sozme
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Feb 24, 2013
- Messages
- 200
Ok so I posted a much, much shorter version here. It was advised that I post a longer excerpt for better context, so... yeah I just decided to post near the word limit (sorry).
Of course, I'd love to hear opinions on any aspect of the piece, which I know needs a lot of work. There are obvious mechanical issues in places that need fixing, but I just can't think of better phraseology at the moment.
That being said, this is the first POV chapter for this particular character (Cannon), and I want to know if it is hooky enough to keep you reading.
BTW I posted a later chapter from this exact same story about 9 months ago here featuring the same character. Sorry for asking for more than one critique this week. I am in my final year of medical school and trying to use my ample amount of free time to finish this story which has been a WIP for over 4 years now. Far and away my biggest problem is OCD and just not having a solid process for writing a story, causing me to vacillate between outlining, discovery writing, and (mostly) frustration-induced procrastination.
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Chapter 3 - Cannon
Kellen 32, 434 I.E. (Present Day)
The terrorists crashed on the colonial world of Juno. Their starcraft lay half-buried in muck, surrounded by air-vans with flashing blue-and-red lights. Chief Ranger Driscoll Cannon strode along the beach towards it, the air hot and heavy on his skin, the scent of ammonia-filled ocean bitter in his nostrils. Overhead, flashes of lightning illuminated chopper-sized avians circling a blood orange sky.
“How many dead?” Cannon said.
“Thirty-two,” Klein said, looking up from the holographic display on his wrist. “Three alive. Eight unaccounted for.”
“What do you mean unaccounted for? It’s an empty cargo ship for fucks sake.”
“Not to worry, Chief,” Klein said slowly. “Marshal Sheehan is sure there’s no explosives.”
“I don’t give a rat’s ass what these idiots are sure of,” Cannon snapped. “We’re combing through this entire ship before the storm hits.”
The group tracked over a small embankment, where towering aquatic trees resembling large mushrooms leaned over them. At the top of his vision, Cannon spotted one of the alien birds diving nearby, presumably for some prey lurking in the bubbling soup behind them. Just before it reached eye-level one of the mushroom trees snapped erect, seizing the creature out of the sky with clam-shaped jaws.
“f*ck this place,” Campbell said, his face screwed-up in disgust. “Why did we have to come down here? These assholes should’ve been atoms the second they entered Union space.”
Cannon scowled as he remembered giving those exact instructions to the Juno Defense Authority. Their refusal seemed to be based on a mixture of stupidity and do-gooderism that he wasn’t equipped to understand.
As they came inside the cordon, Cannon found himself surrounded by interlopers of every stripe. JDA officers in puke-green military uniforms, media people with cameras and microphone booms, civilians and vagrants milling about aimlessly. As expected, the eyes of all of these groups fell on them.
Though their frightened stares held-up traffic and severely annoyed him, Cannon and the others were used the reception. As Special Cytogenetically-Augmented Rangers, each of them stood over 7 feet tall, with more than 350-lbs of sinew in their frames. If pure size wasn’t distinguishing, their eyes were. They had unnatural gold-colored irises that seemed to glow in the dark, with Cannon’s an exceptional ice-blue, and prominent vertical-slit pupils. Coupled with midnight black power armor and large rifles, they appeared as humanoid war machines torn straight from a comic book nightmare.
Cannon ignored the stares and cut through towards the ship. To his annoyance, they fell behind two oblivious officers moving a C-shaped hydraulic cutter used for sectioning bulkheads. The lead officer held the bottom grip between her legs while hoisting the other over her shoulder. Cannon thought it a very stupid and dangerous way to carry it, lodged between shoulder and ass. A great way to get yourself crushed if the device was somehow activated.
“Get out of the way,” Cannon said at the woman’s back, making to move around them.
“Little busy here,” the female officer grunted without turning. She was struggling in vein to lift the bottom stock higher off the ground.
With two enormous paws, Cannon yanked the top jaw off her shoulder. The woman staggered sideways and turned, her angry eyes becoming wide in shock as they followed the now airborne contraption into the night sky. Bystanders screamed and ducked as the hunk of metal sailed through the murk to clang down loudly beyond the barricades.
Traffic then rapidly cleared, and Cannon made way towards a gaping hole in the outer hull. Upon closer survey, it appeared that the aft cargo hold had been breeched with an assault ramp. Two important-looking men in uniform idled just below it, a locus of media hounds situated behind a metal barricade nearby.
Cannon scowled when he recognized the two idiots he had spoken to just a few hours ago. One was a withered old man with dark orange skin and droopy eyelids that made him appear as though he was sleeping. The other was a much younger, much scrawnier man with an upper body disproportionate to his skinny legs. He had a puffed out chest full of patches and ribbons and a look of faux confidence on his face.
“Hello honorable Ranger,” the old one said in a slow voice. “I am Prefect Marim, and this is Marshal Sheehan of the Juno Defense Authority.”
“I know who you are,” Cannon spat. “Where are the survivors?”
The two men looked at each other for a moment. Reporters leaned over the barricade a few feet away, stretching out microphone booms toward them.
“On the bridge in flex cuffs,” Sheehan said. “But they’re in bad shape. We need to get them to the hospital.”
“You’ll do no such thing,” Cannon said. “Where are the eight who are missing?”
“The one’s on-board are all we have,” Sheehan said, turning sideways in the direction of the cameras. “We’ve been all over this ship since it entered the system.”
“Who allowed them to touch-down at this position?” Cannon asked, his gaze fixed squarely on Marim, trying to ignore Sheehan and the gaggle of reporters.
The old man scrunched his face up as though Cannon had spoken a foreign tongue.
“Well, we couldn’t very well blow them out of the sky,” Sheehan said, his voice full of disdain. “It was safest for all parties to-”
“What would have been safest,” Cannon began, stepping in closer to the man and placing a weighty hand on his shoulder. “Would have been to blow them out of space, long before they crashed into your shithole planet.”
Sheehan flinched at the touch, but Cannon leaned in even closer, speaking quiet and slow, as if to a young child. Microphone booms and camera drones inched closer as Cannon directed Sheehan with a pointing a finger across the inlet.
“Did you know they wanted to blow-up that mine over there?”
Sheehan’s eyes fell across the yellow-colored sea towards the cliff face. At the top stood a chain-link fence, the rhythmic lightning illuminating the broad wooden signage that said “Long Dock Mine.”
Sheehan shook himself indignantly out of Cannon’s grasp.
“These are environmentalists, not suicide bombers,” Sheehan said. “We can’t very well commit mass murder. Everyone deserves a fair trial, I shouldn’t have to point that out.”
Cannon fought the urge to slap the man upside the head.
“Honorable Ranger,” the somnambulent Marim interrupted. “I agree with you. But it’s an election year, and the colonists are very progressive when it comes to these things.”
Cannon scowled. He didn’t care a sh*t for trials and even less for elections.
To his right, a fat reporter in a yellow poncho leaned over the railing. “What did the Prefect say?” he yelled.
“Something about the election?” an Icarian reporter said, his green-skin a sharp contrast to the fat man’s poncho.
“Are the SCAR here to murder the Waykeepers?” an unseen third bellowed. “Leave them alone! They’re peaceful!”
“Excuse me, sirs,” a new voice said from inside the ship. Cannon turned to see a group of men in blue biohazard material suits making to exit down the ramp. Cannon couldn’t be sure who had spoken, since the facial windows on the suits were tinted black. They were carrying sealed metal boxes with the word “EVIDENCE” stamped on the sides.
“What is that?” Cannon asked, nodding toward the steel containers. “I specifically told you people not to remove anything.”
“There were no explosives,” Sheehan said quickly, stepping forward with arms in the air. “We cleared that out long before we allowed the media on-scene.”
Cannon began to say something when the sound of an engine humming off to his right made him turn. A Juno Defense Authority air-van had appeared. It was hovering two feet off the ground with more blue suited men inside.
Cannon felt like throttling someone. “I don’t care. You will leave these containers where you found them, and get these media rats out of here.”
There was brief pause then. Sheehan appeared to be about to say something, but ended up stuttering to himself. The faceless blue suits stood still and unreadable. In the silence that followed, Cannon felt his insides go cold, and his muscles tense, the way he felt when he sensed a fight was to be had, and not a verbal one. It was an instinctual feeling oddly out of place in a simple dispute with law enforcement.
Of course, I'd love to hear opinions on any aspect of the piece, which I know needs a lot of work. There are obvious mechanical issues in places that need fixing, but I just can't think of better phraseology at the moment.
That being said, this is the first POV chapter for this particular character (Cannon), and I want to know if it is hooky enough to keep you reading.
BTW I posted a later chapter from this exact same story about 9 months ago here featuring the same character. Sorry for asking for more than one critique this week. I am in my final year of medical school and trying to use my ample amount of free time to finish this story which has been a WIP for over 4 years now. Far and away my biggest problem is OCD and just not having a solid process for writing a story, causing me to vacillate between outlining, discovery writing, and (mostly) frustration-induced procrastination.
###########################################################
Chapter 3 - Cannon
Kellen 32, 434 I.E. (Present Day)
The terrorists crashed on the colonial world of Juno. Their starcraft lay half-buried in muck, surrounded by air-vans with flashing blue-and-red lights. Chief Ranger Driscoll Cannon strode along the beach towards it, the air hot and heavy on his skin, the scent of ammonia-filled ocean bitter in his nostrils. Overhead, flashes of lightning illuminated chopper-sized avians circling a blood orange sky.
“How many dead?” Cannon said.
“Thirty-two,” Klein said, looking up from the holographic display on his wrist. “Three alive. Eight unaccounted for.”
“What do you mean unaccounted for? It’s an empty cargo ship for fucks sake.”
“Not to worry, Chief,” Klein said slowly. “Marshal Sheehan is sure there’s no explosives.”
“I don’t give a rat’s ass what these idiots are sure of,” Cannon snapped. “We’re combing through this entire ship before the storm hits.”
The group tracked over a small embankment, where towering aquatic trees resembling large mushrooms leaned over them. At the top of his vision, Cannon spotted one of the alien birds diving nearby, presumably for some prey lurking in the bubbling soup behind them. Just before it reached eye-level one of the mushroom trees snapped erect, seizing the creature out of the sky with clam-shaped jaws.
“f*ck this place,” Campbell said, his face screwed-up in disgust. “Why did we have to come down here? These assholes should’ve been atoms the second they entered Union space.”
Cannon scowled as he remembered giving those exact instructions to the Juno Defense Authority. Their refusal seemed to be based on a mixture of stupidity and do-gooderism that he wasn’t equipped to understand.
As they came inside the cordon, Cannon found himself surrounded by interlopers of every stripe. JDA officers in puke-green military uniforms, media people with cameras and microphone booms, civilians and vagrants milling about aimlessly. As expected, the eyes of all of these groups fell on them.
Though their frightened stares held-up traffic and severely annoyed him, Cannon and the others were used the reception. As Special Cytogenetically-Augmented Rangers, each of them stood over 7 feet tall, with more than 350-lbs of sinew in their frames. If pure size wasn’t distinguishing, their eyes were. They had unnatural gold-colored irises that seemed to glow in the dark, with Cannon’s an exceptional ice-blue, and prominent vertical-slit pupils. Coupled with midnight black power armor and large rifles, they appeared as humanoid war machines torn straight from a comic book nightmare.
Cannon ignored the stares and cut through towards the ship. To his annoyance, they fell behind two oblivious officers moving a C-shaped hydraulic cutter used for sectioning bulkheads. The lead officer held the bottom grip between her legs while hoisting the other over her shoulder. Cannon thought it a very stupid and dangerous way to carry it, lodged between shoulder and ass. A great way to get yourself crushed if the device was somehow activated.
“Get out of the way,” Cannon said at the woman’s back, making to move around them.
“Little busy here,” the female officer grunted without turning. She was struggling in vein to lift the bottom stock higher off the ground.
With two enormous paws, Cannon yanked the top jaw off her shoulder. The woman staggered sideways and turned, her angry eyes becoming wide in shock as they followed the now airborne contraption into the night sky. Bystanders screamed and ducked as the hunk of metal sailed through the murk to clang down loudly beyond the barricades.
Traffic then rapidly cleared, and Cannon made way towards a gaping hole in the outer hull. Upon closer survey, it appeared that the aft cargo hold had been breeched with an assault ramp. Two important-looking men in uniform idled just below it, a locus of media hounds situated behind a metal barricade nearby.
Cannon scowled when he recognized the two idiots he had spoken to just a few hours ago. One was a withered old man with dark orange skin and droopy eyelids that made him appear as though he was sleeping. The other was a much younger, much scrawnier man with an upper body disproportionate to his skinny legs. He had a puffed out chest full of patches and ribbons and a look of faux confidence on his face.
“Hello honorable Ranger,” the old one said in a slow voice. “I am Prefect Marim, and this is Marshal Sheehan of the Juno Defense Authority.”
“I know who you are,” Cannon spat. “Where are the survivors?”
The two men looked at each other for a moment. Reporters leaned over the barricade a few feet away, stretching out microphone booms toward them.
“On the bridge in flex cuffs,” Sheehan said. “But they’re in bad shape. We need to get them to the hospital.”
“You’ll do no such thing,” Cannon said. “Where are the eight who are missing?”
“The one’s on-board are all we have,” Sheehan said, turning sideways in the direction of the cameras. “We’ve been all over this ship since it entered the system.”
“Who allowed them to touch-down at this position?” Cannon asked, his gaze fixed squarely on Marim, trying to ignore Sheehan and the gaggle of reporters.
The old man scrunched his face up as though Cannon had spoken a foreign tongue.
“Well, we couldn’t very well blow them out of the sky,” Sheehan said, his voice full of disdain. “It was safest for all parties to-”
“What would have been safest,” Cannon began, stepping in closer to the man and placing a weighty hand on his shoulder. “Would have been to blow them out of space, long before they crashed into your shithole planet.”
Sheehan flinched at the touch, but Cannon leaned in even closer, speaking quiet and slow, as if to a young child. Microphone booms and camera drones inched closer as Cannon directed Sheehan with a pointing a finger across the inlet.
“Did you know they wanted to blow-up that mine over there?”
Sheehan’s eyes fell across the yellow-colored sea towards the cliff face. At the top stood a chain-link fence, the rhythmic lightning illuminating the broad wooden signage that said “Long Dock Mine.”
Sheehan shook himself indignantly out of Cannon’s grasp.
“These are environmentalists, not suicide bombers,” Sheehan said. “We can’t very well commit mass murder. Everyone deserves a fair trial, I shouldn’t have to point that out.”
Cannon fought the urge to slap the man upside the head.
“Honorable Ranger,” the somnambulent Marim interrupted. “I agree with you. But it’s an election year, and the colonists are very progressive when it comes to these things.”
Cannon scowled. He didn’t care a sh*t for trials and even less for elections.
To his right, a fat reporter in a yellow poncho leaned over the railing. “What did the Prefect say?” he yelled.
“Something about the election?” an Icarian reporter said, his green-skin a sharp contrast to the fat man’s poncho.
“Are the SCAR here to murder the Waykeepers?” an unseen third bellowed. “Leave them alone! They’re peaceful!”
“Excuse me, sirs,” a new voice said from inside the ship. Cannon turned to see a group of men in blue biohazard material suits making to exit down the ramp. Cannon couldn’t be sure who had spoken, since the facial windows on the suits were tinted black. They were carrying sealed metal boxes with the word “EVIDENCE” stamped on the sides.
“What is that?” Cannon asked, nodding toward the steel containers. “I specifically told you people not to remove anything.”
“There were no explosives,” Sheehan said quickly, stepping forward with arms in the air. “We cleared that out long before we allowed the media on-scene.”
Cannon began to say something when the sound of an engine humming off to his right made him turn. A Juno Defense Authority air-van had appeared. It was hovering two feet off the ground with more blue suited men inside.
Cannon felt like throttling someone. “I don’t care. You will leave these containers where you found them, and get these media rats out of here.”
There was brief pause then. Sheehan appeared to be about to say something, but ended up stuttering to himself. The faceless blue suits stood still and unreadable. In the silence that followed, Cannon felt his insides go cold, and his muscles tense, the way he felt when he sensed a fight was to be had, and not a verbal one. It was an instinctual feeling oddly out of place in a simple dispute with law enforcement.
