An Excerpt from my NaNovel

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Here's a little excerpt from my Novel-In-Progress, The Prometheus Directive (10,011 words out of a minimum qualifying 50,000). Enjoy!

Takahashi felt like he didn't need to fake the sweat-stained armpits on the suit, but his face remained smooth and unworried as the ship's datapulse traveled at thousands of times cee. If things went south here, they'd go south in a hurry with that huge battlecruiser headed their way. His escort carrier only carried twenty-five meks aboard out of a nominal capacity of forty-eight, in five flights of four (with one spare suit per flight), and none of the meks aboard were the kind of heavy assault suits he'd need to fend off a battlecruiser.

But the battlecruiser veered off long before it entered visual range, and Takahashi breathed an imperceptible sigh of relief. If the ship had entered visual range, it would have noticed both Dorian's linear launch tubes and the slender Seth-class destroyer IDS Silphium tagging along in her sensor wake. A destroyer could kill a battlecruiser with an alpha launch, but only if the battlecruiser didn't see it coming. It was Dorian's job to make sure nothing saw the destroyer until it was too late.

"Thank you, Ecliptic Glider, have a nice flight. Prometheus Planetary Control, over and out." The entire bridge crew breathed a massive, collective sigh of relief, and Captain Takahashi shed the stained coverall, far too hot over his regular uniform.

Commander Peter Witt, Silphium's captain, for his part, was itching for the chance to prove his first command and crew in battle. Silphium was a newly-minted ship, heavily optimized for space battle at the expense of all but a single flight of suits (and a single spare). In her ready room, her flight leader, Lieutenant Commander Noh Ramah, paced, tightly wound. Conversely, in Dorian's ready room, Commander Abe sat with a relaxed grin on his face, swapping tall tales with his men.

"So there I was, inverted, no more than a hundred meters off the deck, probably fifty, a Wolf less than eight hundred meters off my tail. The bastard wouldn't get off my back, so I decided to let him get close and have it from point blank range. They'll tell you that beam swords can't break. My brothers, that day, I proved 'em wrong," He sat back with a satisfied grin on his face, "The only regret I had is that I couldn't see the look on the Jake's shocked face when I cut his suit in twain. Picked him up out of midair when he ejected from the top half of his suit, he still didn't believe I'd done it. And that, my friends, is the way it's done." Abe grinned wolfishly as his flightmates closed ranks around him, hanging on his words. The commander made a flippy motion with his hand, as though putting away a sword or a gun, and leaned back.

Dark-skinned and handsome Ensign Shawn Deban, on his first tour of duty after graduating at the top of his academy class and promptly being inducted straight into the Io Directorate, looked up at Commander Abe, grinning. "So you did all that by yourself, sir?"

"Weeeeeeelll... maybe not all of it... Katherine certainly helped quite a bit..."

"What happened to Commander Abe and his famous opposition to mouth-jocking in the flight room," asked Kat, blonde eyebrow arched.

"Personal ideals take a backseat to keeping the men excited, Kat, you know me." Abe's grin seemed to widen, if that was possible, then he took a long slow exaggerated sip of his coffee. Black, no sugar. Kat – a confirmed milk-and-sugar coffee drinker – winced in disgust. Deban for his part was drinking cola, the sure sign of a kid on his first deployment.

"Keep to my side, nugget, and we'll have you walking like a veteran in no time." Deban had been initiated into the ship's culture by the time she'd exited hyper, and the idea of going into action as part of a covert operations team, or better yet, the confused brawl of a mecha battle, thrilled him from the tips of his toes to the top of his head. Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on one's point of view, he had yet to see battle outside of a simulator. And he was Abe's wingman for this crazy mission.

The young pilot hopped up when his name was called over the intercom to report to the launch deck for a routine patrol. "Deban, you'll be flying with Lt. Makabe this mission."

He rocked for a moment, listening to the flight boss. "But sir, I'm Commander Abe's wingman!"

"Yeah, but that doesn't mean we don't mix up the wings for routine patrols, get used to it. You're lead on this flight, too. Make sure Makabe doesn't come back with bad words. The last kid that did that, well, I think he's still cleaning the inside of fuel tanks with a toothbrush."

Deban flushed. "I'll try my best not to disappoint, sir."

"And enough with this sir crap. I work for a living." The non-com grinned and gave Deban a hearty thumbs-up, followed by a slap on the shoulder rough enough to stagger the wiry young pilot.

"Thanks!"

"Don't mention it, now just get going, kid."

Deban walked out on the catwalk to his cockpit hatch, where Lt. Makabe greeted him minimalistically. "Ensign."

"Lieutenant."

"Let's get this flight over with, I wish to be back on the carrier as soon as possible."

"Yessir." Deban swung into his cockpit, pulling on his helmet. Makabe grinned wryly at the newbie's enthusiasm. Time to shake up his world a little bit.

"Oh, kid? Your suit's low on blinker fluid, you might wanna get that checked out when we get back."

"Yessir." The ensign hit the toggle key and strong armor shields swung closed over him. His suit came to life, armor and defense fields springing into place. The beam shield on the left arm was ready to activate at a moment's notice once it cleared the ship's atmosphere field. The green, gold and tan paint scheme was startling, giving the large, winged metal humanoid an almost regal look as it stepped forward, planting its feet in the catapult shoes at the closest end of the linear catapult tunnel, the airfield shimmering between him and space.

Brakes... OKAY

Throttle... OKAY

Catapult... OKAY

LAUNCH

"Breaker Five-One, launching!" The sudden twenty-five gee acceleration of the catapult thrust Deban back into his seat as his mek screamed clear of the carrier, spinning wide right in an exultant pinwheel before stabilizing, lighting off the secondary thrusters for a burst of speed as he cleared the ship's vector.

"Breaker Five-Two, launching." Makabe's launch was far less spectacular, he merely catapulted out of the launch tube, pulling right in a sharp, tight, fuel-conservation turn, clearing his suit from the carrier's flight path in just as short a time. "Kiddo, there's a time and place for hotdog maneuvers. Launching from a carrier is neither that time nor place."

Deban nodded, and Makabe continued. "Get a sip from the KF-80, it's gonna be a long flight. Hope you didn't drink too much coffee in the flight room. Or if you did, hope you got enough piddle packs to last you." Deban winced. Two. He hoped that it would be enough.


Prometheus Planetary Control

"Two objects just separated from Ecliptic."

"Debris?"

"No, they're under power... appear to be mecha."

The other flight controller squinted at the screen. Without enough flight data on the two suits, they were provisionally identified as resource gathering units. Very high thrust-weight ratio for resource gatherers, but if they were designed to recover neutronic material from a gas giant's atmosphere, they'd have to be. "Keep the gatherers under close watch. If they stray too far from the fuel carrier before they reach Seven's orbit, tell me."

Admiral Shane Tristan, the commander of Promethean naval forces, watched carefully over the flight data. He had his suspicions, but without a solid lead, he didn't want to move just yet. Let them show their own hand first... if they were saboteurs or spies, God would show them as such. He smirked in bitter irony. His differences with the Caienist leadership were well-known, as was his refusal to join ecuemenical Caienism. That he remained in his high position despite his religious doubt spoke volumes about his carefulness and his command abilities.

He detailed off the frigate Sword of Justice to investigate this ship more thoroughly. Not a good idea, he thought, to have foreigners running around Prometheus unescorted, no matter what their intentions, if their intentions were even honorable. If they were, it would soon come out. If not, the stars would run red. Tristan might not be a Caienist, but neither would he stand for foreigners poking around his homeworld.

Space near IDS Dorian

Ensign Deban muttered to himself as he watched his suit's sensors. The idea of flying combat was exciting, but patrols seemed to concentrate on examining cubic kilometer after cubic kilometer of nothing, nothing and more nothing.

His attention, like that of so many young pilots, began to wander despite his best intentions. The general uninterest of interplanetary space made him think thoughts of home and friends, many of his friends were just graduating from college...

"Look sharp, Five-One. We've got a pair of suits coming up in sector three niner zero." The younger pilot flipped the right-side beam rifle out of its wing housing into its hand, charging the weapon up. His beam shield came on, forming a hexagonal curtain of energy that would interdict harmlessly most low to medium-powered weapon systems. To his right, Five-Two popped its beam saber hilts, not activating them yet. Both beam shields were transparent except for the distortion effect as they covered the suits' arms and bodies, unlike most beam shields which glowed, usually blue, red or green.

Deban looked at his tactical analyzer console. A pair of PHM-0709 Zenners, basic combat units with very little in the way of advanced sensor capability, and only the most standard weaponry, to keep combat as uncomplicated as possible for new recruit pilots. Definitely no match for the advanced and powerful Reshet, except in very very large numbers.

Fortunately, the trajectory of the suits took them too far out of the way to investigate their heat coronae – if the Zenners altered their course now, they'd never have enough reaction mass to return to base. Poor bastards, better luck next time! The suits sped on, never realizing how close they'd come to a fatal encounter with the Republic's finest.

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Up to 21,021 words.

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I find myself coming up on a bit of a problem: I want more people to see the story, but if I actually publish it on SDN, I've used First Publication Rights, and that will make my job of potentially selling the story much, much harder.

Publishers don't like to look at stories that aren't virginal.