Okay- the prologue and first two chapters of MY book
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Tez
Nov 5, 2008, 10:13:00 PM11/5/08
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To be honest, I'm a little scared to post it. I'm very critical of my
work and this story has been brewing in my head for what seems like
ages. I've never shown anybody any of it, so this is sort of a big
step for me :) Nothing like a little pseudo-anonymity to give you
balls, I guess.
This actually started out in a present day setting, but the further I
explored it, the more I realized the original story was just a
prologue of sorts and the real story is what it causes in the long
run, which as I worked on it more, realized had to take place in the
semi-far-future. So it's sci-fi, but more out of necessity than just
me wanting spaceships all over the place (though that is a neat
bonus!). This first bit I'm posting doesn't really let on to the main
story, but is a setup for one of the characters. Any and all names are
temporary right now; I was spending too much time trying to come up
with fitting names so I decided to just use some placeholders.
Thanks in advance for the comments.
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PROLOGUE:
It's important to fully understand the Inizio, the ancient
battlestation that orbited our tiny planet, before hearing this story.
The Inizio had the human psyche wrapped around its metaphorical
finger, and to grasp the weight its actions carried in the years this
story takes place, one must understand its place in the history of
Earth. The Inizio was not simply another cog in the clockwork or a
grain of sand in a long stretch of shoreline; it was the driving force
of an entire century.
I suppose it's best to just start at the beginning.
The Inizio was originally the first fully functional orbiting
battlestation to come off the assembly line, as it were. A gigantic
metallic beast constructed in orbit, large enough to be home to a
small town's worth of people. It was entirely self-sufficient, able to
produce its own air, food and water, various types of metals, and
ammunition. It was completed in the mid-2300's when most of the
countries of Earth had come together and ceased being countries, but
simply a planet of people known as Earthen. There were, of course, a
few countries straggling behind, clinging to the old ways. The Inizio
was essentially an enormous bluff, a giant god of destruction able to
rain hellfire down from space on these remaining countries, completely
eliminating any hope they had of standing up to what was already an
undefeatable force that occupied 80% of the planet's landmass. It was
never really intended to be used, simply a scare tactic to convince
the outlying countries to join up with what was supposedly a glorious
union of humankind.
As is usually the case, an empire is its own undoing, collapsing on
the weight of itself until it can longer fight, move, or breathe; a
slow decay that is almost impossible to detect until it is too late to
stop it. The fall of the Earthen was not unlike this, although it did
manage to stray from the usual pattern. It took only a few weeks
before the crew of the Inizio mutinied. What was different was this
mutiny was led by the ship's captain.
All control devices and readouts that relayed a constant stream of
information about the events on the ship went dead almost
simultaneously. There was no last-minute transmission of distress, no
fireball in the sky with raining debris, not one thing for the Earthen
to look to and decipher for clues about what had happened. The ship
simply ceased to exist. Efforts to find it via telescope, satellite,
and radar failed. It was another week before they realized, as
painfully obvious facts have a tendency to, that while the Inizio was
no longer sending information to Earthen data centers, it was still
receiving such information. These lines of communication were cut, and
the ship was eventually located, silently orbiting the planet in a
holding pattern, with no apparent aim or purpose. Messages were sent
but there was never a reply, or even a sign that the messages were
received. The Earthen decided something must have went wrong and while
plans were set in motion to send a ship up to investigate, it was put
on the backburner and the incident covered up. After all, they still
needed the threat of the Inizio to convince the remaining countries to
join them. There was also the fact that so much money and faith had
been put into the ship that news of its failure could emotionally
cripple the Earthen populace.
A few months later, the will of a small country had been broken.
While they still refused to join the Earthen, they could not act
against an invasion and sentence their people to death from the Inizio
which was reportedly hovering over their heads above the clouds. The
Earthen made their move, sending in unmanned tanks in a huge formation
miles across, followed by infantry to take control of major population
centers, capitals, and government buildings. But then something
something happened that the Earthen did not exactly expect.
As soon as the tanks crossed the country's border, a terrible light
shot down from the sky. It cut across the landscape, igniting trees,
throwing up dirt and debris, and carved a swath through the tanks,
obliterating them beyond rubble. The giant army came to a halt, and a
message was sent to an Earthen command center. The captain of the
Inizio informed them that they were trespassing onto foreign territory
and an invasion of an innocent sovereign nation would not be
permitted.
This, as you can imagine, created quite an uproar among the higher-
ups of the Earthen. Not only fury that their global domination was
halted, but that it was at the hands of the tool they had built to
clinch this domination. Great plans were put into effect, efforts to
shoot the Inizio out of the sky with both contemporary missiles or a
focused EMP blast. But every time such a plan took shape, it was shot
down, literally, by the Inizio. Missile bases that were thought to be
secret were destroyed days before launch, warning shots hit precisely
outside of research centers deep in locations heavy with innocent
civilians without harming a single one, sending a clear message that
nothing was out of the Inizio's watchful eye, or crosshairs. It had
turned itself into a one-ship army, policing the planet not with
malintent, but with the goal of preserving peace and international
law.
As word spread of the Inizio's mutiny against the Earthen, its
steadfast claim to enforce treaties and prevent warfare, backbones
grew deep within the massive country-state and little by little
sections of Earthen territory became independent and broke away. With
the Inizio's promise of global protection, the Earthen began to come
apart at the seams. Meanwhile, the Inizio was building a reputation as
the ultimate guardian of peace.
At this point, I could go on and on detailing the fall of the
Earthen, the resurrection of individual countries, and their
subsequent fall as the planet formed into a massive two-party
political system, but that isn't too important to the history of the
Inizio, and we'll spend plenty of time on the planet's political
landscape as we go on. What's important is once the dust had settled
about 80 years later, two whole decades went by that did not require
the services of the Inizio as far as direct intervention. The simple
fact of its presence was enough to persuade nations to follow the law
of the land.
This is not to say there was no tension, heated moments between
rivals, or violence in the world. Major conflicts were the Inizio's
specialty, and fear of being obliterated (although the Inizio itself
never outright threatened any nation) served to stem such conflicts
from escalating. However, the expected underhanded political maneuvers
survived this relatively peaceful time, as you will soon see.
As for the Inizio itself, the ship and its crew grew into a tight-nit
community over those many decades, to the point that it was basically
a floating city with cliques, families, and friends that did not
concern themselves with policing the world- a very small portion of
the population dedicated themselves to the events outside the ship,
and everybody else spent their time doing tasks critical to
maintaining the ship's life support and other functions while living
their own lives. The only thing that never changed was the surname of
the captain. The children of the captain were well-trained, having
spent their whole life observing how a captain works and lives, fully
ready to take their parent's place. As a captain approached the end of
their days, their son or daughter stepped forward and offered to take
the helm. They were always open to a vote to decide a new captain, but
it was never necessary as the crew unanimously accepted the captain's
well-rounded offspring. The Inizio floated above the Earth in harmony,
leading by example as they preserved a similar harmony on the planet
below.
There is another thing to cover before we dive into what would be
considered the meat of this tale, and that pertains to the event that
sets all this in motion.
Naturally, none of what I've told you changes anything about human
nature. Classic debate and tension between religion and science rages
on, and had rooted itself into the two-party structure. The names of
these parties are The Seventeen and the Scholars, with the Scholars
representing the scientific side and The Seventeen as an amalgamation
of worldly religions. The Seventeen's name represents the seventeen
universal concepts present in all religions that bind them together.
Unfortunately, what would normally be considered a wonderful unity of
ideas (and make no doubts about how this was never the case), such
powerful organizations merging together were ultimately met with a
wary eye and drove the rift between religion and science further
apart.
These two parties, while very different from each other, still shared
many of the same goals, the main one being an understanding of that
which is not understood, predominately the existence of what we'll
call, for the sake of simplicity, God. As the Scholars gained more
understanding of the way reality operates, insight into the workings
of waves and particles and the invisible forces that mandate their
behavior, The Seventeen searched for indisputable proof of God's
existence in a similar quest of uncovering the mysteries of the
universe. With the familiar concepts of war out of the question thanks
to the Inizio, the Scholars and The Seventeen sought to destroy each
other through a battle of ideas. Eventually research on both sides led
them to a person; a young man named Markus.
Markus had spent his entire life in the hospital he was born. The
hospital was located in a city on the edge of what used to be
Minnesota, a relatively small city considering the massive amount of
global expansion. Diagnosed with a mysterious illness, researchers
from the Scholars and The Seventeen alike often visited him trying to
understand his sickness. The hospital, caught in the middle of the two
parties' conflicting wishes to take him away to be studied, turned to
the Inizio for assistance. The Inizio granted Markus a form of safe
harbor; he was not to be removed from the hospital or left in the care
of either party. His body, as well as the hospital itself, became
neutral ground.
The symptoms would come in waves; he would break out in a seemingly-
endless deluge of sweat, have small a seizure, or slip into short
comas, along with a variety of other strange occurrences. No one from
either party could find anything actually wrong with his body as far
as the human race understood it. It was as if any illness could
instantly manifest itself and then disappear without a trace. The
Seventeen were convinced it was some kind of message from God,
although what the message was they could not say. The Scholars simply
found his condition fascinating, and sought endlessly to find the
cause and hopefully a cure. It was from this situation that the world
was thrust back into chaos, and it started with one of the parties
stepping out of line.
Late one night, in a fierce rainstorm, a small civilian cruiser
drifted above the skyline of the city in a loose circle around the
hospital. Inside the hospital, an orderly was in Markus' room near the
top floor, prepping him for transport to the bathing room. Markus was
squinting in the dark at the orderly, and made a comment about how he
had never seen him working this floor of the hospital before. The
orderly fed a syringe into an IV and Markus drifted into unconscious.
In the basement, a form shrouded in shadows fiddled with the
hospital's power systems. They removed the backup generator's
connections to the power grid, then shut down the entire hospital with
the flip of a heavy switch. All the lights went out, the medical
equipment dead. Nurses and doctors fidgeted, annoyed, and waited for
the emergency power to kick in. As each second passed, they became
more annoyed, then frustrated, then suspicious. As the employees of
the hospital discussed going down to the basement to check the
generators, Markus was wheeled out of his room by the orderly and
brought to the emergency lift which ran on its own power supply. The
lift's generator was attached directly to the elevator car itself, and
its loud whirring as it was called to life drew the attention of
everyone on the floor.
No one knew what to make of the man bringing Markus to the lift at
first. But then it slowly dawned on some of the doctors, and they
approached the orderly to stop him. The orderly drew a pistol and shot
them midstride. Screams echoed through hallways. A nurse hit the
alarm, another picked up a phone to call for help, but neither efforts
were met with success. The man dressed as an orderly pushed Markus'
stretcher into the elevator and pressed the button for the roof.
Outside in the storm, the small orbiting cruiser had taken the
building's loss of power as a signal to land. It touched down on the
roof as the lift doors opened and Markus' stretcher was pushed out
into the rain. A man wearing a long trenchcoat jumped out of the
cruiser and ran out into the rain to meet the stretcher. His hands
gripped the metal chassis and pulled it away from the orderly.
"Some doctors tried to stop me before I could get'im into the lift,"
the orderly told the figure in the trenchcoat, who did not respond and
began pulling the stretcher towards the cruiser.
"Hey," the orderly shouted over the thundering storm, "I killed two
doctors in there! I can't stay here, you've got to take me with you or
I'm screwed!"
The man in the trenchcoat swung around, reached inside a pocket, and
the orderly was dead before he even realized he was about to be shot.
The man stuck the gun back into his pocket, and brought the stretcher
carrying Markus to the cruiser's open door. Arms reached out of the
doors and helped lift the still unconscious Markus into the ship. The
man climbed inside, closed the doors, and the cruiser lifted off and
flew up into the storm clouds. In the distance, audible even over the
thunder, police sirens began to wail as flashing lights approached the
hospital.
CHAPTER 1:
*five years after Markus' kidnapping*
*one hour before Kylie's Earthfall*
It was five-thirty, Earth Standard Time, and Kylie was lying on her
bed. She wore the garments of an Inizio officer, a tight-fitting
outfit made for flexibility with a small layer of padding to provide a
slight amount of protection. The clothes were matte black with the
ship's insignia on the arm, and were designed to be a marriage of
elegance and function. Kylie's eyes traced the cracks in the ceiling
of her room. The Inizio was an old ship -over 100 years old- and it
had more than its share of blemishes to convey that fact.
Five-thirty. In thirty minutes, Kylie would be traveling down to
Earth, to be met by what early reports indicated was a huge crowd.
Apparently Inizio-politics were a big news item these days, and the
entire city of Old Minnesota was coming out to see the daughter of the
legendary Captain Francis step onto the planet's surface for the first
time.
Step onto the surface, then immediately sign away her birthright that
was the captain's chair of the Inizio. No, the entire ship itself was
rightfully hers. Despite her anger, she immediately felt guilty for
such a selfish thought. Although the ship was not ruled as a monarchy,
Kylie was well-known among the population of the Inizio, and well-
liked. The entire crew looked to her for guidance, especially after
the death of her father. She was fit to be the captain, when she came
of age of course. The people wanted her as captain, and she wanted the
job.
Kylie rolled over onto her side. Hanging on the door of the bathroom
was a beautiful dress. Too beautiful, she thought. Too elaborate. Too
pompous. Kylie had tried it on an hour earlier, and she found herself
staring at her reflection in the mirror for fifteen minutes on the
verge of tears. It made her look like a princess, but she didn't feel
like one. Her father's first mate, the ship's once second-in-command
and current Transitional Captain, had picked it out for her to wear on
her trip to Earth. But Kylie was not the type of person to laud her
status over people, and the dress seemed to reinforce the romantic
fantasy of most surface-folk that the Inizio was ruled by a kind of
royalty. This was not how it was. The ship had spent its hundred-plus
years of service under the command of good people, simple as that.
Good people that taught their children well, and raised them to be
good, too.
She would not play into the public's fantasies, and she definitely
would not play into the TC's politics and desires to capitalize on the
people's misconceptions. She would wear what was on her body now, the
clothing of the ship's crew. That was the reality, and she would stand
by it, no matter how infuriated it might make the TC. It was bad
enough what she was being forced into.
A subtle tone sounded, indicating someone at the door to her
quarters. Kylie ignored it at first. She continued to lay there,
staring at the dress, feeling her self-pity turn into loathing. Biting
her lower lip to overwhelm her tears of anger with those of actual
pain, she pushed her body up off the bed and unlocked the door from
her bedside control panel.
The door slid open and a young man walked in. Jameson, Kylie thought
his name was. Even spending your entire life on the Inizio, you still
could not hope to come to know and memorize every single person.
Jameson stood patiently while Kylie pulled herself to a sitting
position at the edge of the bed.
"Miss Kylie, TC Arnette requested I make sure you are ready for the
trip to the surface," he said, avoiding eye contact with Kylie.
"I'm ready," Kylie replied, "Tell her that I am leaving for the dock
station right now." Jameson then turned his gaze at her, looking at
her outfit. His eyes flitted over to the dress on the door, then back
to the late captain's daughter.
"Begging your pardon, Miss Kylie, but TC Arnette also wanted me to
make sure you were wearing the clothing provided for you."
"Tell TC Arnette," Kylie muttered through gritted teeth, almost
spitting the name of the Transistional Captain, "that I will wear
whatever I damn well please, and that she can kindly kiss my ass. You
may also relay to her that you can't always get everything you want,
and the poor wench will have to settle with the thing she desires most
for today and nothing else."
Jameson's jaw hung slightly from his mouth, not sure of either how to
process the esteemed young lady's spiteful words or how to respond.
But he quickly made up his mind, and hurried out the room without
another word. Kylie stood, and took a quick look around her quarters.
She walked over to the dress and yanked it off the door, dragging it
across the room before stuffing it in a trash bin. She brought her
hands to her face, wondering how she was going to be able to go
through the day without bursting into tears, or spewing a barrage of
venomous language at TC Arnette under the public's watchful eye.
However difficult it was to sign away any right to the Inizio, she
would not mar her father's good name by becoming "That great captain,
with a bitch of a daughter." Kylie would wear an expression of quiet
remorse, for certainly that was acceptable. No one could expect her to
be happy about this, and considering her age, she could bear to show a
little bit of emotion. But she would wear that face with a kind of
dignity, and would continue to set a good example by being composed
even in the face of blatant polticking and blackmail.
She briefly considered not showing up. Arnette and her cronies would
wait in the dock station, furious about her tardiness, while she...
what? What else was there to do? Sit and refuse to come out of her
quarters like a spoiled brat? She could sneak away in a different
shuttle, perhaps. The ship's old air ducts were large enough and far-
reaching enough to use them to sneak to the other side of the dock
station, where she could get into a shuttle and be gone before anybody
realized it. But then what? Arnette would still control the Inizio,
and she would be branded any number of things. A deserter, a traitor,
even a criminal, considering some of the threats that were leveled
against her before she agreed to signing away the Inizio. There
wouldn't be anywhere for her to hide; they would find her quickly
enough, and who knows what would happen then.
No, she had to show up. At least this way, she could stay on the
Inizio as a member of the crew, stay with her friends and work to keep
the ship doing what it had done for the past century. Work to subvert
anything sinister Arnette might be planning once she had full control.
I can't run away, she insisted to herself as she placed her palm up
against the door, opening it.
Kylie walked down the long corridors of the Inizio, taking the proper
turns and avoiding bumping into any crew members without giving it a
moment's thought. Years on the ship has ingrained the blueprint into
her mind, and she moved on mental autopilot walking from one place to
another. As she walked, she thought back to the years before her
father died, trying to pinpoint exactly where it all started to go
wrong. She knew a turning point existed; and while she wasn't exactly
sure how it was relevant, and perhaps even feared finding out just how
it was, she knew it had something to do with the hounds, and she could
not forget the first time she encountered them.
CHAPTER 2:
*one year after Markus' kidnapping*
Everyone always smiled at Kylie when she moved through the ship. Her
friends told her it was because she was the captain's daughter, but
she did not believe it. Although only thirteen, Kylie was well enough
aware of fakery to tell when someone was lying to her. The people's
smiles were not fake, they were genuine. Their questions about her
day, her studies, her ambitions, were all genuine. The only thing that
smacked of fakery was the expression on her friend's faces when they
told her it was because of her status. Kylie suspected they were just
jealous, and that was fine. She could not help who her father was, and
she went out of her way to mention it and act like it as little as
possible. So Kylie half-ran through the ship, smiling at everyone who
made eye contact with her, shouting greetings at the people she knew
well enough to consider friends, or as close to friends as adults got
to a thirteen-year-old girl.
Her father had called her up to the bridge, and Kylie loved going to
the bridge. It was full of screens that had all sorts of interesting
things showing up on them. It was full of important people talking
about important things, and her father even clued her in to the goings-
ons of the ship sometimes. One of the first things she had been taught
was how to keep a secret.
"Kylie," her father had told her, "as my child, you might sometimes
come across information that is very important. Sometimes those things
aren't so secret, sometimes they are. And since I don't want you
annoying the bejeebus out of me asking me what's secret and what
isn't, let's just assume it all is. Do you know how to keep a secret?"
"I do, papa," Kylie had replied.
"It means you cannot tell a single soul about anything you hear me
talk about in private or at the bridge," he explained anyway. He never
asked her a question without intending to answer it himself, even when
she knew what it was.
"I know, papa," she pouted, irritated at not being believed. "I won't
tell anybody. My friends are too boring to care, anyway."
The conversation went on for an hour, until her father was completely
convinced that she understood well enough, or at least was scared
enough of the consequences of gossiping to comply. Now, at thirteen,
her head was full of secrets, most of them so boring that she didn't
remember them herself. But her father assured her they were 'up there
in her little noggin' regardless.
Kylie stepped into the bridge's command center, a section of the room
that was raised and littered with different displays and input
devices. The details of the place wasn't what interested her so much,
she merely enjoyed the cacophony of lights, sounds, and people
bustling about. Important people doing important things. She wanted to
be important some day, just like papa. Papa was very important, so
important that he didn't even notice she was in the room until she was
at his side.
"Ah, Kylie," he said, beaming, "how are you today?"
"Just okay, I guess," Kylie replied. Her father laughed.
"Just okay? Well, that's no good. How would you like to do some
important stuff with me today?" Kylie's face lit up and she nodded
excitedly. Important things! Interesting important things, hopefully!
Kylie's father put his arm around her and started to lead her to an
emptier side of the bridge.
"Okay, Ky, today we're going to be doing some diplomatic work."
Kylie's smile turned to a frown as soon as her father said the d-word.
Diplomatic work was important, but not very interesting. "Do you
remember that boy that was in the hospital? The very sick one?"
"Yes," Kylie replied, "the one who was kidnapped last year." Kylie's
voice mimicked her father's serious tone. She did not know a lot about
this boy, but she understood that he was important, as was deciphering
who was behind the kidnapping. A whole year had passed and no one
could confirm who did it. None of the party leaders would admit to
involvement, of course, and not one speck of information had arisen
about his whereabouts. It seemed to be the thing her father took most
seriously of all, so she would do the same.
"That's the one," the captain said, "We're going to be going into the
atmosphere and meeting some of the party representatives on a
starport. We need to try and figure out who is behind the kidnapping
and hopefully this meeting will help us do that."
"So why am I coming?" Kylie asked.
"Someday, if you ever command this ship, you will be doing a lot of
this kind of thing. A lot of talking to people." Kylie did not like
the idea of this. It seemed terribly boring, especially when it seemed
to result in so little most of the time. "I want you to see how I talk
to these people. We have to be very careful not to accuse or offend
any of these representatives, so pay close attention to how I speak
with them."
This wasn't going to be a very interesting day after all, Kylie
thought. It wasn't until she was on board the shuttle with her father
that it occurred to her that something interesting could happen after
all. The starport was a giant floating platform that hung above the
clouds. If they had to go out on the platform, she would need to be
wearing special equipment to help her breathe. Kylie had seen photos
of people wearing this gear, but she had never worn it herself. At
least she would be taking away something new from the day.
Leaving the Inizio on the shuttle was also one of the few times Kylie
could catch a glimpse of the Inizio from the outside. As the small
craft moved away from the ship, Kylie pressed her face up against the
window. The Inizio looked so small from the outside, its long body
resembling a knife or arrowhead chipped out of stone, rigid edges and
features pockmarking the hull. As the shuttle dipped below the belly
of the Inizio, Kylie glimpsed a large hole in the bottom. It was like
someone had cut out the top half of a perfect sphere from the ship,
and the inside surface was covered with lights. It had never occured
to her to ask what that section of the ship was for. Kylie made a
mental note to ask her father about it in the future.
Suddenly the ship shook violently and the entire interior lit up.
Flames wrapped around the window of the cockpit. Kylie had heard about
ships burning up entering the atmosphere, and how it looked as if the
entire planet was on fire. As she watched the planet grow and the
horizon's curve level out, she thought how silly those people were. It
did not look like the Earth was on fire at all; it looked like their
own ship was, and Kylie found that much more unsettling that the
former.
A minute passed and the flames disappeared. Kylie could see a black
dot growing in size against the white backdrop of clouds. The dot grew
corners, and Kylie could see it was a giantic square. Other dots began
to appear around the square, some of them moving and others
stationary. She watched, fascinated, as the starport seemed to grow
out of nothing around them.
The starport platform was nothing special, itself. A giant square
hovering in the sky, with a few buildings here and there on it. The
other dots surrounding it were Jumpers, Kylie realized. Large, metal
rings that could shape themselves to fit snugly to any civilian ship,
with engines on each side. While humanity seemed to abandon migrating
to the stars, spaceports gave them a one-time leap into orbit, where
they could circle the Earth with one healthy boost from their own
ship's engines, letting them travel great distances around the globe
without expending as much fuel as it would take to travel in the
atmosphere.
Their shuttle landed without incident or fanfare. Kylie's father
handed her a heavy jacket and facemask. The shuttle had spent the
journey adjusting its occupants to the altitude's pressure. The mask
pulled every little bit of oxygen out of the air that it could, she
had learned, allowing her to breath at this height. The jacket was to
keep her from freezing on the walk from the tarmac, as it were, to the
starport's main building. Some starports, she had read, were starting
to build docking stations right onto the buildings, allowing people to
avoid the unpleasant walk on the surface of the platform altogether.
When they stepped out onto the platform, Kylie wished her father
arranged this meeting on one of those newer starports. The wind was
strong, tugging on her small body, and the cold was fierce even with
the heavy jacket on. With the platform at eye level, Kylie could see
that the edges were raised about a foot high. Kylie wondered if they
had always been there, or if some poor soul had once lost his footing
once in the early days of the starports and been dragged over the side
by the wind. She imagined being that person, falling from the top of
the world, falling for minutes and minutes, knowing the whole time
that this was the end. Or maybe some ace pilot took a shuttle and
scooped him up on the way down. She shook the images from her head and
focused on not losing her footing herself. While it wouldn't be fatal
to do so, it certainly wouldn't be flattering.
Even with the masks on, it was difficult to breath. Kylie took deep
breaths in, and exhaled without feeling the satisfaction of oxygen
entering her body's system. She was not gasping for breath, though, so
the masks were obviously doing something. What they didn't do was warm
the air that she breathed. The air was freezing and each inward breath
shocked her throat and lungs. Her father was not fond of the
experience either, she noticed, as they hurried towards the entrance
to the main building.
They did not reach the entrance. Kylie and her father were about
fifty feet from the door when red alarm lights began to flash on the
corners of the buildings and on small posts that were scattered about
the platform, and a siren blared. Her father stopped and turned his
gaze upward. Kylie looked up as well, but saw nothing. Loud screeches
filled her ears as the platform's defense systems launched rockets
into the air, flying over Kylie's head. Kylie's eyes followed the
smoke trails of the rockets. A large skiff was flying towards the
platform, weaving between the Jumpers that hung in the air. As the
rockets neared the skiff, their smoke trails took sharp turns, as if
the rockets were being grabbed and swung around, then exploding before
reaching their target.
More rockets screamed into the sky, and they too were tossed around
before detonating. As the skiff neared the platform, Kylie could
faintly make out two small shapes bouncing around in the sky near it.
As a rocket neared the skiff, the shape would fly towards it, then
circle wildly around it as the rocket lost its bearings and was flung
away from its target. The shape seemed to hang in the air a moment
before moving to the next rocket.
The skiff moved over the platform and came in to land. Rockets that
were fired barely made it out of their launchers before they were
rendered harmless. Kylie's father grabbed her hand and they started
for their shuttle, which was already hovering off the ground and ready
to depart. Kylie hardly noticed. With the shapes so close, she could
now make them out. Make them out, but could not process what she was
seeing.
The shapes looked like robotic animals. Great metallic wolves that
were maybe ten feet tall flew through the air. Small thrusters that
were built seamlessly into the animal's chassis exaggerated their
movements; when the creatures leapt into the air they flew thirty feet
up, or more. A rocket would come at the skiff and the hound would meet
it in the sky, shooting what looked like some kind of rope or cable
that attached itself to the rocket. The hound then fired its
thrusters, sending it flying and whipping the rocket around in the sky
with it until the cable detached and the hound blasted it with some
kind of weapons fire. The hound then dropped to the platform, touching
down only for a moment before leaping back into the air at the next
rocket. These two... things were protecting the skiff from an
onslaught of rockets with ease in an insane midair ballet of physics
and destruction.
The skiff touched down on the platform unscathed. Not only that, but
Kylie didn't think a rocket ever got close enough that would even
worry a normal pilot. And whatever was happening here was not normal
in the slightest. A side panel on the skiff slid away. Actually, it
looked more like the side of the ship was disassembling itself,
pulling open in different areas until a gaping hole, pitch black
inside, was staring down at Kylie and her father. Five more of the
things jumped out from the skiff. For a moment, Kylie imagined one of
the things shooting a cable at her and dragging her into the sky,
flinging her around before sending her over the edge of the platform.
The new hounds went straight for the rocket launchers, latching onto
their sides and thrusting around them horizontally, spinning and then
ripping them out from their fixtures.
The rocket launchers, or the half of them that remained, were no
longer firing. A hound leapt at one anyway, this time shooting
multiple cables at it, and rocketed straight up into the air. The
launcher flew up with it, and Kylie watched, dumbstruck, as the hound
then spung around it, using the weight of the launcher to create a
centrifugal force, detaching at just the right moment to send the
launcher flying up into the top floors of the platform's main
building. The rockets stored in the launcher detonated on contact and
a massive explosion tore apart the upper floors. It was then that her
father finally spoke.
"The representatives... the top floor... they're here for us. Kylie,
move. Quickly!"
Kylie and her father ran across the platform as the robotic hounds
jumped and flew and cabled all around them, grabbing ships and sending
them over the edge. Two leapt in the air and cabled each other,
spinning themselves around sickeningly fast in midair before detaching
and sending one rocketing into the sky towards the upper floors of the
main building. A giant ball of orange flames rose from the far corner
of the platform. The hounds had taken out of the engines holding the
platform up and it now started to slowly tilt, causing Kylie to lose
her balance and fall to the floor. She felt her ankle twist and cried
out in pain. Kylie's father shouted her name and turned to help her
up. But before his hand reached her, a hound slammed into him, sending
him skidding across the platform.
Kylie was scared before, but now she was absolutely terrified. The
hound turned and faced her. The beast's eyes glowed red and the mouth
was articulated enough that it could show some of its metallic fangs
in a sinister sneer. It took small steps, like it was sneaking up on
her. Kylie tried to move away from it but the platform was tipping to
the side even more now and she had to fight not to begin sliding
towards the edge. The hound lowered its head and stalked up her to,
the lower jaw slowly dipping, opening its mouth. Kylie allowed herself
one moment to sneak a glance at her father, who was starting to get to
his feet and looked to be in a great deal of pain. Their shuttle was
moving completely away from the platform, probably out of fear of
being grabbed by one or more of the hounds and destroyed.
When she brought her gaze back to the menace in front of her, her
heart jumped. The hound's head was mere inches from her, its mouth
hanging open. She stared in terror for a few moments as the chaos
swirled around her. The platform was now almost forty degrees slanted,
and she could feel her body begin to lose grip with the metal and
slide slightly. She no longer noticed how hard it was to breath in
this environment, or how cold she was. Every bit of her attention was
on the beast that was, for some unsettling reason, taking a
significant time out from its mission of utter destruction to have a
staring contest with her.
The hound lurched and snapped its jaws at her face. Kylie shrieked
and lost what little bearing she had, and began to slide backwards
down the platform. She watched the hound as she fell, which simply
stood on the platform looking at her. Kylie reached the edge of the
platform and let out a loud grunt as she smacked into the foot-high
edging that was becoming more and more like the bottom of her perch.
She frantically scanned the platform for her father, but could not see
him anywhere. She did, however, see the shuttle she had come in,
circling around the platform. It seemed to spot her and began to move
closer. She waved at it just to make sure. The only thing on her mind
right now was getting off this platform and finding her father.
The shuttle came up along side Kylie and the side door slid open. Her
father was inside. He held his arms out to her and called for her.
Kylie slowly got to her feet on the edging -now at about seventy
degrees, the platform was more of a wall for her to lean against- and
braced herself to hop into the shuttle. She saw her father's eyes dart
up above her. She turned and looked where his gaze led. The hound was
still there, motionless, watching. It stood perfectly, as if the
platform was still 'down' to it, as if the laws of gravity simply did
not apply to it. From everything else she was seeing, it would not
surprise her.
Then, the hound appeared to detach -or maybe it just decided to start
following gravity's rules- and began to slide down at Kylie. Her eyes
went wide as it picked up speed. She turned, made a snap judgment
about how far she could leap, and jumped out towards the shuttle.
She misjudged.
There was a brief, gut-wrenching moment where Kylie realized she
couldn't make the jump she was already in the middle of. But the
shuttle dipped and tilted, and the pilot brought the side opening back
on level with her while her father wrapped an arm around her waist and
pulled her inside. He brought his other hand up to the shuttle's door
to close it, but the hound was already on the edge where Kylie had
been and was crouched, ready to pounce.
The pilot moved the shuttle higher, but there was no way for him to
get far enough that the hound could not reach. Giant metal paws
gripped the sides of the opening as it scrambled to pull itself
inside. Kylie's father tossed her to the other side of the shuttle
into one of the chairs, and he kicked ferociously at the beast's head,
which did not seem to faze it at all.
"EMP!" he shouted to the pilot as he kicked. The pilot nodded,
reached down under his controls, and pulled a level. Kylie grabbed the
seatbelt in her chair and fastened herself in. Her hair tingled and
stood on end slightly as the electrical charge pulsed through the air.
The shuttle went dead and started to tilt. The hound went dead as
well, and Kylie's father continued to kick it, loosening it from the
doorway. It slid out and fell, catching on the platform's edge below
and dangling off it lifelessly. The shuttle fell as well, twisting in
the air and smacking into the platform's edge itself, sending it
spinning in a freefall into the clouds and towards the ground.
Kylie felt herself forced up against the chair as the shuttle spun.
Her father had his arm wrapped around a few exposed pipes, and was
still reaching to shut the side panel door. The pilot was digging out
a small EMP-proof box that contained the necessary fuses to give the
shuttle power again. After almost losing his grip and sending the box
flying around the shuttle's cabin, he replaced the fuses and the ship
roared back to life, leveling off and hovering. Kylie's father slammed
the side door shut, leaned against it, and slid down to the floor.
Everyone was panting heavily and Kylie was shaking a little, her body
still tense from her close encounter with the mechanical hound.
"P-papa," she finally managed, "what was that?"
Her father, eyes wide, met her gaze but did not answer. He looked
more afraid than she was.
work and this story has been brewing in my head for what seems like
ages. I've never shown anybody any of it, so this is sort of a big
step for me :) Nothing like a little pseudo-anonymity to give you
balls, I guess.
This actually started out in a present day setting, but the further I
explored it, the more I realized the original story was just a
prologue of sorts and the real story is what it causes in the long
run, which as I worked on it more, realized had to take place in the
semi-far-future. So it's sci-fi, but more out of necessity than just
me wanting spaceships all over the place (though that is a neat
bonus!). This first bit I'm posting doesn't really let on to the main
story, but is a setup for one of the characters. Any and all names are
temporary right now; I was spending too much time trying to come up
with fitting names so I decided to just use some placeholders.
Thanks in advance for the comments.
------------------------------------
PROLOGUE:
It's important to fully understand the Inizio, the ancient
battlestation that orbited our tiny planet, before hearing this story.
The Inizio had the human psyche wrapped around its metaphorical
finger, and to grasp the weight its actions carried in the years this
story takes place, one must understand its place in the history of
Earth. The Inizio was not simply another cog in the clockwork or a
grain of sand in a long stretch of shoreline; it was the driving force
of an entire century.
I suppose it's best to just start at the beginning.
The Inizio was originally the first fully functional orbiting
battlestation to come off the assembly line, as it were. A gigantic
metallic beast constructed in orbit, large enough to be home to a
small town's worth of people. It was entirely self-sufficient, able to
produce its own air, food and water, various types of metals, and
ammunition. It was completed in the mid-2300's when most of the
countries of Earth had come together and ceased being countries, but
simply a planet of people known as Earthen. There were, of course, a
few countries straggling behind, clinging to the old ways. The Inizio
was essentially an enormous bluff, a giant god of destruction able to
rain hellfire down from space on these remaining countries, completely
eliminating any hope they had of standing up to what was already an
undefeatable force that occupied 80% of the planet's landmass. It was
never really intended to be used, simply a scare tactic to convince
the outlying countries to join up with what was supposedly a glorious
union of humankind.
As is usually the case, an empire is its own undoing, collapsing on
the weight of itself until it can longer fight, move, or breathe; a
slow decay that is almost impossible to detect until it is too late to
stop it. The fall of the Earthen was not unlike this, although it did
manage to stray from the usual pattern. It took only a few weeks
before the crew of the Inizio mutinied. What was different was this
mutiny was led by the ship's captain.
All control devices and readouts that relayed a constant stream of
information about the events on the ship went dead almost
simultaneously. There was no last-minute transmission of distress, no
fireball in the sky with raining debris, not one thing for the Earthen
to look to and decipher for clues about what had happened. The ship
simply ceased to exist. Efforts to find it via telescope, satellite,
and radar failed. It was another week before they realized, as
painfully obvious facts have a tendency to, that while the Inizio was
no longer sending information to Earthen data centers, it was still
receiving such information. These lines of communication were cut, and
the ship was eventually located, silently orbiting the planet in a
holding pattern, with no apparent aim or purpose. Messages were sent
but there was never a reply, or even a sign that the messages were
received. The Earthen decided something must have went wrong and while
plans were set in motion to send a ship up to investigate, it was put
on the backburner and the incident covered up. After all, they still
needed the threat of the Inizio to convince the remaining countries to
join them. There was also the fact that so much money and faith had
been put into the ship that news of its failure could emotionally
cripple the Earthen populace.
A few months later, the will of a small country had been broken.
While they still refused to join the Earthen, they could not act
against an invasion and sentence their people to death from the Inizio
which was reportedly hovering over their heads above the clouds. The
Earthen made their move, sending in unmanned tanks in a huge formation
miles across, followed by infantry to take control of major population
centers, capitals, and government buildings. But then something
something happened that the Earthen did not exactly expect.
As soon as the tanks crossed the country's border, a terrible light
shot down from the sky. It cut across the landscape, igniting trees,
throwing up dirt and debris, and carved a swath through the tanks,
obliterating them beyond rubble. The giant army came to a halt, and a
message was sent to an Earthen command center. The captain of the
Inizio informed them that they were trespassing onto foreign territory
and an invasion of an innocent sovereign nation would not be
permitted.
This, as you can imagine, created quite an uproar among the higher-
ups of the Earthen. Not only fury that their global domination was
halted, but that it was at the hands of the tool they had built to
clinch this domination. Great plans were put into effect, efforts to
shoot the Inizio out of the sky with both contemporary missiles or a
focused EMP blast. But every time such a plan took shape, it was shot
down, literally, by the Inizio. Missile bases that were thought to be
secret were destroyed days before launch, warning shots hit precisely
outside of research centers deep in locations heavy with innocent
civilians without harming a single one, sending a clear message that
nothing was out of the Inizio's watchful eye, or crosshairs. It had
turned itself into a one-ship army, policing the planet not with
malintent, but with the goal of preserving peace and international
law.
As word spread of the Inizio's mutiny against the Earthen, its
steadfast claim to enforce treaties and prevent warfare, backbones
grew deep within the massive country-state and little by little
sections of Earthen territory became independent and broke away. With
the Inizio's promise of global protection, the Earthen began to come
apart at the seams. Meanwhile, the Inizio was building a reputation as
the ultimate guardian of peace.
At this point, I could go on and on detailing the fall of the
Earthen, the resurrection of individual countries, and their
subsequent fall as the planet formed into a massive two-party
political system, but that isn't too important to the history of the
Inizio, and we'll spend plenty of time on the planet's political
landscape as we go on. What's important is once the dust had settled
about 80 years later, two whole decades went by that did not require
the services of the Inizio as far as direct intervention. The simple
fact of its presence was enough to persuade nations to follow the law
of the land.
This is not to say there was no tension, heated moments between
rivals, or violence in the world. Major conflicts were the Inizio's
specialty, and fear of being obliterated (although the Inizio itself
never outright threatened any nation) served to stem such conflicts
from escalating. However, the expected underhanded political maneuvers
survived this relatively peaceful time, as you will soon see.
As for the Inizio itself, the ship and its crew grew into a tight-nit
community over those many decades, to the point that it was basically
a floating city with cliques, families, and friends that did not
concern themselves with policing the world- a very small portion of
the population dedicated themselves to the events outside the ship,
and everybody else spent their time doing tasks critical to
maintaining the ship's life support and other functions while living
their own lives. The only thing that never changed was the surname of
the captain. The children of the captain were well-trained, having
spent their whole life observing how a captain works and lives, fully
ready to take their parent's place. As a captain approached the end of
their days, their son or daughter stepped forward and offered to take
the helm. They were always open to a vote to decide a new captain, but
it was never necessary as the crew unanimously accepted the captain's
well-rounded offspring. The Inizio floated above the Earth in harmony,
leading by example as they preserved a similar harmony on the planet
below.
There is another thing to cover before we dive into what would be
considered the meat of this tale, and that pertains to the event that
sets all this in motion.
Naturally, none of what I've told you changes anything about human
nature. Classic debate and tension between religion and science rages
on, and had rooted itself into the two-party structure. The names of
these parties are The Seventeen and the Scholars, with the Scholars
representing the scientific side and The Seventeen as an amalgamation
of worldly religions. The Seventeen's name represents the seventeen
universal concepts present in all religions that bind them together.
Unfortunately, what would normally be considered a wonderful unity of
ideas (and make no doubts about how this was never the case), such
powerful organizations merging together were ultimately met with a
wary eye and drove the rift between religion and science further
apart.
These two parties, while very different from each other, still shared
many of the same goals, the main one being an understanding of that
which is not understood, predominately the existence of what we'll
call, for the sake of simplicity, God. As the Scholars gained more
understanding of the way reality operates, insight into the workings
of waves and particles and the invisible forces that mandate their
behavior, The Seventeen searched for indisputable proof of God's
existence in a similar quest of uncovering the mysteries of the
universe. With the familiar concepts of war out of the question thanks
to the Inizio, the Scholars and The Seventeen sought to destroy each
other through a battle of ideas. Eventually research on both sides led
them to a person; a young man named Markus.
Markus had spent his entire life in the hospital he was born. The
hospital was located in a city on the edge of what used to be
Minnesota, a relatively small city considering the massive amount of
global expansion. Diagnosed with a mysterious illness, researchers
from the Scholars and The Seventeen alike often visited him trying to
understand his sickness. The hospital, caught in the middle of the two
parties' conflicting wishes to take him away to be studied, turned to
the Inizio for assistance. The Inizio granted Markus a form of safe
harbor; he was not to be removed from the hospital or left in the care
of either party. His body, as well as the hospital itself, became
neutral ground.
The symptoms would come in waves; he would break out in a seemingly-
endless deluge of sweat, have small a seizure, or slip into short
comas, along with a variety of other strange occurrences. No one from
either party could find anything actually wrong with his body as far
as the human race understood it. It was as if any illness could
instantly manifest itself and then disappear without a trace. The
Seventeen were convinced it was some kind of message from God,
although what the message was they could not say. The Scholars simply
found his condition fascinating, and sought endlessly to find the
cause and hopefully a cure. It was from this situation that the world
was thrust back into chaos, and it started with one of the parties
stepping out of line.
Late one night, in a fierce rainstorm, a small civilian cruiser
drifted above the skyline of the city in a loose circle around the
hospital. Inside the hospital, an orderly was in Markus' room near the
top floor, prepping him for transport to the bathing room. Markus was
squinting in the dark at the orderly, and made a comment about how he
had never seen him working this floor of the hospital before. The
orderly fed a syringe into an IV and Markus drifted into unconscious.
In the basement, a form shrouded in shadows fiddled with the
hospital's power systems. They removed the backup generator's
connections to the power grid, then shut down the entire hospital with
the flip of a heavy switch. All the lights went out, the medical
equipment dead. Nurses and doctors fidgeted, annoyed, and waited for
the emergency power to kick in. As each second passed, they became
more annoyed, then frustrated, then suspicious. As the employees of
the hospital discussed going down to the basement to check the
generators, Markus was wheeled out of his room by the orderly and
brought to the emergency lift which ran on its own power supply. The
lift's generator was attached directly to the elevator car itself, and
its loud whirring as it was called to life drew the attention of
everyone on the floor.
No one knew what to make of the man bringing Markus to the lift at
first. But then it slowly dawned on some of the doctors, and they
approached the orderly to stop him. The orderly drew a pistol and shot
them midstride. Screams echoed through hallways. A nurse hit the
alarm, another picked up a phone to call for help, but neither efforts
were met with success. The man dressed as an orderly pushed Markus'
stretcher into the elevator and pressed the button for the roof.
Outside in the storm, the small orbiting cruiser had taken the
building's loss of power as a signal to land. It touched down on the
roof as the lift doors opened and Markus' stretcher was pushed out
into the rain. A man wearing a long trenchcoat jumped out of the
cruiser and ran out into the rain to meet the stretcher. His hands
gripped the metal chassis and pulled it away from the orderly.
"Some doctors tried to stop me before I could get'im into the lift,"
the orderly told the figure in the trenchcoat, who did not respond and
began pulling the stretcher towards the cruiser.
"Hey," the orderly shouted over the thundering storm, "I killed two
doctors in there! I can't stay here, you've got to take me with you or
I'm screwed!"
The man in the trenchcoat swung around, reached inside a pocket, and
the orderly was dead before he even realized he was about to be shot.
The man stuck the gun back into his pocket, and brought the stretcher
carrying Markus to the cruiser's open door. Arms reached out of the
doors and helped lift the still unconscious Markus into the ship. The
man climbed inside, closed the doors, and the cruiser lifted off and
flew up into the storm clouds. In the distance, audible even over the
thunder, police sirens began to wail as flashing lights approached the
hospital.
CHAPTER 1:
*five years after Markus' kidnapping*
*one hour before Kylie's Earthfall*
It was five-thirty, Earth Standard Time, and Kylie was lying on her
bed. She wore the garments of an Inizio officer, a tight-fitting
outfit made for flexibility with a small layer of padding to provide a
slight amount of protection. The clothes were matte black with the
ship's insignia on the arm, and were designed to be a marriage of
elegance and function. Kylie's eyes traced the cracks in the ceiling
of her room. The Inizio was an old ship -over 100 years old- and it
had more than its share of blemishes to convey that fact.
Five-thirty. In thirty minutes, Kylie would be traveling down to
Earth, to be met by what early reports indicated was a huge crowd.
Apparently Inizio-politics were a big news item these days, and the
entire city of Old Minnesota was coming out to see the daughter of the
legendary Captain Francis step onto the planet's surface for the first
time.
Step onto the surface, then immediately sign away her birthright that
was the captain's chair of the Inizio. No, the entire ship itself was
rightfully hers. Despite her anger, she immediately felt guilty for
such a selfish thought. Although the ship was not ruled as a monarchy,
Kylie was well-known among the population of the Inizio, and well-
liked. The entire crew looked to her for guidance, especially after
the death of her father. She was fit to be the captain, when she came
of age of course. The people wanted her as captain, and she wanted the
job.
Kylie rolled over onto her side. Hanging on the door of the bathroom
was a beautiful dress. Too beautiful, she thought. Too elaborate. Too
pompous. Kylie had tried it on an hour earlier, and she found herself
staring at her reflection in the mirror for fifteen minutes on the
verge of tears. It made her look like a princess, but she didn't feel
like one. Her father's first mate, the ship's once second-in-command
and current Transitional Captain, had picked it out for her to wear on
her trip to Earth. But Kylie was not the type of person to laud her
status over people, and the dress seemed to reinforce the romantic
fantasy of most surface-folk that the Inizio was ruled by a kind of
royalty. This was not how it was. The ship had spent its hundred-plus
years of service under the command of good people, simple as that.
Good people that taught their children well, and raised them to be
good, too.
She would not play into the public's fantasies, and she definitely
would not play into the TC's politics and desires to capitalize on the
people's misconceptions. She would wear what was on her body now, the
clothing of the ship's crew. That was the reality, and she would stand
by it, no matter how infuriated it might make the TC. It was bad
enough what she was being forced into.
A subtle tone sounded, indicating someone at the door to her
quarters. Kylie ignored it at first. She continued to lay there,
staring at the dress, feeling her self-pity turn into loathing. Biting
her lower lip to overwhelm her tears of anger with those of actual
pain, she pushed her body up off the bed and unlocked the door from
her bedside control panel.
The door slid open and a young man walked in. Jameson, Kylie thought
his name was. Even spending your entire life on the Inizio, you still
could not hope to come to know and memorize every single person.
Jameson stood patiently while Kylie pulled herself to a sitting
position at the edge of the bed.
"Miss Kylie, TC Arnette requested I make sure you are ready for the
trip to the surface," he said, avoiding eye contact with Kylie.
"I'm ready," Kylie replied, "Tell her that I am leaving for the dock
station right now." Jameson then turned his gaze at her, looking at
her outfit. His eyes flitted over to the dress on the door, then back
to the late captain's daughter.
"Begging your pardon, Miss Kylie, but TC Arnette also wanted me to
make sure you were wearing the clothing provided for you."
"Tell TC Arnette," Kylie muttered through gritted teeth, almost
spitting the name of the Transistional Captain, "that I will wear
whatever I damn well please, and that she can kindly kiss my ass. You
may also relay to her that you can't always get everything you want,
and the poor wench will have to settle with the thing she desires most
for today and nothing else."
Jameson's jaw hung slightly from his mouth, not sure of either how to
process the esteemed young lady's spiteful words or how to respond.
But he quickly made up his mind, and hurried out the room without
another word. Kylie stood, and took a quick look around her quarters.
She walked over to the dress and yanked it off the door, dragging it
across the room before stuffing it in a trash bin. She brought her
hands to her face, wondering how she was going to be able to go
through the day without bursting into tears, or spewing a barrage of
venomous language at TC Arnette under the public's watchful eye.
However difficult it was to sign away any right to the Inizio, she
would not mar her father's good name by becoming "That great captain,
with a bitch of a daughter." Kylie would wear an expression of quiet
remorse, for certainly that was acceptable. No one could expect her to
be happy about this, and considering her age, she could bear to show a
little bit of emotion. But she would wear that face with a kind of
dignity, and would continue to set a good example by being composed
even in the face of blatant polticking and blackmail.
She briefly considered not showing up. Arnette and her cronies would
wait in the dock station, furious about her tardiness, while she...
what? What else was there to do? Sit and refuse to come out of her
quarters like a spoiled brat? She could sneak away in a different
shuttle, perhaps. The ship's old air ducts were large enough and far-
reaching enough to use them to sneak to the other side of the dock
station, where she could get into a shuttle and be gone before anybody
realized it. But then what? Arnette would still control the Inizio,
and she would be branded any number of things. A deserter, a traitor,
even a criminal, considering some of the threats that were leveled
against her before she agreed to signing away the Inizio. There
wouldn't be anywhere for her to hide; they would find her quickly
enough, and who knows what would happen then.
No, she had to show up. At least this way, she could stay on the
Inizio as a member of the crew, stay with her friends and work to keep
the ship doing what it had done for the past century. Work to subvert
anything sinister Arnette might be planning once she had full control.
I can't run away, she insisted to herself as she placed her palm up
against the door, opening it.
Kylie walked down the long corridors of the Inizio, taking the proper
turns and avoiding bumping into any crew members without giving it a
moment's thought. Years on the ship has ingrained the blueprint into
her mind, and she moved on mental autopilot walking from one place to
another. As she walked, she thought back to the years before her
father died, trying to pinpoint exactly where it all started to go
wrong. She knew a turning point existed; and while she wasn't exactly
sure how it was relevant, and perhaps even feared finding out just how
it was, she knew it had something to do with the hounds, and she could
not forget the first time she encountered them.
CHAPTER 2:
*one year after Markus' kidnapping*
Everyone always smiled at Kylie when she moved through the ship. Her
friends told her it was because she was the captain's daughter, but
she did not believe it. Although only thirteen, Kylie was well enough
aware of fakery to tell when someone was lying to her. The people's
smiles were not fake, they were genuine. Their questions about her
day, her studies, her ambitions, were all genuine. The only thing that
smacked of fakery was the expression on her friend's faces when they
told her it was because of her status. Kylie suspected they were just
jealous, and that was fine. She could not help who her father was, and
she went out of her way to mention it and act like it as little as
possible. So Kylie half-ran through the ship, smiling at everyone who
made eye contact with her, shouting greetings at the people she knew
well enough to consider friends, or as close to friends as adults got
to a thirteen-year-old girl.
Her father had called her up to the bridge, and Kylie loved going to
the bridge. It was full of screens that had all sorts of interesting
things showing up on them. It was full of important people talking
about important things, and her father even clued her in to the goings-
ons of the ship sometimes. One of the first things she had been taught
was how to keep a secret.
"Kylie," her father had told her, "as my child, you might sometimes
come across information that is very important. Sometimes those things
aren't so secret, sometimes they are. And since I don't want you
annoying the bejeebus out of me asking me what's secret and what
isn't, let's just assume it all is. Do you know how to keep a secret?"
"I do, papa," Kylie had replied.
"It means you cannot tell a single soul about anything you hear me
talk about in private or at the bridge," he explained anyway. He never
asked her a question without intending to answer it himself, even when
she knew what it was.
"I know, papa," she pouted, irritated at not being believed. "I won't
tell anybody. My friends are too boring to care, anyway."
The conversation went on for an hour, until her father was completely
convinced that she understood well enough, or at least was scared
enough of the consequences of gossiping to comply. Now, at thirteen,
her head was full of secrets, most of them so boring that she didn't
remember them herself. But her father assured her they were 'up there
in her little noggin' regardless.
Kylie stepped into the bridge's command center, a section of the room
that was raised and littered with different displays and input
devices. The details of the place wasn't what interested her so much,
she merely enjoyed the cacophony of lights, sounds, and people
bustling about. Important people doing important things. She wanted to
be important some day, just like papa. Papa was very important, so
important that he didn't even notice she was in the room until she was
at his side.
"Ah, Kylie," he said, beaming, "how are you today?"
"Just okay, I guess," Kylie replied. Her father laughed.
"Just okay? Well, that's no good. How would you like to do some
important stuff with me today?" Kylie's face lit up and she nodded
excitedly. Important things! Interesting important things, hopefully!
Kylie's father put his arm around her and started to lead her to an
emptier side of the bridge.
"Okay, Ky, today we're going to be doing some diplomatic work."
Kylie's smile turned to a frown as soon as her father said the d-word.
Diplomatic work was important, but not very interesting. "Do you
remember that boy that was in the hospital? The very sick one?"
"Yes," Kylie replied, "the one who was kidnapped last year." Kylie's
voice mimicked her father's serious tone. She did not know a lot about
this boy, but she understood that he was important, as was deciphering
who was behind the kidnapping. A whole year had passed and no one
could confirm who did it. None of the party leaders would admit to
involvement, of course, and not one speck of information had arisen
about his whereabouts. It seemed to be the thing her father took most
seriously of all, so she would do the same.
"That's the one," the captain said, "We're going to be going into the
atmosphere and meeting some of the party representatives on a
starport. We need to try and figure out who is behind the kidnapping
and hopefully this meeting will help us do that."
"So why am I coming?" Kylie asked.
"Someday, if you ever command this ship, you will be doing a lot of
this kind of thing. A lot of talking to people." Kylie did not like
the idea of this. It seemed terribly boring, especially when it seemed
to result in so little most of the time. "I want you to see how I talk
to these people. We have to be very careful not to accuse or offend
any of these representatives, so pay close attention to how I speak
with them."
This wasn't going to be a very interesting day after all, Kylie
thought. It wasn't until she was on board the shuttle with her father
that it occurred to her that something interesting could happen after
all. The starport was a giant floating platform that hung above the
clouds. If they had to go out on the platform, she would need to be
wearing special equipment to help her breathe. Kylie had seen photos
of people wearing this gear, but she had never worn it herself. At
least she would be taking away something new from the day.
Leaving the Inizio on the shuttle was also one of the few times Kylie
could catch a glimpse of the Inizio from the outside. As the small
craft moved away from the ship, Kylie pressed her face up against the
window. The Inizio looked so small from the outside, its long body
resembling a knife or arrowhead chipped out of stone, rigid edges and
features pockmarking the hull. As the shuttle dipped below the belly
of the Inizio, Kylie glimpsed a large hole in the bottom. It was like
someone had cut out the top half of a perfect sphere from the ship,
and the inside surface was covered with lights. It had never occured
to her to ask what that section of the ship was for. Kylie made a
mental note to ask her father about it in the future.
Suddenly the ship shook violently and the entire interior lit up.
Flames wrapped around the window of the cockpit. Kylie had heard about
ships burning up entering the atmosphere, and how it looked as if the
entire planet was on fire. As she watched the planet grow and the
horizon's curve level out, she thought how silly those people were. It
did not look like the Earth was on fire at all; it looked like their
own ship was, and Kylie found that much more unsettling that the
former.
A minute passed and the flames disappeared. Kylie could see a black
dot growing in size against the white backdrop of clouds. The dot grew
corners, and Kylie could see it was a giantic square. Other dots began
to appear around the square, some of them moving and others
stationary. She watched, fascinated, as the starport seemed to grow
out of nothing around them.
The starport platform was nothing special, itself. A giant square
hovering in the sky, with a few buildings here and there on it. The
other dots surrounding it were Jumpers, Kylie realized. Large, metal
rings that could shape themselves to fit snugly to any civilian ship,
with engines on each side. While humanity seemed to abandon migrating
to the stars, spaceports gave them a one-time leap into orbit, where
they could circle the Earth with one healthy boost from their own
ship's engines, letting them travel great distances around the globe
without expending as much fuel as it would take to travel in the
atmosphere.
Their shuttle landed without incident or fanfare. Kylie's father
handed her a heavy jacket and facemask. The shuttle had spent the
journey adjusting its occupants to the altitude's pressure. The mask
pulled every little bit of oxygen out of the air that it could, she
had learned, allowing her to breath at this height. The jacket was to
keep her from freezing on the walk from the tarmac, as it were, to the
starport's main building. Some starports, she had read, were starting
to build docking stations right onto the buildings, allowing people to
avoid the unpleasant walk on the surface of the platform altogether.
When they stepped out onto the platform, Kylie wished her father
arranged this meeting on one of those newer starports. The wind was
strong, tugging on her small body, and the cold was fierce even with
the heavy jacket on. With the platform at eye level, Kylie could see
that the edges were raised about a foot high. Kylie wondered if they
had always been there, or if some poor soul had once lost his footing
once in the early days of the starports and been dragged over the side
by the wind. She imagined being that person, falling from the top of
the world, falling for minutes and minutes, knowing the whole time
that this was the end. Or maybe some ace pilot took a shuttle and
scooped him up on the way down. She shook the images from her head and
focused on not losing her footing herself. While it wouldn't be fatal
to do so, it certainly wouldn't be flattering.
Even with the masks on, it was difficult to breath. Kylie took deep
breaths in, and exhaled without feeling the satisfaction of oxygen
entering her body's system. She was not gasping for breath, though, so
the masks were obviously doing something. What they didn't do was warm
the air that she breathed. The air was freezing and each inward breath
shocked her throat and lungs. Her father was not fond of the
experience either, she noticed, as they hurried towards the entrance
to the main building.
They did not reach the entrance. Kylie and her father were about
fifty feet from the door when red alarm lights began to flash on the
corners of the buildings and on small posts that were scattered about
the platform, and a siren blared. Her father stopped and turned his
gaze upward. Kylie looked up as well, but saw nothing. Loud screeches
filled her ears as the platform's defense systems launched rockets
into the air, flying over Kylie's head. Kylie's eyes followed the
smoke trails of the rockets. A large skiff was flying towards the
platform, weaving between the Jumpers that hung in the air. As the
rockets neared the skiff, their smoke trails took sharp turns, as if
the rockets were being grabbed and swung around, then exploding before
reaching their target.
More rockets screamed into the sky, and they too were tossed around
before detonating. As the skiff neared the platform, Kylie could
faintly make out two small shapes bouncing around in the sky near it.
As a rocket neared the skiff, the shape would fly towards it, then
circle wildly around it as the rocket lost its bearings and was flung
away from its target. The shape seemed to hang in the air a moment
before moving to the next rocket.
The skiff moved over the platform and came in to land. Rockets that
were fired barely made it out of their launchers before they were
rendered harmless. Kylie's father grabbed her hand and they started
for their shuttle, which was already hovering off the ground and ready
to depart. Kylie hardly noticed. With the shapes so close, she could
now make them out. Make them out, but could not process what she was
seeing.
The shapes looked like robotic animals. Great metallic wolves that
were maybe ten feet tall flew through the air. Small thrusters that
were built seamlessly into the animal's chassis exaggerated their
movements; when the creatures leapt into the air they flew thirty feet
up, or more. A rocket would come at the skiff and the hound would meet
it in the sky, shooting what looked like some kind of rope or cable
that attached itself to the rocket. The hound then fired its
thrusters, sending it flying and whipping the rocket around in the sky
with it until the cable detached and the hound blasted it with some
kind of weapons fire. The hound then dropped to the platform, touching
down only for a moment before leaping back into the air at the next
rocket. These two... things were protecting the skiff from an
onslaught of rockets with ease in an insane midair ballet of physics
and destruction.
The skiff touched down on the platform unscathed. Not only that, but
Kylie didn't think a rocket ever got close enough that would even
worry a normal pilot. And whatever was happening here was not normal
in the slightest. A side panel on the skiff slid away. Actually, it
looked more like the side of the ship was disassembling itself,
pulling open in different areas until a gaping hole, pitch black
inside, was staring down at Kylie and her father. Five more of the
things jumped out from the skiff. For a moment, Kylie imagined one of
the things shooting a cable at her and dragging her into the sky,
flinging her around before sending her over the edge of the platform.
The new hounds went straight for the rocket launchers, latching onto
their sides and thrusting around them horizontally, spinning and then
ripping them out from their fixtures.
The rocket launchers, or the half of them that remained, were no
longer firing. A hound leapt at one anyway, this time shooting
multiple cables at it, and rocketed straight up into the air. The
launcher flew up with it, and Kylie watched, dumbstruck, as the hound
then spung around it, using the weight of the launcher to create a
centrifugal force, detaching at just the right moment to send the
launcher flying up into the top floors of the platform's main
building. The rockets stored in the launcher detonated on contact and
a massive explosion tore apart the upper floors. It was then that her
father finally spoke.
"The representatives... the top floor... they're here for us. Kylie,
move. Quickly!"
Kylie and her father ran across the platform as the robotic hounds
jumped and flew and cabled all around them, grabbing ships and sending
them over the edge. Two leapt in the air and cabled each other,
spinning themselves around sickeningly fast in midair before detaching
and sending one rocketing into the sky towards the upper floors of the
main building. A giant ball of orange flames rose from the far corner
of the platform. The hounds had taken out of the engines holding the
platform up and it now started to slowly tilt, causing Kylie to lose
her balance and fall to the floor. She felt her ankle twist and cried
out in pain. Kylie's father shouted her name and turned to help her
up. But before his hand reached her, a hound slammed into him, sending
him skidding across the platform.
Kylie was scared before, but now she was absolutely terrified. The
hound turned and faced her. The beast's eyes glowed red and the mouth
was articulated enough that it could show some of its metallic fangs
in a sinister sneer. It took small steps, like it was sneaking up on
her. Kylie tried to move away from it but the platform was tipping to
the side even more now and she had to fight not to begin sliding
towards the edge. The hound lowered its head and stalked up her to,
the lower jaw slowly dipping, opening its mouth. Kylie allowed herself
one moment to sneak a glance at her father, who was starting to get to
his feet and looked to be in a great deal of pain. Their shuttle was
moving completely away from the platform, probably out of fear of
being grabbed by one or more of the hounds and destroyed.
When she brought her gaze back to the menace in front of her, her
heart jumped. The hound's head was mere inches from her, its mouth
hanging open. She stared in terror for a few moments as the chaos
swirled around her. The platform was now almost forty degrees slanted,
and she could feel her body begin to lose grip with the metal and
slide slightly. She no longer noticed how hard it was to breath in
this environment, or how cold she was. Every bit of her attention was
on the beast that was, for some unsettling reason, taking a
significant time out from its mission of utter destruction to have a
staring contest with her.
The hound lurched and snapped its jaws at her face. Kylie shrieked
and lost what little bearing she had, and began to slide backwards
down the platform. She watched the hound as she fell, which simply
stood on the platform looking at her. Kylie reached the edge of the
platform and let out a loud grunt as she smacked into the foot-high
edging that was becoming more and more like the bottom of her perch.
She frantically scanned the platform for her father, but could not see
him anywhere. She did, however, see the shuttle she had come in,
circling around the platform. It seemed to spot her and began to move
closer. She waved at it just to make sure. The only thing on her mind
right now was getting off this platform and finding her father.
The shuttle came up along side Kylie and the side door slid open. Her
father was inside. He held his arms out to her and called for her.
Kylie slowly got to her feet on the edging -now at about seventy
degrees, the platform was more of a wall for her to lean against- and
braced herself to hop into the shuttle. She saw her father's eyes dart
up above her. She turned and looked where his gaze led. The hound was
still there, motionless, watching. It stood perfectly, as if the
platform was still 'down' to it, as if the laws of gravity simply did
not apply to it. From everything else she was seeing, it would not
surprise her.
Then, the hound appeared to detach -or maybe it just decided to start
following gravity's rules- and began to slide down at Kylie. Her eyes
went wide as it picked up speed. She turned, made a snap judgment
about how far she could leap, and jumped out towards the shuttle.
She misjudged.
There was a brief, gut-wrenching moment where Kylie realized she
couldn't make the jump she was already in the middle of. But the
shuttle dipped and tilted, and the pilot brought the side opening back
on level with her while her father wrapped an arm around her waist and
pulled her inside. He brought his other hand up to the shuttle's door
to close it, but the hound was already on the edge where Kylie had
been and was crouched, ready to pounce.
The pilot moved the shuttle higher, but there was no way for him to
get far enough that the hound could not reach. Giant metal paws
gripped the sides of the opening as it scrambled to pull itself
inside. Kylie's father tossed her to the other side of the shuttle
into one of the chairs, and he kicked ferociously at the beast's head,
which did not seem to faze it at all.
"EMP!" he shouted to the pilot as he kicked. The pilot nodded,
reached down under his controls, and pulled a level. Kylie grabbed the
seatbelt in her chair and fastened herself in. Her hair tingled and
stood on end slightly as the electrical charge pulsed through the air.
The shuttle went dead and started to tilt. The hound went dead as
well, and Kylie's father continued to kick it, loosening it from the
doorway. It slid out and fell, catching on the platform's edge below
and dangling off it lifelessly. The shuttle fell as well, twisting in
the air and smacking into the platform's edge itself, sending it
spinning in a freefall into the clouds and towards the ground.
Kylie felt herself forced up against the chair as the shuttle spun.
Her father had his arm wrapped around a few exposed pipes, and was
still reaching to shut the side panel door. The pilot was digging out
a small EMP-proof box that contained the necessary fuses to give the
shuttle power again. After almost losing his grip and sending the box
flying around the shuttle's cabin, he replaced the fuses and the ship
roared back to life, leveling off and hovering. Kylie's father slammed
the side door shut, leaned against it, and slid down to the floor.
Everyone was panting heavily and Kylie was shaking a little, her body
still tense from her close encounter with the mechanical hound.
"P-papa," she finally managed, "what was that?"
Her father, eyes wide, met her gaze but did not answer. He looked
more afraid than she was.
Wraygun
Nov 6, 2008, 12:58:41 PM11/6/08
to RedditWritersGroup
You shouldn't be scared to post! I got through about half of it - the
prologue and most of the first chapter, I think - but I can only be so
much of a slacker at work.
My take on it is that the idea itself is compelling, and I think it
could make a good story. The story as it is so far is a good start,
but I think comes off a bit more like detailed notes then the story
itself (it's the kind of thing I would sit down and write while the
idea is fresh in my head, before coming back to write the actual
text. There are a few issues with point-of-view, and with drifting in
and out of narrative voice, etc. I'd definitely recommend you keep
writing it, and not worry about what's written so far - keep writing
as you're doing, or more explicitly as notes, until you get to the
end. By that time you may have some good ideas on how to re-write
what you already have in a more polished style, or you might be at a
good point to bring in someone to give you some edit/style points to
get you started on that.
Most importantly, keep writing, and don't look back - not yet. It's
easy to get discouraged and keep poring over the same bit (usually the
start) over and over again, but it's so much easier to go back and
flesh out a skeleton that's already complete.
I hope that's helpful!
prologue and most of the first chapter, I think - but I can only be so
much of a slacker at work.
My take on it is that the idea itself is compelling, and I think it
could make a good story. The story as it is so far is a good start,
but I think comes off a bit more like detailed notes then the story
itself (it's the kind of thing I would sit down and write while the
idea is fresh in my head, before coming back to write the actual
text. There are a few issues with point-of-view, and with drifting in
and out of narrative voice, etc. I'd definitely recommend you keep
writing it, and not worry about what's written so far - keep writing
as you're doing, or more explicitly as notes, until you get to the
end. By that time you may have some good ideas on how to re-write
what you already have in a more polished style, or you might be at a
good point to bring in someone to give you some edit/style points to
get you started on that.
Most importantly, keep writing, and don't look back - not yet. It's
easy to get discouraged and keep poring over the same bit (usually the
start) over and over again, but it's so much easier to go back and
flesh out a skeleton that's already complete.
I hope that's helpful!
Tez
Nov 6, 2008, 2:08:56 PM11/6/08
to RedditWritersGroup
It was very helpful, thanks. The beginning is sort of supposed to
sound like notes before it actually starts following events as they
happen. Basically with the prologue as third-person omniscient and the
story itself in third-person limited. I'm sure there's a better way to
do it (it is only the first draft :P) but to some extent it's
intentional. I couldn't figure out a good way to tell a few decades of
history in any other way when there were only specific parts I wanted
to stress, and I didn't want to go too in depth and introduce
characters that were only present in the prologue or go on for pages
and pages about what is basically just the pre-show.
I really like your skeleton analogy- I haven't really looked at it
that way, I think keeping that in mind will help me avoid dwelling on
what is written and keep moving. Thanks again, I'd love to hear your
thoughts again once you finish reading it!
> ...
>
> read more »
sound like notes before it actually starts following events as they
happen. Basically with the prologue as third-person omniscient and the
story itself in third-person limited. I'm sure there's a better way to
do it (it is only the first draft :P) but to some extent it's
intentional. I couldn't figure out a good way to tell a few decades of
history in any other way when there were only specific parts I wanted
to stress, and I didn't want to go too in depth and introduce
characters that were only present in the prologue or go on for pages
and pages about what is basically just the pre-show.
I really like your skeleton analogy- I haven't really looked at it
that way, I think keeping that in mind will help me avoid dwelling on
what is written and keep moving. Thanks again, I'd love to hear your
thoughts again once you finish reading it!
>
> read more »
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