Vince
Mar 4th, 2008, 07:32:07 PM
After reading Khendon's thread about his novel recently, I realised that I had been lax in writing my own. So, as a sort of self-motivational tool, I'll post a little snippet of what I've been writing. It's (surprise surprise!) a scifi premise, but I don't really know what to categorize it as so far.
The formatting messed me up a bit, so imagine that it is actually indented and all that.
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"Leonde?" she called into the microphone. "Leonde, this is shuttle four, ready to begin docking."
Irene waited for the answer to come. Idly, she wondered if it would be Alexander who answered. Sometimes he was an annoying adult, but especially when it came to times such as this, as he never acted like she thought an uncle should.
"Uh, Irene, do you think Alexander's playing one on you?" asked Risa, who had been chosen as the chaperone for the student flight. Irene blinked. He hadn't answered?
"Leonde." This time, it was Risa who called to the station. "Leonde, answer in, please."
Silence. Irene sighed, more annoyed than anything else. Alexander was really trying her today.
"Alexander," Irene called in after a pause and still no answer. "Alexander, can you hear me? I'm hungry, and I'm tired. Let the shuttle on so we can get something to eat and go to sleep."
"Miss Risa," Maro's voice carried over to them from his station on the navigation panel. "I'm reading an odd trajectory on the Leonde. It's..." he paused. Irene blinked.
"What?" she asked impatiently. "What's going on?"
Risa, however, looked troubled. And then her face cleared, and she looked angry. "They're going to do it without me!" she growled.
"What?" Ismani asked. "What are they going to do? Miss... Miss Risa?"
Irene was just as curious. "Risa... what's going on?"
Risa didn't say a word. She looked hollow. Irene had seen pictures of people going through the deaths of family members. How sad, sorrowful they looked. Risa's expression was so much deeper. It was frightening. It was like there was nothing at all inside of her, and the smiling joking person they had seen earlier was just a mask. She was leaned over Maro's navigation display, but was looking out the view-port to look at the huge frame of the Leonde. She looked betrayed. She seemed to hold all of those things inside of her at once, but Irene couldn't really understand what she was seeing. All she knew was Risa looked frightening, and never once in all the time she had known the woman had Irene known her to look frightening.
Risa gripped the panel tightly, her knuckles turning white. Suddenly, it seemed she deflated. Irene knew something then. She didn't know how, but her mind connected the dots, and she saw a line, straight from the moment Culiander Ram had murdered Edman Kant, to this moment. But something was missing, and she tried to understand what it was. Something had caused Culiander Ram to murder someone. What was it? The man was quite possibly the most unlikely to snap and go insane. What had happened? What had happened to cause Risa and everyone aboard Leonde to...?
Risa stood straight, and walked out of the bridge of the large shuttle, snapping Irene from her thoughts.
"Stay here!" she snapped, and followed Risa, jogging to catch up. Somehow, it seemed that Risa was walking almost faster than Irene could run. She always seemed to turn a corner just as Irene was coming around the last one.
"Risa!" Irene called, picking up her pace. She turned the gentle slope of the hall that led to the docking bay, almost running into the older woman, who didn't even acknowledge the teenager. "Risa, what's happening?" she bit out, very annoyed.
Risa stopped and turned to her as the docking bay doors opened, leaving the hull doors the only thing from the empty, hungry space around them. Irene wasn't prepared for the blow.
Irene stumbled back, and gripped her face where Risa's fist had landed, shocked. "What was that for?" Irene shouted, regaining her balance. But Risa did not answer, and pressed the button to unlock the hull door switch. The bay doors began closing. Irene blinked, but was too dizzy to get to the doors in time.
"I'm sorry, Irene," Risa's voice, normally cheery and laden with sarcastic innuendo, sounded flat. "Alexander would have been mad had you followed me. It was supposed to be him here when it happened. He was supposed to be here. Not me."
Irene couldn't think beyond hearing the words and processing them.
"I wasn't meant to be here."
And Risa Kaman pulled the switch to the hull doors; Irene watched in horror as the woman's body was sucked violently out into empty, hungry space.
"Irene! What's happening?" <st1><st1:city w:st="on">Antony</st1:city></st1>'s voice echoed over the speakers above her. "What was Risa talking about? What's happening?" He was sounding scared. Irene was beyond scared now.
She was terrified.
"Irene!"
Shaking her head, she snapped out of her stupor, and saw the open hull doors through the thick glass of the bay hatch. Risa Kaman was dead.
"Irene! Get up here! Something's happening!"
Slowly, as if she were walking through a high-gravity training room, Irene turned and pressed the button to close the hull doors. She felt as if she were locking herself away from something. She didn't want to know what it was. As soon as the doors hissed closed, she turned to see Maro, looking decidedly sick and frightened. Irene felt as though she were in fog, and idly wondered if she looked like the young man did. She began walking back to the bridge, feeling as if she were in a trance. Maybe this was the worst nightmare she'd ever had; another thought wound its way around her consciousness. Those childhood nightmares of the irrational bag-men who were said to have gone around the old cities and put the heads of their victims in bags for their pets to eat because of the old superstitions didn't come close, if this were all a product of her subconscious. She stopped to gather herself again.
Irene put her hand on the smooth green walls of the hall, and using the wall for support, started walking to the bridge again. Maro, looking a bit better than he had before, walked back to her, and put her arm over his shoulders to help her.
"<st1><st1:city w:st="on">Antony</st1:city></st1>," Ikiyo Nakaon's voice came clearly through the speaker as they walked up towards the bridge. "It's true. All of it. Everything Alexander told you is true. Everything he showed you was absolute fact."
Her voice crackled out.
It didn't take long to get to the bridge, which somewhat surprised Irene in her sluggish state of mind. It seemed to take a lot longer to catch up with Risa. Maro thumbed the scanner; the doors hissed open, and all the students on the bridge turned to her and Maro. <st1><st1:city w:st="on">Antony</st1:city></st1> lay on the floor by the navigation panel, dead; there were a number of scorch marks on the walls, and dead people on the floor. Zassas was holding a pistol limply in his hands while he stared at Antony's dead form. Maro managed to hold himself together while Irene retched, though he didn't look much better.
"What is it, Kesaria?" Maro asked as he helped Irene to the nearest seat. Irene blinked, and gratefully settled down into the Commander's seat in the centre of the bridge.
"The Leonde's going through the splitting process, Maro."
Kesaria ran a hand through her long red hair, and Irene felt an inexplicable stab of envy at the girl's good fortune to have such beautiful hair. Though she did seem a bit chubbier than she had when coming aboard just about a month and a half ago. Irene pushed such extraneous thoughts from her head. The speakers flared a small warning, and then a voice came through the speakers.
"Kesaria?" a familiar voice; Irene was sure she should have known who it was immediately. "Kesaria, darling, are you there?"
"Daddy?" the red-head cried. "Daddy, what in the name of Rorek is going on!"
"Honey," Constans shushed his daughter, "I'm sorry. Alexander pushed us into a shuttle, but we didn't manage to get out in time. We're caught in the arc—"
"What do you mean?" Kesaria asked, her eyes getting wet. Irene listened dispassionately, though she was sure she should have felt something by now. All Risa's fault, for killing herself in front of...
"I'm not entirely sure myself, honey. Listen. Your mother and I are going to try and land. Do not under any circumstances land until this is over, understand?"
"What?" Irene heard herself asking. "Until what is over? And Alexander?"
"Leonde is entering atmosphere. Six pieces, and the system is reporting trajectories for...Arou, Essina, Xastis...Uran..."
Ismani was looking incredulously at the panel in front of her. Maro quickly reached over Irene to hit the communications relay on the arm-panel.
"Leonde!" he shouted. "Leonde, answer in! Systems report that your trajectories are fatal, not sea-bound! Correct course!"
"Maro."
Everything stopped for Irene. Kesaria's eyes were wide, and she was crying. Maro was taking a breath to repeat what he had said. The other students were shouting, or running to the other rooms to warn the rest of the transfers of what was going to happen.
"Alexander?"
Irene's voice was much too calm, she decided.
"Irene. I'm sorry."
Irene blinked and looked up at the speaker, as if she could see her uncle in it.
"That's what Risa said too," Irene said, voice soft; Alexander sounded like Risa had, only... only, his voice had a bit more feeling in it. Alexander heard Irene's near whisper anyway.
"Risa?" He asked. "Where is Risa?"
"In space." Irene answered matter-of-factly. "She punched me, and opened the hull doors. She flew into space."
Alexander said nothing for a moment. "She was angry."
It was a question, and a statement at the same time. Irene knew what he was asking, and nodded.
"Yes," she answered when she realized that Alexander could not see her.
"I see." Irene felt that Alexander should not have been so calm about Risa dieing like that. But then, wasn't she acting odd as well? Voices, too low to be understood well, came through the speaker. Alexander said something in return, and paused, before saying, "Irene. I'll miss you. Your father would have been proud of the girl he raised."
The speakers emitted the lost connection warning. Maro swore. Kesaria was holding her stomach, and weeping profusely. Irene could make out sounds of Constans shouting something about changing vectors and a collision; suddenly there was only static. Irene heard Ismani muttering under her breath while she typed codes in quickly. Irene recognized the hacking codes Ismani used immediately, and watched as Ismani brought the panel-screen up to full view and tried various times to break into Leonde's computer system, until a message came up.
-Connection failure. Systems locked.-
Ismani stared at the message, lost. Her face and body radiated disbelief. Irene felt sorry for her. Irene stood, and noticed that Maro was stabbing the communications button with his finger, and shouting into the microphone. No one answered; Maro didn't stop. Almost as if she was lost, Irene looked about herself, and stopped at the large space-view off to the side of the bridge, on the lower level. Zassas was standing there, looking out the view.
Irene felt sorry for the boy, and carefully stepped down the stairwell to the lower bridge-deck. Standing next to him, she felt clear headed, as she saw the planet below her in beautiful blues and greys and greens and whites. Oceans; cities; forests or grasslands; clouds. She could see the large sections of Leonde falling through the atmosphere, the main section on the way down to Uran. The <st1><st1>Grand</st1> <st1>City</st1></st1> would be destroyed. And with their conductor offline, the Sea Cities on the other side of the planet would slowly die, and drown. The sections were flaring red as the atmosphere seemed to try and burn them up before they could hit the planet; as if it were trying to keep them from doing such a monstrous thing. Some exploded, and debris flew off, Irene heard Ismani plot new courses for the debris. It had been planned apparently: the debris were on trajectories for the largest of the Sea Cities.
She turned her head away from the view, and saw Kesaria standing behind her. Irene saw her tears, and reached up to feel her own face. 'I'm crying too?' Irene asked herself as she felt for the first time the slightly uncomfortable feeling of tear tracks drying and getting wet again as more fell.
She turned back to look at the upper bridge level. Maro had given up trying to reach Alexander. He was standing at the top of the stairwell, staring at her. He only turned away when he watched his steps down the stairs. Irene turned back to the space-view, and touched the transparent material (she still wasn't entirely sure what the views were made of). She wanted to reach out and scoop up Leonde, and bring it back up. From this distance, it looked as if it were small enough that she could do so; it looked like it could fit in her hand.
She blinked, and saw the bright flare of light from planet-side, as the main section of Leonde crashed down into the surface with the force of an asteroid. Or worse, from the number of volatile combustibles that were stocked on board for experiments. Soon, red orange glows were littering the surface as they watched civilization as they knew it die.
Maro collapsed, turning to land in a crouch against the wall. Sobs wracked through his body; great heaving sighs that sent shudders through him despite not making any sound besides that of the great gasping breath of a choking man. Irene leant her forehead against the glass, and saw her reflection on the planet's surface.
In that moment, she knew that whatever madness had consumed her uncle and the rest of the crew of Leonde, he had never stopped loving her. It caused her a sweet sort of pain that she'd never felt before, this knowledge. He loved her enough to save her; but not himself. Whatever had caused Culiander to choke Edman to death wasn't strong enough to totally destroy her uncle. He was still himself long enough to save her and the others.
All those stares, and silences now made sense to her. His insistence that she learn to pilot and control a shuttle; how to make emergency landings; how to actually cook; everything. For the past month, he'd been training her to survive this.
Alexander had been planning to die.
The formatting messed me up a bit, so imagine that it is actually indented and all that.
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"Leonde?" she called into the microphone. "Leonde, this is shuttle four, ready to begin docking."
Irene waited for the answer to come. Idly, she wondered if it would be Alexander who answered. Sometimes he was an annoying adult, but especially when it came to times such as this, as he never acted like she thought an uncle should.
"Uh, Irene, do you think Alexander's playing one on you?" asked Risa, who had been chosen as the chaperone for the student flight. Irene blinked. He hadn't answered?
"Leonde." This time, it was Risa who called to the station. "Leonde, answer in, please."
Silence. Irene sighed, more annoyed than anything else. Alexander was really trying her today.
"Alexander," Irene called in after a pause and still no answer. "Alexander, can you hear me? I'm hungry, and I'm tired. Let the shuttle on so we can get something to eat and go to sleep."
"Miss Risa," Maro's voice carried over to them from his station on the navigation panel. "I'm reading an odd trajectory on the Leonde. It's..." he paused. Irene blinked.
"What?" she asked impatiently. "What's going on?"
Risa, however, looked troubled. And then her face cleared, and she looked angry. "They're going to do it without me!" she growled.
"What?" Ismani asked. "What are they going to do? Miss... Miss Risa?"
Irene was just as curious. "Risa... what's going on?"
Risa didn't say a word. She looked hollow. Irene had seen pictures of people going through the deaths of family members. How sad, sorrowful they looked. Risa's expression was so much deeper. It was frightening. It was like there was nothing at all inside of her, and the smiling joking person they had seen earlier was just a mask. She was leaned over Maro's navigation display, but was looking out the view-port to look at the huge frame of the Leonde. She looked betrayed. She seemed to hold all of those things inside of her at once, but Irene couldn't really understand what she was seeing. All she knew was Risa looked frightening, and never once in all the time she had known the woman had Irene known her to look frightening.
Risa gripped the panel tightly, her knuckles turning white. Suddenly, it seemed she deflated. Irene knew something then. She didn't know how, but her mind connected the dots, and she saw a line, straight from the moment Culiander Ram had murdered Edman Kant, to this moment. But something was missing, and she tried to understand what it was. Something had caused Culiander Ram to murder someone. What was it? The man was quite possibly the most unlikely to snap and go insane. What had happened? What had happened to cause Risa and everyone aboard Leonde to...?
Risa stood straight, and walked out of the bridge of the large shuttle, snapping Irene from her thoughts.
"Stay here!" she snapped, and followed Risa, jogging to catch up. Somehow, it seemed that Risa was walking almost faster than Irene could run. She always seemed to turn a corner just as Irene was coming around the last one.
"Risa!" Irene called, picking up her pace. She turned the gentle slope of the hall that led to the docking bay, almost running into the older woman, who didn't even acknowledge the teenager. "Risa, what's happening?" she bit out, very annoyed.
Risa stopped and turned to her as the docking bay doors opened, leaving the hull doors the only thing from the empty, hungry space around them. Irene wasn't prepared for the blow.
Irene stumbled back, and gripped her face where Risa's fist had landed, shocked. "What was that for?" Irene shouted, regaining her balance. But Risa did not answer, and pressed the button to unlock the hull door switch. The bay doors began closing. Irene blinked, but was too dizzy to get to the doors in time.
"I'm sorry, Irene," Risa's voice, normally cheery and laden with sarcastic innuendo, sounded flat. "Alexander would have been mad had you followed me. It was supposed to be him here when it happened. He was supposed to be here. Not me."
Irene couldn't think beyond hearing the words and processing them.
"I wasn't meant to be here."
And Risa Kaman pulled the switch to the hull doors; Irene watched in horror as the woman's body was sucked violently out into empty, hungry space.
"Irene! What's happening?" <st1><st1:city w:st="on">Antony</st1:city></st1>'s voice echoed over the speakers above her. "What was Risa talking about? What's happening?" He was sounding scared. Irene was beyond scared now.
She was terrified.
"Irene!"
Shaking her head, she snapped out of her stupor, and saw the open hull doors through the thick glass of the bay hatch. Risa Kaman was dead.
"Irene! Get up here! Something's happening!"
Slowly, as if she were walking through a high-gravity training room, Irene turned and pressed the button to close the hull doors. She felt as if she were locking herself away from something. She didn't want to know what it was. As soon as the doors hissed closed, she turned to see Maro, looking decidedly sick and frightened. Irene felt as though she were in fog, and idly wondered if she looked like the young man did. She began walking back to the bridge, feeling as if she were in a trance. Maybe this was the worst nightmare she'd ever had; another thought wound its way around her consciousness. Those childhood nightmares of the irrational bag-men who were said to have gone around the old cities and put the heads of their victims in bags for their pets to eat because of the old superstitions didn't come close, if this were all a product of her subconscious. She stopped to gather herself again.
Irene put her hand on the smooth green walls of the hall, and using the wall for support, started walking to the bridge again. Maro, looking a bit better than he had before, walked back to her, and put her arm over his shoulders to help her.
"<st1><st1:city w:st="on">Antony</st1:city></st1>," Ikiyo Nakaon's voice came clearly through the speaker as they walked up towards the bridge. "It's true. All of it. Everything Alexander told you is true. Everything he showed you was absolute fact."
Her voice crackled out.
It didn't take long to get to the bridge, which somewhat surprised Irene in her sluggish state of mind. It seemed to take a lot longer to catch up with Risa. Maro thumbed the scanner; the doors hissed open, and all the students on the bridge turned to her and Maro. <st1><st1:city w:st="on">Antony</st1:city></st1> lay on the floor by the navigation panel, dead; there were a number of scorch marks on the walls, and dead people on the floor. Zassas was holding a pistol limply in his hands while he stared at Antony's dead form. Maro managed to hold himself together while Irene retched, though he didn't look much better.
"What is it, Kesaria?" Maro asked as he helped Irene to the nearest seat. Irene blinked, and gratefully settled down into the Commander's seat in the centre of the bridge.
"The Leonde's going through the splitting process, Maro."
Kesaria ran a hand through her long red hair, and Irene felt an inexplicable stab of envy at the girl's good fortune to have such beautiful hair. Though she did seem a bit chubbier than she had when coming aboard just about a month and a half ago. Irene pushed such extraneous thoughts from her head. The speakers flared a small warning, and then a voice came through the speakers.
"Kesaria?" a familiar voice; Irene was sure she should have known who it was immediately. "Kesaria, darling, are you there?"
"Daddy?" the red-head cried. "Daddy, what in the name of Rorek is going on!"
"Honey," Constans shushed his daughter, "I'm sorry. Alexander pushed us into a shuttle, but we didn't manage to get out in time. We're caught in the arc—"
"What do you mean?" Kesaria asked, her eyes getting wet. Irene listened dispassionately, though she was sure she should have felt something by now. All Risa's fault, for killing herself in front of...
"I'm not entirely sure myself, honey. Listen. Your mother and I are going to try and land. Do not under any circumstances land until this is over, understand?"
"What?" Irene heard herself asking. "Until what is over? And Alexander?"
"Leonde is entering atmosphere. Six pieces, and the system is reporting trajectories for...Arou, Essina, Xastis...Uran..."
Ismani was looking incredulously at the panel in front of her. Maro quickly reached over Irene to hit the communications relay on the arm-panel.
"Leonde!" he shouted. "Leonde, answer in! Systems report that your trajectories are fatal, not sea-bound! Correct course!"
"Maro."
Everything stopped for Irene. Kesaria's eyes were wide, and she was crying. Maro was taking a breath to repeat what he had said. The other students were shouting, or running to the other rooms to warn the rest of the transfers of what was going to happen.
"Alexander?"
Irene's voice was much too calm, she decided.
"Irene. I'm sorry."
Irene blinked and looked up at the speaker, as if she could see her uncle in it.
"That's what Risa said too," Irene said, voice soft; Alexander sounded like Risa had, only... only, his voice had a bit more feeling in it. Alexander heard Irene's near whisper anyway.
"Risa?" He asked. "Where is Risa?"
"In space." Irene answered matter-of-factly. "She punched me, and opened the hull doors. She flew into space."
Alexander said nothing for a moment. "She was angry."
It was a question, and a statement at the same time. Irene knew what he was asking, and nodded.
"Yes," she answered when she realized that Alexander could not see her.
"I see." Irene felt that Alexander should not have been so calm about Risa dieing like that. But then, wasn't she acting odd as well? Voices, too low to be understood well, came through the speaker. Alexander said something in return, and paused, before saying, "Irene. I'll miss you. Your father would have been proud of the girl he raised."
The speakers emitted the lost connection warning. Maro swore. Kesaria was holding her stomach, and weeping profusely. Irene could make out sounds of Constans shouting something about changing vectors and a collision; suddenly there was only static. Irene heard Ismani muttering under her breath while she typed codes in quickly. Irene recognized the hacking codes Ismani used immediately, and watched as Ismani brought the panel-screen up to full view and tried various times to break into Leonde's computer system, until a message came up.
-Connection failure. Systems locked.-
Ismani stared at the message, lost. Her face and body radiated disbelief. Irene felt sorry for her. Irene stood, and noticed that Maro was stabbing the communications button with his finger, and shouting into the microphone. No one answered; Maro didn't stop. Almost as if she was lost, Irene looked about herself, and stopped at the large space-view off to the side of the bridge, on the lower level. Zassas was standing there, looking out the view.
Irene felt sorry for the boy, and carefully stepped down the stairwell to the lower bridge-deck. Standing next to him, she felt clear headed, as she saw the planet below her in beautiful blues and greys and greens and whites. Oceans; cities; forests or grasslands; clouds. She could see the large sections of Leonde falling through the atmosphere, the main section on the way down to Uran. The <st1><st1>Grand</st1> <st1>City</st1></st1> would be destroyed. And with their conductor offline, the Sea Cities on the other side of the planet would slowly die, and drown. The sections were flaring red as the atmosphere seemed to try and burn them up before they could hit the planet; as if it were trying to keep them from doing such a monstrous thing. Some exploded, and debris flew off, Irene heard Ismani plot new courses for the debris. It had been planned apparently: the debris were on trajectories for the largest of the Sea Cities.
She turned her head away from the view, and saw Kesaria standing behind her. Irene saw her tears, and reached up to feel her own face. 'I'm crying too?' Irene asked herself as she felt for the first time the slightly uncomfortable feeling of tear tracks drying and getting wet again as more fell.
She turned back to look at the upper bridge level. Maro had given up trying to reach Alexander. He was standing at the top of the stairwell, staring at her. He only turned away when he watched his steps down the stairs. Irene turned back to the space-view, and touched the transparent material (she still wasn't entirely sure what the views were made of). She wanted to reach out and scoop up Leonde, and bring it back up. From this distance, it looked as if it were small enough that she could do so; it looked like it could fit in her hand.
She blinked, and saw the bright flare of light from planet-side, as the main section of Leonde crashed down into the surface with the force of an asteroid. Or worse, from the number of volatile combustibles that were stocked on board for experiments. Soon, red orange glows were littering the surface as they watched civilization as they knew it die.
Maro collapsed, turning to land in a crouch against the wall. Sobs wracked through his body; great heaving sighs that sent shudders through him despite not making any sound besides that of the great gasping breath of a choking man. Irene leant her forehead against the glass, and saw her reflection on the planet's surface.
In that moment, she knew that whatever madness had consumed her uncle and the rest of the crew of Leonde, he had never stopped loving her. It caused her a sweet sort of pain that she'd never felt before, this knowledge. He loved her enough to save her; but not himself. Whatever had caused Culiander to choke Edman to death wasn't strong enough to totally destroy her uncle. He was still himself long enough to save her and the others.
All those stares, and silences now made sense to her. His insistence that she learn to pilot and control a shuttle; how to make emergency landings; how to actually cook; everything. For the past month, he'd been training her to survive this.
Alexander had been planning to die.