Grimdark Future

Jorgo opened his eyes.

The room was quiet. Clean. It reminded him of the medical dome in the Colony, but there was no clean white surfaces anywhere. Instead, the walls were rock and stone. The bed he lay on was soft and warm. and the air was perfumed with wildflowers.

“Brother,” the voice was warm and gentle, an echo from years ago. Jorgo turned to see Sika rising from the chair at the foot of his bed. She leaned over him, her face lined with worry, relief, and regret. “Brother, how are you feeling?”

Jorgo raised a shaky hand and gently poked and prodded his aching body. He felt numb, like the world had somehow gone gray and lifeless. Even the pain was distant, reaching to him from a body far removed from his actual self. He wanted to cry out in despair, but he couldn’t; even his despair was muted.

Jorgo stared at his reflection in the blade. He looked so different than he remembered. An awkward and sickly childhood had filled his memories with pale skin and sunken eyes, with matted hair and a weak back. Now, he felt stronger. Taller. More of a man than he’d ever been before.

The eyes that stared back at him were clean and bright, full of joy and focus. He grinned at the idea that this was the man his foes would be seeing, standing proud next to his family.

“They approach, love,” Karna’s voice broke through his dreaming. “We must be ready.”

“I’m ready,” he laughed, sheathing the curving sword at his side and turning to pluck his girl from off her feet, swinging her around in the air. “Let them come! There is nothing to fear from a bunch of rotten old lepers.”

Karna’s laugh mingled with his as she pressed her lips against his throat. “You are so brave and strong, my love, I hope you are right.”

When Sika had finally finished her meal, the hum shifted again. “Now,” the monk spoke, “you are from the Colony of New Holden, yes? Why don’t you tell us what has caused you to brave such a difficult climb? We did not choose this mountain for its accessibility.”

“My father said it was because you didn’t want anyone from New Holden visiting you who did not need to,” Sika said through a mouth half-full of fowl flesh. She chewed quickly and swallowed a gulp of juice. “So you are not plagued with people begging you for help.”

The giant’s head twisted back and forth like a dog. “Your father is close to the truth of it. You must have a great need to have climbed so far…and a dark one, to seek us.”

Sika set the flagon down. She stared at the misshapen giant, watching as the skin-flaps of its face waved gently in the air like flower petals. In the span of mere minutes, the certainty she had felt while climbing the mountain had begun to show cracks of doubt. Twice she opened her mouth to speak, only to realize no words would come.

Sika’s hands ached. Her knees bled. The cold wind scraped against her cheeks and her back throbbed with fierce vigor. Nevertheless, she kept climbing. She was so close, just a few more feet, and she would be at the Monastery’s doors.

She wanted to pause and catch her breath, but she knew the moment she stopped would be the moment her strength failed her. She followed a thundering heartbeat in her mind; keep climbing. Don’t stop. Keep climbing. She didn’t look down, nor up. She had no idea how much further she had to go. She didn’t want to know. Knowing was for those who needed to risk despair for the chance to hope.

Sika was beyond hope, beyond despair. It didn’t matter how far from the Monastery she was. She would keep climbing until she reached it, or she died.

She reached upwards and grabbed at a protruding rock. She felt it shift, and in one horrible moment the mountain-side spun beneath her. She felt herself fall away from the icy cliff to be gripped by the winds. The rock fell from her hands…

This story is fan-fiction made in the Grimdark Future universe, by One Page Rules.

They met on a small hill a full league from the city’s wall. The land was barren, with only a few dried husks of trees and sparse tufts of weed drifting in the wind. The lazy drone of alien insects filled the chill air, and the bright blue spot that was the planet’s sun beat down on Pwanji’s head.

She met with a monster. It was half-again as tall as her, covered head-to-toe in ancient metal armor. She recognized the design as one of the ancient battle-suits from when humanity first came to the Sirius sector, and it looked well used. That it still functioned at all was impressive, given its age, but she had no doubt that the Battle Brothers of the Founder knew how to maintain even the oldest equipment; given their lifespans, it was likely this was the Battle Brother’s original battle-suit.

“Hail,” she said as the giant walked closer. “I am Mother Pwanji Truevoice of Freecity Arpescious. Whom do I have the honor of meeting?”

This story is fan-fiction made in the Grimdark Future universe, by One Page Rules.

Heresy.

The being that would one day be known as Vradhez sat in its pod, slowly spinning in its personal eddy, separate from the overwhelming current of the Flow. Its caste was one of the few among the Living who had this ability, much less the permission. The Living had long ago realized that in spite of its incredible benefits, the Flow brought with it its own challenges and obstacles. The unity of the Living was powerful, but so too could it be limiting.

So a new caste had been created from countless strands of DNA and mitochondria collected from a thousand different species across the Living’s territory. In spite of their physical similarities to the Prime castes, they had more genetic material in common with the great minds, the caste devoted to the Living’s memory and logistical instincts. They were not only able to see the Flow, but to escape it; to not just analyze and assess, but to imagine and explore.

It was this ancient foresight that meant the Living could survive the great awakening, the sudden awareness of their entire race that they were not the only sentient species in the universe. But how could they have imagined otherwise? Of all the animals they had ever met, none of them were truly alive. How could they be?

This story is fan-fiction made in the Grimdark Future universe, by One Page Rules, , and inspired by the Doomed Empire line of miniatures created by Oshounaminis.

“You don’t like me much, do you?”

Rishard paused in his pacing to answer the hybrid human-machine. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Yes you do,” Airn didn’t bother looking up. “I may not be psychic like Shen, but I can tell when someone’s not comfortable around me. You think I don’t see it all the time in other people’s faces? I’m used to looks of disgust.”

Rishard didn’t answer. He glanced back up the tunnel. “I don’t owe you an explanation.”

“No, I suppose not,” Airn’s mechanical arms darted across the open panel. You mind if I ask you a question?"

Rishard resumed pacing. “Can’t stop you.”

“Did you ever — Ah!”

This story is fan-fiction made in the Grimdark Future universe, by One Page Rules, and inspired by the Doomed Empire line of miniatures created by Oshounaminis.

“There’s no trees.”

Airn looked up. “What?”

Rishard gestured around the horizon. “No trees. At least, not many. Look, I’m not going to complain about going on a treasure hunt, but I’ve seen Starhost ruins before, and they’re always in jungles or forests. At least there should be some grass. This is just sand and dirt. Barely any life at all. I haven’t even heard any insects buzzing.”

“There are birds,” Airn sighed, turning back to her work. “Shen mentioned seeing one several minutes ago.”

“Yeah, flying overhead,” Rishard leaned on their las-digger. “Probably migrating. I’d feel better if it had stopped by for a bit, but there’s nothing here any birds could want. It’s dead.”

“I promise you, we are in the right spot.” Airn’s glowing mechanical eye blinked, the only sign that she had flipped to the next screen of the file she was looking at. “Satellite positioning puts us within three meters of the target.”

This story is fan-fiction made in the Grimdark Future universe, by One Page Rules.

Gene Mods were dangerous things. Hart knew this better than most, and he was not one to quickly forget a lesson. A mistake in the synthesis, an error in the gene coding, or even bumping the manipulator arms could result in horrible mutations, diseases, even acidic fog that would fill the lab in seconds. They had been tinkering with the building blocks of both life and death in Research Station Kappa.

The cells were separate from the main building. They were connected by a series of airlocks with extensive decontamination stations at regular intervals. The Monitoring station allowed Hart — and presumably the former lab-techs — to see what was happening in the cells without needing to risk life or limb of any of his soldiers.

Had the Sonic Sensors not picked up a distant noise, they wouldn’t have bothered looking. What could still be alive in the containment cells after so long without food or water?

This story is fan-fiction made in the Grimdark Future universe, by One Page Rules.

Commandant Schuler was a prisoner.

No matter how he looked at the situation, he couldn’t see it any other way. Oh, the Lance-Captain had been very polite; had a slew of excuses, apologies, and promises of vacating the colony soon enough, but Schuler was no fool. Despite all the ‘sir’s and ‘please’s, there was no mistaking the tone of command in the Lance-Captain’s voice. There was no missing the heavy rifles gripped in the hands of every armored-soldier that now crawled over the tiny colony “for their protection.”

Even now, in the back of an APC with no one but him and two “escorts,” a fully-charged plasma pistol was gripped in one of their fists, as if the gene-modded super-soldiers couldn’t snap his neck with all the effort of cracking an egg.

They didn’t even move right. Schuler watched as the APC tore over the uneven landscape, pitching left and right, rocking him back and forth against the metal walls of the transport enclosure. The soldiers barely moved at all, looking for all the world like they had been carved out of the APC, as much a part of it as the walls.