Soft Red

[to avoid confusion, this post is immediately following the last one chronologically]


Well, that went as well as could be expected, Raxip though to himself. He knew Coffee, though, knew he was a competent, dangerous man. If anyone could burrow through to the core of this problem, it was Coffee. Lying back on the bed, he stared up at the ceiling. There was nothing special about this particular ceiling; it was the same institution off-white of every space station he had ever visited. He wished, just for a minute that it would all stop, just come to an end. The calm flat glow of the fluorescent lighting, softly bathing the small living quarters in a miserable imitation of daylight, relaxed Raxip. He felt himself slipping into a meditative trance, his breathing and heartbeat seeming to align themselves with the gentle pulsations of the lights. Wait, he though to himself, My lights aren’t supposed to pulse. Except now, he realized it wasn’t the lights that were pulsing, but the whole world, his consciousness fading in and out of focus like waves on the beaches he dimly remembered from his childhood, an infinity of lifetimes ago. Then, the world dropped out from under him, and the darkness of absolute nothingness swaddled him.

The darkness was fading, as my eyes adjusted to the soft red haze of the transport shuttle’s emergency lighting filtering in through the open doorway. I felt a spasm through my forearm, as my right hand, still clutching the blood-slick knife tighter than I thought possible, began to cramp. I sank away, pressing my back against the wall beside the doorway, trying not to look at the spreading pool of life draining from the corpse that used to be the guard, encroaching on my bare feet. Images kept flashing through my mind, I desperately tried to block them out, pressing my eyes shut until it hurt, cramming my knuckles against my temples until they popped. It wouldn’t work though. I kept seeing it, the wickedly sharp knife flashing across the proud woman’s exposed neck, the hot blood, steaming in the cold black caverns, staining the lilly-white robes forever, over and over, and I struggled against the men holding me back, straining my still-young arms against their hold, but I couldn’t escape, couldn’t stop it, until I could feel it burning a hot line through my consciousness, feeling her death in my own heart again and again.

My torturous recollection was interrupted by a sound. At first, I couldn’t make it out, couldn’t understand it, but then my mind dropped back into the present, and over my gasping breath, thunderous in my own ears, I heard footsteps, coming towards my cell. I stopped breathing, stopped everything. Silently, I begged them to keep walking, to just assume everything was fine and go deal with whatever had gone so catastrophically wrong. But whatever gods that still exist deigned not to listen, and the two men stepped into the room.

“Hey! Hrollur?” One of the guards spoke to the stifling darkness. “You there, buddy?”

There was a pause, as he waited for a response that could never come. One beat, two. My blood was pounding so hard in my veins, I was sure they could here the violence of its passage clearly.

“Hey?” said the other one, venturing further into the room, “Everything okay in here? Where are you?”

Then his heavy boot landed in the growing puddle of life on the floor, and promptly flew out from under him. He twisted, hard, but didn’t manage to regain his balance, and slammed into the floor with a loud thud.

“What the fuck?” shouted the other guard, “What happened?”

“I fuckin’ slipped. Void, the floor, it’s covered with blood. Oh my god... Oh my god. Hrollur.”

The relaxed stance of the remaining upright guard dropped into a crouch, his body hardening into a spring, to launch himself at what ever threat lurked. I realized I was holding my breath, had been holding for too long, and in a moment I was going to have to release the iron bands crushing my chest and suck in air, and that when I did, the men would surely hear me. My mind spun. Then suddenly, it stopped. I had to do it. I shifted the grip of my hand on the knife, feeling the already-drying blood make my fingers peel stickily from the handle, until it was in a proper hold.

I leapt forward, slammed the blade into the standing man’s chest, deep, until I could feel the blood welling up from the wound. It washed the old blood from my hand, replacing it with new. He made a low grunt in his throat, looked down at the knife, then back up into my face, his eyes confused, asking me what was happening, screaming at my why would I do such a thing. I felt his hands close onto mine, and he pushed the long edge out of his ribs. The suction of his flesh resisted, and then pulled free. He shivered, coughed a mist of blood into my face, then seemed to regain sense, and his hand started to travel towards his sidearm. I swung my hand back, and rammed the knife as hard as I could into his temple, through his skull, twisted his head away from me. I needed to avert his eyes, stop him from looking at me. His whole body quivered, and he let out a long gurgling moan, then went limp. The weight of his body pulled down, wrenched the already slippery knife out of my grasp.

“Poreg? What are you...” The other man, the one on the floor. I had forgotten about him, but the man I had just killed had collapsed onto his leg. He narrowed his eyes, peered into the darkness, then I saw them snap wide.

“Oh my god! You were there! You... Oh god, Poreg! P-please, just let me go,” I realized I was already leaping upon him, before his words had even penetrated my mind. His arm snaked towards his gun, but I kicked him in the elbow, hard, and stomped down, feeling something pop. He started to open his mouth, and I dropped down on him with all my body weight, pushing the air from his lungs before he had a chance to scream. My questing fingers found his face, and I wrapped my hand around his head, gripped, and slammed it once, twice, three times, hard, into the solid tritanium bulkheads, until his desperate convulsions beneath me ceased.

I lay there, for a moment. I needed to be somewhere else, thought back to the golden fields, until my heart stopped pounding a thousand beats. I pushed myself to my knees, dug around on the two corpses I had just made, took their knives from him, and climbed up all the way to my feet. There was a plan beginning to tickle the edges of my mind. Perhaps there was salvation, in the end. Maybe I could get out of here, start again. If I could find the escape pod, get off the vessel, maybe I could make it to the lawless edges of the empire, where an outlaw could go unnoticed, or at least unmolested.

To start on my path to freedom, all I had to do was walk out of this pitch black blood slick slaughterhouse of a room, and reach the doorway, glowing red. I couldn’t, though. The more I tried to get close to it, the further it seemed to get, until it receded and vanished into the darkness, everything vanished into the darkness.

The floor fell away from me, and the darkness swaddled me, until my eyes started to adjust to the soft red haze of the emergency lighting filtering in from the doorway...

Hot Water

The door hissed open, and Raxip stepped into his room. It was fully morning, now, the artificial station lighting making a jaunty yellow-tinted glow across his chamber which didn’t match his mood. Rax’s face was grim, his eyes seeming unfocused, staring into the distance, past the solid bulkheads of his apartment. He stood still for a moment, as the door returned to it’s closed position, then leaned back against it. His head dropped down, and his legs folded slowly, sliding him down the wall to sit on the floor. Raxip rested his head on his knees, and breathed deeply for a few minutes.

His composure regained, Raxip got to his feet, and glanced about. The bed was unmade, empty, the sheets half tossed to the floor. He shrugged, and went to clean up. Resting on the pillow, though was a small datachip. Raxip snorted, and scooped his ‘pad up from the small dresser. Slotting in the chip, he brought up it’s contents, and found a small text message.

Rax where did you go? I woke up and you were gone. You didn’t even leave me a note.
If that’s the way you’re gonna treat me, I think we shouldn’t see each other anymore.
-Shiaen

Shrugging, Raxip hit the ‘wipe’ command on his pad, and tossed it on the bed.

~

The hot water ran over Rax’s face, and down his body, almost washing the insanity of the morning away, but not quite. For a moment he just stood there in the shower, his head bowed under the stream, but a little sound wiggled its way into his conscious, cutting through his trance. When he realized it was the high insistent beep of an incoming call from his communications gear, Raxip leapt out of the small enclosed shower and into his living area, slapping the Receive button. As the screen flickered with static while the connection stabilized, he composed his features to neutrality. The screen resolved into the image of a Sebiestor man sporting a mohawk, his features thin and seeming prematurely lined. His face looked weary, but his eyes were alight, a seed of madness resting in their depths. His eyes widened with recognition, then his mouth quirked up in a smirk as he glanced Raxip from head to toe.

"Raxi, buddy, if I knew it was this kind of call, I wouldn’t have rushed. I’ve told you before, I’m not interested in that way,” he said, a mocking tone in his voice.

Raxip’s brow furrowed with confusion, then realization that he had forgot to dress from his shower swept through him. He abruptly sat down on his bed, and pulled the sheets over his lap.

“Uh, Coffee, um. No, that’s not it. I wanted to hire you for something. You can... Find people, right?”

The Sebiestor man smiled, and steepled his fingers in front of his chin. “You’re a friend Rax, so I can look into it. But it’s still going to cost you.” His eyes widened, and he smiled broadly. “So, who am I finding, and you want him in one piece or what? Oh, and if he’s a capsuleer, it’s gonna cost extra.”

“No, he’s no capsuleer. Actually, I don’t know exactly who he is,” Rax said, his eyes narrowing to a glare, “But his name is Durynx, and I heard he’s out there somewhere. I wanna find him.”

“Alright, Raxip. I’ll see what I can do. I’ll get back to you when I have news.”. Coffee glanced off screen, and made a quick gesture, closing the connection.

Raxip sat there staring at the matte grey panelling of the wall where the screen was, before sighing deeply, and flopping down backwards onto his bed.

“It’s starting again,” he whispered to himself.

Sounds In The Night

“I WILL LIVE!”

The shout echoed through the spartan and sparsely decorated bedroom, grey with the first lights of the station’s artificial morning. Raxip sat up and looked about, his chest heaving with adrenaline, trying to locate the source of the cry. Eventually, though, the last hazy mists of sleep evaporated from his mind and he realized that he himself had cried out. A hand reached up from the form in the bed beside him and gripped the muscles of his upper arm, pulling him downwards.

“Come back to bed, love,” said the form beside him, bleary with sleep. “ It was just a nightmare”.

Raxip twitched the offending limb off himself, though, and swung his legs over the side of the bed. It was early, a couple hours before true dawn, but he knew that the dreams would continue to haunt him if he tried to keep sleeping. They were getting worse. He got up and pulled on an undershirt and trousers, before getting up.

“I’ll be back later,” he said, brusquely. “ Leave, or don’t. Whatever.” There was an op tomorrow, he figured he may as well get an early start making sure everything was ready.

The inside of the hangar was cavernous, with the weaving spotlights only serving to highlight the enormous scale of the structure, built to consolidate much more massive craft than Raxip’s Rupture class cruiser, which currently inhabited it. He stopped at the computer panel beside the door, verifying that all the additional equipment he had requested had been loaded onto it by the station personnel. Everything was fine, however. Since he didn’t have any problems to pursue, and he didn’t want to risk sleep again, he decided to take a rest in his office.

To get to the office, Raxip had to travel down a connecting corridor to the door at the very end. As he got closer to the portal, however, Raxip realized that the oppressive claustrophobic feeling of the empty, silent, vast hangar complex had lifted from his shoulders. Immediately he stopped, and pressed himself up against the wall, willing his breathing to slow, his heart to stop. Gradually, he became aware that he wasn’t alone. He could faintly hear voices, coming from the office.

Pushing his spine hard up against the wall, he slowly slid down the hallway towards the entrance. Easing his small handgun from it’s holster in the small of his back, he opened the door several inches with glacial slowness. Crouching down low, he peered around the corner, and saw two figures, one with his back to him, talking, in his office. Raxip recognized the man facing him as one of his crewmen, his weapons officer. The other was dressed all in matte black, in the uniform of the Republic Commandos, with a full mask over his head, concealing his features.

“I just need you to give this to him. Is that such a hard task?” The voice, a harsh buzzing growl, seemingly modified by some process, came from the man with his back to Raxip.

“No! I told you, If it’s so important, tell him yourself. I don’t wanna get mixed up in this!” His officer seemed agitated. Just then, the man caught sight of Raxip, and just for a second his eyes widened, and flicked towards Rax’s hiding spot. He quickly smothered the reaction, but it was too late. All of a sudden, things started happening quickly.

Raxip saw the intruder begin to spin and reach for a weapon at his side, and shouting “DOWN!” at his officer, a surge of adrenaline blasted through Raxip’s system. Time seemed to slow down, and he rose from his crouch like a sprinter from his starting blocks. Before the other man had even turned halfway into him, Rax slammed his shoulder into the man’s arm and side. Using the moment of bad balance to his advantage, he grabbed the black-clad man’s arm, twisted it up behind his back, and used his momentum and new leverage to bullrush the man the four remaining feet up against the wall of the office. The man grunted with pain, and dropped the small sidearm he had been reaching for. Raxip kicked it away. Sweeping the man’s feet out from under him, Raxip bore the man to the ground, and pinned him there with his knee, pushing the barrel of his own gun into the back of the man’s neck.

“Let’s see who you are, then,” Raxip said, as he unbuckled the sub-vocal microphone collar holding the mask in place.

“Shit,” the man half-rasped, as midway through the word, the voice changer was lifted from his mouth.

When Raxip saw the tall Civire intruder’s face, however, his expression of cold fury was replaced with confusion.

“Graham,” he said, “is that you? What the fuck are you doing breaking into my office and fucking with my crew?”

His posture relaxed slightly, but he still kept his knee on the man’s spine, and the gun pointing unerringly towards his skull. The other man smiled, and said “It’s okay, Rax. I’m not doing anything bad.”

“Weren’t you ordered by your commander not to communicate with me in any way ever again,” Raxip asked, with the slightest hint of a smirk at the edges of his mouth.

The man nodded, “That’s why I did this. I was trying to convince your officer to deliver you the message, so there would be no trace back to me.”

Raxip holstered his weapon, and stood up, releasing his weight from Graham’s back. He offered his hand to the other man. “It’s been a long time, Graham.”

Graham clasped his old friend’s hand firmly, pulling himself to his feet and rubbing his abused shoulder. He smiled. “I know. We move in very different circles nowadays, though, Rax.”

“We do, that. So what the hell is so important that you had to risk court-martial by the republic and getting shot by me?”

Graham’s smile fell from his face. He put a hand on Raxip’s shoulder, and said “You’re not going to like this, Rax. It’s Durynx. I think he might have resurfaced.”

Prices

(This is a story I wrote. Read the post below first please.)

The man’s body presses down on mine, constricting my movement. I lock my leg around him, and try to reverse our positions, but the floor is slick with blood, and I cannot get any purchase. He tries to reach for something in his boot, and I snap an elbow into his briefly unprotected face. His hand scrabbles against my face. I have my arms locked around his chest, but I cannot find leverage. I feel his thumb press against my left eye. I bite down on his wrist, and he shrieks.

A golden sunlight field, stretching in all directions as far as he could see. There were no clouds, and the warmth poured down from the sky. He ran, as far as he could, with no cares. He did not know anything else, so he was happy. The feel of the stubbly furrows under his unshod feet, the whisper of the stalks against his outstretched arms, the heat of the sun on his face, it all meant home to him. Behind him, his family, working the land. Far in front of him, a woman, just back from market, with baskets in her hands. She is thin, with a delicate face, and sadness is visible in the lines around her eyes. She seems tired. Her clothes are simple, and flowing. She wears a collar around her neck. When she sees him, her face transforms into a beaming smile.

I slam my fist once more into his body, just under his ribcage, on his left side. He curls towards the blow, which allows me to drag my right hand from between our bodies. My left arm is numb from repeated impacts, my fingers tingling with pain. I am about to reach up and hook my hand in his face when he snaps his forehead into my nose. Pain blossoms, seeming to fill the universe, and my vision briefly goes white.

A huge vaulted chamber, of yellowish stone. To his young eyes, the ceiling seems to stretch upwards, perhaps into heaven itself. There are huge stained glass windows along each wall, the light spilling through them, illuminating incredible images of serene, wise men and caring, motherly women, brightly coloured, throwing patchwork shadows across the white marble floor. As he walks, he looks in all directions. It is all so new. Halfway, the enormous icons give way to towering pillars, coated with a golden metal. Between them are hung vast tapestries, each one easily the size of his childhood home. At the end of the cavernous chamber, almost dwarfed by the scale of it all, is a chair, simple, hand-carved from wood. He recognizes it, they told him once that his father had made it. In the chair sits a young man, confident, draped with silks and golden decoration, self-consciously toying with a simple silver band on his left middle finger. He looks at the boy, and his mother, and smiles. The boy knows that things will be different.

My mind clears. His forearm is pressing down against my throat, slowly choking me, while he digs his gloved fingers into my left wrist, preventing me from striking him. I cough, and spit blood onto his cheek. I feel a crackle in the joint, but the pain doesn’t make it through the haze of adrenaline. The weight on my neck seems infinite, though, and my vision begins to be encroached by a grey tunnel.

A shadowed vault, made from roughly hewn blocks. Simple wood shelves cover the walls. They are filled with books. He had never even seen one book before. He didn’t even know what they were for. In the centre, lit by a flickering lantern, is a desk, strewn with scrolls, tomes, and old, tattered pages. Hunched over it, a man, ancient looking, with a long flowing beard, and dressed in the simple garb of a hermit or a monk. He adjusts a pair of gold-rimmed glasses. He remembered, there was a bright red mark on the bridge of the old man’s nose, as if the adjustment was a nervous habit or a tick. He shuffles some parchments, then unrolls a scroll. He gestures at it to someone behind the boy. He turns, and behind him is the woman, and the confident young lord. The lord looks shaken and frightened, his face white. The woman’s eyes suddenly catch his, and his is filled with a feeling. “I love you. I will always love you.” The old man shakes his head, and a hand falls on the back of the boy’s neck, pushing his collar into his shoulders. He shouts something, a protest, a prayer, he can’t remember.

I can’t breath. I can’t see. I am about to give up, and go the rest of the way quietly. Suddenly, my grasping fingers settle on a handle. I explore it further. He had a small knife hidden on his back! I wrap my hand around it, and jerk it from it’s sheath. He feels the sudden tug, and the pressure on my breath is momentarily reduced as he twists about to see what is happening.

A small room, made from perfectly fitted blocks of smooth black stone. There are no windows, or decorations at all. Beside the simple steel door, the only interruption is a raised dias. Standing at the stage is the confident young lord. This time, his robes are red, and the ring, set with a large ruby, into which is carved a sigil. He struggles against the ties about his wrists and ankles, but they are too strong for his young limbs. The woman is lead onto the dias. She is dressed in gorgeous white linen robes, and wears a veil over her eyes. She seems limp, docile, like the drugged fowl he used to slaughter for the great feasts. His eyes fill with tears, but he shakes his head. He will not cry. He will not cry! His mother is lain across the altar, and the noble is handed a wicked knife. I WILL NOT CRY. I WILL LIVE!

The short blade of the knife disappears into his throat. We both stop. He looks at me incredulously, as though he doesn’t really believe what just happened. Red wells up around the sharpened spar of steel jutting from the half-shaven flesh of his neck. I pull the weapon out, and hot red blood sprays onto my face. He gurgles, tries to say something, but can’t. I plunge the knife into him again, and again. I will live.

And now for something...

Completely different. As anyone who used to follow this blog knows, I've kinda stopped posting. This is because I found that I had run out of things to write about in the narrow confines of the format I made for myself. Rather than repeat myself, endlessly, I just stopped. But I've been working on backstory and such for Raxip as a character, and I've written a little story. It's intentionally a little mysterious. Maybe I'll fill you all in later, maybe I won't =P. And keep in mind, this is my first real foray into writing actual fiction, so comments are in fact encouraged, to shore up the tatters of my fragile abused ego.

Rebuttal

As my Rifter’s computers began their full reboot, recovering from the confusion of jump gate travel, I took stock of the situation so far today. I’d spent the afternoon wandering through my usual haunts in Molden Heath, but absolutely nothing interesting had happened. I suppose everyone has days like this. It had been the same for much of the time yesterday, with one small exception. Normally the system of Half is outside my usual flight path, but yesterday I had decided to take a look around and see what I found. The area is dominated by a gang of do-gooders who go by the name of the “Shadows of Light” alliance, but I knew that most of them would be no match for a hardened warrior such as me. Sure enough, mere minutes after I entered system, I managed to blow another Rifter pilot out of space, under the bumbling gaze of a local defence force made up of several cruisers and a battleship. The kill itself was unimpressive, my foe having fit his craft to combat non-pod pilots, but the circumstances were what made it worth it. Today, however, the system seemed empty. Only a few pilots in the local comms, most likely docked up doing what ever it is white-hats do in their spare time. Still, it never hurts to check. I took a quick spin about the asteroid belts, hoping to find a straggler, but no such luck. I punched in the co-ordinates of the gate to Istotard, and hit warp.

As I landed on the gate, I sighed. Some days you get no luck. I had my hand on the command to hail the gate crew for immediate transport, but before I got the chance to finish my action, I saw the characteristic flash of light which indicates that someone has just been transported into system. I decided to give this place one more chance, and I brought up the local comms, checking for the new arrival. There was, of course, one, a pilot who went by the name of Vasavia. I knew her, having had an encounter with her about a week ago. She’d won, but I was pretty certain it was a fluke, myself having had a little too much to drink that night. Not that she was a bad pilot, I was just convinced I was better, as I almost always am. She was Shadows of Light, but unlike the rest of her organization, she seemed to actually have a pair of ovaries. This was good. She was holding her gate cloak, so I punched in a warp to a nearby asteroid belt, hoping she would get the hint and follow.

It wasn’t more than a few moments before I saw a Rifter appear on my long range sensors, and even less time before my sensors pinged, telling me that a vessel had just exited warp less than 3 klicks from mine. I quickly shouted orders to my crew, settling myself into an orbit approximately 5 kilometres from my foe, and painting her craft with my LADAR targeting suite. I activated my suite of combat modules, and disengaged the thermal safeties of my autocannons, pushing them past the manufacturer’s specifications. She responded in kind, and the fight was on. Swiftly, streams of nuclear death filled the space between our ships. I could tell she was using the standard cookie cutter setup for her craft, but mine was a little different, as I had filled the space normally containing a rocket launch system with an energy vampire, in order to steal my foes’ capacitor to run my modules for longer. This had been much more popular a few years back, before legal issues surrounding the patents forced manufacturers to limit the operation of the NOS modules, but they hadn’t been completely neutered. I knew that the added punch of the launcher would give her the advantage in sheer firepower, but if I held range, I could force the fight into distances where the inherent instability of the ammunition we fired would reduce the damage. This would allow me to capitalise on the greater staying power my nosferatu had given me.

Very rapidly, the multiple continuous detonations erupting about her craft overloaded the fragile shield projectors, and my cannons began to bite into the armour of her tough little craft. Almost simultaneously, however, an insistent warning light on my heads up display warned me of total system failure in my own shields, and my Rifter started to shake and lurch with the force of the Morphite explosives impacting my own hull. I activated my nanite repair modules, and watched the digital readout as the tiny robots clawed their way through my ship, converging at impact points to replace blackened craters with smooth tungsten. The repair systems were helping, but I wasn’t sure it would be enough. My sensors were telling me that although my weapons were in peak condition and my targeting systems were ably compensating for the contortions my helmsman and hers were putting our nimble frigates through, she was very good. This was going to be a very close fight, and I wasn’t certain of the victor if things continued as they were.

As my armour diagnostics reported 50% armour integrity, I knew I had only one more option available to me. I brought up the computer brains controlling my repair systems, and disengaged the safeties governing their operation. There was a certain amount of danger in doing this, as the increased speed and force of the nanites could damage and eventually even destroy my various protective measures, but for short times, the benefits outweighed the possible drawbacks, and repairs would still be much less expensive than replacing my craft.

The difference was very apparent. Almost immediately, my diagnostics systems reported that the damage incoming on my ship was nearly balanced out by the increased efficiency of my glowing green helpers. On the other hand, my opponent seemed not to be aware of this kind of modification, as her armour integrity dropped lower and lower, until my rounds finally began to blast hard radiation and concussive force into her very interior. She had set her systems up well, with protective internal force fields and redundancies, but it was no match for the fury of the 150mm cannon shells riding my LADAR guidance directly into the gaps in her defences, and Vasavia’s tough little Rifter quickly evaporated around her. It was an excellent test of my abilities as a warrior, however, and kudos to her for a fabulous duel, but to the victor goes the spoils.

I gathered up what undamaged equipment I could get from her wreck, and sent my craft to a safe spot to await the end of my global criminal countdown timer. It was always nice to find fresh blood flying in my home of Molden Heath, especially in a capsuleer as skilled as Vasavia seemed. I expected great things from her.

I'd like to thank the Academy...

In case you didn't already see it, I've been added to KrazyKinux's Eve Blogroll! This is very exciting, I now feel validated as a blogger. In all seriousness, though, thanks so much. I guess I'll actually have to start posting again, though, huh.

Oh, and a shout out from one Canadian Eve player to another! Thanks again.