For fun and a bit of practice at being creative, I've decided to work on an original hard sci-fi story, focusing on the experiences of a woman wanting to see space and her experiences during a seige of sorts upon the Sol system, with thousands of relativistic asteroids constantly inbound from an unknown source.
If anyone could read and critique or offer ideas, I'd be quite happy and give you a cookie. But only if you're good and not a dog, since they're chocolate chip.
I'll post an idea for a prologue below for critique and review, to see if the premise is at least interesting. Got a lot of ideas of course already from that bible site, Atomic Rockets.
Original Fic: Ad Astra Per Aspera
Moderator: LadyTevar
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Nephtys
- Sith Acolyte
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- Joined: 2005-04-02 10:54pm
- Location: South Cali... where life is cheap!
---One---
Natura non contristatur
The first impact was always the worst for Lyudmila Krasnaia. Even secured within the sealed confines of an acceleration tank during high-maneuver operations, each sharp burst of the interceptor’s drive couldn’t help but sound and feel like a massive explosion along the hull. It was a massive explosion, she thought hesitantly. Nobody casually flew fifty times the distance from Earth to the sun without riding such unimaginable energy cast into space. The shock of a second course adjustment quickly shook her back to reality as she felt pressed against the cushioning gel within the steel tank.
Her mind wandered, re-examining the familiar features of the tank. It was a long cylinder in shape, three meters long and a meter wide, it was completely sealed from the outside world. Filled with a translucent shock gel to absorb the forces of harsh maneuvers, oversized keys, switches and controls litter the main panel and walls. Comfortably suited beyond Lyudmila was a plastic cube flashing with a three-dimensional display, beneath a larger primary flat screen. Designed for utility over comfort, claustrophobia invariably set in even amongst the most stoic of crew members. By her feet, the emergency escape latch remained secured, a last option in case she needed to escape.
Don’t screw up, Lyudmila. She thought, gazing upon the static filling her monitors through the gel. By Deus, don’t screw up.
Her breath echoed in the oxygen mask across her hollow-cheeked face, clear green eyes framed by the transparent faceplate of the mask. Through the myriad of orange blips, she focused obsessively on two, rapidly approaching each other. Across one, the familiar label ‘INTR-56 CYRENE’ blinked in a soothing green light, a chevron marking it’s general direction besides data on course and relative velocity. It was familiar to her as the aged conical ship upon which twenty one human beings immediately depended on for survival, not the least of whom included herself.
The second contact was more problematic. ‘MRIO-1855’ was the ugly name given to such an ugly thing, and Lyudmila’s eyes narrowed at it. Massive Relativistic Inbound Object number 1855, a multi-megaton asteroid set on a course for Earth at nearly the speed of light. It was their target. It was her enemy.
A woman’s voice sounded in Lyudmila’s ears once acceleration stopped. “CO, LIDAR.” reported the voice. She understood it immediately, the Laser-sensor technician was reporting to the interceptor’s captain-pilot.
“No damage confirmed, target remains and still on course.” Spoke the voice of the sensor operator, her tone cold. A more aged woman’s voice filtered in after, that of Captain Devereux.
“Ordie, CO. Switch main armament to penetrative charge, forty megaton.” It was for Lyudmila. She was acting ordinance officer, and her heart pounded. “Affirm. Loading.”
Upon the screen to her left, the status of the target updated with the latest LIDAR returns. Lyudmila grew more nervous by the moment. It was her first intercept mission beyond the simulators. More than that, it was the first time she had personally seen any MRIO penetrate so close to the Solar System’s perimeter, a distance of merely 68 AU from Earth. What had been apparently a typical intercept had already grown more complicated, as this probable nickel-iron asteroid had already seemingly shrugged off what should have been a close proximity kill from a high-yield nuclear missile.
Her fingers traced along the keys of her panels. You’re a newly-minted midshipwoman. Nobody expects miracles on a maiden cruise. She thought, keying in the new ordinance request. From the internal magazine, a new torpedo slid into a launch tube only a few meters beyond the confines of her tank. She swallowed hard as firing solution data appeared brightly on her main display. Delicately, she flipped up the plastic covering across the arming switch.
***
Cyrene coasted and shifted course, rotating along her axis with brief bursts from her vernier thrusters. One of missile tubes opened, the hatch withdrawing downwards. With a flash of escaping gas, a missile launched out at what was a relatively leisurely pace, moving to intercept and burrow within the target asteroid. Designed to scatter the mass of the asteroid away from vulnerable Earth, things grew silent aboard the Interceptor, each crew member anxiously waiting in their separate acceleration tanks for the missile to meet MRIO-1855.
Lyudmila held her breath, watching the LIDAR silhouette against a flat screen beyond that of her display cube. The position of her missile’s rendezvous glowed green, and she let a sigh of relief into the muffled facemask. She spoke.
“CO, O-Ordie.” She shook off her excitement and anxiety. “Missile has made contact. The mainframe’s suggesting standard depth detonation will achieve acceptable scattering.”
The Captain said something in acknowledgement, and the rest of the crew resumed their standard work chatter. Lyudmila just groaned in relief, and stretched within the confines of her tank, thinking already about when she could get out and get herself cleaned up. The missile would complete it’s burrowing within the hour, and she would call this intercept a success. She curiously rested back, switching her display cube image to a monitor of all local traffic. There, INTR-132 and INTR-212 were already destroying their own relativistic targets and beginning their deceleration for a return to port within a few days.
Lyudmila cracked her neck back, working the kinks out while she thought of what she’d do on the return voyage. There’d be plenty of more time cramped on one of these tanks of course during deceleration phases, but she still itched for some time in the open air of Cyrene’s compartments. Lyudmila almost failed to notice the sudden change of the LIDAR silhouette still present on the flat screen display, and the disappearance of the tunneling missile.
“CO, LIDAR! There’s activity at the target… its changing course!?”
“Repeat that?”
“Target is adjusting course. Decelerating at one kilometer-second and increasing…”
Lyudmila’s eyes darted to the display as the asteroid broke into a new shape, rough edges of the bean-shaped rock shattering to reveal a more compact form, with arcing expulsions of plasma streaking through space.
Impossible! If it’s not a MRIO then what could it be?
Her thoughts sharply halted, replaced by pure terror as a new burst erupted from the object. A piece of it had broken off, as if fired at its pursuers. An alarm klaxon sounded in her ears, the gel-filled tank turned to a deep cherry light. Her pupils constricted and eyes moved down to her display cube. A new contact had appeared from where the thing that was MRIO-1855, bearing down upon Cyrene. Yelling and panic filled her ears.
“Emergency thrust, full burn imme---“ screamed a voice, cut short in the activity of the moment.
With a deafening crash and the concussion rippling through her tank, Lyudmila tried to scream. No words seemed to emerge from the scream. She felt a sharp pain from the jolt, before nausea and blackness swept over her.
Through her concussion-induced haze, Lyudmila thought she saw stars for a fleeting moment. Beautiful stars, as Cyrene’s hull smashed inwards sending shattered debris off into space. She felt the tube slam forward again with the sound of strained metal before things were dull again. Her displays darkened one by one until only blackness remained.
Natura non contristatur
The first impact was always the worst for Lyudmila Krasnaia. Even secured within the sealed confines of an acceleration tank during high-maneuver operations, each sharp burst of the interceptor’s drive couldn’t help but sound and feel like a massive explosion along the hull. It was a massive explosion, she thought hesitantly. Nobody casually flew fifty times the distance from Earth to the sun without riding such unimaginable energy cast into space. The shock of a second course adjustment quickly shook her back to reality as she felt pressed against the cushioning gel within the steel tank.
Her mind wandered, re-examining the familiar features of the tank. It was a long cylinder in shape, three meters long and a meter wide, it was completely sealed from the outside world. Filled with a translucent shock gel to absorb the forces of harsh maneuvers, oversized keys, switches and controls litter the main panel and walls. Comfortably suited beyond Lyudmila was a plastic cube flashing with a three-dimensional display, beneath a larger primary flat screen. Designed for utility over comfort, claustrophobia invariably set in even amongst the most stoic of crew members. By her feet, the emergency escape latch remained secured, a last option in case she needed to escape.
Don’t screw up, Lyudmila. She thought, gazing upon the static filling her monitors through the gel. By Deus, don’t screw up.
Her breath echoed in the oxygen mask across her hollow-cheeked face, clear green eyes framed by the transparent faceplate of the mask. Through the myriad of orange blips, she focused obsessively on two, rapidly approaching each other. Across one, the familiar label ‘INTR-56 CYRENE’ blinked in a soothing green light, a chevron marking it’s general direction besides data on course and relative velocity. It was familiar to her as the aged conical ship upon which twenty one human beings immediately depended on for survival, not the least of whom included herself.
The second contact was more problematic. ‘MRIO-1855’ was the ugly name given to such an ugly thing, and Lyudmila’s eyes narrowed at it. Massive Relativistic Inbound Object number 1855, a multi-megaton asteroid set on a course for Earth at nearly the speed of light. It was their target. It was her enemy.
A woman’s voice sounded in Lyudmila’s ears once acceleration stopped. “CO, LIDAR.” reported the voice. She understood it immediately, the Laser-sensor technician was reporting to the interceptor’s captain-pilot.
“No damage confirmed, target remains and still on course.” Spoke the voice of the sensor operator, her tone cold. A more aged woman’s voice filtered in after, that of Captain Devereux.
“Ordie, CO. Switch main armament to penetrative charge, forty megaton.” It was for Lyudmila. She was acting ordinance officer, and her heart pounded. “Affirm. Loading.”
Upon the screen to her left, the status of the target updated with the latest LIDAR returns. Lyudmila grew more nervous by the moment. It was her first intercept mission beyond the simulators. More than that, it was the first time she had personally seen any MRIO penetrate so close to the Solar System’s perimeter, a distance of merely 68 AU from Earth. What had been apparently a typical intercept had already grown more complicated, as this probable nickel-iron asteroid had already seemingly shrugged off what should have been a close proximity kill from a high-yield nuclear missile.
Her fingers traced along the keys of her panels. You’re a newly-minted midshipwoman. Nobody expects miracles on a maiden cruise. She thought, keying in the new ordinance request. From the internal magazine, a new torpedo slid into a launch tube only a few meters beyond the confines of her tank. She swallowed hard as firing solution data appeared brightly on her main display. Delicately, she flipped up the plastic covering across the arming switch.
***
Cyrene coasted and shifted course, rotating along her axis with brief bursts from her vernier thrusters. One of missile tubes opened, the hatch withdrawing downwards. With a flash of escaping gas, a missile launched out at what was a relatively leisurely pace, moving to intercept and burrow within the target asteroid. Designed to scatter the mass of the asteroid away from vulnerable Earth, things grew silent aboard the Interceptor, each crew member anxiously waiting in their separate acceleration tanks for the missile to meet MRIO-1855.
Lyudmila held her breath, watching the LIDAR silhouette against a flat screen beyond that of her display cube. The position of her missile’s rendezvous glowed green, and she let a sigh of relief into the muffled facemask. She spoke.
“CO, O-Ordie.” She shook off her excitement and anxiety. “Missile has made contact. The mainframe’s suggesting standard depth detonation will achieve acceptable scattering.”
The Captain said something in acknowledgement, and the rest of the crew resumed their standard work chatter. Lyudmila just groaned in relief, and stretched within the confines of her tank, thinking already about when she could get out and get herself cleaned up. The missile would complete it’s burrowing within the hour, and she would call this intercept a success. She curiously rested back, switching her display cube image to a monitor of all local traffic. There, INTR-132 and INTR-212 were already destroying their own relativistic targets and beginning their deceleration for a return to port within a few days.
Lyudmila cracked her neck back, working the kinks out while she thought of what she’d do on the return voyage. There’d be plenty of more time cramped on one of these tanks of course during deceleration phases, but she still itched for some time in the open air of Cyrene’s compartments. Lyudmila almost failed to notice the sudden change of the LIDAR silhouette still present on the flat screen display, and the disappearance of the tunneling missile.
“CO, LIDAR! There’s activity at the target… its changing course!?”
“Repeat that?”
“Target is adjusting course. Decelerating at one kilometer-second and increasing…”
Lyudmila’s eyes darted to the display as the asteroid broke into a new shape, rough edges of the bean-shaped rock shattering to reveal a more compact form, with arcing expulsions of plasma streaking through space.
Impossible! If it’s not a MRIO then what could it be?
Her thoughts sharply halted, replaced by pure terror as a new burst erupted from the object. A piece of it had broken off, as if fired at its pursuers. An alarm klaxon sounded in her ears, the gel-filled tank turned to a deep cherry light. Her pupils constricted and eyes moved down to her display cube. A new contact had appeared from where the thing that was MRIO-1855, bearing down upon Cyrene. Yelling and panic filled her ears.
“Emergency thrust, full burn imme---“ screamed a voice, cut short in the activity of the moment.
With a deafening crash and the concussion rippling through her tank, Lyudmila tried to scream. No words seemed to emerge from the scream. She felt a sharp pain from the jolt, before nausea and blackness swept over her.
Through her concussion-induced haze, Lyudmila thought she saw stars for a fleeting moment. Beautiful stars, as Cyrene’s hull smashed inwards sending shattered debris off into space. She felt the tube slam forward again with the sound of strained metal before things were dull again. Her displays darkened one by one until only blackness remained.
Last edited by Nephtys on 2006-09-15 04:25am, edited 1 time in total.
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Ford Prefect
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