After years of passing it up, I've decided to take it up this year! The focus of my novel will be the history of Terranis, the fantasy world where my PC RPG I'm making takes place. Essentially, I'm filling in a thousand years of history prior to the game taking place, starting with The Fall, when the interstellar civilization of mankind collapses following a brutal war against an extradimensional alien race, through a thousand years of mankind struggling to survive and rebuild civilization despite ongoing predations by the Great Enemy.
I haven't decided on the exact layout and structure of the novel yet. I guess I'll mostly just write the history out and see where it gets me. I know how this time period begins, and I know how it ends, but the space in between is about 2/3 empty, and I feel like most of what I DO have already needs some serious revision.
Anyway, here's an except from the beginning, when the Great Enemy first invades!
The Chronicles of
Terranis
Part I: The Fall
4306 AD
Lieutenant
Hercule Girard felt his head come to rest against the back of his seat as his
eyes drifted closed. His feet were propped up on the sensor console, the lights
dimmed. His control room was identical the other eleven on the small station,
floating a thousand miles above the planet of Belladrix, its sole function to
monitor and coordinate interplanetary and extra-system space traffic. No one
lived on the station; they relied on one of the thousands of shuttles used to
travel between Belladrix, its moon Terranis, and the dozens of various orbitals
and stations scattered around the system. Perhaps in ages past, some might
marvel at the idea of living on a planet and going up into orbit to work every
day, but to Hercule it was as mundane as going for a stroll outside his house.
The
only thing that distinguished Hercule’s room from the others on the station was
a small picture of his wife and newborn son he stuck to a blank piece of wall
to his side. Erika’s blonde hair seemed to glow in the sunrise of the photo,
and baby Andre had his glittering green eyes, a trait that had been passed down
among the men in the family for generations. Hercule knew most men in the Solar
Alliance military weren’t lucky enough to be stationed with their families
nearby; for all the tedium of his post, that fact alone made it all worth it.
Speaking
of tedium, today was particularly so. There were no scheduled arrivals from
out-system today, and the interplanetary traffic was especially light, so there
was virtually nothing to do. But he still had six hours to go on his shift
before the shuttle would arrive with the next crew, and he would take down his
picture to keep in his jacket until tomorrow morning.
Just as
he was finally drifting off and beginning to dream about swimming among the
Sural Mountains on Terranis, the console beeped to warn him of a new contact.
He tried to ignore it for a second, hoping the central computer would route the
contact to one of the operators, but the beep continued its gentle chirping.
Hercule rubbed his eyes with one hand and sat up, hitting a button on his other
to bring up an information display. Blinking, he stared at the readout on one
of his screens. A half-dozen ships had just come to sub-light speed on the edge
of the system, at the very extreme edge of the station’s sensor range. They
were moving in-system at a decent pace. At this range, the station couldn’t get
a positive ID on the ships, but Hercule’s brow furrowed in confusion.
The
ships had entered the system outside the normal entry points, above the orbital
plane of the system’s various planets. They were heading almost directly
towards Belladrix and Terranis, the only inhabited worlds in the system. There
were some mining posts around the inner worlds and gas harvesters orbiting the
gas giants further outwards, but the only civilian populations were here.
Hercule
was about to send a standard hail to the unknown ships, but his suspicions got
the better of him. Keying his console, he sent a low-level tachyon pulse
towards the ships, and tapped his foot while he waited for the pulse to reach
them. A couple minutes later, additional data began to filter in, giving him a
better idea of the size, mass, and constituent elements making up the unknown
ships.
Staring
at the numbers, his confusion quickly gave way to fear. The ships were not of
human manufacture. Their configurations and compositions were intimately
familiar to anyone serving in the Alliance military. Hercule’s jaw went slack
for a moment before he regained his composition, and he bolted from his chair,
throwing it to the floor and dashed out of his room. He sprinted down the short
hallway towards Commander von Braun’s office. He unceremoniously barged in,
throwing his hands on the Commander’s desk, and leaned in to stare directly at
him.
“We
have a problem,” Hercule said.
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