributed throughout the fissionable core.
Neutron begat neutron as nuclei shattered. A golden egg was laid at the feet of the oncoming fungoid monstrosity. The radiation blast shriveled and blackened its surface before the fireball tore the monster to vapor.
Bob swore and finished his can.
He paused the stream and looked around the bridge of the freighter. The re-run had been punishing by the rules of the Honor Guard drinking game; Victor had saved the day, again, and had demonstrated the value of regulated personal possession of nuclear weapons.
Six empty cans were strewn over the grubby bridge. Behind his back, a yellow light blinked on a panel; a momentary air pressure anomaly just occurred in the sealed, airless hold of the freighter.
He ignored the warning light. Pressure seals did, after all, just wear out sometimes. The hull was intact, it's only an internal problem.
His own virtual "Liquid Waste Storage Full" warning light was burning an angry red; he staggered off to the head.
The door to the sleeping quarters was closed, which prevented a great deal of screaming. His crew-mate had made a successful attempt to eat his pillow and had smothered.
On the bridge, a single light lit on the communications console -- video was being uploaded from the freighter's internal cameras. The lights dimmed, and the view-screen filled with blue static.
Bob, visibly relieved, walked into the bridge to see three words flashing on his view-screen in a field of static.
YOU'RE A WINNER!
He walked up to the window-sized flat screen, visibly confused.
A face appeared -- leonine with ice-cold blue eyes and a shock of dark hair, a short female with hypnotic eyes.
She said, "Don't turn around."
Bob panicked, and did.
An arm reached out of the view-screen and grabbed him by the nape of the neck, pulling him through to the other side.
"I told you not to turn around."
A moment later, the woman stepped casually out of the view-screen.
She sat down in the captain's chair, brushed an empty can off the armrest, and summoned a squat, fat brown toad-dog thing with flapping bat wings and scaly skin. It hovered uneasily a moment before the woman's gaze fell upon it; it spasmed and turned to face her.
"Enter, Demonslayer."
The imp opened its mouth to speak, and its voice was that of an old woman with a sing-song voice.
"Number Six. You've secured the vessel."
"No, just captured it. What do you need me to do to the cargo?"
"Ensure the charges can be armed locally, without outside interference, then land as per the flight plan. My agents will meet you at the East Pole star-port."
Jinx Bubastis thought for a moment. The cargo of ten thousand bug bombs would take days to prepare, although her mind raced for short-cuts. Perhaps she could steal the private key of an exterminator or demolitions specialist, provision a few thousand security modules, set them up to be unlocked with a simple transaction modules and a short PIN code...
"It will take a while."
"Don't rush."
The imp tried to pause dramatically, which was somewhat sabotaged by the frantic fluttering of his undersized bat-wings.
"You will betray me. I know this, I have prophetic dreams. But you will give me the tools we need. Fare thee well, hireling."
The imp went limp, and flopped gracelessly to the floor.
Jinx Bubastis glared at the ectoplasmic lower astral ambient tulpa, and it wearily opened a single urine-yellow eye.
"Clean up the bridge. I have some corpses to space."
"All right, kid -- listen up. I just sent you an arming code for your tac nuke."
On the view-screen, a shaken and nervous Victor pulled a beer-can sized grenade from his utility belt.
"Got it."
"You know what to do, Ensign. Hit him before he closes in!"
"Yes, sir!"
The young super-soldier in training flipped open the breech of the stubby grenade launcher, inserted the cartridge, and snapped the chamber closed. Control computers in the gun and the ammunition exchanged credentials; circuits energized within the shell and the gun. A blast of electrical energy drove the metallic sabot covering the physics package down a superconducting rail, driving the shell out of the barrel at a velocity carefully calculated to be slightly below the speed of sound.
"Duck and cover!"
The soldiers assumed the position, rolling into lethal armored giant pill bugs; their hard suits might have protected their bodies from the radiation in the event of a premature detonation downrange, but the shock wave from an atomic could easily tear an articulated limb from a main battle suit.
One kilometer downrange, the physics package produced a chaotic magnetic field inside the core of some few hundred grams of neptunium, drawing together the isolated paramagnetic clusters that formed around the super-heavy dopant atoms. Thousands of tiny super critical points formed, evenly distributed throughout the fissionable core.
Neutron begat neutron as nuclei shattered. A golden egg was laid at the feet of the oncoming fungoid monstrosity. The radiation blast shriveled and blackened its surface before the fireball tore the monster to vapor.
Bob swore and finished his can.
He paused the stream and looked around the bridge of the freighter. The re-run had been punishing by the rules of the Honor Guard drinking game; Victor had saved the day, again, and had demonstrated the value of regulated personal possession of nuclear weapons.
Six empty cans were strewn over the grubby bridge. Behind his back, a yellow light blinked on a panel; a momentary air pressure anomaly just occurred in the sealed, airless hold of the freighter.
He ignored the warning light. Pressure seals did, after all, just wear out sometimes. The hull was intact, it's only an internal problem.
His own virtual "Liquid Waste Storage Full" warning light was burning an angry red; he staggered off to the head.
The door to the sleeping quarters was closed, which prevented a great deal of screaming. His crew-mate had made a successful attempt to eat his pillow and had smothered.
On the bridge, a single light lit on the communications console -- video was being uploaded from the freighter's internal cameras. The lights dimmed, and the view-screen filled with blue static.
Bob, visibly relieved, walked into the bridge to see three words flashing on his view-screen in a field of static.
YOU'RE A WINNER!
He walked up to the window-sized flat screen, visibly confused.
A face appeared -- leonine with ice-cold blue eyes and a shock of dark hair, a short female with hypnotic eyes.
She said, "Don't turn around."
Bob panicked, and did.
An arm reached out of the view-screen and grabbed him by the nape of the neck, pulling him through to the other side.
"I told you not to turn around."
A moment later, the woman stepped casually out of the view-screen.
She sat down in the captain's chair, brushed an empty can off the armrest, and summoned a squat, fat brown toad-dog thing with flapping bat wings and scaly skin. It hovered uneasily a moment before the woman's gaze fell upon it; it spasmed and turned to face her.
"Enter, Demonslayer."
The imp opened its mouth to speak, and its voice was that of an old woman with a sing-song voice.
"Number Six. You've secured the vessel."
"No, just captured it. What do you need me to do to the cargo?"
"Ensure the charges can be armed locally, without outside interference, then land as per the flight plan. My agents will meet you at the East Pole star-port."
Jinx Bubastis thought for a moment. The cargo of ten thousand bug bombs would take days to prepare, although her mind raced for short-cuts. Perhaps she could steal the private key of an exterminator or demolitions specialist, provision a few thousand security modules, set them up to be unlocked with a simple transaction modules and a short PIN code...
"It will take a while."
"Don't rush."
The imp tried to pause dramatically, which was somewhat sabotaged by the frantic fluttering of his undersized bat-wings.
"You will betray me. I know this, I have prophetic dreams. But you will give me the tools we need. Fare thee well, hireling."
The imp went limp, and flopped gracelessly to the floor.
Jinx Bubastis glared at the ectoplasmic lower astral ambient tulpa, and it wearily opened a single urine-yellow eye.
"Clean up the bridge. I have some corpses to space."
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
His Master's Voice
Suburbia Prime was a low population density settlement, orbiting an orange dwarf sun in an icy but intimate orbit. Its axis of rotation was tilted almost exactly ninety degrees, but the frigid oceans and thick atmosphere spread the tiny sun's energy surprisingly evenly. Twenty years of comet bombardment increased the surface temperature up to comfortable levels; a network of orbital mirrors did their best to simulate a more conventional day-night cycle, artificial sun-dogs that shined brightly in the twilight phases of the planet's five cycle year.
The equatorial region was surprisingly temperate. While the climate of the planet was still changing, the Corporation decided that a program of limited development would create highly desirable manors for the Corporate elite. Industrial activities were limited to the polar regions and interplanetary space; residents were expected to commute to orbital workplaces in private spacecraft.
The people who could no longer afford the punishing expense of interplanetary commuting gravitated towards the landing zones and industrial areas near the poles.
The Suburbian Interstellar Space Port was a five kilometer long, cylindrical space station that orbited the central star in an orbit with a 3:2 resonance with Suburbia Prime, describing a 'U' shaped orbit relative to the planet. (1) It was a stop-over point for long-haul star liners taking passengers to and from Suburbia Prime.
Two men in business suits sat at a table in a restaurant, watching transit passengers rush to catch the elevators to their terminals. The restaurant was packed with recent replicas of everyday antiques, filling every dark corner in an obsessive-compulsive urge to cover every square millimeter of wall space. View-screens surrounded the circular bar, staffed by chemically perky waitresses who prepared over-priced snack food for travelers on lay-over.
The larger and portlier of the two men watched Arsenal save the young woman.
"She was supposed to die, you know."
His companion, older and thinner, looked up from his gerbil in a bun, and chewed thoughtfully.
"It's hard enough to make the mushroom cultists a plausible threat without that showboating idiot shooting my scripts."
Judas Montclair scowled as his companion swallowed.
"The hero saved the damsel in distress. The people love that kind of thing."
"It's childish and silly. Wish fulfillment fantasy is all well and good, but it's adult fantasy that makes people come back for more."
"Sometimes, Judas, I think you just like hurting people."
"My lifestyle choices are irrelevant -- it's a big, violent universe out there. Everybody knows someone who was a casualty in a Reyll raid, or gotten killed by space pirates, or died in some stupid accident. People can relate to sudden, violent death."
"Especially if it happens to someone else."
"That's the key difference between comedy and tragedy, Mister Brown."
Judas' companion remained quiet for a moment. James Brown had been directing and producing "Honor Guard" for most of his adult life. He liked working with Montclair. However irritating Montclair's pedantic moments may be, the scripts came in on time and on spec. For a producer, this was more than good enough. James Brown decided to change the subject.
"How was the meeting with M-Seven?"
"Well, Demonslayer was a pain in the ass. I asked her why a group called M-Seven only has five members, and she went off on an hour-long discussion of numerological symbolism. The spirit of the people is Number One, she's Number Two, her flunkies are Numbers Three, Four and Five. At least she agreed to take on Jinx Bubastis as Number Six."
James Brown's organizer beeped.
"Speak of the devil. Jinx says she'll have an upload ready for me in a few hours."
"She's a real trouper, that one. A jobber in the best sense of the word."
Jinx Bubastis was an occasional Honor Guard adversary, a spell-casting space pirate that usually went by the pseudonym "Arcana". Rumor had it that she was some kind of psychic vampire; Montclair liked vampires. James Brown liked getting his feeds early.
The episode came to the first major cliffhanger, as a low, round hill shook and then rose up on a vast, cylindrical stalk ending in three stubby legs. Dirt rained from the canopy of the hundred meter tall fungal monstrosity as it closed in on a hapless platoon of police troopers.
A close-up on the face of young Victor, a cadet who had been exposed to a super-soldier virus invented by his deceased father.
"Victor to Honor Guard -- it's Fungo the Killopscybe. He's coming right for us!"
The equatorial region was surprisingly temperate. While the climate of the planet was still changing, the Corporation decided that a program of limited development would create highly desirable manors for the Corporate elite. Industrial activities were limited to the polar regions and interplanetary space; residents were expected to commute to orbital workplaces in private spacecraft.
The people who could no longer afford the punishing expense of interplanetary commuting gravitated towards the landing zones and industrial areas near the poles.
The Suburbian Interstellar Space Port was a five kilometer long, cylindrical space station that orbited the central star in an orbit with a 3:2 resonance with Suburbia Prime, describing a 'U' shaped orbit relative to the planet. (1) It was a stop-over point for long-haul star liners taking passengers to and from Suburbia Prime.
Two men in business suits sat at a table in a restaurant, watching transit passengers rush to catch the elevators to their terminals. The restaurant was packed with recent replicas of everyday antiques, filling every dark corner in an obsessive-compulsive urge to cover every square millimeter of wall space. View-screens surrounded the circular bar, staffed by chemically perky waitresses who prepared over-priced snack food for travelers on lay-over.
The larger and portlier of the two men watched Arsenal save the young woman.
"She was supposed to die, you know."
His companion, older and thinner, looked up from his gerbil in a bun, and chewed thoughtfully.
"It's hard enough to make the mushroom cultists a plausible threat without that showboating idiot shooting my scripts."
Judas Montclair scowled as his companion swallowed.
"The hero saved the damsel in distress. The people love that kind of thing."
"It's childish and silly. Wish fulfillment fantasy is all well and good, but it's adult fantasy that makes people come back for more."
"Sometimes, Judas, I think you just like hurting people."
"My lifestyle choices are irrelevant -- it's a big, violent universe out there. Everybody knows someone who was a casualty in a Reyll raid, or gotten killed by space pirates, or died in some stupid accident. People can relate to sudden, violent death."
"Especially if it happens to someone else."
"That's the key difference between comedy and tragedy, Mister Brown."
Judas' companion remained quiet for a moment. James Brown had been directing and producing "Honor Guard" for most of his adult life. He liked working with Montclair. However irritating Montclair's pedantic moments may be, the scripts came in on time and on spec. For a producer, this was more than good enough. James Brown decided to change the subject.
"How was the meeting with M-Seven?"
"Well, Demonslayer was a pain in the ass. I asked her why a group called M-Seven only has five members, and she went off on an hour-long discussion of numerological symbolism. The spirit of the people is Number One, she's Number Two, her flunkies are Numbers Three, Four and Five. At least she agreed to take on Jinx Bubastis as Number Six."
James Brown's organizer beeped.
"Speak of the devil. Jinx says she'll have an upload ready for me in a few hours."
"She's a real trouper, that one. A jobber in the best sense of the word."
Jinx Bubastis was an occasional Honor Guard adversary, a spell-casting space pirate that usually went by the pseudonym "Arcana". Rumor had it that she was some kind of psychic vampire; Montclair liked vampires. James Brown liked getting his feeds early.
The episode came to the first major cliffhanger, as a low, round hill shook and then rose up on a vast, cylindrical stalk ending in three stubby legs. Dirt rained from the canopy of the hundred meter tall fungal monstrosity as it closed in on a hapless platoon of police troopers.
A close-up on the face of young Victor, a cadet who had been exposed to a super-soldier virus invented by his deceased father.
"Victor to Honor Guard -- it's Fungo the Killopscybe. He's coming right for us!"
Sunday, June 10, 2007
We're On A Video Raid
A girl, probably prettier than the girl next door, considered taking a shower when she heard the thumping from the ducts. She walked to the source of the noise, a access panel attached to the ducting near her small apartment's bathroom.
Bob took another hit from his ice-cold can of Heroin Dry. Systems were nominal, all displays were cyan, engines on-line, life support idling at two percent capacity, autopilot on course and locked onto the East Pole starport's synchronous orbital beacon, buzz at the back of his head and rising steadily.
The girl moved to remove the panel and find out what was causing the commotion when she was stopped suddenly by a voice behind her.
"Ma'am? I'm a fully qualified engineer. Stand back from the ducting."
It was a super hero, a member of Honor Guard. His codename was Arsenal.
He was tall, like most superheroes are, with white fur and yellow-green eyes, dressed in a simplified version of a dark-gray police uniform. He had been on the show for a few years, but had not yet received a personalized costume.
He released the latches holding the access panel, reached inside, and pulled out a small brown rodent.
"Oh! It's adorable! Can I eat him?"
"I wouldn't, ma'am. Wild meat is the leading cause of internal parasites."
The young woman took a deep breath; she began to realize that she may still be in danger.
"I need a drink." The woman walked over to her refrigerator.
"Ma'am? Be careful. Your apartment's unsealed -- there may be something else here."
Arsenal, still holding the duct vole, walked over to the refrigerator, stopped, and seemed to go into a trance for a few seconds. He motioned to the woman to step away from the line of fire.
"When I say 'now', open the refrigerator door and run for your life."
The woman carefully reached for the door handle.
"NOW!"
The beam of laser light was invisible, well into the ultraviolet with a wavelength of 337.1 nanometers, produced by exciting diatomic nitrogen. Unlike a real nitrogen laser, the beam did not pulse; the cloud of excited, ionized gas before Arsenal spat out a continuous beam, producing several kilojoules of energy in the second the dazzling gas cloud existed.
In post-production, the next fraction of a second was slowed down and desaturated to the viewers could see what happened next. A formless bluish blob shot out dark, semi-metallic tentacles to seize whoever opened the door. They arced and sparked as the ultraviolet beam focused on the amorphous body of the fungoid horror lurking inside the refrigerator. In an instant, the monster's body, covered with the remains of shredded packages of convenience foods, burned, shriveled, and then exploded into a cloud of carbon dioxide and water vapor.
"Wha- what was that?"
"A worker drone. It came to collect organic material for its master."
"Arsenal, report!" The belt-mounted hands-free speaker of his communicator buzzed angrily.
Arsenal pressed a spot beneath his ear with his right index finger.
"Yes sir. A civilian had something nasty in her fridge. It looks like the mushroom cultists are at it again."
Bob finished his can of ice-cold fizzy narcotic. The Honor Guard drinking game specified one swallow for Arsenal breaking away from the rest of the team, one swallow for every scene where an extra is placed in mortal peril for no immediately obvious reason, and finish the can if the bad guys are the damned mushroom cultists again.
Bob pressed pause and belched mightily. Five minutes into the first episode, and he'd already finished his first can. It was going to be a long shift.
Bob took another hit from his ice-cold can of Heroin Dry. Systems were nominal, all displays were cyan, engines on-line, life support idling at two percent capacity, autopilot on course and locked onto the East Pole starport's synchronous orbital beacon, buzz at the back of his head and rising steadily.
The girl moved to remove the panel and find out what was causing the commotion when she was stopped suddenly by a voice behind her.
"Ma'am? I'm a fully qualified engineer. Stand back from the ducting."
It was a super hero, a member of Honor Guard. His codename was Arsenal.
He was tall, like most superheroes are, with white fur and yellow-green eyes, dressed in a simplified version of a dark-gray police uniform. He had been on the show for a few years, but had not yet received a personalized costume.
He released the latches holding the access panel, reached inside, and pulled out a small brown rodent.
"Oh! It's adorable! Can I eat him?"
"I wouldn't, ma'am. Wild meat is the leading cause of internal parasites."
The young woman took a deep breath; she began to realize that she may still be in danger.
"I need a drink." The woman walked over to her refrigerator.
"Ma'am? Be careful. Your apartment's unsealed -- there may be something else here."
Arsenal, still holding the duct vole, walked over to the refrigerator, stopped, and seemed to go into a trance for a few seconds. He motioned to the woman to step away from the line of fire.
"When I say 'now', open the refrigerator door and run for your life."
The woman carefully reached for the door handle.
"NOW!"
The beam of laser light was invisible, well into the ultraviolet with a wavelength of 337.1 nanometers, produced by exciting diatomic nitrogen. Unlike a real nitrogen laser, the beam did not pulse; the cloud of excited, ionized gas before Arsenal spat out a continuous beam, producing several kilojoules of energy in the second the dazzling gas cloud existed.
In post-production, the next fraction of a second was slowed down and desaturated to the viewers could see what happened next. A formless bluish blob shot out dark, semi-metallic tentacles to seize whoever opened the door. They arced and sparked as the ultraviolet beam focused on the amorphous body of the fungoid horror lurking inside the refrigerator. In an instant, the monster's body, covered with the remains of shredded packages of convenience foods, burned, shriveled, and then exploded into a cloud of carbon dioxide and water vapor.
"Wha- what was that?"
"A worker drone. It came to collect organic material for its master."
"Arsenal, report!" The belt-mounted hands-free speaker of his communicator buzzed angrily.
Arsenal pressed a spot beneath his ear with his right index finger.
"Yes sir. A civilian had something nasty in her fridge. It looks like the mushroom cultists are at it again."
Bob finished his can of ice-cold fizzy narcotic. The Honor Guard drinking game specified one swallow for Arsenal breaking away from the rest of the team, one swallow for every scene where an extra is placed in mortal peril for no immediately obvious reason, and finish the can if the bad guys are the damned mushroom cultists again.
Bob pressed pause and belched mightily. Five minutes into the first episode, and he'd already finished his first can. It was going to be a long shift.
Thursday, June 7, 2007
TV Casualty
Media in Corporate space was distributed asynchronously. Maintaining reliable data streams between two points separated by a few light-years was expensive, and considering the differing diurnal cycles of the colony worlds and the star-ships traveling between them, live distribution would have been inconvenient.
The crew of the deep-space cargo freighter had just received the current delta feed from Entertainment Division for subscribers on Deep Space Distribution Plan 9, which contained the following:
Thirty hours of news and public-interest broadcast archives for the previous cycle from Sedgewick Station, Suburbia's West Pole, Astes, Trojan City, and Parkland. The Big Five media markets generally provided twelve half-hour news broadcasts, sorted and indexed to let homesick crewmen catch up on current events from somewhere near their home.
Twelve hours of the highlights of the last cycle's sporting events, cut into short segments, covering sporting events like competetive pack hunting, combat golf, ski jousting, and chess.
Ten hours of entertainment programming.
The news and sports streams contained elaborate, time-coded indexes that could be used to mix short segments into one of the feature streams.
The feature streams were where the various distribution plans began to distinguish themselves. Plan 9 was reasonably popular among spacers, residents of deep-space installations, prisoners, and bar patrons; it concentrated on super heroes.
The Fe Arrans had records of individuals with extraordinary abilities back into the depths of their written history. These once ruled as warlords over the packs they adopted; over time, the religious philosophies of the Reyll prophets slowly limited their political and economic domination, and introduced more sophisticated and egalitarian social structures that encouraged artistic and scientific progress. The paranormals became useful atavisms, conscripted soldiers used in the quiet, civilized wars fought between the Reyll industrial combines.
The Corporation, on the other hand, turned its paranormals into media figures, dressing them in colorful costumes. They were integrated into police and paramilitary forces, and used to communicate information about public safety and war-time propaganda to vast audiences. However, their intrigues, rivalries, and friendships were scripted and managed by a cadre of writers and producers, producing worked scenes that provided continuity to knit together the footage of what the heroes called "shoots" -- usually combat or some other perilous, unscripted situation.
Honor Guard was a relatively popular super hero series. The setup -- the protagonists were a team of advisers to the Space Patrol, attached to an experimental heavy corvette -- ensured variety in location and tone, combined with the comforting conventions of spacer life and police procedural and search and rescue fiction.
This particular feed contained six hour-long episodes of Honor Guard adventures, two hours of short worked comedy skits and celebrity interviews by Awesome Man, a clownish empath in a garish costume, and a two-hour block of music videos and out-of-context clips from documentaries and old movies hosted by former villain Master Decontrol. As such, Honor Guard was the meat in the media soup doled out by the Deep-Space Distribution Network, playing to a captive audience of bored, inebriated space truckers.
It wasn't high culture, but it made the hours pass between sheer boredom and frantic terror -- just the thing for long-haul space flight.
The crew of the deep-space cargo freighter had just received the current delta feed from Entertainment Division for subscribers on Deep Space Distribution Plan 9, which contained the following:
Thirty hours of news and public-interest broadcast archives for the previous cycle from Sedgewick Station, Suburbia's West Pole, Astes, Trojan City, and Parkland. The Big Five media markets generally provided twelve half-hour news broadcasts, sorted and indexed to let homesick crewmen catch up on current events from somewhere near their home.
Twelve hours of the highlights of the last cycle's sporting events, cut into short segments, covering sporting events like competetive pack hunting, combat golf, ski jousting, and chess.
Ten hours of entertainment programming.
The news and sports streams contained elaborate, time-coded indexes that could be used to mix short segments into one of the feature streams.
The feature streams were where the various distribution plans began to distinguish themselves. Plan 9 was reasonably popular among spacers, residents of deep-space installations, prisoners, and bar patrons; it concentrated on super heroes.
The Fe Arrans had records of individuals with extraordinary abilities back into the depths of their written history. These once ruled as warlords over the packs they adopted; over time, the religious philosophies of the Reyll prophets slowly limited their political and economic domination, and introduced more sophisticated and egalitarian social structures that encouraged artistic and scientific progress. The paranormals became useful atavisms, conscripted soldiers used in the quiet, civilized wars fought between the Reyll industrial combines.
The Corporation, on the other hand, turned its paranormals into media figures, dressing them in colorful costumes. They were integrated into police and paramilitary forces, and used to communicate information about public safety and war-time propaganda to vast audiences. However, their intrigues, rivalries, and friendships were scripted and managed by a cadre of writers and producers, producing worked scenes that provided continuity to knit together the footage of what the heroes called "shoots" -- usually combat or some other perilous, unscripted situation.
Honor Guard was a relatively popular super hero series. The setup -- the protagonists were a team of advisers to the Space Patrol, attached to an experimental heavy corvette -- ensured variety in location and tone, combined with the comforting conventions of spacer life and police procedural and search and rescue fiction.
This particular feed contained six hour-long episodes of Honor Guard adventures, two hours of short worked comedy skits and celebrity interviews by Awesome Man, a clownish empath in a garish costume, and a two-hour block of music videos and out-of-context clips from documentaries and old movies hosted by former villain Master Decontrol. As such, Honor Guard was the meat in the media soup doled out by the Deep-Space Distribution Network, playing to a captive audience of bored, inebriated space truckers.
It wasn't high culture, but it made the hours pass between sheer boredom and frantic terror -- just the thing for long-haul space flight.
Sunday, May 27, 2007
Trailer Parks In The Stars
The survey ship dropped out of hyperspace and took an awkward polar orbit around the distant planet, whose magnetic field interfered with the electrogravitic reactionless thrusters that propelled the vast saucer through the darkness of interstellar space.
The crew were sapient arctomorph felinoids from a yellow dwarf star in the Pleiades cluster. This was one of their first ventures outside of their isolated star cluster.
The planet beneath them was suitable for colonization, with a temperate climate, plentiful water, and an oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere. Gravimetric surveying revealed that the planet was deficient in heavy and precious metals, and had numerous anomalous mass distributions. One scan showed an artificial meander in an underground river; there, what appeared to be the ruins of a villiage was found.
The leader of the expedition, a formidable sorceror, approached the town square. An obelisk flared to life, and he was caught up in a beam of pink light.
Four humans sat before him. They were dressed in the clothing of the American Colonial elite, and gathered together at a round table inside a Masonic lodge in Richmond, Virginia.
Much time passes. A long-haul space trucker, carrying a load of bug bombs to the planet Suburbia, checks the ship's autopilot, downs the ice-cold contents of a garish aluminum can, and rises, obviously inebriated, to relieve himself loudly in the head next to his sleeping quarters.
"Hey, Bob! Wake up!"
A drowsy voice comes from the darkened room.
"Whu-?"
"Your shift. I'm needing to crash."
"Did you make coffee?"
"Sorry!"
"What's on TV?"
"Honor Guard reruns."
The crew were sapient arctomorph felinoids from a yellow dwarf star in the Pleiades cluster. This was one of their first ventures outside of their isolated star cluster.
The planet beneath them was suitable for colonization, with a temperate climate, plentiful water, and an oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere. Gravimetric surveying revealed that the planet was deficient in heavy and precious metals, and had numerous anomalous mass distributions. One scan showed an artificial meander in an underground river; there, what appeared to be the ruins of a villiage was found.
The leader of the expedition, a formidable sorceror, approached the town square. An obelisk flared to life, and he was caught up in a beam of pink light.
Four humans sat before him. They were dressed in the clothing of the American Colonial elite, and gathered together at a round table inside a Masonic lodge in Richmond, Virginia.
Much time passes. A long-haul space trucker, carrying a load of bug bombs to the planet Suburbia, checks the ship's autopilot, downs the ice-cold contents of a garish aluminum can, and rises, obviously inebriated, to relieve himself loudly in the head next to his sleeping quarters.
"Hey, Bob! Wake up!"
A drowsy voice comes from the darkened room.
"Whu-?"
"Your shift. I'm needing to crash."
"Did you make coffee?"
"Sorry!"
"What's on TV?"
"Honor Guard reruns."
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