could come up with the word Bump. An anonymous creature from out of Earth's
past invented it. The word is simple, blunt, and precise. A Bump begins like a
sliver of ice molecules flaking off under a snowshelf. A minor occurance with
macro consequences. Once started, a tiny gram of matter unleashed tortured tons
of rumbling, freefalling ice and snow into a murderous gravity well of
destruction. That is a bump.
All the planning and plotting was over; it was now up to the Kril to capture the planet. Taken, in any universe, any continent, any country, any town, any hill, or in any dirt: by low caste beings, snarling, and vicious, beyond caring or hope. In this time, this continuum, the Kril carrying their weapons would be the chosen many dying for the elite few. In such ways are wars fought in any universe.
Zabin Kril training: honing skills, boring and rugged, physically agonizing work, the Kril troops spent bots sweating, itching, scratching, and cursing the Kril formula of war-making. Simple doctrine; rigid, unyielding, and lethal training readying them for the inevitable...
Pressing against him, the other Zabin Kril, not all human, milled in a clot. The clump of bodies were gently moving CheChun into his metal Toob towards his assigned web made of AK silk. Silk manufactured to be as strong as a diamond, elastic as rubber. The humans called it a web, translucent and textured like a spider's trap, it held the Kril in a standing position for the 'bump'.
A hand grabbed his web belt tugging it downwards, testing its tightness. In the sweating darkness TsoyKab's mocking voice, his singsong Mongol language buzzing beneath the translation in CheChun's mind from his stel, "Be aware. Do not fear. Death stills the fear, for TOTL, Termination of Time Line, is painless, little bird."
He was silent, unable to speak through his dry, caked throat. He wished KrutChan would stop watching him and he struggled to still his involuntary shaking. He rolled his lips together tightly, tasting the salt from his upper lip, pulling his pack tighter, as if the pain of the straps would give him another thing to think about.
The thousands of kilometers they would drop, secured only by the silk Ak thread attached to the top of their Toob, stronger than steel, an umbilical cord ready to snap them to a controlled survivable crash. At least his position was in the middle of the Toob, not the outer fringes of the death webs. Feeling exactly like the proverbial fly; he waited in silence for IT to happen.
All the hype of their briefings ran through his jumbled thoughts. "Confederation's finest troops: Zabin Kril. The leaders of the liberation. The first one's to step onto Planet Kan Balaam"
Boy, were they lucky.
CheChun's body pulsed as if he were tightening, loosening, then flexing his muscles in isometric exercise. He knew the pulsating was an effect from the Burseeosil mass field oscillators firing silently at planet targets from their strategic platform quadrant.
Far above Planet Kan Balaam.
Innocent sounding name. Innocent, bored expressions on the faces surrounding him. On the humans, anyway. Hard for him to tell on the others. Dagots: eelskinned salamander-like amphibians with their electric lights and sonar sounds, Zar: grunting reptile-like beings, and Cunack: fishlike with beetle hardened backs were almost impossible to read because of his inexperience. Once he gained many more Bumps he would be more subtle interpreting his brother Krils. Easy going attitudes from the packed beings contrasted with the hard angles on their faces. The tense, palpable, desperation strained them, putting age where youth tried to linger. KrutChan once had told him his eighteen year old body would incubate a forty year old mind after his first taste of combat. The Bump. A start.
Silently moving around him, their bodies were hollows and humps, equipment squeaking, grunts, murmuring, all of them withdrawn into themselves. Odors pervasive, ozone-like, sweat, sickening sweet perfume (one of the Zars probably farted), strange, yet familiar: hair oil?
CheChun pushed his gray pewter colored stel away with his fingers reaching inside his utilities, into his pocket for a hard sour ball. In the past, he used the candy to kill his thirst when he was hiking. Exercise was not in his mind at the moment. His priority was survival. Pushing the cold stel under his tee shirt made his nipples hard.
His trembling voice mocked KrutChan. "I think I lost my ticket for this Bump." He added with a sneer. "What are you sweating for? Nervous?"
KrutChan's flat, hard stare fixed him. "Just about my virginity, hero. Too many tough guys around."
Nervous laughter, muffled and sneering around him, unforgiving and sad. "Yeah, me too." He said lamely. Battle. He had to tighten up and grit his teeth. Every word he spoke came from the hollow of a drum, squeaking like an adolescent. He wanted to snarl like John Wayne did in that old movie. 'Sands of Iwo Jima', when a new guy asked Wayne. 'Are ya scared, sarge?' And Wayne glanced at the kid in pity and said with tired effort. 'Son, I'm always scared.'
CheChun wanted to be that old veteran; be like KrutChan and TsoyKab. They were different eras, but the same. He wanted to spit, but couldn't work any into his mouth, even with the sourball.
Reaching up to attach his guy line inside his web, he punched a face.
A coarse paw shoved him in exasperation. A moment passed before his stel translated the curse hissed at him by a Zar. "You fuckin' idiot!" Instantly, his exobiological semantics came into his mind, aided by his stel. It coached him now with Zaranian epithets he could yell back at the reptile. One came to mind he remembered from boot camp: air-breathing-thin-hide-two-walker. It was as crude as what he had been called, a real curse in the Zar dialect; befitting a Zabin Kril retort to a challenge. But, he kept his mouth shut. After all, it was my fault.
Trying to keep his fear and hyperactive emotions from scrambling his brains he attempted to hum, then whistle a tune he had running through his mind. About being brave and not caring, and living for the moment. He yawned, feeling it showed his disdain for this moment.
Slowly his gaze sorted out the details in the Toob as reality started to sink into his mind. All the different dialects and the colors of the different uniforms mottled and drained together into the shining webs. No matter what each Kril wore, be it different from CheChun's, the common thread was unmistakable. The purpose was lethal, no parade grounds, or pretty females, or glory in this Toob. That truth shouted at him. Knowing that fact created the pain over his heart and twisted off the bile rising from his stomach. Tragically, his mind shouted. 'God, please don't let me be sick.' Then he was ... spewing vomit like a geyser. And trying to apologize between powerful thrusts of his stomach, trying to maintain his dignity and failing. He felt weak, fighting to control his bowels.
The Zars, Dagots, and Cunacks ignored his distress not interpreting what was happening. Only the human Kril aboard and the Arnamals close to him reacted in disgusted empathy. Sweet odor filled the compartment again; signifying a Zar reaction to the bump similar to CheChun's nausea. It helped him somewhat to know they were scared shitless too.
Then came the screeching of painful hydraulic movement and straining fields of magnetic resonance pushing against other Toobs in the system as the bump moved with persistance towards initiation.
The abrupt gravity well of the planet ingested them in a sickening freefall. The Dagots screeched. CheChun puked again.
They Bumped.
No windows or semblance of any to anticipate their mortality as the outside bulkheads hummed and glowed a warm orange denoting the friction build up outside the shell of their vehicle. Abruptly the walls became translucent and the entire Bump force around them became visible. Through the strands of spider matrix the attacking force fell as the shooting stars they were in fact; he could see at the bottom and top of the bulwarks the seams of their conveyance and forced his mind to realize the sides were not really gone. The Ovals merely let them see what was happening. Fear of the present known would theoretically keep them calmer than not seeing anything at all. Until he saw the Toobs around them randomly exploding, disintegrating, and ripping apart in the maelstrom of gravity, friction, and force fields from the planet.
Clenching his teeth, fighting nausea, CheChun bounced against the restraining AK silk of the Toob. He watched the panic of the Kril Dagots, humans, Zar, and Cunack who were along the periphery of the craft. They were experiencing the illusion they were moments from falling out of the invasion ship. An unobstructed view of the mass carnage of the bump and on the planet did not help those beings to adjust to the feeling it generated.
Retaliation fire from the Planet Balaam mass drivers electrically firing pellets of high velocity enclosing unnocpor particles that obliterated any opposing matter it contacted with silent massive annihilation. That included sentient beings; they would never know at the instant of death what had hit them. The demonic Unnocpor particles releasing just before impact have the most massive and destructive effect. The only defense is to fly directly into them to minimize the scattering of the particles, like running in the rain.
The raw sewage smells assaulting their sensory organs sweet, sickening, and pungent sweat smells from creatures' alien to each other, yet similar. Krils unused to flying in closed battle vehicles were in unmitigated fascinated horror. Roman soldier's and 13th to 18th century peasants tried to adjust to acclimatize to the present situation. Many of them in the Toobs understanding death, but not this way, not falling out of the sky.
As if by sinister magic, a hole ripped in the bulkhead of the Toob revealing bright sky to his left. Instantaneous sounds of screeching torn metal assaulted his ears, expelling air sucking at his clothing and pulling his breath from his lungs. His teeth felt loose in his mouth and his lips leaning towards the breech. A hell of a centrifugal effect, he yelled in his mind. His entire body strained against the AK webbing, its vicious constraints rubbing him raw trying to tear him into shreds and force him through the threads and out the hole to a freefalling death.
[The TOOB loses aerodynamics, spins into the water skipping like a stone, flies off hits trees, and slams into the scabby gravel. They pull the ones out that can't leave. Rest are dead; only one is pinned in the wreckage. So much for a good landing. Horrible smell! "What is that smell? The dude decaying already? No, hes going to be ok. Jesus Christ, that's ok? What the fuck does he smell like dead?]
All the planning and plotting was over; it was now up to the Kril to capture the planet. Taken, in any universe, any continent, any country, any town, any hill, or in any dirt: by low caste beings, snarling, and vicious, beyond caring or hope. In this time, this continuum, the Kril carrying their weapons would be the chosen many dying for the elite few. In such ways are wars fought in any universe.
Zabin Kril training: honing skills, boring and rugged, physically agonizing work, the Kril troops spent bots sweating, itching, scratching, and cursing the Kril formula of war-making. Simple doctrine; rigid, unyielding, and lethal training readying them for the inevitable...
Pressing against him, the other Zabin Kril, not all human, milled in a clot. The clump of bodies were gently moving CheChun into his metal Toob towards his assigned web made of AK silk. Silk manufactured to be as strong as a diamond, elastic as rubber. The humans called it a web, translucent and textured like a spider's trap, it held the Kril in a standing position for the 'bump'.
A hand grabbed his web belt tugging it downwards, testing its tightness. In the sweating darkness TsoyKab's mocking voice, his singsong Mongol language buzzing beneath the translation in CheChun's mind from his stel, "Be aware. Do not fear. Death stills the fear, for TOTL, Termination of Time Line, is painless, little bird."
He was silent, unable to speak through his dry, caked throat. He wished KrutChan would stop watching him and he struggled to still his involuntary shaking. He rolled his lips together tightly, tasting the salt from his upper lip, pulling his pack tighter, as if the pain of the straps would give him another thing to think about.
The thousands of kilometers they would drop, secured only by the silk Ak thread attached to the top of their Toob, stronger than steel, an umbilical cord ready to snap them to a controlled survivable crash. At least his position was in the middle of the Toob, not the outer fringes of the death webs. Feeling exactly like the proverbial fly; he waited in silence for IT to happen.
All the hype of their briefings ran through his jumbled thoughts. "Confederation's finest troops: Zabin Kril. The leaders of the liberation. The first one's to step onto Planet Kan Balaam"
Boy, were they lucky.
CheChun's body pulsed as if he were tightening, loosening, then flexing his muscles in isometric exercise. He knew the pulsating was an effect from the Burseeosil mass field oscillators firing silently at planet targets from their strategic platform quadrant.
Far above Planet Kan Balaam.
Innocent sounding name. Innocent, bored expressions on the faces surrounding him. On the humans, anyway. Hard for him to tell on the others. Dagots: eelskinned salamander-like amphibians with their electric lights and sonar sounds, Zar: grunting reptile-like beings, and Cunack: fishlike with beetle hardened backs were almost impossible to read because of his inexperience. Once he gained many more Bumps he would be more subtle interpreting his brother Krils. Easy going attitudes from the packed beings contrasted with the hard angles on their faces. The tense, palpable, desperation strained them, putting age where youth tried to linger. KrutChan once had told him his eighteen year old body would incubate a forty year old mind after his first taste of combat. The Bump. A start.
Silently moving around him, their bodies were hollows and humps, equipment squeaking, grunts, murmuring, all of them withdrawn into themselves. Odors pervasive, ozone-like, sweat, sickening sweet perfume (one of the Zars probably farted), strange, yet familiar: hair oil?
CheChun pushed his gray pewter colored stel away with his fingers reaching inside his utilities, into his pocket for a hard sour ball. In the past, he used the candy to kill his thirst when he was hiking. Exercise was not in his mind at the moment. His priority was survival. Pushing the cold stel under his tee shirt made his nipples hard.
His trembling voice mocked KrutChan. "I think I lost my ticket for this Bump." He added with a sneer. "What are you sweating for? Nervous?"
KrutChan's flat, hard stare fixed him. "Just about my virginity, hero. Too many tough guys around."
Nervous laughter, muffled and sneering around him, unforgiving and sad. "Yeah, me too." He said lamely. Battle. He had to tighten up and grit his teeth. Every word he spoke came from the hollow of a drum, squeaking like an adolescent. He wanted to snarl like John Wayne did in that old movie. 'Sands of Iwo Jima', when a new guy asked Wayne. 'Are ya scared, sarge?' And Wayne glanced at the kid in pity and said with tired effort. 'Son, I'm always scared.'
CheChun wanted to be that old veteran; be like KrutChan and TsoyKab. They were different eras, but the same. He wanted to spit, but couldn't work any into his mouth, even with the sourball.
Reaching up to attach his guy line inside his web, he punched a face.
A coarse paw shoved him in exasperation. A moment passed before his stel translated the curse hissed at him by a Zar. "You fuckin' idiot!" Instantly, his exobiological semantics came into his mind, aided by his stel. It coached him now with Zaranian epithets he could yell back at the reptile. One came to mind he remembered from boot camp: air-breathing-thin-hide-two-walker. It was as crude as what he had been called, a real curse in the Zar dialect; befitting a Zabin Kril retort to a challenge. But, he kept his mouth shut. After all, it was my fault.
Trying to keep his fear and hyperactive emotions from scrambling his brains he attempted to hum, then whistle a tune he had running through his mind. About being brave and not caring, and living for the moment. He yawned, feeling it showed his disdain for this moment.
Slowly his gaze sorted out the details in the Toob as reality started to sink into his mind. All the different dialects and the colors of the different uniforms mottled and drained together into the shining webs. No matter what each Kril wore, be it different from CheChun's, the common thread was unmistakable. The purpose was lethal, no parade grounds, or pretty females, or glory in this Toob. That truth shouted at him. Knowing that fact created the pain over his heart and twisted off the bile rising from his stomach. Tragically, his mind shouted. 'God, please don't let me be sick.' Then he was ... spewing vomit like a geyser. And trying to apologize between powerful thrusts of his stomach, trying to maintain his dignity and failing. He felt weak, fighting to control his bowels.
The Zars, Dagots, and Cunacks ignored his distress not interpreting what was happening. Only the human Kril aboard and the Arnamals close to him reacted in disgusted empathy. Sweet odor filled the compartment again; signifying a Zar reaction to the bump similar to CheChun's nausea. It helped him somewhat to know they were scared shitless too.
Then came the screeching of painful hydraulic movement and straining fields of magnetic resonance pushing against other Toobs in the system as the bump moved with persistance towards initiation.
The abrupt gravity well of the planet ingested them in a sickening freefall. The Dagots screeched. CheChun puked again.
They Bumped.
No windows or semblance of any to anticipate their mortality as the outside bulkheads hummed and glowed a warm orange denoting the friction build up outside the shell of their vehicle. Abruptly the walls became translucent and the entire Bump force around them became visible. Through the strands of spider matrix the attacking force fell as the shooting stars they were in fact; he could see at the bottom and top of the bulwarks the seams of their conveyance and forced his mind to realize the sides were not really gone. The Ovals merely let them see what was happening. Fear of the present known would theoretically keep them calmer than not seeing anything at all. Until he saw the Toobs around them randomly exploding, disintegrating, and ripping apart in the maelstrom of gravity, friction, and force fields from the planet.
Clenching his teeth, fighting nausea, CheChun bounced against the restraining AK silk of the Toob. He watched the panic of the Kril Dagots, humans, Zar, and Cunack who were along the periphery of the craft. They were experiencing the illusion they were moments from falling out of the invasion ship. An unobstructed view of the mass carnage of the bump and on the planet did not help those beings to adjust to the feeling it generated.
Retaliation fire from the Planet Balaam mass drivers electrically firing pellets of high velocity enclosing unnocpor particles that obliterated any opposing matter it contacted with silent massive annihilation. That included sentient beings; they would never know at the instant of death what had hit them. The demonic Unnocpor particles releasing just before impact have the most massive and destructive effect. The only defense is to fly directly into them to minimize the scattering of the particles, like running in the rain.
The raw sewage smells assaulting their sensory organs sweet, sickening, and pungent sweat smells from creatures' alien to each other, yet similar. Krils unused to flying in closed battle vehicles were in unmitigated fascinated horror. Roman soldier's and 13th to 18th century peasants tried to adjust to acclimatize to the present situation. Many of them in the Toobs understanding death, but not this way, not falling out of the sky.
As if by sinister magic, a hole ripped in the bulkhead of the Toob revealing bright sky to his left. Instantaneous sounds of screeching torn metal assaulted his ears, expelling air sucking at his clothing and pulling his breath from his lungs. His teeth felt loose in his mouth and his lips leaning towards the breech. A hell of a centrifugal effect, he yelled in his mind. His entire body strained against the AK webbing, its vicious constraints rubbing him raw trying to tear him into shreds and force him through the threads and out the hole to a freefalling death.
[The TOOB loses aerodynamics, spins into the water skipping like a stone, flies off hits trees, and slams into the scabby gravel. They pull the ones out that can't leave. Rest are dead; only one is pinned in the wreckage. So much for a good landing. Horrible smell! "What is that smell? The dude decaying already? No, hes going to be ok. Jesus Christ, that's ok? What the fuck does he smell like dead?]
No comments:
Post a Comment