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Author Topic: Cascadia's Dream: The Mammon Virus  (Read 4606 times)
Nitta
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« on: December 12, 2007, 09:33:10 PM »

Hey, all.

I posted part of this up in "A Story I Wrote," which will probably be the thread below this one.  Anyway, this one is a bit better, and it's part one of a little short story I wrote in my spare time.  Hope you like it, and please, let me know what you think.

*****************

Part One

“Four billion credits?  You’re kidding me.”

“It’s three-point-nine, and I’m not kidding you.”

Short fat men always seemed to be in his way these days.  From the hundreds of other commanders whose days sitting on the bridge of a mothership caused them to grow at alarming rates to the merchants at CHOAM who ate alien delicacies paid for by trillion-trillion credit transactions, there always seemed to be three-hundred pounds of human weight between Isidro Galen and a good deal.

“I can’t afford that.”  Isidro looked out the window of the grimy engineer’s office he was in.  Engineers.  Designers.  All of them just a pain in the ass, the kind of people Isidro loved to hate.  “What the hell is wrong with you?  You told me two and a half billion with system upgrades.”

“Things change.  CHOAM patrols are making it harder to get materials.”  The engineer folded his hands.  “And the prices are rising accordingly.”

“Starships aren’t made out of illegal drugs, friend.  Metal isn’t illegal.”

“Weapons-grade transistors are.”

This was true.  Isidro shook his head.  “You said two and a half billion.”

“And now I’m saying four.  If you can’t afford it, I have some other models that--”

There was no point in arguing.  Fat men are stubborn.  Always so stubborn.  Like women.  Worse than women, maybe.  Isidro was thinking this and decided it wasn’t worth it.

Isidro cut him off.  “Forget it.  I’ll find someone else.  And I want my deposit back.”

The engineer shook his head.  “I ask for a deposit for a reason, commander.”

“And you’re giving me a reason to shoot you in the head.  My credits.  In my bank account.  Now.  Give them back and I’ll consider coming back to you for business later.”

The engineer paused, and then hit a few keys on his desk.  “Transferred.  And you’re an not a very nice person.”

“Good doing business with you,” said Isidro.  He turned and walked out the doors.

*   *   *

After the meeting, there was little for Isidro to do but go to the space station’s bar and begin drinking.  Considering the station’s distance from CHOAM controlled space, it was little wonder that the bar’s drink of choice was more akin to metal polish than liquor.  But that was the way things went on the edge of space, and for Isidro, this way had been the way for a long, long time.

“Well?”

A woman with dull brown hair came up to Isidro.

Isidro glanced at her for a moment, and took another sip of his drink.

“Isidro?  The ship?”

“He was going to charge four billion.”

The woman stopped.  “Four?”

Isidro motioned to the bartender for another drink.  The woman slunk down in a chair next to him and put her head on the bar.

“We’re screwed, man.  There is no way around it.  Just plain screwed.”  The bar tender handed Isidro a drink, and the woman continued.  “What are we going to do?  If we don’t get that ship…I mean, the contract…God d**n it.  What are we going to do?”

“Keep moving.  He’ll stop looking after a while.”

“Aaron Dystra is not the kind of guy who stops looking for a man who owes him ten billion credits, Isidro.”  It was true, and Isidro knew it.

“Well, I’m not exactly ready to die, yet, Karen.”

“I don’t give a d**n about you, it’s me that I’m worried about.  You’re practically dead, anyway, who cares if…”  The woman, Karen, saw the stare Isidro was giving her and smiled weakly.  “Heh, kidding.”

Isidro slammed the rest of his drink down and said, “You’re damned right you’re kidding.”  He paused, and then sighed.  “Go prep the transport.  I’m drunk and we need to go home.”

“What are you going to tell everybody?”  Karen asked.

Isidro didn’t say anything as he grabbed his coat.  “We’ll figure something out.”

*   *   *

A few days later, the transport was nearing a depressed-looking mothership.  It was an older looking hull, with burns from lasers checkered across the ships hull.  Hanging off at random intervals were the segments, filled with farms and merchandise that provided the mothership with the credits she needed to keep moving.  As the transport neared the docking station, letters written in peeling white paint read, “Cascadia’s Dream.”

A few minutes later, Isidro and Karen were standing on the bridge of the mothership.

“Four billion?”

Isidro was leaning up against the railings of the bridge.  A group of four people stood in a semicircle around him.  To his left was a slender young man, barely twenty, with his hands awkwardly in his pockets.  Next was Karen, and next to her was another woman with blonde hair, and next to her was a tall, strong looking man with his arms folded.

“Yes.”

“We don’t have four billion,” the large man said.

“I’m really quite aware of that, thanks,” Isidro responded.

“Did you shoot him?”  The blonde woman asked.

“Almost.”  The blonde woman shook her head and mumbled something that certainly meant something like, “Should’ve shot him dead, the bastard.”

The young man cleared his throat and said quietly, “What about the deposit?”

“He gave it back.  That’s why his head remains intact.”

There was an awkward pause, and the lights on the bridge flickered out for an instant, and then came back on.  The five people glanced upwards at the lighting bulkheads and Isidro said, “Johnny, what the hell?”

The young man blushed.  “Uh, sorry…the couplings on the power regulators running up here are sort of fried.”

“Sort of?” asked Karen.

“Well, I would’ve fixed them but we couldn’t afford it, seeing as someone just couldn’t do without new plasma cannons on Deck 23’s biofarm.”  The young man shot a glance at the blonde woman.

“You’re a prick,” she said.

“You’re mean,” said Johnny.

“And I’m going to go crazy if anyone says another word.”  Isidro stood up straight and glanced out the viewing screen of the bridge.  “Johnny, get some creds from the stash and fix those couplings.”  Turning to the blonde woman, Isidro said, “And Elana, don’t call people names.”

“He started it.”  Elana sniffed and glanced at her nails.

“I’m still curious,” said the large man, “about our plan?  How are we going to raid the convoy without the new ship?  The Advent-class starships are barely holding together as is, and Aaron Dystra isn’t going to be happy if we renege.”

Isidro paused.  “Any ideas?”

“Run?” asked Johnny.  Elana scoffed.  “What, I’m serious!  I don’t want to get blasted into smithereens, thanks.”

“You don’t run from Dystra,” said the large man.  “He’s not the kind of guy to stop looking because he gets bored.  The guy’s not a businessman, he’s a butcher; takes things personally, you know?”

There was an awkward pause, and through the viewing window they could see the planet they were orbiting grow slowly from the edges of the screen.  The gas giant was a swirling mass of red and orange clouds, colliding ferociously with a desperate fury none standing there could possibly comprehend.  Down there, among those masses of clouds and storm there were forces that would rend men apart bodily before they could even know what was happening.

“We can’t run,” said Isidro.  He turned his back to the viewing screen.

Elana grinned happily.  “We’re going to fight!”

“We’re not doing that, either,” said Isidro.  Everyone’s eyes shifted towards him.  “We’ll complete the contract, as planned.”

“And how do we do that?” asked Karen.

Isidro looked back at the roiling mass of the planet.  “We’ll figure something out.”

The crew all paused for a moment, and Isidro turned and clapped his hands together.  “Anyway, we got a lot of work to do.  Johnny, fix those couplings.  Karen, reprogram the nav-computer on the Dream to include the system we just visited.  Elana, don’t shoot any of the workers.”  A mild noise of anger followed this order.  Isidro ignored it and turned to the large man.  “Rafe, start looking at ship specs and any kind of special formations CHOAM might be using with their escorts.”

The lights on the bridge flickered off again, and everyone moaned.  Isidro could hear a brief smack followed by Johnny shouting, “Stop hitting me, Elana!”

“Home sweet home,” he muttered, and walked down the bridge.

*   *   *

It was a few weeks later, and Isidro received a message from Dystra, telling Isidro to meet him at Dystra’s space station in a few days.  Isidro sighed.  Contracts were not getting any easier these days.

The transport glided slowly past the gigantic space station.  Through the windows, Isidro could see the large weapons set grimly into the sides of the station, poking at a various angles with sharp features, instruments of death, each of them large enough to rip through entire motherships without hesitation.

“Look at that…” Karen glances up from the controls and stared wide-eyed at the station.  “That thing’s got to be twenty times bigger than the Dream.  Aaron Dystra doesn’t fool around, does he?”

The large man, Rafe, coughed.  “It’s a Tetra-class station.  Not many of them around.”

The transport maneuvered around one of the larger segments that was attached to the main hull of the space station, and as it did so, a large docking port came into view.  Only the topmost part of the docking ring could be seen; the rest disappeared down below the edges of the windows, the ring so large that even from the distance the transport was at, no one could see it all at the same time.

Karen’s eyes got even wider.  “Is that a…?”

“Docking port, yes.”  Isidro’s eyes traced the lines of the ring.  “It’s a docking port.”

“Jesus…what kind of ship would possibly need a docking ring that big?”  Karen asked, turning to Rafe.  “Do they even make ships that big?”

Before Rafe could answer, the cockpit of the transport got darker.  Something was blocking the light from the systems pale yellow star.

“What is that?” Isidro said, leaning forward.

The large object grew in size as the transport continued on its path.  Karen flicked on a scanner, and below the window on a console the faint outline of the prow of a starship could be seen.

“It’s a starship…”  Rafe looked at the ship with a mixture of wonder and fear.  “It’s massive.”

The three stared in awe as they came nearer and nearer to the giant starship.  It was bristling with weaponry:  from clusters of small plasma cannons to laser-accelerators and hydrogen missiles, the ship was built only to destroy.  The bridge of the ship could be seen faintly glowing, a small speck on the large, dark gray hull.  The metal seemed to stretch on and on, rolling like solar flares over and under, titanium waves frozen in space and protected by immense shield generators.  Surrounding the ship, barely visible, were smaller escorts, each one capable of launching a ferocious counter-attack, each one bristling with lasers and plasma.

Isidro remembered the old legends from his childhood, of the days when planets still existed and men built ships large enough to destroy them.  He wondered for a moment whether those ships couldn’t possibly have been much different than one he was looking at right then.  They passed by the ship, out from underneath its massive shadow and back into the sunlight.  However, just before they did, Isidro saw the words Solis Occasus painted on its hull.

“I guess we figured out what kind of ship would need a docking port that big,” said Karen softly.

Isidro was about to respond when a beeping noise filled the cockpit.  It was a radio transmission.

“Cascadian Bay, this is Calamity Station Dock Control.  You’re cleared to dock at Ring Epsilon Five.  Please lower shields while we do a final scan on your manifest.”

Isidro frowned.  “Final scan?  What’s going on?”  Rafe shrugged, and Isidro motioned to Karen.  “Ask them why they need to scan us.”

Karen keyed the comm-box.  “Dock Control, we weren’t told about any final scans on our manifest.  Is there a problem?”

A moment of silence elapsed before the voice returned.  “Standard procedure, Cascadian Bay.  Please lower your shields.”

Karen looked back at Isidro, and he nodded.  “Do as the man says.”

Turning around, Karen tapped a few buttons.  Almost immediately, another beeping noise, much more shrill and loud than the first, rang through the cockpit.

“Kill that noise,” said Isidro.  “We know we’re being scanned.”

The alarm went dead, and the transport grew closer to Calamity Station.

“I wonder what that was all about,” said Rafe.  “I’ve never heard of doing a manifest scan as part of standard security procedure before.  What do they think we’re going to do?”

“I don’t know,” said Karen.  She watched as a small docking ring situated below a biofarm grew closer.  “Maybe Dystra’s getting paranoid.  Maybe some tried to sneak a bomb or something?”

“Yeah, but what kind of bomb can do any kind of damage to a station that size?” murmured Isidro.  “There’s no way…”

Any more speculation was cut short.  The transport turned on its side, and the docking procedure began.

*   *   *

“Do you know why I hired you?”

Isidro was sitting in a large office.  Right across from him was a long desk, simply furnished with a glowlamp and hoverscreen computer.  Behind the desk was a large window, facing out into space.  Isidro could see the massive hull of the Sol Occasus drifting past, with the hundreds of smaller transports, battleships, and various starships of varying sizes moving through and about the space around the station.

Sitting at the desk was a tall, thin man.  His dark hair was cut neatly, and long spindly fingers stroked a sharp looking chin.  That movement, however, was done carelessly, almost as if he were drunk.  It was a slow gesture, and the rise and fall of his chest was similarly lethargic.  Aside from the languid manner in which the man glanced at Isidro, he appeared utterly normal.  Isidro couldn’t help but if this was really Aaron Dystra, the man who controlled the better part of this sector of space.  Could such a gentle-looking human be the cause of so many deaths?  Could those eyes be the ones that, as rumors have it, drink in the sights of torture as if they were a movie?

Isidro brushed such thoughts from his mind.  It was time for business; idle wondering could be done another time.

“No, sir, I don’t.”  Isidro straightened his back.  “I just get the job done, I don’t ask questions.”

“Really?” asked Dystra.  There was a long silence, and Isidro couldn’t tell if the question just asked was rhetorical or earnest.  Just as he was about to open his mouth, Dysra coughed gently.

“Your name is Isidro Galen.”  Dystra moved his long fingers over the 3D interface of the hoverscreen.  “I had my agents look for more information on you, but it seems there’s little to find.”

“I’m a private person.”

“So it would seem.  Smugglers seem to like it better that way.”

Isidro didn’t respond.

“And yet, you have a reputation, don’t you?”  Dystra’s face turned softly into a smile.  “They say you never raid civilian convoys, only CHOAM freighters.  That’s an odd habit for a smuggler and a pirate, don’t you think?”

“CHOAM convoys are more profitable.  It’s the only way a man can stay flying these days.”

“Ah, money…now you’re speaking like a true smuggler.  But the risk of getting caught, being captured alive and then tortured to death by CHOAM security doesn’t deter you?”  Dystra’s smile faded and his eyes hardened.  “The risk seems to outweigh the benefits.”

Isidro paused for a moment.  “Mr. Dystra, if you called me here to ask about my previous employment, I can assure you that I’ve never failed to fulfill a contract--”

“No.”  Dystra cut him off.  “That is not my concern.  My concern is that you are a man who does not think before he acts, and I have little use for such a man in my employ.  Do you know why?”

“No, Mr. Dystra, I don’t.”

Dystra stroked his chin and said very quietly, “It’s because a man who doesn’t care about his life has nothing to lose.  And I need you to be afraid of me.  I need you to be willing to risk the lives of a thousand people just to fulfill the most arbitrary of my wishes.  I want you to be so afraid of the death I could give you that you’d shoot your own mother before you’d betray me.”  Dystra stared for a long time into Isidro’s eyes.  “Do you understand?”

Isidro paused.  This was Dystra, he thought.  This was the man who controlled most of the space that Isidro called home.  A torturer, a murderer, a fanatic.
 
“Mr. Galen?”

“Yes, sir.  I understand.”

Dystra nodded.  “Excellent.  Now, I did not call you here specifically to discuss my management philosophy.”  Dystra let out a weak laugh.  “I came here to give you intelligence on the CHOAM convoy I hired you to raid.”

“What’s wrong with the old intel?” Isidro said, putting his hands on his hips.

“We underestimated the size of the escorts.  They’re going to be much larger.”  Dystra made a quick motion over the hoverscreen.  “We originally had thought there would only be a standard escort of three Lucre-Class battleships.  However, my intelligence officer has informed me that there will be three Lucre-Cass battleships as well as an Inca-Class battlecruiser.”

“Inca-Class?” Isidro’s jaw dropped.  “Why the extra escort?”

Dystra folded his hands in his lap and said, “Mr. Galen, I believe that earlier you said you did not ask questions, that you just did the job.  Have you had a change of heart?”

Isidro shook his head.  “Asking questions about intelligence is a totally different matter.  I’m not going to send my people on a suicide mission, Dystra.”

“Mr. Dystra.  And what did we just talk about?”  Dystra paused and gave another weak smile.  “I need you to be completely loyal.  Don’t ask questions.  And you will send your people on a suicide mission if it is my desire that you do, Galen.”

Isidro folded his arms and said nothing.  Dystra continued.  “My intelligence officer will send you the details.  That is all.  I’ll be expecting the cargo on the same date at the same time.”  Dystra leaned back in his chair and whispered, “And don’t you even think about trying to screw me, pirate.”

Isidro stared back at Dystra.  Finally, he shrugged and nodded.  “I wouldn’t dream of it, sir.”

Dystra snapped his fingers, and two guards materialized out of the shadows of the office walls.  “Escort Mr. Galen back to his transport.  And have Agent Cabrera upload the data on CHOAM Convoy DC-879 to his transport’s computer.”

The two guards both murmured, “Yes, sir,” and Isidro walked out with them and back to the shuttle.

END OF PART ONE

Well, if you stuck with it all the way to the end, I hope it was worth your time!  Let me know if Part Two is worth writing.
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Tzarkoth
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« Reply #1 on: December 12, 2007, 11:47:03 PM »


Couple of minor grammatical errors in the second instalment ... Sounding very Firefly-ish ... in fact, almost too much like Firefly in parts ... Apart from that, its still good.
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Nitta
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« Reply #2 on: December 13, 2007, 12:43:40 AM »


Couple of minor grammatical errors in the second instalment ... Sounding very Firefly-ish ... in fact, almost too much like Firefly in parts ... Apart from that, its still good.

d**n grammar...years of education and I still can't do it right.  =)  Yes, now that you say it, the story does resemble Firefly a lot...I'll keep that in mind.

Actually, if you want to know the truth, I was sort of just working with the idea of writing a train robbery, which, of course, is the basis for a Firefly episode...oh, man.  I'll think about that.  Hopefully, the story will take in a life of its own with further development.  It was going to hopefully expand into something more along the lines of a political thriller, but that'll be developed more in Part Two or Three.  Hopefully.  Hmm...well, anyway, I've got a bit to think about.  Thanks, Tzarkoth!
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« Reply #3 on: December 13, 2007, 01:10:45 AM »


What got me thinking about Firefly was that Aaron Dystra reminds me of Adelia Niska, right down to the fanatically loyal guards, living on a space station and enjoying torture.

And when Isidro says, " It’s the only way a man can stay flying these days. " That's a line right out of Firefly ... I can picture Mal saying that.

Anyhow, the best villians love torture, and they always have fanatically loyal henchmen ... And smugglers are always after the best money they can make their time. So I can put it all down to coincidence at this time. :-)

However .. all the excuse I needed .. time to rewatch Firefly. :-)
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« Reply #4 on: December 21, 2007, 08:12:20 AM »

gimmie part two or ill send half of SO population after you 13
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deezee66
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« Reply #5 on: December 23, 2007, 10:56:31 PM »

I like it give me more  1
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Cameron07
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« Reply #6 on: December 28, 2007, 11:04:20 PM »

i have a.d.d. but the part i read was good.. i just got distracted   wow *sees a shiny object in the next room*
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« Reply #7 on: January 19, 2008, 01:50:07 AM »

An excellent story, it did reminded me about Firefly too but then again, we have Reavers and stations and outlaw space in SO, the Alliance is non existent but we have this big monopoly by CHOAM on the market and lately aliens are trying to take over... great job.
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« Reply #8 on: January 19, 2008, 02:56:14 AM »

An excellent story, it did reminded me about Firefly too but then again, we have Reavers and stations and outlaw space in SO, the Alliance is non existent but we have this big monopoly by CHOAM on the market and lately aliens are trying to take over... great job.
And a Star Wars bounty hunter pic. 3
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