R.W. Krpoun's Blog, page 10

Gamer Story XVII (FS)

I’ve always had a web site devoted to my gaming campaign to help my players keep track of events. In the early days I wrote short stories based on the PCs and posted them on the site for my player’s amusement. This campaign was set in the Fading Suns setting.

“Go check it out,” Damarus motioned Remmie forward.

“It’s a door. I can see that from here,” the tired, filthy Scraver snapped. “What more do you want to know?”

“Is it locked, is it booby-trapped, that sort of thing.” Damarus was as filthy and tired as Remmie and the others, but he bore up under discomfort with true Li Halan stoicism.

The Templars had gotten a hot tip through an Engineer contact of Quinn’s that a covert Scraver dig in the Tepest Desert had stumbled across signs of Antimony.  They had gotten an Imperial Runt-class shuttle to drop them and a borrowed Mech-Mule loaded with supplies at the site of the dig.

But things had not worked out as hoped or expected. The Scraver base was unmanned; equipment was smashed and supplies looted or ruined; the Templars had taken some ammunition, weapons, and cylumes from the mess, but had few clues as to what had happened to the personnel who were supposed to be conducting the dig.

Until they had seen the nomad war bands darting from cover to cover, working their way in. Their background investigation (actually, a few minutes spent perusing a gazetteer while the shuttle loaded) of the desert had warned them of tribes of black-eyed Changed roaming the nearly lifeless desert, but nothing in the book had suggested why they would be concentrating at this point. Quinn had pointed out that it seemly unlikely that spear-using primitives could raise such a force when the tribes were scattered far and wide, but the fact remained that they were here.

Quinn had managed to get a portable think machine they had found in the ruins of the Scraver camp working by connecting it to a mapper unit’s screen. From it they had learned that the Scravers had been searching for a smuggler base that had been hidden in this area at the fall of the Second Republic, before the desert had claimed this continent. Another Scraver expedition had supposedly reached the base three hundred years earlier, than vanished.

The mapper unit had showed the Scraver progress towards their goal, and the Templars, armed with tools salvaged from the Scraver work site, headed underground, reasoning that they were better able to defend themselves in the rat’s nest of tunnels and crawlspaces than on the surface. From a daring recon by Illidan they learned that a thick maxicrete wall was less than forty feet of collapsed corridor from the Scraver diggings, and that the nomads were in the maze with them.

It took over eight hours, but the Templars cleared the corridor until they reached the wall, and a steel door set into it.

Remmie sighed and moved to the door.

***

Remmie howled as he raked a long, barrel-heating burst across the lines of advancing nomad spearmen, ending it in a curse as the bolt slammed forward on an empty magazine. Punching the mag release with his right thumb as he ripped another magazine from his load-bearing-vest (LBV), the Scraver trotted towards Hal, who was calmly pouring fire into the massed archers as arrows flashed down in hissing clouds.

It turned out the reason the nomads had not ambushed them while they cleared out the corridor was because they were waiting for the Templars at their destination. The door in the maxicrete wall had opened into a sizable underground hanger, which contained a powered-down starship and over two hundred nomads. They had archers atop the ship, and spearmen below.

Damarus let his empty submachinegun drop against his chest and ripped his katana from its scabbard, combining the draw with a single fluid stroke that beheaded the closest spearman. He was under the ship, thus sheltered from the archers, while Remmie shot up the spearmen further aft.

The young noble was calm, the inner quiet of a true swordsman, welding blade and body into a killing machine while his brain struggled with their dilemma. They had opened the door causally, took some arrow fire, and immediately charged, only to find themselves staggeringly outnumbered. They had the massive advantage of full auto weapons, and the effects of a flash-bang grenade upon the spearmen, but they were burning ammunition at a staggering rate, and they had nowhere to retreat.

Believing attack to be stronger than defense, Damarus had led a charge, but the full group had not responded. Spotting the dim lights of a control panel next to a cargo elevator hatch on the underside of the ship, Damarus side-stepped to it as he sliced open a nomad’s throat. To his right, Remmie and Hal had taken cover behind some crates and were laying down covering fire.

Big Thunder roared out an eight-round burst, the cloud of triple-ought buckshot sweeping away a half-dozen archers. “Yeah! When Quinn the Engineer gets here, everybody’s gonna wanna cruise!” the big Tech bellowed. He was trying to cover the retreat back into the corridor. They had all started after Damarus, even Ragnar, who had had a leg crippled by an arrow earlier, but Illidan had taken a shaft to the throat, Ragnar had been hit in another leg, and the charge had been stopped in its tracks.

Cody dragged Illidan into the corridor, then raced back out to help Ragnar, who was backing towards the door, his H-6 machinegun roaring into the ranks of the spearmen.

Quinn ripped another burst into the nomads, then howled as an arrow punched through his armor into his side. Cursing at the pain, he emptied the drum and slapped another in place as he backed through the doorway.

Kicking the door shut, he turned to Cody, who was crouched by Ragnar, working on an arrow. “How’s Illidan?”

“Dead. Watch the door.”

“I’ve got an arrow in me, when you’ve a free moment,” the Engineer observed as he pulled the door open, ripped off a burst, and then kicked the door shut. Arrows clattered against the steel portal’s far side.

***

“This is that black water the book mentioned,” Remmie yelled to Hal as he slid another magazine into his hot machine pistol. “Looks like liquid tar.” He bobbed up from behind the crate and fired a burst into the spearmen, who were badly intimidated by the savage volume of fire they were receiving.

“Thick,” Hal agreed as he reloaded, flicking his weapon so the empty mag landed on the hanger floor and not in the liquid, where expended brass floated. “I think we’re gaining fire superiority. Damarus still alive?”

“Yeah, the spearmen are withdrawing.” Remmie hastened their retreat by cutting two more down.

Hal bobbed up and picked off another archer. “Hey! Damarus is calling you.”

“Really? My communicator battery must be low.”

“Yeah, he’s saying you should come up to where he is.”

“What? Couldn’t quite hear you.” Remmie ducked down to reload.

“Get yer butt out there, boy.” Hal jerked a thumb towards the ship.

“ ’Boy’ this, you stupid peasant,” Remmie snarled as he raced towards the knight. “I’m not some damned Marine, you know.”

***

“It’s a League Sentry-class Escort,” Remmie announced, leafing through the papers he had found in the ship’s safe. “From the dates and the recorder we found, I’d say this is the ship used by the missing expedition.”

The Templars were gathered on the ship’s bridge, which was illuminated by a couple cylumes.

“All right, good work. Quinn?”

“Its been powered down for a couple centuries. There ought to be just enough juice left to start up the power plant. Once its on-line, we can get the ship’s systems going and start storing enough power to get out of here.”

“That’s going to be a problem,” Hal pointed out. “The nomads are back under the ship, and we have to get the roof hatch open, or we’re not going anywhere.”

***

Remmie slapped another magazine into his machine pistol as he leaped over a dead nomad, cursing under his breath. Snapping a burst at a retreating spearman, he kicked closed a steel door identical to the one they had entered through and twisted the deadbolt. It had been his idea to close and lock the six doors into the hanger once they had driven off or killed the nomads under the ship, in order to prevent more from coming in, but he wouldn’t have suggested it if he had known that it would become his job to carry out the plan.

Quinn had rigged a power cable from a line stripped out of the ship’s turret, and had improvised a sort of barricade on the cargo elevator. Once the ship’s engine had powered up and the systems were running, Ragnar, Remmie, and Damarus had dropped the elevator into the nomad’s midst (after a volley of grenades). The sudden wall of firepower drove the nomads off, and Hal and Quinn had then exited through the two torpedo-tube-like Marine portals near the bow. Hal had covered while Quinn hooked the line to an exterior power port on this ship and then ran it to the roof hatch controls.

Remmie flipped a frag through the next door and ducked away from the blast, then darted forward and slammed the portal shut. Tripping the centuries-old lock, he mopped away sweat and eyed the hanger as he trotted towards the third door. Ragnar was clinging to the side of the ship with several limbs while he blazed away at someone on top; more archers, the Scraver guessed. Hal was up past the bow firing at nomads on top of the ship; Quinn lay nearby, an arrow jutting from his back.

 

Weaving to make himself a poorer target, Damarus darted to Quinn’s side. “Quinn, are you all right?”

 

“I’m dying, dammit!”

 

“Hang on, Cody’s on his way.” The slender nobleman grabbed the coiled cable and scuttled to the controls, paying out the cable as he went. Flipping open a dusty cover, he slotted the connection into a emergency power socket.

 

‘That’s [I]IT[/I]?!” Quinn roared, his voice hoarse with pain. “I took an arrow for [I]THAT[/I]!? Why couldn’t someone with better armor have carried the cable?”

 

***

 

“Are the crates aboard?” Damarus asked as he climbed into the pilot’s chair, the age-worn material of the seat ripping at his weight.

 

“Yeah.” Hal tried to fasten the buckles of his safety harness in the co-pilot’s seat, then gave up at the old clasps failed to close. “Lets hope this works.”  Lights flickered from red to green on the panel before them. “The elevator’s secure.”

 

“Not any too soon.” The grinding of the hatch system overhead changed in tone, and sand began pouring in from above.

 

“We’re secure, sealed, and probably safe to take off,” Quinn announced as he trotted onto the bridge.

 

“Probably?” Damarus and Hal said in unison.

 

“Well, everything [I]looks[/I] okay, but without shipyard equipment, I can’t say for sure.”

 

The young knight sighed. Nothing was ever easy, simple, or as he expected.

 

 

 

Update 5-24-21 A crisis survived

It was painful but undeniable: extensive testing established that my PS4 has bought the farm. The sudden, expected loss of a loved one is a tragedy that has broken lesser men, but I carried on.

Luckily, I was able to purchase a PS5 a couple days later on Amazon for only 180% of the suggested retail price, but when a challenge to the stability of all that is right and good arises, a man does what a man has to do.

I got it in today, and I’ve got numerous hours of downloading yet before me to put things to rights.

The destruction of my plot troubled me for much of the week, even as the gift of writing flowed upon me; I was able to cobble together the broken bits of plot and stay a half-chapter ahead of my writing until the weekend, when a long session of mowing \allowed me to put the plot back together.

Right now the project stands at 30,000 words, and hope is born anew.

Map I For the Ebon Blades

I found and purchased a map-maker better suited to my lack of visual art skills. It is not great, but it does show the the relative bearing of places to each other.

Each hex is about twenty miles across.

I will continue to try to map out other areas in the series, and then expand into the Phantom Badgers if all goes well.

Update 5-18-21 A study in Crisis

So, set against the backdrop of one man’s heartbreaking saga of his TV suddenly not recognizing his PS4 in the midst of a world-wide shortage of PS5s, my tale takes a heart-wrenching turn.

I’ve been hammering away, knocking out 2000+ words a day while bingeing on an unlikely Brit TV series, when I run into a gaping plot hole like Wiley E Coyote hitting a brick wall.

To some writers this would be a severe setback, coming as it does to a lined-out novel plot, but fortunately my style is more organic (meaning I tend to make it up as I go along), so I expect it will be sorted out in short order.

Anyway, that and the annual plague of mosquitos is about all that is news on my front. Hope everyone is doing well.

Update 5-10-21

So I’m still suffering from fatigue and a cough, but I wrote 8000 words over the weekend and am eager to keep hitting the keyboard. I’m healthy enough to mow (about 3 acres of our place is lawn), which as an activity is very conducive to pondering plot issues.

Not much else going on. Sales are excellent, reviews are trickling in, and hope springs eternal. I hope everyone is doing well.

Update 5-6-21

Well, it appears that the flu my wife brought home was COVID, but NyQuil and Blue Bell were up to the job, and I’m back to normal, insofar as that goes. Work continues.

Update 4-26-21

So the week before last I stood under a 6″ wide branch and knocked myself flat and getting a six-day headache. Last week, as my skull finally quit hurting my wife came home from a conference in San Marcos with a bad case of the flu, which obviously, I got too.

So my productivity has taken a moderate hit recently, but I am still working the keyboard, the hunt for inspiration, and the building of plot arcs. My problem right now is one of focus: I’m getting all sort of interesting ideas, but they are spread across five different projects and three genres. Still, better too much than too little.

Benson is still selling well, and while the review count is a little low, they are all good ones.

Grog got a three-star, but it was nicely-written. I actually expected a lot more push-back on the slavery issues with that book, and almost didn’t bother publishing it because of that. I based the slavery in the book on that of the Roman period, as opposed to the cotton-based American experience, so Grog’s loyalty to Master Horne would fit in more accurately.

Anyway, the flu is waning, and the keyboard calls out to me.

Update 4-12-21

Greetings, all. Not much to report, I’m afraid. Still hammering away at the keyboard ever day and hunting inspiration. Gathering plot ideas one bit at a time while working on a project which is currently 41,000 words. It is not, however, Grog 3 or Dark Journeys; both of those projects are still getting plot arcs and concepts hammered out.

Thanks for all the reviews and purchases. I’ll keep you appraised.

Update 3-39-21

A busy week. Benson is selling well, and I’ve gotten awesome reviews, which inspire me beyond words. Every time I prep a novel for publishing, I am convinced that it is pure crap, and it isn’t until the reviews come in that I relax.

I have about a third of Dark Journeys written, but it is stalled on major plot arc issues. The cliffhanger is giving me fits, and I will have to do a lot of pondering to bring that project home.

But while I ponder, I am still hammering at the keyboard, and I have reached 36,000 words on the current project. It has story arc issues, too, but more minor ones. 2021 is going to be a year of story arc issues; I have three projects started, and a fourth hovering in the wings, and the question facing me is where inspiration will strike hardest.

Update 3-22-21

Well, Benson is up, selling steadily, and I’ve got four excellent reviews that certainly buoyed my spirits. I expect that Benson will be one of the slow-but-steady sellers rather than the hot items like the Grog books, but there’s nothing wrong with that.

Once I commit to a project’s completion, any thoughts and ideas on other projects are simply jotted on scrap paper and set on the corner of my secondary desk. This is especially true during the final few thousand words and the the extensive editing and re-writes. I even cut down on my inspiration-hunt, as I need to stay focused on the project at hand.

Now with Benson done and cast adrift in its bottle, hoping to reach readers on distant shores, I gather up the notes and start cleaning them up and plugging them into the appropriate projects, which is where I am now. I hope to resume intensive writing this comng week, because I really feel the need.