Death is Served - Part 2

     Katya and the other servers gave statements to the uniformed policeman then again to the homicide detectives who showed up a few minutes later.  She noticed Thorne took aside the detective in charge, Lieutenant Drumm.  The two men spoke in whispered tones and shot glances at Katya.  The women were then taken to a police station for further questioning. 

Death is Served - Part 1

It's been a while since I've written and even longer since I've written about the Hidden Ones.  To refresh you memory on who Katya is read this first.  You can also read this but you don't need to read it first. 

     It was very inconvenient that a man Katya wanted to kill was murdered.  Inconvenient because she wouldn’t have a chance to interrogate him or search his place for information about his Hunter friends.  And inconvenient because she ended up being a suspect in his murder.

Cleansing Fire

     It had taken Holden a while to find the creature’s lair.  The underground section of the city had been forgotten by most people.  Holden only knew about it because he remembered his grandfather talking about it when he was a kid.  The underground section wasn’t on the current city plans he had initially checked online.  It had taken most of a day looking through microfiche archives in the basement of city hall to find it.  The section was adjacent to the subway system but could only be accessed through the storm drain system. 

The Long War - Part 6

Memories

     I lay awake in bed sorting through the new memories running through my head.  I knew that the persona I had now was fictitious but it was easier to think of the Peter Rudko in those memories as someone else. 

The Long War - Part 5

Flanagan Revealed

 Olga listened in astonishment as I described my encounter with the alien.  “So it pushed a button and sent you back here?”

     “That’s what it looked like.  But I’m not sure if I was there by design or by accident.”

     “What do you mean?”

     “I wonder if I woke up in the other place because of the pain or maybe because I was dying.”

     “I don’t follow.”

     “Maybe the machinery or whatever that keeps us here doesn’t handle pain well.  Maybe pain interferes with how the interface processes signals from the brain.”

     “Interface?  Processing signals?  What are you talking about?”

     “Those words just came to me.  Maybe the other me knows those terms and the memory broke through.”

     “That’s a lot of maybes, darling.”

     “True, but it’s the best theory I can come up with.”

     “You aren’t thinking of doing something foolish to test your theory, are you?”

     “Of course not.”  I think Olga knew I was lying but she let it go for the time being.

On Space: Above and Beyond

I’ve been rewatching Space: Above and Beyond and have some thoughts.  I’ll avoid revealing major plot points but some spoilers are unavoidable so consider yourself warned.

The Long War - Part 4

The Village

     The regiment was assigned to a different sector of the front line.  My detachment was given a small slice of the regimental sector that only needed one platoon to man it at a time.  This gave me more time to prepare the men for the upcoming offensive.

The Long War - Part 3

 The Scent of a Woman

The Long War - Part 2

Here is the next part of the story I started last week with "Dawn Attack"
Note: there is a graphic bit of violence at the end.

Dawn Attack

     At first I thought the glitches were my mind playing tricks on me.  They were always little things.  Maybe one morning I would wake up in the bunker knowing I needed to clean my rifle but finding it clean when I checked.  I would just think I really had cleaned it the night before and forgotten.  That sort of thing could be easily chalked up to lack of sleep or stress.  I did not think much of things like that until I met Flanagan. 

Photograph

This is a slightly expanded version of something I wrote for a creative challenge on io9. 

Horace looked at the faded photograph from his childhood.  Two boys flanked an android.  The three were bound by friendship and standing together against the world.  But Jasper was dead now.   He had died back in the AI War, victim of the drone bomb attack on San Diego.  Only Horace and TED433L were still around.  And now Horace was dying.

Animal Spirit

     Gretchen had inherited the hunting cabin after her father’s death.  Her friends often asked her why she kept the place.  She only used the place a few times a year and refused to rent it out.  Gretchen would just smile and say it was her bond with her dead father.  Which was true in a way.  Her father had introduced her to the animal spirit.  The spirit was in the cabin.  Sometimes it would call for her but otherwise it did not want to be disturbed.  

In the Land of the Others

He had been walking for days across the wastelands of Ichor. He paused on the crest of a ridge and surveyed the scene in front of him. His destination was still over the horizon. The land before him was dark and crisscrossed with several streams of lava. He looked for a path that would keep him clear of the towering spires of the Others. Angry clouds filled the sky and obscured the sun, his only method of navigation.

The Master had told him to follow the sun. In the mornings his shadow pointed the way to go. In the afternoons he walked towards the setting sun. At night he found hiding places to sleep in. The Master had tried to explain star formations to him once but he did not understand. Besides, it was dangerous to travel in the open at night. That was when the Others came out.

He did not know what was in the package the Master had told him to deliver. It did not matter. He did what the Master told him to do.

There was about an hour of daylight left. He considered his choices. He could find a spot now to spend the night. There were almost certainly caves in the side of the ridge he was on. Or he could keep going and be that much closer to his destination. But it would be harder to find suitable hide spots down on the plain. He kept going. He could not abide the idea of wasting daylight.

An hour later he was following the edge of a lava stream as the sun set. He had found no good spots to spend the night and was getting desperate. He could see the light of fires in the spires. The Others would be roaming soon. The lights of a spire were ahead of him in the distance. He decided to keep going that way until he found a place to rest. He plodded forward, fear overcoming his weariness.

He heard noise behind him and spun around. There were four Others behind him. They drew swords and moved to circle him. He shifted his walking staff and assumed a fighting pose. He charged before any of them could get behind him. He struck one with a solid blow to the head and saw him crumple to the ground. But the odds were against him and he was quickly hacked to death.

The three survivors stood around their fallen opponent. One of them spoke. "What's an orc doing so far in human lands?"

"I don't know. Let's get Herric's body and get back to the spire."