The Iron Throne
Posted: 2007-07-13 03:39am
Maybe an interesting one-off, but I'd also like to continue this, time permitting. Either way, this isn't cleaned up, its the result of an hour or two of slap-dash writing, tell me what you think, etc.
***
The Iron Throne: A Prologue
Phineas the First was the last king of OstVirginion. He had no children, nor brothers to bear his title after he died. When he went to rest, in all likelihood, the King-Prime Andreas, his ancestor, would be cloned and impregnated into some wealthy countess’ daughter. The thought gave him no consolation. If the pregnancy ended in a miscarriage, as was wont to happen in these outdated natural broodings, some note of succession would be forge-faxed and half the duchies in the region of Appalachia would spill blood and oil for a strip of land along the coast and a new crown.
That thought chilled him. He clenched and unclenched his fists. He could feel his nails digging into his palms.
He gazed out the window of Castle Dendron, onto the busy landscape below. Around his castle, the supple silvery shapes of mansions, homes of the nobles and wealthiest merchants of the realm, always jockeying for power, roofed with beautifully manicured terraces and cloaked in the spiderweb outlines of their shields, rubbed up against the great, robust shapes of manufactories, belching oxy-clean nanites and vapour into the morning air as they trudged along on spindly insectoid legs. Great holographic wizardry and golden-brown exotic dancers dazzled plebs in the Plaza. A hundred sparkling, floating merchant-galleys skirmished with tethered, alabaster pleasure-houses for space in the Grand Marketplace, drifting like spores in the wind. Dendron, the jewel of all Virginion.
But outside of the markets and mansions and castles lay the true face of Dendron. Kilos of squat, steel hovels and rusted copper tenements nested in an erratic explosion of life. He hoped his successor had some worthy ideas about urban renewal.
He had more important things to worry about.
“Brandy,” he called, his voice amplified and directed to the servants’ quarters by a thought. He would need some lightning today. “And some breakfast. Seaweed and veal.” Yes, that felt about right. He silently injected himself with 5 cc’s of methadone.
Today the Archduke of the Triple Monarchy was coming. Of course, it was three kingdoms, but it was not an Empire. Oh no, one couldn’t have that. That would be obscene. Bloody aristocrats.
One of his Brights brought him breakfast. The boy was really quite unremarkable. Perhaps Phineas would colour-code his servants tomorrow. Blue would really fit this one well. A nano-enhanced Eunuch, the merchant had said. Phileas didn’t quite see the need for enhancements in servants, but the merchant seemed to think he had ingratiated himself with the OstVirginion court, and merchants who thought themselves with influence were less likely to attempt a coup. Phineas had heard horrible things about some plutocratic coups to the North. Then again, he had heard that that war had seized the West, and that Lemuria had begun to to re-activate (re-activate what, anyways?) to the South, and he had even heard some absurd things about travelers from across the World-Ocean to the East. A king couldn’t be riled by every rumour his spymaster managed to pluck from drunken, malfunctioning plebs.
***
“Quit worrying, cock.”
Lex seemed to have fallen in with everyone else in calling Norin ‘Cock’ and dismissing his suggestions. Of course, all the other scavengers – sorry, that was too honest – all the other reconners – thought that dick-jokes were the height of comedy. But they didn’t matter. Norin never cared what they thought. Most of them were uneducated, outdated, malfunctioning meth addicts. The kind who gravitated naturally to a lowest-common denominator job like this, as far away from any civilization or culture or the arm of law they could go before it got dangerous. Well, before it got really dangerous. They were his comrades, of course – they’d shared all the harrowing battles against nature he had – but they were quaintly offensive comrades.
But Lex was different. Lex was the best of them. Aside from looking the part of a rugged adventurer, unlike the rest of them, who looked like rusted, poxed, bearded, sweaty brigands, he acted like one too. He was certainly stronger, and his enhancements were obviously newer- his powered plate armour had a chrome shine that could blind a careless man – and he spoke rarely, then only dispensing good Western wisdom or telling off the other bastards for their stupidity.
And now he was calling Norin a cock.
Norin admired their surroundings. An ashen old battlefield, surrounding a glass bowl in the middle of this heap, stretched for miles. Hundreds of fallen aircraft and battle-machines of all shapes and sizes were strewn across the area, like toys thrown by an angry god. They made walls and paths and shelters and labyrinths out of twisted wreckage. Any humans, if they had been involved, had disintegrated a long time ago. Crystal laces of an overgrown arti-vine twisted and snuck around the great, hulking machinery of war, with tiny threads expanding to great, thick ropes choking ancient tanks and warbots in their century-long grip.
“Heh, this place, is, heh, virgin.”,Snickered Donivan. “So much for mister pisspot worry-machine over here. No one’s ever been here!”
“It’s only virgin because no one else has ever been dumb enough to scavenge in an Ig-damned Fallout Zone a dozen klicks from Lemuria.”, Whined Norin. He kicked an piece of shiny rubbish in front of him.
“Shut up, guys, we’ve got a job to do, and we can do it before taking it easy and arguing once we get back to base camp.” Lex seemed happy enough to omit cursing this time. Goddamn cowboy.
“Heh, sure Lex,. I’ll just, heh, pop this baby’s cherry to finish the argument.” Donivan sneered, and pulled his matte-black old slugthrower out of its place slung across his back.
BANG! The ground in front of him erupted, sending burnt earth up in a gout of flame and ash.
And then everyone paused nervously, for just a moment.
Donivan opened his mouth to speak, but no sound issued from his sweaty, wine-smelling mouth.
And then they heard it.
“UUUUUUUUU-LAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.”
Everyone turned to the sound. No one could run yet. After all, they were finders. They were curious men.
Something moved.
A high, metallic clacking and clicking started. And then another. And then another. No one ran yet then, either.
Suddenly, from atop an old jeep, they came. Great shiny, silver monsters, all legs and claws and blades. They were like giant spiders, but too wide and low to be spiders.
“SCREEEEEE!”, the first one called as it saw the terrified scavenger band.
“SCREEEEEE!”, a dozen more answered it.
“What the fuck is it?” called Terran.
Donivan was at the head of our party of a dozen. His mouth gaped, and he pissed himself.
The thing sprang towards him like an impossible blur. Suddenly it was on him, and his right arm was cut into three pieces. His slugthrower fell away. Blood and oil sprayed from his wound. Before he could speak, more blades pierced his chest through, and snicked! and snacked! pieces of his face and limbs off of him, with inerrant accuracy. It pinned him in the air, cutting into him like a roast, and it studied him. The thing was snipping away all the muscle and bone and whittling him down to nothing, and it studied him.
Lex, of course, was the first to respond. His Vape-pistol launched like clockwork from its collapsible wrist-holder into his hand. He aimed it at what might have been the thing’s face, and fired. And fired and fired and fired. Ozone filled the air. The first shot blasted piece’s of the thing’s silver armour off, exposing more silver wires and cogs under it. As it was bombarded with energy blasts, it started to melt. Segments of it’s face sloughed off, and smoke discharged out of the gaps between limbs. It crumpled to the ground.. Lex was a dead aim.
“SCREEEEEEE!” Another spiderthing rose above its fallen comrade, and then another, and a few more, all of them writhing masses of whirling blades and screeches and terrible clicks. Lex’s hand move as swiftly as sin to meet the new opponent. Norin looked around. Everyone else had finally pulled their guns too. He scrambled to join in. No one made a shot for a moment. It was a stand-off. But only one party had guns.
Then the spiderthings showed their real hand. In a flash, without sound or sensation, a cool green beam stretched from one of the things’ eyes to connect with Lex’s chest. It moved faster than the eye could track, and Lex was quartered in front of us, perfectly diced into burnt sections by the things.
Then everything went to hell.
“SCREEEEEEE!”
“Holy shit!”
“Run!”
And then only noises.
BANG!
Snick!
And a gurgled scream. And only then did Norin start to run. Everyone else seemed too caught up in dying, even the ones who didn’t know it yet. Between and under and around the great machines of yesteryear, he ran and hid. He remembered a flash of a darker metal on the machinespiderthings. It had read ‘Product of Lemuria, Inc.”
He idly wondered if Terran had seen that before he had died.
That goddamn overconfident cowboy.
________________
Personally, it feels clunky to me, and the fight-scene needs a hell of a lot of work. But I've got an inspiration for this. Comments are welcome.
***
The Iron Throne: A Prologue
Phineas the First was the last king of OstVirginion. He had no children, nor brothers to bear his title after he died. When he went to rest, in all likelihood, the King-Prime Andreas, his ancestor, would be cloned and impregnated into some wealthy countess’ daughter. The thought gave him no consolation. If the pregnancy ended in a miscarriage, as was wont to happen in these outdated natural broodings, some note of succession would be forge-faxed and half the duchies in the region of Appalachia would spill blood and oil for a strip of land along the coast and a new crown.
That thought chilled him. He clenched and unclenched his fists. He could feel his nails digging into his palms.
He gazed out the window of Castle Dendron, onto the busy landscape below. Around his castle, the supple silvery shapes of mansions, homes of the nobles and wealthiest merchants of the realm, always jockeying for power, roofed with beautifully manicured terraces and cloaked in the spiderweb outlines of their shields, rubbed up against the great, robust shapes of manufactories, belching oxy-clean nanites and vapour into the morning air as they trudged along on spindly insectoid legs. Great holographic wizardry and golden-brown exotic dancers dazzled plebs in the Plaza. A hundred sparkling, floating merchant-galleys skirmished with tethered, alabaster pleasure-houses for space in the Grand Marketplace, drifting like spores in the wind. Dendron, the jewel of all Virginion.
But outside of the markets and mansions and castles lay the true face of Dendron. Kilos of squat, steel hovels and rusted copper tenements nested in an erratic explosion of life. He hoped his successor had some worthy ideas about urban renewal.
He had more important things to worry about.
“Brandy,” he called, his voice amplified and directed to the servants’ quarters by a thought. He would need some lightning today. “And some breakfast. Seaweed and veal.” Yes, that felt about right. He silently injected himself with 5 cc’s of methadone.
Today the Archduke of the Triple Monarchy was coming. Of course, it was three kingdoms, but it was not an Empire. Oh no, one couldn’t have that. That would be obscene. Bloody aristocrats.
One of his Brights brought him breakfast. The boy was really quite unremarkable. Perhaps Phineas would colour-code his servants tomorrow. Blue would really fit this one well. A nano-enhanced Eunuch, the merchant had said. Phileas didn’t quite see the need for enhancements in servants, but the merchant seemed to think he had ingratiated himself with the OstVirginion court, and merchants who thought themselves with influence were less likely to attempt a coup. Phineas had heard horrible things about some plutocratic coups to the North. Then again, he had heard that that war had seized the West, and that Lemuria had begun to to re-activate (re-activate what, anyways?) to the South, and he had even heard some absurd things about travelers from across the World-Ocean to the East. A king couldn’t be riled by every rumour his spymaster managed to pluck from drunken, malfunctioning plebs.
***
“Quit worrying, cock.”
Lex seemed to have fallen in with everyone else in calling Norin ‘Cock’ and dismissing his suggestions. Of course, all the other scavengers – sorry, that was too honest – all the other reconners – thought that dick-jokes were the height of comedy. But they didn’t matter. Norin never cared what they thought. Most of them were uneducated, outdated, malfunctioning meth addicts. The kind who gravitated naturally to a lowest-common denominator job like this, as far away from any civilization or culture or the arm of law they could go before it got dangerous. Well, before it got really dangerous. They were his comrades, of course – they’d shared all the harrowing battles against nature he had – but they were quaintly offensive comrades.
But Lex was different. Lex was the best of them. Aside from looking the part of a rugged adventurer, unlike the rest of them, who looked like rusted, poxed, bearded, sweaty brigands, he acted like one too. He was certainly stronger, and his enhancements were obviously newer- his powered plate armour had a chrome shine that could blind a careless man – and he spoke rarely, then only dispensing good Western wisdom or telling off the other bastards for their stupidity.
And now he was calling Norin a cock.
Norin admired their surroundings. An ashen old battlefield, surrounding a glass bowl in the middle of this heap, stretched for miles. Hundreds of fallen aircraft and battle-machines of all shapes and sizes were strewn across the area, like toys thrown by an angry god. They made walls and paths and shelters and labyrinths out of twisted wreckage. Any humans, if they had been involved, had disintegrated a long time ago. Crystal laces of an overgrown arti-vine twisted and snuck around the great, hulking machinery of war, with tiny threads expanding to great, thick ropes choking ancient tanks and warbots in their century-long grip.
“Heh, this place, is, heh, virgin.”,Snickered Donivan. “So much for mister pisspot worry-machine over here. No one’s ever been here!”
“It’s only virgin because no one else has ever been dumb enough to scavenge in an Ig-damned Fallout Zone a dozen klicks from Lemuria.”, Whined Norin. He kicked an piece of shiny rubbish in front of him.
“Shut up, guys, we’ve got a job to do, and we can do it before taking it easy and arguing once we get back to base camp.” Lex seemed happy enough to omit cursing this time. Goddamn cowboy.
“Heh, sure Lex,. I’ll just, heh, pop this baby’s cherry to finish the argument.” Donivan sneered, and pulled his matte-black old slugthrower out of its place slung across his back.
BANG! The ground in front of him erupted, sending burnt earth up in a gout of flame and ash.
And then everyone paused nervously, for just a moment.
Donivan opened his mouth to speak, but no sound issued from his sweaty, wine-smelling mouth.
And then they heard it.
“UUUUUUUUU-LAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.”
Everyone turned to the sound. No one could run yet. After all, they were finders. They were curious men.
Something moved.
A high, metallic clacking and clicking started. And then another. And then another. No one ran yet then, either.
Suddenly, from atop an old jeep, they came. Great shiny, silver monsters, all legs and claws and blades. They were like giant spiders, but too wide and low to be spiders.
“SCREEEEEE!”, the first one called as it saw the terrified scavenger band.
“SCREEEEEE!”, a dozen more answered it.
“What the fuck is it?” called Terran.
Donivan was at the head of our party of a dozen. His mouth gaped, and he pissed himself.
The thing sprang towards him like an impossible blur. Suddenly it was on him, and his right arm was cut into three pieces. His slugthrower fell away. Blood and oil sprayed from his wound. Before he could speak, more blades pierced his chest through, and snicked! and snacked! pieces of his face and limbs off of him, with inerrant accuracy. It pinned him in the air, cutting into him like a roast, and it studied him. The thing was snipping away all the muscle and bone and whittling him down to nothing, and it studied him.
Lex, of course, was the first to respond. His Vape-pistol launched like clockwork from its collapsible wrist-holder into his hand. He aimed it at what might have been the thing’s face, and fired. And fired and fired and fired. Ozone filled the air. The first shot blasted piece’s of the thing’s silver armour off, exposing more silver wires and cogs under it. As it was bombarded with energy blasts, it started to melt. Segments of it’s face sloughed off, and smoke discharged out of the gaps between limbs. It crumpled to the ground.. Lex was a dead aim.
“SCREEEEEEE!” Another spiderthing rose above its fallen comrade, and then another, and a few more, all of them writhing masses of whirling blades and screeches and terrible clicks. Lex’s hand move as swiftly as sin to meet the new opponent. Norin looked around. Everyone else had finally pulled their guns too. He scrambled to join in. No one made a shot for a moment. It was a stand-off. But only one party had guns.
Then the spiderthings showed their real hand. In a flash, without sound or sensation, a cool green beam stretched from one of the things’ eyes to connect with Lex’s chest. It moved faster than the eye could track, and Lex was quartered in front of us, perfectly diced into burnt sections by the things.
Then everything went to hell.
“SCREEEEEEE!”
“Holy shit!”
“Run!”
And then only noises.
BANG!
Snick!
And a gurgled scream. And only then did Norin start to run. Everyone else seemed too caught up in dying, even the ones who didn’t know it yet. Between and under and around the great machines of yesteryear, he ran and hid. He remembered a flash of a darker metal on the machinespiderthings. It had read ‘Product of Lemuria, Inc.”
He idly wondered if Terran had seen that before he had died.
That goddamn overconfident cowboy.
________________
Personally, it feels clunky to me, and the fight-scene needs a hell of a lot of work. But I've got an inspiration for this. Comments are welcome.
