Trust
Monday, August 16, 2004
Original crew in the Fireflly verse. The crew of the Vengeance has some trouble delivering a package and needs to replace two of its members. My first fanfic, response is encouraged and welcomed.
CATEGORY: FICTION TIMES READ: 2648 RATING: 7.0 (PG13) SERIES: FIREFLY
“Trust”
Written by R.T.Byers
No infringement of copyright is intended. All recognizable items are property of Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy. However, the story and all original characters, names, etc. are mine.
Rated: R for strong violence/gore and some language.
Bullets whizzed over Tim “Dual” Raynor’s head as he ducked behind a large, twisted piece of scrap metal. Concern touched his hazel eyes, and he ran a hand through his light brown hair. He dug into the pockets of his long, brown coat, searching for some extra shotgun shells. Finding them, he quickly pushed them into the chamber.
He then picked up his communicator and said with a southern drawl, “Alexis, Jon, we’re pinned down a few feet from you. Can you give us some cover fire?”
“Aye-aye, Captain,” Jon’s voice crackled back.
A couple of yards to the captain’s right was his merc, Raze, who was crouching behind the ruins of a ship and cradling an assault rifle. About fifteen feet to Dual’s fore was his ship, the Vengeance. As the cargo bay door began to lower, Dual motioned to Raze. They stood up simultaneously and opened fire on the cautiously approaching purplebellys.
As the ramp hit the dirt, a bullet lodged itself in Dual’s shoulder. He cried out in shock and pain as the impact spun him ‘round and planted his face in the ground. He looked up and saw Alexis, toting an oversized gun, and Jon, carrying a much smaller one, shooting at the Feds.
“Time to move,” Dual grunted to himself. With his left arm hanging limply, and his right hand wrapped around the barrel of his shotgun, he pushed up off the ground and ran for his ship.
Faced with the unrelenting spray of bullets coming from Alexis’s chain-fed peacemaker, none of the Feds found the courage to fire back. Dual made it
Were I a writer I might be able to tell you why the characterizations vaguely seemed a bit off. Incomplete. The story-telling scene around the table had some very good parts - Alexis' story and it's presentation, particularly - But overall it still seemed a bit superficial. Good effort, though. I'd enjoy reading a rewrite.
It's hard to start a piece with unestablished characters in a heavy action scene, as you did. The reason is that we don't know yet who these people are or why we should care about what happens to them. Killing off those two right away had less impact that I think you meant it to for just that reason--just didn't get a chance to know them before they died. Dual came off quite cold and somewhat psychotic in his reactions to their deaths--which is okay if that's what you were going for.
You hit a lot of other factors well--good variation in sentence structure and good selection of active verbs. Sometimes the narrative sounded a touch stiff--if you read the story outloud you'll hear some places that sound a bit awkward that are easy to miss when just silently reading to edit your own writing. Reading outloud also helps you catch typos.
Keep at it!
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