Saturday, July 20, 2002
Oh yes, I forgot- Gran Turismo: Concept came out yesterday. Got to make some money so I can buy it.
posted by Ian Pattinson at 9:00 PM link
Well, I was typing something really interesting on Thursday afternoon when the Easy internet servers went down. And then yesterday it was pouring down, so I didn't get into town. Those are my excuses, anyway.
A bit of Seeds for you-
The Watney Slender Wasp was a fine mountain aeroplane, maneouvrable enough to pitch down the valleys and far tougher than its slender silhouette suggested. The trimotor they were escorting, on the other hand, was a fat ugly beast of a bird. Reed kept glancing back to check it was still lumbering up behind them. "Kenan's gap in thirty counts." his navigator/ gunner told him. Jay looked nervous, it was her first combat mission.
As they approached the turn she began counting down. "Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, now." Reed banked hard right, flattened and throttled up for the climb. "Horse is still with us, Jay reassured him.
They joined the road at the head of the valley. It clung to the cliff face, curving away from them. "Horse here. We are heading for our drop." the cargo plane announced.
"Affirmative Horse. We're going to cause some chaos."
They couldn't see the target yet, but no doubt the target could hear them. "Guns live, rockets live, bombs ready." Jay pre-empted the command.
The valley straightened and ahead of them was the target. The convoy had positioned itself perfectly to be attacked. Most of the vehicles were still in a short covered section built to protect the road from the avalanches that swept down the gully above. Outside the tunnel two vehicles jostled for position, an armoured track and a softskin eight wheeler with anti air gun in its bed.
"Two and three with me, four, five, six around and take the rear. Let's seal this at each end." The rear three planes peeled off. "You have the plane." Reed told Jay. He kept his hands close to the controls, ready to take them back, but he had to trust her. The plane nosed up slightly as Jay checked the targettting scope. A few more counts and the anit air gun would come to bear. Were they closing fast enough to cut them off?
"Rockets away." Jay announced. Three projectiles jumped from the left wing, two from the right. They were little more than fireworks with shaped charges on the end, and sometimes they didn't work.
The nose dipped and Jay let off a two count burst from the guns. The bullets reached the eight wheeler ahead of the rockets, bouncing off the anti air's armour and decapitating a loader. Gravity hadd taken hold of the rockets and brought their trajectory down toward the gun. Two shaped chargespunched through the armour and destroyed the mechanism beyond. One lifted the gun off its mount and the final two found an ammunition crate. The explosion split the eight wheeler, sending the rear bouncing down the mountain, and rocked the armoured track.
The plane nosed up, as six smoke trails passed below. They flew over the track into the mouth of the tunnel, which lit up yellow as they found a fuel truck.
"Bombs gone." Jay announced. The plane jumped up as she pulled back on the controls. There were mirrors mounted in the lower frames of the cockpit's glazing. As Reed took back control, she checked on the bombs' trajectories. "Dropping metal eggs" her instructor had called it. She had always preferred "Shitting death from above." Thankfully there wasn't a poetry section to the bombardiers exams. Both bombs collapsed the tunnel roof.
At the far end of the tunnel anti air guns had been brought to bear. The convoy was longer than they had thought. Four, five and six had dropped their bombs and were coming back up the valley three abreast to deliver a volley of rockets and bullets.
Reed brought the plane around in time to see a ripple of explosions along the road. Both anti airs, a number of soft skins and another fuel tanker took hits. Infantry spilled out of carriers to find cover. Not a vehicle was undamaged. One eight wheeler had driven over the edge in the confusion and was sliding sideways down the cliff wall.
"Horse here. Drop done." came the message over the radio. That had been the primary mission, the chance to carry out this hit and run was just an added benefit.
"Okay. Flight, form on me and let's go home."
posted by Ian Pattinson at 8:53 PM link
Wednesday, July 17, 2002
I'm not going to put much up today, I don't have the time. I'm off to see Dogtown and Z Boys at the Cornerhouse. If I catch it on matinee, it's cheaper.
posted by Ian Pattinson at 3:01 PM link
Tuesday, July 16, 2002
And they wonder why there's a Black Economy.
I'm available, ready and willing to work, and I'm putting time in each day trying to find work. But whilst I'm not working, I might as well write and work on this site, stuff which may- one day- earn me some money. So, filling out the forms, I admitted I was registered self employed (I may not be making anything, but this is costing money and I want to be able to claim it back) and that whilst I wasn't employed I would be putting around 25 hours a week into various projects. I was being honest, and possibly looking for Brownie points, but whilst I'm unemployed I'm not allowed to admit to anything which might make me money- no matter how far off in the future- without risking the withdrawal of benefits. And if I do make any money and tell them about it, then they will generously let me keep the first five pounds and dock the rest from my benefit. Five pounds. That's slightly more than an hour and a half's work at minimum wage, less than half an hour at my last wage. The temptation to take cash in hand and still sign is very high. How about removing it by allowing income up to half your benefit before docking anything. It would cost more up front, but you'd recoup it in the money coming back into the legitimate economy (death and taxes) and steering people away from the more dubious employers, who, surely, are the ones more likely to have poor safety procedures etc.
Five pounds. It's pathetic.
I've been busy scribbling Seeds stuff, I'll post some more tomorrow. As you can tell, it's very different to other stuff I've done. Just how different remains to be seen. I'm also going to start filling the gaps in The Eliza Effect. I just need to remind myself of all the sub chapter titles.
posted by Ian Pattinson at 3:05 PM link
Monday, July 15, 2002
No writing yesterday, but I did get some layouts done.
Today, I'm beginning my journey around the free treasures of Manchester, starting with the Museum of Science and Industry.
posted by Ian Pattinson at 11:09 AM link
Sunday, July 14, 2002
I'm trying to write every day, now I have all this free time, and post it the next. This is a chunk from my other ongoing project, the untitled 'Seeds project' story-
The silver wing reflected the sky, blending with the perfect blue at the edges. Harren could only tell where his aeroplane ended by spotting the wingtip aerial. He rotated the turret and gazed down the expanse of wing on the other side. It was all wing, this impossibility of a flyer, pushed through the upper atmosphere by six pairs of contra rotating propellers. So ugly on the ground, up here it was a slice of light high above the occupied territories.
Harren unhooked his feet from the stirrups and lowered himself into the main cabin. Jenss, the bearded, miserable top gunner nodded at him as he commented, "You have one of the finest views in the aerial military up there."
"And none of the Northern Countries can fly anything high enough for me to shoot at." Jenss didn't return to his post, merely reached up and locked the turret into its aerodynamic rest position.
There was so much space in the main cabin of the flying wing. Harren had flown his first combat missions in the single engined, two seat 'Stumps' which still saw service with the Defector Brigades. They were solid, slow and stable, but the engines died too easily and there was no space to move in the cabin. Each of the wing's bomb bays could hold the fuselage of a Stumpy and the crew of eight , it could comfortably hold twelve in gun platform mode, could move around the pressurised cabin.
Harren plugged his remote talker into a panel above the navigator's position. "About time to come arfound Mister Karn."
"Coming around to.... three five two?"
The navigator nodded. "Three five two." Harren unplugged and walked forward as the wing began to bank.
"I can't understand why we fly these missions. It would better suit the cause to go over the damn mountains and take the fight to what's left of the Northen Countries. Or we could block the Arril pass for good."
"Good time, Karn, good time. They believe there is a whole army scattered over the plains and in the forests. It is hoped we can find some of it and rain down fire upon them."
The black tower of smoke which pinpointed the factory city of Reff came into view and the wing stabilised. Light glinted off the great river which lazily wound its way from Reff, having just as lazily sneaked out of the forested mountains of the unexplored far North.
"You have no need to lecture me. I am merely impatient and posing a rhetor....." Karn craned forward as he trailled off, straing at something far above.
Harren strained for a moment before he spotted them. Twin trails of white vapour, running almost vertical, inclined ever so slightly toward the far side of the mountains. The trails started and ended far above the wing's upper limits, though the bottoms were coming ever lower. Harren plugged his RT in. "Navigator come forward."
The navigator spotted the vapour trails without requiring a prompt. He did some quick calculations on a wipe clean map. "They shall fall well short of Reff."
"Really? What about now?" Karn asked, pointing. The trajectories were shallower.
"If they keep changing direction at that rate, maybe the great oil store, possibly Reff itself."
"Comms. Flash traffic to Reff aerial defence. Tell them to expect a an attack. Gunnery, see if you can get me those things in the focals."
The screen above and to the left of Harren made alow Punnnn sound as it turned on. In gun platform mode the optics and electronic imaging device under the nose turret fed images for the pilot and gunner to target the recoilless cannons slung below the bomb bays. The image resolved and zoomed in. At maximum magnification the picture was fuzzy, but Harren could swear he was looking at his own wing, only sleeker- as if it had folded up at great speed.
"The Northerners are experimenting with rockets to send their artillery further." Karn repeated an officers' club rumour. The trajectories were now almost flat, these were no dumb shells.
The objects, wing or bomb, were almost horizontal as they crossed Reff. Every aerial defence gun and rocket - and there were a great many- loosed several salvos. The air over the polluted city became darker still. The slave workers would have the threat of a shrapnel rain to add to the noxious fumes they breathed.
Both flying things entered the cloud, they could hardly avoid it. "No thing could survive that." opined Karn. The viewer zoomed out, just in time to see two objects, each trailing flame and smoke, burst out of the cloud. One shot high and to the South, the other low toward the ocean. "Rockets." Karn repeated as they disappeared from view faster than anything had the right to travel.
posted by Ian Pattinson at 12:50 PM link
