A Sword of Fire and an Axe of Cold

So I am restarting my writing fragment blog. 66 1/6 RPM has restarted, but I am working on some other stuff as well that should be forthcoming. Does anyone care? Likely not. //emo post.

Hunted Pt 1

The ancient cargo lift ground inexorably down into the depths of Manufactorum Sector 11-A, just another fifty cubic kilometers of silently rusting machinery and poorly stored caustic chemicals. Well, fifty cubic kilometers of silently rusting machinery and poorly stored caustic chemicals and potentially thousands of varieties of other hazards, many of which had teeth. There was also a fire somewhere in one of the sub blocks, if Helix’s HUD was to be believed, which it generally wasn’t. 500 years ago the sensors screaming about a fire would have been outmoded but maintained, now they were just as likely to have a rodent nesting in their wiring.

Helix stood in between two other identically dressed men in the dim glow of the lift’s backup lighting. Lars, to the left, was a 4 year tunnel rat, solid and dependable; Helix had seen him take wounds that would have killed other men from sheer shock and keep on going. To Helix’s right stood Bengt, the rookie. This was his first trip down and Helix was about 68.24% sure that this would be his last trip, if the statistics held up anyways. All three were clad in near identical Cadian patterned shock trooper gear. Helix and Lars’ gear was battered if well maintained. Bengt’s armor was in deplorable shape, rookies generally were issued kit that no other Rat would take given that it would probably never come back.

It took twenty minutes for the lift to grind to a halt at their assigned sub sector, Helix didn’t care, it was better than humping it down two hundred flights of stairs in full kit then doing it again on the way up. Lars and Helix both shouldered their carbines while Bengt slapped the engraved “open” button. The door split into quarters and slid apart. Entering and leaving a sub-sector were two of the most dangerous times on a shift, in Helix’s opinion. Lots of things learned where prey was likely to come out on a regular basis and stake out a claim. Sure enough there was a desiccated husk clad in clamshell armor and a rotted pair of fatigues.

“Keep me covered,” Helix’s rough voice rasped even harsher over the helmet comms as he slung his carbine over his shoulder and unholstered his hand-flamer and snapped on the primary. He moved into the corridor slowly. A quick spurt of fire ashed all of the cobwebs and shriveled what was left of the poor Rat on the floor. The HID light on Helix’s shoulder illuminated the dark pipelines above his head and he didn’t see any venom drooling arachnids waiting to pounce.

“It’s clear, Bengt you take point,” There was a probably a good reason why new Tunnel Rats often ended up dead.

“Aye sir,” Bengt squeaked over the comm, he was probably only 17 years old or so, and was as gangly a Rat as Helix had ever seen.

“What’s it like in this sector, I heard there are thing’ll put an egg in yer stomach, an’ rip out yer chest!” Bengt seemed excited to the point of fear at the prospect.

“That’s shit right there, nothing that fancy down here, just spiders the size of a ground cars and megalopedes that’ll bite through your helmet,” Lars tapped unconsciously at the welded patch where that exact thing had happened. “Focus on the shadows and don’t wander off.”

The trio walked cautiously down the corridor, in places auto-lights flicked on for the first time in centuries, some panels flickered on and off while others remained entirely dark. Lars had been in sectors that were black as the darkest bowels of the Warp and was grateful for the light, even if it did cast a few more shadows than he would like. According to the ancient map glowing a mellow green on his helmet’s primitive HUD the team was right near a hab-complex. This should be great fun, Lars thought cynically. If anywhere was going to have ferals it would be there.

“Go left at the juncture,” Helix punctuated his words with a jab to the left, then peeked around the corner. He was catapulted back into Lars and Bengt.

“’s blood!” Bengt squeaked.

Wordlessly Helix let loose a two second burst of flaming promethium around the corner. Over the roar of the flames a faint clicking noise came from around the bend.

“Bengt, see if it’s dead,” Helix grunted.

“Bu-,” Before Bengt could respond Helix shoved him towards the now dimming flames.

Bengt let out a surprised yelp and brought his carbine up like a club, his voice grated through his helmet’s vox “Ain’t nuffin’ there, uh, sir”

“The hell are you doing with that rifle? It works better when you aim it!” Lars barked at the new recruit. “Take point again and try not to get eaten”

The corridor was narrow and encrusted with some kind of organic resin. Whatever had attacked Helix had scuttled into a corroded ventilation duct.

66 1/6 RPM

“Hot Wax records and comics, Casey speaking, how may I help you…yeah…yes we do…lemme check…yeah, just a second.” Casey set down the beige corded phone and walked out into the vast rows of CDs that comprised Hot Wax, he passed the CDs and 7” singles and walked up the broad stair case into the vinyl loft. The soothing strains of Sammy Hagar assaulted him as he walked past an ancient speaker. He spent a good three minutes pawing around before walking back downstairs.
“Naw, sorry man, doesn’t look like we have that, I can check and see if we can order it…Ah, well I can check our warehouse, we have lots of out of print stuff there, it’ll just take me a second…yeah just a second,” Again Casey set down the phone and walked to the computer at the counter and began searching the New Deal Recordings warehouse inventory.
Bapatista Mutantes, there’s a new one, thought Casey as he browsed through the primitive interface. Holy shit, miracles do happen I guess. Casey walked back to the phone, “Yeah man, looks like we have a copy at our warehouse, I can have them send it up, but it won’t be in ‘til tomorrow…no sorry man, it’s not open to the public. Just need your name and phone number and we’ll have it for you tomorrow,” Casey picked up a special order card and a pen from the register, “Alright, Brian Sharpe we’ll have it waiting here for you. Have a good one.”
Casey threw the card into the outgoing mail and got back to his issue of Inferno it was a slow day in San Ignacio, hot and slow. His coworker Greg was going on about his latest drinking escapade.
“So there I was, three fuckin’ cops, right there, I was about to be all ‘No man, I’m totally sober’ and I got as far as ‘No –‘then I fuckin’ puked all over the lady cop. It was alright though; the cops were pretty chill about it.”
Greg was 23 and firmly believed in the fast and wild life of a record store clerk, most of his wages went to drinking and partying, but he seemed to enjoy himself. Tall, gaunt, and covered in piercings, Greg looked every bit the part.
“You ever heard of a band called Bapatista Mutantes?” Casey interrupted the part where Greg got the cop’s phone number.
“No man, sounds pretty fucked up though, is it metal?”
“Dunno man, not really anything on allmusic for them. Whatever.”
About an hour later a heavy-set black man with short dreadlocks walked in, breaking the comfortable drone of Greg’s time wasting. He was perhaps 30 and wearing an AtmosFear t-shirt and a pair of Dockers that had seen better days.
“Excuse me, I’m looking for a record could you help me?”
“Well we do have a few of those, what were you looking for, man?”
“It’s…obscure, and out of print, but the band is Bapatista Mutantes, it’s a self titled release, only available on vinyl, I doubt you’d have it, but it never hurts to check I suppose,” The man had a very concise, cultured way of speaking, and it immediately endeared him to Casey.
“Whoa, that’s some crazy synchronicity right there, man; some guy actually just snagged our last copy from our warehouse like an hour ago. Trippy.”
The man seemed perturbed, “That’s too bad, any way I could talk to the lucky winner?”
“I can leave your name and number with his order when he comes to pick it up, but I can’t give out his number. Unethical y’know.”
“Indeed, well I’ll be back,” The man strode out with his shoulder slumped.
“Fuckin’ weird, dude.”

The next morning Casey rolled up on his bike to two cop cars in front of Hot Wax. The owner, a burned out ex-hippie, was talking to the police with all the fury he could muster.
“Carl, what the hell happened,” Casey jumped off his bike midsentence.
“Dunno, someone smashed the front door and broke in, didn’t look like they took anything but they trashed upstairs, it’s a mess. They also broke into the shed”
“Looks like it’s time the new people start earning their keep, I say,” Casey tried to keep his tone light.
“Looks like you have a busy morning ahead of you,” Carl growled.
“Well shit, I tried.”

The day passed slowly, Casey found himself alone with Isaac, a new hire, in a near empty store. The phone jangled and broke the stifling silence.
“Hot Wax Records and Comics, Casey speaking how may I help you?” Casey droned.
“Casey, it’s Tim down at the warehouse, do you guys have a copy of…Bapatista Mutantes on vinyl?”
“Why the fuck does everyone want that album all of a sudden?” Casey was more confused than anything.
“Well someone ordered it yesterday, and it turns out that even bootleg CD copies go for a couple hundred bucks and we were about to sell an original for ten…so if we don’t have two copies this guy is boned.”
“We don’t have any, I would have seen it. That’s kind of shady isn’t it?”
“Whatever, this thing could be worth a fortune. Anyways, it got sent down to the store on accident if you see it come through send it back up. I’ll talk to you later.”
The door chime sounded and a middle aged man, dressed in a gold print t-shirt and baggy jeans strode in with grim purpose. Some people need to learn when to give up on being young… Casey thought to himself.
“I’m here for an album I ordered,” His voice sounded like he gargled whiskey and gravel then got in a shouting match with Tom Waits. “My name is Brian Sharpe, I ordered Bapatista Mutante.”
“Sorry man, uh they couldn’t find it in the warehouse, I guess the catalogue must not have been updated,” Casey hated lying for the shady bastards he worked for. “You might try SelecTrax up on-“
His face turned bright red, “You’re joking, right? I just came all the way down here and now you don’t have it?”
“I’ll see what I can do, maybe it just got misfiled or something.”
“Good,” with that the aging hipster walked out the door without further conversation.
“What the fuck was that guy’s problem,” Casey wondered out loud, “Whatever, motherfuckers need to learn when to hang up the band t-shirts and start acting normal.”
Casey wandered over to the cabinet where special orders from the warehouse were stored, right in the cubby labeled “S” was a single LP with a cheap flimsy jacket and “Sharpe, Brian” printed neatly on the side. He pulled it out of its slot and turned it over in its hands. The artwork was black and white line drawings, in the style of an old punk cover; the artwork itself looked like a scene out of a medieval woodcut. The scene depicted a young boy standing on a table, he was surrounded by nine people in peasant garb, two held him by the arms while one seemed to be cutting open his stomach with a scalpel. Each person had a label over them in what looked like Latin. BAPATISTA MUTANTE was penned in blackletter on the top edge of the album.
“What’s so great about you?” Casey mumbled. Casey quickly decided that the urge to play the record was supplanted by the urge to not have Brian Sharpe come in while his record was playing. Casey put it back in its slot and then set back down at the counter.

8:30 P.M
The night was warm, with a light breeze. Casey slumped over the counter, a mere thirty minutes until he could close up, an hour before he’d be walking back to his apartment. Jim Morrison softly crooned over the old speakers wired up in the rafters. Bored, Casey took out the Bapatista Mutante album again and examined it more closely. There was no copyright date on the jacket, just a small sticker proclaiming it to be from Producciones Iempesa, catalogue number 22. Casey pulled out the vinyl itself. It looked clean, barely played even. The center label looked Xeroxed and didn’t have a track listing or a copyright date either. Casey eyed the store record player cautiously, and then looked around, seeing no one in the store he killed the CD player and the Doors clicked off. He switched the receiver over to PHONO and stuck the plain looking record on the turntable.
“You better be good you piece of shit,”
Casey stabbed the play button with a hint of viciousness. The stylus swung over and dropped, just as Isaac walked out of the back room.
“Is this Kraftwerk?” Isaac stopped for a moment while the reverberating voice echoed through the store. Mechanical noises and a droning voice seemed to all this record had to offer.
“Naw man, it’s that freaky –“ Mid sentence Casey slumped forward into the counter, Isaac staggered on his feet and dropped the till he was carrying with a loud crash.
“Wha, a, bwa, nnn,” Isaac squinted and then fell on to the spray of change from the dropped drawer. The eerie drone continued in the now silent store. The overhead fluorescents began to flicker, there was a loud pop and the computer snapped off with a puff of acrid smoke. A sound like that of a hammer on an anvil began to accompany the drone. The CD player below the phonograph was still on and its LED display began to flash a stream of seeming gibberish numbers before it too died with a loud crack of IC boards heated to breaking. The temperature of the store was steadily rising, metal surfaces began to shimmer and glow, an unopened can of Coke on a shelf below the register burst open with a hiss.
8:39 P.M
Casey opened his eyes and was immediately aware that he was soaked with something; he backed away from the counter and realized he was poured sweat over everything. The store felt like it was perhaps 100 degrees inside. The short black guy from earlier was standing behind the counter looking at him with something between concern and amusement.
“You boys are lucky I was hoping to see who was going to pick this up, another fifteen minutes and you would have been cooked.”
“What the fuck just happened man, and what the fuck is up with this fucking thing” Casey looked around in a daze, some of the records that hung from the ceiling on fishing line had melted and dripped onto the floor. Casey walked over to the door and snicked the lock shut then flipped the open sign to closed.
“Well, to start, ya’ll just had a paranormal experience as it were, you probably wouldn’t have died, without the right accoutrements the recording just causes some unpleasant effects. In short, that record is one of the only analogue recordings of an obscure Peruvian cult and playing it can do some serious things.
“Well who the hell are you, and what do you want with it?” Casey stammered.
“My name is Jean and I’m a record collector.”
“That’s not as helpful as you might think, man.

Grey Waters Chapter 1

The longships cut through the dark grey waters with only the quiet splash of the oars to accompany them. Valrknut Eight-Eyes stood at the prow of the lead ship and looked out towards the coastal fort barely silhouetted in the grey mist by the slowly breaking dawn. Valrknut was an imposing figure in his furs and armor, his fiery red beard’s braids blown back by the wind. He was perhaps 26 fjórðungr of solid muscle, and a bit over six feet tall. He looked back at his warriors, grimly rowing towards their goal. The plunder would be great this day, whether or not the soft nobleman gave into his Jarl’s demands.
The hirdsmanner had stopped bawling their bawdy rowing song, and now simply seemed to be preparing themselves for what was to come in their own ways: Úlfarr with his charms and mumbled litanies to the gods to grant him rage, Tryggr worried at his oar with his thumb until the nail was ragged and bloody, the rest of the crew went through their rituals in silence. Valrknut checked the magazine in his rifle for the third time. This was the first time the Jarl had entrusted him with one of their precious artifacts. Etched with three hundred years of victory markings and runes, the weapon was a sight to behold. Its last wielder, Ulli Urlsen Goldtooth had strung a belt of kraken’s teeth in place of the bracing strap after a successful raid and it made the black rifle look even more sinister.
Valrknut’s ship’s prow glided onto the rocky beach , its flat bottom allowing it to slip almost entirely out of the water. The men quietly jumped out and hauled the ship further up the beach. The beach rustled with activity as the other twelve ships ran aground.
“Úlfarr, you come with Bjorn and I, let’s see how hard this overfed cow wants to make things” Úlfarr fell into step with Valrknut and Bjorn, the scarred rune priest and the closest thing Valrknut had to a diplomat on this raid. Úlfarr raised the banner of Freya and the trio began their climb up to the fortress.

Chapter 2
Eduard Lac-Lorn Duke of the East March was not what most peasants would think of when they thought of a noble. Eduard was lean with ruddy skin and had an intense gaze in his dark eyes that only softened when he spoke about his lady, Marie. He was a far cry from the arrogant, vapid nobility of the West lands. He also genuinely cared what his ‘fellow countrymen’ as he called them thought of his rule. All of this was because Eduard was not of noble blood, nor of any privileged background. A dragoon in the King’s Army, Eduard was the last survivor of the LeChamp massacre and was granted peerage and a title by the King himself.
Now though, Eduard had to deal with the two hundred odd raiders not far from his fortress. He already knew what was to happen. The raiders would ask him to surrender, and he, being a simple minded nob would negotiate his lands and treasure vaults for his own life and the moment the gates were unlocked he and his people would be taken as slaves or killed.
Eduard stood in his old dragoon dress armor, now polished to a mirror finish, but still with all the dents and burns intact. He crossed his pistol brace across his hips and then his sword. He strode out of his dressing room and into the main hall where his advisor Augustus waited nervously.
“The marauders are in the antechamber, lord.” Augustus was in his late sixties and was the most composed man Eduard had ever met, he was quite sure he would use the same tone of voice if the Vikings had decided to storm the gates right that moment.
“Bid them come in, we may as well get this over with as soon as possible, instruct the Captains to ready the militia, I don’t see this ending without bloodshed.”
“Yes, lord,” Augustus shuffled out of the main hall and into the antechamber. Eduard sat on his ‘throne’, really a converted dinner chair, and tried to look as bored as possible. The three marauders strode in, clad in fur and splotched green cloth. All three were hulking in comparison to Eduard’s lithe frame, but they were not the eight foot giants he was half expecting. The apparent leader was a good hand taller than he and had a mass of braids for a beard. There was an older man with shaggy grey hair and a glazed, odd look in his eyes. The third man was so young Eduard thought him still a boy, with shoulder length pale blonde hair and the beginnings of a beard.
“We want to speak to your Duke!” The oldest bellowed.
“I am Eduard, Duc du Ostmerr, perhaps I am not the fat bellied blue blood you were expecting, neh?”