S.D. Falchetti's Blog, page 17

New Short: Silver-Side Up

In 43 Seconds, James and William are friends and business partners who disagree about the future of the Riggs drive. Find out what happens next with them in this free short, Silver-Side Up.

Silver-Side Up (43 Seconds Bonus Short, 1900 words)

SPOILER ALERT: Have you read 43 Seconds yet? If not, stop, get yourself a copy, then continue (seriously, it's only 99 cents). Silver-Side Up follows along with James and William's storyline six months after the conclusion of 43 Seconds.

 

SILVER-SIDE UPBonus Short for 43 Seconds

 

William Pratt stands before the silver spaceship, waiting. Behind him, the Starstrider spans thirty meters of runway. Late-day sunlight gleams along the wing seams in golden flares while azure sky bends along the ship’s fuselage. The navy and crimson Hayden-Pratt logo adorns twin tails. William sweeps his arm out like someone showing off a new car. “Well?”

James Hayden walks up to the ship and runs his hand along a wing. He wears a pair of aviator sunglasses and a suede jacket. “You couldn’t come up with a better name than Starstrider?”

William smirks. “Oh, come on, we’re running out of birds to name things after. Live a little.”

James ducks under the wing. It’s painted sky blue on the underside, transitioning smoothly to silver on the top. “Variable-sweep wings, like the old Grumman F-14.”

“Yeah, they collapse for spaceflight and re-entry.”

“Comet silver, my favorite.” He emerges on the trailing-side of the wing and eyes up the stabilizers.

“So,” William begins, “you going to keep kicking the tires or you want to take it out for drive?”

He smiles. “Thought you’d never ask. Any advice for flying her?”

William points to the top of the ship. “Yeah, try and keep the silver-side up.”

James climbs the stairs and enters the cockpit. Two pilot’s seats, two jumpseats, a bank of trapezoidal windows, plus all of the controls and instrumentation you’d expect to find on a transorbital craft. The passenger cabin door is open and he peers back. Looks like a luxury apartment back there. He slings himself into the pilot’s seat.

William sits in the co-pilot’s seat and begins working the pre-flight checklist. He reaches for the tower handshake icon but James interrupts.

“Let’s do this right,” James says. He taps opens tower comms. “HP Nevada ground, Hayden-Pratt Echo Sierra Two Three requesting verbal flight instruction.”

William shakes his head. “You’re such a relic.”

“Mr. Hayden,” the voice on comms says, “we had a bit of a bet here. Thanks for helping me win. HP-ES23 is cleared to transit path Bravo Nine. Maintain runway heading.”

James smiles. “This is my favorite part. Ready?”

“This should be interesting. You did log all your hours in the simulator, right?”

James winks and clicks his harness closed. The Starstrider’s RF drive hums online as the boarding stairway folds up. Once the ship is secure James edges it off the pavement, one meter, two meters, then slows it to a standstill. William flicks a switch on the overhead and the landing gear retracts. The ship hovers motionless. “Oh yeah,” James says, “this is different.”

“Reactionless drive. You could blast straight up if you wanted to.” Will holds up a cautionary hand. “Don’t do that, though. You’ll rip the wings off. Gotta fly it.”

“That I can do.” 

The comms voice says, “Hayden-Pratt Echo Sierra Two Three, cleared for takeoff. Have fun, gentlemen.”

James takes the yoke and throttles the ship forward. It feels odd, the buttery-smooth push of the RF drive he’s used to in space but with something pushing back. Air resistance. As the ship picks up speed he feels its wings flex and needs to adjust his thinking to accommodate two separate lift forces. Wispy cirrus clouds fill a powder blue gradient through the front windows. When he’s a few kilometers high HP Nevada is a triangle of runway lines and square buildings nestled in endless tan desert. At fifteen kilometers a haze of sunlight and red rock wash out into a glowing white horizon before marrying polarized blue sky. Through the starboard window the Moon is a mirage suspended in the stratosphere.

HP Nevada is purposely nowhere near any flight lanes and the navcon is clear. “Nothing but us and sky,” James says. “So, you eat a big lunch today?”

Will glances over at him. He’s wearing mirrored sunglasses and James can see his own reflection in them. “James…”

“Here we go.” He kicks the throttle and pulls back on the controls. The Starstrider rockets up and pins them into their seats as the horizon falls out of view. Deep navy sky drops down the windows like a curtain. A few faint stars are visible, then the upended taupe Earth rolls across the sky. Will’s hair lifts off his head as his mirrored sunglasses slide towards his forehead. They’re inverted at the top of a three-sixty loop.

“Okay,” Will says, upside-down, “got that out of your system?”

The Starstrider dives down the remainder of the circuit until Nevada fills the windows. James levels the ground back to where it’s supposed to be. “Five gees, nice.”

Will pushes his sunglasses down. “I’ll tell Hitoshi you approve.”

“I have to give you a hand on this one. There’s probably a panic going on at VG. Looking forward to taking back some of their market share.” He flicks something on the pilot’s console. “Speaking of which, let’s punch it. I want to see some stars.”

Hydraulics whine as the variable-sweep wings angle back in preparation for supersonic flight. The Starstrider pitches up and accelerates, leaving white contrails from its wing tips before smoothly breaking the sound barrier. Will taps his watch and flicks a playlist to the ship’s computer. Late twenty-sixties fusion rock. Classic music.

“Oh, that brings back memories,” James says. “Air Force days.”

“Sweating our asses off on base. Seems like a lifetime ago.”

“Perfect choice.”

Comms chirps and a synthesized woman’s voice says, “Pacific LEO Bravo Control, we have you on radar Hayden-Pratt Echo Sierra Two Three.”

Will opens the channel. “Pacific LEO Bravo Control, HP-ES23 on approach to transit path Bravo Nine.”

“HP-ES23, climb and maintain one hundred and seventy kilometers.”

Through the cockpit windows the horizon bends into a great blue arc of sunlight and land. Far to the aft the California coastline slips away. James opens the navcon and selects new waypoints. “You up for a side trip?”

Will chuckles. “I had a feeling you wouldn’t be content with a Sunday drive. What’d you have in mind?”

“Well, it’s no fun if I just tell you.” He finalizes the flight plan and hits the transmit button.

After a few seconds the synthetic voice replies. “HP-ES23, flight plan received and approved. Climb to two two zero kilometers and fly transit path Bravo Twelve.”

James takes off his sunglasses and stows them in his jacket pocket. He glances out the starboard window. The Moon has solidified to a dazzling white semi-sphere. He peers back down towards Earth. Blinking red and green strobes drift slowly along different trajectories overlaying the horizon. Space traffic. 

The Starstrider climbs and levels. William smiles, takes off his sunglasses and flicks them between his thumb and forefinger. They spin weightlessly along their axis.

James looks over. “Never gets old does, it?”

Will snatches the glasses and tucks them away. “I think I know where we’re going.”

James leans forward. “Let’s see…and there,” he points, “there it is.”

A white star blinks ahead. As they draw nearer it splits into eight points and expands into a toroidal lattice. High-intensity lights nestle within the matrix like small suns. The skeleton of a great silver delta shape rests within the torus. Cargo containers are docked at different locations along the torus’s perimeter and a dozen robot arms move in precise choreography over the ship. Weld flashes flicker electric blue. Modular components are already in place. RF drives, reactor, crew cabin. None of the ship’s external hull plating is assembled and all of the vessel’s internals are visible.

“Gossamer Goose,” James says, “Sarah’s ship. Sixty-one meters. Even bigger than Bernard’s Beauty.”

Will nods. “Still on track for end-of-month shakedown?”

“She’ll be ready.”

“How about Sarah? She’s a hell of a pilot, but you sure she’s ready?”

James quirks his head. “No doubts.” A pause. “Hope you’re not holding it against her for going rogue with me on that Mars flight.”

Will looks at him for a moment and says nothing. His poker face is pretty convincing. “No, you guys did what you had to. I’m just worried we’re going to have another accident. Sarah has a kid.”

James lifts his eyebrows, reads Will for a moment. “We’ll have twenty unmanned flights with Gossamer Goose before Sarah takes the conn. Ananke will be with her. I won’t send either of them out until I’m sure it’s safe.”

William’s silent a moment. “Last three flights of Bernard’s Beauty are this month?”

“Yeah. Saturn next week and Jupiter the following. I’m doing a little EVA video with Ananke. You’ll like it.” Gossamer Goose is visible through the starboard window. James motions towards it. “Best we can do with Bernard’s is ninety-eight percent light speed. Need a design change to go faster. Gossamer should be able to hit ninety-nine point nine with a gamma factor of twenty-two.” He looks back at William. “Gamma twenty-two is seventy-one subjective days to Proxima Centauri.”

William’s mouth opens slightly. “Wait, are you thinking of sending Gossamer Goose interstellar?”

“No, there’s way too much left to do from a design standpoint to manage the details of long-duration flight. We’ve got a research partnership with Addison Aerospace. Those guys are used to sending ships out for months at a time. So, not Gossamer, but the ship after Gossamer. Besides,” James motions to the Starstrider’s hull, “we need to integrate this tech so we can go atmospheric.”

William laughs and shakes his head. “There is no way U.N. regulatory will allow you to launch a Riggs ship from Earth’s surface. Congress might still yank our permission to launch from ESL2.”

James has a gleam as he quirks his head. “It’s not for launching from Earth. It’s for landing at our destination.”

Will stops laughing. “Are you serious?”

“If we’re going to go, we’re going to go big. We’re not going to fly four light years just to turn around and come back home. That’d be like Armstrong staying in the Eagle and never setting foot on the Moon.”

Something catches Will’s memory and his expression changes. “It’s subjective time we’ve been talking, right? One hundred and forty-two days for the passengers round-trip, but nine years back here on Earth.”

“That’s right.”

“So, whoever goes is gone for nine years, even if only a few months elapses for them.”

James nods. “Yeah, if we target Proxima. There might be better candidates that are a bit further. We’ll see.”

Will’s hesitant. “Who are you thinking will go?”

James is silent with a slight smile. The pause is a beat too long before he says, “I think we’re putting the cart before the horse here. First we have to make it all work before we even think about crew." A dismissive wave. "At least another three year’s of development.” He hits Will lightly in the arm with the back of his hand. “We’ll talk. Don’t worry.”

Will takes a deep breath and they both watch Gossamer Goose slip out of view. Glimmering gold stars fill the cockpit windows. “You know, the two of us in the pilot and co-pilot seats reminds me of the old days. We should do this more often.”

James grins. “You got it, buddy. Bernard’s Beauty has three seats. Come with me on the next flight.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Now’s the time.”

Will nods. “Alright.”

“Awesome.” James looks out to the infinite starfield. Yellow stars, blue stars, orange stars, all waiting. “Now let’s see what else this ship of yours can do.”

Aero One - FREE Friday & Saturday (April 14/15)

Get Aero One for free this weekend (Friday April 14 & Saturday April 15) on Amazon: http://bit.ly/aerobook

Aero One (First Chapter, 1400 words)

OneBreathe

Jia’s stomach burns and she jolts awake. She flails against the suffocation as if she can beat it away with her own two hands. Tears well in a weightless film across her eyelids and she scrubs the back of one hand across her face while the other fumbles with the harness release. Her head throbs. When she sets her hand to the site of the pain, it returns sticky and red. Thoughts spark and fizzle in an overlapping jumble of competing primal urges. Air. She needs air.

Stop. Right side, right side. Her right hand slides down, finds the emergency kit. The breather feels cool against her palm, then she has it, bites down like a scuba diver, and there’s a hiss as liquid O2 expands. The first breath hurts her chest like January air, but it’s a sweet pain and she closes her eyes for a moment to just breathe. It’s like a drug, electric, hyper-sensitizing. Neurons fire through the haze. She blinks and assesses the room.

Emergency lights trace psychedelic patterns in the zero gee drifting smoke. Bits and pieces of chair foam, loose fasteners, and pieces of soot coast by. Each casts a long, moving shadow, a dark tail like an inverse comet. Ethereal amber light shifts with scrolling alerts.

She inhales deeply from the breather, pops it out of her mouth. “Ship?”

No response.

“Ping? Are you there? Ping, respond.”

An explosion somewhere and her head whiplashes. She keys icons for damage assessment.

Battery three is gone, fire suppression is depleted. Engines are offline. There’s damage everywhere. It’s her fault.

Ping. Ping was down there.

She’s about to unclick her harness and stand when a pulsing red smudge catches her eye. She wipes the fire suppression snowfall and her finger shakes. Orbital diagrams spin on the display. Uranus is an infinite sky stretching in a plane parallel to the ship. The Prosperity plows through the upper atmosphere.

Her stomach drops. She tries to send power from the remaining batteries to the shredded engines, but there is no response. Her pulse races and a clawing digs within her chest, then she remembers the breather, bites down, takes several breaths, pops it back out and opens the emergency channel. Nothing. She slams her fist down on the workstation. Think.

Ping.

She’s out of the chair and diving down the transit tube. The wind picks up mid-tube, whistling, and she looks over to the comms room. Scorch marks stain the pressure seal and a dozen holes make the metal look moth-eaten. Blue sunlight shafts connect the trajectories of each hole with a matching breach on the far wall. Her ears and eyes hurt.

She descends deeper until she comes to the core junction. To the starboard, the emergency area beckons, a fully self-sufficient life pod with its own RF drive, food, water, air and medicine. Get Ping, get inside, jettison it, climb to a stable orbit and activate the beacon. Rescue in twelve days.

Jia ignores it and descends to the aft door. She hooks on a rung, stretches, and keys in the override. Red lights strobe and the seal flashes open, then she’s fighting against the wind as she climbs down the ladder head first. When the door slides down she takes the breather out of her mouth and gulps atmosphere. It tastes bitter, acrid, like burning plastic.

The hangar houses two aerostats shaped like giant Apollo-era capsules. The first is fully extended on its tracks at the edge of the hangar door. A large red number one is printed on its nose. Ping is not here at aerocon, but a slate drifts by and Jia grabs it, tucks it into her belt, then watches the pattern of drifting debris to find an opening before pushing off towards the next room.

Extravehicular Prep. The air here smells strongly of solvent and tickles her throat. Ping is here drifting helmetless in a red spacesuit. Jia kicks off the entrance and collides with him. She takes the breather from her mouth and works it into his. “I got you, Ping.”

The slate recommends airway anti-spasmodics, increased suit oxygen, drugs to counter the volatiles from the battery fire, and inhaled nano-cellular therapy. Some of that is here at the emergency EV station and she presses an injector to his neck. She takes the breather back, places her hand on his cheek, then snaps his helmet on.

Several red EV and blue PLEX suits are here. She slips into the red suit nearest Ping and the slate’s display fizzes over her faceplate as she tethers to his suit’s carabiner. “Okay, we’re getting out of here.”

Something huge rips off the Prosperity and crashes into the starboard hull. Jia can’t tell if she is spinning or if the room is turning around her. She reaches out, curls her fingers around Ping’s chest handle and pulls him into an embrace. Her back bounces off the ceiling.

“Jia?” Ping asks, eyes half parted. “Tried to…tried to get to you. Fire in the battery room.”

“Ping! Hey, stay with me. We’re getting off the ship.”

Jia pushes off the ceiling and navigates Ping back to the core junction. A blast of air and they’re through the door, but her eyes are dark adjusted and the hall is filled with intense light. She hooks a rung and they pendulate for a moment. 

The junction is different. Chaotic bursts of yellow firelight spear through the comms door holes and a dazzling shaft of aquamarine carves a luminous corridor bisecting the hall. Sunlight reflected off Uranus.

Jia’s voice cracks. “No!”

She pulls Ping up to the lifepod window, squints and peers inside. There should be the welcoming glow of the lifepod’s interior lights through the airlock, but instead there is no lifepod, no airlock, just ripped, bent metal splayed open like a flower. As she watches, more pieces of the umbilical twist, snap and streak away awash in flames.

“That is not good,” Ping says, coughing.

Jia wants to cry. She puts both hands on Ping’s faceplate, tilts her head forward and makes contact with his.

“How long?” asks Ping.

Her response is nearly a whisper. “Minutes.”

“Have an idea.” Another cough. “You’re not going to like it.”

“Ping?”

“Back down, back down, to the hangar.”

She searches his face and her brow tightens. “Oh.” She shakes her head. “Oh, no.”

“Yeah, yeah. We can make it.”

Jia grabs Ping’s suit handle and they emerge from the hangar ceiling. Flames flash in sparking globes from EV Prep.

“Needs to be Aero One,” Ping says. “It’s all set up.”

She brings them down right beside the red number one on the aerostat’s nose. The screen illuminates and Jia pairs her slate to it. Startup icons scroll by. A whine of servos and the capsule’s middle unfurls like a metal blossom.

They slip inside. It’s tight in here, designed for maintenance access only. Sitting cross-legged she taps the slate and the six panels seal them in. Ping’s face is lit underneath by his helmet and her own glow spills warm light on his suit.

“I’m going to try and equalize the bay,” she says. 

The klaxon sounds before the air hisses away. Jia taps another icon and the bay doors slide open.

Ping reaches up with both hands and anchors on the steel framework.

She eyes his hands, reads his expression. “Ready?”

“Not really, but, yeah.”

Aero One lurches as the track extends outside the door. It’s a four-thousand-kilometer drop underneath them. She reads off her helmet HUD. “Here we go. Five, four, three, brace, brace.”

The clamps disengage and the thrusters fire with an ear-numbing blast. Her teeth clatter from the vibrations of the shimmying walls.

Ping looks at her and she hears his rapid breaths over the comm. He nods. They are free, free of the dying ship and flying and falling, both at once.

She remembers the slate and pulls it out, linking into the aerostat’s externals. Ping leans forward as she shares the screen with him.

In the aft camera, a gossamer ring bisects the sky, icy white against a powder gradient fading to ultraviolet. A few pale stars dapple the top of the screen. The Prosperity falls behind them. It sputters and flickers, a great blinding meteor in a cyan haze. Sparks shred off the front and veer away like missiles, each tracing its own path.

Tears well in Jia’s eyes as the fireball divides, splits again, until all that remains of the Prosperity is a rain of fire in a cloudless sky.

* * * *

Find out what happens next for 99 cents on Amazon

Signal Loss (First Chapter, 1400 words)

OneSeventy Days

Kyan Anders drifted in a room brimming with a hundred billion stars. Radiant golds spanned familiar constellations, but it was what lay between the stars that captured his attention. Smudges of galaxies against ebony sky. Glowing stellar lanes dusted with rose. Objects no man could see from Earth, but here they were impossible to miss. It was like seeing, truly seeing, for the first time. 

“I’m sorry to interrupt,” Rios said, “but I’ve just received Harmony’s morning broadcast.”

Kyan glanced at his watch. “On my way.” He hooked his instep under a rung and descended into the habmod. A loose gray blanket and sock drifted by. He pushed towards the port comms module, sailed through the daylight rings of the transit tube, and emerged in a halo of screens. An ocean blue baseball cap velcroed to a command chair read Aristarchus. “Give me a quarter gee⁠ vectored along the hab axis.”

The floor fell against Kyan’s feet as he pressed on the cap and laced his arms through the chair’s harness. The Addison Aerospace logo faded on screen with the comms log. Thirty-five conversations separated by seven hundred and sixteen minutes. Kyan scrolled to the newest entry.

A young woman wore an Aristarchus cap over blond hair. Behind her, late afternoon sunlight dappled leafy greens. “Hi, Dad. So, first things first, if I know you, you’re probably all stressed out thinking something happened because my message is early.” The signal pixelated as she spread her fingers, palms facing him. “Don’t worry, everything’s fine. There’s some morning alerts for flares and I’m trying to avoid them. They’re going to get worse, and it might screw up the blackout window. So this sucks. I hope you’ve got some good music queued up.” 

An alert bubbled on the screen:

RIOS - Received 06:20 local - HELIOS reports M-class flare activity expected 08.02.80 06:48 through 08.02.80 13:21. 

Expected magnitude M2-M4. Minor communications disruptions expected with inner planet broadcasts. 

A graphic illustrated line-of-sight between the Aristarchus and Earth. Waypoints showed the Earth’s path over the next few days, a string-of-pearls slipping behind the Sun. Complex field line patterns signified radio interference. Rios updated them with the HELIOS info and the patterns swelled. Earth’s comm tag changed from green to yellow and all of the pearls shifted colors. Yellow, orange, red, black. Signal loss in three days.

Harmony swiped a finger over her bracelet and an ultrasound popped up. Kyan leaned forward. Harmony Richardson, 18 weeks. “There’s your grandson, looking good! I think we’ve browsed a thousand names. I like traditional, but Ryce prefers trendy. You know him. We’ll figure it out. Anyway, we’re keeping the name secret until he’s born. You know, keep a little bit of surprise.”

Kyan’s eyebrows raised and he mirrored her smile. He rested his fingers on the screen. His grandson. She’d told him the evening before his departure. Eight more mission days, then twenty-six transit days. A little more than a month until he could be back with his family.

“Oh, and not sure how much news you’re picking up,” Harmony said, “but something wild happened yesterday. You know that guy who’s always in the tech feeds with the ‘keep dreaming big’ meme? He’s been talking this new ship that twists space, and yesterday he finally got it to work. Well, sort of. He flew to Mars in twelve minutes. Crazy, huh? Check this out.” She flicked her bracelet. Twelve Minutes to Mars. The photo showed James Hayden propped up in a hospital bed, wearing a neck brace, giving a thumbs up. “It says the tech’s at least three years out, but can you imagine? Instead of twenty-six days, you could be home in twelve hours.” A white cat sprang onto her lap and she stroked its fur. “Okay, looks like Halley wants to say hi, too. Well, I miss you. I’ll check the feed for flares, and may need to bump our time tomorrow. Talk to you soon.”

Kyan smiled and tagged the ultrasound. “Rios, give me a hard copy of that.” He slid the photo into the elastic board beside his chair. A dozen other photos were nestled there, pictures of him and Harmony wearing backpacks, family photos of him, Harmony and Lake during the holidays, when Lake was still his wife, and a dog-eared postcard with azure ocean water lapping over bare feet. Getting Away from It All. 

He did a quick once over. A little silver stubble, but acceptable. “Hey, kiddo. Bummer about the flares. Rios updated comms loss to Monday. How are you feeling? Have you felt the baby move yet? I have a million questions.” He tapped the interface and a new window showed orbital diagrams. Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, all on one side of the sun and the Aristarchus on the other. “Not too much to report. I’ve got my final images of Sedna. Today I’ll switch to Eris, then it’s Oort cloud cataloguing and heliopause measurements for the next eight days. You know, I’m not looking forward to comms loss, but it’s awesome for sensors. I’ll be at the quietest place in the system.” Kyan glanced at the family photo. “And for today’s musical selection I’ve got one that me and your mom listened to a million times when she was pregnant. Classic 50’s progressive rock.” The opening chords of Farther strummed in. “Enjoy. Talk to you tomorrow. I love you.” He sent the message and stared at the Addison logo a minute before a sweet scent reset his attention. “Okay, Rios, what’s on the docket for today?”

“Breakfast. I’ve got some eggs and french toast heated for you. It’s the most important meal of the day.”

“Really? Going with the mom approach today?”

Rios’s voice was full of inflection. It was hard to believe he wasn’t sentient. “Addison parameters, crew health.”

“Okay, so, after breakfast?”

“Reposition the drones for Eris imaging. Review night log anomalies.” Rios paused. “Would you like to know about the anomalies?”

Kyan leaned his head on a bent arm. “Do I have to say it?”

“Three visual occultations during wide-field imaging. Would you like to review them now?”

“Just put them on the screen already.”

Three circled stars appeared, each turning black as an object passed before it. Infrared, ultraviolet, x-ray, and radio data accompanied the images. Object one was fifty degrees kelvin with moderate reflectivity. Distance was unknown. Rios guessed it was a scattered disc object, and Kyan confirmed. Object two had similar properties. Object three, though, was unexpected.

“You ran sensor diagnostics?”

“Twice. Sensors are within norm.”

No reflectivity, temperature near cosmic background radiation. As far as the sensors could tell, it was a hole in space passing in front of a star. Except it wasn’t a hole. Even a black hole would have some sensor data.

“Any ideas?”

“I checked microwave and x-ray wide field imaging, and found occultations along the same flight line. Based on parallax, it’s probably close, less than half an AU.”

Kyan scratched his cheek. “Okay, retask the drones along the flight line and configure for narrow field imaging. Let’s log it for now.”

“Logged as Unidentified Scattered Disc Object 235C. We need twenty hours of Eris imaging. It’ll add another mission day if we retask.”

He glanced at the ultrasound and back to the unidentified object. Now seventy mission days. It was tempting to just forget about it, log it as an unknown, but he was curious, and curiosity was one of the main things that brought him out here. “Proceed. Let’s also try a radar burst and see what we can see. Can’t hurt.” He unclicked his harness and stood. One-quarter gravity was similar to the Moon, and he bounded like an Apollo-era astronaut. “I’m going to grab some breakfast while everything gets positioned.”

“We seem to have a mystery.”

“I know,” Kyan said, emerging from the transit tube. “Isn’t it great?”

* * * *

Find out what happens next for 99 cents on Amazon

 

43 Seconds (First Chapter, 1200 words)

One43 Seconds

James Hayden smiled as his dream died. It was the polished, charismatic smile that had glossed the feeds of Frontier and Momentum. In the silence he could hear the soft pulse of Hayden-Pratt’s logo spinning on the wall behind him. He paused and gripped the podium. A room full of tuxedos and gowns looked back. 

“It’s gone, James,” a voice in his earbud said. “We lost telemetry forty-three seconds after wave initiation. They’re reviewing imaging now, but the debris field and trajectory are consistent with a cascade implosion. Distance traveled was twelve million kilometers.”

The A speech indexed in his vision. Twelve Minutes to Mars. The timing of it, here at the Industry Innovators awards, would have been perfect. He blinked, changed to the B speech, and considered the first sentence. The audience watched, waited. He cleared his throat. 

“A great man once said, ‘Rules are made for people who aren’t willing to make up their own.’ He was one of the nineteen pilots who flew the one hundred and fifty-seven test flights of the Bell X-1 aircraft. The fiftieth flight, in October nineteen forty-seven, is the one everyone remembers.” A murmur of recognition swept across the room. “The X-1 had no ejector seat. Each of its pilots was committed, in a single-seat rocket designed to look like a fifty-caliber bullet with wings.”

The voice in James’s ear said, “Okay, Skyway3 just picked up the story, and it’s starting to go viral.”

He could see the Skyway3 news filtering across his audience. Feeds were tapped and haptics signaled notifications. Eyes darted to wearables and looked back to him.

“As a pilot, Chuck Yeager is a personal hero of mine,” James said. “He represents an age and spirit of unbridled exploration and courage. The Bell X-1 flights paved the way for supersonic flight design, forever changing the way we travel.” He gripped the award, and the cold bevels of the etched letters bit his fingers.  “I’m honored to receive the Aerospace Innovators award on behalf of my team for the development of the Riggs drive. Like the X-1, the test flights for the Riggs vehicle are pioneering a new frontier in travel, and I am humbled to be a part of the team pushing the envelope.” He paused, seeming to want to say more, but simply smiled and raised the award. “Thank you.”

A short round of applause sounded, the host wrapped up the ceremonies, and James walked casually back to his table. He set the award behind his plate with a solid thunk.

William Pratt sipped a scotch. The ice clinked as he swirled the glass. “That was not the B speech.”

James shrugged. “When in doubt, quote Yeager. Besides, I think better off the cuff.” He sent a private message to William: I’ve just been getting verbal updates from Hitoshi. What’s the latest on the crash?

William seemed to be expecting this. “Let’s get some air.” He set his napkin on the table as he stood, picked up his drink, and smiled to everyone. “Excuse us.”

The two walked to the back of the room, past the bar, and through a frosted glass door onto the balcony. The distant, rhythmic white noise of the Pacific’s crashing waves greeted them. Crimson light faded into an ultramarine skyline with the first stars brightening. A few people were seated at tables with flickering oil lamps, chatting and watching the night’s arrival. James and William found a quiet corner and leaned against the railing.

“Manifold irregularities at thirty-one seconds, then resonance.” William gestured a tired spiral with his free hand. “Cascade failure, implosion. Same as last time, although the upgraded compensators did keep everything together three more seconds. This is the problem with space. For something that’s filled with nothing, it’s not very uniform.”

James nodded. “Hitoshi thinks we need an AI to manage the flux changes. The interferometers aren’t cutting it. We need to go predictive, not reactive.” William quirked his head, but James continued. “Plus, the mass dynamics of the Riggs vehicle are part of the problem. Hitoshi’s working on a Comet for the next run.”

William leaned forward and lowered his voice. “We’re fortunate these have all been unmanned flights. You put an AI or pilot in there, and they’ll be a glowing field of wreckage before they know they’re dead.”

James thought about that for a minute, and said nothing.

William paused to take a swig of his drink. “All right, consider this. When the US shuttle program collapsed, astronauts went to Soyuz launchers. It was forty-year-old technology, but it was still the most reliable rocket in the world.”

“Your point?”

“Tried and true technology doesn’t kill you. RF and Mach-Lorentz drives can achieve similar speeds without all of the drama.”

“That’s true, except you skipped the part where a one gee acceleration takes a year to get near light speed. The Riggs engine takes nine seconds.”

William pointed his finger, clinking the ice again in his drink. “Sure, but no one needs to spend a year taking an RF drive near light speed. You can literally fly to the end of the solar system in fifteen days. Riggs could change that from days to minutes, which, sure, is amazing, but really, is it necessary?” He gestured towards twin contrails glowing brilliant rose against the navy sky. “Your supersonic flight story is the perfect example. Commercial supersonic was available since the nineteen seventies. I mean, we’re talking disco-era technology, here. It was pricy, and it folded.” He shrugged. “Daily life worked fine at subsonic speeds. Unless you’re talking military, that is.”

James sighed. “Yeah, well, I think we’ve beat that horse to death.”

“Yup. There you have it.”

James laced his fingers and leaned his elbows against the railing. “You know, this is all about getting people interstellar. Everyone’s imagination is fired up from those Proxima images. Timing’s right.”

“How many interstellar drives do you think we’re really going to sell, considering the premium? It doesn’t even get you that much. Six years to Proxima with RF, four years with Riggs. Everything crashes into the light speed limit.”

James’s expression brightened. “But time dilation tips that scale. The RF crew experiences four years, but only eight months for Riggs. And that’s with current design. Tack on more nines after the decimal point, and months become days.”

William considered the point. “I’ll give you that one. But for now, forty-three seconds is the best we can do. The power costs alone are prohibitive.” He clasped James on the shoulder.  “Look, the award is great recognition, and I won’t complain about the PR, but there’s a lot more baking to do. We can’t endlessly implode ten-billion-dollar test vehicles.”

James glanced at William’s hand, and William withdrew it, shifting back to his scotch. James knew the inevitable conclusion of this debate before it started. Still, he paused a long second and sent a private message: You’re not going to side with me on Monday’s board vote, are you? You’re going to mothball the Riggs drive.

William tilted his watch, read it, and responded: Sorry, James. I’m sure you knew this was the last swing at the ball. On to brighter projects.

* * * *

Find out what happens next for 99 cents on Amazon

 

43 Seconds - Free 3/17 & 3/18

43 Seconds is free on Amazon Kindle Friday March 17th and Saturday March 18th. Use the handy link http://bit.ly/43book to get it directly from Amazon.

[image error]Permalink

Folded Like a Cheap Suit

Last week I posted my rant about the new MacBook Pro. Afterwards, I began my PhD-level research into alternatives. Sites were Googled, YouTube reviews analyzed, and even CES2017 stalked for updates. Armed with my new knowledge, I stepped through the doors of Best Buy on Saturday.

If there's one thing Best Buy's probably never been accused of, it's being understaffed. Trying to make a beeline to the computer section without being overcome with assistance offers looked a bit like the airport scene in Airplane:

The contenders were the Dell XPS 13 and HP Spectre x360, both of which have updates coming out of CES2017. But, they both had one huge tradeoff: they didn't run Mac OS. So, it came down to this: which tradeoff was more significant to me? Loss of Mac OS or loss of keyboard travel?

Due to a sale the difference between the MacBook Pro without touchbar versus with was $250. It was tempting to go with the higher end model to get the higher processor speed, but I really like physical keys. My first e-reader was a Nook which had a dual interface of physical keys plus a touchbar. It drove me nuts. I'm in the camp of "eyes on the screen, fingers on the keys". So, the touchbar was a negative for me. I opted for the non-touchbar version.

Yes, I know. I folded like a cheap suit to my Apple overlords.

But it's a really nice computer. It's the Retina MacBook Air we've been waiting for, even if Apple calls it the MacBook Pro.  First things first. It's amazing how much smaller it is than the 13-inch MacBook Air. Here they are side-by-side:

There's a little bit of perspective exaggerating the difference in that photo, but still, it's a huge difference. The second thing is the jump from non-Retina to Retina screen combined with the increase in color gamut.  Here's the effect the resolution change has on the same text in Scrivener's binder:

Left: Macbook Air display; Right: MacBook Pro

The color's a little harder to see in screenshots, although with your eyes it smacks you in the face:

Left: Macbook Pro display; Right: MacBook Air

So, this leaves the keyboard. Many YouTube reviewers said they hated it at first, but after a month, they loved it. I don't know if I'll end up there. I do realize I'll adjust to it the same way that I adjusted from typing on a desktop versus laptop. I haven't done extensive typing yet on the new keyboard, but during the days-worth of typing since buying the new computer I've adjusted and can type accurately. Both of my wrists get a little sore on the tops after typing, however, so hopefully I'll determine how to adjust my typing angle to avoid this. The clacky noise of the keys seem less than what I heard in the store the first time I tried it (although they're still louder than my quiet Air's keyboard). The little click at the bottom of the keystroke feels nice and is good feedback. I just wish the keys had dampening, or if they do, well, more of it. Fans of the keyboard say that the old style is squishy and unstable and the new keyboard is laser-accurate. I think it's a solution in search of a problem which made more sense on the super-thin MacBook than it does on the thicker MacBook Pro. All I can say about it is that you should try it in the store first. Here's a picture so you can see how much the keys rise above the laptop surface:

0.5 mm of travel. They keys are raised enough that you can find the right keys comfortably with touch typing, however.

A few other features which weren't major selling points for me, but really stand out:

The speakers are fantastic. Loud and clear with nice bass and stereo separation. Probably the first laptop I'd consider listening to music with the built-in speakers.The ginormous touchpad is fun and I prefer it to my Air'sThe much-complained about USB-C change doesn't phase me. I bought a $10 adapter. I never used all of the ports on my Air. Only having two USB-C ports doesn't bother me, either, because with USB-C you can plug in hubs which give you as many ports as you need. Not being able to plug my iPhone into my computer without the adapter doesn't bother me because who physically plugs his iPhone into his computer anymore?The space gray color looks great, but it's a smudge magnet. This might be the first time I purchase a skin for the upper case. 

So, there you have it. Once I write a story on it, I'll post an update on my keyboard experience.

The Customer is Always Wrong

For the past week I've hovered my cursor over the Bhphoto cart. Nestled inside was a space gray 13" Macbook Pro. Like a siren to rocks it beckoned me. Two hesitations prevented me from clicking the buy button:

It's very expensiveI read several reviews warning me about the new butterfly keyboard

To end my analysis paralysis, I decided to trek down to BestBuy and lay my hands on it. I was a bit giddy, envisioning finally making a decision, buying it, and unboxing it today. 

Expectation and reality diverged, though, and I left empty-handed.

The keyboard was a deal breaker. I'd seen videos which showed the keys barely depress - only 0.5 mm of travel - but it didn't quite capture the experience of trying to type on them. It's somewhat better than trying to type on the glass screen of a virtual iPad keyboard. The keys are nearly flush with the surface (they are slightly raised), wide, and a little concave. It doesn't take much force to register a keystroke, and the key makes a clack when depressed. Here's my perception, compared to the keyboard of my current 2012 Macbook Air:

I was able to touch type, but I made numerous typos. The height of the keys messed up my aim, and it was easy to catch the corner of a neighboring key.The clacking sound was louder than the quiet key presses of my Air. It wasn't a big deal, though. Still much quieter than the sound of a desktop keyboard. I found the clacking pleasant, although I suspect someone sitting next to me would think I was an angry typer.I felt that, with practice, I could acclimate to it and make less typos.My wrists and hands became sore as I typed. In fairness, some of this can be attributed to standing while typing. I typed a dozen paragraphs to try and get a feel for it. I also tried typing on some other conventional laptop keyboards for comparison. The more I used the Macbook Pro's, the more I felt I would dread using it for fiction writing.

So there you have it. "Dread using it" is never a good selling point. Which is too bad, because I loved the rest of the computer:

The new, ginormous touchpad is fantastic. It doesn't actually move when you click it, but instead tricks you into feeling like you've clicked it through haptic feedback (vibrations). No matter how I pressed it I was always certain it moved and physically clicked. It felt better than my Air's trackpad, which actually does move and physically click - probably because the Air's is hinged and has a limited click angle.The screen is gorgeous. The saturated colors remind me of something you'd see on an OLED display.The svelte factor is nice. I liked that the Pro weighed the same as my Air.

As an aside, I also looked at the Surface Book by Microsoft. I'm an artist, also, and the pressure-sensitive stylus was a nice selling point. My perceptions:

The keyboard on the Surface Book is a joy to type on. 1.6 mm of key travel (vs. Macbook Pro's 0.5 mm) and cushy dampening. I think this is an important point because it's not just how far the keys travel but also what happens at the end of travel and how much force it takes to press them.The Surface Book has a neat trick where the screen separates and becomes a 13" tablet. The tablet is remarkably light and feels great to hold. It also runs a full version of Windows 10. I could definitely see myself sketching in Photoshop with the tablet and pen on my lap.On the downside, and this was why I didn't buy it, the tablet makes the laptop's screen top-heavy. I am constantly picking up my Air by the corner and moving it around. It felt very awkward to do this with the Surface. Plus, when the Surface is closed it folds over like a newspaper. Carrying it around felt like carrying a Trapper Keeper.

For now I'm typing happily on my trusty Macbook Air. I had to admit that I'm disappointed that Apple peaked in knowing what its consumers wanted. I recall back in the 90s seeing colorful Macs with translucent plastics but passing them over because they just weren't functional for what I needed. They sure looked nice. The new Macbook Pros have moved back into this category for me. Hopefully Apple will get their act together, stop telling us what we want, and try listening.

 

Reviews and Ratings

This week I gave away all of my stories for free. If you missed the giveaway, you can still get any story for 99 cents.

If you read a story, I'd love to hear what you thought on Amazon or Goodreads. 

You're probably like me when shopping for new books. Your eyes scroll down to the number of reviews and the book with no reviews gets skimmed past. It's a tough hurdle to clear as an indie author.

Besides just helping others find books, reviews are upvotes for storylines and characters. 43 Seconds has James and Ananke, Signal Loss has Kyan and Rios, and Aero One has Jia and Ping. Which characters would you like to hear more from? What will James do next with Bernard's Beauty? Will Kyan change his mind and use the card James gave him? What was the bigger story behind Watts and the crew of the Egret? Will Jia try and track down Ward? Your feedback will help me determine which storylines to develop.

Amazon asks for a star rating and a little text. The text can be brief. For example, one reviewer for 43 Seconds wrote "Smart and interesting. Looking forward to more from this author" (thank you!). Goodreads, on the other hand, allows you to just leave a star rating if you choose.

You get reach all of my books via my Amazon author's page and Goodreads author's page.

Thanks for reading my stories, and, as always, keep dreaming big.