rix_scaedu | Entries tagged with neoma

I wrote this to the prompts from sauergeek and kelkyag here. As they were one after the other for the same thing, I wrote this as one larger block. This follows on from The Party Assembles.

“Rules of engagement?” Wraith spoke while trying to identify the controller of the camera drone that their camera man was picking up but not controlling.

“Clear and immediate threat to the techs and/or the hostages,” replied Mayin.

“They come after us or get us on camera with their drone,” added Reaver.

“They start using the park as a sniper post for elsewhere in the city or they turn out to be the diversion while the real bad guys do their thing elsewhere,” finished Wraith.

“And what do we want to achieve,” asked Mayin, “aside from getting us and the hostages out of here alive?”

“Gathering intel from these bozos is not my problem,” answered Wraith.

“And I think the authorities would frown at us going all hunter-killer on these guys,” put in Reaver.

“Neoma,” said Mayin quietly to her niece, “you need to stay here while we go deal with the bad guys. I need you to curl up in a ball on the ground with your back against the wall. Stay there until we come back.”

“Why?” Neoma looked frightened.

“Because no-one will be trying to hurt you, but the smaller you are and the better protection you have, then the less likely it is that you’ll get hurt by accident.”

The suited woman asked, “But wouldn’t we be safer with our backs towards the wall?”

“If someone else finds you, we want you to look like people and not like something disguised in clothes,” replied Wraith.

Sharvon the cameraman said quietly, “I can’t curl into a ball, drones to control and all that.”

Wraith looked at him speculatively. “Can you do anything to their drone?”

“If I’d been allowed to bring my kit for exclusive shoots, hey I could have taken over it and the sound board over there,” he nodded vaguely in the direction of the console the techs were hiding behind, “but I wasn’t and so I can’t just hack into that stuff. If we have time, I can add their drone to my network then cut off their privileges but that would give us a brief window where their guy has access to my entire network.”

“Not really what we’re after then.”

Wraith was about to say something else when Sharvon said, “That’s…interesting.”

“What is?” Everyone may have asked that at once.

“I’m getting a message on a data feed channel.” Sharvon adjusted his display and turned his screen so everyone else could see it. “See, that blue field there. It’s meant for a type of transfer I don’t need to use. I understand ‘Friend query’ because it won’t let you use punctuation characters, but I can’t read this box thing that follows.”

“That’s a military electronic signature chop,” replied Wraith. He looked at Mayin, “Would this be your mysterious friend?”

Mayin took a look at the screen. “He’s the only oberxiao out there and this is an oberxiao’s chop.”

Wraith said quietly, “The one with the prosthetics? Oh…my. Sharvon, the answer is ‘yes’.”

This is now followed by Rules of Engagement 2.

This follows on from The Responsible Adults Need To Get Together.... and was written to kelkyag's prompt "that cliffhanger Mayin is stuck in."

“Ah, people,” said Sharvon the cameraman, “I’ve got someone in a set of overalls and toting a bag, no those are tied together shirts, coming in this direction.

Wraith looked at his feeds. “That’s Reaver. This is all about to become less one-sided.”

Reaver arrived at a crouched run, emerging from a formal shrubbery directly behind their position, and dropping down behind the wall without standing. “We gotta do something about those thorny pears in there, I swear they’ve got a micronutrient deficiency or something – those thorns should be bigger and sharper.” He looked around. “Okay then. This looks promising. Who’d like a present from Uncle Reaver? Sorry I’ve only go the stuff I took off the bad guys.”

Neoma, looking entranced, asked, “Did you really tie them up with their own underpants?”

Reaver looked back at her and replied, “It’s an underappreciated art, short stuff, but I did. Now, my presents are a bit big for you,” he opened the improvised bag of tied together shirts and pulled out a G149 which he handed to Mayin, “so you won’t be getting one today. Who are you here with?”

“Aunty Mayin. It was supposed to be ‘an educational experience’.” Neoma pouted. “I don’t like this educational experience.”

“Then you’re a sensible kid,” Reaver handed another weapon to Wraith, who immediately, as Mayin had, checked the weapon for maintenance, load and status.

Reaver was about to add something else when Sharvon said urgently, “I’ve just had another drone camera pop up op on my screens. I don’t know if he can tell I’m here, but I’m fairly sure the operator is working for the bad guys.”

“Let me guess,” said Wraith. “Someone wants to make a televised speech and demonstration.”

The besuited woman looked at the new camera feed and snorted quietly in disgust, “Amateurs!”

This is now followed by Rules of Engagement

This follows on from An Educational Experience Goes Completely Pear Shaped and was written to kelkyag's prompt reminding me that I'd left things on more than a bit of a cliff hanger...

The Memorial Park during an unveiling ceremony was, in Mayin’s opinion, no place to be holding a protest over the end of the war. An armed protest involving shooting. She assumed the unknown protesters had the official party pinned down, or at least had intended to. Intention was a fine thing, but she knew that four of their original fifteen were currently out of play, tied up with their own underwear.

Her wartime comrade Reaver was good at making do with the materials to hand. Plus he was still a free agent.

And if all the responsible adults present were doing their jobs then Oberxiao Huhn Jan-li should already have used the military communicator she’d bet her flat’s rental lease that he had in his artificial arm to report the situation to the proper military authorities. Given the lack of appropriate skill sets being displayed by the enemy, she doubted they’d know that a military issue prosthetic would carry a whole lot more around in it than a civilian one, particularly as discharging service personnel routinely had their prosthetics swapped out to keep military communications and weapons out of general circulation.

Even if they did, they might not have twigged what choice pieces of equipment the Oberxiao could be carrying around concealed in plain sight.

Looking at the PR cameraman Sharvon’s feeds, Mayin could see her brother’s friend Georas and the comms guy Hitch, who she knew from her time in the service, sheltering in place behind the speaker system controls. Something about that wasn’t quite right, and Mayin cautiously sneaked a peek over the memorial wall to confirm what she thought. She dropped back down into place swearing.

Her niece, hiding nice and small beside her said, wide eyed, “Aunty Mayin, those are really rude words!”

At the same time Wraith, on her other side, asked, “What?”

Mayin answered her niece first, “Yes, small piece, they are. Don’t you go repeating them now, you don’t need the universe as annoyed at you as it is at me. Wraith, those two back room techs out there have moved that console to hide an access hatch.”

He repeated one of the words she’d used then added, “I admire their steel, but we could use Reaver, those weapons he’s picked up, and your friend you haven’t told me about who’s got his own gear – all about now, thank you.”

This is now followed by The Party Assembles.

I wrote this to kelkyag's prompt "I'm also fond of Jonna, Mayin, Parthi, and Rensa, for characters with fairly well-developed stories in various states from "not done yet" through "might benefit from a final wrap-up segment"." Which lead to some further discussion, some thinking on my part, a lot of making what I wanted to happen be feasible and plausible, and finally the following 1,314 words about Mayin. It follows on from Getting Out More.

Memorial Park was on a mesa, and so stood on solid ground. It was surrounded by public buildings with roofs that were level with the mesa top and thus extended the limits of the park. All the memorials were in the Park proper while all the access routes were via the buildings. Most people reached the top by using the scenic elevators on the Veterans’ Affairs, Public Library, Community Services and Parks and Waterways buildings. Mayin and her niece, Neoma, came up through the Public Library, pausing to look at the new releases and borrow a few on their way.

( Read more... )

This is now followed by The Responsible Adults Need To Get Together....

I wrote this to lilfluff's first prompt. Mayin first appeared in Back Again and Neoma joined her in Reintegration.

The war was over. Generations of fighting at an end. Not because anyone had won but because a star had exploded. The enemy’s home world was obliterated by a force of nature, billions dead. What was left of the enemy surrendered piecemeal because they no longer had centralized communications. Victory had never tasted so bitter or unearned.

The troops began to come home. They trickled and flooded in as the transports arrived from the distant watch stations and battlefields. Tales came with them too of the empty shells many of the enemy had become, men for whom there was no going home ever again. Then there were the ships that wouldn’t come home yet, searching for the men they knew were hiding from them whose relief and supply ships would never come again, begging them to talk to them.

It wasn’t long before the tacked-together government of the surviving remnants of the enemy’s colonial and supply fringe sent a delegation to negotiate for aid. Some of the negotiations would be so that they didn’t receive more aid than they wanted. Some were to gain greater access to the rehabilitation hospitals for their wounded. The newspapers were full of it.

Mayin noted that her old opponents were on the planet and dismissed it as irrelevant to her. Neoma stayed over with her every three weeks or so now, a comfortable routine that was helping the girl gain independence and the woman relax around people in general. Her family kept trying to introduce her to nice men but Mayin found their choices didn’t spark her interest, so she tended to see them once and not pursue the acquaintance. To be fair, most of them weren’t interested in pursuing her acquaintance.

She opened the door at the knock expecting to find Neoma and her mother there. Instead, it was a face from years ago and planets away. He was neatly dressed in civilian clothes and if he’d come to kill her, she’d have already been dead. The cybernetic right eye and hand were new since that intense afternoon four, almost five, years ago. “How did you find me?” Her voice came out cool and calm.

“It’s one of my base corps’ skills.” His vowels were too precise for a native speaker, betraying his origins. “You ruined my life.” He put the prosthetic hand on the door jam.

“You were trying to kill me.” So many fights and this was the one she remembered in all its detail.

“I was doing my job, as were you. I’m here with the delegation and I thought I’d look you up.” He stepped closer, too close because he was close enough to feel, and added an idiomatic sentence in his own language, “Nothing works anymore.”

“That’s not my fault!” Then she added, “Besides, you can’t convince me of that at the moment.”

He glanced down and closed his eyes as if in pain. “Of course, you would be the exception. Are you a witch as well?”

“No, I’m not!” Then switching to her own language, “This is not a discussion I want to have in the hallway outside my home. Now I’m expecting some people-”

“Aunty Mayin, Aunty Mayin,” that was Neoma tearing down the hallway ahead of her mother. The child stopped far closer than Mayin would have liked and asked, “Hello, are you a friend of my aunty’s?”

He looked down at the child and smiled, “We met briefly several years ago and I have come to visit her.”

Neoma’s mother, observing the lack of distance between the two of them, asked, “Mayin, aren’t you going to introduce us to your friend?”

“Friend? He’s not a friend.” She looked blankly from her sister-in-law to her old opponent as an odd realisation dawned, “And I don’t know your name, do I Vorwei?”

“Oberxiao, I was promoted.” He looked back at Mayin, “Twice. I will return at a more convenient time to discuss my problem.”

“I don’t know what you expect me to do about it,” Mayin was tart, he was too close her and he was too close to her niece.

He was fast. The prosthetic hand was behind her head before she’d realised that he’d moved and then he kissed her for just long enough. “Give me back to myself, luck witch.” Then he was walking away, back towards the elevator.

“What was that about?” Her sister-in-law was puzzled and Neoma was looking from one adult to the other, confused.

“It’s complicated,” Mayin sighed. “He sort of thinks he’s got a spell on him.”

“Then you’re supposed to kiss him to get rid of it,” declared Neoma. “If he does the kissing it’s never going to work! Hasn’t he ever read a fairy tale?”

Down the corridor the man paused and looked back over his shoulder.

This follows on from Back Again.

She didn’t stay long in her parents’ house. Her old room belonged to a girl she didn’t know anymore. It had been a decade and the room was full of things she no longer cared about. She used her terminal leave to get a job, find a flat and move.

The family objected. Girls didn’t just move out. They cited her sister Raquel still living at home and about to be married. They talked about the appearance of the thing. They sent Uncle Charlie to talk to her and he had come back shaking his head, saying, “Let her go.”

It was a nice enough flat in a decent building but Mayin never invited anyone over. She came quietly to family parties and went home, often quieter still. Anyone who ‘dropped in’ only ever saw the kitchen, the dining room and the toilet off the laundry and kitchen. She never mentioned any friends.

A week before Raquel’s wedding her oldest brother’s eldest child needed somewhere to sleep: a combination of father going on the buck’s night; mother having to work; and too many children needing beds for grandma and grandpa to put them all up. Mayin was called and asked if Neoma could stay with her. Surely, for one night, a woman of twenty-eight could house a girl of eight? Put like that, Mayin agreed.

Neoma was deposited in her aunt’s spare bedroom by her mother on her way to work. Her mother checked the contents of the fridge, the state of the bathroom and the dustiness of the bedrooms before pronouncing herself satisfied that the flat was satisfactory for Neoma to stay the night in. She handed over the list of foods Neoma wasn’t allowed to eat and the list of things she wasn’t allowed to do then left, promising to collect her daughter on the way home in the morning.

Mayin fed them both the child’s favourite meal made from fresh ingredients because the ingredients weren’t on the list of banned foods although all the pre-packaged versions of the dish were. As Neoma happily observed, no-one turned pink all over so it must have been all right.

After dinner the ex-servicewoman taught her niece to play adult card games for points. Card games weren’t on the list of forbidden activities. Neither was the manufacture of homemade explosives. Mayin thought Neoma seemed the sort of child to enjoy that but she also thought that card games were less likely to upset the girl’s parents.

The next morning when she was collected Neoma assured her mother and her aunt that she’d had a wonderful time and bounced happily down to the street. As her mother negotiated the transit lanes Neoma said thoughtfully, “Mummy, do you think Aunty Mayin would be happier if she had a green person and some blue people?”

“What are green and blue people?” She inwardly cursed small, dark vehicles that tried to be invisible as they came up from behind on the passenger side.

“Aunty Mayin’s got this big chart on her office wall. People who were in the family before she went away, like her and Daddy, are black. You’re green ‘cause you married Daddy and I’m blue cause I was born.” Neoma waited for her mother to answer.

“I don’t know,” the woman concentrated on the traffic while she spoke, “Did Aunty Mayin say anything about it?”

“It’s in her Reassimilation and Reintegration Plan,” the little girl said the unfamiliar words carefully, “But she’s not sure if they’re essential or just desirable.”

“Reassimilation and Reintegration Plan?” This was beginning to sound like a conversation that she wanted to concentrate on. Why did Neoma always bring these things up in the car?

“Yep,” Neoma looked out the window, “She said it’s her plan for trying to be almost normal again.”