Poul Anderson

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My Writing Process: Controlled Chaos!

Posted by dougdandridge on June 16, 2014
Posted in: Armor, Conferences, eBooks, Fantasy, Far Future, Fusion, Future Prediciton, Future Warfare, History, Kindle, Magic, Military, Near Future, Past, Plotting, Proofreading, science Fiction, self publishing, Titles, Tropes, Writing. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , . 5 Comments

This post deviates some from what I have normally posted on this blog.  Today I am taking part in a blog tour series in which writers answer four questions about their own writing process, then tag another writer to keep it going the following week.

My thanks to writer Tracy Cembor for tagging me this week.  I met Tracy at the DragonCon Writer’s Workshop in 2013, among a bunch of amazing people all striving for the dream of becoming successful writers.  You can check out her blog at http://tracycembor.com/ .  For her contribution to this process, see her post at http://tracycembor.com/2014/06/09/my-writing-process-chaos/ .  She is currently working on a Steampunk fantasy titled The Dreamless City, as well as some short fiction.  Check her out.

What are you working on now?

Actually, I have several irons in the fire.  Currently I am putting words on the hard drive on the third book of The Deep Dark Well Trilogy, Deeper and Darker.  I had actually planned to have this book out by winter, but it just never came together as I was working on other projects.  At the time of this post I am up to about 80,000 words on what I hope will be a 120,000 word novel.  Anyone familiar with my Exodus: Empires at War series knows that it is set about 2000 years in the future.  The Deep Dark Well is basically that same Universe, forty thousand years later.

The seventh book of the Exodus: Empires at War series is also in the works, though nowhere near as complete.  I am doing a little work on it in bits and pieces, and will jump into it full bore when I am finished with Deeper and Darker.  And I am also hard at work on a novel, working title Solar System 23rd Century: The Mars Revolt:  Book 1. This one will be for submission to Baen Books, with the hope of getting some attention, if not the sale of a possible series.

How does your work differ from others of the genre?

I write in both the science fiction and fantasy realms.  In my opinion they have similarities and major differences.  I love the work of writers such as David Weber and R. A. Salvatore.  I have read widely in the genres, and know what I like, and what I don’t like.  I write hardcore, gritty, military science fiction and fantasy.  I try to make the military actions, the technology and, in fantasy, the mythology, as detailed as possible.   I think this separates me from the great majority of people writing in these genres.  But I also try to keep the action ramped up throughout the entire book.  The thing I hate about many long series is the tendency for the book to get longer while the action sequences remain the same length.  In Exodus 6 at least eighty percent of the book was action, and I intend to keep it going in book 7 and beyond.  The tech, mythology and strategy/tactics are for the most part introduced through an action sequence.  This doesn’t mean I don’t have any exposition in my books.  Just small chunks in widely separated locations.

And unlike most other works in the military science fiction genre, I use a lot of points of view during battles, to try and capture the scope of the action, whether aboard a single ship, or across a star system and beyond.  Kind of like a combination of Harry Turtledove and Salvatore.  Some people think the books are too complicated, making the reader work too hard to remember everyone.  Other people love it.  I take the approach that I’m not going to satisfy everyone, so I try and satisfy the people who like my style of writing.

Why do I write what I do?

I guess as many others have said, I write the kind of stuff I like.  When I read I want to know how the ship gets from star A to B, not just that it did.  I hate works that have a long lead up to a battle, then skip over everything to show the aftermath.  I understand the point of that author, but it does not fit in with my style.  I have loved military scifi since I read Starship Troopers as a child.  And Conan, and Elric, and the Polesotechnic League of Poul Anderson.  I also love developing technologies through the story.  In Exodus I introduce wormholes for transportation, then had to come up with many other uses for them.  In other areas, including fantasy, I read or see something I didn’t think was done to its full potential and think, I could do better.  And so I try to do that, to take a science fiction or fantasy meme and do it justice.  I’m not always sure if I do that, but the reviews I have been getting seem to lend credence to that belief.

How does your writing process work?

 I guess you could say I am a very instinctual writer.  At present I go be the seat of my pants and the words just seem to come out in a smooth flow.  But I normally do certain things in the preparation of a novel.

Usually I come up with an idea and start drawing on a graph pad, designing ships, planets, empires, etc.  I will do this late at night, before going to bed.  I will also name characters and give them their positions in the story.  Later, I will add background details to the people.  This is usually going on while I am already working on something else.  Over a couple of months I will add more details, fleshing out my world.  This includes extensive research, both from books and the internet.  Sometimes I will use computer programs like Orbit Explorer or Universe Sandbox to actually model some of the systems I use in the novel.   I also draw maps, of empires, planets, continents, whatever I will need for the detail of the work.  I admit I sometimes go overboard with this.  For the Refuge series I drew maps of the entire world, each continent, and each of about sixty individual kingdoms.  For The Shadows of the Multiverse I drew the entire two hundred and some decks of the battle cruiser that was the primary setting of the book.  I love doing this, it brings out my inner nerd.

I used to outline the complete novel, and would work with three by five cards to plot out the book, to make sure that each chapter has enough action to keep it moving along.  I used to write individual scenes in different parts of the book, then piece them together and fill in the rest.  Now I go from start to finish, doing each scene in sequence.  I look at the scenes like those in movies, visualizing them in my head, and then describing them.  That doesn’t mean I won’t add more in the second draft as I discover I need some bridging.   When I get working I will do two or three thousand words a day.  Toward the end of the first draft, when I’m really getting into the climax, I will do five thousand or more.

I work on a desktop with three monitors.  The word processor (I use Word 2010, but only because Word 2000 no longer works on the new systems) is on the 27 inch central monitor.  The internet is on the left hand monitor, while Thunderbird, my email program, is on the right.  I am always looking things up on the internet, but Facebook is my nemesis, the great time waster.  I also spend way too much time looking at my sales on Amazon.  I open a notepad up and put down the names of characters as I make them up (for tertiary players who may not matter much, but may be mentioned several times).  Ship names, planet names, Gods, cities, organizations, anything I might forget goes here.  Technology is my friend, and I use it as much as possible.

As said before, I used to have everything planned out.  But I kept discovering points in the story where a change from the plot line was for the better.  So now I just go with what feels right.  And on the way I might take some time and do some more drawings, some more development.  I even have dreams that will give me ideas on the novel I am working on.

After finishing the first draft I will put the book to bed for a time. That time used to be a year, but since I have series that are doing well it has changed to about two weeks.  I go over the book, making corrections and some changes, and adding in about ten thousand words to cover areas I think I might have missed.  I don’t do any cutting, except for maybe some individual sentences.  After that I run the novel through a program called Ginger, which will find most of the misspellings and grammatical errors.  I have to be careful here, because Ginger marks a lot of things as mistakes which are the way I intended them to be.  After that I change the font to something really big and do another go over.  When the manuscript is as clean as I can get it I run it over to Wordpad, then back to Word, in order to get rid of all the junk formatting that might be in there.  I then convert it to html, then to Mobi (the Kindle format) and go over it in Kindle Previewer.  I will find some more errors at this point, mostly formatting that I didn’t catch before.  Then it’s back into Word to make changes, and the whole conversion process over again.

At this point I will be well into the development of the next Universe, and may actually already be writing the first draft of the next book.

Next up: writer and Army officer Kevin Ikenberry.

I met Kevin at the Superstars Writing Conference in Colorado Springs this year.  Kevin is an interesting guy, an officer with Space Command as well as a writer, and several of his short stories have been published by collections and anthologies.  He also has a novel out called Runs In The Family.

kevin_profile

Kevin’s head has been in the clouds since he was old enough to read. Ask him and he’ll tell you that he still wants to be an astronaut. A former manager of the world-renowned U.S. Space Camp program in Huntsville, Alabama and a former executive of two Challenger Learning Centers, Kevin continues to work with space every day.  Recently promoted to Lieutenant Colonel, Kevin serves as a Space Operations Officer in the Army Reserve.

Kevin is the author of the military science-fiction novel RUNS IN THE FAMILY. His short fiction appears in Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, Mindflights, Twisted Dreams Magazine and most recently in the anthology EXTREME PLANETS, available from Chaosium. Kevin is a member of Fiction Foundry, Pikes Peak Writers, and alumna of the Superstars Writing Seminar.

He can be found online at www.kevinikenberry.com.

Webpage:  www.kevinikenberry.com

Facebook:  www.facebook.com/thewriterike

Twitter:  @thewriterike

 

It’s in the Game

Posted by dougdandridge on February 3, 2013
Posted in: Barbarians, eBooks, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Fantasy, Far Future, Fusion, Future Prediciton, Future Warfare, History, Kindle, Magic, Military, Near Future, Past, Plotting, Proofreading, science Fiction, self publishing, Titles, Tropes, Typos, Wormholes, Writing. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , . 1 Comment

I received a review lately on Exodus where the reader stated that it was obvious that I had read David Weber and John Ringo. Guilty as charged. And Robert Heinlein and Poul Anderson and Jerry Pournell. And if you read my fantasy you may see Robert E Howard, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Michael Moorcock, some Robert Adams, and a fight scene or two choreographed like R A Salvatore. And in the military aspects of my fiction you may recognize a bit of Tom Clancy and Harold Coyle. You, see, I didn’t learn to write by attending a Master of Fine Arts program, or by taking online classes (though there were some of those). I studied and obtained degrees in Psychology in College, and also studied and majored, at times, in Biology, Geology and Chemistry. I learned to write by reading for enjoyment and sitting my ass in a chair to write. Maybe that causes me to lack some of the polish of an MFA, but I know what I enjoy, and I try to do the same in my stories. If I enjoy something of the above mentioned authors it will enter my tool box without thought. It’s normally not a conscious decision what style to copy where. Just something I do. And as long as the readers enjoy it then I am accomplishing my primary task.
I have also had some reviewers say that I did something in a book that was done before, and therefore dismiss it. I mix and match themes, and sometimes do something similar to what was done in a book or movie, especially if I thought the original was really poorly done. I will also add some things from stories that I enjoyed, but in a new setting, and with a new mixture of elements. One reader noted this in a review, stated that, sure, I used themes that had been used before, but added some interesting new themes involving wormholes and black holes.
Some of my novels have been confusing to some readers. If both my series, Exodus and Refuge, I use a number of POV characters and jump all over the place. Also not an invention of mine, I credit the technique to both James Michener and Harry Turtledove. Michener told stories across centuries of time with different characters for each era. Turtledove, mostly, tells stories with ten or more viewpoint characters, each involved in their own part of a larger story, sometimes revolving around a major war. The scenes switch through the book telling the story from the progression of characters. Every once in awhile a main character will die, and his part is taken by a secondary character in his story. It can be confusing, but can also be interesting. Now I do listen to my readers, and to the reviews good and bad. That doesn’t always mean I’m going to make changes based on their suggestions, but it might. Hopefully I will keep progressing with my writing. I plan on doing this for a long, long time.

Why are so many aliens humanoid?

Posted by dougdandridge on January 31, 2013
Posted in: Alien Invasion, eBooks, Far Future, Future Prediciton, Future Warfare, Genetic Engineering, Genetics, Kindle, Military, Movies, Nanotechnology, Near Future, Plotting, Robots, Space Industry, Space Program, Titles, Tropes, Writing. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

If you have seen as many movies and TV series as I have you may have asked the question. Why are so many aliens humanoid? Is it because of a lack of imagination on the part of movie and TV producers? Budgetary constraints? Other? I know in the original Star Trek they had constraints of budget, and developed a mythology to explain the preponderance of humanoid species in the Galaxy other than “the studio was too cheap to let us come up with cool nonhumans.” They developed a race of ancients who seeded the Galaxy with humanoids (not sure why), which explained why Vulcans could mate with Humans and produce Spock (thought they used blood with different carrier molecules for Oxygen, so no sure how that worked). Otherwise, no matter the compatibility of sexual equipment, you would have more luck reproducing with a tree slug than an alien, even if they did use DNA (which is also not a given). Now Cheesy old movies used humanoids even if they had scaly skins or claws, because the humanoid actors had to fit into those monster suits. Or if the aliens were very nonhuman they didn’t move much, because that was beyond the effects wizardry of the time. I think one of the hookiest aliens was G-Man from Robot Monster, which was a guy in a Gorilla suit with a single eye stalk coming out of his shoulder area. Of course it wasn’t bad enough to not be retread for Lost in Space later on. Or maybe it was bad enough, which is why it was used. In later series the humanoid form was again used often. The Newcomers from Alien Nation, the invaders from V, even though makeup can be hard, its not as difficult as making a mechanical construct to play a truly alien creature.
Now this isn’t saying that the humanoid form is not a good one, and that convergent evolution won’t happen. I don’t buy the theory that in a million planets developing life every single phylum, class and order will be completely different than anything we have on Earth. I expect to see Reptilians, though with more limbs in some cases. And the humanoid form is a robust form. If I had to go to war I would love for it to be against Posleen like in John Ringo’s novels. They could run, but they couldn’t climb, duck or hide in holes or trenches, all useful tasks in a shooting war. And there were a lot of aliens from Star Wars that looked weird and unusual, but didn’t look like a good choice for a Galaxy winner, which is probably why the Galaxy was dominated by, you guessed it, Humanoids. I don’t expect humanoids to look exactly like us, though that could possibly happen. I really don’t expect for them to have the same genetic structures, internal organs or even number of fingers and toes. Our internal organs and their arrangement are a genetic accident. For example, look at the arrangement of our air pipes and food pipes, which cause so many problems. There was a fish with an opposite arrangement that would have been so much better, but it didn’t win the lottery to become land vertebrates. So we have a bad arrangement of pipes that cause problems.
Books have always had better aliens than movies until recently. A writer could create the truly alien with the stroke of a few keys. They didn’t have to worry about how it would look or move, or how much it would cost to make it do so. Dracocentaurs and other aliens from Poul Anderson, all the forms from Alan Dean Foster, the list is endless. Now, with the improvement in CGI technology the movies can bring forms like these to life on the silver screen, and we are no longer stuck with merely redressed faces on obvious humans. Look at the Tharks in John Carter, or the natives in Avatar. Sure, both were more or less humanoid, but with some big differences that brought them to life. Or the alien in Super Eight, which was powerful, fast, and definitely not humanoid. I look forward to some other creations appearing at a theater near me. Today the only limitation is the imagination of the artist, and the time of the CGI artists, to make anything we dream come to life.

The Deep Dark Well, Free on Amazon this Weekend.

Posted by dougdandridge on September 7, 2012
Posted in: Antimatter, eBooks, Far Future, Fusion, Future Prediciton, Future Warfare, Genetic Engineering, Golden Age, Kindle, Military, Nanotechnology, Plotting, Quantum Physics, science Fiction, self publishing, Space Industry, Tropes, Websites, Wormholes, Writing. Tagged: , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

I switched my first published book, The Deep Dark Well, to KDP Select about a month ago, making Amazon the exclusive marketer of this novel. From 09/07/2012 to 09/11/2012 it will be offered for free on Kindle. I really like this book, and consider it one of my best. Written in 2004, just after I had gone through a divorce that really hurt, I submitted it to the three publishers that accept unsolicited work in my genres and received two very detailed rejections that praised the book, the plot, the characters, the setting. The problem was neither publisher thought it would make a ton of money, probably because it was classic science fiction. I still believe that people want to read this kind of scifi, thought publishers and agents don’t agree. I set the book aside for many years, then brought it out for agent submissions when I started down that path. Then a final polishing before self publishing. And reading the book that I had not read in years gave me the impression that this was a damned good novel. I put it out on Amazon without really understanding formatting, but fixed that problem. I have gotten three reviews so far, one three star and two five stars, though the three star was as heavy on their praise as any. But after selling about seventy copies of the book I have yet to get past three reviews. So if you want to read a damned good classic science fiction novel in the tradition of Niven and Anderson, get the book for free and come back to the Amazon page to leave a review. Here is the blurb I use for the book on Amazon:
An Adventure Forty Thousand Years in the making

Pandora Latham was just a country girl from Alabama turned Kuiper Belt Miner. The last thing Pandi expected was to run into a ship from the future on the outskirts of Sol system. Even less expected was that the ship would fall apart while she was inside it, the Universe correcting the paradox. The wormhole in the center of the ship beckoned, and Pandi jumped through, forty thousand years into the future. She arrived on a massive station built around a black hole. Once the center of a Galactic Civilization, the station was used to generate wormhole gates linking the Cosmos. The empty station is a memorial to the civilization that once was.
One survivor, an immortal being called Watcher, remains, guarding the secrets of the station from those who covet its advanced technology. Watcher, lonely from his self-enforced exile, befriends Pandi. Soon the woman from Alabama discovers that there is more to Watcher than is apparent on the surface. What was Watcher’s part in the fall of civilization? The answer to this question will determine whether Pandora Latham survives in this world, or becomes just one more death added to the trillions who went before her.
Grand adventure in the tradition of Larry Niven and Poul Anderson, set in a far future in which many struggle for supremacy, and one woman from the past will decide the winner.

And the book trailer: The Deep Dark Well.

And the three reviews in their entirety:
Azog (3 stars):
Not too bad. I am in agreement with the product blurb, in that I was often reminded of the great grandmasters of sci-fi like Asimov and Niven. Set in far distant future, when galactic empires have risen and fallen, leaving barely a memory of their existence. Massive engineering on incomprehensible scales. There are also nods to some of the great writers within the story.
The story was well-paced. It wasn’t a frenetic page turner like some action novels, but I don’t think there was any moment where I felt bored with the story. Mysteries are introduced in such a way which made me wanting to keep reading. The major actors were introduced in a manner which felt natural, and the overall backstory developed over the course of the novel. I would certainly like to read more of this story.
So why three stars if I enjoyed it so much? There were some minor editing errors, typical typos and such. But the typesetting (or text formatting, since it’s an e-book) needs to be addressed. The text changed fonts in various places, at random times. This threw me for a mental loop, since font changes such as this are often used as a story-telling device, e.g. perhaps to indicate a computer speaking. But there did not seem to be a reason, as the text would change size and font from one paragraph to another. Paragraphs were also either indented too far, or not at all. It may sound like a minor nag which I’m harping on, but typesetting is as fundamental to the book as editing and the story itself.

Janet D Ballard: A Fun Read. (5 stars)
This is classic space opera, with the science updated to modern specs. Admittedly I have a bias because I cut my teeth on E E Doc Smith, James Blish and others of this genre. I finished it in one read. I hope the author does more like this, as this type of book has become uncommon in the last few decades. Another review mentions some problems with the publication that are more of the nature of editing and “typesetting”, and while those are obvious, they did not detract from my overall satisfaction with the book.

Runningbear: Dancing Madly Backwards, then forwards again. (5 stars)
I enjoyed this one all the way through, and the beginning didn’t give a hint at where it was going to end. I especially like the way Dandridge introduces limitations on the end-time hardware. Star Trek’s easy technology is just that, easy. This book presents tremendous technologies, but each have their limitations and even hazards, something all to true in life. High speed sub-light travel with the downside of braking to deal with, not something dealt with in traditional sci-fi much. The author left open the possibility to follow the characters for further adventures. I hope he follows up on this. Great read with more solid detail than is typical.

And finally an excerpt of that solid detail:

The huge cylinder rotated into place. The wormhole com link made the distance between it and its control center meaningless. The wormhole sensor link made the distance between it and its target meaningless. The unit powered up, energy flowing along the millions of kilometers of power cables within the cylinder. Gathering at the conversion chambers. Power spiked to maximum, as the beam of gravitons, the messenger particles of gravity, streamed through the expanding wormhole sensor link. Target, the Nation of Humanity battle cruiser Dolphin.
* * *
The engineering crew of the Dolphin were about their normal business. Basically their business was to be there when automated systems malfunctioned. Or when damage occurred during battle that needed to be repaired quickly. Currently all fusion generators were on line, powered up to three quarters full. All that was needed for alert status. It was always good policy to keep a reserve. The matter/antimatter generators were off line at this time. That much energy was only needed when the space destroying drive was on line.
Crewmen and women were dressed in their battle gear, hard composite armor panels over environment suits, proof against most of the types of hard radiation one might find in a space battle. Helmets were for the most part detached, hooked to belts or set on stands near duty stations. Everything was running smoothly and efficiently. Inertialess drives were tuned perfectly, energy storage packs at full charge. Cooling systems were damping the heat of fusion reactors to the radiators on the skin of the ship.
Everything was running smoothly and efficiently, until disaster struck without warning. The first inkling the engineers had that something was wrong was when objects sitting on shelves or workstations began to slide and fall to the floor. Within moments these same objects were flying through the air, followed by helmets and other heavier objects. Then the crew had to grab onto whatever was at hand, or be pulled across the floor toward a gravity source much greater than that generated by the ship’s artificial field.
The central fusion center was hit the worst, and the first. The large room was sucked free of atmosphere, a roaring wind pulled into the high center of the chamber. Crew grabbed for helmets, then quickly for holds to keep from being pulled along with the air. The environmental systems struggled to dump enough air into the room to keep it stable. Not enough, not nearly fast enough.
Here objects were swept into the point, to disappear in a flash of light. To disappear from sight, but not from the Universe. A helmet swept in, obliterated in an instant. A crewman was pulled in, his screams over the intercom squelched at the instant of his contact with the point, though it took a moment for the gory mess of a disrupted body to be pulled in as well.
Survivors belted themselves to whatever was available, using the safety straps provided on their environmental suits. These were the witnesses to the next phase of the destruction. Braces pulled loose in silence from the nearest fusion reactor, crumpling like tin foil as they struck the point source, to disappear. The closest crew followed, belts tearing, or bodies and suits coming apart under the inexorable pull of gravity. Only those furthest from the source were to survive, for now, though the pain of tidal forces brought screams of agony over the ship’s intercoms.
Matter was squeezed together by the terrific concentration of gravity. Even compressed beyond the resistance of the electron shells. Charges flowed from protons, turning all into a mass of neutrons swathed in a thin shell of electron liquid. Gravity increased as more gravitons entered the mix, informing time and space of the existence of mass that didn’t really exist.
The point source began to move, forward, pulling in more and more matter, as it crushed its way through the bulkhead to the next compartment.
* * *
“Commodore,” yelled the engineering liaison from his station. “We are under attack.”
“From what?” asked Elishas. She was still trying to puzzle the data on the anomalies sent from the flagship. And there had been no warning of any kind of attack.
“We don’t know,” answered the officer. “But it’s tearing the engine rooms apart.”
“On screen,” she ordered. Immediately an image formed, of a distortion of glowing air, swinging swiftly through the antimatter reactor room. Objects flew in blurs into the object, ripped from their places. A cooling pipe tore loose as they watched, to disappear in a flash.
“If it ruptures one of the antimatter storage tanks,” said the hushed voice of the navigator.
Yes, thought Elishas. If it ruptured an antimatter storage tank the Dolphin would be reduced to a great number of small particles moving from the center of the explosion with great speed. Then the point was through the next bulkhead and moving forward. The bridge crew breathed a sigh of relief. A short-lived sigh.
“It’s coming forward,” cried the science officer, echoing the thoughts of others.
The ball of neutronium was indeed coming forward, growing more massive with each traverse of a chamber, pulling crew and equipment into its embrace. The ship shuddered from the assault as bulkheads began to buckle. The view screens followed its progress. To the relief of the commodore it stopped, in the exact center of the ship. Already a thousand tons of matter had been compressed. A small proportion of the ship, to be sure, but still a threat.
Billions of kilometers away the graviton beam was switched off. Instantly the source of gravity that had pulled the thousand tons of matter into a microscopic neutronium sphere disappeared. Matter could not exist in such a concentration without sufficient force pulling it together. There were still sufficient charges within the ball to generate the natural repulsive forces of like charged matter.
Within a nanosecond of the removal of force the ball exploded outward, particles reaching an appreciable fraction of the speed of light. This explosion in itself would have destroyed the vessel beyond recognition. The rupturing of the antimatter storage tanks, followed closely by the destruction of the negative matter pods, assured that little in the way of matter was left to clog the lanes of space.
* * *
Dolphin flared as a brilliant light on the view holo, followed an instant later by the form of the Tiger Shark. Bridge crew covered their eyes instinctively, though the display would never reproduce light powerful enough to damage eyesight.
“What happened?” demanded the admiral, his mouth dropping open at the spectacle of the complete destruction of two of his vessels. No warhead he knew of could have destroyed them so quickly, or approached so invisibly.
“Should we move the squadron back?” asked the captain nervously.
“Yes,” said Gerasi, his voice hushed. “At flank speed.”
“Helmsman,” yelled the captain, “full speed astern. Transmit orders to the rest of the squadron to do the same.”
“Stop us when we are another billion kilometers out,” ordered the admiral.
“You don’t intend to run from this display of power?” asked the captain incredulously.
“We don’t even know what it was,” answered Gerasi, strength creeping back into his voice.
“The gravitation anomaly spiked just before the destruction of the two vessels,” said the wide-eyed science officer. “Ejecta consisted of neutrons, gamma particles and microscopic particles of matter. It will take some time to completely analyze the remains from this distance.”
“We sure as hell are not going to get any closer to that thing until we figure out what happened,” said Gerasi. And what then. He couldn’t go back to the home system empty handed, especially with the loss of two capital ships. But what good to sacrifice all the vessels. All the crews.
“Transmission coming through,” said the com officer.
“Put it on,” ordered the admiral.
The creature appeared on the holo. No longer looking frightened. Its voice no longer trembling with fear.
“How did you like my little pyrotechnic display?” it asked, a smile cracking its narrow face.
“You were responsible for this?” yelled Admiral Miklas Gerasi, waving a fist at the holo. Of course the creature would not be able to respond for over an hour round trip transmission. He couldn’t wait till he had the creature in his grasp, able to communicate by means of voice and pain, instantaneously.
“Of course I was responsible for this,” said the creature. “Oh, don’t look so shocked, my dear admiral.”
“You, have instantaneous communications?”
“Of course,” it replied. “Only primitives such as yourselves do not.
“I had hoped that all of your little ships would have stepped into my parlor. Then I would not have to worry about watching your vessels, filled with semi intelligent monkeys capering about their controls. Now you have been warned. Stay away from the Donut. If you approach closer than two billion kilometers you will never again see the stars of your home. Bring this warning back to the men who sent you. This is my space, and mine alone, and I do not intend to share it with any half evolved protohumans.”
“And what name shall I give my Patriarch, when he asks who gave this ultimatum to an admiral of his fleet?”
“Tell him Vengeance gave the ultimatum. Tell him Vengeance awaits whatever he might send to test my resolve.”
The holo went blank before Gerasi could reply. The admiral stared into the display of stars that took its place for a moment.
“Halt the squadron,” he ordered.
“You don’t mean you believe him about the two billion kilometer limit?” asked the captain with a shaking voice. “The crew will not like being so close.”
“He would have destroyed us already if he meant to,” said the admiral. “Besides, who commands here? The crew, or me?
“I want an analysis on the remains of the two vessels he destroyed,” said Gerasi, as he left his seat and headed for his day cabin. “Keep me informed.”

I hope that many people will pick up what I consider to be a damned good read this weekend for free at Amazon, The Deep Dark Well. And please come back and leave a review.