OT: Hell is For Heroes.

[TurinTurambar]

An interesting OT thought: When I read stories that are this engaging, I usually start to visualize the characters in my head. For some reason, on this one, I'm getting really good environment images but I have no faces yet for the main characters...

AZ, have you done any "preliminary casting" in your head for when this gets made into a movie?

TT

[AgentZero]

TurinTurambar said:

AZ, have you done any "preliminary casting" in your head for when this gets made into a movie?

Nope, you're gonna have to come up with the faces all by your lonesome. If you don't have at least a vague idea what Alice & Saraea look like, then you haven't been paying attention (naughty!) as they were both described when they were introduced, though I admit I haven't done a great job of reinforcing that description. That'll come later, once the story's done & I'm into the editing (shudder).

If it helps, I always pictured Admiral Angus McArthur as looking a bit like B5's John Sheridan when he had a beard, and Admiral Ivanov Korjev looks kinda like his buddy Jack Maynard, also with a beard (the captain of the big ole explorer ship).
If, for some reason you've never seen B5, a Google image search of Bruce Boxleitner and Russ Tamblyn should sort you out nicely.

Aside from that, can't help you much. Except for the fact that Alice is a redhead now.

[AgentZero]

More!



Orrin Pendlebrook hurried around a corner and into a dark alley. Towards the back of the alley, he came across an industrial grade incinerator bin. Such things weren't normally found in back alleys, they tended to make their homes in very secure areas of large industrial complexes, usually with a few friends and specially designed shutes leading into their business ends. To find one that could be accessed simply by lifting a lid and tossing in incriminating evidence was almost unheard of. And yet, somehow, most conveniently, such a rarity had found its way into the alleyway in which Orin now found himself. He hurried over to it, lifted the lid and tossed in his pistol, facial morphnet, gloves and overcoat, then let out a sigh of relief. He was safe. No one would be able to point to him as the trigger man, and any other evidence had quite recently been atomized.
It was a pity, he mused. The girl had been terribly pretty. It was a good thing, he decided, that she'd presented her back to him when time came to shoot. He'd studied her picture ever since the assignment had been given to him, and he'd rather fallen in love with her smiling face. Had he been forced to meet those lovely green eyes, he might have hesitated, and hesitations had a way of being fatal in a job like his.
It was a pity, too, that that Kagan character had to die as well. Orin remembered seeing vids of him at the end of the war, and wasn't very pleased with himself for having assassinated a war hero. Still, his instructions had stated that Kagan was 'optional' and knowing that he was dead gave Orin some measure of relief. Having an angry soldier out for his blood was the sort of thing that made it difficult to sleep at night. But with Kagan dead, he didn't have to worry about that, and with the startling amount of money he was being paid for the job, he would be sleeping very well indeed for some time to come.
It was about this time that Orin became he was not alone. A hooded figure emerged slowly from the inky darkness, walking towards him with great deliberation.
“Frack off!,” he shouted. “Another step and you'll end up dead!”
“No, Mr. Pendlebrook,” the figure replied, pulling back it's hood. “You know you don't pose any real threat to me, now don't you?”
The figure stepped into a pool of light and Orin tried to swallow, his throat suddenly very dry. A legend stood before him, a veritable angel of destruction, chaos and death. And Orin realized that he did indeed pose absolutely no threat to her whatsoever. In the darkness he couldn't make out her eyes, only two large black holes where they should be, and when she bared her teeth in a humorless smile, he could swear he was staring at a living skull rather than any living creature. Saraea Azen herself stood before him, contemplating him much as one might contemplate an insect scuttling across the floor, idly toying with notions of crushing it beneath ones foot.
“Deathchild,” he whispered breathlessly.
Saraea gave him a brief nod of acknowledgement.
“To.. to what do I owe this honour?” he asked nervously.
“Honour?” Saraea scoffed. “Try horror.” She paused then for a moment, muttered something under her breath, then continued, “You murdered two very close friends of mine today Mr. Pendlebrook, did you know that?”
“I don't know what you're talking about?” he said quickly. “I haven't murdered anyone. You don't have enough evidence- no jury in the galaxy would-”
Saraea interrupted him with a laugh, a truly evil sound. “Do you really think I'm going to put you on trial, Mr. Pendlebrook?” she asked harshly. “Since you're obviously of less than stellar intelligence, let me explain to you how this is going to work. I am going to ask you questions. You are going to answer them to my satisfaction, otherwise you will know pain, you will know fear, and then you will die. First: Who hired you?”
“I have no idea what you're-”
Saraea didn't move, didn't even twitch, but suddenly every nerve in Orin's body was on fire with the heat of a thousand suns. He screamed in agony and collapsed, writhing on the floor in a desperate, though vain attempt to escape the pain.
“Scream all you like,” she told him. “No one can hear you.”
The pain went on, washing over him in waves of agony, rising to the point where he thought he was about to slip away into merciful unconsciousness, then receding to the point of almost being bearable before building up again and crashing down on top of him. And then, just as suddenly as it had started, the pain was gone, and he found himself quivering on the ground, curled into a ball at Saraea's feet.
“Now then, Mr. Pendlebrook,” she said conversationally. “Are we feeling a little more talkative, or would you like to find out what level two feels like?”
“Anything,” he gasped. “I'll tell you anything, just don't, please don't do that again.”
“I'm glad to see you're being reasonable,” she said soothingly. “I'm really not asking for very much. Just the answers to a couple of questions, and then I'll be on my way. I've no real quarrel with you, it's those who hired you that I'm angry with.”
“I don't know much,” Orin gasped, still reeling from the agony that had somehow been inflicted upon him. “I was hired by a group calling themselves The Council.”
“Names?” she inquired, with just the right hint of menace to make him break out in a cold sweat.
“I don't know,” he admitted honestly, staggering to his feet and leaning against a wall. “They only ever referred to each other as numbers. A guy called Two did most of the talking, Three gave me the details of the job, and there was another one, Fourteen, who didn't say much except that it was vital that I complete the job and that Very Bad Things would happen to me if I failed.”
“Ironic, then,” Saraea said dryly. “That you succeeded so brilliantly, and yet Very Bad Things have still befallen you. Now, where can I find this Council?”
“I don't know,” he replied, shaking his head. “I never-”
Saraea sighed with disappointment. “It's a pity, really,” she said slowly. “That the memory of pain fades so quickly.”
Orin suddenly felt almost nostalgic for the pain she'd initially inflicted upon him as agony beyond comprehension ripped through his body. He opened his mouth to scream, but couldn't make a sound. His eyes bulged in their sockets, feeling like at any moment they'd burst out of his head. In an instinctive attempt to escape the cause of this agony, his body twitched and spasmed and he staggered about the alleyway, somehow managing to retain his footing. Somewhere through the mist of anguish, he heard the voice of Death murmur, “You know I'd grown terribly fond of Alice. She was a lovely girl, and you killed her. That makes you a bad man. And bad men deserve level three.”
The pain suddenly shot up to a form of such agony that Orin actually relaxed for a second, sure that unconsciousness would soon claim him. When it didn't, his mouth opened again, and his time a thin, whispered scream squeezed it's way out of his tormented throat, before slowly growing to a ear-shattering howl of pain and despair. His bowels and bladder released themselves, but he didn't even notice, all that existed for him was the pain. The alleyway, his tormentor, even his own body melted away and all that was left was an unending sea of pain. And then, once again, the pain was gone just as suddenly as it had come. He slumped against the wall, half sobbing, half gasping. Saraea stood watching him impassively, waiting until he'd regained some measure of composure before repeated her question.
“They took me to a building,” he wheezed in reply. “There was a large room at the top of it, where there were twenty one men seated. They spoke with me, told me that this was much more important then any normal whack job, how imperative it was for me to succeed. I don't know if that's where they're based, but it's all I know. Please-”
“Where is this building?” Saraea interrupted.
“Downtown,” he said shakily. “Across the road from the big MechaCorp building.”
“Thank you Mr. Pendlebrook,” she replied, sounding almost grateful. “That will be all. You do try to have a nice day now.”
And with that, she turned and walked out of the alley. Orin watched her go, a deep hatred beginning to seethe inside him. He pushed himself off the wall to stand upright and swore to himself that no matter how long it took, no matter how much it cost, or what had to be sacrificed, he would track Saraea down and kill her. He glanced down to check if him soiling himself had left any outward trace on his trousers, and only then noticed the large knife protruding from his chest.
“Oh,” he said with profound realization before he crumpled to the ground.

[JAFisher44]

Interesting. Killing the main characters. Ballsy. Ill bet they come back with amnesia. Good writing, keep it up.

[TurinTurambar]

Nah, they aren't dead... "and then the darkness overcame him" is just supposed to make you think "dead."

[AgentZero]

TurinTurambar said:
Nah, they aren't dead... "and then the darkness overcame him" is just supposed to make you think "dead."

Hmm... That's a good point actually. I'll have to rewrite that bit to make the fact that he's dead a bit more clear. That's the problem with being all poetical and stuff. Lets people make their own minds up about things.
How about... "And then he died." Blunt, to the point, no wriggle room.
Or maybe "And then he wasn't alive anymore." Also blunt and to the point, though there's a marginal amount of wriggle room if you want to debate the exact meaning of 'alive.'
"And then, the tight grip they had on one and other loosened, and they died." I quite like this one. A bit more poetical, plus it's quite obvious that they both die.

Agent Zero scurries off to work on the rewrite

[AgentZero]

And yet again, more! Figured it was time for a little more boom boom.


Admiral McArthur gripped his command chair tightly to avoid being ignomiously dumped out of it as his station shuddered from another direct hit. As he turned his head, the station's attacker disappeared in a flash of light, utterly annihilated by a blast from the fortresses main battery that continued onwards to cripple an enemy dreadnought. Still, crippled or not, it still took another four hits to finish the ship off completely. They were built tough, the admiral noted, not quite as tough as Terran ships, but tough nonetheless. And there were a lot of them. More than a lot, a veritable horde of warships swarmed about his command. Still, the network of battle stations built around the jump nexus had been designed to hold up against the entire Tauran Navy, and while several of his stations had taken severe damage, he'd yet to lose one yet. Although, he had to admit, part of that was down to the fact that once a station had been damaged to the point where it no longer posed a threat, the unknown attackers shifted their targeting to a station that was actively firing. And, McArthur thought, despite many reminders as to the downside to that strategy, they continued to follow it. He grinned as one such reminder wiped out an entire battlegroup as Station 37 got her short range weapons back online and proceeded to tear apart anything near her with vengeful fury. His chair lurched again, and this time he barely managed to hang on. Looking up at the damage display, he was confronted with a sea of red. The station's forward shields had failed completely, her armor had been shredded and barely a quarter of her weapons were still operational. Her aft section, however, was another matter.
“Rotate one-eighty,” ordered Admiral McArthur. “And shunt power from forward weapon's systems to shields and damage control.”
“Aye, sir,” the helmsman confirmed. “Rotating one-eighty now.”
A furious babble erupted on the bridge as gunnery stations that had been idle due to lack of guns to co-ordinate suddenly became active again, and the gunners began tossing targeting priorities around their section with all the casual banter that went with it. To a less informed ear, it sounded terribly unprofessional, as actual target priorities seemed to get as much, or even less attention than discourses on the personal hygiene of the gunners mother, yet in truth all of what was said was a code known only to the gunners themselves, and more to the point, it was a brutally efficient code. As no doubt, the crew of an enemy dreadnought squadron would surely attest, had they been more than a cloud of vapour following a particularly crude description by the chief gunner of his second's father's genitalia.
“Tachyon spike!” one of the sensor operators cried over the din. “Almost off the scale, something massive is coming in!”
Despite knowing that there was no possible way reinforcements could be coming through that jump node, part of McArthur couldn't help but hope, that maybe, somehow the new arrivals might be something other than violently hostile. Moments later, his hopes were crushed as a vessel of unimaginable size forced it's way into normal space.
“By the Nine Divine Whores of Kantarl,” whispered the McArthur.
“Ship configuration seems to match that of hostile forces,” the sensor officer reported. “But it's just much, much bigger than anything we've seen so far.”
“Station Ninety-Seven, code Omega!” called out the comms officer. And seconds later, “Station Ninety-Eight, code Omega!”
McArthur grimaced. The two dying stations held only a small crew, being more lookout stations than actual fortresses, and had been passed over by the enemy in their desperate bid to break through the system's defenses. The new arrival, however, seemed more than willing to spare a little attention to them.
“Station Ninety-Six, code Omega!” cried a different comms officer. “Station Ninety-Five reporting heavy fire.”
“Well,” McArthur murmured. “Looks like they've finally played the ace up their sleeve. Now it's time for us to play ours.”
Turning to the comms officer, he instructed, “Contact stations Two and Three, order them to target the new arrival and fire when ready.”
The two stations flanking McArthur's command station, untouched by enemy fire given the fact that they were the only stations not actively firing, and the fact that neither of them sported any discernible weapons, aside from a few rows of point defense turrets, began to move slowly. At first, they only seem to be rotating to point their narrowest end towards the colossal enemy ship, but as they did so, pieces of the stations began to rearrange themselves, moving outwards, upwards and downwards until both stations had taken on the unmistakable shape of two singularly massive guns floating in space. Their movement slowed as they stopped orienting themselves and began tracking their target. Soon, their movement had slowed to the state of being barely perceptible, and far at the back of the stations, massive capacitors began to glow red, becoming brighter and brighter until they glowed a blood-tinged white. The stations soon were became completely engulfed in light as more and more power was poured into their single main weapons system. And then, abruptly, the light vanished. An observer would have just enough time to wonder exactly where the light had gone to, before the answer became abundantly clear to all as a massive white beam of energy blasted its way out of the barrel of the two space stations, casually cut a swath through anything in it's way, and slammed into the alien juggernaut. For a moment, but only a moment, it looked like the behemoth was going to hold up against the vast torrent of energy being poured into it, but then, inevitability, it broke, and the twin beams of light tore through the ship and out the other side. They then began slowly moving about, carving the goliath apart until they hit something critical and the entire ship blew apart in a galaxy-shuddering explosion that wiped out scores of alien ships that had been flying too close.
Almost as one, the surviving ships turned and ran, but the route back to the jump point was a gauntlet of battle stations all waiting for their turn to tear into the attackers, and barely a quarter of the ships made it to safety.
McArthur sat back heavily in his chair. “Status report,” he called into the sudden, eerie silence.
There was a moment of frenzied activity as individual stations rushed to complete preliminary damage reports, and a few minutes later his bruised and battered exec handed him a list of the damaged, destroyed and dead.
“We took heavy losses this time, sir,” he said quietly. “Given a few days to make repairs, we might, maybe weather another attack if we're extraordinarily lucky.”
“Reinforcements?” McArthur inquired.
“The Raezel is en route, along with the entire Fourth and Fifth Fleets, but they're still four days off. The Ninth Fleet should be here tomorrow, but they've taken heavy damage from running engagements and will need the better part of a week for repairs before they could be considered combat-ready.”
“Well,” McArthur mused. “We hurt 'em bad this time. That's the first time we've seen one of their planet-killers come through here. Hopefully we've given them enough of a bloody nose that they'll hold off on another assault long enough for us to get our legs back underneath us.”
“Sirs? If I may interrupt?” Lieutenant Commander Gomez, a small, petite blonde from Intelligence approached the admiral, a datapad in hand. “Station Twenty-Four managed to get some in depth scans of the hostile ships done while her weapons were out. We've just finished the analysis and though you might want to have a look.”
She handed the pad to McArthur, and stood in silence as he read the report. As he reached the end, his eyes jumped ahead to a single word, the only word, really, that the report needed to contain.
“No...” he whispered.
Gomez nodded. “It's confirmed, sir. They're back.”