Scenes

[Patrick]

Quite often I have ideas...which don't connect in any way, or fragments of a story, which I don't yet see how to connect and don't write for this reason...well, I've decided to actually write them. Posts in this thread most often won't have any connection between them, they'll just be random scenes stemming from random ideas, mostly short, possibly sometimes long.

[Patrick]

Scene 1

 

 

The temperature slowly rose and after a minute or two the smaller twigs caught fire. The flames leapt to life, gently licking the larger pieces of wood.

 

The fire did not belong in this great hall of marble. The floor stretched as far as the eye could see, solid marble with no discernible motif. On the two sides of the long chamber two identical rows of massive pillars held the ceiling. There was no visible light source, indeed the light seemed to come from everywhere, for there were no shadows that tainted the smooth surfaces.

 

A solitary figure sat on the throne at the end of the long hall. Full-body armour hid his features. The black plates fit almost perfectly, not leaving a single inch of skin visible. A two-handed sword, almost seven feet in length lay at his feet, almost as if it had been thrown there by hands that no longer cared.

 

The flames caught the big blocks of timber and leapt up, lighting an area of the chamber. The pile of corpses atop the logs would soon catch aflame, filling the air with a foul stench.

 

Blood stretched along the floor as far as the eye could see, and reached almost manheight on each of the pillars, silent evidence to the violence that had been visited on this sacred room. Thousands of bodies littered the halls, all positioned in grotesque poses, death having come swiftly to most of them. The figure on the throne smiled, recalling the battle. They had underestimated him and it had proven to be their downfall. A whole civilization wiped out, its last remnants hiding like rats in a hole, awaiting the death they knew would come.

 

The sweet scent of burning flesh slowly filled the throne room. Soon the heat would become unbearable, especially covered in metal armour from head to toe. Yet the solitary figure did not move. He did not remove his blood-stained armour. He did not run. He waited silently, an ever-present smile behind his helmet.

 

The great hall had been constructed centuries ago, slaves piling stone upon stone, corpse upon corpse. For each pillar, hundreds of workers had died, their bones now part of the foundations of this great edifice.

 

The fire would twist and melt the stone, fierce in its intensity. A fitting tomb for a civilization. A fitting tomb for the man who had torn the civilization down. None alive knew his reasons, none could ascertain why he had destroyed a once flourishing people. Yet destroy he did.

 

He lost a piece of himself in the mindless killing. A small fragment of sanity with each killing blow, yet another step towards madness for each innocent killed.

 

The fire slowly turned into an inferno, a cleansing that would burn away all remnants of a people.

 

The solitary figure leant down and lifted the sword, then leaning heavily on the steel blade stood up. Traces of blood on the blade shone brightly in the light of the fire. His helmet clattered to the ground, revealing a face that could have belonged to any farmer, any merchant....to anyone.

 

The heat was almost unbearable, almost as if the stone itself were lending heat to the fire, willing itself to collapse.

 

A last, sad smile touched the warrior's features before he fell to the ground in a clatter of metal armour.

 

Just another body next to thousands of others on the funeral pyre of a civilization.

[Patrick]

Scene 2

 

 

A ten-foot high stump was all that remained from a once majestic tree. At its height it must have been at least seventy feet high, with branches stretching a hundred feet in each direction, but a great storm, of which there had been several in the last decade had cut the glory of the tree short, tearing its trunk in two. The welcoming shade the great tree had once offered was no more and migrating animals no longer paused to rest under its branches.

 

The stump overlooked a winding curve in the road. Traffic was almost non-existant, limited to a lumbering cart or a speeding car every now and then. It was a backwater trail, not even paved with concrete, a bare step up from the trail made by animals during long centuries. Yet it was here that the convoy would pass.

 

Calling it a convoy did not really do it justice. The Emperor was always accompanied by at least three dozen vehicles, several exact replicas of his own, diversions to make any assassination attempt much harder. It did not discourage the lone sniper lying in the tall grass in the shadow of the stump. He had been waiting there for almost twelve hours, barely moving. He was thirsty and hunger drummed against his empty stomach, yet he did not move. To move was to risk being seen by the aircraft circling above, beyond the cloudcover.

 

Patience was one of the first lessons taught to aspiring soldiers. Patience to wait until the perfect moment for action was a virtue hard to achieve. Truth be told, the chances of successfully killing the Emperor were minimal. Even if the right vehicle was found, the windows were most certainly bullet proof. At least that was what those who had sent him thought. They considered his mission a suicide mission, an attempt to rattle the great ruler's defences, more smoke than fire. He knew better though.

 

He had always been capable of predicting the consequences of his actions. As when a stone was thrown into a pond and produced a ripple, he was able to predict the ripples his actions would cause in the lake of the future. He knew that if he were to move just a foot to the right the imperial sniper positioned on the opposite hill would notice his movement and kill him. And he knew that if he fired a shot in a quite precise angle, the bullet would smash against a winshield and the miniscule fragment detaching from it would slash the Emperor's jugular, while he sat quietly sipping a bottle of expensive wine on the backseat. These were things he knew. What he did not know was what chain of actions he could accomplish that would see him evade capture. That was a door that had closed long ago.

 

The convoy came into view and he pulled the trigger, long outside the range where any sniper would have taken a shot. Even as the bullet exited the chamber he was certain that within a minute the Emperor would be dead. All that remained now was to stay alive himself. He was optimistic. He always had been. After all, he knew what his actions would bring, all that remained was to choose those with positive outcomes.

[Patrick]

Scene 3

 

 

"I love you," he whispered, afraid that lifting his voice would shatter the illusion of privacy they had. The airstrip was filled with soldiers, each saying goodbye in his own way to his loved ones. War was a constant in the Empire, but never did its impact lessen. He gave her a fierce, almost painful hug, unspoken emotions transiting in a simple, almost bestial gesture of longing. "Before you know it I'll be home." He gave her a last kiss and turned to go towards the spacecraft. He could not resist turning back and blowing her a kiss.

 

Inwardly she trembled. The war had not been going well and she did not share his optimism in his own indestructibility. It broke her heart to see him going, knowing that he might never return. And even if he did, he would never be the seventeen year old boy she had once fallen in love with. War always changed people. She had seen its effects on her father, who had returned just six months ago, after more than four years on the frontlines. They had called him one of the lucky ones, one of those who had survived. She was not sure whether he had been lucky. He sported no visible scars, no bodily wounds, yet ever since returning he had been different from the father she had grown up loving.

 

He had turned to drink, like many veterans of the far away campaigns. Drunk to their very bones was the only way these veterans could forget the horrors of war, the only way they could find temporary solace. Her mother had died while her husband was in the war, a debilitating disease taking her in less than a month, in no way enough time to say goodbye. If anything, it had been the final nail in the coffin her father was slowly building for himself. It had hit him harder than any of the horrors he had seen at the front. His slow descent was now only a question of time.

 

She had slowly come to terms with losing her father. He was now barely the once proud man she had known. But she could not bear to lose Paul. He was just eighteen, and already he had been conscripted, yet another victim of this mindless violence. He had been the only one keeping her going. "I love you," his words echoed, a strand of hope she clung to desperately. He did not turn back again before embarking in the troop transport, seeing her pained expression would have been too hard for him.

 

She hugged herself, hungrily taking in that last glimpse she got of him. Even if he survived it would be months before he would be back.

 

She vowed to try to dig her father from the bottomless pit he was putting himself into. She needed an objective if she was to stay sane.

[Patrick]

Scene 4

I had always wondered what it would be like when I finally received my punishment. Would it be quick - a merciful bullet through the head - or slow - a hanging or torture preceding a gruesome death. I was well placed to know which of the two I really deserved.



I guess it all started about thirty years ago. I must have been six or seven at the time, I can't really remember. My mother had taken me shopping with her, subjecting me to interminable waits while she tried on robe after robe. I was bored to say the least. My mother had always liked shopping, to be more precise she enjoyed spending money. Money that she did not earn. I never understood until much later how my father had enough money to allow his wife to keep up her lifestyle. It had been a nice sunny day and I remember fuming at the fact that I had to spend it in designer stores and clothing outlets instead of enjoying the fresh air and playing as any young boy of that age is wont to do.

It was on the way home from shopping that it happened. I don't know why my mother chose not to have the chauffeur drive us home as she usually did. Instead we walked down the main pedestrian street. It was just a ten minute walk to our downtown home. Those ten minutes changed my life.

At first I did not notice the old man lying in a pool of his own vomit. Not many did. The contrast between opulent riches and stark poverty was not unique to my hometown, every great city was afflicted by it. He still moved then, arms slowly flexing, trying to lift his weight from the hard cobblestones. I only spared him a glance, being the ignorant young boy I was back then and thought no more of him. To me he was just an old homeless guy who had had too much to drink. The social values hammered into me since birth stopped me from showing any compassion, stopped me from even sparing him a compassionate glance.

He stared back at me, not much present in his bleak eyes.

I never learned who he was, or how he had gotten to the crowded street where he died half an hour later. But it changed me. I still remember walking past the same spot an hour later with a group of friends and seeing his motionless body being dumped into a black plastic bag.



Punishment. The act of meting out justice for an action perceived as a crime by society at large. It was such a relative term...



A few days shy of my twentieth birthday I was taken to prison for a stint of three years. It had been a stupid mistake. A single moment of explosive anger. It was all that was needed to change a life. To my mother's greatest dismay I had enlisted on my eighteenth birthday. I never told her, but I could no longer stand the life I was supposed to live. All my father had given me as a reply on that rainy night when I had walked out of the door was a mysterious smile that he never managed to explain. His cancer took him away two months later.

I discovered a passion for boxing while in the army. Internal competitions were organised once every month and I found I had a talent for knocking the living daylights out of others. I did not always win, but I was the victor more often than not.

I killed a man in my seventy-ninth boxing match. A captain none the less. I kept pummeling him after he had yielded. He shouldn't have insulted my father. And I shouldn't have killed him.

Prison didn't really change me. The only thing I really learned while in there was that I never wanted to go back.



Strange thoughts to have. I did not think I would recall these two events.

The priest leant slightly closer to me and murmured something. I could have sworn that he was at least as nervous as I was.



"The wind is fifteen miles per hour west. Make that west-north-west."

I made a minor adjustment to the angle of fire.

"Distance?"

"5-5-6 yards."

The echoes of the shot rang loud in the small ravine. A few hundred yards away a deer drew its last breath.

"You were great son! Let's go see what we've got." I said tousling the hair of the youth next to me. The binoculars looked very big on him.



The priest was staring at me. Had I missed something? I sighed, thinking of my son who had died three years earlier in a car accident.

"I do," I finally said, lifting the veil from the face of the woman who in a few seconds would be my wife.

Punishment was sometimes bittersweet...

[Patrick]

Scene 5

The winter before the Great War

The chill winds had swept in from the south, bringing heavy stormclouds burgeoning with snow during the night. Chandri Lake, the central jewel of the sprawling park it gave its name to had frozen during the night and its shores would not be an idyllic setting for evening strolls by young couples for months to come. Winter had been late to come this year, graciously allowing several additional weeks of growth for the tall oak trees neighbouring the lake. The viciously sudden arrival of winter had caught many of the majestic, eighty-ninety foot tall, oaks by surprise, with some autumn leaves still desperately clinging to their branches.

It was still too early in the morning for young children, overjoyed by the sudden liberty of cancelled classes, to descend in hordes to the lake, to enjoy the snow and the ice. Unfortunately for them, their were certain things that not even the weather could stop. Plans which had been set in motion months, maybe even years earlier. Plans which could not be cancelled for to stop now would be catastrophic. Plans, which threatened peace in the entire Empire.

As snowflakes started drifting down from the thick layer of grey clouds, dampening the pre-dawn light, dozens of military troop transports left the barracks on the southern outskirts of the town, accompanied by an even dozen tanks. Reports of an attempted coup had reached military command in the hours before dawn and they had decided to act. Hundreds of miles to the north-west, but fast approaching, a new prototype aircraft, carrying weapons which should never have been developed, flew under the low cover of cloud. Its theft, during the previous day, had still not been discovered. Next to Chandri Park, in a totally average apartment building an antique alarm clock rung five minutes before six. Grimfalk, the Empire's most wanted fugitive since his escape a year ago from the imperial prison planet, stifled a yawn and slowly got out of bed.



The phone in the small apartment rang less than a minute later and only a few words were exchanged. Grimfalk dressed faster than usual, even with the added winter clothing. By six he was outside of his apartment and on the deserted street. The snow was starting to fall in earnest. That would complicate things. Setting his hat against the wind he set off at a brisk walk across Chandri Park and soon disappeared in the developing blizzard.



Private Vilkashondar, or as his comrades called him, Villy, had been on night-time duty and had been looking forward to sleeping at dawn, when the general call-up had come. No one it seemed had any idea of what was going on, but one thing was certain, they had to move into town and take up defensive positions around key installations. Crammed into a troop transport made for twelve, with fifteen of his companions they had set off at great speed, their target Chandri Bridge, the only bridge across Jerul River since the terrorist attacks fifteen months earlier. The tension inside the cramped quarters of the troop transport was palpable, only made worse by the fact that they did not even know who they would be facing. The squad's corporal had come down with some kind of flu a week back and still was not well enough, so the task of leading these recruits had fallen to Villy, the most senior of the privates. All the sergeant had told him was to hold the bridge at all costs, along with the other five squads and two tanks detailed for them. Against whom or how many, no one seemed to know.



Most of the displays and controls were unintelligible even for a pilot with twenty years in the air force, like Captain Ferr. But he could fly the aircraft passingly well and most of the specialized controls he would not need. It had been a long path to treason for a veteran like him. The long years of low pay and no recognition for his bravery and skill, not even when he shot down three rebel aircraft in one engagement. He did not know, nor did he care, how this aircraft had been stolen. All he cared about was what he had to do. He would do it and then disappear forever, significantly richer than before.

[Patrick]

Scene 6

 

They had repulsed three assaults during the night, only giving up a few feet of ground. Those few feet were soaked in the blood of hundreds of fallen and wounded and as the sun slowly rose to the east the medics were crawling among the bodies, helping those who could still be held. Snipers occasionally fired, but until nightfall the battle was mostly over and everyone had retreated to their trenches. Several people standing next to him had fallen asleep where they stood, the constant fighting taking its toll.

 

Trench warfare had become a thing of the past, or so all the military textbooks said. In the age of spacecraft and precision bombs, sitting in a trench was invitation to suicide they went on. Yet here they all were, more than three million soldiers along a meandering frontline from jungle to high mountain terrain, desperately defending against an enemy who shrugged off their air superiority with ease, who did not care about bombs ripping apart trenches and killing thousands. Who for each man who fell brought ten more. A relentless enemy, unmindful of their own losses and with only one intent, the destruction of all that stood between them and their goal.

 

When the revolt had broken out on the planet Achilles VI seventeen years earlier, as standard procedure called for it a standard imperial army of one hundred thousand soldiers and associated equipment had been sent to put the rebellion down. Nine million imperial soldiers had since been killed in the fighthing, with many more injured. On the rebels's side losses were even worse. They only had numbers to counter the imperial superiority in weaponry and a moral they seemed to have an endless supply of. They were fighting for their homeland after all and victory was close.

 

The presence of imperial troops on the ground had been pushed back to an area the size of ancient England on the archeological planet of Terra and each day the Empire lost more and more ground. The constant pounding of the planets surface by the Imperial Space Force did nothing to stop the slowly crumbling defences.

 

 

 

High on a ridge exposed to the elements and sniper fire from the opposing ridge Sergeant Paul Edgethorn and the other soldiers from the third squad of the nineteenth company of the fifty third imperial army huddled in the shelter given by the weather-worn rocks. The wind still howled over the ridge, chilling everyone to the bone, bringing the snow in sheets. And still the enemy came, continuing its attack well into the day here, aiming to win the ridge by any means, even exhaustion of the opposing soldiers. And it looked like they were succeeding. Not many from Paul's squad still could stand and most were catching precious seconds of sleep between pressing the trigger twice. Paul himself had found he was dozing off as an enemy soldier wondered across the sights of his rifle.

 

The wind picked up a notch and the snow thickened even more, making any shots fired a waste of bullets. Surely they would cease their assault under such conditions?

 

They did not.

 

They kept coming for twenty seven more hours before finally withdrawing back to the opposing ridge.