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The tiger wore a three-piece suit and lounged in a massive, gilded chair carved into the shape of a throne, seated at the head of a long oak table whose lacquered surface was crowded with sumptuous delicacies in silver dishes and golden candlesticks. Dancing light gleamed in his eyes and liquid shadows flowed over the contours of his feral features, the tiger’s stripes given strange life by fire. His mighty paws were steepled before him and his smile was twisted with an ugly and indescribable anticipation.
“Come now my dear,” he purred, cajoling. “Have a taste, hmm?” The titanic diamond glass window beyond framed him and the cold, distant stars of space.
The vixen at the table’s other end shivered, a chill crawling through her fur like a horde of insects. Tears blinded her. Through their blur the bowl of steaming soup before her swam into focus. Fighting the urge to retch the young vixen dipped the trembling silver spoon, gripped loosely in her shaking paw, toward the red liquid.
The spoon slipped from her grasp suddenly, clattered against the rim of the bowl. A splash of soup stained the embroidered satin placemat beneath it like a splatter of blood.
She couldn’t take it anymore. She had to say the words, even though she had been told not to hundreds of times by the whitecoats who had tortured her with their experiments and their brainwashing.
“Where are they?” she sobbed, baring her teeth, a spike of anger driving her to lock gazes with him despite her fear. “What have you done with my mother and father?”
The tiger’s smile became a frown. One paw went to his great chin and his sparkling yellow eyes narrowed. “I thought we were through with this nonsense, Sarah. I’m your father now. Your mother is dead. She killed herself, remember?”
Sarah stood so quickly and violently that the heavy oak chair toppled over backwards behind her, its weight slamming down with a bang as it struck the dark, polished marble of the floor. “Liar!” she screamed, spinning, starting to run. A faraway gilded door burst open and a wolf in a black suit and sunglasses slipped through, sprinting towards her. The guard caught her effortlessly with one arm, ignoring her struggles as she writhed in his grasp. He dragged her back to the table, bent to right her fallen chair with his free paw.
As he leaned over the weight of his holstered gun pushed open his jacket. The gun’s steely glint, its waffle grip catching the candlelight and her eyes, swayed towards her.
Her sharp mind made the split second decision that would change her life and that of so many others forever.
She drew the gun from the guard’s holster before he could react. Before she knew what she would do with it she had pulled its trigger. The wolf’s upper body vanished, blown to ash and blackened bone. The crimson bolt burned a neon afterimage onto her retinas as it pierced its target and struck the wall beyond, blasting a head sized crater into the station’s plating.
As she fell towards the floor in a rain of ash and misted blood, the marble rushing up to meet her, the tiger roared and leapt from his throne. He reached into his exquisite jacket and slapped a strange, blinking device the size of a walnut to his temple with one paw. The other pulled a gun twin to the one she now held from an inner pocket.
“Put it down Sarah,” he said shrilly, his pompous voice cracking with fear as he took aim.
Using the table for cover the young vixen rolled right, the tiger’s shot shattering the dark tiles where she had been a second before. Deadly chunks of jagged stone fountained and the table jumped and bucked in the shockwave, spilling steaming food to the floor and knocking over several candles. The tablecloth caught fire and began to smolder, the acrid scent of smoke filling the room as satin burned.
As she rose up she caught a glimpse of his face, his eyes wide and his fangs bared in disbelief. She pulled the trigger twice. The first blast detonated the tiger’s gun with a boom and a crash, the second vaporized what was left of his arm from shoulder to paw.
Liquid shrapnel from the tiger’s melted gun, boiling hot and so fine it stuck to the tiger’s suit and visage like glitter, spattered her tormentor. His roar of agony became a scream as he turned and ran for the side door in an attempt to escape, his tattered jacket flapping and smoking.
Coldly, as if someone else had possessed her, she anticipated his path and fired again. The shot blew him in half, lancing through his body and striking the grand window beyond. The diamond film crackled, a spider web of cracks forming.
The flames devouring the table cloth shimmered and danced restlessly, casting surreal, orange light over the carnage she had created.
Silence engulfed the feast hall. She checked the readout of her weapon. There were nineteen charges remaining.
Sarah padded toward the unlocked door the guard had come through, heart pounding. The blare of an alarm sounded a few seconds later.
My name is Sarah Chain not Sarah Vilo, you sadistic bastard, she thought as she glanced at the tiger’s crumpled corpse. I know my parents are alive and I’m going to find them.
***
The station wide alert disturbed several, interrupting their routine or lack of it.
Nathan Hurrica, who had just stabbed a certain jackal over twenty times, ripped his knife out of the corpse and wiped the blade on his victim’s jumpsuit. Abandoning the dead psychologist, on the verge of panic, he fled towards his quarters through pitch black corridors. He believed in those moments that he had finally been discovered, feared that his latest death dream was a prophecy he had just fulfilled himself. If he were caught he would be summarily executed, the last sliver of his sanity knew.
Lieutenant James Chain, leaning against a bulkhead after his horrendous encounter with an insane soldier, opened his eyes and looked towards his sergeant. She was just as confused as he was, in over a year of security service on Cold Station Six she had never heard the general alarm sound. James wondered if the dead bear had been right, had predicted the early arrival of the Uminh somehow. The rest of his patrol, on edge, fanned out and scanned every shadow even as they awaited his orders.
A cheetah known simply as Jack, startled, dropped his wine glass. It shattered and cold chardonnay soaked his shoes and seeped through them. His first thought was that this was a waste of good booze, his second was that he had better get more in case it was the last thing he could do. His fantasy of commanding a battle cruiser, likewise shattered when the alarm went off, reassembled with the ease the glass could not. He didn’t notice the phantom Uminh lurking in the shadows by his bed, watching his every move.
In the darkest depths of the station a team of scientists were quite busy. The alarm came as no surprise to them, their experiment had begun. On a gurney a previously comatose body gasped and thrashed, a mighty tiger coming to life. As the clone sat up, eyes wide and mouth agape, scanners activated automatically and mapped his brain. A nearly invisible laser beamed a life’s worth of memories into the duplicate tiger. Those memories were drawn from a walnut sized device attached to a cadaver a mile above, the body blown in half by the gun of a desperate young vixen searching for her parents.
As what passed for normalcy returned, the emergency alert overridden by the special police, those with cause to wonder why the alarm had sounded continued to wonder. Time passed, so too the events that had been set in motion.
***
Notes:
Just finished Hammer's Slammers Volume Three. Guess it shows...
“Come now my dear,” he purred, cajoling. “Have a taste, hmm?” The titanic diamond glass window beyond framed him and the cold, distant stars of space.
The vixen at the table’s other end shivered, a chill crawling through her fur like a horde of insects. Tears blinded her. Through their blur the bowl of steaming soup before her swam into focus. Fighting the urge to retch the young vixen dipped the trembling silver spoon, gripped loosely in her shaking paw, toward the red liquid.
The spoon slipped from her grasp suddenly, clattered against the rim of the bowl. A splash of soup stained the embroidered satin placemat beneath it like a splatter of blood.
She couldn’t take it anymore. She had to say the words, even though she had been told not to hundreds of times by the whitecoats who had tortured her with their experiments and their brainwashing.
“Where are they?” she sobbed, baring her teeth, a spike of anger driving her to lock gazes with him despite her fear. “What have you done with my mother and father?”
The tiger’s smile became a frown. One paw went to his great chin and his sparkling yellow eyes narrowed. “I thought we were through with this nonsense, Sarah. I’m your father now. Your mother is dead. She killed herself, remember?”
Sarah stood so quickly and violently that the heavy oak chair toppled over backwards behind her, its weight slamming down with a bang as it struck the dark, polished marble of the floor. “Liar!” she screamed, spinning, starting to run. A faraway gilded door burst open and a wolf in a black suit and sunglasses slipped through, sprinting towards her. The guard caught her effortlessly with one arm, ignoring her struggles as she writhed in his grasp. He dragged her back to the table, bent to right her fallen chair with his free paw.
As he leaned over the weight of his holstered gun pushed open his jacket. The gun’s steely glint, its waffle grip catching the candlelight and her eyes, swayed towards her.
Her sharp mind made the split second decision that would change her life and that of so many others forever.
She drew the gun from the guard’s holster before he could react. Before she knew what she would do with it she had pulled its trigger. The wolf’s upper body vanished, blown to ash and blackened bone. The crimson bolt burned a neon afterimage onto her retinas as it pierced its target and struck the wall beyond, blasting a head sized crater into the station’s plating.
As she fell towards the floor in a rain of ash and misted blood, the marble rushing up to meet her, the tiger roared and leapt from his throne. He reached into his exquisite jacket and slapped a strange, blinking device the size of a walnut to his temple with one paw. The other pulled a gun twin to the one she now held from an inner pocket.
“Put it down Sarah,” he said shrilly, his pompous voice cracking with fear as he took aim.
Using the table for cover the young vixen rolled right, the tiger’s shot shattering the dark tiles where she had been a second before. Deadly chunks of jagged stone fountained and the table jumped and bucked in the shockwave, spilling steaming food to the floor and knocking over several candles. The tablecloth caught fire and began to smolder, the acrid scent of smoke filling the room as satin burned.
As she rose up she caught a glimpse of his face, his eyes wide and his fangs bared in disbelief. She pulled the trigger twice. The first blast detonated the tiger’s gun with a boom and a crash, the second vaporized what was left of his arm from shoulder to paw.
Liquid shrapnel from the tiger’s melted gun, boiling hot and so fine it stuck to the tiger’s suit and visage like glitter, spattered her tormentor. His roar of agony became a scream as he turned and ran for the side door in an attempt to escape, his tattered jacket flapping and smoking.
Coldly, as if someone else had possessed her, she anticipated his path and fired again. The shot blew him in half, lancing through his body and striking the grand window beyond. The diamond film crackled, a spider web of cracks forming.
The flames devouring the table cloth shimmered and danced restlessly, casting surreal, orange light over the carnage she had created.
Silence engulfed the feast hall. She checked the readout of her weapon. There were nineteen charges remaining.
Sarah padded toward the unlocked door the guard had come through, heart pounding. The blare of an alarm sounded a few seconds later.
My name is Sarah Chain not Sarah Vilo, you sadistic bastard, she thought as she glanced at the tiger’s crumpled corpse. I know my parents are alive and I’m going to find them.
***
The station wide alert disturbed several, interrupting their routine or lack of it.
Nathan Hurrica, who had just stabbed a certain jackal over twenty times, ripped his knife out of the corpse and wiped the blade on his victim’s jumpsuit. Abandoning the dead psychologist, on the verge of panic, he fled towards his quarters through pitch black corridors. He believed in those moments that he had finally been discovered, feared that his latest death dream was a prophecy he had just fulfilled himself. If he were caught he would be summarily executed, the last sliver of his sanity knew.
Lieutenant James Chain, leaning against a bulkhead after his horrendous encounter with an insane soldier, opened his eyes and looked towards his sergeant. She was just as confused as he was, in over a year of security service on Cold Station Six she had never heard the general alarm sound. James wondered if the dead bear had been right, had predicted the early arrival of the Uminh somehow. The rest of his patrol, on edge, fanned out and scanned every shadow even as they awaited his orders.
A cheetah known simply as Jack, startled, dropped his wine glass. It shattered and cold chardonnay soaked his shoes and seeped through them. His first thought was that this was a waste of good booze, his second was that he had better get more in case it was the last thing he could do. His fantasy of commanding a battle cruiser, likewise shattered when the alarm went off, reassembled with the ease the glass could not. He didn’t notice the phantom Uminh lurking in the shadows by his bed, watching his every move.
In the darkest depths of the station a team of scientists were quite busy. The alarm came as no surprise to them, their experiment had begun. On a gurney a previously comatose body gasped and thrashed, a mighty tiger coming to life. As the clone sat up, eyes wide and mouth agape, scanners activated automatically and mapped his brain. A nearly invisible laser beamed a life’s worth of memories into the duplicate tiger. Those memories were drawn from a walnut sized device attached to a cadaver a mile above, the body blown in half by the gun of a desperate young vixen searching for her parents.
As what passed for normalcy returned, the emergency alert overridden by the special police, those with cause to wonder why the alarm had sounded continued to wonder. Time passed, so too the events that had been set in motion.
***
Notes:
Just finished Hammer's Slammers Volume Three. Guess it shows...
Category Story / All
Species Unspecified / Any
Size 120 x 77px
File Size 19 kB
As I hinted previously James' family is actually alive and at the center of a conspiracy, heh. Glad I managed to surprise you. It's all going to assemble shortly, or so I hope.
Ah, the tigers. Shere Khan, for one, was purely logical for the role of a villain and the undisputed king of the jungle. The story and movie fascinated me when I was young, I guess it slipped through in this snippet I wrote. Too much Talespin as well, perhaps?
I think the ultimate villain of this story is actually going to be Jack but I'm winging it at this point...although I like my villains to be grey so this is almost gauranteed. Anyone can understand his predicament, it is the story of 99% of Earth's population today.
Currently reading through your novel entitled "The Hunters". A few thoughts after twenty or so pages:
*I was reading it until I was interrupted by circumstances which...well, my life is kind of turbulent sometimes. The bottom line though is that I'm impressed and if I hadn't been disturbed would probably have made it halfway through. The labtop I have in a dark corner I take refuge in isn't capable of opening it for some reason, so I'm waiting for my tormentor to do a fade so I can access my main computer and return to it.
*You've managed to create an immersive atmosphere and maintain the same tone through thousands and thousands of words. I envy the focus and find your work as enjoyable (if not more so) than material already published and in a bookstore. In actuality it's better than alot of that material.
*I'm jealous frankly. I've never completed anything, though I've written a couple of novels worth of shards. If Cold Station Six is the first story I actually finish I'll have you and others who actually read the story to thank, since I'd feel guilty if I abandoned the damn thing...
Ah, the tigers. Shere Khan, for one, was purely logical for the role of a villain and the undisputed king of the jungle. The story and movie fascinated me when I was young, I guess it slipped through in this snippet I wrote. Too much Talespin as well, perhaps?
I think the ultimate villain of this story is actually going to be Jack but I'm winging it at this point...although I like my villains to be grey so this is almost gauranteed. Anyone can understand his predicament, it is the story of 99% of Earth's population today.
Currently reading through your novel entitled "The Hunters". A few thoughts after twenty or so pages:
*I was reading it until I was interrupted by circumstances which...well, my life is kind of turbulent sometimes. The bottom line though is that I'm impressed and if I hadn't been disturbed would probably have made it halfway through. The labtop I have in a dark corner I take refuge in isn't capable of opening it for some reason, so I'm waiting for my tormentor to do a fade so I can access my main computer and return to it.
*You've managed to create an immersive atmosphere and maintain the same tone through thousands and thousands of words. I envy the focus and find your work as enjoyable (if not more so) than material already published and in a bookstore. In actuality it's better than alot of that material.
*I'm jealous frankly. I've never completed anything, though I've written a couple of novels worth of shards. If Cold Station Six is the first story I actually finish I'll have you and others who actually read the story to thank, since I'd feel guilty if I abandoned the damn thing...
Tigers always make good villains. When you get something that big, with teeth that sharp... (Hence the tiger in my own story!)
And I agree with you about The Jungle Book. I read the original myself a few years back and quite enjoyed it.
Villains with shades of grey are the most interesting. I wish you the best in pulling it off. I've never been able to write a villain I've been fully happy with, but you seem to be well on your way.
Thanks for the feedback. Any comments are appreciated, especially positive and in depth ones like yours!
The only words of advice I can give you for getting a long story done is to hold yourself to it. I made myself write two-thousand word a day for a month and a half. Once you get one story done the next is far easier.
I'm sorry to hear your having some turbulence. For what it's worth, I wish you the best of luck. Let me know if I can help you at least read. If you'd have an easier time with The Hunters in plain text I can see what I can do.
I'm pulling for you. I want to see the end of this story!
And I agree with you about The Jungle Book. I read the original myself a few years back and quite enjoyed it.
Villains with shades of grey are the most interesting. I wish you the best in pulling it off. I've never been able to write a villain I've been fully happy with, but you seem to be well on your way.
Thanks for the feedback. Any comments are appreciated, especially positive and in depth ones like yours!
The only words of advice I can give you for getting a long story done is to hold yourself to it. I made myself write two-thousand word a day for a month and a half. Once you get one story done the next is far easier.
I'm sorry to hear your having some turbulence. For what it's worth, I wish you the best of luck. Let me know if I can help you at least read. If you'd have an easier time with The Hunters in plain text I can see what I can do.
I'm pulling for you. I want to see the end of this story!
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