The story

The acrid fumes were the first things I noticed as I awoke in a dark, windy building, filled with piles of rock and lumps of metal; with water dripping in the background and hot, coloured gases hissing and squealing as they passed the door opposite me. As the numbness of sleep wore off, and the pain in my body momentarily cut off my awareness of where I was, memories came flooding back to me.

It had been the four of us, flying a routine mission, when out of nowhere, seven of them had attacked us. I immediately resumed my position at the helm, and after taking down two of them, we were unfortunately hit, with flight control destroyed. I manually attempted to plot a course towards the ocean of the dangerous planet, but this failed, and I found myself over a huge installation. There was a bang, then I woke up.

The first thing to do was ensure that my team, my three best mates, Deathwing, Kyser and BM, were alive. I struggled to my feet, pain lancing through my body, and I began to sift through the wreck. I heard a whimper, and I moved what appeared to have used to be a door, to find of my friends, lying down, blood across his head. I inspected the wound, and discovered that it wasn’t serious, so with an at first gentle, then with an increasingly forceful shake, I managed to wake him up. It was then a simple matter of finding the other two, which I did within a few short minutes, and, finding that they were not seriously injured, I woke them up and we regrouped, below the shattered wing.

None of us were in any condition to move, so we stayed where we were, enjoying the silence which was giving us the opportunity to recover. We stayed like this for several hours. Still. Below a shattered wing. Somewhere, we hoped, in an old, Abandoned Base.

Each of us took different amounts of time to recover enough strength to be able to move. As our muscles returned to near their full strength, the wreck began to be explored. Anything useful was stripped, and when this was completed, we headed off, hoping to find the way back to our own base, Claustrophobopolis, as it had been called by the giant ‘id fiends’ of the Dark Zone.

I knew, in my own mind, that as long as we didn’t meet any LPB’s, we would be fine. We had all completed our Gold navigation award when we were young, yet our ability to destroy LPB’s was very low, and since there were three others with me, it would hardly be possible.

We made our way through corridors, past walls of metal, walls of rock, pools of water, pools of slime. Suddenly, from out of nowhere, an LPB came around a corner. We were trapped. I ran, searching for some way to escape destruction.

‘Bang.’ A rocket exploded near us without us even seeing it.

I turned around and noticed there was one escape – there was a ledge. With a well executed jump, it would be possible to make it to safety. I aimed myself, and leapt, managing to get over. Deathwing and Kyser followed, but BM, who had often been called a KB, could not manage it, and fell. There was no opportunity to turn around and go back. BM was left to the LBP, who would surely triumph in a short battle.

I had two friends left. But this, still, was too many. I knew that if there were just the one, we would be able to make it, but I had to try. I couldn’t leave one of my friends to the LPB…

About

So, what to say about that.

I think I wrote this in one lesson in Year 12 English. It managed to get 10/10 (ha!). The comment with the mark says:

Obviously influenced by your interest in science fiction?
Well written
10/10

Little did she know…!

16/17 year old Daniel was, as many of you are aware, obsessed with Quake. It wasn’t enough just to play it. I also had to write about it in my final year English stories! Yay!

So, what of that story comes from Quake?

Quake Levels

Some of the names I used were levels from the game.

• The Abandoned Base – DM3. The best 4 on 4 multiplayer map.
• Claustrophobopolis – DM2.
• The Dark Zone – DM6. A great 1 on 1 deathmatch map.

Players

The team were others from my wonderful [KoD] clan.

• Deathwing – Ross
• Kyser – Andrew
• BM – Mary

Other

• id fiends was referring to id software.
• LPB’s – Ah, if only ADSL had been around back then.
• KB – Mary only used the keyboard when she played. She didn’t use the mouse. Hence, Keyboarder.
• Gold navigation. Huh? That meant this

Conclusion

From this little exercise I have come to the following conclusions.

• If I ever write a book, I should make sure it’s a non-fiction one
• I liked Quake a lot
• Finding a story that I wrote nearly 10 years ago and then posting it to blog is possibly very foolish indeed

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