Spoor Snippets

Castaway Resolution - Chapter 10 Chapter 10. "What's wrong with them?" Pearce Haley asked, a tiny tremor audible in the normally-controlled voice. "And why hasn't it hit me?" Laura shook her head, trying to banish any personal concern. That wasn't easy; anything that could take down the boys from Emerald Maui could presumably get her children, too. "I don't know yet," she said, following the projections and analyses in her omni. "Akira, how are you coming on the programming station?" "It's operating, love, but the initial calibration and test...

Castaway Resolution - Chapter 09 Chapter 9. Xander forced his eyes to focus on the designs being projected in front of him by his omni. His mouth was dry and he could hear his breath coming more quickly. "Do I need to move away?" a breathy, buzzing voice said, only a few meters distant. Yes! "No," he said. "No, we need to work together, me, you, Tav, everyone. Not letting this beat me." His heart vibrated in his chest with unreasoning fear -- a fear that made him furious. Whips is not a monster. He doesn't even look that much like the. . . he...

Castaway Resolution - Chapter 08 Chapter 8. "Hey, Tavana, can I ask you something?" Sakura, a note of hesitation in her voice. The two of them were at a crude shooting range that the Sergeant had designed, located in the long, low scar that LS-5 had left when it crashed. The upcurved walls of the groove left by the careening shuttle provided good cover to minimize or eliminate the chance of wild shots hitting anything or anyone, and it was fairly broad and straight, allowing the Sergeant to place targets (mostly made of leftover pieces of...

Castaway Resolution - Chapter 07 Part 2: SETTLERS Chapter 7. "All right, everyone," Laura Kimei said, "settle down." Sakura knew this was mostly directed at Francisco and Hitomi; the two youngest members of their unplanned colony were running around, chasing a virtual animal projected on their retinals by Hitomi's omni, which was running some kind of game for them. Looking around the big table in the center of the clearing, she could see most of the others were already seated and paying attention. Laura, Sakura's mother, sat at one end of the...

Castaway Resolution - Chapter 06 Chapter 6. Numbers stared at her with all three eyes, one of them flicking back and forth to look at the display near him. "The 'Kryndomerr Resonance'?" "You and I did the work together, but you were the one who first found the pattern that showed something was causing well-maintained ships to disappear, and then did the hard work of deriving the function and building the models that showed that it actually worked the way we thought." The Bemmie's hide showed a doubtful blue-and-pink pattern. "You were the one...

Castaway Resolution - Chapter 05 Chapter 5. Portmaster Michael Ventrella -- newly inducted a month and a half before -- gestured for everyone to sit as he entered. "We're not a huge organization, let's not get too formal," he said. "I hereby convene this official Review and Inquiry Report for incident OR-7-FTL, the event which resulted in crippling damage to colony vessel Outward Initiative. Are representatives of all interested parties here?" Captain Toriyama stood. "I am Acting Captain Musashi Toriyama. I represent both the crew of Outward...

Castaway Resolution - Chapter 04 Chapter 4. Sue shoved her hair back and forced it back under the restraining clip. "Well, now I'm even more mystified than I was before." She drifted over to the coffee dispenser, filled the transparent carbonan cup again. Numbers floated nearby, chaotic patterns flickering over his hide. "Yes." "I'd expected to find a flaw somewhere -- neglected maintenance, a mistuned coil, a one-in-a-million abrupt coil failure, something. The symptoms sure looked to me like some kind of beat between coils that turned out...

Castaway Resolution - Chapter 03 Chapter 3. "Welcome aboard, Lieutenant Fisher, Dr. Pearce," Captain Toriyama said. Sue was slightly surprised to see that while many of his features were as Japanese as his name, his skin was the color of coffee without much cream at all; he was also tall and not bad looking at all, and would probably be even better looking without the circles under his eyes and the worry lines engraved on his face. Next to him was a woman who looked to be about forty-five, some gray in her brown hair, tanned, narrow-faced...