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Infinitum super-duper-mega-update 7/16/17


Spaceception

Please vote if you want to be a beta reader.  

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  1. 1. You want to be a Beta reader? When you post comments, please give constructive criticism on the chapter, don't just tell me it's good or bad. :)

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Revised Chapter 1! Tell me what you think :D

Spoiler

2313

Mimas spaceport, in a trailing orbit above Saturn.


 

Thousands of rioters ran rampant across the station, protesting about overpopulation, lack of food, and living space. Their yelling and screaming becoming a normal part of everyday life over the old station in the last few months.

Raven Gray felt the ground shaking below her as she walked, and her head pounded in nervousness. She and a small group of people walked through the yelling crowds, avoiding police forces that were trying and failing to suppress them, Well they look busy. She thought, looking down quickly after she caught the eye of one of them. The scattered crowd walked down the hall trying to get to the docks as fast as possible, they strided down a large hall that led to the main port, with a huge window looking out to thousands of docks, and dozens of ships.

They walked through the riots with almost no trouble, and tried to look as innocent as possible, Raven smiled at one of the police members as she walked by quietly. When they were past the riots, she let out a breath of relief.

When they arrived at the airlocks a few minutes later, Evan knelt down, and took the a panel off to break a couple wires off, allowing them to step inside, the airlock was enough for thirty people at a time, and they quickly stepped through, walking down the huge section.

Morales turned to Raven, “Will this work?” he asked quietly.

“Of course it’ll work, we just need to play it smart,” she looked behind her, at the following masses, people who had broken down faces, malnourished children, dirtied faces from years in the underground mines, they were going to escape, they were going to leave.

She looked around for their ship. The Infinitum, an old ship over a century old that was once used for colonizing the outer solar system a couple hundred years ago. Now being refurbished for some rich guy from Mars who had a huge collection of old colony ships used as space hotels No harm in taking a hotel.

“We’ll be there soon,” she said under her breath. She looked up at the docks, the dozens of ships leaving and entering, she dearly hoped that they would be too preoccupied to care about them.

They had decided to send out people all over the station in groups less than sixty to avoid attention. When they got to the ship, there were several engineers working on it, in preparation of the collector who would be arriving in several weeks.

Morales pulled out his stolen card, and walked up to the engineers, holding it up, they turned around.Who the hell are you?” asked one of them, walking forward.

I’m the assistant inspector, and I was told that all of you need to pack up and leave so I can do my work,”

One of the engineers looked around him, “We had inspections two days ago, the next isn’t supposed to be until next week,” Morales was silent for a second, and Raven let out a sharp intake of breath We’re going to blow it.

I don’t ask questions, I was told to be here, and I’m here, would you rather me talk to my boss? I’m sure it’s easy finding a job here,” The engineers shook their heads quickly.

“It’s just that you’re young-”

“Internship,” said Morales simply, “And I’m almost twenty, please leave so we can do a full inspection, we need to make sure it’s perfect, right?” The engineers quickly grabbed their things and left quickly.

“Good job Morales,” said Raven as they walked in the ship. The others quickly got to the crash couches to prepare for launch. They waited almost half an hour for the rest to arrive on the ship.

“I count a hundred and thirty-nine including us,” she said.

“That’s everyone, let’s go,” he said, when the last people walked on board. Someone closed the doors, while Raven and Morales walked to the bridge.

The ship was almost a kilometer long, and had a huge cylinder that took up most of the ship. The person who bought it intended to use it as a retro hotel in Mars orbit.

“We don’t have long,” said Morales when they got to the bridge, “Maybe twenty, thirty minutes, tops before they return,” he said activating the control panel in the pilots chair.

Raven grabbed a headset on the armrest of the captains chair, and put it on, “Well, let’s finish up,” she said, turning it on, “Attention crew!” she announced into the loudspeakers for everyone to hear. “Get yourselves strapped in, we’ll be ready to go in less than half an hour,” she turned to Morales, “How are we looking?”

“Great, Evan is sending me the ships stats as he gets them, metallic hydrogen thrusters are full, the old D-T fusion drives were replaced with better, more efficient antimatter ones, however they kept the fusion reactor, old model, refurbished. Nostalgia I guess,” he said pushing the overhead buttons.

“And a small team is checking our supplies. We have enough food, water, and life support to last us twenty-eight years, well over thirty if we ration. Not self-sustaining, but we’ll be able to build bigger farms on whatever we land on.” Raven said paraphrasing her feed.

“Well, we could dock to some asteroid in another solar system to refuel and get supplies back up,” said Morales, “we can find a planet later on once we’re better off.” Raven nodded in agreement.

Raven heard the sound of someone quickly climbing down the ladder and turned her head, a couple moments later, Sage walked through, “Hey guys,” she said breathlessly. “How the bootup phase doing?”

“Good,” said Raven, “Evan disconnected the external wiring yesterday, so it doesn’t appear we’re booting everything up.”

Sage sat down, and strapped herself in, activating the weapons systems. “Slanted hull armor fully built for micro-meteorite deflection,” she said, flipping through the screens quickly, “Kinetic missile banks, I’m reading fifty total, we also have several thousand slugs for the railguns, and tracking systems for anything larger than a pinhead” she said. “The basic stuff, no EMP missiles, nukes, or lasers.”

That’s good,” she said. She scrolled through the external cameras, “There’s a lot of workers walking past, we should hurry up before they notice,” she turned the headset on, and called Evan, “How’s everything looking?”

“Good,” he replied, “Fusion reactor is almost ready, antimatter thrusters are ready, and metallic hydrogen thrusters are ready, we’ll be good to go in a couple minutes.”

She turned the signal to Lance, their doctor, “How’s the crew?”

“Almost strapped in,” he replied, “Some of the kids look scared, but other than that, no problems.”

God help us if we get caught, her chest pounded with the real threat of getting boarded before they left. “Good to hear, Morales, almost ready?”

“I’ve been ready since yesterday,” he said, with an arrogant grin on his face. His hands were gripping the joystick, twitching to get going.

“Fusion reactor is online,” said Evan from engineering, “We’re go down here.”

“Morales?” said Raven to him.

“Let’s go,” he flipped the signal to the entire ship, “If you would be so kind, please keep your hands, feet, and personal items in this spacecraft, thank you,”

“How can you be like this?” asked Raven.

“It’s easier to be cocky than nervous,” he replied.

The entire spacecraft shuddered as it undocked, and Raven had a fleeting mental image of suffocating from the air being drawn out, but pushed the thoughts from her mind. She looked at the cameras, and workers were running to the airlocks in panic, she turned the feed to the control station, they were still occupied. They won’t be for long. Morales quickly spun the craft around with the thrusters, and she felt herself being pushed to the side, her stomach turned, and she became slightly dizzy from seeing the spacedock spin around.

Morales gave a whoop, and turned the engines on slowly, the engines pushed it out of the spacedock slowly, she turned the cameras to the flight controller decks, and saw the controllers scrambling. She smirked.

“Morales, full throttle.” she said when they were far away from the airlock, he throttled down the metallic hydrogen thrusters, and throttled up the antimatter ones, within hours they were on a fast trajectory that would slingshot them around Mars, and directly towards the Wormhole.

She turned to Morales, “I can’t believe it, we’ll finally be able to escape our old lives.”

“Yeah, but what about everyone else? They’re stuck there, most will die before their forties, it’s not right.”

“No, it’s not,” she agreed sadly, “But we’ll be saving some, and that counts.”

 

Two weeks later

 

Raven stared out at Mars, no larger than the tip of her thumb. They were a few hundred thousand kilometers away from the planet. The collector hadn’t found out about the stolen spacecraft yet, so luckily, they were safe on the Mars slingshot.

Terraforming efforts have made Mars look overwhelmingly different. Significant areas of the planet now looked like places you’d find on Earth, and the planet has started to lose its famous red color. Now looking browner as the soil continues to germinate, the Martian colonists think the planet will look more like Earth in the next couple centuries, and may be habitable to the point that colonists may not need breather masks to walk about. That was the dream anyway, to have another Earth in the solar system.

Morales plotted the trajectory, and turned the engines on, accelerating away from Mars, gaining as much energy as possible. The slingshot only took a couple hours, and were only several days from the Wormhole.

“We are out of Mars’ gravity well,” said Morales, “and on a direct trajectory for the wormhole.” he announced.

Raven’s head pounded, This is really happening, we’re finally on our way. She thought about her pain and suffering, Her father dying in a riot when she was little because he was an officer. Her mother shaken by grief for years. Her heart ached at the thought of never seeing her again. Her last goodbye was an assurance by her mother the day they left, telling her to start fresh. She looked down at her childhood necklace with a raven pendent. What she was named for. She looked up silently, all her thoughts in a whirlwind, as she stared out into the abyss.

 

Two days later

 

The captain of the navy cruiser Viper stared at a report that showed a small, unknown spacecraft from the outer solar system coming in towards the gate.

The Viper was a small civilian cruiser, thirty-eight stories long, and shaped like a narrowed delta wing for aerobraking, optimized for maximum combat efficiency. While there weren’t any wars between the major solar system powers, space pirates had a habit of destroying or damaging valuable bases, their ships were used for quick response. There were kinetic, railguns, small nukes, and lasers. It used antimatter for both energy and propulsion, holding only a couple dozen crew for efficiency.

Captain Kennedy,” said a voice over the static. The voice came from the captain of the Odyssey, a science vessel working on the wormhole.

“What is it?” he asked curtly.

“You need to get that ship off course, they can’t enter.”

“What’s the problem?” asked Malcolm, “You need a ship to go through anyway,”

“They stole the ship from a wealthy Mars collector, they’re criminals, and probably pirates as well.”

“Very well, we’ll tell them to change course,” he said, turning off comms with Odyssey.

Sergeant?” Asked Malcolm.

Yes captain,” replied the timid man at the comms station.

Open a channel to the Infinitum,” he said briskly.

Yessir,” The man started, Opening a channel now,” he said, tapping his screen. The bridge was small, built in towards the back of the ship for protection against threats. There were only room for a few people, and even then it was cramped. The smell of filtered air and metal lingered in the air. Malcolm looked around at his pilot, comms, and tactical. His small fleet of five ships were used for mild protection against space pirates, with additional forces within several hours if necessary.

 

Raven looked at the blinking light on her armrest, and bit her lip in nervousness, “Karol, open up channels with Viper,” she said after a few moments.

A few seconds later, the static cleared, and she was talking to a brisk and sour voice. Beads of sweat gathered at her temple. “Who is the captain of this vessel?”

“I am sir,” she said, her voice shook slightly, but she got it back on track, “I’m the captain.”

“You don’t sound older than a child.” he said sharply.

“I’m almost Nineteen.” she said, in a steadier voice.

“Yeah, you don’t sound older than sixteen, what, is that ship full of hotshot kids?”

“No, we have families here, broken down families that your government somehow can’t fix even though it controls the damn asteroid belt, and almost everything between it and the Sun.” she said, her voice slightly rising, Morales laid an arm on hers gently, she looked over. Calm down. She saw in his eyes. She took a deep breath, and relaxed. “We aren’t pirates, we just want to get through. That’s all.”

“While I’d love to believe you, we can’t let you enter, you’re criminals, now turn this ship around immediately.

The guy has dozens of ships, one won’t make a difference, just let us enter-”

“No, you’re just a bunch of kids, you’ll get yourselves killed, turn around now,” he said sharply.

“We’re going through,” she said in a firm voice.

“If you do not turn around now, you will be fired upon.” he said. The radio cut to static.

Raven’s chest pounded in fear, she didn’t expect that, “Sage? Are they bluffing?”

“No, they’re getting locks on us.” she replied, her hands flying across her control panel.

“Morales? Can you get us through?”

“Of course I can,” he said, flipping the switches to begin getting the engines ready.

She breathed deeply, Will I do it? Will I get everyone killed? She was silent for a couple moments, Morales looked at her expectantly, his hand on the joystick. “Do it,” Morales nodded quietly, and raised the thrust of the engines, on a course for the gate.

 

Sir,” said the man at the comms station, “They aren’t changing course, they’re going straight for the wormhole.”

Malcolm looked at the ship on the video feed solemnly, Well, we listened to the Odyssey, turning them around didn’t work,” he turned to the others silently.

“Arm the torpedoes.”

 

 

Raven was staring at her feed, listening to messages from the engineering deck. “excrements,” said Sage.

“What’s wrong?” asked Raven quickly, turning off her comms.

“They’re firing, we have ten kinetic missiles inbound, ETA, thirty seconds.”

“love,” said Morales.

Morales, get us past the missiles,” she said.

“On it,” he said, slightly shouting, he turned on the chemical thrusters quickly, The ship started shaking, and several seconds later, she was being pushed to the back of her seat. Out the window, she stared at ten bright dots in the distance, that got closer and brighter.

Sage quickly armed the turrets on the ship, and fired on the kinetic missiles, blowing them up one by one, “Come at me, you stand-up guys,” she snarled.

Eight out of ten missiles had direct hits to their engines, igniting the fuel, and destroying them. Debris from the explosion hit the ship, but did little damage.

“Sage, there’s two left!” Raven yelled, terrified.

“I know!” she said, firing the turrets, but it was no use, the missiles impacted the cylinder at over four kilometers per second, glancing off, taking a small chunk of the armor off.

The bridge slightly shuddered from the impact, and Raven felt her heart drop. “Is there loss of pressure?” she asked in a higher voice, scared for the answer.

“No,” said Sage, “it glanced off the slanted armor, we seem to be fine.”

Morales, we need to get there faster,” Raven said panicked, “what’s our ETA?”.

Eight minutes, and shrinking,” he replied, raising the thrust ever higher, Sage’s console beeped again.

“love! We have ten more missiles inbound!”

“Okay, that’s enough,” said Morales, turning on his comms to address the crew, “We will be doing high-g maneuvers, hold on to something,” he said, raising the thrust to a hundred percent, Raven grunted at the sudden force as she was shoved to the back of her seat. Her vision started blurring at the edges, and she watched the missiles blowing up one by one.

 

Evan and his engineers were jolted from side to side as the ship shook from the extreme thrust, he looked at his tablet, there was slight armor penetration on the cylinder. He was walking down the hall, gripping the handholds, looking multiple feeds at the same time when his comms started beeping.

“Brace yourself, you’ve got a missile that will likely impact near your deck sooncame Raven’s panicked voice over the radio. Evan turned his head, a few heart-pounding moments later, there was a large jolt nearby. Evan was thrown to the side. He got up grunting, trying to get a stable foothold. He hurried down the corridor to see the damage.

Where there was once a hallway, was now in vacuum, Evan closed the airlock, cutting the rest of the ship off from the engineering deck. Within moments, the entire bay was in vacuum.

“Okay boys,” yelled Evan to the other engineers through comms, we need to patch this up!” he turned on his mag-boots and walked as fast as he could towards the hole, his body slanted from the thrust.

He stared at it for a moment, looking at the damage, it was much bigger than him, his engineers brought tools over, and they quickly grabbed a flexible panel, beginning to fit it over the gaping hole as fast as they could.

Before they brought it over, he saw a single bright dot fast approaching them. He looked at it in horror, his body shaking. He turned to the other engineers, and grabbed them, getting away from the hole as quickly as possible.

“Get to cover!” he yelled to the others. He looked behind him, and saw one of the engineers trip over the panel, he stopped trying to run away, and ran as quickly as possible towards him his body making large arcs in the null-g. A moment later, the second missile was blown up just a few dozen meters from the ship, knocking them over, and throwing the engineer towards him.

“excrements!” he said, running over to the engineer, he was face down, and Evan braced himself for the worst, as he turned him over. His faceplate was badly cracked, Evan could see it could break at any moment, he motioned for another engineer to come help him, and they lifted him up to the airlock, quickly opening it, and closing it back up before too much air was lost.

The other engineers quickly patched up the large hole, and less than a minute later, they were sealing it.

“Raven,” he said panting heavily, his faceplate was fogged, and it was hard to see. “How far are we?”

“Less than two minutes, what’s it like down there? You went silent,” she said a few words at a time.

“A missile breached the hull, we got a temporary fix though,”

“excrements,” she said, “Well, is everyone alright?”

“Yes, we had a couple close calls, but we’re fine down here.”

“Strap up, we’ll be going in soon,”

“Roger.”

 

Dominic the captain of the Odyssey, was urgently talking to Viper, “You need to call off the other ships and stop firing,”

What? You were just saying they couldn’t enter,” replied Malcolm gruffly.

“If you destroy their ship now, the debris cloud won’t have enough time to disperse, it could destroy the wormhole, tell them to stop firing!”

“What happens if it does?” he replied after a moment.

“Everything within a few thousand kilometers could be destroyed!” Dominic waited for the answer.

“Fine, we’ll call the hips off,” Dominic breathed a sigh of relief over the static, and watched as the missiles stopped firing, and the cruisers banking off to let the small ship pass.

 

Sage looked at her console, breathing heavily, “They stopped firing,” she said in disbelief.

Morales looked at his console, “Why?”

“I don’t know,” said Raven panting, “How long?”

Morales quickly looked at his console, “Less than a minute,”

Every ship that had video feed within a hundred-thousand kilometers watched as the Infinitum approached the Wormhole. The scientists looked at it in curiosity, scanning everything they could, and the naval vessels kept their weapons trained on them, as if waiting for the order to recommence the attack. As it approached, the shimmering red light of the gate slowly turned blinding white, and a couple moments later, it entered. Just as soon as it went in, it was gone. Communications from the ship stopped immediately, and sensors went off the charts.

No one knew where they could’ve ended up.

 

The red light from the Wormhole filled the bridge in blinding light and forced everyone to close their eyes to avoid getting blind. Through her retinas, Raven could still feel the overwhelming brightness from the light, it was more brilliant than anything she had ever seen. “Okay, everybody, we will be entering the Wormhole in three…. two… one…” Said Morales, his eyes closed, with an arm over his face, bent down over his console, so he could see the readouts.

The moment the ship touched the Wormhole gate, everything they could see, if their vision wasn't obstructed, suddenly shrunk down to nothing, and everything turning to a bright gray that seemed to go on forever with no end in sight. The ship was seemingly under no acceleration whatsoever and everything felt eerily smooth.

Raven’s head pounded, she wondered if this is what death felt like.

All of this lasted not five seconds, and before anyone could adjust to their new surroundings, the endless gray light expanded immensely, immediately being replaced with normal space. When it had exited, the ship started drifting, and everyone was in a strange daze. Outside, there was a massive spiral galaxy in their view, and stars surrounding them. The crew slowly opened their eyes, and were speechless, both from the sudden journey, and spectacular sight.

After several moments, Morales was the first to speak.

Where the hell are we?”

 

Oh! And may the forth be with you!

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  • 2 weeks later...

So.... Updates!!

I've finished Chapter 16 (I know I said that before... I think, haven't updated in awhile :P but I merged some chapters) which now sits at 4.8k words :D

I've also finished over 100 words on chapter 17, and about 65,000 words overall, It'd probably be more, but I cut over 4k words a couple weeks ago.

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 1 month later...

I feel like an update is in order...

Writing became a bit slower because I didn't really know how I was going to end it, but I've written over 3k words on Chapter 20, and I'm nearly done with that, then 2 more chapters to go.

Wow. Two. More. Chapters.

Oh, and there's an intro chapter for one of the character's I need to finish, nearly forgot about that O_o

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6 hours ago, Bill Phil said:

Congrats.

Now comes the real writing*.

*editing

Just kidding. Great job, man. 

Thanks :D I have a bunch of ideas to make the story flow better, but the book may end up less than 80,000 words, I don't mind though, it could be a fast paced sci-fi novel.

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So, I'm going to leave my novel alone until July 31st when I do the first read through, and write the outline for the 2nd draft, where I'll take care of major plot problems.

My list of major changes.

 

Everything past Chapter 8 will likely need drastic rewrites, complete scene changes, and many things will need to be cut altogether.
The prologue thing where they send messages to Earth will be cut, I don't need that anymore.
The climax needs to be completely changed (And I know what the change will be), and properly set up, because right now, even without reading it, I know for a fact I did almost nothing to set it up, so it mostly feels like a cheap way to create conflict.
Morales/Raven's relationship needs to be set up better.
I need more character development for Lance and Nadan so they don't feel like random names pushing the plot along.

All and all, a lot will be cut out, rewritten, and revised. And this is just the 2nd draft, the 3rd one will be to smooth out the changes, and fix smaller plot points, and plot holes.

The 4th one will be to polish it, and do line edits, while the 5th will be to fix grammar, and do final revisions before I send it to a professional editor.

 

Then it's off to find an agent, and get it published!!

Edited by Spaceception
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Traditional publishing is hard to get into. You need to build a platform so you don't look like some random guy asking for a deal. Self publishing isn't necessarily a bad way to go, and it could get your book out there, which could eventually get picked up by a big publishing house. Get your work out there and maybe it'll evolve. In any case you're not that likely to make much money. Good luck.

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7 minutes ago, Bill Phil said:

Traditional publishing is hard to get into. You need to build a platform so you don't look like some random guy asking for a deal. Self publishing isn't necessarily a bad way to go, and it could get your book out there, which could eventually get picked up by a big publishing house. Get your work out there and maybe it'll evolve. In any case you're not that likely to make much money. Good luck.

Yeah, I'm expecting that, and I have a little platform I'm trying to build. :) In any case, I won't be ready for at the very least a few months, so I have some time to build up, and research.

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