[Polpolion]

     I am really nervous about posting this, as I am not all that good at writing, and plus I don't really like writing. But I need feedback from people who don't know who I am, so I'll post it anyway.

Just some background info about this "project":

     It all started back in sixth grade: I was going to my cottage in Michigan's upper peninsula, and it was like a five hour drive just to get to the bridge. So I decided that I would write a book. It would be a grand compilation of all of my favorite books, movies, and games. It had Mechwarrior, Freelancer, Freespace and some other stuff I forgot about/never got around to writing. Out of boredom, I stopped writing at about 30 front/back of notebook pages. Since I was in sixth grade, it was really retarded. I kept getting bored with the universe I was writing in so I kept killing off all of the characters except for myself (I did that like seven times). Now, I keep that notebook on my shelf unit. I don't care if anyone reads it, because it is all horrible handwriting. I can't even read it myself.

     Now, my current "book" borrows many aspects of my old book. Except, I am making my own universe. The only thing I'm borrowing from another universe is the subspace portal. Just the portal. Not subspace itself, that looks different. And, yeah. I don't feel like typing anymore, so I'll just post the book:

*snip (scroll down for story)*

Oh yeah! It's not done yet. duh!



So, I guess you know the drill. Constructive Criticism. Uh, please.




I don't care what you say as long as you read it and reply.

[NGTM-1R]

Too short, too little information, to get a real feel for your non-technical writing aspects (stuff I normally lump under the catchall "storytelling"). From a technical (grammar, spelling, etc.) standpoint your writing is excellent; far better than average. From what I can tell of the non-technical aspects you're good, but like I said, I'd need more for a solid evaluation.

[Mustang19]

Have some confidence there! Why does everyone come on this forum claiming to be a n00b every time they make their first post? Trying to draw welcome-beam fire? Seriously, HLP is not a noob-eating forum, there are places on the internet like that, but people are surprisingly mature here (as long as politics, relgion, or the GTC Aeolus is not involved).

Sure, it's not going to get published without some editing work, but it's a great idea. Better than most other people. The fact that you were willing to post your writing is a big step. There are plenty of campaigns looking for storyline writers. Creativity and good grammar is all you need, and you have plenty of both. Who gives a **** about prose?

I'm working on a campaign now, if you're available later I'd like you to do some writing. However, the best thing to do with your manuscript (if you want people to stop *****ing about it) would be to make some sort of campaign of it. As much as people praise FS campaigns for creativity and depth, they're speaking in relative terms. I've seen few campaigns with a creative or deep story, and with your skills, you could do well at that.

[Polpolion]

“How ironic,”  I thought as I sped away from the waning fireball and molten metal in an escape pod. It was the third time that I barely made it out if the destruction of a shuttle. This time, I needed research for my thesis, and one of my buddies at New University on Cappella IV offered to help me out in exchange for some of my knowledge of Old Earth. The last two times, I was simply making routine visits to some relatives on one of Saturn’s moons, Hyperion. All three times, the explosion triggered with relatively little warning, except this time, I wasn’t the only survivor. The first time I had been lucky I just happened to be strolling past the escape pods when supposedly a clog in the reactor coolant tubes caused a quick release of high-pressure, which in turn triggered an explosion somehow. The next time and this time, I was a bit more cautious and tried to stick close to the pods. I don’t really know what exactly could have been the cause, but I thought I heard some tech people say something about pure liquid sodium in the coolant. I didn’t even know sodium could be liquid. It was the same cause this time, which was very suspicious.
   I waited for the other two escape pods to jump out before I decided figure out what to do. I prepped the subspace drive, after a few minutes of charging, an eerie green light signaled it was ready. I flipped the switch and pressed the button, and watched as a luminescent blue-white portal spiraled out in front of me, creating a gateway to another dimension. My ship started shaking as I was pulled into the silky smooth, soft lights and into the bright pressure. After a second of adjusting to this rapid change of scenery, from the cold dark reaches of nothingness to an even more empty area of unfathomable strangeness, I started to think of what to do.  Knowing that this couldn’t be a coincidence, I was going to try and lay low for a while. I had a “friend” who was a bit “less civilized” than the average person. By less civilized, I mean he is a pirate. And by pirate, I don’t mean a stereo-typical pirate. Instead of illegally acquiring the code for different types of robots, or maybe hacking into other people’s computer to download their money, media, or other things of value, he attacked ships, knocked out their engines and boarded them. On the ship, he would usually ransack it looking for weapons, ammunition, money, valuables, food, clothing; basically anything he wanted or needed. Don’t go thinking of him as barbaric or anything, though. He very rarely killed people that weren’t actively trying to kill him. But anyway, his flagship was nothing special. It was just a decommissioned carrier about one hundred and fifty years old. It used to be an HMS Henry class heavy carrier. It was very old, hence its title HMS. The nation that used that prefix joined the United Earth Federation in the Union wars back in 3946. When he stole it from the scrap yards, literally right before it was about to be melted down in Justice Shipyards, he found it with a full strike craft compliment and then some (all broken, they had to be sold as spare parts on the black market), all but two working turrets (he actually is still using two of the LRMD-4s), but unfortunately, no ammunition. Now, far from being in perfect working condition, it still manages to serve the roles of a full carrier, flotilla leader, EW ship and heavy cruiser adequately. With its unique modifications, its vast hold can hold up to three frigate class vessels in addition to the standard twelve fighter and five bomber squadrons.
   I, while not remaining in full contact him, do speak to him every once in a while. Because of that, I have a vague idea of where he currently is. While in subspace, I plotted an exit vector in the exact middle of the sector that I thought he was in and started to try and relax. Even at the relative speed of four hundred times the speed of light, which is quite slow now a days, this would take awhile. I began to ponder…
   How could these things be happening to me? Why would anyone even want to try and kill me? I’m just a historian trying to get my masters. How could that potentially harm anyone? It is possible for it to be a coincidence. Naw, it has to be and attempt on my life. I could be one of the smaller nation-factions. You always get strange folk in there. There are also those sub-humans.  They descended from the first few space travelers. A couple strange mutations or genetically passed abnormalities, and with such a small range of ‘possible mates’ it is almost a given that it will stick. But why would they have anything against me? I need someone who knows those kinds of strange people and more importantly what they stand for. Oh wait, that’s why I’m meeting Logan.
   A red light filled the cramped cabin indicating that I have reached the exit coordinates. I reached over, and disengaged the drive system, and a spiral of reality was created in front of me. Instead of being pulled into it, I fluidicly fell out of subspace. As my impulse engines powered up as I saw the entrance to the bright bluish pressure spiral backwards, gradually getting smaller until eventually fading back to the void of space.
   Now to the task at hand; I needed to find Logan and his ship, now the Depredation, in this area of space nearly ten million kilometers in diameter. The logical place to start to look for the Depredation would be in the dense asteroid that has an orbit just past the second planet in Munich 15040, or more commonly Bernard’s Star. Knowing that he wouldn’t hide somewhere so simple, I knew he wouldn’t be there, but I set course for it anyway, because it was relatively close, and there is still a chance he could be there. En route, I could plan out where I would head next, so I took out a very old hand map of the system and scoured it looking for possible locations. It would be difficult to hide the two kilometer long ship, or at least compared to the standard twelve hundred meter long carrier. But the electronics package would make it much more difficult to track. Sensors go a long ways away on most ships. On most carriers, they can extend up to at most five thousand kilometers, on reconnaissance probes, about seven thousand. AWACS or ECM\SJS ships usually get about fifteen thousand and anything not one of those three, except for flotilla leaders, usually got about 500 kilometers. On my escape pod, I was lucky to get seventy.  The second planet was currently very close by the belt, within about 250 kilometers or so, so I had to switch over to manual flight, because I didn’t want to orbit, and the autopilot was horrible on the pod. After an hour or so of manual flight, I was still able to pilot with my nose pointed about ten degrees to the right of my intended target, which was good, because I needed to concentrate on my sensors and piloting. It was temping to look at the mesmerizing view of the planet to my left, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the myriad of asteroids that lay before me. Munich 15040 hadn’t been colonized yet, and it wasn’t on schedule even for terra-forming until ninety years or so, and not populated for the next 120. There weren’t even any star bases here yet. I’ll have to come back here and visit in my old age when it is populated. The cool red sun would be nice; the planets will be beautiful with the treatment that will be put in…
   I was starting to get disheartened and bored. It hadn’t been long that I’d been in the belt, but the constant scanning and maneuvering was tedious and tiring. I veered off course for a moment outside of the belt to rest for a moment. While there, I kneaded my aching wrist, which tires very easily under the constant movements and maneuvers I have to perform that the control panel. The steering mechanisms hadn’t changed much over the course of flight. About two thousand years, and small fighters and some bombers were using sticks, while everything else up to about frigate class used the standard yoke. Everything above that, or at least everything military, used something in which you first select your destination along the XZ plane, and then finish with the Y plane separately. After selecting the destination, the autopilot would take care of the rest. As I sat there resting, wondering whether I should give up on the search for my acquaintance or not, I remembered what a true terror it had been, the experiences I witnessed. The first time, there had been a terrible lurching noise and a sound as though someone took nails and a chalkboard and threw them away and took a piece of rust and rubbed sandpaper on it. The rust tear up, each piece scratched off by the sandpaper, would scratch the remaining metal more until all was left was a red powder, which if inhaled, would rip your intestines to pieces. Thank goodness all rust-able metals have phased out of use! After that noise, a huge explosion rocked the ship, enveloping all things, including the dying shrieks of terror and fear from those trapped within the labyrinth of the ship’s hull. At that point, I was literally thrown into the pod by the shaking of the ship. I had quickly closed the doors behind me and launched, fearing the growing destruction would soon reach me. The other two times were all too similar, with the exception of more prepared travelers. Still, all three times, the cries for help haunted me. I might have not been able to do anything to save anyone, but I still feel guilty that I got out when that myriad of other worthy people didn’t.
   It was about this time that I noticed something strange on the planet in front of me. Creeping along the night side, just barely coming into my view was a large lightning storm. I knew right away that this wasn’t right, as the planet’s atmosphere couldn’t support a storm that strange. I accelerated towards the planet’s side and towards the flashing lights with a small grin growing upon my countenance.




As suspected, my sensors indeed read that there was a particularly violent storm on the surface, but my eyes showed otherwise. When I neared the planet and the storm melted to a form even more obviously of the Depredation’s silhouette, a communications channel opened up between us. In a harsh, cold voice, the speakers emit a short speech consisting of:  “Incoming ship: Come no closer. If your efforts persist, we will presume hostilities and open fire,” I kept flying strait at them, strait towards the wide launch and docking tubes just above the bow of the ship. It was a long and relatively narrow ship, not much exterior architecture except for a notch in the front extending about 320 meters, another one about 260 meters in front of the engines, and some observation tubes at the top. It was all pretty standard and symmetrical, to. The paint job was dark blue, with the black tubes on the top. Taking myself away from the sight of that ship, I sent the code that meant “friend” to them in an old, obsolete, code comprised of short or long bursts of static. Other than this message, there was no other use for this code, or had ever been since about the dawn of the second millennia. They signaled back, and then a much more informal nicer voice said that we had docking clearance. Before I docked I decided to loop around the ship to see what modifications Logan had recently put the Depredation through. As I passed the starboard side, I noticed a recently added battery of LRM-1 torpedo banks. Five tubes on each side made ten torpedoes ready to be fired at the push of a button. Assuming he had the correct ammunition, which was unlikely, those missiles would have an effective range against capitol ships of up to 90 kilometers. It wasn’t relatively that far, but this was the capitol variant and the engine had to propel 30 tons of nuclear warheads. You can’t fit that much fuel into it without it being so massive that you can barely get it out of the tube without sending the ship spinning. Other than the missile battery, everything was old weapons, or at least looked old. After finishing the pass, I aligned my nose with the beacon at the ending of the docking bay and guided my pod in.


I first met Logan about 14 years ago, when I was ten. It was a rather frightening experience, or at least awkward. My family was not all that wealthy when I was a child. We lived in a tough neighborhood in the Chios province on Deimos, named after an area in ancient Greece. Recently, there had been a lot of riots due to the numerous scandals commit by the planetary governor. I found that ironic at the time, because everyone had elected her. But actually, only a twelfth of the population did. That was the lowest recorded voter turnout ever, other than perhaps some of the elections in Iraq in the 2020’s. I’ve always wondered why they didn’t vote, and then rioted when she was a bad leader. You can’t get a decent leader without voting. But nonetheless, the riots were terrible. Those were the riots that my parents were killed in. The riots started getting worse, too. Looters came in from all over, and there were other pirates there too, except they wanted to pillage and ransack. The entire moon was on fire. The smoked caused the artificially added atmosphere to turn to smog. The smells of burning wood, chemicals, and even flesh permeated throughout the atmosphere creating a stench distinct to our world. All traffic to and from Deimos, Phobos, Mars, Station Alexandrea and Station Julean had been stopped. It was strange how the pirates managed to get through with all of the Federation’s naval vessels there. It was the 14th month of the fighting, and Logan was appalled. For some reason, he felt obligated to come and try to set things straight.  Goodness knows why, maybe he was involved with the fiasco on the Moon and wanted to prevent it from getting that bad. When I met him, he wasn’t that old, maybe seventy-five. If he had a job, he would’ve had five more years until retirement.
When he arrived with his Depredation, the naval fleet was decimated. Somehow, the rag-tag group of bandits had managed to capture or destroy a tenth of the fleet. The fleet was primarily composed of the UEF Salvation class cruisers, with escorts of the UEF Monolith class battle frigates. The Salvation was quite a powerful ship, even though it didn’t quite match the then Depredation. It had a powerful anti-capitol broadside, with three LRMD-4s on one side, but bare of anti-capitol on the other. At 1000 meters long, it wasn’t the largest ship around, but it was certainly massive. It didn’t fare to well against the small, more maneuverable pirate craft, so most of the work was up to the frigates and strike-craft. Needless to say, the Depredation annihilated the pirate craft. The largest pirate craft was a cruiser, which was taken down by the UEF Deimos herself. There wasn’t really any conflict between Federation forces and the Depredation because they were working towards a common goal: the eradication of the criminal prescience in the Mars Sector.
After just a few days, the skies above Deimos were, for the lack of a better word, clear, and the Depredation and the UEF forces stared landing vigilantes and guardsmen. Again, while not quite working in complete harmony, they both abided to each other’s plans. Clearing the Chios province was relatively painless, because it was the last. So painless that famous Captain Logan Fuole of the Depredation took part himself.
At ten years old, I didn’t know any better than to run up to him and ask him for food. He had just laughed and told me to come with him. I knew that I shouldn’t have gone with him, he was a stranger. But I did anyway, I was just so hungry. He took me aboard the Depredation, fed and clothed me. He then asked my where my parents were, and I had no choice but to answer that they had been killed when a bomb exploded next door and caused our house to collapse. He looked a bit teary for a second, and then asked me if I had a place to stay. All I could answer was this convenient secluded hole in a pile of rubble I had found. He said he would find me a nice place to stay. I asked him why he was doing all of this for me, and he said something about it would be a sin not to help me. I was shocked at the strange word “sin” I asked him what it meant, and he told me it meant something that isn’t ethically correct. I asked him why he was still a pirate then, and he was kind of shocked, like he wasn’t expecting a reply. He asked me if I viewed stealing food to feed you as morally correct. I thought about it for a second, and answered yes. I suppose it was a bit more of a thing to just get me to stop asking questions for a while. In a few days, he dropped me off on the Moon to live with some of his friends until I was able to support myself. He visited very occasionally but mostly we had to go visit him, seeing as how he was still wanted for piracy.

   I was greeted with the glaring eyes of gun barrels as I stepped out of my cramped escape pod. I squinted my eyes as they adjusted from the inky blackness of space to the clean gray façade of the interior docking bay. Above us, hanging from the docking clamps, loomed a gigantic 260 meter long light ASC (anti-strike craft) destroyer christened the Apocalypse.
“Welcome aboard the Depredation. May I ask you your business before I order my men to lower their weapons?” the First Mate, Rick J’honsons, asked.
“Hey, Rick. I, uhh, need to lay low, uhhmm, for a while,” I rather disgracefully stated.
“Are you still paranoid like that?”
“If you define paranoid as fear for one’s safety after three attempts on my life, then I must be,”
“What has been going on? Oh, I’m sorry; men, you can lower weapons,” All of the thugs put their weapons down. Some put them on their shoulder; others put the barrel on the floor and used the butt to lean on. “Let’s go talk to the Cap about this,”
We started walking towards the only door on the hanger deck. Walking through the archway and down the hallways was still quite an experience. It was only my third time on the ship, but it felt like I’ve lived there all of my life. I recognized every nook and cranny of this ship. It is quite a feeling knowing that four and a half thousand people manage to live on this ship with no outside contact unless boarding a ship. Even with all those people, the halls were still pretty bare, except all of the emergency rations spilling out of the supply closets every few hundred feet.
Finally, we arrived at the last elevator. We got aboard and it took us up twenty stories, to the bridge level. The bridge wasn’t completely on the outside of the ship; that would be foolish, as the smallest round could penetrate the thin armor. Instead, the Bridge was protected by seven feet of solid Ontberiegum. Ontberiegum is the heaviest, strongest, most tough material in the known galaxy. With an atomic number of 278, it was at least twice the weight of any other element. Originally a gas in the noble gas, family, it was compressed into a solid with extreme force.
We arrived on the bridge and Logan was standing gazing out the of the view screen. A full dome of vision was supplied here by the various cameras positioned on the hull. The only place that had a better view was the observation deck, which was retracted during combat because it uses actual glass.
“Hello. Are you hungry?” Logan asked me as he turned.
“No, I’m good. Thanks, though,”
“Take a seat,” he said as he pushed up a red chair from the unoccupied sensor man’s seat. “So what brings you here?”
“Thank you,” I politely replied as I sat down. “You probably wouldn’t know, seeing as how you’re outside broadcasting range of all of the communication stations, but there have been attacks on civilian shuttles recently,”
“Well duh, I’m a pirate,”
“No, it’s not that. There have been three bombings recently. Each was a definite case of sabotage. Each time, I was aboard that ship and barely survived. I… I think someone is after me,”
“Why would anyone want to kill a historian?” Rick interjected. “I mean, no offense, but they don’t really serve a huge part of society. What’s the point?”
“I won’t argue with you about that now. I don’t know why anyone would want me dead that bad. I don’t even really know what to do, other than to hide,”
“Well you did the right thing coming here. You will be safe here for the time being. I can’t do anything currently, so you should occupy your time learning up about different cultures, political parties, terrorist groups, you know anything that could possibly have a motive for doing this,”
“Okay, I already have a few suspicions. They’re not based on much, so I suppose I can’t really call them suspicions,” After a moment, I added, “I guess they’re little more than racial profiling. Oh well,”
“If I were a Homocentariaus I would be offended. But I’m human, so I’m not offended,” Rick said, as if trying to be funny. I noticed that Logan had a smirk on his face.
“Ahh, I guess you can walk him to his room now, Rick.” Logan told Rick.
“Okay, Cap. Let’s go,” he said as he motioned me to come along with him.
I took one last look at the space all around us before I stepped into the elevator. It was all very pretty, and the planet below, made it just better. It was truly a breathtaking view. Being in low orbit, we were at just the right angle to see the mountains rise up in the distance, but we could also see many stars above us. It was hard to believe that we were in a large metal case that is ten feet thick in places. I climbed into the elevator and pressed the door close button.



I sighed as I continued perusing the reference materials that were at my disposal. Right now, I was studying the homoturpis, who are generally believed to be insane, or at least in possession of terrible moral codes and ethics. The book, entitled Early Colonization Human Derivative Species, focuses on the species that branched off of Homo sapiens during the period of time when intersystem colonization became possible. People had to colonize because Earth was in such poor condition with pollution and overpopulation.  Colonization was still very difficult and expensive, though. Occasionally, a colony would lose contact with Earth, or the colonists would all catch some disease. I even read that an entire colony was mauled by a roving pack of semi-intelligent animals. The animals viciously attacked, severing the limbs from torso and head. Both the still living, dead bodies, and limbs were dragged into a large open area just outside of town, where they were they were slowly devoured, one by one.
I glanced down at my time keeper. It read 45:10, so I had to hurry to catch dinner. When I got down there, everyone was already seated, but they had no food. It looked like Logan was going to make an announcement. I took a seat near the doorway, next to a man who was a bit shorter than me who had red hair and freckles.
“What’s going on?” I asked him.
“Urhw, Logan’s, jus’ merkin’ urn urnerncement,” he told me. I groaned to myself, hating how he had a horrible Ganymedian accent, made famous by their inability to pronounce “a”. For some reason, a few of the original colonists had a speech defect, and I guess this is what happens when they procreate. At least I learned something from those books. I thought some more about him. I looked at him as he attentively listened to Logan make his talk, apparently unaware of how his genes make him annoying. He was human. The more I thought about it, the more disgusted I was with myself. I was essentially taking an entire group of people and condemning them because of their traits. And there he was, just sitting there like nothing had happened. Man was he naïve, not thinking that people do these things. Or was he? Could he actually know that I was actually offended with that visage he is keeping? Is he really - really super objective? I thought about it more. Is there really a difference between naïve and objective in this situation?
All of a sudden I jerked upward, as if awaking from a slumber during a school lecture. There he was, standing with that objective face of his.
“Ureh you urll right? You look loork yoor slureeeeping,” He said, with some effort. I rubbed my face with my hands.
“Yeah, I’m all right. Where’s the food at?” I said hastily, trying to gather myself from a deeply meditative state into a regular talkative state.
“Whurnt ‘oo lisnurn? We doon’t hurve urny. Lurgin surd thurt we murst ‘prucure’ surm froom thurt crnvey,” He gasped out in a strange manner. It would seem as though in my deep research I didn’t notice that we had been moving at the relative speed of 700.12c.
“Oh,” is all I could say in response. I really didn’t like talking to him.
“Ur doon’t look too well. Yoo shold corme lury durn,”
“No, I’m quite all right,” I said as I sprang up as if to prove my point. Or was it just because I didn’t want his help?
“Ur-ky,” he said in a quite, short syllable way.
I fought off the effects of standing up too quickly and walked off, disappointed with myself. Everyone else, or at least most people, was organizing themselves into squads and wings. Some of the natural leaders briefed everyone on their wings or teams assignment. From what I heard, the plan was to put boarding parties together to assault the ship that had the food in the convoy. What makes this a tricky assignment is that this convoy (even though not in subspace) is whipping along at 1500 meters per second.

It's about 9.5 word pages long now. If you want me to make it neater and easier to read, I could just upload the doc file. PlEaSe!!! Feedback!!

Of course, I don't blame you for not reading it. If I were you and you were me, I wouldn't read it. SO kudos to you if you did read it!

EDIT: pretty please? any comments?