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kbox-in-the-box · 4 years

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Captain Zap and her Hyperspace Rangers

1988 was the year that the planet Aetheria was liberated at last from the mad Emperor Xerxes, but it was neither the great space hero, Samuel Gerald “Astro” Armstrong, nor his daughter, Samantha Gillespie “Astra” Armstrong, who struck the final, decisive blow.

From 1933 to 1938, Astro Armstrong, Hedy Fine and Dr. Leon Volkov fought for the freedom of the people of Aetheria against the tyranny of Xerxes and his daughter, the wicked Empress Eris.

But in 1959, Astro Armstrong went missing, and in 1966, Astra Armstrong and her mother, Prof. Hedy Feynman, returned to Aetheria after Dr. Leon Volkov’s son, Dr. Leonid Volkov, told them that Astro was still alive, on Aetheria, but captive in the clutches of Xerxes.

As Astro’s family and allies sought to find him again, all while resuming their war with the forces of Xerxes and Eris, they found themselves facing a new foe, the first human ever to join the dark side of the Aetherian Armada, a mysterious masked man known only as Kommissar Blitzkrieg, who somehow seemed capable of anticipating Astra and Hedy at every turn.

By the 1980s, Hedy had begun to suspect the terrible secret of Kommissar Blitzkrieg’s true identity, one that could never be revealed to Astra, which the ruthlessly clinical Prof. Feynman recognized would necessitate the enlistment (or more accurately, the compulsory impressment) of new allies into their struggle, young outsiders with new ways of thinking, whose strengths would draw from their lack of preexisting emotional connections to this star-spanning conflict.

In 1984, the “Hyperspace Pilot” video game had cabinets distributed to the Bits & Blasts Arcade near the edge of the Ned Pines Neighborhood, the Pink Flamingos Mobile Home & RV Park on the outskirts of Eliot’s Expanse, and the Cabaret Cinema in the core of Edwin A. Abbott Square.

Opening in 1922, the Cabaret Cinema remains the oldest continuously operating movie theater in the state of Calizona, its infrequent stints as a Union Gospel Mission location notwithstanding.

The Cabaret Cinema was where a young Valerie Gail Zappa watched nostalgic rescreenings of Saturday matinee serials such as “The Adventures of ‘Astro’ Armstrong," and by the summer of 1984, Val was not only 18 years old and freshly graduated from Stanford S. Strickland Junior High & High School (go Teen Wolves!), but she was also a veteran usher at the Cabaret, where she took in countless classic films for free, and racked up high scores on “Hyperspace Pilot.”

Val and her two-years-younger sister, Tara Moonchild Zappa, lived at their parents’ double-wide at the Pink Flamingos, but like their fellow Pink Flamingos resident Crystal Swan, who was still attending Strickland Junior High in 1984, all three girls were pretty much raising themselves.

Tara had aspirations of enrolling in Beauty’s Beholder Cosmetics & Cosmetology, so she could eventually work at Nagel’s Picture-Perfect Cuts & Colors in the Gold Key Commercial Core.

And while Val’s on-again, off-again boyfriend, Buckminster “Bucky” Martínez, was still sorting through prospective career paths, he’d already earned an athletic scholarship, as a soccer and volleyball player, through Coral Shores Community College (go Atoms!), part of the Calizona Community College Athletic Conference and the National Junior College Athletic Association.

Even Morten Emory Thistlethwaite, the spoiled antisocial prodigy whom Val grudgingly agreed to babysit when she was in junior high, because he was three years her junior, was already on track to attend the University of Calizona, Santa Teresa (go Manticores!), with the Quatermass University of Abstract and Applied Sciences (go Tachyons!) as his designated fallback school.

And yet, Val herself simply drifted, never pursuing a post-secondary education or a long-term occupation beyond what was required to pay for the rent and fun nights out on the town during her weekends off, much to the dismay of her peers and former teachers, all of whom sensed far more potential in her than punching ticket stubs at the Cabaret Cinema, subbing in to lead group workouts at Aphrodite & Adonis Aerobics, or feeding quarters into “Hyperspace Pilot” cabinets.

By 1987, the band of Valerie and Tara Zappa, Bucky Martínez and Morten Thistlethwaite knew they had little enough left in common to wonder aloud why they were still hanging out, but they knew the answer to that as well, since not only had they all remained avid players of “Hyperspace Pilot,” but they’d taken up the next iteration in the franchise, i.e. the “Hyperspace Pistoleer” light-tagging toy guns released in 1986, for which Bits & Blasts had economized its existing space, and even leased adjacent property, to set up a hide-and-seek arena for — among other players — Captain Zap, Brigadier Buckyball, Lieutenant Luna and Master Sergeant Mars, as they preferred to be called on the game clock.

And by the summer of 1987, the band had reasons to celebrate, with Morten’s acceptance for UC Santa Teresa’s fall semester confirmed, Tara feeling confident she would finally be promoted from apprentice to junior stylist at Nagel’s Picture-Perfect Cuts & Colors, and even Bucky finally having settled on a major, after three years, at Coral Shores Community College.

Everyone was heading places, except for Val, who’d always dreamed of travel, but never had the free time or finances to spare, just as her ongoing consumption of classic cinema ensured her lock on the pink-for-entertainment slice of the pie any time she played Trivial Pursuit, and yet, for all her fascination with the film industry, she still couldn’t summon the patience to audition, or even sit still for test shots, for more than sporadic roles as an extra.

“Why does this feel like the end of that made-for-TV movie where roleplaying games drove Tom Hanks crazy?” Tara asked despondently, as the band sat at their regular table in Bits & Blasts, nursing their slices of Pizzazz Pizza.

“You know why,” Val smirked ruefully. “Everyone else is about to embark on grand adventures in bold new campaign settings, while some of us are just destined to ... hang back from the action, and become non-player characters.”

“It doesn’t have to be like this,” Bucky clasped Val’s hand in his own to console her.

“I heard Lis Berger is shutting down the Hyperspace Pistoleer arena after this summer,” Morten blurted out, acutely uncomfortable with the unpleasant emotions his peers were displaying so openly. “Even though it’s still popular, she’s losing a ton of money on it. I say we play one last round now, before it gets torn down.”

Val stood up and laid down a few dollars for the tip. “Might as well go out shooting,” she grinned.

The entry of every officially licensed “Hyperspace Pistoleer” arena was equipped with speakers to play the same opening narration before the players went inside, complete with a flash of light to simulate an interplanetary tesseract:

“As the people of the planet Aetheria cry out for aid, in their fight for freedom against the evil forces of the mad Emperor Xerxes and his Aetherian Armada, a highly trained special mission force has been recruited from the ranks of ordinary humans, right here on Earth, to respond to this call. They are the Hyperspace Rangers, and their brave battles began when they stepped into the Star Point Portal ... and vanished.”

After the obligatory flash of light, Lis Berger’s assistant games supervisor, Rachelle “Ratchet” Chennault, checked the activated “Hyperspace Pistoleer” arena, only to find it empty.

The “Strickland Slackers,” as they came to be branded in subsequent press reports, were gone.

Hedy Feynman knew she had a limited window of time within which to work, because time itself passes on Aetheria at roughly one-seventh the rate that it does on Earth, and because she knew the start of the Harmonic Convergence would commence on Aug. 16, 1987, but even she had failed to grasp how quickly most toy and video game franchises fall out of fashion.

Hedy had commissioned the younger Dr. Leonid Volkov to produce the “Hyperspace Pilot” and “Hyperspace Pistoleer” game lines, as covert training and recruitment tools for what she had envisioned as crack commando units to be branded the “Hyperspace Rangers,” since they would be able to operate not only behind enemy lines, but also between the boundaries that defined both the war and space travel itself.

Because Hedy wished to avoid drawing too much notice, and because she’d retained enough of her conscience not to want to press-gang too many child soldiers into risking life and limb for a cause for which none of them had knowingly consented to sacrifice themselves, the Star Point Portals affixed to the “Hyperspace Pistoleer” arenas absconded with only scattered handfuls of players from her former home planet.

The sustained toll of their secret missions was brutal, culling all but a few of the promising crop Hedy had authorized to transport from Earth during the summer of 1987, but one unlikely band of Hyperspace Rangers somehow not only kept on surviving, but also succeeding in completing their missions, thanks in no small part to the guidance and motivation they drew from the canny strategies and inspiring speeches of their Valkyrie-like leader.

Eventually, the rest of the units were reduced in number enough that their remainders were seconded to Captain Zap and her Hyperspace Rangers.

During the final push to overthrow the misrule of Xerxes, when Astra Armstrong was devastated by the discovery that the merciless Kommissar Blitzkrieg was actually her long-lost father, Astro Armstrong — whose innate heroism had been artificially suppressed by technology the elder Dr. Leon Volkov had been conscripted to create for Xerxes — it was Captain Zap’s Hyperspace Rangers who kept up the pressure on the Aetherian Armada, giving Astra the chance to break through those psychic barriers to reach her real father’s heart, and ultimately redeem his soul.

... And so it was that 1988 was the year that the planet Aetheria was liberated at last from the mad Emperor Xerxes, not by two generations of the same heroic family, but by a third generation of complete strangers to their cause, and yet, even as the rest of the surviving Hyperspace Rangers were returned to Earth per their request, one band asked to stay behind.

Captain Zap, Brigadier Buckyball, Lieutenant Luna and Master Sergeant Mars each had their own reasons for wanting to venture further into the largely uncharted frontier within which they’d found themselves, but Hedy Feynman, as newly elected head of the likewise recently installed government of Aetheria, harbored equally ulterior motives for agreeing to retain their services.

Hedy knew that a tentatively democratic Aetheria, one which was now seeking to atone for the misdeeds of its empire by forging alliances among adversaries, needed free agents to act on its behalf, to make contact with the broader cosmos that Xerxes’ simultaneously expansive and provincial priorities had impacted, and yet also ignored.

Hedy also knew that Astra’s appetite for such crusades had been ground down hard over the course of the war, even before she’d inadvertently unmasked one of her fiercest foes as the vanished father whose legacy she’d sought to live up to her entire life, and for the first time since 1966, Astra found herself missing the old home planet she’d abandoned so casually.

Which was how Astra Armstrong woke up late one morning to the fanfare surrounding the hastily rescheduled launch of the Moebius Loop-powered Cavalry Cruiser-class Unification Searcher Spacecraft (USS) Starlin, the ship she’d simply assumed she would be tasked with commanding, because it had already taken off with its new crew, Captain Zap and her Hyperspace Rangers, without Hedy telling her.

Astra had resigned herself to the likelihood that she would be assigned to provide Captain Zap’s Hyperspace Rangers with essential insights on the various alien species, civilizations and cultures they might encounter, but Hedy had instead sentenced the former Empress Eris to serve as a Hyperspace Ranger, under the command of Captain Zap, as Ensign Eleutherios (”Eleutherios” being the birth name that Eris had always hated), as repayment for her sins.

And with a capable crew protecting the peace in her stead, Astra couldn’t help but smile when Hedy presented her with the Reckless Endeavor, the spaceship with which Astra’s parents and the elder Dr. Volkov had originally traveled to Aetheria, now freshly restored and ready to fly wherever Astra wished.

“First, I’m gonna take a long nap, and then, I’m gonna spend some time doing nothing at all, because I’ve been meaning to do both of those for years,” Astra laughed, even as tears spilled down her cheeks. “After that ... when we left Earth, I was so ready for something so much bigger. The only other gals I knew who wore pants were you, Katherine Hepburn and Laura Petrie on Dick Van Dyke. So much happened, just right after I left.” She chuckled. “It’s like Earth waited until I was gone to get cool.”

“And now?” Hedy brushed the blonde spit-curl from her daughter’s face. “You want to catch up?”

“I want ...” Astra paused, then unclipped the Walkman from her belt loop, that she’d carried to honor all the fallen Hyperspace Rangers, more than one of whom had worn such portable music players into the fray of combat.

Astra cranked the volume on the headphones up to the max, then pressed play, and the voice of Stevie Nicks began to croon:

♫ No one knows how I feel ♪ ♪ What I say, unless you read between my lines ♫ ♫ One man walked away from me ♪ ♪ First he took my hand ♫ ♫ Take me home ... ♪

“I want to go where the music sounds like THAT,” Astra’s voice choked up, as her eyes welled up with fresh unshed tears.

Hedy struggled to keep the quaver out of her own voice, as she squeezed her daughter tight to wish her safe travels. “Then you go there, baby. You go follow the music that’s in your heart.”

#Captain Zap and her Hyperspace Rangers #Captain Zap #Hyperspace Rangers #The Adventures of Astro Armstrong #Astro Armstrong #Astra Armstrong

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shockdowndefiance · 4 years

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You've been visited by the random OC question fairy! :D ~☆

Pick five of your character's most influential milestones (moving away from home, a first kiss, a death, etc.). Why and how did these milestones affect your character?

Thank you for the question! Once again I am answering for Allison Shepard as she’s the only MC I really have fleshed out. I sat down to write out her most influential milestones and narrowed it down to the five I felt would be most interesting. In chronological order:

1. Finding out she was a latent biotic and suddenly developing biotic abilities at the age of sixteen 2. Meeting her first boyfriend, Finn

After she was expelled for punching and injuring another student, and moving to a different human colony, she enrolls in a new school and meets Finn on her first day there:

A teen boy slouched casually against the wall opposite the office, moving to stand up when Allison shut the door behind her. His dark hair flopped down into his bright blue eyes as he moved, his hand almost continually going up to move it out of the way.

"Finnegan Osmani. Call me Finn," he said once he was close enough, holding a hand out. Allison took it and gave a brief shake before she pulled back. "You're that new kid, right?"

"I am," Allison said, turning and looking around. "I hear you’re my chaperone."

Finn laughed. "That's one way of putting it. Hey, rumours going around; you are a biotic, right?"

"Sure am," Allison said, turning back to look at Finn with a cool glare. "You gonna make something of it?"

"Nope." Finn grinned. "My lil sis is a biotic, she'll love to meet you."

Allison smiled herself.

Maybe introductions weren't going to be so bad.

Outside of family everyone treated Aliison and her twin brother Elliot like a ticking time bomb. Finn was the first one to fully embrace who she was, biotics and all. This was in part because of his younger sister also being a biotic, so he had some knowledge of what being a biotic meant.

Walking in to that new school, she had put her hair up and left her amp fully visible - she didn’t care what anyone thought of her, whispered about her. Hating her for being a biotic was the same as hating her for having green eyes, and if it meant she rounded out high school as the ostracised creepy biotic whom no one talked to...well, she didn’t care.

And then Finnegan showed her that, no, not everyone was going to act like that. Some people would be accepting of who she was, biotics and all.

Again, this has gotten really long so the rest is under a cut!

3. Enlisting in the Alliance 4. Getting dumped by Finn 5. Defending Elysium from pirates and slavers 6. Being awarded the Star of Terra for her actions on Elysium

Allison didn’t do anything special on Elysium.She didn’t do anything more than any other marine would have done (and in fact some of them willingly laid down their lives so that others could be saved). Being hailed as the Hero of Elysium is an aggravating and unnecessary epithet, and doubly so when her status as a biotic soldier is emphasised.

(This does create positive associations with biotics so it’s at least something but, again, she’s an average biotic. Nothing special. Stop advertising it on recruitment posters so much.)

She receives the Star of Terra (among others: namely her officer commission, invitation to ICT school, and a special commendation) for her actions, but despite all the pomp and circumstance, unless she needs to wear it it stays hidden away in its box in storage.

It doesn’t help that she’s the daughter of Hannah Shepard, well-regarded veteran of the First Contact War. People expected a lot from Allison, and barely four years since enrolling in the Alliance, they had humanity’s newest hero on their hands. She brushes off most applauds about her status; they take it as her being modest, she intends it as a stop bothering me about it but she can’t not keep it.

(This does later cause a bit of friction between Allison and Ashley later, but that is 8-9 years later in the timeline.)

7. Being invited to participate in the Interplanetary Combatives Training course 8. The untimely death of her paternal grandfather In the late 22nd century, the average life expectancy for humans is around 120, with some individuals reaching 150 years old.

As such, Allison’s paternal grandfather dying in his early nineties was a shock to all. It occurs in the middle of Allison’s ICT learning, and as a result it delays her graduation by a year. Completing ICT can be done in a year, but Allison spread it out a little because she wanted to pace herself - being one of the first biotics invited into the program, she didn’t want to crash and burn (despite there being no shame in being able to complete the first rank, she personally would have hated having done so).

Her grandfather’s death causes her to step back and reevaluate things a little. She idolised her grandfather so much (I have an idea for an art piece when Allison was about eight years old, on the back porch of her grandfather’s house; Allison is pulling a face because she and her grandfather are eating liquorice; she despises it but her grandfather adores it, and because he adores it she reckons that she must also adore it) and losing him punches a hole in her career plans.

She stays in the Alliance (not much else for a biotic to do, and her family going back many generations has been military, so she doesn’t quite know what else to do) but she misses him for a long time. 9. Completing her Interplanetary Combatives Training course and being awarded N7 rank 10. Accidentally interfacing with the prothean beacon on Eden Prime and getting the first glimpse of the impending Reaper invasion 11. Becoming a Spectre, part of the Citadel's specops group 12. Rescuing both Kaidan and Ashley from the near-doom mission on Virmire 13. Allowing herself to fall in love with Kaidan This harkens back to Finn and him seeing her as a whole. For Allison, being in the Alliance and having a relationship doesn’t mesh - initially she’s working on her career, aiming to get her officer’s commission, then Elysium happens and people are more interested in her as Commander Shepard, Hero of Elysium than they are of Allison.

Kaidan’s different. Heck, all of the Normandy crew are different (barring those who knew her prior like Anderson and Adams) - while they respect her as their XO/CO, they don’t idolise her like other people she’s met. She can pull off heroic feats and achieve the near-impossible, but a large part of that is down to her crew and how they are all able to work together.

But Kaidan sees beyond rank, sees beyond medals, sees beyond her service history, and does indeed see Allison, the person. Admittedly at the point in time this occurs, Allison hasn’t seen how bad things can get, and she doesn’t know how much of a rock Kaidan will be to her, but to realise that he loves her, the entirety of her, and not the hero plastered across the recruitment vids, or the thin line between reverence and rejection biotics often get.

But they’re military, she’s his CO and he’s her HOMD. She’s gotten a lot of leniency running as a Spectre ship but she still answers to the Alliance. Fraternization is not allowed, and so they push their feelings to the back once the Citadel is saved and Saren and Sovereign are killed. Kaidan requests to be given a new posting, a space halfway across the galaxy, given a few months and then start an official, public relationship, and allow Allison a shot at a normal romantic relationship. 14. Dying and being ressurected 15. Finding out that the Collectors are protheans, enslaved and mutated by the Reapers 16. Leading a team through the Omega 4 relay, a place where no one had returned from, to destroy the collector base and returning victorious 17. Blowing up a mass relay in batarian space, killing over 300k batarians and being put under house arrest 18. Almost losing Kaidan after an ambush on Mars 19. Uniting the galaxy against the Reapers and delivering the killing blow, ending their message for ever 20. Waking up to a post-Reaper galaxy with both physical and mental injuries, and learning how to manage with those

Allison wakes up in a hospital bed for the second time in her life after a major battle and she almost cries. Let me rest, she thinks, fearing that Cerberus has gotten to her again and they’ve rebuilt her again to go rogue and save the galaxy again. Hasn’t she earned her rest?

Well, yes. She has.

She’s in a hospital in London, her mother at her bedside as medics struggle to sedate her, worried that Allison will injure herself more without it. Miranda, the one who rebuilt her after the Collector attack, is leading the team. Allison is officially awoken from the induced coma/sedation about a month later and told what happened.

She lost her lower left leg, replaced with a prosthesis in the short term and a tissue cloned leg in the long term. One arm was dislocated, the other broken; a scar now bisects her face from forehead to nose, before curving around her cheekbone to her ear.

The Normandy has disappeared, no one knows where her or her crew are, including Kaidan - whom she had married just hours before the final assault against the Reapers.

Allison gets a multitude of diagnoses - acute stress disorder, anxiety, depression, panic attacks. Physically she recovers without issue, though she considers the clone tissue leg a waste (I can manage just fine on a prosthesis thank you) when there are others around who could benefit from the resources used on her.

But she’s got one more epithet to add to her collection - saviour of the galaxy, and a one-of-a-kind medal to accompany that. Her immediate family survived - her parents, her twin brother, her younger sister. And somehow Kaidan and nearly everyone on the Normandy survives too, reunited about three months after Allison officially wakes up.

But she struggles with her mental health, lashing out at Kaidan for his idea to take her to inner British Columbia, to his family’s orchard. Logically she knows it’s the best idea - remote and peaceful - but her brain rebels, another choice made for her, another change to her life that she has no control over.

But she apologises, rests, and recovers. Takes up Anderson’s apartment on the Citadel when it’s habitable once again and considers, maybe, retiring from the Alliance and pursuing a normal life.

Maybe.

(It doesn’t stay that way for long.) 21. Choosing to get pregnant and raising children with Kaidan

#oc memes #questions and answers #allison shepard #mass effect #random oc questions fairy #thank you #if anyone wants to know some of the other events feel free to ask me #I talk a lot #random-oc-questions-fairy

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magic-and-moonlit-wings · 5 years

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Patterns in Trollhunters and 3Below to watch for in Wizards

It’s a bit much to fit on a bingo card, so have a checklist!

Protector and surrogate father-figure, who used to work for the main antagonist, appears to die in a heroic sacrifice at the end of the first season (or, halfway through the series by episode numbers), but is revived/rescued a few episodes later. [AAARRRGGHH, Varvatos Vex]

Woman who appears as a low-level threat in a single Season One episode reappears as a more significant reoccurring threat in Season Two, working with the main antagonist, and is killed off by the end of the series. [Queen Usurna, Colonel Kubritz]

Assassin with power to basically teleport, distinctive yellow eyes, and sympathetic backstory, deserves so much better than the betrayals and abandonment he gets, and is eventually killed by someone he used to work for. [Angor Rot, Tronos Madu]

League of assassins gets wiped out. [Janus Order, Zeron Brotherhood]

Character gets a power-up palette swap. [Jim, Gunmar, Morando]

Time manipulation [Kairosect, time loops, that one novel where the Trollhunter team went back in time, that room in Merlin’s tomb]

Memory erasure [breaking the binding spell, time loops, Morando’s attack inside Coranda and Fialkov’s minds]

A plot-significant artifact glows blue. [Amulet, serrators]

Weapon can compress to ‘fun sized’ seemingly-harmless state. [Daylight, Shadow Staff, warhammer, serrators]

Acquiring and assembling the three components of a device important for accomplishing the protagonists’ goals. [Triumbric Stones, Daxial Array, possibly Seklos’ Cannon but I forget how many pieces that needed]

Three Rules Of ___ [Trollhunting, Changelings, ‘love hunting’, acting human]

Method of disguising nonhumans as humans [Changeling transformation, glamour masks, transduction chambers, that thing Stuart built]

Secondary character’s ex is a sexy badass lady who tries to kill him and the protagonists, not because of the breakup but because they are on different sides of a war. [Draal and Nomura, Stuart and Gwendolyn]

Blue-skinned character does not understand the appeal of kissing. [Draal, Krel]

Acting subplot [Romeo & Juliet high school play, the parents’ improvised play to trick Detective Scott, DJ Kleb movie]

Doctor Mom [Barbara, Izita]

“I’m jealous my sibling/best friend I grew up with has a love interest and is paying attention to them instead of me and wants to share a secret with them that we’ve been keeping together.” [Toby about Jlaire, Krel about Staja]

Character is conscripted into a lifelong job that they don’t want to do, but by the end of the series has come to terms with it and encourages their brother/surrogate brother to stay behind in Arcadia while they leave to fulfill their responsibilities. [Jim being Trollhunter and leaving Toby behind, Aja being Queen and leaving Krel behind; since Steve also stayed in Arcadia, you can swap ‘surrogate brother’ for ‘love interest’ if you interpret Jim and Toby as a ship]

Adolescent protagonist(s) attempting to protect their parent(s). [Jim trying to keep Barbara out of Trollhunting matters and away from Strickler, Aja and Krel trying to guard their comatose parents from bounty hunters and being willing to sacrifice themselves to power Seklos’ Cannon instead of using their parents’ cores]

Characters are faced with tangible manifestations of their deepest fears. [pixies, maybe ‘Unbecoming’, The Deep]

Main antagonist wants powerful item kept in Trollmarket. [Heartstone, Galen’s Core]

Sexy fighter lady who wields scythe-like weapons stays behind to give protagonists time to escape main antagonist. [Nomura with khopesh buying time in the Darklands, Zadra with that double-headed scythe serrator taking on Morando’s forces]

Nougat Nummies [self-explanatory]

Gun Robot [self-explanatory]

Portals [Killahead Bridge, Shadow Staff, the interplanetary wormhole Krel built]

Chess [chessboard in Strickler’s office used for metaphors, Vex making friends with humans he meets via chess]

Interspecies romance [Stricklake, Staja, Vex and Nana, Stuart and Gwen]

Mind control [Draal and the Decimaar Blade, Claire being possessed, Mothership getting hacked]

What The Actual Fuck, Kanjigar? [insistence on working alone results in dying alone and leaving his son desperate to prove his worth, holding the doorway into the Darklands open instead of having Jim reopen it from the other side, creating The Deep to hide Galen’s Core under Trollmarket]

Major antagonist whose name begins with ‘Mor-’ [Morgana, Morando] {This supports the hypothesis Mordred will be involved in Wizards somehow.}

That one bridge everything seems to happen at or under [Kanjigar and Bular’s deaths, the doorway to Trollmarket, Morgana’s fire-cyclone, final battle with Morgana, meeting Area 49-B agents to discuss how to blow up the asteroid, final battle with Morando]

Douxie as a reoccurring minor character with implications there’s something important up with him but we never learn what. [fighting a Gumm-Gumm and saying he’s encountered them before, resemblance of wristbands to those of Merlin’s assistant in crafting the Amulet, giving Aja a highly accurate palm-reading] {I do not expect this to be the case, I just think it would be funny.}

Shannon as a reoccurring minor character with implications there’s something important up with her but we never learn what. [being nominated for Spring Fling Queen when every other nominee was a character the audience had ‘met’ before, just happening to be in the school after hours when Vex met with Birdie, getting progressively more frustrated that her volcano kept being destroyed in the time-loop episode despite supposedly not having her memories of previous loops] {This seems slightly more likely.}

Catchphrase involving gloriousness. [Amulet’s first incantation, Varvatos Vex’s fixation on ‘glorious death’]

#toaWizards #Tales of Arcadia #Trollhunters #3Below #parallels #Speculation #narrative #characterization #long post #spoilers #maybe #I do swear I just don't swear often

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jaiofalltrades · 4 years

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The following is a transcript of the only thirteen surviving audio recordings from the captain’s log of Admiral Alala Tann. They follow the voyage of the E. S. Iphigenia to fight for DOLOS in the Second Interplanetary War.

The recordings were recovered at her last known location, an outpost in Dodona. Her current whereabouts are still unknown.

First entry:

<Hello? Hi, I--Yes, I think it’s on. Captain’s log, cycle one of the E. S. Iphigenia’s voyage to the Deimos military base in the Bellona system. This is Admiral Alala Tann. We are agents of DOLOS, a private warfare company, going to assist the Federation in its fight against the insurgents. This is my--well, actually this is my first mission of this calibre. 150 troops, at my command. It’s exhilarating. I’m ready to fight! I will gladly give my life for my people. Uh, well, my crew is clearly not as thrilled about my new position as I am. I can tell they’re uneasy about me. The head engineer, Zelos, seems particularly rebellious. I should watch him--for signs of mutiny, you know? Anyway, this is my first DOLOS mission with, you know, consequences. Gysthus, this is also my first long-term mission outside of Earth. It’s a little scary, that I won’t see my family for at least five years. Hell, there’s no guarantee I’ll ever see them again. But that’s war, right? Can’t make an omelette without cracking a few nutrition storage pods. It’ll be fine. I asked for this. This was my choice.

Anyway, I’ll try to keep this log as frequently as I can. DOLOS wants me to, apparently it helps with accountability and all that. I’m trying to get in with my crew, but it isn’t easy. It’s particularly tough when you’re a small town, Earth-native human. All I can do is try. Admiral Tann out.>

Second entry:

<Captain’s log, cycle five onboard the E. S. Iphigenia. Admiral Alala Tann. We’re on course to arrive at our first checkpoint. I was talking to Brizo, our navigator, about out upcoming passage through the Antaeus Asteroid Belt. That’s the big one, the nasty one. I hate to admit it, but, uh, I’m kind of nervous about this asteroid belt. Every other vessel I’ve commanded was small enough to go over it, but it looks like we’re going to be forced to go through it. Brizo reassured me that she’d done this a thousand times and it would be okay. I like Brizo. She has a--a calming, motherly presence. I trust her.

In other news, I think I’m making friends. Kakia, a lieutenant drone pilot conversed with me in the mess hall. Gysthus, I hate that mess hall. It feels like high school all over again. Anyway, she came and asked me about myself.

‘So, Admiral, where are you from?’ She asked.

‘Earth. America, specifically,’ I said.

‘Wow. I’ve heard it’s beautiful.’ She lowered her eyes and picked at her food. I could tell she was lying.

I laughed. ‘You and only you. It’s a wasteland. Most of Earth is. I love it, though.’

She smiled. ‘I get that. I’m from DOLOS, more than anything.’

‘Oh really? What do you mean?’

‘Well, my parents are from Quirinus, but I was born on the base. More or less never left. My parents were high-ranking DOLOS agents. DOLOS was all I ever knew.’

‘They must be very proud of you,’ I said.

The smile melted off her face. ‘I sure hope so. They went missing three years ago.’

I didn’t know what to say. 'I--I’m so sorry, I--’

‘It’s okay.' She looked off distantly. ‘That’s part of why I became a pilot. Maybe, if I travel across the galaxy, I just might find them.’

I could tell she didn’t want to talk anymore.

She still sat and talked with me every day. And slowly, I think people are starting to warm up to me. Brizo talks with us too. Others chime in every now and again. I still can’t seem to get through to Zelos though. One day. Admiral Tann out.>

Third entry:

<Captain’s log, cycle nineteen. Admiral Alala Tann onboard the E. S. Iphigenia. There’s, uh, there’s a problem. Brizo says there’s been some unexpected asteroid movement. I-It seems another, independent ship was struck by an asteroid, which is tragic, but it also means that it redirected the course of an asteroid, which is now heading right for us. Brizo told me not to worry, but Gysthus, it’s massive. At least twice the size of our ship, and the Iphigenia is no dinghy. Brizo said we may be able to redirect our course, but it’s going to be tricky. We’d have to improvise the entire rest of our path through the asteroids. Navigation says they can do it. I have no choice but to put my trust in Brizo.

I’m told that it’ll be fine. We have very capable navigators. And I don’t distrust them. I’m just--it’s my first real mission. And--and I don’t want to mess it up. I can tell navigation can tell that I’m nervous. I’m not trying to offend them. I can’t help it.

Well, there’s not much I can do besides take the problem head on. Come on, Tann, you’re better than this. Navigation is working on it. It will be fine. Admiral Tann out.>

Fourth entry:

<Captain’s log, cycle twenty. It’s bad. It’s really bad. Brizo cannot redirect our course, we’re surrounded by volatile asteroids. One rock knocked off course can trigger a chain of events in hundreds. There’s no way to predict it. At least, not with navigation’s tech. I haven’t told the crew. I know they’ll riot. I know I have to. It’s not like me to run away from a setback like this. I feel like a little girl again. But I’m not. I’m not helpless, I am competent, I am the captain of this ship, and I will lead my crew to safety. We’ve been filling the escape pods with supplies. I keep dodging glances from my suspicious crew. Zelos in particular can tell I’m on edge. I don’t know if he’s also anxious or if he’s just waiting for me to screw up so he can prove he’s right about me. I can work this out. It’s fine. Admiral Tann out.>

Fifth entry:

<Captain’s log, cycle twenty-one. It’s not fine. It’s super not fine.

The asteroid stuck us today. And I hadn’t even told the crew anything was wrong.

It struck at 300 hours. The first thing we heard was alarms blaring. I was on my sleeping shift, but I wasn’t getting much sleep anyway. I lept to my feet. It was time.

I raced through the corridors, ignoring the questions from the crew. They were filling the hallways, a turbulent mass of riotous bodies running for their lives. I made it to the cockpit and grabbed the microphone for the announcement system.

‘All personnel report to the escape pods on the starboard side. The ship is in imminent danger from asteroid collision.’

I could hear the din from the cockpit. I took a deep breath, and stepped back out.

I was instantly bombarded with people. I could hear Zelos’ voice above all others. ‘What’s going on? What’s happening? Did you know about this?’

I stayed silent.

‘You did. Why didn’t you say anything?’ he roared.

‘Brizo told me it would work out.’ My voice was rising.

‘She always says that, that incompetent...You have a duty to inform us of all--’

‘You do not speak to your commanding officer that way. Report to the escape pods immediately!’

And he did. I darted around the ship, dodging bodies and questions. I got as much food and supplies as I could and shoved it into various escape pods. The crew crammed themselves in. Each of the fifteen pods could hold ten people comfortably, more than enough room for our crew. Each person brought as much of their things as they could, and when the cargo bays were full, they shoveled them into the compartments where people sat.

I wish I knew what was happening to the ship. Because the simulated gravity is calibrated to the ship, we can’t feel movement in the ships path, meaning we can’t feel when we get struck.

When nearly everyone had crammed into an escape pod, Brizo stopped me. ‘We can’t leave.’

‘What? Brizo, we have to go.’

‘The asteroids are projected to drive down, about thirty degrees from the ship in ten minutes. If we leave now, the escape pods to be smashed to smithereens.’

I looked at her. The people in escape pods were glancing around nervously. Some looked at me, right in the eyes, as if they were begging to let them go.

Brizo took me by the shoulder and turned me to face her. ‘Admiral Tann. Alala. Trust me.’

I turned to the escape pods. ‘We’ll depart in fifteen minutes.’ I call.

Pandemonium erupted. Zelos, still ushering stragglers into pods, cried out at me: ‘Are you crazy? We have to get out now. The ship is falling apart. An asteroid has already pierced the hull, it’s only a matter of time before our air supply starts leaking.’

I turned to him, my hands clenched into fists. ‘Stand down. The chief navigator has stated--’

He cut me off. The nerve on that man. ‘The same chief navigator that lead us into an asteroid field? This is her fault in the first place. Admiral Tann, requesting permission to release the first eight escape pods.’

I stared at him. I looked back to Brizo. She looked at me, pleadingly, mouthing trust me. I looked down. If the hull was pierced, the slightest tap could cause an air leak. The hand I had on the wall of the bay vibrated. We’d been struck again.

‘Permission granted.’

Brizo’s face fell. ‘No!’ she cried, but Zelos had already authorized the pods to depart. The doors sealed shut and ejected into the nothingness. As I stared out the window, time seemed to slow down.

A massive, gray, craggy asteroid, easily the size of the ship, smashed through the row of escape pods. The debris rocketed in every direction. There was--I saw--dear Gysthus, there was so much. I saw everything. Blood, guts, metal, luggage, food, uniforms, buttons, water units, shrapnel, everything. I was still. I didn’t feel like I was there. There was screaming around me, but I couldn’t feel anything. It was like I was watching myself, like I was in a dream. My...my crew. They were gone. Not all of them. Half of them.

I was distantly aware that I had fallen to the floor. Brizo was pulling my arm, yelling something. I stood. Zelos was in my face, in a rage. He was screaming something but I head nothing. All I saw was smashed skull, flesh peeling off and hair burning up, scorched into the back of my eyelids. Before I knew it was on the master escape pod, the one where the leaders sit, so the master navigator can control the actions of all the escape pods. Well, now only half the escape pods. Without speaking to anyone, I sat in the cockpit. I’ve been here ever since. In the rush, I couldn’t take any of my personal belongings. It’s just me, the clothes on my back, and the metal wristband on my arm. I guess this captain’s log is all I have. If I can even allow myself to call myself a captain. No captain lets half their crew die. No captain ignores their subordinates like that. What a captain I am. These escape pods are programmed to take us to the nearest habited planet. So until then, all I can do is sit and stew. We’ll see what comes next. Alala out.>

Sixth entry:

<Captain’s log, cycle thirty-five. We’ve finally reached a habitable planet. After days of not making eye contact with my crew, we land. We’re on a gorgeous planet, and we’ve landed near some friendly villagers who have thankfully taken us in. Their technology is very basic, almost crude. I can’t help but wonder how a planet in contact with interplanetary travellers can be so primitive. But the wildlife is lush and green, with abundant flora and breathtaking geography. Of course, I can’t appreciate it. All I see is that skull. Wherever I look, whenever I close my eyes, all I can see is that bubbling flesh ripping at the seams.

A local healer, Paean, has been my main company. He’s quiet, sensitive, and will listen to me. He’s heard my story about how I killed half my crew, and somehow still sits with me. It’s nice. I haven’t spoken much to my crew. Kakia has tried to talk, but I know she’ll just chastise me. I can’t look Brizo in the eye. Zelos steers clear of me. He seems to share my guilt. I don’t know how I feel about that.

I was walking with Paean one day, when we came by some rubble.

‘What’s that?’ I said, picking my way over rocks to observe the ruin.

‘Oh, that’s just the ruins of the old civilization. We--uh, we don’t like to talk about it.’ Paean stayed where he was while I investigated.

I found a curved piece of metal. The DOLOS logo, a delta inside a lambda, was fading from the outside. I frowned. I had seen a hunk of metal like that before. The technology at the village was primitive enough that I hadn’t expected to find something so recent.

‘This--this is so...modern,’ I said, ‘I haven’t seen anything like it back at your village.’

He visibly stiffens. ‘That’s--well--’

‘Where did this rubble come from? Do you all know about this? Are there other people here with this technology?’

‘Alala, I don’t think you should--’

I turn, marching towards him. 'Paean! What are you hiding from me?'

Sufficiently intimidated, he caves. ‘Cipros, I’ll tell you! Just relax.'

I smile. He sits on a rock, and I do the same.

‘Not so long ago, this planet was just as advanced as any other. We had technology almost equivalent to Earth. Of course, any advanced civilization will eventually be consumed by another. Colonization, and all that.’

I nod. Happened to every planet in our solar system that wasn’t Earth. They start out as human colonies or alien civilization and then one day a company like DOLOS buys them out. There are some casualties, but that’s just how it goes. It’s natural. Honestly, it’s better that way. DOLOS what any society needs better than the unsophisticated locals.

'So we were bought out. By DOLOS. You’re familiar?'

'Yes, quite.' I hadn’t mentioned that we worked for them. A phenomenal decision, looking back.

'It was okay at first. It usually is. But soon they started putting price tags on everything.'

'Well, it makes sense. They have to make a profit somehow.' he shoots me a look. I think that was rather insensitive.

'Sure. well, they started pricing all our crops, our livestock, even our water. We were paying some other company to buy the things that we grew. And the prices kept rising and rising until we just couldn’t pay it. There was no way. We were making a fraction of that money DOLOS sent it for. So we took it. It’s not like it was stealing, it’s the food we grew.'

I’m still not sure if I agree with that.

'And of course, DOLOS found out. People who wrong DOLOS don’t usually end up alright on the other side. We fought. It was an ugly battle. Both sides committed atrocities we dare not speak of. Everyone you will meet either fought in it or lost someone to it. Needless to say, DOLOS eviscerated us. Razed us. Leveled all our cities. Poisoned our plants and animals. It was like we never existed.'

My hands clutching the curved surface stiffened. It clicked into my brain. This piece of metal was a bombshell.

'We don’t talk about it much because, well, because why would we? We know what happened. We tell our children in hushed tones. The few of us that survived created a new society, like primordial cave people. It’s been--it’s been hard. We’ve been trying to build back our tech, but it’s hard with so little metal and all our tools destroyed. But we’ll survive. We’ll thrive one day. And some day, we dream of bringing down DOLOS.’

I was speechless. I knew DOLOS did what it had to do, but--but--I don’t know, I can’t imagine something like...something like that happening. DOLOS isn’t evil. They can’t be! I’ve lived my life dreaming of one day working for them. They are heroes back on Earth. They made Earth a universal power. They’re our one claim to fame. DOLOS is my everything. They can’t...there’s no way they’re evil.

But I saw it. I saw the rubble. I saw the DOLOS logo burned into the shell of a bomb. I-I need some time to think about this.

Still, I told my crew. In my first ever address to them, I swallowed my fear, braced myself, and stood. I tried to be brave, to be fierce. I faced my crew and told them what happened. I told them what I had learned about this place and that we would have to leave as soon as possible, and to never tell any villager who we work for. Zelos and his engineers had already started work on repairing and refueling the escape pods.

Meanwhile, I had an apology to give. I tracked down Brizo working on the autopilot on the escape pods and pulled her aside.

I squared my shoulders. 'Brizo, I owe you an apology. I should have listened. And because of my actions, half the crew is--’ my voice broke ‘--half of our crew has been killed.' My words were almost robotic.

Brizo was stiff. 'Thank you, Captain. May I return to my work?'

I nodded. I’m going to have to work on the heartfelt stuff. Until then, Admiral Tann out.>

Seventh entry:

<Captain’s log, cycle fifty-one. The escape pods are repaired! I’ve had some time to think, and I think I have a plan. I can’t keep working for DOLOS. After what they did to Paean’s planet, I can’t work with a company that does that. There are a lot of things about DOLOS that would seem inhumanly cruel if done by anyone else. DOLOS is a company that sells war. Is that a company I want to work for? I used to think war was a noble, beautiful thing. I don’t know why. After watching this village for so long, I know what war does. War kills. It wounds, it maims irreperably. These people, they--well, war has defined their lives. I can see it. The way a mother cringes when we ask for her husband. The way children pucker when we ask to meet their mom. The way they start a sentence, say ‘is,’ then trail off. Not ‘is.’ ‘Was.’ You can tell they aren’t used to these now homes. They bump into things, trip, like their home has something against them. It’s horrible. And I don’t want to contribute to a company that gets away with that.

The insurgents always seemed like an abstract, distant concept, a group of insane people fighting for the sake of fighting. Now...well, I can kind of understand. Of course, you never really understand until you experience it. I’m not going to go joining them, of course, but still. I may want to help. My crew feels the same way. After I told them what DOLOS had done, I think they were sympathetic to my cause. And so, I told them the plan.

We can’t keep fighting for DOLOS, that much is clear. And we aren’t going to go joining the rebellion. So I said, we’d report to the checkpoint we were expected at on Dodona, refuel, maybe buy a better aircraft, then turn around and head right for Earth. As far as DOLOS knows, we all died in an asteroid crash and were never seen again. They seemed to agree. Some crew members decided to stay. I had a feeling they were happy to get away from me. Thankfully, Zelos remained. We need all the hands we can get. I bid goodbye to Paean, who helped us restock what supplies we could. So we boarded our escape pods, and that’s where we are now, bound for Dodona. All we can really do is hope, at this point. I just want to get home. I have a lot to think about. Alala out.>

Eighth entry:

<Captain’s log, cycle sixty-nine. Gysthus save me, we’ve been through a lot in the past cycle. There was--well--we--Gysthus, it’s been eventful. I guess I’ll start at the top.

When we were just four cycles from Dodona, our escape pods started to break down, because of course they did. Thankfully, a DOLOS ship was passing by. Brizo, bless her, was able to establish a communication signal with them. We told them we were part of a DOLOS ship that had been destroyed by asteroids, which was the truth. They didn’t have to know about the whole ‘ignoring direct orders’ thing. Thankfully they let us board, and said they could take a quick detour to drop us off at Dodona. I was so grateful, I don’t think I noticed that every crewperson from that ship who spoke sounded exactly the same.

We boarded the ship. Immediately, we knew something was wrong.

‘Welcome, crew, this is the D. S. Thalassa.’ the crewman who greeted us seemed to be very...chill. He spoke with little change in tone, almost robotic. His eyes were half-lidded and glazed. As we boarded, we came to notice that they were all like that. And the most uncanny thing was that no matter what person, no matter what species or gender, everyone sounded exactly the same. Their voices were nearly identical. Scratch that, they were identical. As if one person spoke from many mouths. When we talked to people about themselves, the quickly turned the conversation around, as if they had no history or personality. The captain, Kratos, seemed to be more animated. But still, with his chilled out voice and smile with too many teeth, I didn’t trust him. And for good reason.

As soon as we boarded, things started going wrong. Pieces of wall and ceiling would fall on crewmembers. People would trip over things that weren’t there a second ago. And these people, though languid, acted with incredible force. Every touch and push was just a little too rough, every handshake too tight. They tripped us and pushed us and nudged us over gaps. And though we had our own healers and supplies, they continually insisted we go to their sick bay. We never let anyone, thank God.

Eventually, we got fed up. I had to confront the captain. Gysthus knows I didn’t want to. I am not a coward, but this man creeped me out. He felt like a ringleader of a brainwashed circus. But after...after what happened, I have to protect my crew. I knocked on the captain’s door.

He sat behind a comically large desk with a massive holoscreen in front of it.

‘Kratos.’

He turned.

'What’s going on? Your crew doesn’t seem entirely healthy.'

He smiled. I shuddered. Too many teeth. 'Oh, they’re just like that. They’re very chill, you know. But they get the job done.'

'They’ve been trying to harm my fr--my crew.'

He raised an eyebrow. ‘Now that can’t be true.’

‘They insisted my lieutenant eat one specific dish. When she gave the food to another of your crewmen, he passed out.'

'We have excellent cuisine here, they’re allowed to recommend their favorites, no?'

'They tried to push me out a window.'

‘They just want you to take in the view!’

‘Listen here, Kratos,’ my hand went to my electron phaser. 'You’re hiding something, and you’re going to tell me what’s up.'

His smile faded. 'I think it’s time you go.'

I walked closer. I drew my phaser. 'I think it’s time you start talking.'

I stalked towards him, aiming my phaser. Before I could get close, he drew a dagger, ready to throw. I froze. We were at a standstill.

‘Young admiral, you still have much to learn.' He moved first, lightning fast. He pushed towards me and tried to strike, but I bobbed out of the way and rolled behind the desk. He rammed into the desk and I used the barrel of my phaser to knock the knife from his hand. It clatters to the floor. I grabbed it.

‘Now, you’re going to tell me what I want to--’ he sprung up, grabbing for my gun. I slashed with the dagger.

He let out a strangled cry and fell to his knees, clutching his arm. I made a pretty deep incision, it seemed. Blood splattered onto the floor. I hesitated.

‘Now you’ve...now you’ve really done it.’ He laughed. I was not sure what to do. I wasn’t exactly used to slicing up other ally captains in my free time.

A funny look crossed his face. I wasn’t sure what was happening until I heard footsteps. The crew was coming, I realized. Somehow, Kratos had summoned the crew to come tear me to smithereens. I had to find out how, and quick. I started searching the desk for a button, a switch, anything. I looked at the holoscreen, but it was in some language I had never seen before.

‘You’d better—‘ Kratos started.

‘Can it!’ I kicked him. The back of his head slammed into the desk.

Suddenly, the footsteps stopped. I heard confused, dazed voices. Different voices.

‘You’ve—what have you done?’ He croaked.

‘Don’t be dramatic. Get up.’ I kicked him again.

The doors burst open. A mob stood in the hall, about to strike.

‘Please, I’m not trying to—‘ they cut me off.

‘There he is!’

‘He did this!’

‘Get him!’

I barely had time to duck out of my way as the mob pours in and starts attacking Kratos. I wasn’t fond of the guy, but watching him be brutally torn apart by a mob was a little...much.

Soon after, they told me and the rest of my crew that they were part of a hivemind controlled by Kratos via an implant in his brain. Some kind of failed DOLOS experiment. He adds people to his hivemind by injuring them, and then while they’re unconscious in the sick bay, implanting a chip in their brains. Most of them weren’t even soldiers. You see the weirdest stuff out here.

Thankfully, they said they would actually take us to Dodona. So hopefully they’ll follow through. I’d hate to have to instigate another revolution. Gysthus, I miss Earth. At this point, all I want is to return home. To see my family. Part of me wants to retire, quit, get a new job. Another part says this is my duty. A soldier endures. I can endure this. Maybe what I miss isn’t Earth, but stability. I keep getting thrown from hardship to hardship. Maybe I just want to live quietly, as a farmer or something. Three isn’t much I have in terms of skill that would be useful on Earth. I do miss that stability, though.

Things are still terse with my crew. I still haven’t reconciled with Brizo. At this point, Kakia is my only friend. I’m just glad she still respects me. Alala out.>

Ninth entry:

<Cycle 81. Something bad happened. I think...I think there’s a mole in my crew.

Let’s—I—okay, let me explain.

Today I got a call from DOLOS. They called Kratos’ holoscreen and asked the first mate at his desk for me.

I stepped in. ‘Yes?’

A mousy-looking DOLOS agent stared back at me through small glasses. ‘Admiral Alala Tann.’

My blood runs cold. ‘This is she.’ My brain is moving fast. How do I get out of this?

‘You have a lot to explain.’

‘Yes! Yes. I am so glad you got to me, I’ve been trying to get in touch with your people!’

‘Really.’ It was more of a statement then a question.

‘Yes. Our ship crashed into an asteroid! We got into the escape pods but half of us were destroyed by asteroids. The few survivors of my crew managed to get passage here.’

‘Interesting. You claim to have attempted to contact us but haven’t gotten through?’

‘That’s correct.’

They wrote something on a holopad in front of them. The silence screamed in my ears.

‘Hm. Admiral Tann, I’m sensing some inconsistencies in your story. You and your crew are to report immediately to the DOLOS base on Quirinus.’

‘But—‘

‘Thank you, Admiral Tann.’

And they closed the line. I sat back in Kratos’ chair. Gysthus, what am I going to do?

I’ve talked it over with Kakia.

‘—and they want me to go to Quirinus. I figured you’d have some insight, being from there.’

She cocked her head. ‘Quirinus? You can’t go to Quirinus! That’s where they send dissidents.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah. I’ve seen it. They take them into this chamber and then poof. They cooperate. They're happy. They’re fixed.’ She leaned in and whispered, ‘They’re brainwashed.’

‘Yeah, I got it. I guess...I guess we just proceed to Dodona, huh?’

She nodded.

‘And...I think there’s a mole on the ship.’

Her eyes went wide. ‘What?’

‘I mean, I never told DOLOS we were on this ship, but they found us anyway. All DOLOS tech and provided uniforms are long gone, so there’s no way they tracked us here. Should I start investigating?’

‘No! You can’t let them know you’re onto them! Those DOLOS moles are tricky. If you find them out, they’ll rat you out immediately and you will be terminated. As long as the mole thinks they’re still a secret, you’re safe. I’ve been with DOLOS a while, and as soon as a secret agent gets discovered, they take down the whole mission.’

‘So...I should just do nothing?’

‘I hate to say it, but that’s all you can do.’

And that’s what we’re doing. Alala out.>

Tenth entry:

<cycle 124. There’s...there’s...sorry, I’m panting. There’s...a lot to talk about this time. I’m just gonna jump in.

We’d made it to Dodona, and the original crew of the D. S. Thalassa let themselves out at the first checkpoint before landing. The first mate actually sold the ship to me. He claimed he wasn’t a real soldier anyway, the crew was made up of whatever laypeople Kratos could find. They booked passage back to their various home planets. We requested to dock on the DOLOS base. Naturally, because nothing is easy here, they recognized me. They locked us in a tractor beam and pulled us to what was essentially the brig of the base. Not the proper prison, which they do have, just the brig. They put us in baby jail.

Thankfully, that means security was very lax. There were no alarm sounds, no flashing lights. Just us with a couple of security guards. Security guards we could definitely take down.

Thinking on my feet, I grabbed the only people on the deck with me. Kakia, Brizo, and Zelos. Naturally. Brizo is back on my side, though. Still, there’s an awkward air when we together. You can feel the things we aren’t saying hanging in the air like moisture.

‘Okay, here’s the plan. We’re gonna break into the baby jail control system and reverse the tractor beam that has our ship to a repulsor beam.’

They paused, as if waiting for more. ‘That’s it?’ Asked Zelos, ‘that’s your plan?’

I almost chastised him for talking back, but stopped myself. I laughed. ‘Do you have a better one?’

He was silent. I didn’t think so.

‘That’s a great idea,’ Kakia said. I could see the gears turning in her brain. I hated to shut her down.

‘Sorry, lieutenant, but I need someone to lead the crew if we get caught.’

‘What?’ She said, ‘Me? What about your first mate?’

‘He’s dead, soldier.’

‘But--I’m from here! I know the place. How are you going to get around?’

‘That might help.’ I pointed through the windscreen to the map on the chamber’s wall.

She sputtered.

‘We don’t have time to waste. Zelos, Brizo, grab yourself some weapons. We have thirty minutes before the DOLOS agents come for us. Move!’

We armed up. Zelos had his miscellaneous gadgets on his belt, Brizo had her phaser and I had mine and my newly added dagger. The gangway descended right between the two guards standing watch. We took them down with ease. We scouted around for any more, but it seemed we were alone. I could hear activity down the main corridor. We raided the unconscious bodies of the guards for their weapons and strapped into their armor. With their helmets on, we were indistinguishable from the other guards.

After taking a snapshot of the map, we marched down the corridor, nodding at any guards we passed. No one questioned us, thank Gysthus. We joined a growing stream of troops filing towards the main control room.

When we got there, our hearts sank. The room was crawling with troops, scientists, and commanders. Brizo and Zelos could locate the panel controlling the brig tractor beam, but there were too many people around to mess with it.

I pulled Brizo and Zelos in. ‘Okay. I’m going to create a diversion, you guys reverse the beam and get back to the ship. Don’t wait for me.’

‘Captain, we aren’t going to leave without you,’ Brizo said.

‘Officer, I appreciate it, but this is bigger than me. This is about you. It’s about our crew. I’ve been...well you know I haven’t been the best captain. But I promised I would do anything for my men, for my people, and this is it. Now, we don’t have any time. Go.’

And before they could say anything, I was off.

For the distraction, I had an idea. Being a soldier who’s a human, a woman, et cetera, I know how to clock people. I know how to assess who’s a threat and who’s just talking big game. Before me, a hulking frame stood looking down on another two heads shorter than him. He was more than as twice as tall as me. If I had to guess, he was probably a Shohli. Shohli are tough, value respect, and don’t feel emotions nearly the same as humans. This makes them ruthless soldiers. Somehow, I knew this guy wasn’t like that. Maybe it was the way he hesitated when he spoke, like he doubted himself, or the way he drew himself up to appear taller, but I could tell he was not all he looked. Starting a fight with him could draw soldiers, and if I got him to smash enough stuff, the scientists would come too.

I squared my shoulders and marched up to him. ‘Hey! Big shot!’

He turned. He was listening. That was step one.

‘I heard what you said about Sheila!’

That was a gamble.

‘What? I love Sheila!’

Jackpot.

‘Don’t be smart with me!’

I tried to shove him. I couldn’t really reach is shoulders, so I just went for the knees and hoped. He buckled back, crashing into a panel of buttons. People came running. I glanced over at Zelos and Brizo. There were still too many. I shove him a few more times. He’s still not fighting back, which is good.

I cried, ‘You don’t talk about her that way! I knew you were a piece of--’

He crashed into another set of panels.

‘--from the moment you walked in! You’re nothing like they say you are! You don’t even know what you’re doing!’

Crash after crash. He had landed on his back at this point.

‘Hey! Please, don’t--what are you--shove off!’ He shoved me back. I nearly flew across the room. I rammed into a screen, and something in my back cracks. Hope that wasn’t important. That got me some more attention. Another glance showed Brizo and Zelos had started tapping away at keyboards and buttons. Things were going well.

Then he punched me in the gut.

I felt the air leave my lungs. I was on my knees, I couldn’t get up. He loomed above me.

‘I don’t know who you are, or who you think I am, but you have to stop this.’ He was bellowing. The whole room was watching. I glanced over, and Zelos and Brizo were gone. My work was done.

‘Hey, man, I’m sorry. I heard it from that guy over there.’ I point.

He whips around. ‘Doug! What the--’

When attention had turned, I slipped out from the room and staggered down the halls, still reeling from that punch. I was clutching my gut. I thought one of my ribs had broken. I’d have to get that checked out.

I was moving as fast as I could down corridors. People around me were grabbing me, yelling at me, but I just keep running. I saw phasers trained on me. I saw angry faces. I just kept moving.

I finally, finally broke into the brig chamber. The ship was already hovering, but the gangway was lowered. There was time.

I sprinted to the gangway, jumped, but by fingertips just grazed the cool metal. It rose, higher and higher. It was a lost cause. I felt myself sink. Guards were yelling behind me, gaining on me. I saw people inside the doorway of the ship; I saw Kakia, Brizo, and Zelos. Zelos was fiddling with his equipment. He tossed something down at me, and it clattered to my feet.

‘Use this! It’s a...like...repulsor beam but weaker...the presser...more concentrated…’ I couldn’t hear him over the roar of the engines. ‘Press the blue button!’

Press the blue button… I looked down. It was a small rod with a flared end pointing toward the ground. It had a handle like a screwdriver with a blue and a red button.

My ribs ached. It felt like every bone in my torso had been liquified. A guard grabbed my shoulder. ‘You’re coming with--’ I pressed the blue button.

I rocketed into the air, shaking the guard from me, just high enough to grab the rising end of the gangway. I swung myself into the cabin as the gangway closed. I saw at least half the crew gathered around me. They were cheering. I could barely hear them. They were congratulating me.

Zelos clapped me on the back. ‘Almost had us worried there, Captain. I have to admit, it worked out.’

I smiled, and handed him back the tool. ‘Thanks, but...what is it?’

His eyes lit up. ‘It’s a presser beam! It’s actually one of my own inventions. It’s like a repulsor beam, like the one that’s repelling our ship right now, but smaller nad more concentrated. This means that it can bear less loads, but creates more force.’

‘That’s...really cool. You folks down at engineering are doing good work.’ He smiled.

‘You really did it,’ Kakia said, ‘you really pulled it off. You really are something, Alala.’ She smiled.

‘Yeah,’ Brizo added, ‘you’re doing pretty well for yourself. You’ve messed up but...you got us this far. And I...I trust you’ll bring us to safety.’

I tried my best to thank them, but all I could get out was “h--’ before I collapsed to the floor.

I’m in the sick bay, healing up. The plan for now is to circle the planet until we find a non-DOLOS base to dock at. Brizo’s more or less taken over at this point. That’s fine. I’m resting up. Healing from my three broken ribs. Yup, three of my twelve ribs. That one Shohli broke one quarter of my ribs. Over Sheila.

I think this journey is finally reaching its conclusion. For the first time, the end is in sight. And I can’t wait. Alala out.>

Eleventh entry:

<Cycle 151. We’ve been circling the planet, and finally found a neutral base to dock at. We quickly learned that ‘neutral’ is really code for ‘insurgent.’ They weren’t too happy to see a ship with a massive DOLOS logo on it, but we were able to convince them that we were with them. I guess we’re as good as insurgents. May as well join the rebellion entirely at this point. Well, we were able to park our ship and get out into the local town. It’s rather nice, actually. It’s been a while since we could relax. Still, I miss Earth. Every day, after all these tribulations, the one thing that reassures me is that I may, at the end of this, return to Earth. To my family. And it’s only been five months. I still can’t believe that. All of this crap amounts to five measly months. Odysseus was on his journey for ten years. Well, he wasn’t a fresh-out-of training 22-year-old with little experience and even less maturity. I feel like I’ve aged so much in five months.

Anyway, we had started venturing into the surrounding villages. This particular area is a desert, so there are no bustling metropolises, just small villages that crop up wherever they can, then relocate when supplies run out. We but things, visit places, learn things, and meet people. I met the woman who leads this branch of insurgents, Pistis. She goes by Tiss, for fairly obvious reasons. I’m told she’s the best healer these parts had ever seen. I had coffee with her a few times.

‘So, the insurgence around here, how did it start?’ I asked one morning.

She scoffed. ‘Same way every other one starts. With DOLOS wronging us. There was war here, a while ago. DOLOS agents occupied my hometown. They took lives. But they also took people. The troops took my mother. They claimed she was an integral witness to the crimes of the other side. I never saw her again. They took our siblings. You’ve met my sister, Phila? She wasn’t the only one. We had four siblings, two brothers and a sister. They were all taken. One by one. For various reasons. They didn’t even give us a reason for our sister. She was just gone. I suspect it was a Trojan Women kind of situation. That’s kind of what it was like, being the common people of the losing side. I guess that Euripides was right.’ She sipped her coffee. ‘Anyway, when the war was over, our thriving nomadic communes turned into these ramshackle, pathetic huts.’ She kicked the cloth wall of her house. Hot sand pours in, scorching my skin. My coffee is ruined.

‘I’m--I’m so sorry.’

‘Well, at least you’re not working for the bastards anymore. Speaking of, it’s only a matter of time before you all join the rebellion.’

“I think we’re trying to remain neutral right now.’

‘There’s no neutral in war. Just the oppressors and the oppressed.”

I shrugged. “Maybe. My main goal has been to get back to Earth.’

She raised an eyebrow. ‘Really? I don’t think most of your crew would want that.’

‘No?’

‘Most of them aren’t from Earth. They were just on that DOLOS base for that one assignment. They’d probably want to break up.’

‘Huh. Maybe...maybe this is our journeys end. Maybe we part ways here.’

“If I were you, I’d sell the ship, pay the crew whatever you can, and then part.’

‘But I’m wanted for DOLOS. I probably can’t leave the planet.’

‘Then don’t. Hang around. Or I’m sure my sister can help you forge some documents to assume another identity. She stays here and helps with that kind of thing for the rebellion.’

‘I might take you up on that.’

‘Might want to fake your own death for good measure.’

I laugh.

‘I’m not joking. DOLOS will not rest until you’re caught.’

‘I’ll look into it.’

And that’s the plan for now. Sell the ship, fake my own death, head back to Earth. Easy peasy. Gysthus, I’m so close. I can almost taste it. Alala out.>

Twelfth entry:

<Cycle 160. I gathered the crew. ‘Folks, I speak to you not as your captain, but as your friend. I’m stepping down. Lieutenant Kakia is in charge. I’ve learned and grown so much with you. I’d like to thank you for everything we’ve been through. I want to thank you for, no matter how I’d lead you astray, putting your trust in me. You are free to depart as you please, but I must bid you all farewell. In the immortal words of my ancient human ancestors, I’ll catch you on the flip side. That means goodbye.’

My speech done, people started to clap. One by one, they all saluted and nodded to me. I hate to see them go. I may not have been the best captain in moments, but I think it can be said that I gave them my all.

I pulled Kakia, Zelos, and Brizo aside. ‘May I speak with you all privately?”

I ushered them into my chamber of the ship. ‘I’m going to fake my own death.’ Brizo gasped. Zelos frowned. Kakia stiffened. Kakia had been stressed out for the last few days, I recalled.

‘I know it sounds drastic, but I have to dodge DOLOS somehow. I just want you all to know that I’m okay, and I wanted to thank you all for helping me all this time and trusting me. I may have done you wrong a few times, but I do care for you all and wish you the best.’

‘Alala, thank you,’ Brizo said, ‘I--I wish you the best as well.’

‘I know we haven’t always seen eye to eye, but I do trust and appreciate you. I may not have thought so initially, but you are an excellent captain.’ I smiled at Zelos.

The room went quiet.

‘I’m afraid I can’t let you do that.’ Kakia spoke quietly, chillingly so. We all turned to her.

‘What?’ I said, hand creeping towards my phaser.

‘I’m afraid I can’t let you do that. You can’t just run away like that. We’ll always find you.’ Kakia was rising from her seat. The hairs on my arms rose.

‘“We?”...Kakia you...you’re the--’

‘The mole? Yes, Alala, the mole. I’m the mole. Happy? Satisfied?’

‘You...it can’t be...I trusted you!’ I roared.

‘That was your first mistake. And if you aren’t going to comply and go straight to DOLOS headquarters, I will make you.’

‘This can’t be...and I don’t suppose you two are--’ I saidm but Brizo and Zelos already had their phasers pointed at Kakia.

‘Don’t move! You’re outnumbered, three to one.’ Brizo was tapping away at her holopad, no doubt calling for help.

Kakia slapped it out of her hand. It hit the floor and shattered. She slammed a fist on a button and the doors locked.

‘That’s what you might think.’ She smacked another button, and panels of the wall flipped open to reveal laser phasers trained on Zelos and Brizo. They slowly lowered their weapons and raised their hands.

Kakia turned her attention to me. ‘And for you captain…’

I whipped out my phaser, training it on her. She chuckled.

‘Don’t bother with that. You’ll find your electron phasers don’t work in here.’

I pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. I tossed my gun aside. My hand went to the dagger, but I didn’t unsheath it. Kakia rounded the table and drew her own blade.

‘Now you’re going to come with me if you want to--’ I tackled her.

I wrestled her to the ground, my own dagger drawn. With my knees on her chest, I wrangle the knife out of her hand. I toss it, just out of her reach, and hold my dagger under her throat. ‘Now you’re going to--’ With her free arm, she pulled a heavy chair out from the table, and it fell onto my back. Startled, I leaned off of her to avoid getting crushed. She hoisted herself up and tackled me. She pinned my shoulders to the ground and grabbed around for her knife. While she was distracted, I kicked her in the chin. I stood up and slammed the button, and the lasers retract into the walls again.

‘Why do we even have those?’ I muttered. I tossed Brizo my phaser, which I seriously hoped had started working again. Kakia was rising again, but Zelos was quicker. He got up behind her and managed to grab one of her wrists. Sadly, the other one clutching the dagger, was free. She slashed at him, and caught him in the shoulder. I heard him hiss in pain.

Brizo and I were quick to wrangle Kakia. With two of us, we overtook her. Zelos ripped up some of his shirt to use to temporarily tie her up. We unlocked the door and marched her down to the brig.

When she was properly bound in her cell, we gathered in front of it to question her.

‘Kakia, who are you really?’

She smiled mockingly. ‘Kakia Ularin, in the flesh. Same DOLOS lieutenant, just with different, say, motivations.’

‘And I suppose all that bull you told me about your background was false too.’

‘No, I’m really from Quirinus, and I really haven’t seen my parents since I was young. Only difference is DOLOS says they’ll bring them back to me if I spy for them. I go on every mission with amateur captains like you to keep them in check.’

‘Kakia...it’s DOLOS.’ I almost felt bad for her. ‘I don’t think you’re going to see them again.’

She spat at me through the bars. ‘You’re lying! They’re out there! I know it. I can feel it.’

I shared a look with Brizo. ‘Okay, okay. So all that advice you gave me--’

‘All orchestrated to suit my plans. Every step of the way was planned out.’

‘Really? Even the one where we break out of baby jail on the DOLOS base?’

‘Stop calling it that. And no, that particular episode was unplanned. I started the ship early to make sure you wouldn’t make it. You can thank him for that whatever beam that launched you back in.’ She nodded at Zelos.

‘And about me not going to Quirinus?’

‘That was a test. You were supposed to follow the orders of your superiors without question.’

‘But...I don’t get how you could set up that test after what happened to our ship.’

She smirked. ‘Where do you think the asteroids came from?’

Brizo gasped. My stomach dropped to my knees. I couldn’t feel my legs. ‘No...no, you’re lying! DOLOS would never purposefully destroy its own assets just to what, test me?’

‘Maybe they would, maybe they won’t. Maybe I’m finally confessing the truth. Maybe these are the last delusions of a crazy woman. You’ll never know.’

I didn’t know what to do. I knew I was done with Kakia. I stormed out of the brig.

Brizo followed. ‘Alala, I’m so…’ she trails off. ‘Is the plan still on?’

‘Oh, I have new plans.’

I...I have nothing more to say. I can’t believe I trusted her. Alala out.>

Thirteenth entry:

<Captain’s log, cycle 161. It’s official, folks. I’m dead!

It happened like this.

At eighteen hundred hours, I marched Kakia down to the center of town square.

‘Going to execute me? Right in the street?’ She taunted. I ignored her.

‘You don’t get to know where we’re going.’

And then, right in the middle of the square, I let her go.

‘What? You--’

‘Oh no!’ I cried, as loud as I could. ‘She escaped!’ I drew my phaser clumsily. She easily knocked it out of my hand and grabbed it.

She pointed it at me. ‘I’ll finally finish this, once and for all!’

And she shot me.

And I died.

Around my body, pandemonium ensued. Nearly the entire town had seen Kakia shoot me, so it wasn’t long before guards started rushing in. She had already started running, but they closed in on her with ease. And they dragged her, kicking and screaming, to Dodona Interplanetary Prison. I smiled from where I lay on the pavement. Zelos and Brizo came to collect my body and brought it to Tiss’s house. With the help of Zelos’s armor, Tiss’s healing skills, and just a little fake blood, I was dead in the eyes of DOLOS. We know no federal prison can contain Kakia. Nothing has been able to contain DOLOS as of yet. But that doesn’t mean we still won’t try.

I’m staying with Tiss’s sister, Philophrosyne. She goes by Phila, for obvious reasons. I gel with her more than anyone else I’ve met so far on my journey. She’s sweet. People think she’s soft, but I can tell there’s an edge to her. I can see the fierceness in her eyes when she talks about the insurgence. She’s smart, she’s quick, I’ve never met someone quite as witty. We’re working on forging me some documents so I can get back to Earth. Until then, I’m enjoying my time here on Dodona with Phila. It’s...it’s really nice. Insurgents come through here often. It feels good to be able to help them. I’m doing my part to hold back DOLOS. Well, I’ll be here. Alala out.>

Thirteenth entry:

<Captain’s--well, I guess this isn’t really a captain’s log anymore, is it? Cycle 228. I think this will be my last entry. I’ve--you know I’ve been going back and forth on staying, these past few cycles. It’s tiring, anyway, keeping track of Earth cycles on a planet with a unique cycle length. I think--I--well, I’ve decided to stay.

I struggle to say way. It’s a lot of reasons. I’ve grown so accustomed to this way of life. I’m rather fond of this desert, though it can be a pain. I love aiding in the rebellion, any way I can, whether its helping Tiss heal them up or helping Phila forge documents. I know it sounds boring, but with Phila any task seems exhilarating. Sometimes I hear tell of the work of my friends. Zelos has been making tech for the insurgents. Brizo has been piloting ships for them. And of course, Kakia is back to spying.

I had a conversation with Phila about Earth.

‘It sounds beautiful.’ She had been hunched over some paperwork, but she leaned back to look at me.

‘It wasn’t. It’s the people, not the landscape, that matters. It’s so diverse, even within human culture. And there was--there was music.’

She glanced at me. ‘Music? We don’t get a lot of that around here.’

‘I know. I had been thinking of commissioning some kind of flute from Metis. I’m not much of a singer, but it’s fun. It’s nice.’

‘You’ll have to sing for me one day.’ Phila was now focused on me. I shifted a little under her intense gaze.

She took my hand in hers. ‘Alala. It’s a beautiful name.’

I smiled, suddenly shy. ‘It’s Greek. Means “spirit of the war cry.”’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah. Doesn’t feel quite like me now. I used to be like that, though. I was fierce. Rough around the edges, some would say.’

‘Do you miss that?’

I smiled. ‘Hardly. It was mostly to make up for some insecurity or other.’

She squeezed my hand, then went back to her work. And I noticed for the first time, she was humming. It was some basic tune, very repetitive. After a moment, I started humming along. And we worked together, not speaking, for hours. It sounds like it would be droll, but...it wasn’t. It was...it was nice. It was nice being with her.

It is nice being with her.

I think I’m going to stay.

I don’t really need this log anymore, do I? I think...I think I’m finally home.

Alala Tann out.>

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atamascolily · 5 years

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I was so happy to stumble across a paperback copy of Vigilant, by James Alan Gardner, which was one of my favorite sci-fi novels in high school. It’s the only one of his novels I’ve ever read, and I was delighted to discover I enjoyed it just as much--if not more--on re-read.

Vigilant is set in Gardner’s League of Peoples universe, in which there are a wide variety of alien races, planets, colonies, and governments, but only one unflinching universal law:

“No dangerous non-sentient creature will ever be allowed to move from one star system to another system. ‘Dangerous non-sentient’ means any creature ready to kill a sentient creature or let sentients die through wilful negligence.”

As you can imagine, this doesn’t eliminate war entirely, but it does limit it significantly, since the rule is 100% accurately enforced by the League by means humanity does not understand. With the ground rules covered in a short and snappy prologue (god, I wish more authors understood how to do this), we meet Faye Smallwood, denizen of the planet Demoth, as she narrates her story.

First person novels live or die by the strength of their narrative voice. The best ones tug you by the arm from the first line and never let you go. This is what Heinlein excels at, for instance. Even when I find the narrator morally repugnant and unreliable (looking at you, Mycroft Canner from Too Like the Lightning!!), I’ll follow them anywhere if they have a strong voice. And Faye does.

Faye begins when she’s sixteen, growing up in a mining town, when her alien neighbor Ooloms--genetically modified humanoids with glider-like “wings”--start dying of a mysterious plague. Even if Faye wasn’t the daughter of the local doctor, every human on Demoth is pressed into service as one by one, Ooloms fall ill and die. When an Oolom named Zillif crashes into Faye’s sleeping dome one night, Faye carries her to the improvised hospital and takes care of her. (This is the image depicted on the cover, which shows a gorgeous, Pieta-like inset of a young woman cradling a woman in a voluminous white gown that are actually wing flaps.)

Zillif is a proctor of Vigil, a government agency devoted to inspection and rooting out corruption--essentially a Jedi without the Force. (It sounds too good to be true, but it does work for reasons that are explained later.) Faye listens to the dying Zillif’s stories of Vigil, and is devastated by Zillif’s death three hours before her father discovers the cure. As humans and Ooloms slowly begin to recuperate from the massive, planet-wide PTSD, Faye engages in all kinds of self-destructive coping mechanisms. Eventually, she settles down and decides to join Vigil... only for someone to start killing Vigil agents across the planet.

I’ve already mentioned I love Faye’s voice. I love how flawed she is, how brutally honest she is about her fuck-ups, her dry humor. I love how much information Gardner packs into those opening chapters, how you think that none of this is related to the actual plot, but it’s just so compelling you don’t really mind the detours--only to find out, no, actually, none of that was a detour and it will all be important later. As a writer, I admire that.

I really like how Gardner writes aliens. I like the world-building, much of which logically flows from the dictate about not letting non-sentients travel. I like how the Ooloms are weirdly alien and yet relatable, the little glimpses we get of their culture, all kinds of cross-cultural shenanigans. I like Tic, the master proctor who is “1.000001 with the universe”. And I love how Faye ends up circumventing killer androids, with one of most unlikely lines in the universe, which I cannot reveal because it’s just too good in context.

I also like how Faye ends up in a group marriage of both men and women (she does it to annoy her family and it works, but not in the way you’re probably expecting), though we only see her be intimate with women.

At a certain point in the novel, Admiral Festina Ramos shows up, who I know is the protagonist of some of Gardner’s previous novels that I have never read. Festina still retains some of that PC glow, but I’m able to follow her part in the story without too much confusion. I enjoy her relationship with Faye as they blow shit up, try not to die, and bat eyes at each other. LOL.

And I really love Vigil. Faye doesn’t know this when she meets Zillif, but graduating Vigil means having a data-link to the interplanetary computer network embedded in your brain, which can kill you with “data tumors” if you accidently overload yourself. It also eliminates the all-too-human ability to lie to yourself, to willfully ignore conclusions you don’t want to think about, which is how Vigil agents remain incorruptible and the system works. And what I love is how this changes Faye, how it forces her to deal with her psychological bullshit, and grow and mature. And I think it’s an excellent system that seems like it might actually work both in-universe and out!

So, yeah, this book is great, and I’m so glad I was able to find it again.

#book reviews #vigilant #james alan gardner #90s nostalgia

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oosteven-universe · 4 years

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They Fell From The Sky #1 Advance Review

They Fell From The Sky #1 Advance Review Mad Cave Studios 2021 On Sale Feb. 03 2021 Written by Liezl Buenaventura Illustrated by Xavier Tarrega Coloured by DJ Chavis Lettered by Joamette Gil Tommy Murphy is just an ordinary kid. He goes to school, hangs out with his friends, and fanboys over his favorite TV show. But when a chance encounter in the woods thrusts him into an unlikely friendship with an otherworldly creature, he is forced to navigate bullies, family squabbles, and tween woes... all while trying to prevent an interplanetary war! This is a part of what I do that I absolutely love. Being asked to do an advance review of a book that will be out before you know it. Better still when it comes form a company whose work you really enjoy. So this is an all-ages offering and it has all the elements to it that make this feel like it is a premiere book for the next year. Or This year as of a couple of hours from now. There are a few things about this that already set it apart from the crowd and they are little moments that you will have to read to understand because I am not about to get into them and give anything away. Suffice it to say however, that they will make you smile, laugh and believe that anything, anything at all is possible. I love the way that this is being told. The story & plot development that we see through how the sequence of events unfold as well as how the reader learns information is presented exceptionally well. There are many times that we all vividly remember the trials and tribulations of being in high school and even more so if you weren’t one of the popular kids then oh yes then it was more hellish indeed. So to see this captured in a way that is utterly relatable to and you can empathise with any of the characters is sensational. The character development that we see is fantastic! How we see the characters act and react to the situations and circumstances they encounter really help to flesh them out beautifully. The pacing is superb and as it takes us through the pages revealing the twists & turns along the way we are treated to a really delightful introduction to the kids and the world that they live in. I am completely enamoured with the interiors here. The linework that we see has this nie strength to it and the way we see the detail work shining through is extremely nice to see. We get some really nice utilisation of backgrounds throughout the book as well which is more than a delightful surprise as they really do enhance the moments as well as well bring us depth perception, a sense of scale and the overall sense of size and scope to the story. The utilisation of the page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels show a remarkable eye for storytelling. The colour work is gorgeous as well. I really like how we see the various hues and tones within the colours being utilised to create the shading, highlights and shadow work. I find myself growing more and more drawn to the all-ages titles that are coming out. I had never appreciated them when I was growing up which is a shame considering how much fun they are. This is the kind of stuff that kids dream about being able to do and adults remember wanting to be like as a kid. So all in all it is something for everyone to relate to whether they think that they can or not. This is some superb storytelling that highlights the magic and wonder comics can bring.

#Comic Books #Comics Reviews #Mad Cave Studios

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aion-rsa · 4 years

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Read an Exclusive Excerpt From Charlie Jane Anders’ YA Debut

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

We need hopeful, critical, and empathetic voices in speculative fiction now more than ever, and Charlie Jane Anders is one of the best. The io9 co-founder who has gone on to write Hugo-nominated speculative fiction novels All the Birds in the Sky and The City in the Middle of the Night, is coming out with her first young adult novel, and we couldn’t be more excited. The upcoming science fiction adventure is called Victories Greater Than Death, and it’s being billed as perfect for fans of Star Wars (us) and Doctor Who (also us). We’re honored to bring you an exclusive excerpt from the novel—but, first, the synopsis:

THE UNIVERSE IS CALLING—and time is running out. Tina has always known her destiny is outside the norm—after all, she is the human clone of the most brilliant alien commander in all the galaxies (even if the rest of the world is still deciding whether aliens exist). But she is tired of waiting for her life to begin. And then it does—and maybe Tina should have been more prepared. At least she has a crew around her that she can trust—and her best friend at her side. Now, they just have to save the world.

And now for the exclusive sneak peek…

I have a ball of starlight inside me. A globe, containing a billion bright pinpricks. It’s always been there, since I was a baby—but lately I’ve been chewing up the inside of my own mouth waiting for it to burst out of me. Sometimes I feel all these little suns whirling, like they’re getting ready to emerge from the hollow of my collarbone. My whole life has been leading up to this, and I can’t stand the waiting.

I’m dangling by my waist from the side of the highway bridge. All the blood rushes to my head as a sixteen-wheeler truck rushes past, so close that I can feel the air disturbance and smell the fumes. The bridge quivers, and so does my heart. I feel like I’m going to pass out.

“Anything?” asks Rachael Townsend, who’s holding my belt in her strong grip.

“Nothing,” I gasp.

“Maybe you’re not scared enough,” Rachael says.

“I’m definitely scared enough. This . . . isn’t working.”

Rachael helps me pull myself upward, back behind the rusted old railing. I collapse on the hot cement walkway, next to a graffiti tag with a picture of a snarling puma.

“Okay.” Rachael smiles, sitting cross-legged on the walkway with her eyes looking wide and extra green in the midday sun. She’s dressed like a fourth-grader, as usual, in corduroy overalls and a long-sleeved stripy shirt.

“So it’s not reacting to fear. Or adrenaline.”

“And we know it’s not triggered by anger,” I say, “or it would have activated when Lauren Bose put dirt in Zuleikha Marshall’s new shoes. For sure.”

“Is Lauren Bose still harassing Zuleikha Marshall? And the school is doing nothing?” Rachael shakes her head. “This is why I’m being homeschooled.”

“Yeah. And yeah, the administration is both-sidesing the hell out of it. Makes me want to scream.”

“Okay.” Rachael reaches into her backpack and pulls out a folder. “So I’ve personally seen your rescue beacon light up on three separate occasions, and you’ve told me about four other times.” She shows me a chart, with beautiful handwriting and amazing doodles showing different versions of me with a bright blue-tinged glow coming from my sternum. Because Rachael is the greatest artist of all time.

Each cartoon version of me is labeled with things like:

1. Tina about to go to junior prom with Rob Langford 2. Tina right after cops broke up our flashmob outside the slumlord offices 3. Tina finds out she flunked trig midterm

“I got a D on that trig test,” I protest. “I did not flunk!”

“So I don’t see a huge pattern,” Rachael says. “I mean, it’s supposed to turn on when you’re old enough for the aliens to come get you, right?”

“They’re taking their sweet time.” I drag myself to my feet. “My mom keeps saying it might not happen until I turn eighteen, or even twenty-one. She just doesn’t want me to leave. As if it would be better for me to just stay trapped here forever.”

Rachael stands up too, and we walk back toward her rust-colored old Dodge hatchback. She’s being quiet again, which . . . a lot of being friends with Rachael is learning to interpret her many flavors of silence.

Like, there’s the “I’m mad at you and you won’t find out why for a week” silence. Or the “I’m figuring something out in my own head” silence. The most common is the “I need to be alone” silence, because Rachael has major hermit tendencies. But this silence is none of those, I’m pretty sure.

We drive for a while, without even any music. I’m one-quarter wondering what’s up with Rachael, but three-quarters obsessing about my rescue beacon and why it won’t just spill all the stars already.

At last, when we’re stopped at an intersection near the upscale mall and the tech campus, Rachael glances my way and says, “I wish I could go too. When the aliens come to collect you. I wish I could come along.”

I just stare at her. I don’t even know what to say.

“I know, I know.” Rachael raises her hands from the steering wheel.

“It would be ridiculous, and I would be useless up there in space, and there would be creatures trying to kill us, and it’s your destiny, not mine. But still. I wish.”

I want to tell Rachael that she’ll have a way better life down here on Earth. She’ll go to art school, find a new boyfriend to replace that loser Sven, publish tons of comics, and win awards. She’ll have adventures that don’t involve things like an alien murder team trying to kill her. She has plenty of reasons to stay.

Unlike me. I don’t have any real friends at high school, since Rachael dropped out. And the only thing I have to look forward to here on Earth is more people talking down to me. More bullies and creepers at school. More feeling like a bottomless pit, crammed with garbage emotions.

When Rachael drops me at my house, I just say, “I wish you could come too.”

“Yeah.” She smiles and hands me the folder. “Here. You should have this. Maybe it’ll help.”

She drives away. While I stare at a painstakingly annotated chart full of cartoon Tinas—each one bursting with pure dazzling light.

A few hours later, Rachael and I are already chatting again:

Chat log, Aug 19: Trashstar [5:36 pm]: its gonna happen soon. i can tell. the beacon. it’s gonna light up. Inkflinger [5:36 pm]: thats what u said last spring. and last winter. and five other times. Trashstar [5:37 pm]: its different this time i swear Trashstar [5:37 pm]: my mom is doing that thing again where she just stares at nothing Inkflinger [5:38 pm]: oh man, i’m sorry Inkflinger [5:38 pm]: what do u really think will happen when it lights up???? [Trashstar is typing] [Trashstar is typing] [Trashstar is typing] Inkflinger [5:40 pm]: helloooo?! Trashstar [5:40 pm]: i dont know Trashstar [5:41 pm]: they didnt tell my mom much when they dropped me off Trashstar [5:41 pm]: just . . . alien baby. massive legacy. evil murder team. Inkflinger [5:41 pm]: i hope there’s a dragon that u get to ride on Trashstar [5:41 pm]: like my own personal dragon Inkflinger [5:41 pm]: ur personal dragon that u share with me Trashstar [5:42 pm]: i’m pretty sure there will be at least a suit of armor Trashstar [5:42 pm]: rocket boots!!!! Trashstar [5:42 pm]: my theory is i’m the heir to a space casino Inkflinger [5:42 pm]: u’ve had YEARS to think about this Inkflinger [5:42 pm]: and space casino is the best u’ve come up with???? Trashstar [5:42 pm]: or maybe a wizard school Inkflinger [5:43 pm]: its definitely either casino or wizard academy Trashstar [5:43 pm]: pretty sure i’ve narrowed it down to those 2 options yea

This beacon is a part of me, like my liver or kidneys. Except sometimes at night, a faint growl wakes me—and I feel like I have a pacemaker, or some other foreign object, jammed inside my chest. And then I remember that my body isn’t the same as literally everyone else’s.

I fill our electric teakettle, with the switch jammed in the “on” position. And then I lean all the way over the side of my bed, so the steam is hitting the exact spot where the beacon is located. Mostly, the steam gets up in my nostrils and makes me choke.

My mom hears the kettle squealing. “What are you doing in there?” She peels back the curtain that separates my “bedroom” from the rest of the apartment. “Stop messing around. This is ridiculous.”

“It likes the steam! I can feel it reacting.” I cough and sputter.

“It’s an interplanetary rescue beacon, not a pork bun.” My mom turns the kettle off.

“I’m just so sick of ‘almost.’” I flop back onto my bed and bury my face in my knees.

Lately, my mom spends her time either trying to hide her tears from me, or acting like I’m already gone. Last week, I caught her folding the same shirt for five minutes, just creasing and tucking over and over until it looked like a paper football. She’s started calling up friends she hasn’t seen in ages, signing herself up for adult education classes, working on ways to move on with her life without me. But then, she’ll blow off some social plan that she spent hours making, just so she can sit at home staring into a Public Radio mug full of Chablis. I want to comfort her, or reassure her, but I don’t know how.

For all we know, the people who left me on Earth as a baby are all gone, and there’ll be nobody to answer the beacon when it does come to life.

“You could just stay here on Earth and have an amazing life.” She stares at her refrigerator door, with all the old photos and the terrible artwork I did in fifth grade. “You’re already helping people down here,” she says with the full force of her midwestern Presbyterian earnestness. “All of the things that you do with the Lasagna Hats, everything you make happen . . . Nothing could ever make me prouder of you than I already am.”

“Yeah.” I stare at the floor. I don’t know what to say. My mom knows I want this, more than anything, even though it’s going to destroy her.

My mom sighs and drinks from her wine-mug. “Just promise me one thing.”

“Sure. Whatever.”

For once, we are actually looking at each other. Her red hair has wiry streaks of gray, and her eyes have new lines around them.

“When the beacon lights up, you have to run.” Her eyes blaze, out of nowhere, with an intensity I’ve almost never seen before. “Run as if armies were chasing you. Because I’ve told you, the moment your beacon activates, monsters from beyond our world will try to kill you. They won’t stop. Keep running, until you’re sure you’re being rescued for real. Promise me.”

I kind of shrug it off, but my mom grabs my wrist. So I say, “Yeah, yeah. Of course. I promise. Jeez.”

That night I wake up, and there’s someone next to my bed.

All I can see at first is a pair of coal-black eyes, glinting in the moonlight filtered through the branches of the yew tree outside my tiny window.

Then I make out his face. Pale, like a ghost. Grinning, like a serial killer.

Something lights up in his hands. I glimpse a shiny metal tube with four wings on all sides, and an opening, full of bottomless darkness, aimed right at me. Somehow I know this is a weapon.

He stands over me, huge as a mountain, blocking out everything else. Even if I had the strength to rise, I would still be a speck next to him.

“I take no pleasure from killing you.” The giant speaks in a low purr. “Satisfaction, certainly. And an adrenaline rush. And oh yes, a sense of vindication. Your death will probably give me closure. But still, I feel sad that it came to this.”

My skin is so cold, my hands are numb and my arms feel prickly. I can’t breathe.

“I want you to know that I feel nothing but pity for your miserable state.” The huge figure raises the gun to my head.

I scream until my throat hurts.

The gun hisses. I’m about to be burned down to nothing.

I’m so cold, I can’t stand this cold.

The word “miserable” rings in my ears as I scream and brace myself for death.

The next thing I know, my mom is shaking me and yelling my name. “Tina!”

My mom wraps my quilt tight around me. “Tina, are you okay? Talk to me.”

I still can’t breathe. “He was here,” I wheeze. “He was right here. He wasn’t even human. He was about to kill me.”

“Honey, it’s okay,” my mom says. “It’s okay. You’re safe. You’re here with me, it’s only human beings ’round these parts. I promise.”

“I’ve never been so scared in my life.”

That sentence takes me several breaths to say, with all the shivering. The quilt (with squares containing famous women who fought against oppression) helps a little. So does my mom, whispering reassurances in my ear.

That wasn’t just a random hallucination, or a dream. It was a memory. A memory of the person I used to be. Whoever that was. Don’t ask how, but I just know this was a glimpse of her life. The rescue beacon whirs inside me.

“I’m glad you saw that,” my mom says, “because I keep trying to tell you. The moment that beacon activates, they’ll be coming. I only saw a glimpse, and that was enough to make my skin crawl.”

My stomach flutters. “Tell me again.”

My mom hesitates, then nods. “I had just failed another infertility treatment, and they showed up at my apartment. They had a baby, with skin the color of fresh-picked lavender, and big round eyes, and they said you were a clone of someone who had just died, someone important. They took some of my DNA and used it to make you look like my daughter, so I could watch you until they were ready to come get you. They showed me a hologram of the monsters that I needed to keep you hidden from, and it was like seeing an army sent by death itself.”

My mom leans on my quilted shoulder, like she’s about to start crying.

Then she takes a deep breath instead. “Let’s do something fun tomorrow. I have a day off. Worthington Garden Party?”

“Wow. What? Really? We haven’t played Worthington Garden Party in forever.”

The beacon goes back to sleep behind my breastbone.

“Oh! There’s that brand-new mall near the tech campus that we haven’t even been to yet. I can wear my church-lady hat!” My mom laughs, and rubs her hands together, and I can’t help smiling too.

But after she leaves, I close my eyes again, and I still see the pale giant leering at me. Raising that terrible gun. I feel frozen to the marrow, like I’ve waded neck-deep into a lake on the bleakest day of winter.

Worthington Garden Party is a game my mom and I invented, where we go through the mall looking at things we could never afford to buy, and we pretend that we’re planning a fancy garden party for the Worthingtons (who don’t exist, just in case it wasn’t already obvious).

My mom puts on her scariest hat, with the carnations and the pink ribbon, and I wear bright apricot capri pants. And we drive to the new shopping center, over on the rich side of town.

The kitchen store has this red-chrome machine that turns fresh fruit into a decorative fountain, and you can program it to spray a few different patterns. “I don’t know,” my mom says, in a very serious voice. “The Worthingtons are quite particular about their juice formations. We wouldn’t want to have a fruit salute that lacks proper parabolas.” My mom says the words “fruit salute” with a straight face.

“Yes, yes,” I say. “I mean, the Worthingtons. How many times have they said they prefer their papaya juice to really soar? So many times.”

My mom nods gravely. “Yes. The Worthingtons have strong opinions about properly aerodynamic papaya juice.” Over in the corner, the salesperson is hiding her giggles behind her hand.

This is the mom I’ve been missing lately. The one who decided that she and I would treat everything like a grand ridiculous adventure, the two of us against the universe. Even when we went camping and set fire to our tent, and got ourselves menaced by beavers. (They were really terrifying. I swear.)

“I always knew that you were going to be taken away from me,” my mom told me a while ago. “I thought about taking you off the grid, or trying to find people to train you in survival skills. But I decided it was better for you to have some good memories of your time as a human being. However long that lasts.”

We keep moving through the mall, along marble floors that are so shiny, I see a murky ghost of myself reflected in them. We gaze upon shiny shoes, in a riot of colors, that cost nearly a month’s rent. These kid-leather saddle shoes, with peacock feather heads all around the sides, might be just the thing to help the Worthingtons launch the season. “Mundane,” my mother proclaims, squinting at them. “Frightfully mundane.”

The only thing we actually buy is a basket of truffle fries, which we eat in the food court. They smell of rich oils and spices, but they taste like regular fries, just a little sweeter.

My mom chatters about the book club she keeps missing, and I let myself breathe. It’s okay. Only humans ’round these parts.

Then I look away for a second, and see the pale man, standing near the video game store. Watching us. His lip curls upward, and he pats the ugly gun attached to his dark tunic.

When I look again, a second later, the pale man is gone.

The next day at Clinton High, someone has posted a slut-shaming video about Samantha Kinnock, and it has a hundred likes already. Only thirty seconds long, just a close-up of Samantha’s ass in this pair of booty shorts that she decided to wear one weekend, with ugly messages popping up. I hear Lauren Bose and her other friends whisper about it in the hallway.

It never stops. The cycle just keeps going and going. People only feel like their footing is secure when they can step on someone else’s head.

Why would I even want to be human?

I step into Lauren’s path and the rage settles onto me, like armor.

“Leave Samantha alone.”

I get tunnel vision, and my nerves are jangling, and Lauren’s dimply smirk gets under my skin—and the beacon wakes up. Something to add to Rachael’s chart of cartoon Tinas.

This ball of light throbs and pounds against the wall of my chest like a trapped animal, pale glow showing through my hoodie. And I think, It’s happening, damn damn damn, I’ll finally be who I was meant to be.

One of Lauren’s friends, maybe Kayla, sticks out her foot, and trips me. I fall face-first onto the tile floor, hard enough to scrape my palms. Everyone is laughing and chattering and aiming their phones.

The beacon sputters.

All at once, I’m not picking myself up off the hallway of Clinton High. I’m raising myself, painfully, off an opaque black surface made out of glass, or plastic. The floor quakes under my hands and knees—and all around me is nothing but darkness, peppered with tiny lights.

Stars to my left, stars to my right, stars all around.

I’m standing on top of a spaceship, in deep space.

And my skin has turned purple. Not grape-soda purple, more like a pale, bluish purple that shimmers as it catches the starlight. I’m wearing a crimson suit, or some kind of uniform, with a river of lights on the left sleeve and a picture of a strange mask, like for an opera singer, on the right. My violet palms are cupped around a holographic message that I somehow know is telling me this spaceship is about to explode.

“You mustn’t blame yourself,” says a voice like the rustling of dead leaves in the wind. “You were always doomed to fail.” The giant from my bedroom turns his depthless black eyes toward me. He’s wearing a bloodred sash across his long dark tunic.

His face looks wrong, even besides the paleness and the big dark eye pools. I can’t figure it out at first, but then I realize: he’s too perfect. No flaws, no blemishes. The two sides of his face are exactly the same, like a mirror image. His dark hair is cropped short across his white scalp.

“Marrant, even if you kill me, that doesn’t mean I’ve failed,” I hear myself say. “There are victories greater than death. I might not live to see justice done, but I can see it coming. Also, that sash makes you look like a third-rate CrudePink singer.”

The giant—Marrant?—snarls and lunges forward, and his right hand holds the same weapon as in my vision from the other night. I’ve never even seen a regular gun up close, but at this range, I can tell this one will rip my entire body in half.

The darkness in Marrant’s eyes makes me feel tiny, weak, a speck of nothing.

Then reality comes crashing back. My skin is back to its usual shade of pale cream. I’m standing there in the hallway, trembling, and the bell is ringing, and I’m about to be late for class. My legs won’t budge, no matter how hard I try to make them.

Saturday morning, the sunlight invades my tiny curtained-off “bedroom” and wakes me from a clammy bad dream. Even awake, I keep remembering Marrant’s creepy voice—and I startle, as if I had more layers of nightmare to wake from.

My phone is jittering with all the gossip from Waymaker fandom and random updates about some Clinton High drama that I barely noticed in the midst of my Marrant obsession . . . and then there’s a message from Rachael on the Lasagna Hats server.

Monday Barker. It’s happening: disco party! Coming to pick you up at noon.

The Lasagna Hats started as a backchannel group for Waymaker players—until the game had one gross update too many, and then we started just chatting about whatever. And somehow it turned into a place to organize pranks and disruptions against all of the world’s scuzziest creeps.

I grab my backpack, dump out all my school stuff, and cram it full of noisemakers, glitter, and my mom’s old costume stuff. I’m already snapping out of my anxiety spiral.

The back seat of Rachael’s car is covered with art supplies and sketchpads, and I can tell at a glance that she’s leveled up since I last saw her works in progress. As soon as I get in her car, Rachael chatters to me about Monday Barker—that online “personality” who says that girls are naturally bad at science and math, and women should never have gotten the vote.

Then Rachael trails off, because she can tell I’m only half listening.

“Okay,” she says. “What’s wrong with you?” I can barely find the words to tell her I’ve started having hallucinations about an alien serial killer.

The artwork on Rachael’s back seat includes a hand-colored drawing of a zebra wearing a ruffly collar and velvet jacket, raising a sword and riding a narwhal across the clouds. Somehow this image gives me the courage to explain about Marrant.

“Pretty sure these were actual memories from . . . before,” I say. “I think this means it’s going to light up soon.”

“That’s great.” Rachael glances at my face. “Wait. Why isn’t that great?”

“It is. Except . . . I’ve been waiting and dreaming for so long, and now it’s suddenly a real thing. And . . . what if there’s nothing out there but the evil murder team? What if all the friendly aliens are dead? Or don’t bother to show up?”

“Huh.” She drives onto the highway and merges into traffic without slowing down. “I guess there’s only one way to find out.”

I close my eyes, and remember that oily voice: You were always doomed to fail.

“Maybe I can’t do this.” I suck in a deep breath through my teeth. “Maybe I’m just out of my league and I’m going to die. Maybe I’m just not strong enough.”

Rachael glances at me again, and shrugs. “Maybe,” is all she says.

She doesn’t talk again for ages. I think this is the “working something out in her own head” silence.

We make a pit stop at a convenience store, and Rachael pauses in the parking lot. “Remember when you decked Walter Gough for calling me an orca in a smock?” (It wasn’t a smock, it was a nice chemise from Torrid, and Walter deserved worse.) “Remember the great lunch lady war, and that Frito pie costume you wore?”

I nod.

“The entire time I’ve known you, people have kept telling you to stop being such an obnoxious pain in the butt,” Rachael says with a gleam in her eye. “But here you are, preparing to put on a ridiculous costume and prank Monday Barker. This is who you are. So . . . if some alien murder team shows up to test you, I feel sorry for them.”

Rachael smiles at me. Everything suddenly feels extremely heavy and lighter than air, at the same time.

“Oh my god,” I say. “Can I hug you? I know you don’t always like to be touched, but—”

Rachael nods, and I pull her into a bear hug. She smells of fancy soap and acetone, and her arms wrap around me super gently.

Then she lets go of me, and I let go too, and we go to buy some extra-spicy chips and ultra-caffeinated sodas, the perfect fuel for confronting asshattery (ass-millinery?). I keep thinking of what Rachael just said, and a sugar rush spreads throughout my whole body.

I feel like I almost forgot something massively important, but then my best friend was there to remind me.

Monday Barker is scheduled to speak at the Lions Club in Islington, and we’re setting up at the park across the street. Bette and Turtle have a glitter mist machine and a big disco ball, and a dozen other people, mostly my age, have brought sparkly decorations. I wander around helping people to figure out the best place to set up, since this “disco party” was sort of my idea.

“We got this,” says Turtle, buttoning their white suit jacket over a red shirt. “Why don’t you get yourself ready?” They’ve put pink streaks into their hair-swoosh.

In other words, Stop trying to micromanage everyone. Message received.

I retreat to Rachael’s car, where I rummage in my knapsack and put on a bright red spangly tuxedo shirt and a big fluffy pink skirt I stole from my mom, plus shoes covered with sequins.

Rachael sets to work finishing some signs she was making, which are full of rainbows and stars and shiny Day-Glo paint. I pull out the tubes of glitter-goop I brought with me, and she lets me spread some around the edges using a popsicle stick.

I coax Rachael into telling me about the comic she’s working on right now. “It’s about a group of animals living on a boat. They thought they were getting on Noah’s Ark, but the guy they thought was Noah skipped out on them, and now they’re just stuck on a boat in the middle of the ocean alone. There’s a pair of giraffes, and a poly triad of walruses. They have to teach themselves to sail, and maybe they’re going to become pirates who only steal fresh produce. Once I have enough of it, I might put it online.”

“Hell yeah,” I say. “The world deserves to learn how excellent you are.”

She just nods and keeps adding more sparkle.

I wish the bullies hadn’t driven Rachael away from school. She just made too easy a target for ass-millinery: her parents are nudists, she’s a super-introvert who sometimes talks to herself when she gets stressed, and she wears loose rayon clothing to hide all her curves.

The rich kids, whose parents worked at the tech campus, took her picture and used filters to make her look like an actual dog. Kids “accidentally” tripped her up as she walked into school, or shoved her in the girls’ room. One time, someone dumped a can of coffee grounds from the teacher’s lounge on her head. I tried to protect her, but I couldn’t be there all the time.

So . . . homeschooling. And me never seeing Rachael during the week anymore.

Soon there are about twenty of us across the street from the Lions Club, everybody feeding off everyone else’s energy and hoisting Rachael’s glorious awning. And a pro–Monday Barker crowd is already gathered across the street, on the front walk of this old one-story brick meeting hall with flaking paint on its wooden sign.

A town car pulls up, and Monday Barker gets out, flanked by two beefy men in dark suits holding walkie-talkies. Monday Barker is about my mom’s age, with sideburns enclosing his round face, and a huge crown of upswept hair. He waves in a robotic motion, and his fans scream and freak out.

Someone on our side fires up a big speaker on wheels, playing old disco music. The handful of cops between us and the Lions Club tense up, but we’re not trying to start anything. We’re just having an impromptu dance party.

The brick wall of the savings and trust bank seems to shiver. I catch a glimpse of Marrant, the giant with the scary-perfect face and the sneering thin lips, staring at me.

But I remember what I said to him in that vision: There are victories greater than death. I can see justice coming. And then I think about Rachael saying, If an alien murder team shows up, I feel sorry for them.

The throbbing grows stronger . . . but Marrant is gone. The brick wall is just a wall again.

The Monday Barker fans—mostly white boys with bad hair—are chanting something, but I can’t hear them over our music. Rachael and I look at each other and whoop. Someone starts the whole crowd singing along with that song about how we are family. I know, I know. But I get kind of choked up.

We keep on, chanting disco lyrics and holding hands, until Monday Barker’s supporters vanish inside the Lions Club to listen to their idol explain why girls shouldn’t learn to read. Out here, on the disco side of the line, we all start high-fiving each other and jumping up and down.

Afterward, we all head to the 23-Hour Coffee Bomb. Turtle, Bette, and the others all go inside the coffee place, but I pause out in the parking lot, with its scenic view of the wind-beaten sign for the Little Darlings strip club. Rachael sees me and hangs back too.

“I started to get another one of those hallucinations.” I look down at the white gravel. “During the disco party. Snow-white serial killer, staring me down. And this time . . . I faced it. I didn’t get scared. And I could feel the star ball respond to that, like it was powering up.”

“Hmm.” Rachael turns away from the door and looks at me. “Maybe that’s the key. That’s how you get the rescue beacon to switch on.”

“You think?”

“Yeah. Makes total sense. When you can confront that scary vision of your past life or whatever, then it proves you’re ready.” She comes closer and reaches out with one hand. “Okay. Let’s do it.”

“What, now?”

“Yeah. I want to be here to see this.” She grins.

I swallow and shiver for a moment, then I clasp her hand and concentrate. Probably better to do this before I lose my nerve, right?

I remember Marrant and his bottomless dark eyes, and the exploding spaceship, and that curdled blob of helplessness inside me. And I catch sight of him again, striding across the road with his death-cannon raised. The icy feeling grows from my core outward, and I clench my free hand into a fist.

Then . . . I start to shake. I can actually see the dark tendrils gathering inside that gun barrel. Pure concentrated death. My heart pounds so loud I can’t even think straight. I couldn’t even help Rachael feel safe at Clinton High. How could I possibly be ready to face Marrant?

“I can’t,” I choke out. “I can’t. I . . . I just can’t.”

“Okay,” Rachael says. “Doesn’t have to be today, right? But I know you got this. Just think of disco and glitter and the look in Monday Barker’s eyes when he tried so damn hard not to notice us in all our finery.”

She squeezes my hand tighter. I look down at the ridiculous skirt I’m still wearing. And I focus on the person I am in those visions—the person who can see justice coming, even on the brink of death. That’s who I’ve always wanted to be.

I’m ready. I know I can do this.

I growl in my throat, and feel a sympathetic thrumming from the top of my rib cage.

The parking lot and the strip-club billboard melt away, and I’m once again standing on top of a spaceship, and my free hand is cupped around a warning that we’re about to blow up. The stars whirl around so fast that I get dizzy, and Marrant is aiming his weapon at point-blank range.

But I can still feel Rachael’s hand wrapped around mine.

I gather myself together, step forward, and smile.

I can’t see what happens next, because a white light floods my eyes, so bright it burns.

Rachael squeezes my hand tighter and says, “Holy bloody hell.”

A million stars flow out of me, inside a globe the size of a tennis ball. I can only stand to look at them through my fingers, all of these red and blue and yellow lights whirling around, with clouds of gas and comets and pulsars.

Way more stars than I’ve ever seen in the sky.

All of my senses feel extra sharp: the burnt-tire smell of the coffee, the whoosh of traffic going past, the jangle of classic rock from inside the café, the tiny rocks under my feet.

Everybody inside the coffee shop is staring and yelling. I catch Turtle’s eye, and they look freaked out. Rachael has her phone out and is taking as many pictures as she can.

As soon as the ball leaves my body, it gets bigger, until I can see more of the individual stars. So many tiny hearts of light, I can’t even count. The sphere expands until I’m surrounded. Stars overhead, stars underfoot. This parking lot has become a planetarium.

I can’t help laughing, yelling, swirling my hands through the star-trails. Feels like I’ve been waiting forever to bathe in this stardust.

Used with permission from Tor Teen, an imprint of Tom Doherty Associates; a trade division of Macmillan Publishers. Copyright Charlie Jane Anders 2021.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Victories Greater Than Death will hit bookshelves on April 14th, 2021. You can find out more about Victories Greater Than Death, including how to pre-order, here.

As a kid, all I wanted was for aliens to show up and take me away from this planet. So I put that dream into a new YA book, #VictoriesGreaterThanDeath. Now there's a brand new pre-order page, with links to all the places! Pre-ordering is awesomely heroic!https://t.co/K9v5vUsiSV

— Charlie Jane Anders *Victories Greater than Death* (@charliejane) November 18, 2020

The post Read an Exclusive Excerpt From Charlie Jane Anders’ YA Debut appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3qk1QwT

#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

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grimdarkandhandsome · 7 years

Text

SUNLIGHT: INTRO

In the future, an investigative blogger asks me:

'Hey, excuse me. I just wanted to ask, what is Sunlight and how did you get started on this project?'

Oh, sure, i can give a quick answer to that. Sunlight is a scifi about school, space battleships, and imperfect communication between friends. The major character is Hannah, a young woman who signed up for the Navy despite the pressure to get a normal, healthy job. Most people in this setting think of the military as frivolous and obsolete, and it's actually not an exaggeration to say that Hannah has a nostalgic, adventure-seeking streak. Hannah, a recent graduate of Pilar Academy, is the leader of a Close Quarters Combat squad specializing in ship-to-ship boarding actions. She fights with a quad-hammer, strength harness, and magneto glove.

There are really a lot of characters and details in this universe. I used to maintain a wiki on Obsidian Portal about it.

The gist is that it's a set of stories about attending a slightly drowsy military academy, groups of friends unsure exactly what they want or where they are going, and finding love in a world of pointless and harmless violence.

I discovered Sunlight late one night on Tumblr. I was up at 0200 when their server went down, and when it came back up they were accidentally showing me tag feeds from a parallel universe. I stayed up and checked it out; this other universe has some cool differences from ours. They never got Minecraft, for example, but over there Starcraft Ghost is very successful series.

One of them is this series of action & strategy games called Sunlight. They're kindof like slightly less professional versions of Overwatch, as far as i can tell. Anyway it's really big and the series has been around since their 2008. There was even a movie that was somewhat well-received ... according to Tumblr anyway. The only site i’ve been able to access from that universe is Tumblr, so it’s not like i can check their version of Rotten Tomatoes.

The first game in the series, Sunlight, was the debut game of VileMilan Studios (never founded in our universe). It was a FPS with a focus on equipment customization and team play. The art design budget was limited and there were really only three or so allied NPC models. After Sunlight's wild success, Sunlight 2 started referring to these NPCs as Bravo Squad, and the junior writing staff whipped up some bios (and retcons) for them. These ended up on the promotional website in the section designed to show off how narratively rich and cinematic Sunlight 2 was. One of Bravo Squad, Lysa, even became a supporting character in a tie-in novel later on.

My imagination was captured by these minor characters. After following the tag for a while, i found myself spinning stories of their time in training, growing up together. I've actually started to write some fanfiction about the series. Some of the details, admittedly, are my own invention, since the games don't really focus on these parts of the world. I mean i haven't played any of the games but i feel like i have a pretty good handle on the story from all the gifsets. And the planets they visit are definitely canon.

Some Bravo Squad characters i like to write about:

Hannah, called Hammerhand in the marketing. A Medium. Likes warrior-poets.

Perihelion Yamaguchi, called Peri, a Medium sniper. Quiet, contemplative. After graduation she reconnects with her religious family in a big way and becomes the Young Queen Rhiannon.

Lysandra, called Lysa. She knew she wanted to join the navy ever since she read her first Horatio Hornblower book in primary school. Big ego, big ambitions, was the top-graded in her class back on her home planet. Uses a teleport harness, field laptop, and electro drones. A Light.

Shawn. She keeps to herself, but she's part of the group and is good with an assault rifle. Knows the best ramen places. A Medium.

Bu, who fights with two axes and plenty of strength biomods. A low-armor Heavy.

Fiona, with repulsor wings and a heat-seeking spear. A Light.

Some sub-settings:

The early cadetship on the mighty flagship HMS Titan (back before they even had any weapon certificates!)

Pilar Academy, and the windy grasslands used for ground war classes.

Mars, work placement missions against the robot warlords.

The winter internship in the echoing tunnels of the mysterious alien moon Extremis A.

The interplanetary expeditions of the graduates' warband: Dragon Team.

The Bevelled Plains, greatest land theater in the whole sector, created by an eccentric necrotechnomancer as his last gift to the tradition of warfare.

Basic backstory:

It's the future, & all problems have been solved.

Poverty, agriculture, space colonization, gender, artificial intelligence, economics, death, violence, politics... Whatever it is, someone has already gotten there first.

This is a little disconcerting for a young person who dreams big. All the demons that still exist were created for mere entertainment in safe, isolated environments. Ambition is redirected into games and amusement parks.

War is obsolete. Militaries linger on at a fraction of their old budgets, funded mostly by donors and hobbyists.

All intercultural conflicts have so many outlets and safeguards set up that the possibility of violence is astronomically low.

Conflicts are settled by diplomacy or fair arbitration under pre-agreed rules.

And the end of scarcity means that people don't really get serious about fighting anymore.

Furthermore, brain backups, body manufacturing, brain emulation, and artificial bodies are all so developed that lethal injuries are no longer a realistic threat.

If you die, you'll just wake up in a newly-grown body the next day.

But the literary and narrative traditions about warriors survive.

And it is this poison that has gotten into the veins of our protagonists.

War is like sports.

It is hosted by special venues - theaters - such as colosseums and state parks.

Violence outside of predeclared areas is ridiculed.

Armies (a fraction of their historical size) are funded by advertising, merchandise, and tips.

Marketing the combatants is an important part of the military business model.

The actual main character of the Sunlight video games is Agent Golem, champion of the combat tournaments that war has devolved into.

Her life is legitimately dramatic and involves power struggles between sponsors, the pressure of being the best in the world, etc. However, the life of the average war enthusiast is much more mundane.

Military technology is marketed to retrofuturist hobbyists, and features a kitschy exuberance in its design and branding (Electroblasters, Meltaswords, etc.).

There also exist backwater moons that artists have seeded with self-constructing species of robots (Pandoricans), just as something to fight. These are not very dangerous given that death is a totally curable condition.

These moons are somewhere between theme parks, open-air zoos, and live-action video games

Also, gender roles have changed. Most parents and organizations obsess over children's genomes before conception, and the current fashion in this sector is bright, athletic daughters who strive for uniqueness. (Unfortunately, there is only a finite supply of uniqueness available.) Male births are down in the low single digit percentages, and most parents seem reluctant to bother with the gender.

Other influences i draw on in these fics:

Anamanaguchi

The Magicians

Ender's Game

Halo

My memories of playing Mass Effect with Michelle in high school

Also, i like to be conscientious and attach a disclaimer on my fanfiction:

Sunlight and related characters are registered trademarks of VileMilan Studios, Inc., but as it is obvious to us storytellers that characters, narratives, and mythology belong to the people, such trademarks are culturally void. Claims of corporate ownership over thought and folklore, however well-intentioned, can have no artistic legitimacy among fans. Proprietary fiction is a legal fiction. The explorations, variations, and transformations of Sunlight in these fic(s) belong to no one but exist as simple dreams set loose upon the net, flitting from the mind of one fan to another.

#sunlight #writing #fanfiction #sunlight 2 #scifi #creative writing

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renaroo · 8 years

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Twisted Legacy (12/25)

Disclaimer: Transformers and related properties belong to Hasbro Warnings: Canon-typical language and violence, Psychological torture and horror, Post-war politics, Canon divergence/Loose canon, Hospitalization and illness, Cultist indoctrination Rating: T Synopsis: [Canon Divergence from MTMTE and exRID #54] The legacy of the Primes has had a tainted past, one that weighs heavily on Optimus, his supporters, and those who seek the legacy for the future. But as they look forward for themselves and for Cybertron, a darkness looms that threatens to further corrupt the unsteady peace of their planet with its curious claim to be the Hand of Primus himself.

It’s up to Optimus, Windblade, Rodimus, and their teams to try and save all Cybertronians from this mysterious threat and, perhaps, change the future for the better if they can.

A/N: Agghhhh this was supposed to come out Friday, but I’m LAZY and I apologize so much for the wait <3

Special thanks to Isame, @secretlystephaniebrown, and squiggol for the feedback! I really appreciate it!

Part III: The Risk of Saving the Guilty Chapter 3.2: Steep Accusations

Velocity, like all Camiens, had been accustomed to worship of the Primes. These distant, mythological figures who were chosen by Primus to guide all mech, to open their spark to the Matrix and provide a guiding light to them all.

She had, especially of her sorority, always been the more secular of the girls, especially if one did not account for Firestar’s self absorption. Velocity had never been precisely a skeptic or non-believer on the levels she had seen over the months being exposed to Ratchet’s tutelage, but the reality of a Prime was always so distant from her day to day life.

One thing she never dreamed of was riding in a shuttle beside the Prime himself.

The very real, very solemn, very intimidating Prime.

His very presence smothered what otherwise would have probably been joyous reunification between her and her group of Amicas.

Alongside her, Nautica seemed utterly starstruck by the Prime’s presence, unusually quiet and teetering on pure nervousness. So unlike her.

Their Cybertronian Amicas and other friends did not share the quiet awe, but they were all visibly uncomfortable, from Brainstorm’s nervous chatter to Nightbeat’s suspicious leering in Optimus Prime’s direction.

Chromedome was flying their shuttle, Rewind by his side as always. But the minibot was downright furious -- his field was vibrating with it. Their reactions to the Prime’s presence on the ship was... curious and mostly an outlier.

The Prime was unreadably stoic from his seat.

“So what are the odds, given he was part of the mutiny, that Perceptor would allow me to design something briefcase shaped but under supervision as always?” Brainstorm asked, stroking his faceplate’s chin. “I’m thinking it’s in the twenty to thirty percent possible.”

“You’re being far too generous,” Nightbeat informed him. “I’d put it at a zero. I think briefcases are out of the question at this point in your scientific career.”

Brainstorm let out a frustrated noise and grabbed the sides of his helm. “But it’s the only thing I have on my processor since I woke up!”

“Hm,” Nightbeat said, bringing his own hand to his chin.

Velocity looked at him curiously. He had been unusually quiet since the upset at Eukaris first broke news across their crew. It was very unlike Nightbeat, and even more than that it was most likely because he was trying to untangle some connections he was making. Though, Velocity couldn’t imagine for the life of her how he had enough information to figure anything out yet.

Nautica was hugging her arms before taking a deep vent and pulling her gaze away from the Prime as best she could. Instead she looked to Velocity.

“Velocity, you got to spend more time in the medical ward while we were on Cybertron,” Nautica stated.

“Yes,” Velocity agreed, somewhat confused by the subject.

“Did you see Windblade and Chromia at all?” she asked hopefully.

“I did,” Velocity said. “Though, not much. They seemed to mostly be looking for answers and checking the tensions in the room. With it being an interplanetary incident and all, I’m pretty sure they were figuring out political stuff more than come in for a visit.”

A somewhat disappointed frown came to Nautica’s face. “I guess Windblade always did dive headfirst into anything she was involved in, didn’t she? That’s a shame. I’ve always had a hard time of holding a high opinion of politicians.”

“Everything’s a little political at the end of the day,” Velocity observed.

“And the patients?” Nautica asked. “I mean, Brainstorm’s doing better -- processor damage or not.”

“Who said anything about damage?” Brainstorm huffed defensively.

“So the others have a good chance thanks to your all’s hands, right?” Nautica pressed.

Velocity rubbed at her shoulder. “That’s difficult to really answer, Nautica. You’re dealing with different injuries, and I didn’t have a direct hand with everyone in the ward. I barely got to more than watch over Rodimus’ CR chamber while we were there and all.”

“But you could read his charts, right?” Nautica asked. “When do they think he’ll wake up?”

Surprised by the curious looks all of her friends were giving her, Velocity realized that they really didn’t grasp the state of their co-captain’s hospitalization.

“Oh, gosh. Everyone, it’s not....” Velocity paused and gathered her thoughts. “Rodimus isn’t going to wake up until they decide to take him off of sedation. His coma is medically induced until they can figure out a way to reconstruct his bareframe over his protoform again. A lot of his natural physiology is melted and will require lots of reconstruction. It’s beyond natural mending abilities.”

"That sounds horrible,” Nautica said, placing a hand over her intake.

“I’d be completely lost on what to do if it was my case alone,” Velocity admitted. “Fortunately First Aid and Ratchet are on it. And they’re... It’s amazing. I’ve never seen some of the procedures they would use while working on Rodimus. I mean, First Aid alone revived Rodimus’ spark on the brink of offlining -- when it was the size of pinprick!” She then hesitated, recalling the enormity of those moments and glancing toward Optimus Prime. O-of course they were using the Prime’s help at the time. I even saw the Matrix itself once.”

Nightbeat and Brainstorm seemed intrigued but not nearly as impressed as Nautica, who looked to the Prime with complete awe.

Velocity wondered if their similar religious upbringing brought the same subtle fears and amazement to her friend as they did to her.

It was difficult sitting in the same ship as a religious figure.

“I really got to put into perspective my position as a new doctor while in that room, though,” Velocity announced, steepling her fingers. “I worked so hard for all those years to make it through medical school and then through the exams. Even at my proudest moment, I had always assumed mediocrity for myself in my field. But the Lost Light -- learning under First Aid and Ratchet. They do laps around the mentors I’ve had for all these years. Their application has taught me more than all the books I’m still in debt paying off during school. I am beyond fortunate. And our captain is beyond fortunate to have them on his team, keeping him in the best care possible.”

Nautica nodded.

Brainstorm and Nightbeat were unusually quiet for themselves.

“Is there anything else you want to know?” Velocity asked. “If not, I’d love to hear about the sights on Cybertron you all got to visit while I was cooped up. The growth of the city is something to behold! Each time we stop there, no matter what crisis has happened in the time between, they’ve managed to do so much and grow in population and structures.”

“There’s a civilian-ran research facility--” Brainstorm began, eyes shining with excitement. “It’s the first time I’ve thought there could actually be something Cybertron could offer if the Lost Light ever docks back--”

“If I may interrupt...”

At that booming voice, Velocity felt ready to leap out of her own frame. She turned and looked in shock to the Prime. He was looking right at them!

Nautica actually squeaked.

The Prime continued staring at them. “I overheard one of you telling Chromedome and Rewind about modifications to the hyperdrive of this shuttle someone made. That was one of you, correct?”

At once, Velocity joined the others in looking toward their resident quantum mechanic.

“I...” Nautica began before coughing into her fist. “That would be me, Prime. Sir. Mister Prime....”

“I am called Optimus by my friends,” he assured her.

“I... Yes, Prime,” she said before burying her face in her hands. “I can’t be seen if I’m hiding. No one can see me. This is worse than being upside down.”

Velocity, uncertain of what else to do, reached forward and gently patted her friend’s shoulders while the socially awkward submarine flailed in the proverbial waters of social engagement.

“Those are impressive enhancements to such a small vessel,” Optimus Prime said gently. “I would like to put you in contact with the scientist of my own crew -- Jetfire. I believe the two of you would get along very well by comparing notes. And having a quantum drive on our own ship could make travel between Earth and Cybertron without a space bridge more possible.”

“Oh...” Nautica said, dropping her hands slightly. “Oh! I mean. Oh! Yes. Yes, it would be an honor to help the Prime and his crew. I’m honored. I’m--”

“We would also cover your expenses in doing so,” the Prime continued. “I am not in a habit of not rewarding others for their work, even if they are religious.”

“That is even better,” Nautica responded without thinking. Then she smacked herself in the head. “Oh my god, what’s wrong with me -- what I mean to say is that it would be, I would be, you don’t have to...”

“Vent, Nautica,” Velocity whispered.

Doing as instructed, Nautica vented pure steam. “Thank you, Optimus Prime. I am very grateful.”

“Better,” Velocity whispered with an encouraging smile.

“I will be the one thanking you, I am certain,” he replied, looking back toward the bow of the ship. “Both for the assistance and for helping change the subject of conversation.”

The ship grew uncomfortably quiet after the Prime’s pronouncement. Nautica in particular looked like her fuel tank was expiring before their eyes.

Velocity did her best to swallow down her own feelings of intimidation and stepped toward the Prime. She hesitated at first, but then gently placed a hand on his shoulder, drawing the large mech’s attention toward her.

“We really appreciate everything you did to help our co-captain, Sir,” Velocity said. “The medical procedures were a success thanks to your very spark.”

At first, the Prime seemed almost surprised by her and, for a moment, Velocity was worried that perhaps she overstepped by touching him. But his optics grew soft and he glanced back ahead to the front of the ship. It allowed Velocity to quietly withdraw her hand and hold it as if some of the Primacy had rubbed off on it.

“There has been a lot more that I could have done,” the Prime said lowly.

It was a flat statement, not open for discussion. And, thoroughly intimidated and questioning what had gotten into her processor, Velocity backed off.

She was just close enough to hear lowly as the Prime shook his head and muttered, “Co-captain,” like it was a curse. A regret. Something.

The rest of the trip was stiflingly uneventful.

Cybertronians were a famously durable species.

Drift remembered his own rebirth among the Knights, when he had been saved by Wing. He had been ripped assunder, and yet with the barest medical care available at the Crystal City, he was given a new body, a new life.

Rodimus had the greatest scientific minds Cybertron had to offer working on him.

But he still wasn’t awake.

Hands always dancing over the hilts of his swords, always prepared to protect his captain at the slightest sign of danger, Drift had to wonder why. Why wasn’t Rodimus awake yet.

He knew what Rodimus’ destiny was, he knew that the future of Cybertron, of their crew, needed him more than anything else. That his explicit, confusing visions needed him to survive any trial their journey threw at them.

Including this. Certainly including this.

“Drift.”

Cycling his optics, Drift turned and looked toward Ratchet. He had been so lost in thought he hadn’t even realized that the old grump of a robot had been finished yelling at his fellow doctors.

“We’re done for the day,” Ratchet said, continuing to walk toward him. “Grab some of your stuff and come with me to Blurr’s. Get some decent energon in your system while we’re off the clock. First Aid assures me he has everything handled here for the night.”

Not making any motions to move on the suggestion, Drift rested his hands on the hilts of his swords.

“You deserve a break,” Drift agreed. “You’ve done so much, so tirelessly, Ratchet. I can’t thank you enough. But I do not have a clock. I have a duty, and it does not take breaks for energon.”

Ratchet’s face showed that he was anything but impressed. Drift had to give it to him, he was a mech who wore his emotions with clarity.

“You’ve got nothing but a security pass I wrestled out of that piece of scrap Rattrap’s hand for you,” Ratchet reminded him. “He’s not in danger anymore -- and he’s mostly out of the woods, as they said on Earth.”

Frowning, Drift looked back at the CR chamber. “He’s going to need someone -- someone not with a medical degree -- with him when he wakes up. When he sees... when he sees the damage.”

For once, Ratchet seemed to drop the snark from his reaction. “Well, his coma at this point is medically induced. He’s not waking up until we’re ready for him to,” the medic explained in what, for him, passed for gently. “So I think you can go out for a drink.”

Drift actually turned from Ratchet at that.

He was exhausted...

"I trust First Aid and the other doctors,” Drift said. “Medically. But as far as protection goes, I believe my place is still here--”

“Oh, for the love of...” Ratchet said, throwing his servos up in the air. “I knew you were going to be like this.”

“Like...?” Drift said, tilting his helm.

“Like a dunce with a second rate processor,” Ratchet snapped before waving to the doors of the lab as they slid open and Ironhide and the bodyguard he met before known as Chromia came walking in. “I called backup for you.”

Drift vented, feeling himself cool almost immediately with relief.

It was better. His nerves were shot and the idea of leaving Rodimus’ side at all still unsettled his fuel pump, but it was better. He could manage it -- for a short amount of time.

“Thank you,” Drift said to Ratchet. “For understanding my obligation--”

“Yeah, yeah, you should thank me,” Ratchet said with a wave of hi hand. “Can we get some energon or not?”

Drift frowned some and glanced back toward Ironhide and Chromia before stepping toward them, eyeing them from helm to pede. He ignored Ratchet’s “Oh, you’ve gotta be kidding,” from behind him and concentrated on the bots before him instead.

“You’re going to assure me that any threat to Rodimus will be handled by you personally?” Drift asked them clearly.

“If a threat comes up, between the two of us it ain’t got a chance,” Ironhide said firmly.

Chromia was a little more suspicious. “Has there been any attempts made on him? Or threats--”

“The threat that put him in that CR Chamber to begin with,” Drift responded snappislhly.

"Drift!” Ratchet snapped from over his shoulder. “Move your tailpipe. They’ve got this.”

Drift let out a heavy vent and offered his servo out to Chromia .”Thank you for your time and service.”

“Not a problem,” Chromia assured him, taking his hand and shaking it. “Windblade was happy to get rid of me for the night. As usual.”

Before Drift could turn to tell Ratchet he was ready, the lab door opened yet again.

Somehow, in the building relief Drift had been allowing in his system, he had not even made a move for his swords when he heard the doors. He hadn’t been prepared for the worst possibilities for the first time in months.

He let his guard down, and was taken aback by the arrival of Starscream, that traitorous Rattrap, and the official badgeless Cybertronian guards.

“How convenient, finding everyone in one spot,” Starascream said darkly as he neared the medbay. His optics then concentrated on Rodimus’ CR chamber. He seemed displeased. “Rattrap, your story doesn’t seem to be adding up right now.”

Drift moved for his swords, but the gards raised their guns.

It was a standoff.

“What’s the meaning of this!?” Ratchet demanded. “You want talk on your research, Starscream, go find First Aid or Knock Out. But don’t bring armed goons into a place of healing--”

“It was him, Lord Starscream. There’s no doubts about it!” Rattrap declared by Starscream’s side. “And just look! These guys’re here... but sure don’t see any Windblade, do ya?”

Starscream almost looked delighted to have the point made out for him. He shifted his gaze to Chromia. “Ah, yes, where is our favorite cityspeaker?”

“Recharging,” Chromia spat out. “What’re you doing here, Starscream?”

“To prove once and for all that Rodimus is faking his injuries and is guilty of collusion with our greatest modern threat to Cybertronian society,” Starscream answered as if it was the simplest statement in the world.

“What the pit are you talking about?” Ratchet demanded. He waved toward the CR chamber. “We’ve had him put under for weeks!”

"Then what was he doing downtown in the sewers just an hour ago?” Rattrap asked, as if he really ‘had’ them.

“That’s impossible,” Drift hissed. “I have been here every second since he was put in intensive care. He’s not so much as flinched on his own!”

“And I was with Windblade an hour ago,” Chromia defended.

“You’ll have to forgive me for not taking your words for more than face value,” Starascream said dismissively before waving to his guards. “Open up the CR chamber. I want this cleared up yesterday.”

The guards took one step forward and Drift moved fast, slicing through each of their guns with his sword before the guards could even react. They looked at each other in shock and confusion while Drift held out his sword in an attempt to show the supposed leader of Cybertron just how serious he was.

“You have no right to attack a wounded warrior!” Drift declared angrily.

“I have any right I want,” Starscream said cockily. “But what right I have or don’t have is not of importance here. What’s of importance is that if we have truly caught Rodimus in a lie, then we are a step closer to understanding who attacked the mechs on Eukaris and what insider has been responsible for leaking information to the cltists.”

“What in the frag are you talking about!?” Ratchet cried out.

“I think you understand perfectly what I’m saying,” Starscream announced. “I am formally accusing Rodimus , former Autobot, former captai nof the Lost Light vessel, is responsible for the death and carnage that befell Eukaris and his crew. I am accusing your former captain of assault and murder. Not to mention traitorism. The last charge goes for Windbalde as well.”

Everyone stared at the mad king in shock.

It was not exactly predictable that the captain himself was not there to greet them at the shuttle, but it managed to put Optimus even more on alarm than he already was.

Megatron wanted to make the encounter more challenging, then so be it.

He exited the ship looking all around the dock before finally settling on Ultra Magnus.

“I hope the trip was decent,” Ultra Magnus said immediately.

“You have a good crew if this group is anything to judge by,” Optimus said assuredly, earning some looks from his recent travel companions. “If not... easily lead into conversation.”

“We consider that a hallmark of the Lost Light,” Ultra Magnus said somewhat lightly.

Optimus Prime had heard rumors of Ultra Magnus’ new leaf -- at his attempts to provide levity and humor. It was hard to believe. And in his actual presence, it was difficult to determine if it was that kind of situation or not.

“I need to speak with Megatron,” Optimus continued all the same. “Of course, I’m sure he knew that when he sent you.”

“I do my bet to not make assumptions on my higher commands’ intentions,” Ultra Magnus answered before leading and waving toward the nearest corridor. “But I am here to lead you to his office if you are interested in speaking with him yourself.”

“I am,” Optimus answered, stepping forward and all but marching toward the office Ultra Magnus was directing him to.

Beyond the brief exchange, there was not much conversation between them. It was unusual for Ultra Magnus -- especially to not at least be asking about the status of the crew recovering on Cybertron.

That all but cemented in Optimus’ mind that there was something on the Lost Light that was being kept a secret. And that just made the Prime more determined to learn it for himself.

When he opened the door to the office, Megatron wasn’t even pretending to not be waiting on him. He was merely sitting at his desk -- hands crossed over a very distinct dent in the shape of a fist.

“Megatron,” Optimus said, ignoring as Ultra Magnus entered after him and shut the door.

"Prime,” Megatron said thinly.

“Your ship has not been compliant with the Council of Worlds’ investigations to what occurred on Eukaris,” Optimus said angrily. “It also has yet to leave Eukaris’ airspace.”

Megatron remained stonefaced throughout the accusations. “I was not aware that the colony had any space program to speak of. Our Eukarian crew members did not mention as much--”

“Your mission to find the Knights of Cybertron is being stalled,” Optimus got to the point.

That declaration shook something loose from Megatron as he finally reacted. His look darkened and he unfolded his hands to grip the edges of his desk. “Of course it is stalled. Members of my crew, including my co-captain, have been attacked and hospitalized. We are waiting for the crew to--”

“You are postponing your trial through distractions,” Optimus snapped. “I know who you are, Megatron. I know what you are about. And there is very little you do without reason or planning.”

“Our mission is not moving forward without our co-captain,” Megatron said fiercely. “That is all, Prime.”

“You are the captain,” Optimus said firmly. “I made you such. You can do whatever you want without Rodimus’ input--”

“I could, and I wouldn’t!” Megatron yelled, getting to his feet and slamming his hands against the desk. “You do not understand anything, Optimus. You may think you do, but you don’t.”

“I understand that the less you do to help Starscream, the more reason he has to throw you and every member of your crew into jail, taking this ship, and cutting off financial support to the medical center in the capital that holds your crew,” Optimus bantered. “I understand you might just be selfish enough to risk it.”

“Selfish!?” Megatron laughed, a thunderous disturbing laugh that Optimus had not heard in years. “You don’t know the meaning of the word--”

“Enough,” Ultra Magnus stepped in between them, even going so far as to put a firm hand on Optimus’ chest to keep him and Megatron at arm’s length from each other. “This is not productive. We all share the same concern.”

“Do we?” Optimus asked dryly, reconcentrating on Megatron. “Do you understand what this all is looking like to those on Cybertron? That it seems as though you are making a coup against what Autobots are left on the ship who are not loyal to you? That you’re no longer looking for the Knights but are attacking an underdeveloped colony for invasion?”

"Is that all?” Megatron asked. “Really, Optimus? After the eons I spent determining near perfect ways of assimilating and overthrowing worlds at a time, you think that I am in charge of this series of disastrous events?”

“You and disastrous events are seldom mutually exclusive,” Optimus argued. “And it is not what I think, it is what Cybertron, the Council and--”

“Starscream,” Megatron interrupted, “does not believe I am responsible for anything at the moment because he knows my approach better than anyone. I taught him his ruthlessness, to my eternal dismay. If he sent you here with that impression then you are more of a fool than had ever realized.”

Optimus narrowed his optics. “Then what does Starscream think? Enlighten me,” he demanded.

A look was shared between Ultra Magnus and Megatron that left Optimus feeling highly uncomfortable. The shared understanding between them was not something Optimus ever expected to see, even when he put Megatron in charge of the ship knowing Magnus’ fealty to the chain of command.

They knew something.

“If you have anything--” Optimus began.

“He could get the information to Ratchet even more quickly than Velocity, and we would not be without a medic,” Ultra Magnus argued on the part of a side Optimus was not even aware he was on.

“This has the potential to be the greatest of mistakes either of us has made,” Megatron said darkly.

Suddenly, Optimus felt dwarfed by the momentum of their conversation, lost in the lack of information. “Who does Starscream believe is responsible?” he pressed.

Megatron stared at Optimus once more like he was the true enemy.

“Rodimus,” he answered finally.

“Rodimus?” Optimus repeated. “But how? He’s the most damaged of the survivors -- I helped restart his spark three times--”

The former Decepticon was not listening to him anymore, reaching toward his gauntlet and producing a drive.

“What is that?” Optimus asked suspiciously.

“Your answers,” Megatron said flatly. “The ones you don’t want.”

Still steeped in suspicion, Optimus accepted the drive and looked to Ultra Magnus instead. “What is he talking about?”

“That drive contains the saved audial logs that we were finally able to decode from the Lost Light’s emergency frequency,” Ultra Magnus explained. “They are from Rodimus’ away team during the incident.” The law abiding looked at him gravely. “We need to see these make their way safely to Ratchet and to Rung.”

Optimus tilted his helm. “Rung?”

“Our former ship psychoanalyst,” Megatron answered, still holding out the drive. “He... retired himself recently, but under my order he stayed on Cybertron after traveling with your recent companions.”

Idly, Optimus somewhat remembered an orange mech receiving hugs shortly before their departure.

“Other than them, we have not allowed anyone to listen to the recording,” Ultra Magnus explained further.

“Why?” Optimus demanded immediately.

Neither answered.

“I suppose you do not wish for me to listen to them either,” Optimus surmised.

“Do you trust Rodimus?” Megaton asked.

“Excuse me?” Optimus asked, thrown off guard.

Megatron did not so much as flinch. “Do you trust Rodimus? Do you wish to assist him? Or is he yet another acolyte to sacrifice for the greater good?”

“You of all mechs have no right to say such things against my character, Megatron,” Optimus argued angrily.

“I don’t disagree,” Megatron replied. “I am old, old enough that I question if change is truly possible for any of us. In a sense of irony, our species seems particularly inept at change. But if there is anything that has led me to change it is that I find myself concerned for this ship, this crew. Rodimus is more than simply my crew, he is my co-captain. We have survived and led together through what we previously thought was the ship’s darkest hours. And without him there is zero possibility that I can lead this ship. Ultra Magnus and Perceptor have taken over most of the command duties. I am without power -- power to command, power to help those I consider... my friends.”

Still, Megatron held out the drive.

Optimus took it. “I take care of my friends as well,” he assured them both. “But I will be listening to this recording myself. I want to know what I am protecting them from.”

“Of course you will,” Megatron said with only slight disgust as he glanced toward the opposing wall.

Confused, Optimus looked to Magnus who seemed equally disheartened.

“You will be protecting Rodimus from himself, Sir,” Ultra Magnus revealed.

#writing #tf fic #TF: Twisted Legacy #Velocity #Drift #Optimus Prime #Nautica #Brainstorm #Nightbeat #Ratchet #Rodimus #Chromia #Ironhide #Starscream #Rattrap #Ultra Magnus

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