In a backdrop of inky blackness any flicker of light draws the eyes. Actually, it draws the sensors when you’re eyes are an AI package, but it amounts to the same thing. I brought up the camera feed from the fore-port camera and marveled. It might not look like much to some, but to me it looked like adventure, freedom and a chance to play boy hero. It was a fairly basic Buster, mostly tuned up, mostly kitted for quick jukes and rolls and sporting 11MJ of shielding and a quartet of Beta IREs to go with the pair of Alphas from my old Disco; but to me it screamed bad ass. I just knew that flying that thing I was going to be indestructible.
Hey, I had done a pretty fair job in my Disco, even before the last of the engine upgrades I did to her. I had splashed a trio of Harriers in one dog fight and come through it without so much as a scorch mark on the paint job. Hell, even with just 3MJ of shielding I had swayed and jived my way out of harms way while smacking first one and then the next and then the next of those pilot fighter jockeys around until one bailed and the two less intelligent ones burned. I was a god in my own mind, but I really was good enough to live through it and score a ship in the process. Between the savings not detailed to keeping the “Sally Girl” a top notch little freighter or setting up my own satellite network and the sale of the Disco and the mostly intact Harrier, I had just enough. Eventually some cargo upgrades would be added and I’d be in hog heaven. I’d finally found that “oh so secret” Space Fuel refinery, just where my friend Josh had said it would be and timed the run between it and the Trading Station, so I knew what the chances were and how to turn a quick credit when it was needed. Yep, I had the whole galaxy by the tail and was ready to make them all cry.
“There are now three mizuars to docking Captain.” The sweet contralto of Heady, my freighters AI, broke my reverie and I glanced at the indicators and took the stick for the final approach. I trust Heady, you see, but not the lame brained excuses for pilots that always seem to find just the wrong time to stop paying attention as they manually dock at this Trading Station. There is a drawback to having that Space Fuel Refinery in system after all. I’d read that there are more ‘rubs’ at the Heron’s Nebula Free Argon Trading Station than at any other Trading Station in the Core sectors. I wasn’t about to have some joker cut across my nose and try to later blame it on Heady. I took the stick for final docking approaches. That’s just the way I did things. A few final puffs from the strafe drive and that sweet tone from the station traffic control AI announces another perfect docking. As I shut down the manual input devices and lock them out to prevent theft, I told Heady to mind the shop and have the Teladino Symphony playing when we power back up and headed for the already extending passenger tube. I’ve never been on this station before and the jitters I get at every new station remind me how important it’s going to be to present a professional image as I talk with the Purser and the Docking Master. Word is that these two handle a good deal of the ‘outsourcing’ that goes on at this station and I could certainly use an infusion of capital right now.
As the sphincter opens and I float through to the inner airlock I can already feel the tension between my shoulder blades. Harris had said that these two guys could make or break you in the Nebula system. If you didn’t have a major contract for shipping, being an independent up here could be tough, but with them it could be big Credits. The feeling of the air exchangers going through their cycle reminds me to grab the stanchions and get my feet in the flooring grooves before the room is allowed to begin its synchronizing spin. Hmm, a bit on the heavy side it feels like. Make it 0.8 standard Gs. That’s interesting in itself. Most of these independent trading stations don’t bother supporting more than a .72 spin. It must be the extra money flowing through here that allows for the extras. It’s certainly a step up from the almost embarrassing 0.61 standard G’s that the Ore Belt Station is known for. A guy could get used to this.
The door opens and young Boron in a full domed atmosphere helmet greets me politely as I pass my bag through and climb in to the station proper. Well lit here too. These guys must do alright indeed. I sign the docking forms and electronically chop the signature tab and try to draw out the Pursers Assistant about the station in general. People never seem to take advantage of the Argon penchant for live receivers in the docking arrays. These guys are a nividium mine of information though. The few sezuras of polite exchange is almost always worth it. I pay him the half credit for the ring elevator card, no more walking those endless halls for this boy, and leave the other half credit on the transfer voucher in thanks for his advising me on which bars to stay out of. Half a mizura later I am being let off in the main concourse.
Wow, busy place. There must be forty or fifty shipmen in here and about half as many **** pit crew. I notice that there is even a trio of Paranid over by the Information Kiosk. This place isn’t allot less busy than the Argon Prime Station Concourse. Especially as this is so late in the station standard day, well in to the sixth stazura. I wondered if this place was an all nighter. It did turn out to be one, but that’s another story.
A surprising amount of clandestine business gets carried on in Free Trading Station concourses. Allot of legitimate business does as well, but the clandestine sort is really what you FEEL when you walk in to the area with your antennae twitching, wanting to make real money, big money, real fast. For me it wasn’t the Purser or the Dock Master that put me on to my first big score. It was a somehow greasy looking Teladi, short and disturbingly saurid like all of her race, but so inoffensive looking that you felt almost sorry for her that put the idea in my mind that one could be fully a merc and a merchant at the same time.
The conversation was banal at first. She didn’t know who or what I was, and it was just a “pass the time” kind of thing, that lengthened, and lengthened and so on. Before I knew what was going on a stazura had passed and the place was changing, with more of the “night crowd” out, even more people than had been earlier, but nearly all of them looking like extras from a space mafia flick, and her own demeanor changed too, becoming harder and yet more closely conspiratorial at the same time. I have no doubt that figured me for the novice I was, but she treated me like a dangerous Pirate who needed her as a contact. It made me feel the part. The Teladi aren’t the greatest Traders in the galaxy for nothing. They read people, especially maybe human people, like open books. And my book, back then, didn’t have a ton of pages anyway.
In short, she handled me.
I left the station with a sealed cred voucher for 14, 350 Credits and with her personal assurances that it was all on the up and up, that all the proper paperwork had been filed, in triplicate with the proper officials and that the proper hands had been liberally softened with “fragrant grease”, as she called it. It was a kill, but a righteous one. I was certain of that. It was righteous.
Does it sound like I’m trying to convince myself of that? Three jazuras later and yes, I still am trying, without success, to convince myself of it. What was it? What were the particulars? Let me take you back in time those three jazuras to mid 762, and without naming names, let those of you who remember the fiasco it was have the answer to that question. Maybe this will lay the ghosts of that event once and for all.
Black velvet, diamonds and death
Moderators: TheElf, Moderators for English X Forum
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Cantankerous
- Posts: 175
- Joined: Wed, 9. Aug 06, 19:46
Black velvet, diamonds and death
Not quite a newbie anymore, but still able to ask the most stultifyingly silly assed questions imaginable.
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ghostrider
- Posts: 11
- Joined: Sat, 21. Jul 07, 20:20
I have a hard enough time remembering which story's witch and you go and start yet another -
The Zig
- Posts: 458
- Joined: Mon, 1. Mar 04, 22:59
Great opening.
Really like the general voice and tone. It's conversational, and rich in feel. Interesting that you entirely did away with direct dialogue for this part - didn't get yourself bogged down in conversations. I think that let you keep the rich setting, while keeping a sharp and punchy pace and feel.
Good work, man!
Nice prelude-style lead in at the end too. Sets up a nice anticipation for what comes next. Good stuff.
Really like the general voice and tone. It's conversational, and rich in feel. Interesting that you entirely did away with direct dialogue for this part - didn't get yourself bogged down in conversations. I think that let you keep the rich setting, while keeping a sharp and punchy pace and feel.
Good work, man!
Nice prelude-style lead in at the end too. Sets up a nice anticipation for what comes next. Good stuff.
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Cantankerous
- Posts: 175
- Joined: Wed, 9. Aug 06, 19:46
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Cantankerous
- Posts: 175
- Joined: Wed, 9. Aug 06, 19:46
***Let there be peace under Sonra; and let it begin with me.***
I was told that he was a Pirate, and a murderer, many times over as it happened. I was told that Ankla Da was the exception to the cool, calm, pacifistic Boron mold, and as far removed from it as might be. I was told that he had stolen the child of a Teladi Company Manager and had sold this child to other Pirates like himself, who doubtless tormented her, in revenge for the honest Company Manager not authorizing tribute to be paid to the hated Boron Pirate.
Yes, I was young and naïve, but maybe not that naïve. An honest Teladi Company Manager? Who were they kidding? If a Teladi had refused to “pay tribute” to a Pirate it was because the books looked better without the tribute, that the bottom line showed more profit. Hell, they even say: “Profit go with you!” as a deeply and religiously zealous refrain. It isn’t one they use lightly. Still, I wanted to believe that the poor parent had every right to want revenge. And looking over the documents she did have, it certainly looked to me like they were in order; not that I would have been any better at spotting a faked document in those days than I would have been in spotting a faked art masterpiece. That is to say as long as it looked even vaguely credible that would have been enough for me.
So, this notorious pirate was presently piloting a Dolphin Freighter, but likely he had a fighter escort or two. Or two? Oh helllll-lo, I hoped to m**** that if it was plural that they were Octopuses. Almost as soon as I launched I could see this wasn’t the case.
I spent the extra cred for the best senor package I could get my hands on. I’d gotten a great price on a Metsu Fune VII Gravidar Duplex system with all the gravy and trimmings. She had vastly greater range than the factory system and fine detail friend/foe recognition that was second to none and after I had programmed the system with the ship registry of the “pirate” it was ready to so paint him the second it got him. Because of the advanced protocol package that came with it, it would designate any ships that were transmitting his sub-frequencies with the same red-foe markings. And this system was nearly fool proof. It re-examined it’s friend/foe query fourteen times per sezura whenever it was at all within either precise or distant gravidar range. Now, I was so impressed that the system found all three targets almost as soon as I had launched that it failed to register with me that they still were, when all was said and done, suspiciously close ranged. That should have tipped me off. Hell, it did tip me off. I knew right then that something was wrong, but I submerged it.
This was something of a right of passage for me. This whole insanity was about me proving to myself that I had what it took to be a bounty hunter and a hard case, like the guys I watched on trideo growing up, the ones who never had nightmares about their victims screaming in their burning cockpits before they flared out, but always had a light and flippant something to shout over their comm. Units as they scorched the bad guys. Never mind that even when the bad guys are basically “bad guys” that they have families too that wait for them, families that love them and want them to come home safely. But that kind of thinking could make you freeze up and not become a damned killer, so it had to be edited out and edited out hard. I remember so clearly my ears burning with these thoughts as I banked my Buster towards the “bogeys” and told myself that these guys were all stone killers, that they’d take me out without compunction or thought if they saw me in a freighter in a sector where the rules were lax.
Of course I didn’t announce myself to my enemies. The Dolphin they were escorting was slow, barely making 55 m/s, so I flew casually behind hem and closed the distance with the same casual indifference, slightly above their plane of elliptic and in a ling that would put me almost directly above the first of the two escorts. I’d need every break I could get as these escorts were definitively NOT Octopuses. They were both Makos, and new models, both with almost as much shielding capacity as I had both faster than I was one of them able to pull almost 200 m /s and if well piloted, both were more than capable of turning me into Argon Pâté. I was liking this less and less by the moment. But I set it up, and carefully at that.
When I got my new Buster; or, well, new to me anyway, as the old girl was probably older than my mother without regard to the fact that she was supposedly fitted out in 749, I made sure that the Argon Prime Shipyards at which I had transferred all of the various sensor and computer packages from my old Disco made sure that the firing tubes for the four Wasp missiles I had were in pristine shape I couldn’t have afforded those four Wasps but I didn’t need to as I looted them from the same Pirates who were kind enough to donate the Harrier to me. Those four Wasps were going to be very necessary though, for “the plan.”
“The Plan”, spelled that way in my mind, with capital letters and all but with a fanfare, was simple enough. I intended to get as close to these guys as I could, right above and slightly behind the port side escort and then casually slow to match speed with them and then I’d tip nose down and flay his shields with every erg of laser fire that I could pour into him for as long as possible, but once he evaded enough to break targeting lock for the guns I was going to feed him a Wasp salvo. Hopefully his shields would be down and maybe he’d even have some of his hull eaten up and while he was playing tag with the Wasps I could then bank over and take the second escort under my guns and keep on him as long as possible. With any luck the Wasp salvo would put paid to the first escort if I had dropped his shields. There was a fair chance of it after all. And since the Dolphin was a typical Boron pacifist job (yes, it did occur to me even then that this was an awfully funny ship to run around in for a hardened killer) I wouldn’t have to worry about him piling in to things. Simple, yes, but with a good likelihood of success as well, it wasn’t a bad plan all in all.
Did I give even a moments thought to the guys piloting the Makos. Especially to the one I was getting ready to murder by deception and quick ambush? Of course I did. That was half of the problem. I kept repeating in my mind the mantra, “They’re bogies. You aren’t killing men, or even fish men, they’re just ships, just hardware. Don’t think about it. Be strong!”
Yeah, murder is strength. I had to keep repeating that to myself, because it sounded as hollow as a politicians promise right from the start. But we humans are amazing beasts. We can turn our minds off, at least in the short term, and tell ourselves it’s ok because the other guy IS a soulless killer and he’d do it to me quick enough and for less.
But how much less can you get than less than five thousand credits per death for the death of no less than three sophont beings? And maybe the Dolphin had a few more too. Some of the older ‘Phins, and this one looked old enough to have seen my grandmothers birth, used live crewmen in maintenance and engineering slots instead of AIs and robotic waldoes. So, I might well be killing as many as six men for less than fifteen thousand credits. How was I going to convince myself f the vile nature of all of them?
I didn’t. I just convinced myself not to think about it. THAT is something we humans are better at than rationalization even; turning off our brains and not thinking about the implications of what we do is our real gift.
This is getting morose. Kyle, I know I promised you I’d do this but…
No, forget it. I’ll do anything to have even a chance of laying these first ghosts. I’ll keep on. Not for you, but for me. I’m great at doing things for my own benefit after all.
I was told that he was a Pirate, and a murderer, many times over as it happened. I was told that Ankla Da was the exception to the cool, calm, pacifistic Boron mold, and as far removed from it as might be. I was told that he had stolen the child of a Teladi Company Manager and had sold this child to other Pirates like himself, who doubtless tormented her, in revenge for the honest Company Manager not authorizing tribute to be paid to the hated Boron Pirate.
Yes, I was young and naïve, but maybe not that naïve. An honest Teladi Company Manager? Who were they kidding? If a Teladi had refused to “pay tribute” to a Pirate it was because the books looked better without the tribute, that the bottom line showed more profit. Hell, they even say: “Profit go with you!” as a deeply and religiously zealous refrain. It isn’t one they use lightly. Still, I wanted to believe that the poor parent had every right to want revenge. And looking over the documents she did have, it certainly looked to me like they were in order; not that I would have been any better at spotting a faked document in those days than I would have been in spotting a faked art masterpiece. That is to say as long as it looked even vaguely credible that would have been enough for me.
So, this notorious pirate was presently piloting a Dolphin Freighter, but likely he had a fighter escort or two. Or two? Oh helllll-lo, I hoped to m**** that if it was plural that they were Octopuses. Almost as soon as I launched I could see this wasn’t the case.
I spent the extra cred for the best senor package I could get my hands on. I’d gotten a great price on a Metsu Fune VII Gravidar Duplex system with all the gravy and trimmings. She had vastly greater range than the factory system and fine detail friend/foe recognition that was second to none and after I had programmed the system with the ship registry of the “pirate” it was ready to so paint him the second it got him. Because of the advanced protocol package that came with it, it would designate any ships that were transmitting his sub-frequencies with the same red-foe markings. And this system was nearly fool proof. It re-examined it’s friend/foe query fourteen times per sezura whenever it was at all within either precise or distant gravidar range. Now, I was so impressed that the system found all three targets almost as soon as I had launched that it failed to register with me that they still were, when all was said and done, suspiciously close ranged. That should have tipped me off. Hell, it did tip me off. I knew right then that something was wrong, but I submerged it.
This was something of a right of passage for me. This whole insanity was about me proving to myself that I had what it took to be a bounty hunter and a hard case, like the guys I watched on trideo growing up, the ones who never had nightmares about their victims screaming in their burning cockpits before they flared out, but always had a light and flippant something to shout over their comm. Units as they scorched the bad guys. Never mind that even when the bad guys are basically “bad guys” that they have families too that wait for them, families that love them and want them to come home safely. But that kind of thinking could make you freeze up and not become a damned killer, so it had to be edited out and edited out hard. I remember so clearly my ears burning with these thoughts as I banked my Buster towards the “bogeys” and told myself that these guys were all stone killers, that they’d take me out without compunction or thought if they saw me in a freighter in a sector where the rules were lax.
Of course I didn’t announce myself to my enemies. The Dolphin they were escorting was slow, barely making 55 m/s, so I flew casually behind hem and closed the distance with the same casual indifference, slightly above their plane of elliptic and in a ling that would put me almost directly above the first of the two escorts. I’d need every break I could get as these escorts were definitively NOT Octopuses. They were both Makos, and new models, both with almost as much shielding capacity as I had both faster than I was one of them able to pull almost 200 m /s and if well piloted, both were more than capable of turning me into Argon Pâté. I was liking this less and less by the moment. But I set it up, and carefully at that.
When I got my new Buster; or, well, new to me anyway, as the old girl was probably older than my mother without regard to the fact that she was supposedly fitted out in 749, I made sure that the Argon Prime Shipyards at which I had transferred all of the various sensor and computer packages from my old Disco made sure that the firing tubes for the four Wasp missiles I had were in pristine shape I couldn’t have afforded those four Wasps but I didn’t need to as I looted them from the same Pirates who were kind enough to donate the Harrier to me. Those four Wasps were going to be very necessary though, for “the plan.”
“The Plan”, spelled that way in my mind, with capital letters and all but with a fanfare, was simple enough. I intended to get as close to these guys as I could, right above and slightly behind the port side escort and then casually slow to match speed with them and then I’d tip nose down and flay his shields with every erg of laser fire that I could pour into him for as long as possible, but once he evaded enough to break targeting lock for the guns I was going to feed him a Wasp salvo. Hopefully his shields would be down and maybe he’d even have some of his hull eaten up and while he was playing tag with the Wasps I could then bank over and take the second escort under my guns and keep on him as long as possible. With any luck the Wasp salvo would put paid to the first escort if I had dropped his shields. There was a fair chance of it after all. And since the Dolphin was a typical Boron pacifist job (yes, it did occur to me even then that this was an awfully funny ship to run around in for a hardened killer) I wouldn’t have to worry about him piling in to things. Simple, yes, but with a good likelihood of success as well, it wasn’t a bad plan all in all.
Did I give even a moments thought to the guys piloting the Makos. Especially to the one I was getting ready to murder by deception and quick ambush? Of course I did. That was half of the problem. I kept repeating in my mind the mantra, “They’re bogies. You aren’t killing men, or even fish men, they’re just ships, just hardware. Don’t think about it. Be strong!”
Yeah, murder is strength. I had to keep repeating that to myself, because it sounded as hollow as a politicians promise right from the start. But we humans are amazing beasts. We can turn our minds off, at least in the short term, and tell ourselves it’s ok because the other guy IS a soulless killer and he’d do it to me quick enough and for less.
But how much less can you get than less than five thousand credits per death for the death of no less than three sophont beings? And maybe the Dolphin had a few more too. Some of the older ‘Phins, and this one looked old enough to have seen my grandmothers birth, used live crewmen in maintenance and engineering slots instead of AIs and robotic waldoes. So, I might well be killing as many as six men for less than fifteen thousand credits. How was I going to convince myself f the vile nature of all of them?
I didn’t. I just convinced myself not to think about it. THAT is something we humans are better at than rationalization even; turning off our brains and not thinking about the implications of what we do is our real gift.
This is getting morose. Kyle, I know I promised you I’d do this but…
No, forget it. I’ll do anything to have even a chance of laying these first ghosts. I’ll keep on. Not for you, but for me. I’m great at doing things for my own benefit after all.
Not quite a newbie anymore, but still able to ask the most stultifyingly silly assed questions imaginable.
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Cantankerous
- Posts: 175
- Joined: Wed, 9. Aug 06, 19:46
And maybe a "cat that ate the canary smiley too". Anyway, thank you for your kind words. There are few of us here who read these so it is important to know they are being read and enjoyed.
And genius that I am I just now managed to note your own signature. You're a writer here. I'm going to have to try to load those on a USB stick before I run and remember to take my net book. I look forward to reading them.
Isshia
And genius that I am I just now managed to note your own signature. You're a writer here. I'm going to have to try to load those on a USB stick before I run and remember to take my net book. I look forward to reading them.
Isshia
Not quite a newbie anymore, but still able to ask the most stultifyingly silly assed questions imaginable.
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collins50
- Posts: 196
- Joined: Sun, 25. Dec 05, 19:51
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Cantankerous
- Posts: 175
- Joined: Wed, 9. Aug 06, 19:46
Hi Collins 
Nah, it's only three X Universe stories. The others are in different genres, from heroic fantasy through horror, eight all totaled presently. I'm the old fashioned kind of writer who doesn't write unless the Muse whispers. The problem right now is that there are a whole tribe of them bending my ears and three of them (two of the heroic fantasy girls and the one who is whispering the horror story) just won't shut up. Really, right now, I'm more interested in what the girl from Summer Time (this forum) is saying, but she is the least chatty right at the moment.
Isshia
Nah, it's only three X Universe stories. The others are in different genres, from heroic fantasy through horror, eight all totaled presently. I'm the old fashioned kind of writer who doesn't write unless the Muse whispers. The problem right now is that there are a whole tribe of them bending my ears and three of them (two of the heroic fantasy girls and the one who is whispering the horror story) just won't shut up. Really, right now, I'm more interested in what the girl from Summer Time (this forum) is saying, but she is the least chatty right at the moment.
Isshia
Not quite a newbie anymore, but still able to ask the most stultifyingly silly assed questions imaginable.
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Cantankerous
- Posts: 175
- Joined: Wed, 9. Aug 06, 19:46
Thanks to those of you who have been reading...and this will, after a hiatus, likely start up again, but right at present I have TC and my Reunion stories are waiting a bit while the Muse in TC gets here time on stage.
I am probably going to tie all of the Reunion stories together with the TC story (the story that is comprised of eight stories ) in the not too distant future as the continuing tales of the X-Verse, in case anyone is interested.
So, for all three of the Reunion threads, you'll be asked to kindly be patient with the TC Muse, who seems to want to just talk and talk and talk. Thanks again.
Isshia
I am probably going to tie all of the Reunion stories together with the TC story (the story that is comprised of eight stories
) in the not too distant future as the continuing tales of the X-Verse, in case anyone is interested.So, for all three of the Reunion threads, you'll be asked to kindly be patient with the TC Muse, who seems to want to just talk and talk and talk. Thanks again.
Isshia
Not quite a newbie anymore, but still able to ask the most stultifyingly silly assed questions imaginable.