Which fanfic to prepare for NaNoWriMo?

[Surlethe]

I'm going to do NaNoWriMo this fall, and I want to prepare with a fanfic. I have two in mind. Which would you like to see?

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Submission One

Star Trek: Deep Space is Really Fucking Cold

Part One

Passenger Liner / Refugee Ship USS Reaper, En Route to the Menzies System. Stardate 53846.9

Jim Liu stared out the little porthole at the points of light flitting past unimaginably fast. They’d been at warp like this for almost fifteen hours; the deep hum of the warp engines, jarring at first through the dull metal floor plates on which they sat, had become part of the background, working its way into his bones. He blew out a breath and glanced at the ceiling. It was just the same as the last time he’d looked at it, low overhead so he had to stoop to walk, with the fluorescent strip lights casting their same harsh glow. It wouldn’t be long now until they dulled and people would go back to sleep.

“Daddy? Why does it look blue from here?” Susan, just four, was peering out the porthole from one side.

He roused himself to answer. “It’s because we’re going in that direction, and the light gets all bunched up on itself so it looks more blue. Here, look at this.” He pulled her over to the other side, and smiled as he watched her expression as the space outside went from blue-tinged to black to red-tinged. “In the other direction, the light gets all stretched out trying to catch up to us, so it turns red.”

“Why does it get scrunched up?”

Hmm. How would one explain relativistic dilation to a four-year-old? He twisted his lips, thinking for a moment – half trying to remember the physics from his years in the Academy, and half trying to think of a way to phrase it that didn’t involve words like “wavelength”, “dilation”, or “Doppler effect.”

After a moment, he breathed on the window, steaming it up. In the condensation, he drew a wiggly line. “See that?”

“What’s that?”

“Light is like that. When the lines are closer together –“ and he drew another one “- it looks blue. When they’re further apart, it looks red. When we’re going fast,” he said as he emptied a blob of water, “the light in front of us gets scrunched up getting to us –“ waves tight together leading toward the ship – “ and stretched out behind –“ and he completed the drawing with lazy waves trailing from the blob.

Susan contemplated it for a moment, then turned to her doll. “Miss Laura,” she said in mock anger, “you weren’t paying attention to Daddy! Shame on you!”

Jim smiled, then turned around and settled back against the cool hull. “That was cute,” said his wife, Mei, just back from the bathroom, straddling his outstretched legs.

“Thanks, honey,” he said. “Long line?”

“You wouldn’t believe,” she replied. “I swear to god, every woman on this ship is having her period today.”

Jim glanced at Susan, still absorbed with her doll, then heaved an exaggerated sigh. Mei giggled. “Too bad for you, you horndog,” she said, sitting down on his thighs and kissing him, letting it linger just an instant too long to be appropriate before settling herself next to him, knees drawn up to her chest.

He whispered, “You fucking tease.”

She giggled again, then her face straightened. “You know,” she said, “I still don’t like the idea of leaving Federation space entirely.”

Jim’s brow wrinkled, and he ran a hand across his crew cut as he answered. “We couldn’t stay there. It was just too dangerous, even out on the fringes; there’s no saying what those crazies would do to anyone they found out was connected to the Federation, let alone discovering I was –“ he stopped, then continued more quietly – “that I was drawing a veteran’s pension.”

“We could have stayed on Alpha-28,” she said. “There were jobs there for you, you know that. It was peaceful, backwater, the war wouldn’t have touched it. We could have settled down, you could have found a job doing engineering things for a factory, and ...” her voice trailed off.

“And Susan could have gotten to know her grandparents, I know,” Jim said. “Mei, we’ve had this discussion before. The war was moving toward 55, and Alpha-28 is the most important planet in the whole damn sector. It would have touched us, and what then? Do you want your daughter growing up in a concentration camp, not knowing her father?”

Mei’s face was set like stone, framed by her black hair. “That’s your opinion, not fact,” she said. “My father said that –“

“Your father doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” said Jim impatiently. “Look, I know people in the Army, in Starfleet, they all said to get the hell out –“

“My father is the administrator of the whole fucking continent!” said Mei. “He knows what he’s talking –“

“Your father is a damned fool, he’d have been the first person executed to make a point when they took A-28, and it’s a moot point anyway since we are on this fucking transport heading toward the Free States.”

It was uncharacteristically quiet, and Jim glanced away from Mei. The near half of the steerage quarters was quiet, with people ostentatiously not staring at them. Susan was looking up from her doll with wide eyes. Mei’s face was frozen, staring off into space, but her almond-shaped eyes were shining and a tear was edging down next to her nose.

“Sorry – sorry,” said Jim to nobody in particular, then turned to Mei. “I’m sorry, honey,” he said, more gently, putting his arms around her and drawing her close to him. She was sobbing silently. Susan stood up and came over, doll dangling by one arm. “We made a decision, and what’s done is done. There’s no use questioning ourselves now. Everything is planned out when we get there; you know I have a job all lined up.”

“Mommy, don’t cry,” said Susan, hugging Mei from the other side.

Mei looked up at Jim, face streaked. He smiled down at her. “It will be all right. Right?” He nodded, and she nodded back. “Su-su,” he said, “will it be all right?”

Susan grinned. “It will be a-o-kay, Mommy!” Mei smiled, and Jim bent and kissed her on the lips.

After a few minutes, Jim pulled from their tote bag – one suitcase and one tote bag allowed for steerage passengers – a portable Weiqi board and unrolled it. Susan plopped herself down across from him, and they took turns placing the black and white stones on the playing field as Mei looked on, making suggestions for Susan and laughing at some of Jim’s more comically bad moves. The board game occupied them until the lights dimmed and they packed up and retreated to the air mattress.

After Susan was soundly asleep next to them, Mei and Jim very quietly made love as the Reaper streaked through the frozen, silent depths of space.

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Submission Two

SDN in Middle Earth

The next raid, the siren went off in the middle of the night when the raiding party tripped the alarm crossing the valley. Knife bolted out of his bed at the head of the barracks. “EVERYONE UP AND OUT!” he roared, grabbing his M2 and radio. As the men groggily swung out of their bunks, clearing their heads and pulling on their boots as fast as they could, he spoke into the radio. “Watch, report.”

The radio crackled. “Looks like a big party,” said Kendall through the radio. “Scouts are reporting about a hundred orcs moving across the perimeter. Big ones, too. Not sure if they’re headed for us, though. They’re apparently vectoring for Leurbost down toward the mouth of the valley.”

“Shit,” said Knife. “We might need to convene the Council for this one.”

The entire company had assembled now, three hundred sixty men standing at attention. “Company, report to battle stations!” The men scattered, splitting into platoons and running to their designated places to await orders. Headquarters platoon followed Knife as he headed toward the headquarters building. Kendall, Ice, Edi, and the other company commanders were already there.

As the senior officer, Knife had de facto command. “Any situational clarification?”

“Yes, sir,” said Kendall. “More than we thought - one hundred ninety five orcs heading toward town. They’ve passed the approach to base; it looks like either they accidentally tripped the alarm or a deer did and we got lucky.”

Kendall’s radio crackled. He bent his ear toward it, then looked back up with a concerned expression. “One other thing, sir. The scouts are saying that the town lookouts are drunk and asleep. “

“What’s the expected damage to the town?”

“Two hundred orcs, no functional opposition? They’ll rape, kill, and burn everything in the town.”

“Shit,” said Knife. “Is the Council up?”

“Sure are,” said Edi. “They’ve already started arguing it through.”

Knife led the other company commanders into the council room. Mike was talking. “Look, if they’re not a threat to us, we really shouldn’t waste fuel or ammunition going after them.”

“Actually, Mike, the situation is a little more complicated.”

Mike looked up, running a hand through his short hair. “What’s the deal?”

“There are nearly two hundred orcs, more than we thought. Worse, it looks like the town’s not going to put up a fight. Their lookouts are asleep. The orcs will surprise them and kill everyone.”

“Fuck them,” said Shep. Nobody was quite sure how he’d gotten on the Council anyhow, as a representative of the manual laborers. “They deserve it for letting the lookouts fall asleep on the job.”

“Fuck you,” said Marina, the new representative of the engineering faction. “We have to help them out. It’s a moral prerogative, not a question of –“ she shot a dirty look at Shep – “deserving punishment.”

Kuroneko, the senior science initiative representative, nodded. “I completely agree.” Around the room, others followed suit.

Knife broke the silence. “Good.” He turned to the other company commanders. “Let’s implement Defense Plan C and modify it for the town village.”

Ice nodded. “Sounds good to me.” The rest of the commanders made agreeable noises.

“Kendall, what’s the time frame we’re working with?” asked Knife.

“The orcs are moving at a slow run,” said Kendall. “They’ll be down to the village in an hour and a half.”

“That’s plenty of time,” said Knife. “Let’s do this, people!”

Five minutes later, the dull roar of four HMMWVs starting rumbled out into the night, and was echoed by the higher growl of the eight ATVs.

Halath was having a weird dream. He was wandering through a deep, dark forest – the sort where there was more tree than space between trees, where moss grew thick on trunks, and hung down in thick beards from ponderous branches. The smell of rotting peat (although he wouldn’t have been able to identify it as such) filled the air, perfuming the air with the musty, ancient scent of old forests; completing the picture, the light was green, mottled, playing out in pretty patterns on the floor.

Suddenly, the earth itself started roaring. What was happening? He spun around, looking warily for the source of the noise, eyes frantically darting, trying to penetrate the shadowy depths of the forest.

Something grabbed his shoulders, shaking him. From a distance, he heard shouting – “Wake up, wake up –“

And then he was awake. “WAKE THE FUCK UP!”

“Wha …?” He was groggy, had a pounding headache.

The man snorted. “Two hundred orcs are descending upon your village. They will be here before sunrise.”

“Orcs?”

His head rang as the man slapped him, hard, across the face. “Yes, you fucking idiot. You can see the moonlight on their armor in the valley. Now get the fuck up and sound the alarm!”

Halath dragged himself up, looked out in the valley, trying to make sense of what he saw. The full moon cast the scene in a light, silver glow – he saw the dark, foreboding slopes of the mountains, the scrub and shortgrass in the valley, and in the middle a black stream snaking toward the town – a black stream, with moonlight glinting on it – alarm cleared the rest of his hangover from his head.

The man dragged him to his feet. “Sound the alarm!”

He turned and tugged on the bellpull. The leaden peals rang out over the town as Haleth threw himself down the ladder, dropping the last five feet and running toward the elder’s house, yelling at the top of his lungs.

Knife rolled his eyes at the young man, and spoke into his mouthpiece to his company. “Remember: aim, fire, pull back as they approach. Do not charge, do not give your position away. And conserve ammunition.” Behind him, the last member of his headquarters platoon pulled himself up. From here, Knife could survey the battlefield and give instructions to his company and the other company commanders.

Another man poked his head above the ladder. “Sir, mind if I set up shop here?”

“No problem, Rob. You think you can identify the leaders?”

“Absolutely,” said Rob. “There are certain patterns that all command structures follow, from the stone age to Iraq.”

Gurzhnakh loped toward the low hill. The town was spread out before him now; he could smell the scent of manflesh in the air. This would be a good night – killing some of the hated humans, who had driven them underground. Ethnic memory ran long and bright, and the list of grievances the orcs held against men – let alone those accursed elves! – took three straight days to recite. And that was just for the Third Age. The older stories, before the destruction of Sauron’s might, the annihilation of the West, and even further back, before the ruin of Beleriand, required a month-long festival to tell.

He missed a small dip in the ground and stumbled forward onto the commander’s heels, catching himself; the commander snarled over his shoulder. Gurzhnakh mewled an apology, and the commander’s head exploded, showering fragments of blood, skull, and brain on Gurzhnakh. A dull, distant boom echoed across the valley as he stood, completely stunned. The rest of the column crashed into him, shoving him forward to stumble again, this time over the commander’s toppled body, before it realized what had happened, then they too stood, milling about, scared, wondering what sort of magic the town had.

Then a chorus of bangs cut through the night, closer, and orkish screams followed immediately as several dozen on the outside of the group were scythed down; Gurzhnakh saw the torso of an orc standing next to him suddenly open a gaping hole, and then he himself felt nothing more as his head popped like an overripe melon dropped from a roof.

The second volley was too much, and the remaining orcs broke and ran. New sounds assaulted their panicked ears – a grumble, like a lion stalking her prey, closing on their right and left. Black shadows loomed out of the darkness, herding the fleeing raiding party into a group, then the loud pops rang out again, and again.

The next morning, as the village elders surveyed the scene of the strange noises the previous night from the walls of the town’s citadel, they saw the plain strewn with dead orc bodies, and strange markings on the ground. The cleanup work was particularly disgusting: many of the orcs were horrifically dismembered, or were missing heads, or had limbs entirely gone. The tracks led off to the south, but the townspeople dared not follow. And over the next few months, the children of the village were often caught playing with strange, hollow bronze cylinders the like of which none had before seen.

The next morning, Knife was called before the council to defend his orders the night before. As always, Mike was the loudest and talked the fastest. “What the fuck were you thinking? Hunting them down and slaughtering them like animals? That’s a fucking war crime.”

“My justification is this. I felt that it was absolutely important that no word get out about our establishment here, as in the twenty-four weeks we’ve been here we have not yet made contact with any locals, and that our presence ought to remain a secret until such time as we decide to reveal ourselves. It would be in my judgment detrimental to our mission if any word of our presence, let alone our capabilities, left now.”

Kuroneko leaned forward. “Have you considered that the complete annihilation of a raiding party may raise eyebrows, if in fact it was directed by one of our enemies?”

“Yes sir, I did,” replied Knife. “I felt that a complete annihilation would be more appropriate, as that way no rumor of our capabilities would return. For all they know, it was destroyed by a party of Rohirrim before reaching Leurbost. Better to raise some questions with known answers than questions with entirely unknown answers.”

Marina nodded slowly. “That reasoning seems sound.” She glanced around the room. “Does anybody else have any questions?”

“I do, but not to Knife,” said Edi. “Would it be good to take this as an opportunity to reveal ourselves to Leurbost and begin making local connections?”

That kicked off a whole new round of discussion, and Knife sat down. His justification was good – he knew it! – but he still couldn’t shake the feeling of walking through the wounded orcs the previous night and putting bullets between wounded, scared, confused eyes.

[Rogue 9]

A very tough choice, but I have to go for SDN in Middle Earth.

[Bluewolf]

I would like to see more of SDN in Middle Earth. It'd be great.

[RogueIce]

Since I get to be a company commander in the Middle Earth fic, my personal bias will dictate that you go with that story. Plus I don't really care all that much about Star Trek.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

Your SDN in Middle Earth fic sets my mental wheels turning and makes me want to write one. So . . . your Middle Earth fic.

[Siege]

I'll join in with the chorus and drop another vote for guns vs. orcs.

[Gandalf]

I vote for the first one.

I find the second idea fairly uninteresting/wanky.

[tezunegari]

My vote for SDN in ME.

[Scottish Ninja]

I vote for SDNiME, too - as long as I get to be the nervous guy with the camera, trying to make a documentary of our time there.

[Surlethe]

SDN in Middle Earth it will be.

[Knife]

Hmm, odd. I don't see myself as one in charge. Cool, but weird.