So I’ve had a job for a while now. Retail. Hey, it’s full time with benefits.
I try not to complain too much.
But I still want to create…to design…to do SOMETHING…
But lately, it seems all my energy is devoted to the job.
Alright…I’ve scored an interview tomorrow. Here goes nothing.
Beyond that…um….I’m bored.
I’m sitting here, typing out a blog as opposed to finishing the website. Of course, I finished the damn thing three days ago. Now I’m just tweaking it. I’m almost done with my coursework, and I’ll be graduating in December. I’m sending out preliminary emails for the whole job search thing…but have yet to get a hit.
I wonder if it’ll be like last time…
There was blood on his hands again.
Dark, rich, almost black…the kind of blood that usually meant mortal wounds.
But he was not wounded.
In fact, he’d never felt more alive.
The fighting knife in his hand was coated in crimson, bits of gore and viscera stuck in the serrated side of the standard issue field dagger. His heart was pounding, his head was alive with energy, his muscles tingled with adrenaline. The bruises and scratches on his body were a long way away.
There wasn’t any pain where he was.
“On your feet, soldier!” bellowed a massive, growling voice behind him. “Move!”
He complied, more out of an automatic indoctrination to following orders than to any sort of want or need. In fact, he didn’t want or need anything more at this point. If he’d been shot, struck down dead at that very moment by whatever there might be in the universe to do such things, his life might have just been complete.
“Move! Double quick!” came the voice again.
His hands reached out instinctively to pick up the rifle he’d dropped nearby. It lay across the body of the soldier -the man! That’s a human being!- he’d just killed. He slid his knife back into the scabbard on his tactical rig. The rifle took its place in his hands, the synthetic polymer grip in his right hand, finger on the trigger guard, his left hand gripping the synthetic stock tightly.
-You just killed someone!- A nagging voice in the back of his mind. But he did what he was trained to do.
“Move, soldier! You have six minutes to make it to Point Bravo!”
Point Bravo…the roof of a parking structure some few dozen yards away through this cityscape. He was almost there…So close, but so far.
“Three o’clock! Inbound! Move! MOVE!” said the voice in his ear, urgently. He turned to his right, to see three men bounding towards him in a groundjeep. All three were heavily armed. The passenger was raising his rifle to open fire.
The young soldier dove forward, to land behind a k-rail just as the high powered rifle rounds riddled the air and concrete around where he’d been standing not a second before.
The jeep burned past, the driver cursing as he tried to whip the vehicle around to bear down on the soldier, who was scrambling along the k-rail wall towards the parking garage nearby. Towards Point Bravo.
Towards salvation.
The assaulting trio screeched to a stop, the jeep barely halted before the two passengers were out of the vehicle.
The young soldier had finally made it to the entrance of the parking garage. Surrounded by concrete and decent cover, he turned, catching sight of the encroaching soldiers.
His body reacted on instinct, even as one of them paused to bring up his rifle to bear. The soldier’s rifle butt found its way into his shoulder and his eye found its way to the sights. His finger wormed its way into the trigger guard and squeezed.
The rifle jumped in his hands, barking flames and copper-jacketed lead. The impact of the rifle against his shoulder drew the weapon’s sights off to the right. Instinctively, he corrected, keeping his burst on target.
The first of the four round burst caught the pausing enemy soldier in his upper right shoulder, kicking his upper body back, causing his rifle to fall away. The second and third punched holes in the man’s chest armor, pushing his body further over backwards. The fourth went wide, barely grazing the uniform the man wore. He collapsed backwards onto the ground, his body suddenly limp and inert.
-You just killed a human being!- As time returned to the young man, his training rolled him backwards along the wall, away from the other two soldiers. The other had already begun opening fire, while his friend, the driver who’d been the last one out of the vehicle, was duck-running to catch up. They both waited, one holding down cover fire while they approached closer to the entrance to the parking garage.
The young soldier didn’t risk looking out again…he crept sideways, darting for the concrete support columns. -You’ve killed two people! Are you insane?!- The two soldiers both stuck their weapons around the corner, spraying the open area of the parking garage entrance with dozens of superheated rounds. Bits of metal and concrete chips flew all over, creating a small, wispy dust storm inside.
The hunted man was already moving again, heading column to column towards the ramp.
Towards Point Bravo.
The ramp lacked any sort of real cover. The young soldier was forced to pause, as his position was made and lit up by the two soldiers hunting him down. He cringed behind the column, looking at the ramp no more than a dozen steps away. -They’re going to kill you! Do something!- Freedom was there…just out of reach. He heard voices somewhere near the entrance, angry voices, making promises of murder and despair on the young man.
He closed his eyes, focusing. His training took over and he tugged the frag grenade from his tac-rig, slipping his thumb into the pin ring. -That’s going to…you’re going to do it again!- The voices came closer, the shooting became less and less. More to keep him pinned than actually kill him.
It was working.
The voices came closer still. The young man took a deep breath, hugged his rifle closer to him and tugged the pin free of the grenade. He focused, mentally imagining the next scene even as he caused it. He tossed the grenade behind him, around the column at the same moment he jumped up and darted forward. When the two soldiers spotted his movement, both of them raised their rifles to open fire. The one closer to him heard the metallic clunk and rattle of something at his feet and had just enough time to utter a curse. The explosion ripped the enemy soldier apart, the blast flinging his body back to slam into his partner, who was a few paces back and to the side, changing his clip. The blast shot miniscule shards of steel tearing through the air, along with a blast shock wave that rattled and rang the hunted man’s ears as he scrambled up the last few feet of the ramp to the next level. As the dust and smoke cleared, the young soldier risked taking a peek down the ramp. Nothing, not a sound, save the shrapnel and other bits hitting the ground finally.
The young man turned once more, inhaling deeply, his ears still pounding. He moved at a half-creep, half-jog towards the next ramp upwards, which was a few yards away.
“Good, soldier.” said the voice in his ear. “Keep moving.”
He made it to the ramp, his heart racing, and his muscles taut and sore, his ears still not equalized completely. His eyes squinted in the evening sun as he made his way up to the roof of the structure.
“Command…” said the soldier, speaking into the voice-activated comm unit over his ear. “This is Lost Boy, requesting extraction, over?”
“Lost Boy, this is Last Angel, we read you at Point Bravo, confirm?” came a different voice over the comm unit.
“Confirmed. Am at Point Bravo, awaiting extraction.”
“Roger that, Lost boy.” came the voice. “ETA, thirty seconds.”
“Roger.” said the young man, gripping his rifle a bit tighter as he came up fully onto the roof and made his way to the largest open area.
He looked around a bit and sighed, inhaling deeply. He’d made it. He’d made it out. He could hear the transport in the distance. The cadet pulled his helmet off, clipping it to his tac-rig and leaned up against a nearby groundcar. He leaned his rifle up against the car, to wait.
The moment the rifle touched the body panel of the car, the last of them appeared. The last survivor of the trio bore down on him, torn up, bloody, eyes fierce, his arm raised high, his own dagger slashing forward towards the cadet’s ribs. The young soldier moved, more on training and instinct than anything else, using his forearm to block the slashing blade. The soldier twisted away, roaring, slamming his other fist into the younger man’s throat. The young soldier, still surprised, turned away and coughed, spinning away from the enemy soldier. As he finished his spin, the older man growled again, bearing down on the young man with hate and anger in his eyes. The desperate man raised his arms, catching the descending blade in a cross-armed block, twisted, bringing the arm down and to the side, then stepped in and booted the enemy soldier in the gut. He groaned, bending over, coughing. Then, suddenly, the enemy soldier’s head and torso shot upwards, the enemy soldier driving his skull into the young man’s jaw. The young soldier fell back, scrabbling against the body panel of the car to avoid falling. The enemy soldier descended on him, bringing his knife up under the young man’s throat even before he’d finished falling.
“You killed my boys!” he cried out, tears filling his eyes, but not obscuring the hate, anger and sheer determination. There was no question in the young soldier’s mind…this man intended to kill him.
The knife dug in, the younger man’s hand fumbled around on his tactical rig. The young man felt the blade beginning to cut, the flesh begin to sever and the blood begin to flow. His blood.
His blood.
-Do something! You’re going to DIE! - That same little voice, screaming at him through this whole thing that he was a murderer was now desperately trying to motivate him to save himself. -Him or me…Him or me…Him or me…- The young man made a choice. Somehow, as time slowed and the young soldier knew he was dead, his fingers found the handgrip of his sidearm. As the blade began to dig deeper, finding important parts of the cadet’s anatomy, the gun moved up the enemy soldier’s side and dug itself into his ribs. There was no armor under his arm.
The trigger came back, the gun jumped…over and over. The lone soldier didn’t stop firing until the gun stopped jumping. By that time, the surprised enemy soldier was quite dead, several of the .45 caliber rounds having made lumps from inside the man’s armor, several others exiting the body at different upward angles. The body made a gurgling sound as it slid sideways, off the young soldier, the knife falling away uselessly.
The young man laid there, clutching at the flowing blood coming from his neck with his off hand as he watched something large and dark obscure the sky above him.
Before he blacked out, he caught sight of someone descending a dropped rope from the transport.
—————————————-
“Attention, Cadet.”
He woke up in the sim-pod, sweating, tired, hungry and sore…
And alive.
He blinked, senses not quite re-aligned. “Him or me.” he said to no one in particular.
The voice came again, ordering him to exit the pod.
He did so, fumbling for the exit controls for the hatch. The silver dome of the sim-pod popped open and moved out of the way. The cadet, now looking disheveled and beat-up, staggered out of the pod and tried to get into parade rest.
A man approached wearing a similar uniform to the cadet’s, but with much more in the way of rank insignia. Alongside him came someone with a datascreen, who was studying the results of the simulation.
They both paused in front of the cadet, assessing him. The higher ranked man looked him over carefully, even leaning in close to get a look in the young man’s eyes.
“So…” he finally said, regarding the tech standing next to him. “How’d he do?”
“Cadet Raven scored exceptionally well in the [I]Lost Boy[/I] Scenario, sir.” said the smaller man with the datascreen.
“Really?” said the colonel, regarding the cadet again. “Ranking?”
The tech touched a few commands…then blinked. “Erm…sir?”
“Spit it out, man…what’d he get? Top fifty? Top one hundred? Top ten?”
The tech shook his head. “No sir.” he said, clearing his throat. “Number one.”
The colonel looked at the tech, frowning, then took the datascreen from him. He studied it for a few minutes, then blinked, looking up at the cadet.
“Well, holy damn…” said the colonel after a few moments, handing back the datascreen. “Best all time score.”
“Yes sir. Considering only the top fifty have ever even finished the scenario alive.”
“I’m aware, Specialist.” said the colonel. “I took fifteenth…Well, I [I]was[/I] fifteenth.”
The cadet had, by this time, regained some of his composure. “Sir.”
“Good job, son.” said the colonel, patting him on the shoulder. “Damn fine job.” he said. “You sure you only want to be a pilot?”
“Flying’s what I’m best at, sir.” said the cadet. “It’s what I’ve trained for.”
“Seems almost like a waste, but…” said the colonel, shrugging a bit. “Congratulations, Private.” he continued, shaking Raven’s hand. “Welcome to the Takehara Corporate Military.”
Cadet Raven saluted crisply. “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”
“Pending your admission into the Flight Academy, that is.” said the colonel with a wink. “Then I’ll probably be saluting you before too long.”
“Yes, sir.” said Cadet Raven. “Sir, the cadet wishes to return to quarters and get cleaned up. Sir.”
The colonel pressed his thumb to the official results of the test and grinned.
“Dismissed, Private.”
The cadet saluted, then turned and walked away without another word
So I set this thing up a minute ago. I’m in the process of building up this site as I speak. And now it has a blog. Of course, I’ve had blogs before, I just never really gave a shit about them.
And no, I’m probably not going to read yours, either.
Why do I bother with my own? I don’t know. Because it was there, and I like pushing the buttons that make the website do things.
So…there you have it.