"The 3rd anniversary of the Eastern Syris Massacre."

[Theplahunter]

A small backstory following my character, Hunter Robinson, in an investigation over the Eastern Syris Massacre. Any feedback and comments are appriciated, please read the disclaimer at the end of the story. Edit: This is also another explanation of my character gone, he's "On active duty." for the time being until i can return.

Video interview

Lt. Captain Hunter Robinson, age 26, Commander of the B.E.N Crown: Frigate.

Eastern Syris refugee incident.

1/8/2454

Hunter rolled the cigar in his hand, looking between the four high ranking naval officials, he stated quite plainly “You have the floor, Commodore Williams.” the commodore shuffled some papers around and cleared his throat, staring down at the Younger Lt. Captain from his position “Ah… Yes, Lt. Captain Hunter Robinson, you are here for the investigation of Rear Admiral Anthony Phillips and Major George Mann for the orders of the…” he adjusted his spectacles and glanced down at the papers before him, continuing with his statement “The ordered murder of Seven hundred thousand Eastern Syris Refugees, and the utter destruction of the Western Syris city of Hanniban Lah.”

Hunter leaned forward on his elbows, half closing his eyes and looking over his papers. He nibbled on his thumb knuckle and glanced up at the four officers “Yes Commodore, i am aware of the accusations.” he placed his hands flat on the table and made eye contact with the Commodore, stating calmly “And i believe these actions were necessary to protect the fourth Armored Division and Seventh infantry Division. About six hundred thousand of those refugees had been attacking those divisions and had them surrounded in the city, the refugees had killed about forty thousand British ground forces and were armed with 120 A12 122mm tank destroyers and variating small arms.”

The officers glanced between each other and Major General Monroe spoke up “Yes, but what about the other hundred thousand? And was the utter destruction of Hanniban Lah required to save those men?” Robinson shrugged and reached over to the bronze ashtray on the table, snuffing his cigar and leaving it tipped over “Well, Sir, i dont have the ability to make that call. I was only following orders, what i do know is that Rear Admiral Phillips was fed information from Major George Mann and that information may have been Inflamed. I personally do not believe Six hundred thousand refugees could get enough small arms to arm everybody, and a more accurate number would be Seventy five thousand, from the weapons recovered and counted.”

Before the officers could say anything however, he said more “I’m not proud of what i did, sir. And i do not believe the Rear admiral or Major are proud as well, all that matters to me is that those men were saved and were able to go home to their families-” he was cut off by the commodore “Yes, but the refugees had families as well! And they deserve as much as those troops to see who they love.” He nodded slowly, looking down at the table and rubbing the bridge of his nose, Hunter looked up at the officer, a war torn man, he exhaled and spoke clearly

“Sir… With all due respect, i’ve felt this war for two years. The Syris Separation war has been going on too long and this should have been expected, i dont feel any better firing those rounds into that city, and i know my ship did the majority of the damage. It is the second biggest ship in the fleet and i cant sleep at night knowing i might have hit some child with a 170mm HE round, i dont know one man that could sleep at night with that, and i know: It was justified if the Major and Rear Admiral was able to order total destruction of a city.” a silence swept over the room after this statement… Finally the Commodore spoke up “Dismissed Lt. Captain.”

NSS Aurora

1/8/2457

Warden Hunter Robinson

off duty

“Turns out, the found the Major and Rear admiral Innocent, but the next year George was shot by a radicalist at the memorial of Hanniban Lah… Ironic, huh? The Rear Admiral is still serving today, he’s Vice Admiral Anthony Phillips now. I’m still serving in the reserves of course, the BEN Sapien is just used for patrols under Commander Steele, but i get command when i get called for active duty which’ll be…” he rolled up his chess checkered button up shirt and checked his watch “Four hours from now.” he stood up and picked up a duffle bag “I gotta get to the terminal, mates. Uh… Tell Nia to keep an eye on Sterling, okay?” he walked off, headed to his transport shuttle.

DISCLAIMER

some of this may contradict canon and is not considered fully canon in any ways unless validated by any lore staff specifically, story is subject to change, the story will be updated with more experiences when deemed appropriate.

[Susan]

I think the rank you're looking for is 'lieutenant commander'. Lieutenant captain isn't a thing.

[SgtSammac]

Sorry to nitpick further, but the average Lt.Commander (Commander being a Lesser rank than Captain, on average under modern day equivalents) is between 30 and 40 years of Age in the US Navy, taking into account education and training and the average time served between promotions.

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

Hello! I read this fully, and since you asked for consultation I decided to write up a review, and offer some insights. I'll offer mechanical first, since while it may seem pedantic - a lot of niggling structural problems that can back a piece.

Dialogue

Normally with dialogue you have a break with every spoken sentence, to make it clear to the reader that a new person is speaking, and not have them be part of the paragraph itself. Think of it as starting a new paragraph with every speaker.

"This is an example," said Example, "showing the breaks in sentences."

"You're literally Hitler," his best friend responded.

"You can still work the emotional or reactionary state of the character like this," Example resplied while rolling his cigar with practiced ease, "it can make it a bit easier to include character actions in with dialogue -"

"HITLER!" his friend screamed, interrupting him and showing how interruption can also be portrayed.

Proofreading

Always be sure to proof read what you write before you submit it anywhere. Even if you're like me and compulsively edit after you post, you should be sure that all your i's are capitalized and punctuation is put in place. cant = can't, i've = I've, etc.

Exposition

This one is tricky, so I won't dwell on it. Try to be careful with dialogue that the characters aren't just talking exposition at each other. Having the story explained frank-faced at the reader by two chatting characters can be a bit boring.

THE THEMES

While your writing shows potential, I have a few issues with the thematic part of the story. Lieutenant Captain is the first, but I'll assume this is based on a national navy of something other than the US or UK. Second is the justification of the characters for the massacre - I don't feel any sense of justification. I mean, 700,000 thinking, feeling people were killed. That's a large number. There's some tactical issues as well - like how, if the forces wereinside the city, they escaped its destruction when being completely surrounded in the tightly packed nature of urban warfare.

Regardless, I feel that you might have been trying a bit too hard to have this grand, devastating event. Mass-slaughter is a hard topic to put across, because the numbers of lives involved make it a statistic and thus harder to wrap our heads around, but even with this there's a total disconnect. The number is just... Too large, and the people involved are too robotic. Their decisions feel like they were mandated by plot points, not by the personalities or psychologies of the characters themselves.

I feel that if you work on this, and practice your writing more, you could improve with another piece.

Edited January 7, 2015 by Marlon Phoenix

[Tenenza]

Says the arrivals bomber~

But, horribleness of our peoples aside, I'm on the fence here. There are ships. I like ships. Also the word commodore came up, and that's a good thing. But also, the ships, while I could call them space-ships, weren't space enough to be spaceships (one word). So, really, the whole thing fell apart for me because there wasn't enough space-e-ness. I mean, I guess I could fill in the blanks about the space stuffs to make it space-e-er, but then the themes end up way different because suddenly it's about logistics and how you would field mechs in an armored battalion in an urban setting. Or like, wondering if an HE round fired from a rail gun would actually be any more effective then conventional cannons. And then like, I considering where the drones start to play a role. Then it circles back to Kinetic warheads...

Ahem.

Um.

Yeah, the word, commodore came up. Great start.

[Skull132]

Right, 4 replies nixed. Can we not have an immature frackfest on the forums, at least, not on this level. We already have enough of these, thank you.

Also, Plahunter. Read what Jackboot said. Which I'm going to use as a bit of a bounce for my own line: respect your work, and respect your reader. When I see uncapitalized letters, I'm not going to nitpick and say, "Dude, the word "I" is indicated by a capital letter." What I'm going to do instead is stop reading, and walk away from it. Why? Because the writer couldn't bother himself to move a pinkie to the shift key while typing. So, in turn, I'm not going to feel inclined to be constructive, provide any feedback, or actually even finish the story. Obviously, I made an exception here.

Legitimate mistakes are fine. I learn English as a foreign language, I make mistakes. But I make sure that all of my mistakes are committed out of a lack of knowledge, and not because I'm being lazy.