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All posts for the month February, 2012

That Red Herring Stinks

Posted by dougdandridge on February 25, 2012
Posted in: eBooks, Kindle, Near Future, Plotting, science Fiction, self publishing, Writing. Tagged: , , , . 1 Comment

Before I starting writing novels I used to read the work of others and wonder at the brilliance of their plots.  Somewhere near the end I would come across something in the plot that was pointed to much earlier in the work, and I would think, wow, how did he think of that link.  And then there were the Red Herrings, the plot points meant to lead the reader astray so that when the plot surprise comes it is a real surprise.  Of course I naively thought that the writer had plotted this all out in advance, or had the talent to write along on his first draft and plant the perfect clues, or herrings, along the way.  Since writing I have found that this is not the case, as least in my own work, and from what I have read not in the work of most others.  Currently I am working on the first draft of, of course, my Work In Progress, otherwise known as a WIP.  It should be finished by the last day of this month.  At least that is the plan.  It is a science fiction novel concerning a man who transports himself by way of nanotechnology in an experiment meant to open up the solar system.  His body is disassembled on one end and reassembled on the other from different components.  During this process the original is destroyed and the copy is reassembled missing something.  Working title is Soulless, which should give you the idea of what was missing.  A kind hearted man is turned into a complete psychopath, out for himself and himself alone, with the technical knowledge to make himself a superman and construct an army of supermen.  When it is finished it will be put to bed on the hard drive and backups, not to see the light of day for at least a year.  This is my normal mode of operation, since a year’s separation makes the manuscript look to my eyes the work of someone else, which I guess it is, since I will have changed some in that year.  Currently I am working on rewrite for agent submission of a novel I wrote in 2010, which I processed through a first rewrite in 2011, and is now going through the second and final polishing.

Anyway, while writing soulless I have created new characters later in the book that were needed to fill certain parts (that’s the problem with killing characters off earlier in the book that served those roles).  So now I am thinking of new scenes near the beginning that really introduce those characters, while also adding plot points that foreshadow the scenes that I have just written.  In one scene I am currently working on I introduce animals that have been remade into killer beasts as a way for the antagonist to escape a situation that would otherwise be inescapable.  But I said nothing about killer animals in the past, so now I have to go back and write something that foreshadows them.  And on and on, adding maybe ten thousand words to something already completed, so that the plot makes sense all the way through, without introducing a totally unexpected tech or character to the story in a manner that seems artificial, just a way to get out of a corner I have painted a character into.  Hopefully when this book comes out, either with a publisher or on the net as a selfpub, people will read it and say, how did he think of that?  Or, wow, he foreshadowed that in chapter three.  And not realize how I cheated, using my author’s control of time and space in the realm of my work.

Refuge

Posted by dougdandridge on February 12, 2012
Posted in: eBooks, Fantasy, Interdimensional Travel, Military, Near Future, Nuclear Weapons, self publishing, Sword and Sorcery, Vampires, Writing. Tagged: , , , . Leave a comment

There have been several books in my history titled Refuge.  I first came up with the idea for the world when I first started writing, and it was the third manuscript I completed.   I had just completed the manuscripts for The Tower of Psychobable, a non-fiction, and The Convoy, an alternate history, and wanted to do something epic in the realm of fantasy.  And Refuge was born.  Before it was over I had embarqed on an epic journey of world building.  Cultures, civilizations, Pantheons of multiple dozens of Gods, Languages, Histories, Architectures.  And the maps.  Maps of large cities.  Maps of Countries.  Maps of Empires.  Maps of each continent.  And of course a map of the entire world.  I sought to out Tolkien the worldbuilding of Tolkien, and may have succeeded.  All this was going on while I was developing characters and plotting.  Then I got to work, and finished with a two hundred and sixty thousand word masterpiece with too many characters.  It was a semireligious tale of a world where people from the twentieth century earth were thrust into another dimension, a magical world of the archetypes of our world.  Where elves, dwarves, orcs and halflings existed and thrived.  It was set two thousand years after the arrival and was titled simply Refuge.  I sent it off to publishers and agents and started to work on the second novel, titled The Ravening Blade.  I was scammed on this book and developed a mistrust of agents that lasted for over a decade.  I now realize that the book was entirely too long for a first effort.  But I still loved the idea.
About five years ago I wrote another book set in the same world, thinking that maybe a shorter tale with fewer characters might sell.  So I wrote the ninety-three thousand word novel titled Refuge.  Again it was set in the magical world of Refuge, a planet in which millions of refugees from Earth have changed the order of the land.  Still had elves, dwarves, orcs and halflings, with explanations through the work of how they were evolutionary branches of humanity that had thrived on this new world.  They had major differences from the imaginary creatures of Tolkien and D & D, but were treated as the same by the publishers that read, or should I say didn’t read, the work.  So the work was ignored.  Recently I dusted it off the hard drive and am preparing it for release under the title Doppelganger: A Novel of Refuge.  I am intending it to be a teaser for the latest version of Refuge, written in 2010.  I am making changes to make sure that it meshes well with the newest version.
This one will be titled Refuge: The Arrival, and will be followed by Refuge: The Legions and then Refuge: The Naval War.  Again set in the same world, this story will start when humans, engaged in a nuclear was that flares up over tensions in Europe, are transported by the millions to the new world.  Among them are the human Immortals who are so central to the story.  The Germans and their American allies end up right smack in the middle of an Elven Empire whose Emperor sees them as soul energy to further his plans for immortality.  The Earthers come across with weapons; tanks, armored personnel carriers, attack helicopters, and find themselves fighting a foe primitively armed but possessing magic.  And since Refuge is a world where belief become reality, the weapons begin degrading under the will of the original inhabitants, until they no longer work and the humans are forced to learn how to fight like the inhabitants.  Some ideas just to whet the appetite.  Humans who are Schizophrenic or Autistic on Earth are touched by the Gods on Refuge, and are innate magicians.  Followers of the major Earth Religions are untouched by the magic of Refuge, and most importantly by the soul eaters of the planet.  Try to suck the life out of one of them and disaster results.  The planet has existed in a status quo for centuries, and Earthers are about to change that.  This novel sits at one hundred and seventy thousand words and is planned to top out at two hundred thousand.  I have plans to do at least one novel a year in this series, with an ultimate goal of fifteen books.  That’s the plan at least, and we all know what can happen with plans.  I will say that I am very passionate about this series.  It has everything I love in fantasy.  Disciplined armies battling it out over the final victory of good or evil.  Magic and magical creatures, including dragons, giant hawks and unicorns.  Vampires and Trolls.  And even the ultimate slimballs of our history, Nazis.  Led by a German Immortal who has revived that vile breed in an evil land, to fight against the German Immortal leading the opposition, attempting to make ammends for the sins he committed in the Second World War.
Below is an excerpt from Doppelganger:

The lift tube slowed her ascent as she approached the observation deck of the newest of the Elfin Towers.  Her upward motion stopped as the gentle force of the tube pushed her out onto the floor of the deck.  Catching her breath at the beauty of the expanse of glass and steel to her front, she walked forward flanked by the plainclothes guards of the Imperial Secret Service.  Her sitters, as she thought of them.

A trio of the uniformed Imperial Guards waited to her front, along with a pair of her accompanying mages, the Imperial Battlemage Kellium Zoriski alongside of the younger communications mage.  The elfin Empress’ sharp ears picked up the sounds of the rest of her detachment stepping out of the numerous tubes.  They fanned out through the floor, reinforcing those who had already secured any entrance to the deck.

The dwarven warpriest, Korgan Grimmbarg, ran up as fast as his short legs would carry him, bowed to the Empress, and reported to the head of the security detail.

“Nothing is amiss, my lord,” said the dwarf to the dark elf.

“Very good,” said Major Thallius.

Not that anything is likely to happen here in the heart of Ataponia, thought the Empress, walking toward the shimmering glass wall that let out onto the city, barely noticing the beautiful foliage that the elfin builders had placed in profusion.

I have seen this many times before, she thought as she looked out at the city below.  But the sight of Ataponia, the greatest city of the Empire and the home of over seven million citizens, always brought a rush of excitement.  Greenery there was in abundance, as the other races emulated the environmental concerns of the elves who had originally founded this city.  Wide avenues traversed by throngs of people, afoot and in carriages.  Parks set among the high buildings and apartments, a place for people to gather and play.

A huge airship to her left caught her gaze, drifting lazily across the sky, smoke rising from its stacks.  Smaller airships also crowded over the city, personal craft, taxis and search/rescue vessels.  A dragon squadron, silvers, lazily flew a wedge formation at altitude.

Next her eyes wandered to the Seine, crowded with river craft of all types, while people the size of mites crossed the many bridges, and a long train passed over the river from the dockyards.  The enormous skyscrapers of the downtown district were only overshadowed by the backdrop of the mountains under which the underground dwellers built their neighborhoods.  Sunlight reflected from various points of those mountains, the solar storage facilities providing much of the magical power of the city.

Moving her field of vision, she smiled as she looked over the center of the city, at the Imperial Arch of Victory, the many Cabinet buildings, and the huge palace complex beyond.  The glow to her right caught her attention, and she swung her gaze toward the Cathedral Complex of the Life Gods.  The glow of power shone bright on the central spire of the Basilica of Arathonia, while the domes of the eleven lesser cathedrals glowed with a pure white light of their own.  The power of the Gods harnessed for the people’s use.

“Breathtaking, is it not, your Highness?” said the architect, another high elf, who had moved silently beside her.

“The view is fine,” she said in her contralto voice, brushing her long golden hair behind her ears and turning her solid blue eyes towards the man, “as is the building providing the view.”

Gwenara leaned out and looked down at the last statement, admiring the garden like square from which the building rose. Like all the elfin towers of the Point Neighborhood, this building held many levels of greenery.  Only a nation that allowed the talents of its many people to mingle could accomplish such a feat of engineering and architecture.  Only the combination of elfin architecture, dwarven materials science and human engineering would make such a tower possible.

Feeling the presence of another to her left, she turned to find Matthew, the youngest of her uniformed bodyguards, standing beside her, trying to keep his attention on the crowd behind her instead of the gorgeous vista ahead.  The boy was her favorite among the guards, so curious and inquisitive, not appearing experienced enough to walk with the elite of the Empire.  Until one looked at the Golden Wolf adorning his helmet, the sign of a warrior of extreme bravery.

“Beautiful, is it not, Matthew?” she asked the youngster.

“Yes, my lady,” he said, looking directly into her solid blue eyes with a smile on his face.

Gwenara wondered whether the boy was remarking on the scenery or on her.  High Elven, or Ellala, culture allowed the taking of lovers, even when married, and she was curious to experience such a young human.  But her husband, though an Immortal, had still been raised to believe that monogamy was the true way of marriage, and she loved and respected him enough to respect his viewpoint.

“The people are waiting, your Highness,” said the voice of Major Thallius.

For yet another of these interminable speeches, she thought.  But an Empress had political duties to fulfill, no matter how they bored her.  She turned and waved at the now crowded observation deck, throngs of people of all races here to cover the dedication of the newest of Ataponia’s skyscrapers.

Then it hit her, a feeling growing in the back of her mind, like that she felt when a dream of import tugged at her during the night.  Something was wrong here.  Her eyes scanned the crowd, locking for a moment on the eyes of a tall elf near the rear.  Dark eyes stared back, pupils opened to maximum, even in the brightly lit observation deck.  Light red hair.  Strawberry blond her husband’s people called it.  Rare in the Empire, though not unheard of.

But very common in Tarakesh.  There was a feeling emanating from him as well.  Something was wrong, and that man had something to do with it.  Her guard seemed unaware of anything amiss, her psionic and her warpriest looking calm and relaxed as they scanned the crowd.

“Major Thallius,” she said, reaching to touch his shoulder. The strange elf’s eyes widened in alarm as he hurriedly pulled a red handkerchief and blew his nose.  Then all hell broke loose, and she realized that she had set off the trap by her very actions.  Hidden weapons were drawn by many in the crowd.  It seemed to happen in slow motion, as if she were trapped in a spell, and everyone else did not realize what was going on.

Gwenara saw the squat curved shape of a steam pistol rising up in her direction, held in the hands of the elf with the strawberry blond hair.  An assassination was her first thought, as she began to call the words of protection to her lips.  The gun spurted a cloud of steam.  People in the crowd screamed in panic and looked for somewhere to run.  The pellet whizzed by, shattering the glass of the observation wall, ripping a large hole in it.  The winds rose through the opening, snatching at her clothing and threatening to pull her out into the abyss of the sky.

“My Lady,” screamed Matthew, reaching to interpose his shield between her and her assassin.

A fireball burst, striking a quartet of Secret Service Agents, turning men into screaming torches who ran this way and that.  The warpriest tried to extinguish the flames, before a bolt of crackling electricity ended his efforts with a stench of burning flesh.  Another bolt of destruction hit, and more steam pistols spoke.  Then, as the Archmage Kellium Zoriski waved his hands, threatening all enemies with mighty magic, a field of magic negation sprung into being, making even the mighty archmage’s powers of assault useless.

Gwenara felt her own magical energies drain away as if a plug had been pulled.  A negator, was her thought, one of those rare humans who could short circuit all magic within range of their abilities.  The magic would not work until he allowed it to work.  Her eyes searched through the crowd, trying to locate the man, before her mind was occupied by other matters.

The high elf she had first noticed fired his second shot, the pellet striking Matthew in the side of his helmet and knocking him off of his feet.  The helmet resisted the penetration of the shot as well made armor should, its inner padding absorbing the shock as the tough alloy sprung back.  But the impact unbalanced him, and the young man slid on broken glass through the opening to outside, his hands grasping for any purchase before he fell from the manmade cliff.

Gwenara reacted immediately, diving for the floor as her hands reached and grasped her guard’s wrists, feeling herself being pulled from the room as well as she tried to dig the toes of her high boots into the polished surface.  Wide eyes stared into hers, as the youth fought down his terrible fear with thoughts of duty.

“Let go, my lady,” he said through clenched teeth, “lest you follow me to doom.”

“I won’t let go,’ she replied in strained voice.  “I won’t let go.”

“Let me help, your Majesty,” said the voice of the architect, kneeling down beside her.

His hands touched her, and her muscles spasmed with the shock of some unholy presence entering through the physical contact.  She fought with every ounce of her considerable willpower, but the distraction of holding the boy from death was just enough to allow her to fail.  The spirit slipped in, more vile than the vilest of physical rapists, and her mind was thrust into the role of observer, as the lifeless body of the architect dropped to the floor and through the hole in the windows, almost knocking Matthew from her grasp.  Then control began to leave body.  The Empress tried to recover as she saw her hands begin to open, but nothing she knew could stop her from releasing her grip on the young guardsman.

Matthew fell out into space on the beginning of his two thousand foot drop, his eyes smiling at the thought that he would not be the cause of his Empress’s death.  He fell silently and with great courage, while Gwenara mentally cursed her lack of will for allowing the possessing spirit to let the boy die.

Then her limbs began to move with a will of their own, pulling her away from the opening and to her feet.  Most of her guards, both Imperial Army and Secret Service, were down, as well as a number of armed men who could only be the terrorists.  Some of the attackers still held steam pistols, though most had dropped those one shot weapons and now held short swords in their hands, the ultra-sharp blades glowing with high enchantment.  No bows were in evidence.  The attackers must not have been able to smuggle their long forms to the deck, she thought.  And how did they ever get the weapons they did bring through the tight security?

A soldier still fought on here and there, with superior armor and swordsmanship, outnumbered by the conspirators.  Innocents lay in crumpled positions, while others ran or crawled toward any exit, and still others grabbed whatever was near at hand to fight beside their Empress’ men.

She tried to shout a warning, with no result, and her hand drew the ceremonial dagger she carried at her belt.  She knew the power of this fine blade, enchanted by the Gods themselves.  Please, she screamed in her mind, as she walked with knife in hand toward one of her surviving guards, a sergeant who was more than holding his own against the attackers.  The guardsman swung his sword, beating down the guard of one of the elfin assailants, taking advantage of the opening to rip his blade across the elf’s face.  Blood spurted and the terrorist fell back.

Then the Empress was behind the guard, her blade thrusting easily through the fine quality enchanted armor as only an artifact such as it could.  The man twisted around as the blade was pulled from her hand, ready to strike until his wide eyes beheld who stood behind him.

“Your Majesty”, stammered the man, “what…”

A mace struck the man’s helmet hard, the concussion knocking him to his knees, as another elf danced to his front and throat thrust him with a slim sword.

“Good work,” said the elf, the same who had caught her attention before the attack.  “Now get moving to the drop.  We don’t have much time.”

“She has a powerful will,” said her voice, as her legs were again forced forward.

The drop shaft grew nearer, no matter her efforts, while the attackers fell in around her.  Some dragged bodies, the remains of comrades they couldn’t risk to leave behind.  One of these dropped as a bullet struck his shoulder, the man falling with the corpse on top.  Hands reached out to help him up, the body abandoned so that the living might be rescued.

 

The Shadows of the Multiverse

Posted by dougdandridge on February 5, 2012
Posted in: Alien Invasion, Far Future, Fusion, Interdimensional Travel, Kindle, Military, Multiverse, Nuclear Weapons, Quantum Physics, String Theory, Writing. Tagged: , , , . 2 Comments

Just released my fifth eBook, The Shadows of the Multiverse.  Set in the far future, I have tried to blend hard science fiction with the spooky world of  Quantum Physics and String theory.  Below from the website and an excerpt from the book, which is filled with like action.

Eight Centuries in the Future and mankind has spread across the Universe.  Not entirely his own doing, most credit going to the discovery of the Gates.  On the outer edge of select systems, including ours, each is the mass of a small planet, with three million kilometer wide facets, each leading to another Gate in another location of the Universe.  Each Galaxy holds at most a half dozen Gates, but there are a hundred billion Galaxies.  Mankind has taken advantage of these portals to billions of habitable worlds and have taken their fair share.  Then, as humans have done throughout history, people have splintered into multiple political entities.  Sol System is still the big dog of human space, but even it is splintered into multiple political entities, with Earth, Belt and the Jovian Moons all independent governments with their prickly pride.  Other intelligences have been discovered, each with their own goals and priorities, each expanding to the limits of their capabilities.
And then there are the ruins of past civilizations, one the possible builder of the Gates.  They are everywhere, some hundreds of millions of years old and constructed of materials beyond any known science.  In space, free from the ravages of erosion, there are artifacts billions of years old.  No one knows where these civilizations have gone.  It is apparent that there have been waves of intelligent species through the life of the Universe.  Then all intelligence ends within a millennium of each other, a blink of the eye in the time scale of the Cosmos.  Where they went no one knows.  But go they did, and this fact is an ominous backdrop of the optimistic expansion and growth into the Universe.  One particular culture is known as the ancients.  There superhard cities span the Universe.  And as with the other extinct species no one knows where they went.
Humanity as is its habit is poking its curious nose into the shadows of the Universe, not realizing that there are forces beyond this Cosmos, in the Multiverse that span dimensions.  Now these Shadows are stirring again, and it may spell doom for Intelligences of the Universe once again.  Unless three unique minds can forge a unity and lead the Universe against the weavers of reality.
This novel is a little bit of everything.  Hard science fiction with no inertial compensators or force fields, where high acceleration comes with a penalty.  Exploration into the spooky world of Quantum Mechanics and String Theory.  And a bit of mysticism and fantasy thrown in for good measure.

“Goddamitt,” said Lt. Marishana Mangana.  Lucille looked up from the acceleration tank she was crawling into to see what the assistant tac officer was looking at.  The image of a battleship appeared on the main viewer, leaving the gate far to their rear.
“Shit,” added the captain to the cussing going through the bridge.  Flashes appeared at the front of the long cylinder as a dozen missiles left their acceleration tubes and headed for their targets.  Matter/antimatter warheads exploded into one of the covering destroyers, while the invisible beams of lasers ate through the hull of another.
“We aren’t at war with the Tripods,” exclaimed Lt. Ngyen.  “What the hell are they doing?”
Taking advantage of surprise, thought Lucille.  The poor bastards at the gate picket hesitated for a moment and paid for it with their lives.  A single warhead impacted on the alien battleship, blasting a small hole in the forward hull.  Within a second the counter-attacking destroyer was spiraling away from the gate, a lifeless wreck.  Another cylinder rushed from the gate, a second battleship.  Followed by a third.
The lone remaining destroyer maneuvered as fast as her crew could handle, moving along the side of the gate sphere as if trying to escape.  Two of the Tripod battleships flared thrusters as they turned to follow, trying to lock their stationary particle beams on the target that was dodging and weaving away from their laser turrets.  A missile left a tube, followed by another.  But the destroyer’s crew was on the ball and a dozen interceptors left its stern mere microseconds after the missiles.  Interceptor missiles struck, antimatter warheads erupted, and the space between hunter and hunted was filled with hellish radiation.
“They really foxed them,” said Ngyen, admiration in his voice.
Yes, thought Lucille.  The radiation will interfere with target acquisition as well as helping to diffuse the power of laser and particle beams.
The destroyer rotated swiftly in a maneuver guaranteed to cause casualties if the crew wasn’t in the tanks.  A message carrier streaked from a bow tube at thousands of gees acceleration, heading into a specific facet of the gate and disappearing before anyone could do anything about it.
Then the destroyer pulled another high gee turn, lining her own bow up on one of the pursuers and unleashing a volley of missiles.  It was to be her last volley.  Incoming fire tore through the radiation cloud.  Some of the enemy missiles lost target lock and sailed past the smaller ship.  Others smashed into her nose, warheads powerful enough to cripple a battle-cruiser like Navarin exploding into the thinly armored hull.  The fire of explosion ran instantly down the length of the ship, engulfing her in a maelstrom of flame while pieces of hull and fragments of internal machinery spun into the cold of space, as if trying to escape the inferno.  When the flame had attenuated enough to see the destroyer was gone as if it hadn’t existed.  Gone too were the three hundred crewmen and women aboard.
Counter missiles from a tripod battleship took out two of the destroyer’s last volley.  Laser fire from the target ship took out two more, leaving one to slam into the bow of the battlewagon.  The battleship was most heavily armored at the bow, while the destroyer’s torpedo was not nearly as powerful as the ones that had been launched by the tripod battleships.  But the fury of its explosion still caused damage to the battleship’s forward missile tubes and its particle beam projectors, as well as closing off its main KE cannon tube.  It also took most of the ship’s forward momentum away in an instant, which couldn’t have been healthy for the crew.
The bridge crew of the Navarin cheered as the fury of the explosion stopped the enemy ship in its tracks.  While not a deathblow, or even enough damage to keep the battleship out of action, it was still a weakening of enemy power.
The cheer died to a hush as another Tripod battleship popped from the gate, followed by another.  Then in single file a mass of cruisers and destroyers.  Within minutes the ships had clustered into task forces and all were boosting for destinations throughout the system.  Lucille only had eyes for one of the groups though.  On the tactical was displayed an arrow with figures showing two battleships, a heavy cruiser and five destroyers.  Their heading was toward the convoy she was tasked to protect.  The convoy she was nowhere near.
“Sharks are on the way,” she muttered to herself.  “Already fifteen minutes on the way toward my minnows.”
“Into the tanks, everyone,” she shouted across the bridge.  “Maximum accel in one minute.”
Crew scrambled into their tanks, completing the last second safety checks that would ensure that they survived the killing acceleration that was to come.  All over the ship people did the same, disciplined to think of no other task than to seek safety.  Because when full boost came in an emergency situation there would be no time to make sure everyone was safe.
*    *    *
While they were underway Lucille linked into the ship’s computer, trying to get a view over the entire situation as she made sure that all relevant data was transmitted to the rest of the fleet in the system.  Not that it will do much good, she thought.  The fleet would see what had happened at the gate minutes before her message crawled to them at the speed of light. But the data she had gathered closer to the battle might be of some small help.
Meanwhile, more Tripod ships had come through the gate. Probably called forth by their admiral after he had scoped out the forces opposing him.  But moments after their arrival human ships had also come through.  And now, or at least fifteen minutes ago, a battle had started that was tearing apart the infrastructure built around the gate as well as the ships involved.  Not that the human vessels, if they won the fight and were capable of maneuver afterward, would be able to help her or her convoy.  If they could avoid destruction there was hope that help would eventually arrive.  But first it was up to her and the other ships of her escort to avoid destruction.
*    *    *
Admiral Ginarjanasan stared at the three different views into the system with the three eyestalks protruding from the top of his truck.  Karstasians possessed much better visual acuity than any of the other races, including humans.  Their large eyes possessed an enormous number of structures synonymous with the cones of human eyes, giving them greater discrimination and a wider range of view across their visual spectrum.  The size of each orb, over six inches across, gave each eye the depth perception of binocular vision.  But their weakness was shown in the dark, as Karstasian eyes were poor both in the night vision and in the motion detection that humans and other races took for granted.
The admiral needed no night vision or motion detection skills at this time.  The flares of fusion drives shown clearly on the screens.   A number of drives approached the class M world that was the heart of the system.  More drives diverged at the outer reaches of the system.  And closest of all, the drives of slow freighters which ran directly away from the gate, accompanied by the fiercer but smaller lights of escorting destroyers.  And the flame of a capital ship rushing to rendezvous with them.  Which to attack though?  Which to lead my force against?  He had half dozen capital ships at his disposal, plus numerous cruisers and destroyers.  Far out numbering the ships the humans had brought into the system.  And more of his vessels were coming into the system at every moment.
Of course the humans were also bringing more ships into the system with each moment.  And though the humans lacked the unity of his race, splintering as they had into hundreds of independent kingdoms, republics and empires, when gathered for a common purpose they presented a daunting presence.
Not bad for a race whose breeders reproduce so slowly, only one or two offspring at a time.  Not like his own race, where a breeder produced thousands of offspring at a time.  But the humans cared for their offspring, raising most of them into adulthood.  A weak and fragile way to raise offspring, where even the weakest survived to become a breeder.
Only ten of his own brood had survived to late middle age.  That thought brought some sadness as he looked back on the wreck of the battleship of his brood-mate.  A ship now being pounded to obliteration by the ships of the humans.  His fool of a brother had allowed his ship to become crippled by a destroyer, no less, the smallest of the warships engaged in today’s combat.  If the humans were not in the process of killing his sibling the admiral would have been forced to do it at the end of their mission, to show he had no favoritism toward his brother’s failure.
But which target to pick for his own task force, the largest he had launched into the system?
“Orders, admiral?” asked his flag captain, echoing his own thoughts.
The class M planet’s the real treasure of the system, with plenty of human targets in the task force that orbited it, he thought.  But it was also too far.  Over two days travel at full boost.  And leaving his own force in danger of isolation, being picked off by the humans if they won back the gate.  The smaller groups, further out, would be easy pickings.  But they were too small and scattered to make them worthy of his efforts.  And the same problem arose of being too far from the gate.  Now the convoy running slowly into the system.  Just enough warships to make it a target worthy of a warrior.  And prizes to take without running as much risk of isolation.
“Make course toward the convoy,” he said, his three legs lifting him off his stool.  “Full thrust in ten minutes.”

The New and Improved Armageddon.

Posted by dougdandridge on February 3, 2012
Posted in: Alien Invasion, eBooks, Far Future, Military, Movies, Nuclear Weapons, science Fiction, self publishing, Writing. Tagged: , , , , , . 1 Comment

Just finished the first draft of one of the manuscripts I didn’t finish in 2011.  Feels good to finish one.  And now it will sit in the dark on my hard drives and thumb drives for a year.  That gives me some separation from the novel before approaching it again.  Now it’s on to the next project.  But first some time to reflect on this tale, especially the ending, a line from which actually gave me the working title, The New Armageddon.  I originally got the idea from Independence Day, the block buster movie that was all special effects and no intelligent story line.  You know the story.  The aliens come here in big hawking space ships to take all our resources, as if there weren’t more and better resources for the taking in space.  The vibrations of the ships are so damned strong that they shake the footprints of the first men on the moon from the dust, I guess as a foreshadowing of what they intend for us, despite the fact that vacuum does not transmit sound waves.  Then the humans, after arguing about the use of nuclear weapons that might pollute the world, despite the fact that the aliens are going to pretty much wipe the Earth clean, use the backdoor of the alien’s Microsoft DOS System and put a virus in the works.  This allows a small tactical nuclear weapon to destroy a ship a quarter the mass of the moon by going off in the hanger deck really far from any of the vessel’s power sources.  At which point the humongous space ships blows up but does no harm to the planet it hovers over.   The intelligence of the script just shines through.   I would have thrown more than one of the planet’s twenty some thousand nuclear weapons at the evil aliens and cleaned up afterwards, if there was one.  But the movie sparked an idea that I had thought about for years.

First off I thought about using aliens that were traveling slower than light, and they first hit one of our colonies, Tau Ceti.  Of course this is set in the future, six hundred years or so.  So we know they are coming, we can see them coming, and we have time to prepare our war machine.  The aliens are much more advanced than we, in most technologies.  They do not have much in the way of medical science and have completely ignored nanotech.   And this ties in with the reason they are coming after us.  They are death worshipers.  They believe that life is bad and their mission is to wipe all life from the Universe, one solar system at a time.  And they have stolen their tech from another species that they, you guessed it, wiped out.  So we prepare for them and don’t do very well  at first.  They destroy whole fleets, kill off the populations of planets, and look like they are going to win the trophy.  Until…..

Well, you’re just going to have to wait to read the book when it comes out.  So on the same day I celebrate finishing a manuscript, always a big deal even it it is number 23, I receive a letter in the mail from an agent.  These form rejections used to break my heart.  Now that I am self publishing it is not such a big deal.  I still feel compelled to put each book through the agenting process.  And then if they are rejected I go on and publish that book online, then move on to the next agent submission.  This agent’s form letter stated that the novel, a High Fantasy that has been read by professionals and amateurs who thought it good enough for publication, was not for their list.  That’s OK, because it’s now for mine.  Another favorite response is “it’s not for me,” to which I can now respond to myself, “no, but it’s sure for me.”  So I will continue down my path, and the gatekeepers have become minor players in my career.  Still important, but not really such a big deal.