Flash piece

Essays & Creative Writing Fiction and Drama
1

The hatch of the shuttle-pod hissed open. Adam Hawkshaw descended the ramp and observed a robot and buggy awaiting him. Beyond the spaceport, the spires and domes of the colony where the murders had occurred were visible. A sudden blast of steam from a nearby vent startled him.
The gravitational field on New America was E+.35 but Hawkshaw felt heavier as he walked to the groundcar parked beside a row of cargo pallets. After synchronising local time with the utilibot, he realised he was late for his appointment with the Governor, John Pastor.
The landscape beyond the speeding groundcar was alien and forbidding, the sky an ominous shade of purple-blue. The robot had a fleck of rust on its right arm and the car’s interior was shabby with dust. Strange structures of undefined purpose began to appear as the vehicle engaged a traffic beam and surged towards the tallest building.

Hawkshaw paused for a final glance at the colony of New America before entering the shuttle-pod. It had been an exhausting month in a taxing environment before the killer had been arrested.
Just moments earlier, Hawkshaw had watched Matthew Cloud, shackled and sedated, unrepentant triple murderer, hustled into the cargo space of the pod. He would be an unpleasant presence during the three-month return to Earth before Hawkshaw could sign him over for judicial torture and execution.
Cloud was intelligent and wily, borderline psychopathic, Hawkshaw reflected as he buckled himself into his seat. As a prisoner with nothing to lose, he would bear watching over the coming weeks aboard ship.

2

Cool stuff. Love how much of the world is conveyed by the selected details. Qiuckly sucked in.

3

Thanks Marc. I’m digging the prose board here.

4

With a name like Matthew Cloud, he has to be innocent/framed, one of the good guys. Ok, he might be a borderline psychopath, but I wouldn’t hold that against him. Hawkshaw isn’t gonna have an easy flight home :+1:
Good write, Mark.

5

‘Borderline psychopaths’ make great characters because they carry conflict within themselves, whereas a full-on psycho is generally a cut-out character with no depth or capacity for change/surprise. which can capture the readers imagination,

All good stories have an element of conflict or tension, it’s what moves the tale forward. A story without conflict is like vanilla ice-cream.

I liked the little details, like the patch of rust in the arm of the robot. Like a soldier with a patched uniform it gives it just a little bit more of an identity.

I was also intrigued by the medieval concept of 'judicial torture and execution. Some attitudes never die, despite time and distance.

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Thanks Colm and Gyppo for generous comments. I like that form, like a quick-fix for a prose-write craving. I guess SF is interesting because one can just make up everything.