Deleted scene
It’s common when writing to toss phrases and scenes into the wastepaper basket as you find they don’t serve the greater purpose of the piece. Below is one such scene from Incursion which, after a restructuring of the first quarter of the book, wasn’t doing the job it needed to.
Throughout Incursion are scattered vignettes. They represent terrible things that happen at least once every ten years somewhere in our world, and usually far more. The people and places and other specifics change, but our inhumanity to each other repeats.
The vignettes give me the opportunity to show the reader how Darren is seen as he injects himself into these situations. Even to victims he can be terrifying.
The scene that follows is one such vignette. It isn’t final draft quality, and also doesn’t hit as hard as the ones still in the book, but I hope you find it interesting.
The fundamental difference between the Darren portrayed here, and the Darren in the book, is that the Darren in the book would not give a second warning.
The north wall of the cabin exploded inward and, as the room filled with dust, the captain felt himself thrown back against the far end of the structure, his feet striking the table, scattering the beer bottles and cards and chips onto the floor. Though the three other men coughed and spluttered—they had not moved save to fall to the floor—he found himself in a pocket of clean air. He heard footsteps, slow and steady. From the thickening haze came a voice.
« I told you what would happen. »
He laughed. « You. You again. You don’t scare me. You’re just a nuisance. »
« Are you that unwise? » said the voice. The haze was almost entirely opaque now, but he saw a shadow move within it. His men started to shout, a pistol fired, then there was a series of thuds and cracks, ending when one man hit the wall behind him and collapsed into a bundle of limbs just to his right. Then silence.
« What are you going to do to me? » asked the captain, a smirk forming. « Kill me? You don’t kill. I know you don’t kill. You don’t scare me. »
« There are people in the world who care for nothing but violence. They will murder and rape and torture, just like you have, and are consumed by it. Fortunately, most people care about so much else. »
The captain felt himself snapped through the haze and out through the hole in the wall. His left shoulder crunched as it struck a rock. He tried to push himself over onto his right side but, as he pressed down with his left hand, he felt a sickening pop followed by shooting pain down the entire length of the limb. He tucked and rolled and used his good arm to push himself up. He looked back at the cabin.
The haze inside had almost cleared and within he saw only three men and miscellanea. There was no-one else inside. He started as he realised it was deathly quiet around him; this camp that housed two hundred was without any human noise. Even the generators were silent, the only sound an intermittent pinging he couldn’t place.
Surrounding him were the remainder of his men, slumped over. He saw one of his sergeants and ran to him, shook him with his good hand, but though he breathed he remained unconscious.
The voice came again, as if from everywhere at once. « There is no help for you now. » He looked around but could see no sign of the speaker.
More pings. He walked out into the clearing near the main gate. Twenty metres or so above the ground things were collecting, drawn up towards a point. Ammunition. Weapons. Radios. Vehicles. His own sidearm came out of its holster and joined the mass, and his knife followed. All the tools of war that the base held now hung as a loose sphere in the air above it.
There was a horrible scream of metal noise, then silence again as the sphere contracted to a fraction of its size and became a new sun in the sky made of molten metal. The light that near blinded him, and he shielded his eyes.
The captain laughed. « So you destroy our equipment, » he shouted, « but we can always get more. You won’t kill us, so you will never win. »
« Do you think that this is all I am here to do? »
He felt something slide up his chest. The medal, on a chain around his neck, lifted up and out of his shirt.
His mother had given it to him when he was fourteen, when he took a job one town over. A Saint Christopher medal. « Something to keep you safe on your travels, » she’d said. A sign of her superstition, but dear to him. One of a handful of things he still had to remind him of her, after she took her own journey into the earth.
He gripped the medal in front of his throat. « You animal! »
The ground shook. « Animal? I am much worse than that. »
He felt the tug on the medal build until the chain began to cut into his neck, until the clasp gave. Inside his fist, the medal started to move. As it slid out, he grabbed for the chain with his left hand, tried not to vomit from the agony in his shoulder. The chain ran across his right palm, and he held it tighter as he yelled, as he screamed.
The chain snapped, and the medal disappeared into the molten ball above.
He fell to his knees weeping. Drops of blood on the ground before him and beyond those came another man’s black boots.
« You soldiers can play your games all you like, but if you so much as breathe on another innocent person, I will destroy everything you have that connects you back to her. »
He looked up at the man, silhouetted against the red and yellow glow that had been his arsenal.
« It’s only your body I won’t kill, captain. »