ATTN: i really don't want the title to be "Chapter One" cause I'm not going to write it like that. The only reason I'm putting it out in parts is cause I can't write it all at once, and I thought I'd get a bit of feedback... Thanks:)
Part One - I will survive!
Fireballs lit up the night sky above Earth as yet another battle raged between the Rebellion and the Confederates. While the Rebellion had finally begun to edge forward, eventually becoming strong enough to attack the headquarters of the Confederacy itself, the war wasn't over and the occupants of earth pulled their pillows over their heads and sighed as the fate of the universe was decided above them.
Mantas whipped around a Confederate Cruiser, raking it with laser cannons as it thumped out bolt after bolt of high-tech proton bullets. The more maneouvrable Mantas ran rings around anything the Feds could fire at them, but they were too lightly armed to do anything - while huge explosions ripped the sky apart when torpedos were blown apart by defensive laser fire, little actual damage was done.
In the middle of the chaos was the Rebel ship "Ghost", commanded by Admiral Scott Hope. As Hope stood in his control room, staring at row upon row of battle printouts, computer screens and radar images, he wore a weary face.
"Hodgson, give me visual."
"Yes, sir."
As Hope stood in a holographic simulation of the battle, he was forced to make the inevitable decision.
"Hodgson, tell them to pull out. We're not going to gain anything this time."
"Yes, sir."
The rest of the crew in the bridge gave a visible slump when Hope gave the order. Looking at them, he could see why. All of them young, just out of the Rebel Training Academy and full of hope, they all thought they could win the war singlehandedly given half the chance. It was like when he and his friends used to play at tieing a stick to a donkey's head, and hanging a carrot from it; no matter how many battles they won, no matter how many Fed ships they destroyed, there were always more. It was depressing.
As the retreat signal was put out, Hope sighed. Again, he had come so close, and again, he was thwarted. He didn't like to think it, but it was clear that the Earth seemed impenetrable - unless the brains at HQ came up with something fast, the war could go on long enough for the Rebel cause to lose support - after all, Hope mused, the one thing people seemed to want more than freedom was to be able to sleep in silence...
"Ghost, calling all Red Squadron, the retreat signal has been sounded. Head back to HQ."
Sht! Throwing his Manta into a dive, Luke spiralled around in the middle of the fray before weaving his way out. Why did they have to pull out? He was sure that if he could just have another few minutes in every fray he could win the war.
The private intercom beeped. "Race ya back, loser."
It was his fellow pilot and best friend Cynthia. Perpetually chewing gum, she was smart, athletic, and considered by many to be the biggest (and hardest) catch in the fleet. Luke was sure that this time he'd be able to kick her ass!
"We'll see who's gonna lose, lippy," he muttered. Pulling his joystick back and heading away, Luke accelerated towards the system edge. If he could just beat her into hyperspace then he'd be home and dry. As he came into a clear area, he initialised the hyperspace key and pulled back on the magic wand, only to see a blur above his head as Cynthia whipped past him, already accelerating towards zero-space.
"Ah well" he muttered, "I can still outmaneuver her on the other side."
When Luke crashed out of hyperspace, seconds later, he looked around to see how far ahead she was. But there was nothing there. I saw her go into the jump, he thought, so where the hell is she?
"Cynthia? Cynthia! Don't give me sht like this, babe! You're out here, aren't you? This ain't funny, Cynthia. Cynthia? C'mon, answer me!"
He glared at the radio, daring it to spring to life. It was as silent as ever.
"Cynthiaaa!"
The three men, all tall and well built, sat around a small, coffee-stained table. A map was spread out, with lines covering it where someone had made frantic calculations.
"We've had disappearances here, here and... here," said one, slamming his finger down on the final point. "We actually have a witness of the last incident entering hyperspace but not exiting. At the moment it's only been small ships, but this may get worse. The pilots are already talking about it."
The men sat back, not making eye contact. It was a far cry from the moments of victory they had felt a few months ago, when one pilot had almost won the war for the Rebels on his own. But he was dead now, and they all thought the same thing - the war was beginning to look unwinnable. No-one dared to say it, of course, but it was there every night when you went to sleep, when you got up in the morning, and when you paid your taxes.
"Well, what can we do? The places the incidents have happened are in different corners of the universe, and we can't exactly withdraw from Earth, can we?"
"No, we can't," interrupted Hope, "but we should start looking. I'll put a few men on it, and we'll get to the bottom of this. In the meantime, we've got to keep fighting. We can't let the feds know that we're worried."
"Yeehaaww!" muttered Piper, throwing the modified Manta round another mountain. As the tiny, yellow ship whipped round the huge lumps of stone, she pulled back on the throttle and exited the atmosphere, enjoying the sudden silence that came over the ship. Up here everything downstairs seemed so small and pointless - who cared if she failed a few exams, when there were still planets waiting to be discovered? All she'd ever wanted to do in life was to get away from her crappy, overpopulated, backwards planet, and when she came up here it was like she almost made it.
As Piper cut the engines and slapped in a datadisc, she hummed in her head before deafening, bouncy music shook the cabin. Now she couldn't hear anyone, and they couldn't hear her. Perfect! She turned the volume know until it jammed, and lay back to stare at the stars.
First I was afraid
I was petrified
thinking I could never live without you by my side.
But then I spent so many nights thinking how you did me wrong
and I grew strong
and I learned how to get along...
Piper was jerked back to reality by the sudden, incredibly loud static. What the hell? She only just bought this disc. Fiddling with the knobs on the manta, she couldn't see to get it working again. Hang on, what was that? Piper turned the volume back up, listening to the faint sound of a voice muttering.
She could only make out the occasional word, and it wasn't enough to piece together anything - probably just some freighters talking to each other again, she thought.
But then it got louder, and the girl managed to make sense of a sentence or two.
"Hit...space....in jump...no time...LUUUKE!".
And then the world erupted.
A huge fireball appeared out of nowhere, metres away from the manta. Without the engines started up, Piper was helpless and could only watch as she was ripped out of the sky and began the plummet towards the ground below.
"So, let me get this straight. You were listening to music in that junk heap you call a ship, and you heard a voice on your datadisc. Suddenly, a huge bomb erupts and you get thrown back down here, where you manage to eject, and call mountain rescue."
"Sadie, that's what happened. I'm telling you!"
"Piper, I thought you said you'd give up smoking that sh*t when you moved out of your parents house!"
"Sadie!"
"I'm just kidding, girl. No-one makes up a story that stupid. Now, there's only one thing left to do."
"There is?"
"Uh-huh. Milk it!"
And, again we have a recap of tonight's top stories. Local girl Piper Perabo was today involved in what appears to be a supernatural experience, as she was hit by a fireball and heard voices. Madame Tussuad's is again sued as her effigies attack the viewers. A seven headed cow was born just outside the fusion power plant. The nineteenth...
Piper idly flicked off the holovid. A sad day it was indeed when a near death experience only got a small mention on the local news. She flicked over to another channel, and was fully immersed in a romantic comedy when she heard a knock at the door.
Maybe it was Kevin - they'd always had a bit of a thing, but it had never gone as far as Piper wanted it to. She wondered if the extra publicity had given him a reason to head on over. Quickly checking her appearance in the mirror, she ran her eyes over her long, wavy blonde hair, red, large lips and long eyelashes. Her breasts were smaller than she'd like, but she didn't have time to put on another top - the shapeless flannel shirt she was wearing would have to do. Hitching up her trousers, she rolled up her sleeves and leant against the wall provocatively as she pulled open the door.
"Why hello... who the hell are you?!?"
Two black suited men glared at her through their sunglasses. "Miss Perabo. We'd just like to ask you a few questions. It will only take a minute."
Bill and Ben, the flowerpot men, Piper thought to herself. They only need masks and they'd look like two really stupid Darth Vaders...
"Maybe. Who are you?"
"We are with the government, Miss Perabo. We're... researching incidents like the one that occurred to you this afternoon, in order to make sure they don't happen again." The man Piper had mentally christened Ben proffered his ID badge. "May we come in?"
"Well, I guess so."
They sat down at the single table in the small apartment, with Piper hovering next to the door.
"Miss Perabo. We understand that you heard voices before the explosion. Would you care to elaborate about these voices"
Something told Piper, deep inside of her, that she shouldn't tell anything to these men. "They were scrambled by the radio static - I couldn't hear anything."
"You could hear... nothing at all"
"Well, I couldn't really make anything out. It sounded like they were...uh... singing. Yeah, they were singing..."
After a few further lines of questioning, to which Piper became increasingly incommunicative, Bill asked to use the phone.
"Sure, it's in the bedroom," offered Piper. "I'll show you."
"Thank you, Miss Perabo, but I will be perfectly fine. My associate will finish the questions, while I check in with my superior."
The girl did manage to circle round to the door, but only overheard a small snippet of conversation before the other man asked to examine her ID cards.
"We are sure she knows more than she's letting on. Yes. We'll do that. Out." It was, however, quite some time before Bill came out of the bedroom, and Piper had become nervous. She reached into her back pocket, and set her beeper off.
"Oh, I'm sorry, but I have a... hair appointment. Would you mind coming back tomorrow?"
"Thank you, Miss Perabo, but we will call you if we need your... help.... Good night."
Slamming the door shut, Piper leant against it for some time before making a cup of tea. The last thing she needed was people trying to throw her in jail! She sank onto her bed, and called up Sadie.
"Heya girl. How's it going?"
"Not good, Sadie, not good. Not only did I just get interrogated by these mysterious Darth Vader wannabes, but I also lied my f*cking ass off! I just couldn't help it. If they're remotely official I'm screwed!"
"Honey, can you hear that clicking?"
"Nope. Why?"
"Did they use your phone at any point?"
"Yeah... again, why?"
"Honey, I think they bugged you. You might want to hang up..."
Piper slammed the phone down on the hook, and sprinted over to the window. Sure enough, there was a black van parked outside, and the two flowerpot men were walking slowly towards her door.
Grabbing her cigarettes from the table, pulling her tattered overcoat on and snatching her wallet, she ran out of the back door and into the dark alleyway. As Bill and Ben kicked the door down, Piper made a decision.
The flowerpot men surveyed Piper's meagre apartment.
"What've we got?"
"Nothing. The kid didn't have much. A few tools, a coupla books, and a wardrobe that looks like it's owned by an eighty-year-old."
"You got a trace on that phone call?"
"Wasn't long enough. Whoever Sadie is, she's smart. She ain't a school kid, that's for sure. Could be anywhere in this city."
Bill idly ran his finger along the grime stained sideboard. A few plates, a mouldy piece of bread, a stubbed out rollup. "Jesus, from what we got in this room this kid coulda been living in the twentieth century!"
"Yeah, and half the rest of the planet. Depressing, ain't it? Up there, we got huge ships the size of countries rippin' the hell out of each other with weapons you an' me can't even pronounce, and down here we got a nineteen year old kid, livin' alone, with only a holovid and a phone as any evidence of our great species's science. Chrissakes, she even smokes! You'd think she woulda got the fact that millions of people on earth die every day through that crappy stuff!"
"Well, we have to keep trying. If she knows anything at all, it mustn't get out. At the moment, she might not even realise she knows it. We've got to get to her before she does."
Across the other side of down, lit by the glow of neon signs and brake lights, Piper sighed. Sadie was too far away, she had... what, about fifteen credits... and nowhere to go. As the first drop of rain fell, she pulled her coat tight around her, and trudged towards a nearby doorway. What the hell was she gonna do now?
Silently roaming the wet streets of New Canterbury, the squad car slid through the heaps of discarded garments and old rubbish as it searched for its target. The roar of other cars, several hundred yards away, was the only sign of life within the alley. Inside the car, in silence, sat the two men. They slowed the car to a stop, and got out. One of the men stood up against a wall and relieved himself. The steam hissed and drifted up into the air.
"You think the kid's on the streets, Nate?"
"Maybe. Maybe she's at Sadie's. Maybe she's not even on this planet anymore. But we gotta find her."
"She's just a kid. She's not gonna know what she saw. So she saw a big fireball, heard a few voices - what's the significance of that?" He idly kicked a pile of trash apart with his foot. "Loadsa people see stuff like that everyday, an' it's all inside their heads."
"Yeah, but this thing's top secret. If she made it to some rebels somewhere, and told them what she'd got, they might put two an' two together. And at the moment, we can't allow that to happen."
"True. What's next?"
"Well, Sadie's not a very popular name hereabouts. We'll check the ID database. There can only be a few. Get out the word to bring all Sadies between... 16 and 40 into the station."
The men got back into the car, and the doors slowly slid shut. There was a quiet hum, and the car disappeared into the fog. One of the piles of old clothes shivered, then unfolded. Piper shrugged off the PVC coat she had slept under, and dropped down onto a cardboard box.
Holding her head in her hands, she wondered what she could do. She could go to her parents, but a fat lot of help they'd be - she might as well go and ask Aretha Franklin! So, what to do?
Ok, first thing's first, she'd seen something they didn't want her to see. And they didn't want her to go and see the Rebels, so that meant they were Feds. Right. While Piper's parents were happy as long as they didn't have to fire all their servants, Piper felt strongly about the war and secretly hoped the Rebels would win out. So... she had to find a Rebel to tell this stuff to. Obviously it was something the Feds had done, and they didn't want the Rebels to know about it.
But how was she going to go and find a Rebel? It wasn't like she could just stand in the middle of the street and shout for one (you could get shot on sight for that). Aha! Sadie would know who's a Reb-"
"Oh SH*T," Piper screamed. "Sadie!"
She had to get to her friend before the Feds did. It was right across the other side of town, but they still had to find her address. She could make it. She had to.
Piper leapt up and started down the alley, in the opposite direction to the squad car.
*** 9 hours later, early morning***
Cathedral Road, New Canterbury, was a depressing sight. A bystander on the street could hardly see the pollution streaked sight above the mile high buildings on each side - the smoky, sewage ridden cobbles had seen more than their fair share of brutal incidents under the bright neon lights that advertised long dead gambling and prostitution dens.
It was down these cobbles that Piper skidded, dodging the sludgy puddles that oozed out of the drains, her hair streaming out behind her as she sprinted into a shapeless, nameless apartment building. When she reached the fourth floor she stopped for a moment to catch her breath, before hammering on the door of flat 409.
An enormous woman answered the door, holding a frying pan with bacon sizzling away.
"Aw, heya Piper. Guess you want Sadie, huh?" she boomed, a grin creeping across her face. "What you doing with your hair all messed up like that? Been messing around with that Kevin, have we?"
"Not this time, Mrs. Patterson," Piper replied, blushing.
"She's upstairs. Got her head in some damn book, I should imagine..."
"Thank you, Mrs. Patterson."
Piper dashed up the creaky wooden stairs, barging into the first room she came to. Inside, a tall, slender black girl was lying on a threadbare bed. Old books were littered around her (for a computer genius, the twenty-five year old sure didn't look the part!) and she was staring out of the window at her feet. Piper and Sadie had met on a march to stop vivisection. Piper had fallen, and was in danger of being crushed in the throng - as everything began to go misty, a thin dark hand had been thrust in front of her and she had grabbed hold of it with everything she had. She sometimes thought to herself that she had never let go.
"Hey Pipe. How's it goin' with that whole bein' on the run from the law thing?"
That was Sadie. Even in the most dire situation she could make Piper smile. Piper wished she could have Sadie's ability to keep calm in any situation, the way that she instinctively made the people around her feel at ease with herself.
"Not good, Sade. They're coming after you next. I overheard them."
"Figures." How could she be taking this so calm? It was the end of Piper's life! She didn't even bat an eyelid, dammit!
"Sadie, I'm serious. I give you about fifteen minutes."
" You give me fifteen minutes? So what the hell are you doing here? It ain't me they want, girl, it's the cute little kitten from Jersey..."
"Sadie, I overheard them. They're talking about the Rebels. I need to find a Rebel. I gotta tell them that-"
"Don't tell me! If I don't know then I can't tell them."
"Sade, you gotta know a Rebel. There's gotta be one around here somewhere," Piper looked desperate.
Sadie just laughed. "Girl, I ain't the answer for everything, y'know."
Piper sank to the floor. "So you don't know a Rebel? Sh*t, what am I gonna do?"
Again, Sadie laughed her tinkling little laugh. "Did I say that I didn't know a Rebel? Tell you what, if you give me one of those smokes, I'll give you the name of a cafe where they hang out. But I'm not gonna give you anything else."
Piper sighed, and handed Sadie her largest rollup - she just didn't understand her friend sometimes. "You don't even like my cigarettes. You're just doing this to be annoying!"
Sadie chuckled. "It's fun to be a bitch sometimes." She handed the rollup back. "I don't really want it, country girl. Just playin'. Now listen up. There's a place on the High Street, it's called the Blue Parrot Cafe. It's a Rebel hangout. I haven't bin there, but I'm sure you'll get a sympathetic ear or two there." She ran her eyes down Piper's creased shirt, her dirty coat and her unbrushed hair. "Hell, if you clean yourself up a bit you might even get more than that!"
Taking a look at herself, Piper realised that her shabby clothes were going to attract more attention on the High Street than if she wore a flourescent orange tracksuit.
Sadie reached under her bed, and pulled out a pile of clothes. "Here, you left these here on Friday night. Got any money?"
"Uh, I got about fifteen bucks."
"Here's a hundred. You might want to clean yourself up somewhere, cause girl... you stink!"
"Oh.. uh... I had a rough night..."
"Well, chuck me that rollie and I'll let ya go. I don't smoke but I'll keep it for you till you get back, kay?" And with that, she pushed Piper out of her door. "Now get lost. The cops are on their way..."
"Yeah, I love you too, Sade." Piper smiled as she opened the door in Sadie's bedroom and ran down the rusty fire-escape. She dropped the final few feet to the ground and immersed herself in the early morning bustle of New Canterbury.
Lying back down on her bed, Sadie looked at the wallpaper peeling off the ceiling.
"You better be careful, girl. Ain't gonna be easy..."
(This message has been edited by Jamin! (edited 11-18-2003).)
Can't wate for the next setion! 