OT: Hell is For Heroes.

[AgentZero]

Anyway, here's a proper continuation, along with a promise that Ted's role in all of this will soon become clear.


“That's not quiet!” Alice cried, pointing at the colossus on the main viewer. “Well, really it is quiet, sound not being terribly prevalent in space and such bit still, I'm not pleased about this turn of events at all, nope, not one bit. However, it must be mentioned-”
Alice's monologue was interrupted as she was flung from her chair. The colossus had decided to start shooting at them, and Saraea was doing a rather admirable job of avoiding it's fire, though her evasive maneuvers were having a rather detrimental effect on the rest of the crew.
“Get us the hell out of here!” Kagan hollered as he tumbled past.
“Trying!” she yelled back.
Kagan and Alice continued to bounce and roll about the bridge for several minutes before Saraea announced: “Jumping out, now!”
There was the familiar crackle of discharging energy, then an altogether unfamiliar, but very loud, bang, and everything went black.
“Oh no we died,” Alice said sadly.
“Kagan, you there?” Saraea called out.
“Most of me,” came the reply.
“Then we're not dead,” Saraea concluded. “Because there's absolutely no way that you and me are ending up in the same afterlife.”
“Comforting,” Kagan said dryly.
“What about me?” Alice inquired. “Whose afterlife am I in?”
“I think you'll be getting your own,” Kagan informed her.
“Lonely,” she decided. “But since I don't remember inviting you into my afterlife, we must be alive.”
There was a loud thunk, a louder groan, and Kagan informed them, “Yeah, we're definitely alive.”
“What did you do?” asked Alice.
“I banged my head.”
“Oh,” she said. “Well I don't think that's a very afterlifey thing to go and do.”
“Unless we're in Hell,” Saraea pointed out.
There was another loud thunk, another louder groan, and Kagan informed them, “It's beginning to look like a distinct possibility. Although it's bloody cold for Hell.”
“And dark,” Alice said. “Very very very dark. I don't like it. Hold on, I'm going to do something about it.”
Kagan and Saraea waited in the black silence for what seemed like a very long time before Kagan spoke up.
“When?” he inquired softly.
“I'm trying,” she replied, sounding as though she was genuinely trying very hard at something. “It's not working... give me a moment...” She exhaled suddenly, inhaled deeply and cursed savagely.
“What exactly are you trying to do over there?” Saraea inquired, sounding rather concerned.
“Glow in the dark,” Alice replied matter-of-factly.
“Can you do that?” Kagan asked.
“Doesn't look like it,” she replied dejectedly. “I guess I better go find a light switch.”
There was a loud thunk, a louder groan, and Saraea snickered.
“That wasn't me,” Kagan informed her.
“Oh,” she said, surprised. “Sorry sweety, are you ok?”
“Yes,” came the reply. “I just tripped over something strange.”
“That's not good,” Kagan said slowly. “What did it feel like?”
“My foot,” Alice told them.
“Right,” Kagan said. “Well in all your tripping over your own feet, did you manage to find a light switch?"
“No, but I did find this,” she replied. There was a small 'beep' followed by an audible announcement from the ship that emergency power had been activated. Shortly after that, dim lights finally illuminated the bridge.
Kagan found himself lying underneath a console, staring up at what appeared to be an imprint of his forehead in the bottom of it's casing. He slid out from under the console, rose to his feet and took a couple steps towards the command chair before he paused, turned, and administered a good kick to the console. He plunked himself down, and looked over at Saraea, who was draped comfortably across a chair in front of the sensor console. Which was rather odd, he thought, considering she'd been at the helm the last he'd seen her. Looking across to Alice, he saw her still scrambling to her feet at the engineering console, one hand still over the emergency power activation switch. Which was also odd, he realized, since that last he'd seen of her she'd been on the opposite side of the bridge. Deciding he didn't really want to know how they'd gotten there, he swiped at his itching forehead only to see his hand come back dusted with dried blood.
Saraea studied him for a moment and then slid gracefully out of her chair.
“I'll get something from Medical for that,” she told him.
He grunted an acknowledgment as he finally began to notice the throbbing pain in his head. As he began to run diagnostics on the ship, a strange thought surfaced in his mind.
“Alice, my dear,” he said slowly. “Was I rather quiet for any period of time after you heard me bang my head?”
“Nope,” she replied, engrossed in diagnostics of her own. “You kept right on babbling away.”
“Hmmm...” he pondered. “In that case, I must have received this wound to my forehead earlier, yet I don't remember it.”
Alice looked up from her console briefly as the same thought struck her. She pressed a few buttons on her console and then looked back at him.
“It's been eight hours and forty three minutes since the very loud bang,” she said.
“Were we unconscious for all that time?” Kagan wondered.
“Hard to say,” she replied. “With it being all dark and all, can't tell if eyes are open or closed, if thoughts are conscious or dreams, very hard indeed to say.”
“I was unconscious for seven hours and sixteen minutes,” Saraea said, re-entering the bridge. “Following a significant energy discharge caused by overloading systems, which in turn was a result of us getting hit just as we entered null-space. Yourself and Kagan were out for eight hours, twelve minutes, forty-two seconds and eight hours, eleven minutes, fifty-two seconds, respectively.”
“How'd you know that?” Alice demanded, sounding almost indignant that for once she wasn't the bearer of strangely accurate information.
“Very, very accurate internal clock,” Saraea told her. “And both of you made rather funny noises when you came to, which made the whole thing rather easy."
“And during the time you were awake before us, you didn't do anything about the lights, or us for that matter, because...” Kagan let the sentence trail off into a question.
“You were both breathing comfortably, there was no immediate danger, and – I was comfy,” Saraea shrugged. "So,” she continued. “Have we figured out what's going on, and where we are? I'm presuming that we made it into null-space successfully, since neither of you look like floating clouds of vapor to me.”
“Aye, we made it alright,” said Kagan. “We're currently flying arseways through the Tigga band, but don't ask me how we got there.”
“Interesting,” Saraea said as she began wiping the dried blood from his forehead with a moist towel. “Which would put us, where, exactly?”
“About twenty minutes outside the Fyron System,” Alice said darkly. “Very far away from where we're supposed to be.”
“Aye,” said Kagan, trying to keep an eye on his console as Saraea applied a dermal patch to his injury. “But we'll definitely need to stop by there before we go anywhere else to put my ship back together. And yes,” he added, cutting off Alice's objection. “We do absolutely have to. One firm nudge and the poor girl's likely to fall to pieces.”
Having finished tending to Kagan, Saraea made her way towards the helm, pausing as she noticed Alice looking around the bridge with an expression of total confusion.
“He means the ship, sweety,” Saraea murmured.
While she'd intended to be helpful, Saraea realized she'd just made Alice even more confused, but decided to leave well enough alone rather than risk making things even worse. She sat herself down and began the slow job of coaxing the ship into facing the right direction. It didn't matter terribly much which way they were facing in null-space, but making transit in any direction except forward was terribly hard on any ship, let alone one that had just had a number of holes punched in it. That being said, she knew she couldn't go too easy on the poor Daedalus, otherwise they'd overshoot the Fyron jump nexus and have to start the whole thing all over again.
Alice, having never heard of the Fyron System, busied herself with looking up information about it in the ship's database.
“Huh,” she said. “Are we going to Sheol or Zellund?”
“Zellund,” Kagan replied. “Why?”
“Just curious,” she replied. “It says here that on Sheol all the women are um... genetically enhanced, never wear clothes and average three sexual partners a day. I was just wondering why you don't want to go there. It seems quite odd to me.”
“Keep reading,” Kagan advised her.
“Oh,” she said a few minutes later, sounding quite disappointed. “No men? None at all? Not even one? But how do they... you know?”
“Sheol happens to be the galaxy's largest importer of sperm,” Kagan deadpanned.
“Interesting,” Alice murmured, looking off space as she contemplated the ramifications of a planet without Y chromosomes.
“He's having you on,” Saraea said with a chuckle. “Keep reading.”
“Oh,” Alice said a few minutes later. “Genetic enhancements... They do it with their... huh.”
“My kind of planet,” Saraea said with a wolfish grin.
“Huh,” Alice said again, this time staring at Saraea and contemplating the significance of this latest revelation.
Fifteen minutes later, Saraea had managed to bring the ship around and they were slowly dropping through the null-space bands in preparation for the softest transit they could possibly manage.
Within moments of dropping into normal space, there were four Fyronian heavy cruisers approaching them at high velocity. Saraea had managed to pull off an extremely soft transit, which as far as the Fyronian Navy was concerned was a sign someone was trying to sneak into their system.
“Fire up the emergency transponder,” Kagan told Alice. “We don't want these nice folks blasting us into tiny little pieces for trying to sneak up on their lovely ladies.”
“This one doesn't look like my head neither,” Alice muttered as she activated the transponder.
Moments later, the lead cruiser hailed them, and an extremely attractive, well proportioned redhead appeared on the main viewer.
“This is JNS Cerberus hailing ITS Daedalus,” she said authoritatively. “What is your situation?”
“We encountered an unknown hostile outside the Patrocian System,” Kagan replied. “We've taken heavy damage and are in need of urgent assistance.”
“Acknowledged,” the Cerberus' captain said. “We will escort you to the Zellund Shipyards where you can make arrangements for repairs, though I would recommend you try stay planetside. The orbital platforms have gotten rather crowded ever since someone decided to install telescopes in all the Sheol facing viewports.” She spoke with the resignation of someone who had lived with such behavior her whole life, but never quite managed to get used to it.
“Thank you, Cerberus,” Kagan replied, suppressing a grin. “We're setting a course for the Zellund shipyards now.”
The main viewer blinked off as the Cerberus cut their comm link.
“Friendly folks, aren't they?” Kagan muttered.
“Yeah,” Saraea agreed. “But I still totally would.”
Kagan's witty reply was interrupted as the main view flared back on, revealing the still-unnamed ship's captain looking a fair bit more friendly. “I have just relayed your information to Naval Command,” she said briskly. “And I have been informed that Command is willing to cover the expense of repairing your ship in return for all sensor data pertaining to the hostile you encountered in the Patrocian System.”
“Sounds like a good deal to me,” Kagan informed her. “We'll begin transmission as soon as we're within range.”
“Thank you, captain,” she replied, and disappeared as abruptly as she'd appeared.

True to his word, Kagan transmitted the sensor logs of their brief encounter to the Fyronian Naval Command as soon as he was able, and received a prompt reply containing docking instructions for them to receive their repairs. This was followed by an estimate from the repair yard that it would take the better part of two weeks in order to repair all the damage he'd reported. In the mean time, he was advised, the JNC would be providing them with a courtesy planetary shuttle and a comfortable hotel for them to use at their leisure during their stay on Sheol. Within four hours, they'd left the Daedalus in the caring hands of the Navy repair docks and shuttled down to the planet. Saraea advised him she had some things to do and people to see, and bade the farewell after agreeing to meet up with them in a few days time. Kagan and Alice, for their part, decided to go explore the wonderful sights of Zellund's capitol city's renowned Keatchem district.
They spent several hours wandering through various shops and markets, Kagan having finally yielded to the idea that Alice really should have clothing of her own. After a long and seemingly fruitless search, they stumbled upon a little store that just happened to have exactly what Alice had been looking for hanging in the front window. After a bit of cajoling, Kagan agreed to buy it for her and was enjoying his reward of a proper hug when he caught the eye of a passer by. He nodded at Kagan briefly and smiled as he passed by. Kagan was still trying to work out who he was and why he couldn't place a supposedly familiar face when a bolt of energy ripped through Alice's small body and slammed into his chest, hurling him against the wall. The two of them collapsed into a pile, and with his fading strength he managed to wrap his arms around Alice.
“Ouch,” she whispered, looking at the scorch mark on his chest. “That looks sore.”
“It's nothing,” he murmured. “Nothing at all.”
Then, the tight grip they had on one and other loosened, and they died.

[Puke]

sell it with sex, baby. sell it with sex.

while "oh no we died" had me in stitches, there does seem to be some scruffy continuity in this one. one of the girls had quite a bit of awake time and didnt manage to find emergency power or lights with it.

Another one woke up about 15 minutes before Kagan, so his response to (what you would presume is her imediate reaction) "oh no we died" seems misplaced. he should have been alseep for that.

but im just being picky. the flow and witicisms are, as always, superb.

[Hunpecked]

AgentZero: “Oh,” Alice said a few minutes later. “Genetic enhancements... They do it with their... huh.”

Ears?

[AgentZero]

Puke, thanks for pointing out the scruffy continuity. I've fixed it up, fortified Kagan's constitution by having him wake up a bit earlier, and thrown in a little explanation of why Saraea didn't do anything about the lights. Of course, what she was really up to is for her to know and you to wonder.

Hunpecked, you don't want to know.

No, really. You don't.

[TurinTurambar]

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

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

TT

[AgentZero]

TurinTurambar said:

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

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

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

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

[AgentZero]

More!



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

[JAFisher44]

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

[TurinTurambar]

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

[AgentZero]

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

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

Agent Zero scurries off to work on the rewrite