Heaven and Earth - 2023

A series of vignettes and writing exercises taking place within the Heaven and Earth continuity. The entries are arranged in roughly chronological order.
==Irbit Never Sleeps==
Written October 30
Tires squealed on concrete. Dagmar ducked behind a nearby bench just in case gunfire accompanied the bright-red MLX's flight into Irbit's nighttime. The car melted into the stream of traffic. None of the passers-by trickling along the dirty sidewalk spared the departure any notice. When no bullets or plasma rounds splashed overhead Dagmar picked himself up, sheepish but defiant against the smirks his display earned from his companions.
"Nice moves," Ellen said. The wiry girl lounged outside the storage shed while the rest of their crew loaded sealed crates into their bulky HC1500 hauler. This night's haul was a big one. "Practicing for the grav-ballet?"
Dagmar made a face and tried to look nonchalant. "Can't be too careful."
"There's such a thing as inconspicuous, Mr. Jumpy. If you're not going to help keep watch you should get in their and help the--"
Ellen pulled her hood lower. A pair of Irbit city police drew near. Both men wore grimy blue fatigues and combat gear that made them look like rebel militia fighters straight out of a Waypoint drama. The look wasn't far off from reality. ICPD--"Icers," as the lame street name went--were a militia, goons with badges as mean and trigger-happy as any Syndicate enforcer. The cops sidled up to the spot where the MLX had sped off. One conferred with his wristcom while the other checked the sidewalk and surrounding buildings. Dagmar was surprised at the second cop. He was young, about Dagmar and Ellen's own age, without the look of blunt force and low-simmering anger most Icers wore like a uniform. That wouldn't last long, Dagmar knew. The younger cop conferred with his partner only to be brusquely waved off. Neither Icer paid Dagmar and the activity around the shed much mind. The gang always paid the ICPD its due. These beat cops didn't care what these street runners did as long as they didn't step on any Syndicate toes.
Dagmar and his friends were small fry. They wanted to keep things that way.
Retl emerged from the shed. The pudgy Yonhet tapped nervously at a cargo manifest. "Truck loaded. Cargo secure. We should move. Client not patient."
Dagmar tried not to make a face. He liked Retl but a fishy stench accompanied the Yonhet wherever he went. "Right, let's move out. El, you're driving."
==Mud and Concrete==
Written October 26.
A chorus of bestial house rent air already shattered by hammering gunfire. Artillery fire smashed concrete walls and sent ugly geysers of mud down to bury the fallen in premature graves. Simon couldn’t tell if the thundering fire came from the Banished or from his own batteries. Corpses littered the skeletal gridwork of the embattled construction site. The colonists had meant to build a new power generator complex here. Instead the Kru’desh and the Banished had turned this place into a graveyard.
Coms were an incoherent mess of conflicting voices inside Simon’s helmet. He tuned them out. He’d given up on coordinating this mud-soaked nightmare. He’d win or he’d die—just like every other time before now. Rifle fire clattered beside him. Spent shell casings glanced off of his armor. Andra killed two Brutes with precise shots from her firing position beside the broken wall. Her shields flared as a flurry of spikes impaled the dirt and concrete around her. She didn’t even flinch. A Brute screamed a war cry, casting aside his spent Spiker to charge their position with reckless abandon. A well placed shell from Simon’s Hydra cast the hulking alien down into the mud. The Rakshasa’s integrated targeting computer made killing so evilly simple…
More howls. The Banished shifted their attack, abandoning the perimeter walls in a push to overrun Kru’desh positions at the center of the complex. Simon couldn’t see the officer directing the pack’s efforts. The Banished formation was unintelligible through the smoke and the mud. But Cassandra’s drone picked that moment to punch its feed through the wall of signal distortion the Banished always threw up with those damned insertion pods of theirs. That aerial feed—a barely visible square flickering across Simon’s HUD—was all he needed to piece together just where his opposite number was coordinating the battle.
A cold smile slid over his lips. He and Andra were perfectly positioned to slip behind the Banished advance. Time to take back momentum.
A simple gesture from Simon was all Andra needed to spring into action. She darted out from behind her concrete shield, a barely visible blur amidst the chaos. As Simon wrenched himself free of the mud it occurred to him that he now moved in better coordination with Andra than he’d ever moved with Jake or Ralph or the rest of Team Jian. The family he’d known all those years on Onyx was gone, buried like his old armor beneath Archangel’s Rest.
He cast the thought aside and raced forward. Fresh shells slid into the Hydra’s firing cylinder as mud splashed around him. He had no time for regrets when the hunt was on.
Two armored figures darted through mud and corpses and concrete. They descended on the Banished like wolves upon a herd of unsuspecting deer.
==Soul's Rest==
Written October 27
Mohsin Shah-formerly captain, now councilman-unslung his rucksack and found a rock where he could sit and rest his weary legs. Try as he might to stay in shape, the exertion of marching up the steep hills around Soul's Rest left him in dire need of a breather. The cold wind stirring up this time of season didn't help. Mohsin massaged his legs and pulled his jacket close. A gray ceiling of clouds rolled over the highlands. The hills were bleached brown-grey by rocks and barren trees. Soul's Rest was a hard land even during the good seasons.
The promised land. Mohsin looked over his rough surroundings and swelled with a defiant pride. The Kru'desh Legion had journeyed through fire and ice and the cold vacuum of space to make these rough hills and barren plains their own. The colonists elsewhere on the planet might call this place Furthest Point, but to the legionnaires and their families it was Soul's Rest. These gray skies and sharp winds blew over a foundation of martyrs. Mohsin had sent many of those men and women to their deaths. He bore that burden proudly. Those sacrifices had won them a land free of bondage and empire. This enclave belonged to those who would not yield to tyranny.
The thin wail of twin gravity-boost engineers drifted over the wind and heralded the approach of a low-flying Banshee. Mohsin dug into his jacket and flashed the approaching pilot his credential ribbon. Freedom did not mean complacency. The enclave that stretched out beyond the grounded fortress of the Soul Ascension was home to warriors. Every home, from the settlements around the cruiser's armored shadow to the homesteads spread around these hills, would fight to repel any invader.
The Banshee patrol dipped its stubby wings and flew on.