A Quiet Drink - 1000 word challenge

 

Well we are back again with another reflection on some fanfiction. After my last piece I found a 1000 word challenge. This one had two main rules. It had to be one thousand words, and had to be themed around the prompt 'Reclaim'. Once again we are in the Warhammer 40,000 setting. 

I want to say that I have a serious issue when it comes to writing. If you ask for a ham sandwich, I am going to give you an entire pig farm. I grew up reading Tolkien and H P Lovecraft. Thus I tend to go overboard in descriptions, and details. So to be frank I found the idea of writing one thousand words to be the creative writing equivalent of a haiku. The piece I ended up designing went for more boots on the ground level of the Warhammer 40,000 setting. Not the grand sweeping tales of armies fighting over worlds. Instead I focused on a conflict we all relate to. Just wanting a quiet place to drink. The protagonist was an interesting one for me. I usually have ideas come to me fully formed. But with this there were elements that changed as I wrote it. The biggest being my choice to change the protagonist to a woman. I had come off reading 'Wanted: Dead' by Mike Brooks. So I had Escher on the mind.

Also I have been a fan of the 'Gaunt's Ghosts' series by Dan Abnett, having had the books carry me through a number of night shift dinner breaks. I had in particular been a fan of the Character Tona Criid.

 So I found myself channeling those characters with one distinct difference. I did not want the fully fledged character. To use the Dungeons and Dragons analogy I did not want the level 20 character, instead I wanted to create the level 1 character. Many of the things I write have two functions. Firstly, to create an enjoyable read. Secondly, to create a story that I can come back to in the future. A jump off point for future pieces. My gamesroom is filled with these sort of writings. With this preamble done, I present the following fiction. 

 

'A Quiet Drink'

"How in the hell did I get into this? The thought was not new, and nor was it the first time that it had come into Harik’s mind. She stepped out into the recently cleared factorum floor, machinery and debris had been pushed aside. Morro sat waving a hand missing two fingers from the cab of the lifter that had cleared the space. Chemlights burned overhead and bathed the rusted flooring and the dozens of grubby faces that leered in at her, and shouted encouragement. It was a twisted gallery made up of his fellow miners. They were uniformed only in the sense they bore the tell-tale signs of a harsh life spent producing the raw materials needed to feed the Imperium’s warmachine. Faces dotted with haphazard augmentics to replace eyes, arms, and other limbs lost in the dangerous environment that was the mine. By comparison the blues and greys of the Imperial navy uniforms seemed truly out of place.

“Roight lass?” came the question from Harik’s side and pulled her back to the current moment. Kyrin the older foreman limped beside her. He was hunched from years of crawling through cramped spaces, and in the dim lighting Harik notice a purplish tinge creeping up her old friend’s neck signalling some new illness from chem exposure. She also noted the growths over one eye like ridges beneath the skin.
“Yeah I’m right mate” was the best she could manage. The next few moments passed in a dream like blur. There Harik stood opposite her opponent. The dour veteran that had started this whole bloody mess in the first place. How the sumping hell did an argument over a place to drink get this far? A simple argument about navy types drinking in the miner’s bar had resulted in a scuffle and now this arranged parody of a duel. The prize was simple, miners win the navy leaves. That the Promethium Pit would ever rate as a place worthy of such vicious contest was insane. However Harik could see that this was more than a simple scrap, the crowd here was made up of many types from the lowliest workers right up to Astra Militarum, and even a couple of the gangers that fought for a living in the underhive. They looked encouragingly at Harik. This fight was about taking back something from the Navy. Kyrin had assured her she was the best choice as she was the fittest miner they had. She bore none of the injuries or illnesses that plagued her comrades.

Challengers and seconds stepped into the circle of debris. In the dim light the challenger looked even more intimidating. He was stripped to the waist and his chest and arms were a mix of scars and naval tattoos that Harik remembered the navyman’s brags that they recorded the length of his service history. The long chain tattoos she knew denoted his many years of service. He was shaved close to the scalp, and his face was still bruised from the bar stool that Harik had hit him with in the earlier fight. How could she not? His bragging had started it.
“Roight, simple rules you pair” Kyrin wheezed, talking as though he was an expert in such matters. “No weapons, no cheatin’, first to be knocked out or give up loses” he concluded with an official tone. All parties nodded their heads and took their places. Harik doubted the navy’s assurances.

*********************************************************************************

Pain flared through her ribs as the veteran caught Harik with a hook to left side, she parried a jab and threw her head forward to butt the navy fighter in the nose. A warm splash told her she had broken the brute’s nose. Blood splattered across her forehead. The crowd let out a sympathetic groan before erupting into a chorus of cheers and whistles. The fighters staggered away from one another. Harik took the chance to gulp in some air. The fight had been savage. Her head pounded from a lucky uppercut, and her ribs screamed in protest from the assault she had just taken. The navy veteran’s left eye was swollen and deep purple. She saw that a guild noble was impassively viewing the spectacle. What the hell are you here for? Ok, get smart you little hiverat Harik scolded herself. Use his left side and catch him blind. The navy man bellowed and rushed her. Harik dodged to the left and snapped a kick to the man’s knee. There was a sickening crunch and the man collapsed with a howl. The crowd echoed it. Harik pounced on his back. She slammed his head into the rusted metal flooring. Once, twice, three times. Each punctuated with a sickening wet thud. Then came the word.
“Yield” Croaked the beaten man. The crowd started the jeer and hurl abuse, and in one case a bottle, at the navy as they collected their defeated comrade. The crowd was threatening to turn violent. Harik was about to call for calm when a nearby hatch exploded and black clad Arbites surged in. One discharged a scatter gun and others rushed forward beating miners to the ground. Having had enough punishment Harik dropped to her knees immediately, and put up her hands. An Arbites stood beside her.
“Target acquired” he spoke into a vox bead. Harik looked at him in surprise. Then a voice cut through the chaos.
“No sergeant, you caught the wrong one” said the guild noble as he strode through the Arbites and held aloft a strange icon of an “I” with a skull set into its centre.
“Inquisitor” said the sergeant snapping to attention. The inquisitor looked directly at Harik.
“Where is the xenos agent known as Kyrin?” his voice calm with a serenity but Harik felt a deep rage beneath it.
“We all just came here to get out bar back” Harik replied in an exasperated tone. The Inquisitor merely stared. He leaned forward.
“It calls itself Kyrin” he repeated slowly." 

The Reflection

This piece was a challenge for me and I sadly was not successful in this attempt. I received the following feedback on this entry. 

"Thank you again for being a part of our recent call for submissions. As per your request, we've assembled some feedback from our judging team. We wanted to give you some honest candor in the hopes that it'll give you food-for-thought:

- You've conveyed the idea of this ragtag group of miners quite well! They definitely come across as a gruff but loyal group of people.

- Some grammatical cleaning would really benefit the piece. Especially within the first paragraph, there are sentences that are somewhat confusing. E.g. the second and fourth sentences are somewhat choppy and seem as though several sentences may have been re-written or spliced together.

- There's also a bit of contextual confusion from the end of the first paragraph, when the "blues and greys of the Imperial navy uniforms" are addressed. The confusion comes from how the presence of the navy men isn't addressed until the third paragraph, making the comparison a little jarring.

- Your overall narrative is good. The main problem arises from the little contextual and grammatical problems listed above, which keep the reader from becoming fully immersed."

I know that I became hung up on the word count and began chopping and changing. In an effort to avoid going over that word limit. I missed the good old university days of the plus or minus ten percent rules. So this is what I believe led to the over cutting of writing, and the subsequent grammatical issues that were identified in the feedback. This is something that I openly admit is a dead set nail on the head assessment. Something I would hope to fix when working in smaller word count pieces in the future. After all Black Library only allows five hundred word limits for their pitches. So learning to be economic in my writing. 

I was quite proud of how I portrayed the miners. I was inspired by the 'Eisenhorn' series, and the large amounts of Genestealer Cult fluff around at the time. I wanted that grim portrayal that the Imperium takes a toll on all its people and not just those in its armed forces. 

I will admit my aim with the line regarding the Imperial uniforms was meant to be a way to make the readers ask 'wait what are they doing there?' Sadly I suppose it did not read that way. I did not want to waste word count on a 'show don't tell'. But perhaps in reflection I should have, and I should also have reorganised the paragraphs to not leave the explanation so late in the piece. 

Either way it was a fun challenge and I am happy for the experience it provided both in its completion and reflection.