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Post by jamessavik on Aug 8, 2015 15:28:06 GMT -5
I did a short writing exercise and came up with an interesting concept for a longer story. After enjoying Toy Soldiers, I wonder...
Cadet Cruise
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“Where did they want to meet us, again?"
Gunshots broke out in the distance. Jerry looked his the GPS unit. "We're in the right place. Sounds like my brothers squad has run into trouble."
Corporal Agli said, "Again?"
Jerry just shook his head. "Again. I swear if there's trouble in a thousand klicks, my brother's squad will find it."
The gunfire intensified and then there was the deep bass boom of a plasma rifle. Then there was quiet again.
Jerry keyed his mike and said, "Voodoo lead to Uniform, what is your status?"
Gary's voice replied, "Uniform lead to Voodoo, we were almost lunch again. We ran into a pack of gremlins. I think we're being stalked by something we haven't seen yet. The rest of the wildlife if bugging out. We'll be at the rendezvous point in about ten mikes and don't be surprised if we've got something nasty behind us. Over."
Jerry cringed. The reptiles they had called gremlins ranged in size from as big as a cow up to the size of a house.
Jerry said, "Roger that. You get here and we'll have a nice fire trap set for whatever is stalking you."
Jerry turned to his squad and said, "All right, listen up. Uniform squad is coming in hot. I want to set a fire trap. Set up along this ridge line and dig in."
He watched with pride as the ten boys of his squad spread out and started digging like a pack of rabid gophers in the sandy loam of the ridge top. There's nothing like a little motivation to shape up any unit. They had come a very long way in their cadet cruise to hell.
Two short weeks ago they were a bunch of kids on a cadet orientation cruise aboard the Basilone. That was before the ships number three fusion plant blew and the boys were stranded on an obscure, restricted world with a biosphere comparable to earth's Cretaceous period. The twenty-two cadets were stuffed into an Assault shuttle with the auto-pilot set to land. If it wasn't for the Alliance Marine survival gear and their training, they would all be dinosaur crap.
Jerry and his twin brother Gary had become squad leaders by acclamation. They had been genetically engineered and raised to be soldiers from birth by Mil-Tech. They were liberated when the Corporations lost their war against the Alliance goverenment when they were eight and adopted by a nice couple on Sutra Prime. Now they were sixteen, Cadets in good standing and desperately trying to keep the other kids alive long enough to be rescued from this hell hole.
He checked the magazine on his pulse rifle, got in the prone position behind a log and took out his field glasses to survey the approaches to the ridge line. It was clear for five hundred meters down the slope to the tree line of the jungle below. A few klicks behind the jungle was some of the nastiest swamp any of them had ever seen and it went on to the horizon.
It wasn't long before he saw two guys from Uniform squad sprint out of the jungle and find cover. Four more sprinted out of the jungle and took cover further up the ridge providing cover for the rest of the squad. The final five emerged from the jungle came out, moved further up the ridge, took cover. As soon as they were set, they began leap frogging up the ridge stopping every hundred meters or so to cover their squad mates.
Jerry keyed his mike and said, "Uniform lead, I have eyes on you. Come on up the hill."
It only took a few minutes for Uniform squad to make it to the crest of the ridge. Gary got his squad spread out and and sat down beside his brother behind the log sweating and breathing hard. He took a hard pull from his canteen.
Jerry asked, "You guys find anything?"
Gary shook his head. "Nothing but bad ass bush and nasty creepy crawlies. Look, does it seem like something is moving in that bush to you?"
Jerry looked closely at the jungle with his field glasses. "Yeah. There is something moving out there. There's way too much motion in that brush for the wind to be causing it all."
As they watched the jungle, they could see shadowy shapes moving under the canopy. The local bird analogs had already bugged out.
It was like the critters were waiting for some critical mass and then they boiled out of the jungle. First in the hundreds. Then in the thousands.
Jerry looked at the little horrors with his field glasses. They were black, six legged, about the size of an average dog and they were equipped with an impressive set of talons and fangs.
Gary said, "Uhh... what are we doing?"
Jerry put his field glasses up and said, "We are leaving, most Riki-tic!"
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Post by PaulR5 on Aug 9, 2015 1:12:24 GMT -5
James, this has possibilities.
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Post by jamessavik on Sept 9, 2015 0:30:35 GMT -5
More from Cadet Cruise
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“Would you, please, go to sleep?”
Gary rolled over and said, "How did you know I was awake?"
Jerry snorted and said, "We're twins. When you lay there worrying , I know. So... spill it."
Gary sighed and said, "I don't know. I just feel like something is wrong. I can't really say what it is."
Jerry sat up. "I hate it when you do that."
Gary said, "Do what?"
"You say you're worried about something and something bad happens." Jerry jumped out of his rack and started dressing.
Gary sat up and dangled his feet over the edge of his bunk. He groaned, made the short drop to the floor and started dressing.
Jerry said, "You really ought to talk to somebody about that."
Gary asked, "What?"
"The way you get these feelings and something always happens."
"What am I supposed to say? I get nervous and worried and something always happens? They'll put me on drugs."
"Well, it has been really useful. Remember that time..." Jerry stopped and looked at his arms. The hairs were standing straight up.
Gary looked startled and jumped in front of his terminal. He pulled up the ship's status display and saw that the Basilogne was charging it's jump drive. He put two and two together and said, "The ships jump capacitor is leaking. Everything is charged- it's going to blow- we've got to get out of here!"
They were both dressed in seconds and moving. Jerry stopped at a damage control station on their corridor and pulled the cover. Sure enough there were several yellow warning lights on jump drive systems and a big red flashing one on the jump capacitors.
Gary looked over his shoulder and said, "We are so screwed. Why hasn't the crew noticed anything wrong?"
Jerry pushed the intercom button labeled "bridge". They waited for what seemed like entirely to long and a sleepy voice answered, "This is the bridge. Who is this?"
"Cadet Jorgenson, J. Look at your jump drive status board."
"What? Get off the DC panel and get back in your rack cadet."
Jerry persisted, "Look at the board sir. The jump capacitor is leaking charge back into the jump drive systems. There's going to be an explosion any second."
There was some swearing over the pick up and then the GQ alarm went off.
In a few seconds their squad mates were in the halls saying, "Top, what's going on?"
Jerry made his very first command decision. He put as much authority and strength into his voice. "Listen up. The ship is having a serious problem with it's jump drive. We've only got minutes to get off before she blows. Everybody go to Boat Bay 2 and load up on the shuttle we trained on. Move it, move it, move it!"
A few of the cadets looked like they wanted to talk about it but the tone in Jerry's command voice got through the boys sleepiness.
Everyone was making for the Boat Bay- most of them carrying their clothes and shoes.
They were boarding the shuttle when something strange happened. It was like a jump but it didn't feel right at all. Then the first explosion rocked the ship.
Wind gusted and ears popped as the ship started losing atmosphere. It didn't take any encouragement for everyone to run.
Gary was the last one through the shuttle hatch. He did a quick count and got twenty-two, "Everybody is aboard, let's go!"
Jerry sat at the pilots console and saw that at least the ship hadn't been asleep on watch. A red emergency strobe was flashing on the panel. He began the start up check list as quickly as he could as he brought up the shuttles fusion plant and systems. Another explosion rocked the ship and he could tell the boat bay had completely lost pressure.
Gary sat down in the co-pilots chair and began working the boat bay door controls. Slowly as the ship was rocked by a cascade of explosion the boat bay doors came open and Jerry hit the maneuvering thrusters.
Gary said, "Computer, use external cameras. Give us a visual record of the Basilogne."
Jerry had to dodge debris as the big ship came apart but as soon as he was clear, he went to maximum military power and pulled away from the doomed ship.
Seconds later the fusion reactor mag bottles failed in cascade and the the big ship became a boil of white hot plasma and fury.
Jerry cut the thrust and said, "Where the hell are we?"
Gary answered, "I requested a navigation fix from the Basilogne on the way out. The on board computers are chewing on it. It looks like we had a mis-jump right before everything went to hell."
Carter Rogers and Arron Ross entered the control room from behind them. Carter said, "Oh shit."
Jerry chuckled and said, "What part of this Charlie Foxtrot rates an oh shit from Carter."
Carter sat in the navigators station and said, "When a jump goes bad like that, we could be anywhere in a sphere of about fifteen light years from the intended destination. There's just too many variables to figure it out. We need to shoot a raw fix."
Gary asked, "Do you know how?"
Carter said, "Maybe. I've seen my dad do it about a thousand times but I don't know the systems on a fleet ship."
Jerry said, "Use the computer in tutorial mode. It will walk you through it."
Carter booted up the navigation station and did battle with the ships computer for about twenty minutes. He did get a position fix and nobody liked it.
With the shuttle in auto-pilot, the boys had a major conference in the squad bay.
For some reason everyone was looking at Jerry and he began, "We've got a position fix and we're light years from any Alliance planets, colonies, stations or out posts. That being said, we're fifteen light days outside the system SK-03-445. It's got a K dwarf star and about 14 planets- one of them is a Class T9 so we can land there."
Someone sucked in their breath. Jerry grinned and said, "I think Kyle knows what a classification of T7 means."
Kyle said, "It sure isn't going to be the Disney planet. T means Terran or earth like. The higher the second digit, the more hostile the environment. It could be really hot, cold or..."
Jerry finished for him, "Suffice it to say that it's a hostile environment. Now- every T class world that we know of has been surveyed to some extent. When we get closer we can query the survey satellite for more information. Most surveyed world have a ground station for scientists. There may actually be people there. That's our destination. We can get there and hole up until someone show up."
Carter said, "The only problem is that we're a long way from the system. It's going to take at least a month to get to the planet."
There were groans all around. Carter said, "We need to have two or three people awake but we can put everybody else in cold sleep."
Riley quipped, "I wonder who it will be?"
Carter said, "It has to be people that know how to use the ships systems. Jerry. Gary. Probably me. The rest of you we'll put in the sleepers and we'll wake you when we get there."
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Post by Lugnutz on Sept 9, 2015 1:00:04 GMT -5
It has shades of "Lord of the Flies" in it. Now, I want to know more.
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Post by Dabeagle on Sept 9, 2015 6:16:33 GMT -5
I just caught up on it all. I like the concept, now run with it!
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Post by ricky on Sept 29, 2015 5:29:09 GMT -5
Wow. This has a David McLeod flavor to it. I love it and am hooked already. Gentlemen . . . I await the story with great anticipation
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Post by jamessavik on Oct 2, 2015 0:12:38 GMT -5
“What did he just say?”
"It sounded like run."
Gary's squad had discovered another batch of ruins that the cadets had all agreed to investigate. Although the ruins appeared to be ancient, they were quite advanced in construction. They were very much ruined with time but the stone work was superb. The joints in the stones were so well constructed with tolerances so tight that the interiors of the buildings were bone dry and full of curious artifacts and relics. There were tantalizing signs that a somewhat advanced civilization had one thrived on this planet but there were no clues to what happened to them. Had they lost the struggle to survive against the deadly fauna on this planet?
Allister said, "But, Gary hates to run."
Gary came sprinting out of the weird ruins screaming, "Run you idiots!"
There was an ear splitting roar and the ground shook.
For a moment Allister was rooted to the spot until his buddy Gray snatched him.
The boys sprinted for the hill top overlooking the ruins followed closely by Gary. They laid down flat on the hill top and got a glimpse at the giant creature that came shambling out of the ruins.
It was gray with streaks of black and stood about fifteen meters tall. What it lacked in height, it made up for in width and bulk. It spread out about thirty-five meters wide covered with powerful muscle and bony armored plates on eight legs as big as giant tree trunks. It trotted out of the ruins, pawed the earth, cocked his head and bellowed. It looked around its territory, snorted in satisfaction that the invaders had been repelled, ate a tree and then trotted back inside the ruins.
Gary sighed. "That thing ate a tree?"
Allister said, "Thank goodness he's a herbivore."
Max asked incredulously, "It's a friggin cow?"
Allister, the budding naturalist of the group said, "Oh yes. You can tell by its teeth and claws. He's probably harmless as long as you don't get in his territory."
Gary said, "A very disturbed cow with serious anger issues. Come on guys. Let's get out of here before he wants group therapy."
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Post by PaulR5 on Oct 2, 2015 7:53:53 GMT -5
Okay, James, please! Get this written and let us read it!
If the in-between parts are even ½ as good as the teasers, this is really good!
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Post by Lugnutz on Oct 2, 2015 18:56:31 GMT -5
What he said. ^^^
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Post by jamessavik on Oct 3, 2015 22:48:47 GMT -5
I'm working on it.
I'm trying to change my unfortunate tendency of publishing something and not finishing it.
When I finish it, I'll post it.
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Post by jamessavik on Oct 5, 2015 0:01:15 GMT -5
“Where did all of that come from?”
Jerry looked at the wreckage and ruins on plains by the bay through his field glasses and sighed.
Kevin said, "Those sure aren't the same sort of ruins that we're used to."
Jerry said, "I think not. That building with the cooling tower is an old Dassault fusion reactor. The others are all pre-fabricated structures. My guess is that this is a wildcat colony that picked the wrong planet."
Troy, one of the youngest boys asked, "What is a wildcat colony?"
Jerry said, "Doug, you want to handle this one?"
Doug chuckled and said, "OK... I'm from Evergreen so I guess I am the right guy to answer that."
Jerry said, "Yeah, that's what I was thinking."
Doug took a swig out of his canteen and said, "Back a couple hundred years ago during the first wave of colonization, anybody with enough money and a ship could start a colony. Lot's of groups wanted to start colonies- some of them for all the wrong reasons: religious groups, racial separatists, nationalists. There was no governing authority to regulate who could go and have any say in the planets that were good for colonization and what planets had serious problems."
"When Evergreen was discovered, they thought it was the garden of Eden. It was beautiful and pristine but, you had to live there a while to find the snakes. You see- Evergreen's year is about seven and a quarter standard years long. We had no idea about the seasonal variations in the ecosystem. There were fungal diseases and horrible creatures that hatched or came out of hibernation. In the colonies first four years, one in four colonists died. After what happened in Evergreen and some other places, the Alliance formed the Ministry of Colonization. It did surveys and regulated colonization so that colonists wouldn't get slaughtered horribly by alien ecosystems."
"The Ministry has never been very popular. It's detractors call it 'the Mock' and claim that it's too conservative and political but, it's way better than it was before. Colonies formed before MOC regulation and, some illegal colonies formed afterwards were called Wildcat Colonies. Way too often they turned out like that colony down by the bay."
Troy asked, "Are they... all dead?"
Jerry said, "From what we've seen of this hell hole, unless they were evacuated, I don't see how they survived."
Ever the practical one Justin asked, "Could we find stuff down there we might need?" Jerry said, "It could have been there for over a hundred years. I doubt we'll find anything but it might be worth a look."
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Post by Dabeagle on Oct 5, 2015 5:38:38 GMT -5
James, you are such a tease.
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Post by Lugnutz on Oct 5, 2015 7:00:54 GMT -5
And again. I like this, and have no idea where it's going.
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Post by jamessavik on Oct 9, 2015 16:46:04 GMT -5
“So, tell me all the details!”, Jerry gushed.
"It's ugly bro. Very ugly."
Jerry read his brothers grim mood and said, "It was a wildcat colony like you thought?"
Gary said, "Yeah. Welcome to beautiful New Zion. Population twenty thousand corpses."
Jerry said, "Oh Christ. They all died?"
"I got into the colony command center- their data core was still in tact. Every single faithful one of them. They were funded by the Ladder Day Saints. They wanted to establish- I don't know- Utah in space I guess. The Mormons sort of have a tradition of taking shitty places and taming them. They've just never tried to tame a place this wild. They weren't down an hour when they had their first death."
"They lasted almost four years. The colony log reads like a Greek tragedy. They were pinned on the peninsula by the bay. They built a minefield with smart triggers to keep the big stuff out. Once the critters got the taste and scent of their blood it was one long siege. Even now, almost a century later, the approaches to the colony are still dangerous. It is a field of bones and unexploded ordinance. We almost lost Charlie when one of their claymores went off. Thank God it was oriented in the opposite direction."
Jerry cursed softly and asked, "Why is it we are able to survive and they didn't?"
Gary smiled and said, "That one is easy. The colonists were fixed in position. They picked a spot- and a good one, and they had to make a stand there. We have been moving and moving fast. We dare not slow down or all the shit on this God awful planet will catch up with us."
"Did we get anything useful?"
Gary sighed and said, "Not really. There is one thing that bothered me. The colony beacon had been shut down."
"What do you mean, shut down?"
"It was turned off at the source. Someone else has been here. Everything worth looting has been looted. Whoever did it shut down the colony beacon."
Jerry huffed, "Pirates?"
"Pirates, raiders, opportunists, whatever. People we probably don't want to run into."
"Wonderful."
"Ain't it though? I reset the colony beacon. It's in standby mode. If it is interrogated with Alliance codes, it will broadcast our distress call. Otherwise, it will remain silent."
"OK. You're right. We need to get moving. No sense in waiting around for the critters to fix us in place and set an ambush."
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Post by PaulR5 on Oct 9, 2015 23:43:24 GMT -5
James, James, James! You have written all the in-between parts for this good story, right? If not, please do!
You could even do a series of consecutive short stories-- Cadet Cruise; Cadet Colony; Cadet Caprice; Cadet Commander; Cadet Comrades; Cadet Confusion; Cadet Clarity; Cadet City; Cadet Call; Cadet Clandestine; Cadet Citation; Cadet Caution; Cadet Character; Cadet Cabal; Cadet Creation; Cadet Challenge; Cadet Calculation; Cadet Collusion; Cadet Cry; Cadet Cupid; Cadet Crash; Cadet Concern; Cadet Casanova; Cadet Charity; and Cadet Catapult.
While the suggested Chapter or Short Story titles are offered half in jest, feel free to use any of those title you wish, for any purpose whatsoever, with my blessing and encouragement.
Please, finish the story! Thank you!
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