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By
fieldgunner
on
11-27-2007, 05:04 AM
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| Update... chapter one. Chapter One : BACK FROM THE DEAD The necrovault descended through the gradient at the optimum speed of a meter every minute. Inside her blood, slowly, the protocryogens melted and dissolved, bringing exquisite pain to every capillary in her body, a pain that began as a red haze at the edge of perception and gradually bled into the darkness of her sleep. The first synaptic responses began earlier than usual, only eighteen meters down the gradient instead of the usual twenty four. The vault operator acknowledged the sensor and adjusted the temperature in the gradient to compensate. Another six meters down, her vitals kicked in, and stabilized mere minutes later, faster than any normal sleeper. And then, suddenly…memory! Like a slick bowstrap, her body went taut in the descending cocoon as awareness hit her like a physical force. On his panel, the vault operator saw the restraint tension jump. Brainwave inductance spiked once, twice… thrice. The vault operator seasoned at this though he was, held his breath. The fourth spike blended into a plateau. “Subject is functional and neuro-constant,” the operator reported, “Electromuscular reconstruction protocol commencing…” His voice carried on the com to the brightly lit hexagonal reception at the base of the gradient, where three men in Veldcorps uniforms, one of them a senior Proxer, no less, waited for the necrovault to arrive. One of them turned to the vault operator’s tinted gondola and acknowledged with a slight nod. From his seat, the vault operator felt the slightest vibe of…what was it? Anxiety? Fear? Well, that was new… The operator knew that the sleeper was a female, and fairly young at that. He had no doubt that she was something extraordinary… her responses during the de-nec had been unprecedented in his experience… but a girl who could make the Veldcorps nervous was something else… He felt a spark of a desire to see her with his own eyes, but that was forbidden. The vaults hour long journey from the top of the gradient to the reception was almost complete. All monitors were green. Having done his walk-on part in history, the operator threw a knurled lever, opaqueing his windows and withdrawing the gondola into the metal wall. A few more moments passed in tomblike silence in the reception. Then the port at the bottom of the gradient slid open with a short, sharp hiss, and there she was … back from the dead, almost. The elongated glass bubble that had been her prison for sixty seven years slid forth on suspension rails to the recovery platform and tilted on whispering hydraulics into a vertical position. The mist of the de-nec vapours cleared from her face… Her eyes were open. The Veldcorps officer barely stopped himself from taking an involuntary step back. He had been sketchily briefed about her, sure, but nothing could have prepared him for the penetrating, icy turquoise stare that seemed to lase from her exotic face right through his self- enforced calmness. He knew her only as Subject Windchime, a randomly assigned name that gave absolutely no insight into what she really was. The vault split open and the fluid mist spilled onto the platform. The girl was, of course, naked. Naked and delicately, deceptively beautiful. Damp, jet black hair clung to her cheeks. Condensation glistened on her amber skin. Though she was chronologically eighty six years old, the necrovault had ensured that the lithe body restrained to the open cocoon was still nineteen. For a fleeting moment, jaws dropped and throats dried. The officer half- recovered first. “Er… Subject Windchime… I am here to… I am Proxer Samyel Masters of the Hannelite Division, Veldcorps… please keep calm…I am here to convey you to the…I mean we…” Her small breasts heaved against the belts that criss-crossed them as if she was making an effort to speak, but a soft wheeze was all that escaped. Eyes never leaving the Proxer, she tried again. “What ? I’m sorry, what ?” The Proxer seemed thankful for being interrupted. She nodded weakly for him to lean closer. Then spoke in a voice that once used to sing. “ I said…get me a medic, Proxer…and turn…the **** …around…” ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ “Ah…yes, of course…yes…get the medics in here…Now!” barked Proxer Masters, averting his eyes, all flustered. The men behind him whirled and almost ran each other over to get to the exit. Facing away from her nakedness allowed him to collect his thoughts. He took a deep breath, shook his head and started over. “Are you feeling all right?” He asked. She probably didn’t consider the query worth answering. “Well, you have been in Cryonec for sixty seven years… I am here to take you back to the Hannel One. The Staff Principal’s Audience is in session …they have voted to de-nec you, offer you a …a rehabilitation.” He hesitated, and turned a fraction to try to see if she was even conscious. “Eyes front, Proxer… I’m old enough to be your mother…explain ‘rehabilitation’, please?” “Actually, I am not authorized…” “What have they briefed you about me ?” “They… well, it doesn’t matter… Subject Windchime, I’m just a… an escort, actually… all your questions will be answered at the Audience…” “What have they briefed you ?” Her voice had, in less than a minute, gained strength and a quality of… command, realized the Proxer in dismay. “They told me you were dangerous and not to be underestimated…that you were to be in restraints and under guard at all times… they told me you were to be transported without the location of the Hannel One being disclosed to you...” She waited out the pause. “They said you outrank me… so I should be polite…” “So they plan to return my commission, do they?” she laughed lightly. Proxer Masters was tempted to turn again, not so much to see her state of undress, but because he would have loved to see her laugh. But the laugh was gone in the next instant. “Did they mention what it was that I said or did during the past sixty seven years that indicated to them that I was eager to rejoin the Veldcorps?” “You couldn’t have…oh, right… no, but my orders are just to transport you to the Audience… so…” The medics burst in, rolling a modified gurney in front of them, flanked by the Proxer’s aides and a Veldcorps doctor. A girl in the team hurriedly stepped forward and covered Subject Windchime in a black cloak that bore the Hannelite insignia. Two others two unplugged the revival support from the vault and plugged it into the gurney. “Are you feeling any …”, began the doctor. “Spatial disorientation, nausea, skin agitation and muscle ache? Of course I do… those are standard de-nec symptoms…I don’t need medication for that, you quack! Perform a rosette inhibition assay…now! ” The medics all froze and looked at each other, bewildered. “What?”, Proxer Masters said, “What did you… what did she ask for ?” Subject Windchime turned to him. Though her face was completely impassive, the Proxer, inexplicably, felt a burning aura of sheer hatred emanate from her. Suddenly, he had never been so afraid of anything else in his entire life. “I asked for a pregnancy confirmation, Masters…you and your Staff Principal had better hope that it’s still positive …” |
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By
fieldgunner
on
11-27-2007, 05:10 PM
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| Update...Chapter Two Chapter Two : THE ARKINDEN AUDIENCE “Conflict has always been a base trait of human civilization. Some may go so far as to call it a need… an undeniable… as essential to humanity as food and sex is to the individual.” The Staff Principal stood tall on the dais, a soft glow from the three cartograms that floated in the centre of the Audience hall throwing his eagle-like features into sharp relief. He was an old man, just about an year away from superannuation from the Veldcorps, but he knew that he would be leaving behind a towering legacy that would serve the interests of the elite arm of the Confederacy Corsaire… and indeed the Confederacy as a whole, long after he was ashes and dust. His voice had a strange, contradictory quality of being harsh and grating, yet hypnotic at the same time. The eight Arkinden, his council of generals, who each commanded a Strike Armada or an Offensive Division of the Veldcorps, sat silent and unmoving as sculptures in their places, listening to the legend speak. “What sets the Veldcorps apart from the rest of the Corsaire, and indeed from the rest of humankind, is that we have, as an organization, accepted this fundamental fact,” the Staff Principal continued, “We have, long ago, stopped seeing war as a means to achieve an end… we have realized that peace and stabilityare inherently just seeding grounds for further conflict. War is not destructive… indeed it is a catalyst for growth, not just for mankind, but for all sentients. It is a force without which civilization would stagnate, scatter and die. This view of war as a norm rather than an aberration has been at the nucleus of all Veldcorps strategy since the Great Migration, eleven hundred years ago. While we, as individuals, and those we serve rejoice at victory, mourn at defeat and feel relieved at the end of hostilities either way, the Veldcorps knows that these are mere interludes in the history of man, which is the history of war.” The Staff Principal was a man named Obernath Etlas. His was a story that inspired. Few military men in the history of the Confederacy had achieved as much as Etlas. He had been recruited forty three years ago at the very late age of twenty two, during the bloody Sim’nar Ak campaigns. He joined because he had a death-wish that would not be denied, and he started working on it the first time he stepped on the barren rockscape of the Ak Sib world as a footrecon in Cohort IX of the Sedush Division of the Veldcorps. The Sim’nar were a spacefaring race of humanoid sentients who were confined to two planets of Ak Meth and Ak Sib located in the long unexplored Sector Trinomede. First contact had been made by prospecting mining corporations of the Confederacy more than two centuries ago. During that time, the two Sim’nar Aks had been locked in a stalemate over the rich asteroid fields that ringed their planetary system. In a typical colonial strategy, the miners had thrown in their efforts with the slightly weaker Ak Sib world in exchange of substantial claims in the asteroids. The stalemate stood broken. The bitter war that began in the Aks was fought mainly by mercenaria and the private militias of the miners. It was not long before Ak Meth sued for peace and the Confederacy intervened diplomatically to end the conflict. The mining corporations established extensive operations in the field over the next decade. The local politics and equations of the Sim’nar were ignored. That turned out to be an error of judgment that the Confederacy would pay for dearly. The Confederacy’s presence in the Sim’nar Ak system did something unparalleled in Ak history… it united them. The Sim’nar were strategically patient. Their technology, decidedly primitive in comparison with human tech at the time of first contact, grew in quantum steps. They spied, they stole, they modified and they reverse engineered. To be fair, they also innovated. Fifty years ago, they attacked without preamble and massacred every single man, woman and child on the mining stations in the Ak field. The Sim’nar were also strategically stupid, it seemed. The Ak system came under siege by the Confederacy Corsaire in a matter of days. While the Sim’nar had underestimated the Confederacy’s response, the Confederacy in turn realized, after the first few skirmishes of the war, that they may have underestimated their sheer ferocity. The Sim’nar Ak campaigns would be fought for the next eight years and would cost a billion lives on either side. Two Veldcorps Divisions, the Sedush and the Draghana, and one Armada, the First Skymasters, were inducted quite late into the Aks, only when the Corsaire’s regular formations became aware of a disturbing balance between them and their opponents, and the war threatened to deteriorate into impasse. Footrecon Obernath Etlas was among the first wave. His fourteen member reconteam saw combat on their first day in the system . They were assigned to designate three landing zones for their Cohort’s Patton Class Planetfallers on a Sim’nar flank. When they landed in their small dropship, they realized that the selected area was not a flank… it was in the middle of the enemy’s stronghold line… and there were a thousand pissed Sim’nar who had watched them touch down… |
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Last edited by fieldgunner; 11-30-2007 at 05:20 AM.
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