Each Tuesday, rather than a POSSIBLY
IRRITATING ESSAY, I'd like to both challenge you and lend a helping hand. I
generate more speculative and teen story ideas than I can ever use. My family
rolls its collective eyes when I say, "Hang on a second! I just have to
write down this idea..." Here, I'll include the initial inspiration
(quote, website, podcast, etc.) and then a thought or two that came to mind.
These will simply be seeds -- plant, nurture, fertilize, chemically treat,
irradiate, test or stress them as you see fit. I only ask if you let me know if
anything comes of them.
H Trope: Ancient
tombs discovered/cursed/releases monster/mummy & fairy dust
SF: Starship
Troopers
F Trope: Elves,
gnomes and Halflings
Western Trope: Dr.
Quinn, Medicine Woman
Romance Trope: Beauty
and the beast
Current Events:
Rayyan Brakus
powered his exoskeleton armor up and swung down from the troop transport. Granted,
he was supposed to be eighteen; granted, he’d lied about his age.
But when the
InterWar recruiter had shown up at the base of Butte Vertical Village in their
shiny starship, offering lots of cash and a life of adventure, Rayyan ran to
place his thumbprint. His ID didn’t show that he was 16 and a half. It showed
he was 22. So what if the recruiter’d said, “You bring your cat along to lick
your whiskers off, soldier?”
Rayyan snorted,
blowing a blot of snot on the inside of his faceplate. He reached up to wipe it
away, remembered it was inside and ignore the other soldiers who laughed at
him. He’d show THEM!
He clomped down
the ramp, stepped to one side and stopped, scanning. A bleak place, this world.
Looked like lots of dunes, dead trees and boulders – some sort of adobe village
a couple klicks. Command channel blasted into his ears, “Target acquired.
Mumiyah’s Cavern has been partially secured. Local resistance armed and should
be considered dangerous. Squads Delta and Theta proceed with caution. Air
support unavailable.”
Rayyan felt his
stomach drop to his feet then sprinted to follow the rest of Theta Squad. His
first live combat mission...
He wasn’t
expecting the attack. He should have been, but they’d never trained against
cavalry.
Horses ridden by
midgets. With bazookas. Trying to kill him. “Not me personally!” he shouted
into his helmet as he fired into the mob with his stunner. There wasn’t any
reason to…
A female midget –
sorta hot looking, he noticed before she sprayed something on his armor – swung
a mass-balanced lance that glowed as it cut through the first layer physical
defense then was deflected by the monomolecular fluid underlayer.
Deflecting the
lance, the inertia transferred to him, her speed and weight knocking him over.
Instead of a hard crash, it felt like he’d fallen on sponges. The midget on her
full-sized horse, was wearing a cowboy hat and clenched a cigar between her
teeth. She raised a mace and shouting, brought it down on his helmet.
****
Vesna Lobato stared
down at the man wrapped in bug scales and shook her head. Polish him up a bit
and he might be a good-looking boy. A bit older that her little brother, his
blonde hair was snarled, the fabric body suit was soaking wet from the
dissolution of the armor by her fairy dust. She was reasonably certain the dust
was no longer potent, though she’d had at least ten soldiers of the hundred the
Imperial Mounted Police had repelled from Mumiyah’s Cavern – die. Their skin
liquefied, sloughing from the bones. The screams made her shudder.
But it wasn’t like
she was fighting people. They were soldiers, impersonal, caring nothing for the
cultures of the New West. They wanted only to dig out its secrets and turn them
into another weapon to subjugate the worlds!
She lifted the
lance to strike the youngster’s head off.
“Hold your blade,
Vesna!”
“Why, brother?
He’d have killed me if I hadn’t knocked him down first.”
Her brother looked
down at the soldier and said, “If nothing else, we can strip out of his brain
what he thinks he knows about the Cavern.”
She lifted her
blade, took a deep breath and said, “I’ll stop my lance – but only ‘cause I
might ask him out on a date before we magick out his brain.” She wheeled on her
horse and headed back into town.
Name source: (m)
Malaysia, Greek; (f) Macedonia, Portuguese
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