Ratslips
All is not what it seems.
Mankind uneasily shares a distant world with an inferior humanoid alien race. A scientist discovers the secret of his father's work, while a policeman uncovers the truth about his own heritage, and together they expose a shocking revelation.
This is an unfinished, much anticiapted novel from my pre-university days. (It's legendary amongst my university friends as some sort of mythical, seminal, uber werk. I'll let you be the judge of that!)
It was originally envisaged as a collaboration with a friend in which we'd write alternative chapters, each working on a different set of characters who only come together at the end. I finished my half but I'm still waiting for his chapters. Will rework into a Fomalhaut series parallel world novel, after the novels Glorious and World War A are released.
This one partially exists, so you can read an excerpt below:
Mankind uneasily shares a distant world with an inferior humanoid alien race. A scientist discovers the secret of his father's work, while a policeman uncovers the truth about his own heritage, and together they expose a shocking revelation.
This is an unfinished, much anticiapted novel from my pre-university days. (It's legendary amongst my university friends as some sort of mythical, seminal, uber werk. I'll let you be the judge of that!)
It was originally envisaged as a collaboration with a friend in which we'd write alternative chapters, each working on a different set of characters who only come together at the end. I finished my half but I'm still waiting for his chapters. Will rework into a Fomalhaut series parallel world novel, after the novels Glorious and World War A are released.
This one partially exists, so you can read an excerpt below:
Ratslips by darrenwhite
© Darren White 1996
You can download a Kindle format excerpt below:
(Click here for instructions on how to import the file into your Kindle device or app.)
© Darren White 1996
You can download a Kindle format excerpt below:
(Click here for instructions on how to import the file into your Kindle device or app.)
| ratslips.mobi |
Or, simply scroll down to read the excerpt from the website.
Excerpt from Ratslips:
© 1996 Darren White
Martha had spent the best part of the day alone, inspecting the containment fences in the fields furthest from her village, with only her old dog Rufus for company. She'd finished her task just before sunset, and wearily, she'd started the long journey home shortly afterwards.
She had been less than two kilometers into it, when the old vehicle, that the humans had given her, had finally died. She tried to raise help on the communicator, but it too had seen better days, and she gave up. The obselete equipment they gave never lasted very long.
So, she had been forced to begin the long walk back. She knew the country well, she had never lived anywhere else, afterall. There was a short cut across the hills, that few people outside her village knew. That few people ouside her village even cared about.
The brooding sky had been threatening to rain all day. So it came as no great surprise when the heavens eventually opened, soaking her and her canine companion completely. She had originaly hoped that they might make it home before the storm came. But that hope soon died.
And now as they trudged together down the final hill, with the welcoming glow of their village firmly in sight, and her cheap boots turning to sodden cardboard beneath her freezing feet, she felt secure.
She could hear the distant whine of a human transporter, hidden somewhere behind the brooding clouds, it's engines muffled by the ferocity of the storm. She paid little attention to it. They often overflew the land belonging to her kind, preferring it to the airspace above their densly populated human cities.
Yet, something about the sounds that it made concerned her.
She pulled the collar of her coat tight around her neck, trying to keep out the driving rain that dripped in, then she yelled at her dog to keep up, and pushed forward through the deluge. "Not long now", she told herself. "We'll soon be home."
The relentless drone of the plane above her, still shrouded by the grey mire, grew steadily louder, and she realized that it was heading her way. That was unusual, the planes never came this close. Not without a good reason, anyway.
Then suddenly, it unexpectedly burst through the clouds, right in front of her, and flew so low over her head that she instinctivly ducked. Her dog barked furiously at it, first running towards it, as it raced behind them, and then thinking better of it, running back towards her, still barking in a confused manner.
"Come here!" She shouted at it. She bent over and hugged the dog, frightened by the howl of the transporter's roaring engines. She stared petrified as the craft dissappeared into the dark night, it's dipped nose carrying it ever closer to the side of the looming hill.
"Pull up!" She heard herself shout forlornly, her words hopelessly drowned out by the noise of the engines. But it was already too late.
The nose of the plane ploughed forcefully into the hillside, momentarily digging a rut into it, before it began to flip forward. It's back seemed to arch for a split secound, before the ruptured fuel tanks exploded into a huge orange fireball, the intensity of which made her eyes ache.
The sound of the explosion hit her full on, and she found herself being hurled to the floor, as if by the sheer force of the immense noise alone. She quickly pushed herself up, off the ground and looked back up the hill. She could see the main body of the plane, rolling furiously up the hillside as it disintergrated, trailing an immense ball of flame and dense smoke. Smaller splinter groups of wrekage flew around the hillside in all directions, and floating light pieces danced into the night. Streams of lit fuel portrayed the length of it's slide up the hill.
She srung to her feet and began to sprint up the mountainside towards what remained of the plane, forgetting about her dog. The first pieces of debris lay smouldering on the ground as she reached them, just so many unrecognizable pieces of twisted, smoking metal. She ran amongst the chunks of plane, searching for any possible survivors.
She found a red double seat lying on the ground, on it's side. A human air hostess lay strapped into the bottom chair, her skin charred brown by the explosion, but her long blonde hair, falling over the dirty, wet ground, was virtually untouched.
Martha caught the gag of vomit in the back of her throat, that had risen from her sickened stomach. She turned quickly away, and ran from the corpse, repulsed by the gruesome sight.
She found herself sat on the fringe of the crash site, staring at the muddy ground. The surrounding hillside glowed in the illumination of the flames still burning behind her. Her back burned from the fire's radiated heat. She became aware of a low whining noise coming from somewhere to her right, amongst the furthest piles of sizable rubble.
She ignored the noise initially, and then realizing that it was her dog Rufus, she ran to the site of the wimpering, fearfully that he may be trapped or injured. But she couldn't tell exactly where he was, so she began searching frantically, calling his name at the top of her frail alien voice.
She found him in an isolated section of the fusalage, standing strangly undamaged on the ground, like some sort of surreal sculpture. He lay, quite peacfully, with his muzzle and a comforting white-tipped paw on the chest of one of the former passengers, who also rested his arm on the dog's body. She wondered how and why the dog had pushed under his arm, but as she drew nearer, she realized that the passenger was somehow still alive. She watched his chest slowly rise and fall beneath blood stained clothing.
Cautiously, she knelt down beside him, carefull not to touch him. His empty eyes stared at the broken roof above him, and his dry lips moved slowly, forming unspoken words.
"Don't worry," she managed to stumble, unsure of just what she should say, "I'm sure help is on it's way." She glanced along his broken body. The white of a broken bone protruded from the gory pulp that had once been his upper arm, beneath the torn shreds of dark clothing, and his right leg lay twisted at an impossible angle beneath him. "You're going to be all right." She added, trying to comfort him.
But he just stared upwards, as if mesmerized by something unseen, still slowly forming his unheard words.
"What are you trying to say?" She asked, leaning over him, her ear almost pressed to his mouth. She could feel his warm breath on her as he slowly croaked the hoarse words, pushing the sounds forth from deep within his throat. She could only catch some of the words that he whispered to her.
He was trying to tell her something about his baby, something about a hospital and his wife; begging her to do something that she couldn't quite understand. She pushed herself up, looking carefully around the smashed cabin for some sign of the others that he was talking about, but she could see nothing that confirmed his vague story.
When she turned back to him, his lips had stopped moving, but his eyes still stared relentlessly at the featureless ceiling.
"Come on Rufus," she beckoned to her dog, "let's get out of here." She looked back at the man, a member of her own species, but only half her age. "There's nothing we can do here." She declared, more to herself than to her dog. Then she made the sign of her own religion and left.
She found herself walking away from the piece of broken plane, in no particular direction, just away from the horrors within; anxious to leave them behind.
She could see the twinkling of a hundred lights, a mixture of both electric and flame torches, slowly creeping up the hill, from the valley below. Yet she hardly noticed the approach of her villagers.
She found herself leaning against another large section of the smashed plane. It felt warm to her touch, and soothing somehow. She turned around and pushed her back against the metal sheet, in an attempt to drive the cold away.
She could feel the shattered tube rocking slightly, not with the wind, but in an all together more random pattern. Almost without thinking, she followed the cabin to it's edge, and peered in. She could see a woman, still strapped to her chair, writhing in apparant agony.
As she got closer, she couldn't help but notice that the woman was pregnant. Her arms cluthched her swollen stomach, grabbing at the bulge, while her mouth screamed silently. Martha ran to her side. The woman reached out to her as soon as she saw her, grabbing franticaly at her rough clothes.
"Don't worry." She shouted, trying to comfort her. "My people are on the way." But the woman just pulled her closer, her nails digging painfully into her arms.
"My baby!" She screamed.
"Yes, you're going to be alright." She tore her grasping hands off her clothes, and backed away, towards the gaping opening of the broken cabin.
"Save my baby!" The woman screamed from inside the battered hulk. Martha ran out into the night, and peered down the hillside, desperate to find her villagers. She could see their lights, still some distance away, but closing slowly. In desperation she ran back inside the plane, aware that she should try to comfort the woman. But as she got closer, she realised that she was too late, and that the woman was already dead.
She lay in her seat, still strapped in, still clutching her stomach. Only now she looked mercifully peacefull, released from her former torment.
Martha dropped to her knees, besides the dead woman. She found herself closing the young woman's eyelids, and pulling her arms away from the nurturing mound covering her child. As she did so, she felt the child moving inside her, kicking as if trying to escape.
Instantly, she knew what she must do. She carefully unfastened the woman's bloodstained clothing, pulling her shirt apart, smoothing her hands over her still warm stomach.
Then she slowly pulled her long, ornate hunting knife from it's sheath, by her side, watching it glint in the warm light from nearby fires. She carefully pressed the long blade against the dead woman's stomach and pushed.
