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Lore, Fan Media & Fiction / Unavoidable Decisions
« on: January 20, 2012, 04:19:28 AM »
By all the long lost Gods of man, I wish for nothing more than to avoid the pit, the mire, of Hegemony space. It’s hard enough as I walk through the black corridors of this ageing, creaking hulk to keep the shadows from my mind, I don’t know how I would cope if the shadows actually were out to get me.
I am on board The Grantham, an independently operated Venture-Class cruiser taking a few hundred miners and some low grade equipment out to a small industrial outpust on Clanx IV. It wouldn’t be my destination of choice, I’ll admit, but it was inconspicuous enough for me for now, and the people I am sharing the journey with were just the right kind of people that I needed. Simple folk, out to work the heavy metal mines for a few months, to earn enough credits to feed their temporarily discarded families for the rest of the cycle. Folk who couldn’t care less whether the Hegemony disappeared tomorrow. My kind of people.
I arrived on this boat six days ago, the Venture and its escort fleet hailing me well before I knew they were there. I had used up a significant portion of my system power in the escape shuttle making my escape from the scene of a massacre, and I was just sat there, on the go-slow, recharging the systems carefully from the bright white dwarf a few hundred million kilometres away. Some ancient orchestral music was keeping me company at the time, I believe.
I could still feel and hear the imploding crunch and the shudder of that Harpoon sinking in to the side of our Tempest hull as the engineer was desperately trying to discharge an overload of flux and bring our shields back. Something made our engine burst in to life a second later, failing almost as soon as it had started, and it dragged down those of us who remained standing after the missile strike. The bridge was littered with charred flesh and the sparking consoles streaked with blood. My decision was made for me.
I watched the Condor swallow up the black, burst hull behind me as I sped away. It was bittersweet that I alone survived from that wrecked hull, and for the sake of my own lost crew and those who suffered alongside us, I intended to carry out our mission to completion. But more than that, I intended to complete the mission for our glory.
I was sharing my quarters on The Grantham with an overweight miner, veteran of 25 cycles of working the pits of Clanx IV, and he was heavily marked all over his body with pitted depressions, some the size of a man’s fist. He was very keen to show me these, as well, which didn’t help me with my paranoia in any way. All those cycles working with the heavy metals had given him ‘enough cancer to choke a horse’ and apparently he still had the excised growths on display in his home. I wondered whether it really would take a lot of cancer to choke a horse, but I didn’t feel like prying, and I felt sorry for his family. It wasn’t their fault that they were provided for by such a man. But his idiocy was comforting - his ignorance bliss.
I walked the dimly lit corridors of the Venture, and returned to my quarters, hoping that he would be asleep on his bunk, or enthralled in one of those family dramas he liked to tune in to. Anything that would keep him from trying to entertain me, really.
The door opened, and a lump formed in my throat as I saw his body slumped, unnaturally, face down on his bed.
A foot tapped almost musically in the corner of the room behind the door.
“Please, do come in.”
The voice is shrill, but lazy. The voice of a man much calmer than I, my hand sweating uncontrollably around the tightening grip on my briefcase. My face feels cold. There is nowhere to run. A dark pool is beginning to form on the sheets around the unmoving head of the fat miner. He must have been alive but seconds ago.
“You have no need for concern, my dear fellow. You will be pleased to know the Hegemony have no concept of your escape, and in all likelihood they believe the reports of your cargo to be … false.”
Uncontrollably, my hand tightens further around the smooth metal handle of the case, so much so that the muscles in my hand began to cramp. I can only stand still in the dark corridor, just outside the door.
“We can negotiate with the door between us, if you want. But I would recommend whatever the outcome you are leaving this hulk with me. The rest of the miners aren’t going to appreciate what you appear to have done to your friend here.”
I try to speak but as I open my mouth, the dryness of my throat is stifling. Somehow, the Tri-Tachyon have found me, and I knew that my fate was already sealed, whatever that fate would be.
I force my legs to wake up and I enter in to the room.
E: Minor edits
I am on board The Grantham, an independently operated Venture-Class cruiser taking a few hundred miners and some low grade equipment out to a small industrial outpust on Clanx IV. It wouldn’t be my destination of choice, I’ll admit, but it was inconspicuous enough for me for now, and the people I am sharing the journey with were just the right kind of people that I needed. Simple folk, out to work the heavy metal mines for a few months, to earn enough credits to feed their temporarily discarded families for the rest of the cycle. Folk who couldn’t care less whether the Hegemony disappeared tomorrow. My kind of people.
I arrived on this boat six days ago, the Venture and its escort fleet hailing me well before I knew they were there. I had used up a significant portion of my system power in the escape shuttle making my escape from the scene of a massacre, and I was just sat there, on the go-slow, recharging the systems carefully from the bright white dwarf a few hundred million kilometres away. Some ancient orchestral music was keeping me company at the time, I believe.
I could still feel and hear the imploding crunch and the shudder of that Harpoon sinking in to the side of our Tempest hull as the engineer was desperately trying to discharge an overload of flux and bring our shields back. Something made our engine burst in to life a second later, failing almost as soon as it had started, and it dragged down those of us who remained standing after the missile strike. The bridge was littered with charred flesh and the sparking consoles streaked with blood. My decision was made for me.
I watched the Condor swallow up the black, burst hull behind me as I sped away. It was bittersweet that I alone survived from that wrecked hull, and for the sake of my own lost crew and those who suffered alongside us, I intended to carry out our mission to completion. But more than that, I intended to complete the mission for our glory.
I was sharing my quarters on The Grantham with an overweight miner, veteran of 25 cycles of working the pits of Clanx IV, and he was heavily marked all over his body with pitted depressions, some the size of a man’s fist. He was very keen to show me these, as well, which didn’t help me with my paranoia in any way. All those cycles working with the heavy metals had given him ‘enough cancer to choke a horse’ and apparently he still had the excised growths on display in his home. I wondered whether it really would take a lot of cancer to choke a horse, but I didn’t feel like prying, and I felt sorry for his family. It wasn’t their fault that they were provided for by such a man. But his idiocy was comforting - his ignorance bliss.
I walked the dimly lit corridors of the Venture, and returned to my quarters, hoping that he would be asleep on his bunk, or enthralled in one of those family dramas he liked to tune in to. Anything that would keep him from trying to entertain me, really.
The door opened, and a lump formed in my throat as I saw his body slumped, unnaturally, face down on his bed.
A foot tapped almost musically in the corner of the room behind the door.
“Please, do come in.”
The voice is shrill, but lazy. The voice of a man much calmer than I, my hand sweating uncontrollably around the tightening grip on my briefcase. My face feels cold. There is nowhere to run. A dark pool is beginning to form on the sheets around the unmoving head of the fat miner. He must have been alive but seconds ago.
“You have no need for concern, my dear fellow. You will be pleased to know the Hegemony have no concept of your escape, and in all likelihood they believe the reports of your cargo to be … false.”
Uncontrollably, my hand tightens further around the smooth metal handle of the case, so much so that the muscles in my hand began to cramp. I can only stand still in the dark corridor, just outside the door.
“We can negotiate with the door between us, if you want. But I would recommend whatever the outcome you are leaving this hulk with me. The rest of the miners aren’t going to appreciate what you appear to have done to your friend here.”
I try to speak but as I open my mouth, the dryness of my throat is stifling. Somehow, the Tri-Tachyon have found me, and I knew that my fate was already sealed, whatever that fate would be.
I force my legs to wake up and I enter in to the room.
E: Minor edits