The Walcroft Chronicles

[cat danny 25]

I would like to try and write these at least semi-regularly.

 

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March 11th, 2286

Belair House

London, England, Terra

I

 

"Say something, you stupid girl," you told yourself. You wanted to. Oh, how badly you wanted to say something to avoid looking like a bumbling idiot. "Hi," you blurted out with no semblance of poise. You spent an hour practicing introductions. "Hi James. How are you?" or "James! You look very nice tonight, it's such a pleasure to see you again." You didn't do any of them. 'Hi'? Who says hi when you're at a ball with someone? Idiot, or so you thought. He smiled at you, and you found that genuinely surprising. The gentle incense of spring, the lingering smell of wine and cigars; You never would have imagined it would be this colorful for your first ball. With James Royce, nevertheless. Your father was good friends with his father, which meant it was only proper that you accompany one-another to the Winter Ball. He was two years older than you, and oh my goodness you could have sworn that he was the most beautiful boy you'd ever laid eyes on. He was your friend, you'd gone for coffee once or twice and he'd never done anything that would have dissuaded you from being so crass as to ask him to dance. So why didn't you? You didn't because that effervescent feeling in your chest, the one that you got when you looked at him? -- That was because you were completely, and utterly petrified. Terrified. You were a mousy little thing, when you were younger. Thank the maker it never stuck. You're not sure when that went away, boot camp maybe?

 

"Well, hello to you too, miz' Walcroft. Looking marvelous, per usual." Why did his compliments make you rosy? You weren't dizzy now too, were you? This boy drove you crazy, in your angsty adolescent state and you had absolutely no idea why other than the fact that his teeth looked so damn kissable when he smiled, or that his jaw was firm and gorgeous. Do something, stop standing there and looking at him! Anything? No. You opted for a second "Hi." Just a hi. Screw-up. Luckily for you, your date wasn't a dim-witted coward. He asked you to dance, and you had to do a double take just to make sure he was speaking to you. Of course he was! Could you not tell that, that young man was head over heels for you? Of course not. You were seventeen and frankly, the dumbest intelligent person you have ever known.

 

You accepted his proposal and got close with one-another. He had an overwhelming scent to him, though you couldn't tell the nuances between cologne and aftershave. Why did things have to be so complicated, sometimes? Granted - you had three different forks at the dinner table. Your friends from school looked like neanderthals when they tried to discern the three, which must have meant that this wasn't so bad. Just new water for you, right? At least, that's what you would have liked to tell yourself. It was the first time you felt someone touch you around the waist in a way that wasn't some sort of friendly hug. You were taught to dance at a young age, but that all went out the window when you felt how warm his hands where. Like an ape, you threw your arms around him for a big hug and just sort of wobbled back and forth to the sound of the music. You probably caught more than a few eyes. What a time to be alive, the eldest daughter of Everett Walcroft couldn't dance when it came time to actually do so with the son of Marcus Royce.

 

You felt dizzy. Perhaps it was from the champagne, perhaps it was from the fact that you were embarrassed - or maybe that you finally got to hold the young man you've admired since childhood. It was probably a mix of all three, admittedly. The room spun, he spun you and then before you knew it - James bent you back and pressed his lips against yours. You weren't sure how long it lasted, but it was long enough to make the adolescent you swoon.

 

What a time to be alive thought the younger Alice.

 

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[cat danny 25]

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December 16th, 2297

Operation: Red Harvest

Somewhere In The Nomad Province, Port MacArthur Outskirts, New Salem

II

 

The final thing you remembered was wrapping the last of Claire's injuries. He'll be fine, you told yourself, it was everyone else that you had to worry about now. You were concerned for the marauder who lay adjacent to you on the litter. You liked her, in a friendly sort of way. There were only two marauders that you actually had some semblance of care for, and she was one of them. You were also just as concerned for the platoon. So many thoughts ran through your head, that you could have sworn that were you able to, you would have drowned in them. Suddenly as you stood up, you experienced tunnel vision and the world around you seemed to slow. At first you were petrified for the briefest of moments, and then you felt your knees buckle. You took hold of the wall for assistance and looked off towards the remnants of the scattered platoon you'd managed to recover. A few familiar faces, a few not-so. Your vision began to swim, your stomach turned and twisted itself akin to a sponge being ruthlessly wrung out into a bucket. You took a quick ACE, though only managed to discern that your heart was racing and you were covered in blood. Your whole body ached and writhed. You were exhausted, you hurt, and you wanted to go home. You were accustomed to being covered in it, and it usually wasn't yours. That adrenaline-fueled kick that was the afterglow of combat left you wiry and doped up enough to have missed that stinging sensation that would have plagued your arm, had only you been hit minutes earlier. All that time; through all that running, that carrying; you had been bleeding to death, and you were too concerned with everyone else to realize it. You stupid, stupid girl. Like a photograph to a flame, everything turned to a smoky haze and the last thing you felt was your body hit the ground in an unceremonious 'thud'. 

 

You'd made your last mistake, you thought.

 

You heard voices, shouting - though you weren't so sure who they were, or what they were screaming about. Your consciousness wavered and everything faded to black. It was an uncomfortable sentiment that you'd only experienced a couple of times, yet it made that sense of dread return every time it happened. It wasn't a quick thing, the fading. You watched as first your peripherals darkened - and then like a tunnel slowly closing, the rest of your vision began to gradually lose pigment until nothing but a black haze remained. You weren't sure if you were hallucinating or dreaming. Both, perhaps. Dying is a funny thing, you thought; Is that what we were calling it, now? You were in your room with Maria. She was two years your younger sibling, and you don't think that there could have been anything else in the world you loved more than that girl, vain as she was - and even sometimes inconsiderate. "What do you mean, you're enlisting?" Maria demanded to you. She looked flabbergasted, despite the fact that she was a twenty-something and not particularly stupid either.

 

"I mean exactly what I just said," you replied. It wasn't the last time the two of you spoke, but the last you'd argued. Your father was a Citizen and would not leave anything for either of his daughters were they not to enlist and acquire a citizenship. Maria refused, you obliged. For the first time in your life, you outdid the favorite of the family and managed to make your parents prouder than she ever could have.Vanity was your sister's vice, and you had always considered yourself humble. Which - frankly, you found ironic; because humble people don't tend to look for the good things, or they downplay them. Redundant. You figured you were pretty terrible at dying, if you had the time to consciously correct that little voice in your head, your ever-present conscience when it didn't say things the way it should have. Perhaps it was that, or perhaps things simply passed much slower when you were trapped within your own mental prison. Your own cage. You couldn't move your arms, you couldn't move your legs. It was a smothering sensation, that darkness. As your mind swam, you clung to a small shard of hope. Something you'd read in a poem, once. Deep into that darkness peering, long I sat there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before. You'd nearly drowned as a child, and this was the closest thing you'd ever felt. Your lungs burned with smoke and ash, you could feel your slowing heartbeat drum in your ears. Your fingers moved. You wanted to scream. Your eyes finally opened, and you saw someone lingering above you. You weren't so sure who that someone was, but oh, the desire to call out to them.

 

Help me. Say it.

 

Nothing, but you wanted to scream. You wanted someone, anyone; you didn't care whom.

 

Please.

Death had its fingers wrapped tightly around your throat. You couldn't speak, you couldn't cry out no matter how hard you tried. Your pleas for help - or perhaps even for mercy were silenced, snuffed out by the creeping entity that came for every man. Your duty as someone who saves lives for a living came to mind. How many times you had given the finger to the maiden in black, how many times you've loomed over a fellow soldier and shouted in the face of death; pulling them from her grasp.

 

"Not today."

 

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Pre-enlistement Alice (right) alongside her biological sister Maria (left).

 

[cat danny 25]

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October 26th, 2291

Halekulani Hotel

Honolulu, Hawaii, Terra

III

 

The scent of the burning incense candle in the hotel room, the wiry feeling that made you melt into the bed like a melted sack of something. It was the second-last day of autumn break for your university. You somehow found yourself dragged along with a handful of your friends to Hawaii for the entirety of that break - your parents could all afford it, after-all. The party was over and everyone had gone back to their rooms. There were six of you and three rooms, which meant that you were staying with someone, one Nolan Rexford. He was your best friend through Uni' and you don't think you would have traded him for anyone else. You were a thing, back then. Granted, your father would never approve given that he was not a citizen, nor did he plan to be. Redundant. Your father wasn't in Hawaii, and you weren't about to tell him.

 

Your friends were an awful influence on you, you thought - but you didn't care. A twenty-something studying to be a councilor for children, how noble. For that night you wanted to be something different than a goody-two-shoes, something more. That night you were 'Just Alice'. You didn't think that a few glasses of wine, or a cigarette would do that, though. You wanted to try something bold, something new. Mushrooms were new to you, and oh my goodness did you ever feel that after you ate one or three. The room was hazy and you felt dizzy whenever you moved your head to look around - goodness you, you couldn't stop giggling. Oh, the irony. You wanted to be bold and daring, and instead - you wound up looking like more of a schoolgirl than you usually did. You were neither alcohol tolerant nor particularly resilient to the effects of the bland-tasting fungus.

 

Fade out, open your eyes a few minutes later to Nolan looking down at you. "Dance with me, Allie," he called to you. You weren't sure which one of you had the stupidest look on your face. He had this goofy grin that made you want to kiss him, and your cheeks were starting to hurt from the fact that you'd been smiling for almost an hour now. With difficulty standing and your skin tingling in anticipation when he wrapped you in a hug to help you up, you put your arms around him as he reached to turn up the stereo. Nolan's chest was warm against your cheek, through the t-shirt that he was wearing. He reminded you somewhat of an old flame, with the fact that he liked to dance. That old flame had gone off to war and you'd never heard from him again. You missed him sometimes, and now that you were vulnerable and those intrusive thoughts returned, you let out a pathetic little sniffle as your eyes began to water.

 

"What's wrong, Alice?" Nolan asked. He didn't use pet names around you when you were upset. Your third-wheel had silently exited at some point during the kerfuffle, so-to not draw any attention away from your moment of intimacy with your partner. "Why're you crying?"

 

"I don't know," you replied. You weren't sure if you were a liar, or not. You still aren't. He reached down to kiss your head before scooping you up into his arms. You always did like that, the smothering feeling of a partner taking advantage of you like that. He set you down and moved to loom over you, looking down with those big blue eyes. If you died right then and there, you would have been satisfied. You'd never looked into an ocean before, after-all.

 

When we have a drink or three, seems it always ends in a hazy shower scene.

[cat danny 25]

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September 1st, 2296

Hatton Hill

Liverpool, England, Terra

IV

 

"People die when they go to war, and that's why I want you to stay. Won't you please stay? For me," she asked you. There were times when Maria made your head spin, but this was the last time you would ever see your little sister again. Granted, you hadn't known that at the time. Maybe if you had, you would have treated her differently, told her how much she meant to you. How much you would miss her, or even how sorry you were for the argument you'd had the night prior. You abstained from telling her and your parents until it was too late for them to stop you. You told them Friday that you would be leaving on Monday. It was a Sunday evening, and you had eleven hours to go until your life would change forever. There you sat, counting down the hours with your baby sister, a bottle stolen from your father's cabinet and the most wonderful sunset you'd ever seen in all of your years.

 

From your book bag you withdrew your favorite, the hard-covered Lays of Ancient Rome you'd paid an arm and a leg for when you were in high school. For once, you'd finally gone through with something that terrified you with preparation alone, never mind forcing yourself to do it when the time actually came. You flipped to the twenty-eighth verse of the lay of Horatius. "I'm going because I feel that there's an obligation to uphold. Not only to our family, but to our Federation," you tried to explain to her. Why in the seven hells were you such a screw-up? You tried to excuse your selfish desire to be some sort of a hero by lying to the person who loved you more than life, by cascading them with a bunch of regurgitated moral philosophical garbage that you yourself didn't quite believe in. You wanted to protect her, you wanted to shelter her because in all your vanity - her appraisal was the only one you'd ever cared for. You now believe that in doing so, you pushed away the only person to whom you were number one. You were a two to everyone but her, and now you're a two to everyone left. "I still don't understand why it needs to be -you-, why not someone else?"

 

Because I don't want it to be someone else, you thought. You were afraid of what she might think if you told her that you wanted to be a war hero, like the men and women in the text books. That in all your pride and vanity, you wanted someone to remember your name. "Because if everyone thought like that, then there would be no-one to stand up," you told her. It pained you almost physically to lie to her face. That was the first step you took down a path that she could no longer follow. A road filled with sins you would carry with you to your grave. You pressed your finger to the verse in question and read to her for the last time. "Then out spoke brave Horatius, the Captain of the gate; "For every man upon this Earth, death cometh soon or late. But how can a man die better, than facing fearful odds? For the ashes of his fathers, and the temples of his Gods.""

 

And so, it was with those words in your heart that you went to war. The last thing that you remember of your time with Maria was just before you stepped into the shuttle to leave for basic. The final exchange of words with someone who had not yet known you'd let them down, then and always. "What happens if it's you?" she asked. "What will you say then, if you ever see Death?"

 

"Not today," you promised her.

 

Not today.

 

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[cat danny 25]

 

[cat danny 25]

 

Cassette Contents;

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November 20th, 2290

The Last Time You Were All Together

Outskirts of Belfast, Northern Ireland, Terra

V

 

The first thing that you remember from that day was waking up in the car after a long drive to a song over the radio, one that you never thought you would forget. It caught your interest, and you weren't quite sure why. You took your PDA and inspected it to gather the time, only to be touched on the shoulder by Maria. "Smile!" she let out as she stuck a camera in your face. Smile. There's something you ought to do more. You did. You don't anymore, but you did quite frequently back then. For her; for no reason other than because she asked you to. You were on a family trip, the last time that the entirety of your immediate family were all together in one place. Before things got bad. Before the divorce, you and Maria went to Ireland with your parents. It wasn't the first time that you'd traveled, nor would it be your last. At that point, you never did stop to consider how far you might one day wander. Were you one day planning on going somewhere, or running away from it all? So many good questions that young you would never have stopped to consider, or think about.

 

It was your first time to Ireland. In your youth you had been to Geneva, the Capital of the Federation. You had also visited Aberdeen, the city that was rumored to have planted the seeds that would one day grow into what you knew as the Federation. Of course, that had all happened long before you were born. Another cog in the machine. You always had enjoyed trying new things, despite the fact that you would oft object because you were afraid. Oh, boy, did change ever frighten the hell out of you. It was sudden, it was brash and the thought of not being familiar with something that was to become the new norm terrified you. The trip was pleasant, the divorce was less-than. You never did see your mother often after that; it was her fault, after-all, that your family had been sheared. She drank, she became crass and bitter as she aged. Your parents were a good deal older than you. Had you when they were in their late thirties, Maria in their early forties. Your mother had grown into a bitter woman by the time she had reached sixty. She turned to prescription medicine which eventually killed her by the time you finished Boot. She cried the day you told her you were leaving, and now you wish you could take it all back.

 

Strange, you never knew.

 

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[cat danny 25]

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August 2nd, 2297

The First Time

New Cantrip, Orelli Province, Rebus Three.

VI

 

Specialist Parker fell to the floor clutching at his throat. The spalling that came out the back of his neck had grazed your arm as you took aim towards the assailant. One round, two rounds, click. You jammed. Then you panicked. Then you heard your assailant's magazine hit the floor as he went to reload. Making to do the only thing you knew how to; You ran straight for him, leaving your partner who was choking on his own blood to writhe around helplessly on the floor, wide-eyed and afraid. He was nineteen, and he was your assigned battle-buddy. It wasn't the first time that a friend of yours had been shot, been wounded. It was however, the first time that you blamed yourself. You were too trusting, too careless with the charismatic man who answered the door to the apartment you were checking. You cross-checked the young man with your rifle and pinned him to the wall. He screamed at you, you screamed back. His helmet smashed into yours and it made you dizzy. He threw you to the floor and got overtop of you, pinning the rifle to your neck. Your feet kicked helplessly as you began to mimic Parker's dying actions. Sissy. Your first time in CQC and you were about to get choked to death with your own bloody rifle. You bent your leg at the knee and wrapped your calf around his. Struggling, you took the knife from its sheath and cut the strap. He flinched as it jutted free, and you used that momentum to throw him to the side. Your knee wound up on his forearm and both of your own hands clenched the knife while his only free hand held you back.

 

Your blood boiled, your adrenaline shot through you as potent as battery acid. Oh, how you could feel your heart racing. It wouldn't be him that would kill you, you thought. It would be your own damn self, at that rate. You put your entire body weight into your arms, leaning forward and slowly sinking the blade closer and closer to the young man who was beneath you. "Stop it!" he hollered. "Please, God! Stop it! Let me go! They made me! They made me!" His pleads fell on deaf ears. Never before had you killed someone, nor had you seen a bug. You were garrisoned on Rebus Three for your first year of deployment, straight out of boot. You were practically a reserve trooper fighting against backwater separatists. The second the knife came loose from your sheath, something broke inside of you. To this day you swear by that fact.

 

That young man that lie beneath you, struggling and begging for his life. He was no older than Parker was at his time of death, no older than a boy. A child. You were a medic, but you were also a soldier. You had the power to save lives, and now you had the opportunity to take one away. His shirt began to stain red as the tip of your blade broke his skin. "Oh, fuck - stop!" he screamed again as his voice broke and cracked. Utterly terrified, petrified. You'd never saw fear like that in the eyes of another human being before, and it turned your stomach. Still, you carried on with what you'd set out to do. You knew well what was about to happen, what you were about to do. Not a word. The blade sunk through his chest slowly, painfully. You felt his strength had begun to seep away until finally, you heard his arm give out a sickening 'snap!' that made you wince, then a disgusting slicing noise followed once you broke through his chest down to the hilt. His head wrenched a few more times, twitching and spasming from the knife that had just punctured through into his lungs. His feet that kicked stood still and his breathing wheezed to a halt.

 

Panting and breathing heavily, you sat down in the hallway. To your left lay the dead boy whose life you'd just taken. To your right, lay Parker - whose eyes still stared lifelessly up at the ceiling, hands still clenched tightly to his neck. There was a monsoon of blood beneath him, and that's when for the first time in your life; It finally hit you. You were twenty six years old and you had finally come to know the feeling that was Sonder. The sudden realization of passersby having a life just as long, and complex as your own. The nameless young man, Specialist Parker. Both of them had lived a life with just as many twists and turns as any other person, yours included. Now they were gone. Just like that, their fire that had been long-burning was now extinguished, and it was never coming back.

 

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