Oolite Bulletins

A soft chiming sound echoed through the bridge of the python as the Montezuma's Revenge exitted witchspace into the usual vortex of high energy particles. The captain, a slightly overweight female humanoid dressed in a black, practical but unattractive jumpsuit, smiled and yawned, stretching her fingers.
Setting down her coffee, and the cheap looking paperback entitled "The chronicles of Stepan, book seven" captain Montgomery looked over at the nav computer's display whilst pondering how a book could smell quite so strongly of chewie bars. "Significant pirate activity" she said aloud with a slight hint of pleasure in her voice.

"So, we'll be expecting trouble?" came a voice from the back of the cockput. Gizmo, the Tianvan engineer was behind the captain, with the remains of the speech synthesizer in her paw.

"Quite likely, one lone bulk trader full to the brim with computers and luxuries, it'd be a dumb pirate to pass that up."

"Riiight... next thing you'll be doing is signing us up for military reserve service.. oh yeah, you already did that." Came the reply from the slightly annoyed feline.

"Indeed I did, and we made a fortune off the first two engagements we participated in. Everyone else brought cobras and asps, I brought empty cargo bays and a fuel scoop. One big battle with thargoids means only two things, adding to the kill score in relative safety, and fleets of those robot fighters."

"Quite the devil before you kill the mothership tho."
"True tha..." The captains reply was cut off as a siren cut through the conversation.
"Ah, we have custom already." chuckled the captain, swinging the ponderous vessel into a curve, to investigate the source of the active scan flooding the ship's sensors, and causing the siren. A deft flick of her thumb on a stick control silenced the noise, and another set the Revenge's sensors into a matching active scan mode.
The HUD revealed a single Cobra Mark 3 on an intercept course. The freighter's nose probed the blackness, homing in on the unsuspecting cobra.
Lights suddenly flashed, and laser light flashed across the darkness as the cobra opened fire. Beam laser fire sparked from the python's shields as they absorbed some of the somewhat inaccurate fire.
"Right, that's shown your colours up nicely" chuckled the captain, as she settled the sights onto the nose of the incomming cobra and squeezed the trigger.
The pilot of the cobra now realised his mistake as the military grade lasers tore through his shields and into his hull, and he wrenched his ship into a tight turn, trying to throw off the slower, heavier freighter, sending a pair of missiles at the Montezuma's Revenge.

A burst of high energy coruscated around the python as her ECM system activated, frying the control circuits of the missiles, and bright light flared from the engines as the fuel injectors pushed the huge, bulky ship in pursuit of the fleeing cobra.

A string of vicious swearing filled the command deck of the python, as Gizmo picked herself up, and rubbed her temple with a paw. "Could have warned me before pulling that kind of G!"

"Sorry.." was the apologetic response from the captain as she settled the sharp nose of the python onto the engine flares of the rapidly departing pirate's ship. He was running all right, the flare was that subtle shade that showed the cobra too had witchspace fuel injectors, and he wasn't afraid of using them.
Fast indeed, too fast for the python to keep a pace with, but not her lasers, which had cooled enough for another sustained burst, which arced out into the night, and into the stern of the pirate.
The sky flared with light, as the cobra's shields fought to disperse the massive energies of the laser impact. They succeeded, for a second or two... then collapsed, and the bolts tore into the battered hull, cutting it in two.

"I'll go check on the cargo, we lost a few credits a ton on the last run because they got shaken around." says the engineer with a sigh. The feline turns, and exit's through the door, which opens with a soft, swooshing sound. As it closes, a melodic robotic voice echoes, "Nice to be of service!" it exclaims, a sound which is followed by muffled swearing.

"I guess I shouldn't have bought Sirius Cybernetics parts for that last refit..." ponders the captain as she points the nose back towards the planet.
The cobra's remains had disintegrated under the power of the afterburners, nothing of value had remained for the ever hungry maw of the fuel scoops.

The view on the screens showed the stars gently flowing by, as the torus drive shifted into super-cruise mode, pushing the ship rapidly towards the chaotic planet ahead.

Reaching to her right, the captain's hand explored the vicinity of the cupholder for the coffee she'd put there a few minutes beforehand. Finding nothing, her brow furrowed, and her attention strayed to finding the missing cup. Ah yes, there it was.. in about thirty pieces, in a puddle of cold coffee.

"Bugger!" came the exclamation. "I'm going to find the man who gave that damned planet a tech rating of fourteen and feed him the broken shards of my favorite coffee cup!"

A chime issued from the navicomp, and the torus drive reset to it's normal mode as the presence of other ships disrupted the super-cruise's extended drive field. As the ship's speed dropped with a jolt, the main display was obscured as the cheap paperback novel flew forwards.
Yet more swearing followed, as the ship turned, aiming the prow at the radar signature on the smaller screen.
Climbing from her seat, she recovers the book from the screen. Grumbling about the workmanship of the repair yard, she settles back into her chair, hand tightening about the control stick, finger tightening on the trigger.

Just as she's about to tense her trigger finger the computers give another soft chime, as it identifies the ship as a GalCop viper. Relaxing, she settles back into her seat, and begins to turn the ship back towards the planet once more. When the shocking sight of the viper disappearing into a cloud of debris and vented gasses makes her pause.

Through the cloud, the twin, lancing beams of military grade lasers seek out and find their target. The lights dim as the shield boosters struggle to maintain the shields against the onslaught.
A worrying change of colour on the status displays explains the simple fact, the boosters are losing the fight, and fast.
The sensors pick up two new contacts, the escape pod from the viper, and the sleek, deadly form of a corsair. The simple fact that this one has popped up on the bounty scanner as a high priced fugitive only reinforces the simple facts. The python is in trouble. Despite the investment put into the ship, the nearly five tons of advanced electronics and military grade weaponry, it's a freighter, and the corsair is a purebred hunter of the space lanes.
The twin lasers lance out again, hungrily chewing at the freighter's rapidly fading shields. There was only one thing to do...run.
Fingers dancing over the control board, she triggers a series of electronic circuits. Witchspace fuel is pumped into engines already running at full power, and bright flames pour into the void as the python leaps forwards at the head of a bright column. A moment later, a cannister falls into the bright wake, it distracts the corsair for a moment, as it pauses to scan the cannister, but the hunter is not waylaid for more than a few seconds by the empty, tumbling, ejected fuel tank.
The python rushes past corsair, dodging the murderous embrace of the twin lasers. As the freighter passes the corsair's side, the stern shields begin to complain as well, dipping horribly as the corsair's plasma cannons take their toll too.
But the Revenge was past their hunter, it was now a simple race. The python twisted and span, engines and displays shrieking their distress in a hail of colour and sound as the ship bucked.

The corsair's plasma weapons having ripped assunder the freighter's rear shields, and scored their mark upon the delicate hull beneath, there was a pause, a few short moment's respite as the sharklike nose of the fugitive ship turned and bright light up the sky as engines set a pursuit course.

As the python's engines screamed in protest, at being run so hard, for so long, and precious witchspace fuel drained all too rapidly from the tanks, it became slowly clear that while the corsair had firepower and speed a plenty, he'd not bought the fuel injectors he needed to keep up with the fleeing freighter. Slowly, the battered python pulled away, but not before the corsair's twin lasers had ripped vast, expensive rends into the hull.
The rear-view display showed a trail of high value computer parts spraying into the cosmos, surrounded by an aura of exploding wine bottles and other luxury items vented from damaged cargo containers, through the side of the ship.

Several minutes later, the fuel tanks almost drained, the Revenge slowed. The corsair was a long way behind now, but the faster ship was certain to catch them again if they didn't make the coriolis station soon.
The scanner was clear, so, setting the ship into a long, arcing trajectory, hoping to avoid any further hostile encounters, she pushed the button to trigger the tortured torus drive into super-cruise mode again.

Nothing happened.

Again and again she pressed the control, to no response, not even the dreaded "Mass lock" warning on the screen, then.. finally, the engines flared and the ship leapt forwards. It had just been that bad control that had never quite worked right... "I told the damned repair yard to fix that blasted control! I'll kill them!" she swore.

Good stuff, Allikat! No time right now for a detailed proofread (although I'm sure others will come along pretty soon), but one thing to watch is the shifting between past and present tenses in the second section there, e.g. "says the engineer with a sigh" and "ponders the captain", but "the captain's hand explored the vicinity of the cupholder"; and "Yet more swearing followed, as the ship turned" but "she settles back into her chair".

Plenty of action though!

The story concept is good.
The style has a nice feel. (It somehow reminds me of the BBC television show "The Vicar of Dibley")

The action needs to be more sequential and better defined. If the writer loses track of what they're writing about, the reader won't fare well either.

Good start. Proper proof read to follow if others do not beat me to it (but I concur with the Big D - tense shifting is a no-no (generally) )

Looking forward to more!

Well, I've not written fiction in any form since school. And yes, that was before the original Elite came out.. lol I'll have a go at the tenses at some point, as well as introduce some more of the crew.

allikat wrote:

Well, I've not written fiction in any form since school. And yes, that was before the original Elite came out.. lol I'll have a go at the tenses at some point, as well as introduce some more of the crew.

Then double bravo - 1) for the story 2) for stepping back up to the plate (with a potentially huge audience)

Anyone want to see pictures of this?

Myr wrote:

Anyone want to see pictures of this?

Pictures of what?

Good start!

Tense shifting definitely needs sorting, but great descriptions and the story holds the attention.

You might want to think about the description of the torus drive "showed the stars gently flowing by, as the torus drive shifted into super-cruise mode, pushing the ship rapidly towards the chaotic planet " - as I think we've generally accepted that they aren't 'stars' but bits of 'space dandruff' (dirt, bits of debris etc) as there is no way that stars could be shooting past given that you're approaching a planet at sublight speeds.

Other than that... more!

Cheers,

Drew.

Myr wrote:

Anyone want to see pictures of this?

Myr is my neighbour, and is an artist, and her hubby has OOlite on his home theatre machine, and is gently trying to ensure everything he watches on his plasma has the HUD at the bottom :p

allikat wrote:

Myr wrote:

Anyone want to see pictures of this?

Myr is my neighbour, and is an artist, and her hubby has OOlite on his home theatre machine, and is gently trying to ensure everything he watches on his plasma has the HUD at the bottom :p

Ah-ha!

I would like to see pictures.

Myr wrote:

Anyone want to see pictures of this?

Art can only help a good story. It worked for
ROTK so yes, a bit of art is always a lovely addition. Home cinema eh? Is it decked out like this one by any chance?

http://www.electronichouse.com/article/ ... r_theater/

Lucidor wrote:

I would like to see pictures.

Me too!

Cheers,

Drew.