Randy Dyess's Blog, page 8

The Farm Chapter 8 Online

Chapter 8 of The Farm is now online for a free preview. Check out the The Farm main series page for the link.

Enjoy reading this chapter and please leave feedback on if you like it or not and if you spot a problem.

Chapter 9 on the way–keep checking in.

The Farm Chapter 7 Online

Chapter 7 of The Farm is now online for a free preview. Check out the The Farm main series page for the link.

Enjoy reading this chapter and please leave feedback on if you like it or not and if you spot a problem.

Chapter 8 on the way–keep checking in.

The Farm Chapter 6 Online

Chapter 6 of The Farm is now online for a free preview. Check out the The Farm main series page for the link.

Enjoy reading this chapter and please leave feedback on if you like it or not and if you spot a problem.

Chapter 7 on the way–keep checking in.

The Farm Chapter 5 Online

Chapter 5 of The Farm is now online for a free preview. Check out the The Farm main series page for the link.

Enjoy reading this chapter and please leave feedback on if you like it or not and if you spot a problem.

Chapter 6 on the way–keep checking in.

The Farm Chapter 4 Online

Chapter 4 of The Farm is now online for a free preview. Check out the The Farm main series page for the link.

Enjoy reading this chapter and please leave feedback on if you like it or not and if you spot a problem.

Chapter 5 on the way–keep checking in.

Sergeant Major McCoons

I don’t know when or if this blurb will make it into the new science fiction book I’m piecing together. I thought I would share it with you anyway since it has been bouncing around my pea brain and keeping me up at nights.

Sergeant Major McCoons floated through the hole just blown into the side of the captured Spider vessel. As far as anyone knew, he would be the first living human to ever set foot into a Spider vessel. Mankind had never before been able to capture one of their vessels. Spider technology had always been a little more advanced than human technology but over the past five years of war, man had done what he has always been good at and developed better and better weapons. This was the first battle the Terran Navy had actually defeated a Spider fleet. Several stalemates were fought over the last year and before that the Terran Navy had always been lucky to get one sailor out alive whenever it met a Spider ship. Sergeant Major McCoons and his unit were about to make history.

“OK, listen up,” McCoons bellowed through his mike. “No one has ever been in one of the rocks before so keep the shit down and your heads up.”

McCoons really didn’t need to repeat instructions to his select group of boarders. Every man and women on his team, except for the navy news sailor forced on him at the last minute to record everything, were handpicked by McCoons for this mission. When McCoons made his selection, the admiral joked that there was more years of combat experience on McCoons boarding team than the entire rest of the fleet combined. McCoons actually stopped and thought about that for a moment and silently agreed with the admiral that it was possible. All of his team members had been in the Space Marines for decades and fought pirates, rebels, terrorist, and countless navy punks for the majority of those decades. There were no daddies’ boys or girls here that bought their rank like the Terran Navy used to be filled with. Everyone here earned it the hard way.

McCoons knew that every word he said would be heard and captured by the dozens of officers on board the Eagle and McCoons had strict instructions to keep a running dialogue as he made his way through the ship. “No gravity. I don’t know if it’s shut down or if they never had that gravity,” he said as he straightened himself out after making his way through the hole.

“I’m placing the scanner on the wall now.”

A voice came through his ear piece, “Sergeant Major. Verify that the scanner is functional. The scan indicates that the ship is hollow.”

“Aye, Sir.”

McCoons hit the diagnostic button on the scanner and it came back as green. “Scanners working and I can see why it comes back stating the ship is hollow. It looks hollow. There’s no walls, just a bunch of..”

“A bunch of what, Sergeant Major?”

“A bunch of spider webs. The inside of the ship looks just like a hollow rock filled with spider webs. It’s damn spooky.”

“Copy that Sergeant Major. Continue with your scan.”

“Aye, Sir.”

“Murphy, Smith, Toons. Take your teams and fan out. Record everything you see and remember we need to see if we can capture some of these eight-legged freaks. Don’t just shoot everything you see. Make sure can find your way back and use your taggers to mark everything of interest. We need to secure the ship and make sure that tech weenies can come back and study this shit.”

“Aye, Sergeant Major,” all team leaders said at once.

Once the teams began to spread out and make their ways through the webs, McCoons called out, “Alpha team with me. Beta team, stand by and guard the hole. Tom, Jim, Guard the navy reporter and try to keep him alive.”

“OK, Mike,” Sergeant Majors Johnson and Brown said together. They had been in the marines as long as McCoons had been and McCoons knew he could count on them to protect the navy video specialist and back him up in any kind of fire fight.

“Eagle,” McCoons called.

“Eagle here.”

“This stuff is very tough and sticky as hell. I’m going to have Beta team try to get a sample for the biologists. You rub up against this crap and you are stuck enough you have to saw your way through the glue to get loose. If we can’t do something to counter-act it, there’s going to be a lot of science nerds stuck to this shit.”

“Copy that, Sergeant Major. We’ll have a team standing by for analysis to see if they can come up with something.”

The Marine teams made their way through the ship placing sensor pods at various locations on the paths. The team on the Eagle slowing began to build a picture of the interior of the ship but the complex web of cables interfered with the scans and large blank areas still remained.

After cutting himself free for what seemed like the hundredth time, McCoons let out a stream of expletives and told his team to stop.

“Alpha team to Eagle.”

“Eagle here.”

“You have that spider doc online?”

“Patched in.”

“Doc, didn’t you say in one of your briefings that spiders on Earth would monitor their webs by using their legs to feel for the vibrations caused by something stuck on it.”

‘Yes, many spiders build their webs with signal lines that…”

McCoons cut him off not wanting to hear a presentation. “Alpha team leader to all team leaders. Let’s try something. I want all teams to form up with a back-to-back circle pattern. Three team members, set your rifles to the min setting. I want to make the strings of this web shake, not tear apart. Other team members, alternate between max setting and medium setting. If this works, those spiders are going to come out of hiding fast and I want team members with medium settings to fire first. If it kills the spider, readjust and try again in another spot. If it doesn’t kill the spider but doesn’t stop it, kill it fast and readjust with a higher setting until we can knock these monsters out to capture them.”

Sergeant Major McCoons heard each team leader copy and he began his little experiment. It was a major success as spiders came out of hiding to capture what they thought were the marines tangled in their webs. All four teams managed to kill a dozen spiders and capture two dozen more of various sizes. The scientists onboard the Eagle were very excited that they would soon have a large number of research subjects for all the experiments that had in mind to learn more about the makeup of the spiders and how to defeat them.

After tagging all bodies and restraining the live spiders with Qualtonium alloy shackles which they hoped would be strong enough, he teams continued on with their initial surveys. The mechanical portions on the ship were discovered and tagged and what was thought to be command and control found and tagged. Other various sections of the ships were found but the marines had no clue what they would be used for. The engineers waiting on the Eagle would have that chore.

As McCoons and Alpha team reached the limit of their search area and were about to turn about to place scanners in all those blank spots in the ship, McCoons saw something. “Hold. Murphy, check out that area at 1 o’clock. What are those lumps?”

“Copy that, Sergeant Major.”

A minute later, McCoons heard Murphy call out, “Sergeant Major. You need to get over here. I think I found their food supply.”

“On my way.”

“Alpha team to Eagle.”

“Eagle here.”

“That spider doc still there.”

“Affirmative, Alpha team.”

“Doc. We’re looking at about two hundred cocoon looking things. Most are the size of a human. Some are smaller and a few are the size of a truck. Could this be their food storage?”

“It could be. There’s a possibility that the spiders don’t kill their prey, just put it in stasis until needed. Most spiders need living food sources. You see, they suck..”

“Understand doc,” McCoons said cutting him off. “I get the picture. Peterson, you’re up. See if you can cut into one of those things without killing whatever is inside. Start with that one at the pointy end. Maybe we’ll get lucky and it will be at the feet.”

“Aye, Sir.”

Petty Officer Peterson was the navy medic assigned to Alpha team. She went over to the cocoon and started slowly cutting into the webbing with a laser scalpel. The outer layer peeled away and they saw thick, blue goo that stayed in place even in zero gravity. She held her breath and used her hands to scoop up handfuls of the goo and put it into a bag someone was holding out. After several handfuls she started to see a pale, fresh color patch of skin. Soon it was apparent that what they were seeing was someone’s foot.

“I got a foot,” Peterson shouted. “I’m going to try to see if there is a pulse.”

Peterson took out her probe and placed onto the foot where the dorsalis pedis pulse should be. “I got a pulse. It’s weak but readable.”

McCoons broke in, “Alpha team to Eagle.”

“Eagle here.”

“Can you pinpoint our location?”

“Affirmative, Alpha team.”

“Can you have the Captain release the second strike team to breach this ship near us? I’m thinking that it will be almost impossible to get these people all away across this ship or enough docs through this thing to help these people. Might be easier if we make another hole closer to make things go faster.”

A minute later, Eagle responded, “Command agrees with your assessment and second strike team is on its way to breach hull. We’re going to try to create a dock directly with the hospital ship after we put a team on board to guard against surprises.”

“Copy that, Eagle. We will stand by and guard the prisoners until second strike team takes over. The rest of the teams will continue searching and tagging.”

“Affirmative, Alpha team.”

“Spread out and keep your eyes open for spiders and the second strike team. Nothing non-human gets by us and does anything to these poor souls.”

The Farm Chapter 3 Online

Chapter 3 of The Farm is now online for a free preview. Check out the The Farm main series page for the link.

Enjoy reading this chapter.

Chapter 4 on the way–keep checking in.

The Farm Chapter 2 Online

Chapter 2 of The Farm is now online for a free preview. Check out the The Farm main series page for the link.

Enjoy reading this chapter.

Chapter 3 on the way–keep checking in.

Rock Hunters and Rock Busters

I have been reading over the year about various reported NASA plans on using hollowed out asteroids for various reasons. The plans include fueling stations, space stations, and space colonies. I thought I would try writing a blurb on an alien species using hollowed out asteroids as weapons in their war against humanity.

The USC battleship Electra shook as the shields absorbed the latest round of kinetic weapons fire from the two Spider cruisers strafing her as they flew by. Normally two cruisers would not be a match against the strength of the Electra but after nearly 6 solid hours of sustaining hits from various Spider ships, the Electra’s outer hulls were weakened to the point that were on the verge of collapse. A collapse in the outer hull would leave the Electra vulnerable to inner hull breaches and Captain Lewis had strict orders not to put the Electra in harm’s way.

“Captain. Tactical,” shouted Lieutenant Parks. “We have rocks dead astern 57,000 kilometers out. I estimate 200 rocks traveling towards the fleet with impact in 90 seconds.”

“Rocks,” Captain Lewis thought. “Where did they come from? Spiders using only used rocks near asteroid fields and we are not within a million kilometers to the nearest field.”

Rocks were a weapon developed by the Spiders over two decades ago as a way to increase the number of weapons they had in human space without bringing them in from their own space. Rocks were exactly what they sounded like, rocks. The Spiders would capture asteroids in the 100 to1 50 meter size and hollow out small cavities in the captured asteroids. A larger cavity on one side of the rock would hold an Ion engine capable of accelerating the rock to near light speed if given long enough. Another large cavity in the front would hold a single rail gun with enough ammunition to weaken the shields of any human vessel to the point that the rock could smash into the vessel and destroy it. Small maneuvering thrusters combined with a simple flight controller could make minor adjustments the flight path of the asteroid but were not strong enough to put the rock back on path if it was moved more than 5 degrees off target.

Two years ago during the a battle of Targus 1, a Targus Coast Guard patrol caption figured out this weakness and developed two weapons to help the USC fleet survive attacks by large numbers of rocks. Before that battle, USC fleets targeted by more than a dozen or so rocks usually had to retreat from the battle and jump to safe locations. Rocks carried small light directing shields which out make them almost invisible to sensors until the rocks were right on top if the fleet and that was too late to safely destroy them before they wreaked havoc of the human ships.

“Communications,” Captain Lewis said, “Inform the admiral. Helm, start rock evasive maneuvering.”

“Aye, Sir,” both officers responded.

“Weapon’s officer,” Captain Lewis said into his headset.

“Weapons here, Captain.”

“We have rocks inbound dead astern. Release those new weapons Lt. Parsons developed.”

“Aye, Sir,” Major Thurber replied. “We haven’t tested them yet so I can’t guarantee their effectiveness.”

“Understood,” replied Captain Lewis. “We have no other choice, our main jump drive is damaged and we can’t escape.”

“Aye, Sir. We’ll do what we can,” replied Major Thurber.

“Rock hunters released,” Major Thurber announced a few seconds later. “Rock busters spun up and ready to fire.”

“Thank Major,” Captain Lewis commented. “XO. Announce to the ship to seal their suits in case a rock gets through. Transfer all controls to the individual guns.”

“Aye, Captain,” Commander McCord replied.

A second later the XO came over the ship’s speakers, “This is the XO. We have rocks inbound and all personal will now seal their suits. Control is given to all guns.”

USC sailors did not normally seal their vacuum suits inside of a ship in action. The gloves and helmets on a sealed suit were very bulky and prevented the operation of the finer controls found throughout the ship. There were also the issue that each suit only had a limited amount of air and if you used it all during combat you would not have enough left to survive in a crippled vessel long enough to get rescued. Terran researchers had been frantically trying for the past decade to refine the suits enough so that they could be worn throughout any battle without interfering with operations or having to worry about air supply but have been unable to make much headway. The suits the crew of the Electra wore were the best of the current models but they still had those massive limitations.

“All guns report local control,” Lt. Parks replied.

At this point, Major Thurber and weapons could no longer control the individual weapons against Spider ships. This would reduce their effectiveness in battle as the gun crews could only fire at what they could see with their limited scanners. Without its centralized fire control, a ship stopped being a tactical vessel with a firing strategy in mind and simply became a bunch of guns strafing at anything that flew by. Ships found themselves firing at their own ships in the heat of a close combat battle. Still local control was needed if a rock happened to make it through the ships defenses and damaged tactical. If the control was still in tactical at that time, the guns would stop firing and the crews could not change them over to manual. Newer combat vessels had improved weapon control by creating distributed, redundant systems that could survive rock damage but the Electra had been in combat for the past few years and could not be taken out of service for a long overdue overhaul to correct this deficiency.

“Captain. Rock hunters have engaged the rocks and seem to be having quite a bit of luck. We estimate 30% of the rocks have been captured and redirected,” Lt. Parks announced.

“Finally some good news,” Captain Lewis said. “Has anyone else released their hunters?”

“Yes sir,” Lt. Parks replied. “It looks like the Enterprise, Hornet, Han Yang, Shen Yang, and Khukiri have all released their hunters. It’s going to be close but I estimate that the hunters will arrive before the terminal line.”

Rock hunters were very small missiles that had one purpose. They flew out and attached themselves to the rocks and then fired off their engines at maximum thrust to redirect the flight trajectory of the rocks. Rocks were simple and dumb. Their thrusters could not turn themselves around or make significant corrections to their trajectories if something redirected them enough. The terminal line was the point that it would be too late for the rock hunters to redirect the rocks enough to miss any ships in the battle zone. If engaged inside of the terminal line, the rock might fly by its original target but had enough time to acquire a ship further away and make the small corrections to its flight path needed to still be effective against the new target.

Several tense seconds went by before Lt. Parks reported. “Captain. All rock hunters have engaged. I estimate over 85% of rocks have been redirected.”

A loud applause broke out on the Electra as humans might just found a weapon that could change the course of the war by evening the Spider and Terran fleets.

“Calm down people,” Captain Lewis shouted. “We still have dozens of rocks inbound.”

The Captain looked at Lt. Parks and asked, “Status of the busters?”

“Busters are making contact now Captain.”

Rock busters were designed to overcome the problem of what to do with rocks that made it through the hunters. Rock busters were two separate missiles within one missile. The first warhead exploded near the surface of the rock with just enough power to cause any shielding built into the rock to fail. Once the first explosion went off, a secondary missile would fire and drill into the rock far enough so that its small warhead could explode and pulverize the rock from within. It took a much smaller explosive within the rock to pulverize it then it would have if the explosion occurred on the surface of the rock. While technically, busters could be set for an explosion large enough to completely pulverize the rock, those larger explosions would often cause shock waves that would damage nearby ships. It was a problem that had researchers scrambling to solve until someone read about the “bunker buster” missiles of old earth and modified the design for a rock attack.

Rock busters had some major drawbacks when compared to rock hunters. Often the secondary explosion would fail to pulverize the rock sufficiently and would only cause the rock to break into larger pieces. These smaller pieces would usually be small enough to be deflected by normal ship’s shields but often larger pieces still found their way through the shields and caused considerable damage to weakened ships. This happened often enough that third defensive screen of specially built shuttle craft would be used during rock attacks to push the larger pieces away from the fleet before they had a chance to damage a ship by chance.

The other drawback to rock busters was that they had to be launched from missile tubes and would cause the ships to have to stop their fights with Spider vessels long enough to reload missile tubes with the busters. Ship captains were all waiting on the day that ships could launch busters fast enough to handle the hundreds of rocks often used in a single attack but until then, they had to rely on both hunters and busters as hunters were much smaller than rock busters and could be ejected by the hundreds very quickly.

“Status report,” Captain Lewis ordered.

“Busters have engaged rocks and have destroyed all of them. It looks like there are only a dozen chunks large enough to damage vessels and the shuttles are taking care of them. No enemy fighters in the area to harass the shuttles.”

Another cheer went out from the crew and this time the Captain joined them.

“Weapons,” the Captain order. “Take control of all guns and finish off those Spider cruisers.

“Aye, Sir. Weapons central,” Major Thurber announced.

“Captain. Spider cruisers disengaging and leaving the area. Should we pursue?”

“No. Let the destroyers have them. We need to move back in and protect the carriers,” Captain Lewis responded. “Damage reports to my console.”

The rest of the fleet celebrated as well when the Spider ship all disengaged and jumped out of the system. The new weapons developed to fight off the rocks had turned the tide and evened the playing field for the first time in the five years of fighting the Spiders. Humans for the first time had a chance to repeal the invasion and save themselves from extinction.

Cheyenne Feeds the Chickens

Working on the second book of the Out of Gas series: The Farm and thought I would share one of the scenes from the rough draft of the first chapter. I’m hoping to get this edited and online before the end of the month as I finish up the first half of the book and start on the second half.

Hope you enjoy and leave comments please.

Mark heard the screen door slam shut on his new porch as he finished taking care of the livestock before heading into the house for breakfast. The grunts and squeals of the pigs accompanied him as he stopped and listened to the sounds of his new life. The sounds of the country he told himself as he poured the last of the slop into the pig’s trough. Even after two months being on the farm part-time, Mark still marveled at the silence as compared to the city. Yes, there were noises from the animals and the sound of an occasional jet as it lined up for landing at the DFW airport all those miles away, but overall there was only a fraction of the noise one would face living in a town like Dallas or even Fort Worth. Mark smiled to himself as he heard the birds signing and noticed the source of the slamming screen door he heard earlier. “Morning sweetie,” he said to his oldest daughter Cheyenne. “What are you doing out here this time of morning?”

“Mama asked me to get some eggs for breakfast,” the sleepy-eyed girl answered him.

“Why don’t I get the eggs for you and you go back in and watch cartoons before breakfast,” Mark told Cheyenne.

“No thanks daddy. I’ll do it. I like seeing the chickens in the morning right after you let them out of their house,“ Cheyenne replied. “They are so funny running around trying to eat all the bugs up before the other chickens can get them.”

Mark just chuckled and thought to himself, “Six months ago I would have never thought she would even come close to turning down cartoons for anything else. All she did in the mornings was slink down the stairs, glue her eyes on the TV and demand that breakfast be brought to her so she wouldn’t miss a minute of whatever the latest and greatest cartoon was. Our lives have already started changing and we really haven’t even moved out here full-time yet.”

Mark walked over to the hen house with her and leaned against the door as she started to gather the eggs. She went to each hen that was still laying on the nests and talked to them for a few minutes before reaching under them to remove any eggs she could find. Slowly Cheyenne made her way around the various nests and then went out into the small yard that surrounded the hen house. She greeted the chickens she hadn’t already talked to and watched them for a few moments as each chicken raced around the yard looking for various bugs they could eat.

“You like the chickens, don’t you,” Mark asked Cheyenne?

“I sure do,” Cheyenne replied. “They are so funny to watch run around. Are we going to let them have babies one day?”

“Yes, all we have to do is not take their eggs and they will sit on them and hatch them for babies.”

Cheyenne’s eyes grew wide as she glanced from the chickens to the basket of eggs she was carrying. “You mean the eggs that we eat are baby chickens,” Cheyenne asked?

Mark wondered what he stepped into as he said, “Yes and no. The eggs are what come before the baby chickens. You don’t see a chicken in the egg when you break it open, do you?”

“I guess not. How does the baby come from the egg then?”

“The yellow stuff you see in the egg grows into a baby chicken if the mother sits on the egg. It takes about three weeks and then the baby grows inside of the egg and then hatches one day.”

“How does the baby breathe if it is inside of the egg?”

“I tell you what. Why don’t we talk about this during breakfast and I will explain everything and if you want, you can pick one or two of your favorite chickens and we can let them hatch a bunch of babies. You’ll have to watch over them after they are born to make sure the mother is taking care of them and nothing is trying to eat them. Baby chickens are considered food by a lot of the wild animals around here.”

Mark could see the smile grow across her face as they thought about helping to raise the babies. “OK, daddy. That sounds great.”

“Finish up here and then let’s go inside and get something to eat. I’m starving,” Mark replied with a smile on his face. Every night, Mark would move the entire hen house and yard to a new spot in the pasture so each morning the hens were greeted by fresh grass and bugs. This not only helped reduce the feed bill of the chickens as they supplemented their grain with grass and insects, it helped increase the health of the chickens and the quality of eggs they got from them.

Mark was thinking about how he could improve the hen house to the point that Cheyenne could help move it each night when he heard, “You coming in for breakfast daddy,” Cheyenne asked as she walked past him with an armful of eggs? “I thought you were starving?”

“Right behind you pumpkin,” Mark replied as he followed his daughter into the porch to clean up after feeding all the animals. At least he had the forethought to install a laundry sink on the porch when he built it, as most mornings he was filthy after completing his morning chores. At least he could get the first layer of gross off of himself so he would track it into his new home.

After removing the outer layers of his work clothes and cleaning up, Mark walked into the house. “Hi sweetie,” Kelly said as she gave him a little peck on the cheek. “Breakfast will be ready in a few.”

“OK, let me write up my daily notes and I’ll be right in. We need to talk about Cheyenne’s new chicken adventure while we eat.”