Another bit of writing - Corvain Dagger

This one is a story that I am working on as well. I wanted to give the impression, or the feel, of medieval armies with foot soldiers and all that. But have it take place in the future. On top of that I wanted to sprinkle it with humans who develop mysterious powers. Of course I also wanted there to be a grand struggle between two massive political/military forces.

I think this one is written a bit more smoothly than Thief's Choice.

~The Corvain Dagger~

Prologue

Corvain Year 292

Planetary summer

Planet 618825

(called Bon Chance by its inhabitants)

15 kilometres from Colony 7

(called Marseilles by its residents)

Unit 18 on life form control duty- Day 12

“I can’t do it Sarge…I don’t think I should go down there,” Netmender edged away. “….I got this…um…feeling…”
“Just get in there ‘n flush tha suckers out, Netmender!” Sgt. Baker growled through his thick beard. “You don’t have ta propose t‘em or nothin’…what, do I gotta send Smith wit ya ta hold yer hand?”
Netmender’s face reddened. They were all gathered around the unit’s three flamer cannons and setting up their ambush for the Nixhecra onrush with the offhand manner of individuals performing repetitive tasks. Netmender shivered as he eyed the beckoning hole. He backed off another step.
“What ever is the matter, Netty? Scared of the dark?” someone chirped. Sharpe probably. He was the unit’s loudmouth. The other Footmen brayed behind Netmender. “Need a torch, Nort?” was another jibe. “Don’t pee yourself, kid! You’ll rust your armour!” shouted another soldier. His face reddened even further. Even the ammo boys filling the flamer tanks with volatile liquid took their concentration off their hazardous work long enough to snicker at him. They all thought that he was afraid to go into the Nixhecra hole. The shivering numbness in his toes and fingers told him they were correct. He was afraid, very afraid. But not for the reasons they expected…not for the reason anyone would expect! The Nixhecra were vicious little bastards that could be very dangerous in large groups -- and the Sgt. wanted him to follow the methodically clawed out tunnel to their nest, where there would be several dozen of them! A full grown man that fell while trying to outrun a Nixhecra horde, would be ripped to bloody shreds rather quickly.
A soldier would ironically be in greatest jeopardy because of the armour he wore. Despite their horrendous appearance and violent nature, the Nixhecra weren’t carnivores. They had no taste for flesh and blood. They did have a tremendous appetite for metals and plastics, however. A Nixhecra horde could tear a camp apart overnight with nothing left but organic material. So the units of the Southwester Division were forced to resort to systematic pest control.
All the other soldiers in the unit had already done their stint as Nixhecra bait and now it was Netmender’s turn. He had to do it, and by himself. The Sgt. expected it. The unit expected it. And what’s more, the unwritten creed of the soldier demanded that he faced the same dangers as the others of his unit. He wouldn’t be able to live it down if he didn’t go down that hole. The remainder of his service with the Corvain Army would be extremely unpleasant he was sure. He had to go down that hole!
But if Norton Netmender went down that hole, down into that deep, damp, dark, he would…what? What would he do? He asked himself. He wasn’t sure, but he felt that going down that hole would be a very bad idea.
It was something in his head that was whispering to him. Something grating –no, grating was wrong; it was more of a battering than anything else. Norton couldn’t tell Sgt. Baker that of course. The no-nonsense career soldier would definitely consider him unstable and recommend a thorough psycho-energetic probe be performed. That was a thought that truly frightened Footman Norton Netmender.
He had heard rumours of men claiming to hear voices in their heads. Symptoms of schizophrenia and other mental disorders evident in soldiers were handled as follows: They were sent to field hospitals as per standard operational procedure. The stay at the FH was no doubt quite enjoyable at first; good hot meals and a dry bed with warm blankets. Not to mention a cute nurse attending to a patient’s every need. It would have seemed like a great plan. An ingenious scheme designed to get a little vacation from the humping and constant battles with the indigenous life forms of this planet. According to grunt gossip whispered through the dust and exhaustion as they hunkered down for the night, men in the deep blue outfits of the M.U.D.D. would eventually show up at the patient in question’s bed bearing sophisticated equipment. None of them ever wore any rank insignia. They would confer quietly amongst themselves for a while then begin running the patient through a battery of psychological tests. Most times, the testing wouldn’t last longer than an hour before the patient was released back to his unit (usually with their service record bearing a stamp in red stating: DOES NOT FIT TREATMENT CRITERIA FOR D-NX-626). Sometimes however, the M.U.D.D. technicians would visit the patient again. The privacy curtain would be drawn. Elusive shadows would skitter across the canvas material of the curtains for hours, accompanied by low mewling sounds one would not expect from a grown man.
It was then most common for the curtains to be pulled aside to reveal patients unsuitable for return to duty. These men were dismissed from service and taken off-world for permanent care. But there was no rush in signing out the patient. Sometimes weeks would go by before the bed would be free for use by others. Not that the ‘patient’ minded, of course. They were lost in their own world and made no complaints whatsoever.
Very rarely, the M.U.D.D. technicians seemed to discover profound and unusual results from their study of the patient. Men in unmarked uniforms were always called in at this time. These men were scarred and battle hardened. They moved with the deadly grace of those accustomed to constant wariness of one’s surroundings. They brought with them a wheeled chamber resembling a coffin. The patient was placed in the chamber and carried from the FH. It was said that the soldiers of the unit the patient originated from never saw him again and were told nothing about his whereabouts.
Netmender wasn’t sure he believed all that. He thought it was more likely one of the many ‘boogie man’ stories that floated around the service. Still, he didn’t want anything like that to happen to him so he kept knowledge of the voices in his head to himself. He was more afraid of losing his mind to experimentation than to going insane of his own accord. It wasn’t like he always had voices talking to him his whole life, anyway. The whispers had only started a few weeks after landing on-planet. He had attributed it all to stress and loneliness. He was from a small planet crowded with dozens of large fishing cities. The cultures were loud and boisterous with a distain for authority and pomp. It took a long time for Netmender to acclimate himself to military life, and so thought his strange mental behaviour was caused by the pressure placed upon him in his new environment.
He was just getting the jitters. The jitters, that’s all. Nothing else. He was going to go down that hole, be the human bait expected of him, and lead the Nixhecra out into the trap waiting for them. He would do it because he had to. To prove to the others he wasn’t going to let his fears control him and to show the ‘voice’ it was wrong. Show it nothing was going to happen to him.
He squared his shoulders and stood a little bit straighter. “Yeah. OK. When ever you’re ready, Sarge.” He felt another shiver that bordered on a spasm.
Netmender approached the Nixhecra hole. “Everythin’ ready, Eddy?” Sgt. Baker asked his second in command. Corporal Eddy Yokohama gave the thumbs up. “Alright, Netmender, you know tha drill. Get them critters hankerin’ for ya so’s they follow ya up here.” Netmender nodded. “Cut to the side when ya clear tha hole. To the right side, mind you!” Sgt. Baker’s stubby index finger punctuated his orders on Netmender’s armoured chest plate.
Netmender nodded stiffly and lowered his visor. At Sgt. Baker’s command he edged himself into the opening. As he went deeper into the tunnel he could hear his unit’s jeering. Their voices settled over his shoulders like an unwanted touch. His trembling fingers, encased within composite chain mail, worked at controls embedded into the forearm plating of his left arm. The world around him darkened, and then slowly coalesced into shades of cool green as his visor’s lowlight display came on-line. Data scrolled down the sides of his vision. Two hundred yards to the Nixhecra nest at a 12 degree decline. There was a 7% toxic gas ratio in the tunnel. Not too dangerous at that quantity, but it would only grow stronger as he went deeper. Nixhecra gastric gases were toxic, the by-products of metal and plastic breakdown in their digestive system, he thought as he eyed the figures. Netmender fixed his mask to his visor. Cool air, filtered and regulated, flowed down his throat. It tasted vaguely medicinal. Memories of his training on Fort Righteous, the Corvain Orbital Military base, came back to him. A quick glimpse through a corridor port was the last time he saw Jacobsworld. It was one year ago that he left orbit. It all happened so quickly that he didn’t have time to thinks things through. He was no longer a fisherman. He had become a soldier. Became a paid killer. He had become a killer because it paid more than he could ever make on Jacobsworld and his family needed money.
The fact that he was a Footman in the service of the Corvain Army was still a cold shock to him. He had thought he would live his life fishing the seas of Jacobsworld. Just like his father and his father’s father had done. But he did not have a boat. It was lying at the bottom of the Razor Reefs, shattered and providing shelter for sea life. Without a boat a fisherman couldn’t make a living. It was Norton’s fault the Netmender Family no longer had a boat. A man had to take responsibility for their mistakes. A man had to do what he had to do. He couldn’t let his family starve. Not because of a stupid mistake.
So there he was, a nineteen-year-old fisherman, shuffling down a rough-hewn tunnel on a planet 20 LY from home towards a nest of dangerous creatures. No wonder he had voices in his head telling him to turn around and flee. What business had a fisherman, a man who had spent all his life on or near the ocean, tunnelling underground?
The footing beneath him changed and he had to concentrate on his course. There was now plastic and metal debris peppered throughout the loose dirt under his boots. He was getting closer to the nest. The toxic gas level was higher as well.
As he trudged deeper he passed other tunnels that branched off on either side of him. They were empty of travellers and seemed rarely used. Some were little more than crude alcoves used to store caches of debris a Nixhecra would consider food; low altitude rover panels and generator parts made up the majority of the rubble.
Once, he caught sight of a standard-issue Corvain Army helmet, battered and torn with patches of some dark dried substance upon it. Though the low-light augmentation of his visor allowed Netmender to see in near dark, colors were reduced to ranges of green, so he could not tell if it was blood on the helmet. He felt grateful for the gear’s limitation. All the same, he proceeded with added caution and tightened his grip on his weapon.
The heft of his Bruebaker-Haus did little to bolster his confidence. It was a stubby autogun designed for close-in battle. Propelled by a compact electro-magnetic pulse generator, its depleted uranium bearing ammunition was capable of tremendous kinetic delivery against soft and hard targets.
Unfortunately, his rules of engagement only called for weapon fire in the event that one of the beasts got too close as he baited them towards the surface. Netmender thought he would probably be too busy running for his life to give a backward glance let alone take time to turn around and fire at any Nixhecra about to pounce on him.
That thought brought his hand to the small electronic unit clipped to one of his armour’s utility slots. The unassuming palm-sized device was a modified molecular gas dispersion unit used by game hunters galaxy-wide. It mimicked the molecular trace or ‘odour’ found on living and non-living matter and scattered the artificial gases into the surrounding area. In this case, the molecular gas dispersion unit—or MGDU—was set to give off the tang of a ton of high-grade metal. This was proven to attract Nixhecra from even the deepest tunnels they were known to dig. Once Netmender pressed the charge plug the MGDU would operate for two minutes before its load ran dry.
The right bait for the right prey. Just like fishing. It was ironic that Norton Netmender left his life as a fisherman only to end up fishing for metal eating vermin underground. I shouldn’t be doing this crap, he thought. The voice agreed. The voice demanded he go back or it was going to happen. “What? What will happen?” He complained out loud. His head suddenly pulsed with pressure he had never felt before. Like a migraine, but more intense. His vision blurred. His legs became weak.
His com-line squawked and Corporal Yokohama’s high voice washed over Netmender’s mind on a wave of nausea. He couldn’t understand what the Corporal was saying; it was too difficult to focus on anything except trying to remain standing. The ground beneath his feet seemed so far away.
The darkness was closing in on him. The walls of the tunnel seemed too close.
It was then that the motion sensor software running on his armour’s combat circuitry decided to rail in his ears like the angry nattering of old fisher wives over whose nets were in the best condition.
The voice told him it was too late now. There was no turning back. It was all on Norton’s shoulders from here on in. It had tried to warn him, but would he listen? No. He had to be stubborn, didn’t he? He had to be brave.
Netmender barely had enough time to peel off his air mask before his last meal came back up. It didn’t taste very good going down, he remembered. It tasted even worst as it passed back over his tongue and teeth. The vomit was mostly liquid, but with thick choking chunks, that escaped his mouth with surprising force. He didn’t feel any better after inhaling the base gases no longer filtered by the air mask, either.
The damned voice wouldn’t shut up. The motion sensor’s alarm became more insistent. And the Corporal….the Corporal was demanding a sit-rep. Why was he not moving? Who was down there with him? The unit was picking up movement in his vicinity. WHAT THE HELL WAS GOING ON???
Now it was Sgt. Baker who growled curses into Netmender’s ears. He was screaming that Norton should back out! Back out quick and remember to cut to the right!! They were on him, damn it!!!
They? They who?, thought Netmender. He raised his head, towards sounds down the tunnel, and activated his headlamp. The sounds of many feet scampering in the farther darkness of this enclosed space. The noise became louder and was soon accompanied by imprecise shapes undulating like a Rorschach blotter in his watering eyes. He tried to blink away the tears, but they stung even more. The gases. It was the gases, he thought to himself almost dreamily. He did not need unobstucted sight to realize what was coming up the tunnel. He knew. The voice told him. It told him very clearly. The Nichexra were coming. Many of them. More than Netmender would care to want to see. They were coming, and it was time.
“Now. Do it now” someone said out loud. He wasn’t sure if it was the voice or if it was himself. But that didn’t matter. He could see the Nichexra eyes glowing like cold little gems as they rushed out of the darkness his headlamp didn’t reach.
“NOW!”