Tag Archives: human

Launch Sequence – Chapter 2

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Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5

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TWO

The elevator opened up into a cavern so large I couldn’t see the far wall. Part of what was blocking my view of the other wall was a starship. I didn’t know how I could know that based on the limited section of it that I could see, but inside, I knew. There was an army of men and women in white lab coats scurrying around the ship like ants around their queen. I looked up toward the ceiling, but there didn’t seem to be one. The walls rose straight up until the darkness swallowed everything. The ship didn’t look like any ship I had ever seen before. It wasn’t that it was so alien that I couldn’t have imagined it, but it was just so… different.

I loved science fiction, both books and movies, though I hadn’t been allowed to see any of the scarier adult versions. I thought I had an idea of what every ship ever conceived of would or could look like. This one didn’t resemble a rocket, the old NASA space shuttles, nor even the Terran Navy’s almost uncountable variations in ships. It didn’t look like any of the Kai ships I had seen on the news and in documentaries.

As I walked along the new yellow line in the floor that began to glow once we stepped out of the elevator, I tried to figure out where the cockpit was, where the engines were, where the airlock for letting crew members in and out could possibly be on the massive vessel before me. The ship looked like a giant, slightly flattened egg with a polished silver outer hull that returned weird images of us as we walked by it. The reflective surface made me think of a funhouse mirror in the way that it distorted every shape it captured. Twice as we continued toward wherever Mom and the yellow line led us, I noticed that some of the reflections would simply wink out, almost as if we had become vampires for a few seconds. Continue reading →

Launch Sequence I – Chapter 1

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“Launch Sequence I” is the first story from “Genesis-6,” the (much more uplifting!) sequel to “End of the Line.”

 

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5

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ONE

My mother held my hand so tight it began to hurt. She gave me a soothing look, but I could see the fear in her eyes. I didn’t really understand what was happening, but I knew all of the adults were scared. The thunderous booms that filtered down through the underground complex resonated regularly. Every thump caused Mom to jump a little, and each time she would squeeze my hand even tighter.

“Mom, you’re hurting me,” I said after another powerful explosion made the world around us vibrate.

“I’m sorry, honey,” she replied, relaxing her grip, then giving me a quick hug while holding a small smile on her face for a few seconds. “I’m just nervous.”

Another boom, this time louder than any previous, rumbled down the walls. I could hear other children crying, whimpering in the line all around us, along with the voices of parents doing their best to soothe them. Just like my mother was doing for me. I wondered again if I was dreaming.

—|—

A week ago, I was playing in the park, beating my friends at video games, and practicing with my school’s basketball team. At twelve years old, I didn’t pay much attention to the adult things like the news unless my father left the tablet screen open to the cartoons, though some of the cartoons made no sense. Chancellor Ryley was a woman who looked almost like my mother, and I didn’t understand why some cartoons showed her as a donkey, or why the aliens we were at war with were stuffing apple pies into her exaggeratedly large mouth.

Sometimes I liked to read the sports section. Earth was two hundred light years away, but they had all of the best sports leagues, as some sports couldn’t be played on colony worlds if the gravity or atmosphere wasn’t right. Once in a while my own name was in the local sports section, along with those of my teammates. Sometimes we got our pictures in the news as well. My father printed a hardcopy of the time I made the news by scoring the winning basket in the championship game when I was eight.

It was a distraction from the hushed whispering—sometimes even shouting and shoving—the adults did over what was happening in the Coalition. All of us kids were told not to worry about any of that, only to focus on the next game, the next day, the next homework assignment. It was easy for me, though it made me uncomfortable around certain adults, as they sometimes forgot to stop worrying and focus on the next game, day, or work assignment. Continue reading →

End of the Line – Chapter One

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(First chapter of a nearly finished post-apocalyptic, alien invasion, military science fiction novel. Not sure why I can no longer get proper formatting in these posts anymore…)

ONE

I watched the endless lines of humans allow themselves to be herded to their deaths from three miles away. The combat scope’s digital zoom was top-notch, and allowed me to see too much detail. A woman in a torn red dress, crying with two children clutched to her chest, a family of at least eight, most of the children still in their pre-teen years, a group of at least thirty senior citizens, all of them too dazed to resist as they were led like cattle to the slaughterhouse.

The building that housed the Kai ovens reminded me of a warped children’s toy, one invented by a sadistic madman. Instead of malleable clay being fed into one end and spaghetti or pizza coming out the other, this one took in human beings and belched out an oily, blackish-grey smoke that hung in the air like thick smog. I wondered if the Kai had bothered to learn some human history, then decided to pick one of the most terrible events ever recorded as a fitting end for us. We had no idea what the Kai had done to the Hanura, other than once the Wire had gone silent, their amusing voices no longer chattering on the network, we knew that they’d become part of galactic history. The same with The Seven, our other ally against the Kai. Maybe this was the way that the Kai always vanquished their foes.

A commotion to the right caught my attention and I shifted the scope. A Kai soldier had picked up a human in each of its two powerful hands and carried them toward the entrance of the furnace. The two Kai soldiers guarding the doorway stepped forward to block the mass of humans while their comrade dragged the kicking, screaming men inside the building. The soldier reappeared three seconds later, and began patrolling the area as if nothing had happened. I thumbed the power button on the scope and rolled over when the Kai began shuffling people into the incinerator again. I couldn’t watch anymore.

“How bad is it?” Sergeant McAdams asked me from a few feet down the hillside.

“The same as Denver, Salt Lake, and Great Falls,” I whispered down to her.

“Come on, let’s go,” she said.
Continue reading →