Opening chapter of SF novel (again)

[Droflet]

Taking onboard all the sage advice I recieved, let's see how we go this time.

As always all and any crits appreciated.

Part one

Lucas Telford could sense the feelings of Bellinda's bridge crew, as if the bond of blood and shared suffering joined them in a type of macabre symbiosis. The air reeked of apprehension and seemed tainted with a stagnant dryness that parched the back of the throat. Four years of accumulated hatred from the eighty seven surviving crewmembers mingled with the sense of trepidation. The time drew near. Depending upon how chance played out, his family would regain their long lost freedom or die in the attempt.

Without weapons or long range communications it could well be a very short journey. However, they did have one thing going for them. Their captors knew, with absolute certainty, that their old freighter could never escape. Not without hyper capability.

His wife and young son occupied the First Officer’s station. Mary running the day to day functions of the ship and in the jump seat beside her, Nathan, undergoing bridge orientation. It was right that he be here at this time. If the plan failed, Lucas wanted all of his immediate family close. They had faced so much together and if the end was to come then, that to they would face together. But their time of slavery would end today; one way or another.

Lucas strummed his fingers lightly against the armrest. His years of naval service, before returning to Bellinda, had only served to sharpen his intrinsically keen instincts. At the moment those instincts were screaming at him that something was wrong. Their ploy had worked well, so far. But how far could they push their luck? The coded signal to the enemy escort ship Kania had worked, but still the suspicion lingered. Could it have been the tone of the enemy captain's voice as he signed off? The halting but deliberate tenor of his words, that suggested he did not buy the story. He would have trouble believing such a tale himself. Yet whether he believed it or not, it had bought them the time that they so desperately needed.

Lucas checked the time. It had been two point four hours since they had left their escort Kania behind, and one point nine hours since they had cleared her sensor envelope and began calibrating the makeshift generator.
His finger hovered over the comm stud for a moment, then returned to tapping the armrest. Contacting the Senior Engineer would only serve to interrupt his train of thought. Tuning the harmonics of the hyper-generator took total concentration even with the best of technology. The jury-rigged apparatus that had taken four years to cobble together, had none of the sophistication of their old system. It might not even work.

"Contact!" Mary's voice struck him like the crack of a whip. "Captain, I have a contact, coming in fast from astern." She looked up from her readouts, dread painted across her face. "It's Kania."

A collective groan filled the bridge as heads slumped over consoles.

"Captain, we are being hailed."

"No reply.” He did not wait for a reply. "Mary, alert condition one. Helm, give us best possible speed to the hyper ingression point." He tapped the comm stud. "John, we need to go now."

"Almost there." The Senior Engineer's voice sounded far away, clouded with matters not of the real world.

“We have company, John."

"Captain, if I push this too hard we will end up going nowhere.”

He hit the off stud and turned to the First Officer. "How long?"

"She will be in firing range in fifty seconds,” Mary said. “She is on full tactical alert and her sensors are active."

Lucas nodded. With her military grade sensor suite, Kania could not help but detect Bellinda's hyper emissions.

The crew's tension was palpable.

"Very well people, we knew this was a possibility from the outset. We aren't out of the race yet. Mary, let's take a look."

The screen shimmered to life against the forward bulkhead, before solidifying into a representation of the patrol ship that dogged their course. He snorted.

"What?" Mary caught his gesture and had managed to force a curious smile.

"I was thinking that we wouldn't be here at all if that was a real warship rather than a patrol craft. A destroyer would have vaporized us by now and we wouldn’t know who killed us."

He selected a comm channel to the ship’s cargo officer. "Janine, stand by; I will keep this channel open."

"Aye, captain."

"Sally, are you ready?"

"Yes, sir." Again, the inhumanly steady tenor.

The ship shook. "High and to starboard," Mary said. "She's coming in at maximum acceleration and will be in optimal firing position in twelve seconds."

"Very well.”

One decent shot through her belly and into the reactor room would finish them all. Bellinda's shields and armor cladding would afford little protection from the enemy's energy weapons.

"Sally, guard our belly and port side."

"Aye, sir." Her fingers flew across the console pitching the ungainly vessel about, in a frantic attempt to throw off the patrol ship's aim and protect her stern quarter. She was good, but four hundred thousand tonnes of freighter did not outmaneuver a fast attack ship; period.

Twin beams struck out from Kania followed by a horrific concussion.

"Direct hits on upper hull. Shield blisters fifty two through sixty seven overloaded," Daniel reported.

Almost before she finished speaking the ship rocked again.

"We are open to space. Starboard bow, sections twenty through twenty eight on decks eight through eleven."

Lucas' eyes darted to the screen. A great plume of frozen air trailed behind the ship, along with detritus from the shattered hull. And a mass of bodies. Some were broken pieces of humanity, mercifully killed outright. Some of the bodies flailed their arms and legs in their death throes. Merciful God almighty, he thought.

The ship trembled as the energy beams tore at her.

"Starboard upper. Sections sixty one through seventy, on decks eleven through fifteen. Sealing off."

The enemy warship maneuvered for the freighter's stern lower quarter. Bellinda's only advantage lay in her size. She could absorb a lot of punishment. Unless they maneuvered for a shot into her reactor.

"She has passed optimal and is closing," Mary said.

"Watch her, Sal," Lucas warned.

"I see her." Sally's hands were a blur across the helm controls. She could not outmaneuver the smaller vessel but she could outguess it.

A handful of heartbeats before Kania fired, Sally hit the bow thrusters for one point five seconds. The bow rose and the stern dropped. The move saved all of their lives.

The pulsar beams missed their intended target, the engine nacelles, and ripped into the boat bay doors. Massive decompression blew the doors outward, along with the untethered landing boats.

Bellinda shuddered violently. The stern feeds went down under the onslaught, blacking out the screen. Lucas felt quietly thankful for the reprieve from the carnage. He could not know how many family members he had lost. Not to mention the thousands of slaves in the holds.

"She's hitting her forward thrusters full on," Mary said hurriedly.
"Switching to port and starboard scanners."

The screen split in two, showing twin images of destruction. The great rent in the top of deck one gapped open like a jagged mouth, still trailing a gossamer venting of air.

So quiet that no one could hear, Lucas whispered, "Come on you little *******. Just a bit closer."

The patrol ship repositioned for another shot at Bellinda's belly.

Lucas waited and counted the seconds as Kania hurtled towards them. Safe in the knowledge that their opponent was unarmed, the enemy took chances that no naval officer would normally risk. That confidence was worth a broadside of torpedoes.

"Now, Sally!"

Sally rotated the ship through her axis. The untouched port side of the ship swung around to face the onrushing ship. Sally stopped the rotation with counter thrust then sat motionless with her fingers poised over the attitude thrusters.

"Five degrees over," Lucas ordered. Then, "Janine, blow them all, now."

Each of the eight great cargo hatches that ran along the port side of the ship was composed of two interlocking sections. Each section was a solid construct of durillian and weighed forty tonnes a piece.

Janine had prepared the hatches with a quantity of explosive charges, courtesy of the mining consignment bound for Kulak Four. The explosive decompression would add to their momentum.

The mass of six hundred and forty tonnes of ejected hatches blew directly into the attacker's flight path.

Lucas held little hope of actually hitting a vessel as fast and maneuverable as Kania. But if he could give her pause, make her change her angle of attack, make her delay firing for even a few seconds, it would be worth the effort.

Kania took a snap shot as she rolled away from Bellinda's hatches, and the ship shook again. Lucas waited. He had given her a scare. Maybe, just maybe that would make her young captain act rashly.

 

[J Riff]

See watcha think. Again, the beginning is especially important.. not to be clogged up with any distraction or unneccessary wordage if humanely possible.

Captain Lucas Telford could sense the apprehension of Bellinda's crew, as if a bond of blood and suffering joined him to them in a macabre symbiosis. Years of accumulated hatred mingled with a sense of trepidation in the stagnant air of the bridge.
The time drew near. Depending upon how chance played out, very soon his family and crew would regain their long lost freedom - or die.
The Bellinda was without hyper capability, weapons or long range communications. Thus their captors knew, with absolute certainty, that the old freighter could never escape.
Telford's wife Mary ran the day-to-day functions of the ship. In the jump seat beside her was their young son Nathan, undergoing bridge orientation. If the plan failed, Lucas wanted his immediate family close. They had faced much together, and if the end was to come, they would face it together as well- but their time of slavery would end today, for better or worse.

Telfords' years of naval service, before he returned to the Bellinda, had served to sharpen his intrinsically keen instincts, and at the moment those instincts were screaming that something was wrong.
Their ploy had worked well so far, but could they push their luck? The coded signal to the enemy escort ship Kania had bought them some time, but suspicion had lingered in the enemy captain's voice as he signed off, The halting but deliberate tenor of his words suggested that he did not buy the story. Telford would have trouble believing such a tale himself.

It's almost like... you might want to start it with a sentence like: The Bellinda drifted, without weapons, communications, or hyper capability. Thus their captors knew with cetrainty that etc. just to set the stage.. then the Captains thots.

 

[Toby Frost]

Re your question about telling on the other thread: to my mind the problem here is the very frequent use of small tells. There's no ridiculous point at which Crewman X cries "Three years in an Excalibur-class nuclear-powered ship near Proxima Centuri fighting a mammalian enemy who prefers death to dishonour and now they reveal their secret weapon -alas!" but there are loads of little tells that add up. The formula "event followed by brief tell" crops up too often to my mind and perhaps this is what's giving the impression of a constant tell. So,

"Lucas strummed his fingers lightly against the armrest. His years of naval service, before returning to Bellinda, had only served to sharpen his intrinsically keen instincts"

Contains an action followed by a short explanatory tell. The tell is that he has been in the navy for years (as he's a captain, do we need to know this?), that he returned to Belinda, and that his instincts are intrinsically keen and now even keener. How much of this do we need to know right now and how much could be dropped in more subtly later on, without directly telling the reader what's what?

In fact, if you cut the tell, and then had him bark out a suitably impressive order ("Prep two decoys and activate exhaust filters" or whatever), you've shown that he's nervous but keen without needing to tell. The career history bit can come later.

Also, the opening doesn't have a lot of actual dialogue to begin with, which means you've got a lot of backstory and reported speech being used to fill in the situation, which in itself is a sort of tell. Consider the film Serenity: the first time we meet the character Jayne, he asks the captain whether they should take grenades with them to the planet. From this dialogue we immediately learn that Jayne is warlike, there may be trouble on the planet, Jayne is of lower rank than the captain and that the captain is either wise or wrong about the grenades. That's a lot of info and no telling involved.

"Horrific concussion" and "palpable tension" are also blatant tells, because you're telling the reader what he should be picking up from the scene. Not that you can never do this, but it should be used sparingly.

A couple of things: beware of phrases that come too easily. "The tension was palpable" and maybe, just maybe" sound old to me. Oh, and by the way, if you haven't read The Cruel Sea and seen Das Boot, now may be a good time to start, seeing as you've got fighting spaceships...

I hope this helps. It's actually very difficult to explain, especially because you're not writing tells in a particularly obvious way.

 

[J Riff]

Right. I mentioned looking at some other writers... and what you are trying to do is difficult- an action sequence with mucho tension, at the same time as introducing a bunch characters...all in the first few paragraphs... and you'll probably notice that most writers simply avoid the problem by forgetting about any detail re: the characters until things are well under way.
Obviously you are working hard at this and it has all the elements needed for a terrific story, maybe just needs to slow down and spread out.
Must be a bit much, all these critiques... too many suggestions equals total confusion.. but maybe try leaving the personal info out, or just drip it in there very carefully.

 

[TheEndIsNigh]

However, It's an improvement.

I'd drop the first bit and start with the 'checked the time' para.

The background can be stuck in later.

Also the damage reports seem a bit too much for a ship to survive. After all, 'one good shot would finish her' and you describe four or five.

Anyway, could you work in a small fast attack craft inside the freighter cargo bay so that the damage is irrelevant and superficial. Also you could have the dead bodies as cadavers rather than lose some of that precious group of 87. Although the flailing arms etc, was a nice touch.

Just ideas.

 

[Droflet]

My thanks to JRiff once again. Oh, so that's how it's done. Sighs, and thinks, 'One day, when I'm a big boy.'

Toby, great comments. Sadly, I have seen Serenity, Das Boot and many years ago read the Cruel Sea. You are absolutely right; this is what I am after but it's like trying to pick up mercury with a hook. Thanks again and I'll just stick at the *******.

TIEN, always helpful. Thank you.

 

[Xelah]

I'm not going to go over this one with a fine tooth comb like the last one, but I'll give some input.

It's leaps and bounds better than the previous, though I still have some difficulty. You're still introducing a bunch of characters (albeit more fluidly than before), which is okay, but we're still bombarded by technobabble (less so than before). I'd pick one or the other and roll with it until you have time to introduce the other. It's a little overwhelming trying to remember everyone and the machinery, and then follow along with the action. It's pretty taxing on the left-brain.

 

[Nik]

Uh, wouldn't those compartments and emergency doors be closed *before* incoming fire began ??

 

[Droflet]

Xelah, thanks again. I'll keep at it and chop it some more.

Nik, yeah, sealed compartments come under the Alert Condition One, banner. Perhaps I should mention that? Thanks for your comment.

 

[doughm04]

--

Lucas Telford could sense the feelings of Bellinda's bridge crew, as if the bond of blood and shared suffering joined them in a type of macabre symbiosis

.--

To start off, this was a mouthful. It could definitely be tightened and streamlined to roll off the tongue better. Though the sentences that followed were more engaging. I liked J Riff’s idea of starting it like this or something similar “The Bellinda drifted, without weapons, communications, or hyper capability.”

--

Lucas checked the time. It had been two point four hours since they had left their escort Kania behind, and one point nine hours since they had cleared her sensor envelope and began calibrating the makeshift generator.
His finger hovered over the comm stud for a moment, then returned to tapping the armrest. Contacting the Senior Engineer would only serve to interrupt his train of thought. Tuning the harmonics of the hyper-generator took total concentration even with the best of technology. The jury-rigged apparatus that had taken four years to cobble together, had none of the sophistication of their old system. It might not even work.

—

This is a mouthful of information all at once. It might be too descriptive, and could use tightening.

--

"No reply.” He did not wait for a reply. "Mary, alert condition one. Helm, give us best possible speed to the hyper ingression point." He tapped the comm stud. "John, we need to go now."

--

This is the second time I’m seing the word “comm. stud” and I still have no idea what it is referring to. Maybe find a way to clarify what it is without adding too much bulk.


Overall I feel like it needs to have a more effortless flow. I liked the tension, but it was too broken. I didn’t feel the scene moving along with the intended tempo. I think that if the scene is broken down and some of the unnecessary bulk is removed then you have the makings of an interesting story.

 

[Droflet]

Thanks for that Doughm. Yep, I've got some rewriting to do here.