Overture to a Space Marshall
2003 National Novel Writing Month Entry

We have a Winner!

Second Novel in a Month!

Mark S. Wellington

51,068 of 50,000 Words Completed

Preface

The edge of the periphery of the United Societies was still filled with unknowns. New cultures and races were waiting to be discovered. Fleet vessels moved through the voids of space, pushing the boundaries out further and further, flashing from place to place mapping stars and other. There were dangers out there too. The Milota still existed, though the numbers were still not known, they had become much less of a problem then they were a decade earlier.

The Society was still attempting to find out the best way of doing things. Messenger vessels moved through space, transferring data from station to station, from Central Command to the planets and any other occupied location. Their small unarmed vessels flashed in and out of hyper space bringing the important information necessary to keep things operating and in synch. Ships of the line moved into the periphery, mapping out star locations, looking for new civilizations and new members of the Society.

Freighters carried cargo and ores through the sectors, providing trade goods throughout the known periphery. Shuttles connected planets with stations, the life lines of the planets.

Space was not without its dangers. Flash engines were not exact mechanism. Buffers had to be provided and safety factors built into the jumps. And sometimes they went awry, dumping a vessel days, weeks, even months away from their intended location. If the engine still worked, it could be recalibrated and the jump attempted again. If it didn’t, they captain had to aim is vessel to the closest civilized location and head there on their sub-light engines. Delays were not a bad thing, but months or even years could but a lot of strain on the environmentals of the ship, not to mention the stress it put on the crew.

Vessels were missing and there was no organized way of finding them. Thus was created the Space Marshall, a program designed to look for trouble, to find missing vessels and assist them in getting back to the civilized worlds.

This book chronicles the first two years of Commander Wilins as he fills the new positon. There are battles, rescues, mutiny and a proposal.

This novel is the second in a series of three woven together in a common era and common characters.

Excerpt:
Chapter 2 - Discovery

The small red light began flashing. It wasn’t unexpected. It was, after all, what a Sector Marshall was supposed to be out wondering in space looking for. Still, Commander Wilkins scowled as he turned from the documentation screen he was working on and punched the status button for the light.

It was a distress call. The indicators showed a suit alarm, one used by an individual in trouble in a single environment suit. The question was, how old was it? Alarms such as this were floating around the ether, many of them decades old. The United Societies had gotten smarter about insuring that the signals sent were coded so that an age could be determined. This one actually showed a date code in it. It was barely three days old. It was a valid distress signal. Signature files indicated a rather current model of suit. A few seconds later the analysis of the signal was complete. It was a United Societies Fleet Star Ship issued emergency suit.

As the computer began the calculations to determine a bearing to the distress call, Commander Wilkins terminated the manual he had been working on. The position of Sector Marshall was new, less than a year old. He had been appointed as the first sector Marshall and given two years to prove the viability of the concept. Currently he had a single deputy, who was supposed to be out on patrol with him, testing their search patterns and validating the manuals and procedures.
He kicked over the helm of the small patrol ship that had been specially designed for this job. It was only slightly larger than the messenger ships, differing by an over sized environmental suite and the fact that it was armed. Granted, it was only two missile tubes and a single pulse beam blazer, it could pack a punch much larger than anyone would guess for its small size. There were a total of 6 torpedoes and the blazer was limited to a single 20 second pulse, with a five minute refresh. And there was minimal shielding, enough to protect the occupants against radiation and small meteorites and create an air lock when necessary.

The calculations for the hyper-space Flash would take a few minutes. The double Flash engines were almost ninety percent of the mass of the small ship. The ship had been intentionally designed to fit into the same docking ports as the messenger ships.

Wilkins started through the checklist. A good opportunity to validate the process. He used the computer to work out the calculations on sending a message to his deputy. There was only a single time when he would be in the proper event window to catch a message if he sent it. He fired it off, narrow beam to the point that his Deputy was expected to be at the appropriate time, always assuming he was on his itinerary. He also sent one in the direction of the base station were their operations center was located. It would take about a week to get there, even at light speed.

The weapons were locked and loaded, blazer fully charged. The life-support systems where placed on full load, pumping the tanks as full of oxygen as they could hold. His sensors were set to maximum range.

A soft voice came out of the speaker system. “Course computed. Ready for Flash at your command.” He read the layout of the control panel and looked for anything that seemed out of synch. Nothing did. Standard flash, it should take less than ten minutes to cover the light day that the beacon had covered. “Execute Flash .”

The change was not really perceptible. The outside screens went blank, all input from sensors was blank. He worked through the checklist and had just completed it when the voice came back.

“Hyperspace flash completed. Standard drive engaged.”

He had set the filter to look only for the distress beacon.. It found it quickly, a few light seconds away. The computer quickly calculated the short jump, allowed ample space so the distortion wouldn’t affect the ship in danger and a second in hyperspace put him almost on top of the beacon’s location.

The sensors on the small craft were designed for long range scouting and not pin pointing. They had no problem detecting the general source of the beacon. A large cloud of debris was slowly expanding in front of him. The signal was somewhere in the middle of the cloud. He slowly edged into the debris field looking for the masses that were indicated on his scanners. His shields were designed to protect him against small particles and bits of rubble, but nothing on the scale of what was in front of him.

The horror of what appeared before him took a while to slowly sank into his head. It was a shell of a Spruance class Fleet Destroyer sat drifting in front of him. It looked like a giant apple corer had punched the center out of the ship. Whatever had done this had hit off center, leaving a very thin shell to the port side, slightly larger to starboard and the largest portion aft. There was nothing left above the midsection.

Copyright 2003, Mark W. Swarthout