This is a scene (VERY rough draft) from my WIP, Starship Destine: Wynter. I'm not posting it to seek out critique or praise. What I'm interested is this:
1. Reactions: are there bits of it you thought were interesting? Which bits?
2. The cast of characters is multinational and includes Asian and Hungarian characters who write their names surname-first and other European cultures that go surname-last, and I want to write them the culturally appropriate way. For the major characters I want to introduce the names with the surname in all-caps--- usually read from an ID--- so that you get which bit is the surname without me having to explain it each time. I got the idea from the international convention of writing names with surnames in all-caps which is-or-was used on Esperanto-language correspondence lists. (Jes, mi parolas esperante.)
Scene begins on the planet Oldearth during the time of the Psion Riots. Fleet officer Jang has rescued a psionic Fleet cadet, Oblonsky, from the rioters and must flee both from the riots and from a cadre of Fleet officers who agree with them.
The place looked like a desert. More earth was bare than was covered with the spare, sickly-looking grass. The few trees were small, shrubby and twisted. But as the two figures on horseback rode through the valley, there were signs that this place was once not a deserted wasteland, that it was, in fact, once a lush agricultural valley that fed a large part of a nation, the America-that-was.
There were bits of abandoned irrigation equipent, fragments of houses, places where the trail turned in to paved road for a pace or two. And, here, a piece of the modern world stuck out in this bleak place. A building—- a shack—- filled with modern equipment.
The lead rider, a young man with Asian features, directed his horse to the shack. He glanced slightly at his even-younger companion to ensure he had followed. "Boy!" he addressed him. "We're stopping here for a while. Dismount." And following his own advice, he dismounted and walked to the door of the shack. Pulling out his ID, which bore the words 'Lieutenant FIRST rank JANG Taemin' embossed into it, he waved it at the door sensor. Twice. Nothing happened.
The boy walked up and pulled out his own ID awkwardly with his right hand. 'Cadet FIRST rank Maximin Raoul OBLONSKY' was what it said. He placed it carefully in his left hand, and pulled up his sleeve to reveal angry green letters fused into the flesh of his arm: PSION. He waved both the ID and his defaced forearm at the sensor. The door clicked open.
Jang was surprised. "Why wouldn't mine…."
"Because this is my place—- my people's. Not a Fleet thing at all." He took Jang's ID and waved it around in front of the sensor. "There. Now it knows you are with me."
Jang took his ID back, entered the shack, and sat down before a standard communications array. Waving his card over the thing gave him access, but he paused. "Maximin—- I may call you Maximin?"
"No."
"Alright, Cadet…."
The boy wrinkled up his nose. "You don't have to call me that. Not after…. It's just that Maximin Oblonsky is my grandfather's name. Maximin Vladimir Oblonsky. All of the sons and grandsons also have Maximin as the first given name but none of them use it. I am called Raoul."
"OK," Jang turned back to the communication array. "I was just wondering—- what with the Anti-Psion Riots and all—- if it's even safe to contact normal Fleet channels. We need pickup, but if we contact someone who's been corrupted…."
The boy leaned over the array. "This can't contact the Fleet channels anyway—- not directly. We have to route it through my Family's system." He took a small keyboard from his pocket and slaved it to the array, and began to type, first a long code, and then words which appeared on the screen in front of Jang: 'House OBLONSKY, Colonel FIRST rank Nataliya Melody Victoire Alexandra Myeongwol OBLONSKAYA, Special Services'.
"Colonel Oblonskaya?" Jang asked.
"My mother," Raoul said. "Or at least, her comm system. I can crack her security—- at least enough to get the list of her Fleet contacts, to find someone trustworthy. Ideally, one who owes my mother a favor."
It seemed to take a great deal of time and several rather lengthy challenges and code responses before the boy got in. But from Colonel Oblonskaya's system it took a minimum number of keystrokes before the boy looked up at Jang. "OK, it's arranged," he said. "Pickup by a secure shuttle—- my family's, but with a Fleet crew—- and we'll be taken to an orbital station." He smiled, very slightly—- the first time Jang had seen the boy smile since the Riots began. "And we get to keep the horses."
The boy moved as if to leave immediately. "Wait," Jang said. "Your family—- don't you want to get word, to see if they are all safe? Your sister?"
"They are all safe, behind Family security," Raoul said. "Except my sister who was at the Fleet station in San Jose with me."
"Don't we need to find her?"
"She is fine," the boy said. "I'd know if she wasn't. Besides, she's not like me. She doesn't mind hurting people."
Jang pulled the co-ords for the rendezvous point—- a two-hour ride, could be much worse. He waved his ID over the array in a routine shut-down move—- wouldn't do to leave it unlocked—- and stopped, transfixed by what it now said.
The boy noticed. "I forgot to say. You got promoted. Commander Third rank."
"And you?"
"Lieutenant Third rank."
Jang grinned. "A damned kid officer." He mounted his horse and spurred it toward the rendezvous point, and the boy followed.
(c) Nissa Annakindt 2013, all rights reserved.
http://www.facebook.com/NissaAnnakindt
Well, first off, I like the idea of this story and you've got an awful lot of good-seeming concepts going on there - that bit of history at the outset made me want to read more, and it looks like the characters are going to be interesting.
ReplyDeleteAs for the method of introducing character names? I'd skip it. I've read some books recently that had tons of different characters in them, some of whom don't appear for chapters after chapters, only to resurface, and it's tough for me to keep track of them, especially because I read books over a period of 2 months or more. But the way you do the names wouldn't have helped me keep track of them. What I kept wanting was a glossary and character list, so that I could flip back to that to remind myself who a character is. So something like THAT would be very helpful.
But I like the stuff you've posted here.
I probably am going to have a character list for the novel version. And that's why I wanted to introduce names, at least of important characters, with the all-caps convention for family names so I don't have to explain for each character which is the surname and which is the personal name, or else present all names in the 'correct' American way of surname last.
ReplyDeleteBut thanks for the kind words about the story. It was difficult to write because I know tons of backstory that I had to WORK to keep out of the scene.