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The Colonel's Ravings (Stories)
I just found the West a couple of days ago, and I saw that stories were allowed on the forums. I am going to use this thread for a few stories I would like to get comment on.
The Colonel
First up is called The Travails of Ages.
The Megellen Class Scout, the UTS Henry Hudson, seemed to effortlessly slide though the Oort cloud, avoiding both the occasional large asteroid and the thousands of smaller chunks. At the scout’s sensor controls David Denton Dryer worked hard scanning all of the various floating rocks while, at the same time, trying to track the trajectories of the ones that posed a possible threat to the ship.
So why was David here in this desolate region of space? After all, considering it was probably the most desolate place to patrol anywhere within the Sol system. The answer was, of course, money. The pay is good, not great but good and patrolling the Oort cloud was the highest pay of all for a scout crew. David had been surprised to find that he was quickly saving enough money to be able to live a very comfortable life, even in New York, when he retired in fifteen years.
David had been amazed to find out he was regarded by everyone in the nascent Terran National Astronautics and Survey Administration as the best navigator in the Oort cloud. Why was that a bystander would ask, and was told that because, unlike the UTAF pilots who could ‘feel’ their ships, David had never once bumped into anything. Not one scrape or scratch. Everybody knew that he would never have made a good starfighter pilot, but as a NASA navigator he was without peer.
The job itself was fairly easy, along with the patrol duties the mining mega-corps’ would rent out the survey ships from the fleet. So the Hudson took the prospecting teams out to the various asteroids and they took core samples, then the ship would take them back to base where the core samples were analyzed. This allowed the best asteroids to be mined first.
The prospecting team currently assigned to David’s ship called themselves ‘the gold diggers’ and they where led by Gary Snyder. Gary and David had become fast friends over the last two years they had been working together.
Gary entered the small bridge and asked, “You want a cup o’ Joe, Triple D?” He said using David’s nickname.
“Sure Snyd,” David replied, as he concentrated on the controls in front of him. In the back of his mind he had often wondered why his parents had named him David Denton when their family’s last name was Dryer. As it was he thought his parents had a cruel sense of humor to name him David Denton Dryer and that had, from his earliest days at school, earned him the not too imaginative nickname ‘Triple D’.
“I’ll be back in a moment,” Gary said as he disappeared into the small galley just behind the bridge.
The Hudson carefully moved around one of the larger boulders in the area and entered a very dense cluster of small metallic asteroids. The Hudson slowed to a fraction of full power and began to negotiate the hazardous debris field. She inched through the field, mainly using radar, to avoid the dangerous chunks spinning nearby. Most of them would disintegrate if they hit the scout’s armor, but an occasional one would be large and dense enough to get through the hull. It only took one of those to make your day really bad.
David noticed the radar screen seemed to be playing games. Occasionally, he thought, he would get reflected images of something ahead of the scout. Suddenly he wasn’t getting an echo back from part of the display, so he began a systems diagnostics check. If the radar had developed a problem it would be suicide to continue the survey sweep.
As he worked though the systems check he heard the Captain, Lucas Paulson, exclaim, “In the name of God, what is that, David?” He asked, sounding very shocked.
David looked up from the diagnostic screen where he glanced at the viewscreen, and swallowed. A good third of the view was filled with a dark mass. David looked down at the radar and realized that part of the huge mass was blocking the scan. Worryingly, the rest of whatever it was did not seem to be blocking anything.
“Derelict ship of some sort, maybe?” David whispered. He looked back at the radar screen. It did not make sense why only part of the radar screen was occulded!
“Can’t be one of ours,” Captain Paulson said, sounding less shocked. “That thing is huge, and look at the size of that asteroid embedded in the side of it.”
“Ah ha, I see the problem now.” David said eventually.
“See what?” Captain Paulson said as he came up beside David and peered at the radar screen.
“This cloud seems to consist of small metallic asteroids, and they are scattering most of the radar waves, except for here,” David said, pointing at the screen. “So we are only receiving telemetry returns at the point where we have a clear view all the way to... whatever it is.”
“Shall we have a closer look?” David asked.
“Get us in close. Let’s see if it’s a ship or just an odd shaped rock,” the Captain said suddenly.
The Hudson edged forward at a crawl. Very soon they could tell it was indeed a ship. A massive ship. Vast beyond anything the Terrans had ever imagined. The most disturbing thing to the crew of the Hudson was the size of the asteroid that had impacted amidships. It was truly immense and it underscored just how large this ship truly was.
As they neared the ship they could see its surface bore scorch marks and seemed to have been breached in several dozen places. The breaches were large, they were big enough for a giant of a man to get through.
Captain Paulson was sure this was something that needed to be reported to fleet command. “Comm, prep a message for COMSPAFOR (Commander Space Forces) and include all of the data we have on this. Get it sent, ASAP.”
At that moment Gary returned to the bridge. “Mr. Snyder, I need you to prep your team for a little exploration mission.” Paulson said. Gary just stood there for a moment, slack-jawed, before heading for the team’s berth. “Aye, sir.”
“Are we there yet?” ‘John Henry’ Freeman said, in a parody of a small child, as Gary entered the team’s berth. Henry and the rest of the prospecting team were lounging around in their bunks. Henry was a tall and incredibly strong man. His strength often came in handy while the crew was drilling.
In a near zero gee environment you would think a person would not need strength, but in many cases to move a mass in the direction you wanted it to go took raw power and Henry had plenty of that. Behind him was Eric ‘Red Rooster’ Crowe, a small flamboyant man. The only man David had ever met with a red crest of hair attached to his helmet. Finally filling the small space to capacity was Pete ‘Quiet Man’ Hollister, who rarely spoke.
Gary ignored Henry and said, “The Captain wants us to inspect something for him, check it out.”
“Inspect what?” Henry asked and then spotted the picture Gary was carrying.
“I think we should get right to it,” Pete said. Surprising everyone with one of the longest sentences any of them had ever heard him say.
“Why?” Henry and Eric asked at the same time.
“We need to mark it and check to see if there’s anyone alive on it.” Pete said, going on in his quiet, almost a whisper, of a voice.
“There’s no way I’m going on that!” Eric said. “That’s just asking to get killed.”
“Fine,” Pete replied. “I guess we won’t be able to claim the salvage rights on it then, if it’s a ship that is.”
“According to the starmaps it’s the rock we are supposed to take a sample of,” Gary stated.
“Look at it, that’s no rock. If it’s a ship think about how much the salvage rights will be worth.” Pete said, passion now seeming to be creeping into his voice. “If it is though, we need to mark it and check for survivors or they won’t pay us.”
Someone watching the four could have picked the exact moment that each of them realized just how much the salvage would be and what it would do for their lives.
The ‘Gold Diggers’ arrived on the bridge just as the scout was nearing the derelict ship.
After a short search David spotted an airlock and he killed the system drive and began closing with just thrusters. The scout connected with the huge ship with a gentle clang. Small magnetic tethers closed in on the alien hull from the small craft and, thankfully, found similar magnetic linking points.
The prospecting team and made their way to the scout’s airlock. They attached their air tanks and set their E-suits to vacuum mode. Then they open the outer airlock door.
The hulks outer airlock door was jammed and they ended up having to crank it open with a handjack. Gary never did find out whom the handjack belonged to, or why anyone would have one on a space ship this size, he was just glad someone had had one!
When the team finally got the door open they found the inner lock looked like it had been ripped off of its mounting and they could see inside the ancient ship. The deck of the airlock had long scratch marks across it.
The airlock opened into a wide corridor, corridors that had lain dark for millennia. What they found would change Terran ideas about the past, forever.
“I think the universe just got a bit more interesting,” Captain Paulson commented, once the prospecting team had given their report upon returning to the Hudson.
I just found the West a couple of days ago, and I saw that stories were allowed on the forums. I am going to use this thread for a few stories I would like to get comment on.
The Colonel
First up is called The Travails of Ages.
Oort Cloud, Sol System
The Megellen Class Scout, the UTS Henry Hudson, seemed to effortlessly slide though the Oort cloud, avoiding both the occasional large asteroid and the thousands of smaller chunks. At the scout’s sensor controls David Denton Dryer worked hard scanning all of the various floating rocks while, at the same time, trying to track the trajectories of the ones that posed a possible threat to the ship.
So why was David here in this desolate region of space? After all, considering it was probably the most desolate place to patrol anywhere within the Sol system. The answer was, of course, money. The pay is good, not great but good and patrolling the Oort cloud was the highest pay of all for a scout crew. David had been surprised to find that he was quickly saving enough money to be able to live a very comfortable life, even in New York, when he retired in fifteen years.
David had been amazed to find out he was regarded by everyone in the nascent Terran National Astronautics and Survey Administration as the best navigator in the Oort cloud. Why was that a bystander would ask, and was told that because, unlike the UTAF pilots who could ‘feel’ their ships, David had never once bumped into anything. Not one scrape or scratch. Everybody knew that he would never have made a good starfighter pilot, but as a NASA navigator he was without peer.
The job itself was fairly easy, along with the patrol duties the mining mega-corps’ would rent out the survey ships from the fleet. So the Hudson took the prospecting teams out to the various asteroids and they took core samples, then the ship would take them back to base where the core samples were analyzed. This allowed the best asteroids to be mined first.
The prospecting team currently assigned to David’s ship called themselves ‘the gold diggers’ and they where led by Gary Snyder. Gary and David had become fast friends over the last two years they had been working together.
Gary entered the small bridge and asked, “You want a cup o’ Joe, Triple D?” He said using David’s nickname.
“Sure Snyd,” David replied, as he concentrated on the controls in front of him. In the back of his mind he had often wondered why his parents had named him David Denton when their family’s last name was Dryer. As it was he thought his parents had a cruel sense of humor to name him David Denton Dryer and that had, from his earliest days at school, earned him the not too imaginative nickname ‘Triple D’.
“I’ll be back in a moment,” Gary said as he disappeared into the small galley just behind the bridge.
The Hudson carefully moved around one of the larger boulders in the area and entered a very dense cluster of small metallic asteroids. The Hudson slowed to a fraction of full power and began to negotiate the hazardous debris field. She inched through the field, mainly using radar, to avoid the dangerous chunks spinning nearby. Most of them would disintegrate if they hit the scout’s armor, but an occasional one would be large and dense enough to get through the hull. It only took one of those to make your day really bad.
David noticed the radar screen seemed to be playing games. Occasionally, he thought, he would get reflected images of something ahead of the scout. Suddenly he wasn’t getting an echo back from part of the display, so he began a systems diagnostics check. If the radar had developed a problem it would be suicide to continue the survey sweep.
As he worked though the systems check he heard the Captain, Lucas Paulson, exclaim, “In the name of God, what is that, David?” He asked, sounding very shocked.
David looked up from the diagnostic screen where he glanced at the viewscreen, and swallowed. A good third of the view was filled with a dark mass. David looked down at the radar and realized that part of the huge mass was blocking the scan. Worryingly, the rest of whatever it was did not seem to be blocking anything.
“Derelict ship of some sort, maybe?” David whispered. He looked back at the radar screen. It did not make sense why only part of the radar screen was occulded!
“Can’t be one of ours,” Captain Paulson said, sounding less shocked. “That thing is huge, and look at the size of that asteroid embedded in the side of it.”
“Ah ha, I see the problem now.” David said eventually.
“See what?” Captain Paulson said as he came up beside David and peered at the radar screen.
“This cloud seems to consist of small metallic asteroids, and they are scattering most of the radar waves, except for here,” David said, pointing at the screen. “So we are only receiving telemetry returns at the point where we have a clear view all the way to... whatever it is.”
“Shall we have a closer look?” David asked.
“Get us in close. Let’s see if it’s a ship or just an odd shaped rock,” the Captain said suddenly.
The Hudson edged forward at a crawl. Very soon they could tell it was indeed a ship. A massive ship. Vast beyond anything the Terrans had ever imagined. The most disturbing thing to the crew of the Hudson was the size of the asteroid that had impacted amidships. It was truly immense and it underscored just how large this ship truly was.
As they neared the ship they could see its surface bore scorch marks and seemed to have been breached in several dozen places. The breaches were large, they were big enough for a giant of a man to get through.
Captain Paulson was sure this was something that needed to be reported to fleet command. “Comm, prep a message for COMSPAFOR (Commander Space Forces) and include all of the data we have on this. Get it sent, ASAP.”
At that moment Gary returned to the bridge. “Mr. Snyder, I need you to prep your team for a little exploration mission.” Paulson said. Gary just stood there for a moment, slack-jawed, before heading for the team’s berth. “Aye, sir.”
---
“Are we there yet?” ‘John Henry’ Freeman said, in a parody of a small child, as Gary entered the team’s berth. Henry and the rest of the prospecting team were lounging around in their bunks. Henry was a tall and incredibly strong man. His strength often came in handy while the crew was drilling.
In a near zero gee environment you would think a person would not need strength, but in many cases to move a mass in the direction you wanted it to go took raw power and Henry had plenty of that. Behind him was Eric ‘Red Rooster’ Crowe, a small flamboyant man. The only man David had ever met with a red crest of hair attached to his helmet. Finally filling the small space to capacity was Pete ‘Quiet Man’ Hollister, who rarely spoke.
Gary ignored Henry and said, “The Captain wants us to inspect something for him, check it out.”
“Inspect what?” Henry asked and then spotted the picture Gary was carrying.
“I think we should get right to it,” Pete said. Surprising everyone with one of the longest sentences any of them had ever heard him say.
“Why?” Henry and Eric asked at the same time.
“We need to mark it and check to see if there’s anyone alive on it.” Pete said, going on in his quiet, almost a whisper, of a voice.
“There’s no way I’m going on that!” Eric said. “That’s just asking to get killed.”
“Fine,” Pete replied. “I guess we won’t be able to claim the salvage rights on it then, if it’s a ship that is.”
“According to the starmaps it’s the rock we are supposed to take a sample of,” Gary stated.
“Look at it, that’s no rock. If it’s a ship think about how much the salvage rights will be worth.” Pete said, passion now seeming to be creeping into his voice. “If it is though, we need to mark it and check for survivors or they won’t pay us.”
Someone watching the four could have picked the exact moment that each of them realized just how much the salvage would be and what it would do for their lives.
---
The ‘Gold Diggers’ arrived on the bridge just as the scout was nearing the derelict ship.
After a short search David spotted an airlock and he killed the system drive and began closing with just thrusters. The scout connected with the huge ship with a gentle clang. Small magnetic tethers closed in on the alien hull from the small craft and, thankfully, found similar magnetic linking points.
The prospecting team and made their way to the scout’s airlock. They attached their air tanks and set their E-suits to vacuum mode. Then they open the outer airlock door.
The hulks outer airlock door was jammed and they ended up having to crank it open with a handjack. Gary never did find out whom the handjack belonged to, or why anyone would have one on a space ship this size, he was just glad someone had had one!
When the team finally got the door open they found the inner lock looked like it had been ripped off of its mounting and they could see inside the ancient ship. The deck of the airlock had long scratch marks across it.
The airlock opened into a wide corridor, corridors that had lain dark for millennia. What they found would change Terran ideas about the past, forever.
“I think the universe just got a bit more interesting,” Captain Paulson commented, once the prospecting team had given their report upon returning to the Hudson.
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