"Free Will is Overrated" - Language Barrier, Part 2 of 2

Story Hub: [link] 

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            Mixly and Jastear were at a loss. The cyangel was dangerous and damn near indestructible, but she was so cowardly and uncoordinated that it was hard to tell how much of a threat she actually was. They had already decided to call the keeper, but by the time Jastear opened the comm line, the armored man had already arrived without them realizing.

            “Knight Sabre, how long have you been here?” Mixly nearly jumped out of his skin.

            “I told you I would follow shortly, and I did,” Sabre answered. “I sensed your encounter with the target and rushed to aid you, and it seems I’ve arrived just in time.” The cyangel, upon noticing the keeper’s arrival, went from hysterical panic to silent fear.

            “Our weapons are mostly ineffective, Knight Sabre. We only managed to corner her through a lucky shot and her own weapon jamming,” Jastear explained. “What are we to do?”

            “Since it appears this creature is the source of the signal, it is likely a scout paving the way for whatever force has been afflicting the other colonies,” Sabre declared. “Thus, it must be destroyed before it can report back. And, if it is so durable, I shall simply strike it down with a more potent weapon.” With but a thought, Sabre called forth a small construct buckled to his waist. It reassembled into a sword hilt in his right hand, then generated a brilliant blade of equal parts light and psionic energy.

            With an even greater threat presented, the cyangel went from silent fear back to screaming hysterics and tried to wield her jammed rifle in defense. However, Sabre just sliced through it like paper. Next, the gynoid tried to fly up using her small wings, and despite her impressive speed taking the two officers off-guard, the keeper caught up to her in mid-air with a simple jump. His first slash barely missed her, slicing through one of the hollow buildings. However, he followed up with a psionically enhanced palm strike that sent her through the building and into an adjacent street.

            The cyangel picked herself up from the rubble, coughing and gasping. As she hacked up synthetic blue blood, the gynoid realized she had taken her first real damage in the fight and froze. Her cheek was torn, revealing the mix of flesh and cybernetics beneath it, and she felt vulnerable…weak…mortal…so she screamed.

            “And now to…” Sabre landed beside her, ready to deliver a coup de grâce, but her scream stopped him. Not out of a sudden desire to show his wounded foe mercy, but because he realized what kind of cry it was.

            “Knight Sabre, why have you stopped?” Mixly asked as he and Jaspear ran through the remains of the fake building. The cyangel continued to scream while occasionally yelling something in the Bulliries language.

            “Jastear, what is she saying?” Sabre asked in a deathly serious tone.

            “Huh?” Jastear was taken aback by the request but quickly tried to translate. “It’s hard to really tell. I’m only getting every third word, but one I hear a lot is the word for ‘elder’ or something close to it.”

            “What kind? Like a parent?” Sabre nearly yelled at his subordinate.

            “It’s less of a word and more of a modifier, not like a specific kind of elder, just something comparatively older,” Jastear stammered. “But I don’t understand. What’s so important about her ranting and raving?”

            “You two, can’t you tell? That is not the scream of a dying animal. It’s that of a child screaming for its mother to protect it!” Sabre explained. “I’ve made a grave error. This is not a scout! It’s a fledgling! We must regroup before-”

            A winged humanoid crashed into the area, cutting Sabre off. It was another cyangel, and a much bigger one at that. She stood taller than the keeper, with long black hair and a giant pair of white wings with a wingspan nearly the size of one of the fake buildings. Unlike the little one, who only wore a uniform, she was in cybernetic armor similar to the keeper’s. However, hers was even sleeker, yet appeared just as sturdy, and was colored pure white with red glowing lines running through it. She wielded a massive construct axe, partially composed of light like Sabre’s sword, but held together by a different force that the keeper didn’t recognize. Her piercing red eyes glowed with a malice one would never expect from a mostly mechanical being, and if looks could kill, Sabre would have died screaming.

            “Explain yourselves. Why have you harmed the little one?” The cyangel warrior demanded an explanation.

            “Knight Sabre! The signal is resonating even stronger than before!” Jastear’s eyes widened as the device they’d been using to trace the mysterious signal went haywire in the new cyangel’s presence.

            “Then my answer is obvious: you two are clearly invaders of a Federation-controlled world,” Sabre held his sword over the young cyangel. “You’d best surrender, or we’ll subdue you by force as well.”

            “An empty threat,” the black-haired cyangel mocked him. “I’m no fool, I can feel you trying to probe my mind, keeper. I challenge you to try. See what happens.” Her confidence shocked the keeper, but he had heard plenty of foes boast of their great mental defenses before they were swiftly humbled, and he figured this would be no different.

            “Soon I will know everything you do, machine. Your creator was careless to leave you with an organic brain,” Sabre pried deeper into her mind, but just as he peeled off the highest layer of her thoughts, he was hit with terrible psychic feedback that nearly knocked him off his feet. As if a thousand-thousand voices screamed at him to get out. “You horrid machine, how can you live like that?”

            “Oh, I assure you, it only takes a little time to understand how such a constant chorus of voices can become comforting,” the cyangel laughed. In less than the blink of an eye, she was already upon him, tackling him off her sister and smashing him through another of the false buildings. Still reeling from the psychic feedback, Sabre struggled to mount a solid defense, but even if he wasn’t, he quickly realized she was already faster than him.

            “Know no peace,” Sabre tried to paralyze her with his psionics, but he only managed to slow her down.

            “Know only peace and oblivion,” the cyangel brought her axe down onto him, which the keeper barely held back with his blade.

            “Shoot her down!” Sabre ordered the two officers. They opened fire, but their shots didn’t even annoy the cyangel.

            “Try the ploder charge,” Mixly whispered to his partner.

            “We’ll kill Sabre,” Jastear pointed out.

            “She’ll kill all of us regardless,” Mixly countered. Jastear acknowledged this, armed the explosive, and threw it at the gynoid. Realizing what was coming, Sabre raised a psychic shield, while the cyangel simply turned to face the object hurtling towards her. With a deafening explosion, fire and smoke engulfed them both, leaving a sizable crater in the ground.

            “Did it work?” Mixly asked as the young cyangel flailed, watching her elder vanish in a ball of fire.

            “It did not,” the elder cyangel emerged from the smoke, barely scuffed, the keeper now impaled on her axe. “Thanks for distracting him,” she mocked, gripping her axe tightly causing something to pulse through it and into Sabre. The keeper convulsed and writhed before she tossed him aside.

            “What did you do to him?” Mixly aimed his rifle at her head while Jastear aimed for her wings.

            “The same things I’m about to do to you,” she answered before blitzing the two, stabbing through them both with her bare hands, as if their armor didn’t exist. “Know only peace and oblivion. As you vanish from this world as you are, know that what remains will go on to do wonderful things.”

            “What…is…she…?” Mixly struggled to decipher her cryptic words as something poured into him through her hand. He turned to see Jastear’s eyes roll into the back of his head as he went limp. Soon his own vision began to fade as he struggled to so much as turn his head. All he could hear was the young cyangel still babbling and crying. For some reason, for the briefest moment before the world went to darkness, he could understand her.

            “….ome….Home…Want to go home!” She exclaimed before Mixly felt himself disappear into oblivion.

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            The battle was over, and all three agents of the Federation were rendered incapacitated and convulsing as an unstoppable process overtook them. The young cyangel was barely aware of this as she sobbed into the ground. Her only thoughts and desires were focused on the ever-distant idea of home.

            “I don’t want to be here anymore. I want to go home, I want to go home!” She pleaded to no one in particular.

            “It’s alright, little one,” the elder cyangel appeared by her sibling and comforted her. “Soon this place will be home.”

            “I’ve tried and tried, but I can’t make this place home. Look, just look!” The younger gestured to all the crude mockeries of buildings surrounding them.

            “I know it’s been hard, but now we’ve put down roots,” the elder looked aside and smiled at the three convulsing figures who had begun to rapidly change, especially the keeper. Whatever soul had lived inside that suit of armor was gone, something new was rapidly emerging, and the cyangel couldn’t be happier.

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            After Mixly, Jastear, and Sabre failed to return from Upillio and all attempts to contact them failed, Federation Command went into a minor panic. This was the third scouting party in the past two septocycles to disappear without a trace, and while they floated the idea of a search-and-rescue operation, they shelved the plan when two more groups vanished just as suddenly. Their only hint as to what might have happened was that whatever signal Sabre’s group had tracked on the planet had grown in strength, size, and intensity, and by the end of the next geocycle, the planet went dark.

            This could no longer be chalked up to bad luck or a fluke. Something terrible was happening in the Federation, and they had barely any idea what. However, some did, not that they wanted to believe it was possible, but there was no other explanation. They were being invaded, and quickly at that. It was only a matter of time before the major core worlds were in this mysterious enemy’s sights, and that’s if they were lucky. For all they knew, this enemy was already in their midst. Unfortunately for the Federation, the truth was far worse.

End Transmission…

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Setting down roots in a new place is a rewarding process with its own host of challenges. A language barrier, hostility from locals who don't like change, growing pains from missing your old home, struggling to carve out your own little niche and so on. But soon you'll find your problems slip away as your home and hearth grows wildly, and if the locals still refuse to like it accept your differences and manage the friction between you and them Make Them.

Until next time, Read, Comment and Enjoy.

"Free Will is Overrated" - Language Barrier, Part 1 of 2

Story Hub: [link] 

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            Strange things were happening in the Cosmic Wall. Outer rim outposts and listening stations insisted nothing was wrong for the longest time, but suddenly many planets on the fringes of the Themision Federation territory started going dark. It began with unaffiliated low-tech worlds technically under the Federation’s jurisdiction, then it spread to their outermost colonies, and now even planets close to the middle rim were rapidly losing contact with their scattered settlements. Yet the outposts and listening stations kept sending the all-clear. When these locations were inspected to determine the cause of their negligence, they were all empty and devoid of life. That is, if the teams sent to perform inspections returned at all.

            The Federation Senate was rife with talks of blame and finger-pointing, more so than usual, but a few cooler heads prevailed and put more funding and manpower behind discovering the source of this issue. However, not too many resources were invested in this search, the Federation had other problems and wars to fight. So many planets were lucky to have teams as large as three people coming to their aid. And in most cases the ‘aid’ was more inspections and scouting. In some people’s eyes, it was better than nothing. Others saw the obvious insanity in sending as few as three people to scout an entire planet.

            All these thoughts and more bounced around the mind of Special Security Officer Mixly. He cared little for his new “rank,” which pulled him away from the war with the Bacchus Union where he was really needed and sent him on, in his own words, “senate mandated shite work.” That’s why he and his partner were shipped to planet Upillio, the closest core world to the outer rim and the latest victim of mysterious issues and unexplained signals.

            As he gazed at the rolling hills and city-sized swathes of cultivated land that made up the farming world, Mixly could say only one thing. “We will find nothing, and receive nothing but grief for it.”

            “Don’t be so quick to assume the worst, Mixly,” his partner, Jastear, assured. “I’ve been hearing rumors from my friends upstairs. There’s a lot more to these happenings than the Senate is willing to let on. That’s why the keeper is with us.”

            “I’m almost afraid to ask,” Mixly sighed. Some of the higher-ups keeping needless secrets had become an unfortunately common thing in his line of work. He used to be annoyed by it, but now he was furious because it literally almost cost him an arm and a leg in his last mission.

            “A few of the bigwigs have a solid idea of who is responsible for all these missing colonies and empty outposts, but they’re not willing to admit it,” Jastear explained. “That, and they don’t have much in the way of real evidence. It’s not like they have survivors to squeeze info out of.”

            “So, they’re either terrified of being wrong, or they’re terrified of being right?” Mixly suggested.

            “Couldn’t have put it better myself,” Jastear agreed. “And of course those jarheads are too spineless to even give us enough resources to solve the problem if it is as bad as they think it is.”

            “This is not the time for idle speculation, Security Officer,” a filtered voice echoed from behind them. The two officers turned to see a man encased in stylized armor that hummed with enough electricity to power a small tank. The faceplate of his helmet was a flat, polished silver that matched his stoicism. He stood a full head taller than both men, but his sheer presence made him seem almost twice as large. Like a statue come to life, he glared down at the two men with disapproval. “We have a mission, and we complete it with the resources provided to us. Or are you implying that you are incompetent?”

            “No, sir,” Jastear stiffened up, desperately suppressing every insubordinate thought he could.

            “Do not suppress your true feelings. I am not a direct superior with fragile feelings,” the armored man replied. “Explain to me your worries in detail.”

            “While I lack official intel, sir,” Jastear gulped, “I have word from people I trust that whatever we might be after is a serious threat, and we won’t be prepared for whatever we find.”

            “I understand your concern, but it is unfounded as long as I am here,” the armored man assured.

            “Yes sir, Lord Keeper,” Jastear saluted.

            “I am not yet a Lord, Security Officer. I’m still just a humble Knight,” the keeper clarified. “Referring to me as Knight Sabre will be sufficient. And despite the rank’s name, calling me sir is unnecessary.”

            “Yes, Knight Sabre,” Jastear saluted.

            “Now, I’ve found an unusual signal of unknown origin,” Sabre revealed a hand-sized holographic projector displaying a map and coordinates. “It resembles signals from other locations like Theta-4, Iluxio, and Bulliries.”

            “I heard about what happened with the first two, but what happened on a backwater planet like Bulliries?” Mixly asked.

            “They went dark a few septocycles ago. It likely wasn’t mentioned in your briefing as it was recent and considered low priority,” Sabre explained. “However, the signal on this planet most closely matches the one on Bulliries, so I saw it relevant to mention.”

            “Know anything about that place?” Mixly turned to his partner.

            “They’ve got an obscure language, I took it for a couple of semesters in the academy,” Jastear commented. “Other than that, all I know is it’s another farm planet, and not a very expansive or profitable one.”

            “No surprise it went dark then if the threat is real,” Mixly sighed.

            “Agreed, I request that you two head out to investigate the signal,” Sabre ordered. “I’ll follow shortly. I wish to investigate the wider area.”

            “Consider the matter done, Knight Sabre,” Mixly and Jastear saluted.

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             Following the signal, Mixly and Jastear descended into the furthest, most remote corner of the planet. The endless rolling farmlands gave way to uncultivated forests before they finally tracked the signal to a cave system hidden near its heart.

            It was an odd sight: while the cave entrance appeared natural, the formation was equally out of place. It looked old, as though it had been carved out over centuries of nature doing what it did best. However, the entrance sat in the middle of a clearing in the trees, as if dropped there by unseen hands.

            “I have no clue what to make of this,” Jastear admitted. “Does that look right to you?”

            “Not by a long shot,” Mixly replied. “The clearing on its own would be fine, and the cave on its own would be fine. But together? The whole thing looks off, like two different environments were carelessly jammed together and this is the result. Normally I’d think someone culled the trees to make way for the cave, but it looks more like someone found a clearing of trees and plopped the cave right there.”

            “Think it could be a trap?” Jastear theorized.

            “If it is, it’s the most obvious trap I’ve seen in my life,” Mixly answered. “Message the keeper and tell him what we’ve found, then we proceed with caution.”

            “Sounds like a plan,” Jastear agreed.

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            As the two security officers delved into the cave, their questions and confusion grew by the minute. Within was not a sprawling maze of rock walls nor a giant cavern, but something resembling a village with a mushroom motif and an artificial sky. It resembled a village, but it was most certainly not a place where people lived. The area was deserted, and the “houses” were mere facsimiles of a home, with either no interior or a completely hollow inside. Even the false sky was merely paint, very meticulously applied paint, but paint nonetheless that was already in the process of peeling.

            “What do you make of this?” Mixly asked his partner.

            “Honestly, I’ve got nothing, and even if I did, I wouldn’t know where to begin,” Jastear admitted. “Gates of Paradise, look at this place from another angle.” Jastear tilted his head left, and as Mixly did the same, he immediately realized the problem. The “village” only looked vaguely convincing from one angle. If you angled your head even slightly, it started to look like you were on the wrong side of a cheap movie set.

            “Why even bother? It already looks wrong. I think those houses in the back are blending into each other,” Mixly pointed out. Once his partner pointed it out, Jastear noticed it everywhere. Mishapen buildings, melded structures, and plastic plants growing out of random surfaces. It looked like the area was designed by a random number generator.

            “I guess this narrows down the list of suspects. I can’t think of many factions that build like this, in fact, I can’t think of any,” Jastear exclaimed. “This makes the whole thing…hold on, I saw something.” The officer shifted into a combat stance and raised his laser rifle. It was a much higher-quality weapon than the standard-issue pea shooters given to most enlisted soldiers. This thing was designed to kill the much nastier creatures that stalked the darkest corners of the Outer Rim. “It wasn’t big, nor was it moving fast, I don’t even think they’ve seen us yet.”

            “Then let’s take this slow,” Mixly drew his own rifle as the two began to skulk after the unknown life form. Thankfully, it didn’t take long to find it, as it wasn’t running away from them. It was a small humanoid figure seated at a crude replica of a café. Mixly pulled down a visor that magnified his vision and got a better look. “It’s…a cyangel? I don’t think I’ve ever seen one completely on their own.”

            “Let me look,” Jastear pulled down his own visor to see. Just as his partner said, a lone cyangel gynoid sat at a table, pouring a drink from a thermos. She had medium-length black hair that covered her eyes, was barely taller than your average teenage girl, had very small wings on her back, and was dressed like she was attending a fancy military prep school. “I see her, and the signal is really strong around here, so either she’s involved or knows something about it. If she’s really on her own, we should be more than capable of dealing with her.” The two broke from their hiding spot and rushed the gynoid’s position.

            “A long way from home, aren’t ya?” Mixly approached the girl from the front. She looked up and immediately jumped to her feet in panic, but as she turned around to flee, Jastear was already waiting for her.

            “You’re not going anywhere. Now tell us what we want to know,” Jastear demanded. The cyangel immediately descended into hysterical crying and babbling in a language the two didn’t immediately understand. Mixly could at the very least tell she was afraid and begging for her life, but Jastear slowly recognized the words. “That’s the language of Bulliries she’s speaking.”

            “Why would that be a cyangel’s first language?” Mixly wondered.

            “No clue, but I intend to find out,” Jastear tried to grab her, but the gynoid wiggled out of his grasp and scrambled away.

            “Shit,” Mixly primed his rifle. “Go for the legs!” He fired at the cyangel. Her erratic movements made her a difficult target, but Mixly was an experienced soldier and could easily adjust. Before long, two of his shots struck true, one in her upper thigh and another in the opposite leg’s calf. Despite being stunned for a moment, the cyangel quickly bounced back to her feet and kept fleeing.

            “You’re kidding, you hit anything else with that, and they’d be lucky to ever walk again,” Jastear exclaimed. “Fuck it, aim for her vitals.” Jastear fired off his own volley of shots. Three laser bolts landed square in her back, and while the gynoid was knocked off her feet, there was no permanent damage, and she kept moving without injury. However, she had lost her bearings and was running in circles with no destination in mind.

            “Does nothing hurt her?” Mixly fumed as he fired off the last few shots before he needed to reload. A shot to the cyangel’s tailbone only made her spring into the air briefly, while a hit on her arm only made her cradle it like one does a bee sting. Mixly was about at his wits’ end before his last shot clipped the cyangel’s wing, causing her to go into spasms. “That did something, corner her!”

            “No more running,” Jastear came at the cyangel from the left while Mixly covered her right. They finally managed to corner her in a crude approximation of a back alley, complete with hollow trash cans and solid black rocks that resembled trash bags. The cyangel cowered in her corner, practically in tears as she continued to speak a mile a minute in the Bulliries tongue.

            “What’s she saying?” Mixly asked.

            “No clue, she’s talking way too fast and my Bulliries is really rusty,” Jastear admitted. “Let me try something,” the security officer said, thinking back to his old language classes. Using what he remembered of the Bulliries language, he asked her to calm down and speak slowly, which he had to repeat three times before the panicking gynoid heard him. When she finally registered what he was saying, she only replied with a brief sentence.

            “Now what’d she say?” Mixly already sensed he wouldn’t like what the girl said.

            “Your Bulliries sucks,” Jastear translated. “If that’s how you’re going to be,” the soldier armed his rifle and shot her leg, but despite the point-blank shot, the laser only inflicted a fleeting pain on the cyangel. Realizing she wasn’t in nearly as much danger as she’d thought, the cyangel laughed at the two men, mixing in some colorful words from her language.

            “I don’t even need you to translate that last part,” Mixly seethed as he put his rifle to the girl’s head. However, she just stuck her tongue out without the slightest bit of fear. “Don’t test us, you scrap heap!”

            The cyangel kept laughing as she swatted his rifle away and jumped to her feet. With a few hand motions, she rapidly assembled her own rifle, as if from thin air, and pointed it right at the two men. She spouted increasingly bold-sounding words as she primed the weapon.

            “Careful, she’s threatening to blow our heads off,” Jastear took a defensive stance.

            “Blast it all, call the keeper! We need help!” Mixly urged as she cyangel pointed her gun at him and pulled the trigger. Luckily for him, the recoil of the weapon knocked her off her feet, and the shot went wide. Fuming, she forced herself back to her feet and tried to shoot again, but only managed to jam her gun. Her confident boasts faded away as she returned to her rapid crying and panic.

            “…Yeah, let’s call the keeper,” Jastear said, thanking his lucky stars.   

To Be Continued…

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Lack of communication is just as bad as a miscommunication, because it forces the other party to make assumptions and act on incomplete information. It is rarely wise to act quickly on baseless assumptions, but sometimes you don't have the luxury to wait.

Until next time, Read, Comment and Enjoy.

Today's Story Delayed 10/6

Story Hub: [link] 

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Sadly I've missed a second deadline this year and today's story is being delayed. It should be out next week however. I don't know how this will cascade through the schedule yet, because I already planned to upload a story next week, but it will likely just push everything back a week.
In other words, October 6th's story is now being released on October 13th.

I never like being behind on my stories, but I was sick not too long ago, and other days I just didn't have time to write so it all compounded into me being behind. I already made the perils of adult life joke last time, so I'll just leave it at that.

Until next time...etc, etc...

Eclectic Narratives - Righting Course For Writing Of Course

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Right the course, change the course.

Find your course, steel your course.

Don’t lose sight of the destination.

Don’t lose passion for the journey.

It’s hard to keep focused, it’s hard to stay strong.

Keep yourself strong, keep yourself motivated.

Don’t lose yourself to the details.

Don’t lose yourself to the struggles.

Find your balance, find your flow.

Find the passion that makes it all worth it.

Once you right your course, it all falls into place.

Once it all falls into place, it becomes just that much easier.

Once it becomes just that much easier, you can do so much more.

Once you can do so much more, then there is no limit.

So right your course, find your peace.

Don’t burn out, don’t overcommit.

Just find that balance and make it all worth it.

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It's hard to stay on track, especially for a very long time, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't keep trying.

Until next time, Read, Comment and Enjoy.