[MetalJon]

Hi folks - I'm new to this site but I have to say I've thoroughly enjoyed reading a lot of the posts on the various forums. For an aspiring writer, this website is totally invaluable!
Anyway, to the point: I've finally got round to writing, after years of talking about it! The excerpt I'm about to post is from a story I've been working on for only a week - it was supposed to be a short story, but I found that my ideas for it kept on getting bigger and bigger!
Does anyone else have this problem with short stories? If anyone could give me some pointers on how to sharpen it up and make it shorter, I'd really appreciate it. Anyway, any suggestions would very useful! The story I'm writing seems to have turned out rather pulpy, and slightly tongue in cheek as well... it's a detective story set on a space station, with vampires!

Hope you enjoy it:

The great ugly hulk of metal hung in space, motionless, like an unusual asteroid. G-12 was one of the last stations to be built before the Earth finally became completely uninhabitable, choked under the weight of its poison-filled atmosphere. In a desperate rush for survival, humanity had thrown together temporary accommodation in space, vast floating shelters to contain the remains of the species and take them to somewhere better, somewhere that they could be safe and free from deadly toxins.

Like all of the last stations, G-12 was built in a desperate hurry. The very last of the Earth’s natural resources were ripped out, melted and hammered quickly into shape. As a result, the last few stations were cramped, basic and suffered a continual array of technical glitches, design flaws and leaks. They were also without any aesthetic quality whatsoever, the designers and manufacturers putting all their energy into creating functional living quarters. This had the unexpected bonus of keeping raiding parties away – pirates often raided the older stations with their neon signs, flashing lights and accommodating entry hatches.

Although G-12 appeared to be a lifeless hunk of square metal from the outside, it was a completely different matter inside. The station positively heaved with life as over one hundred and fifty thousand people lived, worked, ate and slept within its cramped frame. The walkways were almost always throbbing with grubby, irritable life, while the various mechanical systems continually churned out water, processed air and power, with the occasional technical failure being its only respite.

Jeff Johnson sat in the stationary vehicle and lit another cigarette. He shifted in his seat until he was finally comfortable, and laid his head back on the head rest. It seemed as though it would be another long night, full of expectant waiting and little else.

A crackling sound came from the small screen in the centre of the dashboard, and a fuzzy image appeared – the humourless face of police chief appeared.
“Seen anything yet? Any updates?” she snapped, obviously as irritated with all the waiting as Jeff himself.
“No. Not a thing.” Jeff stated flatly. It was best not to antagonise Chief Wicklow when she was in such a black mood.
“I hope your informant wasn’t jerking us around!”
“I’m sure he wasn’t, he’s been pretty reliable of late”
“Of late… That doesn’t promise me one hundred percent reliability Jeff! Remember, you’re on borrowed time!” Wicklow’s face loomed slightly larger as she leant closer to the screen back at the police station.
“Hey!” she shouted, “How many times have I told you not to smoke in patrol vehicles??”
A guilty expression flashed across Jeff’s face for a second, and he flicked the smoking cigarette though the open crack in the window.
“I can assure you, he is reliable” he said quietly with a wry smile. Jeff had extracted the truth from his pasty-faced informant by means some would not consider `by the book’. He was almost envious of the view the man must have had, hanging by his ankles from a twentieth-story balcony.

Wicklow glared at him suspiciously, and then disappeared from view without a word. The screen faded back to black, leaving Jeff sitting in shadow once again. He reached for the pack of cigarettes on the dashboard and went to take another one out. As he did so, something caught his eye. On the opposite side of the street, in between the usual throng, a distinctive figure marched purposefully towards the very door that Jeff had spent all evening watching. It was a red-haired man, in his late twenties, with a ruddy complexion – the very man Jeff was waiting for.

He punched a button at the side of the comms screen, and the bored face of Officer Jones faded into view.
“What?”
“The Romanian’s here. Let’s get on with it.” Jeff stated. He flicked the screen off.
The red haired man punched his entry code into the keypad, and the door swung open. He entered quickly and slammed the door behind him.
Within seconds, Jeff plus four police officers in uniform were at the door with a hydraulic ram. Jeff looked at the faces of the officers in turn; each one of them unsuccessfully masking their fear and apprehension of what awaited them behind the door. Nicolai Inecatu was no ordinary felon. He was indeed a petty thief, someone who stole to order and didn’t ask too many questions. He was also a card-carrying member of a vampire coven, one of the walking dead.

Back on Earth, people had believed vampires were a myth, a fairy tale, something fictional that only appeared in horror stories. As mankind left Earth, living in cramped conditions, and moving further and further from natural sunlight, the undead began to manifest themselves as a reality. No-one knew how to respond to this new addition to the population – some stations began to hunt them, and drove a stake through the heart of anyone suspected of being undead or possessing supernatural powers. This led to massive protests and violent demonstrations from human rights activists across the solar system.

Eventually, some of the more progressive stations gave vampires and lycanthropes citizenship rights and work permits. As long as they applied for a license to drink blood from a legal source, and didn’t take human lives, everything was considered to be legal. The powers that be felt that keeping the creaky, overpopulated and overstretched stations running smoothly was enough to worry about, never mind keeping the living dead at bay. This shift in policy eventually trickled down to all stations around the solar system, so that the living and the dead inhabited the same cramped space in mutual distrust. At the last count, there were around two hundred undead citizens inhabiting G-12, all with work permits and voting rights.

Jeff wiped some sweat from his brow and breathed heavily. He disliked dealing with vampires intensely, all the screeching, baring of fangs and hypnotic eyes. It reminded him too much of his ex-wife, who had literally transformed into mist, floated out of the window one night and had never come back. After a heavy sigh, Jeff regained his composure, and set his face into its usual unreadable mask. He glanced at Officer Jones.
“Have you got the collar?” he asked.
Officer Jones nodded.
“Let’s go then”
With that, the men braced themselves and flicked on the hydraulic ram. Within two seconds, the door was in splinters.