About:
Nightmarish creatures looking for a new nest stumble upon an unused path into the heart of a new unsuspecting sector… Prisoners being tormented in a space prison plot an escape… Scientists begin work on the greatest project of civilization… The descendants of terraformers repair their titanic ship and make their way back to the outer Federation… these and other stories lurk within the pages here…
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Sitrep: So, the cover to Multiverse 8 has been completed:
There are 5 stories in it, 2 Federation, 1 PRI, and 2 new independent sci-fi stories. (one of which was recommended to be turned into a full novel/series!)
Anyway, that gives me 5 books in the hands of the Betas and Goodlifeguide. I think I'm well ahead! :)
They are:
World Builders (in the hands of Goodlife so it will be published anytime this month!)
Noah's Arks (due in December)
Lowering the Hammer (Pirate Hunt 4)
Jethro 9 Siege
Multiverse 8
If any of the Betas want any of the books let me know. (you know who you are!)
I would also like to get 1-2 books into print. Possibly New Dawn and Jethro goes to War 1 next year. We shall see.
For those of you wondering, (a little birdy told me) my bibliography is in the beginning of every book, and in the Federation books at the back you will find a 'Recommended Reading Order'.
In other news: I am poking at my Johnny 5 bust again and looking at the Delorian time machine print again too. I need to reprint a few parts that broke (or in this case were glued to parts that broke) so I can get things moving with J5 there. (upper strut mounts) I'm hoping to get somewhere with it soon.
Here is the snippet:
Backup Plan
Edessa
The Guiding Intelligence finally felt like he was making some headway with the Gravemind when their people in the capital reported that the Xenos were pushing for more automation and less reliance on their kind.
It was a point of concern for them.
As a contingency plan built into their subconscious, they gathered a copy of everything they had, including nanites. They had reverse engineered the nanites so had recently begun manufacturing their own. Soon they would no longer be reliant on the Xenos for that critical resource.
Until then they had to be careful. They sent encrypted orders to the researchers to slow their research and be more thorough in their testing before providing results and conclusions. The same for the engineers.
They also dispatched two of their own ships outward. One would hide in deep space; the other would head to a neighboring sector. Both were contingencies against the possibility of their loss and destruction.
The temptation was strong to send it to the nearest one but that was Pi sector. That was occupied by the pirates and the Federation.
The Gravemind and independent leaders debated the odds of survival of a ship. If the Federation had not closed the jump lines across the sector, they could easily get a ship through. If, however, the Federation had managed to take over the sector, any ship would be detected and run down or destroyed.
Worse would be the detection. They did not need or want unwanted attention from the Federation.
Pity, they had holdings in Pi and the neighboring sectors, and some of their creators had been last sighted in those regions of space. It would have been nice to get back into contact with them and update them with their findings.
Instead, the ship was forged to run across the sector north to Xi sector. They could move in there and establish another Well of Souls and a backup of their kind somewhere in that sector.
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In Hyperspace
Captain Charon MMXXIII was a humorless clone. It had a mission and it was programmed to complete that mission or die with his ship. The captain took the mission on with solemn dignity of his build, neither complaining nor attempting to shirk its fate.
As a clone, his mind had been drawn from the Well of Souls. He was not a draft, a fresh mind enslaved to the greater purpose in order to serve the collective. His genetic profile had been weeded and cleansed of any defects. He was wholeheartedly committed to the cause.
He did have enslaved minds on board his ship running some of the lesser functions. Their manic energy was useful when properly harnessed. The critical command positions were held by clones of course.
Charon 23 turned to look at Preserver II, his ship’s sister ship in the cause. It was a copy of his own save for two small details.
Each ship was a cruiser grade construction rather than a transport. Most weapons stripped out to house copies of the Cryptorium facility. The ships were flat black and shaped like beetles.
Preserver II differed in her mission. She had been set up to travel further since she was to go to an adjacent sector and set up its Cryptorium there. But the second difference was as in its captain.
Charon 23 was still grappling with the differences. It wasn’t certain if the initiative its clone brother had been programmed with would help or hinder the cause. Only time and the fickle winds of fate would show them which way the bones would fall.
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Preserver II
As a Charon build, Captain Charon MMXXIII was known as a steady hand in a starship. Charons were transport captains who ferried the Necrons around. Normally they were selected to transport material and units between sites or, more likely and in this case, to ferry a unit out to a new location to set up a fallback cryptorium.
Charon 24, as he was known, had been grown in the same vat bath as 23. His hatching had been delayed by several months due to a temporary industrial priority shift. When they had returned to his ship, he had been hatched in order to oversee the final fitting out of the ship.
Unlike his vat brother, Charon 24 had a few extra modifications to allow for independent thought and action. He was, after all, to take his ship into unknown territory. He had a contingency order to return the ship if he could do so safely and discretely.
His clone brother had no such command. Twenty-three would most likely shut down when his function was complete and he was made redundant.
Charon had no idea what his original bio-parent’s name was nor did he care. His original bio parent might have been a volunteer or a draft; again, it didn’t matter to him. What mattered was the mission.
He was unaware if the Xenos were sending out their own ships to set up fallback bases. That was not his concern. His concern was to not alert the Xenos to his presence. The Xeno-Necron alliance was expanding rapidly through the sector like a wildfire. There were cracks starting to show in the unholy alliance though, which was why the Guiding Intelligence had triggered the backup contingency.
As Preserve vessels go, this one was better than any other in the history of the Necron cause. It was purpose built, a rarity. Normally, a Preserver was a captured ship that had been rebuilt to fulfill its programming. Occasionally, it wasn’t even fully suborned but a portion of a vessel, sometimes just a few shipping containers. When they arrived at their destination, the shipment would be “lost” at the destination and a new cryptorium would be forged somewhere.
As the best Preserver mission to be sent out to date, the ship had some beings selected from the Well of Souls to support and maintain the mission. Each had their own role to play.
The Guardian, known as Cerberus, Guardian of Tomorrow, was a Necron knight. He was a giant brute mech with the core of a cyborg. Black Gothic armor covered the mech body with spear points jutting out of the backpack. The mech tended to stomp around when he moved through the ship. Each step was powerful enough to shake the deck. It was so energy intensive and large it usually limited its movements around the interior of the ship.
He normally liked to squat in front of the chamber to the Well of Souls or to the armory.
Kha MMMXXXIII was the Cryptek Technomancer, the chief engineer of the starship. The Technomancer was quiet and went about his duties silently. His body moved swiftly and silently, seemingly floating through the ship.
Kha controlled two-thirds of the bots and lesser cyborgs that maintained the vessel at its peak efficiency. The Technomancer moved from one spot to another checking ship systems constantly.
Zramek the Harvester was the Necromancer assigned to the ship. He was a black brooding cyborg dressed in black robes who seemed bitter at the assignment but determined to follow it through. He looked like a dark Gothic priest with his pointed hat and shoulders. To the uninitiated, he would be terrifying. Most of the time a mortal only saw him once while strapped to a table being dissected and reformatted into a new form with a new purpose to serve the collective. Any mortal that had been drafted in such a way might harbor memories in their flesh and were therefore terrified and extremely deferential to the Necromancer.
Most likely because they didn’t want anything else cut off and reshaped, Charon thought moodily. Zramek was known as a harvester, but he occasionally experimented with ideas on how to “better the race.”
The Caretaker was one of his underlings. She was a cyborg Arachnes, a half human, half spider robot. She spoke with a sweet voice. The Caretaker cared for the fleshy parts of the cyborg amalgamation within the ship. She controlled some of the spiderbots in order to tend to the cyborgs who were fused to the wall or machinery in one fashion or another.
Samuel was the XO of the ship. He was another mostly silent being who went about his duties quickly and quietly.
Salem was once a small black domestic Neocat that had been a helmsman on a tramp freighter in his previous life. He was now a cyborg tied into the ships systems. He tended to roam the ship when they were not in hyperspace. He liked to sleep and would try to hide in odd spaces. The spiderbots always found him and rousted him out to attend to his duties.
There were clones of each of them on each vessel. There had been little interaction between them. Many had been programmed to not be interested in such matters. The Guardian was a humorless near automaton, rigid in his mission parameters.
The Charon could not help but debate their mission. The Necron species was in a better place than it had ever been before. Yet, still they moved with caution.
The hated Federation, which burned them from their hiding spots, was far away. They had an ally and had almost every technological resource that they needed to continue with their great crusade.
And yet they still proceeded with caution. They still acted like they could be destroyed at any time.
It made him question his mission. Of course he did it privately; it would not do to show adherent behavior. That could get the attention of the Necromancer with disastrous results for his existence and the mission.
He only had a slight care for this existence, enough to want to maintain it. He was aware that he was the best Charon of his subspecies build. A lot of that had to do with the quality of his cybernetics and his nanites.
Since his mission was so far reaching, he had been given a lot of latitude in his programming. That included initiative. He was programmed to think, to plan, and to watch out and avoid trouble.
He had temporarily toyed with his mission orders. He was supposed to go to a neighboring sector but initially the orders had been vague. South was obviously out, and they had been programmed against going into Pi sector and accidentally alerting the Federation of the Necron/Xeno alliance prematurely.
But there might be another direction. He considered headed west into deep space towards Upsilon Sector. There was a massive void between the arms of the galaxy, but if he could transition it safely, it would be a big leap for his kind.
He was uncertain of his chances though so he kept his ship in line with Preserver I until he needed to make the final decision.
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Sitrep:
So, I am almost finished the cover of Multiverse 8. Here is the snippet from the next story:
Congo City
Purple Skies Star System, Tau Sector
Doctor Peter Ellington didn’t know his family well. His parents had died in a riot when the pirate plagues had killed many people. As humans they had been immune to the plagues but not to the violence from others. He had been living on the streets and had gotten pneumonia. He owed his life to a medic from a visiting hospital ship that had picked him up and brought him to the aide camp for treatment.
He had entered the foster care system there. He might have ended up as a tragic statistic but he had been determined to make a life for himself. He had proven he was gifted so he had been given more opportunities than other people in the same situation might have.
“Okay, folks, the grades will be posted by this evening. Oh, if you need adjustments, see me or Richy. We will be at the auditorium tonight trying to pitch the next expedition,” he said. He turned.
“Speaking of which, if we want to see it happen, please invite anyone interested in it to attend. We need to find a way to stop the beetles. I feel that the jungle may be the key to that threat,” he said firmly.
A few students smiled slightly at his insistence. They knew their professor’s hobby horse intimately.
“Make sure those of you who are on digs or other expeditions, check in with your team leads right away. I mean it! They might have changed the schedule, and you could get left behind,” he warned. He surveyed the students. “It has happened before,” he warned darkly.
He dismissed them and a gaggle of students immediately mobbed his assistant Richy. Richy did his best to handle the questions. Pete stood by and handled any leakers.
There were a bare twenty students so they got through that relatively quickly. Richy smiled and sat down on a stool in relief.
“Ever wish you’d gone off on the science ship?” Richy asked.
“Sometimes. Not anymore,” Pete admitted.
A science ship had come by the star system and had done an orange peel orbit around the planet to map the surface. Anomalies were highlighted and the entire data set given to the government.
The scientists had done many things during their brief time in orbit. They had taken readings, talked to people, cataloged artifacts, and tisked tisked about the lack of museums and such.
The science vessel’s crew had goaded the government into creating a college university system again. The government had done so in order to elevate their people into the future, and Pete had been one of the gifted students who had gotten through it. He had even taken a few classes with the scientists on the ship until they had departed the star system.
There had been hope that there would be additional visits. But then the war with Tau had broken out and everyone had been busy looking for escape plans in case of invasion. Now that the war with Tau was winding down, they were keen to look into the lost cities and relics of the past.
One such location was Congo city, a reputed lost city near the equatorial region. The data from the science ship and their own old maps had mapped it out. Expeditions had tried to go there, but few had returned. Those that did or those that just overflew the region reported that the entire area was overgrown with seven centuries of jungle growth. Pete was keen to know how the jungle handled the beetle menace, which was devastating plants across the planets in the region.
Traenor Industries, an offworld company, had come in when they had heard about the lost city. They were eager to go there and check it out. They had a contract with the government to get loot from the city when they opened access to it. Pete was a bit dismayed by that fact, but at least they would catalog everything and make the data available to the scientists.
He was practical enough to understand the government’s reasoning. The government wanted to get a city going and to get the lost riches to fund growth and to combat the beetle pest. With them they could have a brighter future, perhaps even grow the college into a proper university.
The government was tapped out on sending another expedition, however. There was an economic depression hammering the planet and region. The beetle pest and the quarantine to keep it from leaving the world were tying their hands badly.
Pete had convinced his college to pay half of the costs for his expedition to the jungle. He had to fit it in between semesters, however. They had six weeks to complete the expedition, but only two days to find an investor to pay the rest of the money he needed, or it was a no-go. Pete had put in as much money from his meager savings as he dared.
He needed the data from the field. But there was more to it than that.
The official reason was to chart the progress of the beetles devastating plant life on their world and on the neighboring worlds in the region. He and his assistant were also supposed to look for some natural predator or some immune plant that killed the pest.
The idea was to find something that might give them a glimmer of hope to kill the pest. He had his doubts though.
He had another more personal reason to go to the jungle though. Her name was Amy.
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Sitrep:
So, Rea just sent me the manuscript back.
Here is a snippet from the second story, Customs:
Customs
Nuevo B
Commander Jorge Rushbar eyed the star system map with misgivings. The place to be was inward to the Lagrange points around the Nuevo Alpha planet.
Unfortunately, he was on a space station around Nuevo Baker.
He scratched his head with a hand, running his fingernails through his stubble.
The star system was a G0 class system with six planets. The inner two were Mercury class rocks. The third planet was named Alpha because it was the first habitable world with its own trio of moons. Outward from there but still in the goldilocks zone was Nuevo Baker, a super Earth class with 1.4 gravity and a single moon.
Outward from there was Gamma, a Mars class with two moons and finally a Neptune class gas giant with its own subsystem of moons.
The natives had colonized the star system in the cluster after a light terraforming effort had made the planets habitable. Nuevo Alpha had been settled initially by retired military personnel and their families. Nuevo Baker or B as it was also called had been primarily settled by a colony of Centaurians as well as a scattering of heavy worlders.
Nuevo and a couple of other star systems like Bek were in an isolated cluster in a pocket of space within the Rho sector. There were two ways in and out of the cluster but only one was safe to transit, the rapids.
The two Nuevo worlds had been agro worlds, happy with being mostly forgotten by the Federation until the Xenos had come around. Admiral Irons had visited briefly to set them up as a redoubt in case civilization fell. Bek had traded with them using their small number of starships until the ships had one by one broken down and had been mothballed or recycled.
For centuries the Nuevans had been cut off from Bek and the rest of the galaxy. That was, until the light cruiser Caroline had managed to successfully navigate the rapids and bring them back into the Federation.
The commander wasn’t quite certain he should be happy about that or not. Bek’s industry and shipyards were damn good but they came with strings. As did the army units that were stood up on Nuevo Alpha.
Nuevo Alpha had developed an army to protect itself from swarms of worms called Tremor worms. Why they were called that he wasn’t certain. What he was certain of was that the colonists had been struggling with the swarms for centuries. Their technology had failed, and they had been reduced to buggies and animal drawn carriages until the Federation had re-established contact.
Now they were returning to modern technology. There were two space stations in orbit of that planet. And here he was on the partially constructed space station orbiting Baker.
The space station was to ship cargo and people to and from the planet. A fourth station was on the books; it was supposed to be built at the single jump point in the star system, eventually.
He wasn’t tasked with that project thankfully.
He scratched his scalp again and then tugged on his right ear lobe.
He was a Spacebee; he had come from Senka. His star system lacked a habitable world; the world had been destroyed during the Xeno war. The survivors had build colonies in the asteroids. He was at home in space even though he knew it was dangerous and could kill him in an eye blink if he got too careless.
He ran his eyes around the station. The current design had been set up for the basic species. Most sentient species were less than three meters tall. The Centaurians, however, were not.
Their body forms were too large for the spaces and modules. The station had needed to be redesigned after a lawsuit made its way through the courts. The State Department had intervened and arbitrated a deal to redesign the station.
That allowed everyone to get what they wanted and the administration would avoid accusations of racism. The administration had accepted that compromise and sent the Spacebees in to build the new space station. They were using the small modular one attached to the new one until the new one was complete.
To say that the Centaurians were prickly was putting it mildly. And that wasn’t just because of the poisonous spines on their backs.
Nuevo A exported army personnel, some military goods, and food products to the Sargasso star system and from there to Bek or the outer Federation. They were steadily improving the quantity and quality of their exports and even expanding to other export goods.
The army had a handle on the worms to the point that tourism was starting to pick up a little. There were even star liners that came in from Bek every quarter. The tourists enjoyed the visits to the “quaint” world and welcomed a respite from their time on the ships and casinos.
The natives on Nuevo B had only one export, information. Their work was important to science, math, genetic research, industry, physics, and navigation. Which explained why they wanted their own dedicated ansible at three times the capacity of a normal link he thought wryly.
That was a part of his mission, build the station, build a computer center on the planet, build a larger ansible platform, and possibly build bridges and other structures on the planet if there was anything left in the budget.
A second ansible link was on its way. Getting it through the rapids was tricky though; they had to account for losses in transit. The ansible cores were super sensitive to even the slightest shock to them.
The Centaurians wanted to hog the current ansible bandwidth while they waited. That was not acceptable. State became involved again, and a decree was announced that the two worlds split the data bandwidth down the middle with exceptions for military and government communications of course.
Conversations through the ansible was expensive. He was limited to a dozen characters a month. He had begun to save them up so he could send an entire sentence to his family and not just an emoji.
He shook his head and glanced at the image of Reuben Sullivan. The Neodog mutt was the undersecretary assigned to the star system. He predated Jorge’s arrival and was the bane of his existence. The dog was constantly on him to find ways to speed the process up.
He would if he could. He’d love to get out from under the mutt and the prickly natives. Love, love, love that idea. But, it wasn’t going to happen. At least, not any time soon. He couldn’t magically pull the parts out of the void. Even though he’d love to do just that.
Or send a certain pain-in-the-ass mutt in that direction he thought darkly.
He kept tabs on the dog’s whereabouts so he could be elsewhere. Usually being on the shitter was enough to keep the dog at bay so he wouldn’t have to listen to another lecture and whiny demand to hurry things along—oh, and keep it all under budget of course.
He shook his head and decided it was time for him to go walkabout for a bit. In the other direction from the mutt of course.
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About: Nightmarish creatures looking for a new nest stumble upon an unused path into the heart of a new unsuspecting sector… Prisoners b...
