National Novel Writing Month has started for 2013. It is an annual challenge for writers to try and write a novel in the course of a month. The goal is to reach 50,000 words in 30 days; having done this for a couple of years now, I find that this challenge is certainly do-able, and can be quite motivating.
This year, I decided to work on a project that I've been struggling with since high school. This year's novel is called Void: it takes place in a distant future, where the human race has expanded to other worlds and has become part of a larger galactic community, but falls under attack by a mysterious alien race that destroys the Earth's sun. When these aliens threaten other stars in the galaxy, war breaks out on all fronts.
This idea initially came to me during a physics class, when we were discussing black holes. Since it takes so long for light from other stars to reach our eyes on Earth, the thought occurred to me that we don't really know whether or not the stars we see at night actually exist. I felt it was a scary notion to consider that there could be an alien race that's exterminating all the stars in the galaxy, but we'd never know about it. I originally tried to draft this as a trilogy, but the draft proved to be very weak; looking back on it, I realize that there was nothing creditable about it, the dialogue was way too silly, and the writing overall was rather immature. I was also a little hung up on trying to make it hard sci-fi, but I think I failed miserably; I decided that focusing too much on science is a distraction and obstacle more than anything, so I'm keeping it soft sci-fi in the new draft.
I am currently 14,000 words into the new draft, which is way ahead of schedule, and I think the story overall is coming together pretty decently. Below is an excerpt of the first chapter, which details my main character performing a test flight on a prototype starfighter, as part of a competitive bid. Enjoy!
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Jupiter loomed over the lifeless, icy plains of Europa; the gas giant’s massive red spot perpetually swirled with the full force of never-ending storms. The gargantuan planet took up the entire horizon, its bands of red, orange, and yellow clouds drifting across its diameter hypnotically.
All across the ice moon, deep cracks and fissures criss-crossed the hard surface, scarring the satellite with dark lines. Cutting across rugged, frozen surface was a single vessel: a miniscule single-man spacecraft with a pill-shaped chassis, with small wings extending from its sides. A black canopy jutted from its body, tapered to a point, making it look like a small metal bird with a black face. As the Starhawk X32-model fighter accelerated along the moon’s surface at Mach 20, its friction against the thin atmosphere created a blazing hot wake behind the craft, which reacted with the ice and melted long streaks as it passed by. Geysers of ice crystals flew up in mighty blue and white jets.
In the fighter’s cockpit, Master-Sergeant Jack MacDougal watched the expanse of Europa’s jagged surface zooming past him. With Jupiter’s enormous red spot directly ahead, it looked as though the planet itself was watching him with an ominous red eye. It was a reminder to Jack that there were eyes on him from afar; General Hafford and corporate executors monitored his flight on the Aegis Space Station, 20,000 light years away in Fenorian space.
The thought of being scrutinized so intently made Jack a little uneasy, with a multi-star general and prestigious corporate executives watching his move, and with a multi-billion-dollar contract riding on his success. It was the most important and prolific assignment Jack had undertaken in his career.
For such a demonstration, a good pilot would fly on the designated course with no deviation or showmanship, strictly adhering to all the rules and guidelines to be the shining example for all Star Force pilots.
Jack was not chosen to be a good pilot. His superiors agreed that, if they wanted a perfect flight, they’d let a machine take over the craft. They wanted an imperfect, perhaps even reckless, flight.
Holographic controls hovered in front of Jack’s eyes, constantly displaying his speed, trajectory, fuel, power, weapons, and other statuses. Grabbing the control staff, he throttled ahead, pushing his speed to Mach 23.
As the dark Europa landscape rushed past him in a blur, a voice called out over the comms, “Tango One, you are exceeding high-hypersonic thresholds. Slow down!”
“How else are we supposed to know what this piece of scrap can do?” Jack retorted, his Scottish accent annunciating each vowel long and deep.
“We won’t know much if you fly fast enough to rip the ship apart!” the mission commander said. “We’re going to deploy the package in ten. Get ready!”
“I was born ready. Let's get on with it!”
From orbit, the battleship Perseverancedrifted over the testing site, twenty miles over Jack’s fighter. Along the starboard hull of the long, skinny, hardened vessel, one of its hangar bay doors slid open. Several small pods accelerated from the opening, and descended toward the surface. As the small pods breached the atmosphere, the friction against the thin air caused their hulls to glow red.
Through his display, Jack could see the pods descending ahead of the fighter, appearing as small streaks of fire. When the pods came close to the surface, their outer casings popped open. Drones shot out from the discarded shells; they were small robotic orbs that flew fast and straight toward Jack.
An alarm beeped in the cockpit, and Jack saw the warning in front of his face: the drones had a lock on his craft, and they were aiming laser cannons at him. Jack immediately pulled hard on the staff, and his vessel spun in a tight, fast barrel roll. A red laser shot out toward the fighter, but missed it by several feet.
As he continued to spiral, Jack felt himself being pushed into his seat by the intense G-forces of his maneuver. The spinning view of the moon’s landscape made him dizzy and sick. Despite the disorientating spinning, the fighter’s computer highlighted the drone on Jack’s display. He squeezed the trigger on his staff, and the fighter’s guns sent out a short burst of laser pulses. His shots hit the small drone’s casing, and sent it spiraling out of control. It landed hard on an icy field, exploding to pieces as it ruptured the ground and caused a geyser.
Ahead, another drone leveled over the moon’s surface and bore down on Jack. Jack banked to the right, just as the drone targeted him. A laser beam sizzled past Jack’s canopy, narrowly missing the cockpit by mere inches.
When the targeting computer locked onto the oncoming drone, Jack fired at it. His shots missed, as the drone darted to the side. He followed the small device, but his computer beeped in warning. His display showed two more drones closing in on him from his aft.
In a split-second decision, Jack pulled up on the staff, pitching his craft skyward. As he accelerated, his craft’s thrusters impacted the icy ground, causing a large eruption of melted water. His fighter shot upward, just as a drone flew toward him and passed through the eruption of ice and water. As the machine’s casing was pelted by ice chunks, it was shredded to pieces.
Another drone closed in on Jack as he flew upward, swerving around the geyser before shooting upward. Jack immediately cut off his thrusters, allowing the fighter to drift to a halt. As the moon’s gravity pulled his craft back to its surface, he performed a 180-degree flip, so that the ship faced the ground. As his fighter descended on its own momentum, he closed the distance between him and the drone. Squeezing the trigger, he shot the drone down, his laser beams slicing it to pieces. Parts of the machine flew up at the fighter and clattered against the hull.
Pulling on the staff, Jack leveled off and applied his thrusters again. He sped forward, crossing miles of flat terrain in a matter of seconds. The last two drones acquired him, and zoomed after him.
Jack suddenly dived into a deep gorge. He sped through the narrow icy canyon, watching the passage’s twists and turns carefully and flying in perfect alignment with the winding path. As he banked around the canyon’s curves, the drones struggled to follow him; one of them tried to match his speed and trajectory, but couldn’t make the turn sharply enough. It smashed against the wall of the canyon, bursting into metal shrapnel with pieces of the wall crumbling down.
The last drone rose above the canyon and targeted Jack from above. Pitching up, Jack immediately flew out of the canyon and headed skyward again. The drone fired at him, but he spiraled and banked erratically to evade the lancing laser beams. Ahead, he could see the Perseverance, well outside of the testing area.
Flying toward the battleship, Jack broke through the moon’s atmosphere and performed a run along the vessel’s hull. The drone continued to follow, also flying close to the battleship’s surface.
On the comms, the mission commander shouted, “Tango One, what the hell are you doing? You’re way outside of the testing zone! You’re not supposed to be here!”
Ignoring the message, Jack continued to fly close to the battleship, with the drone following. Looping around the battleship’s bow, Jack made a pass around the bridge, which was housed in a tower that jutted from the vessel’s dorsal hull. As he performed a tight arc around the tower, the drone followed and tried to match Jack’s trajectory. Unable to keep up, the drone hit the tower and was shattered to pieces. Its remains drifted quietly in open space.
Moving toward the battleship’s hangar decks, Jack brought the fighter through an open door and flew down the narrow corridor of the flight deck. He approached the open space to land his fighter and maneuvered into it. With the landing gear extended, the Starhawk fighter settled gently on the deck, the battleship’s artificial gravity keeping it secured in place. Inside the pressurized hangar, the engines roared loudly, but gradually died as the thrusters cooled down.
The canopy opened, as a number of flight deck mechanics and engineers ran toward the craft. One of them set a ladder up against the fighter’s hull, and Jack climbed out of the cockpit. Once he set foot on the deck, he unzipped his flight suit, so that he’d feel less constrained by the tight-fitting layers of sustainment foam and thermal material.
The personnel bustling around the fighter tended to the vessel’s power, fuel, and computer readings, to ensure that it was working optimally. Reading the stats of the flight on a tablet, one of the engineers remarked, “Looks like smooth flying. The MAM reactor held up flawlessly, the computer worked at 80% efficiency, life support was good…”
“Yeah, she flies alright,” Jack said. “Seems like I felt a wee bit of drag when flying against gravity. I don’t know, but I don’t think the computer can compensate for that right away.”
“Well, that’s always been a problem with these Starhawk fighters. This is still a better record than the older X2 models.”
“It was a good run, I think I could get used to flying in these regularly. I hope Star Force considers giving the contract to these Kuahlee-Dureg lads again.”
One of the other crewmen warned, “Heads up, commander, the shirt’s heading your way, and he’s pissed.”
“Ah, what else is new?” Jack mumbled.
Moving across the hangar deck, he moved toward the pilots’ locker areas, where he shed his flight suit and all the layers beneath it. After taking off the protective outer layer, the thermal layer, and the sustainment foam, he was left in his standard uniform, which was a standard black and violet shirt with the Star Force insignia printed on the breast, and dark-colored khaki pants.
The mission commander entered the locker rooms with a surly expression on his face. The lieutenant approached Jack and exclaimed, “What do you think you’re doing out there? You were supposed to stay on the moon’s surface! At no point were you ever supposed to approach this ship! You deliberately breached the testing zone and intruded on observation space!”
“Yes sir.”
“Is that all you have to say? ‘Yes sir’? Does that mean you knew that what you did was wrong?”
“No sir, I don’t believe what I did was wrong necessarily. But I do know that I did break away from the testing zone and entered the observation zone. That’s why I say, yes sir.”
“You just don’t care, do you, MacDougal?”
“I do believe it was Captain Miller who said that they wanted me to be a wee bit unconventional on this flight, and that General Hafford would love to see it that way.”
“The General wants a demonstration of the new fighter, but what you did was sheer exhibitionism. You could have put yourself and everybody on this ship in mortal danger, just so you could fly laps around us and show off like a damned fool!”
“Yes sir.”
“You listen to me, sergeant,” the lieutenant seethed. “You’re under examination to become a squad leader. If you’re really going to take that responsibility seriously, you better stop acting like the immature street trash you are.”
“Street trash?” Jack said. After a tense moment of glaring at the mission commander, he added, “I’ll take that as a compliment.”
Turning away, the lieutenant left the rooms, muttering, “I hope to God they bust you down to Astronaut Basic someday.”
When the officer was out of earshot, Jack muttered, “I hope to God somebody pulls out whatever it was that crawled up your arse.”
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