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."

The Ganesha Campaign

This is part of a larger space opera story I've been working on for a while. 

     Jezzie went over to the shelf and examined the holoprint.  It showed Liam and two other people in Alliance Army uniforms.  One of them was a young pretty woman.  The other was Logan.  From Liam’s apparent age the print was about twenty years old.  But Logan only looked a few years younger than the man she had met earlier that day.

Leyla’s Tale (Part Six)

     I had been considering a move to the United States for some time.  After World War II many Hidden Ones moved there.  The devastation of the war in Europe made it easier to fabricate identities with no paperwork.  Just about every large concentration of European immigrants in the U.S. had a few Hidden Ones in it.

     My recent encounter with Hans Glickenhoff convinced me of the need to abandon my current identity and move on.  I had a score to settle with him but Hans held all the high cards at the moment.  I would have to wait until I had the advantage to confront him.  So it seemed the right time to make the move to the New World.  

A Hunter’s Tale

I tried to write this as a standalone story about the Hunters so it’s technically not part of Leyla’s Tale.  If you’ve read the first part of Leyla’s Tale, you’ll realize what this scene is.  If not, I recommend reading part one right after reading this.

This was Gustav’s first Hunt.  He had helped on other Hunts as a driver but this was his first time as an actual Hunter.  He was nervous and excited.  The creatures were dangerous, especially when cornered in their lair. 

Leyla's Tale (Part Five)

     The next day I was escorted to a courtroom.  Two men in dark suits and a severely dressed woman with a tight bun of gray hair sat on a raised platform at one end of the room.  I was directed to a chair placed squarely in front of and facing the judges.  Armed guards flanked the door.  The witness chair was flanked by a pair of desks.  At the desk to my left sat two men.  One was a nervous looking man who looked to be in his fifties.  He was obviously the defendant.  Next to him sat a younger man with several folders on the desk in front of him.  I wondered how much effort the advocate was putting into the defense.  On my right was the prosecutor.

     I had never met Hans Glickenhoff before but I recognized him from his photographs.  He was about the same age as Baker but looked ten years younger.  He must have been feeding on many of my kind over the years to be aging that slowly.  He gave me a predatory look as I sat in the witness chair.  I felt like I was being sized up like a side of beef.  He rose and spoke in a booming voice that filled the courtroom.

The Institution Part Two

Sorry for the long break in writing.  The real world was very demanding.  Here's the continuation of my last story.  There is a fair amount of violence so you've been warned.