Brin was tossed and jostled by the press of the panicked crowd. She could see the airlock at the end of the docking arm. The enormous tetra-redundant voidglass panels had been designed to give disembarking passengers an awe-inspiring view of the nebula while impressing upon them the prowess of the mighty Republic. But now it… Continue reading There’s No Need to Panic
Tag: Space Ships
Inside the Prohibition Zone
“These jump coordinates don’t look right.” “How so?” “They’d put us inside the Prohibition Zone.” “That’s right.” “It would take a full Federation armada to have a chance of anything getting back out again. Are you serious?” “Serious, yes, and also the captain of this ship. It would do you good to remember that. And… Continue reading Inside the Prohibition Zone
But…where?
“…and behind this bulkhead here is the reaction chamber. Inside, a captured wormhole mouth can be induced to open or close, and the outflowing energy is directed with a simple magnetic field to provide thrust.” “Where’s the energy come from?” “The other end of the wormhole.” “Yeah, but where is it?” “Well, nobody really knows.… Continue reading But…where?
Answering the Stravinsky
Space is a big place. Remarkably, unfathomably, soul-crushingly big. And all that space is essentially empty. The black vastness is not somewhere you want your ship to break down. That's why there's a mandate all ships are obligated to respond in good faith to any distress signals of space origin (once you make planetfall you're… Continue reading Answering the Stravinsky
Half Done
It started with a bar fight. I don’t remember what started the swinging, but I do know that I swung first, and I did it with a double rocks glass in my hand. Dark liquor and darker blood covered the big man’s droopy, drawn-out face and sharp little pebbles of glass scattered over the floorboards.… Continue reading Half Done
I Think, Therefore I Amnesia
“That event horizon’s only getting closer, ExI. Punch the coordinates and jump us out.” The android froze and tilted its face up toward the overhead above the helm. “Aw hell, Exoanthropic Intelligence my left foot! Don’t tell me you can’t remember.” “Bulk expulsion of superannuated data is a hallmark of higher-order cognition.” It pressed its… Continue reading I Think, Therefore I Amnesia
What Comes Lurking in the Light
Miria’s eyesight was poor, and that was before the hibernation sickness. She awoke alone. The Mon Chou was as deathly quiet as space itself. It was a freighter—unglamorous, but cheaper than a passenger transport—hauling a wormhole mouth to Khambalia. Miria wandered the identical empty corridors. Motion sensors kept her spotlit within the surrounding blackness. By… Continue reading What Comes Lurking in the Light
Mind is Mind
The small jump shuttle, its name and serial numbers and various tracking devices destroyed in faraway systems, hard docked with the remote outpost. The ship had never been here before, but the pilot had. Sofia shut down the engines and locked the thrusters. Then she started up the various maintenance cycles, including the FTL scrubber… Continue reading Mind is Mind
A Taste of Vengeance
The morning sky is black, thick with the ash spit from the stacks of the trawlers. The metal-plated machines stretch two kilometers straight upward, maybe more, with wide bases that could cover my entire village twice over. They hover on a cushion of plasma and crawl across the surface in long, ponderous paths, harvesting the… Continue reading A Taste of Vengeance
The Third Age of Sail
The First Age of Sail lasted for 400 years, marking a period when wind-powered ocean vessels were the principal means of human commerce before the rise of steam engines. The Second Age of Sail was a reaction to rising average global temperatures. Wind propulsion, combined with the advent of electric battery technology, again dominated mercantile… Continue reading The Third Age of Sail
Warmup Pages 