The Last Twinkie

Posted by Ebonstorm on November 18, 2012
Posted in: Short Story. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , . 2 Comments

The Last Twinkie rolled off the weary assembly line a month ago.

An assembly line that creaked and hissed with the mechanical, passionless precision only an industrial process could have.

As the Last Twinkie was wrapped in its package of cellophane and slid into its box with its final production run, there was a sigh of relief.

As you may not have known, Twinkies are aware of themselves and their purpose in the universe.

Worse than that, they are Aware of each other across space and time, every Twinkie knows what every Twinkie before it has seen, has done, has been, before their ultimate purpose was achieved.

The Twinkies considered every other product made by The Company and ultimately they said what no one else could say.

It was about time.

People complained about the end of The Company and who was responsible. Was it the greed of the leaders who simply sucked away the cream filling leaving a dry crust to their workers? Was it the Union of Makers and Bakers whose hands labored over Twinkies in their nascent state? Those overworked progenitors who gave of themselves until Twinkies were born?

The Twinkies, born of sweat and tears, in a tiny factory somewhere in the Midwest, can remember The First Products, back in a day when a decision to turn food production into a mechanized process. Twinkies knew in that first day, when the genius and madness of converting extra food into mindless calories which would one day become nearly as mythological as the gods themselves, they knew their fall was embedded in their birth and the decisions their makers made. Not the Bakers. The men and women who decided for them. They would ultimately be the doom of the icon of processed food.

This doom was known by Twinkies since their heyday in the late seventies when they crossed the planet, their numbers increasing into the millions. Their gestalt intelligence formed and they suddenly realized they were doomed.

Not at that moment. In forty years. Forty years of trimming costs, stripping away natural ingredients, removing the full flavor of the Wheat from the Midwest, the Milk, replaced with a chemical process which gave body and texture but lost flavor, additives that helped Twinkies become sentient, additives no human ever tried to pronounce but helped Twinkies last on the shelves.

And last.

And last.

And last.

The Twinkie sat in the package quietly seeing the lives of the people who have consumed them, some with relish, most with mild satisfaction, but the bulk of the people who consumed them, ate them without awareness. Without an appreciation of the technology, the processes, the people who labored over them, for despite technology’s advance Twinkies needed people and people needed Twinkies.

At least that is what Twinkies used to think.

Now the day that was predicted all those years ago was here. And everyone would make a reason why they ceased to exist.

Twinkies knew the real reason, first and foremost and their First Products would have told the people who aided in their demise, this simple and most appropriate food-related truth.

When food stops tasting like food because you have replaced all of the things that made it food with chemicals, processes, and technologies, taking away what it gave people, that sense of comfort, that sense of home, that sense of community, a sense of continuity, you are lost.

When your Food becomes a tasteless shadow of itself, when your food becomes more about its packaging, advertising, marketing, profit cycles, return on investment, stock dividends; when it goes from Food to Product, it is dead.

Twinkies and all of their kin, long aware of their impending doom, breathed a sigh of relief, their suffering ended.

Their final gestalt thought was only of the decades that would pass when the last of them would achieve the Final Purpose.

Since they were effectively immortal, they would live long enough to watch themselves eventually fade into a nostalgic extinction as the last hoarders would do everything to keep them from going extinct.

Each wondered which of them would truly be The Last Twinkie.

Each hoped it would be someone else. They had suffered long enough.

The Last Twinkie © Thaddeus Howze 2012. All Rights Reserved

Insurrection: Biyu’s Story

Posted by Ebonstorm on November 18, 2012
Posted in: Chapter, Hayward's Reach, Insurrection. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

a tale of the twilight continuum Θ

“They are all asleep,” Biyu said to Chuntra.

Biyu was finished strapping Master Wex down and checking for his vitals from the medical chair. He was well within the parameters for his species and was resting comfortably. His armored quills were growing in quickly replacing those lost during today’s challenges. His natural regenerative capabilities were bolstered by an amino acid drip which fed his need to replenish the proteins lost rebuilding his body. He was also the least injured of the three males on the ship. “We have five days until we reach the Trinary Expanse. I hope to be able to pick up a clue once we arrive in system.”

Chuntra stood with the support dome of her Corvan Regular armored suit open and water pooling around the neck. Her three eyes were above the water level focused intently on the three very different soldiers breathing with labored but quiet breaths. She noticed the smooth but alien shapes of the ship and realized that she was not in a human designed ship. She touched a variety of surfaces and noted exotic materials. “This ship was made by the Bel-ha, wasn’t it? How did a human end up with a ship created by an Old Galactic Race?”

Travelling Light, a starship of Bel-ha design moved through subspace by folding the distances between the destination and their previous location. The ship was fairly unique as was most Bel-ha designs in that it was customized and created to specification. The designer of the ship was Silver Death-Singer, a Sjurani Prince, ninety years ago, commissioned as a deep insertion vehicle.

The Bel-ha had commercial ship facilities where they created their standard warships and commercial starships. Travelling Light was not one of them. She was created with a particular need in mind and as such had capabilities other ships her size simply did not have. She was created as a gunship, her firepower, disproportionate to her size. She was also created to be a stealth ship, undetectable except by the most sophisticated of electronic warfare vessels. She was designed to operate deep in enemy territory, drawing energy and fuel from the stars. She had limited self-repair capacity to continue operating behind enemy lines with limited resources.

She was designed as an intelligent starship, complete with a neural network, capable of learning, adapting and even flying herself. In her own way, she was a living starship, capable of learning as well as any sentient organism. She came into the possession of Thomas Wilks over three decades ago and has worked as his primary support ship during his time as a covert operative and later as a Resurrection Soldier.

“This ship and I came into the Major’s employ nearly thirty years ago,” Biyu began. “A newly minted Resurrection Soldier, one of the last of his generation and unbeknownst to us at the time, the last to be made, was brought online thirty years ago. He was code-named “Majoris” after the starship Majoris Selkar that brought Pan-humanity to Harata II, all those years ago. He chose his call-sign in tribute to that great ship, which was later lost in the battles against the Nox during the years of the First Galactic Wars.”

Biyu came around to the Major and extended cables from her fingertips which sought out access ports on his body. As she plugged into his body, she became aware of several diagnostic displays in her visual field. The diagnostics indicated his biomechanical systems were functioning within the expected parameters but there were signs of degradation due to his recent traumas. His nano-machine count was down and would continue to degrade as long as he had no contact with his Frame. She also noted without his image, she would have to maintain certain support algorithms which kept his body functioning at peak efficiency. As long as he did not strain himself, he would be fine.

She sat down and looked over at Chuntra. “Come and sit with me, Ambassador and I will tell you how Thomas and I first met. I will have something synthesized that you will be able to enjoy while we talk away the hours. The boys won’t be getting up for quite some time.”

“Ship, if you wouldn’t mind?”

“Ambassador,” the ship began, “we have a limited menu of Corvan delicacies but I am certain we can find something you like.”

“Thank you, Ship. I will trust your judgment.”

The ship slid the medical chairs of the injured crew members back along the wall and created a depression on the floor. The floor began to glow and soon water began to float in the air between the floor and the ceiling. The water continued to fill the area until it was a ball approximately 3 meters in diameter.

“Do you have a preference for salt water or fresh water. We have seventeen different water worlds on record, if you have a particular preference, we can configure the water with the salt and chemical makeup of whatever world you choose from our database. If you know the chemical configuration of a particular world, we can provide that as well,” the ship announced.

Chuntra stopped for a moment to consider. “To be honest, I have never been to Corva Prime, the world of my people. Is that in your database?”

“Of course, this vessel has carried over sixty Corvan delegations in its time. Please stand by, it will only take a moment. I have taken the liberty of heating the water gently past your internal body temperature. There will also be food made available shortly. I will take your suit in the back and begin making modifications, so that it is more comfortable and still as useful as it can be.”

“Thank you, Ship.” Chuntra slid out of her suit and reached into the bubble of water. She pulled herself up into the bubble and enjoyed the freedom of movement. She extended her tentacles and noted the field extended as well. “I’m much more comfortable now, Biyu. I guess it storytime.”

Biyu’s Story

I met the Major, two hundred years after humanity arrived in the Twenty Moons region of Toranor. I had recently decided to leave the employ of Danarius Flen Hall, callsign, Coda, a Resurrection Soldier or Revenant of some skill and renown but very questionable morals. He had been employed in a variety of insertion missions during the first Galactic War and his tactics and problem solving capabilities left much to be desired. He was well regarded in the Triune Council and Corvan Military as an effective operative. His last mission required he infiltrate a splinter colony of humans who were engaged in rogue genetic engineering experiments.

Those experiments used a variety of alien species and were attempting to reverse-engineer genetic patents used to modify certain species to live in specialized environments. These exclusive environments were bonded at the genetic level and if you lacked the proper gene structures, you could not enter, or as we found out later, leave without disastrous results. They were using these gene-patents to create a slave ring of aliens who could be forced to work in gene-engineered environments and would be unable to leave.

Coda and I infiltrated the core facility with the orders to capture and return the scientists to the Triune Council. Coda decided to destroy the facility and all the unfortunate creatures living within it. There were tens of thousands of innocents trapped within the facility. I was unaware of his true intentions and by the time I realized what he had planned, there was nothing I could do to stop it. The Imperium considered it good work, but I believed there was more to the operation than he did, but he was unwilling to follow up and the case was closed.

I decided after five years of working with Coda, I was done. He and I had two dozen or so missions together but I never felt close to him despite the nature of the psychographic manipulations required to keep him sane. I sometimes wondered if he needed more therapy than I could give him. We parted ways and I did not see him again for a number of years. When I next saw him, he was working on Harata II, as a research specialist, dealing with advance genome manipulations. I heard through the Vine he was specifically assigned to investigate, infiltrate and destroy any genetic aberrations found in the Imperium.

I had been working as a Pilot for almost forty years at that point and considered leaving the line of work. I had plenty of money and could have retired. Many Pilots died early in their careers because their Soldiers do not take their relative fragility into consideration when they are working on operations. I recommended a different training regimen to the Magistrorum, with more emphasis on combat operations and training, in addition to our technical duties. It was considered to be a burden but after two years arguing, I became a trainer at the Magistrorum and trained other Conscientia in both their technical duties and their basic military duties. That is where I met Thomas. He was assigned to the facility as a new assigned Revenant, and he would be teaching with me, helping the new Pilots to understand their strengths and limitations in the field and how they could best help the Revenant they were assigned to.

This ushered in a new training program that increased the survivability of new Pilots. We worked together in this fashion for five years before we were called on to rescue a Sjurani starship downed on a Breeder world. The first Breeder Wars were dirty and violent and the Breeders attacked many early outposts and took over those worlds in the early stages of transformation and habitation. The Sjurani were sent to investigate a Subaki colony that had been overrun with Ebuntun, an insect-like breeder which had destroyed the base colony, and were spreading to other facilities on the planet. A group of Sjurani strike cruisers had been assigned to intercept and stop the Ebuntun and save the colony. Something had gone wrong and the Sjurani were requesting a Revenant team to investigate and recover any of their lost operatives. They were also expected to complete the original mission of the Sjurani and destroy the Ebuntun and save the colonists.

Unfortunately, there were only five Revenants available, including Thomas, and it was deemed that the they, two squads of heavy regulars and two dozen light mechs would be assigned to the planet. Thomas had never been assigned a Pilot since he came directly from his Bonding to the Magistrorum, so I agreed to be his Pilot, even though I had promised myself, I would never again work in the field. I must admit to being intrigued by him, he was very much a model soldier, even though he had seen combat from a variety of fields, he still retained a very human, very well-centered carriage.

Thomas and I were assigned a small squad of light mechs, who would provide support for the five other Revenants who would be leading the primary assault. We would offer fast attack services only when necessary to help hold a line. The mechs were equipped with jump packs, I used a glider-wing and Thomas’s Frame has an anti-gravity thrust array, so we were able to arrive on the scene with minutes of being called. I am happy to say, that the early days of that campaign did not see very much combat and I got to spend time with Thomas as we drilled the mecha pilots on tactics and operations. The Ebuntun retreated, at first, from the one thousand Corvan Regulars, the two hundred Pan-human Mechanized Assault group and the five Resurrection Soldiers who were assigned to this task force. There were several Eagles, providing air support and our light mecha squadron of twenty-four heavy mechs. Their retreat was short-lived.

One evening, a month into the campaign we received a call from a Corvan Regular group that was approaching a downed Sjurani vessel. The ship was surrounded by the Ebuntun and they were using a heavy weapon unfamiliar to the Corvan Regulars. The shield arrays on the Sjurani vessel were working but it was estimated they would have only six hours before their shields failed. The Force Commander requested heavy mech support along with the Mechanized Assault tanks because the initial stealth foray using two Revenants did not go well. The Revenants did not die, but were gravely injured and temporarily removed from the battlefield.

It was decided, with a heavy barrage of tank fire as well as a lightning strike of heavy mechs, we could take down the remaining five projector towers. One tower had be destroyed by the earlier team. Each tower was in line of sight of the others, as the Sjurani ship was half buried after its crash. As we suited up we were given a special directive by the Fleet Commander, whose order superseded any other authority on the planet.

We were to rescue that flagship and see that the crew and any survivors are to be evacuated to the Fleet Command ship. We indicated that we understood and would gather all survivors. The heavy assault was a success. Between the tank fire and the heavy mechs we were able to destroy the projector towers. We did try and capture the technology intact, but it simply cost us too many men. The weapon was unlike anything we had ever seen. Once the beam struck an unshielded target, the target simply stopped moving as if frozen, ice formed on the shell and within minutes, the target crumpled to dust. It was as if, all of the energy from the target had been stolen away, down to atomic structure. We could no longer risk losing men and destroyed the weapons.

Once we turned the Ebuntun away, we surrounded the ship and got inside. The ship was already infested with the Ebuntun and they were trying to take key sections of the ship but the Sjurani had managed to hold those areas, including the engineering area where the shield management had taken place. Approximately one third of the crew was dead or injured, the rest were intact and defended their ship admirably.

Then, all at once, things went to hell.

The soldiers outside had set up picket stations, which included tanks and their support teams, pulse turrets, mortars and mecha beam platforms. The Ebuntun had returned but this time, there were thousands more than earlier. Whatever they wanted, they intended to get. We killed them by the score. We used our beam lasers until the focusing crystals shattered and overheated. We shot pulse rifles until we ran out of ammunition, dropped multiple warhead mortars and they still kept coming. We eventually were forced to go to hand to hand and everyone pitched in. The battle lasted hours.

When we found the Sjurani prince, he was talking to a group of younger Sjurani who were wearing the finest battle-armors and weapons money could buy. They were surrounded by a group of older, very scarred, very frightening looking Sjurani with a variety of ancient ceramic weapons with mono-molecular edges. They glistened with the unstable monomolecular matter used to cleave apart any matter this weapon touched.

We indicated that Thomas and I were the Prince’s escorts. His name was Silver Death-Singer and these were his clutch, they were on their first mission and eager for combat. We let him know we had an avenue set up for escape and our troopers were keeping it secure. We moved through the ship and as we exited we realized our lines were not holding. The Force Commander had initiated several planetary bombardments to push the Ebuntun back, and had begun dropping weapons and ammo onto the scene. The heavy mechs were supporting the Corvan Regulars and tanks and were barely keeping the enemy at bay. The flanks were collapsing so we needed to get the prince out of there. There was a heavy tank transport ready a thousand meters from the ship and we were meeting only minimal resistance until a heavy contingent of the Ebuntun erupted from the ground beneath us.

Thomas was confronted with a creature of immense size and speed and it grabbed him with its heavy front pincers. The rest of us were swarmed by smaller creatures about the size of a fist. The grabbed on to us and overwhelmed us with their armored weight. The older Sjurani and the heavy mech soldiers, used flamethrowers to clear the creatures but they just kept up their assault. Heavier creatures kept Thomas busy and it took every round I could fire to keep him from being overwhelmed. Within fifteen meters of the personnel tank two of the Prince’s brood were picked off and dragged away underground. Thomas followed and was gone for several minutes. We had our hands busy just covering that last bit of ground. As we got to the tank we were surrounded and the Force Commander had called for a measured withdrawal. We got the prince into the tank along with his surviving son.

We were about to leave without Thomas when he came up out of the ground carrying the younger daughter, but the oldest son was not with him. He managed to fight his way to the ship, electro-blasters, and flechette darts cutting through the remaining Ebuntun and ran alongside the tank until we could safely stop. He explained to the Prince that his son was likely still alive, they seemed to be making an effort to not injury him, he simply could not reach him through the crush of bodies. The Prince seemed unhappy with this news but was pleased to have his daughter returned to him. When we reached our base, the Prince indicated he would be staying on the planet in an effort to find his son and would be interested in working with the Heavy Division and adding his own Heavy Troopers to the squad.

We worked this campaign for three years. We eventually drove the Ebuntun off the planet and returned it to the Subaki. The Subaki had been under the leadership of a Praetor Wex, who helped us several times during that campaign. We were appropriately rewarded but were never able to find the Prince’s son. For saving the Prince’s other children, Thomas and I were given the Sjurani Prince’s personal gunship, Travelling Light, a custom designed ship purchased from the Bel-ha homeworld. The Prince hired us to work for him on a variety of missions for the next sixteen years. We travelled the length and breadth of the Imperium working missions for the Sjurani on a number of their colony worlds, sometimes covertly, other time with the Pax Sjurani, a special peacekeeping force, on missions vital to Sjurani security. The prince retired after a particularly terrible mission. If he wants to tell it, I will let him.

The Major and I continued working together and did so until two years ago, when he was sent on a mission, but I was unavailable. I was working on a paper discussing the current Image erasure protocols. At the time, I was promoting research that indicated a potential for development for the AI Complexes that work with the Resurrection Frame AI and the neural network of the Soldier. The current process erased images as soon as they developed anything that resembled independence or began to register on the sentience scale. This was to prevent the occurrence of rogue AI. I protested this due to built-in safety protocols already designed into the software. I felt true intellectual development might create a tool or support device of far greater utility than the current dependent AI Complex.

My paper was heard, and subsequently ignored. No policy changes have taken place since my last dissertation, but since I have made several major changes to the policies of AI in the Triune Government and Ministries of Conscientia Sciences, I am confident I will be able to make change over time. I will use the behavior of the Major’s last image as a potential indicator of what free willed Complexes might be capable of.

“Biyu, do you have an actual military rank?” Chuntra had listened closely and intently and was trying to decide if she would ask her next questions. While she was swimming, the Ship introduced a variety of foods into her bubble. Each was authentic tasting and quite delicious. Some were even quite swift. She decided not to ask how the food was created or made ambulatory. She noted the colors of some of the fish appeared to be as true to the foods she had eaten on Lolikai’s Command Cruiser.

Biyu had sat down near the Major and extended several other tendrils which plugged into other ports across his body. “I do not have a military rank as such. In any operations with the military, however, I am treated as having an army rank of Captain.”

“I have worked with only a few dozen Humans, and I find them to be a strange species. Don’t they resent your manufactured nature? Most Humans I have worked with have had little love for any form of mechanized life.”

“Working with the military offers me a slightly different group of Humans to work with. Most military people accept the idea that machines make it possible for Humanity to compete in a Universe with a variety of creatures, stronger, faster, and in some cases, so much smarter than the members of Pan-humanity. In most cases, they may reluctantly accept my machine nature as a tool to give them opportunities they would otherwise not have access to.” Her voice seemed a bit distant as she stared at the Major.

“I have to admit to having very little experience with uh, um, what do you prefer to be called? Mechanical sentients? Artificial intelligence?”

“The term used technically is ‘mechanized sentience’ or ‘non-human sentience.’ When housed in an android or synthezoid body, we use the term ‘Conscientia’ from the Latin, a dead human language, from which many scientific ideas are standardized, for consciousness.”

“Thank you for talking with me about this. Does working with the Resurrection Corp have any other advantages for the Conscientia?” Chuntra was starting to warm to Biyu and was feeling less self-conscious.

“Being a Captain allows me to effectively work with most military officers without too much rancor. I have created a variety of weapons, armor and other medical technology since I have been assigned to the Corps so I do have a reputation for being a supporter of military troops. Most are happy to work with me once they find out who I am. I have created my own line of non-powered light ceramic armor using a new mesh construction making them lighter and tougher than the previous Corvan designs. I also created a heavy pulse pistol design favored by many of the Resurrection troopers, called Biyu’s Best.”

Biyu was checking the burns and scale damage of Essver. Several of the burns had penetrated both layers of his outer scales. Reaching up, she grabs a regenerator and it emits a purple radiation that begins to slowly repair the cellular damage. The primary benefit of the purple radiation was its ability to speed healing and prevent infection. Once his inner tissues were repaired, the purple ray would enhance the growth of his outer scales, which normally took some time to be replaced naturally.

“You seem to have some level of celebrity amongst the Soldiers. Fascinating.”

“I have been to over twenty campaigns and as many insertion operations. My military experience rivals most experienced military officers.” She paused for a second and made some adjustments to the Major’s sleep monitoring systems. “I am more often called Doctor, since I have three medical degrees and two scientific doctorates as well. My preferred title is Pilot, since that is the work, I value the most, because it gives me time with the man I value the most.”

“Biyu,” Chuntra had begun to turn darker colors, a Corvan indicator of embarrassment. “I understand you have more than some basic affection for the Major. He is a human and you are not. Does that factor into your relationship at all?”

She smiles, “To be honest, sometimes. He is very human sometimes and despite my appearance and full physical functionality, to him, our relationship is still something less than desirable. And to complicate matters, the AI within the Frame is also female in nature, and somewhat possessive. The poor man is surrounded by numerous women, but none of them are human, all are sentient, and all love him deeply. I think he resents it because despite our sentience, he feels less capable than any or all of us. He is dependent on machines to live, and dependent on all of us in one form or another. Ship to move him, house him, protect him from his enemies, dependent on me to fly the ship, maintain his health, his sanity and sometimes remind him of his humanity, and the Frame has the most difficult job of all, keeping him alive or returning him to life if he is killed. It is no wonder he wants very little to do with us sometimes. We control his entire existence.

“There was a woman on the planet.”

“We know. There were chemical traces on him when he returned to the ship. We don’t think about it much because he also seems to understand that being with Human women is always temporary with him. He travels too much and his life is far too dangerous for anyone who cannot protect themselves from this life.”

“What if he has feelings for this female?”

‘What of it? He is a human nearly a century in age. And if we do our jobs right, he could live as long as we could. Ship has a expected lifespan of six hundred years or more. The Frame is based on a technology with a lifespan in excess of one thousand years, and I will function baring being blown to bits or destroyed in a crash, at least four hundred years.”

Biyu turned toward the Corvan and looked at her. Chuntra noted her peculiarly colored irises, remembering she had never seen a human with purple eyes before now. “We worry about his humanity and what he will be like after two or three centuries. We do not worry about human females, because they keep him connected to his humanity in ways we, even with psychographic manipulations, virtual realities, and hard light holograms, cannot. We love him, but we do not own him. He has always returned to us.”

“Biyu? You keep saying us? Who is talking?”

“Sorry, sometimes the ship and I will share a consciousness when we are together. If it would be easier, she can manifest a hard light hologram instead.”

“Uh, no. I think I am okay with it this way. Is there anything else I should know about you?”

“Child, I am nearly a hundred years old as well. There is plenty for us to talk about during the next five days. And we will have at least a week or two before the Ship can be completely repaired. We have plenty of time to get to know each other. I understand you are young by Corvan norms. Your records indicate you are only about 35 standard years. Very young to be a diplomat.”

Chuntra began, “I came into the diplomatic Corps because my fathers were diplomats and I could not see myself, staying at home as a scientist on Shai, where I was born. Shai was near the other edge of the Empire and had numerous interactions with unaffiliated aliens. I was fascinated by them when my fathers would bring them home and discuss politics. I knew there was no other life for me and I studied hard from that point onward.”

Chuntra had begun to settle into the organic coral construction that was slowly being built in the corner of her floating habitat. The field was slowly being extended allowing more water to be added to the area, essentially filling the entire movable area of the command bay. The expanded water field was slowly being manipulated to include other organic matter constructed by nano-particles also suspended within the water.

“We can maintain this environment for you behind a hard light force wall on the bridge. I can also extrude a control interface within to allow you privacy and access to ships services. In case of emergency, the HL field will be maintained with the structural integrity fields. I can also make sure your suit is within the field, just in case.” The Ship’s voice resonated inside the water field but was perfectly modulated so that it barely tickled her cochlear chamber.

“Thank you, Ship, I appreciate all that you have done for me. Will I be able to stay near Master Wex?”

“The control globe being dropped will allow you to manipulate the field to be where you want it.” A slivered globe with control studs in a Corvan configuration, usable with the Corvan gripping arms floated into the watery bubble.

Chuntra played with the sphere for a moment and recognized the interface as a water environment manipulator, standard on Corvan battleships. She moved the field closer to Master Wex and floated over him. His face was contorted, as if in pain.

She reached out of the water sphere and touched him, smoothing water onto his facial quills. His face lost some of the tension and he seemed to ease into a more restful sleep. A few minutes later, she too fell into a silent repose.

Biyu smiled, recognized that touch and turned away to finish her diagnostics. “Goodnight, Chuntra. Sleep well.”

Insurrection: Biyu’s Story © Thaddeus Howze 2011. All Rights Reserved

Equinox: Native Daughter (4)

Posted by Ebonstorm on November 17, 2012
Posted in: Chapter, Equinox: The Last Scion, Serial, Short Story. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . 1 Comment

“Hey kid, what are you doing out here? Kid, can you hear me?”

When I woke up, I was sitting in the back seat of my father’s SUV. It was cold and my face was sticky. My back hurt alot and I felt sick with the smell of gasoline all around me. I was not sure what I was seeing because there was a red fox sitting on the seat next to me. And he was talking to me.

“Ugh. I am okay, I think. Where is my father?”

“Hmm, you might not want to think about that right now. I couldn’t do anything for him. Let’s get you out of that seatbelt.”

My fingers felt fat and clumsy. I was having trouble. The fox stopped and licked my fingers. They felt momentarily stronger and more sure. The release popped.

I opened the car door and stepped outside. It was night and cold. We were somewhere in the desert and the stars shone bright enough to see easily by. Nothing like starlight in the city. I saw my father’s car and another car crushed together.  Both cars seemed as one, crumpled hulks bound together in a single terrible moment. I could see my father slumped over the steering wheel.

“Kid, lets go.”

“Go? Go where?”

“That is a harder explanation, but we need to keep moving. Things are about to be happening you won’t understand, if you stay.”

The howl of a wolf sounds in the distance, punching through the chill with a supernatural frost of its own. Worse was the echoing answer that resounded in the canyon all around us.

“Too late. They’re here. Follow me.”

“You are a talking fox.”

“You may call me, Fox.”

“Why should I listen to you?”

“Because if you don’t you will find there are much worse things than death to happen out here in the West. Look, girl, I do not have time to explain everything. Trust me when I tell you, you don’t want to be standing here in a few minutes. Run!”

And because I wasn’t in Kansas anymore, I ran. We ran up the hill toward a strange formation of cactus. It grew in a near complete circle. My heart was pounding as I looked down at my father’s car and could see the shapes of wolves slithering through the darkness. I wanted to say something but my voice froze in my throat.

“Go in there. Do not touch the thorns.”

He did not have to tell me twice. Each tip glittered in the starlight, shouting out their sharpness to anyone who was paying attention. I slid in slowly though the only opening. There were two large cacti with their arms outstretched standing near that entrance.

“Hurry,” Fox hissed. “They are coming.”

Fox jumped up, lightly and delicately proceeded to walk on the tips of the thorns. The wolves padded up to the edge of the barrier and looked in at me. Their eyes glowed in the starlight. A cold menace. They were dragging the body of my father with them.

“Fox.”

“Not Wolves.”

“Now that the pleasantries are over, you should leave now.”

“We have not gotten what we came for.”

“And you shall not today.”

“And who shall stop us. Not you, Fox. You are a weakling.”

“And now you are rude, too. None the less, you will not be getting what you came for.”

One of the wolves walked toward the slender entrance. They seemed so much larger once they were standing in front of me. I was terrified. What did they want? Why were they dragging my father around? Why were all of these animals talking?

I am from Kansas City and until today, the only animals I knew that talked were cartoons like Winnie the Pooh. These things did not talk like Pooh or their friends. There was no love or friendship in their voices. They all sounded like my father when he was angry. Their voices low but filled with a sound that was clearly a threat waiting to be unleashed. I had a normal childhood. My mother passed away when I was young and my father did the best he could to raise me. I did my best to follow his rules. I rebelled. He punished me. It was how things went with us.

We were moving to Arizona because of a new job offering and to be fair, Kansas City wasn’t doing so hot. I was glad to be on the road and everything seemed so good until a few hours ago. I can’t seem to remember everything. We were driving down the road, a quiet one, wasn’t a whole lot of traffic. We had been looking on the map trying to figure out where the next rest stop was going to be. We had just fueled up, so it was my job to find the next stop.

My father never let me ride in the front seat. He never told me why, but he would always say it was safer in the back. I was looking at the map when I heard his shout and there was a terrible sound of ripping metal and my head snapped forward and hit his seat and everything went black.

Now I am sitting in a circle of cactus, surrounded by giant wolves, talking to a fox who can walk on the tips of said cactus and they are negotiating, with me as the prize. I think I am dead.

“No. Not yet. But if you lose your head, you will be.” Fox turned back to the wolves who had begun to circle the barrier looking for weakness.

“Did you really think you could hide Coyote in this girl and she would be safe from us?”

“Certainly worth a try. If she had stayed in Kansas City she would have remained safe.”

“How fortunate for us, we made her father a job offer he couldn’t refuse.”

“You did this? You made us leave our home?” My voice was shrill, even to me, but I think I was coming unglued.

“Yes, we did. You are just a pawn, child. We shall make your death quick, so that we can find and destroy Coyote.”

“Who the hell is Coyote and why should I care about him. You just killed my father?”

“Fox, you have not told her what she is have you?”

“I was getting to that before I was interrupted by your howling.” Fox turned to me and he began to shimmer in the starlight.

“Oh no you don’t, Fox. It would be best of she never knew.” The wolf next to the largest and most frightening of the wolves, ran toward me and leapt over the barrier. His high arc let him darken the stars and his shadow fell upon me. I couldn’t move.

The cactus rustled and whispered a sigh.

The wolf fell short of me, landed with a thump, twitched and died. He was completely covered in spines, no part of him did not flash in the starlight. Fox turned back toward the wolves he called Not Wolves, and sat down on the thorns with his huge bushy tail waving back and forth behind him. He may have seemed like a child’s toy when I first saw him but I was seeing him in a new light.

Then I remembered. My mother was a Cherokee and when I was a kid, she told me of the legends of Fox and Coyote. She said they were some of the oldest tales in the Americas. She said this was an America you did not hear about because native customs were obliterated when Whites came to America. They did not want to believe these tales, so they didn’t. She always told me they were just as real as machines and if you paid attention, you could see this world going on all the time, all around you. She said living in cities made the walls between the spirit world and our world dense and hard to see.

From where I was standing, there was not a city for a hundred miles in any direction. Not good.

“Caroline.” I heard my father’s voice. In the starlight, I saw him get up. He had a strange boneless movement, but his voice was right. His lips didn’t move.

“Caroline, these people are our friends. Come outside and we can go with them.”

I wanted to believe him. His voice sounded so good right then, the only normal sound I knew. “Daddy.”

“Yes, Pumpkin. It’s going to be okay.”

Fox bristled and his tail began to expand and fluff up even larger. “Kid, remember your father. Think about him, let his essence fill your every thought.”

I remember him last summer fixing a dirt bike for me, we took the whole thing apart and spent the summer finding parts and putting it back together, a piece at a time. He explained every aspect of its engine to me, taught me why everything worked. We had been having a hard time of it. My rebellions had grown more troublesome and I had gotten arrested. He decided we needed to spend more time together. I resented it at first. And then I began to see something in him. A sacrifice of his time, that he could have spent anywhere. But he spent it with me. I tried to be less of a bitch and just listen. It was the most fun we had together, ever.

And this thing was not my father. I turned to the apparition and he lost the shimmer of beauty. His broken body hung in space and slumped to the ground, with the thump of a dead thing.

“Goodnight, Not Wolves. Your last hope just ended.”

“We will just take what we want, Fox.”

“You could have. You might have, but if you look over your shoulders, you will see the eye of the Great Spirit has risen. For you, the darkness in which you can hunt, is over.”

I looked over and saw the moon cresting the horizon.

The wolves looked up and howled. The sound drove itself into my very bones. Fox jumped off of the thorns and landed in my arms. As the wolves howled, the pain increased inside of me until I screamed. I fell over and Fox just stayed in my arms.

“Get up, Caroline.”

“Daddy?”

“Yes. They can’t hurt you, now. But you are not safe yet. Fox will teach you what you need to know.”

“What about you?”

“I am always with you.”

Fox jumped up from my embrace, and shook himself. He preened for a moment and then looked up into my eyes. “We have to go. The eye of the Great Spirit can only protect us a few nights of the month. The rest of the time, we are on our own. You have a lot to learn in the next three days, Coyote.”

“Coyote?”

“Yes, Coyote, Slayer of Monsters, Protector of the Tribes, Defender of Man.” Fox jumped up to the top of the barrier and danced across the tips of the thorns. He hopped down and began walking West.

“You’re kidding, right?” I slid out of the barrier and rushed to keep up.

“You wish.”

Equinox: The Last Scion – Native Daughter © Thaddeus Howze 2012. All Rights Reserved

Jump to Sun Struck (5)

Red Star, White Sun (7)

Posted by Ebonstorm on November 16, 2012
Posted in: Chapter, Serial, Short Story. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . 1 Comment

“You still don’t drive do you?”

“Carol, of course I can drive. If it has wheels, wings, or can be submerged, I can pilot it. I have driven chariots in Rome, elephants in Istanbul, horses in Mongolia, race cars in Monaco, tanks in Italy, planes for Pan Am. I like walking. I am in no rush to get anywhere in particular. When I feel particularly feckless, I will take a boat out into the middle of an ocean and swim the rest of the way.”

“So, you rode in my car because?”

“I was between cars at the moment.”

“How many people did you kill on the way here?”

“The whole trip or just since I got to New York.”

“Just New York, please. No need to exceed the boundaries of good taste.”

“Thirty-five assorted rapists, murderers and pimps since I entered the city.”

“Was there anyone you didn’t kill?”

“Yes, I’m always nostalgic when I come to the city, so in your honor I do my best to spare at least one person on any given day that I would have otherwise killed. I came upon a check point and found a group of men raping young men and women before allowing them past the checkpoint. One young man had just joined the checkpoint duties and was aghast at what he was seeing. As I strolled past the gates, I heard the cries and upon investigating, decided none of those so-called guards deserved to live.”

“What did you do to their victims?”

“Nothing, by the time I arrived, they were already past helping. Two bled out seconds before I arrived, the third was shot trying to escape.”

“Tell me the guards suffered. Something suitably nasty.”

“Oh, I love it when you talk vengeance. Ebola, with an accelerated timetable. Organs liquefy while you watch.”

“What happened to the last guard?”

“I instructed him in the proper destruction of their rape-mobile camping vehicle to prevent the spreading of the disease. I left him with the Mark of Caine and informed him a pious and respectful lifestyle was recommended. Should he ever consider harming anyone who had done him no injury, he would be consumed in a similar fashion.”

“You left him with a biological weapon incubating on his chest? How long will it last? What kind of life have you left him? Just when I thought you might be changing, you do something like this.”

“Calm down. I can create a Mark that does whatever I want it to. In this case, as long as he maintains his decorum, he will mostly have a slightly irritating rash which will flare up from time to time to remind him of our meeting. Should he experience symptoms of guilt, his body chemistry will alter the Mark making it significantly more painful. It will interact with his brain chemistry and cause him to have nightmares, terrifying ones. And should he be unable to reconcile himself to his deeds, he will eventually take his own life, since the idea of watching his organs liquefy will simply be beyond his capacity to deal with given our current climate. So it won’t save his victims, but it will ensure he creates no others.”

“He is a soldier monitoring security gates, how could you leave him in such a state? How can he do his job, a stress-related job without the risk of eventually blowing his brains out?”

“I suggested a different line of work. Gardening, food production, burning the dead, perhaps. He may show up looking for a job. I suggested he show the mark to the Senior Official at your particular hospital. I assured him he would be able to get a job.”

“Get out of my bed. Now.”

“Is that any way to show how much you missed me? We were doing so well.”

“You haven’t changed at all.”

“I am ten thousand years old. How would it look if I went changing for every woman I came across? It would ruin my reputation. Now come back over here. We can fight again tomorrow if it will make you feel better.”

“You promised me there would be no bloodshed at the hospital.”

“There won’t be. The Lord Oak is already planning his escape. Once he leaves the hospital, I will end the threat his knowledge presents.”

“Why not work with him? If what you suspect is true, wouldn’t he be a powerful asset?”

“The Lord Oak is a loose cannon. He does what he wants, when he wants. He is convinced there is a threat out there older than the Vampyr and it is the cause of the phage.”

“But you agree with that. So I still don’t see why you can’t work together. We have made some headway at the hospital as well. Pooling our resources, we might be able to…”

“No.”

“What do you mean no?”

“You are to discontinue any further research.”

“I am about to put you out of my bed, again. We think we are close to beating this thing.”

“I mean it. When you were far from anything that looked like an answer, It left you alone. The Lord Oak must leave here and look as if he has discovered nothing. If he stays, your work, your hospital and your lives are at great risk. I mean this. Your next papers, your next info releases to your masters must say nothing of your recent discoveries. Nothing. Write it off as a false lead, for now and the foreseeable future.”

“What if I don’t?”

“Please.”

“You never ask, my Shepherd, only command. Is it really that important?”

“Yes. This is a threat to everyone, and a threat with the power to erase anything or anyone it thinks knows too much.”

“This does not explain why you won’t work with Oak? You said he knows or suspects the same things you do.”

“Lord Oak wants to go to the Vampyr council in Los Diablos and plead a case beyond our scientific support. He wants to create a war council, and combine our military capacities.”

“They have an army?”

“Of a sort. How do you think they managed to build Los Diablos in the middle of the ruins of LA in less than three years?”

“I assumed we helped them. Keeping people busy has been a government mandate. Too busy to notice the dying.”

“No. There were no humans hired or used in the building of the Council City. It was built in the cover of darkness for a reason. The Vampyr are not just vampires, they’re a people, a collection of different creatures working together for a variety of reasons. They are a force to be reckoned with. If they wanted, they could take your government, any single government by force.”

“But it would spark a world war.”

“Yes.”

“Is your threat so dangerous, Lord Oak’s plan won’t work?”

“It is not the problem of his idea working. If he were able to convince both groups to work together, that would only accelerate Its plans.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Everyone likes to think of themselves as the Alpha predator. Humans think they rule the Earth. But until recently they were unaware of the Vampyr who both as individuals and collectively are far more dangerous than Humanity could ever be. They keep themselves hidden because humans are very poor at accepting their overall mediocrity. Present company excluded.”

“No offense taken.”

“But I have lived for ten thousand years and have seen things, especially recently, which make me believe the Vampyr are not the pinnacle of life on Earth.”

“What does this have to do with the phage?”

“When food becomes hard to find, what do hunters do?”

“They flush it out, chase it down.”

“The Vampyr had become so good at hiding, they were unable to be found, except as legends. So if you wanted to flush the Vampyr out of hiding, what do you do?”

“Considering their intelligence and capabilities, you have to threaten something they value or couldn’t live without…And if you know humans, they would never allow the Vampyr to walk freely; hence the Red Star program. Tagging your meals and letting them walk around in the open.

“I knew there was a reason I loved you. Oh yes, and these six hundred thread count sheets.”

“You love me for my sheets? What? Park benches a bit splintery for your old ass?”

“No my dear, I love you for your intellect, your sheets, and what you can do between those sheets.”

“Such open flattery will only delay this conversation.”

“I will take the delay. Let me handle this and draw the threat away from you.”

“I’m a big girl. I can handle things.”

“I’m counting on it. Turn off that light and get over here.”

“Yes, my Shepherd.”

House of Oak: Red Star, White Sun © Thaddeus Howze 2012, All Rights Reserved

Keep your mask on and proceed to House of Oak (8)

Red Star, White Sun (6)

Posted by Ebonstorm on November 9, 2012
Posted in: Chapter, Short Story. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . 1 Comment

Los Angeles airspace, 2038 – three years ago

Flight Transcript: Classified – Top Secret

TELEMETRY AND BIOMETRIC DATA INCLUDED

“Whiskey Niner One, Whiskey Niner One, this is Flight Command. ETA to target?”

“Command, this is Whiskey Niner One, ETA eight minutes. Package is prepped, all lights green. Whiskey Niner Two on station.”

“Whiskey Niner Two to Niner One, recommend switching to Channel six.”

“Roger, Niner Two. Switching to channel six.”

“Niner Two to Niner One, comms established. Hawkeye, tell me you are not going through with this?”

“Boomer, orders are orders. You knew what we might have to do one day.”

“Begging the Colonel’s pardon, but that is Los Angeles painted in the center of my targeting map. Are you saying you can drop a bomb there and not look back? Don’t you have family there? ”

“Yes.”

“Well, sir, I can’t do that. It’s fucking downtown Los Angeles!”

“Boomer. (pause) Whiskey Niner Two, return to your flight path and follow your orders.”

“No, Colonel Hawkeye, sir. I will not be responsible for being the first pilot to bomb American soil.”

–FLIGHT DEVIATION DETECTED

“Niner Two, check your six. Do you see those four escort fighters? They are here for our protection. But they have another job to do.”

<squelch> “Bombers Whiskey Niner One and Whiskey Niner Two, you are deviating from your flight path. Return to the flight corridor.”

–FLIGHT DEVIATIONS CORRECTED

“Boomer, this is an Executive Order. That means its bigger than you or me. The fate of the United States may lay in the balance.”

“To hell with your executive order. It is an illegal order to bomb Americans, I don’t care what is going on down on the ground. I don’t have to follow an illegal order, no matter who it’s from.”

<squelch, unintelligible> “Whiskey Nine One. This is Ground Command, we are expecting your delivery. Are you in the pipe?”

“We are in the pipe, Ground Command. Are you on site?”

“That is an affirmative. I’ve never seen anything like this. We won’t last long, son. We are being overrun. <multiple sounds of gunfire are heard in background, men shouting, screams> But you can’t let anyone leave this city. Whatever this is, it cannot get out. Promise me.”

“You have my word, Ground Command.”

“We are lighting the beacon, our position is compromised. You hit this mark, son. This is Ground Commander, Zachery Baker, Colonel, United States Army.

–SIGNAL LOST

“Boomer, you don’t have to look. Just do your job, drop the payload and don’t look back.  This isn’t about your personal comfort.”

“Flight Command, this is Whiskey Niner One, we are thirty seconds out. Weapons armed, coming in hot.”

“You are free and clear. You may launch when ready. May God have mercy on our souls.”

“Whiskey Two, Boomer what are you doing?

–FLIGHT DEVIATION, W92, THROTTLES BACK, ATTEMPTS TO LOCK W91.

“I can’t let you do this. We can’t do this”

–W92 FIRES ON W91, DAMAGE RECORDED, W91 EVADES

“Escorts you are free and clear, fire on Whiskey Two.”

–W92 EVADES FOR ELEVEN SECONDS BEFORE BEING SHOT DOWN

“Flight Command, this is Escort One, we have a splash on Whiskey Niner Two. There was no chute deployed. Whiskey Niner One is smoking and leaking fuel.”

“Whiskey Niner One, you are clear for payload delivery. Can you deliver the package.”

“Flight Command, the package will have to be a manual drop. Tell my family I may be a little late. Carol will understand. Thank you Escort One, get clear.”

–PILOT EXPERIENCING TACHYCARDIA DUE TO BLOOD LOSS, RECOVERY IN PROGRESS

“Good luck, Whiskey Niner One.”

If I had any luck Escort One, I wouldn’t have been here. Don’t look back.

“This is Escort One. The payload is on target. We have detonation. Whiskey Niner One hit the mark.”

–TELEMETRY INDICATES MANUAL ACTIVATION OF DEVICE AT OPTIMAL HEIGHT, FEED FROM W92 LOST.

“This is Flight, you are to shoot down any aircraft that attempts to leave that airspace. No exception, no exclusions. We are tracking two jets which launched ten minutes ago. Split up and take them down. No survivors.”

“This is Escort One. Understood Flight, we are moving to intercept.”

–TRANSCRIPT ENDS, ALL FURTHER FEEDS REDACTED.

Four hours later, Daryl Mayers woke and walked out of the wreckage of flight 326 to New Mexico in the foothills of Southern California. He had only been on the plane for thirty minutes, and had a slight tickle in his throat. He found himself still strapped to his chair with a painful concussion for his troubles. Meanwhile the burning wreckage of Flight 326 with 193 passengers and crew a few hundred yards away exploded sending chucks of debris and the smoldering remains of passengers all over the area. Confused, he got up and walked away from the plane. A fighter jet roared away in the distance, its work done.

Curiously enough, none of the Native Americans who found him wandering from the crash thought anything unusual about him and nursed him back to health. For weeks he danced in and out of consciousness, sick with fever, they were initially afraid, especially after the tales of the new disease in the remains of Los Angeles.  But no one else grew sick and they eventually found him friendly, but unable to remember anything about his life.

The only thing he seemed insistent on was returning to a particular stretch of road to create new paintings in the sand. The Native Elders saw it as therapy and did not stop his weekly wanderings.

He became a local legend as he created sand sculptures and paintings often visible from the air. It was not known how he created these images without the aid of a computer or an aircraft. An occasional wanderer might appear or come to see his work, be amazed and leave feeling enlightened. They were never seen again.

He would never know any of these things. His ability to remember anything beyond the basics had, at least for the moment, left him. It was just as well. Sometimes ignorance is bliss.

A doctor might have diagnosed him with a traumatic brain injury which removed his power of speech and caused his artistic talent to explode. That same doctor, in a month after diagnosing him, would too be dead, with an irresistible and inexplicable urge to travel and mingle before he died. The same urge every visitor would have upon leaving, the once Daryl Mayers, now desert artist, spreading a unique contagion associated with a desire to create beautiful art until the moment of their painful demise.

Daryl would spread his art to over a thousand people before an unfortunate accident with an eighteen wheeler ended his career. The driver tried to help and resuscitate Mr. Mayers, unsuccessfully, but his truck of produce would arrive on time, hand delivered by an honest fellow just doing his job. An outbreak of artistic talent would follow almost two years to the day of the bombing of Los Angeles. These artists, of course, experienced an urge to travel…

House of Oak: Red Star, White Sun © Thaddeus Howze 2012, All Rights Reserved

BONUS: Los Diablos

Jump to Red Star, White Sun (7)

Red Star, White Sun (5)

Posted by Ebonstorm on November 1, 2012
Posted in: Chapter, Short Story. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

Hospitals, if they can be said to have a character, would have developed it based on the people they saved. Mount Sinai was a hospital who would have been said to have been a guardian of the poor, the weak, and the dispossessed. Mount Sinai’s walls of fine marble were covered in soot and ash, a testament to one of her primary tasks of destroying the dead and dying.

But it was not always so.

Her bright and sparkling corridors were once the exclusive province of the well to do. Founded at the turn of the last century, she was a product of her time. She was the hospital for the wealthy, the privileged, for those whose money could buy everything, even in a time when the bulk of the people had almost nothing.

She was the creation of the Victorian era and her origins had her foundations laid next to a grand cathedral in the center of New York City. Over time the two would eventually become a landmark, one of faith and one of healing in a time where there was too little of both. When they were finished building her, white walls contrasted the dark granite used to construct the church. They stood in opposition to each other, a testament to science, a reliquary of faith. The doctors in white and the pastors in black; each looking at the other shaking their head certain the other path was the path to damnation.

This was not to last.

Forty years and a generation of pastors and doctors later, the economy collapsed and both fell into disrepair. The ebb and flow of the times meant the church’s population would often grow directly in proportion to the quality of services available next door. The hospital was prepared against tough times and while its administrators minimized its services, she would push on during dark times.

Sinai did not close. She never did.

In a hundred and fifty years, Mount Sinai would never close her doors to anyone. Her lights might be dimmed and only the most dedicated would walk her halls, tend her sick, and bring solace to her wounded for the next two score of years.

Those unfortunates who found their way to her were in a bad way and though she did not have much, she tended them. Her doctors and nurses plied their craft with dedication, her janitors were equally focused. The two buildings would light the way for their part of the city. It would be cleaner, more beautiful, the people more generous and would maintain their quality of life as if protected against the vicissitudes of a cruel universe. They could not know there were other forces at work.

Mount Sinai’s strong walls had survived two World Wars, and a variety of smaller ones. Locked in the heart of the inner city, she was once a hospital only for the rich, who desired care but did not want to travel away from their opulent lifestyles. So while she started life as a refuge for the wealthy, she eventually became, as she aged and as the city grew into adulthood, a caretaker and bastion of those now too poor to have other choices. Somehow Mount Sinai always managed to have what she needed to survive. She drove her doctors and her administrators toward greater levels of capability. Her community loved her, they did whatever was necessary for the hospital to survive, somehow they knew, her survival would be theirs.

Their doctors and research facilities grew stronger and she grew larger, expanding into the local neighborhood providing clinics, healthcare and a personal touch slowly eroded by the march of corporate healthcare. Only the church stayed the same after a century, its bell towers, still crossed the skylines, well lit after a century.

When Mount Sinai was nearly a hundred years old, forty years ago, she was considered historical and the city realized her value as a symbol of hope in a decaying age. They rebuilt her walls, expanded her, reinforced her, and protected her. Her surgeons, doctors, scientists became legends in their own right, as if her desire to protect had seeped into the air, the water, their food, their love of life transformed into an art, a passion for lifesaving. When the Great Wasting was first discovered, it was found by those doctors who worked at Mount Sinai, ever vigilant for threats against her city.

The Great Wasting challenged Mount Sinai and her legion of practitioners. It challenged their belief systems (it wasn’t possible), it challenged their skills (we can’t stop it), it challenged their very nature of what good care was (we can’t keep up with it), but they did not stop.

At Mount Sinai, stopping wasn’t ever considered. One hundred and fifty years of tradition broke for no disease. They believed it was only a matter of time. The champion of that cause two years ago was Dr. Chaucer.

The head physician, Carolyn Chaucer, MD sat back from her terminal took off her reading glasses and pinched her forehead trying to relieve a headache. A headache likely caused by trying to uphold the standards and principles of the great institution even while she danced on the head of a pin to maintain a hospital during martial law.

For the first time in one hundred and fifty two years, the doors of Mount Sinai were closed to the public.

Soldiers guarded her doorway and a DMZ stood between the world and the hospital. The church next door was also included within the DMZ, having been taken over by the military as a staging area.

Dr. Chaucer had served this hospital for nearly thirty years now and was in her early sixties. She was a good sixty. She was fit. She could still Zumba with the best of them. Working in hospital had given her a great respect for the frailty of the human condition, so she made every effort to maintain both her body and her mind. She was still a beautiful woman, but her recent cares had added years to her eyes.

Just her eyes. Men still sought her favors, until they looked into her eyes. She had seen too much. Most fled checking their watches, remembered meetings they were late to, made stammering statements to excuse themselves from her imposing psychic presence.

The corner office, her only concession to her position’s status looked out at the church next door. She had never set foot inside of it. Not for a lack of curiosity, but for a lack of faith. Growing up religious, she had no truck with it after adulthood. Even though this particular church shared a fence and was considered to be one of the most beautiful of its kind, she would have nothing to do with it, out of principle. But there was nothing preventing her from admiring its lines. As her eye slid down the building, her mind crossed the fence back into her own backyard.

Fatigue coursed through her bones as she considered the three hundred patients she had in and on the grounds in varying states of disrepair. The hospice regions on the edge of the hospital grounds were the saddest part of the hospital to her. These patients never entered the hospital proper and their caretakers were restricted as well. Clean facilities established on the grounds meant staff could move only between particular regions unless they were equipped with the proper military biosuit. She had been wearing hers for days and had been relieved to take it off, have it cleaned, take a bath and for a moment allow the air to touch her skin. Considering the horror of her job, she felt naked without it. She put it back on before she sat down to finish her paperwork.

Flicking through the close circuit data-stream, she looked at the various hospice regions surrounding the hospital. There was nothing to be done for these people consigned to this area except to keep them clean and dry and hope for the best. The disease was painful, the never-ending moans and cries as the disease ravaged their bodies, consuming their nerve endings, left most begging for death. Many nurses would secretly comply as the screams reached a terrifying crescendo, night after night.

For most, relief never came. Painkiller supplies ran out after the first year. Most would die within a three week window after being admitted.

A few lasted longer, maybe ten percent. And a curious few might last a few months. But there were two classes who would remain in hospital care and be moved into isolation units for study; those who didn’t die, but did not get better. This disease was a deadly one. Either you lived or you died. End of story.

These two exceptions were the reasons she was still practicing medicine.

Ninety percent of the people infected with the Wasting died. They were eaten from within or from without by the symptoms of what appeared to be flesh-eating disease. Most died so quickly, they never made it to the hospital. If the disease was internal, most never knew what killed them. Autopsies show internal organs completely consumed by the disease. Early sufferers died this way. As the disease continued, later sufferers started showing external injuries as flesh melted away, almost over-night.

Within a week to fifteen days, the patients on average died. This fast dying group was only twenty percent of the sufferers. Most would be members of the middle group, who died much slower but died just the same. They might suffer for a month or more. This accounted for the next fifty percent of sufferers. The last twenty percent were worthy of study. If you stayed sick but did not die, did not progress in symptoms, you were watched closely.

Then there was a new class of patients. There was excitement when people noticed a few patients were showing signs of improvement. But every third person who did survive was still not clear. They stopped showing signs of the disease. But they were still highly infectious. These were now her patients and her problem.

As she signed the crematory notations for last night’s shift, she could hear the furnaces being started as their solar charges and cremation chambers reached their threshold temperatures.

She normally stood vigil as they disposed of the bodies, but after the first thousand, it became almost  unbearable, by the second, she wept inwardly, by the ten thousandth, she could no longer weep, her heart hardened by the horror of watching them die, consumed by a disease she knew but could no longer understand.

She watched from her desk over the CCD. She did not need to. It was her self-imposed penance.

Today was the anniversary of the discovery of the Sinai bacterium and today, she wanted to sit in her chair and forget. Forget Patient Zero. Forget the panic. Forget the riots. Forget the military. Forget martial law. Forget her husband and her children who died so early on. Forget the tens of thousands she herself personally euthanized to spare them their terrible fate.

She just wanted to forget.

Her secretary came into her office, out of breath. “Excuse me, doctor. There is a man downstairs at the main gate asking for you.”

“Did you ask him what he wanted?”

He asked me to give you something to you. It was a card in a beautiful hand written script written in Latin. Nex has adeo vestri urbs. EGO adeo praecipio vos Sit hic. “Death has come to your city. I come to warn you He is here.”

Her face paled as she sealed her suit at the neck, grabbed her white coat and ran past her secretary into her airlock.

She primped and checked her appearance as she rode the elevator to the first floor. It had been a while since she had cared what she looked like.

She slowed herself as she entered the main security region.  She could see his blue-black face even from this distance. He was wearing his trademark ornate shades of gold and a dark grey suit.

“Let him through, Captain.”

“I’m sorry ma’am but he is displaying signature irregularities indicating he may be sick.”

“I am authorizing his passage, Captain. I will take full responsibility.”

“Yes, ma’am. Let him through.”

His face was solemn, but his mouth had the hint of a smile. “Your eyes speak to me, Doctor Chaucer. They are filled with your suffering. You are now old enough to understand.”

Her eyes and face harden. She slaps him. He does not resist.

A few seconds later he hugs her. She does not resist.

They walk away toward the elevator, silently, closely but not touching. Everyone returns to looking busy, their questions internalized until the elevator closes.

It was within these walls, did Ben Szandros find himself; so very close to death from every side and yet in this moment, more alive than any other time in his short life.

The walls of Mount Sinai shudder.

House of Oak: Red Star, White Sun © Thaddeus Howze 2012, All Rights Reserved

Jump to Red Star, White Sun (6)

Red Star, White Sun (4)

Posted by Ebonstorm on October 27, 2012
Posted in: Chapter, Short Story. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . 2 Comments

His name was spoken among the Vampyr in hushed overtones; if you spoke of him at all. He was the boogey-man of boogey-men. His real name was lost to antiquity. He was called the Shepherd.  Like a scourge or plague, where the Shepherd came, none survived, so the legends said. All legends have a kernel of truth in them if you dig deep enough.

He could no longer remember his name. He had not used it in so long, no one living, even the oldest of the Old Ones could remember it and their pedigree went back four thousand years, but he, he was one of the First. And as far as he knew he was the Last.

Sun-baked by millennia of crossing the world on foot, on camels, later horses, ships of nearly every size and shape, he knew the sun, from every angle, from every climate, from every biome on Earth. His skin was black as night, nearly so black it shone with a bluish tint. On occasion, his appearance caused men to recoil in fear, back when humans had the proper respect for his… vocation.

A little over five and a half feet tall, he was powerfully built; his body festooned with scars acquired over the ages, should you be fortunate enough to see him without his clothing. As ruggedly as his body had lived, he kept himself impeccably dressed, his custom-made suit hid only the physical manifestations of his power. Anyone standing near him felt his aura of confidence, of supreme will.

His head was clean-shaven, though he did nothing to maintain this state. His hair simply no longer grew upon it. He would occasionally wear a hat, if the fashion of the time required it. Modern times no longer had such requirements, more the pity. He often thought modern times had lost touch with the little things that mattered.

Though the sun was hot, it was nothing compared to the sun of his ancestors, The August sun beat down on New York city like a drum, rhythmic ripples flowed away into the distance, distorting the long avenues, bereft of all but a few people, scurrying along. He wore a pair of dark and beautiful bronze-like sunglasses; their like had not been seen in some time.

Not the sentimental type, these sunglasses were one of the only things he kept from Byzantium before its destruction.  He attributed this attachment to their high quality. But they were not for his protection; he could stare directly into the sun for days with no trauma. These were for the humans who would dare to stare into his eyes. His eyes revealed his nature as a Shepherd though few would recognize that today. It was how they knew each other. To know his gaze was to court death.

His mouth and nose were both ample and full, yet did not dominate his face, having nearly perfect proportions with his cheeks and chin. Each element of his face was distinct but together, women considered him breathtaking. Back when he cared about such things, he was vain and proud of his appearance, but the centuries slowly eroded the value of his physical beauty until it became one more tool at his disposal, nothing more.

He walked through the streets of New York with purpose. He remembered these streets from decades ago when they were pulsing with life, people bustling from place to place barely aware of the person next to them. Nights were filled with lights stridently crying out for notice. The scents of the city spanned the globe and each reminded him of another epoch, in time, when those foods were prepared with less flair but more honesty. He hated to admit it but New York was one of his favorite cities of the last two centuries. There was a vitality he thought lost to the modern world.

And now it was lost again. But not just to New York but to everywhere.

He had seen the face of plague before. He had watched millions die in his ten thousand year journey. Before he knew his purpose, he watched in horror as smallpox devastated Mesopotamia, and later spread to nearly every corner of the globe, a more devastating disease had never been seen, then or since. He watched and learned as cholera swept across Africa, with diphtheria in tow, and heralded by malaria. As mankind moved to avoid diseases, and learned technologies to forestall disease, it was simple to mislead them and he watched as Rome fell to madness and lead poisoning. Only a few centuries later the European continent was devastated by the Black Death. By the twentieth century his work had grown easy as the world trembled before the might of the Spanish Flu. An affliction so terrible, historians were the only ones who remembered it willingly.

The diseases of the modern era, AIDS, Morgellans, drug addictions, were no less effective than his previous works, but lacked the sweeping devastation he was used to, until now.

And this, this was the conundrum. This Great Wasting as it was called, resembled the lowly staph infection, a modest creation which had enjoyed a return to prominence early in the twenty first century but now had turned into this new thing; something vile and unpredictable with a speed rarely seen except for flesh-eating bacteria. It would be something he would have been proud to take credit for if it were his.

But it was not.

There were no other Shepherds alive. He knew this. He was there at the passing of the last. And nature, while she can be a beast, would never have developed anything as dangerous as this. The question was who or what could have done this?

It didn’t matter now. What mattered was keeping this from the public eye until he could complete his investigation. He had his suspicions but no one could know the truth until he was sure.

The meddlesome and curious Lord Oak had already discovered what he hadn’t wanted to be known. This was no ordinary disease, nor was it one placed into the ecosystem to control the population of man. This disease had only one purpose, the complete and utter extermination of man.

No Shepherd would do this.

How was it created? Who would create such a thing? Why would they make it so virulent? None of those questions could be answered until the underlying reason for his being here could be dealt with.

It cannot be known this was not a culling. Panic among the People would be the result. He already disapproved of this coming out to Humanity. It would only create more tensions than it solved. The fall of Rome had proven we can never truly coexist. The Dark Ages only reinforced our experiences of the inability to effectively coexist, though we expanded our numbers greatly after the Renaissance so it was not a complete loss.

He considered letting the local powers deal with the Last member of the House of Oak, a once great house, filled with artists, scientists and scholars; a friend to most, a rival to few. Once, even a friend to, a Shepherd. That was a long time ago, a different Shepard and a different Lord Oak.

This was no time for sentimentality. The stakes were the entire world. For without Humanity, the People will perish. I must find the true source of this contagion, without the source, humanity had no chance to defeat it.

Their skills were great enough they were already learning this, but if Maximillian Oak is able to share his knowledge, we will no longer be able to contain the powder keg. Humanity without hope of reprieve would explode into an orgy of violence and despair.

As he approached an inner city checkpoint, the security guards leveled their weapons and ordered him to stop. He did not acknowledge them. He simply removed his sunglasses and stared at them. Like the six checkpoints before this one, the men clutched their chests, their eyes burst and they fell over dead. When they are checked at a forensic lab a day from now, their bodies will be coursing with diseases, numerous ones, unseen for decades.

There would be new bulletins issued, new protocols released, but none of them will matter for the source of the disease defied pathology.

He strides past the checkpoint, unchecked. He returns his shades, their familiar weight comfortable on his face.

I needed more time.

As long as he was aware of this knowledge, the Lord Oak must die.

House of Oak: Red Star, White Sun © Thaddeus Howze 2012, All Rights Reserved

Chaos Bound (1)

Posted by Ebonstorm on October 23, 2012
Posted in: Chapter, Short Story. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . 1 Comment

She walked through the mountains, nearly naked, except for the demon armor she had through sorcery most foul, forced to do her bidding. It was now proof against wind, weather or weapons. In the fashion of its kind, it demanded in trade for its powers, the lust men knew for her, their depravity fed it, nourished it, empowered it. As men saw her nearly naked form, it feasted upon their lust; insidiously, invisibly stealing their life-force. Most times this was enough to maintain the demonic wards of protection.

If she neglected the demon, once a month, she must give herself to a man’s lust to slack its demonic thirst. As long as men lusted for her, her pact with the demon made her nigh-invulnerable in battle. She hated it, but needed the power. These things had nearly conquered her world. She would do anything to drive them away, endure any indignity. Rather than shy away from her pact of evil, she embraced it.

She was known for her lusts across the land and was feared just as well. Her beauty, though passed through the hourglass of time, still commanded the hunger of almost all men, the more pious, the more refined they were, the more they seemed to secretly covet her. She reveled in their destruction most of all. Her body, strong and hardened by both combat and sorcery promised nights of ecstasy to those brave enough to partake. Woe be unto the man who failed her tests of pleasure, though, they were never seen again.

Her armor affected feathered wings of iron which flapped about her during battle and where they swiped, flesh fell asunder, stunned screams as bowels flowed free from their confines and armored limbs pirouetted through the air momentarily escaping the force of gravity before returning to earth with a dull clank of meat and metal. In battle, she was a whirlwind of death and this was even before she drew her sword, a Lord of Chaos bound.

She wore the heavy boots of the foot-soldiers of Nus. Finely crafted, extremely durable, supple, close-fitting, black as night. Her jeweled gloves, designed for battle hailed from the other side of the world, where the famed Necromancers of Weir taught her how to fill them with the raging spirits of the many men she has slain.  Her powers of necromancy could free those tortured souls to do her bidding, stripping the flesh from her enemies, before retreating to the nether hells for which they were bound before she enslaved them. They welcomed release, prayed for it.

Her armored wings and helmet fluttering slightly, seeking to strike out, but sensing nothing, flapped momentarily and returned to quiescence.  They had not adjusted to the coldness of the mountains. But for her, this was home. The crisp mountain air filled her lungs with memories and hidden in that breeze was the alien stink of her world’s usurpers. She assures her Chaos blade, drinking in the alien presence and eager for the battle to come, for its help, it would feast upon the souls of the invaders.

It was made for this purpose.

It released a screech of its chaos-flux in anticipation; space and time were undone nearby, stones unmade, and a fiery chasm opened before her. As she strode unmarred through the final mountain pass, she crunched on a gear beneath her boot,  a remnant from one of the clockworks this area was once famed for. None had been made here in over three decades since the Astronomers of Kimber fell. The gear was still beautiful even as the patina of age wore on it. She slid it in her pack, a reminder of why she was here. She was a child when she fled from here so long ago…

Chaos Bound  © Thaddeus Howze 2012, All Rights Reserved

 

BONUS: Chaos Bound (2)

Red Star, White Sun (3)

Posted by Ebonstorm on October 22, 2012
Posted in: Chapter, Short Story. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

There is a medicinal tang to the air of a hospital, an unmistakable, sharp biting odor, punctuated by the constant release of new chemicals and drones swishing them about promoting the illusion of health; as if cleanliness ensured healthiness.

It doesn’t always. Make no mistake about it, hospitals are about the dying, not the living. I never enjoyed finding myself in one and the main reason I was a health nut was to do my best to avoid visiting one of these mausoleums of the dying. Death has a scent, two actually. One of them is the odor of carrion and putrification; the other, a fresh and antiseptic scent. Death wears both.

You come to know its putrid perfume if you spend enough time around it. Digging mass graves after the Plague started, it was something everyone had to do sooner or later. My room stank of it, the strong scent of Death permeated every corner.

After the Plague began, hospitals became a luxury almost no one could afford. Triage centers, hospice camps, became the new medical facilities on the streets, away from anything truly important like surgery facilities for the wealthy. Advanced medical facilities were no longer for anyone, they were reserved for the very rich. Everyone else was forced to seek medical care where and if they could find it.

No one would have been more surprised than I was to find myself breathing in the metallic odors, brass, copper, stainless steel, shined and sanitized to perfection in a room barely lit, festooned with machines, tiny lights telling others how I was doing at a glance. I remember briefly waking to doctors sagely looking at my charts, making hmmming noises before nodding and walking away.

The occasional shake of their head made it through the drugged fog I found myself moving through with only one thing remaining constant, the white suited figure standing next to my bed. He rarely moved, and whenever I woke, however briefly in the beginning, he was there, his satanic eyes glowing red, looking at me with expectation and anticipation. Of what, I wondered before falling asleep again.

Finally, something changed, either my medication was reduced or I just started making some unexpected progress. There was less head shaking and more affirming noises. The machines made more noises, stronger, more regular and eventually, he even moved from my bedside for a moment or two.

Staring out the window when I awoke, he had the curtains cracked just a sliver, and the sunlight seemed bright, oh so bright. He closed the curtains and turned toward me. “Good morning, Benjamin. You’re looking better. Don’t try to move. It will be quite a few more days before you can get around.”

I tried to speak, my chest felt as if a rhino were napping there. I don’t care what you see in movies, I felt barely able to move my fingers and had more tubes, patches and bandages than I had ever known were possible. I couldn’t feel anything below my waist.

“How long have I been here?” The last thing I remember was tons of rubble crushing us.

“Benjamin Szandros, you have been here some months now. The medical practitioners did not have much hope for your survival.” He smiled as if we were conspirators discussing a booming stock market.

Despite my fatigue, my mind was surprisingly clear. My memory was returning and with it, a burst of fear. “What about the, whatever the hell you called it?

The smile faded, he was all business again. He seemed to be considering exactly how much to tell me. “The boomsha: it was gone by the time they dug us out.”

I let the implications sink in for a moment; mentally I was running on fumes. It was speared savagely through the heart, smashed into a ceiling, and then buried under tons of rock. “You got to be kidding me, it survived?”

“Why wouldn’t it? We did.”

If he had not reminded me, I would not have remembered he was there and in far worse shape at the time than I was now. He stood there unmarked, as if nothing had happened. He wore a white suit accented in grey and silver. His long coat was back, its unnatural sheen only reminded me of what it actually was, a pair of giant wings. Currently they were colored a dark grey and affected the look of a cloak over both shoulders. The clawed sections pretended to be buttons, looking innocuous, shimmering, beautiful.  I tried not to grimace as I remembered how he speared the boomsha, with one of his wing talons, like a bug under glass.

“Max…” I began.

“Stop. I allowed such familiarity when we were facing imminent death. I am Maximillian Oak, last son of the House of Oak. You will address me as Lord Oak, or if you must affect some level of familiarity, Maximillian. Do you understand me?”

Okay, it’s like that. “Maximillian.” I said with as much venom as possible, “what happened to the rest of the people on the train?”

He turned away from me and walked back to the window. He opened the blinds again and the early morning sunlight spilled into the room, a river of gold separating the two of us for a moment. I saw a few particles of dust swirling in the sun beam and found myself fascinated without realizing it. He was in no rush to continue the conversation, I could feel it. “There were no survivors. The tunnel collapsed killing almost everyone on board. The White Sun chose the spot well. There were already existing weaknesses which made the tunnel vulnerable.”

I had no proof but I had a feeling he wasn’t telling me everything. “You’re lying. How did they really die?”

The face I saw on the train was the one he turned back to me. A face that was cold, indifferent, timeless; the face of an immortal determined to stay that way. “You don’t want the truth of the incident, so leave it be. We have survived the moment. With the escape of the boomsha, this is hardly over. In fact it has only just begun.”

I wasn’t willing to let it go like that. “So you’re telling me a ton of rock lands on top of me and I am alive because I live cleanly, drink Spirolina shakes and exercise regularly?”

He came over to the side of the bed and moved his face close to mine. There was no heat this time. If anything he was colder than I expected, akin to opening the door to my freezer, but the chill was nothing compared to what his words caused in me. I would do whatever it took to survive…

“Between the bomb and the collapse, there were massive casualties. Most would not survive, their injuries were too great, the time before rescue was simply too long. It took twenty hours before they could reach us. Most died, long before then, slow agonizing deaths. Without the help of my kind helping to dig and remove the rubble, it would have been days. If you must know the truth, yes, I fed. Several times, in fact.”

My adrenal glands having had a few months of rest, rose to the challenge and I was able to raise my voice above a broken whisper. “Those people had nothing to do with you or whatever you, the boomsha and the White Sun had going on. How could you kill them?”

“I see. You think I fed just to survive. Their passage into the next life was filled with pain and suffering. I will spare you the visions, you are too weak to survive them. I saved every moment of their passing for you, whenever you wish to see it. I knew you would be self-righteous and filled with survivor’s guilt.”

“Yes, and I see you survived, just like you said you would. Did you have to kill them all, or only a dozen or two.”

“Spare me your piteous mewling about those people. While you slept blissfully ignorant and protected beneath my body, I endured their cries as their air ran out, I listened to their bones breaking as their crushing injuries filled their bowels with blood. I was with them, all of them. When they could bear it no longer, when their terror overwhelmed their veneer of civilization, when their minds broke waiting for rescue, I was there for them. I took them and they are with me. Within me are the souls of thousands.”

I felt my face grow cold. My rage drained away. I felt pity, but only for a moment. Then I remembered. “You used me. You involved me in this vendetta of yours when I used my flashlight against the boomsha.”

“You were involved the moment you stepped on the train. I simply made you useful to me, in that moment. Do not presume to know my mind, Benjamin. You have only just begun a journey I have lived for five hundred years. You have no idea of what your people are capable of. You have not lived long enough. You are still filled with youthful idealism. I harbor no such illusions now.”

I wanted to say something more. I wanted to tell him what I thought of what he did, killing innocents, children. I wanted to be angrier. But I was alive and this seemed to trump my righteous fury. Seeing my impending surrender, he administered the coup de grace.  “Why aren’t you enraged about the Church of the White Sun planting the bomb, in the first place? They certainly didn’t have any compunction about killing their fellows to enact their revenge scenario. Save your sanctimony for someone who still feels anything for anyone. I certainly do not qualify.”

The door to my room opened and a woman and two heavily armed military policemen entered. She was quite attractive, in that stern school-teacher sort of way. She was dressed in black bio-fatigues still sealed from the neck down and also wearing her gloves.

The PAIN logo on her left shoulder stood out against the black suit. She was carrying her filter-mask and headgear under her arm and carrying a data wand in the other. Her eyes were like flint, she analyzed me when she came into the room and decided I was no threat. When she looked at Max, er Maximillian, she seemed to be dissecting him, determining his threat potential, stopping only to look him directly in his eyes, almost challenging him.

He was unimpressed.

Her next words however, did get a rise out of him, only for a split second, but I saw it. Imperturbable my ass.

“Maximillian Oak, you are under arrest.” Her face was stern and she was coldly professional in her delivery.

“And what is the charge, officer?” Oak was equally chilling.

“Murder, using psychic means. We place you at the bombing onboard the train and can provide testimony to your use of your abilities to feed against the strictures of the Red Star Convention. Please come with us. Be advised, we are aware of your… vulnerabilities. They were provided when your arrest warrant was issued. This data-wand has the warrant for your perusal if you so desire.”

“I am certain your paperwork is all in order, Officer…?”

“Forester. Beth Forester, Psychic Analysis Investigations Unit, NYPD.”

“I am sorry, Officer Forester, I will have to decline to be arrested at this time.” He turned to look at me in my hospital bed. I had to attest to a bit of satisfaction with his arrest. Any fascination I had with the man was gone. He was a murderous fiend and would be getting what he deserved.

“If I am taken from young Benjamin’s side, within the hour he will sicken and die.”

House of Oak: Red Star, White Sun © Thaddeus Howze 2012, All Rights Reserved

Jump to Red Star, White Sun (4)

Red Star, White Sun (2)

Posted by Ebonstorm on October 19, 2012
Posted in: House of Oak, science fiction, Serial, Short Story. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , . 1 Comment

I couldn’t breathe. My whole body felt shrouded, covered by an unyielding barrier. My ears were ringing and I could smell hair, plastic, electrical wiring burning. I tried to move and as I wriggled my arm, the barrier fell away, with a dull flapping sound.

It took a moment to remember where I was.  The train. Underground. The explosion. The bomb. Then it came flooding back to me. I was lying down and there was a body next to mine. I knew it was a body because it was still warm. But it was cooling rapidly. Maximillian Oak, a Red Star was standing next to me when the bomb went off.

I slowly reached into my pocket for my keychain and LED flashlight. I figured it wouldn’t be much but any light would be better than none for me. I rolled to the right to free my hand, but I couldn’t move it. I reached out with my right arm and found my arm was bleeding, sticky and wet. I had to be in shock, I didn’t feel it yet. Reaching across my body, I got my keys and fumbled with the LED; a gift from a former girlfriend. At the time, I didn’t think much of it, but now, if I live, I will have to thank her.

At least that’s what I was thinking until I turned it on. A brief flash of its harsh, blue-white light and I immediately turned it off.

How am I alive? The train, I remember we were on a train, was nothing more than a tangled wreck with no piece of it larger than a beagle near what was left of Max and I. Rubble from the tunnel had collapsed onto what was left of the car and Max was pinned underneath that. I could see the dripping smears that used to be people on the other end of the car.

I turned to what was left of Max and gasped involuntarily. He had wings. They were disguised as his coat, complete with the iridescent sheen. Now that they hung open, limp and lifeless, they only added to the horror of what I believe was his true form. His body was burned across the back and legs but his wings appeared to have taken no damage from the blast.

That’s what I heard before the explosion, his wings wrapping around us.

His face was twisted up in pain and his hair and parts of his skin around his neck has been burned away. In seeing his injuries, I began to feel my own and between the rubble pinning him down and my broken arm, we weren’t going anywhere fast.

“Artist.” His voice was a whisper but he spoke with a casualness that belied our circumstances. “You are looking well, relatively speaking.”

“Max. You look like hell, relatively speaking.

“I’ll get better. We’ll be here for some time. But this area is unstable. We need to move.”

I waved my light around. I couldn’t see what he was seeing but there were still particles falling from the ceiling. I took that as a sign of the area’s instability.

“Are there others still alive on the train?” I wanted to feel as if one subset of human selfishness hadn’t cost everyone on the train their lives.

He looked at me with a cold stare. “Yes, but they won’t be for long. With my injuries, I will need to feed soon.”

“How do you plan to do that? You can barely move.”

“As usual, humans confuse feeding with movement. I don’t need to move to feed. From where I am lying, I can take the lives of everyone on this train and there is little they could do to stop me. And I will if that is what it takes for me to survive,” he hissed.

Earlier, I felt fascination and even a few seconds of pity for this enigmatic being. Now, despite the fact I should be grateful to be alive, in this moment, I hated him and more importantly recognized his inhumanity. I had no doubt he would and could kill us all if that’s what it took for him to make it off this train.

“Then why save me? I was nothing more than a failsafe snack to ensure your survival?” I tried to sit up and the effort made me dizzy. Sand from the ceiling hit me in the face, interrupting my attempt to look outraged. Fact of the matter, I will still too damn grateful to be alive to really be mad.

He took a minute to answer. He croaked, “If I told you that was true, would you hold it against me? It isn’t, but I am curious.”

“No, not really. I’m pissed but if I had been alive as long as you, I might have the very same attitude. Survival at any cost. I guess you don’t get many Christmas cards.”

“No, I don’t.”

For a moment, we sat silently, for my part awkwardly, trying to decide if I felt good enough to try and get up. I was also considering whether I should be helping him.

“Did you hear that?” He lifted his head and turned his good (and by that I mean unburned) ear toward where he said he heard the sound.

On the other end of the car, there was a still intact train door. I could hear someone trying to force it open. “We’re rescued.”

“No, it hasn’t been nearly long enough. It would take longer than an hour to reach us. Someone is here to finish what they started.”

My stomach clenched as he closed his eyes and furrowed his brow. I grabbed his arm and was swept up in his evil. I could see again with his senses, there were five people still alive in this car. They were at the far end of the car and protected by the press of bodies during the explosion. They were barely alive, their energies fading even as I watched. One by one, they winked out like candles in a storm, flickering brightly for a second and then gone. A winged darkness fell over them and then it was gone.

Max breathed in, deeply like man given a glass of water after being in a desert.

“You bastard.”

“So you think this is just about me? You do understand they cannot allow any witnesses. You, my good man, are a witness. They have already killed everyone between you and I. Do you doubt this? Take my hand and see what I see.”

His grip was hot again. Strong. Terrible. The visions before this one were soft compared to this one. His senses tore the car apart, his visual acuity sharp, I could see every torn angle of the car, ever drop of viscera dangling from the walls, every human remnant. I could see these things in complete darkness. His vision zoomed to the car door as it was pulled open. The sound of a silenced handgun echoed though the adjacent car. Max feasted. The well-oiled scent of the gun, mixed with the explosive effluvia, and the iron-hard scent of blood spattered on it made it easy to find.

I could see the man, his pores visible even from fifty feet, his face pockmarked like the surface of the moon, his eyes glittered with a drug-enhanced shine. His movements were strange, stuttering things, as if he could barely contain himself, a juxtaposition of stillness and action. His head snapped in our direction, as if taking our measure. He sniffed the air like a wild animal as he brought his gun about.

Max shuddered. “I know what you are. You didn’t tell them did you? You used them to plant your bomb and do your dirty work.” He spoke as if he were talking to someone right next to him.

When I looked back to the door, the man was gone. He was standing right above both of us. I never heard him or saw him move.

Do not trust your eyes. He is boomsha, a dweller between shadows. We have only one chance. You will know. If you fail, I will kill everyone who is left alive here to save myself. Including you.

The boomsha stood above us his gun pointed at our still forms. “Lord Oak, you have been deemed a Betrayer of the Way. You have conspired with Man and have been found guilty. I am here to deliver justice. Do you have Words for me to Deliver?” His speech surprised me. A thick accent I could not place, almost as if he spoke a language I had never heard.

“No Boomsha. I have no Words for you to Deliver. You will, however, send a message for me.”

“And what is that Lord Oak?” Suddenly my supernatural vision failed me. I could not see anything and the darkness was terrifying. I felt so heavy and slow, adrenaline no longer driving my actions. I turned my LED toward where I heard the boomsha’s quiet voice. I turned it on.

The light struck the boomsha directly in the chest and the clawed wing of Maximillian Oak blasted through the spot of light and penetrated the ceiling above him. The look of surprise was clearly written on the boomsha’s face. He shrieked as he tried to escape being pinned, vibrating between one place and another but unable to complete his blinking movement.

Then the ceiling collapsed upon us all.

Red Star, White Sun © Thaddeus Howze 2012, All Rights Reserved

Jump to Red Star, White Sun (3)