Sci-Fi Writing
ANDROGYNE KEY - Character Excerpts
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION
It was impossible to separate Androgyne from the ship, or the ship from her. She herself did not know where one ended and the other began anymore. Gypsy Heart was four thousand tons of polycarbide mayhem salvaged from the brutality of the 4th millennium--a yellow and black hornet birthed from the scrapyards of Hades-Gamma IV. Androgyne Key shared her sharp lines and subtle curves. Both were sleek, savage looking creatures from the wild deeps of space. A patch covered the hole where Androgyne's left eye once sat--replaced long ago with a cybernetic uplink to Gypsy's subsystems, allowing her to feel the cold void of space on her hull the ecstatic swell of her railguns, and the warm purr of her slipspace drive.
CHARACTER IN ACTION
Unholy heat and the blue-white flicker of plasma filled the hallway, permeating it with the acrid stench of bubbling plastene and molten terrasteel. Androgyne's personal shields deflected the worst of it, dispersing energy beams and shrapnel with equal competence. Still, the ambient heat alone was almost enough to kill her.
Three strides and she was down the hallway, a predator in her element. A moment before impact, Androgyne flipped off the safety protocols on her personal shield, the ones that kept it from cooking organic matter on contact. New sounds and smells filled the hallway. The sizzle and pop of human flesh, the panicked crackle of stun lances, and the wet spatter of arterial spray as she went to work with her knife.
CHARACTER IN REVERIE
A strange thing, to be both here and there. Androgyne could feel Gypsy's bones shrieking in the void of space above the planet. She mingled effortlessly with the ship's AI, passing it en route from repairing the shield generator to reorienting the forward guns. Here she was scaling the mountain, fingers digging between rock, but up there she was being dismantled with cold precision by the Grand Adjudicator's warship. Her limbs were missing. Her heart was breaking. She was dying, and she would live. She wondered if this was how mothers felt when they lost a child.
CHARACTER DIALOGUE
The Apiary was a cyclopean chamber lined with hydration vats. Each of them crackled with the holo-noise as they fed orphans visions of conquest. At its center loomed the towering statue of a woman who cradled a baby in one arm, and a rifle in the other.
"Who is that?" asked Key.
"Our Lady of Perpetual Mayhem," Grundle Mot replied. "Mother of All War-Babies."
"Were you an orphan?"
"Yes. The Vile children orphaned me, then they raised me."
Androgyne could not hide her disgust. "Now you're one of them. A war criminal."
"Perhaps, but a father too. I ensure these orphans have a family and somewhere to sleep."
"More fuel for your wars."
"Ours is the Lady of Perpetual Mayhem. She does not let us rest. And you may lecture all you want, but how many have you orphaned? Where do those orphans sleep? You are not some hero and I will not be your villain."