There are things worth carrying.
And things worth running from.
Both ways, arrival is complicated.
Stay tuned.
Of Cargo and Consequence
Category: Work in Progress
From Long Silences to Burning Thrusters
It’s been a while.
Longer than I meant it to be, and longer than I would have liked. But stories have a way of waiting for you when you need to step away for a bit, and this past year has been very good at insisting on that. Between a few life-sized plot twists, a move to a new city, and a handful of real-world chapters I hadn’t exactly planned for, this little corner of the internet grew quiet.
But I never stopped thinking about stories.
Some of you remember that, for a long time, I’d been sharing scenes here from The Silence of Ancient Light — a big, serious, slow-burn science fiction project that’s grown into something rather sprawling and strange and dear to me. That story is still very much alive. I haven’t abandoned it. If anything, I’ve learned that sometimes a story needs a little space to breathe, so that when you return, you can see it more clearly.
And while I was letting that one simmer, something unexpected happened.
I began writing a very different kind of story.
It started as a kind of creative palate cleanser — lighter, smaller in scope, faster on its feet. A story more interested in voice and character than in cosmic philosophy. Something that didn’t take itself quite so seriously. And somewhere along the way, that little side project stopped being little. It found its own rhythm. It’s own momentum. Its own sense of fun.
If you read To Wander the Silent Dark, you may remember that I had a bit of fun leaning into rhythm, voice, and the sheer pleasure of language. That, it turns out, was a clue. This new project carries a little of that same energy, though in a very different form.
Right now, I’m deep into the editing stages of that new work. It’s novella-length, quick-moving, and deliberately playful in ways my longer projects rarely are. I’m not quite ready to share details yet — not the title, not the characters, not the plot — but I wanted to let you know that something new is taking shape.
The image below is a small, spoiler-free glimpse of the world it inhabits.
More soon.
And thank you for being here, even when I’ve been quiet.
A Grim Discovery and Shattered Hopes
(The Silence of Ancient Light, continued)
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The darkness did not persist. Lights came on, dimly at first, then gradually brighter, to illuminate the embarkation compartment beyond the airlock, and Anna reached up to turn off her helmet light. She heard as much as felt a rush of warm air blow into the room from the wall vents, though it would take a while to displace the cold that permeated everything. At least that meant there was atmospheric pressure, so the safety systems must have sealed off the depressurized parts of the ship. A slowly pulsing red light over the far hatchway competed with the persistent alarm for her attention, and after each alarm tone, a cool, calm, female voice rang over the speakers.
“Attention. Hull breach detected. Safety interlocks engaged. All personnel don emergency apparatus and report to duty stations.”
Had that alert been sounding repeatedly for… how long had it been? Nine weeks? Ten?
“Attention. Hull breach detected. Safety interlocks engaged. All personnel…”
Read more at
(1,254 words; 5 min reading time)
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Upon returning to the starship, a grim discovery awaits Anna and her crew, along with the realization that outrunning the oncoming Orta ship will be futile. With time running out, all options appear bad, but that has been the case since first being marooned on the alien world of Kepler 62f. Can quick thinking and clever strategies save them now, or are they about to find out what happens to prisoners of an alien species?
Go click that button to find out! And after you’ve read the scene, if you liked it, let me know! Hit that Like button, and to be notified when the next scene is out, hit that Follow button too!
header image credit: Matt Fraser
Our Heroes Return to Their Starship
(The Silence of Ancient Light, continued)
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A distant flash shook Anna from her reverie. She pulled her gaze from the receding destruction of the station with all its awful fascination and focused on the tiny yet intense flare of light near the horizon’s arc, beyond the terminator and approaching night, almost lost in the dreamlike sapphire veil of the upper atmosphere. Before she could bring any of the limited instruments available from the lander’s console to bear, the flare ended as abruptly as it had begun.
“Did you see that?”
“See what, Anna?”
Laxmi climbed up the ladder and into the copilot seat to gaze beside her into the inky black.
“That was a fusion engine. It didn’t last long, so I think it was an attitude correction and not an acceleration burn, but they’re out there.”
“Will they come for us?”
Read more at
(1,448 words; 5 min 47 sec reading time)
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While months have passed for us, dear readers, only minutes have passed for our heroes, through the magical time dilation of a story on pause while the author is busy with other things. But we have returned to Anna, Laxmi, and Ca-Tren, and they have escaped the destruction of the Kwakitl space station. Finally, after more than two months on the planet’s surface and much adventure and setback, they are about to arrive back at Aniara, silent all this time. As the scene opens, the lander has flipped end over end and is decelerating toward the starship, so from the cockpit they are looking back the way they have come. And that’s when Anna notices the flare of a distant fusion engine.
The Orta are coming for them.
They have time, but the mystery of what happened to Aniara, and to the captain, David, remains. What will Anna and her crew find when they arrive? Whatever caused the ship to go silent, will they be able to get it going again before the Orta arrive? And just what do the Orta want? Why have they been pursuing our hapless heroes across oceans and into orbit? Are they bent on interstellar conquest, or is it all just a misunderstanding?
It’s a mystery.
So, go click that link above, read the scene, and if you haven’t already, hit the Follow button, hit the Like button, and if you’re especially daring, leave a comment!
header image credit: Matt Fraser
All is Lost, or is it?
(The Silence of Ancient Light, continued)
(Caution: the opening paragraph of this scene contains a major spoiler for those who have not read the previous scene, so if you have not yet read that one, please consider going back to do so now)
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With the inner airlock hatch opened, Anna floated Jaci’s lifeless body into the warmth of the lander’s crew compartment. Laxmi awaited her on the other side and gently took Jaci from Anna, quickly and efficiently moving him to a stable surface to remove his helmet. With a gasp of equalizing pressure, Anna removed her own, her vision still blurred by tear droplets clinging to her eyelashes. She watched Laxmi cut away Jaci’s e-suit to reveal the wound in his abdomen, red, raw, and angry, a deep two-inch gash of frozen blood and vacuum-cauterized flesh. She had to look away and focus on her breathing for a moment.
“Anna, there’s nothing more you can do for him now. He was exposed for a good ten minutes, and even without the other trauma, that would not have been survivable.”
Read more at
(1,815 words; 7 min 15 sec reading time)
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Wait, what?
I told you at the top of the page that there would be a major spoiler, so if that paragraph surprised you, well, you have only yourself to blame! Now do yourself a favor, and go back and read the previous scene… actually, you need to read at least the previous two scenes for the lead-up to this one. Of course, I’m assuming you’ve been reading all the scenes up to this point, right?
So yes, dear reader, it appears a beloved character has met with an awful fate, and the few remaining survivors are left to pick up the pieces and deal with the emotional fallout. How many have we killed off now? Two that we know of — Takashi much earlier in the story and now Jaci — and one more that we strongly suspect. Remember David? He remained behind on Aniara to mind the shop while everyone else piled into the shuttle to go investigate the ring station when they first arrived, and he hasn’t been heard from since. He could be just hanging out, enjoying some me-time after three years cooped up in a small space with this crew, but it has been a couple months with no word, so yeah, not looking good.
That leaves only Anna and Laxmi from the original crew, plus Ca-Tren whom they’ve picked up along the way, and now they are finally — finally! — enroute back to Aniara. Where, no doubt, they will discover David’s fate.
I really do want to get into some discussion about the lander that Anna remotely piloted to come pick them up, and in which they are now heading back. This is a spacecraft fundamentally different from the shuttle they first set out in to investigate the station. The shuttle, remember, was really intended for ship-to-ship orbital transfers, but in a pinch it was capable of atmospheric re-entry and landing, which turned out to be a very useful feature. However, once down on the surface of a high-G world, it isn’t capable of boosting itself back into orbit without being strapped onto some big rocket, even if it hadn’t sustained major damage during the crash-landing.
The lander, on the other hand, is just what it sounds like: a vehicle intended for trips down to the surface, and then back. This thing has only a very small crew compartment and a very BIG engine, with most of its gross mass being fuel, and it is capable of continuous high specific impulse and high thrust operation, something today’s rockets can’t actually do. Don’t worry about what those things mean right now — I’ll go into more detail in a future blog post where we can geek out properly — but suffice it to say these twin properties mean the lander can choose to ignore normal orbital maneuvers and make a straight-line brachistochrone between two points, albeit at a greatly increased fuel consumption rate. In other words, Anna and crew can get back to Aniara, 22,000 kilometers away, in about 50 minutes of 1/2-G thrusting instead of spending a day and a full orbit to raise themselves 100 kilometers higher and fall back to Aniara‘s position.
So, go read the scene, and then if you haven’t already, hit that Follow button, and hit those Like buttons, or better yet, leave a comment!
header image credit: user:Placidplace / pixabay.com under Pixabay License
Matt Fraser 