Friday Flash: Space Opera time!

Chuck Wendig is back on the job with our Friday flash fiction challenges, and in honor of May the Fourth commanded us to write a space opera, in 1500 words or less. So, more like a single aria from the opera, but I went for the melodrama of an early Star Trek episode. It's just under 1200 words.

Long Odds

“There’s no way we can win, on the face of it.” Captain Kira Andashar of the Earth Federation Starship Endurance didn’t believe in sugar-coating matters to her officers. “The invaders outnumber us three to one, and based on what they did to EFS Consequence they outgun us by far as well.”

“Should we surrender, then? Or run?” Lieutenant Albert Percival knew better. His captain wasn’t the surrendering sort, and they’d already proved they couldn’t outrun the aliens. When he asked his question he heard a few gasps, and at least one snort of derision. He ignored them and waited for the answer.

“We fight. And dammit,” Captain Andashar raised her voice, “we will win!”

A few young officers cheered, but Percival and his fellow lieutenant, Sharra Stonebrook, exchanged glances. How the devil were they going to do that?

“I hope she has a plan,” Sharra muttered to Albert. “Because I sure as hell don’t see any way.” Knowing what was coming next, the two remained as the other officers followed orders to return to their stations and prepare for battle.

Captain Andashar looked at her lieutenants. “Well? Any ideas?”

Despite the grim circumstances, Albert laughed. “I had a feeling you were going to ask that. To summarize, do I have any ideas how a single starship with suddenly obsolete weapons can defeat three alien ships with weapons we don’t even understand? Short answer: no. Not a clue.”

“Me, neither,” Kara Andashar replied. “But we’re going to need an answer in about 30 minutes, so we’d better start thinking.”

#
Twenty minutes later, the captain was at the con, her officers in place, and all prepared to sell their lives as dearly as possible in the defense of their planetary system. The patrol had a simple sweep of the outer limits of human space. Endeavor and Consequence had expected to turn up nothing, as the sweeps had for three centuries.

There always had to be a first time, Kara thought. She didn’t know she’d said it out loud until Albert answered.

“And unless we get very lucky, it’ll be the last, too.”

“Shut up and prepare for battle.”

Lieutenant Percival considered the controls under his hands. Sharra had the conventional weapons. What he had was the comms unit and control of the thrusters used for take-off and landing. Under his captain’s orders, he was going to turn the latter into a weapon, though if he handled the former right, perhaps they’d not need them.

The alien ships drew closer, and they were truly alien. They looked like a drug-induced hallucination of an octopus. These ships stayed in vacuum. They would be torn apart trying to enter the atmosphere of any planet that could support life.

Sharra said it aloud. “Damnation. If the ships look like that, what do you suppose the aliens look like?”

“The kraken,” Captain Andashar answered. “I don’t want to find out.” She was the only one who had seen the message sent from their sister ship seconds before it was destroyed by the aliens. Now, her face set and grim, she prepared to exact what revenge she could.

She hesitated, then ordered, “Send the message.”

Albert hit the button to send the pre-recorded message. They’d argued a bit over the wording, settling on the straightforward, “You are violating Human Space. Surrender to inspection and penalties for destroying EFS Consequence, or we will be forced to destroy you.” He wondered how they'd respond to that.

His translator flashed almost at once. He flipped a switch, looked at the message—they had decided not to broadcast into the bridge without checking first—and flipped a switch so everyone could hear.

The aliens had responded with a suggestion that was anatomically impossible, at least for humans.

“I don’t think that’s friendly,” was the captain’s comment. “Shields up. Fire photon torpedo across their bows, and send the second warning.” Behind her back she crossed her fingers. Their shields had never been tested. Until now there had been no enemies in space save a few pirates whose limited armament required no special defenses.

The second hail produced a repetition of the middle-finger message. A moment later Endurance shuddered as the photon torpedo launched. They all watched the viewer to see the results. Nothing. The alien ship didn't hesitate. Then a flare of light, and the bridge shook, knocking Lt. Stonebrook from her seat. She gave a yell of pain, but dragged herself back to her seat, fastened the landing straps, and grabbed the weapons controls. Chaos swarmed around her, but she focused her attention on aiming and firing a succession of torpedoes at the same spot on the lead ship.

"Damage report?" Captain Andashar demanded. Reports came in from all over the ship. Damage, but nothing fatal. The chief engineer suggested they could handle a half a dozen strikes before hull breach or loss of controls.

“We’ll never make it!” Captain Andashar couldn’t tell which of her officers yelled it, but she shared the feeling. Nonetheless she commanded, “Silence, there! And stay on your station!”

Now that she could see what the enemy weapons looked like, she began taking evasive action.

“Dammit, Captain!” This time it was Lt. Stonebrook. “How’m I supposed to aim when you do that?”

“Unerringly,” the captain shot back before the next swoop.

Sharra Stonebrook landed two more hits on the prow of the alien ship before the next shot struck Endurance. This one damaged their left thruster. Captain Andashar smiled grimly, and compensated in her next swerve. So did Lt. Stonebrook. Her fourth hit on the alien ship took spectacular effect. The empty space left behind revealed the second vessel.

“Captain! Third ship is at our rear!” The warning startled most of the crew, but Lt. Percival heard it as his signal. Flipping his screen to the rear view, he watched as the alien ship drew closer, ignoring the shouts and alarm bells, and the shudder of another hit on their shields. Through it all, he heard the captain’s quiet voice.

“Let it get close enough, Percival. Don’t panic.”

He let it get so close it almost had its nose up the thrusters, the whole ship shuddering from the repeated attacks on their shields. When he ignited the thrusters, the enemy ship vaporized as Endurance shot forward.

“Brace for impact!”

Sharra Stonebrook was already braced. Ignoring the pain from her injured shoulder, she maintained a steady fire with her torpedoes and blasters as the ships careened toward each other.

The third torpedo took effect. The impact of another enemy shot was followed immediately by the impact of the explosion of the alien ship.

Damage reports flooded in. Kira Andashar picked herself up from where the impacts had flung her, ignoring blood running down her face from a cut on her head.

“Navs! Map a course for the nearest base. Have we power?” The string of reports and commands seemed to last forever. Someone strapped a bandage on her head, but no one left stations except feet first until the ship nosed into the docking station, like her captain bloodied, but unbowed.

###

©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2018
As always, please ask permission to use any photos or text. Link-backs appreciated!

Non-fiction review: The Meaning of Everything

 

Title: The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary
Author: Simon Winchester
Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2003. 288 pages.
Source: Library used book sale

Publisher's Summary:

From the best-selling author of The Professor and the Madman, The Map That Changed the World, and Krakatoa comes a truly wonderful celebration of the English language and of its unrivaled treasure house, the Oxford English Dictionary.

Writing with marvelous brio, Winchester first serves up a lightning history of the English language--"so vast, so sprawling, so wonderfully unwieldy"--and pays homage to the great dictionary makers, from "the irredeemably famous" Samuel Johnson to the "short, pale, smug and boastful" schoolmaster from New Hartford, Noah Webster. He then turns his unmatched talent for story-telling to the making of this most venerable of dictionaries.

In this fast-paced narrative, the reader will discover lively portraits of such key figures as the brilliant but tubercular first editor Herbert Coleridge (grandson of the poet), the colorful, boisterous Frederick Furnivall (who left the project in a shambles), and James Augustus Henry Murray, who spent a half-century bringing the project to fruition. Winchester lovingly describes the nuts-and-bolts of dictionary making--how unexpectedly tricky the dictionary entry for marzipan was, or how fraternity turned out so much longer and monkey so much more ancient than anticipated--and how bondmaid was left out completely, its slips found lurking under a pile of books long after the B-volume had gone to press.

We visit the ugly corrugated iron structure that Murray grandly dubbed the Scriptorium--the Scrippy or the Shed, as locals called it--and meet some of the legion of volunteers, from Fitzedward Hall, a bitter hermit obsessively devoted to the OED, to W. C. Minor, whose story is one of dangerous madness, ineluctable sadness, and ultimate redemption.

The Meaning of Everything is a scintillating account of the creation of the greatest monument ever erected to a living language. Simon Winchester's supple, vigorous prose illuminates this dauntingly ambitious project--a seventy-year odyssey to create the grandfather of all word-books, the world's unrivalled uber-dictionary.


My Review:  
After that unmercifully long blurb, what's left for me to say? Not to worry: I'll find something, and say it regardless.

I picked this book up at the library book sale because I'm a word nerd and a lover of the OED. I have my own copy of the 2-volume "compact edition," whereby hangs a tale. When I started graduate school and moved in to a shared house in Seattle, one of my housemates saw the massive 2-volume set and laughed at the idea of it being in any way compact. That lasted until I showed her the interior, each page of which contains 4 pages shrunken of the original. (Happily, it came with a magnifying glass). I still love to consult the OED for origins and history of words.

That being said, I was fascinated by the insights into the way my favorite reference work was constructed. I'm not sure anyone by a word nerd would find the book as interesting, though, and the minutiae about the lives of the people involved wore on me as well. The problem here, I think, is that there really wasn't a book's worth of story in the 80-year undertaking. So, while parts of the book were absorbing as Winchester recounted how certain words were tracked down and captured, other parts went on too long (in my opinion) about how certain people fell out over this and that issue.

I will, however, give Winchester credit for making note of the women and people of lower rank who participated in the project, often with little credit, as well as of the sexist assumptions that kept women out of the heart of the book. But the OED did one thing: it moved the making of dictionaries from a sort of gentlemanly pursuit (think Samuel Johnson) into the world of paying jobs, which it needed to be as it absorbed at least one editor for nearly his entire adult life.

My Recommendation:
Read this if you are curious about the way a dictionary is made, or if you are a bit obsessed with words, their meanings, and their histories. Winchester tells a pretty good tale, but this one isn't as readable as some of his other books.

FTC Disclosure: I bought a second-hand copy of this book, and received nothing from the writer or publisher for my honest review.  The opinions expressed are my own and those of no one else.  I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255: "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising."  

Middle Grade Review: The Night Diary by Veera Hiranandani

 

Title: The Night Diary
Author: Veera Hiranandani
Publisher: Dial Books for Young Readers, 2018. 264 pages
Source: Library

Publisher's Summary:
It's 1947, and India, newly independent of British rule, has been separated into two countries: Pakistan and India. The divide has created much tension between Hindus and Muslims, and hundreds of thousands are killed crossing borders.

Half-Muslim, half-Hindu twelve-year-old Nisha doesn't know where she belongs, or what her country is anymore. When Papa decides it's too dangerous to stay in what is now Pakistan, Nisha and her family become refugees and embark first by train but later on foot to reach her new home. The journey is long, difficult, and dangerous, and after losing her mother as a baby, Nisha can't imagine losing her homeland, too. But even if her country has been ripped apart, Nisha still believes in the possibility of putting herself back together.

My Review: 
As is so often the case, I don't think much of the blurb for this one, compared to the actual story. That's neither here nor there, as the blurb was enough to get me interested, and the story was better and more interesting than it suggested.

Nisha's diary is her main voice. She's not physically unable to talk, but as I read it, so introverted that talking to much of anyone besides her twin brother is almost impossible for her. So a part of the story here is Nisha coming to grips with speech and silence--in a time when speech may be the far more dangerous choice. The book, realistically, doesn't give her a miracle cure. It just gives her a voice in the form of her diary.

The story, like many middle grade books, is at base about family. That's not to diminish the way in which it sheds light on a pretty awful moment in history (could the independence of India and the partition have been handled better? It certainly seems like it). It's a window for younger readers into an historical moment they may know little about. But in the end, the real question is who is family, and what constitutes family in a time when the government and many violent people are all saying that the answer to that question revolves around religion.

Nisha's family is transgressive from the beginning, because her parents married across religious lines, angering many on both sides of the family as well as creating a built-in danger in a time of growing intolerance. The creation of Pakistan made that worse, as it did for millions across what once was a single India. The journey Nisha and her family take is in search of safety, but each step is also a search for family, and in the end, that pull seems to be stronger than any lasting resentment for the marriage that crossed lines most thought should never be crossed.

Nisha may not find her voice by the end of the book, but she does find peace, and a sense that life can go on.

My Recommendation:
This is suitable for kids from about 10 or 11 up, as some of the scenes of violence might be disturbing to younger kids (and whatever age reads it, it would be worth having a conversation about what led to so much violence). Any reader will get a stronger sense of what those chaotic days were like, and the disruption to the country that followed independence.

FTC Disclosure: I checked The Night Diary out of my library, and received nothing from the writer or publisher for my honest review.  The opinions expressed are my own and those of no one else.  I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255: "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising."