Childers
Page 1
by
RICHARD F. WEYAND
Copyright 2017 by Richard F. Weyand
All Rights Reserved
ISBN 978-0-9970709-6-5
Printed in the United States of America
Credits
Front Cover: Oleg Volk
Model: Athena Burkhead
Back Cover Photo: Oleg Volk
Published by Weyand Associates, Inc.
Bloomington, Indiana, USA
September, 2017
CONTENTS
Foreword
Citizen
Quito Elevator
Quito Station
CSS Aquitaine
Seaman Recruit, Light Cruiser CSS Aquitaine
Officer Candidate School
Implants
Basic Tactics School
Unarmed Combat School
Doctorate in Mathematics, University of Jablonka
Assistant Tactical Officer, Battleship CSS Jean d'Arc
Captain, Sensor Tender CSS Clermont
Advanced Tactics School
Senior Tactical Officer, Heavy Cruiser CSS Nils Isacsson
Recovery
Executive Officer, Heavy Cruiser CSS Hu Mingli
Alliance
Senior Tactical Officer, Calumet Planetary C.I.C.
Hyperspace
Totally Black
Captain, Battleship CSS Boadicea
Commanding Officer, Operation Payback
The Grand Tour
Commanding Officer, Task Force 32
Aftermath
Back To Work
The Problem With Earth
Code Black
Earth
Phoenix
Appendix
Acronyms and Terms
Foreword
This foreword is for my readers who may be aspiring writers, particularly those who cannot get past the outlining and plotting and planning [they think is] required to write a novel. I never could either. Instead, for this, my first published novel, I wrote 'into the dark.' That is, I wrote without a plot, without an outline, without a plan. When I started, I didn't know if it was a novel or a novella or a short story. I just wrote, and let it go where it wanted to go.
The first image that came to me is the Quito Elevator, a space station with gravity due to centripetal force. I don't like artificial gravity, where everybody walks around like they were on a ship at sea, or just standing around on a planet. My education is in physics, and it's always been jarring for me. In particular, any civilization that had artificial gravity would have a lot of other things that, in Star Trek or Star Wars for instance, they simply don't have.
Ships departing a space station with centripetal force providing gravity would simply let go. No launch sequence, or thrusters, or anything like that. They would just fall away by letting go.
So why was this person, our hero, going to the Quito Elevator? Perhaps a coming-of-age story? OK. Why were they leaving Earth? Because, for them, it's awful. And so we come to our hero, a starving, homeless child. How about a female? I like writing female characters. OK, so it's a starving, homeless girl. An orphan. Grade school age, not high school, so maybe thirteen years old. How does she get off the Earth? The Charter. That's it, the Charter of the – Not Federation. Not Alliance. Not Republic. Too many connotations. Commonwealth. That's it. The Charter of the Commonwealth of, of, of Free Planets. The Charter guarantees citizenship in the Commonwealth if you, um, pass the Citizenship Exam. Which you can take at fourteen, because she's thirteen, and I have to get her off-planet to have a story.
That is absolutely as far as I was when I started writing. I didn't even know the main character's last name, the title of this book, until I had to type it. From there I wrote into the dark, making it up as I went along. Designing spaceships with apparent gravity, but not artificial gravity technology, which is a bit of a trick. Doing away with "shuttle bays" because the idea of these big garage doors in the side of the ship is ludicrous. Perhaps the writer who came up with those was looking out his office window at the houses in his suburban neighborhood.
Same thing with having a hull. Sure, the bottom side of a sea-going warship is all smooth, but the top looks like somebody just glued a lot of random pieces on there. Why would ships be smooth when there is no air or water resistance? Crew quarters need to be sealed air-tight, but why would anything else be? And why would you transfer stores – massive amounts of stores – to internal storage areas? Why not just latch the sealed containers onto the framework of the ship?
Finally, spaceships taking multiple weapons hits and combat damage makes a great story – if you don't know anything about submarines. Spaceships are much more like submarines than surface vessels. Pressurized, sealed, in an inimical environment. In World War 2, submarine captains were told the U.S. had cracked the Japanese Navy codes, while surface vessel captains were not. Why? Because there were never any captured sailors from submarines. It seemed to me much more likely that a single solid hit on a spaceship would result in its complete destruction with all hands.
As I wrote the main story thread, ideas about future incidents in the main character's life came to me, popping into my head almost whole. When they did, I skipped to the end and wrote them, then put them in chronological order in her life. I kept writing the main thread, and wrote it right through these incidents, incorporating them as I went.
Then, disaster. While my beta readers liked it, some other early readers I respect didn't. The main character was too perfect, which was not the character I had in my head. I added a hundred extra pages, about her life when not on ship, and added them after publication.
In the end, the story ended up being the life story of the main character to age 38 or so. Most of it was a surprise to me, which I only learned as I was writing the story.
I hope you enjoy it.
Richard F. Weyand
Bloomington, Indiana
September 7, 2017
Citizen
Jan huddled in the shadows of the alley, merging into the darkness. The sky was just lightening now, the long, wild night beginning to recede. She pulled her rags closer about her in the pre-dawn cold.
Every night was a long, wild night in the city. In all the cities of Earth. The masses of people were locked into their tiny rooms within the huge apartment blocks, deep in their virtual realities, while both homeless and predator roamed the streets.
Jan was homeless, orphaned years ago. Abused in the government orphanage, she had fled to the streets, living a shadow existence in the niches and interstices of the big city. But that would soon change. Her fourteenth birthday approached, the culmination of her dream and the end of her nightmare.
Her immediate destination loomed across the street. The public library, which would open soon, had long been both her haven and her hope.
Her longer-term destination lay much farther away.
Jan scuttled across the street toward the steps as the custodianbot unlocked the doors. She broke into a dead run when a grizzled old man popped out of the shadows behind the abutment of the stairs. She evaded him with the ease of long practice, raced up the stairs, and reached the safety of the doors.
She walked through the lobby to the study rooms, took her favorite carrel, and thumb-swiped her login. Donning the VR headset, she immersed herself in another long day of study.
There was only one way off the planet, only one way to escape the madness that was post-diaspora Earth, and that was by the Exam. Those with brains, and initiative, and independence had long ago left the Earth for its colonies. The long attrition had left Earth a castaway husk, in which the bulk of humanity dreamed their lives away, or scurried in the shadows to survive.
There was no way out now except the Exam, and Jan was determined to be r
eady.
The morning of her fourteenth birthday, Jan waited once again in the shadows of an alley, but her destination today was different. Across the street stood the impressive modern facade of the Consulate of the Commonwealth of Free Planets. She waited until their posted opening time, and then strode up to the gate. There were two actual human guards at the gate, resplendent in their uniforms, a deep, deep blue with silver buttons, like stars at twilight.
"I petition citizenship in the Commonwealth of Free Planets," she announced to them.
"The door to your right, ma'am. Just go right on in."
Jan walked through the gate and up the sidewalk to the indicated door, which opened outward at her approach. She walked through a small vestibule into a larger room, in the middle of which a middle-aged man sat at a desk. Jan walked up to the desk, and, as the man looked up at her, standing there barefoot, in her rags, with her wild mane of hair, she announced her intentions again.
"I petition citizenship in the Commonwealth of Free Planets."
"That's not for the likes of you. Get out," he said.
"But – "
"Go on. Get out."
He stood up and started to come around his desk, at which Jan fled outside. She nearly crashed into the slowly opening door in her haste.
She fled down the sidewalk and past the guards, collapsing in tears against the wall next to the gate. How could she have been so stupid? How could she have thought that she, an orphan, a vagabond, a nothing, less than nothing, could aspire to the stars? Her dreams collapsed in shambles around her, and she sobbed uncontrollably.
Footsteps approached and she started. For years, approaching footsteps had always been bad. But it was one of the guards.
"Ma'am, are you ok?"
"No. Yes. I mean, I don't know. How could I have been so stupid, to think that I – “ Jan's voice broke and she trailed off into sobbing again.
The guard squatted down beside her.
"Did you study for the Exam?"
"Yes, of course, but I never even got to take the Exam."
"Your studies taught you nothing then?"
"I'm sorry?"
"Did you study the Charter? And the writings of Gerald Ansen?"
"Well, of course, but –"
"Think about it for a bit. You're safe here."
With that, the guard stood up and returned to the gate to take up his post.
Jan thought furiously, running through the Charter in her mind. There it was, plain as day, the source of all her hopes and dreams, in Article 1, Section 3: "All human beings above the age of fourteen solar years shall have the right to petition for citizenship in the Commonwealth of Free Planets, and to be admitted as a full citizen of the Commonwealth upon passing the Citizenship Exam, enjoying all the benefits and shouldering all the responsibilities attaching thereto." She had the right! Rights, rights, what was it Gerald Ansen, the author of the Charter, had written about rights? A lot of things, but one jumped into her mind. "Demanding one's rights can never be an act of disobedience or subversion. It cannot by definition be a crime. It is, rather, the mark and measure of the free man."
Jan smeared the tears from her eyes with dirty hands, and looked back at the guard, who eyed her curiously. She got up and strode back to the gate.
"I petition citizenship in the Commonwealth of Free Planets."
"The door to your right, ma'am. Just go right on in."
Jan could swear he winked at her as he answered. She walked once more through the gate and up the sidewalk to the indicated door, which opened outward at her approach. She once more walked through the small vestibule into the larger room, in the middle of which the middle-aged man sat at his desk as before. Jan walked up to the desk, and, as the man looked up at her, standing there once more, barefoot, in her rags, with her wild mane of hair, she announced her intentions yet again.
"I petition citizenship in the Commonwealth of Free Planets."
"I thought I told you to get out."
He once again started to get up, but pounding her fist on his desk brought him to a halt.
"No! I demand my right to take the Citizenship Exam under Article 1, Section 3 of the Charter. You will not deny me my birthright."
He sank back into his chair and considered her. She stood unflinching before him while the silence stretched out. Finally, he continued in a different tone.
"You have to be fourteen years old."
"Today is my fourteenth birthday."
"The Exam presumes an education."
"I have studied."
"A college education."
"I have completed the on-line curriculum for the Master of Science in Mathematics."
That got a raised eyebrow from him.
"Really?"
She nodded. "The library machine recommended mathematics for me as the best fit based on my earlier studies. I like math. It's fun."
“Takes all kinds.” He shrugged, then grew more serious. "You do have the right to take the Exam, but you only have the right to take it once. Are you sure you're ready?"
That had not occurred to Jan. The Charter did not say she could take the Exam as many times as she wanted until she passed. It said she had the right to take the Exam. Was she really ready to take the Exam, right here, right now? Could she be ruining her dreams by acting too soon, not being prepared enough?
No, she had done what she could. And she might not survive even another year. As she got older, she got to be even more of a target, for predators who might have had some hesitation about raping or killing a child, while her last growth spurt made it harder to hide. It was now or never.
"I understand. I'm as ready as I'm ever going to be."
"Very well. Follow me. My name, by the way, is Harry Voss."
"Jan Childers. Pleased to meet you, I guess."
He nodded and led her to a door on the left side of the room. Through the door, they passed down a short hallway past several other doors before he showed her into a small room on the right. Inside was a single desk and chair facing the far wall, with a high-end VR unit of recent manufacture.
"Login with a thumb swipe and the machine will set up your account. The machine itself will explain the Exam, and then run the Exam for you when you are ready. It will time you as you go. If you have any difficulties or questions, you can push the call button there on the desk, and someone will come to help you.
"Do you understand?"
"Yes."
"Good luck."
"Thank you."
With that he left, closing the door behind him.
The VR unit was the helmet-and-hands type, not a full-up immersive simulator. For that you needed interface implants. While most of the adult population of Earth had at least rudimentary implants, Jan had fled the orphanage well before the minimum age for implants. They probably would not have born the expense even if she had been old enough. She couldn't remember any of the older kids at the orphanage receiving implants. But she also knew from her studies that implants were not necessary for the Exam.
Jan sat at the desk and donned the VR helmet, then pulled the hand units onto each hand in turn. When all were adjusted and strapped on appropriately, she swiped the exposed pad of her right thumb over the sensor on the console.
The first section of the Exam covered the basic history and political structure of the Commonwealth. How Gerald Ansen had written the Charter that united the inner core of Earth's scattered colonies into one loosely joined polity that gave them the political and military might to force the separation from Earth's political and mercantilist domination. How the Commonwealth Council was structured, the rights the Charter guaranteed to citizens, and the rights the Charter guaranteed to member planets.
The second section of the Exam seemed like a basic intelligence exam. The questions got harder and harder, and it seemed to go on forever.
The third section was in one’s major subject. Jan selected mathematics. Here she was more in her element, and enjoyed considering and answe
ring each of the questions in turn. The questions got harder and harder here, too, but she just considered them to be getting more and more interesting.
Harry Voss and his supervisor, Donna Schmeckel, watched Jan's progress in real time on a computer screen in a room nearby. They saw what she saw, and her answers, as well as the machine's ongoing assessment as the Exam progressed.
"Have you ever seen the intelligence section go on this long?" Harry asked.
"No, and neither have you."
Donna leaned over and punched a code into the intercom.
"Yes?"
"Fred, this is Donna. Can you come down to the Exam monitoring room for a minute? I think you need to see this."
A few minutes later, Fred Becker joined the other two in the monitoring room.
"Whatcha got?" he asked, while scanning the screen. "Wait. That can't be right."
"No, it's right, all right. We've been watching," Donna said.
"What have we got here, the well-tutored son of some big-money family?"
Harry answered, "No. A dirty, little street urchin. Just turned fourteen. Wanted to take the Exam. I gave her the brush-off, and she came back fifteen minutes later and read me the riot act on her rights under the Charter and demanded the Exam."
"I'll be damned."
They continued to watch until the intelligence section had completed. The Exam software had given up. Her intelligence could only be estimated. The machine simply couldn't resolve a value for intelligence that high. Who could design a test that would? Only someone smarter yet. Good luck with that.
"Well, I've seen enough. Obviously, she's going to pass the Exam. That gets her citizenship, but I need to talk to higher-ups about what we do now. We definitely want to offer her some kind of situation where she can develop and use that kind of horsepower. I'm just not at all sure what that is," Fred said. "Good find," he added, as he clapped Harry on the shoulder.