A preview. But not if you dislike spoilers.
This may be a bit of a spoiler for book 4 of the Dark Seas series. If you don’t want to know anything until you get the book in your hands or on your Kindle, do not read on.
Really.
This is a spoiler alert.
Spoiler alert.
Here is an excerpt from Chapter 2, so you know I have been working on it. 🙂 I left you with a cliffhanger at the end of Book 3, but this doesn’t address that. Much. But if you’re worried about Admiral Sarah Dayson, this does address that a bit.
You have been warned. Spoiler. And still a bit 2nd draftish.
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The Stennis had nearly two months to work alone in system.
On the day of their arrival they surveyed the red dwarf’s accompaniment of planets, asteroids, and comets. Fortunately, as a fleet command ship, the Stennis was designed to do that very thing.
Assess the terrain and provide data to the fleet commander.
There was only one planet in system, a gas giant three fourths of a Jovian mass. It was so close to the primary star that the atmosphere was ablating away, making a planet sized comet. Any moons of the gas giant had long ago been ripped away by tidal forces and either consumed by the small star, or tossed away into the abyss.
Her ship was alone now.
No others floated in the darkness to support the Stennis. No other ship stood ready to assist in a firefight. Crippled, slowed, battered and bruised, he would stand alone against a superior vessel.
It took a few days to survey the system. The survey hounds searched every corner, every solid body looking for any sign of life or intelligence. None was found.
Admiral Sarah Dayson regained her confidence within those few days. The crew didn’t realize she’d even had a crisis of self confidence. She’d led for so long she was able to fool just about everyone. Except for her bridge crew. They felt her pain, it was on her face. It was in the milliseconds of delay in her orders.
And, because she was family in every way but genetics to them, they stepped up for her. While she got her feet, they checked and double checked everything. While she recovered from her loss in Oasis, they stood next to her like buttresses, holding her high and strong.
But with each passing day, as she watched her plan to kill Orson coalesce, her confidence returned. She saw how her closest officers stood by her. She realized that they were covering for her.
And that would not do.
By the fifth day in system, she’d made her decision. All commanders lose battles. What matters is living to fight again. And she’d lived.
Orson would not be so lucky at their second engagement.
It didn’t matter that the Schein outgunned them. They had surprise on their side, and a mode of transport he couldn’t even conceive of. Still, once the ships met, the battle would be intense. She’d be outgunned more than twice over.
Maybe that’s how I fight best. As the underdog.
“There was only one planet in system, a gas giant three fourths of a Jovian mass. It was so close to the primary star that the atmosphere was ablating away, making a planet sized comet. Any moons of the gas giant had long ago been ripped away by tidal forces and either consumed by the small star, or tossed away into the abyss.”
This is a gorgeous scene, and seemingly accurate, from an astronomical perspective. The idea of a planet-sized comet, it’s tail carried away from an intense stellar wind perhaps hundreds of millions of miles long…beautiful!
Hi Will! Good to see you here.
As the planet is very close to the star, its orbit would be a few days. That means the tail would wrap around the star in an expanding spiral. The system seen from above would look like a hypnosis wheel. As the distance from the star increased, the gas would diffuse and slowly the spiral would grow broader and weaker until it was no longer seen.
If you’re going to make a star system, might as well be a visually interesting one.