Arcadia (Tijdelijke naam)

[Roggie]

Arcadia

Ohai!

Omdat ik dit jaar weer een flink project voor Engels doe wilde ik het nog eens verblijden met een flink verhaal, ditmaal met science fiction en samenzweringen, zoals ik al een tijdje iets wil schrijven. Ik ben altijd heel blij met op- of aanmerken (zolang ze maar beleefd blijven), dus wees niet bang het reactietopic te gebruiken!

Plot
Het jaar is 2417, en het universum verkeert in een periode van rust en voorspoed. Maar als Senator Emily Bloomberg bewijs probeert te vinden van oorlogsmisdaden door de Caezen lopen de spanningen tussen de verschillende rijken hoog op. Zo hoog, dat sommigen dit als een kans zien zich te ontdoen van hun politieke tegenstanders. Kapitein Franklin Cooper, Senator Emily Bloomberg, Kanselier Martin Ghorian en Professor Christopher Greenwich zullen een grote rol spelen in de dagen die te komen staan, met het lot van het universum als hun inzet.

Hoofdstukken:
Hoofdstuk 1: Franklin Cooper
Hoofdstuk 2: Emily Bloomberg

Personages:

• Captain Franklin "Bounce" Cooper
• Senator Emily Bloomberg
• Lieutenant William O'Connor
• Sergeant Craig Bekowski
• Corporal Alfred Agresta
• ? "Defector" ?

Veel plezier met lezen!

Roggie

[Roggie]

Franklin Cooper

   The shuttle's hydraulic doors opened with a soft hiss, as the fresh air of Coutts mixed itself with the muff and recycled shuttle air. The first thing Captain Franklin Cooper did was to breathe in a mouthful of fresh oxygen. It was a ritual, almost, of the space traveller, the celebration of a steady ground under your feet, with real air to breathe and real gravity to feel. After that, Franklin checked his comm.
   'Ship, here's your captain. Do you guys copy me?' he asked in a soft whisper, finger on the solid earpiece in his right ear. Precision was of the essence: nothing could go wrong today, after the careful but hasty preparations of every single step that they would take.
   'Copy, cap,' the radio answered. Lieutenant O'Connor's voice brought a feeling of relief to Franklin, who was feeling quite anxious already. He leaned back briefly into his seat and looked at the rest of the crew.
   Sergeant Craig Bekowski was unstrapping himself from the pilot's chair in the front at the front of the shuttle. Franklin had known Bekowski since Franklin had joined the Galileo's crew seventeen years back. Bekowski, with his bald head and relaxed atmosphere around him, had been Franklin's first choice to pilot the landing party to the surface of Coutts.
   Strapped to the shuttle opposite of Franklin sat Corporal Alfred Agresta who was readying his Phaser Gun. Agresta was no veteran like his two companions, but had proven himself to Franklin and was a reliable member for a landing party.
   All three of them were wearing standard issue marine landing suits. Made out of latex and titanium
   'Alright guys, get out of here,' Franklin ordered, unstrapping himself from the shuttle wall. He took out his Phaser and got it off the safety. 'We'll shoot to kill. Extracting the target is our top priority. I confided in you for this job, so don't let me down.' Franklin waited for anyone to say something, but when no answer came, he took the lead and jumped out of the shuttle.
   The first few steps always were the hardest, when the feet weren't quite ready for normal gravity yet. It took him a few steps to regain his balance, and to take a look at the environment. They had landed in a field of tall grass, as planned. Around them, everything was totally quiet, with no life in sight for Franklin. As he set his first few steps, he noted that the earth beneath him was wet and sticky: a giant pool of slimy mud. The sinister night on Coutts made Franklin think of Earth, the stars being their only source of light. Somewhere far above him flew his crew in the Union Cruiser Galileo, risking their lives at his command. Having oriented himself, he turned to his crew.
   'Alright guys, our defector is approximately half a mile eastwards, so we gotta cover this thing up before any Caesian creep finds it,' the Captain instructed. The shuttle model was quite old, having been manufactured in the previous century, and had to be camouflaged by hand. The newer Cruiser spaceships were fitted with more modern shuttles who could camouflage themselves for over 48 hours, but Franklin's Galileo spaceship, once the dream of a generation of spaceship engineers, was getting fairly out-of-date already, having proudly served for almost twenty-five years.
   Bekowski and Agresta got the camouflage net out of the shuttle and the three of them covered it up. Franklin called out to the Galileo again.
   'Ship, it's me again. How is it going up there?' Franklin asked. Awkwardly, he looked up to the sky as he said it, like a decent formality to the person he was addressing.
   'We're fine, sir. Ready to do this?' O'Connor asked.
   'Wouldn't want to disappoint her, would we?' Franklin joked over the radio. 'Any life around here?' He took another deep breath of Coutts' air. Operation Asylum was going down.
   The order had only come in yesterday, issued directly by Senator Emily Bloomberg. The Senator, an influential woman internationally, was part of the Schneider Commission, which looked into genocide committed by the Caesian Empire against the Forians during the assimilations of the past years.
   Bloomberg had called in a hurry, having found a Caesian witness to the Eldritch Massacre, an universal act of terror many men still didn't dare to speak of. During the horrible purges on the Forian planet of Eldritch seven years back, more than three billion Forians had been murdered. The informant had defected two weeks ago and saw asylum from the Caesians in exchange for information on the war crimes commited by the Empire. Bloomberg had called Operation Asylum to make sure the defector made it out alive.
   'There's nothing notable on our radars, sir. You're good to go.'
   Franklin signalled Bekowski and Agresta to follow him as he started moving east. After a few minutes, the latex uniform had completely adapted to his body, allowing them to move fluently and swiftly. The night was wet and cold and the atmosphere felt weirdly swampy. It started to moist onto Franklin's face, who wiped it off, irritated. As they neared the edge of the field, Bekowski suddenly halted.
   'Shush,' he hissed to Franklin. 'I think I heard something.' Instinctively, Franklin got down with the rest of them and concentrated on the danger. He didn't hear anything.
   'It's nothing, Bekowski,' he said irritated. 'Come on, we're only halfway.' He wanted to stand up again when he too heard a sound. A repetitive sucking sound disturbed the silent night and sent shivers down Franklin's spine. It was the exact same sound they made when they walked.
   'Ship, mind doing another heat scan?' he whispered into his radio in a volume barely audible. 'I think we've got some company down here.' Franklin closed his eyes and focussed on his breathing, trying to make it as silent as possible, but when he even when he concentrated, he could still hear it.
   'Sir, there's nothing down there,' O'Connor reassured him. 'You are completely alone.' As the Lieutenant said that,  the sucking sound of footsteps disappeared, as sudden as it had come. They waited for another minute, trying to convince themselves that what they had heard was because of stress.
   'Let's move it, boys,' Franklin said as he silently raised himself from the grass. 'This place is creeping me out.'
   His two companions followed him to the border of the forest. In a lot of ways, the dark and oblivious place resembled the horror stories about witches and monsters human mothers told their children about far away races and planets. The trees on Coutts were strangely curved, trying to capture sunlight in a slow race against the other trees that were densely planted against one another.
   'Looks like a job for night vision, cap,' Agresta remarked as they stood there silently, looking at the trees.
   'We can't, the radiation would give us away,' Franklin refused, shaking his head. 'Remember: this is Caesian territory, we're not meant to be here. Same goes for the defector.' Taking a deep breath, he took a step towards the forest border, to stop again. It's just a scary forest, you're a marine for the love of God... 'We're the Union's army, guys,' he spoke, mostly to himself. 'We can take on a little darkness.' Desperately holding on to his Phaser gun, he walked up to the trees and tried to find a path through the dense vegetation.
   'Remember, we're looking for an old shack, no lights,' he reminded the others. The forest was a weird and eerie place to be, with an atmosphere of death hanging around it. The earth beneath their feet was more rigid and they seemed to have entered a whole new different climate. Every now and then, they stopped to see if they were still going in the right direction. After about fifteen minutes, Bekowski asked them to halt.
   'Guys, the shack!' He pointed to the side, where Franklin could barely decipher the features of an old, wooden shack.
   'Gee man, we would've walked passed it is it wasn't for you,' Franklin complimented him with relief. The hardest part was over. Silently, they approached the shack, prepared to act if anything went wrong. Franklin positioned himself next to the door.
   'Mister?' he called out. 'My name is Franklin Cooper, I'm with the Union Marines. We're here to extract you to neutral territory.' There was no response from inside. Everything was silent, apart from the three men's own breathing. 'Mister? I'm coming in now!'
   Franklin laid his hand upon the door and pushed it open. It creaked a little, but seemed to be well maintained despite the state it seemed to be in from the outside.
   The inside of the room was dimly lit with candles, scattered around the empty, wooden floor, and it took Franklin some time to adapt to the light. In a corner, a Caesian was sitting on the ground, face down.
   'Mister?'
   'I'm a woman,' the Caesian corrected Franklin, lifting up her head. Her features were those of any Caesian woman, with a worn in, rust-coloured face and small, deep eyes. It were the features one needed when they tried to survive on the Caesian's desert home planet.
   'Miss, please. We've got to get out of here, our shuttle is two miles eastwards.' Franklin tried to lift the woman up by her arm, but she refused.
   'You think we can run?' the Caesian woman asked. 'You might.' She looked at Franklin with a face of slight amusement. 'If you and your Union friends run hard enough, you might make it back and keep the peace. Or you could die trying to get me back.' Then, she lowered her eyebrows. She seemed very sad and small suddenly, even though she kept a tone that made it seem like she didn't really care. 'I'm done with running.'
   Franklin kneeled beside her.
   'Miss, I don't know what you've been through, but I can assure you that it's over.'
   'Franklin, why did you think I've hold myself up in here?' she asked. The use of Franklin's name gave her sentence a hostile tone. 'This forest consists of fifteen hundred acre, the area around it is swamp. You can't land a shuttle here, you can't come here, and if you do you'll get lost in the forest because it's a maze out here. It's a small wonder you found a place to land and a miracle you made it to me in one piece.' The woman stood up, instantly becoming more intimidating because of her long legs. Franklin could see in which state she was now. Her body was skinny, even worse off than most of the Caesians. She wore everyday clothing, probably of human descent,but they were dirty and ragged. 'As long as I'm here, I'm safe,' she continued. 'Your Senator underestimates the power of the Caesians.'
   Franklin was stunned by what she had said. After a moment of silence, he revealed what was on his mind.
   'Then why ask Bloomberg to risk the lives of a complete crew to hear your nonsense of staying here?' he asked, feeling furious and ripped off.
   'I never wanted an extraction,' the Caesian anwered, awarding him a tiny smile. 'I just wanted my story to be told.' She stepped away from Franklin, to the room's corner where I worn out handbag was laying on the floor. From it, she got a file and showed it to Franklin. 'This is all the evidence Bloomberg will need.' As her face moved closer, Franklin became more uneasy. 'Do warn her,' she whispered. 'Her actions will have consequences.' With those words, she pushed the file into Franklin's hands.
   'It's been an honour, miss,' Bekowski said, who head been silent all the time and started walking towards the exit. Franklin remained standing.
   'Keep it,' he said, dropping the file to the floor. 'I'm not leaving anyone behind.' The defector gave him a mean look.
   'Don't do stupid things out of honour, Franklin,' she said.
   'It's no honour, it's a principle!' Franklin shouted at her. 'I'm not letting anyone die miss, so either you go with us, or nothing goes with us!'
   'I wouldn't make it for one day,' she mocked. 'They follow everyone, everywhere if that's what it takes. So I'll tell you once more: go away.' They were arguing now, the defector's face becoming tenser and more angry every second.
   'I'm not going anywhere,' Franklin responded. They were standing face to face now, waiting for somebody to say something. Suddenly, Bekowski approached him from the backside.
   'Captain-' he started, but was cut of by Franklin.
   'This is my call, sergeant.'
   'We got what we wanted, cap. If we don't go now-'
   'Sergeant Bekowski, will-'
   'You damn well know that-'   
   'Outside! NOW!' He shouted it way to loud, probably loud enough for the rest of the forest to hear, but Franklin Cooper didn't think of that. Why didn't things want to go his way? Why were they forcing him to leave someone behind to save another? Why couldn't they just save everybody? It was what they did... Right?
   Agresta and Bekowski walked out of the shack face down, Franklin closing the door behind him. He directed the crew to an open space between the trees, where they could still see the shack.
   'I'm not leaving her behind,' Franklin stated plainly, leaning back against a tree. Before Bekowski could respond, he had already cut him of. 'Now Bekowski, that's my call. So I want your support, okay? We're taking her with us, because I don't want her blood on my hands.'
   'Cap, you know that this-'
   'Enough, Bekowski, enough,' Franklin sighed and lowered his head for a few seconds to clear his thoughts. In essence, Bekowski was right. Every second they waited here was one they gave to the Caesians to find them. The Union Cruiser that floated ten miles above their heads in Caesian territory didn't really help either. 'Agresta,' he said. 'Get in there and tell the defector that she's coming with us. Bekowski, you're staying here.'
   Agresta gave him a quick nod and then ran of to the shack. Franklin stayed opposite of Bekowski, looking at him with an expression of slight anger.
   'Enjoying yourself?' he asked, trying to control his voice.
   'What do you think, cap?'
   'I think that one of my sergeants just disobeyed an order in front of my corporal, that's what I think. This is not a debate, sergeant. I'm the captain, and this is my ship. Are we clear?'
   'Shush,' Bekowski replied, with a sudden look of discomfort.
   'I said are-'
   'Will you shut up? I hear something,' Bekowski hissed towards him. Annoyed, Franklin concentrated himself. From a distance, he could hear a faint humming sound. At first, he couldn't decipher the quite common humming sound, but suddenly he shockingly realized where it came from.
   'Oh Lord...' he whispered. 'It's a fucking VTOL.' Both he and Bekowski were now anxiously staring at the sky, waiting for something to happen.
   VTOLs were old, yet some of the greatest assets of the various armies around the universe. They were relatively silent, didn't weigh much and could be operated by just one person. Even better, they were quick and were great at killing. It was no surprise that upon realizing the threat, Franklin was stunned. But once his mind regained control of the situation, he started running towards the shack.
   'Agresta!' he called. 'Get out of there!'
   At high speed, he ran through the forest in search of the shack. The darkness didn't quite help, and he thought that he was lost until a small light illuminated his surroundings. Scared, he looked up to the sky, to see a miniature sun.
   For a moment, the bright ball of light seemed to hang still in the air, as if it really was the sun. However, it soon started accelerating downwards, growing bigger and bigger until it disappeared into the ground.
   Next thing Franklin knew, the whole sky was illuminated and a wave of warm air caught him off balance. As he started falling down, the sound that predicted annihilation followed, as if it was the warm messenger of death. As he hit the ground, he knew that there was no chance either the defector or the Caesian had survived the explosion.
   'Bekowski!' he cried, once he got his head of the Couttian soil. 'Run!' He didn't really need to say it, as Craig Bekowski was already at his side, pulling him up.
   'The files!' Franklin shouted, but Bekowski wouldn't let go of him as they started running eastwards.
   'The files are gone, Frank!' Bekowski whispered back, trying to calm in down. 'But that jet isn't and I figure once he picks up our heat signals he's coming back. So shut up, will you?' He let go of Franklin, who started running after him. A few times, Franklin looked back to see what disaster they had caused upon Coutts. About two hundred meters behind them, a forest fire was spreading fast. Once they reached the edge of the forest, Franklin knew they weren't going to make it.
   The swamp was wet and sticky, and safe for the fire that was sweeping behind them, racing towards them at a swift and steady pace.  However, it was open and the VTOL would certainly intercept them if they ran. If they'd stay here, the fire would burn them alive.
   'We've got to warp,' Franklin instructed Bekowski.
   'We can't do that cap,' Bekowski refused. 'It would cause radiation from here to Earth, making us and the ship visible on every bloody radar in the universe.'
   'I don't see another option here, Craig,' Franklin stated, his patience running out. He laid his hand on his earpiece again, connecting himself to the UC Galileo's crew.
   'Ship, please come in,' he spoke. Bekowski ran a couple of meters into the field to see whether the VTOL was returning and he gave Frankin a look that mostly resembled nausea.
   'Captain, this is the UC Galileo, what the hell is going on down there?'
   'The defector is down,' he explained. It was the first time that he came to realize that Asylum had failed, and that made him even more uncomfortable. The adrenaline had kicked in, but he was starting to feel a sharp pain in his right leg and thought something might had pierced his latex suit. 'We need an evac, warp,' he added after that.
   'Captain, warp would-'
   'Cause us to show up on every radar, I know. But we were just fired upon so this is going down anyway. So either you warp us unto deck, or we're going to burn alive.' He got off comm to prevent further debate, but also because Bekowski was calling for him.
   'Captain! They're coming!' he shouted. Anxiously, Franklin looked back into the forest, where the fire was still steadily approaching. He could already feel the heat, coming towards them on hot winds, carrying the message of death. They didn't have a minute, not even thirty seconds. But Franklin could also hear the ship now, flying towards them to finish what they had started. There was one option only.
   They had to run, to follow their most basic animalistic instincts: to evade the fight. Bekowski was the first one to realize this, and signaled Franklin to follow him into the field. Franklin took of with his eyes closed, expecting the VTOL to intercept them at any time. The humming was growing louder and heavier, and their movement was slow as they worked themselves through the muddy soil. Franklin tripped and fell, and as his suit was filled up with mud, he knew that it was over. With his last strength, he rolled unto his back and looked at the sky. The VTOL was still approaching, and it had come so close that Franklin could see the pilot through the plane's laminated front.
   He wore a mask. A terrible, terrifying, smiling mask. The mask that would have haunted Franklin in his sleep in the days to come, if there had been any following days. A terrible sound light up the sky. Suddenly, everything was empty.