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Steven Domingues

Thinks of things, then writes them down

Universal Constant

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This is an interesting one,  my second serious attempt at a full length novel. What do I mean by serious? I have a full outline, research into the science of how things work and files full of world-building material. Every other story I’ve written has been from the “seat of my pants” so to speak. So what’s this one about? Space. Drawing inspiration from Firefly, Star Wars and Mass Effect, this is my attempt at a space opera. I’m treading very lightly here, as sci-fi is one of my favorite genres, only touched upon in one other story (The Wormhole) which is time travel, not space travel. I have a Captain who doesn’t own his own ship and said ship full of miscreants: a systems tech with an artificial arm, the ship’s AI which knows too much and an engineer with too little experience. What could go wrong?

Sample text follows, click on link at top of page for longer sample.

“Hey Emma, we in range yet?” The tri-lensed holo projector that was hanging from the ceiling lit up and an image of a woman materialized in the middle of the room. She stood still in the room, the look on her hard face one of annoyance.

“No Captain. I’ll tell you when we are. Or, you could just look at this.” She raised one beefy arm and pointed towards the holo display. The display lit again and a model of near-space appeared, the ship a glowing green point of light. The station they were approaching, Isle of John, was a bright blue, and there was a dashed orange line connecting the two, with various numbers floating next to it indicating an estimated time of arrival, the current distance, and their velocity.

“Show me other ships.” Hicks sat in the rotating chair next to his built-in desk and put his booted feet up on the stack of boxes that held hardcopies of the ships manifest, which still needed to be stamped with the ship’s seal. His heavy safety-mag boots caused the boxes to sag with the added weight. He folded his hands behind his head, leaned back and waited.

“Do you really need me for this captain?” The image of the woman shifted her weight from one booted foot to the other and crossed her arms. The image flickered as she did this, her resolution flipping between poor pixelation and a focused image. “I’m a little busy at the moment, as you can see.”

“Just show me, Emma.” Hicks dropped his feet from the boxes, his knees aching. He turned his back to her exasperated face and flopped down on his bunk, causing his tablet to bounce in place, it’s screen flickering to life with the movement. The holo-display angled itself, following the captain’s movement.

Emma, the ship’s AI, stayed where she was, her face going back to it’s usual stoic facade, her beefy arms staying crossed in front of her chest. She had modeled herself after a famous Old-Earth American painting of Rosie the Riveter. As far as Hicks could tell, she had been the mascot for one war or another. She wore faded blue overalls over a darker blue collared shirt and she had chosen to show her pant legs tucked into thick black boots, the only change she made to the classic image. Dark welding goggles rested on her forehead, obscuring her eyebrows, and held her red hair in place with the strap that wrapped around her head. She had placed a name-tag on the front left breast of her overalls, along with various pins and buttons that only she, and Old-Earth historians, knew the meaning of.

“Yes, sir.” The holographic image that contained the ship, Clementine, and the commercial station they were heading to, Isle of John, zoomed back and populated with several red dots, tags of text floating next to them showing velocity, ship names, and cargo manifests, if available. Hicks leaned forward and squinted his eyes. He read through several names: Dignity, Sarah’s Pride, Centurion Hawk, Four on the Floor, Elephant Dancer, Lightning Bug, Colorado Corsair, Taiwan 724, Earth-Corp Ark, and when he didn’t recognize any of those ships, or any one the twenty others that were inbound to the station, he closed his eyes and tried to remember if he knew anyone who lived on-station. If he was going to re-crew the ship, he’d have to start hunting soon.