NaNoWriMo 2010!

[Emma]

Yeah, I know, it's over half done already and I only just thought to make this thread, but better late than never, right? =D

Anywho! Due to the amount of members participating, I've decided to make an official NaNo thread where people can put up samples of their work, discuss novel writing, and so on. I'll make a new thread every year (if we last that long o.o) but I'll never delete the old ones.

So... yeah. XD Begin!

[kaioinazuma18]

Here I go... Book 3 of my compilation


Book 3:
And then there were none…


It had been five days on the Spartan class transport, now dubbed the “Altair” after the alpha star in the eagle constellation. Ryvn sat in the dining room, playing a game of holo-chess with Darius while Kalia and Belyth were off doing their own things. It was relatively peaceful, but they hadn’t run into another ship in that entire time. As much as they didn’t like confrontation with other space faring vessels, the deep blackness of space got quite unnerving sometimes. Especially when traveling between planet systems and not having anything in between for thousands of miles.

Without warning, the proximity alarm went off, and everyone’s, including Kalia’s, heads went up immediately. Andraste looked up and glanced to see what the deal was, but nothing came up… that was until they were around the other side. All she noted was a massive black mass that seemed to blot out the light from all of the other stars. They were being pulled into orbit around it, but as they rounded the edge, the star Eta Carinae came into view as well as the lit side of the planet. Ryvn came up into the pilot’s seat. “Welcome to Carmen.” He muttered as he took his seat. The planet was much smaller than Nyheria, but it had a higher rate of forestation than Nyheria did. The planet itself was a tad larger than Mars was, but it was, as far as he had heard, a much nicer place to live. Ryvn was genuinely curious, but they did have a destination to reach. They were trying to get to the next jump point, which was on the other side of Carmen. He didn’t know how much further it would be until they got there, but there had already been several days when he didn’t move because there was nothing to look at.

As they rounded Carmen in orbit, Ryvn noted a much larger transport ship stopped in orbit, and they approached. “Andraste, hail them.” He said, making the command.

“This is the Altair, unidentified transport ship, please respond.” She said, hoping to get a response. Much to her dismay, there was no response. She turned to Ryvn. “This is weird, Captain… usually there would be electromagnetic signatures on the ship, but on this one there are none… It has been dead in the water for a while it seems.
There was silence, Ryvn staring intently at the ship, and the crew’s gaze intent on him. “I’m going to check it out, dock with it and I’ll go see what’s up with it.” Ryvn headed to the back room, grabbing his suit. As he donned the armor, he realized that it was custom made to fit him… A nice touch Andraste did for him. The armor itself was quite peculiar. It was obviously meant to repel plasma blasts and other projectiles. The amazing thing was that it had its own air recirculation unit for little to no oxygen situations. He also liked the color. The armor itself was steel gray with teal accents, a nice touch for him. On the shoulder, however, was the symbol that he had painted on the ships. It had officially become his symbol and he would not accept it any other way.

Ryvn made his way to the airlock, picking up a handgun and a shotgun on the way in case there was trouble. As he stood at the airlock, he waited for clearance to go through.

“Alright, Ryvn, it’s safe to go through, stay safe.” She said before Ryvn opened the airlock. As he began climbing down, he saw the red lights of what he recognized as the lights of the lack of life support. There was very little oxygen left in the ship.

Ryvn was a bit disturbed by the readings he was getting in his visor. Oxygen levels were dangerously low. He continued walking, his suit managing to create fresh air for him. As he turned a corner into the main room of the ship, nothing but horror came to his eyes. “Searching further in the ship is useless.” He muttered incoherently into his microphone. He continued onwards anyways, searching for answers to what exactly happened on the ship. There were definitely signs of a struggle, possibly a fight for control of the ship… but what would a transport ship be carrying that could possibly be of value to anyone else. He headed down another level, finding the crew dorms as well as the tech room, completely trashed. What he saw further confused him and compounded the mystery of the transport ship. The layout told him that the ship was a Goliath class cargo transport ship, but he just needed to find his way to the cargo hold to see what it was that the struggle was over. What he had seen in the main hall was as horrifying as none other, so much to the point he never wanted to see it happen ever again. As he walked further down, he saw more of what he saw before. Dead bodies and their various parts laying everywhere, It was a horrifying sight to see, even to his hardened eyes. Some had their eyes gouged out, others were missing their chest cavity and the entrails within, and others were in so many pieces that they were no longer recognizable as human bodies. He found a small room to the side, seemingly devoid of life, until his flashlight hit the body of a dead man with a bullet through his forehead. Something was oddly familiar about his uniform… something about the symbol it bore. He ignored it and turned to his right a bit, realizing the man had been doing something important. In the busted computer was a disk of sorts. As Ryvn pulled the small disk out, he pocketed it and moved on. “It’s not pretty in here, that’s for sure… something killed them all off, the crew, the passengers, everyone… they’re all dead. I’m going to check the cargo hold to see if there is anything down there… be ready for an evac if something should go wrong.” Ryvn spoke before going deeper, his eyes glancing over the glowing directional sign telling him which direction the cargo hold was. Ryvn disappeared down the hole, darkness engulfing him before he reached the bottom. There was a dull thrumming sound emitted from one of the corners, and as soon as he reached the wall, he found a switch. Immediately he turned it on and bright fluorescent lights that nearly blinded him illuminated the entire cargo hold. The cargo bay was half full, and there was something down there, something thrumming like that couldn’t be inorganic. It was way to alive to be a machine of sorts. As Ryvn walked through the halls of the ship, his eyes glanced around, and suddenly he came to what looked to be a massive reptilian creature. Suddenly he realized something about it… He recognized the physiology of it. The wings, the tail, and of course, the quadruped form with a long scaly neck. Ryvn had, inadvertently stumbled upon what may have spurred the murder of the entire ship.

The creature looked up at him, pupils dilated by the light before returning to normal, it was wounded in one side, possibly from a dagger of some sort. Whoever was responsible for the slaughter had obviously tried to kill the poor creature as well. He knelt down by it and the creature seemed untrusting at first, but then Ryvn activated the clear visor to get a facial recognition by the dragon. The dragon looked at him, not able to move anywhere because of the gash on its side. Ryvn removed his med pack. Right as he was about to bandage it, he heard a voice in his head.
‘Go.’
Ryvn blinked at the obviously feminine voice, then it repeated itself. ‘They will return, leave now while you still can.’
Ryvn shook his head. “I’m sorry, I can’t…. no, I won’t leave you here to die, that’s not my creed” He spoke, silencing the voice and then bandaging the creature as swiftly as possible while still helping to heal it as well as he could. The creature was not big, and so Ryvn could easily carry it, but the problem was carrying it up the ladders three floors to the main deck. He picked the creature up and immediately began climbing, carrying it out of the bright lights and into the other parts of the ship which were now having the life support lights turned back on. The ship did have back up juice… that was a good thing. He climbed out, reaching the main deck before looking around, He opened the airlocks and carried the creature out swiftly, setting it down before climbing back out of the Spartan and into the Goliath, heading immediately to the bridge, He pushed aside the dead bodies and switched off the shielding, turning on the thrusters and setting the coordinates to Carmen. As the ship pushed forwards, Ryvn climbed out of the ship.

“Andraste, I’m in, sever the airlock and pull away unless you too want an untimely death.” He said as he climbed out. She assented and the Altair pulled away from the dead cargo transport.

‘Thank you, stranger. Your kindness will not go unpaid.You may call me Aglaia. Your people were not kind to me, they uprooted me from my home and put me on this cold metal thing they were calling a ‘ship’.’
Ryvn nodded. “And where is your home?”
‘my home is… well… that disk you have there should tell you. The man in charge had it as a log for all of his travels.’ Ikeya noted, pointing her scaled snout towards his utilities pouch. Ryvn removed his helmet, setting it under his arm before removing the disk.

“That remains to be seen. However, I will do anything in my power to get you back home.” Ryvn responded, pocketing the disk and picking the reptilian creature up to take to the medical ward. As soon as his armor was removed, he headed straight to the tech lab, inserting the disk and running scans on it before running the program itself. As it opened, he realized that the creature had been right; the disk had all of the ship’s data logs. He looked at the producer though. The disk was all Alliance, and that was a fact. The more he read it the more disgusted he was. The Alliance had been running a slave-trading program under the guise of open trade and through unmarked ships that were cleared by the Alliance itself. There was no mistaking it. There was an ungodly force at work in the hierarchy of the Allied government. Ryvn realized in that moment that he couldn’t trust the alliance, not when they were violating other races and cultures other than their own. Ryvn shut the computer down and took the disk with him, he did not want to risk the rest of his crew getting their hands on it until he saw fit to tell them. That wasn’t yet though. He needed to get them to the Alpha Centauri system if they were to get a job of any sort. After all, it was the first star system colonized during the expansion of their race.

Ryvn disappeared for the next hour, laying on his bunk and staring at the ceiling, contemplating what he had seen. It must have been the rebels who did it, or possibly pirates… but whoever could do such carnage to people was a monster, not fit enough to be called human at all. These were the dilemmas that he faced every time he stepped foot outside his ship. How should he treat others who have become targets by the race they call their own? Whose role is it to pass judgment on others for a heinous crime? The more he contemplated the moral issues behind things, the more he realized he could trust no one but himself and his interpretation of the word of the God which he had been raised with, the God who had singlehandedly created the universe and who could cause even more troubles to him than he wished. Ryvn was just glad that he did not have to kill a man on that ship. He was against killing needlessly, but he would wound them if they were either in the way of his job or if they posed a minor threat to a mission of his. It was easy enough for him to learn that he wouldn’t spare them an inch afterwards. Such acts people called cruelty, but he called them mercy. Times were not exactly the greatest of ease for him and his crew, but such policies of everyone pulling their own weight on the ship made it a lot easier for each person to get along. Darius was the guns, Andraste was the pilot, He was the one who got the jobs and maintained the ship, and now with the new additions, Kalia and Belyth who were the medic and engineer respectively.