Blood For A Brother

Today I want to showcase the very first thing I ever wrote in the New Tellus Order Saga. The standalone prologue to the first book "The Human Codex". 
     This served as a test piece. A short story for me to get a grasp on the main cast and see if it worked. It was also something I could pass around to people whom I knew were interested in my writing as a sample of what was to come.
     The idea was to release a standalone prologue for every book; its story unrelated to the plot so you could read it without it being a vital piece of information once the book was finished. There are two prologues so far (we will cover the second one at a later date) but to be honest I have weaved such an intricate story at the point of book 3 that I honestly don't know if I can write a prologue that isn't important to the plot anymore. So that idea is sort of out the window now. 

    None of the abbreviations or names pertinent to the lore are explained in this prologue. It wasn't important and would be explored in the first book.
(I will dedicate an entire blogpost on everything regarding the lore at some point as it will probably confuse a lot of people when we start to go through the books. The various factions will be explained in the same post and we will also be covering the different cities on the planet of I-ROHN.) 
    I have left it unedited a part from a few spelling mistakes and at the bottom of the post I will add a few commentary sidenotes worth mentioning that will only make sense after you've read the thing, so... let's go.
   
     

"Blood For A Brother"

Where does the dead line between justified violence and careless brutality go? It’s as faint as a pair of jugger headlights in a blizzard tornado. I’m sure there was a line at some point. At some point. By now it’s been buried beneath a thick layer of bullshit, bullets and blood.
     There comes a time in every SQUAD Guard’s career when they're forced to make a decision whether to make the jump across that dead line and become another soulless vessel with a badge or to remain the personality, the human being they still are.
     We do everything that’s expected of us. We keep this city breathing and yet it still spits blood on our helmets. With all the history Resurgo's harboured over the years we’re the ones who walk the muddy aftermath. We put our lives on the line for our people every damned day to make them feel more secure; make them feel like this actually can be a place to call home, a safe haven from the beasts in the Outsides. We put our hearts and souls into clearing the streets of danger but it’s never enough. That’s the raw truth of it all. Shit.
     As if the upset citizens aren’t enough we got the whole shitty ordeal with the NPAC hailing down on top of us like giant boulders from the mountain of pressure crushing our shoulders. Pesky terrorists with nothing but repulsive hate for the AMG and everything related.  I’ve seen a lot of fellow Guards, my brothers and sisters in arms be hammered down by their stray bullets and grenades like they were nothing more than tacky target pieces on a bloodstained training field. I’ve seen it so much recently it saddens me to say it hardly touches me anymore; but when they gun down an off duty brother in the middle of his own city, it’s fuckin' personal.
     Patrick Madden deserved better. That guy fought off a minor NPAC army while defending a AMG outpost out on The Long Route with a bullet in his gut. He'd wrestle a damn leggd Beast if he had to...and he'd fuckin' win too. He deserved better.  So when I heard what'd happened I may have taken it bit more personal than I should’ve. All four of us did. He was our SQUAD Guard Lieutenant after all. A mentor, not only to me, but a lot of newcomers who've just gotten out of The Gun Pit.
     This all leads up to the moment where I had my standard issue SQUAD Tackle Pistol pointed at the forehead attached to the scumbag responsible for my bad day headache.
     Patrick’s killer was a low level swamp rat; a dirtlicker named Karoul Fonas. The AMG’d pulled him in several times before for possession of heavy duty drugs, black-marketing guns, extortion, assault with a blunt object, assault with deadly weapon; shit, you name’m, this toad’s done’m. We found out through No-Legs Noland Fonas was also a known NPAC supporter in the Boroughs.  For a man doped up to high-mountain he sure could stand up straight.
     I opened my helmet shutters to see the scumbag with my own eyes. To let him see the demon he’d conjured.
     His skin was dried white, curling round the mouth of my gun like spaghetti round a fork. His bloodshot, beady eyes were close to popping out of their sockets the way he franticly rolled them back and forth across the room. He knew he was up shits creek; even his intoxicated body knew it.
     How this loser managed to kill Patrick was beyond me. Even though I must admit the NPAC sabotages had been pretty skillfully executed, they were no soldiers. Peasants who one day decided to leave Resurgo to look for a better life but ended up fighting their old instead. No, this bastard was no soldier. It takes no skill to shoot a man in the back. All you need is to be close enough to not miss and a steady hand. Knowing Fonas, he’d probably drunk enough to counterweight the drugs and that way managing to find a straight sense of balance.
     Lost in my train of thought, Fonas made an instinctive jolt to get away but a quick fist in the ribs dropped him to the dusty, cement floor.
     We ‘d tracked him down to a glass factory in the northwest part of the city. As it was early dawn the place was empty. Fonas’ coughs echoed throughout the room. We were surrounded by recently smelted glass hanging from hooks in the ceiling. I caught my dark, clunky reflection in the glass next to me. As we were still on the last hour of the night I couldn’t see my weary, pale, insomnia embezzled face. 
      “Karoul Fonas, you have been seen shooting a SQUAD Guard outside the Hunker Down Tavern tonight. How do you plead?” I asked.
     “Not guilty.” Fonas answered with a mindless snigger. He wiped a patch of thick drool off the edge of his mouth with the back of his hand.
     I sighed.
     “Are we gonna have to do this the hard way, Fonas?”
     I nodded at Turner who pulled his Shafer Shottie Pistol out of its holster. The shutters of his helmet opened and his Irish ginger hair curled out from under the cap.
    “A’right, yous, it’s time for a ‘lil game I like to call ‘Answer correctly or Turner’s gonna cap yer knee.’”
     He crouched down with a wicked grin in front of Fonas who nervously began backing away.
     “You really need to come up with a better name for that, Turner.” I said, crossing my arms in anticipation.
     “Aye, I know. I’ll get started on that next decennium when we get our next night off.” Turner replied with a chuckle as he lit a Genovian cigarette in the side of his mouth.
    “Where ye off to, pumpkin’, I’m not done with ye.”
     Fonas squeaked as Turner grabbed him by the ankles and heaved him back to where he was crouching.
     “Right then,” Turner continued, pulling the glove off his right hand and putting it in his sidesatchel. He picked the gun back up and spun the four piped barrel till it clicked.
     “So this game has a few wee rules, right? Well, just the one rule really, but it’s the most vital rule there is, see. Answer the question or I’ll pull the trigger. If yer a lucky white-trash camper, there ye'll hear a wee 'click' as the chamber is empty. Now if you’re unlucky…yer leg'll get separated from the rest of ye. It's very unpleasant.”
     Fonas gave me a worried look as if he was expecting me to stop the crazy Irishman in the last minute as some kind of a good-guard, bad-guard scum-rattler. No fuckin’ way, pal.
     “Yer highness; our contestant is…marginally ready to proceed.” Turner shrugged giving me the nod to start.
     “Was this a planned hit and is there anyone else involved?”
     “Contestant, the question is: ‘was this a planned hit and is there anyone else involved?’ Yer thirty seconds start now. Tick-tock.”
     Fonas squinted. He called our bluff.
     “That gun’s not loaded. It’s a fucking scare tactic. It’s known throughout the Boroughs, you stupid idiots. Go ahead, ginger; pull the trigger. Make me sweat.” He spat furiously, shaking his head.
     “Is that the answer yer highness was looking for?” Turner asked, cocking his head sideways.
     “Wrong answer.” I replied.
     “Wrong answer!”   Turner repeated and shot Fonas’ leg into a bright red, squishy stump.
     “Oh, fuck!” He yelped backwards as Fonas started screaming at the top of his overworking lungs.
     “Damn it, Turner, it’s not supposed to be loaded! What’s wrong with you?”
     “Honest mistake, boss, I forgot to unload it. Got distracted by the cigarette.”
     "For fucks sake, Turner, get your head in the game. Jess, would you please shut him the fuck up? His screaming is making my head cry.”
     Jess stepped forward, her helmet shutters already opened. She got down beside the shrieking dirtlicker and popped open her brown padded sidesatchel, the one with the emblem depicting a fiery phoenix wrapped around a red cross. If there was any medic I’d trust my with my life, it was Jess. She truly was the gloria of SQUAD Guard R-ITA.
     “Man up, you big baby, I’ve had worse than this.” She moaned, pulling her Tissue Replenisher from the satchel.
     “You saying you’ve had something worse than your leg shot off, bitch?” Fonas mouthed through the pain, his eyes twitching uncontrollably.
     “Yes, Fonas I have, it’s called giving birth; far worse than having your leg shot off. I’m surprised you didn’t know, the way you’re crying you might be growing a pussy. Now lay still.”
     Fonas was so taken aback by her direct and bristled answer he shut right the hell up and bit his lip as Jess bent over his severed leg to reseal the part that was still attached to his body.
     The rest of us stood there rolling our thumbs. Turner flicked his cigarette butt to one side and coughed slightly the way old men do when they’ve had too much fresh air.
     Rocket stood silent; arms crossed, helmet shutters open and his head slightly tilted in thought. He never said much, Rocket; but you could always feel him there in the background, assessing the situation.
     “Alright, I’ve managed to seal up the stump temporarily but he needs to be taken to the hospital wing within an hour or it will reopen and he'll bleed out.” Jess said as she got up and stuck the Tissue Replenisher back into the satchel.
     “Alright, Jess, thanks.” I said, giving her an appreciative clap on the shoulder.
     “Are you ready to talk yet, one-leg?” I growled to Fonas who wearily sat back up, scratching his head, turning a funny shade of green when he saw the other part of his leg lying in a pool of blood a meter from the rest of him.
     “Yeah, I’ll talk, man, just promise me you’ll get me to the hospital.”
     “Yeah, I’ll get you to the hospital, don’t worry. Turner, Rocket, lift him up.”
     Turner and Rocket swiftly brushed past me and on the count of three flung an arm each round their necks. Fonas wobbled like a puppy scud trying to walk for the first time before grasping the concept of only having one leg to stand on. Guess he quickly understood the meaning of that.
     “And you’ll let me have a fair trial, right? I have rights...and you shot me in the leg!”
     “Are you or are you not gonna to tell me what I wanna know, Fonas?” I said, pressing my hard skinned face into his.
     “Yeah, yeah, alright, man. I’d had a few drinks, shot up several hours before; I was burnt out of my skull when I saw out of the corner of my eye the SQUAD Guard leaving the tavern. I knew what he was coz I got a glimpse of his SQUAD patch and I’m a NPAC supporter, well that detail wasn’t very obvious at the time but I guess the cat’s out of the box now, eh? So yeah, I guess I thought I’d do my bit for society and, you know, get rid of him.”
     “Is that all?” I grunted, unimpressed by his pathetic hero-of-a-revolution story.
     “No one else involved? He was only at the wrong place at the wrong time?”
     Fonas shrugged, swaying as he tried to find his balance.
     “That’s the gist of it yeah. I mean, you can see it the way you like but personally I feel I was in the right place at the right time, you know. To me he was just another man with a badge.” He shrugged again with his half-cut eyebrows raised boldly as if he was king of the fuckin' world.
      His arrogance made my blood boil like water in a kettle; only no one lifted me off the stove when I whistled.
      “So you gonna take me to the palace now?” Fonas smirked, knowing we couldn’t do another thing to him.
      “High Court won't waste their precious buttscratching time on your skinny little junkie ass, Fonas.” I growled threateningly and without flinching I pulled my TACKLE pistol back out of its holster and shot Fonas straight in the face.
     Rocket and Turner both let go of the body and let it sink backwards like a sack of potatoes, crashing through the glass behind. The glass shattered with an echoing hiss, shards dropped to the floor like sharp knives. The sound bounced around the abandoned factory floor for a couple of echoing minutes before the quiet crawled back in to take over.
     “Blood for a brother, motherfucker.” I snarled as I slid my gun back into its nest.
     Rocket and Turner both slapped me on the shoulder when they walked passed toward the stairs. Jess hung around an extra two minutes watching my silhouette in the blue darkness. Then she left too.
     There comes a time in every SQUAD Guard’s career when they're forced to make a decision whether to make the jump across the dead line and become feral or to stay the human they are....I passed that line a long time ago. In fact, everyone in SQUAD Guard R-ITA did. Now we’re just a bunch of battlebruised drones waiting for our next orders in the never ending gun-wrestle for a more peaceful place to live.



First of all "coughed slightly the way old men do when they’ve had too much fresh air." I don't know what the hell I meant by this? 
And there are few other bits and bobs that don't really make sense metaphorically but I'll let it slide. 

All in all - looking back at it nine or more years later - it's not a bad piece. It's a bit cringy at points and some lore things aren't canon anymore. There is no "high court" for example and in book 2 it's explained that cats don't exist in Resurgo (for a reason I'm too lazy to research right now) so an expression like "the cat's out of the box" (the saying is bag though but okay) while not completely farfetched, does not fit the dialogue. 
     I remember when I first wrote this piece and I absolutely loved it. It was simple and provided exactly what it intended. Raw dialogue, some action and depicted the SQUAD Guards as vicious when it came to fighting crime. Sort of like Judge Dredd now that I think of it. 
     This was it too. There was no mystery about who killed Patrick Madden, that is never part of the story in book 1. However, a lot of the plot in The Human Codex is the main character (Cameron Tapper) adjusting to the role of Lieutenant while still in mourning AND being forced to train a new rookie from the ground up, expecting him to fill a pair of shoes that were, well, according to him "unfillable." 
     Fast forward to book 3 where it is revealed someone completely different killed Patrick Madden because he came to close to unravelling a secret and Karoul Fonas was set up as the fall guy.  This changes the entire narrative of what you've just read. Maybe he was paid to play the scapegoat but as soon as he realises he might actually face the death penalty - a lowlevel junkie like Founas would change his story in a panic and plead for his life. It's interesting though to think that something that initially wasn't meant to be a part of anything other than setting the emotional state of the protagonist actually ends up being a pivotal part of the third installment so many years later. Thank christ I never published professionally, huh?
     I think if I decided to rewrite the entire scene today I would've probably written it differently. I mean, I have evolved slightly in my writing since giving birth to this piece, so I would hope it would be different. But more importantly, even though it is dark, if it was to fit the narrative of book 3, it needs to go darker without being too edgy. Maybe I will do a rewrite after book 3 and repost it on here so we can compare the two.