Well, I thought that I would take a crack at writing my own fan fiction. I'll be adding to this in somewhat small chunks, partly because I may not always have a lot of time to work on it and partly to make it easily digestible. Any feedback would be greatly, greatly appreciated. Enjoy. 
Note: This post has been edited since I first made it. In the second paragraph of section I, I wrote a line that too close to a line in a movie for my comfort. The offending line has been removed and replaced.
When everything started, I was in a casino. Although ‘casino’ might not have been the best name for it; ‘gambling den’ was fitting, and ‘hellhole’ would really describe the place. It was the sort of puke-and-sawdust place that you knew would be trouble going in but just couldn’t stay away from anyhow. The trouble came for me later, but I like to think that it wouldn’t have been so bad had it not all started there.
I had been planetside for a week by then, drinking and gambling away the money I hadn’t spent back home. I was waiting for a mission. With each passing day, I was slowly losing the edge I’d honed out in the field. If I stayed here much longer, the Kats would eat me for breakfast the next time I went out. The game at the table was poker, but I was really playing Russian roulette. As each day passed, I was spinning the chamber. When the hammer fell, I was holding Jacks and eights.
It was the dead man’s hand, so named because it was what Wild Bill Hickock was holding when he’d been shot dead through a saloon window in some cowtown on Earth 700 years ago. Come to think of it, this place probably wasn’t much different then whatever hellhole Hickock had been in when he bought it. The colony was in a desert: hot, dry, and with air so thin you got winded walking across the street. Even with all that, it was a hundred times better than the sector command outpost in orbit. After enough time in filth, it was the stench of cleanliness that made you hold your nose.
I shot a look across the table at the only other guy left in the game. He was a colonist: fat, grizzled, and steely-eyed. He was a hardcase among the locals, but he was really softer than chewed bubble gum. He was killing me at the table, though. I suspected that he had a scam running with the dealer, but I was too drunk to do anything about it, or maybe I just didn’t care. “That’s twenty-five hundred to you,” I rasped. The air and the booze had taken my voice hours ago, maybe days ago.
“Call,” the hardcase answered, throwing a stack of bills into the middle of the table. I barely noticed, though, my attention had went to the figure standing in the doorway: a skinny kid in a Colonel’s uniform too clean to have been planetside any longer than an hour or two. I got the feeling my time here was coming to an end.
“Captain Deschain!” the kid called at me.
I ignored him. “Jacks and eights,” I croaked, laying my cards on the table.
“Captain Deschain,” the Colonel repeated. He was now at my side, “I really must speak with you. It’s urgent Confederation business.”
“I’m sure it isn’t so urgent that it can’t wait a few seconds,” I said, looking up into the light at him, “Colonel.” His hair was cropped closely to his head. He was clean-shaven, and his uniform still smelled of starch. His orderly nature offended me.
The hardcase interpreted the Colonel’s silence as compliance. “Dead man’s hand, eh?” the hardcase grumbled, “Good hand. Shame it doesn’t beat my three sixes.” The hardcase confirmed his statement, laying his cards down. He had the sixes, and his off cards were the Ace of Spades and the King of Hearts.
Dead man’s hand, Mark of the Beast, Suicide King: the metaphors were coming a little thick for my taste. It was time I got going. Besides, I had just lost the last of my bankroll. I stood from the table and gulped back the last of my whiskey that tasted like gasoline. “Colonel,” I said, putting on my dusty officer’s coat, “I believe you were about to take me back to the war.”
For half a second, the rattling sound of my hotel room’s dying air conditioner was broken by the hiss of the aspirator mixing Pale Rider into the air in my lungs. I flopped unceremoniously onto the rickety bed as the drug sent gooseflesh crawling across my body. The distant, rational part of my mind protested loudly about my continued use of a drug named for death, but I didn’t care. It had occurred to me then that even if I could stop using, I wouldn’t want to. I think I may have been hoping that the Pale Rider killed me before the Kats could.
I drug my arm off the bed and looked at my watch, not surprised that I was unable to read it. The Colonel had given me twenty minutes to shower and change into a clean uniform. Fortunately, I happened to have a clean uniform to change into. As an added bonus, I was even able to get showered and changed into the clean uniform before I used. Now, everything was drowned out in wave after wave of glorious, blinding light. Had I been able to see my reflection in a mirror, I’d have seen that the irises of my eyes were just rims around my dilated pupils.
I got back to my feet and, with a grunt, hauled my duffel bag onto my shoulder. The door loomed ahead as a brown haze maybe five feet in front of me. I lurched forward, crossing the room and groping for the door control. I found it and found the ‘door open’ control on it. I paused to dig my sunglasses out of my coat pocket and get them on my face. Had I went outside in the state I was in with my eyes unprotected, the sunlight would’ve blinded me. With the shades on, the door now appeared as a door. Albeit now it had brilliant, shimmering edges and lines radiating with the inner light of the universe. It left me to wonder why anyone would want to stay clean. I pressed the button on the door control and stepped out onto the hot, dusty colonial street.
I was still too high to think at this point. Relying on memory and an educated guess, I turned right on the sidewalk and started off toward the colony’s largest building I saw. As I walked, the buzzing glory of the Pale Rider began to fade and the world and my mind began to come in focus. I was pleased to see the building I was walking toward was indeed the spaceport. The air was as hot and damnably thin as it had been the whole time I was stuck on the rock, and I found myself panting as I reached the spaceport entrance. When I stopped to catch my breath, I began to hear a voice from the direction of the ground. “Spare some change to buy a crippled vet a meal?”
After a second, I realized that the man was talking to me and I looked down to see a shining bum staring pleadingly at me from the sidewalk. “What do you say?”
I leaned over the bum and placed my hand on his shoulder, more to rest some of my weight on him and rest than anything else. “You may or may not be a vet or crippled,” I began slowly, “but you damn sure don’t want money to buy a meal, do you?” Even in my state of mind, I could tell I was slurring, and the Pale Rider still reeked on my breath. However, I didn’t think my new companion was going to tell anyone.
He didn’t say anything actually, so I figured I’d continue. I reached into my pocket and pulled out a twenty credit chit, the last cash that I had. I dangled the chit in front of him for a long second before saying anything, “Now, tell me the truth. You’re either a drunk or a Rider junkie and you’re looking to get a fix, aren’t you?”
The bum looked down ashamedly. His shame made me angrier than his panhandling. You can’t change what you are. If this man’s lot in life was to be a degenerate addict, than he should embrace it and ride it out until its end. I surely had. “Yeah,” the bum finally answered, “I want to get a bottle.”
I nodded and distantly felt the corner of my mouth quirk upward in a lopsided grin, “Good,” I said, dropping the chit into his hand, “If I find out that you spent that on anything other than getting drunk, I’ll come back here and slit your throat. God bless.”
“I will,” the bum said, nodding at me bewilderedly, but the eager glimmer was already in his eyes. I looked the same way right before boosting up in the hotel room. In his mind, the bum was already picking out what kind of bottle. I didn’t imagine I would have to worry about making good on my threat. Having caught my breath, I patted the bum on the shoulder and tromped into the spaceport concourse.
I saw the Colonel standing by one of the doors leading out to the spaceport tarmac. I made my way across the concourse, trying my best not to bump into anyone and failing, and met him at the door. The Colonel looked down at his watch and back at me crossly, “You’re late. What kept you?”
“Philanthropy,” I answered.
The Colonel sighed, rapidly losing his patience with me. “I’m rapidly losing patience with you, Captain,” he said, “I hope you’re not so glib with the Admiral.”
The word ‘Admiral’ caught my attention. The installation commander, my CO, was Commodore David Halstead, a decent enough cruiser Captain who’d lost his nerve for line work after fighting off a Kat boarding action. He’d gotten the Gold Star for that. Three months later, he’d gotten his flag in order to transfer him to the boondocks without arousing any suspicion. But an Admiral wouldn’t have any normal business out here. The first seed of what I imagined was going to become a large, hard pit in my stomach began to develop. “Well, I wouldn’t want to keep the Admiral waiting.”
Note: This post has been edited since I first made it. In the second paragraph of section I, I wrote a line that too close to a line in a movie for my comfort. The offending line has been removed and replaced.
“The Road to Hell”
Chapter One
“Only the dead have seen the end of war.”
-Plato
I. A Casino ¤ The Hardcase ¤ Colonel Ford ¤ Cheap Metaphors
Chapter One
“Only the dead have seen the end of war.”
-Plato
I. A Casino ¤ The Hardcase ¤ Colonel Ford ¤ Cheap Metaphors
When everything started, I was in a casino. Although ‘casino’ might not have been the best name for it; ‘gambling den’ was fitting, and ‘hellhole’ would really describe the place. It was the sort of puke-and-sawdust place that you knew would be trouble going in but just couldn’t stay away from anyhow. The trouble came for me later, but I like to think that it wouldn’t have been so bad had it not all started there.
I had been planetside for a week by then, drinking and gambling away the money I hadn’t spent back home. I was waiting for a mission. With each passing day, I was slowly losing the edge I’d honed out in the field. If I stayed here much longer, the Kats would eat me for breakfast the next time I went out. The game at the table was poker, but I was really playing Russian roulette. As each day passed, I was spinning the chamber. When the hammer fell, I was holding Jacks and eights.
It was the dead man’s hand, so named because it was what Wild Bill Hickock was holding when he’d been shot dead through a saloon window in some cowtown on Earth 700 years ago. Come to think of it, this place probably wasn’t much different then whatever hellhole Hickock had been in when he bought it. The colony was in a desert: hot, dry, and with air so thin you got winded walking across the street. Even with all that, it was a hundred times better than the sector command outpost in orbit. After enough time in filth, it was the stench of cleanliness that made you hold your nose.
I shot a look across the table at the only other guy left in the game. He was a colonist: fat, grizzled, and steely-eyed. He was a hardcase among the locals, but he was really softer than chewed bubble gum. He was killing me at the table, though. I suspected that he had a scam running with the dealer, but I was too drunk to do anything about it, or maybe I just didn’t care. “That’s twenty-five hundred to you,” I rasped. The air and the booze had taken my voice hours ago, maybe days ago.
“Call,” the hardcase answered, throwing a stack of bills into the middle of the table. I barely noticed, though, my attention had went to the figure standing in the doorway: a skinny kid in a Colonel’s uniform too clean to have been planetside any longer than an hour or two. I got the feeling my time here was coming to an end.
“Captain Deschain!” the kid called at me.
I ignored him. “Jacks and eights,” I croaked, laying my cards on the table.
“Captain Deschain,” the Colonel repeated. He was now at my side, “I really must speak with you. It’s urgent Confederation business.”
“I’m sure it isn’t so urgent that it can’t wait a few seconds,” I said, looking up into the light at him, “Colonel.” His hair was cropped closely to his head. He was clean-shaven, and his uniform still smelled of starch. His orderly nature offended me.
The hardcase interpreted the Colonel’s silence as compliance. “Dead man’s hand, eh?” the hardcase grumbled, “Good hand. Shame it doesn’t beat my three sixes.” The hardcase confirmed his statement, laying his cards down. He had the sixes, and his off cards were the Ace of Spades and the King of Hearts.
Dead man’s hand, Mark of the Beast, Suicide King: the metaphors were coming a little thick for my taste. It was time I got going. Besides, I had just lost the last of my bankroll. I stood from the table and gulped back the last of my whiskey that tasted like gasoline. “Colonel,” I said, putting on my dusty officer’s coat, “I believe you were about to take me back to the war.”
II. Pale Rider ¤ A Panhandler’s Vow ¤ Departure
For half a second, the rattling sound of my hotel room’s dying air conditioner was broken by the hiss of the aspirator mixing Pale Rider into the air in my lungs. I flopped unceremoniously onto the rickety bed as the drug sent gooseflesh crawling across my body. The distant, rational part of my mind protested loudly about my continued use of a drug named for death, but I didn’t care. It had occurred to me then that even if I could stop using, I wouldn’t want to. I think I may have been hoping that the Pale Rider killed me before the Kats could.
I drug my arm off the bed and looked at my watch, not surprised that I was unable to read it. The Colonel had given me twenty minutes to shower and change into a clean uniform. Fortunately, I happened to have a clean uniform to change into. As an added bonus, I was even able to get showered and changed into the clean uniform before I used. Now, everything was drowned out in wave after wave of glorious, blinding light. Had I been able to see my reflection in a mirror, I’d have seen that the irises of my eyes were just rims around my dilated pupils.
I got back to my feet and, with a grunt, hauled my duffel bag onto my shoulder. The door loomed ahead as a brown haze maybe five feet in front of me. I lurched forward, crossing the room and groping for the door control. I found it and found the ‘door open’ control on it. I paused to dig my sunglasses out of my coat pocket and get them on my face. Had I went outside in the state I was in with my eyes unprotected, the sunlight would’ve blinded me. With the shades on, the door now appeared as a door. Albeit now it had brilliant, shimmering edges and lines radiating with the inner light of the universe. It left me to wonder why anyone would want to stay clean. I pressed the button on the door control and stepped out onto the hot, dusty colonial street.
I was still too high to think at this point. Relying on memory and an educated guess, I turned right on the sidewalk and started off toward the colony’s largest building I saw. As I walked, the buzzing glory of the Pale Rider began to fade and the world and my mind began to come in focus. I was pleased to see the building I was walking toward was indeed the spaceport. The air was as hot and damnably thin as it had been the whole time I was stuck on the rock, and I found myself panting as I reached the spaceport entrance. When I stopped to catch my breath, I began to hear a voice from the direction of the ground. “Spare some change to buy a crippled vet a meal?”
After a second, I realized that the man was talking to me and I looked down to see a shining bum staring pleadingly at me from the sidewalk. “What do you say?”
I leaned over the bum and placed my hand on his shoulder, more to rest some of my weight on him and rest than anything else. “You may or may not be a vet or crippled,” I began slowly, “but you damn sure don’t want money to buy a meal, do you?” Even in my state of mind, I could tell I was slurring, and the Pale Rider still reeked on my breath. However, I didn’t think my new companion was going to tell anyone.
He didn’t say anything actually, so I figured I’d continue. I reached into my pocket and pulled out a twenty credit chit, the last cash that I had. I dangled the chit in front of him for a long second before saying anything, “Now, tell me the truth. You’re either a drunk or a Rider junkie and you’re looking to get a fix, aren’t you?”
The bum looked down ashamedly. His shame made me angrier than his panhandling. You can’t change what you are. If this man’s lot in life was to be a degenerate addict, than he should embrace it and ride it out until its end. I surely had. “Yeah,” the bum finally answered, “I want to get a bottle.”
I nodded and distantly felt the corner of my mouth quirk upward in a lopsided grin, “Good,” I said, dropping the chit into his hand, “If I find out that you spent that on anything other than getting drunk, I’ll come back here and slit your throat. God bless.”
“I will,” the bum said, nodding at me bewilderedly, but the eager glimmer was already in his eyes. I looked the same way right before boosting up in the hotel room. In his mind, the bum was already picking out what kind of bottle. I didn’t imagine I would have to worry about making good on my threat. Having caught my breath, I patted the bum on the shoulder and tromped into the spaceport concourse.
I saw the Colonel standing by one of the doors leading out to the spaceport tarmac. I made my way across the concourse, trying my best not to bump into anyone and failing, and met him at the door. The Colonel looked down at his watch and back at me crossly, “You’re late. What kept you?”
“Philanthropy,” I answered.
The Colonel sighed, rapidly losing his patience with me. “I’m rapidly losing patience with you, Captain,” he said, “I hope you’re not so glib with the Admiral.”
The word ‘Admiral’ caught my attention. The installation commander, my CO, was Commodore David Halstead, a decent enough cruiser Captain who’d lost his nerve for line work after fighting off a Kat boarding action. He’d gotten the Gold Star for that. Three months later, he’d gotten his flag in order to transfer him to the boondocks without arousing any suspicion. But an Admiral wouldn’t have any normal business out here. The first seed of what I imagined was going to become a large, hard pit in my stomach began to develop. “Well, I wouldn’t want to keep the Admiral waiting.”
