Comment with your opinion if you would like, though critiques of writing style will be ignored as I use my free short stories to play with writing styles. If you don't like that, well... it's free.
MC ties into a novel I am writing. More short stories of her exploits between this story and the novel may follow.
Word Count: 3228
Full story text below.
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“Indrin’s Utopia! The future, today!” Those were the words emblazoned on the digital banners hanging from the temple. Goeneth (go-en-ETT), a young elven woman of 24, followed her parents into the temple for sabbath worship. They were surrounded by hundreds of others, devout followers of the Libertine Sect of Indrin.
Goeneth was a beautiful young woman, already six feet tall with a few more years of growth left. Her silver hair and eyes contrasting against her dark purple skin mesmerized the boys of every species.
Goeneth’s parents had spent years scrimping and saving enough money for tickets to Indrin’s Utopia, the grand plan of the Libertine Sect. Three hundred thousand people across Gonariol would board ships the next day, to begin the process of artificially building a planet out of asteroids using purely capitalist principles. No taxes and no government. Not even the corporations - which may as well have been governments unto themselves - were allowed to participate.
But for today, a warm autumn morning, the musty smell of the falling leaves in the air, it was time for worship and recreation. Goeneth and her parents sat near the back, with the rest of the lower income members. Sitting closer to the front of the temple required larger donations, something her parents could ill-afford while saving for the tickets to Indrin’s Utopia.
The sermon was all about the people that would be founding Indrin’s Utopia. The priest spoke about how brave they were, and how they were marvelous examples of Indrin’s tenants of the individual. They would be proving to the world, to all of Gonariol, that government was unnecessary and that a pure individualism was all that was needed. Hard work and skill was what determined wealth and therefore status. No need to martial the oppressive nature of government; responsible individuals working in self interest would necessarily do all that was needed.
Two years later…
“Beat it, darkelf,” growled the owner of the hydroponics bay. “I have my own kids to feed. No lazy beggars!”
Goeneth dropped her gaze to the floor and turned to leave. Just as she was about to walk out of the storefront, she grabbed a bag of mixed greens and ran.
“Thief! Someone stop her!” No one got in her way as she ran. No one cared. In the twisted minds of the people in the asteroid passageways, anyone that couldn’t afford security didn’t deserve any help in dealing with thieves.
Indrin’s Utopia had been a disaster for her family. Goenett’s parents had been low skill workers on Gonariol. Their money ran out quickly on Indrin’s Utopia. No one would hire them and they had no money to pay for education. Not even for their daughter.
They had been forced to resort to begging and thieving to survive. Tens of thousands of people lived in poverty on Indrin’s Utopia, deep inside the asteroid, while the rich lived in buildings on the surface. Luckily, several hydroponics bays had been abandoned in the lower levels and the impoverished had some food that they shared, but not nearly enough.
Goeneth made her way through the rock-walled tunnels of the asteroid. They wound through the stone like snakes, the product of the first mining teams. Vents and pipes ran the length of the ceiling, one of the few things funded by the rich as a public service. She supposed if they didn’t, they’d all die, too.
As she came upon the entrance to the poor district, she was blocked by a throng of hundreds of tightly packed people. She did her best to squeeze through, but got stuck halfway to the doors.
“What’s going on?” she asked a female half-orc that could see over the crowd.
“Life support failed in the poor district. The entrances are all sealed up while the life support systems are being repaired.”
Goeneth’s vision narrowed. The outside world melted away. The only things that existed were people in her way and the doors to the poor district. She forced her way through the crowd, trying desperately to get to the front. “Mom! Dad! My mom and dad are in there! Let me through!”
As she made it to the front of the throng of people, the technicians closed several panels and turned some keys. The life support systems whirred to life and the doors to the poor district slid open.
There was a pile of corpses on the other side of the door. People that had suffocated trying to escape. Goeneth frantically searched for her parents, but didn’t see them. She climbed over the bodies and ran through the tunnels, back to her home. She had stolen emergency air supplies only a few weeks earlier. Maybe - just maybe - her parents were still alive.
Everywhere she went, bodies lined the floor. Many had turned blue from the lack of oxygen. Some looked like they had fallen asleep. Others had torn nails and had left scratches and trails of blood on the tunnel walls.
Goeneth reached the little corner of the open common area where her family had been forced to make a home. It was nothing more than some stacked rocks and a few blankets hung for privacy. She pulled back a blanket.
Her parents had indeed used the emergency oxygen tanks. But it hadn’t been enough. They lay side by side on the dirty mattress that was their home, eyes closed like they were asleep, their hands clasped together in a final embrace.
Goeneth fell to her knees and wept.
She didn’t know how long she had been crying for. She heard others moving around behind her. She turned to look.
Looters. A female half orc, a male dwarf and a male human. They were going through the belongings of the dead, even stripping them of their clothes and piling it all into a hovering mining cart.
Before leaving Gonariol, her grandmother had given her a gift. Her grandparents had implored her not to go with her parents. All four also worshipped Indrin, but were not members of the Libertine Sect. Religious differences had strained the relationship between her parents and grandparents, but they held a close relationship with their granddaughter and didn’t want her to go, fearing the worst.
She reached over to her few belongings sitting next to her mattress. Some clothes, some art supplies, a computer tablet… and the centuries old mithril dagger that her grandmother had given her.
Goeneth took the dagger. She stood up and began picking her way through the other hovels and the bodies that littered the floor. Her gaze locked on the half orc, the woman’s back turned and unaware of her approach.
She plunged the dagger into the looter’s back.
The looter stood up straight and arched her back. She desperately tried to reach for the dagger. Goeneth pulled it out and plunged it back in. Again and again, she stabbed the looter in the back. Finally, the half orc fell to her knees, then slumped to the ground.
She hadn’t made a noise as she died. No scream, no gurgling. Just slow and silent death. Goeneth started to giggle. Then she laughed out loud.
“What the fuck!” yelled another of the looters. Still giggling, Goeneth turned to see the human and dwarf running towards her. She pulled the dagger from the half orc’s back and ran to meet them.
The human got to her first. He tried to reach for her arm. She put a gaping wound in his hand, then stabbed him in the chest. The mithril blade slid through the man’s chestplate like a hot knife through butter, piercing his heart. He collapsed to the ground.
The dwarf stopped a few feet away as she pulled the dagger from the human’s chest. Then he turned and ran. Still giggling, Goeneth threw the dagger. It stuck into the dwarf’s back, he slowed, then fell, and died.
Goeneth went back to her home and sat down next to her parents. She no longer cried. “We should never have come here,” she said to her parents’ bodies. “Your parents were right.”
She lay down on her bed and fell asleep.
She woke a few hours later. Others had come into the common area. She stood up to take a look.
No looters this time. A half-orc man in a suit surrounded by armed guards in armour. Three guards noticed her stand and raised their longarms.
“Stand down,” said the half-orc. He looked carefully at the corpses of the three that Goeneth had killed. He walked over to the dwarf and pulled the dagger out. “This yours?” he asked Goeneth.
“Yes.”
“Why did you kill them?”
“Because my parents are dead and they were looting bodies. And because it was fun.”
The half-orc made his way towards Goeneth. His head was bald; his eyes grey. He must have had his tusks shaved, as his teeth fit nicely into his mouth.
He looked at the blood soaked dagger, then back at Goeneth. “If I give this to you, will you try to kill me?”
“Did you have anything to do with the life support failing?”
“I was the only one paying for the maintenance. I took on half a million credits in debt trying to keep those systems online. I’m sorry I failed.”
Goeneth considered this for a moment. “Then no, I won’t kill you.”
The half-orc held out the dagger to Goeneth, hilt first. As she reached for it, two of his men trained their weapons on her. She took the dagger slowly, wiped the blade off on her pants, then turned around to look for its sheath.
“Do you have anywhere to go?” asked the half-orc.
“No. Well, I have grandparents on Gonariol. I can’t afford a ticket back.”
The half-orc was silent for a few moments before speaking. “I will buy you a ticket home. If that’s what you want.”
Goeneth found the sheath and put away her dagger. Then she wrapped the sheath belt around her waist and cinched it tight. “If it’s what I want? What’s the alternative, inheriting the poor district?”
“You killed three looters on your own. I see two stabbed in the back. I assume you snuck up on at least one of them.”
A halfling man in a lab coat that Goeneth hadn’t noticed earlier stood up and walked over. “One stabbed multiple times, one struck from the front, then another that fell while running away. I would say she snuck up on the half-orc, killed the human face to face, then threw the dagger into the dwarf as he ran away.”
“Is that what happened?” asked the half-orc businessman.
“More or less. So, what are my alternatives to staying here or going back to Gonariol?”
“Work for me,” he said. “Body counts are still coming in, but the estimates of the dead are in the tens of thousands. Something has to change. The Libertine Sect was wrong. Crime is rampant. We haven’t expanded Indrin’s Utopia in over a year. And this won’t be the last life support system to fail due to lack of maintenance.
“There will be a reckoning, and I need soldiers. Simple as that.”
Goeneth really had to stop and think. Back on Gonariol, she had family that loved her. Her grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins and friends… A happy and peaceful life was what she had wanted for a long time; not one scraping by to survive every day. Two years of poverty was enough hardship for a lifetime.
But… something had changed. She felt it when she killed the first looter.
“What’s your plan?” she asked.
“I have meetings later today with other businesspeople and the leaders of several workers factions. I hope to band together to form an interim government. When we have control of the station, elections will be held immediately.”
“Half the station will be against that. What happens to them?”
The half-orc was calm. “Surrender or death.”
Goeneth extended her right hand, and the half-orc clasped it. “I’m Goeneth.”
“Thusk Wulgraz. I’m pleased to meet you, Goeneth.”
“When do I start?”
One year later…
Goeneth used sign language to call the breaching team forward. Two men with jam packed technomagical tool belts moved up to the front. “Directional, high explosive,” she motioned. The two pulled the requested explosives from their belts and silently stuck them to the rock wall.
Goeneth had excelled in her training and had risen through the ranks quickly in the civil war. Lieutenant Goeneth, now, leading a special operations team. High value targets were their specialty.
And on the other side of the wall was the headquarters of Goldstone Corporation, the most powerful anti-Council company.
Indrin’s Utopia was a maze. No one person or faction had complete maps of the asteroid, just the tunnels that they had dug or mapped for themselves. Goldstone Corporation had dug out a quarter of the asteroid. Thusk Wulgraz wanted those maps.
“Ready stimpacks.”
They were a team of eight including Goeneth, stacked up four to either side. Highly trained, highly skilled, survivors of multiple engagements and battles, hand selected by Goeneth herself. They were covered head to toe in the best lightweight armour available, linked together with a system that allowed them to see each other through walls on a heads up display. The system AI had an IFF that would target and track any enemy in visual or radar range, and share that information with the rest of the team. And of course, all were armed with the latest particle beam longarms.
Goeneth smiled as her men finished wiring the explosives and pulled back to their positions. “Here we go killing again,” she said aloud. Then she gave the signal and hit her stimpack.
The explosives blew and time slowed. Her HUD dimmed and dampened the flash. Rocks blew out past her men, and the wall disappeared.
To her, time passed agonizingly slowly. One foot after the other, she ran through the breach in the wall, her men trailing behind her. Her AI identified seven deceased on the floor. Three alive near the far wall, armed, weapons at their sides. She lifted her rifle and fired at the middle target. Green light pierced their armour and chest. Moments later, particle beams from two of her men killed the other two targets.
She scanned the room. Tables. Chairs. Food, most on the floor. A buffet. They’d entered through the cafeteria. No computer terminals here.
There was no getting around the immense noise of the explosion. The headquarters would be on alert. They would have to move fast. “Breachers, hold the exit! Everyone else, on me!
The remaining six made their way through the cafeteria; Goeneth in the lead. Through the cafeteria doors they fanned out. Goldstone Corporation employees were scrambling in the hallways beyond.
“Rules of engagement?” she had asked Thusk as they planned the assault.
Thusk had spoken gravely. “No prisoners. Weapons free.”
Goeneth squeezed the trigger and held it down, sweeping the particle beam down the hall in a single second burst. To her, the stimpack still fresh, it felt like four times that. The beam cut through or burned dozens of people. Behind her, she heard a team member doing the same in the other direction. She fired again, cutting through the last of those standing in the halls. She made her way forward.
They came to a four way intersection and, thankfully, signs. To the right, the kitchens. Forward, meeting rooms and personal offices, all of which would have computer terminals. To the left, the server room. She went left.
She could feel the stimpack wearing off, and time slowly but surely sped up. They had to hurry.
They made it down the hall and into the server room without incident. Computer towers stretched floor to ceiling. Her hacker broke off from the group and slung his longarm over his shoulder. He plugged his wrist computer into a port on a server and began running decryption programs.
Goeneth and her men fanned out around the hacker, creating an armoured barrier. Their weapons were trained on every visible entrance. A helmeted head peaked through a doorway, and she blew it in half with a particle beam. She knew they wouldn’t risk damaging their own servers in a firefight, but they could try to snipe the terminal.
Thusk and Goeneth had planned the attack as best they could with limited intel. To make sure reinforcements couldn’t arrive, Council forces had launched an offensive far away from Goldstone headquarters. There was no chance of the offensive being a success, and every second that ticked by meant more good men and women had fallen.
“I’m in,” came the hacker’s voice over her comm. “Maps downloaded in 10 seconds… Beginning virus upload… System compromised, installing AI… Agent installed. Installing decoy… Decoy installed. We’re done.” The hacker disconnected from the server and readied his longarm.
“On the move! Prepare for exfil!” Goeneth headed back to the door they had entered. She motioned one of her men forward. He rounded the corner to the right, the direction opposite the way they had come, and began firing. She went through the door immediately after him.
The butt of a rifle struck her helmet. It was enough to throw her off balance and her shot went wide. Another of her men fired past her and carved a hole out of the enemy soldier’s chest. They kept moving, back through the halls they had come through, meeting less opposition than she had expected.
They made their way back through the base and out of the breach. As they covered their retreat, the demolitions team activated explosives they had left behind, collapsing and sealing the tunnels behind them.
The diversion had worked. The mission was a success.
“Council Base, this is strike team Delta. Mission accomplished. We’re coming home.”
“Understood, Delta. We’re ordering the retreat. See you soon.”
Later that day…
“This is perfect,” said Thusk. Goeneth’s team stood around a holographic projector with Thusk and other Council leaders. Goldstone’s maps were displayed. Thusk input some commands into the computer and the Goldstone maps amalgamated with Council maps. They now had maps for over two thirds of the station. “Are we getting telemetry from the agent yet?”
“Coming in now, General,” said one of the techs at a terminal.
The projection was altered and markers were added to the map. A map key formed to one side.
“By Indrin, that’s a lot of munitions,” said Thusk. “This is going to take longer than I thought.”
“Look here, General,” said her hacker. “Seismic monitoring stations. The agent can feed false readings. We’ll be able to burrow into their networks without them knowing.”
“Even still… The Libertine Sect must have sent them aid. Damn our blind spots. Good work, Delta, this is just what we needed. We have a long way to go, but this made things a lot easier. I’m giving you all five days leave. Make the best of it. Dismissed.”
Goeneth stayed behind as her men filed out. “I don’t want to go on leave, General.”
“I know. But I’m not going to deprive your men of their leader. You’ll be back in the fight soon enough.”
Goeneth turned to leave. She turned back as she reached the door. “See you for dinner, Uncle Thusk?”
Thusk smiled at her. “See you tonight.”
Submitted October 15, 2018 at 05:35AM by JustinLadobruk https://ift.tt/2P0dL3f
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