Space crocodiles
Jul. 1st, 2012 07:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
icepixieInsert usual moan about how badly revision is going here. Part of my problem is hating revision, but I think the greater part of it is the Farscape vid burning a hole in my brain. Perhaps once I finish my rewatch (one more season to go!) and make the vid, I can concentrate on other things again.
In a fit of annoyance at a scene that wasn't being amenable to fixing up and, I admit, after being, er, "inspired" by "Green Eyed Monster" (aka "Jonah and the Budong"), this little futurefic for my space pilots story happened. 300-word excerpt follows.
It was supposed to be easy. Sure, the region of space around 49 Ceti had never been visited or even charted by an AI survey ship before, but the Spirit of Albuquerque was not exactly your ordinary ship. Four years after her commissioning, she could still outpace ninety-five percent of the vessels that had hyperdrives. And she'd come safely through the worst hyperspace storm ever recorded—I have a copy of the report from NOAA's space weather department to prove it. It's full of words and phrases like "unprecedented" and "recalibrate the scale" and "revolutionize forecasting methods," all of which is official-speak for "it was a really goddamned big storm."
But this—this was just ridiculous.
"Did you just say 'space crocodile'?" I asked Amelia, leaning into the ninety-degree turn she slammed us into. Amelia Selwyn is my pilot, my business partner, and—not coincidentally—my wife.
"Do you have a better term?" she shot back, a few flicks of her fingers on her board sending us spinning relative-up.
Well, no, I can't say that I did. Navigation school had not prepared me for the immense wormlike blob that had appeared behind us several minutes ago and had been chasing us ever since. The probe we launched, mostly as an attempt to distract the thing long enough for me to calculate an exit point and get us the hell out of hyperspace and away from this thing, reported that it was made of organic matter. About two seconds later, the space crocodile—I had to admit the name fit—opened its jaws, and the probe quickly stopped reporting anything at all.
Yeah, I didn't want that to be us.
"Any time you want to give me some exit coordinates..." Amelia said. A tiny worry line furrowed her brow, and in my experience, if Amelia began to look slightly concerned while she was flying, the rest of us should start freaking out.
In a fit of annoyance at a scene that wasn't being amenable to fixing up and, I admit, after being, er, "inspired" by "Green Eyed Monster" (aka "Jonah and the Budong"), this little futurefic for my space pilots story happened. 300-word excerpt follows.
It was supposed to be easy. Sure, the region of space around 49 Ceti had never been visited or even charted by an AI survey ship before, but the Spirit of Albuquerque was not exactly your ordinary ship. Four years after her commissioning, she could still outpace ninety-five percent of the vessels that had hyperdrives. And she'd come safely through the worst hyperspace storm ever recorded—I have a copy of the report from NOAA's space weather department to prove it. It's full of words and phrases like "unprecedented" and "recalibrate the scale" and "revolutionize forecasting methods," all of which is official-speak for "it was a really goddamned big storm."
But this—this was just ridiculous.
"Did you just say 'space crocodile'?" I asked Amelia, leaning into the ninety-degree turn she slammed us into. Amelia Selwyn is my pilot, my business partner, and—not coincidentally—my wife.
"Do you have a better term?" she shot back, a few flicks of her fingers on her board sending us spinning relative-up.
Well, no, I can't say that I did. Navigation school had not prepared me for the immense wormlike blob that had appeared behind us several minutes ago and had been chasing us ever since. The probe we launched, mostly as an attempt to distract the thing long enough for me to calculate an exit point and get us the hell out of hyperspace and away from this thing, reported that it was made of organic matter. About two seconds later, the space crocodile—I had to admit the name fit—opened its jaws, and the probe quickly stopped reporting anything at all.
Yeah, I didn't want that to be us.
"Any time you want to give me some exit coordinates..." Amelia said. A tiny worry line furrowed her brow, and in my experience, if Amelia began to look slightly concerned while she was flying, the rest of us should start freaking out.
