First things first.
-Yes, I haven't posted anything in forever.
-Yes, that is sad and entirely my bad.
but
-No, that does not mean you can have your money back.
Okay now that that's out of the way I thought I'd jump straight back in with another story, which is for the most part a direct continuation of the one started in my last post (though I have changed the perspective of the narrative to third person as opposed to first).
Again like last time this segment is another excerpt which will be obvious once you read it and get frustrated by the abrupt ending (it is also rather shorter than the last post).
Don't worry though I have written more than I'm putting up now (several different continuations in fact - which is the problem) but at the moment I am having issues with tone and pacing, as (out of impatience) I keep on having characters making friends rather to quickly and for not good enough reasons - something which seems very out of place in what I want to be a reasonably dark narrative.
Once I figure this out more will be put up (though I do have some other ideas I want to test out as well) that will either directly connect to this excerpt or expand upon the universe in which it is set - which for the most part is fully formed in my head/in various notebooks.
Anywho, story:
Exile: excerpt II
The world comes back with a bang.
Everything bucks and heaves. Vibration pins Bryce to his seat. He opens his mouth, gasping nothing, trying to breathe. A dull weight presses down upon his chest and then an instant later another kicks him in the back. Everything is darkness and movement, he feels as if he is standing on his own chest. Somewhere someone whimpers. For an instant he wonders if it was him and then a wave of pressure crashes down upon his head, and abolishes any memory of conscious thought. Fingers of steel wrap themselves around this skull and begin to squeeze. His stomach heaves and a stray voice in his head begins to moan: Which way is up!? Which way is up!??
There is another bang and everything rolls to one side before becoming still. His ears pop and in an instant the pressure is gone; there is the feeling of weightless movement, he feels weightless. He takes an experimental breath and finding only the tension of a harness across his chest he gulps down as much air as possible. All around him he can hear others panting for breath as well. One coughs and finds a voice that shakes with a slowly receding panic, “Is it over?”. Below their feet an engine rumbles to life in answer, filling the darkness with a high-pitched whine. There is a noise of impact, or ignition and the weight the hits him again, forcing the blood to rush to his head and the harness to cut into his shoulders. More people seem to awake now and for a moment their panicked cries can be heard over the rumble of the breaking motor, then the rising roar engulfs their voices and there is only a wall of noise.
As suddenly as it started the engine quits and then instant later the shock of impact rattles through the seat and into his bones and then there is silence and stillness. He sighs in exhaustion, trying teach his muscles how to relax and unwind again. People mutter in the darkness, some sobbing, some praying, some angry. Eventually lights flicker on, as if in afterthought, and for the first time in what seems like forever he can see other people's faces.
There seem to be about twenty people arranged in two inwardly facing rows, in seats bolted to the walls, each one separated by heavy metal braces that reach up to the low ceiling. Everyone is a mess, their faces red and stained with sweat or tears or both. Some are still unconscious, or have fainted in the drop. Others grip harness, or the hands off others found darkness. All blink at the new light and at each other. All look rather ordinary and tired.
From across the row a man grins at him, “not so bad eh? I thought they we’re going to strap us down and force us to watch one of those rehabilitation videos.” There is something about the way he talks, something naggingly familiar that Bryce can’t quite put his finger on. The man’s voice takes on a tone of mock seriousness and he casually rubs at the shadow of stubble on his cheeks, “You have a responsibility to society young man. To do right by your home colony and by Earth and you have done wrong!”. The man begins to chuckle, and Bryce can’t help but join him. Then all at once something clicks in his head and he feels homesick and terrified at the same time. A dozen questions fill his mind but he pushes them away and manages a smile. It had been a long time since he last ran into someone from home.
The reverie is quickly broken by the sound of metal on metal. Something heavy moves above them and there is a jolt of vibration as it falls into place. A crack of blinding white light appears near the ceiling off to his right and Bryce struggles to cover his eyes while the people around him groan, groans which quickly turn to swearing and cries of surprise as an icy wind claws its way into the compartment and cuts through the thin cotton of their clothes, uniform except for the individual barcodes stamped onto the front.
By the time he can stand the light the hatch has fully extended to ground outside and everybody on board has begun to shiver uncontrollably. Outside the sky is hidden behind a curtain of cold and swirling white and the ground is all stones and snow. “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.” One of the others, the tall slender man has managed to pull himself free from his harness and is standing near the ramp. “They’ve gone and dropped us in a fucking blizzard.” He then reals off a number of insults seemingly aimed at anyone and everyone he think of before collapsing back into his seat, his arms wrapped around his chest and his breath a small cloud of white.
For a moment everyone else just looks at him, as if expecting him to do something else, but instead he just sits there shivering and glaring at his snow drenched slippers.
The man with the familar accent chuckles and mutters something about the whole thing being ‘anti-climatic’ before an older woman manages to push herself to the front of the group that has huddled together at the far end of the lander. She moves towards the man with wet shoes, “You’d better get those off, if you don’t want to loose half your toes.” The man continues to look blankly at the ground. “Why does it matter? We’ll all freeze to death soon enough.” The woman exhales impatienly and runs a hand through her graying hair to brush away the flecks of snow that have settled there. “No you idiot. We are not going to die. What would be the point of that?” The man looks at her in confusion, “Huh? The point of what?” She looks round at everybody else, everybody else looks at her. “Of putting us here. Of going to all the effort of dragging us from all the corners of the colonies, sticking us in cryo, and then going to the effort of dumping us on this chunk of ice.” She shrugs. “I mean if they wanted us dead they would have done it long time ago and they wouldn’t have had any reason to bring us all here together to do it.” The man looks up at her, “well I guess that does make sense” she lowers her voice a bit, “well of course it does and if you had spent less time moping and more time looking around then you would have realised that we’re not the only cargo that hunk of junk was packing.” To emphasise her point she balled her hand into a fist and gave the metal panel above the nearest seat a light thump. It popped open with a hiss. “See: Earth, the Colonies, they don’t want us dead. Just out of the way.”
