July Writing Challenge Day 16: Ashes 2

Greetings all. Welcome to the second half of my month long writing challenge.

Today I wanted to go back and visit a story from the beginning of the month, one that I was unhappy with for several reasons. First and foremost I was displeased because I felt that the story got bogged down in too much back story and explanations and lost track of what it was supposed to be about. So I started today by re-reading that piece and then completely redoing it.  Same story, same characters, but other than that I started from scratch. I didn’t keep the previous copy open to refer back to, I didn’t lift any passages and put them into the new material. I just went back to the original idea and started typing.

I think that what I have today is better. It’s not great, but it’s better. It doesn’t worry too much about dropping in hard sci-fi, doesn’t try to beat you over the head with an appendix worth of information, and I think it’s a bit more realistic in terms of character interactions and behavior. All in all, I think this is closer to a good first draft for the story this could eventually become. Not sure I want to continue it, but I think I’ve made progress.

Anyway, please feel free to leave any comments or criticisms you have. If you haven’t read the previous story, that’s fine. It might be good for me to hear a point of view that is uninfluenced by outside sources, even if those sources are from the same source.

As always, thanks for reading, and enjoy.

Ashes on the Moon 2.0
By E W Morrow
Word Count: 771

“We’ll be landing soon,” Myra said. She could see the approach lights from the view port on her left. “You had better buckle in.”

“Why?” asked Gabe from the other side of his data-link screen.

“Because I would be very upset if anything happened to you,” Myra said, slipping her own harness over her head.

“If anything happened to your money, you mean.”

“That too.” Gabe rolled his eyes. An explosion pipped from the speakers on his link. Gabe winced and threw the machine on the seat beside him.

“Getting bored anyway,” he said. “I think I’ll go straight to the floor when we get there.”

“No,” said Myra. She pulled out her own data link and activated the front camera. A strand of hair had drifted out of place. She put it back.

“Yes,” Gabe said, drawing out the syllable.

“No,” Myra repeated. She pushed a few buttons. “We have business to take care of first.”

“Yeah, well, tough.”

“Gabe, don’t do this,” Myra said in an exasperated tone. “We’re going to the mausoleum first thing and that’s final.”

“I’d like to see you make me.” Myra smirked and pressed a final button on her data link. A second later Gabe’s link chimed. He picked it up and read the message Myra had forwarded him. It was from their father. “God damnit.”

“Sorry,” Myra said, though she didn’t sound like it. “It won’t take long.”

“What a jerk,” Gabe mumbled.

“The casino’s been there for ninety years, it will still be there when we get done.” Gabe grunted and slouched in his seat. “And put your harness on.”

Twelve surly minutes later their shuttle had landed. Myra stood and reached into the overhead compartment. She pulled out a case made of hard, black plastic and tucked it under one arm. She clucked her tongue at her brother who rose and slumped after her. At the bottom of the ramp that lead out of the shuttle was small gate. Myra handed the attendant on duty the paperwork for her brother and herself and then had a quiet word with a second, more senior looking, employee.

“Please have our luggage sent to this address,” she said, pinging the man’s data link and sending their hotel reservation info as well as a generous tip.

“Very good, madam,” he said with a smile. “Shall I take your carry on as well?”

“No,” Myra said, pulling the package close. “Thank you, that will be all.”

“Are we done yet?” Gabe asked. The attendant made to hand the paperwork back to Myra, but Gabe grabbed it and stuffed it in his pocket. “Let’s go.” He hurried off and Myra watched him for a second, shocked.

“You know,” Myra said, almost running to catch up, “you can be a lot like Dad sometimes.”

“Shut up,” Gabe growled. They’d reached the end of the terminal and he held out his hand and waved it.

“I mean it,” Myra said as a shuttle car whined to a halt beside them.

“That’s great, now drop it.” The interior of the car was clean but sparsely furnished: plastic and metal without even an adhesive veneer to emulate wood or leather. In other words not the kind of car her brother would normally choose. Gabe leaned forward and mumbled directions in the driver’s ear.

“I’m just saying that you can both be assertive when you want to be,” Myra continued.

“Look,” Gabe sighed, “can we just not talk about Dad right now, please.” The plastic cushions squeaked beneath him as he shifted in his seat.

“Why not?”

“Because I…” Gabe began. “I don’t want to. Let’s just get this done and then go have some fun.” He turned and looked out the window, and after a minute’s silence Myra turned to her own and did the same.

A stream of neon lights and flashing, LED bulbs flowed past them. Every forty feet or so there would be a gap in the brilliance that left only black. So black you forgot there was a dome between you and the emptiness of space. It was okay as long as you thought of it as perpetual night and not a great, sucking void held at bay by a foot of k-glass.

Gradually the neon diminished until it was reduced to only occasional highlight rather than the entire backdrop, and the buildings began to take on a utilitarian look. The shuttle car picked up speed as traffic dwindled. After that it took only five minutes to reach their destination. Gabe was out the door before the car had fully stopped, leaving Myra to pay their fare.

July Writing Challenge Day 2 – Ashes on the Moon

Hey all. Not much to say at the moment. Kinda brain fried from writing today. I will think about doing a reflection/self criticism write up on this later tonight, but I might not get around to it. Still, 2000 words is 2000 words. Day 2 is in the bag.

Ashes on the Moon
By E. W. Morrow
Word Count: 2001

It came as a surprise to most first time visitors to the Moon that one of the first permanent structures built on her surface was a mausoleum. Most people, if they thought about it at all, assumed it must have been the foundations for one of the first colonial hab-blocks around the sea of tranquility, or perhaps a small religious shrine hidden in the shadow an secluded crater. And, of course, some of the more cynical visitors were sure that it had been a brothel, or at the very least a tiny casino. But the truth was that, just before the first great wave of colonization really kicked off, the first building on the moon was a small, domed structure made from lightweight plas-crete blocks built for the sole purpose of storing and displaying human remains. Due to weight restrictions these remains were invariably urns, lavishly decorated and hermetically sealed, full of human ashes.

None of this was surprising, or even new, to Myra Kage as she stowed her personal data link in her slender briefcase, secured the case below her seat, and fastened her safety harness. She barely felt it slide into place, and a brief inspection told her that it wouldn’t even wrinkle her blouse, but she had faith that if something happened during the shuttle’s decent it would hold firm. One of the benefits of first class was that you were just as safe as in coach, you just didn’t notice it.

Myra glanced up at the figure seated across from her and sighed. He was slumped in his chair, dark glasses over his eyes, fast asleep. At a casual glance he was could be no more than twenty five or thirty, with a full head of auburn hair the same color as hers and a uniform tanned glow to his unblemished skin, but she knew him well enough to see through the facade. The hair was thick, but it was too thick, especially in the front. Patches individual strands were clearly of greater width, and must have been artificially introduced. Quite recently, too, judging by the look. The polymers coating the artificial follicles would eventual break down, but until then they would reflect too much light, giving them what had been come to be called the “Barbie Sheen”. His skin, too, was slightly wrong. The signs of regular face lifts was present, and the orange tint to his tan hinted at possible melanin injections.

But these inconsistencies were minor, only really noticeable in close quarters, and even so, one would have to be as familiar with her brother as Myra was to know that his true age was some twenty years greater than his physical appearance suggested. She had, over the years, had a few touch ups herself, but instead of a full on assault on the ravages of time she had gone for a more elegant decline into middle age.

“Gabriel,” she said, prodding the slumbering figure with her foot. He grunted and shifted his weight a little in the chair, but otherwise gave no indication he heard her. She sighed again and prodded him harder. “Gabriel!”

He woke with a snort, knocking his glasses askew as he jerked to stop himself from falling out of the chair. The glasses hung in the air beside him for a while before floating gently into the empty seat beside him.

“Wha…?” he began, blinking in harsh fluorescent cabin lights.

“We’re about to land,” Myra explained. She pulled a hairpin from her hair and repositioned it, snaring a few strands that had been floating loosely in front of her and clamping them back in place. “Sit up and fasten your harness.”

“Why? Who are you, Mom?” He asked, grabbing his glasses and slumping down in the chair again. It was amazing to Myra how petulant her brother could sound even after all these years.

“Because,” she said with strained patience “if something were to happen and you were hurt, I would be inconsolable. And,” a hint of sarcasm entered her tone, “dear Brother, I would be out a considerable deal of money.”

Gabriel half grunted, half laughed, but sat up and did as he was told. Myra relaxed and turned her attention to the view port on her left. Their destination was on the sunward side of the Moon this time of month, and below her the pocked surface spiraled slowly as the shuttle aligned itself for it’s final approach. A minute later the edge of the dome surrounding the colony of New Providence slid into view.

It was a monumental structure, almost twenty five miles wide and 4,500 feet tall. It was comprised of more than a million plates of high strength S-Glass, each one 3 feet thick and coated in a layer of high tensile polymer that would hold the plates together if they suffered any damage short of total pulverizing force. To top it off, the whole thing was covered by a slender grid which housed millions of sensors that monitored everything from surface temperature to added weight of dust particles kicked up by increased human traffic. If any of the plates were even marginally damaged, robotic arms would detach from the grid and set to work stabilizing the plates until a response crew could be dispatched to make repairs or replacements. These were just the first line of defense against the harsh realities of life in space, and word had it that a significant fraction of the city’s infrastructure had been allocated to computer banks to provide the processing power necessary for the dome’s automated functions.

Myra barely had enough time to register the web work of side tunnels and mini domes that had spread out from New Providence over the decades before the sunlight caught the facets of the dome and momentarily blinded her. The view port’s window automatically dimmed a moment later, but the view had already been ruined. She spent the remaining few minutes of descent running through a mental checklist of the itinerary for their stay on the Moon. There was a lot to do, but most of it would have to wait.

The shuttle touched down with a gentle bump and there were a few more minutes of waiting as a small, six wheeled vehicle pulled up to the nose. After a brief exchange between pilot and driver, the rover successfully coupled itself to the shuttle and began to taxi it through one of the dome’s main airlocks. Once pressure had been equalized and external atmosphere registered at dome norm, the pilot gave the all clear for people to move about the cabin. Myra retrieved her briefcase from below her seat and pulled out her data link. She flipped through the notifications that had accumulated during the ten minute decent. There was one document required her authorization, two notices about personnel changes that she chose to ignore, a copy of a presentation she would be giving later that week to the board of directors for her to okay, and confirmation that their car would be waiting for them outside the terminal.

Oh, and a message from her father.

That was most unusual. Almost unprecedented. Most communication from her father either came through a series of subordinates, or, in the rare case of personal matters, through her mother. Even her yearly birthday message was usually forwarded through his secretary. But this…well it would have been amazing if she didn’t already know what it was going to be about. As it was, the only emotion she could summon was agitation. She opened it anyway, knowing he would know if it had been read or not, and knowing he would be angrier than usual if it hadn’t been. Inside was exactly what she expected. Just two sentences and a cold, businesslike signature.

“Myra, make sure you get your brother to the mausoleum. First thing.

-Hyram Kage, CEO Kage Enterprises”

She pressed the delete button harder than she needed to and shoved the data link roughly into the briefcase. The man was so infuriating. He somehow managed to treat her as though she were as useless as Gabriel and yet still expected her to behave with a responsibility he would have never asked of his only son. She stood up, glaring at Gabriel as she did. He, too, had his data link out, but judging by the expression on his face, eyes squinted, tongue sticking out at an angle, she had a feeling that he was not being productive. A miniature explosion sounded from the link’s speakers and she knew she was right. She grabbed him by the color and heaved. He wasn’t a thin man, but in the reduced gravity of the Moon she nearly banged his head on the roof of the cabin.

“Whoa! Hey!” he cried, almost dropping his data link. “Gah! You got me killed!”

“I don’t care,” Myra snapped. “Let’s go.”

Gabriel mumbled as Myra manhandled him down the aisle and out the shuttle’s hatch. As they reached the bottom of a flight of stairs Myra produced a pair of passports for inspection. The man at the terminal took his time inspecting the documents. He spent a long time comparing Gabriel’s photo to his physical appearance, noting the recent modifications with a practiced eye. Gabriel cocked an eyebrow in an amazing impression of their father, and the man relented in his suspicions. While the paperwork was being sorted, turned and had a quiet discussion with a second attendant. Within moments a smartly dressed man in horn rimmed glasses appeared at her side. He was carrying a small, black box in one hand and a commercial grade data link in the other. Myra grabbed her brother’s wrist and pressed his thumb on the small indentation just below the data link’s screen. A moment passed, a bright, mechanical tone chimed and a small light blinked green. The man handed Myra the box, which she juggled into the same hand as her briefcase, and then Myra steered them through the rest of the terminal, keeping on hand on Gabriel’s shoulder at all times. When they reached the car, Myra shoved him in just as soon as the driver opened the door.

“Hey, what about our bags?” Gabriel whined as Myra joined him. “I wanted to change before I hit the tables.”

“I have arranged for our luggage to be sent to the hotel in our absence.” Myra said coolly. “I felt it prudent to attend to other matters before you begin your….festivities.”

As the car made it’s way through the streets of New Providence, Myra took a moment to quiet her nerves. This trip to the Moon had been hastily planned, but even so it had somehow managed to fill up so fast. Which was a shame, since New Providence was, for most people, one of the ideal vacation getaways anywhere among the inner planets. Gazing out the window, lips pursed in frustration, Myra was once more reminded of the colony’s affectionate nickname: Moon Vegas.

There was a reason that cynics thought that the first building on the moon must have been a casino, and that was because it was a well known fact that New Providence was home to more square feet of casino gaming floor than any other city, colony, or station in the solar system. When the first great wave of human space colonization was at it’s peak, every rocket leaving Earth’s gravity well was primarily funded by corporations. Each brick of plascrete, every mile of fiber optic cable, every circuit board in every environment regulation system, all of it, was paid for by corporate dollars. In the end, governments ceded most of the property and mineral rights straight back to those corporations.

No one really knows who first had the idea. Probably if you looked hard enough you could sift through the layers of bureaucracy and find a document where someone’s name would be listed in some prominent way as to suggest credit for building the first casino.

New Fiction

Well, it has only been a week since I proclaimed I would stop posting random crap on my blog.

To commemorate this event, here is some random fiction I wrote today. It has been subjected to the most cursory of editing. Essentially I wrote the story once, without stopping, then rewrote it as I typed it up. Other than that I have changed nothing. I do not plan to continue it at any point in time. I am just being honest. I feel like this makes the story stronger. Deal with it in any way you feel appropriate.

 

A Change of Heart (Working Title)
By E. W. Morrow
Word Count: 776

Aaron’s hand trembled as he made the necessary marks above yet another door. The plasma cutter shook as the final line was gouged above the lintel. He’d lost count of the number of buildings he’d inscribed that night. Something about the relative finality of the act made it hard to track the number of times it had happened. Relative. That’s all anything was anymore. Relatively necessary. Relatively evil. Relatively good. Come dawn these buildings would be rubble, their slender brick facades reduced to nothing more smoldering ash and agonizing memories, their inhabitants gone from this world, gone to live with their own terrible, heathen gods, hopefully in a world entirely removed from the sight of pure, Christ fearing men. Their gods’ had lost. His god had won. That was all that mattered, no matter how relative to the truth.

A cold, desperate scream echoed down the street. The stark, crowded brick buildings, huddled so close together at the city’s core, and the narrow cobbled street created a sort of canyon that magnified the cry, each echo louder, more painful than the last. Aaron glanced to his right. There, across a dusty, weed choked garden crammed between brick and cobble, he saw  one of Bravo Squad jam the butt of his gun into the emaciated face of one of the slum’s more lucid inhabitants. Aaron, heart pounding from the burst of adrenaline, was all too aware of the figure’s swollen stomach, a stark contrast to its skeletal frame. He managed to take in the impression of dark, olive skin and long, jet black hair moving in a confused blur before a second member of Bravo Squad stepped forward and dowsed the gangrel figure in a tidal wave of flaming liquid.

Anguished cries and the sickly smell of burnt flesh mingled and danced in Aaron’s brain until sight, sound and smell ceased to have individual meaning. Anger and sadness screamed at him from opposite sides of the abyss that had suddenly become reality. The waring emotions shifted and ground against one another, repulsion becoming attraction and back again, over and over, until eventually the two were inseparable and a new thought was born.

Hatred. Glistening and pure and screaming like a newborn babe. Aaron drew the fledgling thought close to his bosom and everything changed. Everything shifted, relative to the adolescent hatred swelling inside him.

There were no gods. There was no truth, relative or otherwise. There was only belief, and pain, and anger, and heartache, and everything else that belief birthed unto the world.

Aaron was so completely absorbed in his own visions of a brand new world that he failed to notice the crimson lights flickering across his helmet’s display. By the time he realized something was amiss, his suit’s auxiliary containment systems had begun the terminal shutdown of all major ambulatory systems. The supple dermis of the suit suddenly went rigid, forming a hard exoskeleton that Aaron could only thrash against impotently. Two faceless members of Charlie Squad, suddenly divorced from the digital identifiers that had previously danced across his vision, each grabbed him by an arm. A moment later the world blurred and Aaron heard a crunch and saw the splintered remains of a rotten, wooden door flying across his vision. He sailed effortlessly through the air and landed horizontally in the den of dissidents he had only moments before marked for destruction.

At the edges of his field of vision, Aaron became aware of two things. First, at the bottom of his vision, from the direction he had so recently been thrown, he became aware of the sudden, terrible advance of of cleansing fire. Already it was licking at his feet, melting the rubber on the soles of his shoes. But, even though this was the more terrifying and immediate concern, he found he was unable to give it the attention it deserved.

From somewhere above him, deep within the squalid hive of malcontents and villains he had been taught to despise from boyhood, there came a soothing, wonderful music. Full of joy and peace, it washed over him, canceled out the pain of the fire consuming him from the bottom up. As the flames leaped higher and higher over his helpless form, Aaron saw the dark, foreign shapes of his lifelong enemy drifting into place beside him. Heedless of the flames, men, women and even children, all desperately thin and wasted, lay down beside him, weaving their limbs together in a solemn tapestry of humanity and love, with Aaron at the center. They continued to sing even as the flames devoured their flesh and the roof caved in on top of them.

November Challenge: Day 24

Hello all. Not a whole lot to say today. Still really sick. The only difference today is that I no longer have the deep, many voice of a late night smooth jams radio DJ. Instead I sound more like Bobcat Goldthwait out of breath.

I’m noticing one thing about my writing recently. I’m not really discouraged by having to write consistently every day, which is good. What I am doing, though, is treating it more like a school assignment, constantly checking my word count, possibly avoiding long stretches of dialogue that might slow my progress down. I will be making a concerted effort in the coming days to avoid writing solely for volume because I feel like my quality is slipping a little as a consequence. I’m going to focus more on taking the story where it needs to go, where it should go. I think I’ve not been doing that as much lately. I’m still going to write 2,000 words a day, but I’m going to try to make them the “right” 2,000 words, if that makes any sense.

Today’s entry is a bit of a sci-fi horror thing. I may or may not have stolen the idea from another story I’ve read before. It’s a pretty common troupe though. Scientists on an alien planet, accompanied by soldiers, exploring and experimenting. They start being hunted by the local wildlife. Etc… It’s just what I felt like writing today.

Writing Challenge: Day 24 (Untitled)
By E. W. Morrow
Word Count: 2119

The hunter slipped from one shadow to another, barely stirring the pebbles underfoot as it went. It kept itself low to the ground, spreading it’s weight across its legs and letting its natural camouflage keep it hidden in the space between. What appeared to most to be a flat, barren waste punctuated by smoldering mounds of rubble was a perfect playground for the hunter.

Up ahead, maybe two hundred meters, it could sense prey. It had followed the trail for hours, tongue darting out to sniff at the depressions in the dust and rocks that the prey had left, the smell of meat like a fluorescent invitation hanging in the air before it. It was so close now that the hunter could sense tiny vibrations traveling up from the rocky soil into the pads of its feet and hands. The spines on the hunters head and back quivered in excitement and it made a conscious effort to calm itself. After a moment the quills settled and the sound of them rubbing against one another, a sound like sand running through an hourglass, subsided. The hunter slithered out of its shadow and moved to the next, its body so low its stomach pressed against the ground. It flicked its tongue out one more time, tasted the meat-scent of the prey up ahead, and slunk off after it.

 

Sargent Major Kent Brixton puffed his cigar as though he were in a cigar smoking race. He only smoked cheap, mass produced cigars these days, with the occasional hand rolled import on special occasions, such as his birthday or the incredibly rare weekend leave. When he got agitated, or impatient, or excited he tended to take long puffs and expel them quickly before going back in for another so that the smoke spent barely any time at all in his lungs or mouth. When the cigar was just a nub he tended to extinguish it but leave it in his mouth so he had something to chew on for a bit. Right now, Sargent Brixton was very agitated indeed.

“Excuse me, Sargent, but would you mind putting that cigar out? Or at least smoking it upwind of our current position? It’s contaminating our samples.”

Brixton glared at the thin, aging man with the thick glasses and shiny plastic clipboard who was giving him a quite impressive glare of his own. Brixton had met drill Sargents who could learn a thing or two about intimidation from the little man.

“Today,” said the spectacled man, “if you don’t mind, Sargent.”

Sargent Brixton didn’t respond. He simply stood, shouldered his rifle and sauntered off to find another rock to sit on. As he passed the little man he made sure to blow a stream of smoke as close to his face and to the complicated instrument at his side as possible. The little man coughed and sputtered.

“Really now, Sargent, you were briefed on my medical condition. Please try to be more careful.”

Brixton decided that he might have been more inclined to listen to the man if he didn’t have such a high pitched, needling sort of voice. Forgetting for a moment that it rankled him to have to take orders from civilians it was a damn disgrace that he had to take them from a civilian like Kreiger. The rest of the troopers ringed around the perimeter of the crater snickered as the little man sputtered and wiped the thick lenses of his glasses in disgust. A few more scientists gathered around the cluster of sensors and computers in the center of the crater and began to take new readings. One of them, a pretty young girl with long brown hair smiled at him briefly before jotting something down on her own clipboard. Brixton puffed his cigar a little faster.

This whole detail was a joke, Brixton thought. This whole planet was as shit hole. It was too close to the system’s asteroid belt and seemed to get pelted by rocks every forty or fifty years it seemed. The only things on the planet that seemed to survive were the giant fungal growths that settled in the valleys and lowlands of the planet’s pock marked surface and around it’s poles, and a few rodent and insect-like creatures that scurried away whenever they heard the crunch of boots on dusty soil. They wouldn’t even be here if the giant mushrooms didn’t appear to be some evolutionary jackpot. Millenia of constant asteroid and occasional comet impact had altered the atmosphere of the planet, and with it the planet’s flora. The mushroom growths that seemed to be the full extent of this flora were now the biological equivalent of a Hoover. They scrubbed the thick, poisonous atmosphere so efficiently that it was possible to breathe on the planet’s surface most of the time.

Possible, but not enjoyable, Brixton thought as he mouthed the plastic tube by his left shoulder and breathed in a fresh lungful of pure oxygen. It was a bit like climbing a mountain with oxygen support, except instead of thin the air felt too thick. Thick and dirty.

Brixton understood why the planet was of interest to the scientific community. Even he could see the importance of learning from the planet’s peculiar circumstances. Air filtration was vital to space travel, and if it was possible to learn to increase efficiency from the pulpy, misshaped fungoids on some tiny dust ball in the middle of nowhere, then a tiny dust ball in the middle of nowhere was where someone would have to go. What Brixton didn’t understand was the need for an armed, military escort. Surly there was some private security firm who could handle a simple operation like this.

 

The hunter slithered to the lip of the next crater slowly. The prey was in there, it knew. The quills on the back of its head shook once more but ceased almost immediately as the hunter forced them to lie flat against its skin. It flicked it’s tongue over the rocky edge. The prey was close, but not too close. Slowly the hunter peeked it’s head over the lip until it had a good view of the entire crater and then froze. To any casual observer the part of the hunter’s head now visible above the rim of the crater was just another misshapen rock, its scales the same gray color as the rock and rubble around it, its two eyes just strangely regular divots in the otherwise normal rock face.

Down in the crater were nine figures. They were all bipedal and perhaps twice as large as the hunter. Four of the creatures appeared to be making no attempt to conceal themselves, shrouded as they were in long white garments and shuffling around the crater in noisy haste. The other five were only marginally better. They were partially, if inexpertly, camouflaged in appearance, though the hunter reasoned that this was not their natural coloration, merely additional material chosen consciously. This fact, coupled with the strange devices that the figures in white seemed so interested in, told the hunter that these creatures possessed some level of intelligence. Not much, given their inability to conceal themselves on a hostile world, but enough that the hunter realized on some basic level to treat them with caution. Especially the partially camouflaged ones with the black metal sticks. The hunter was not entirely sure what those objects were, but it recognized a weapon when it saw it.

As it watched, one of the figures in white made a sound with its mouth. Another answered it and gestured off to one side without looking up. The hunter also recognized language when it saw it. The figure that had spoken first, a shorter, rounder specimen than the others around it, put down whatever it was holding and made his way toward the edge of the crater, slightly in the direction of the hunter. The hunter almost recoiled, fearing it had been spotted, but none of the other figures made to move along with it. In fact, one of the camouflaged figures stood firmly in the other’s way, glaring at it as it edged its way between the man’s weapon and a lump of stone. The plump figure in white crested the lip of the crater barely ten meters from the hunters position but didn’t appear to see it. Then he made his way down the slight hill surrounding the crater and a short way further until it disappeared behind a particularly large pile of rubble.

The hunter’s quills vibrated again as it backed away from the crater’s edge and towards the isolated prey.

 

“Where’s Robertson?” Kreiger asked, looking up from his work for the first time in several minutes.

“Went to take a piss,” Brixton replied, idly chewing on the end of his spent cigar.

“And yet I see you found it prudent not to accompany him,” chided the scientist.

“If you wanna hold your people’s hands while they take care of nature’s business, be my guest.” Brixton sighed.

“They probably need it, eh Sarge?” This comment came from one of the soldiers on the other side of the crater. Brian Willowby chuckled and winked at Brixton, basking in the snickers of the other soldiers.

“That’s enough, Private.” Brixton said before Kreiger, already sputtering a reply, could protest. “If I remember correctly, you were a little damp the first time you saw action.” This got another, louder, chorus of laughs from the men in uniform. Even the scientists smirked a little.

“Well maybe if you’d have held my hand like I asked I wouldn’t have,” Willowby said in mock anguish. Say what you like about the little shit, Brixton thought, but he could take a joke about as well as he could give it.

Kreiger looked as though he were about to make some biting remark about the situation or the lack of decorum from the soldiers, but one of the machines at his side started beeping furiously and he soon lost all interest in the soldier’s conversation. The scientists went back to taking measurements and fiddling with knobs and dials and the soldiers back to hurling insults and spitting in the dirt. Brixton fished another cheap cigar out of his breast pocket and lit it up, making sure to keep the lighter away from the oxygen tube as he did.

 

The hunter slid silently onto a ledge overhanging the secluded refuge the fat man had chosen to relieve himself. The man hummed to himself and cast a few nervous glances around as he tried to do his business. The hunter waited patiently for the sound of liquid falling on the ground before he started moving. The fat man was obviously not used to his surroundings and his nerves were getting the better of him. It took nearly a minute for a steady stream to start, and even then the hunter waited a few seconds before it moved. It’s quills were vibrating now, and it was so caught up in the thrill of the hunt that it couldn’t quiet them. Normally the hunter would have been able to control itself, but these things were something new, and it always loved killing something new.

The hunter edged its way forward, mid and hind legs gripping the rock face, coiled and ready to spring should the prey become aware of its presence and bolt. Luckily for the hunter then twin sounds of the humming and the stream of liquid hitting the hard earth masked the sand-like sound of the vibrating quills. The hunter’s fangs, already dripping venom, slid from their sheathes in its mouth, joining the rows of solid, curved teeth that permanently ringed its maw. One bite was all it would take. The fangs would sink into the prey’s flesh, pumping neurotoxins into the bloodstream, while the rest of the teeth hooked the skin and clamped the victim in an inescapable death grip.

Suddenly, the sound of urination ceased and the fat man gave a sigh of relief. He arched his back and took a deep, labored breath. Then he opened his eyes and saw the hunter less than a foot away. He didn’t even have time to scream before the hunter pounced, sinking it’s fangs into his jugular and clamping a strong, scaly hand over his mouth. The toxins worked their way quickly through his body and into his brain, paralyzing him in less than a minute. His legs gave way and he slumped over. He couldn’t feel pain anymore, but he was horribly aware of the first few bites that the hunter took from his ample midsection. He passed out from lack of blood long before the toxin wore off.

November Challenge: Day 23

Hey all. No time to chat today. Parents in town to visit and I have a long day of work later, so I got my writing done early. Sorry I had to leave it off before the end, but I gotta jet. Maybe I’ll finish it tonight before I go to bed. Thanks for reading.

Writing Challenge Day 23 (Untitled)
By E. W. Morrow
Word Count: 2020

Barton Kline slung his pack over his shoulder and made his way down the gangplank, his thick soled boots clanging on the slightly rusty iron plates as he went. He made his way down the ramp quickly, eager to pass the space between the skiff’s two main thrusters, still pregnant with residual heat from flight and landing procedures. Various men in heavy heat resistant coveralls and safety helmets were already swarming around the ship, clamping down the landing gear and bringing loading drones in to restock and refuel the small spacecraft. That was one of the perks of being a noble, Barton though. Everyone always scrambled to obey as quickly as possible.

Which was why Barton had to get clear of the landing platform and into the bowels of the station proper before the rest of the minimal crew finished the post flight safety checks and Mr Bigshot Important Noble Man was roused from his nap. Nobles were not used to being denied, but Barton had no intention of leaving with the ship when it was scheduled to depart six hours from now. He’d signed on for the full duration of the trip out of necessity, not honesty. A station like this was bound to be crawling with able bodied men with naval experience. Surely one of them would be sober enough for the final leg of the journey.

Barton wound his way through the deck crews, supply crates, freight loaders and refuel and repair drones and headed straight for the nearest exit. Years of service in both the Confederation Navy and civilian shipping industries had given him an almost preternatural ability to navigate everything from the busiest landing ports to the most remote space stations with relative ease. By the time the first of his recent companions had disembarked the nobleman’s skiff he’d been off the dock for five and a half minutes. It was another two hours before anyone realized his bunk was turned down and his personal effects were missing. When the skiff left four hours later, Barton had been replaced by a scraggly but sober man with a slight limp and one augmetic arm who smelled faintly of chewing tobacco but seemed to know his way around a ship.

By that point, Barton was already dead.

 

After his hasty retreat from the landing pad Barton made his way toward the seediest portion of the station he could find. It wasn’t hard for a well traveled man like him. All stations tended to be the same. All you had to do was find out where the local centers of law enforcement were and find the bar, tavern, or other suitable rat hole that was as far as possible from all of them. Since most of the time stations advertised such centers of law and order, or at the very least provided maps to find them, it was as good as having an personal guide to sin and vice.

Port Fairwind was no different. It was only a medium sized station, a bustling port by the standards of a smallish star system more than 10,000 light years spinwards of the Confederation Homeworlds, so Barton had few places to check before he found what he was looking for.

It was a fairly large tavern by anyone’s reckoning located at the ass end of the station’s main entertainment district. The district itself occupied three decks and the tavern had expanded to encompass all three and probably much of the real estate to either side. There were obvious signs, if you knew to look for them. The place was generally cleaner than the places around it. Someone regularly took a power scrubber to the metal paneled front of the tavern, swept up cigarette buts and carted away beer bottles and snuff tins. Three tall, burly men in sunglasses and loose fitting clothing played cards at a table by the main entrance on the bottom deck. Barton noticed the telltale bulges of barely concealed weapons underneath their jackets. And, of course, there was the constant roars and cries of the tavern’s patrons reveling in wild abandon at two o’clock in the afternoon, station time, with no regard payed to outside events such as time of day or even day of the week. The tavern might be a long way away from the law, but it had it’s own system of order that made it unmistakeable.

Barton made his way inside, sidestepping a few drunks and pulling himself away from the clutches of busty women in old fashioned bodices and pounds of rouge, and headed straight for the bar. He ordered a shot of whiskey but drank it slowly as he glanced at his surroundings. It was pretty standard, as far as he could see. The main floor was dedicated to the drinkers and the gamblers. At every table there seemed to be a stack of faded chips and a group of greasy men holding fistfuls of cards while trying to to leer in triumph or grimace in despair. The bar, and several of the shadier, more remote booths, were home to the heavy drinkers, those so lost in despair or self-loathing and short on coin that not even the ladies of questionable virtue bothered to flirt with them.

From the main bar it was easy enough to see up to the second floor. It was lined with doors all around, many of them shut but enough of them open that Barton’s imagination had little trouble figuring out what went on inside. Even if they had been shut, the constant stream of scantily clad women and staggering men entering and leaving them painted a clear enough picture for a blind man to see. The third floor was a mystery, but Barton had a pretty good idea of what went on up there, and knew that he was going to have find his way up there before too long. He downed the rest of the drink in one go and turned back to the bartender.

“Same again,” he said, waving his glass with one hand and a folded bill with two fingers of the other. The bartender stopped polishing a mug and picked up a bottle. Halfway through pouring it Barton extended the rest of the fingers of his money hand, revealing a substantially larger wad of cash. “And perhaps some information, if you’d be so kind.”

“Depends on what you wanna know,” the man said, the cash disappearing behind his apron just as the liquid reached the top of the shot glass.

“Just looking for someone. Pretty sure you’d know if you’ve seen her. Recognize her?” Barton downed the whiskey and then reached inside his jacket. He saw the bartender clench his fists as a reaction, but release them again as he pulled out a simple photograph. It was bent down the middle but the face in it was quite visible.

“This some kind of joke?” asked the bartender, screwing up his piggy eyes in confused concentration.

“Do I look like I’m laughing?” Barton asked, just as serious as before.

“Didn’t say it was a good joke, did I?” the barman retorted. “It’s a pretty bad one if you ask me.”

“Funny thing,” Barton said, “is that I didn’t ask you. What I did ask you was whether or not you recognized her. Do you, or don’t you?”

“Course I bloody recognize her,” barked the barman. “And if you don’t you must be new here.”

“Pretty new,” Barton assured him. “Can you tell me where she is?”

The barman stared at Barton intently for a moment. He liked his job. He was well paid and if anyone started any trouble in the tavern then the three kind men outside would make sure that the trouble was taken outside. Sometimes in pieces, but they always cleaned up afterward. The boss didn’t mind him making a bit of cash on the side, so long as it didn’t interfere with business. This stranger, however, was dangerously close to falling into that second category, and it was more than his job was worth to let him keep poking his nose around. But it was basically common knowledge, and there was something else about the stranger, something on the tip of the barman’s tongue.

“You know,” he said eventually. “That picture ain’t the only thing that looks familiar. I seen you somewhere before?”

“Not exactly,” Barton said.

“You look damn familiar though.”

“Let’s just say that it’s all relative, and leave it at that.” Barton winked in case the barman missed the obvious clue in that sentence. He needn’t have bothered.

“Okay, right,” said the barman after a moment’s pause. “Up them stairs, two floors up. I’ll buzz the security, let them know you’re coming.”

“Thanks,” Barton said, downing his second shot of whiskey and heading for the stairs.

Once again Barton was forced to pry himself loose of the loose women as he ascended the staircase. Once he reached the second floor the press of bodies and bosoms lessened and he made better time up the second flight of stairs. Once again his intuition proved correct. The third floor was much quieter and darker than the bottom floors. This was a place where serious vice was conducted, and serious vice liked it’s privacy. There were less rooms on this floor than the second, and none of the doors were open. At the top of the stairs stood a pair of hulking figures even larger than the ones outside. One of the men was hunched over a small view screen, speaking in mumbled conversation to someone on the other end. Neither of these guards made the effort to hide the weapons at their sides, and both of them looked like they could kill Barton effortlessly without them. Barton paused at the top of the stairs and waited to be addressed. The guard finished his conversation and turned to Barton.

“The lady will see you now,” he rumbled and then moved off without another word. Barton followed him in silence.

Barton had expected to be led to the very back of the complex, perhaps even into a set of rooms not technically part of the tavern as a whole. Instead they took only a single turn down a short corridor and stopped at a door halfway down. The guard knocked three times and stood back, blocking the rest of the corridor from Barton’s view. The door opened and the guard gestured for Barton to enter. He did not accompany Barton over the threshold.

The room was simple but elegantly decorated. It was done mainly in dark reds and blacks. Here and there were hints of other colors though, dark mahogany or glints of polished silver. The only other occupant was a slender man in a well tailored suit in one corner. He had a book of puzzles open in front of him but no pencil in his hand. After a few moments he licked his finger and turned a page. Barton took a seat in a cushioned chair facing a large wooden desk and waited. After a few minutes of silence he heard the man in the corner turn another page. After two more page turns a second door, opposite the one he’d entered from, slid open and the woman from the photograph in his pocket stepped out. Barton could just make out another muscle bound figure in the darkness beyond before the door slid closed once more.

“Barton,” the woman said as she took her seat.

“Nicole,” Barton replied. “Long time no see.”

“Yes. I was rather enjoying it, to tell you the truth.”

“Sorry to burst in on you like this,” Barton said with a frown.

“If you’re here to tell me about Mom and Dad you can save your breath. I probably knew before you did.” Nicole steepled her fingers as she looked at her brother. The resemblance between them had faded somewhat since she’d last seen him, but it was still there. Same eyes, same nose. Slightly different chin and wildly different hair, though Nicole knew that was only because her’s wasn’t entirely natural anymore.