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Joined: Fri Sep 24, 2004 3:12 pm
Posts: 38
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Hi all,
Here's a piece of fluff (or more accurately, a story) I've written in the BFG universe. ?If there are any obvious errors, or any positive or negative comments to share, please post them here  !
?VENGEANCE?
On the bridge of the Mars class battlecruiser Sword of Truth, Fleet Admiral Justinus Rueben sat back within his command throne and surveyed the bridge. ?Gigantic viewscreens, which provided an exceptional 360 degree view during battle, were now largely covered with scrolling columns of data. ?Around the bridge walls sat white uniformed ensigns and grey skinned servitors, which chattered meaningless binary conversations to each other as their tech-priest masters moved between them, bionic optic replacements glowing eerily. ?Fleet Admiral Rueben himself was seated at the top of the chamber?s ziggurat like command tower, and the ship's captain, Garhaus, sat below him, engaged in a constant one way conversation with the vessels logic engines and human crew.
Not for the first time, Rueben wondered whether Garhaus had any ambition, any wish to rise beyond his current position. ?Probably not, he decided, the old fool was quite happy to stay where he was, among the machine-minds of the Sword of Truth. ?
Rueben was ambitious. He had worked his way up in the Gothic Sector Battlefleet from his induction as a lowly ensign on his twenty-first birthday, to his command of a cruiser squadron by his sixtieth. ?His masterpiece had been the poisoning of the previous incumbent of his present position, Fleet Admiral Octavius Brenn, at the Sanguinalia celebrations at Cypra Mundi, twelve years ago. ?The old man had been far past it when he had promised Reuben, the fleets brightest young officer, his own position when he died. ?
But Octavius had from then on shown no sign of dying, and had in fact gone on to be more decorated and more lauded than ever before. ?Eventually Rueben?s patience had worn thin and amidst the merrymaking had slipped some powdered Arajah extract into one of Octavius' many drinks, and the recipient had died later, in bed, at the ripe old age of 132, thanks to his regular dosage of ?juvenat? drugs. ?The enquiry into his death had found that his ancient heart had given out through the consumpion of excessive amounts of alcohol the night before, and Rueben was appointed in the old man's vacated position and gave an extremely emotional speech at his predecessors funeral. ?Surrounded by his supporters on board the Sword of Truth, twelve years of success had all but erased the torturous guilt that had wracked him after his advancement. ?The old man, skilled and fair as he was, had had to go.
Rueben pulled his mind back to the present. ?His flotilla had eliminated the ragtag fleet of one of the sectors most hated pirates, and back at Cypra Mundi decorations and promotions were sure to await. He allowed himself a smile. ?Life was good.
For another individual on board the Sword of Truth, life was not good. ?This was largely because he was dead. ?Fleet Admiral Octavius Brenn had been furious when he found his soul looking down on his body, where it had been laid out in one of the fleet HQ?s many chapels. ?He was surprised when he found he could see people?s souls and what they contained as easily as looking at their faces. ?And when he saw what secret thoughts hid within the then 1st officer Justinus Rueben, he had dedicated himself to revenge. ?His body had been incarcerated, as was the tradition, on board his flagship the Sword of Truth. ?Since then, from the dimly lit chamber where he and his ridiculously ornamented sarcophagus resided, he had committed himself to learning all that he could about manipulating the physical world.
As a disembodied soul, it had been gruelling, maddening work to even learn how to manipulate lightbeams, and almost impossible to move anything larger than a speck of dust. ?His initial plan, to use a weapon to kill his murderer, had to be discounted as impractical. ?But he had shortly afterwards realised how easy electricity was to work with. ?And so he run his plan through what was technically his mind, until every detail was perfect. ?And today was the day when his scheme would be implemented!
His soul, a barely visible shimmer in the air, left his candle-lit accommodation and drifted through the warm, dry passageways of the command deck towards his enemy. ?He was annoyed by the way that the fluorescent tubes which illuminated the passages flickered at his approach, but the price to pay for learning how to control electricity was to be unable to stop doing so. ?On the way he passed a servo skull, trailing incense behind it, which detected his electrical field and found a pressing reason to float quickly away down a side passage. ?Octavius? route to the bridge was circuitous, as he wished to avoid the ship?s psyker choirs who would detect his supernatural presence. ?After about a quarter of an hour, he entered the great bridge chamber.
?Sir!? croaked one of the servitors seated nearest the chamber entrance to his overseeing tech-priest.
?What is it?? came the monotone reply.
?My viewscreen, sir. ?Its?? ?the slave-creatures eyes seemed to flicker ?its..its..? the servitors optics ceased to glow and it slumped forward.
Techpriest Malachron opened his mouth to curse but suddenly felt his bionic arm stiffen and the logic engines within his brain flicker and die. ?His mechanical eyes went dark. ?He panicked, and began to shout. Others followed suit as servitors keeled over and servo skulls fell from the air and smashed on the deck. ?The smell of burning electronic components terrified him as much as the smell of burning flesh would. ?He began to run, not knowing where he was going, but knowing, in his unmodified brain, that he had to get awayfrom whatever mysterious presence he had encountered.
Through the chaos Fleet-Admiral Octavius Brenn drifted, aiming only for his target, the fat man seated upon the command throne. ?The sight infuriated him and he spun behind the throne, focusing utterly on the electrical impulses from the man?s brain which kept his heart beating. ?He applied himself to them, sensing their patterns and strength.
Then he began to speed them up.
Ensign Lyndsar was fighting to restrain Tech-priest Malachron, who was thrashing and babbling incoherently. ?Suddenly he heard a groan from above, a small noise in the cacophony on the bridge as a whole, but with an unpleasant edge that drew his gaze.
It was the Fleet Admiral. ?His face was scarlet, and his eyes bulged as though they would pop from their sockets. ?He suddenly clutched his chest, gave a gasping, bubbling scream and in one movement broke from the mind-connectors in the headrest of the throne and tumbled forward, sliding over the canopy above Captain Garhaus and thumping to the floor at Ensign Lyndsar?s feet with a crack of bone. ?He stopped screaming. ?
In the silence that followed the deck equipment repowered as the Ensigns and tech-priests gathered around the twisted, blood spattered remains of Fleet-Admiral Rueben. ?Even as Octavius' soul began to break apart and whirl away into the warp, the anger and thirst for revenge that had held him together for the past twelve years satisfied, he left, just for a moment, his ghostly face, staring down at his vengeance with an expression of interest.
And then even that shredded, and was gone.
whaddya think?
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Very nice... well written and entertaining - and just the sort of thing Iain (Cybershadow) is looking for for Warp Rift I'd imagine....
What is Warp Rift? What is Warp Rift? 
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