You know that scene at the beginning of Starship Troopers where Johnny Rico is about to make a drop on an enemy planet? Even wrapped in one of the most advanced combat systems ever invented by man he is nervous, strung out, and mentally babbling to get past it.
I’ve always been inspired by that scene. The writing is tight, descriptive, and tells you so much about Rico. It’s a fantastic introduction to a fantastic book, and I’ve always held it up as an example of what to aspire to.
Last year the fine folks at Three Ravens Publishing announced they were partnering with J.R. Handley to put out a set of open-call anthologies with varying themes. One of those was Assault Team, which I’ve written about previously (check out that post for a snippet!).
Assault Teams Away!
I am very excited to be a part of this upcoming anthology from Three Ravens Publishing coming out this Friday, March 29th! My story, titled Critical Objectives, is in the same universe as the short story Laugh or Cry that can be found in the Clash of Steel
I was lucky enough to earn a spot in that anthology, and I knew I wanted to do another story for the next open call, titled Contested Landing. The moment I saw the title, that scene from Starship Troopers struck me, and I knew I had to write something in that same vein.
And thus the story Good Works was born and accepted into Contested Landing, Volume 2.
From the beginning this story is a pretty action-packed fight between four human mechs and what seems like an endless stream of invading alien Kugh. I had the idea for this story in my head for a while, but hadn’t been able to find the time until I went out of town on a work trip. On a Pittsburgh-Atlanta-Memphis flight and the return, I wrote about 2,200 words each way, with a few hundred more one night in my hotel room. The whole story was written and edited in five days, which was pretty astonishing to me that I was able to pack a whole story in that small a time frame. I do love the results though!
This story is a companion both to my story in Assault Team (Critical Objectives) and the previous story Laugh or Cry found in the Clash of Steel anthology. Together, these three short stories make up about 22,000 words of alien-killing awesomeness. Critical Objectives and Good Works actually occur over the same time period, covering the two halves of the company I introduced in Laugh or Cry.
This was a fun story to write, and I hope you like it. It’ll be available June 6th on Amazon here. On to the snippet!
A Snippet of Good Works:
Big Dog growled as the maneuvering unit's simple computer again rebuffed his request for a higher acceleration. It was programmed for 15 meters per second squared. Not one meter more, not one less.
Of course, it was little consequence to the computer whether or not it lived through the next ten minutes.
It was of great consequence to Big Dog that his ODD-3 Drop Pod, Mech, Expendable and the three more trailing behind him made it safely through the battle raging in the skies above the planet Korecki.
“Come on, come on, you stupid pod! We need to move.” Frustrated, he pulled his mind back from the interface, peering through the pod’s sensors with his neural link at the unfolding battle in orbit. Swarms of attacking Kugh warships continued to pour in from just outside the small moon’s orbit. The local defense fleet was responding, albeit slowly. No one had anticipated a strike at Korecki, the sector capital and crown jewel of the rimward territories.
Their most recent ride, the assault transport Corsuca, was nearly a hundred kilometers ahead of them in orbit, having fired the string of pods ‘backwards’ so they lost velocity and rapidly slid down into the gravity well.
But not swiftly enough.
In an intersecting trajectory below the string of drop pods was a huge civilian cargo hauler, frantically piling on power to her gravity spikes to evade a pursuing Kugh destroyer. The stingray-shaped destroyer was a fraction of the hauler’s size, yet could tear the civvy ship to pieces should it desire.
Which is exactly what the invading Kugh did. A ship killer missile arrowed from the destroyer’s dorsal hull and tore into the hauler’s engineering section.
Silent fire bloomed against the backdrop of space. The civvy ship peeled apart from the aft, scattering hundreds of cargo containers and a swarm of debris across the trajectory picked out in gold ahead of Big Dog.
A comm ping jerked his attention away from the unfolding disaster.
“Ah, shit, Big Dog. What are we going to do about that?” Sherlock’s voice was as calm and composed as ever. The woman was absolutely unflappable and utterly reliable in the toughest of firefights.
ACCELERATION WARNING
The red words pulsed across his vision through the neural net.
“I think just sit back and let the pod handle it is what that means, Sherlock. See you on the other side. Nox Venator.”
“Night Hunters!” Sherlock, Sinner, and Saint all responded in unison.
I hope you enjoyed that snippet! If you liked it, I hope you’ll consider picking up a copy of Contested Landing, available June 6th (yes, D-Day!) on Amazon.
Thanks for reading and I’ll see you next time!
I believe I critiqued on early version of this, it was good.