The second of my bits from last years Nine Worlds can be found here:

Don was sat in his office. his accountant was sat on the opposite side of the desk, Don cold see he was trembling. Clearly aware of why Don had called him into the office. Tue office with the plastic sheeting on the floor.
‘So.’ said Don, ‘You see we have a problem.’
The accountant nodded.
‘We see to have a mismatch in the amount of product coming though.’ The accountant nodded again. ‘Someone has slipped up. this should have been hidden.’ Again the accountant nodded. ‘You know how important the Heroin Donation Program is. How it preps our next generation of paying customers.’ The accountant nodded again, Don thought he was starting to look like one of the nodding dogs you found in the back of cars. ‘You know how my project runs. You also know how much the others would hate for it to be discovered. How much my police friends would hate it. How much my doctor contacts would rebel.’ The accountant nodded again – Don was starting to hate his little bob of the head. Is this the only response the man could do? Did he not know how to speak to people? How being like this was the worst thing he could be doing right now?

‘I believe,’ Said Don ‘That you know this, that you planned this. You knew that the accounts would be audited – that the others would see the mismatch in product. Fortunately for me, you are not the only accountant working for me. My other accountants have fixed the problem, chased it down in such a way that we have placed the issue and loss of product to you. You are now responsible for the program. And it is you who will answer the hangman. You will be going out tonight and being on the front line of the program.’

The accountant nodded again.

I have now typed up one of the bits I wrote at last years Nine Worlds – there is some more to come in the next little bit, and there will be some more good stuff coming out of this years convention. If you are able I highly recommend visiting!

Jess wasn’t sure what was happening. She had woken up to the ship shaking and rattling round her. She groggily slipped out of bed and into her uniform; she smiled, or was it a grimace, at it. Japanese school girl with a red neck scarf. She wasn’t sure what the navy had been thinking when they did the uniforms. Obviously something not right with that…

Just as she started dressing the alarm klaxons went off, the short burst followed by three longer ones – the alarm for space rock. There should not be any space rock anywhere near their location. As first helm she had plotted the well-travelled route herself. Either someone on the third shift had messed with the helm computer or something had happened – neither of those were good options. She knew third helm – he would not do anything with the program – not unless something serious had given him cause.

She ran down the corridor, she saw the other main bridge crew ahead of her. She dropped into her seat as third helm gracefully moved himself out of the chair. Jess plugged in her jack – that special cable helms had that connected them directly to the ship. Letting use the speed of the brain to give commands – eliminating the seconds taken to process moving limbs to move a lever or press a button.

The display came up on her bionic eyes – projecting directly into the retina.

She could see it was debris; she took the ship under control and changed her left eye to have the display from the scan. It was showing the size of the chunks, the composition, and the note from the scan tech that the debris was from a ship, there was evidence of cannon fire – and data was still coming in. there was an alert showing that weapons were online and ready if they found a target.

The captain sent Jess the order to move the ship out of the debris field and to hold position in a safe location. This was where they were meant to be, to meet a contact. Jess knew what that meant – illegal cargo. It didn’t bother her – she sometimes found it odd that the navy was involved in this – but she knew that the corruption was rife. She knew that almost all captains of lone ships were involved in some way.

She gently moved the ship out, all the while one thought on the jump command – pre-set to take them ten light minuets out from their current position.

She kept an eye on the scan data; she saw the notes suggesting the debris was of the ship they were due to meet.

There was nothing showing yet on scans for what had happened, Jess was carefully holding station now – she had nothing to do while the scan techs scoured space – looking for anything, any change, any sign of ship activity.

They pulled in something, Jess guessed at the flight recorder of the other ship. She watched the scan screen as the data was going into it. Still no contacts in the area. There wouldn’t be – while well-travelled – this route was normally taken in jump – they had dropped out in the middle of nowhere. They were between systems, in the dark where few ships had the engine capacity to jump back out of again. It made the list of potential attackers very small. The navy, or one of the few large pirate ships – which were captured Navy ships. The onship jump generator was a very closely guarded military secret. The name of the debris changed in the scan data – it was the ship they had come to meet. The Renascence – a Navy destroyer; the sister ship to their Radison.

The captain came back onto the bridge half an hour later; he had been looking at the logs and recordings from the Ren. He had the look of a man betrayed, pushed over the edge. Jess didn’t want to know what he had found in the recordings but she was sure she would find out in the not too distant future. ‘Coms’ said the captain, ‘We need a secure channel to the area commander on base X153Y.’ ‘Yes sir!’ replied the little old man that had coms this shift/ Jess could see him working his console, talking to someone when he got an answer.

Jess saw him transfer the com to the captain – who was using his implanted computer to communicate. Jess was sure she would be moving the ship any moment now.

When the captain finished he was red faced and clearly very angry. ‘Helm. Set course for base F15X3. Best speed.’ ‘Sir!’ Replied Jess – they had been called to their own base – not the local one. Jess set the course and as required with all trips to base she sent the flight plan ahead; informing them of the expected arrival, the point of entry and trajectory.

Jess let engineering know they would be jumping – gave the, five minutes to make sure all was ok with the drive. The countdown reached zero and Jess sent the command to jump. The ship lurched just as the thought was sent; the scan screen blurred and adjusted as the Radison entered jump – it showed two ships approaching where they had been, weapon fire had brushed their hull. Where had they come from? There had been no sign of entry, no results on the very active scan they had been using the previous hours. She guessed scan would be having a word with the captain to explain what he had missed – Jess looked out of the corner of her eye and could see the sweat already forming on his forehead, the hurried tapping as he was going through all the data again – looking for the thing he had missed.

Jess would have preferred he was watching if they were being followed into jump – even though everyone said it was impossible – she was convinced you could do it. She had a theory – not that she had any ready way of proving it right now, she would need to talk to her friendly scan second sometime. See if she would help – if they could prove it the navy would only benefit.

Carefully she slipped her copy of the scan screen to the feed – using the various little hooks she had in the system, fuzz. All she got from it. Fuzz. She let the feed slip back to what she was being given by scan first. It would be another couple of hours before they dropped out of jump. The main crew went off shift and second came on. She left a message for scan second to investigate things for her. They would catch up when they were both off shift together next. Jess left the bridge and headed to the galley for food. A quick snack meal, nothing hot and a quick drink of water. She then stopped by the gym and did her required workout; humanity still had issues with muscle and bone loss while in space. Once she had finished that she headed back to her cabin, time to get some sleep and out of her uniform.

She slipped back into her pyjamas and into bed; she knew things would either be calm or mayhem when they dropped out of jump.

This time the klaxons actually woke her – no tell tale shudder thought the ship to give her those seconds to wake up. She was bolt upright, it was the GQ alarm. She checked the clock – they would be about an hour from dropping down from jump. She ran though getting dressed and was on the bridge in less than two minutes. She was the first of the main crew to make it, and the second captain looked relived to see her. She slipped into her seat and plugged into the ship. She pulled the ship scan to her screen – and it wasn’t the fuzz she’d got before. This time there was a very clear indication of two ships close – too close – and they both showed to be ones from the wreckage site. ‘How do we have scan?’ she asked. Second scan replied, ‘I was fine tuning some of the sensors – doing general maintenance – and this is what happened when I pressed a hidden option.’ She smiled and shrugged. ‘Is this real? It’s not a ghost from our last scan data?’ Jess wanted to be sure. She had to know if she was going to try any kind of manoeuvre as they dropped from their jump.

The captain entered and was given an update by his second. He looked at the second scan as first came in. ‘Second scan keep position. First scan – stand down.’ He turned and left the bridge, looking defeated and deflated.

Jess prepped her commands; she prepped an emergency jump drop. Everything she could think of. As soon as they hit normal space the ship was going to start some very erratic manoeuvring.

It was a slow shift in traffic control, there had in fact been a slowdown in incoming traffic for the last three shifts. And the computer had noticed.

Dave was sat at his command station when he got the alert from the computer. It also sent him a splurge of news that it has sucked from the few ships that had docked. And it had highlighted some disturbing things. At least the computer thought they were disturbing.

Dave was inclined to agree with it. They all indicated that Earth had gone crazy.

This wasn’t the normal level of crazy that happened on a semi regular basis, this was full on someone had turned the planetary defences on all of the orbiting stations crazy.

The news didn’t say what had caused this. But Dave knew. Everyone that had served on the line knew.

There was something about serving on a spaceship for several years at a time that didn’t agree with some people. And the hyper jumps for FTL didn’t help; they put a lot of stress on the human body. Dave knew – his navy career was in tatters because he had problems with FTL. The fact he had even been given the command he had was an indication that he was not long in uniform.
‘Sir!’ yelled one of the scan techs.
‘Go ahead Jim.’
‘There is something big coming out of FTL at system edge, the relays have just sent us a high priority warning.’
‘How big?’
‘Big sir, they haven’t sent an ident sir. They have flagged at unknown ships with a possible first contact warning.’
Dave tapped into his console to lookup the regs for first contact; in all human space history they had never been used. There was another ten hours before the ships were within range of the station, at least they – whoever they were – hadn’t come in close to the station. Although that could have been a bad thing too – why draw out the issue?
‘What navy ships are in system?’ Dave asked the room.
‘Just the Destroyer Marvellous Infinity.’
‘Get the skipper on the com please.’ Dave brought up the details of the skipper while the com tech did as he was asked.
‘Captain Ruiz on com for you sir.’
‘Captain – this is station master Kirby. We have an unidentified ship or ships at ten hours out. Please prepare for possible hostile action or first contact.’
‘Do you have any information on them Station Master?’ Asked Ruiz.
‘Not at this time – we got an auto alert from the relays. I will pass on more info as and when we get it.’
‘Understood Station Master. Infinity out.’
Dave relaxed a little. A destroyer wouldn’t be much good if it was an invasion. But it could at least send a signal probe out towards Earth and hopefully warn them of anything that happened.

I was looking in random folders on the laptop and came across these, no idea what they are or where they came from (not my best work by any stretch of the imagination), but they have date stamps of 2001 and 2003 – so while I was still at uni, wonder what bit of coursework I got tired of working on or books/films I had been reading/watching when I “needed” to write these 🙂

—

During the second age of man, during the great war of good and evil, the strength that was leaders of the light cast the last spell to be cast for a thousand years. This spell was not just spell it was The Spell. This spell was cast to prevent the evil which magic was consuming the land. This spell had never been cast before apart from when Elerbran the Great first discovered the spell, which had drastic consequence for him and everything around him. When he first discovered the spell the great library, were he had been working was almost total destroyed, the spell almost killed him. When he had cast the spell the area around were the library had stood became aura free. This meant that no magic could be cast in the area. In last days of the War when all was not going well for Armies of life, the great council of light gathered for the last time and with all the magical abilities together the cast the spell. The spell caused the Aura of the whole Earth to be destroyed removing the evil magic that had been plaguing the planet. Without the Aura that had once surrounded the planet, magic started to fade, this fading of the Magic had two effects; prevented all magic on the planet, also the magic which had already been cast on earth started to fail, including The Spell. So the Aura started to return. Sending magic into myths and legends… This aura is now returning…

—-

It was a nice sunny day and Jake was looking out over the lake, the sun rippled orange on the blue-green water. The wind ruffled his hair and the leaves on the nearby trees.
It was peaceful, the way Jake liked it, the way that was to end the next day when he set off to war in the army. War, the thought brought shivers to his spine, all that blood and gore, he couldn’t even stand the sight when he cut himself, how would he cope with the blood that would spill over his, over the sea of bright green grass.
He felt the presence of another behind him, he smiled as he smelt the perfume of his wife, Aganla
‘My love, you look troubled’ she said.
Turning he placed his arms round her waist, gave he a quick kiss, ‘It is the war. I do not wish to go, but I know that I must or be killed for the coward that I am.’ There was a tint of sadness in his voice. Aganla looked at him, ‘You shall never be a coward, never in my eyes nor the eyes of our children.’
The sadness on his face intensified. ‘Our children will be told that their father was a coward by the soldiers. Please do no try to hurt my feelings by lying to me.’
‘The let us have one night of happiness before the end of our lives as we know them.’
Arm in arm they walked towards the hut that they lived in.

The next morning Jake left his wife’s arms while she still slept and crept out into the night, while he did not want to bring shame to his family he had come to the decision that he was not going to fight in the war. He was going to try and stop the war, he wasn’t sure how, but he was going to try.
As he walked towards the lake for his final view he saw the sky light up in a blaze of lightning, like nothing he’d ever seen before. Maybe the tales he had heard as a child about the wizard in the mountains on the other side of the lake, maybe he could find out.
He started towards the inlet about a mile to the west so that he could take a boat and leave over the lake, he heard the sound of marching men, the army had come to claim the men, when he was found to be gone; he would have to go another way to the other side.

—

Gerry often wondered what it was like to fly. He’s seen other people doing it, but he knew he could not, never would be able to fly
He was deformed, and while the others didn’t say anything to his face, he knew they would rather he was not around them
He looked at the stumps where his wings were supposed to be, he felt the welling feeling of shame as it came to him. Why was he cursed like this! Oh great Thiran why?
He often asked this of the God of People, why was he deformed and the others were not? Why was it do bad that the deformed were shunned? He never got his answer, or more to the point, he did. Thiran was shunning him, that’s why the others were uncomfortable round him.

Thiran heard the anguish in the younglings’ calls, but he could not bear to look upon this one and incur the wrath of Heiklin; The God of War.

Its was a strange day. It was the middle of summer, yet there was ice on the well, no birds were singing. And no sound could be heard from the stables, nor from where the other farm animals were kept.
The sky was overcast, big dark black clouds covering the sky.
Looking round Linna could see the buildings that surrounded the yard, they all looked bleak and uninhabited – it was though no one had been here…

OK – so I’ve done a little more development work on the Assassins project 🙂

Isaac had reached out to his other operatives already on the station, they all knew the schedule, to make sure that central ops was taken on time.

There was a team assembling in the maintenance office down the corridor from central, and Isaac was on his way there. He had already scheduled a series of system tests to take place that would allow the team to move from there to central. If all went to plan they would make their move and be in place as the cruse liner was docking. They had two hours left, it would take him one of those just to make it across the station to be in place.

Isaac entered the maintenance office on the central corridor fifty minuets later. There were twenty people waiting there for him, including Angela and Tessa. He nodded to them as he entered. ‘ok people. We have just over an hour to make sure everything is under our control. The routines are set to start switching processes into test mode in ten mins. Does everyone have a weapon?’ there was a murmur of yes from everyone. ‘ok. We will split into three teams, team one will be working through the tunnels to access from inside the control room, team two will go down the main corridor and enter through the main door, team three will enter from the auxiliary entrance. Angela, Tessa – are you two ok working together?’ They both nodded ‘in that case Angela will head up team two, I will head up team three. Simon – you take team one. We will move out in ten minuets. Everyone check your gear.’ there was a mass rustle as everyone did so. ‘we are still unsure of the location of Danco, we don’t know what has happened to at least three operatives – they have not called in for the last twenty-four hours. Once the marines are on station, we need to make sure that all of the cartel are under our control, we can then make a start on looking for them. Team one, make a start on heading through the tunnels now, the other two teams, lets start working our way down the corridors.’

If everything went to plan it would take team one twenty mins to reach the central ops office access panels, team two would take five mins, and team three would take seven or so.

Tessa watched as Isaac left and double checked everything through again, once they had ops she would be able to start hunting through sec footage to see if there was any sign of what happened to Tirela.

There was a nod from Angela and their team moved out and down the corridor, if they were lucky there would be no one moving about, if they met anyone the action would have to be quick and silent.

They turned the last corner and could see the ops centre doors, they were on time and quickly moved into position. Angela watched the count on her watch and gave the signal to the team.

They pulled open the door and tossed in a stun bomb, they followed it in and Tessa could see the other teams entering from their places.

Angela went to the security console and entered in the over rides to bring all the section access to her, while Isaac took the station masters console.

‘Initiate Earth link’ he commanded, and the woman that had taken a seat at the communication desk entered the commands to re-establish the link to central Navy control.

‘Security initialisation is taking place’ said Angela ‘system reset in thirty seconds. Cruiser is in final docking manoeuvre, final connection in two mins. Preparing for crash dock and sec release. I don’t think any one realises what’s happened yet.’

‘Any word on Danco?’ asked Isaac.

‘He’s not here, once the sec reset takes place we will tag him, I also have the list of other people to tag ready to load.’ said Simon.

‘Sec reset in five’ said Angela, ‘four, three, two, one and reset. Earth Link established. Sec Protocol is loaded into system. Sir – it’s waiting for a Commanding Office to take command.’

Isaac removed his security id from a pocket and entered the card into the reader on the station masters console. It prompted for a voice verification ‘Admiral Kenneth Hartman, ID number four, five, three, six, two. ‘

‘Cruiser will dock in five seconds, release security seal.’

On the dock there was a shudder as the curser docked and took hold, and the men on the security desk went into a state of confusion and then panic as their screens went blank and two thousand marines started to file past them with loaded weapons.

The red warning lights started to flash and the dock seal klaxons started to sound as the seals were closed across the station.

A detachment of five marines took control of the security desk and sent a signal to central ops.

In the central ops office Angela was locking out all of the remote security stations, she had initialised a communication blackout for all traffic.

Well, I’ve been busy working on a new project, it’s a Sci-Fi thriller. I’m not going to give too much away right now, but enjoy this little snippit:

Joshua was sat in his office, he’d signalled to the sisters over three hours ago. He knew what it meant if they hadn’t got back to him by now. There was trouble; he didn’t know what it was linked to yet. He had started to monitor the station alerts after two hours. The only blip had been the maintenance tunnel alert – but that had been quickly closed down. Just the single alert in that amount of time was a bad sign. He knew how they worked. They wouldn’t contact him if they thought either they or he had been compromised.

He started to make his own plans; he wouldn’t leave the station unless absolutely necessary. His bosses had too much invested for him to leave. Taking control back from the criminal cartel that had taken the station was too important. He had some of the key naval personnel now on the station, but his plans were not compete. The sisters taking out Danco had been the next step.

They would either do it or not. But he had to be sure, so he signalled to another one of his contacts.

Angela got a beep on her comm, Isaac had requested her to report to his office. It wasn’t often you got called to see the head of the department. It wasn’t a big department, but he normally just stuck his head out of the door and yelled.

‘I’m just going to see Isaac, make sure Joe gets finished on that clean up in sector five three. Thanks’ She stood and made sure her jacket was straight. It may only be the maintenance department but that didn’t mean they couldn’t take pride in themselves.

‘Close the door Angela.’ He said as she entered. She did so and stood at attention by his desk. ‘I am Joshua. I have a job for you.’

She nodded – she had suspected that there was more to Isaac than had seemed and now she knew.

‘Two of my operatives may have been compromised, as may this office. Your target is here’ he handed over a folder. ‘You are to eliminate the targets identified. If you come across the two other persons on interest you are to render any request they give you. Assess the threat level to this office. If we are compromised I need to know, we may have to withdraw from here. I would rather do it right and get all our operatives out alive. Good luck.’ He waved his hand to dismiss her.

Angela left the office and went back to her station; she tapped at a few keys and found what she was looking for – a blip in the system about 2 hours previously. ‘I’m going to section seven five, there was a blip and I need to stretch my legs.’

Angela walked to the lift system, no need to use the trams when visiting the maint tunnels, there were lifts to everywhere. She set the lights to auto. As she approached the area she could see blood on the floor and walls, something had happened here, but there was no sign of anyone. Other than the bloody foot prints leading to an air duct.

‘Joshua sent me.’

Angela looked directly at the duct.

‘Are you Tessa or Tirela? By the looks of it something went wrong. Look me up, Angela. I will wait for an hour at the hatch on seven five.’

She turned and walked back the way she had come.

Angela sat at the café across from the hatch and watched the brunette approach, she was slim and very pretty, looked to have some Japanese in her. From the files she had to be Tessa.

The brunette sat on the chair opposite and poured from the tea pot into the mug that had been left ready.

‘Tirela has been taken. She got at least one before she went down. Looks like she’d been ambushed. A man named Bruce is in a coma in one of our safe apartments. I have initiated clean programs to remove all trace of us from the station.’ The voice that spoke was soft, quiet, barely audible and filled with a deep sorrow. ‘I’m not sure how much they know. But I am confident that Joshua is compromised.’ She drank from the mug.

It was a very hot mug of tea, it needed sugar.

I have uploaded a very short little thing I wrote the other night. Not brilliant but could be used as the basis for something one day

http://www.anarna.org/transfer-station-1-shorts/

I have posted a new short on the site, this is the original idea I had for Mary Rose, which on the first draft turned into a prologue:

http://www.anarna.org/mary-rose-shorts/