Behind The Scenes

I need two characters, brothers, who may be twins. I also want some diversity.

I want them to be of Pakistani descent, but after 100 years in space, their families will be different. I.e., diversity does not mean stereotypical. I do want them to be Pashtun and to be descended from a strong Pashtunwali upbringing. I do want that upbringing to have adapted to not being totally masculine - i.e., I want the sense of family from Pashtunwali to permeate the formation of the Clans, but I still want the Clans to be matriarchal.

Kochai Umarzai will be the older brother (see, no twins!) and he will ship on The Voodoo Lounge. He will be a father figure for Jenny. He will have a large family, larger than normal. It will include his parents, his sister (and her family), and his wife and children.

Dagar Umarzai will be the younger brother. He will be about 16 when he serves in the Interdiction Patrol. He will command a fast attack destroyer, The Khyber Pass, which gets trapped in the corridor because of a possible infection. He will stay there, work hard, and enable his brother to take out more of their family. He in essence sacrifices his chance to go.

For some reason (i.e., I haven’t reconciled his duty and honor in staying in the corridor with why) he ends up on The Dizzy Dean. It has to be family - that ties in with the development of the Clan and allows his brother to finally forgive him. His uncles were on Earth and were used as a bribe to get his help to take and man The Dizzy Dean.

Kochai doesn’t know about the family aboard The Dizzy Dean. This doesn’t come out until the crew of The Voodoo Lounge try to rescue those on The Dizzy Dean. There are some other families down on the planet. Dagar and others are leading a raid with The Khyber Pass to rescue the families. They will find some infected alongside the families and have to eliminate them. There will be a 1 year decontamination period when they get back.

Dagar will also be the commander of the expedition to the first Pandora’s Box. And he will also be the father of Jenny’s twin daughters. I knew I needed twins somewhere. It won’t be until the expedition that Kochai learns that his brother is on the The Dizzy Dean. I.e., Dagar thought they went out on another ship - he wouldn’t have jeopardized their passage - which means that The Dizzy Dean and The Voodoo Lounge have to leave at about the same time. They were supposed to go to neighboring systems, but due to the hijackers not being properly trained, they will end up in the same system.

Okay, the new start of the story is better, information is conveyed as part of the story and not as a means to the end.

But I quickly got more interested in the background events than in the dialog/action.

I’ll need to start the 3rd pass soon…

Jenny starts a pirate radio station before she ships out on The Voodoo Lounge. She broadcasts to Station 5 and down the corridor. When the Spacer ship starts its journey, she continues her show on the road - some tag lines:

• “Beaming in from the Stars”
• “Enjoy the slow ride”
• “The view is worth the trip”

She sets the mood and tone for intership communication. Even the different hijacker ships tune in. She broadcasts new music trends from The Voodoo Lounge (believe me, I’m not a Rolling Stones fan, but I wanted a zombie motif for the ships).

She becomes a voice for her generation. Her change of focus from naming things from My Little Ponies to the more macabre shows her maturity and dealing with her injuries. Instead of withdrawing into alcohol and/or recreation drugs, she becomes more outgoing. She refuses to accept that her injury forces her to man a desk.

Timeline wise, she spends a year in system after the destruction of the Parasol in Jenny’s War. Five years later, on the mission to the first Pandora’s Box, she would be about 16. (Note: I wanted to keep this close to my chest, but as I don’t have the story written and I’m designing the future, I’ll pull the shock ending in a little bit to have all of this make sense.)

The complication of her getting command will be older crew chaffing about her age. But when she gets her legs blown off (ouch I have to share more), she becomes a full citizen at age 9. She earned her way on The Voodoo Lounge (not sure if she has family yet) and into the command chain. Questions of her maturity and/or capability are swept aside by the captain because of her service record.

I’ve gone from having a neat universe with no story to having a little short story to having the potential for a book. One of the biggest problems with action adventures is how many times can the hero save the world? Either you have to get new villains (more powerful natch), do the city -> state -> nation -> world -> solar system -> galaxy -> universe scaling, etc.

For me, the book would be the journey of the Spacers and The Dizzy Dean caretaker crew to the new system and their decision to leave. Of interest would be what got Jenny to go with the Spacers, how she learned to interact with them, how she influenced their culture to form the basis of the Clans, how the crew of the XXX (including how/why the iconoclastic YYY capitulated) got on The Dizzy Dean, how the two crews interacted, etc.

In short, the journey is the destination and the story.

The Dizzy Dean caretaker crew has to admit that they haven’t a clue as to whether or not any of the popsicles are infected. They will be paying rapt attention to new decontamination and quarantine protocols that are being developed. Some of the crew will have served in the Interdiction Patrol and will be adamant about crew safety. By now even the most ardent supporter of the popsicles will be treating them as meat puppets.

They will scout the planet when they get there, they will determine it is sufficient for the needs of the popsicles, and they will drop the huge cargo canisters down on the planet. They will drop supplies, etc. And then they will awaken the colonists remotely.

As the colonists awaken and their true nature is revealed, the crew will split. Some of them will be sleeper agents placed for this possibility. They will seize control of the engine room and the defenses. The remaining crew will control the bridge and shuttles.

The Spacers will attack at some point in the stalemate. They will be lead by Jenny Dalton - most combat experience and ties with the crew.

I’m at that point where the stories are coming to life in my mind, but I don’t have the experience or confidence to write them.

In some cases, details just pop into my head. The Dizzy Dean is the name given to the hijacked ship, Jenny Dalton will become the main driving force in defining the Clan culture, etc.

So Jenny is on the Spacer asteroid ship (no name yet!). Five or so years in, the two ships detect a derelict vessel, perhaps it is broadcasting an SOS? For some reason, they both need to go to it:

1. The Dizzy Dean crew need some component to fix something vital.
2. They need to pool resources to get back to their ships.
   1. 1 month journey out.
   2. 5 weeks journey back.
3. The Dizzy Dean crew have pass codes to board?
   1. I.e., this is the first of the Pandora’s Boxes.

Jenny is assigned to be the captain of the Spacer recovery ship:

1. Combat experience
2. Highest ranking scout ship pilot
   1. Sinecure post because of her combat record
      • 1 year of corridor missions
      • 27 confirmed kills
3. Gets flack that she is no longer physically capable

They meet at the derelict, have some fun, help each other out. Jenny ends up pregnant from one of the hijackers (instrumental in forming the matriarchal culture of the Clan and thought of live as I typed this!). They discover that the research done on the derelict allows nanotech probes to store the contents of a person’s mind and dump it back into a clone. The Dizzy Dean has the facilities to do this, because of the popsicles, and the Spacers do not.

The father-to-be of Jenny’s child takes a sample of her and now has the ability to bring her back on The Dizzy Dean. Jenny doesn’t know this, but she gets the plans back to her ship and they send it back to Luna Central. This will allow Interdiction Patrol pilots to be be infected and still go on their colony ship with their family.

This sets the table for the crews to really start gossiping together, it gives some conflict in Jenny’s life as she deals with having gone on a mission and coming back preggers, it introduces the need for caution when opening a Pandora’s Box, etc.

Hmm, how did the box go wrong and what do they need to overcome?

1. Clones that have a group mind!
   • We never run into intelligent alien lifeform
   • The technology advancements on the Pandora’s boxes push the boundary of the alieness of humanity.
2. It needs to be something which forces factions to not have multiple copies of people running around.
   1. They can’t clone younger versions and apply the nanotechs
   2. It is tried and the nanotech probes age the subject.
   3. Might be the reason why Jenny can’t be cured?
      1. I like this rationalization.
3. How does Jenny get in a position to become pregnant?

In the The Plague Years, I had a story idea:

A story arc might be a hijacked ship going close to where a spacer ship goes. During the long journey, the two crews keep in contact to pass the time. The spacers help the hijackers deal with emergencies. The crew disgorges the popsicles on the planet and decide they have more in common with the other ship. They leave to be with their friends.

In thinking about this some more, I want the two ships starting out as antagonistic to each other - nothing more than the stress of opposing each other during the Plague Years. The crew of the hijacked ship should be about 500, which will be much less than the 10,000 on the spacer ship. And there should be about 20,000 popsicles.

The hijackers will need help.

Also, the crews should start to share entertainment between each other, gossip, etc.

At some point, the hijackers will make a breakthrough and cut 5 years off of the journey. They share this engineering feat with the spacers.

The two crews think that they are going to end up in different systems, but they both end up in the same one. The spacers occupy an asteroid belt and the hijackers land their cargo on a planet. When they wake the sleepers, they discover that while they have changed in their outlook, the sleepers have not.

Also, perhaps the sleepers were not the people the hijackers thought they were. Instead of a democracy, a dictatorship is set up.

The crew decide that they are not going to stay. They ask the spacers to rescue them. The spacers have to decide if it is a trap or not. In any event, they do not want to be in the same system as the dictator. They need to capture the other asteroid ship or destroy it at a minimum.

Or perhaps when they board the ship to destroy it, the crew sides with them?

In any event, the two asteroids take off to the next system.

I want the initial exodus from Earth to start out slow and controlled. This would the colonization of our solar system. And I want them to be self sufficient. But I don’t want them to be self governing.

And I want some probes sent out to Alpha Centauri and Bernard’s Star. Some asteroid ships with crews in the thousands would also have been launched. These crews would all be second generation spacers - most would never have stepped on a planet. The ships would mostly not have gravity and would have acceleration cylinders where the crews could exercise.

And then I want the Plague Years to start - 10% of earth bound humanity wiped out in the first 3 months. The spacers impose martial law and establish a blockade around the Earth. This will be run from the moon. A patrol will be set up to destroy smugglers, etc.

The race for a cure will be at a space station orbiting the Earth. There will be a well defined flight corridor to and from it. Leave the corridor and die - have radioactive remains rain down on the Earth.

The reason why the space station will be the focus for the cure will be the development of vaccines in weightlessness and the safety of the vacuum. Infected people will be brought up from the planet and tested.

And the spacers will be afraid of ships breaking the blockade - this will be seen as an extinction event. Asteroid ships are going to be pumped out quickly. They will be carrying tens of thousands of colonists. The asteroids will launch with minimal facilities and the passengers will be engaged in construction during the long voyages.

Competition to ship out will be fierce. One of the ways to buy space will be to do duty patrolling the blockade. The closer you patrol to Earth and the corridor, the faster you can earn spots for your family - because only families go.

The danger is that if your ship is exposed to the plague, you are doomed to stay on Earth. Some crew arrange for clones of themselves if exposed.

Some factions on Earth attempt to hijack asteroid ships for themselves. Some go out with plague carriers and become ghost ships. Some go out and the new colonists do not have the needed skills to survive. Some story arcs could be survey crews finding these asteroid ships and dealing with them.

So the spacer colonist ships will have a strong bond with each other. And they are not necessarily looking for a planet to settle on - they distrust gravity wells, know that they can thrive in space, etc. In fact, their asteroid ships will be their first habitat in the new systems.

But the hijacked colony ships which survive will be a different matter. They will want to land on a planet, they will not be strongly bonded with others, etc. Some of them will have freeze dried members along. Even if they awake crew and their descendants adapt to life in space, the popsicles will not.

A story arc might be a hijacked ship going close to where a spacer ship goes. During the long journey, the two crews keep in contact to pass the time. The spacers help the hijackers deal with emergencies. The crew disgorges the popsicles on the planet and decide they have more in common with the other ship. They leave to be with their friends.

So I want the Plague Years to really push the exodus out of the Terran system. It will see leaps in biological research and development. Indeed, the era of the research asteroids starts here. These would be smaller versions (crews in the low hundreds) of the colony ships. In some cases the crew would be infected, near infected, etc. The ships would launch to go to other systems to look for biological specimens. Or they would launch to test new propulsion systems, etc. The reality will be that the stated research will not match the actual research. And these ships will be a joy to explore when found.

The story Misfits is about Miri and what happened on Klamath.

What blowed me away was that as I reread the cycle of books, I came across little details which basically said the Lee and Miller already had either written Misfits or they had a good outline. I.e., Miri’s treasure box has the master key, she regrets leaving the suit, she knew Brunner, etc. I know Lee and Miller didn’t sneak into my house and rewrite the books.

Steve Miller and Sharon Lee have a nice setup for doing Serialized Science Fiction over at korval.com: Home of the Liaden Universe®.

I’ve been reading their work for quite some time and I’ve even paid for some of their work in the Embiid Publishing electronic format. Luckily I’ve been quite good at backing up both the reader and the contents.