Well recieved.
Ugh. Been so crazy busy lately... and here's one of the things I've been busy on. In addition to SCARE for a CURE, which has really picked up the pace, only two weekends of build left! Aieeee! bfly and I built a 30' scaffold to support the fireball shooting guys, last weekend. We'll probably build a smaller guard tower scaffold tomorrow after work.
And cleaning up after the flood... and work, and ... yeah, being bored isn't really an option.
Anyway, our little writing group met tonight, and my excerpt from the hard SF story I'm working on -- The Black -- was well recieved. I gotta say, that felt really nice, and so after implimenting a few of the suggested tweaks, I thought I'd share the excerpt here.
Set-up in brief: Things are going downhill rapidly for our heroes. They were split into three teams when an alien vessel came calling, with clearly hostile intent. One team (that we don't see here) is on the alien station. Captain Weir's team is on an abandoned alien vessel. And the two people we meet first are left on their ship (the Thrum Pudding).
Daniel grunted as Falka swung the ship hard around, using the main engines to change their vector with a ferocity the ship's designers would have winced at, before adding them to the promotional fliers. "Why the hell not?" he shouted, when he got his breath back, before punching in the commands to slam home the emergency bulkheads throughout the ship.
"Because," Falka called back, "We can't just outrun them in open space. It won't work. Will you just focus and let me fly? Get our comms back!"
"Pudding's fast as hell! And you're gonna twist the poor girl up flying like this!" He swept the comms trancievers down through a lower set of bands. The jamming was thorough, but focussed in the high-energy realms. Even up through laser flutter and quark waves. But he was starting to get answers back from the mule, on the ULF emergency band.
"Ship. Show. Escape intercept scenarios. To Daniel," Falka commanded impatiently. She glanced at the edges of her screens, letting her awareness flood outwards. The enemy ship could apply a great deal more thrust, and its squat profile let it rotate faster, but it was also much more heavily armored, which made it slower to apply those delta-v's. If only there was somewhere to GO, she could manage it, but... even if she got out past the girders they had passed on the way in, there were hundreds of millions of kilometers of empty space beyond. The fact that the new arrival had dumped a dozen heavily armored infantry attack shells wasn't helping matters, at all.
Daniel grimaced as he had the ship page through a quick half-dozen scenarios. Every single one of them ended with intercept at best. Most were marked by complete destruction. Then a high-low tone warbled through his speakers, and he snorted triumphantly. He locked the mule's comms to his, and started a secondary sweep outwards to find a better connection, while he started querying CAP's suit.
Falka bared her teeth as one of the remaining armored infantry boarding shells skittered out of hiding, making a dash for them. She spun the ship hard counter-clockwise and 'out', lining up the remaining kinetic weapon. The hammering sound rattled through the ship as she fired out a three round burst, letting the rotational momentum carry them outwards further before diving back into the sheltering debris. At these ranges the effect was instantaneous - the armored shell exploded outward in jagged fragments, the alien inside vanishing in a fine mist that froze instantly. "Three down. Three to go... come out come out..." she growled.
She'd seen six make a bee-line for the airlock of the abandoned ship, the others were doing their best to intercept her. They were fast, like the ship, capable of accelerations that made her ache to think about. But their reflexes were nothing like hers... so far.
"I got Gareth, and Cap! And Booms!" Daniel shouted, clinging to his harness with one hand as the ship twisted hard around him again.
"What? Great! Fill them in... are they outside yet?" she shouted back, then flicked her gaze to the side... two of the wedge-shaped armored shells were arrowing out across the main body, dodging behind a spinning fragment of debris. "Ahh... tricky bastard..." she whispered, and twisted the ship in the opposite direction. They were nimble, but easy to outrun, and she knew they could only hold so much fuel.
"Jesus! Come on girl, hold together..." Daniel whispered, as the slow link downloaded everything it could from the captain's team. "It's a crappy link, and they're radio silent, but all three of 'em are ok." He keyed a quick query, only to get an answer from Martin before he could hit send. "Booms says they're fighting, almost to the airlock, wants to know if we can pick them up..."
"Tell him it's extra for curbside... oh." She trailed off as the larger ship rose up over the 'horizon' of the asteroid. How they hell had they managed to reverse like that? She twisted the ship hard, weighing her options as the heartbeats pounded past. She was flighted, she was open, free in the great black sky of the void. She could feel the wings on her back as she twisted, danced in the debris, the drifting cargo and ... there. Strap-engine. Two shots. One missed, the second hit, the explosion rippling out silently, sending one of the new infantry shells spinning. But they were too spread out to focus fire effectively, or to flee. She spun hard, grunting as the G-forces crushed her sideways, and 'slapped' one with the aft end of the ship, before incinerating it in the thrust. Then the arrows came, and found her.
"Oh? What do you mean, 'oh'?" Daniel called back, twisting around in his bindings to look back at the pilot's nest... though Falka was completely hidden, only the glow of her monitors visible. He nearly blacked out as the ship moved hard, slamming him into the mesh, then a harsh metallic spang echoed through the hull. "What the hell... did we hit..." he wheezed, then heard two hard 'crump!' impacts. "Oh... shit," he whispered, as the ship suddenly seemed to stop and hang, motionless, and all gravity fell away as the pilot killed the engines.
"Boarders!" Falka called as she peeled herself out of the harness, and launched herself out of the nest. "Both midsection. Gun-up, suit-up, right now."
"Damnit, I KNEW it!" Daniel said as he struggled out of the crash harness. "And screw that, we're hulled! I'm putting my suit on first!"
* * *
"Come on, come on, answer..." Gareth growled, giving his pad a sharp shake, then glanced up and around quickly. Captain Weir and Martin were still crouched in cover. As he watched, Martin rocked back under the silent impulse of three rounds fired out, the puff of smoke and gas swirling strangely in the almost complete vacum and complete lack of gravity.
~Well?~ Cap signed impatiently.
~Signal good. Words stop.~ he signed back, then muttered a soft "Ah..." as a thought came to him. It was a slow link, but steady. He signed an absent ~Working~ before dancing his fingers through the levels of commands, until the ship's systems opened to him. "Oh... fuck," he said, as he skimmed the top level warnings. He ignored most of the warnings about overstressed hull, a few breaches that were bad but not lethal... until he came to the most recent events. Two major hull breaches, low velocity, and internal damages.
He caught Cap's attention with a wave of his hand. ~Bad bad~ he signed sharply, then yelped as she aimed past him and fired twice. He spun around, twisting in the narrow passage, as the first armored suit floated backwards, pushed by a sputter of escaping air, blood, and gel. "Fuck it," he hissed, and tongued on his radio. Screw Martin's worry about intercepted comm's... he was more worried about catching a round! He braced against the wall, pushing against the far one with his feet, and as a second suit tried to use the first as a shield, he fired several rounds at it's leg. At least one hit, he was pleased to note, and as the impact threw the alien off balance, both he and CAP fired repeatedly. "Boarders on the Pudding," he said, as something between fear and delight flooded through him. He had actually hit something he'd shot at, outside a sim!
Martin ducked back around the corner and checked his map "How many?"
"Looks like two... that's why they've gone silent. They stopped transmitting right about then, so they weren't surprised. Don't see how they could be, given how hard they hit the ship." He stuck his gun around the corner, glancing up at the HUD display of its targeting camera. Nothing but the two suits... one still twitching and squirming, the other gone quite still. The brief sense of triumph was replaced by a flash of nausea and dread. There were attackers on the Pudding, and her hull was breached in multiple places. It was still fixable, from what he had seen, but... suddenly this was all much more real. Much more frightening.
A small lumpy ball drifted into view, past the two drifting suits. There was a brief bright flash before his visor blacked, followed instantly by unimaginable force slamming against him. Pain washed up, and then all was black.
And cleaning up after the flood... and work, and ... yeah, being bored isn't really an option.
Anyway, our little writing group met tonight, and my excerpt from the hard SF story I'm working on -- The Black -- was well recieved. I gotta say, that felt really nice, and so after implimenting a few of the suggested tweaks, I thought I'd share the excerpt here.
Set-up in brief: Things are going downhill rapidly for our heroes. They were split into three teams when an alien vessel came calling, with clearly hostile intent. One team (that we don't see here) is on the alien station. Captain Weir's team is on an abandoned alien vessel. And the two people we meet first are left on their ship (the Thrum Pudding).
Daniel grunted as Falka swung the ship hard around, using the main engines to change their vector with a ferocity the ship's designers would have winced at, before adding them to the promotional fliers. "Why the hell not?" he shouted, when he got his breath back, before punching in the commands to slam home the emergency bulkheads throughout the ship.
"Because," Falka called back, "We can't just outrun them in open space. It won't work. Will you just focus and let me fly? Get our comms back!"
"Pudding's fast as hell! And you're gonna twist the poor girl up flying like this!" He swept the comms trancievers down through a lower set of bands. The jamming was thorough, but focussed in the high-energy realms. Even up through laser flutter and quark waves. But he was starting to get answers back from the mule, on the ULF emergency band.
"Ship. Show. Escape intercept scenarios. To Daniel," Falka commanded impatiently. She glanced at the edges of her screens, letting her awareness flood outwards. The enemy ship could apply a great deal more thrust, and its squat profile let it rotate faster, but it was also much more heavily armored, which made it slower to apply those delta-v's. If only there was somewhere to GO, she could manage it, but... even if she got out past the girders they had passed on the way in, there were hundreds of millions of kilometers of empty space beyond. The fact that the new arrival had dumped a dozen heavily armored infantry attack shells wasn't helping matters, at all.
Daniel grimaced as he had the ship page through a quick half-dozen scenarios. Every single one of them ended with intercept at best. Most were marked by complete destruction. Then a high-low tone warbled through his speakers, and he snorted triumphantly. He locked the mule's comms to his, and started a secondary sweep outwards to find a better connection, while he started querying CAP's suit.
Falka bared her teeth as one of the remaining armored infantry boarding shells skittered out of hiding, making a dash for them. She spun the ship hard counter-clockwise and 'out', lining up the remaining kinetic weapon. The hammering sound rattled through the ship as she fired out a three round burst, letting the rotational momentum carry them outwards further before diving back into the sheltering debris. At these ranges the effect was instantaneous - the armored shell exploded outward in jagged fragments, the alien inside vanishing in a fine mist that froze instantly. "Three down. Three to go... come out come out..." she growled.
She'd seen six make a bee-line for the airlock of the abandoned ship, the others were doing their best to intercept her. They were fast, like the ship, capable of accelerations that made her ache to think about. But their reflexes were nothing like hers... so far.
"I got Gareth, and Cap! And Booms!" Daniel shouted, clinging to his harness with one hand as the ship twisted hard around him again.
"What? Great! Fill them in... are they outside yet?" she shouted back, then flicked her gaze to the side... two of the wedge-shaped armored shells were arrowing out across the main body, dodging behind a spinning fragment of debris. "Ahh... tricky bastard..." she whispered, and twisted the ship in the opposite direction. They were nimble, but easy to outrun, and she knew they could only hold so much fuel.
"Jesus! Come on girl, hold together..." Daniel whispered, as the slow link downloaded everything it could from the captain's team. "It's a crappy link, and they're radio silent, but all three of 'em are ok." He keyed a quick query, only to get an answer from Martin before he could hit send. "Booms says they're fighting, almost to the airlock, wants to know if we can pick them up..."
"Tell him it's extra for curbside... oh." She trailed off as the larger ship rose up over the 'horizon' of the asteroid. How they hell had they managed to reverse like that? She twisted the ship hard, weighing her options as the heartbeats pounded past. She was flighted, she was open, free in the great black sky of the void. She could feel the wings on her back as she twisted, danced in the debris, the drifting cargo and ... there. Strap-engine. Two shots. One missed, the second hit, the explosion rippling out silently, sending one of the new infantry shells spinning. But they were too spread out to focus fire effectively, or to flee. She spun hard, grunting as the G-forces crushed her sideways, and 'slapped' one with the aft end of the ship, before incinerating it in the thrust. Then the arrows came, and found her.
"Oh? What do you mean, 'oh'?" Daniel called back, twisting around in his bindings to look back at the pilot's nest... though Falka was completely hidden, only the glow of her monitors visible. He nearly blacked out as the ship moved hard, slamming him into the mesh, then a harsh metallic spang echoed through the hull. "What the hell... did we hit..." he wheezed, then heard two hard 'crump!' impacts. "Oh... shit," he whispered, as the ship suddenly seemed to stop and hang, motionless, and all gravity fell away as the pilot killed the engines.
"Boarders!" Falka called as she peeled herself out of the harness, and launched herself out of the nest. "Both midsection. Gun-up, suit-up, right now."
"Damnit, I KNEW it!" Daniel said as he struggled out of the crash harness. "And screw that, we're hulled! I'm putting my suit on first!"
* * *
"Come on, come on, answer..." Gareth growled, giving his pad a sharp shake, then glanced up and around quickly. Captain Weir and Martin were still crouched in cover. As he watched, Martin rocked back under the silent impulse of three rounds fired out, the puff of smoke and gas swirling strangely in the almost complete vacum and complete lack of gravity.
~Well?~ Cap signed impatiently.
~Signal good. Words stop.~ he signed back, then muttered a soft "Ah..." as a thought came to him. It was a slow link, but steady. He signed an absent ~Working~ before dancing his fingers through the levels of commands, until the ship's systems opened to him. "Oh... fuck," he said, as he skimmed the top level warnings. He ignored most of the warnings about overstressed hull, a few breaches that were bad but not lethal... until he came to the most recent events. Two major hull breaches, low velocity, and internal damages.
He caught Cap's attention with a wave of his hand. ~Bad bad~ he signed sharply, then yelped as she aimed past him and fired twice. He spun around, twisting in the narrow passage, as the first armored suit floated backwards, pushed by a sputter of escaping air, blood, and gel. "Fuck it," he hissed, and tongued on his radio. Screw Martin's worry about intercepted comm's... he was more worried about catching a round! He braced against the wall, pushing against the far one with his feet, and as a second suit tried to use the first as a shield, he fired several rounds at it's leg. At least one hit, he was pleased to note, and as the impact threw the alien off balance, both he and CAP fired repeatedly. "Boarders on the Pudding," he said, as something between fear and delight flooded through him. He had actually hit something he'd shot at, outside a sim!
Martin ducked back around the corner and checked his map "How many?"
"Looks like two... that's why they've gone silent. They stopped transmitting right about then, so they weren't surprised. Don't see how they could be, given how hard they hit the ship." He stuck his gun around the corner, glancing up at the HUD display of its targeting camera. Nothing but the two suits... one still twitching and squirming, the other gone quite still. The brief sense of triumph was replaced by a flash of nausea and dread. There were attackers on the Pudding, and her hull was breached in multiple places. It was still fixable, from what he had seen, but... suddenly this was all much more real. Much more frightening.
A small lumpy ball drifted into view, past the two drifting suits. There was a brief bright flash before his visor blacked, followed instantly by unimaginable force slamming against him. Pain washed up, and then all was black.