Awaken -- First Chapter

This is the first chapter of a novel that I'm working on.  The working title of the novel is Awaken:




RANDSDAY 2241

Negation, she thought.

A decision can be easy or it could be difficult.

The thunderstorm that crashed upon the capital city was a thing of beauty.  The flash of lightning illuminated the streets and the buildings beyond the window with an electric blue glow.  With the light reflected from her face back upon the inside surface she could see the winkles beneath her eyes and the streaks of gray in her dark hair.

She gave thought to the window before her.

It was both invisible and itself a thing of beauty.  It separated and protected her from the outside environment and allowed her to see it in all its glory.  She could watch the passage of the storm from the safety of her office because of the applied thought of a man.

Those who destroyed the works of men could not conceive of a pane of glass.  Nor could they be taught how to make one and integrate it into a structure.  The thoughts of rational men were nothing to them.  And the works of men that resulted from the trains of rational thought were seen only as abominations that were to be smashed into dust. 

They did not see the truth and they did not want to see the truth.

Reality is real.

Her parents had taught her this before she learned to read.

Understand this and you can understand everything.

But there were those alive who did not want to know.  They actively sought ignorance, and they sought only to negate knowledge and the products of applied knowledge.

And now another of those men had stepped onto her world with the intent of negation, of murdering the people and smashing their works to nothing.  There was nothing that he would be gained from such acts.  It would be the sacrifice of actual things to nothing. 

Absolutely nothing.

Under the existing laws of her nation the subject of her present thought could simply be arrested and processed.  With his death being the ultimate result.

But that would not solve the larger problem.  The subject of the investigation was employed by a group of men back on Earth.  The employers will simply hire another man to attack the worlds under her care.  And the next time she may not be able to stop them.       

The woman had witnessed too much of the horror of negation over the course of her life.  She had seen her parents taken from her simply because they were the only sane people on an insane world.  See had seen her husband murdered simply because he was her husband.

Would it ever end?  How does one deal with such people?

The phone on her desk rang.  She turned and quickly lifted the receiver to speak.

“Yes?”

A man’s voice at the far end replied.

“We’re ready to proceed, ma’am.”

“Do so.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

A trade off then.  Let the immediate subject live and use him to discover his employers.

And then eliminate them.

Across the city the subject of the conversation in question was sleeping naked in a hotel bed.  But not for long.  This would be a hostile encounter.  He had not expected the police on any world, whom he normally thought of as no better than clowns, to break into his hotel room in full tactical mode.  They should not have known of his origin or mission.

The arrest had been absolutely hostile.  At no point was he allowed to speak, nor was he spoken to.  He was gagged  immediately by the black suited police strike team.  He was not given any cover for the weather.  He was dragged through the cold  winter rain to the police assault team transport vehicle in the condition he normally slept in.  On this night in the city of Landfall on the planet Freya he was completely naked.

Upon arrival at their headquarters he was deposited in a holding cell.

Except for the light panels, the steel door, and buttons that controlled the sink and toilet, all the features of the entire holding cell were made of concrete.

This was not a standard jail cell for a common criminal.  The cops here on Freya had taken his presence on their planet seriously.

Very seriously.

Why?  He thought.

He was certain he would soon know why. 

The door of the holding cell opened outwards.  A long stun stick was immediately thrust into the cell and upon his chest.

He was shocked into a state of complete inaction. 

As he lay stunned on the floor the black suited cops entered the cell in mass.  They cuffed him behind the back and inserted a rod between his arms and his back.  The cops then lifted him by the rod and dragged him down a bleak and completely undecorated bureaucratic corridor.  The cops who carried him were escorted by four more officers paired fore and aft.

Not one of them said a word to him.

He was dragged down the corridor and around a corner to the right.  At the end of the second corridor he was carried into an interrogation room.  There was a stainless steel table and two chairs.  He was secured to one of the chairs by the ankles and wrists.

It was five minutes by his estimate before the door to the room opened again.

A woman stepped into the room and sat down at the table opposite of him.

The subject of the arrest took the time to visually examine the woman.  She appeared to be a bit over fifty standard years of age with light stands of gray hair appearing in the neatly cut body of short black hair.  The woman also had blue eyes.  She was dressed as a civilian with a white office blouse and blue slacks.  The woman wore a photo identification badge and carried an immaculate military service grade semiautomatic pistol in the custom black leather holster under her left shoulder.

I’m supposed to be frightened by this old broad?  He thought.  That was foolish of her, very foolish.   

The man then took a close look at the I.D. badge.  It was issued by the Central Security Agency of the Ursa Major Confederation.  Below the photograph on the badge was the logo of the agency.  This was in the form of a flag with a white “X” over a black field.  He did not know that the symbol was technically called the Cross of Saint Andrew.  He saw it as being identical to cross on the battle flag of the Confederate States of America.  He saw it as their admission of being evil.

The name on her photo badge was Judith Stern and showed her rank as Director of the agency.

NO!  He thought.

No! No! No! No!

The woman sitting opposite of him at the table was the true daughter of darkness.  She was the absolute incarnation of evil herself.

Judith Stern was personally responsible for the murder of millions of people on his home world.  No one, not a priest, nor a child, was exempt from her absolute depravity.    

And he has not in the custody of any police agency.  The Freyan CSA was every mercenary soldier’s worst nightmare.  No mercenary soldier operating separately from an organized unit was safe from death by their Pest Control teams.  And ultimately backing the CSA field teams were the planetary landing forces of the Ursa Major Confederation Army and Marine Corps.

Worlds in close proximity to Freya were effectively off limits to mercenary operations.  And in the custody of the Freyan CSA he was already dead.

She looked up at him and spoke.  Her voice was of solid authority, it was firm and without apparent emotion.

“Welcome to The Aquarium.”

She then asked him a question.

“Who are you?”

He did not answer.

There was a slight twitch on her right eyebrow.

She calmly repeated the question.

“Who are you?”

There was no point in screaming.  He tried to reply clearly in a level voice.

“Why don’t you tell me?”

Without a word she looked down and opened the folder on the table before her.

Printed documents?  He thought.  How primitive of them.

She removed a set of reading glasses from a pocket of her blouse and used them to read from the printed file.

“Your name is Michael Gratton.  You were born in the City of New Boston on the planet Kennedy in the Alpha Centauri B system.  You are the second son of the late Prime Minister Thomas Gratton.  After the rescue and reprisal mission to that world your mother brought you as an infant to her family home in the city of Boston in the State of Massachusetts on Earth.  You attended the Boston Latin School and the Federation Military Academy at West Point.  As a junior officer you were wounded in action in a minor dust-up against a band of feral Muslims and subsequently received a knee joint replacement.  You spent the remainder of your time in the army in staff positions and as an instructor at the academy.  You were medically retired from the Federation Army with the rank of Major and emigrated to Xenophon in the Epsilon Indi system.  You are now a minor stockholder in, and company grade officer of the Military Assistance Corporation based on Xenophon.”

Gratton stared at Director Stern silently.  She had used the Freyan term for their crimes against his home world and the crimes they committed against his people.  One of the many people of that world murdered by the Freyans was his own father.

Gratton continued to stare at her until he was able to speak without apparent emotion.

“You are wrong!”  He replied.  “My name is John Fletcher and I am a civilian.”

The planetary clown farce on Freya should not discovered this information on him along with the fact that he was traveling on a false set of identity documents.  With the CSA he was clearly in the hands of a very competent intelligence agency of an absolutely evil nation.

Michael Gratton clearly saw that he was now in deep trouble.

Judith Stern stared straight at him without a visible flinch.

“Major Gratton, or whatever your current rank in the MAC-X Corporation is, you are traveling on a false set of documents, which is a felony.  And you are also a known mercenary, which in the Ursa Major Confederation is a capital offense.”

Gratton looked up at her and replied calmly.

“My name is John Fletcher and I am a witness for our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Judith Stern did not budge or blink.

“No Major Gratton.  You are a veteran officer of the Federation Army, which is a yellow flag for this agency.  You are traveling on false identity documents, which is a red flag.  And you are a member of a commercial organization whose sole purpose is to violate the rights of individuals and of sovereign nations, which is absolutely the black flag for us.  Please explain to us why we should not air out your head?”

Gratton blinked.

He raised his voice to reply.

“There is nothing you can threaten me with!”

Stern responded in a calm voice.

“Of course not, there never is.”

What The Fuck did that mean?

Stern saw that Gratton was mystified.  It was at this time she made her statement.

“Major Gratton, you and your backers seek to negate us -- to remove us from existence.   We need to discover who your backers are and kill them.  In order to do this we are sending you back to Earth.  You will be kept under surveillance and through this we will find the people who trying to destroy us and we will kill all of them.”

Gratton now stared at her.  He then closed his eyes and shook his head. 

So far I had not broken from my cover story, I can still use it.  He thought.  It will work.

“My name is John Fletcher.”  He cried out.  “I am a witness for Our Lord Jesus Christ on this Godless world.  Your people have turned from Our Lord at your eternal peril.  Don’t you understand that?”

Judith Stern stared straight through him as if she were a shipboard laser burning through a starship hull.  She then replied to him.

“Major Gratton, Reality is Real.”   

With that final reply she closed the folder on the table and stood up.  She spoke up to the staff members listening remotely.

“I’m finished.”

An officer opened the door for her from outside.  As she departed more officers suddenly entered the interrogation room and hit him with the stun staff again.  With full effect to full  unconsciousness.

When Michael Gratton awoke he was back on Earth.  The first thing he would hear was the voice of a different woman back on the planet Earth.


So what are your questions?

Diary 2

There was a saying that originated on the original timeline: If you want something done right, you must do it yourself.

Or something like that.

For Judith and I this was something of a working honeymoon.  Our first stop was London to negotiate directly with several departments of the Imperial Government.  An advantage of have several working spacecraft is that we could fly directly to the Imperial capital instead of having to take the boat. Another advantage was that as long as the spacecraft were still functioning we could place satellites in orbit.

For the Royal Navy we had built three communications satellites which we placed equidistantly in geosynchronous orbit.  Given the still primitive state of technology, even with our assistance, they were massive structures using redundant vacuum tubes systems and powered by a thorium based thermoisotope generator. This was somewhat in line with Arthur C. Clarke’s original paper on the concept in the original 1945 paper.  Although he did envision a fully manned space station where the crew would rebuild and replace the tubes as needed.

Of course we had to also built the ground stations and the communications suites for the RN task force flagships.  Although we strongly suggested redundancy with commo suites installed in all capital ships and cruisers, the Navy brass and their pet politicians wanted to keep costs down.

Obviously I don’t agree nor does Mr. Churchill.  It may take actual operational experience to persuade them to change their alleged minds.

As part of the trip we made a stop in Geneva, Switzerland.  We both traveled on British diplomatic passports.  If anyone asked about our odd accents our answer was usually to say we’re from Canada.  Believe it or not some Europeans are not aware that Canada exists.

We ended up at the Grand Hotel.  It was nothing like the place described in the song by Deep Purple.  But then few people at the present time have ever heard the song.

In the morning I met with the advance team.  Their mission was to keep a watch on a certain Russian emigre.  One who escaped the alleged net for revolutionaries by the Imperial Russian government.  Even though we did provide a warning based on the history recorded on the shipboard database the downtime Russians were apparently loathe to take advice from any atheist.  Even a time traveling atheist from the future.

Their minister in London actually acted as if we were the problem.   As a result the tree worst Bolsheviks escaped the net when it was finally cast.

If you want something done right, do it yourself.

According to the advance team the subject would be sitting on a park bunch at a certain time of the day.  I was there that I would meet him.

I was dressed in normal downtime attire for a tourist. When I walked up to him.  I then spoke.

“Tovarish Lenin?”

He looked up and replied.

“Da?”

It was at this point that I reached for the pistol in the holster under the left shoulder.  I brought the sights into line on his forehead and pulled the trigger.

The Gauss Pistol does not have the report of a normal firearm.  There was a supersonic crack as the round traversed the space to his head. 

A blood colored hole appeared on his forehead.  He then fell forward.  Lenin was dead.

I immediately replaced the weapon in its holster and walked away. The four millimeter pistol round was irreplaceable.  But given the immense crimes he would have brought about without our intervention it was worth it.

We did design a silenced weapon that used downtime technology.  A single shot pistol with an integral silencer.  But I didn’t want the risk of carrying the scent of cordite with me after performing the action.

Trotsky and Stalin remained on the list.  Yes, there was a discussion about eliminating Hitler.  But if we can prevent the coming world war this may prevent his rise to power.

Or it may not.  We have established surveillance on him.

There Is Judith

This an alternate history piece where the point of departure is the appearance of a starship from the future. The accidental time travelers have no way to return home and thus must make do in the time they are in.

The basis of this piece was a dream I had featuring a the girl and in some industrial site.

There is Judith.

Judith is young woman with short blonde hair who’s in charge of the power plant at Port Stanley.  The plant has a thorium pebble core reactor and provides steam for running the generators and in turn for heating the town.  And we need the generators on the ground.  Even though we do test runs on the fusion power plant on the Endeavor and even take her up for a flight on occasion, we are dependent on ground power most of the time.

Judith was a girl we found in an American orphanage when we arrived on Earth about fourteen years ago.  She quickly  apprenticed with our engineering crew as they were building the power station for Port Stanley.  There were some idiots who objected to her being on the crew.  They were very quickly placed on the next boat back to London.  Port Stanley is our home now and we do everything our way.

Of course when the American authorities found out about how we did things our way they stopped allowing us to recruit people from their orphanages.  Any American who wants to join us has to go to our London office as an adult and sign up there.  And we found that adults are not as able to adapt to our way of life as orphan children are.  The British authorities do object to our ways but still allow us to recruit from their orphanages.  A deal is a deal. 

There are gentlemen who come to Port Stanley to learn about our technology -- or at least the tech that we allow the downtime people to learn.  Judith is now one of the instructors on nuclear fission technology.  But on occasion there is a moron who objects to receiving instruction from a woman.  We usually put his ass back on the boat to London.

By present Terrestrial standards Judith is considered to be a loose woman.  She begins by keeping her hair is a comfortable short style.  On duty at the power station she wears working men’s clothes with a white lab coat.  Off duty she dresses as a normal young Freyan woman.  Apart from her clearly American accent she is effectively indistinguishable from the rest of us.

Her attitude towards sexuality is effectively indistinguishable too.

We were both in attendance at an anniversary party for our landfall and I  was clearly stunned when she came onto me.

“Are you clean?”  She asked me.

I was initially dumbfounded.

“What?”  I replied.

She repeated the question with an explanation.

“Are you clean?  Do you have one of those awful sexually transmitted diseases the ship’s medics are always concerned about?”

Yes, of course I’m clean.”  I said.  “I came to Earth on the Endeavor, remember?”

Yes,” she said, “I just wanted to be sure.”

I nodded.

“I don’t blame you.”  I said.  “Are you coming on to me?”

“Yes, you don’t mind, do you?”

“Not at all.”  I replied.

Yes, we got it on that night.  And we’ve been in a standing relationship since.

Live with it.

Problem

I have a bit of writer's block. Actually two cases of writer's block. I was working alternately on two science fiction novels. One is set in a FTL universe and the other in a STL mode.

Here's the first chapter from the STL novel:

One thing I had certainly learned in my original incarnation on Earth was that in order to see a task performed correctly I had to do it myself. Today I led a raid on a native nest. This was usually called a pest control operation. Given the very hostile history between the human colonists and the stone age natives of the planet this euphemism was putting it mildly.

The natives, originally classified scientifically as Reptantis Sapiens Eden, and now generally known as shrieks, were bipedal and bilateral egg laying carnivores with scales and feathers instead of skin and hair. Shrieks would eat anything that moved. They would even eat other members of their species, both from their own nest and other nests.

They also ate the remains of the first wave of human colonists that were killed when the Plymouth Colony was overrun and destroyed.

Two local days ago a patrol drone spotted a hunting party of shrieks taking down a thagosaurus. The saurian herbivore had wandered into a patch of wild tobacco and was gorging itself and getting high on the leaves of the imported plants. It was too wasted on the nicotine of the imported plants to notice the native hunting party bearing down on it.

I sat with a full Ranger company of the Guard as we watched the video of the shrieks surrounding the thagosaur and engaging it. There were cheers from the rangers as the thagosaur struck one of the shrieks with it’s tail spikes, mortally wounding it. But the poor and high creature was doomed. The largest of the shrieks carried a human made axe and struck the prey square on the head with it.

The natives had stolen the axe and other artifacts when they overran Plymouth, the first human settlement on the planet. They hunted down and slaughtered all the human colonists who could not escape.

The video ended. It wasn’t necessary to watch the hunting party strip the useful meat from their prey and the dead member of their party.

This morning Alpha Company of the Ranger Battalion of the Guard would drop in on the shriek nest.

The next stage after the briefing was suiting up. The details of the process are essentially boring. The Ranger Combat Suit is an armored exoskeleton with sensors, strength enhancement, full isolation from the external environment, jump thrusters, and full life support. A ranger could fight in space with it if necessary. The process on donning the suit requires assistance from the ground crew and a full test of the onboard combat sensors. The onboard computer even has a program for translating the speech of shrieks and displaying it as written language on the heads-up display. Not every ranger runs the translation program, but I do.

Once the company was suited up they assembled at the landing field. The system primary, Alpha Centauri A, was still below the eastern horizon. The other star of the system, Alpha Centauri B, was in the overhead position and was the brightest star in the sky. Even with the lights of the landing field glowing at full power the light of the star had the effect of the full moon back on Earth. From where I was standing I could see virtually all the buildings of Camp Heinlein and the ruins of the Plymouth Colony.

The four landing craft, with their lift fans open and idling, were ready to carry out the mission. The rear hatch and ramps were open. We loaded one platoon on each landing craft and took off.

By our custom the landing craft flew over the ruins of the Plymouth Colony.

The shriek nest, designated Sierra Mike, was roughly a thousand kilometers from Camp Heinlein. It was the furthest nest out from the ruins of the Plymouth Colony that was identified as a site holding human artifacts. Roughly five generations had been hatched since Plymouth was overrun and destroyed. And even though no shriek living today would remember the massacre there was our own standing policy to enforce.

Once the second wave of human colonists arrived in the system it was our policy to recover all human artifacts and remains from the shrieks. No shriek was allowed to hold a human made artifact. Nor were they to possess human remains. The penalty these acts would be the complete annihilation of their nest.

Over the years since the second wave arrived in the system the shrieks fled away from the new human base at Camp Heinlein.

But no distance, not even a thousand kilometers, was far enough from human vengeance.

The local sun was beginning to rise as the landing craft approached the nest.

The nest was located in a dense forest. It was theorized that this practice began as a way to protect the nest from large predators. It also had provided some protection from human reprisal actions. It took time us for us to develop tools and tactics to negate this practice.

The landing craft came in at treetop level at the four points of the compass with respect to the position of the nest. The craft I was riding was on the north corner of the square. With the rear ramp open I was the first to step out. The jump thrusters fired to slow my descent as I dropped to the forest floor. The landing craft I jumped from continued to float to southwest as each ranger stepped out and descended to the ground. The rangers now formed up in a tactical square surrounding the nest and on my command marched inwards.

Very shortly we came in contact with the shrieks.

Someone spoke on the company channel.

“Alpha-three-oh-three! Have contact!” There was a pause and then he spoke again. “Recovered flash drive from necklace!”

“Very good!" I replied. “Continue inward!”

The first kill was scored by Ranger A-303, Sergeant Les Keller. He was one of the first rangers who stopped counting the number of shrieks that he killed.

Every ranger carried a small bag for recovered artifacts. The shrieks apparently believed that human artifacts were magical or conferred protective powers on them.

I then encountered a shriek. It was a very large male with a flint headed spear. It leveled the spear and charged at me while screaming.

The translation program was active. A line of text appeared at the bottom of my heads-up display. It said, “DIE MOTHER MATER!”

I should have shot it.

Instead I let go of my mag rifle. The sling snapped it back to the carry position on the suit. I grabbed the fore end of the spear and ripped it from the hands of the shriek. I then proceeded to beat the shriek to death with the blunt end of the spear.

I searched the body. There were no human artifacts on the shriek.

One could argue that I was showing off by killing the shriek with it’s own spear. Go ahead. I don’t mind the criticism at all.

The fact of the matter is that all of our ammunition is still made on Zion, the other and now primary inhabited planet of the system. And it’s dammed difficult and expensive to haul it across interplanetary space in the Alpha Centauri system. Even with fusion drive spacecraft.

And if there one thing that I have learned it’s that one can never have enough ammunition.

The rangers continued inwards toward the nest. I quietly, with only the supersonic crack of the magnetically propelled bullets, killed four more shrieks in the forest with my rifle.

We then came to outer edge of the nest. It was a cluster of primitive shelters surrounding a central large hut. The rangers went through the nest, shelter by shelter, killing every shriek they found without regard to apparent age or gender. Even the recent hatchlings were killed. No exception could be made. No exception would EVER be made.

We then came to the central hut.

I stepped in first with my rifle at the ready position.

The sensors indicated the air inside the hut was warmer than the ambient air outside. The hut was where all their eggs were laid and buried for protection from other animals and the elements.

But not from us.

There was a path through the raised soil that covered the eggs. At the end of the path was a shrine. Before the shrine was the priestess.

She was the oldest of the female shrieks. It’s feathers were white and withered. And she wore a stainless steel fingernail clipper on her sacred necklace. She turned around and began to speak. If the translation program was functioning properly it was addressing me as a deity and begging me not to kill the remaining eggs.

I looked past the priestess to the shrine. At the center of the shrine was skull of a human infant. To me it was a clear indication that this clutch of shrieks was involved in the Plymouth Massacre.

I placed a single round in the head of the priestess.

I stepped forward to the shrine. I gently lifted the skull of the child from the shrine and placed it in my recovery bag.

I then spoke.

“Aright. Let’s finish this.”

Rangers stepped into the hut and positioned themselves on the pathway.

“Infrared on!” I ordered.

At the voice command the infrared vision display lit up in my visor. The eggs below the loose soil were now fully visible to me and the rangers in the hut.

“Ready!” I ordered. “Fire!”

Every one of the eggs was penetrated by multiple rifle rounds. Not one egg remained intact. The last of the shrieks in the nest were dead.

As I stepped outside the hut I spoke on the company channel.

“Did anyone find that damned axe?”

“Alpha-three-oh-three! I did!” Replied Sergeant Keller.

Of course he would find it. He was effective that way.

As the rangers departed from the nest there was one final act of destruction. Several white phosphorus grenades were tossed into the remains of the nest, setting it on fire.

The rangers proceeded to the nearest large clearing and boarded the landing craft. As usual I was the last to board.

Upon our return to Camp Heinlein the rangers separated into two groups. Those who did not retrieve any artifacts immediately returned to the barracks. Those who retrieved a human made object lined up for the march to the memorial.

I called out to one of those rangers.

“Sergeant Keller!”

“Yes, sir!”

He quickly ran over to my position. I could feel the mass of his ranger suit shaking the ground with each step he made.

I spoke to him.

“Sergeant, could you do me a favor?”

“Yes, sir.”

I handed him the nail clipper I recovered from the priestess.

“Sir?” He said.

“I also recovered the skull of a child.” I said.

“I understand.” He nodded and replied. “Yes, sir.”

I stood in my ranger suit with the helmet open in the forensic lab of the base as one of the doctors performed the identification tests. The doctor’s name was Cheryl Adams. She was a granddaughter of a little girl who was orphaned as a result of the attack on the Plymouth Colony. The girl’s mother had loaded her aboard one of three functional landing craft without boarding herself. All of the landers had docked with the starship Mayflower which still in orbit above the colony. The landers would never return to colony. It was too late to rescue any more colonists.

Doctor Adams had completed the tests.

“I’m finished.”

She brought up a video file on the workstation monitor. The sound and image was of a happy and smiling newborn girl with blue eyes.

I stepped forward.

“Her name was Elizabeth Mary Cook.” Said Doctor Adams. “She was my great aunt.”

The girl was also the granddaughter of Andrew Cook, one of the owners of the Mayflower, and whom I met in my first life on Earth.

I continued to watch the video file.

There are some people back on Zion ask me how I could live with what I do to the shrieks.

The fact is that I do not have a problem at all.

Space battle 1 (updated)

He (the Commandant of the space patrol) briefly dropped the handset of the telephone away from his face and looked at it.

Was the P.M. out of his bloody mind?

He returned the handset to the proper position and spoke again.

“Sir, we are unable to fire a warning shot in space.”
“Why not?”  The P.M. replied.

Wow, he thought, the elected moron actually asked a valid question.

“Sir, laser beams are not visible in the vacuum of space.”

“What?  How can that be?  It’s done all the time in the movies?”

The Commandant mentally reminded himself that he was speaking to an elected official.  Someone who was ignorant of anything outside of the realm of politics, such as the actual facts of nature.

“This is not the cinema, sir.  And in any case the Concord is already off the planet.  As such it is now subject to the laws and regulations of the Freyan Republic.  We have no valid grounds to board her at this time.”

The Prime Minister responded with anger.

“Do you want your immortal soul to go to Hell?  There is a child aboard that ship who is in the hands of unfit parents and who will never know the light of our lord Jesus Christ!”

The Commandant knew that to answer truthfully would result in his being fired by the P.M., but he had to do it.

“Prime Minister, the Concord is an Alissa Two class light merchant built and operated by the Freyaspace Corporation.  This vessel is built with two mounts for class two beam lasers rated at five hundred megawatts each.  Under Freyan law that vessel is authorized to be armed for self defense.  As she is carrying an executive of the corporation and his family I would fully expect her to be so.  And the attempt to seize a child passenger from her parents in open space is by interstellar law is clearly an act of piracy.  As Commandant of the Space Patrol I must follow only the laws of nations and of nature.  And you sir, can tell the Archbishop to go fuck himself.”

With that the Commandant hung up the phone.

He began the process of clearing his desk.  The personal items he wanted to keep were neatly stacked in a bag on the desk. Everything else went straight into the trash can.

Within ten minutes there was a knock on the door.

“Come in.”  He shouted.

The door opened.  The familiar figure of the Executive Officer of the Space Patrol entered the room.

The Commandant spoke.

“Michael, I assume you have news for me?”

“Sir,” he said, “you have been relieved of command.  I’ve been promoted and appointed to take your place.”

“So you finally made the rank of commander.”

“I’ve been promoted to the rank of captain, sir.”

The man who was now the former Commandant shook his head.

“Well, isn’t that nice?”  He said.  “You’ll have a nice title for the letters you’ll have to write.”

“Letters, sir?”

The former Commandant almost cracked a smile as he replied.

“The letters that you’ll have to write to parents and wives of the men you are sending up to their deaths.  The Freyaspace Concord is an armed merchantman, and she out guns the entire space patrol.  But it not my problem now.”

With that he picked up the bag with his personal belongings and departed from his former office.

Above planet the Freyaspace Concord continued to accelerate at the standard rate of ten meters per second/per second.  In normal commercial operations to each the safe distance for the jump to hyperspace a ship would accelerate for the first half of the trip through normal space and them brake for the second half.  It would to stand still with respect to the planet.  For a world of the size and mass of Kennedy the standard trip would take five hours.  To escape from the idiots on Kennedy Captain Kovac decided to simply accelerate all the way on the leg out and to perform the deceleration phase after the jump through hyperspace.  In this special case the outbound leg would take three and a half hours.

They were a half hour into the outbound leg when they were interrupted.

The guard channel on the radio lit up.

“Freyaspace Concord, this is space guard cutter James Joyce. You will cease acceleration and prepare to be boarded.

Moron, thought Captain Kovac, they actually found an idiot who would take the mission.

Too bad.

Kovac read the sensors from the pilot’s station.  He then rolled the ship so that both of the laser mounts would have a clear shot at the space guard cutter.

He then spoke on the intercom.

“Fire control stations, report when you are locked on the target.”

“Starboard mount, clear and locked.”

“Port side mount, clear and locked.”

The pilot of the space guard cutter repeated his call.

“Freyaspace Concord, cease acceleration or you will be fired upon.”

As he learned in basic ethics class while attending primary school the issuance of a threat was itself an act of coercion.  And that once the line had been morally crossed that one must respond with open force.

Captain Kovac gave the order.

“Fire.”

In the vacuum of space the laser beams were invisible.  Only upon striking the target did they become brightly visible and have an decisive effect.  Both beams burned through into the cockpit of the cutter.  The flight crew was both incinerated and exposed to vacuum at the same time.  With the control system dead the life support system of the small craft also died.  The boarding party riding aft of the cockpit would expire before the pilots of another space guard craft would dare to leave the planet.

Upon reaching the safe zone Captain Kovac made the jump to Earth.

There was one other casualty from this incident.  Captain Michael Herman, the commandant of the Kennedy Space Guard, committed suicide by a gunshot to the head.  He was denied a Christian burial by the Catholic Church.

Space Battle 1

This is a scene I just wrote for the novel project.  I haven't inserted it into a chapter yet.

He (the Commandant of the space patrol) briefly dropped the handset of the telephone away from his face and looked at it.

Was the P.M. out of his bloody mind?

He returned the handset to the proper position and spoke again.

“Sir, we are unable to fire a warning shot in space.”

“Why not?”  The P.M. replied.

Wow, he thought, the elected moron actually asked a valid question.

“Sir, laser beams are not visible in the vacuum of space.”

“What?  How can that be?  It’s done all the time in the movies?”

The Commandant mentally reminded himself that he was speaking to an elected official.  Someone who was ignorant of anything outside of the realm of politics, such as the actual facts of nature.

“This is not the cinema, sir.  And in any case the Concord is already off the planet.  As such it is now subject to the laws and regulations of the Freyan Republic.  We have no valid grounds to board her at this time.”

The Prime Minister responded with anger.

“Do you want your immortal soul to go to Hell?  There is a child aboard that ship who is in the hands of unfit parents and who will never know the light of our lord Jesus Christ!”

The Commandant knew that to answer truthfully would result in his being fired by the P.M., but he had to do it.

“Prime Minister, the Concord is an Alissa Two class light merchant built and operated by the Freyaspace Corporation.  This vessel is built with two mounts for class two beam lasers rated at five hundred megawatts each.  Under Freyan law that vessel is authorized to be armed for self defense.  As she is carrying an executive of the corporation and his family I would fully expect her to be so.  And the attempt to seize a child passenger from her parents in open space is by interstellar law is clearly an act of piracy.  As Commandant of the Space Patrol I must follow only the laws of nations and of nature.  And you sir, can tell the Archbishop to go fuck himself.”

With that the Commandant hung up the phone.

It Was A Dark And Stormy Night, Again

I did not actually intend to do it but somehow I wrote a version of the classic "Dark and Stormy Night" opening for a novel.

I quote:

Reality is real.

Her parents had taught her this before she learned to read.

Know this and you can know everything.

But there were those alive who did not want to know.  They sought not to know.  Only to destroy knowledge and the products of knowledge.

Another destroyer has come to us.  
Someone had stepped upon her world with the intent of smashing it to nothing.  There was nothing that would be gained from this act.  It would be the sacrifice of everything to nothing.  Absolutely nothing.      

The woman had witnessed too much of the horror over the course of her life.  She had seen her parents taken from her simply because they were the only sane people on an insane world.  See had seen her husband murdered simply because he was her husband.Would it never end?

She stared at the world outside of her office window.

It was raining in the night of an alien world.  This world was not the home of Mankind but it was now the home of her people.  It was here they found some comfort and should have found absolute sanctuary.

She gave thought to window before her.

It was both a thing invisible and a thing of beauty.  It separated and protected her from the outside environment and allowed her to see it in all its glory.

The winter thunderstorm that crashed upon the city was a thing of beauty in itself.  The flash of lightning illuminated the streets and the buildings beyond the window with a blue glow.  And the flash of light reflected from her face back upon the inside of the window.  From this image she could see the winkles beneath her eyes and the streaks of gray in her dark hair.

She could watch the passage of the storm from the safety of her office because of the applied thought of a man.

The destroyers could not conceive of a pane of glass.  Nor could they be taught how to make it.  The thoughts of rational men were nothing to them.  And the works of men that followed the thoughts were seen only as abominations to be smashed into dust.

They did not see and they did not want to see.

How does one deal with such beings?
The phone on her desk rang.  She turned and quickly lifted the receiver to speak.

“Yes?”

A man’s voice at the far end replied.

“We’re ready to proceed, ma’am.”

“Do so.”

Yes, ma’am.”

 As a result I was inspired to submit an opening sentence to the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest.

As follows:

"The thunderstorm that crashed upon the city was a thing of beauty, the flash of lightning illuminated the streets and the buildings beyond the window with a blue glow, with the light reflected from her face back upon the inside surface she could see the winkles beneath her eyes and the streaks of gray in her dark hair."

-- Judith

Announcement

On my primary blog I have made an announcement:

As I write this a full moon is setting to the west.

A friend recently suggested that I stand for the office of President of the United States.  After giving the concept some thought I have decided to do so.

My fundamental goal as President will be to restore complete compliance of the Federal Government to the Constitution and the complete sovereignty of our nation with respect to the transnational order.

And I fully look forward to interaction with the Fourth Estate:

Reporter: Mr. Bates, how do you as a Christian Conservative justify your opposition to Social Justice?

Candidate LB: Good question.  Have you thought of asking an actual Christian Conservative?

Reporter: What?

Candidate LB: I stopped believing in the Western Monotheist Tradition over four decades ago.  I have made no secret of my disbelief since that time.  Even when I enlisted in the United States Army during the administration of President Ronald Reagan.

In light of this answer the reporter would have to engage in actual thought in order to respond.

Regardless of the outcome I fully expect to have fun.   

I have not had this level of emotional uplift since I uploaded the first issue of The Resister on the talk.politics.guns newsgroup and every bulletin board I could log on to.

This will be one Hell of a run.

Some Old Stuff

Here was something I wrote as part of a Second Civil War Scenario:

Interview with MAJ Ken Biggles, History and Moral Philosophy instructor at the Continental Army Infantry School, Fort Snelling, Minnesota. Aired on the Free America Network, September 2, 2005.

KB: Shouldn't you be talking to Rolve Hemmerding about this?

FAN: We tried, he's off at the front.

KB: Hmmm ... he's usually muttering something about needing to do some more field work ... actually, I think he's probably safer out there.

FAN: Oh?

KB: He has a problem with practitioners of the Kantian theory of driving. He just lost a third car to someone running a red light, all on the same street too.

FAN: Ouch! Getting back to the subject, can you comment on the U.N.'s proposed peace plan.

KB: Sure can, It's a classic example of what George Orwell would call "political language."

FAN: Which is?

KB: Quote, "Political language ... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind," close quote.

What the U.N. calls a "peace plan" is in fact a demand for surrender.

FAN: How could they demand surrender? Aren't we supposed to be winning?

KB: We are making gains against the PDA. Of course I can't go into any detail on that ... do you listen to the BBC World Service?

FAN: The Voice of the New World Order? Yes. According to the BBC, the situation as of today is that we have Alaska, and apart from about two thirds of California and the city of St. Louis we control every thing west of the Mississippi. We control all of Minnesota and Wisconsin. All of Michigan apart from Lansing, which is under siege, and Detroit, which is only surrounded. Except for Chicago, Gary, Indianapolis and East St. Louis, which are under siege, we control all of Illinois and Indiana. And we have all of Ohio west of Interstate 71. We also have New Orleans under siege. The BBC is claiming that there are offensive operations in Eastern Ohio and Southern Mississippi and Alabama. They are also claiming that there is significant resistance activity in the rest of the country.

In short, we're winning. Now given that we are winning, isn't it odd that their so-called peace plan calls for giving everything we have gained to the "People's Democracy" who are losing?

KB: No, its insane. But remember, we are dealing with altruists.

WE are the Constitutional government of the United States, we DO NOT share power with a gang of slavers and murderers.

Statement of Fact

In the ninth chapter of my current project I have a character say this:

“Given what I’ve seen and heard so far I would have to conclude that these people do not engage in any thought at all. By themselves they could not have survived the journey to Alpha Centauri. It’s as if their survival were a plot point in a work of fiction.”

That's a bit too obvious, isn't it?

A Bit Of Work

The beginning of the seventh chapter of the current novel:

Did I say that I hate having to supervise from a distance?

We held mock space battles and boarding exercises with the Guardian as the target ship. In each exercise companies of the Ranger battalion would take turns as boarders and defenders.

My Fourth Incarnation was a bit annoyed at my constant presence on the command deck aboard the Eagle.

“Don’t you have a desk on the ground?” He once asked me with a clearly annoyed voice as we observed a boarding exercise.

“Yes.” I replied to him politely.

“You also have a wife.”

I turned to look at him silently. He spoke again.

“Seriously, I remember what happened to our marriage in the first incarnation.”

“Our marriage?”

Number Four took a very annoyed and lecturer tone of voice in his reply.

“Evelyn Boatman Number One and our one and only Susan.”

“Oh yes, I remember.”

“She went back to Earth and it was our fault.”

And she remained on Earth until the end.

I spoke again.

“Our fault?”

Number Four looked forward and lowered his voice.

“Fine, I understand, the language isn’t set up for multiple incarnations of a person to have a conversation, particularly concerning a private matter. The point is that I remember being overworked while building the escape fleet, I remember the divorce, and I remember the subsequent results. And so should you, and I don’t want to see the whole thing happen again.”

“You aren’t married to Cheryl.”

He turned to speak at me again.

“And the way you are pushing yourself right now neither will you. Seriously Number Three, you need to take a break, put on some music group files and dance with her. She’ll love it.”

I silently stared at him.

“Oh come off it!” He said. “Don’t give me the silent stare treatment!”

I broke off the stare and looked about the command deck. Everyone on deck was putting on the appearance of being hardwired and fully dedicated to their work stations.

Number Four spoke again.

“Look, you can call it a rehearsal for the arrival celebration, the point is that you need a break.”

“What about you?”

“I’m not supervising this entire operation, you are.”

“You also want me off of your ship?”

“Yes.” He replied. “Just trust me, we’ll get it right.”

I had no idea how to respond to the argument. So I took a break. I clearly needed it. And Cheryl and I conceived our first daughter.

A Work In Progress

I've already written the epilogue of my current novel project:

Time passes and life continues.

Zoe grew up as a fully human young woman and pursued the man of her dreams. In this case my fourth incarnation, for this I don’t blame her at all, but then I am clearly biased.

The wedding ceremony and celebration was held in Landfall on Zion. A live band played for the event.

Zoe made the first request.

“Could you please play ‘Have You Ever Had It Blue?’”

“My pleasure ma’am.” The lead singer replied.

The fellow actually resembled Paul Weller of The Style Council, even down to the British teeth.

As the happy couple began to dance Cheryl turned to me and asked a question.

“Why don’t we dance that way?”

“Let’s try it.” I replied.

I stood up and took her hand.

Human Life is a joyous and a learning experience.

Live with it.

Unusued Portion

I originally wrote this segment for a novel in progress. I eventually used part of it as dialogue in the second chapter:

So why are we here?

Why did we escape the Solar System and settle on the planets of Alpha Centauri?

The fact is that we live in a dynamic universe. A universe whose internal material components are subject to change by entirely natural means. Life, including human life, is the result of a series of an entirely natural processes. The process of life is also a localized acceleration of the process of entropy, the conversion of matter to energy. Simply by living each of us is accelerating the ultimate decline of the known universe. Please don’t tell the environmentalists.

For simple forms of life survival is simply an accident of nature. For Humanity survival is the result of the function of the active mind. And we will think and do what is necessary to live what is properly a human life.

Believe it or not there were people back on Earth who objected to our escape from extinction and actively worked to prevent it.

I am not kidding.

Some of those people believed that our lives were the result of the will of a being commonly known as God. And that the event that would ultimately destroy all life on Earth was also the will of God. They believed that the extinction event was brought about because of our collective sins. The primary sin being the constant refusal to obey the commands of God as transmitted through his self appointed spokesmen. The vilest of our sins being the persistent habit of actually thinking on the basis of the actual facts of reality. The believers in the God Premise deemed us guilty of these crimes and wanted us to sit down without resistance and die for our sins.

Absolutely not, we decided.

The idea that God could eliminate Mankind at a thought and did not require an actually natural event to kill off our species simply did not enter their minds.

This assumes of course that those who believe in the concept of God had actually functioning minds.

There were also those who believed in the concept of material equality. That everyone had to be materially equal regardless of the actual amount of productive thought and labor. They believed it was unfair for us who could build starships to escape the Solar System. We who could should not do so because it was unfair to those who could not. That the truly fair course of action was to do nothing and for all of us to die together.

This view, which was purely emotional, was clearly wrong.

And finally there were the self-appointed elites. They believed that only they had the best of the collective interests of Mankind in mind. And that only the best and the brightest members of the Human collective, as defined by themselves, should be allowed to escape extinction by the means available.

That the elites have always lived off the thought and labor of those they deemed inferior and invariably made decisions for their own benefit was never, ever, mentioned by them or their willing servants.

The fact was that we would not sacrifice ourselves for the benefit of what was in fact a band of lazy and mindless losers.

The fundamental moral value is life. But human life is not simply physical existence. The human mode of life also requires an active mental existence.

In order to live as human beings we must see things as they are and act as we conceive as necessary.

Live with it.

What are your questions on this block of instruction?

Announcement

The short story TUESDAY is now available on Amazon Kindle.

A rescue mission turns into a nuclear nightmare.

The story is available at this link. (LINK HERE)

Friday

I'm working on a short story. It's a sequel to my story WEEKEND. (Which is available HERE.)

I have no idea when I will be finished.

Attempted First Chapter

Basically I dropped into the show-don't-tell trap and accidentally wrote an outline for a proper novel.

Yes. I'll use it.

If there was one thing I learned in my first incarnation on Earth, if I wanted something done right I had to do it myself.

In this case it was to lead a raid on a native village. These were generally known as pest control operations. Given the very hostile history between human colonists and the stone age natives of the planet this was putting it mildly.

The first starship to reach the Alpha Centauri system was the Mayflower. She was built to order for and operated by Edward and Carl Cook. Their family that had been in the orbital solar energy business for over a century. She was, and remains to this day, the most advanced starship ever designed and launched by humans. She had a crew of two hundred and carried one thousand colonists in cryostasis. She had antimatter rocket engines and was designed to reach half the speed of light and perform the journey to Alpha Centauri in ten years.

During the deceleration phase of the mission Mayflower had released two probes for a fly-through reconnaissance of the system. As a result of the probes two planets were found that were apparently fit for human habitation.

Orbiting Alpha Centauri A was a world that was slightly larger than Earth, had a denser atmosphere, and appeared to have and an advanced biosphere. It was named Eden.

Orbiting Alpha Centauri B was a world that was slightly smaller than Earth, had a thinner atmosphere, and appeared to have a simple biosphere. It was named Zion.

Based on this information the Cook Brothers had decided to explore and possibly settle on the planet Eden.

Based on the orbital survey it appeared that the planet had never been hit by a major asteroid, a K-T impactor rock. Commonly known as a dinosaur killer. And from the initial landings on several continents it appeared the dominant form of animal life were large dinosaurian lizards.

Mammals had never developed on the planet.

The brothers decided to establish their colony on an isolated continent with the smallest dinosaurs.

It was after the infrastructure had been built, some forests had been cleared, and some crops had been planted that it was discovered that the colonists had neighbors.


The new neighbors had simply walked into the colony unannounced. They appeared to be friendly and curious at first.

They were scientifically classified as Reptantis Sapiens Eden. And at the time they were commonly called Repts. They were a bilateral biped reptile species with scales and feathers instead of bare skin and hair. They also had developed basic a basic set of wood and stone hand tools. Some Rept tribes had already developed primitive agriculture and had built villages that should have been seen from orbit.

The tool set included flint tipped spears and arrows. It was at this time the Repts should have seen as a potential problem.

From records recovered decades later it appeared that the Cook Brothers saw the Repts as people who could be uplifted to the status of civilization and as potential customers and employees. They also disregarded suggestions that the Repts were a potential danger to the colony.

The Cook Brothers were Americans. By the time they departed from the Solar System they had no living memory of any aspect of life in a frontier environment. They were also comfortable in their technological superiority. They had dismissed all suggestions that basic security measures, such as building a stockade around the colony or arming all the colonists, should be taken.

Edward and Carl Cook, and the fifteen hundred and twenty seven colonists on the ground with them, paid for their stupidity with their lives.

Of the inhabitants of the Plymouth Colony, only one hundred and twenty eight men, women, and children made it to the landing field during the native assault. They boarded the landing craft and lifted off to the still orbiting Mayflower. There were sixteen crew members aboard to maintain her in operational condition.

It was clear to everyone on board that there was no other place on the planet Eden they could land and resettle. After a long, drawn out, and very well recorded discussion they decided to use their remaining antimatter fuel and transit to the planet Zion.

They never looked back.

Upon arrival they stripped out the ship as thoroughly as possible. Even going as far as to remove the auxiliary fusion power plant and bring it to the surface. They learned to live on the surface of Zion. They learned to domesticate the simple plants and some of the few animals that were found there.

In spite of the small initial population the settlement on Zion was thriving when the second wave of human colonists arrived in the system.

Thsi may end up being a three part novel.

Thought For The Day

I went home with a waitress, the way I always do,
How was I to know, she was with the Cylons too?

Post of the day

I've finished the second chapter of the novel.

http://otherles.livejournal.com/11890.html

First Chapter

I just posted the first chapter of my novel on my Live Journal page.

This is not set in the Official Traveller Universe.

http://otherles.livejournal.com/11664.html

A Literary Demolition Of DORSAI!

Or how not to write a science fiction novel.

As part of my project to write a science fiction novel I am re-reading DORSAI! Yes, the exclamation point is part of the title. This is the first novel in a series of ubermensch fantasies by Gordon R. Dickson. I am reading it with the intent of deconstructing it as an example of military science fiction with mercenaries. My goal as a novelist is to create a depiction of a similar band of mercenaries and show how a rational nation would be deal with them.

Here’s the first paragraph from the chapter titled MERCENARY III:

Returning again up the corridor toward the bow of the ship, Donal allowed himself to wonder, a little wistfully, about this incubus of his own strange difference from other people. He had thought to leave it behind with his cadet uniform. Instead, it seemed, it continued to ride with him, still perched on his shoulders. Always it had been this way. What seemed so plain, and simple and straightforward to himself, had always struck others as veiled, tortuous, and involved. Always he had been like a stranger passing trough a town, the ways of whose people were different, and who looked on him with a lack of understanding amounting to suspicion. Their language failed on the doorstep of his motives and could not enter the lonely mansion of his mind. They said “enemy” and “friend”; they said “strong” and “weak”–“them” and “us”. They set up a thousand arbitrary classifications and distinctions which he could not comprehend, convinced as he was that all people were only people–and there was very little to choose between them. Only, you dealt with them as individuals, one by one; and always remembering to be patient. And if you did this successfully, then the larger, group things came out right.

Can you understand that? Was Dickson an English Literature major at the U of M?

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION, the periodical that published this serially in 1959 did pay a penny a word. But this amount of barely incomprehensible verbiage is simply absurd.

Dickson attempts to recreate the European political environment prior to the Treaty Of Westphalia (1648), a time when the use of specifically raised and organized mercenary units was commonplace. Civil wars within what should be sovereign nation states are commonplace. Dickson also creates a moral nightmare. A universe where the Right Of Life is legally negated. An individual may be conscripted by the state and forced to work on another world in trade for another worker with knowledge in another field. Or die as cannon fodder in a foreign war. And the penalty for an individual who broke this so-called contract is death.

Dickson may not have understood the concept of government. But then he was a graduate of the University Of Minnesota.

What is very apparent when reading this and the other works in the series is that Dickson adopted a Platonist metaphysics. What passes for philosophy is a gibberish of Eastern Mysticism and Racial Collectivism along with the open practice of magic. In fact the overall plot of the series, such it was, is completely dependent on the occurrence of magical events. It would more accurate to describe this series as a work of fantasy instead of science fiction. In THE FINAL ENCYCLOPEDIA, Dickson actually wrote a scene set on the Platonic World Of Forms. And at the end of the initial novel Dickson has his protagonist literally commanding the antagonist to suffer. And the antagonist magically does so.

If reality is unreal in a fictional universe, why bother to write about it?