This time, we were going to pretend to be something we weren't- passengers. Blaine had the Yard give his plane a once-over, so that the usual sea-blue top and light-blue bottom were replaced with the bright white of a commercial flight. The Shrike didn't have to change a thing- no matter what we did, it was still a Shrike, and nobody looking at it would think that it was being used for passengers. I pulled Fifty duty again, on ball mount in the belly of the Shrike. A good spot for this run, really- we were flying pretty high, and most interceptors would be coming up that way. Bad news if the Shrike got badly thrashed, though- the belly turrets tended to jam, and a belly-flop landing could make gunners One with the Turf.

We took off at 3 PM. We were going around the Front, of course- radar everywhere, and lots of itchy triggers, and we had to go a little slower than usual to pretend that we were actually just passengers.

Around 3:25, we saw the first smoke. Some fighter'd made a funeral pyre on one of the last Islands before Sane Man's Land ended, and we saw another one's carcass lying out at sea. That one was red... and now we knew we were in for it. Blaine's plan had backfired- instead of looking harmless to the cops... we looked like easy pickings for the Sky Howlers.

We didn't dare turn back. Chances were, we'd gotten lucky, and slipped inside their patrol net- maybe our luck would keep holding. My fingers were so cramped from tension that when I tried to let go of the Fifty's handles, I had to try to let go twice- my hands started gripping nothing, like dumb crab claws. I muttered prayers to the gods I don't believe in and worked the knots out- it's no good to try fighting with bad hands.

20 minutes later... we saw them. Moreover, they saw us. Two specks against the Ocean, which a quick peek through the binocs turned into Vultures. Heavy, lumbering fighters, made for killing bombers and transports. The Shrike could outrun them, but not outfight them, and the flying boxcar was just meat. We already knew that... we knew our odds. Some kid in the boxcar made a sweaty-hands joke over the radio, and we all laughed, way too hard.

The Vultures slowly caught up, but they stayed back, out've range of anything but random spray- 1000 meters or more. Then we caught sight of the Poisoned Arrows climbing on our 1 o'clock, and knew this was going to be very, very nasty. Poisoned Arrows aren't well-armed, but they're fast interceptors, and the Shrike was in big trouble now, not just the boxcar. My hands started aching again, and I had to concentrate my whole being on not clenching around the triggers.

There are these moments in combat.

Time stands still, because your brain knows that Something Important is Happening, and it records everything it can, for future use. You're not afraid, really- or you're so far down in fear that it can't get worse. As I watched the first Poisoned Arrow close to 800 meters, I could count the propeller's revolutions. I could see... somehow see the glinting pits in its aluminum skin, from where it'd been repaired, badly and without proper paint. At 800 meters, this is impossible. But if I could paint, I could show you every inch of that fighter's battered hide, and you'd believe it.

And then things started to happen so fast that the memory is just a blur of confusion, hatred and violence. The first Arrow passed low, and he overshot us by 50 meters... I chiseled his tail with the Fifties, and he started smoking when the top gunner caught him again. The second one was smarter, and slid around our backside, where there spots a Shrike can't shoot. Our pilot dove and swept around the boxcar, shouting profanities which we were all too busy to answer. I caught the second Arrow with a short burst, but not before it tore a big chunk out of the starboard wing, which promptly began spitting fuel. The engineer fixed that a second later, cutting off the flow and blowing the tank's contents into the air.

While I was paying too much attention to the deadly dance between disaster and a wrench, the first Arrow came back for another go. I have to give that Pirate credit- his aim was poor, but his spine was straight and true. He came back at a lower speed than was healthy, though, and I stitched his fuselage with Fifty rounds. He blew up with "crump" sound that we could hear from 400 meters, easy.

The second one spun around us, dancing and strafing, keeping us busy without much risk either way. We knew what was going to happen next, and the pilot was still cursing. The Vultures were about to get into range.

The first one took the boxcar, and the other one split and came at us. This probably saved our lives- if they'd both come at us, along with the Arrow, I wouldn't be telling this story.

But we got lucky, and our pilot was superb. Y'see... the Shrike carries 4 nose-mounted cannon. Usually, they're useless- the Shrike will not out-maneuver a fighter. But almost every pilot keeps them, insists on keeping them, because they're the only weapons they can point directly, and pilots hate feeling defenseless, even with 3 guys in turrets helping to keep him alive. Our pilot slid the Shrike around in an energy-wasting turn, slid left... and got the Vulture aiming for the boxcar with all 4 barrels. Simply superb... an almost-impossible shot, with beautiful timing and accuracy. But he got it, and the Vulture became a rapidly-disintegrating pile of junk.

While we were pulling our 4-G maneuver, though... the Arrow came in for a nip at us, and the Vulture spun out, deciding to hammer the boxcar. We caught at least 10 more cannon rounds, and almost went up in smoke, and the boxcar's port side lit up with a fire that kept burning and burning.

But neither of us were dead, and our dorsal gunner got the Arrow... we saw a chute that time, and I saluted that savvy buccaneer later, when I wasn't busy trying to kill him. The Vulture decided that the odds were bad... and left.

The boxcar made it home. We did, too, although by time we landed the Engineer had 75% of the main systems working AOK, which is pretty good for combat. The boxcar got the fire out, eventually, and landed on its belly at high speed, losing its landing gear in the process. It wasn't flying home any time soon, that was certain.

Blaine was dead, along with the cheeky kid with the sweaty hands and two of the gunners. The boxcar's Engineer had flown it in, barely, after using everything but the dead bodies to staunch the fuel leaks in the main tanks.

More than half the load of Crystal was trash- fuel'd soaked the packets, ruining the chemistry. Nobody would buy them. We sold the rest, though... and since we were paying 4 fewer people, we more than broke even- I now had 80K, and the Shrike's pilot went on a 4-day drinking binge while the airframe was patched up again, for the return home.

80K. So close.

I can hear the Shrike's engines spinning up outside. "One more run", we've all agreed. We're crazy- each of us, crazy in our own way. I don't know what the others are doing this for- they've made enough this past week to live like kings. But we're doing it again, with another boxcar. One last time.

The Cobra wants me to.

Hey Argh, good to see a new face to the fanfic forum.
I like your story...
it is based on your mod, right?

I'll have to grab it up.
I assume THe Sky Howlers get the VHFs

"I like liberty rogues, they make a funny little popping sound when they die"
10 points to whoever guess what I messed with for that

It's based on the mod (generally speaking). The aircraft mentioned are still just names/concepts for the moment... they're ideas that I have that I haven't had time to implement yet. The story's based on what I'm hoping the final game will feel like, though... yeah

So if you get the current Alpha and are like, "hey, I can't buy a Shrike"... it's because I haven't made it... but I will

And fyi... the concepts of LF, HF and VHF are a little... hmm... different in the mod. The Starflier (the player's starting aircraft in Alpha 3, but not in Alpha 4) is a pretty typical "VHF"- it's got more armor and more guns, but not by much more than a typical fighter. The next Alpha's going to have an improved version of this aircraft (to address some tricky PvP issues) but it's not a super-leet ride like in many FL mods. So the concept of a lightly-armed transport (flying boxcar) and a Shrike being enough to scare a single Vulture away... is pretty "realistic" for the game world. If you play the current Alpha, you'll see what I mean

But realism ain't fun.
I want ships I can swat like flies while others I run away in terror from.
What about capships? Are they still ridiculously bad?

"I like liberty rogues, they make a funny little popping sound when they die"
10 points to whoever guess what I messed with for that

It's nice to see you've finally decided to become a contributing member of TLR, Argh.

The story is very good, I especially enjoyed your narration style. Rest assured I'll be following this story (and offering some criticism, if you're interested) as it progresses. Still, I have to wonder if this is the best place for the tale. It isn't actually a Freelancer fanfic (after all, your mod is a TC) so maybe it should be in the Amazing Stories forum. I suppose Finalday will have the final say though (as he's the only moderator who spends significant time in this area).

@Deathspike

Don't worry, there are plenty of things that you'll run away from But "swat like flies" is not a term in common use among my playtesters... more like, "you feel like a stud when you pwn them 4 on 1"

The mod is designed for multiplayer, cooperative play , not SP, and not for people whose idea of "multiplayer" is doing trade runs on a server for weeks until they have a ship that they can "pwn the nubs with". Think Counter-Strike, not FL MP- money makes a difference, but it won't make you a god

And yes, battleships are plenty scary

@Codename

It's been a long time since I've written anything like a "story", and I was bored, so I decided, "why not"? I'm not really here to develop "further" as a writer, if that makes any sense- I got about as far as I ever wanted to when I was 18, and still thought I was going to be the next Faulkner

Seriously speaking, the tale as told above contains numerous small errors and flawed sentence structures, has a few slow areas that could be tighter style-wise, and suffers mainly from being assembled linearily and with poor editing overall- there are a few time issues that glared at me after posting it, but I've had other things to do. I wouldn't submit it as professional work or anything, obviously

Motion sickness.

I woke up dreamily into half-nightmare. I'd had a dream about fire... and my arm was burning as I moved it upwards towards my hair.

Suddenly the memories began flooding back. The pain got worse.

I was laying near a beach. Near my head, I could see glittering slivers of aluminum- the stripped skin of a dead plane. The wreckage stretched to the edge of the ocean, and I could make out a chunk of tail above the waves.

My arm was hurting terribly now- in that special way that really bad lacerations tend to irritate and ache. I looked down, and saw that my sleeve was badly torn, and it was crusted with blood. I pulled the sleeve back, gingerly... and saw that I had 4 really deep cuts, lined up like the blades of a razor. But I could move my fingers, and they weren't bleeding, so if I could clean them, I'd probably be OK. I fumbled around for my First Aid Kit, and dragged it out of its pouch. 5 very painful minutes later, I had the cuts cleaned out and swathed in bandages.

Amazingly, the cuts were my only serious injuries. I was covered with big bruises everywhere, and several of them ached as I stood up and began to take stock, but nothing was broken, and my arm was already starting to feel better.

I'd crashed. Behind me... in front of me... was all that remained of the Grasshopper that Jess and I had been riding south to Blood Peak.

Grasshoppers aren't designed for long-range flying. They're short-hop transports, with a max load rated just under 5 tons. They're armed, but pretty pathetically, and when we saw our escort go down, we knew we were finished. The Alliance flyboy was spitting burning kerosene from a wingtip as he circled for the kill. I kept shouting "BLOW!" as he came in, hoping that nature wouldn't nurture... but he got his burst in first.

We lost an engine... and after that, Jess screamed something incoherently as we plunged through the hazy afternoon sky. We spun like a wild top for several long moments before we finally leveled out, and Jess looked back to where I'd been hanging on to the gunner's webbing and said, "Kidney Island... hold on".

I don't really remember the actual crash, except that it seemed to go on forever, and that the Grasshopper took far more punishment than it should've, and then ... something happened, and now I was here.

I looked around, to see if Jess had made it too. At first, I'd thought she might've rescued me, as I awakened far from my webbing. Then I dimly remembered jumping from the aircraft’s loading doors as we bounced towards the sea. Jess must've been trapped in her chair until the nose was underwater. I didn't want to look, but I knew I had to- if I was alive, it was because of her. So I walked down to the water's edge, and took a look.

The plane's fuselage had broken in half sometime after it bounced over the last dune that rose from this sandy beach. I was looking at the tail end- the nose was just barely visible 40 meters out, and even in the clear water I couldn't see what shape it was in. But the water didn't get very deep for about 30 meters, so I splashed my way up to the wreckage.

If Jess was alive, it was a miracle, and she wasn’t down there. And I didn’t feel like diving to visit a corpse.

After that, it was time to take stock in my situation, and see whether or not I was going to live out the rest of the week. Kidney Island was barely inhabited, and quite large- maybe 100 klicks long. Not a quick journey, even if I wasn’t covered in bruises. I checked around, and eventually salvaged some drinking water and cheese from the remains of our the mini-fridge we’d bolted to the rear storage bins of the Grasshopper- for a wonder, this part of the aircraft, so near the tail, was almost eerily pristine. Unfortunately, we hadn’t packed much food- just enough for a snack during the long flight. But the water would last long enough for me to find what passed for civilization, I figured.

I set out along the beach, my feet making squishing noises inside my flight boots, from getting them soaked in the ocean. I climbed up above the high tide line, where the walking was less treacherous, and looked at the jungle that cloaked the island like soft green fur. In the far distance- maybe 10 klicks or more... I could dimly make out a shining object, which my gunner’s binocs quickly resolved into a lighthouse. I nearly cackled with delight- I wouldn’t have to walk more than an hour or two before I could speak with people and maybe even call the insurance people about the crash. Jess had been a big believer in insurance, even though it cost a fortune to insure a fat cargo hauler that flew in dangerous places. I, being the junior partner, was fully entitled to collect- Jess had no family to speak of.

Another thing caught my eye- a small drifting plume of black smoke, rising from the jungle a few hundred meters away. I immediately suspected what it was, and stopped to check that my service pistol (which I barely remembered how to clean properly, most days) was loaded and in good mechanical condition. Working the slide and testing the mechanism, I felt a little bit of sand gritting between the parts, and I stopped, sat down, and carefully began to clean the weapon with an oily rag. Because that plume of smoke was surely the last resting place of the Alliance fighter, and the pilot might still be alive and looking for trouble.

I still didn’t understand why we’d been attacked. We’d been worried about pirates, of course, but they were relatively rare in these parts, and we hadn’t heard anything on the radio chatter during the flight. The news had been full of mutterings about renewed skirmishes along the No Man’s Land between the Alliance and the Coalition, of course, and we were working for Daumann- a firm that might as well be Coalition-owned. But we weren’t painted in Daumann livery, and were just one of dozens of aircraft in our sector, doing the same jobs.

Besides feeling bad about Jess, I felt bad about our escort, a young fire-eater named Che Lodonza. He’d been our escort for the last 4 months, and had just about saved up enough scratch for a brand-new Shrike that he and his brothers planned to buy. I had heard him tell story after story of the exploits of his eldest brother, Henrique, who’d made quite a name for himself as a Hunter, until he’d married a whiny (but beautiful) shrew of a girl, who insisted that he do something safer for a living. He acquiesced, in a stylish fashion, by presenting his brothers with a plan- to buy a Shrike and form an escort team, flying CAP for the rich sea-traders. Che had died seeking his brother’s happiness in marriage, which was a real shame.

My pistol was as clean and functional was it was going to get, so I began walking into the jungle. Walking along the beach would’ve been suicide- Alliance pilots are issued MKH-3 assault carbines, which have built-in optic sights, so if he planned any mischief, I was a dead man, walking on a nearly coverless beach. So I went into the jungle, and moved slowly and carefully towards the area of the wreck.

The jungle was... well, it was a tropical island jungle. Not too dense, here near the beach where the ocean occasionally swells in and destroys everything, but dense enough. Mosquitoes buzzed around my ears, and vines and small undergrowth made travel annoyingly slow, especially as I was trying to keep quiet.

I got close enough to see the wreck, and it was spectacular. The Alliance plane was a Raptor... a medium-sized brute bristling with heavy cannon mounts near its vicious-looking snout. The snout- heck, most of the fighter- no longer existed. The plane had buried itself into the jungle at high speed, blowing a huge crater into the ground. If the pilot survived... he’d had to use his parachute, and could’ve drifted just about anywhere for klicks around. Chances were, he was in the ocean feeding a shark.

I then made my way back to the beach, relieved that I wasn’t going to have a rifle aimed at my back, and made my way towards the lighthouse. It was an imposing structure... ancient beyond all belief, and apparently built before the Change. Why the Ancients had built a lighthouse, when their technologies had spanned the stars and gave them godlike powers, I didn’t know- but they sure built to last. The lighthouse was built from some smooth, extruded substance that looked like pale stone, from this distance. As I got closer, I could see two small sheds nearby, and a couple of small motor launches... and then all hell broke loose.

My body was flinging itself down, against the sodden bulk of a huge driftwood log, before my brain had time to really think things over. The first sign of trouble hadn’t been obvious... just a sharp “papf” noise from the beach, 10 meters away, like the sound you’d hear if you threw a handful of sand. Then I heard the report of a rifle, and found myself against the tree trunk.

It was obvious, after a moment’s thought, what must’ve happened. The Alliance pilot, having bailed out, had drifted his parachute near to the lighthouse, and then had either killed everybody, or just snuck up to the top of the lighthouse, awaiting my arrival. How he had known that I or Jess could’ve survived was beyond me, but I suspected that the same paranoid instincts that had led me to investigate his wreck had caused him to pan his binocs down the shore, where I would’ve been clearly visible.

I cursed my luck, but there wasn’t much else to do. I could either stay behind this fallen tree trunk until nightfall (or his approach to kill or capture me)... or I could run into the jungle, and hope to come up with a better plan.

I ran into the jungle, and was rewarded with a number of shots aimed in my direction. I was almost half a klick away, though, so he wasn’t able to hit me- Alliance pilots aren’t selected for their skill with rifles, and even a trained sniper would’ve had some trouble hitting a running man entering a thick jungle canopy.

Once I was far enough into the jungle that he couldn’t hit me no matter how good he was... I began trudging towards the lighthouse. Sure, I could’ve taken my chances, and just cut across the island to the other side, hoping to find more people over there, but I didn’t have much water, and I figured that I might as well get this over with, one way or another. After about an hour of trudging slowly through the vines, I was 200 meters away from the lighthouse, and could see it through gaps in the jungle canopy. I then settled down, drank most of the water, and ate the cheese, and waited for night.

Thinking about the mosquitoes and my survival chances if I had to slap them, I found some mud and caked my skin with it. The mud stank terribly, but it seemed to work pretty well, and after I found a nice flat rock to lie on, I was actually pretty comfortable, dry and warm, but not hot.

Night came, and it was surprisingly chilly. The wind blew in off the ocean, and the warm air of the day settled into a clinging mist. Perfect. I waited until I was sure it was well into deep night, and then set off towards the lighthouse. The lights around the building remained on, which increased my chances of getting to a boat unseen, or finding the rifle-toting scum and giving him a lead-coated surprise.

I finally crept near to the boat dock, when I heard some angry shouting, followed by a shot and a woman’s wailing cry. I’m not normally chivalrous, but whatever was going on was clearly about more than just finding and killing a suspected Coalition smuggler... and I decided that I couldn’t just abandon whoever was in there to their fate. I moved quickly towards the building, and heard a man’s voice speaking harshly: “Get that meat outta here, girl, throw him out the door. He’s paid for his lip, and you can too.”

The woman was sobbing in that broken moan of the truly bereaved. I stepped closer to the front door, and waited carefully. Then I heard the man slap the woman, hard- I could hear it clearly through the door, and then he said, “Pick up his feet, you worthless cow! Now, or I’ll just kill you, and get it over with!”. Then I heard her retching, moaning and crying as she no doubt did what she’d been told, and the sound of something heavy sliding across the floor. I was practically against the door myself, now, trying to listen in, and caught myself in time to draw my pistol and disengage the safety.

The woman gave a great cry, and blubbered, “I... I can’t... can’t... he’s... he’s too heavy...” and began to sob. The man said, in a much more reasonable tone of voice “Then I’ll get his shoulders... let’s get him out of here.” And the body began to slide towards the door again, accompanied by the woman’s crying and muffled grunts from the man.

When the door opened... I don’t know who was more surprised- me or the man, whose rifle was tucked out’ve reach across his shoulder. Because I was looking into the face of Henrique, and the woman was clearly Jess- I’d have recognized those worn-out coveralls anywhere.

Because I was full of adrenaline and fear, I shouted, “FREEZE OR I SHOOT” before my brain caught up with what my eyes were seeing. And then Henrique and Jess turned towards me, and I saw that the man who’d been shot was Che.

I looked down at the corpse, and as I did, Henrique went for his gun, and Jess leapt to one side into the room. I fired five times, and Henrique managed to shoulder the weapon before toppling. Jess was lying on her side, with blood spurting from her right thigh.

I looked down at Henrique, and as my father used to tell me (when he waxed nostalgic about his days in the Coalition Army)... I shot him once through the forehead, so that there could be no doubt. I had 7 rounds left in the pistol, and Jess appeared to be unarmed and wasn’t moving, so I gave her a rough push with one boot to turn her over and find out whether she was dead or just in shock. She cried out from the pain, and stared into my eyes with the hollow-pupil look one sees starving children wear.

I asked the obvious question. “What’s going on here?”

Jess spat a little blood out, and finally caught her breath. She was obviously going into shock, and looked at me with a mad glint in her eye as she hugged her hands against the wounded thigh, trying to press the ripped flesh closed. Then she spat the word out through her shivering lips. “Insurance”.

I shot her and drove a boat home.

WHAT??
He shot his partner??
come on man, he could've at least just left her to die.

I've never been in a situation that awful, and I hope I never am... and I hope I wouldn't take justice into my own hands like that, either.

I'm not claiming that this character is nice ... or that I'd make the same choices, given the same situation (in fact, I'd have probably tried crossing the island, instead of heading into a confrontation).

That's the fun of writing, though- I can explore different ways of looking at things. The main character of the second story is faced with a series of difficult ethical choices, and makes them based on his belief system, which is as sloppy and inconsistent as most people's- in his world, being killed by people over money is a normal part of doing business, and killing somebody who threatens him is also normal behavior.

He's an antihero, and I think that your outrage, while justified, reflects what you see in the story... and even you would've condoned "leaving her to die", which to me, at least, sounds crueler than just getting things over with.

And don't forget... that in the regular ol' Freelancer, you play the part of Trent, who cold-bloodily murders countless people during his adventures... and is, in fact, forced to kill others during various parts of the game. It always grated on me that while Trent seems to express fear about his own death, he never seems to express any regrets about the Liberty Rogues and others he kills during his adventure. So, in part, the second story allowed me to explore a character like that- somebody who had a structure of ethics that allowed them to kill for money, for example... much like people are doing every time they take a Mission.

Cold Blooded Murder?
It's one thing to kill an enemy for money, it's a whole different thing to kill your PARTNER, and why did he need to kill her in the first place?

Perhaps all this would be explained in a future chapter?

ttfn

I confess that I thought it was explained fairly well, but you have to pick up the pieces and examine them closely. I was playing a lot with the ideas of distorted perception here... but then again, I wrote the tangled web, and made it make sense to me... I can't speak for readers. But there are things that I deliberately constructed as clues:

1. The narrator doesn't really know whether Jess bailed out of the plane. At one point, he even thinks she must've helped him out of the wreckage, and then tells us something totally different. Obviously, his memories aren't very good This is typical behavior for somebody who's gone through a traumatic event like this- we don't remember nearly as much as we'd like, and our brains tend to fill in the gaps (often with fanciful garbage).

2. The narrator also knows that there's a huge sum in insurance to be collected by the survivor. So if you want to, you can interpret his actions as being purely criminal- after all, he could've saved Jess's life and then collected half of the insurance, although then he might have to watch his back for a very long, long time

3. Henrique has a motive to make a lot of money, that involves some risk and violence. I'm also pretty careful to point out that he's an expert pilot.

4. The characters are all people who make their living in a world of violence.

5. In the narrator's mind, Henrique and Jess have just killed Che, which makes them murderers. It's pretty clear that Jess wasn't a willing partner to Che's murder, but it's also clear (to me) that Jess, Che and Henrique all being at the lighthouse would be extremely suspicious to even the dumbest observer... and I meant it to tell readers, "hey, our Hero's been set up"

Edited by - Argh on 12/13/2004 10:40:48 AM

Great story man! What I was wondering is if you would let me do another one in this same theme, but with a different hero and story. Also, where can I find your MOD and what is it called? It sounds good but I can't find it anywhere. Another thing, what are the performance numbers and stats on these planes, are we talking WWII here or what? At any rate, keep up the good work.

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