a sample from 20K LIGHTYEARS FROM EARTH
You never know how a book is going to go until you start writing it. You can have a killer idea that turns into goo when it’s finally put on the page, or you can have an idea that’s only halfway there that somehow turns into something special by the time you’re done.
I’ve only written four chapters of 20K so far, so it’s too early to tell which scenario I’m facing. I do know that the first chapter made me a bit nervous if I would find the characters’ voices. The second was a bit better. The third a bit better still. And now the fourth is done and it’s a cracker jack little piece of work, I think.
Here’s a first draft sample from the fourth chapter, which takes place right after the ship our characters are on pick up an escape pod from a previously-destroyed vessel…
“Repressurize.” Cpt. Jansen ordered. He was standing in front of the large window that separated the corridor from the docking bay, waiting for the massive retractable doors to close so the chamber could be repressurized and filled with oxygen. Once the light above the window changed from red to green, the captain gestured toward the door and let his security detail lead the way toward the rescued escape pod.
The small craft was large enough to seat only a handful. It was little more than an oversized barrel with a rounded tip on one end, and four thruster-engines on the other. The words OSC VALIANT was etched above the door and the faint glimmer of dimming lights in the interior danced a bit; a sign of life on the inside.
“Knock twice and open the hatch.” Jansen ordered. The nearest security officer slowly approached the pod with his fist outstretched, ready to knock on the metal structure. Before he could, however, the craft hissed loudly, and released a stream of steam, after which the hatch was opened from the inside.
The soldiers snapped their weapons to the ready, but the captain’s hand went up to signal everyone to wait. The steam obscured the interior of the ship, building the suspense until, finally, a figure emerged…and promptly flopped onto the ground below.
“Get the medics.” Jansen ordered before turning to the guard: “Help him up.”
The man looked about fifty, with pewter colored hair around his ears and in his mustache. His shirt was a rich green, the uniform used by the spaceship crews of the Outer System Colonies, and the pins on his left breast—two triangles and a circle—indicated his rank was Lt. Commander.
The officer’s breathing was labored, but steady. His eyes were a bit baggy and darkened, but mostly he looked relieved to be out of the small craft. He stretched his legs out and groaned with relief.
“Are you the only passenger?” Jansen asked.
“I’m the only survivor.” the man replied. “So far as I know.”
“What’s your name?”
“Lt. Commander Eli Townsend. Senior Tactical Officer, OSC Valiant.”
“What happened to your ship, Commander?”
“We were attacked by that…thing. That ship that’s been making sport of OSC spacecraft. We went looking for it and it found us.”
“Did you get a good look at it?” Jansen asked. “Could you make out where it came from?”
“The DRADIS picked up something resembling an inner system signature but…not like any ship sig I’ve ever seen.”
“What do you mean? Was it from Earth or from Mars?”
“Neither…maybe either, like I say, there were a few signatures our scanners picked up as being from an Earth-design, but other aspects were Martian…and some I don’t even know. Some we didn’t know what it was. There was no time to do a deeper analysis.”
“Why’s that?”
“They hit us hard, took out our engines, killed life support, then boarded.”
“How many?” Jansen asked. This was not a gentle conversation between colleagues, but a grilling from a captain to a lower-ranked officer.
“Don’t know.”
“You don’t know? You were the tactical officer and you don’t know how many hostiles boarded your ship?”
“They took out internal computers when they hit us. They had firepower like we never saw before. I think they were stripping the ship.”
“Stripping it?”
“Just before internal comms went out, the engine room reported a power drain and the external sensors showed a tether from their ship to ours. It was only for a second before—”
“Before you lost sensors.” Jansen said, finishing the thought. The medics arrived but the captain held his hand out to stop them from tending to the weary man. Townsend was still on the ground, sitting upright but looking exhausted.
“How long have you been adrift?”
“I don’t know…what’s the date?” he asked before chuckling.
It’s a silly question to ask when you’re traveling through space. Dates and times are relative. Official dates marking the length of an officer’s tenure is kept according to the universal date and time held by the government that commissioned him. Personal dates such as birthdays and anniversaries are kept, unofficially, by the crew in their own ways. The internal clock on the ship is kept at a twenty-four cycle, in keeping with the first space colonists that left Earth hundreds of (Earth) years earlier.
But anyway…
“We first received word that the Valiant was taken out almost a week ago.” Jansen said. “It takes about two days for messages to travel the subspace band from the outer systems to Earth.”
“We were deep in the Kuiper Belt so give it more than two.”
“You’ve been in that craft for a week, then.”
“There are water rations and not much else.” Townsend said. “Maybe one of your soldiers could help me up and lead me to a military ration pack. The spaghetti and meatball one sounds really nice right about now.”
“Let’s get you checked out by the medics first.” Jansen replied, though he again raised his hand to stop the doctors from approaching. “Just one more question for the time being: I was under the belief that OSC policy was for the senior staff to go down with the ship in the event of a catastrophe, and to use the escape pods to save the crew.”
“You’re right about that, but that’s not a question.” Townsend said, clearly knowing exactly what question he was about to be asked.
“No it isn’t. My question is, why is it that the senior tactical officer not only boarded an escape pod big enough for three, but ended up being the only one to escape the ship at all?
“Just before we lost power to the externals, I picked up a weird flux in the ship’s engine output. I told the captain that we should stay and fight to regain power because if we did, I could send a feedback along their tether; the one they had connected to our engine core, sucking our juice.”
“Right…”
“They were sucking power from us on a drip, and even that was redlining their power output. I figured if we turned the knob a bit and gave them more power than they could handle—”
“The enemy ship might overload its own engines.”
Townsend shrugged. “It wouldn’t fix our problem but it would give them a big one to deal with, giving us time to regroup and maybe take them out.”
“That’s good.” Jansen said, thinking and nodding to himself.
“Once things got too dicey, the captain ordered me to escape, so I could get the word to the rest of the OSC. Unfortunately, escaping the Kuiper Belt was not a walk in the park. I took enough microfractures in my hull that I lost comms within a few minutes. By the time I got out of the belt, I was down to one working engine and no nav computer.”
“No nav?” Jansen said, shocked. A ship without a nav computer needed an exceptionally good pilot, otherwise they were flying blind, with an infinity of bad directions to choose from. “What’d you do?”
“I used power from the life support systems, heat and air purifying mostly, to give the nav a few seconds of life. It was enough to get me to the intrastellar conduit. Once I was in, I just pointed her to the sun hoped to stumble upon a landmark along the way. Instead I found you.”
“I’ll have more questions for you later.” Jansen said before turning to Mr. Valentine, who was standing quietly behind the waiting medics. “I think, in the interest of ship safety, we will have to cancel the remainder of our trip.”
“The kids will be so disappointed.” Valentine said, trying his best not to fist-pump.
“Going to the Kuiper Belt?” Townsend asked.
“Not quite. Neptune. Field Trip. Obviously I underestimated the danger that was out there. I’m rectifying that mistake now.” With that, he finally gave the go ahead for the medics to approach. “You look like you could use a good nap.”
“I probably could.”
“I can give you something to help you sleep.” the medic said as she knelt down beside him.
“Perfect.” Townsend replied, before snatching the syringe from her hands and stabbing the leg of the nearby soldier. The officer stumbled a bit, instantly groggy, unable to stop Townsend from snatching his disrupter sidearm from his holster.
*PEW*
The energy beam struck its target, taking out the other soldier just as he was squaring up his aim. After that, he turned the weapon toward Ian Jansen.
“You need to rethink things, Captain.”
Again, who knows if the bulk of the book (the middle chapters that comprise the meat of the story) turn out good, but at least things are moving nicely. I hope to have the book done in a month or so, which seems faster than usual but it’s helped due to the fact that almost all of the art is completed already.
I’m excited to have the finished product in my hands.
~ Matthew