18
May
Yes, I know it’s been a couple days since the last JNY update, but I’ve been a little busy moving apartments and getting the Blog Carnival off the grounds. Also had to write my piece for that, which will appear tomorrow morning. I’ve been editing Chloddio’s story, also, and am about 1/3-1/2 the way through.
So, Jenny and his crew are running around an alien dropship. Let’s see what they can do.
Tubes hung from the ceiling, hung in vast profusion. They swung as the ship flew, tickling against one another. JNY-35197 stared. Children. The tubes were full of alien children. Not so much a dropship as a cloning factory then. Perhaps that was what command wanted. Jenny shrugged. He had better things to do.
The eleven moved from the creche into the next room. Another charge, another floor up. Near the top now. Two to go? Maybe three. Repeater fire zipped past. Jenny returned, downing one alien, maybe more. Up, up. One more floor. He hoped.
Jenny scanned the room. Command deck. He gestured, and the grunts fanned out, checking down corridors. Rat’s nest of a ship. Damn aliens couldn’t build properly. A wave back, and the infiltrators moved on. The battlesuits couldn’t be far behind. Had to know where the organ replacements were going, had to. A quick jog, checking, always checking.
Nothing. Where was the damn command? Repeaters whirred from the ceiling, opening up on the troops. Ten dived clear, one got the crossfire. Ducking out and shooting got the twin turrets, barely. The edge of Jenny’s armour glowed from a near miss. Guess the cockpit’s that way.
Clank, clank. The sound of battlesuits on hull. Jenny ran, heading towards the cockpit, the others close behind. A blast door. A big blast door. One demo charge. Peeled back the first layer, nothing more. Another. Nope. A third. Getting there. Four? Crap, only two charges left.
The fifth blew threw the door, and repeater fire came through the hole. Jenny peeked. One guard? Easy. A shot and the guard was down, the grunts diving through the hole. Repeaters on the bridge crew, kill them all. Don’t know what they’re doing, can’t trust em. Five humans guard the door, five more scan the consoles, looking for commands.
Built for alien limbs, two humans needed to be at each console to even try and work them. Jenny punched at switches, trying any that might work. Not that. Nor that. Maybe? The ship shuddered. He’d done something.
Repeater shots tore the silence, the grunts unleashing a torrent through the hole. The battlesuits had arrived. A blast shook the door. Great, aliens were trying to throw grenades through. The third made it, but a grunt fielded it in the air and whipped it back. It blew the other side of the hole, taking battlesuits with it. This was ugly. Too many aliens, too few humans.
Jenny hammered the controls. The dropship lurched. A shout. A screen had turned on, looking down. The dropship was plummeting from space towards the planet. Jenny shrugged. It’s what command wanted. All ten grunts fired through the hole, keeping the battlesuits down and back. Ammo would be a problem if they didn’t crash soon.
The planet grew large on the screen, until hills and valleys appeared. Then rivers and streams. The console screamed in alien, and rockets fired too late to stop the impact. Jenny braced. This was going to hurt.
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Scath on 05.18.2010
Intense action going on in this one!
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John Wiswell on 05.19.2010
Aesthetically, I strongly recommend italicizing the forewords to your posts. Every time I visit they disorient me, something that would go away with italics.
Like Scath said, the scene is intense. How many cartridges Jenny had left, and the rapidity of questioning it, was the best. You could play with that sort of thing, making us wait more to see if there are enough shots to survive.
The Four Part Land on 05.20.2010
Yeah, I do rather forget to do that. In some ways I’ve never thought of marking out the foreword as different, although I should do.
The short, choppy, intense style of writing is very different from what I normally use. I’m much more “at home” using something that looks like it came from fantasy/high fantasy novels, and I have to consciously remind myself to fall back into the “Jenny” style when I start on the flash. This is why the first paragraph usually does not have the chop chop chop of the later ones.
I do look forward to writing Jenny again (tonight?).
#TuesdaySerial Report – Week 3 – May 18, 2010 | Tuesday Serial on 09.15.2010
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