Coriolis: Waking the Dark - Prologue

For about a year, I've been putting together ideas and draft chapters for the first book in a series of science fiction novels. This week's blog entry is the prologue. What do you think? Would you want to read more?

Prologue: The Arrival

Nerio Space Station, Low Earth Orbit

            It didn't look like much, she had to admit. If da Vinci had cobbled together a spacecraft out of scraps from a twentieth-century junkyard, it might look a bit like the Javelin. But still, it was something entirely different from the repeated string of faceless freighters she typically wrangled in, and thus a welcome change. The steel-framed fuselage was littered with solar panels, each slowly craning for sunlight as the ship arced towards her at a ponderous pace. The solar panels reminded her of time-lapse videos of flowers blooming, gracefully yearning for light.

            “Hey Valerie, can you see it yet?” asked her co-pilot Erica Taskin. It was silly calling them pilots Valerie thought, her mind wandering off task. From her frame of reference they never actually flew anywhere. People on the ground might have a different perspective of course, but -

            “HEY! VALERIE!” Erica tried a little louder this time, the increase in volume nearly maxing out Valerie's earpiece.

            “Yeah, I see it. It's too junky-looking to be a freighter, it must be the Javelin.” And her tabloid-happy captain. There was a little extra edge to her voice when Valerie spoke the name of the incoming ship. This was not lost on Erica.

            “So I can't tell, do you hate him or have a thing for him? It has to be one or the other.”

            “Shhhhh! C'mon Erica we've got work to do. You see him out your porthole yet?”

            “Him? You know it's bad luck to refer to a ship with a masculine pronoun. But yes, I see her arriving right now.”

Valerie and Erica hadn't had many houseguests since arriving on the station six months ago. Just standard stop-and-swaps, unloading cargo from a freighter returning from the moon and loading them up with food, air, water, that sort of thing. Most of freighters were automated, so not too exciting. There had been a few personnel transfers mixed in, but they hadn’t been much better for conversation than standard cargo. It was a mundane job so far, but the views were great and the two young women had gotten along surprisingly well considering the lack of variety. Today was a little different though. There weren't many ships making the eight-month journey between Earth and Mars, and all except this one owned and operated by Coriolis.

            There was a crackle in her headset and then a friendly but confident voice came in: “This is ​Captain Pritcher of the merchant ship Javelin requesting S.S. Nerio for airdock and cargo transfer.”

            It was Valerie's job to reply, but the words were stuck in her throat.

            “Valerie? You OK?” Erica chirped. A few seconds passed with no reply. “Whatever, I'll do this part too.” Her tone changed drastically, her previously somewhat screechy petulance replaced with an over-friendly rolling yaw; part of the reason Valerie usually took the comm was because she couldn't stand to hear her colleague squawking like a prissy flight attendant. “We read you loud and clear Javelin. We have established a link-up with your ship computer and will take you in from here. On behalf of my co-pilot Valerie Arbonne, myself Erica Taskin, and the entire Coriolis Intersolar Corporation, welcome back home to Earth. We'll see you inside.”

            As the fake smile left her face, Erica clicked back over to the personal channel to berate her co-pilot. After a relatively moderate tirade that touched upon such subjects as duty, celebrity crushes, and getting enough sleep, she chomped away at an ancient and flavorless stick of chewing gum and impatiently awaited a response.

            “Sorry, sorry, I -” Valerie was cutoff mid-sentence by the hsssss-CLANK of the Nerio's airlock mating with that of the Javelin. She was supposed to get up and float over to the door on the other side of the small space station, but she was frozen in her seat.

Erica unhooked herself from her chair at the airlock controls, turned upside-down, and pushed off. There was a little gravity from Earth some 200 miles below, but it was close enough to zero-g for Erica's liking. She had always loved playing underwater in her grandmother's swimming pool growing up, and she still got a rush out of weightlessness. While most men said she was cute, Erica had always struggled with a little extra weight. Her long, flowing, amber curls (now pulled into a tight bun to combat the lack of gravity) and curvy frame got her a long way with guys, but she always felt heavy. Not so much up here.

            After swinging from a few handholds, she made it to the door expecting to see Valerie bounding up the hallway on her right. What is wrong with her today? She must really have it for Pritcher. She shook her head when she noticed Valerie's elbow sticking out the side of the big white captain's chair twenty yards down the hallway. I guess I'll have to greet him myself. The flat ​gray iris-style airlock whirred open and Erica was very surprised by what she saw. Tall, dark, and handsome my ass. One out of three won't get it done young fella.

            “Ola, I'm the first officer. Javier Ramos. Most people call me Javy. It's, um, it's nice to meet you miss,” the olive-skinned boy ducking into the station managed nervously.

            “I get it: Javy, Javeline. Very alliterative,” replied Erica.

            “Huh? No it is chhhhavee. Not Djavee.”

            “Never mind. Just get in here. Where's El Capitan?”

“You mean 'o capitao'?” he corrected her with a broad grin.

“Yeah, whatever! Captain Pritcher?”

            “That'd be me,” the man in question chimed in. He was bent over behind Javier grabbing a shirt that had escaped his suitcase.

“Erica Taskin, nice tameetcha,” she said with a well-practiced grin/headtilt combination. God he was handsome. She wasn't usually into guys with beards, but his was jet-black (like his hair) and trimmed close and it just worked on him. His green eyes seemed almost electric and his deep tan suited Erica just fine. Plenty of time for tanning beds on a trip home from Mars, if you are in to that sort of thing she thought to herself. She had to admit, she appreciated a man who knew how to take care of himself.

            Erica stuck her hand out and Javy grabbed it and shook. She pretended vainly to be courteous about that faux pas and stuck it out again for the captain. As he pressed his hand against hers she could feel the stub of his partial ring-finger on her palm. Nobody's perfect I guess, she thought, trying to suppress that creeped-out feeling.

            “Seldon, nice to meet you as well” he replied courteously enough. “Aren't there supposed to be two of you on this station?”

            “There's only one Erica Taskin,” she replied, amused by her own wit. “But yes, my uh co-pilot Valerie is not quite feeling well I'm afraid.”

            “What's wrong?” Javier asked as Seldon nimbly slid into the station and stretched to his full height. He was tall, but clearly accustomed to low gravity.

            “Oh, it's nothing. She just stayed up late last orbit and didn't get enough sleep.”

            Erica was a terrible liar and Seldon a passable poker player, so this didn't exactly convince him. “I'm sorry, I hope she feels better!” Javier interjected cheerily. Javy always acted as if being ​chipper would solve everything; why, Seldon couldn't quite tell. Past the obnoxious brunette in front of him, Seldon got a glimpse of Valerie's elbow as Erica had before. He smiled curtly and nodded as he brushed past Erica and headed over to the big white chair.

            “Hey, are you ok?” He could see her sharp features mirrored in the tiled glass observation window. His metallic ship directly beyond her reflection soaked in the pale blue planet far below, taking on an unnatural but pleasing lapis lazuli hue. Valerie’s light skin would have been beautiful he noticed – like porcelain – if it wasn't quite so ghostly pale. He shook the co-pilot's shoulder gently. “It's Valerie, right? Pardon the cliché, but you look like you've seen a ghost.”

            She slowly turned her head to face him, her face frozen in an alarming but somehow serene expression. She deliberately cleared an escaped hair from her eyes, tucking the long black strand behind her ear.  Her eyes were hollow and wide, but whatever she had seen hadn't taken away their soft azure luster. “It... it wasn't... I mean I don't think...”

            “Slow down, slow down. Just tell me what you saw.”

            “It was a small ship, about the size of... of... a couch. Just a disc. I don't think it was man-made.”

            “Wait what? C'mon…”

            Valerie Arbonne looked him dead in the eyes. “I've seen just about everything we've made that can fly out here. The way this thing moved... I'm telling you. It was NOT man made.”

            Despite himself, Seldon believed her. He turned his gaze back towards the featureless ocean and swirling clouds below and searched the curved horizon fruitlessly for signs of the extraordinary.