Science Fiction for Friday

*thinking it's about time for some more sci-fi -- or would ya'll rather have fantasy? let me know.*

This can't be happening.
I told myself that every minute of every day. I couldn't be stuck in a Coreship cell with Tarika Trevis, the most dangerous criminal in the galaxy. I couldn't have gotten caught using the Equilibrium Complex. I couldn't be without Karelei ... it was an impossibly impossible impossibility.
Tarika stared at me with her creepily colorless eyes as I paced the floor of the tiny cell. The stark, glowing walls were beginning to whirl around me.

"They all do that," she informed me.
"Do what?"
"Pace. It never does any good."
I kept at it, just to prove her wrong. She was in front of me an instant later, blocking my path with an expression like stone. I jumped back into my corner. My back struck the wall, jarring all the air out of me. Ever since that dratted laser got me, all my Equilibrium was out the window.
"I can heal that," Tarika growled again, crouching next to me.
I curled into myself, the laserburn stinging like fire. "Leave me alone."

The door slid open.

Tarika jumped to her feet, fists clenched. I glanced up, deliberately keeping my hair in front of my eyes. Two guards in red uniforms cocked green Fighters at Tarika's head. "Not you," one rasped, eyes glinting behind his purple eyeband. "The kid."
"I still qualify as a kid," Tarika protested. I wondered for the first time how old she really was behind that hard face and jagged black hairstyle.
The second guard shoved her into the opposite corner and stood over her with his gun aimed at her heart. The other beckoned to me. I staggered to my feet, swaying with the barely perceptible roll of the ship.

“Arely!” Tarika cried, sitting up. “Aim for the blue, and look out for the –”
“Shut up,” said her guard. I just saw the handle of the gun impact her head as the door slipped closed again. I shouldn’t have been able to hear her cry of pain through the soundproof walls, but I did anyway.
I also heard the metallic buzz of Restraints as they settled around my wrists and saw the orange glow in front of my eyes as they confined my vision as well. The guard’s thick fingers dug into my upper arm, and I stumbled beside him along a long, curving hall.

The Restraints did not dissipate until it was completely dark around me. Something weighed my hands down. I glanced at it, but didn’t see anything so I groped with my fingers instead. My thumb hit something. A green Fighter laser streaked across the room, the low warble bouncing off wide, high walls and a star-strewn roof, illumined for an instant in brilliant colored light. I cocked the lasergun in my hand, ready to shoot at whatever attacked me. I’d heard of this.

That was the reason cold fear pooled in my stomach.

A blue light stabbed at my eyes from the left. I whirled to meet it, but it vanished. Something slammed into the back of my neck. I smelled burnt hair as I fell to the ground. The gun skittered out of my reach. Gasping, I rolled onto my back, but whatever had hit me was cloaked by darkness, smothering, concealing darkness.
Setting my teeth, I felt the back of my neck. Something warm trickled onto my hand. I jerked my hand away and automatically tried to look at my fingers to assess the damage, but the dark fell like a blanket before my eyes.

Cold laughter echoed to my right. Two points of blue light stared at me. I felt my own eyes grow wide. Every bit of warmth in my body seeped into the floor. My hands twitched. I reached for where I thought the gun would be.

Nothing.

Science Fiction for Friday -- on Saturday? *shrug*

As promised. I wrote this at aobut 10:00 last night, so it's a bit delayed. Rayhan still won't talk to me, so we'll have to save his story for later. *sigh*


I was there when they brought him in, unconscious, mumbling incoherently, a long streak across the back of his Zangar getup torn and the flesh beneath red from laserburn and orange Restraints still flickering around his wrists and ankles. I don't know why I bother saying I was there, because where else would I be? Where else would a dangerous criminal be confined except the the galaxy's finest Coreship?
Yeah. Right.

I watched him, having nothing better to do, for the better part of an hour. The Restraints activated by the laser eventually faded. He wasn't going anywhere. I began pacing the room again. I hadn't done it in over a month, but restlessness had set in. I hadn't had a cellmate for over a year. I wanted some news.

In the middle of the fourth circuit of my pointless prowl around the mercilessly glowing walls, the youngster stirred and moaned. I squatted next to him, tracing a finger over the long streak of laserburn. He started upright, groaned, and sank back onto the metal floor. I rocked back on my heels and studied him again. Long, untidy brown hair, unusually aquiline features, startlingly blue eyes. I hadn't seen eyes like that since ... since ...

He peeked out through a thicket of brown bangs and scooted back against the wall, teeth clenched. "I know you. I know you, you can't be here. Go away. You're all over the Weave. Convicted for -- "
"Yes, well, we all know about that." I peered around his side, where the laserburn carried over to his left leg. "You should let me treat that."
"With your ... your witchcraft?" His voice was high and frantic, signifying near panic. "No. Get away from me. This isn't happening."
I moved back to my corner of the cell and leaned my head against the wall. A long silence ensued.

"You gotta name, kid?" I asked finally.
"Why should I tell you?"
"Far's I can tell, you're in the same boat as me. We're equals now." I pretended to examine my cracked fingernails. "You might as well spill."
He gulped. A lock of his bangs fell back over one eye. "A-Arely."
Huh. What parent names their cub something like that? I'd hate going through life with a name that meant Destiny. 'Course, Starfield wasn't much better.

"So," I drawled, licking my lips. "Whatcha in for?"
He appeared to be sorting through his memories. Another silence, this one stretching for at least five minutes, then; "Something they call love."
"Ha! Love." I grinned. He shrank farther into his corner. I ignored that. "So she dumped you and you went and did something stupid."
"N-no."
"Then what?"
"None of your business." He sniffed. "Why did they put me in here with you, anyway?"

"For fun. They like a fight every now and then. You want outta here?"
He didn't appear taken aback at the sudden question, as I'd expected, but a light of hope glinted in his colorful eyes. "I guess."
"You'll have to trust me."
He looked down. "I don't know how. I-I can't trust anyone, anymore."
"You'll have to learn." I narrowed my eyes, thoughts racing through my head like green Fighter lasers. "'Cause I'm your only way out."

Science Fiction for Friday

This is my first attempt at sci-fi. Tell me what you think!

I wiped my sweaty fingers on the slick fabric of my form-fitting Zangar outfit and positioned them over the smooth virtual keyboard.
“Commence infiltration,” muttered Karelei, behind me.
“Shush,” I ordered, reaching up to adjust my eyeband. “Here we go.”

I’m sure that without the technological sweat-wicking geniuses of the Zangar company, I would have been drenched. As it was I now wished I’d accepted the gloves offered me at the start of this endeavor. You don’t get sweat on the world’s top machine. No going back for them now, though.
Choking back my nervousness, I began pecking at the numbered keys, maneuvering quickly through the preliminary levels. The colors of each individual room flashed by, faded into a blur. White, black, green, orange–
Red.
Confirmation code required.
“Sayller?” I choked.

A combination of random numbers blinked into the corner of my screen. Except not. That was what I expected it to be. Instead it spelled a single word. Relax.
“Sayller!!”
“Chill. Kid, you have no sense of humor.”
The word relax faded back into the luminescent silver background. My favorite color. It was supposed to be calming.
Password: S45228G.

I keyed it in, double- and triple- checking each character. “You’re sure this is the right one?”
I felt the pulse of electric color and sound as Sayller’s solid frame touched the virtual wall. He had a bad habit of leaning on Detector substances. “Positive.”
“It better be, or we’re fried.”
“Like an egg,” Karelei joked feebly. “Sunnyside up.”
“Quit with the ancient history, sugar,” Sayller chuckled.
Affirmative, said the red room, and faded. Please wait.
I slipped off the eyeband and smiled weakly. Karelei turned to face me, clutching folds of her outfit. With a sigh, she let it go. It snapped back into its original position. “Thank you, Arely.”
“No prob.”

She pulled off her gold eyeband and blinked. Once again I was struck by the color of her eyes. My family couldn’t afford to use the bands on a regular basis, so none of us had the characteristic cream-colored pupil of the Weavers. Everyone said it had no effect on eyesight. Well, no known effect, anyhow. Most were too immersed in their virtual worlds to care. Some never even took it off.
Sayller included.
“Hang on,” he proclaimed, grinning. “Got an update.” He walked over to the far Receptor wall and began moving various invisible objects across it with his fingers. I knew that to him, it was the colorful, multi-layered surface of the Weave. To me, it was just empty metal.

I glanced back at the screen. “You’d think they would’ve had tighter security on that.”
Karelei rubbed a hand over her face. “They may. Wait till you see the next level.”
“Think we’ll get her out?”
“We have to try.”
Sayller keyed in the code for Illusion, and a shimmering film of color appeared on the wall. He’d been wanting a better quality machine for years, he said, but this one looked fine to me. ‘Course, I wasn’t exactly educated in the constant updates of the big-wigs. They’d only brought me along for my innate talent with the Equilibrium Complex.

The colors resolved themselves into the face of Tiral, one of our few tech experts. She was frowning. “This wasn’t part of the plan.”
“Look, it was my idea to bring Arely along,” Sayller sighed. “And he got us in, didn’t he?”
“Not all the way. You have to be more careful. You have to –"

The please wait screen flooded from black to red and emitted a low, eerie warble of warning. It tore at the fabric of my mind, ripped my Equilibrium into a drillion pieces. I whirled to face it, my fingers digging into the metal of my eyeband. An orange laser streaked across my back. I crumpled forward onto the cold white floor. The last thing I heard was Karelei screaming my name.