been doing some serious editing lately, here is the most recent update, a complete redo of chapter one. Vastly improved.
comments re more than welcome, they are encouraged.
She was enjoying the rain, the sound it made as it fell to
the ground. It played out across the landscape in whispers and plops, a random
pitter patter that gently washed away the silence of the colonial country side.
While the soft white noise of shipboard life was pleasant, it was not loud
enough to drown out her thoughts. The rain was.
She paused for a moment, enjoying the peace. She held out
her right hand, and caught a few drops, watching them splash against the
flexible polymer skin of her palm. They were to light to feel, but telltales
scrolling along the edges of her peripheral vision showed her that it was a
cold, heavy rain; the kind she would have hated as a child. Different times, she thought. She quickly brushed the thought aside;
her father had taught her better than to dawdle when there was work to
be done.
She was crouched low, her double jointed legs compressed
tightly and leaning forward on her left hand. She was at the edge of her targets’ property,
having come on foot through the forest that hemmed in the large farm. She was
taking cover behind an earthen windbreak at the south edge of the fields. Her
feet were sunk several inches into the mud.
The other side of the artificial ridge sheltered some kind
of cabbage. Vile stuff, she
remembered. Why do I only remember things I
didn’t like? Sharren shook the memories away again, wondering why they came
unbidden at times like this.
There was work to do. She crawled forward like a giant cat,
moving carefully on all fours. The windbreak
was only a meter or so high, and it took an effort to stay low enough as she crept
closer to her goal. The ridge ended some 50 meters later, Sharren dropped on
her belly and slid her body as close to
the edge of it as she dared without exposing herself.
A thin aerial slid out of her left shoulder, no more than 2 millimeters
across. It was tipped with a series of
tiny camera beads, hardly larger than the antenna itself. She extended it to its
full length, allowing her to peer over
the edge of the ridge without risking the rest of her body. The only way these
hillbillies would be able to see it at all in this weather would be with
thermal imaging gear. She was wiling to
bet they had no such thing.
She let her point of view change from that of her head to that of the camera. She
had gotten used to the sudden shift years ago, but it still took her a moment
to adjust. The night was dark, and
aerial’s optics were not as good as her primary system.
Her onboard Virtual Intelligence was showing her a composite
of night vision and thermal mode. The view it created was a pretty mix of green
tinged with thermal hot spots overlaid in reds and yellows. There was a farm house across a large unkempt
lawn, and a barn further to her right, nearer the other corner of the field.
The house was glowing hot on the thermal spectrum, but the barn was cold, and there
were vehicles parked near it.
She focused her attention on the house. Her VI started to bring up relevant
structural data in the lower left corner of her vision, but she ignored it. The
main house was a prefabricated model, standard on most UNW colonies. It was a
single floor, with one door in front, and one in back. The windows were a thin light-weight
plastic, with simple internal locks. The
owner had added a two story wing on the eastern side of the house. He had used
local wood and stone, the effect was quite pretty. The siding panels had been
painted in alternating blue and white horizontal stripes.
The main door was clearly the original prefab’s front door. There
was a pretty little garden wall surrounding a quaint yard in front of the
house, about 5 by 5 meters. There was a guard near that door, and a window just
to his right. He was the only person in sight.
The guy was leaning against the house in a feeble attempt to avoid getting rain on his face. The
heavy poncho he wore made it difficult for Sharren to determine if the guard was
wearing armor. The poor bastard was just huddled under the eve, trying not to
shiver in the cold, sloppy rain.
The house had some external lights, but nothing like a
search light. The glow they cast did not reach far beyond the garden.
Sharren’s lips would have
curled into an evil smirk, but she had not kept her face in the last upgrade. You poor, dirt-eating hillbillies. These are your security measures? She shook her head. I can’t belive they expect to stand up to us. She felt like the
villain in a children’s story. The
people, they were the villagers.
Why do they do this?
She thought. Captain Marcotte
had given these locals five days to come up with a metric ton of
untainted food, and at least a kilo of gold or platinum. He had come armed. He
had been specific, with the usual death threats and show of force. He had even
calculated in advance what these people could afford to lose, using data from
orbital flyovers.
These goat-fuckers had messed it all up. They had not paid. Now
they had to be shown that defiance was more expensive than compliance. Her
orders were clear: Find their leaders and make an example of them. Tear them
limb from limb and leave behind a nightmare; those were the words Captian
Marcotte had used.
Sharren looked the area over one last time. Her VI
calculated the distance to the door and feed it to her Heads Up Display, almost
exactly 112 meters. She retracted the camera, and checked her rifle as the
ariel slid back inside her shoulder. It was an older Prussian model, a heavy
12mm bull-pup set up with an excellent optics package.
The rifle’s scope had been hardwired to her VI through a
data connection in the gun’s grip. She could see ammo quantity, gun status, and
point of aim through her H.U.D., showing her
exactly where the gun was pointed via a little red X. She preferred simple
graphics over some of the more modern versions.
Despite the system showing her green lights, a manual check of
the gun made her feel better.
She released the plastic ammo block, and confirmed the first round had already
been chipped off. Sharren slapped it back
into the feed and checked the chamber, then made sure her side arm was secure
in its magnetic holster on her left leg. Once she was sure everything was in
place, she waited for the storm.
The storm did not disappoint her. Lighting flashed, and
brought with it the thunder she had been waiting for.
She was ready for it. Her powerful electro-polymer muscles
launched her two hundred and forty kilogram frame over the ridge and into a
sprint, the rolling sound of thunder hiding the noise of her foot falls.
Sharren cleared the distance in just over five seconds. The guard saw her as
she skipped over the garden wall, he let out surprised yell and tried to raise
his shot gun.
The gun never reached level. Sharren used the momentum built
up on her sprint to deliver a stomp-kick to his chest. Ribs collapsed beneath her armored foot, and
her talons scrapped against the house as she pressed his corpse to the ground.
It seems he was not wearing armor,
she noted to herself.
Without looking at her handy work,
she side stepped and punched
through the window nearest the door. The clear polymer sheet gave way
to her fist, leaving the window a spider web of cracks. She released a
flash-bang from her forearm and whirled
around. Her VI knew what she wanted, and detonated the grenade remotely, not waiting for its timer to expire. Sharren
turned her attention back to the door, and kicked it. The door’s bolt failed
under the force, slamming it open. Her forward momentum carried her across
the threshold like death's bride.
She could see the people in the main room easily, despite the dark. Most of
them were reeling, blind and deaf from the flash bang. The ones that could see were stricken
with fear, wide eyed and open mouthed in shock. They hid behind makeshift
barricades of over turned furniture.
She rose from her usual combative crouch to her full seven
foot height as she strode one more step into the room, letting the light fall
on her demonic armored form. Slowly and deliberately, she swayed side to side. She had seen a snake do
this once, and enjoyed the way it menaced folks.
“Do you have our payment?” She vocalized. Sharren was using
a voice she had calibrated just for such occasions, female, but harsh and dark.
No one moved, and for a moment the world seemed frozen. Distant lightning
highlighted the open door behind her, and its thunder passed by a moment later.
The Locals were trying to study her face, but there was
nothing to gauge but an unmoving armor plate, sloping back from a central riser.
Her armor was red and black, in a camouflage pattern, except for her fingers
and hands, which were solid black.
“Well? Does this end here, or do I need to make good the
Captain’s words?” She vocalized the last line slowly. Internally, she had
assigned her VI to assume control of her right hand, and prioritized targets
for it to shoot.
The man closest to her seemed to find his courage. He was
still young, but perhaps old enough to be called a man in some places. He had
his right hand on a pistol butt, and squared up his shoulders though his eyes
were still watery from the dazzle of the flash grenade.
“Fuck. You. You come here and demand our crops? Our money? What
are we supposed to eat after you clean us out?” The young man stood his
ground, glaring at her and seething with rage.
“Life is hard little boy. We need to eat as well. We have
the strength to take what we need, so we do.” She softened her voice a bit, in
hopes he would back down. “It’s a small
price, compared to the alternative. Last chance to buy peace, little boy. Will
you pay or will you die?”
The defiant young man started to drawn his gun, and some of
the others began to follow his lead. Sharren did not even think about it, 30 years of experience made her an old
hand. She grabbed the boy, her left hand shot out quick as lightning. Her
VI used her right to begin shooting the others. She paid the gunfire no mind as
she slammed the boys head in the ceiling one handed. She felt his skull crack,
so she tossed him aside like a broken toy. The room was silent.
The after image of the boy reminded Sharren of herself at
his age. Things almost worked out better for
you, eh boy? Back to work. She chided herself. These distractions were going to
be a problem if she could not lock it down.
Five seconds, six
bodies; not bad work she thought. The
VI was trying to put names to faces, but none of them matched the Mayor's
picture profile. More work to do.
The VI was letting her know there were thirty rounds left in
the gun’s ammo block as Sharren noted the stairway on her right. It seemed to
go up into the newer part of the house. She moved carefully towards it,
the floor softly creaking under her weight.
There was a
closed door blocking her view. She listened for breathing, but the rain was
giving her too much white noise. She put two rounds through door, and got what
she wanted. A startled yelp slipped out of someone, a someone which her VI highlighted
faster than thought. She sent two more bullets that way, and heard the target
fall over.
The pushed
through the feeble wooden door and saw a male body, holding some kind of heavy
fire arm. It was big enough to have possibly put a hole in her.
This is why you never advance blindly.
These folk might be a challenge after all.
She slung the rifle and it magnetized itself to her back.
She picked up the dead man’s boom-stick and fired through a wall, leaving an
enormous hole where it blew through, showering the room inhabitants with wooden
splinters.
Or
maybe not,
the thought as she tore the rest of the way through the wall to finish her
work.
