Christopher Meddleton -- Chapter 1

[Pr0nogo]

This is a short piece I wrote up in about an hour and a half. Underscores denote new paragraphs. I've attached the MSWord '03 document in case someone wants it for whatever reason (or can't read it at the moment).

Rip it apart; it's my first creative writing exercise... ever.

I'll probably be continuing this. Probably.

Spoiler

_"Chris. Hey, buttercup, wake the hell up!"
_Stumbling into the conscious world rather suddenly, Christopher Meddleton opened his eyes to the friendly, joking expression of his good pal Nicolas Tucker. Nick was a large man, standing at six feet, three-and-a-half inches. His Dominion CMC-660 model power armor only served to increase the humongous marine's stature. Serving as a Dominion Firebat was no joke, and Nick Tucker was quite living proof of this.
_Chris rose to his feet, surveying the interior of his platoon's barracks. His power armor was model CMC-400, a step below the CMC-660 and used by most other Dominion marines. CMC-660 power armor was used by Firebats alone, as it was specialized with use of napalm rockets and flamethrower attachments.
_"Glad ta see yer up that easy, bud," chuckled Nick, nudging him a bit with his shoulder. "Heard the ell tee's gonna give us a low-down 'a the mission."
_"Hell, it's about time, don't ya think? I think he's kept us in the dark fer quite awhile now."
_Chris was never one too keen on not being told everything. "Left outta da loop," he called it. He always wanted to know everything he could as soon as he could, mirroring the idea that "knowledge is power" in many a way.
_"Well. let's head ta tha mess," Chris said, walking towards the mess hall portion of the barracks.

* * *

_"MARINES, REMIND ME AGAIN," barked the lieutenant. "WHAT ARE YOU HERE FOR?"
_The response was an uproar of "TO SERVE AND TO PROTECT."
_Chris and company were in their barracks' ready room, with Lieutenant Wilhem Conrad pacing to and fro in front of their lines.
_"Damn straight. You're also here ta put these rebellious dogs back in there place!" At this, he turned 'round to face the platoon. "AM I RIGHT, MARINES?!"
_"SIR, YES SIR!"
_Chuckling softly, Conrad said, "Damn right, I am! Let's go over this one more time. I'm takin' half the platoon to regroup with a small detachment of tanks. Rest-uh yuh'll intercept a supply convoy, headed to an enemy outpost from the north. After that, ye'll take control of the convoy an' radio in to report under a specialized frequency. We'll give the frequency to your commanding officers before the drop. Am I one-hundred percent clear, troopers?!"
_"SIR, CRYSTAL CLEAR SIR!" barked the marines.
_"File in, then! Eight men to a ship, go, go, GO!" was the response. Chris and his troopers jumped up.
_Eying Nick, Chris said, "This is it."
_"This is it, buddy!" Nick said, chuckling.

* * *

_"Hop on out, boys. Meet you at the other side." The pilot's feminine voice blared uncomfortably loudly over the APOD-33 dropship's loudspeaker. Chris woke, again rather groggily, and stood up at attention. Nick and the others were already jumping the ten-foot gap between the ship's ramp and the dirt.
_Chris hating jumping in his suit. It always had a shock factor in his knees that was more uncomfortable than painful. Hopping out, he joined Nick and another Firebat, Clyde Simmons. They were discussing some personal contest between each other, most likely one how-brutally-can-you-kill-a-Zergling variant or another. Pausing his speech only to nod in Chris' direction, he continued telling a vibrant story of just how easily a Hydralisk's arm snapped off in his hands. Waiting for a second pause in their conversation, Chris said, "So, fellas, when're we movin' out?"
_Clyde simply stared blankly at Chris as if he had grown a second head. Nick answered, "We aint movin' until the convoy's here."
_"Oh, so they dropped us in the middle of their route?"
_"Well, what duh 'ell did you think dey were gunna do?" responded Clyde.
_Promptly, Sergeant Perez shouted from somewhere behind the group, "THEY'RE COMIN', YOU DOLTS! GIT INTO POSITION!"

* * *

_"Fuck, kid, how many cigs you gonna smoke today?"
_Johnny Poltz hollered "Shut up, Kyle!' from inside the driver's cabin. The dim, flickering lighting inside the cabin was starting to give him a headache, which caused him a bit of stress. Everyone coped with stress differently. Johnny's way was simple; smoke a few Rebel Reds cigars every now and then. Sure, he smoked more than he liked to admit, but what else was he gonna do? "Lay off, I've got a fuckin' headache."
_One of the front-end lights was failing, and the other one was long gone. Through the dim light cast by the aforementioned failing light, he could see some large object directly in his path.
_"FUCK!" Poltz hollered to Kyle, "HEY! Yoo min' tellin' them bastards out back behin' me dat we gots tah SLOW DOWN?! Some bitch-ass foo' lef' us a lil present..."
_After hearing an acknowledgment from Kyle, Poltz hopped out the cabin and walked outside to inspect the pieces of machinery in front of him. On his way over there, he thought he heard some leaves rustling to his right. His eyes flickered in that direction, but he saw nothing but darkness. Silently cursing the convoy truck's failing headlights, he walked a little faster.
_"Dat sure is a shitload uh shit righ' there," he remarked. He heard the screeching of brakes behind him, followed by some rather loud, metallic thumping. Assuming it to be nothing but Kyle angrily smashing another dent into the inner walls of the truck, Poltz headed back to the cabin. He silently chuckled at his pal's anger management (or lack thereof) as he slipped into the seat.
_Almost as soon as he sat down again, he felt the air around him change. There was little sound, other than his breathing and his slightly-accelerated heartbeats. He heard another thump, and another, and another yet, as rhythmic as a man's footsteps. The air got thicker, more humid, as the thumping grew louder. A lump grew in Poltz's throat; he knew that if he were to try and scream now, no sound would emanate from his often smoke-filled lungs. His head thought "Run now, you fool. Run before they get you! At least do something, shithead!" But Poltz could not concentrate enough to even attempt to do these things. Thoughts and memories flew by in a whirl, too fast and too uncoordinated to be pieced together in any intelligible way. All he could concentrate on was the heavy thumping. It grew louder and louder, closer and closer, until finally, mercifully, it stopped.
_"Poltz! What the FUCK is goin' on here?!"
_Surprised as ever, Poltz wheeled around in his chair. Standing in front of him was Jerry "Sterling Silver" Renn, cabby of another truck in the convoy.
_Relieved, he exhaled. "Holay shit, bud-eh, ye had me scared there."
_Mouthing "What?" Jerry opened his mouth to speak again as the truck's rear promptly exploded. Hit by shrapnel, metal or some other fragment of truck, Jerry was either killed on-site or knocked unconscious. Either way, he hit the floor of the truck rather hard.
_"SHIT! SHIT! OH, SHIT!" screamed Poltz as several armored suits stepped into the hole left by the explosion. Screams echoed from the other trucks as well, and, had Poltz been paying attention, he would have seen an inflamed civilian dashing out and attempting the "stop, drop and roll" maneuver.
_Unable to face the fact that his death was this close and forgetting the fact that he thought it was all ending less than a minute ago, Poltz attempted to run towards the cabin door. His peripheral vision caught something, some hand movement or another, and he heard deafening gunshots...

_...and then, he heard nothing at all.

[bajadulce]

Very nice.  I envy anyone that can whip stuff like this up.  Myself, I never could find those kinds of creative juices when it came to writing.  Hell man, why stop now.  Write a novel!

Dat sure is a shitload uh shit righ' there

I could use a good writer to team up with for my latest project + some help with the planned campaign. 

[Pr0nogo]

Thanks! I look forward to continuing this piece.

I'm a good dialogue / story writer, so if you need help with that (even if it's just critiquing your current one), I'll gladly contribute.

[IskatuMesk]

Why all the underscores? Kind of annoying, actually.

Some of the dialogue seems slightly strange, in that the LT could reference to handling the rebellious dogs as a form of serving and protecting but his speech instead implies it's something else. Which seems a little odd to me.

You're also here ta put these rebellious dogs back in there place!"

Don't worry too much about hilarious goof-ups like this, you'd be shocked at some of the shit I find in TOA...

I absolutely hate CC's spoiler tags when it comes to selecting stuff to copy and paste; usually the whole spoiler just vanishes and I have to try again and again... fffuuuu

_Eying Nick, Chris said, "This is it."
_"This is it, buddy!" Nick said, chuckling.

Perhaps Nick would be replying to his buddy.

The pilot's feminine voice blared uncomfortably loudly over the

A little something I personally try to be careful with; how is the voice feminine when it's really loud and uncomfortable to bear? Your style is significantly different than mine, so my alternatives may not provide immediate answers, but I'd suggest something like "once feminine" or "fleetingly feminine" or something that denotes that it's clearly a woman's voice but has been distorted by the equipment.

There's also something else I am a little curious about. In Augostradia, I opted to include the code names for many of the weapons and equipment that the Alzerians fielded. But after a while I felt it was a little redundant to constantly refer to the gear by their entire name, so I instead used either code or name. In TOA I abolished the usage of codes altogether. Now this isn't really large enough to worry about such trivial matters but if you seek to enlarge the writing considerably, it's something to consider.

but he saw nothing but darkness.

I don't think this is really incorrect, as my first-grader knowledge of English isn't much to go by, but I generally try to avoid dual use of "buts" in the same sentence. Lol, butts.


As someone who sometimes browses the Spacebattles fanfic forum, this is grade A stuff to my eyes. I'm just pointing out a few little odd bits in my never-ending crusade for perfect flow and harmony. The only things I would change, that I am again just going to account to your style or the style of the fic itself, is that scenes end really, really quickly and we don't really get to be introduced to the characters.

[Pr0nogo]

The underscores denote new paragraphs.

Thank you for the feedback! Alternatively, here's something I wrote up in about fifteen minutes (the beginning of chapter two):

CHAPTER TWO

Steven Kyte was going to die.
The towering figure above him was a seven-foot six-inch Protoss Psion of some sort. Of the specifics, Kyte could care less; the fact of the matter was the alien had blasted through a three-foot titanium and annihilated half of the installation's crew already. Good for them, thought Kyte. They don't have to deal with the fucking aftermath!
The Protoss, at this point in time, was dealing with two armed guards who came rushing in at the beginning of this rather one-sided battle. Kyte and several others had been blown to the back of the loading bay. His left hand was bleeding severely at the wrist from a shrapnel wound, and his armor was dented at the right leg, making it impossible for him to walk. He spotted a dropped pistol to his left. His leg spasmed as he lunged for it, almost causing him to cry out in pain. Remarkably, Kyte managed not to alert anyone until after he grabbed the firearm.
This is what I get for picking the fucking Rebel side! thought Kyte, switching off the safety.
One of the guards was thrown into the wall with astonishing strength. Laughter demonic enough to chill the inner core of any normal Terran resonated from the Protoss as he shoved his fist through the last guard's armor and flesh like a keen blade. Screaming, the guard slid off the Psion's arm. As Kyte fired the firearm, sure as anything he was going to land a headshot, a sudden movement of the alien's head caused his shot to land only on the thing's right shoulder. Causing naught but a slight smoking hole, the shot was incredibly ineffective.
"Rrrah! Impudent human!" the Protoss' yells echoed throughout the bay. "Your death is nothing to me! End this inane struggle!"
Whimpering, the pistol slid from Kyte's grasp and the Terran himself collapsed.
"Gooood…" the Protoss laughed his chilling laugh as his hands began to glow. "Now, we will see how you hold up against my mental assaults, primitive creature." he said with a Protoss equivalent of a Terran's sneer. Steven Kyte thought of the last few words he would say to his family, of the last few prayers he should whisper, of the oaths and swears directed at the Protoss he should utter under his breath. Then the Protoss raised his glowing-blue hands.
And Kyte thought no more.