ADSactly Sci-Fi : Outer Earth Series 'The One Eyed Man (Part 7)'
Hello Steemians. For those just catching up now... Are you just like me, hopelessly addicted to Sci-Fi stories and the many wonderful series shows available on Netflix?
Have you ever seen shows like Firefly, The Expanse, Dark Matter, Killjoys, Star Trek Discovery and the rest?
Well, we've got more in common than ever! I've only briefly played around in this genre and by no means can I consider myself a master sci-fi creative writer but at this point I feel like I have a pretty firm grasp of the fundamentals required to create a real sci fi experience. An immersion into another world. With deep characters, comedy and action sequences I will take my readers to another world.
Without further delay, I bring you the fourth chapter in a new sci-fi short story I've been working on. I'm still working out final details in the storyline but still have time to add in new elements, situations and characters... Any ideas you have will be greatly appreciated in the comments section below!
If you are just now tuning in, I recommend stopping right here and reading parts one, two and three of the story before continuing on:
https://steemit.com/science/@adsactly/adsactly-sci-fi-outer-earth-series-the-one-eyed-man-part-1
https://steemit.com/fiction/@adsactly/adsactly-sci-fi-outer-earth-series-the-one-eyed-man-part-2
https://steemit.com/fiction/@adsactly/adsactly-sci-fi-outer-earth-series-the-one-eyed-man-part-3
https://steemit.com/science/@adsactly/adsactly-sci-fi-outer-earth-series-the-one-eyed-man-part-4
https://steemit.com/fiction/@adsactly/adsactly-sci-fi-outer-earth-series-the-one-eyed-man-part-5
Now I give you 'The One Eyed Man (Part 7)'
Outer Earth Series – The One Eyed Man (Part 7)
Brrrring! Brrrring! And so it began again. Albright sat up and lit a cigarette. He swigged down the dregs of a bottle of sludge sake that had been left sitting on the table beside his bed overnight.
Nothing like the last few sips of rancid warm sludge sake to get a guy going in the morning.
The message indicator on the holo-projector flashed red, it blinked repeatedly indicating there was an unread message waiting for him. His head was throbbing. Thinking back on last night’s events, he faintly remembered drunk dialing Claire and offering her a load of credits to be his wingman on the trip to Tremaine.
He cracked his neck and waved his hand in a clockwise motion instructing the holoprojector to play the message.
It was Claire. ‘Hey honey. I was wondering when you were going to look me up. Sounds like you’ve got your pickle into a bit of a tickle with that contract… I took a job for Syntec a few months back, I ended up killing the target after several attempts but I was the only one in my team that made it out alive. The agent that had the job before me failed miserably and Syntec made sure he died a slow and painful death. So I’ve thought it over. I’ll help you close that contract out but it’s going to cost you an extra 20% plus expenses. My deal is non-negotiable, you know that I’m the best and you’re totally flerked without me. I’ll meet you on Deltia outpost in three days. Don’t be late.’
God she was hot. Deltia outpost was a space-station orbiting a small moon just a quick hyperjump from Tremaine. It made sense to meet off world because of the nature of the job and the need for discretion. He’d need to make one last stop into town to load up on some supplies for the job.
Albright sat there in thought for a few moments. He was a bit surprised that Claire was even willing to entertain this mission given the fact that the employer he worked for was certainly one of the most ruthless corporations in the galaxy. A few missteps could see her suffer the same fate as he would. He figured he would get off lucky if all they did was cut off his balls and feed em to their dogs before slitting his throat.
Either way it didn’t matter, she was a talented professional like himself and probably a real freak in the sheets to boot. Albright sort of secretly hoped he get a shot at banging her someday but he also knew it would be foolish to set any expectations. He was cursed and disappointment seemed to follow him around like his own shadow at every turn.
It was daytime. The streets were unusually crowded today as he pushed past miners, merchants and riffraff steadily pacing towards the underground black market emporium just one kilometer south of Darcy station. Contraband of all sorts could be purchased there, and I mean all sorts. The mafia ran most of the shops in the area and had their grubby fingers in the most despicable commerce imaginable.
Drugs, human trafficking, freshly extracted organs, off world identification and after-market implants were all on the menu but Albright wasn’t interested in any of that. He was there to visit Snake and load up on high tech surveillance equipment and exotic weapons of death and dismemberment.
Snake’s shop looked quite plain, the walls were painted grey and the aisles were full of scavenged junk. His inventory looked like what you’d find in a bum’s supermarket shopping cart. Behind the counter stood a little old lady with bifocals. She wore a flower patterned dress, the kind that little old ladies wear and she had long grey hair. She must have been about eighty years old by the look of it. Behind the counter she packed a shotgun. Albright was pretty sure she knew how to use it. This was an outer colony. What little old lady that lived on a planet like this wouldn’t know how to use a shotgun right?
Albright walked up to the lady and in his most deeply scruffy and confident voice said “I’m here to see Snake.”
The old lady covered her earpiece with her right hand and appeared to receive instructions.
“Snake will see you now.”
The old lady pressed a button behind a counter a bright light flashed disorienting Albright momentarily the wall to left had slid open revealing a staircase and railing that led to the basement. The lady sort of tiredly pointed towards the staircase. Albright had never met Snake before but had heard that he was the best in town when it came to the demonstration and sale of contraband weapons.
Albright had no sooner got to the bottom of the staircase when he heard a loud bellow. ‘Oy, I was about to close up for the day mate. This better be worth my time.’
After walking through the doorway Albright saw something so magnificent that he could hardly believe his eyes. The entire room was decked out with massive glass cases full of interesting and expensive gadgets. Arms lined the walls and ranged from little peashooter type devices to massive RPG sized firearms, the type of stuff you only saw the corporate military elites packing.
About three meters away Snake towered above him, arms folded with a stern look on his face.
He couldn’t believe it. The man must have been at least 7ft tall weighing something like 150kg.
Snake had a rough wrinkly looking face with a big scar running down his right cheek with dark brown eyes and long spikey white hair. He wore a grey tank top and military grade cargo pants.
Tattoos covered his arms and shoulders. Albright recognized the tattoo on his right shoulder, it was the insignia of a Triad assassin, a vicious python coiled around a samurai sword.
“Well, get on with it then.’ Snake was obviously getting annoyed, his patience had already worn thin.
Albright reached into his bag and pulled out a small black tablet. He quickly punched in a short passphrase.
‘These are the items I’ll be needing’ Albright handed the tablet to Snake.
The list read as follows:
(1) neuralyzer
(2) compact sonic shotguns
(2) titan class security vests
(3) plasma stun grenades
(6) stealth surveillance drones
(4) seismic charges
(1) dna analyzer
(1) pair of monomolecular handcuffs
(1) smartdisc with neural link interface
Sure it was probably overkill but Albright had been on jobs before where he was short a gadget or two and those types of jobs never ended well. It was especially difficult when a contract required the trapping of a target as opposed to just a standard kill job. What a pain in the arse!
Snake stared at the list for a few moments.
‘God damnit Albright! What the blazing flerk are you planning to do with all this gear, mate? Some of this shit is just downright ancient. I’ll have to make a special request and have a few of these items brought up from the warehouse.’
‘Ugh, give me a minute…’ Snake’s demeanor had noticeably changed. The frown on his face had been replaced with a big wide grin that almost broadcasted his intentions. He was going to present Albright with a bill to end all bills. Albright better have the credits to pay for all this crap, gear like this didn’t come cheap.
Albright nodded to Snake and began slowing pacing around the room examining all the high tech weaponry securely mounted on the walls. Laser Gatling guns, compact plasma pulse rifles, modified portable railguns, biomatter cannons, titanium based fusion propelled rocket launchers, the list went on and on. Some of the weaponry Albright had never even seen before. It was a bloody hitman’s Toys R Us.
Snake began busily punching a purchase order into his console. Several drones with mechanical arms sprang into action buzzing about the room collecting some of the gear on Albright’s shopping list. A few minutes later Snake called him back over to present the goods. Albright was impressed, every single item he had requested was sitting before him on the glass display case.
He gave all the gear a quick once over and acknowledged that it was all there.
Snake pressed a button on his console and a holo-display presented the bill. Would you look at that. Wowsers!
The total came to 1.57 Million credits. Albright just stood there shocked for a moment. After a bit of quick mental math he realized that this would be cutting it close. Considering the fact he had been absolutely reamed by Mork and adding that to the decision to take on Claire as his partner for a price that pretty much amounted to extortion, the situation looked dire.
These damn pit vipers were intent on bleeding him dry. He wouldn’t have much left if everything went tits up and he needed to make an end run for the other side of the galaxy.
Albright tapped a few commands into his tablet and settled his bill with Snake. At least the guy was nice enough to throw in a military grade nylon tote bag free of charge. With the gear in hand he took the hyperloop to the colony shipyards. He decided he’d have to book a real budget transport pod to Deltia outpost.
If you had a bit of money you could commission one of those high end stasis pods which would put you on cloud nine dreaming sweet dreams having every need and desire attended to by a harem of exotic women, being fed grapes and drinking champagne, imprinted with memories you’d never be able to distinguish weren’t real.
Unless of course you got real technical with an advanced delta wave neuro-scanner able to detect micro neuron stimulation. Well shit, just for a shot at banging Claire, it seemed almost worth forgoing the pleasure of orgies and caviar snacks on this journey.
Albright arrived at the shipyard in the early afternoon and began examining his options. A Borlag freighter was departing in six hours, it was an option but damn did those Borlags smell like two week old potatoes left out under the boiling sun, a whole race of people who never found value in a good shower and never bothered to use something humans referred to as soap.
Scanning down the list of departures, he spotted a real gem. It was Tarlaxian cruiser departing the spaceport in just a few hours. The Tarlaxians had never let him down before and it appeared that they had one single economy pod left unoccupied. His fingers fumbled awkwardly trying to reserve the pod. Oh thank god!
He had just managed to dodge a bullet and literally hit the jackpot managing to escape the prospect of a less than pleasurable journey led by the putrid smelling Borlags. Was lady luck finally on Albright’s side?
He thought to himself how smoothly things were going at the moment and realized that he actually felt happy. It was a strange sensation, one that he rarely experienced and so he figured that he may as well enjoy it while it lasted.
Albright boarded the Tarlaxian cruiser and made his way to the economy class stasis pods. Along the way he saw some interesting passengers, a six eyed Harbinger from the Mandela cluster, a few wily Foxarians and a handful of human settlers. He had no use for small talk and frankly he was exhausted from the past few days, a long nap would do him good.
Once he arrived to his assigned stasis pod, he stripped down naked and placed the nylon tote bag along with his clothing into the storage compartment below. After that he crawled in, stretched his arms and legs and activated the stasis protocol. The pod whizzed and hummed and whirred as gasses flooded the chamber. Everything went silent. Sweet dreams.
Final Thoughts
So we really made a lot of progress in this chapter! Albright has a new partner lined up and the action is really close from here! He's also decked out with a bunch of insane toys which will be interesting to see how they are used in the hunt.
I hope I've got readers to relate to the characters so far. Writing is like anything else I suppose, the more we practice the better it becomes and the easier it is for us to express ourselves.
I'd very much like to know your thoughts on this story so far and what about it you may have liked or didn't like. Thanks so much for reading!
Authored by: Zentalk
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It maintains the sense of plausibility you've given to your story. As expected, Claire became interested in the contract. Albright, of course, is happy and, at the same time, eager for his company. The scene in the weapons warehouse is quite well resolved with its elements of warfare technology and the character Snake. Expectations of how the mission will be accomplished with Claire's participation are intensifying. Pending. Greetings, @zentalk.
Yes! Claire couldn't resist the easy money but there may be more to it than that... Albright hasn't had much luck with women (the kinds that dont sell their body for money...) so maybe its an opportunity for him to work on his social skills. The weapons warehouse was very fun to write, it took significant research into the weaponry of the future and review of my story outline to sort of figure out what would be needed in terms of devices to make it work (i can always go back and change what was purchased later if I decide to use something different, not use something or add something.). The action and mystery is ahead! Thanks for reading and giving me your thoughts on this chapter! I really like what you said about plausibility, that is important to me, the illusion must be upheld at all times to make it immersive!
Claire is a woman of arms to take. In this part there are very vivid and plausible descriptions, especially those that have to do with weapons and spaces. I like how you include the new with the old technologies, and how you recreate artifacts that may be great in the future, like that stasis capsule. Imagining the old lady's character was funny and interesting. I remembered an old Schwarzenegger film. Thanks for sharing, @zentalk
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