I just started a Cyberpunk Fanfic called "Cyberpunk: Whispers of the Blackwall" that is currently at 4 chapters, with a similar word length to TCTS, maintaining 3500-6000 words per chapter. I will keep it Patreon exclusive for the time being until somewhere around chapter 10-15.
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This Royal Navy has expanded and welcomes the following courageous soul: Technosapien996.
As your Fleet Admiral, I, Crimson_Reapr, welcome you, honor your commitment, and thank you for your service. May our power reach beyond the edges of charted space, and may ruin fall upon all who stand against humanity's strength.
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POV: 3rd Person (Kaelen Strathmore)
The sun of Oakhaven was a brilliant, warm amber, casting long, golden shadows across the sprawling fields of the colony. It was a world that smelled of turning soil, crushed ozone from the atmospheric terraformers working double time to turn more land fertile, and the sweet tang of native fruit orchards.
Ten-year-old Kaelen Strathmore was currently breathless, his lungs burning with the kind of exertion that only came from pure, unadulterated childhood joy. He was sprinting through the tall, rust-colored grass, his legs pumping as he chased after his twin brother, Kaesius.
"You're too slow, Kae!" Kaesius laughed, looking back over his shoulder. Though they were the exact same age, born just four minutes earlier, Kaesius was taller and already showing the broad shoulders that their father possessed. "If you can't catch me on an open field, how are you ever going to catch a hare?"
"I'm going to tackle you into the mud!" Kaelen shouted back, a wide grin plastered across his dirt-smudged face. He pushed himself harder, the wind whipping through his dark hair.
For a moment, the universe was perfect. There were no corporations, no IUC mandates, no fleets or cold wars. There was just the colony, the harvest, and his family. But dreams, especially memories disguised as dreams, never allow the light to linger. The transition was violent and instantaneous. The warm amber sun was suddenly blotted out, not by clouds, but by shadows that defied the natural order.
A sound ripped through the sky, a deafening, mechanical screech that vibrated in the marrow of Kaelen's bones. It was the sound of atmospheric friction being torn apart by crude thrusters.
Kaesius stopped dead in his tracks, his laughter dying in his throat. Kaelen bumped into him, knocking them both to the dirt, but neither complained. They simply looked up.
Descending through the clouds were ships. They weren't the sleek, polished silver vessels of the IUC merchant marine that occasionally visited to trade. These ships were jagged, asymmetrical monstrosities of welded scrap, dark iron, and exposed engine manifolds. They bled black smoke and vented raw plasma into the sky. Painted on the hull of the largest vessel, descending like a rusted spearhead toward the center of their town, was a crude emblem: a metallic bird of prey with a blood-red talon.
The Iron Talon Syndicate.
"Kaelen! Kaesius!"
The voice of their father called out. He was running toward them from the edge of the orchards, his face pale, his eyes wide with a terror Kaelen had never seen before. In his hands, he held a colonial militia rifle, a weapon meant for deterring local predators, not repelling an orbital raid.
"Get to the house!" their father screamed, grabbing both boys by the collars of their shirts and physically hurling them toward the homestead. "Run! Don't look back!"
But the sky was already raining fire.
The pirate vessels didn't bother looking for landing pads. They crashed down into the fields, crushing the crops and sending shockwaves of displaced dirt and fire rolling across the plains. Boarding ramps slammed open before the ships had even fully settled, and the raiders poured out.
They were a nightmare made flesh and metal. Pirates heavily augmented with cheap, unregulated cybernetics, wired jaws, hydraulic limbs bolted directly onto rotting flesh, optical sensors glowing a sickly green. They moved like a swarm of locusts, firing wildly into the colonial structures.
The air, seconds ago filled with the smell of fruit, instantly turned to a choking miasma of burning plasma, vaporized blood, and terrified screams.
Kaelen stumbled, his knees scraping against the dirt, but Kaesius hauled him up, dragging him toward the porch of their home. Their mother was already there, the screen door thrown open, her face a mask of absolute horror as she reached out for her sons.
"Inside! Get inside the storm cellar!" she cried, pulling them by the arms, her fingers digging painfully into Kaelen's skin.
A thunderous explosion rocked the settlement as one of the pirate ships fired a railgun into the town's central grain silo. The shockwave shattered the windows of their home, showering them in glass. Kaelen fell, his hands covering his ears as the high-pitched ring of the blast drowned out the screaming.
Through the ringing, Kaelen looked back toward the field.
His father had stopped at the edge of the property line. He had dropped to one knee, raising the rifle, placing himself between his family and the advancing horde of scavengers. He fired, the sharp *crack-crack-crack* of the rifle echoing uselessly against the overwhelming roar of the invasion. He managed to drop one pirate, the round punching through the man's unarmored chest, but it was like throwing a pebble at a tidal wave.
A massive pirate, towering over seven feet tall with a heavy rotary cannon grafted in place of his right arm, locked his gaze onto Kaelen's father.
"Dad! Move!" Kaesius screamed, trying to pull away from their mother's grip to run back to the field.
The pirate didn't even break his stride. The rotary cannon spun with a sickening mechanical whine.
The barrage of superheated rounds tore through the wooden fence, the dirt, and finally, their father. He didn't have a heroic final stand, didn't even get the chance to say any last words. The kinetic force of the heavy rounds lifted the strong, broad-shouldered man entirely off the ground, tearing through his torso and turning his chest into a hollow, smoking ruin before throwing him backward into the dirt like a discarded ragdoll.
"NO!" their mother shrieked, a sound so raw and guttural it barely sounded human.
Kaelen couldn't scream. His voice was paralyzed, his breath trapped in his chest. He stared at the smoking crater where his father's chest had been, the unblinking, lifeless eyes staring up at the smoke-filled sky.
Before their mother could drag them into the house, heavy, metallic footsteps thudded onto the wooden porch.
A hand, comprised entirely of rusted hydraulic pistons and jagged metal fingers, clamped down on their mother's hair, yanking her violently backward. She slammed into the deck, crying out in pain.
Two more pirates vaulted over the railing. One of them, a gaunt man with a face half-burned, grabbed Kaesius by the throat, pinning the struggling ten-year-old boy to the wall of the house.
The other grabbed Kaelen. The grip was impossibly strong, bruising his arms instantly. Kaelen kicked, bit, and thrashed, but the pirate simply laughed, letting out a wet, rattling sound before slamming Kaelen face-first into the dirt of the yard. He then planted a heavy, steel-toed boot squarely on his back, pinning him to the ground.
"Look at what we got here," the massive pirate with the rotary cannon rumbled, stepping up to the porch, looking down at Kaelen's mother as she writhed under the hydraulic grip of her captor. "A pretty little pioneer."
Pinned to the dirt, the smell of his father's burning flesh filling his nostrils, young Kaelen was forced to turn his head and watch as the monsters descended on his mother.
The pirate with the half-burned face hauled Kaelen's mother to her knees on the metal planks of the porch. She was bleeding from a cut on her forehead, her dress torn from the struggle, but there was no submission in her eyes. There was only the fierce, terrifying desperation of a mother who knew her children were watching.
"Make 'em watch," the massive pirate with the rotary cannon grunted, his mechanical jaw clicking with a sickening metallic rhythm. "Let the whelps see what happens when dirt-farmers resist the Talon."
The pirate holding Kaesius slammed the boy's head against the siding of the house, forcing his eyes toward the center of the porch. The boot on Kaelen's back pressed down harder, grinding his ribs into the dirt, but Kaelen didn't need to be forced. He couldn't look away. He was paralyzed by a terror so absolute it felt like ice in his veins.
Contrary to the pirate's hopes, his mother didn't beg. As the burned pirate leaned in close, mocking her with a rotten, metal-toothed grin, she lunged. With a feral cry, she clamped her teeth down hard on the exposed, unarmored pirate's throat, tearing through the flesh and biting deep into the meat beneath.
The pirate shrieked, letting out a high, bubbling sound. He then staggered backward, dropping her. He clawed at his neck, dark blood spraying across the porch.
For a fraction of a second, Kaelen felt a surge of hope. But the syndicate didn't raid worlds through fairness.
The massive pirate didn't even flinch. He simply raised his massive, hydraulic left arm, a blade snapping out from the forearm gauntlet with a lethal hiss. Before Kaelen's mother could scramble to her feet, the pirate pushed the blade forward. It was a single, brutal, and terrifyingly efficient strike that stabbed her in the heart.
Kaelen didn't hear a sound. It was as if his mind, completely overloaded by the trauma, simply shut off his hearing. He watched his mother fall, the life extinguished from her eyes before she even hit the wood. The pirate kicked her lifeless body off the side of the porch, tossing her away like discarded refuse. She landed in the dirt, just a few feet from where Kaelen lay pinned.
Kaesius screamed, a raw, throat-tearing sound that finally broke through the static in Kaelen's ears. The other boy thrashed wildly, tears streaming down his face, kicking and clawing at the pirate holding him, but the man just laughed, backhanding Kaesius so hard the boy slumped sideways, dazed and bleeding from the mouth.
"Grab the other one," the massive pirate ordered, wiping a speck of blood from his metal jaw. "They both got good shoulders. They'll fetch a fine price in the cobalt mines."
Two pirates dragged Kaesius forward by his arms, his boots scraping through the dirt. Kaesius looked over at Kaelen, his green eyes wide with terror, silently pleading for a rescue that neither of their parents could provide.
Looking at his twin brother, and then at the lifeless eyes of his mother in the dirt beside him, something inside ten-year-old Kaelen Strathmore fractured.
The terror evaporated, flash-boiled into a rage so pure and dense it felt like a physical weight in his chest. His vision narrowed, the edges of the world turning a dark, bloody crimson. The frantic, panicked heartbeat in his ears smoothed out into a slow, rhythmic drum.
The pirate standing on Kaelen's back shifted his weight to jeer at Kaesius, give Kaelen a momentary lapse in pressure, a fraction of an inch of leeway. And that was all Kaelen needed.
He twisted with a sudden, vicious ferocity, bringing his teeth down on the exposed ankle joint of the pirate's boot. He didn't bite leather; he bit through the cheap mesh and straight into the flesh beneath, locking his jaw like a rabid dog.
The pirate howled in surprise and pain, stumbling backward and lifting his boot.
Kaelen scrambled forward, his small hands digging into the blood-soaked dirt. His fingers brushed against cold, heavy metal. It was a pistol, dropped by the pirate he had just bitten.
Kaelen gripped the handle. It was far too large for a ten-year-old's hands, heavy and awkward, but the adrenaline surging through his small frame gave him a terrifying, hysterical strength. He rolled onto his back, raising the weapon with both hands.
The pirate he had bitten reached for his holstered rifle, his face twisted in anger. "You little piece of-"
*BANG*
The recoil threw Kaelen's arms back, nearly dislocating his small shoulders, but the heavy slug caught the pirate dead in the center of his unarmored face mask. The man's head snapped back, and he collapsed into the dirt like a puppet with its strings cut.
Silence fell over the yard for a microsecond. Even the pirates holding Kaesius stopped, staring in absolute shock at the ten-year-old boy sitting in the dirt with a smoking heavy pistol.
Kaelen didn't hesitate. He swung the heavy weapon toward the pirates holding his brother. His small finger squeezed the heavy trigger again.
*BANG*
The shot hit the pirate on the left in the collarbone, shattering the bone and sending the man spinning to the ground with a scream of agony. The sudden chaos and the spray of blood caused the second pirate to flinch, his grip on Kaesius loosening for just a fraction of a second.
Kaesius didn't waste it. He drove his elbow backward into the pirate's groin, broke free, and sprinted toward Kaelen.
Kaelen shifted his aim to the massive pirate leader, pulling the trigger a third time.
*Click*
He had only fired twice, but the chamber was already empty.
The massive pirate stared at Kaelen, his optical sensor whirring as it focused on the boy. "Well, I'll be damned," the pirate rumbled, raising his rotary cannon. "The pup's got teeth."
A single, localized flash erupted from another pirate standing near the porch.
It hit Kaelen just below the ribs on his right side. The force of it threw him backward into the dirt. It felt like he had been struck by a sledgehammer made of pure heat. He gasped, staring up at the smoke-choked amber sky, his vision blurring. He could feel the wet, terrifying warmth spreading across his stomach.
"Kaelen!" Kaesius slid into the dirt beside him, his hands frantically pressing down on the smoking, cauterized wound in Kaelen's gut. Kaesius was sobbing, his tears mixing with the soot and blood on Kaelen's shirt. "Don't close your eyes! Kae, look at me! Don't close your eyes!"
"Fuck it. Leave 'em both," the massive pirate's voice echoed, sounding like it was coming from underwater. He aimed the rotary cannon at the two boys bleeding in the dirt. "Little bastards are more trouble than they're worth. The IUC should be arriving in a few minutes. We gotta burn out of the system before they arrive."
Kaelen looked up at his twin. 'I'm sorry, Kae,' Kaelen thought, his eyelids growing impossibly heavy. 'I tried.'
He closed his eyes, waiting for the dark to take him.
But the dark didn't come. Instead, the sky tore open.
It wasn't the crude, screeching entry of the pirate vessels. It was a unified, deafening roar of precision-engineered atmospheric thrusters that shook the very bedrock of the colony.
Kaelen forced his eyes open just a fraction.
Descending through the smoke, sleek and terrifyingly beautiful, were dropships painted in the stark blue and white of the Imperial Union of Celestine. They came in fast, hovering perfectly above the fields. Before they even touched down, the side doors blew open.
A hail of disciplined, high-yield fire rained down from the heavens. The pirate who had shot Kaelen evaporated into a mist of superheated gore. The massive pirate leader roared, spinning his rotary cannon toward the sky, but a concentrated spray from an IUC gunship cut him cleanly in half, his mechanical top half crashing onto the porch.
Heavy, armored boots hit the dirt as IUC Marines, clad in full tactical exoskeletons, fanned out with terrifying, synchronized efficiency. They walked forward, executing the remaining, panicked pirates with single, methodical shots.
Through the chaos, a massive figure in blue armor knelt beside Kaelen. A gloved hand pressed a bio-gel patch hard against his gut, replacing Kaesius's trembling hands.
"We got survivors here!" a distorted voice barked through a helmet speaker. "Child, severe trauma! Get a med-evac down here now!"
Kaelen looked up at the featureless visor of the Marine. He could feel Kaesius gripping his left hand with bone-crushing force, refusing to be pulled away by the other Marines securing the perimeter. The pain finally caught up to Kaelen, a searing, white-hot agony that consumed the world.
He closed his eyes.
Kaelen Strathmore woke with a violent, gasping intake of air.
He shot upward, his head narrowly missing the metal bunk above him. He was drenched in a cold, icy sweat, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird trying to escape his chest. His right hand was instinctively clamped over his abdomen, right where the jagged, puckered scar of a point-blank plasma burn permanently marred his skin.
He sat there in the dark, his breathing ragged, his eyes wide as he stared at the utilitarian grey bulkhead of the barracks. The smell of burning flesh and ozone slowly faded, replaced by the sterile, recycled air of the IUC boot camp.
He wasn't ten years old anymore. He was eighteen.
Kaelen swung his legs over the side of the cot, his bare feet hitting the cold metal deck plating. He rested his elbows on his knees, burying his face in his large, calloused hands, waiting for the adrenaline to recede.
"Same one?" A quiet voice, rough with sleep, cut through the silence of the darkened room.
Kaelen lifted his head and looked across the narrow aisle between the bunks. Sitting up on the edge of his own cot was Kaesius.
They were maternal twins, born mere minutes apart, but the genetic lottery had made sure they didn't share a face. The years had shaped them both, and they seemed to have traded places. Kaesius had been the broad-shouldered one when they were children, but now it was Kaelen who was built like a dreadnought. He was broad-shouldered, thick-necked, with dark, unruly hair and a jawline that looked like it could break stone. He truly resembled his father. Kaesius, on the other hand, was leaner, with lighter, ash-brown hair and sharper, aristocratic features, resembling his mother. But despite the physical differences, they shared the exact same piercing, emerald-green eyes. Right now, Kaesius's eyes were filled with the same haunted exhaustion that Kaelen felt in his bones.
"Yeah," Kaelen grunted, his voice a low, gravelly rumble. He ran a hand through his sweat-drenched hair. "Same one."
Kaesius didn't offer any empty platitudes. He didn't tell Kaelen it was just a dream, because they both knew it wasn't. It was a memory burned into their synapses. Kaesius just nodded slowly, leaning forward and resting his forearms on his knees, the moonlight from the high barrack windows catching the silver glint of his dog tags.
"I can still smell the smoke sometimes," Kaesius murmured, looking down at his hands. The hands that had desperately tried to hold Kaelen's intestines inside his body eight years ago.
Kaelen stood up, his massive frame filling the cramped space. He walked over to the small, polished metal mirror above the communal sink. He gripped the edges of the basin, the metal groaning under his strength, and looked at his reflection.
The eyes staring back at him weren't the innocent eyes of a colonial farm boy. They were the eyes of a soldier who had forged his soul in the fires of Oakhaven. He looked at Kaesius in the mirror's reflection. They had survived together. They had bled together. And they had enlisted together.
"They're still out there, Kae," Kaelen whispered, the vow echoing in the quiet barracks. "The Iron Talon."
Kaesius stood up, stepping up beside his brother. He looked into the mirror, two distinctly different faces bound by a single, unbreakable thread of trauma and purpose.
"I know," Kaesius said softly, his voice hardening into cold steel. "And when we find them, Kaelen... we're going to burn them all."
"Yeah," Kaelen whispered. "But I doubt we'll be able to do anything as Marines."
"What are you trying to say?" Kaesius asked, shifting forward.
"The Marines will never give us the chance to chase those fuckers down," Kaelen whispered. "But the Navy, on the other hand..."
"Again with the Navy," Kaesius sighed. "You already know I have no aptitude for piloting a ship as you do."
"You let me worry about that," Kaelen said, a smirk growing on his face. "Just let me worry about that."
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Book 2 has wrapped up at Chapter 50, which is a short 13,400 words, and Book 3 has hit the ground running with new chapters! That means that you can read up to 28 Advanced Chapters on my Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/cw/Crimson_Reapr
But listen closely now. I'm currently writing Chapter 17, so that number will naturally increase to 30 sometime today.
Also, since spring break just began, I'll be trying to shoot for about 4-5 chapters a week, maybe even more, on Patreon.
Crimson_Reapr is the name, and writing Sci-fi is the way.