yes, i HAVE "written" a book. It's composed of short stories from random characters all over the world about Excelsior. Either from the eyes of a 17 year old in Egypt during Operation Cleansing or a marine in canada after the first MHR assault. First of all, not all the concepts in these stories will be in the finished product. for example, the MHR, or the aliens, have been completely scrapped. It was cool to have aliens, but the ideas for the machines also spilled into the ideas for the MHR, so i scrapped the aliens. like the tripods. OKAY, o here is one of the stories, one of my favorites. PLEASE C&C (whatever it is). PS: this was written a long time ago, so my grammar might not be at it's best/ but for now, it's my only finished product. If you guys want to see more, just tell me and I'll be glad to upload another Chapter of EC.
THE MOSQUE
MARCH 4, 2009
I looked out to the heavens, but saw nothing. I asked God for forgiveness, but I am forsaken. I am an evil sinner, but innocent at the same time. It was our fault of creating them, and we have to deal with them. We were their masters, they were our slaves. We were happy, and so were they. But then I have to remember why I fight. I fight for the sake of humanity. I fight for my family, so that my children will not have to be scared whenever they walk the streets. I fight because I am human. And humans never lose, especially to this “scum” called the confederacy. I just hope I am right.
I am on the field right now, overlooking the once-great city of Nairobi, its buildings all painted a wonderful red, and a rich maroon. Our building was once a Muslim arts auditorium, whose name is mixed up with all the other info. What’s left of it is a beige-yellow color, untouched by the sun. Its golden-like rings around the edges sparkle with the heat coming from all the mechanics at work. At the back, where I am standing, is a fountain, (again rimmed with gold or a similar material, I don’t care) and it’s still on, nobody has had the mind to turn it off. There is an abandoned supply truck jammed into the parking lot, half blown by a stray rocket.
I blink, and see the remains of the classic “dome” shape in front of me, and realize that this is the only building that still remains under UN control. All the other buildings nearby have been demolished to give us a better line of sight. Like we need it anyways, we’ll die anyways. The buildings still standing are the ones that either had a reason not to go down, or survived the lazy explosive skills of the road crew. People still live in them, but came to the temple for food and worship three times a day. Until the machines came, then the fighting began.
I remember my great battle as if it were yesterday, maybe it was yesterday, I don’t care anymore. I can retell everything that happened, the memories of the carnage etched into my brain.
Me and two other guys, Private Jack Pilla was on my right, a good friend of mine, and Private Calvin Anderson, whose brother, Private Stephen Anderson, had gone off on a stealth operation and was never heard of again. I felt kind of bad for him, but since he was the newbie I wasn’t supposed to give a damn. He just sat on the edge of the mosque, smoking his weed. Basically, the UN no longer cared about whether its soldiers did illegal drugs or not. I remember looking at the city, at how the sun reflected off the panels that were once buildings. Then I heard rumbling. Everybody on the west flank had definitely heard it, and was on their way. Their armies marched towards us in the horizon. There was another building that was left standing, far into the horizon, the Sarit Centre, and the only way to get to us was through them. The Sarit Centre had fallen.
“Oh shit, shit, shit, this is not good man, oh shit,” Jack continued like this until I nudged him in the shoulder with my elbow, hard. He nodded and stood up straight, the sergeant was coming our way, chin-checking my fellow men. He walked up to Jack first, looked at his battle armor, and then pointed at his finger at the laser pointer on Jack’s battle rifle. “Turn that thing off, this shit isn’t going to end anytime soon, so save some juice for the evening. I radioed Charlie, and he said that we should expect some more men by the morning, I would say 5:30 in the morning.” Said the sergeant with his scratchy voice, him being a man probably in his mid-fifties, who was known as a true hero, being the last survivor of the attack on the Mexican border, where thousands of men were brutally killed.
Jack re-adjusted his rifle until the little red dot on the ground disappeared. Then the sergeant came to me. He just looked at my shoulder pads, then my chest plate, and then backed off. He put his arm on my shoulder and shook my shoulder-pad for a minute, and then moved on. The people started cramming into the main gate, and there was an entire fanfare of noise and horror as hundreds tried to get behind the military personnel and into the field, where tanks lay in standby. The sergeant didn’t hurry at all, and was finished checking up on Calvin, when he fell over. Blood started to spray out of the back of his head as he lay on the ground, motionless. It took us a while to process what had just happened, and then I cried out; “SNIPERS!”
With that said, the battle began. The machines poured into the horizon like the water coming out of a broken dam. The foot soldiers came first, and lunging at speeds of a motorcycle, they got here pretty fast. Jack and Calvin both pointed in unison and fired at the oncoming horde of enemies. Hundreds of rifles fired as the ranks of the machines whittled away. By this time, most of the civilians had already made their way onto the field and into safety, and the gate was barred shut. The few machines that managed to survive the flood of bullets however, jumped onto the gate and vaulted over it with amazing skill. They would land on the other side, their bodies riddled with bullets. Then the enemy started returning fire. Millions of lead pellets flew through the air as our men was butchered alive by the enemy. I knew we couldn’t stay up on the roof for long without getting hit, so we crawled behind one of the two domes that were about ten meters away. When we got there, there was a staircase behind it, leading to the main hall, which was exactly where we wanted to go. From here I could stand, and walked down to the bottom of the staircase.
There lay a grey, bolted door in front of me. I knocked once, and the door was unbarred and opened. “Get the hell in, before the droids get here!” Shouted the voice behind the door, tense with terror, I couldn’t blame the poor man. Me and the two other men scrambled inside to the main hall, and saw its elegance. The walls we a lazy beige, with solid wood carved into rectangles along the pillars. There computers and guns everywhere, as the soldiers geared up for their last stand. As I walked on however, there was yet another huge hall, this one was more of an observatory though. The roof was an upwards slant of two giant sheets of glass. Without the pillars in this room, I could see crowds of people flocking around a statue of Muhammad. They were praising and kissing it with all their passion, their might… then it exploded. Fire spewed out of the glass and shattered it, and then slammed into the crowd, and consumed dozens of people in seconds.
As the smoke cleared out, I saw the remains of what were once people. I was frozen in position as I looked at the walls, now a combination of black and red. The gunfire fire outside intensified and I forced myself to move along with Jack and Calvin, who were running towards one of the main doors, opposite the glass corridor. “What are you guys doing? The field is over there!” I shouted, pointing at the door facing the field.
The door that they were running towards was jam-packed with “Wolverines”, a light 4-by-4 version of an APC. The battery-like radio was dragged out of the back and carried inside. The soldier operating it had a huge map of Nairobi in one hand, and the receiver in the other. “Just hold on Kilo, tell me your location, and calm down for a minute” said the marine speaking over the receiver.
“We just got off Waiyaki way, and are heading towards James Gichuru road, but the machines are too many! We are being ambushed! Charlie split off and is now driving down Msongari road, but we lost contact, we need a higher-powered radio if we want to contact- OH MY GOD!” and then the radio went static. The marine next to me went frantic and started fiddling with it, but to no avail. He then picked up the radio and went back to the truck. The driver started revving up the engine of the wolverine, but then it exploded. A pillar of fire, similar to the one that killed the crowd in the glass room, had descended on the wolverine just as it started moving. “OH SHIT! A DRAGON! GET DOWN! GET DOOOOOOOOWWWWWNNN!” echoed throughout the building as I fell back in terror. A massive, steaming, black mechanic tentacle smashed into the ground, and two more followed suite. I forced myself to walk towards the flaming wolverine, its occupants now carbonized. I just got out of the building in time to see the monster. It was a tripod, with a central battery attached to the top. It had no other weapons than the flamethrower, which emitted so much heat even in standby that it began to burn me. There was a hollow tube from where the fire would shoot out, and it was lighting up again, preparing for another shot. A spiral of fire spewed out of its muzzle as the flames spiraled at a platoon of marines. There were no survivors.
I jogged backwards and then ran to the original exit I was heading for, and Calvin and Jack were waiting for me there. As soon as I got out of the building, I heard the sound of a high-pitched screech coming from behind me. I spun, and saw two “dragons”, or tripods firing liquid hell through the huge cavity left from the glass room. I turned my head and ran towards the field. There was a slight ramp leading from the parking lot to the field, one that led down, and marines were already on it. I leaped off the edge, fell to the grass, rolled over, and got back up. I kept sprinting for my life when I realized that Jack was gone, so was Calvin too. I stopped running and jogged back to the ramp, and saw Jack on the floor, his right leg drenched in blood. Calvin was trying to treat it with his first-aid kit, but there was just too much blood. “Hey James, get over here! Jack is bleeding badly, and I don’t know how to use this shit!” he said. I was walking over there, him waving at me, when his head popped. His brains splattered on the field harmlessly as his throat made a low, gurgling noise. His body fidgeted for a while, and twitched, before it flopped on the ground like a wet blanket.
“DAMN! Don’t these things ever give up?” came another frantic scream from behind me, before his esophagus burst into a dark red spray. He fell onto the field and shook madly, making incomprehensible noises. His wind-pipe was completely destroyed, so the only noise he could make was a high-pitched squeal as his life spilled out on his lap. I couldn’t watch, so I turned to Jack. I lifted his body with a single stroke, and he was on my shoulders in seconds. The man who was shot in the neck kept screaming, and screaming, and screaming… until an explosion blew the dirt and grass in front of me into the air, and I couldn’t see. A loud ringing noise blared in my ears, and then I saw the light. I saw hope.
On the other side, I could see silhouettes of tanks, about five of them. The one in the front fired its cannon, and it was responded to by a loud blast, and I turned around. Hundreds of soldiers were running from the mosque, covered in blood and ash, as the dragon that was hit by the tank wobbled, ignited, and fell. It fell onto the mosque, and exploded into a massive fireball, consuming thousands of androids. More tanks fired upon them, as marines began sliding down the slope and firing at the machines. The machines kept pressing on, but were massacred by the huge Vulcan machineguns equipped onto the tanks. Jets screamed overhead as they dropped pin-point shells right on top of the dragons, igniting more. Artillery bombardments fired napalm shells into the machine masses, drastically cutting down their numbers.
I dropped Jack, his dead body sprawling on the ground, and fell. I kneeled down, and thanked God. I thanked him for his mercy, and for his grace. The clouds began assembling together, and rain started falling. First in little droplets, then in entire buckets as our men stood, silent, and the gunfire stopped. It took us a while to realize what had just happened as we stood in the cold rain. First it was a whisper, then a murmur, then a shout, then a cheer. Men stood in the streets, screaming as loud as they could, thrusting their arms into the air. I was cheering too, and then I embraced what had just happened.
Victory.
Subject: The Mosque (EXCELSIOR CHRONICLES bit) 
Sun Sep 20, 2009 1:41 pm
