Have sword, will travel. #wewriwar

Welcome to weekend writing warriors. Many fine authors, and me, contribute short snippets for your delectation.

I was getting a bit stuck with Regency fiction, and decided to try hard SF. Swords and spaceships, no rayguns (yet), but plenty of action and as long as I’m logically consistent I don’t have to worry about historical accuracy

It seems to be working, the words are (so far) flying off my fingers (I crossed 61k last night) and into the book.

In any case, here’s the start – a new midshipman is having her first session of weapons training on her first ship. Her instructor is not exactly impressed. Last week’s snippet skips ahead a few paragraphs from the one before. It’s after she’s finished her training for the day. The discussion of Scotland from before is replaced by the ceremonies for the first jump of the mission. The initiation ceremony continues this week.

I’ve decided to skip ahead and move to the start of more action. Serapis is about to jump near a new (to us humans) star and explore it. Terry takes her station.
Chief Ames reassures the other members of the landing ship’s crew that they’ll live in this installment.

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“Secured,” Ames turned away from the microphone; his voice, muted, still came through, “Relax, lads, I know it’s her first launch; do you see me acting like a gormless lout?”

“Chief;” Terry asked, “Why me; I thought you didn’t like me?”

“I don’t; not particularly any road,” Ames paused, “I’ve read the astrogation scores; at least you manage to put us in the right galactic quadrant and occasionally even in the right star system; I know the automatics can keep track, but as I said, I’d like to get home.”

Terry whispered to herself, “Faint praise.”

“What was that Sir?”

“Nothing,” Terry watched the count, “Prepare for separation in five, four, Bloody hell, something’s wrong,” She pushed the scram button and the craft shot sideways, away from the Serapis, hard.

When she caught her breath, she haled the crew, “You well, I heard clunks.”

Ames spat back, “Take more than that to harm me, Lass … Sir. What happened?”

“I don’t know,” Terry frantically scanned the controls, “Everything seems in order, but where’s the Serapis?”

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This weekend is the date for the fifth GSU Hackathon.  It’s a programming contest , a chance for the students to find internships, and a great way to show off the university which must not be named. I’m one of the faculty advisors, one of my ex-Ph.D. students, now a PTI, organizes it, and the students run it. It’s a blast.
The Chaos Monkey has so far skipped us by and it’s been smooth. Tiring but smooth.

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I’ve put up a couple of things on instafreebie. The first is a short story, To Court a Dragon.

The second is the start of a science fiction story in the same universe as Cynthia the Invincible, but set in 1893 Dartmoor, The Curious Case of Miss James. It’s available on Amazon.

The Art of Deception, first in a series of late Georgian/early Regency spy novels is now up.. You can get the first part here.

You can find my work here.