First Impressions (Science Fiction Story)

[PostNuclearMan]

Okay, remember all those stories where an alien and a human get captured by other aliens and are commanded to fight? Then they do it? that always struck me as retarded. So I started this story. Criticism is welcomed.


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There stands a man, under a sky filled with alien stars, beneath his feet a meadow of grasses. The foliage of flower and weed is not the familiar green of earth, but instead an odd dark blue, the occasional tree menaces with jet black thorn girded bark. The yellow sky serves as a stage for the small quartet of moons which race across the horizon in a continuous dance. Sometimes they are partnered with a pair of orange suns, sometimes with unfamiliar constellations.
None of this concerns the man. He searches around him for a moment, then finds what he is looking for, a jacket, black leather, bold words emblazoned on the back with a strange, threatening emblem to accompany them. He shakes off alien pollen and dust particles and dons the pilot’s jacket over his light grey jumpsuit. His boots crush plant matter that has never known the step of a sapient being under foot and the man moves forward, glaring at his strange surroundings with mismatched eyes.
For a moment it seems he is alone. But this does not last. As the man maneuvers around these new environs whilst his brain slowly coming to terms with his new reality a light begins to shine. First it is merely a blue glow, but soon enough it shapes itself into the abstract form of a humanoid face. The details are vague and it is mainly a wire frame construction, but still, a face, as large as a small car and floating ten or so feet in the air.
The face speaks and its words scare this world’s bird analogues into the air. Flocks of things with mahogany shells and buzzing wings streak off into a saffron sky whilst an alien voice makes authoritarian demands. “HUMAN, YOUR DESIGNATION IS KNOWN TO US. YOU ARE CALLED MADMAN. YOU HAVE BEEN TAKEN FROM YOUR CRAFT, DESIGNATED “JUGGERNAUT” FOR THE PURPOSE OF PARTICIPATING IN ONE OF THE SACRED GAMES. NEARBY YOU WILL FIND THE CAPTAIN OF THE FELLMININE SCIENCE VESSEL “NOBLE ENDEAVOUR” SHE HAS BEEN GIVEN THE MISSION OF ENDING YOUR EXISTENCE WITH NOTHING MORE THAN WHAT IS AT HAND. YOU WILL DO THE SAME. ROCKS, TREES, PLANTS, THESE ARE YOUR TOOLS. SLAY HER BEFORE SHE SLAYS YOU.” The face disappears, the meadow quiets and Madman grimaces. “Oh, you want to play a game?” a snow white eyebrow arches and a knowing smirk plays over the man’s features. “Well old Tesla knows a hundred and one games. Less see how you play some of mine.”
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Let’s switch our perspective. We move from an alien world with yellow skies and fields of indigo flowers to the bridge of a human Star Cruiser. Its’ Captain stands, stepping away from the table where he’d been conducting his meeting. He moves to one of mirrors that show the borders of his conference room. A command in uttered and the mirror becomes transparent. The captain stares down from his conference room to the bridge dispassionately before turning and speaking to his assembled command team. “So...” Red eyes turned to regard the assembled officers of the King of Kings causing more than one man a bit of unease. “On a supposedly routine patrol of this star system one of our fightercraft disappeared. But not just any fightercraft. A specialty Black Brigadier assault craft.” The officers tensed, if ever there were words leading up to a rant on incompetence these were it. “Need I mention that my brother, piloted, maintained and designed that craft? That’s right, we just lost an experimental combat prototype as well as several million dollars in training, along with several hundred million in equipment.” The captain sat down in his chair, one that had to have been shipped in to hold someone of his prodigious height and weight. “So. Here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to find Tesla “Madman” Mandaris. We’re going to find an EX/SC 001 fightercraft, and if it turns out someone, as opposed to something is responsible, that someone is going to have a very, very bad day.” The tension eased out of the room, there was no rant, just an outlining of the things at stake, and what the consequences were for the ensuing incident. The Captain makes a small gesture with his hand, and the accompanying command causes the group to disperse to their various duties, all save one.
“The reports have been filed?” It wasn’t a question. Captain Mandaris had certain expectations of his officers. “Yes sir.” The young woman before him coughed nervously. The man was seven feet tall and white as a ghost. These features were disturbing enough but “Captain Goliath” was renowned for his martial abilities and was never seen without a sword sheathed at his hip. Regulations be damned. “Break it down for me.” The large man leaned forward, the longsword propped against the table clattering ever so slightly as he toyed with the bundle of alien teeth that decorated its hand guard. Clearing her throat, Abigal Smith, Chief Science Officer of the Experimental Patriot Class Starcraft plunged into her report. “At oh seven hundred hours we sent out the Interceptor codenamed Juggernaut into the debris belt of this system’s gas giant. At oh eight hundred we lost contact with him. Since things had been going normally up until then we didn’t send anyone to check on him till oh nine hundred. We picked up some etheric residue and what appears to be a hyperspace engine signature but nothing more than that.” The Captain’s red eyes brimmed with emotion for just a moment, and then were nothing more than crimson shards of glass. It had happened too quickly for Abigail to get a glance at the man inside but she took some comfort in her commanding officer’s sign of humanity, no matter how well hidden. “Can you give me a course?” This was a question, toneless, flat. The usual calm, stoic demeanor Captain Mandaris gave the world. Abigail shrugged and answered him. This at least, she could give a one hundred percent clear answer on. “Yes, and no. I can give you the next system they jumped into, but I can’t give you their precise location in that system.” The Captain’s eyes hardened and he stood, fastening his sword to his belt. “Plot the course. We will find the people responsible for this, and they will answer to the Sol System Alliance.”
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The stage changes, from a top of the line human vessel we move back to the strange yellow skies and navy blue plants of Telrenamar 4. Our object of interest? Captain Maiayda, scientist, anthropologist, naturalist. She’d been shown a diagram of the humans, a male and female, on the replication of a disk that some other unknown race (her captors had called them something like... “the True peoples, or at least that’s the translation her standard issue linguistic translator had given her...) had recovered. They we’re superficially similar to the Fellminine. No tails, and strangely placed, underdeveloped ears. No muzzle either, and an odd protuberance of the nostrils. Still, they were far more attractive than her captors. Their facial features were in just the right places to keep the “uncanny valley” effect from taking place. Their legs were a tad odd though, plantigrade instead of digitigrade. In truth they reminded her of some of the native primates of her home nation’s jungles.

Regardless her captors were demanding that she, she, fourth daughter of Governess Ashayta slay another sapient being. One who’d done her no wrong no less! Whenever she thought about it her fur stood on end from the indignation. Nevertheless her captors had contacted her recently and told her they’d finally managed to capture a “Human To-exist” (her translator was definitely acting up. She’d have to get her expert on alien languages and try to find some way to fine tune the device...) and spent minutes detailing the “obvious” signs of the their specimens bloodthirst. First, they pointed out his scar, it started out at his scalp, moved down through the eye, then to the side of his... Nose was probably the proper word, through his lips, down his...yes, chin was obviously the only useful term, down his neck, whatever had caused it had barely avoided destroying one of his nipples, finally it swerved off to the right before reaching his groin and fading from existence altogether.

Maia had to agree, it was certainly an impressive scar, but the prosthetic, a golden, metallic eye intrigued her far more than superficial damage to the Human...was that the right word? Well it was the only name they had given her (other than a poorly translated descriptor) so it had to be. Either way she was more interested in the story behind the scar than the scar itself. Then they spent what felt like an hour blathering on about the Human’s sidearm. So what if it was a kinetic weapon? Non-Lethal weapons were very difficult to design and usually woefully specific in their application, a lethal, easy to use, broad-purpose weapon made the most sense for a space going civilization’s explorer.

Then they fetishized over the necklace of teeth he wore. Maybe if they’d said the teeth came from a peaceful race she’d have made some unpleasant judgments about her fellow captive wearing such a thing. But instead they fully admitted that each and every one of those teeth came from the warrior races of “The True peoples.” Well what did that mean any way? Inquiries were bleak and cryptic, weaseling information out of her captors was difficult but she finally managed to get her captors to answer two of the questions that most bothered her. One: The True peoples were at war with the humans, furthermore The True Peoples had recovered an artifact that the humans had sent out during their earliest days, a primitive Slower than light probe with a golden disk on it, it was from there that her captives had a rough diagram of human physiology. Two: the true peoples had used that artifact to hunt the humans down, finding them when they had just finished several major space construction projects, and attacked them.

They dropped the issue shortly thereafter and told her to attack the human before he could get his bearings, it was, apparently her only hope. Maia managed to hold in her incredulous laughter until their communication avatar had disappeared. She’d grant them that the human looked intimidating. But only because of his scar, and maybe his prosthetic... Though he was using a set of dark lenses mounted in a metal frame to hide his eyes, so the prosthetic wasn’t terribly obvious. They’d talked about the legendary battle prowess of his people, and Maia couldn’t help but chuckle at the naiveté, or blunt stupidity of her captors. Either they expected her to buy into obvious hype, or they bought into it themselves. The Fellminine had never encountered “The True Peoples” but judging from the details she’d managed gather she’d applied the profile of a highly expansionistic imperial culture on them. The humans on the other hand, she had little detail on them. Which probably meant her captors had next to nothing. Oh no. she wouldn’t be attacking the human. She’d defend herself if she had to. But she wouldn’t be attacking him.

Which left her with her one real option. Find the human, and study him. That wouldn’t be terribly difficult. She was a xenonaturalist after all, if she could track the footsteps of a being who clad his feet in protective layers then she’d throw in her captainship and apprentice herself all over again. It took her a few minutes to find the area she’d made her dwelling in. It was a natural rock cavern, the area was studded with them. She’d first taken it for a sinkhole but further examination showed her that it was actually a cave that’d had some of its roof collapse in on itself. A little bit of effort and she’d managed to make a fairly livable space with the proper application of her Academy Survival training. Weaving had given her some baskets and a whicker container for bedding materials. Hunting had given her a sling (and a bow, but making arrows was so mrawing tedious that she preferred the sling) which she was quite skilled with. Primitive Tools 101 had given her rock knives which she’d used to skin her kills. The fact that she’d been here long enough to be able to make one or two tanned hides (treated insect chitin was a better description, The planet’s native life forms had more in common with insects than anything else) worried her a little. So she gathered up her sling (something she kept in the pouches on the belt she wore, along with other scientific instruments)and a pouch of river stones and set off on her journey.

Maia’s progress in her hunt for the human startled her. She hadn’t expected so much success so fast. He hadn’t bothered to hide his tracks. arrogance? Haste? Preoccupation? There were a lot of possibilities and it took her a moment to focus herself and keep from bogging down and following each thought pattern to its end. There was work to be done. Her quarry hadn’t bothered to hide his tracks; this led her to a sapling of one of the local tree equivalents. Or what had been a sapling. Now there was a hole in the ground, wood shavings, rock shards and the exposed root system of the plant, some of the odd, fuzzy leaves that most of the flora on this world sported were about but it was obvious that the human had taken some for himself. Maia crouched, as her ears and whiskers assumed an expression indicating discontent or deep thought. He’d just discarded the rock knives after using them... Either that or he’d made at least six before finally claiming one for himself. That didn’t make much sense to Maia, unless her quarry was very obsessive about the quality of his works he wouldn’t have bothered to make six stone knives. She gathered up the artifacts in question and examined them, at least two were rejects. Useless for anything except cutting an unprotected hand. One appeared to be used for etching, or chiseling, either way it had been crafted so that a sharpened point could be used on something. The others were all for hacking. Why would he need so man- of course. Maia looked back over the other fragments; he’d broken several knives, at least two, probably more than that. If she’d had more time Maia would have pieced the shards back together but all she’d really need was the confirmation that he’d broken several knives. So, he wanted a chiseling knife, and a hacking knife but had kept breaking knives so he’d made extras, then gone back to work and ended up with a surplus once he was finished...

Maia moved onto examining the sapling fragments, some branches and leaves, not as many as there should have been, so he’d taken several branches and leaves with him. Wood shavings, bark, the root system of the plant what could he possibly- A sudden picture came to mind. The festival of the All Mother’s Concubine Matchka, males dressed in ceremonial armor smashing each other with wooden swords until one was unconscious or conceded defeat. Injuries, and even death in such contests were not unheard of. Maia looked over her shoulder uneasily, could the human really be that barbaric? Had he made a club, a club studded with small spikes no less, and was he sneaking up on her even now? Of course not. His track led off to the east, in the same arrogant/hasty/busy stride that had brought her here. So he made a club, a very unpleasant club, and from the looks of things he had a target, what could he possibly be up to? Now that her quarry was armed, well armed, Maia made certain to take extra care in her movements. The Standard survival sling was loaded with a river stone and her senses were heightened by fear and...excitement? Odd, here she was dealing with what might be a homicidal alien and she was excited.

Carefully, quietly she crept forward, moving from meadow, into forest, and finally onto one of the rock spires that dotted the landscape. After looking over the area she was able to spot her quarry’s tracks, though they were slower, more...determined perhaps? What was he up to? Maia was so focused on her tracking that she didn’t notice the metallic refuse until she stubbed a toe on it. Swearing slightly she crouched down to examine the offending object. Strange, upon further examination the wreckage was part of a rock, she’d been over this area two or three times and never noticed this. So, the captors had disguised a stone as part of the landscape, not out of the question but how had the human noticed it when she had not? The answer was so obvious she wanted to kick herself. His eye it was such a glaringly obvious physical abnormality that you’d end up overlooking it. He had a golden prosthetic installed in his skull. What if he’d crammed as many scanning devices into that orb as...humanly possible was probably the appropriate phrase... So he was using his eye to find captor devices and dismantle them. But to what end? Maia was no techie but she could easily see that the, device had been stripped down to the point where it was nothing more than rust worthy junk. What was he going to do with all that equipment? Shaking off her confusion Maia moved forward following the human’s tracks into the ca- cave? There was no cave in this area she had checked. Dozens of times. Her face took on the thoughtful aspect (ears tilted just so, whiskers pressed against her muzzle, tail probably waving about) and then her eyes traced the base of the cavern’s entrance. More metal ruination, the human’s work obviously. Her face took on the aspect of a smirk (ears up, whiskers out, tail mostly still except for the waggling tip) and she climbed up the spire’s face till she could examine the valley from on high. All it took was a few seconds examination. Metal glinted in a dozen places that it shouldn’t have. All of which, she noted, were places that the captor’s avatars had spoken to her.

Maia leapt down and landed effortlessly, pausing only to discard a few burrs that had gotten caught in the knee length skirt of her uniform before continuing on her way. The cave was dank, rot, wet, and the smell of cave dweller dung clouded Maia’s senses. The sounds of dripping water and echoes threw off her hearing. Maia’s training, thankfully allowed her to make some sense of the cacophony, though anyone with her level of sensory sensitivity couldn’t help but be a little confused by the sheer level of differing scents and sounds. Tracking was a little difficult, but thankfully nothing on this world had a gait even vaguely humanoid and as far as Maia knew none of the humanoid species discovered by The Exploration Fleets had encountered a Sapient species that felt the need to bind their feet. So maybe Humans had to? Perhaps the clothing he was wearing wasn’t so much for uniform purposes like in the Fellminine’s case and was more for protection? After all he didn’t have any fur...

So caught up in her thoughts was Maia that she was rather surprised when she stumbled onto the Captor’s corpse, thankfully she was no shrinking violet, to tremble and cower before a dead sapient. Though, the damage to the body did churn her gut. His, her, it, whatever, its face had been smashed in, its eyes reduced to so much goo by the thorns of the Human’s club. Its teeth were smashed in and over all its face was now pretty much one giant wound. Thankfully the damage seemed confined to the captor’s head, this may have been a vengeance killing but the human probably wasn’t going to waste the time required to maim a corpse. Hmm... did the creature have a translator? Maia removed the translator badge from its position on her uniform as she removed what looked like a personal computer from the creature, after a moment she managed to get the translator badge to interface with it and download what the dedicated AI would deem relevant information. That task done she moved on to examine her captor’s corpse.

Yes, it was as she first thought, the trauma to the face was so extreme that she wouldn’t be able to tell anything, other than that it had hideously large eyes and long, thin needle like teeth, most of which had been smashed or sent flying out of its mouth by the Human’s thorny club. The creature wore a body suit that had several pockets built into it, all of which had been emptied, bits of dried meat and other detritus she couldn’t identify littered the ground around the dead alien. A belt that had held what appeared to be a knife and a side arm had been emptied... So now the Human had a knife, a sidearm (that he probably couldn’t use, anyone with any sense in space would put security devices into their side arms if they were a government operation)and that fiendish club that he’d made. Her translator meanwhile had digested the new data. The proper name for her quarry’s species was not “Human To-Exist” but “Human Being.” That made a lot more sense actually. Taking a deep breath for strength, Maia readied her sling and continued deeper into the cave.

Maia moved forward with all the grace and stealth that one of her ancestors would have used tracking a Varmanar herd beast across the plains of the Dajhani desert. The allusion brought a smile (well, a pleasant expression at any rate. Whiskers out, ears at an angle, tail tip twitching to the left and right...) to her face as she moved through the murk of the cave. As she moved forward she noted that there were a variety of machines, all in various states of working order, she saw what she recognized as a security post, still functioning, whilst several of the displays (on solid screens no less! Just how old was this thing?) were nothing more than static, others were displaying various rooms in what were probably the captor’s habitation areas. She identified a workshop, what appeared to be a garage full of ships in various states of disassembly, a cafeteria full of active captors, a motorpool full of wheeled vehicles, several empty cells (she assumed they were cells rate. They had the look of a room that you’d put someone you didn’t have much respect for in.) and what she assumed was an area used by the captors to maintain hygiene before a commotion drew her attention. “HERE! I saw the bastard mammal over here!” Carefully Maia moved towards the sounds, several captors, all toting some form of hand weapon were milling around one of the caverns, which were surprisingly well lit. With eyes that size Maia had just assumed they’d have decent night vision. Apparently that wasn’t the case. “Find him! He’s been wreaking havoc all over the place! We’ve already lost all the hologenerators in the game area! I can’t raise Verfum on his comm, and I don’t even want to think about what he’s doing with all the crap he stole from the storage room! Split up, find him. He’s only one sapient, just what could he do against us?” There was much belligerent boasting of what they would do to the human when they found him and then the group split up, several of the captors headed off to some dark caverns to the east, while several others went to the west.

The Overseer (she assumed he was their overseer, or possessed some other form of rank since he would stay in the “safe” area of the tunnels) on the other hand spent something like ten minutes eating a gut churningly disgusting looking substance that smelled like rotten fish, and looked like something her pet Xanshi would have left in its waste box before “performing recon.” This apparently entailed puttering about the cavern that had had been used as some form of security office. The overseer showed all signs of comfortable complacency right until he discovered the corpse of what Maia assumed was an on duty security guard. He panicked, called for back and spent several seconds trying to get some sort of flat, ceramic container open. This lasted right up until a Javelin, that had to be a javelin took him in one of his knees, bringing the slimy amphibian crashing to the floor. “You! You can’t do this!” The captor tried to key his communicator, only to have a thick, wooden shaft slam through ceramic and plastic, shattering the small piece of alien technology and driving the sharp weapon deep into the alien’s body. AS the stepped out of the darkness the captor groaned and coughed up a bit of blue-green blood. “Why not, precisely?” So her translator had managed to download more than a few useful terms. She’d have to complement the Technology Corp on their interface designs. Or the politicos for trading with the Normellay for widely used technologies. “You kidnap me, tear apart my ship, demand, that I kill another sapient being for no other reason than “I told you so” and are surprised when I take the fight to you. Well let me tell you son. That dog don’t hunt.” The captor soiled itself. At least she hoped it soiled itself, Maia didn’t like to think that any creature could smell so bad without having a special reason for it. “W, w, We are the masters of this space! We make the rules! By entering this area of space you have subject yourself to our la-“ A kick from the human’s strangely covered feet silenced the captor. And sent several of its teeth flying across the floor. “Your friends won’t get here fast enough to save you. I set some traps. Honestly it’s your own fault for making all those lovely chemicals and spare parts so easy to find. As for your laws...” Even if she required a translator to understand him Maia could still understand the emotion that he loaded the word “law” with. Pure, unadulterated scorn. “Any sapient being who presumes that privilege grants him the right to enslave or make sport of the lives of other sapient beings deserves only death. You’re lucky I have so little time. Otherwise I’d drag this out.” Any protests the captor would’ve made were quickly silenced by the club the human had made. The captor died after the first blow, or was rendered unconscious,the subsequent blows tore the long, stringy strands of flesh that hung down past its mouth and obscured it nostrils to shreds and generally rendered the creatures face a mess. After a moment’s contemplation the human picked the corpse up and positioned it just so... (in the meantime giving her a good view of the makeshift quiver he’d made for the thorn tree javelin’s he’d made, apparently he’d found one of the massive seed pods that the tree’s occasionally produced, hollowed it out, tied it to his back with vines and used into to store javelins carved from suitable tree branches...) He placed a contraption under the corpse which clicked ominously just once before he managed to slip off into the gloom of the cave.

[Mayabird]

Please, please, please first fix the formatting and writing errors in this. It is difficult to read. I don't know if English is your first language or not (it's not for a lot of members of the board, and English is rather horrible language anyway, so it'd be understandable), so I could give you advice on fixing it up and places you made mistakes. For starters, when different people talk, it's best to start a new line.

"What do you want?" "I don't know. What do you want?" "I dunno. What do you want?" "GODDAMNIT, WILL YOU TWO STOP DOING THAT?" Harder to read and understand.

"What do you want?"
"I don't know. What do you want?"
"I dunno. What do you want?"
"GODDAMNIT, WILL YOU TWO STOP DOING THAT?"
Clearer, easier to read.

People will be more inclined to read the stories and be able to criticize or advise or whatever when it's neater.


But yes, those stories are stupid.

[Simon_Jester]

Most of those stories are a variant on the Prisoner's Dilemma, as I see it; it's not surprising that some of them have the two beings fight. But you're right, it's stupid that they all do.

I don't think the language is so much the problem as the formatting. In print, paragraphs are usually indented, which makes it easier to tell where one ends and another begins. Here, you can't do that, so you have to put an empty line between paragraphs if you want it to be readable. Otherwise you get huge blocks of text that look like single paragraphs unless someone is very careful to examine them.

Also, what Mayabird said about having each line of a conversation get its own paragraph. If you look at novels or other published stories in English, that is always what the author does, or nearly always.

[PostNuclearMan]

Damnit.
That was formatted perfectly in word.

as for each line in a conversation getting its own paragragh, its not that common. Its a more recent convention to be perfectly honest, but it does make more sense.

but yeah, later I'm gonna have to go in there and format it for a forum style.Which I hate doing but what the hell?

[Simon_Jester]

Damnit.
That was formatted perfectly in word.

as for each line in a conversation getting its own paragragh, its not that common. Its a more recent convention to be perfectly honest, but it does make more sense.

...Recent how? I've seen it in stories dating back to the 1930s, or at least I'm pretty sure I have.

[Mayabird]

Oh dear. One more thing, which really gets on my nerves:

"Its" is possessive, as in "its own paragraph." "It's" is a contraction of "it is" or "it was" as in, "It's not that common." When I'm writing, I actually say "it is" to see if it would work to make sure that I'm picking the right one.