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  1.  

    Short notice, but a friend tipped me off. I might do it, possibly, if I have time and if I have an idea good enough that I can actually write well.

    Contest Link

    •  
      CommentAuthorVirgil
    • CommentTimeSep 4th 2009 edited
     

    Is this legit?

    And it is quite short notice, but I had just started something I meant to be small just last night. We’ll see..

  2.  

    ...

    And you think I’ll have the experience to know, based on the billions of short story contests I’ve been involved in?

    Honestly, I don’t even know how all of this works.

    •  
      CommentAuthorVirgil
    • CommentTimeSep 4th 2009
     

    Seems okay, sponsors look real and such.

    •  
      CommentAuthorVirgil
    • CommentTimeSep 4th 2009
     

    It would also appear that its for Canadians only..

  3.  

    ...

    Really?

    •  
      CommentAuthorVirgil
    • CommentTimeSep 4th 2009
     

    Well, when filling out the location form, its only Canadian provinces. So.. logically.. I suppose you could ask to submit from the States.

    Are there any other sites similar to this one?

  4.  
    Hahaha. I'm taking a Fiction Writing class at Uni. And we're writing short stories. If I get mine spiffed up and nice enough, I may as well enter in something I scrounge up. Wish me luck because I resoundly stink at short story writing.
    •  
      CommentAuthorRandomX2
    • CommentTimeSep 4th 2009
     

    wishes RikkiTikkiTavi luck

    Hey great, that means I can enter :)

  5.  

    The website address is likewise Canadian. I have a leftover short story from a CW class I took in the spring, although none of the judges would get it since it’s all an elaborate internet joke. What’s the prize, anyway?

    •  
      CommentAuthorVirgil
    • CommentTimeSep 4th 2009
     

    Moneh.

  6.  

    Hmm, I could pose as a Canadian. I lived in an adjacent state for several years and met a family of them once. Curious creatures, those Canadians are. Were there any content restrictions?

    •  
      CommentAuthorVirgil
    • CommentTimeSep 4th 2009
     

    Click on the link.

  7.  

    Well, I didn’t see anything about inappropriate content, but I think the story’s over 2k words anyway, so sadface.

    •  
      CommentAuthorAdamPottle
    • CommentTimeSep 5th 2009
     
    Entered!
    •  
      CommentAuthorVirgil
    • CommentTimeSep 5th 2009
     

    Nice. Good luck!

    i assume you’re in canada?

  8.  

    Good luck! Post your story here if you can, I’d like to see it.

    •  
      CommentAuthorAdamPottle
    • CommentTimeSep 6th 2009
     
    will do! And thanks, eh?
    •  
      CommentAuthorAdamPottle
    • CommentTimeSep 17th 2009
     
    It looks like I came in third! Woooo
  9.  

    Wow, congrats!

    •  
      CommentAuthorAdamPottle
    • CommentTimeSep 17th 2009
     
    I guess I should post it.
  10.  

    Please do!

    •  
      CommentAuthorAdamPottle
    • CommentTimeSep 17th 2009
     
    “Brace.” Haas’ voice was muffled by his bulky helmet. The sky shimmered and burnt as we fell through the troposphere. Pulling up hard, the shuttle’s thrusters screamed. I clenched my harness, white-knuckled. Every descent, every single time. A tracer round slammed up past us, and another, a fading arc of red contrails. We bucked as one punched into our portside wing.

    Haas was no slouch. He killed the engines and we dropped, wounded. His nimble fingers deployed a bright ripple of shredded aluminium- chaff- from under our backswept wings. A dot appeared on our scanner, six miles up. It faltered as it passed through our expanding chaff cloud and veered to the northeast, looping out in a great clockwise arc. Haas reignited our engines and our fall slowed. Another dot, three miles below and flying straight up.

    We roared out across the smoky and yellowed fields, still ten miles down, and looped back in on the first craft. Haas locked onto the ship, barely visible, and a long burst of cannon fire connected seconds later. A silent explosion.

    “One.”

    The second had corrected its course and swung lazily towards us, four miles away. Tracers shot out from our wing-mounts and he was gone. Not shot down- gone.

    “He’s good,” Haas whispered on our crackling com-link. “I don’t know what he did- he went through our shots- mirror shielding, maybe, I didn’t think they had that yet,” The pilot was muttering just to keep me calm. He was an incredible pilot, but we were a moderate-speed cargo plane. I closed my eyes and leaned forward.

    The fighter shimmered into back into existence, only a quarter mile behind us. Four rockets lazily detached from his plane. A pair of decoys slid out across our slipstream from under our wings and two missiles impacted, victims of Haas’ quick thinking. Rapid-response light-calibre guns shredded a third, and the fourth corkscrewed, screaming, towards the east- a dud. The fighter curved outwards and for a second I could see the glint of his helmet through the armoured glass. He flickered and was gone again, his missiles spent.

    “Mirror-shield,” murmured Haas. He was impressed. Difficult to maintain and notoriously expensive, mirror shielding was hardly seen anymore. But he was gone.

    We slid even lower, the wrinkled, yellow fields blurring below us. A crack of radio contact splintered the grinding silence. I started, fearing more combat.

    Our computers exchanged short explosions of code with the ground crews, as we slowed enough for the landscape to be seen in detail, such little detail there was. Amongst endless dusty tracts of land, smoking aircraft wreckage sat sullen and immobile for mile after mile. A final pulse of crackling code and we were cleared for landing.

    I hobbled out onto the tarmac, clutching my stomach. Dusty grey ground crews hauled forth fuel hoses to replenish the plane’s diminished stocks. Haas hopped out behind me, unfastening his helmet. He trotted over to the ground crew and began talking shop, leaving me alone to find my patient in the dry heat.

    I walked between slender anti-aircraft guns at rest and crusted with kill-markings; their crews idling. Two men were playing cards. Three were drinking. Curiously, no one was visible besides those five men and the grounds crew behind me.

    Past the guns were serrated rows of field hospitals and messes. The former were mostly empty. This was a conflict of the sky, and minimal soldiery was required. The mess tents had more ample attendance: it appeared a concert of sorts was happening further in. Dusted men sat and ate steaming bowls of something; they paid no attention to me.

    A blunt signpost had been erected past the mess tents. An arrow pointed out across the field to my left. It warned of land mines. An ominous plank of wood marked the direction to the FRONT, capitalized. I prudently chose the opposite direction, which was unmarked. There was still little activity to be seen. I continued through the shimmering heat.

    Past a second airstrip (damaged), a set of barracks, another huddle of mess tents, a third airstrip (full), a field of tanks. After an hour of journeying the building I was searching for appeared. It was still and bone-white, the only permanent structure I had seen in the camp. Long and windowless it stood in the grim prairie heat, guarded by a lone sentry sitting under a blue umbrella in the courtyard, reading. His rifle was three tables over, without an ammunition clip. He lazily met my eyes and made an almost imperceptible tilt of his head towards the building. I nodded gratefully at not being considered a security risk and entered through a pair of sliding doors. It was cool and sterile. A meek potted plant sat in front of a desk, and a bespectacled man in green scrubs looked up at me and frowned.

    “I’m here for the colonel,” I said.

    The man looked nonplussed and frowned at me through his needlessly worn surgical mask, which was camouflage-printed.

    I realized that would get me nowhere. Rooting around in my coat pocket for proof of identification that in all probability didn't exist or matter outside this particular field hospital, covered in dust, I tried to smile at the man. He was, still frowning under his mask.

    “I’m Doctor Martin,” I said helpfully.

    The man behind the desk narrowed his eyes. Consulting a clipboard, he gestured down a hallway to the left. “Blue line, twelfth door,” he muttered. He turned back to his paperwork.

    I turned down the hallway, following the scraped blue line on the floor. It forked then merged again. A poster urged me to ‘please wash my hands!’

    The blue line continued without interruption for another thirty feet, before turning left where it suddenly stopped. I glanced through a window at the single occupied bed within. A bandaged and still form lay within. I carefully pushed open the door and picked my way across the tiles. He awoke.

    “Sir, I’m Doctor Martin of the Medical Airlift Corps. Your condition is- grave and you will be removed to a safer location until you recover. There are safer treatment facilities elsewhere.”

    The colonel made a vaguely affirmative grunt. He was not a large man, and had been seriously wounded in the abdomen, chest and throat during an artillery misfire two days ago.

    “We will be transporting you by ambulance to our plane within the hour.”

    The colonel nodded silently, wincing. “I’ll be just outside.” I bowed out of the room and closed the door softly behind me, heading to the front desk to radio Haas.

    A pair of attendants both dressed in matching blue scrubs and surgical masks manoeuvred the colonel’s gurney out of the Medical Annex over to the waiting ambulance. He looked frayed and resigned to whatever fate awaited him. I couldn’t blame the man- I had performed five officer extractions over two days without showering in three and looked worse for wear than him.

    I secured the colonel in the ambulance with no complications. The ambulance rumbled along the dirt roads, a train of dust rising behind us. The ride was bumpy and uneventful. The orderlies manoeuvred him up our ramp and once more he was secured without protest. We sealed the hatch and rose up, engines thrumming. Manoeuvres like the ones that had got us to the surface, alive, would now be impossible. The wounded officer was too fragile for that sort of combat. If we were attacked now we would rely totally on our escorts.

    We rose higher and suddenly we were no longer just rising but moving. We shot out across the outskirts of the sullen encampment, over the dry fields. Our two minders, light-bodied things with pointed noses and forward-swept wings drew themselves up beside us, only a half-mile away to either side.

    “Incoming for you, Martin.”

    I felt a hiss and crackle in my ear. “Doctor Martin. After the colonel is safe and sound, you have six hours to freshen up.” I slumped in my seat. “A general has been injured in a tank accident on the southern front. I’ll give Lieutenant Haas the coordinates.”

    We slid into the eternal empty sky and it was infinite.
  11.  

    Awesome. :)

    •  
      CommentAuthorAdamPottle
    • CommentTimeSep 18th 2009
     
    thank ya!