Tiny sample -- WASHINGTON BOARD

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Date Posted: 09:21:55 04/21/10 Wed
Author: RmH
Author Host/IP: S010600179a334297.gv.shawcable.net / 96.54.199.160
Subject:

Tiny sample
In reply to: Trudy 's message, "Re: First draft of Legend of Chun (working title) is complete" on 02:15:38 04/21/10 Wed

(Schroeder is a former Council member in the city they're off to attack, McCarty was a former Brigadier General for that city also. Enslann, the bad guy, has loaded a salvaged nuke onto a flying machine (lifter) and is about to nuke their position. The nuke is about to arrive)

* * *

Schroeder lay between two rocks, next to McCarty, cringing against the lobber fire. The opening seconds of battle were a blur to him. One moment they marched in column, and the next moment a string of brilliant explosions walked up and down the ranks, scattering and shredding their formations. In the cloud of screams and smoke and erupting coil fire it had taken what seemed an eternity to spot their attackers.

To their south, scattered among the rocks and wrecked ground of the valley a few hundred metres away, were hundreds of flashing muzzles.

McCarty had marshalled them, shouting over his external speaker and the Summites were fighting back, but they were pinned.

�That�s right,� McCarty called over the din. �Kill and shift, Councillor.� He made a guttural noise and fired into the falling darkness at something Schroeder couldn�t see. �Kill and shift.�

Another point of light in the distance, and Schroeder aimed at the area that it seemed to come from. He fired, checked his terror, fired some more, watched for another blaze and, when it appeared, fired two more bolts as a lob shell blasted the rocks to his rear, washing him with overpressure, propelling whistling chunks of broken rock over his head.

�Where the cluster hell did they come from,� he muttered.

McCarty didn�t hear him over the roar. If he did, there was no indication and no reply. The Brigadier fired so rapidly that his coiler began to glow a soft yellow.

A string of detonations walked over the Guard�s positions. It looked like lobber fire. �What the-� McCarty shouted. That was when they saw the distant muzzle flashes far to the south. Someone was attacking their ambushers from behind.

The shriek of lifter engines filled the valley, and Schroeder scanned the sky, but saw nothing.

�Granitites?� Schroeder shouted the word, but his throat was hoarse and voice cracked.

McCarty may have nodded at that, but it was hard to be certain. The Brigadier pulled the coiler into his shoulder and settled to take aim as Schroeder checked the charge on the side of his own weapon. The batteries were fading under the demands of his harried return fire.

The light on the side of his weapon glowed red. Then it was yellow. Then it was white, and his weapon was white. Washed out white. Long shadows appeared, cast by stones on the ground and the land became a web of long shadows.

In that puzzling millisecond, his brain registered the flash, but his conscious mind did not.

By the twentieth millisecond, he knew that it came from the south. His head instinctively rose as his photosensitive faceplate darkened to near opaque and his brain froze. As the jerking motion initiated by his neck continued to pull his head up, something else embedded in Schroeder�s gray matter tried to abort the motion.

In the fiftieth millisecond, half a breath into the moment, the signal to bury his face caught up with his neck muscles and his face fell forward as a hand rose to protect his eyes and wisps of smoke rose from the very stones.

Awareness of silence. Awareness of the bones in the hand that covered his faceplate. Schroeder saw, as if drawn on a map, the veins suspended in the flesh beneath the glove. Then, it was as if his eyes had fallen out and were replaced with a flood of pure, white light and his brain grasped the danger.

He fell flat in the crease of the sheltering rocks, hands flailing to cover the back of his head and he was aware of heat... so much heat. Heat passed into him and through him and around him and the places where his gloves joined the wrists and his helmet joined the neck burned as if red hot wires were lain on his skin.

Silence. Empty, lingering silence in a sea of light and burn.

The ground dropped away. Before his body could follow, the ground rose and slammed into the full length of his chest and legs, forcing the air from his lungs, and only the nano-rubber armor prevented the impact from crushing his ribs to dust. The thin strips of exposed flesh were impossibly hot, but the arriving shockwave killed every deliberate thought. The ground rose, fell, slammed into him again amid the rapid-fire staccatos of cracking rock. A cacophonic roar dazzled Schroeder, slammed into his eardrums. Sharp pain in the side of his head and the sensation of being crushed as the fireball, glimmering like the baleful eye of some fire god, violet and white and red and orange and green and flashing and undulating rose and blowtorch heat danced on his back.

Schroeder�s overtaxed brain relented, and he lost consciousness.

These were the first three seconds.

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Replies:

It's unfiltered, though -- RmH, 20:53:30 04/21/10 Wed
Re: Tiny sample -- Trudy, 22:00:09 04/23/10 Fri
- Re: Tiny sample -- RmH, 09:11:27 04/24/10 Sat
  - Re: Tiny sample -- Trudy, 12:36:54 04/24/10 Sat