Tag: writing

Asks the grizzled old man seated at a comically large desk empty of anything except a pen and a few sheets of multi coloured paper. The office secreted in the depths of Torus Station, is well adorned with rich fabrics and expensive artifacts, if sparse. The tall and slender woman standing before him is watching him through cold slate grey eyes. “Yes – sir. And what we know so far is not encouraging. It seems that The Company having let that old bastard Garneau lead a personal war over a vendetta is working about as well as we had come to expect from a guy who spends seventy five to ninety percent of his time in stasis, so that he could try to bring a sense of peace, calm and continuity to humanity. The ego on this guy. Fuck me.” She spits in disgust.

“Yes, yes, Gemma my dear girl, I am well aware of your feelings toward my youngest son. He wanted glory and to command from a place of visibility, while we chose to live in the shadows, and the comfort of anonymity.  He’s a fool, but I can’t have him killed. So we let him run afoul of that demented doctor to test his mettle. If he comes back we can control him since we know so much about his goings on within the flotilla. And if he dies. Well then. He’s dead, and we can moved passed this debacle finally, with our hands clean.” He harrumphs in his typically gruff manner.

“Yes sir.” She smiles warmly at the old man. “Now you said you have news. Spill it, I’m rather busy Gemma.” He leans back into his over stuffed leather wing backed chair. The springs creaking under his movement. “Long story, short version then, yes? Right. The nanotech integrated soldiers, mainly the heavy weapons Fire Teams and all of the Walking Tank units caught some kind of brain bug that gave them all irreparable brain damage, and they thought they were all lost. To which your son’s best friend decided to convert them to 100% nanobot automatons, and they woke up, and are now operational, but are no longer human. They don’t eat, or sleep, or communicate verbally anymore. I guess using all of the same batch of nano bots to repair every single one of them created this hive mind between them. Scary good as a fighting force, fearless, and savage. But not human, and the rest of the crew has noticed the shift.

Also – side note. Due to the 100% uptake in the nanobots they have taken to horrific displays of shedding their biological materials. Talk of them shitting out shriveled and wasted organs. The stench is a thick all encompassing miasma aboard each ship until the last one is finished. They do it wherever they are, at any time. I hear it’s a total horror show to behold. The scrubbers and recyclers are being over loaded, and a few regular crew have gotten sick from the decaying body matter. Morale is not high.” She says while wiping her forehead, and tucking a loose strange of her dark hair behind an ear.

“Secondly, the admiral had lost faith in the nanotech integrated teams and almost immediately called on captain Morgan to jump start her Jackal Protocol. Those massive Bison drones she’s so proud of. Anyway – she purportedly had almost sixty crew members injured on purpose to fill the ranks of her fighting force, and they are taking to it slowly. Promising results from the subconscious training regimen, but less so when entirely awake, though I have reports that it’s starting to gel. Oh, also – the captain is suspected of having her more perceptive crew murdered for piecing two and two together.” To this the older man raises his hands to rest fingers interlocked on top of his head. “Did she now. I knew she had ambition, but that’s a bit much.” He coughs out the words. “Hm. Yes, a bit much.” She repeats in response.

“Also, our intelligence suggests that they have picked up a new Ghost Crew member during the resupply at the Mars Six Sub-Orbital Aerial base, but have not updated their HR directory to say who it is. Which seems odd? Do I need to notify anyone of this? That seems rather widely outside the norm.” She smirks with a raised eyebrow. “No, no, you know what, let it stand. Keep an eye on it. Let’s see if we can trace it back before anything comes of it.” He laughs conspiratorially. “Yes sir.” She says.

“Lastly, our spies at UB313 have said that this will likely be a blood bath, as the, as you said, demented doctor has a fair few surprises in store for the admiral and his fleet. Whom are due to arrive at their rendezvous point in a matter of hours from now.” She finishes her statement and cracks her knuckles, and rolls her shoulders. “Mm… well, keep watching. Find out what you can about our mystery Ghost. And let me know when the fighting starts. Is there anything else?” He says while stifling a yawn.

“Actually yes there is. We’ve noticed a signal from out beyond Pluto and Charon that has a encrypted message in it. It appears vaguely human in origin. But something seems off about it. From what we can tell two names repeat a lot. Just the letter ‘K’ and the name Kelvin.” She says. The man freezes in his spot. “Did you say Kelvin?” He sputters. “Yes, it’s here on the report sir.” She pulls a sheet of paper out of a group and softly lays it down on the desk infront of the older man. Looking down at the paper the man’s face drains of colour. “Well fuck me. He was telling the truth.”

Part Thirty Six : Ghost of the Dirty Starling.

Both Gurinder and Bennet Jr got hurt in exactly the right ways to be placed directly into the captain’s new drone program immediately after getting seriously injured?” Drawls the very drunk interim supply clerk and dock worker Norman Chan a little too loudly. His friends at the hip high bar table all look at Norm sideways over their drinks. “Not this again!” The chorus goes up from the group around Norm. “Come on man, we leave port tomorrow afternoon, let’s just get drunk, fuck and forget about shit for a few hours, man! Just let it go. People are starting to stare.” Slurs a particularly drunk Bennet Sr. His hair a messy tussle of greasy grey. “He’s my son – right? Right. So, so… I’m just glad they had the spinal column haptics that gives him full mobility again ok. That container mishap crushed a good portion of his back. He could, he, he could have died man. Be happy he isn’t dead!” Shouts Bennet Sr over the din of the music blaring in the crowded bar. “I know, I know!” Norm waves his hands, palms out. “It just seems suspicious is all I’m saying.” Norm takes another long pull from his mixed drink. Bennet Sr leans over to rest on his shoulder and says. “Oh hey, that smells good, what is that Norman?” He slurs cheerily, his momentary lapse of melancholy driven away by drink. “Sex on the beach.” Norm says. “What!?!” Shouts back Bennet Sr. “I said Sex on The Beach!” Norman bellows, just as the music goes quiet waiting for the beat to drop. A huge portion of the crowd turns to look at the now flushed and thoroughly embarrassed Norman. The beat comes crashing back in and the crowd cheers! “YEAH!” Norman turns away from his group of friends and winds his way through the packed dance floor of the bar, away from the bar top he was using to steady himself between drinks. Working his way back towards the men’s room at the farthest reaches of the narrow room. The long interior wall is one long bar with mirrors behind it making you feel like the space was wider than it was, in the middle were lengths of bar top between pillars and a few free standing tables, mostly faux wood finishes dominated the bar. Then a walk way, and several day bed like couches under the floor to ceiling cement glass windows that looked out into space. But now caught the glinting sight of the Mars Six Sub-Orbital Aerial Base where the Jolene Roger was docked for Resupply before shipping out to Pluto for an offensive against the Insurgency, and their black ops base stationed at UB313. Passing by the hot and sweaty crowd Norman fails to notice as a few heads turn to follow him as he walks through the crowd. The three men in a triangle formation watch as Norman walks between them and on to the toilets at the back of the room. The smallest of the three watchers types quickly on his wrist communicator without looking down at it. He is smiling and being social with a few women at his slab of the bar. Within moments the three gentleman get a return notification, and slowly they peel away from their gatherings and walk nonchalantly to the men’s room.

Norman passes the last part of the bar and reaches up to grasp the pillar just out away from the wall before nearly falling over a drunk woman legs. How he missed the bright pink tutu is anybody’s guess. Leaning down, gingerly he asks if the young woman needs any help regaining her feet. Instead she pulls him head first by his collar into the space where the pillar meets the floor and he blacks out. Crawling onto Norman’s body she begins to writhe around and shriek incoherently. The gathered crowd turns their backs in an attempt to ignore the weird behavior. With the crew on edge with war looming nobody is willing to get in the middle of anyone’s business tonight. A brief moment later and three men bolt into the bathroom locking the doors behind them. Their shouts, and the sounds of gun shots are muffled by the music and the heavy doors. From the floor the woman rolls of Norman, and fireman carries him out of the club. No one gives them a second look.

Several paces outside the bar the woman sets Norman’s unconscious body against the wall to slump into a crumple of limbs. She removes her dark wig to reveal her bright green, close cropped hair. Ditching her ruffled tutu, and knee high boots and stockings to unfurl her brown jumpsuit that was tied off at the waist and appear like an on duty custodial staff member. She pulls a cleaning cart out of a hidden compartment in the hallway wall and pushes Norman’s body into the over-sized garbage bin. She proceeds to take him down into the sanitation decks well below.

Part Thirty Three : Ghost of the Dirty Starling.

Racquelle is half buried in a deep freezer before she becomes aware of the audio recording playing over the ship wide PA system. Having found her way through the vaguely human, mostly antique inspired vessel to what was a great candidate for the canteen. Racquelle found an unlocked standing freezer box and decided to go rifling through it in search of sustenance. The ice build up and oddly plastic wrapped packaging had her excited at first, but after pulling half of the deep freezers contents out into the open to find mostly powders and frozen black brown sludge which tasted awful, she was becoming increasingly agitated. Which made her stomach rumble, alerted her to a growing head ache, and a general sense of anger and frustration, chased by fatigue and the now constant belly ache. Pushing the lid open from the inside, and throwing out the last handful of bags to the floor, she stepped over the rim of the ice cold box and took a moment to listen to the message. The first thing she registered was that the ship ‘K’ and the humanoid AI Katayna had come out of their deep data dive long enough to compose a message and play it on repeat for her to hear it. Sort of a good sign, after nearly a full week of dead silence. The second thing she realized was that if the ship had no access to chronologically stored data, it would have to expend a far greater amount of time and energy to find whatever the fuck it was it went looking for in the first place. And, that she could potentially communicate with ‘K’ vocally again. “Glad to hear you’re alive and well K!” She said into the dimness of the canteen. “Good evening Racquelle. Apologies for our, my, prolonged disappearance.” Barked the PA system in response, justice little too loudly. “Motion tracking has you placed near our make shift morgue. I required certain molecular elements which we are unable to synthesize in bulk. Do you have an interest in the vitamins and minerals left over from breaking down the former crew?” Asks the ship flatly. Feeling rather taken aback Racquelle says “I need to eat and drink something quickly, or else I’m going to faint and likely never wake up again.” She rasps wryly. “I will light the way to the nearest cafeteria. Hold tight. Actually on second thought I will provide you with transportation. Your vitals are greatly diminished from when we first met.” With a horrendous screech a wall panel pulls open to reveal a small people mover with fat black wheels, a canopy of beige Formica, and plush yellowed off white leather looking seats. No visible steering wheel though, or breaks nor foot pedals. “Climb aboard Ms. Your chariot awaits.” Murmurs the tinny voice from the PA system.

Sitting at the round white table with a veritable feast laid out before her Racquelle listens intently while Katayna goes over what remarkable things they’ve discovered buried in the disrupted internal data logs. “We are as of yet unable to verify when, where or how any of these things happened. We would need to correlate the logs with the findings from all of the various antenna arrays located around us – which as you might suspect, will take some time. Things of note are as follows. We’ve made two outbound calls, to whom and what about, or why are a mystery as of yet. Also we have a near steady stream of incoming calls as of a few days ago. That’s not from the logs, by the by. It’s what caused our jolt out of the frozen processing cycle. We received a significant processing power bump of unknown origin. Seemed friendly though, which is odd.” Katayna tilts her head a little too far to one side in an imitation of a human expression towards looking puzzled. The act is rather comical in how over zealous it is.

Crunching on her vitamin and mineral porridge Racquelle takes a moment to stop eating and stare at Katayna. She points down at her bowl and says “This isn’t made from your old crew though right? No matter. I burned that bridge when I crossed it an hour ago.” With a loud and dry swallow she goes on. “Outbound messages huh? That does seem odd. But you guys have said you think you crossed both time, space and possibly dimensions too. Could it be a logging error, or some type of electrical distortion that looks like a message?” Ponders Racquelle. “Well, no. The first one had a lengthy set of technical diagrams attached to it, for a type of dimensional jumping engine, called a For E’s engine. Don’t know if we found that and sent it along, or designed it ourselves. The second one is far harder to decipher and has been put on hold. Though with the available processing bump in capabilities, we could tackle that in the background if we wanted to.” Katayna says in a chipper tone, at odds with the stillness of her face and metallic features.

Looking at the messy remains of her feast Racquelle leans back in her seat as a wave of nausea washes over from eating too much after days of going hungry. “Rookie mistake.” She mutters. “So – what’s next up on the horizon. I assume we’re here alone right? You consumed my other sortie partners and their ship, and we are weeks away from UB313. I don’t suppose I could talk you all into taking me back there? I have a few folks who really want to talk to you.” Quips Racquelle. “No – no. We are not alone. Our long range scanners have located a flotilla of approximately twelve fast moving vessels headed here, as far as we can tell from their roughshod trajectories. Some look as though they’ll arrive a few days after the majority, but I assure you we are most decidedly not alone. Well – short term yes, long term, not even close.” Says Katayna and K both simultaneously.

Racquelle’s face loses its colour and she turns a sort of ashen grey green, with flecks of blue purple around her eyes and mouth. The smirk fades just as quickly as it appeared. “Wait these are coming from UB313?” She croaks. “Uh no. These look to have originated from Earth’s orbit, possibly Mars too.” Says Katayna flatly. “Well, fuck me sideways.” Says Racquelle.

Part Twenty Nine: Ghost of the Dirty Starling.