So the sequel to Operational Realities is written. Well, the first draft is, anyways. I’m working with two wonderful beta readers to iron out the wrinkles as we speak, and currently drawing a blank on what to do for the cover.
I want to produce the cover myself, same as I did with OR, but my artistic skills have atrophied a lot in the years that I didn’t really have time to practice them. And I was never a prodigy to begin with.
I’m also less chuffed with the cover of OR now than I was when I first made it. It’s a little bland, there’s no good silhouette there… It’s just kind of a mess of oranges and blues and purples, and it takes a second to recognize what it’s showing. I still think it’s a decent piece of artwork, but a little unremarkable, and not a good cover. I’ve been thinking of updating that, but my imagination far outstrips my abilities, so I’m at a bit of a loss.
I have similar feelings about the book itself, but this, at least, is expected. I knew it was shit when I published it, even though I couldn’t recognize how. I’m beginning to see it now, though. I expect I’ll be revising it in the future. Not a full re-write, of course, but just smoothing over some of the worst parts.
With regards to the sequel… Well, we’re a little over halfway through the beta reading process. I’m going to do another editing pass after this is done, but those tend to go pretty quickly (probably indicates that I’m doing a bad job of it, but whatever; I can’t afford to pay an editor).
Hopefully, inspiration for the cover will strike soon, and I’ll have something ready by the time the manuscript is ready. In the meantime, here’s the excerpt I promised in the title.
Friday, April 4th, 2758
Friday, April 4th, 2758
I am the flame, burning all that stands in my path.
I am the rock, standing against the waves, unyielding.
I am the wind, rising and dying at my own whims.
I am the tide, sweeping from the shore to the deep.
The litany cycled through my mind as I raged, smashing faceless enemies before me with my bare hands. I mowed through their ranks, only the first line really ringing true, until I found the blue girl. As I came face to face with her, I stopped. My arms came down to rest at my side and I felt the nausea and weakness that signaled the end of my rage.
She wore a familiar face; Kat’s. Before I had uploaded her likeness, she had been just a generic girl, an icon, a symbol fed to me by the virt-sim computer that I needed to learn to recognize and respond to by leaving my rage. I was getting better at bringing myself out, though I still needed work. This phase of my training would not be completed until I could leave the rage at the mere sight of her. I had found that giving her Kat’s likeness helped immensely, and my tutors had not had any objection. “Whatever helps you in your journey,” was their mantra.
This was the third part of my training, learning to come down from a rage on cue. I had been on Trondheim for five months now. The entire time, I had been living at the Berserkergang lodge and learning to harness my condition under the watchful guidance of the elders.
The 4th had placed me on indefinite, administrative leave once my report, in which I detailed my rages, was filed. I had instructions to seek out and join a Berserkergang, and then report back in once I’d completed training in the ways of the Berserkers. I spent the first few weeks with my parents. I explained what had happened to me in very broad terms, so as not to violate the State Secrecy Act, with an emphasis on discovering that I was subject to the rages.
They helped me search for a Berserkergang there on Earth, but I eventually decided to come to Trondheim for it. I knew someone here, even if only briefly. Legolas and Gimli had been here when I arrived, and greeted me like an old friend, making me feel immediately welcome. I missed my parents, but I didn’t regret coming here.
The first part of my training had been so counterintuitive that I almost left. They wanted me to learn to rage at will. I had protested that this was the opposite of what I came here to learn, but they insisted, explaining that this was a necessary first step to mastering one’s rages. So I gave in to their insistences, and I learned to rage on command. It was easier than I expected. The naturally occurring rages had all required a great deal of stress to trigger, conditions I didn’t think I could simulate mentally. And of course, I still couldn’t. But what I learned to do was to reach down and feel the coiling snake within me, to stroke it and tease it out. After two months of training, I was able to rage at the drop of a hat.
Next came learning to stop it from happening against my will. To this end, they beat me, shot me with plastic pellets and hurled abuse at me for weeks on end. My sensitivity ramped up by the previous two months of summoning the rage as often as I could, I raged many times before I got control of myself. They always had enough senior members on hand to prevent me from hurting anyone. That had been another two months, and my eventual mastery of this aspect had done a great deal to ease my anxieties.
Now in my third phase, I was working on coming out of the rages on command. There was nothing special about the blue girl, and I could have picked any color/gender/subspecies combination, or gone with an alien or even an inanimate object. But the girl’s dress was identical to something Kat had owned. When I saw it on the menu, I was reminded of the only time I’d seen Kat in that dress. I had noticed it in her wardrobe in the training barracks at Fort Markham during our thirteenth month of OD-E training. When I asked her about it, she had giddily told me about how she’d found it in a farmer’s market while she was on leave right before starting SOG-AS, and how she’d never had the chance to wear it. She happily put it on to show me how it looked, and I remember how beautiful she was, twirling and grinning in delight.
I remained in the tank, leaving the simulation paused while I caught my breath and waited for the nausea to pass. I stared at the gorgeous visage before me and wondered if I’d ever see it for real. I wondered if I did see her face, if it would be suffused with fear. Or maybe anger.
Once I composed myself, I restarted the simulation. The faceless (literally; they simply had vaguely face-shaped expanses of smooth flesh) enemies appeared before me. Their arms, skill level and composition were randomized, and this time, they had sticks, bats, knives and a few small-caliber handguns. I dipped down inside myself and brushed my fingers against the coiled snake there, stirring it to wakefulness. As my vision went red, I tore into the enemy with gleeful abandon and a rock hard erection.
After hours of practice, the elders insisted I take the rest of the afternoon off. It wasn’t healthy to keep raging the way we must do as we learn to master ourselves, and the training schedule was purposefully light. Naturally, I pushed myself to keep training, day after day, until they’d finally learned that they needed to step in and cut me off, else I’d train until I dropped.
I filled the rest of the afternoon working on my own cabin on the lodge’s grounds. By long standing tradition, each new Berserker must build one as they master their rages. It must be built of the native evergreen trees, by hand. At the urging of the elders, I had selected a spot that spoke to me on the massive, million-hectare estate through the simple act of tooling around in a flier and keeping an eye out for any unclaimed plot big enough to build on. I’d selected a spot only a few kilometers north of the central longhouse, on the edge of a low cliff that overlooked several kilometers of flat forest to the west that rose into foothills, and then mountains in the distance. I had neighbors, fellow Berserker cabins, less than two kilometers away in either direction along the cliff edge, both perched on higher rises. But this spot had something magical about it. Maybe it was the small waterfall that cascaded down the cliff to a small pool, before running off into the forest. Maybe it was the plentiful game trails I’d found around the site. I wasn’t sure. I just knew that this spot spoke to me.
There was no tradition that said we couldn’t have help, though. So Legolas and Gimli were there. We cut down trees and sprayed them with chemicals to artificially season them overnight. We cut seasoned logs into boards, or simply stripped the bark, as needed. The cabin was taking shape slowly but surely, and it was an almost exact duplicate of the cabin Kat and I had shared on New Canada.
Legolas occupied the cabin to my north, and had built in an extra room to accommodate Gimli some time back. Gimli had no standing with the Berserkergang, but still came and went as he pleased, and none begrudged him this. The whole lodge was like that; everyone relaxed and chill about everything (except for my tendency to over-train). You’d never know that every single one of us was a bloodthirsty monster, held in check only by months of rigorous training.
We worked through the afternoon. I’d learned about the cabin-building tradition before coming here, and brought some of my father’s power tools, which put us well ahead of schedule. The four walls were built, the windows cut into them and two window frames placed when I got here. By the time we finished, we’d installed the remaining frames and started placing some of the thinner logs as roof timbers.
When the sun began to disappear behind the mountains, we put down our tools and tapped a keg of mead, the drink of choice for the Berserkergang. We enjoyed the sunset over wooden mugs of cold mead, and then I bid them good night. They left for Legolas’ cabin with promises to return tomorrow afternoon and I retired to my tent.
My head had barely touched the pillow when I heard a distant buzzing. I didn’t think much of it at first, but it grew louder and closer, until it eventually became clear it was heading overhead. I climbed out of the tent and watched a flier appear above the treeline to my south.
As I watched, it slowed, banked around and then came down to rest next to the flier I used to get to and from the longhouse. The door opened and a man in IDF class B’s stepped out. I recognized his patches right away; this was an intel officer, specifically an ICIB liaison. It had to be about her.
I had kept tabs on Ariana periodically throughout my training. The professional interrogators who worked for the various intelligence organizations in the Empire didn’t rely on such ineffectual methods as torture, or even on hard questioning. Instead, they were more seducer than tormentor. They treated their subjects well, extolled the virtues of the Empire and offered absolution for whatever crimes had landed you in their care, if only you would talk. It was a far more effective method of extracting information, if slower. If we needed information faster, well, there were technological ways to pull information straight from someone’s brain.
In the case of our sole Hive captive, they had removed the device from her skull that allowed her to switch bodies, then surgically separated her reservoirs of DNA from her nervous system, while leaving the circulatory system intact. They told her that she would never get the device back; it was just too dangerous. But if she proved herself, she could have access to her ability to change her body and physiology at will, again.
They had questioned her, examined her, tested her and scanned her. The psychs declared her mind to be well within the range of normalcy for humans, with no innate psychopathy, which came as a surprise to me. Apparently, one could learn to be a psychopath. Whodathunkit. They also declared her intelligent and well-educated, if naive and a bit child-like.
I’d watched her go from haughty anger to desperate resistance to resigned acceptance of her fate, and then slide into a rapport. I’d watched her go from refusing to answer any questions to chatting away amiably with her interrogators. And I’d watched her belly grow with a child. My child. The product of rape.
I found the whole thing confusing and stressful, so I didn’t often check her status. I didn’t dive into the orders and strategizing, only familiarizing myself with the reports of those who examined or questioned her and watching security footage. I wasn’t supposed to have any of this access, of course, but there was not a computer system in the entire galaxy which could keep out a determined OD-E Operator, and I was good, even by our standards.
So I thought I knew what to expect when the intel officer approached me. Despite being on administrative leave, I straightened and saluted him as he drew near. He returned my salute, then stuck out a hand. I took it and shook.
“Lieutenant Colonel Jack Thompson, it’s a pleasure to meet you, Sergeant Adams.”
“Likewise, sir, but a little confusing. Has my leave been canceled?” I replied.
“Well son,” he said, broadcasting some files to me via BCI. “Your leave is still in effect, but we have something we’d like you to do in the meantime. Whether you do this or not is up to you.”
“What is it, sir?”
“We want you to meet with the prisoner. The one you captured on New Canada.”
“Are you sure that’s wise, sir? She’s had a pretty… Visceral reaction to my presence. Scaring the shit out of her might not be the best idea, if they’re making progress.”
“You don’t understand, Sergeant. She asked to see you.”
Well, shit.