Yhtomit's Literary Dumping Site

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Ok, this is where I'm gonna dump any short stories or poems or any sort of writing stuff that I come up with. I've got a few short stories to post, but I think I'll start off with this one:

HUNT
He looked at his screen, and flicked through various security cameras, as he sat in the back of a plain white van, parked outside Heathrow Airport. A hands-free headset addorned his ear as he searched through the maze of terminals, check-in desks and security check points. Then he finally spotted what he was looking for. Or more importantly, who.
"Adam, target just left the check-in desk for Terminal 3. And I am not liking the look of that suitcase," officer Peter Nemek said into his headset.
Outside of the van, MI5 officer Adam Jones got up from the waiting bench, and set out for Terminal 3. "Ok, Tay. I'm on my way there now." He got up and brushed past a rather wide man reading a copy of The Daily Telegraph. Immediately, he got up and began walking alongside Adam. "He's in Terminal 3, you go through the staff way and cut him off, I'll follow behind him."
The man broke away, and headed for a door labeled, "No admittance! Staff Only!"
Taylor Bellic, still back in the van, working the screen, tried to keep track of the two agents and their target, while also looking for flight bookings. The suspect was very quickly approaching boarding, and now he could see precisely which jet he was going for. "Adam, he's heading for the first class lounge, I think he's booked onto a British Airways flight to Panama."
Adam quickly passed security, and entered Terminal 3. He passed quickly through the shopping mall, trying to avoid bumping into anyone. Meanwhile, Robert Patterton was working his way through the staff shortcuts, and was already ahead of the man. They had him. That man was going nowhere.
Suddenly, Taylor saw the CCTV for the First Class Lounge. "Jesus..." He looked, and opened up his facial recognition software. He applied it to the face off a man who was sitting, one leg crossed over in the lounge, 3 seats away from their target. He had a martini of some description resting next to him, as he browsed some cheap airport magazine, left to entertain British Airway's high brow clients. "Adam, the plane isn't the target."
As Adam turned the corner, the First Class Lounge appearing in front of him, and he could see Robert approaching the lounge from the boarding corridor. "What? Then what is?"
"Sitting 3 seats from Malik, is Leonard Ishikov, a trader with major investment in the oil being taken from Iraq. He's on his way to Florida to negociate a better deal. He also has some ties to the US Intelligence, and he's been a target for terrorists for years."
Adam glanced at Robert and flicked his hand. Robert stopped, and looked at Adam. They met, just out of view of the First Class Lounge window. "Robert, we think he's going to detonate right here. There's a big oil trader in there that they've been wanting to take out for years."
"What do we do?" asked Robert. Adam looked around desparately. He needed to think, and fast. The area was busy with people boarding and disembarking. "Let's just go for him," he finally suggested.
The two agents looked at each other, and readied themselves to attempt to apprehend the man, sitting on top of a huge explosive device, in the First Class Lounge of London's busiest airport. The next few moments would decide the fate of hundreds of people, and if anything went wrong... Adam tried to avoid that thought. He knew that if anything went wrong, it wouldn't go well for him, or Robert. He took a deep breath, and then said, "Let's go."
Airport security were ready to back them up. They had been told that this was going down, and they had been kept in the loop for the whole situation, and 5 officers were ready to give support, from what Adam could see around him as he and Robert approached the lounge. As they walked through the door, they drew their guns. "Ok, hands in the air!"
There were a couple of screams as the guns came out, and were pointed at Malik Yusaf. Adam glanced at Robert and nodded. Malik raised his hands into the air. It looked good. Robert went down, and reached for the suitcase. Carefully, he unzipped it. He pulled out an "I Heart London" t-shirt. "Uh... Adam?"
"What?"
The room was tense as the 20 or so people in there stared at the spectacle in front of them unfolded.
"This isn't a bomb."
"What?"
Their eyes met, and Robert stared, his face full of fear, at Adam, and said clearly, "We've got the wrong guy."
He cursed loudly and withdrew his gun. He apologised to the passengers waiting there, and left the room. "Tay, what the fuck just happened? That guy didn't have a bomb!"
Taylor looked desparately at his screen. "Shit! But we our intelligence was clear..."
"I know what our intelligence said, and it could still be right! Are there any other suspects who have booked flights here today?"
Taylor desparately looked through the bookings for any names in connection to known terrorist cells that were operating in the UK. Two names appeared. One was Malik Yusaf. But he was sitting, bombless, in the First Class Lounge in Terminal 3. And the other was... Malik Yusaf... "Shit! Adam, there are two Malik Yusaf's! There's bloody two!"
Adam swore as he heard the news through his headset. "Details, Tay, I need details!"
Tay clicked on the link and read through the file. "Oh no..."
Taylor's face whitened as he read the screen. "We're too late," he said, into his microphone. "He's on a flight that's taking off right now! A BA flight, you should be able to see it from the nearest window.
Adam ran to the window, and sure enough, a British Airways Boeing 747 was speeding down the runway. It's nose raised, defiantly, into the air, and the machine lifted itself into the air. They'd missed him. They'd bloody missed him by 5 minutes, and then they'd wasted their time on the wrong person. He should have gotten him. He should have. That man shouldn't be on that...
A large bang rocked the whole building. He looked back up and out of the window. The jet fell apart as it raced towards just ground just outside of the airport. Bits off aircraft fell from the sky over a residential neighbourhood. Over several, residential neighbourhoods. Adam's blood curdled as he heard bits of it impact the ground little under a mile away.
They were so damn close...

[RWT]

, At 2/1/10 05:24 PM, Yhtomit wrote:

...he finally spotted what he was looking for. Or more importantly, who.

It's, "...he finally spotted for what he was looking, or more importantly, whom."

You stupid bastard! I spit on your work!

---

Grammar aside, I like it. It captured the spirit of modern anti-terrorism, and it fits well in the carefully crafted 'espianoge' genre. Passages come off as a bit 'novelization of the movie'-ish, but on a whole I think it stands alone well. It was a good read.

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At 2/1/10 05:50 PM, RWT wrote: Grammar aside, I like it. It captured the spirit of modern anti-terrorism, and it fits well in the carefully crafted 'espianoge' genre. Passages come off as a bit 'novelization of the movie'-ish, but on a whole I think it stands alone well. It was a good read.

Thanks. I think the 'novelisation of the movie' thing probably comes from the fact that when I imagine how the story pans out, the way I imagine it comes with crafty camera angles and dramatic music, and when I think of that, I probably miss out on writing details that could make the text read better. But oh well, it's still good.

And now for something completely different. This is a sci-fi short story I've had bouncing around my head for a long time. Well, I say sci-fi. I haven't really thought of any deeper plot right now, but maybe I will at some point in the future.

I call it,
THE INTRUDER (Part One. Stupid character limit...)
The ship Calvin slipped through the space way above a planet at 845.129 on the galactic map. It was restricted space. And yet, as the Calvin patrolled the area, a blip appeared on a screen. A young man, about 20, was sat at his desk on the bridge of the Calvin. He was Arthur Mendez, First Officer, and Information Relay for Communications and External Systems. He noticed it on his screen, and tapped it twice to pull up more data. "Sir." He ventured.
At the helm was a man with ginger hair, and a fairly bushy beard of the same colour, both of which were beginning to show his age in the form of ever increasing numbers of grey hairs. "Yes, Officer Mendez?"
"We've detected a blip, about 2 degrees over the planets horizon, maybe 3 clicks away. It's big, sir. Really big. Width 800 metres, and height over 1500 metres. Have you seen anything like it?" He tapped the screen in a few different places, and a basic image of the vessel, based on the information available appeared on Captain Bennet's screen.
His eyes widened as he read the specs. "Woah." He looked at it on his display, and then looked out of his spacescreen in front of him. The silvery blue moon was rising over the horizon of this forbidden world, and the bright red star shone from somewhere to the upper right of the window, casting a brilliant rainbow of rays of light across it. "I haven't seen anything like it. Maybe it's a new merchant class freighter, I heard some of the corporations were working on something big."
He leaned on his desk, with his hand holding his bearded chin. "How long til we get a good look at it?"
"About 30 seconds, sir."
Calvin moved over the surface of the forgotten planet heading towards the horizon. Then it appeared. It was a long way off, many thousands of miles, but now the infa-radar could build a more detailed image of it. It was big. There was enough power surging through it to not just power the Calvin, but to build it in the first place. "My God..." Bennet whispered.
As they moved towards it, it became apparent that they were at the same altitude, and yet it still managed to loom over them like the shadow of the monster that would soon decend upon an otherwise unsuspecting victim while dramatic music played in the background.
The outer schematics came through. There were photon laser ports everywhere, and rocket ports where the photon lasers weren't. The Calvin, for the first time in it's 20 year life patrolling sector 845, was outgunned. "Officer Mendez, get me a direct audio line to that ships bridge."
"Aye, sir." Mendez tapped at the screen. A play button appeared on the screen in front of Captain Bennet. He pressed his finger down on it, and held it there. "Unidentified ship, you are in restricted space. Please state your name, the reason you are here, the authority that ordered you here, or leave the area immediately, or I will be forced to fire upon you." He released the button. Automatically, the audio receiving app opened on his screen, ready for any responding message. A nervous silence fell over the bridge, as they waited for any response from the ship. It lasted about a minute, but felt so much longer.
The reply was hardly worth waiting for. "No." It came back. And then, immediately, the audio comm channel was closed from their end. Captain Bennet now turned to the man sitting on his left, Officer Isaac Gray, Information Relay for Navigation and Internal Systems. "Who's the nearest ship to us, and how far are they?"
Gray looked at his screen. "Well, the Hobbes is about 20 clicks from our position, out in sector 845.131, they're the closest patrol ship."
"Right," Bennet said. "Officer Mendez, send a text comm to the Hobbes asking for help, we could get into a scrap here." Immediately, Mendez began tapping on his screen, creating a message for assistance, and sending it to the Hobbes. It took a second to upload, but he soon got the confirmation message on his screen. "Done, sir," he said.

Mendez then got a new reading from the intruder. "Sir, they're powering up weapons." He read. As he looked through the spacescreen, he could see the flashes of photon energy beams streaming towards them in one sure, steady beam that was seconds away from them across the hundreds of miles that separated them. "Mendez, target them, Gray, raise shields to 70 and fire when locked."
The ship vibrated as energy beams piled into the hull of the Calvin. Moments later, other vibrations periodically shook the ship, as rockets followed in the wake of the beams. The Calvin was soon launching beams and rockets back at the offending ship. This was it, they were in battle. The two vessels were locked in combat. "Gray, keep me up to speed with damage reports."
As Gray looked at his screen, he pulled up a new tab for damage updates, and across the ship, tweets were coming in from the automated system and staff reports. "Sheilds fallen to 65 around the airlock, but staying strong around the hub and the engines. No confirmed casualties as of yet." The exchange of missiles went on between the Calvin and the intruding craft, with little damage being done to either side.
Then, there was a flash from behind the Calvin, and the Hobbes glided into position along side the Calvin. The Hobbes was atleast 3 times the size of Captain Bennet's ship, but still considerably smaller in height than the ship that they were faced with. A holo-screen openned up in front of Bennet.
"Captain Bennet, this is Captain Arkansas of the ship Hobbes. We are firing on the enemy ship." Within moments, energy beams and rockets from the Hobbes flew past the Calvin, out in the vacuum of space, aiming with deadly accuracy at the hull of the unidentified ship. It kept firing back. On Mendez's screen, a blur appeared to begin to appear around the front of the enemy ship. Seconds later, his screen blipped up a message from the Hobbes. "en-fi engage", it read.
Mendez turned to Bennet. "Captain, they're launching fighters, and the Hobbes is reacting." It didn't take long for the Captain of the Calvin to respond. "Launch our fighters, get them to help out in that scruff." Gray put the message on the tannoy, and within moments, the ships 12 pilots were running out to the hanger. From the bridge, Bennet watched as the Hobbes' comets rocketed by them, to engage the swarm miles out ahead of them.

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THE INTRUDER (Part 2)

Once all the pilots were strapped in, the hangar door flew open, and the suction of the vacuum of space threw the Calvin's comets out into the void. Seconds later, they were racing to join the Hobbes fighters. Back on the bridge, the captain was making desicions. "Mendez, do they have aft weapons?"
"Not that we can detect," reported the First Officer.
"Good, then get us below and behind that sucker so we can get a better shot at it's engines."
Mendez tweeted what they were doing over to the Hobbes so that they were up to date with what was going on. The Calvin pulled down towards the forbidden planet, and then shot forwards towards the hostile. They passed underneath the dog fighting of the comets and the enemy fighters, and were on target to position themselves 10 miles behind the unidentified ship when...
Bennet saw a bright glow build around one of the engines, and in seconds, the glow on the ship they were passing under was replaced by a gaping hole in the Calvin. "JESUS! Mendez, what just happened? Gray, what's it done to us?"
"It was some sort of hyper energy beam, not too dissimiliar to the sort of thing that gets us into warp, only, it was somehow directed at us..." reported Mendez, still struggling to understand the information his screen was feeding him. Bennet then looked to Gray. "Not good, we've got a massive rip along sectors A4, C6 and F9 on decks 1, 2 and 3. Sir, we're wide open, shields are completely gone in the affected and surrounding areas, we're struggling to keep them at 35." It wasn't good.
On the Hobbes, Arkansas saw the flash impact the Calvin. "Comm, ask them if they're alright."
"Aye, sir," said a woman in her early 20s on his left. The message took a second to reach the bridge of the Calvin. "Sir," Mendez said, "we just got a text comm from the Hobbes asking if we're ok. Are we?"
"For the moment. Just get this ship in a position to run an attack on the enemy engines." Mendez fed this information back to the Hobbes. Gray was recieving information about their fighters, they'd lost 3 already, and the Hobbes fighters weren't doing great either. He decided that this really wasn't the best time for that, and instead reported that they were now ready to fire when the order was giving. "Ok, run our attack now."
The Calvin sped back towards the enemy ship, firing increasingly powerful beams at their engine. Mendez spotted a glow building near their engine. "EVASIVE MANOUV-..." The blast tore out the front of the hub, and the impact destroyed what shielding was left on the Calvin. What was left of the control system was now stuck on the trajectory of their attack run. The engines continued to power up, and the ship sped up, now without anyone at the bridge, or a bridge for anyone to be at.
"Calvin, this is Hobbes. Respond," Captain Arkansas tried. "Respond." They watched the ship disappear out of their view. "Dammit, get weapons up to maximum and destroy those goddamn engines. And someone keep trying to raise the Calvin as soon as possible, I want to know what the hell's going on!"
The Hobbes, stationary in space, now fought against the enemy ship. On the screen of First Officer Patrick Petrelli, something appeared in an odd position on his radar. He examined the specs for a few seconds. It was the Calvin, and it was...
"SIR, WE NEED TO MOVE NOW!" He screamed at the Captain.
"Okay, take us down, now," Arkansas ordered.
"BUT, SIR, IT'S THE CALVIN, IT-"
The silent Calvin, still speeding on the attack trajectory, piled into the underbelly of the Hobbes, blasting through all 9 decks of the ship, the engines pushing it straight through the Hobbes, obliterating both ships in seconds. Now, both Space Fleet ships and their crews were gone. But miles away, out in the void of space, about halfway between the disaster and the enemy ship, on last comet had been speeding towards the Hobbes. It was piloted by Private First Class, George Koiner. He screamed through his microphone.
"Hey! Hello? Calvin? Hobbes, anyone? Is anyone out there?"
A blip appeared on his screen behind him. "Oh shit." The enemy fighter closed in behind him. He could see in his rear screen. He could see the pilot moving the controls. And he saw the rocket release and speed towards him.

Reality blurred in and out of his head. "This is the recovery ship Orion bro...." In, and out... "ships with life signs on..." In and out... "If anyone can hear us, please respond." George Koiner finally came to, slowly spinning in his comet fighter. A voice was talking through the radio at him. "This is the recovery ship Orion, broadcasting this automatic message to all ships with life signs on board. If anyone can hear us, please respond." His mind took a second to process this. He looked up, or at was, for a few minutes, up, and saw the great lumbering ship pass over him. It was below him, closer to the planet, and he could clearly see the 8 engines that were the signature of the biggest ship in Space Fleet.
"Hey," he managed. "This is George Koiner of the ship, Calvin. Beeping you my location now. Get me the hell outta here." He waited for a few seconds as he spun silently through space. He could see his right wing was completely torn of, leaving a stub. Boy was he glad that that stub was there. If any more had gone, then it would have caused a hole in his cockpit.
Beams of light whizzed around him, and he felt himself reappearing onto the teletrans bay on the Orion. He collapsed under the weight of the now comforting artifical gravity, and allowed himself to be moved to the infirmary deck. He was alive.

Out, in the depths of space, over the planet at 845.129, the wreckage of two collided patrol ships hung in orbit close to the atmosphere. They carried with them the combined total of 583 Space Fleet officers, with another 49, 11 from Calvin, and 38 from Hobbes, left in a similar state, alone in their comet fighters. And somewhere, out in the depths of the galaxy, the intruder was wandering between the stars...