Doomguard - The fractured Mirror (part1)

[EnglishmanInUkraine]

This is the short story I've had in my head for a couple of years. I re-write it every 6months. This is my latest version (part 1). Please tell me what you think.
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From their hidden point in the ceiling alcove, the three watched.
“You sure he is the one?” asked the first, in deep low-gothic.
“Yes. He is the one. He is perfect for the mission.”
“He *cough* is handsome enough, for a human *cough*. Far too skinny and weak though. You sure *cough* he has the gift?” Asked the third member of the group, in her feminine yet sickly voice.
“Yes.  I will make contact with him in an hour. Put the plan into action.”

“There Jessica, all fixed for you.” Douglas pulled his head out from under the machine, and flicked the main power system back online. “So I can come to your apartment at 1900?”
“Oh Douglas. I’m sorry. I just remembered I have plans tonight. But thanks for fixing the machine for me. I would have been in big trouble with the foreman if you hadn’t. You’re such a sweetie, and you have such a gift with machines. Maybe another day.”
Story of my life, thought Douglas on his way home. This was the fourth time he had fixed her machine in return for a promised date. And this was the fourth time she had changed her mind after. It felt like the twenty-fourth.
Walking through the same dark, dingy, narrow alleyways he always did on his way home, Douglas felt miserable. He was staring at feet and didn’t see the man before he ploughed straight into him. “Oh, sorry….oh”.
Douglas looked at the man in front of him. He was almost 8 foot tall, and his body was blocking the entire alleyway. He had a loose fitting garment failing to hide power armour underneath. In the darkness it was impossible to tell colours or markings.
“Hello” spoke the stranger, in a strange, “manner of fact” type of way. “You are Douglas Bartamus Mehler. You are 24 terra-cycles old and a level twelve maintenance clerk at refinery centre gamma nineteen.”
Douglas nodded, speechless from shock.
“Douglas, I need you to leave everything behind and follow me at once. I need you to help save the universe”

The shocked technician stared blankly at the stranger. “You’re a space marine, aren’t you?”
“Yes I am. I’m glad you are observant”.
“Which chapter are you from?”
“That’s not important right now. I’m not here as a member of my legion. I’m here as a leader of a very select team of specialists. We need you for our next mission.”
 

Douglas looked down at himself. He wasn’t strong, or particularly smart. “Why me?”
The Astartes put his hand gently on Douglas’s shoulder. “You are a techno-savant. You have a natural affinity with machinery. We need that gift. There is a machine that is slowly destroying the universe. My team and I will take you to that machine. We want you to shut it down safely.”
Douglas thought for a moment. Then he looked hard at the space marine.
“I don’t have a choice…do I?”
“Not really. It kinda has to be you. Put it down to the Emperor’s divine guidance if you are a religious man.  Put it down to fate or sheer dumb luck if you are not.”
“Will you kill me if I say no?”
“I really need a YES from you, so I wouldn’t kill you. I would kill all your friends and family in alphabetical order until you said yes. However, I really don’t want it to get that far.”
Douglas’s mind raced to the gothic alphabet, trying to figure out how far down the list Jessica would be. Early middle. For a moment Douglas wasn’t sure if he wanted to save or kill her. Probably save, he thought to himself unconvincingly.
 

“I see” said Douglas. “I guess we are leaving then. One final thing -you know all about me, but haven’t even told me your name.”
The stranger smiled.

“Call me Alpharius.”
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A few hours later, and Douglas found himself on a medium size cargo-vessel. Douglas had been confined to one small room, although Alpharius (currently using the pseudonym “Jeffery Bernardov”) seemed to have free reign of the ship.
The inside of the room was full of interesting and exotic items, apparently all ready for sale. Many seemed to be pre-heresy artifacts or forbidden Xenos tech. There was a statue in the centre, gleaming with gold and jewels. It was roughly man sized and shaped, but with hard edges everywhere, instead of any curved marks. It was like a mathematician had designed a human, and given the design to a goldsmith rather then a biologist.

Alpharius / Jeffery Bernardov returned to the room.
“Douglas, you are doing really well. The mission is going great so far, so it is time for me to let you know a bit more detail.” Douglas nodded.

Alpharius chucked Douglas a small object. A six-sided box with strange symbols and circuitry inlayed onto it. After resting the cube in his hands for a minute, Douglas instinctively turned a few symbols and pressed on places of circuitry until it lit up in a blue glow.
“Good! That is your gift at work. This is a piece of Dark Eldar technology. Their technology runs by siphoning small amounts of power from the fabric of the reality. They also have other, stranger forms of technology. For example, they once had a mirror that could be used as a doorway to another dimension.”
Douglas murmured something affirmative, as to show he understood the concept, but not how it would exist in reality.
“The mirror was broken” the marine continued “and it’s shards scattered across all reality. However, one Archon (a Dark Eldar leader) has managed to collect two shards. Still with me?”
Douglas nodded in his normal, slightly dumb way while trying to picture a mirror that is really a door.

“Tell me…say you take two normal mirrors and place them facing each other. Then you look into the mirror faces. What do you see??”
Douglas thought. “You see thousands of reflections, trailing off from each other.”

There was a small bump from the ship, and the sound of a far off warning siren.
 
“Yes”-replied Apharius. “An infinite number of reflections. Now, if you had a mirror that reflected reality…”
“You would get infinite copies of the reality!” Exclaimed Douglas.
“Exactly! Dark Eldar technology works off the power of one universe. If their machine could tap into the power of infinite realities, well, I’m sure you understand the power that would unleash. It would rip our own reality apart. You understand why we must stop it.”
“Why do you need me? Why not just blow the machine up?”

The sound of raised voices and gunfire started in the background.

“An excellent question, and normally I approve of explosives. However, if this machine has been activated, then blowing it up while connected to infinite numbers of realities…might be a bad thing. Better to turn it off before destroying it. Don’t you agree?”
“OK, I get that. But don’t the Dark Eldar live in some pocket, shadow world? How are we meant to get there?”
“A clever man you are. That little box you activated is a beacon, telling all those evil space pirates exactly where to find us. We will now be captured and sold as slaves in Commorragh, their dark city. Now please excuse me, but it sounds like they have already started slaughtering the crew. I need to go and fail to fight them off. You should be safe in here. For the moment at least.”

 

[deathspectersgt7]

Very Interesting.