The Veil War
"and then I was like, 'Holy crap, goblins!'"
May 25, 2012
And while we’re at it…
Just this week I got an advance copy of Ian Healy and Allison Dickson’s upcoming novel The Oilman’s Daughter. Steampunk adventures in space, with pirates and – I am told – atomic steam forklifts. How awesome is that? Pretty damn awesome. As a beta reader, it is my understanding that I am to resist my temptation to make edits and only make general comments on the story. Nice ones, so Ian’s feelings aren’t hurt. Should be fun, and this will be only the second novel I’ve read since last fall. So I guess I’m coming at it fresh.
And speaking of Ian and Allison – if you haven’t, check out their Really Big Idea posts. (And all the others. And then buy all their books.) Click here for the series list. Lots of good stuff in there, and a long reading list for me once I finish Veil War.
May 25, 2012
Dragons!
Of a different sort:
Not the kind of dragon I normally write about here, but an awesome one nevertheless. That’s a pic of SpaceX’s dragon capsule approaching the ISS for docking – the first commercial craft to do so. Dragon is not currently man-rated, but it won’t be long before vehicles like that are ferrying astronauts to and from orbit.
SpaceX is, I think, poised to make real changes in how we get to space. Cost most obviously – Musk is pushing hard on the $1000/lb to orbit barrier. But also in a philosophical sense. If we are no longer dependent on a hidebound, design-by-committee bureaucracy for our access to space, then (miraculously!) we will have access to space on a far wider scale than we’ve seen so far.
And when the goblins do invade, it will be well for us to be able to nuke them from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.
May 24, 2012
Chapter 22
Chapter 22 is up. I apologize for the week-long delay, but life got a little crazy. You may have a surprise later, though. Teaser:
Lewis saw the standard bearer he’d watched a second before tossed backward as if he’d been hit by a giant, invisible tsunami. A half step and a half second behind him, the rest of the first goblin rank was pushed inexorably and violently backward, crashing into the ranks behind as all were swept away.
It took another second before the wave hit the dragon. The dragon went from graceful and malevolent flight to sparrow in a hurricane. Again the dragon screamed in rage as it was forced from its prey.
It has been frustrating to write – or try to write – compelling prose about people watching a battle. But that is just the nature of the thing, and Lewis can’t be everywhere. Very shortly, though, the battle will be coming to Lewis. As always, please note any errors or inconsistencies, and let me know what you think about how the story is developing. Your feedback has been crucial, really, in allowing me to achieve even the modest level of quality I have.
May 10, 2012
Veil War Thursday
It is Thursday, and that means mayhem.
The shells exploded nearly two hundred feet above the goblins. Marching as they were with their shields up, they were suffering almost no casualties.
“Why aren’t they adjusting their fire?” Pethoukis nearly shouted. The next barrage didn’t explode at all. One shell landed on a goblin, crushing it. No others were even hurt.
“I think they are adjusting their fire. It’s just not the 116th doing the adjusting,” Lewis said.
Chapter Twenty-One is up, and available for your delighted perusal. Please point out to the internet any mistakes, blunders, cock-ups, typos and senior moments you detect in the prose. Because, you know, the internet cares.
May 3, 2012
Firesack
Chapter 20 is now up, and impatiently awaiting your attention. Teaser:
Lewis cursed in horror as he saw the goblins had penetrated the perimeter at least five points. Bronze-armored monsters poured into the middle of the brigade defenses. Cavalry troopers ran madly across the sand toward the rear.
By way of a progress report, this last week has been marvelously productive. I have the entire next month’s chapters ready and queued up, which means that I can focus on getting the rest of the story written. Since March was a near total wash thanks to virulent, uh, viruses – I am behind on my self-imposed schedule by about that much. I did a lot more rewriting than I had planned last month but by dint of self-sacrifice, self-abegnation, and other selfy things I still made progress. It is perhaps a vain and ambitious hope, but I nevertheless hope to have a completed draft manuscript of the whole novel by the end of this month. We’ll see how that goes.
As always, please feel free to point out errors and mistakes, infelicities and screw-ups. And thank you, as always, for reading. You are all, each and individually, my favorite people in the whole world.
April 26, 2012
Mayhem!
Chapter 19 is up! And yes, there is mayhem. A little violence, the more sensitive of you might want to avert your eyes. Teaser:
In the distance about five miles out and a bit east, Lewis guessed, was a low rise of rough terrain; lumps of bare, black rock sticking out of a shallow sandy swell. There the 116th had taken up a defensive posture.
North and west of the cavalry, Lewis could see a goblin assault readying in the flat ground to the left. Seven regiments of goblin infantry were moving out of column. There looked to be about a thousand goblins in each, so at least seven thousand total. They were equipped like the goblins they’d fought back in Iraq; bronze breast plates and helmets, carrying swords and shields. Their banners snapped in the growing breeze. Windrows of goblin corpses in the field before them showed that this wasn’t the first assault, but likely the largest so far.
As always, please note in the comments any typos, mistakes, and errors. And also feel free to lavish me with praise. That’s always nice.
April 19, 2012
Movement to Contact
Chapter Eighteen is now up, and hey, look at the time! It’s not 11:59! I actually hope to get back to early morning Thursday postings for chapters, but the quantity of rewriting I’m doing is a lot more than I (rather naively, as it turns out) expected. Teaser:
“Fuck!” Coleman shouted, and spun the thumper around to the right. “Who fucking shot me?”
Angelo, standing in the bed of the humvee behind, opened up with his .50 cal. Lewis watched the tracers reach out across the sandto a battered Toyota pickup racing toward them. Two bursts disabled the engine and the occupants piled out. Another burst cut one of them in half.
We’re now in Part III, which doesn’t necessarily have to mean anything to you except that it’s battle time. And as always, your help in catching errors and mistakes is always appreciated. Further, since we’re moving into combat mode again, that will mean greater opportunities for you veterans and gun enthhusiasts to be nitpicky as much as your black little hearts desire offer constructive and useful criticism to improve the story. So enjoy.
April 16, 2012
Spiders from Space!
Doesn’t quite have the cache of “Pigs in Space” but an interesting idea. Baen has an article up on what it sort of starfaring species social spiders might turn into. Interesting stuff:
Think Like Spiders with Starships
…First they have to find us. Or at least they have to find suitable sites to establish new nests, presumably rich, wet worlds like our own Earth. The drive for spiders to expand territory results in exploratory threads sent out at random. If strands stick, spiders investigate.
Imagine a technology that mimics what spiders know from biology. Von Neumann probes scattered to space might carry explorers who evaluate new nodes, new planets. Each planetfall expands a web work across space of increasing complexity and shifting connectivity. Communication vibrates along the connection points like a hum across the galaxy, with the spiders focusing on attractive worlds. The fact is, with expansion following their ancient ethological roots, they might eventually visit every world in the Milky Way.
…When they arrive here, they will not care about individuals. They will seem pitiless in the way they advance. There will be no opportunity for prisoner exchange. No quarter given or expected, indeed no conception of such a thing. We will likely not understand them and they can’t even try to understand us. We will see a campaign of conquest, but should realize the intellectual emptiness of evolution’s moral compass.
As a hierarchical species capable of independent thought at different levels, our advantage on the battlefield will play greatly to our advantage. While initially we may be awed and cowed by the technology they wield, the uncanny way they coordinate their ground troops, or their pitiless methods of advance, human instincts should launch our own problem solving abilities to defend our world and defeat the menace. We, who killed mastodon with fire-hardened sticks. We, who took the dens of cave bears as our own. We, who crossed mountains with nothing but furs wrapped about our bodies. We, who must now repel the seemingly implacable alien menace from our midst.
The tactics and strategy of the spiders following ancient biological algorithms would manifest in rapid adaptations on a battle field. Fluid with emergent properties, spider troops react almost instantaneously to our positions and movements with their own age old mechanisms honed over almost a half billion years longer as a social species. But their thinking is not heuristic, it is only reactionary. And this is their weakness. Our individuality will outwit programming.
Reminds me a bit of two of my favorite sf novels – Blindsight by Peter Watts, and Killing Star by Zebrowski and Pellegrino. (You should read both instantly.)
April 13, 2012
Chapter 17
Here we are. Escaped from the darker recesses of my mind is Chapter 17. Your by now traditional teaser:
Lewis’ sword moved with agonizing slowness as he struggled to parry Siegfried’s attack. The baron was so damn fast, Lewis thought. Lewis managed to get his sword up to block the cut he expected but the baron’s sword wasn’t there. Siegfried’s sword somehow whipped up and beat Lewis’ blade away, out of line and to the right. Mentally and physically off-balance, Lewis winced. Here it comes.
For those of you keeping score at home, this chapter marks the end of what I like to call Part II. Captain Lewis’ story falls into roughly three parts, four if you’re being generous. Part I is chapters one through eight – up to the meeting with the crusaders. Part II is the bridge to the big battle and Part III, then, is the big battle. The very last bit is the conclusion, and I guess we could call that Part IV. I’ve written over 22,poo words for the rest of the story, and I know right now that I’ll be adding more as I go back through this stuff getting it ready to post. So far, including today’s extra long 3000-word chapter, I’ve posted 41,000 words.
As always, feel free – nay, feel obligated – to note in the comments any mistakes, grammatical errors, typos or infelicities of language. Comments on the story are of course welcome as well. I accept full responsibility for all that is published here. (But not the blame.)
The Veil War 