literature

Red Dawn - Ch 1 - When Worlds Collide

Deviation Actions

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Walking down the unlit street between derelict husks that once were gleaming office towers at the heart of Gemini City, Jason hunched his shoulders and drew his jacket closer around himself. The air tonight held a sharp bitterness that told of another harsh winter ahead and the chill went straight to his bones as he moved in silence. He didn't like being out in the open, exposed, where he could easily be spotted. However, tonight he had little choice in the matter. Several buildings had collapsed in the recent tremors and left many of his more circumspect routes buried under several tonnes of rubble. Seeing his destination ahead, just past the next intersection, he doubled his pace in order to more quickly get off the streets and into some relative warmth.
It hadn't been all that long ago that Gemini City had been the shining beacon of the modern era. Brightly lit, bustling with commerce, the city had been the colony capital with it's twin towers rising over a hundred floors in height at either end of the central corridor. That had all ended however when the colonists had rebelled against the central government back on Earth. Retribution was swift and decisive and the death toll had been enormous. Now, only the Earth run Tarsus Mine remained in tact. A heavily fortified facility that supplied the home world with an assortment of rare and valuable minerals used in everything from computer circuitry to weapons.
The colony rebellion had started on Luna colony, closest to The Gate, and had quickly spread. Many of the out-of-sector colonies on the other side of The Gate fell to the rebels before Earth knew what was happening. Of all the rebel colonies, Mars had been more a spectator or a neutral party, striving to keep a semblance of peace amongst the chaos. Despite that, Mars was the first and last target for Earth's campaign to end the rebellion. It had the population and public visibility to send a message of the scale needed. More importantly it had Tarsus Mine. After the decimation of nearly all of the colony cities was broadcast throughout the colonies, the rebels quickly surrendered fearing similar treatment. It had only taken a day... the Goliath class cruisers were already on their return trip to Earth before the event had hit the news feeds.

***

As Jason navigated through several checkpoints in the collapsed heap of a building he'd entered moments before, he began to hear the low murmur of voices further ahead. Passing the final obstacle, a camouflaged scan-wall that caused the hairs on his arms to stand on end, he finally emerged into the bunker. A couple of people turned their heads as he entered but few were interrupted from their actions. Anyone who didn't belong here would have found themselves dead somewhere in the passages and he was known to this group. At a mere 5'10”, Jason was far from formidable in size. His light blond hair was messy but short-cut and he kept himself clean shaven which gave the illusion that he was younger than his years. Granted, he was only 22 standard years of age, but in the past year he'd proven himself time and again along side men of twice his age and experience.
“Another Sweeper crew came through today...” That was Sonya, communications and intel specialist from the Old Reserve. As Jason approached her, she turned her grim gaze toward him as she continued. “Fifty more survivors gathered and shipped off to the mine. They're getting more bold lately.” Jason studied the holo-projection of the city she had brought up for him and scowled. Scattered across the overlay were several flashing red sectors, each of these representing either uninhabitable or Earth controlled districts of Gemini City. The pattern was obvious, the Earth crews were systematically closing a net around the city core and that net was getting tighter each day.
Waving a hand through the projection to dismiss it, Jason sighed. “Has Rayze returned yet? I think it's time for one last push before we have no room to maneuver.” When nobody replied in the sudden awkward silence, he turned to see the room's occupants looking at him in apprehension. Sonya's hand fell gently to his shoulder as she turned him to face her once more. “Rayze... was amongst the group picked up on today's sweep. His crew were all killed and he was badly injured but they took him alive.” The news fell on him like a thunderclap. His brother was in the hands of the Earthers? Impossible! He felt a pit growing in his stomach. Rayze was slender, almost effeminate. Well skilled with computers and electronics but hardly mining material. He knew what the Sweepers would do with someone like that.
As he turned to storm off to his office at the far end of the bunker the ground around them trembled from a nearby explosion and alarms began blaring from the sensor equipment behind him. Scanning the displays, Sonya shouted over the sudden commotion. “Weapons out! They're coming through the south passage! Twenty or more from the look of it.” Amidst the sudden bustle of movement, Jason picked out his lieutenants and made his way to a cover position just to the left of the south entrance along side one of them. Trevor, a thickly built man he'd known since childhood, passed him a pulse rifle as he grunted a greeting. “Biggest group yet, boy. Bet I can beat your count two to one this time” The wolfish grin on the man's grizzled face made the younger man chuckle dryly. “You're too slow, old man. I'll beat you three to one easily.”
As the south entrance crumbled under a grinding explosion from outside, the room filled with smoke and dust. The taste of metal and dust fragments was in the air and within seconds the sounds of gunfire and killing echoed throughout the small bunker. The invading force was thinning out slowly, as they'd taken advantage of the disarray from the earlier explosion to gain better position within the bunker, but several were still active and the rebels were also losing numbers. It was then that Jason felt an all-too-familiar tightening of his skin as the air around him polarized. Turning in shock, he saw Cameron, one of their newer members, push down on the trigger in his hand. The room spun, voices echoing into darkness... the enemy forces stood triumphantly over their captives as the pulse-wave dissipated. The traitor had used a pulse-bomb, how did he... darkness engulfed Jason as he lost consciousness.
***

As the smoke settled and the last of the rebels were dragged into the center of the room, a young man wearing a crisp uniform bearing Captain's bars strode confidently into the bunker. Looking down over his thin glasses at the group of unconscious men, he turned his attention to Cameron, and grinned coldly. “Nicely done Corporal. I suppose you couldn't have acted more quickly to reduce our collateral damage though?” His gaze swept the room, taking in the body count and he clicked his tongue in annoyance. “By my count we lost half the team before you set off that pulse.”
Cameron shrugged calmly, not betraying the anger he felt at the unspoken insinuation the Captain had just made or his fear of what this man might try to do to him next. “You know as well as I do, Sir, that it takes time to set up a pulse-bomb.” Gesturing to the crumbling condition of the room around them he continued. “It has to be set up in the right location and I needed to be sure that they were... properly distracted, before I started or I wouldn't have had the chance to set it off at all.” This seemed to appease the senior officer as he merely nodded and started heading for the tunnel. “Very well, see to the disposal of the bodies and get these prisoners up to the transport before they wake up.” Without a further word or look back he was off into the tunnels and out of sight.
As the remaining troops began dragging the Rebels to the surface to load them into the transport, Cameron gestured to a young woman wearing a Military Intelligence uniform. "See what you can get from their computer systems." He handed her a slip of paper with his access credentials. "I only had limited access but this should give you a starting point." The woman nodded crisply and went to work on one of the nearby terminals that hadn't been damaged in the attack, typing away quickly at the keypad.
Cameron paced impatiently, wanting to get out of this bunker and back to base where he could kick back with some drinks and have a hot shower for the first time in months. He was so pre-occupied with this that it took him a moment to notice the flashing of a red indicator on one of the command consoles. Moving quickly, he went to investigate and immediately shouted to the rest of his squad. "Evacuate! Now!!" Grabbing the young Intelligence officer's arm he pulled her forcibly from her work and bolted for the tunnels. His men had already managed to clear the Rebels to the surface and, at his yelled command, they were now scrambling down the tunnels at top speed. Cameron had barely cleared the exit to the tunnel and dodged left to plant himself behind a solid segment of wall when a flash of heat and light erupted from the gap beside him. Two of his men were killed as they were hurled across the street by the blast, the rest of his squad were luckier.
Pulling the Intelligence officer to stand in front of him he backhanded her across the face. "You idiot! How did you not notice you'd tripped their fail safes?" He was furiously shaking her and two of his men needed to step forward to separate them. "You almost got us all killed! Get the hell out of my sight." As he straightened his clothes and waved off the men who'd stepped forward he gave the order to move out. Cameron boarded the prisoner transport and flipped on the monitor that would show his recent Rebel colleagues in the back. The rest of the troops boarded the escort craft and they were off, headed north toward the mine.
***

Jason's mind was swimming as the chemicals the technician had injected him with took hold of his reality. The blindingly bright light overhead was making his head ache as the restraints on the table prevented him from so much as turning his head. He felt a sharp pain as the computer terminal next to the table hummed to life and the electrodes strapped to various points on his head and body came alive.
"What is your name?" The voice was familiar, he thought he'd heard it somewhere before but it was all a haze. Though he struggled to look for it's source, he couldn't see anything but the light shining in his eyes. "What is your name?" The question was repeated more firmly this time. Jason fought the urge he suddenly felt to answer the question and weakly croaked a reply. "Mary Poppins." There was an audible sigh and then pain as the electrodes on his temples pulsed with electricity. "What is your name?" Jason stifled a groan as the agony built in waves. "I told... nng... I told you, Mary Poppins! F-fuck!!"
James Tartus stood behind the one-way glass and pressed his palms into his eyes. The Captain had dealt with this sort of person before but it always tired him. Surely the young man in the next room had to know they would get him to cooperate eventually. Why did they always persist in causing themselves so much extra pain before hand? His hand turned a dial on the panel in front of him and he watched the man's body arch as his pain impulses were activated by the electrodes all over his body. "What... is your name?" He grinned as he saw the answer flash onto his screen via the neural relays on his prisoner.
Jason's world was a whirlwind of pain and shadow. The blinding light had long since faded leaving only darkness behind. He heard shouting and the rapid bursts of automatic gunfire. "What are you still doing here? I told you to retreat!!" That had been Trevor's voice. But it couldn't be happening, this was a memory... the day of the ambush. He heard himself, as if from a distance. "I won't leave you here to die!" Gunfire rained down from every direction, the air was thick with the smell of blood and burnt flesh. "If you don't get the men out of here right now I'll shoot you myself, boy! I've got your back now GO!" Sounds and sight faded again and Jason spun into darkness.
"He's not doing well, Sir. Shouldn't we turn the settings down?" Captain Tartus glared at the technician and growled. "We keep going until we get what we're after." Information flashed across the screens. Each question asked provided a host of new information to be processed and filtered by the Intelligence corps later. Clicking the transmit button on the microphone he asked one question after another until they'd finally extracted everything they needed. As the machinery powered down, Jason's body went limp, steam rising from him as the hot sweat hit the cool are of the room around him. After the guard dragged him, unconscious, back to his cell the Captain grinned and left the control room. He'd shot the insubordinate technician half way through the session. It was a pity, but they could easily find a replacement.
Chapter 2 can be found here.
Chapter 3 can be found here.
Chapter 4 can be found here.

This is not my usual work. I'm actually trying to write something with a bit more substance.

Yes, it will at some point contain some scenes that would be 'kink' oriented but they are not the 'focus' of the story in any respects.

Earth has colonized distant planets. As the colonization of new worlds continues and new resources are found and harvested for the Home World, the central government enacts new laws allowing colony-borns to be drafted into slavery to fill the rising labour needs. Some, less scrupulous, businesses have also taken to exploiting loopholes in these laws to begin a booming sex-slavery market of their own.

The colonists, growing tired of this mistreatment, had risen up in rebellion against Earth. The rebellion, however, was short lived as... with one devastatingly brutal blow, Earth Forces annihilated Mars Colony's major cities in order to send a clear message of their intent. The rebels surrendered quickly, but not before Mars colony was changed forever.

This story takes place 1 year after the bombardment of Mars colony.
© 2013 - 2024 dlboy78
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snowywolf7's avatar
That's amazing. Excellent writing. :)

Are you planning to write another chapter?