August Novel Essential Information

Novel Title: No Alternative

Time Setting: 2019

Genre: Life

Minimum Word Goal: 90,000

Timespan: Late May–Early September

Location: Kamloops, British Columbia

Main Character: Drake Bradley

Background Information: 

The oldest of five children born to a chef and his baker wife, Drake has grown up around food and cooking, as his parents have both worked in the same restaurant for all his life.

His great-uncle ran the restaurant initially, but his love of good food and disdain for exercise caused him to die of a heart attack while Drake was still young; furthermore, his daughters weren’t interested in the restaurant, thus Drake’s father inherited the restaurant upon his death instead.

Since then, the restaurant hasn’t been doing the greatest. It still makes a profit, but the profit margin has shrunk every year. On top of that, the staff turnover rate as nearly doubled, as Drake’s father is very controlling — a behaviour fed by his uncle having considered him unable to do anything wrong and all of his ideas strokes of genius.

Although Drake learned how to cook at a young age and has always enjoyed good food, he’s never had an interest in the restaurant, but he knows better than to let that be clearly known to his parents because they expect him to take the restaurant over when they retire.

Drake, however, wants to become a pilot, and preferably a bush pilot flying people to remote locations throughout the BC Interior; in fact, seeing as one of his friends aspires to go into Search and Rescue, the two of them have plotted that maybe he would do the flying for the Search and Rescue team his friend would join.

To his parents, however, he is the dutiful son still learning more cooking skills from both parents — and receiving rave reviews from family and friends when they’re served his cooking — and working as a waiter at the restaurant on a regular shift, as well as in most any emergency situation.

Thankfully, though, the end is in sight. He’s graduating at the end of the school year and is looking forward to receiving some money from his parents toward secondary schooling, at which time he means to enrol in an aviation program and move onto living his own life and leaving the restaurant to be taken over by one of his younger siblings.

Game Changer: Day 15

Word Total: 90,022

Year to Date: 660,254

Summary of Events:

Hawk was trying to sabotage the other hackers' efforts to get into the Sons of Nahash's computers to buy himself time to edit the General Secretary's video when one of his sabotage devices went out of control and shorted out all the computers — as well as destroying the probe factory and the millions of probes Hawk had already made. The General Secretary discovered Hawk was behind it all and had him put into his fighter on autopilot as the leader of an attack against the Sons of Nahash. Hawk found the autopilot disengage switch had been removed and tried desperately to disengage it somehow so he wouldn't be killed . . .

Excerpt of the Day:

Remembering another code — the one for the cockpit lights — Hawk punched it in and startled when the screen actually didn’t flash red.

Autopilot Disengaged, the green screen said before flashing up the data that had him hurtling toward the Sons of Chesil at five thousand kilometres an hour.

Immediately Hawk shifted the stick to pull up and turn away from the futile attack and the demise the General Secretary had plotted for him.

As he did so his craft shook and the screen flashed red, informing him that he’d been hit, and it wasn’t a minor strike either; in fact, Hawk quickly discovered that it was almost worse.

He wasn’t as close to Maarath as he’d thought, and it was his guess that the Sons of Chesil had broken orbit around it and were heading for Tamah, which loomed larger ahead of Hawk than he had expected.

The worst part, however, was that Hawk couldn’t steer at all; not up, down, left, or right, and his computer told him that his acceleration system had malfunctioned and was accelerating rapidly.

Hawk tried slamming his foot down on the decelerator, but the speed only continued to rise until he was going faster than he ever had gone before in his life, screaming toward Tamah with no way of avoiding the planet.

His accelerator hadn’t stopped accelerating by the time he ripped through Tamah’s atmosphere, which scorched the paint off of his craft, but somehow managed to leave it otherwise unscathed.

Finding his eject button still intact, Hawk pressed it, only to have an error code inform him that his eject mechanism had been locked and he needed to put in a code to deactivate the lock.

All of his codes had been changed, and he only had three tries or he would be dead.

Hawk’s heart pounded loudly enough to be heard over the scream of the air around his craft’s exterior.

He punched in the code it had been. Error.

The surface of Tamah raced toward him.

He punched in the code for the fuel jettison. Error.

Flames erupted from the engines, unable to handle the speed.

He punched the code it had been in reverse.

Suddenly Hawk found himself flailing through the air, very close to thick woods. He grabbed for his parachute ripcord. Nothing.

An explosion sounded and its force sent Hawk across the tops of the trees. His craft had made impact, but he had managed to escape alive.

After the brief interruption of the explosion shockwaves, Hawk resumed his downward descent into the trees, which tore and snatched at him, tossing him about between themselves.

A large branch slammed into his chest and stopped him for a split second before dropping him again to be flipped over by a branch to the ankles.

The last thing he remembered was the impact of a branch against his cheekbone.

Next Post: July 31.

Game Changer: Day 14

Word Count: 84,018

Summary of Events:

Hawk stayed in hiding at Tekla's residential unit for a few days while Tekla collected him a disguise of loose-fitting black clothes, contact lenses that made his eyes brown, and black dye for his hair before he went off to the Military Headquarters and started hacking away with the other assembled hackers — except that he wasn't trying to get into the Sons of Nahash's computers, he instead hacked an Emim probe manufacturer and started making lots of probes loaded with high explosives . . .

Excerpt of the Day:

Once that was started Hawk shrunk that window and set it off in the corner where it would flicker or blink if his attention was required in its direction and then started searching for the video the hackers were working to send.

It took him a bit of work to find the video message that the General Secretary had recorded, but he finally succeeded and prepared to watch it.

Putting on some wireless earpieces that Tekla had gotten him, Hawk plugged their small antenna — which looked like little more than a large droplet of water when inserted — into the port.

An automated voice spoke, telling him that his earpieces were connected; he then selected to watch the video.

The video filled the screen and soon the General Secretary appeared, seated behind his desk, with his office looking rather grand and imposing behind him, his uniform looking perfect.

“Attention Sons of Chesil,” the General Secretary said, practically spitting the words out like bad food. “I am General Secretary Vedran Dzhugashvili of the Emim.”

He stared savagely for a moment.

“We have received your probe, your declaration of war,” he continued. “And we return it. All of our forces are mobilised, and we shall attack you until you are no longer, with not even a remnant to run away to Deep Space like cowards.”

An evil smirk lifted the General Secretary’s moustache on one end.

“It is regrettable that we did not finish you the first time,” he went on. “But where our forebears failed, we will succeed. You will suffer until you are annihilated, and then your names will be torn from the history books, wiped from the hard drives, and driven from our minds as the people who never existed.”

The General Secretary brought his hands up and clasped them just under his mouth, his smirk lifting into a smile.

“You have declared war on the wrong people,” he said. “You have declared war on the fiercest and most valiant warriors of the entire universe, and you will severely regret it, for we shall show you no mercy. Insolent wretches like you deserve none. May your death be agonising.”

With that, the video was finished.

Hawk was going to see about editing the video to see if he could change what it said almost entirely, but the shrunk window flickered, so Hawk enlarged it over top of the window he’d been looking at and saw that the factory had already finished fifty thousand probes loaded with high explosives.

Immediately Hawk ordered them to launch and sent their flight instructions before shrinking the window again and opening another window that he set up to show him live security footage near the factory, and he watched with pleasure as the explosive probes began their three-day journey to Maarath for the destruction of the Sons of Chesil.

Pronunciations:

Dzhugashvili: zhoogahshveelee

Game Changer: Day 13

Word Count: 78,016

Summary of Events:

Tekla informed Hawk that the General Secretary had given up on probes and moved on to the idea of hacking into the Sons of Nahash's computer system to transmit the message, which would be followed by an attacking force; they then plotted on how to get Hawk out as discreetly as possible and Tekla got Hawk what he needed — namely a disguise and some codes to get him through doors — which he then used to pretend he'd been attacked by a prisoner who'd escaped, allowing him to be released by the guard, whom he killed and traded clothes with before inputting the prisoner escaped alert code . . .

Excerpt of the Day:

Immediately red lights started flashing, horns started blaring, bells started ringing, and Hawk input the second code: 5928, which meant the escapee had killed someone to escape, not just knocked them unconscious.

A guard arrived at the door in moments.

“What happened?” the guard asked.

“I don’t know,” Hawk lied. “I came in here to check on the prisoner and saw what you can go see over there.”

The guard walked past Hawk, who lightly bumped the guard and relieved him of his pistol before leaving briskly, not really being noticed within the chaos that was everywhere.

He got orders from several people and he went and hurried in those directions until he lost sight of those who’d given him the orders, strategically making his way toward the little-used stairwell.

All the sirens and whatnot still sounded loud in the stairwell, but not a single person appeared on the steps, far more people preferred to use the elevator pods than the stairs, which was alright by Hawk.

Reaching the top level, Hawk found the hangar entry as deserted as he’d expected and input the three codes Tekla had given him as prompted. The door opened and Hawk strode inside, where he startled in spite of himself at the sight of a group of guards casually eating off in a corner.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded, as if addressing lower-ranking officers of his unit — which the guards were technically even lesser than. “There’s a fifty nine twenty eight downstairs, they need everyone on the lookout.”

“But we’re in charge of the hangar sir,” one of the men said hesitantly.

“I don’t care,” Hawk swore. “He’s not going to get in here, his hand won’t pass the scan and he doesn’t have the codes, move it!”

“Yes sir,” the men each said as they scrambled to their feet and left their unfinished lunches.

Hawk waited until they were gone before stealing the tastiest-looking of the lunches and eating it. He then hurried over to the nearest marked fighter and got into the loose-fitting ejection suit.

Pressing the button at the top of his breastbone, Hawk watched as the suit tightened to fit closer around his disguise uniform. He then put the helmet on, fitting his mouth over the respirator piece and hopped up into the fighter.

Inputing the code to override the ignition — for which he needed a key — Hawk closed the hatch, activated the deoxygenation, followed by the opening of the hangar door before he shifted to release the gravity and float out, pressing the button to close the hangar door once he’d floated clear of it.

He free-floated for a few moments before quick shifting the craft into forward gear, flicking the switch that turned on the overhead lights to suggest that he was responding to a distress call, and speeding away from the hangar toward Station Ten.

Game Changer: Day 12

Word Count: 72,029

Summary of Events:

Tekla brought Cvita to visit Hawk, who had to soothe his rather distraught girlfriend because she didn't really understand why her father had jailed him. Several days later Tekla told Hawk that the General Secretary was trying again to send a probe — with twice the attacking force — to the Sons of Nahash and discussed the possibility of Tekla helping Hawk escape to gather some probes and launch the attack he'd suggested, or even better yet — especially in Tekla's mind — assassinating the General Secretary . . .

Excerpt of the Day:

He was actually glad that Tekla had left, because he’d had a doubt strike him that he couldn’t shake about the idea of actually assassinating the General Secretary — as much as it would be nice to eliminate him — that he hadn’t wanted to end up inadvertently sharing with her.

His doubt was whether it was a good thing to be the one who pulled the trigger to end the life of a man he owed his current rank to, a man who had always looked on him with a decent measure of favour, compared to the behaviour of all of the other higher-ranking people toward him.

Too, the General Secretary was Cvita’s father. Would Cvita really want anything to do with him after he killed her father?

She probably didn’t think the General Secretary was bad enough to deserve to be killed, after all, she was rather distraught at the fact that her father had effectively disowned her to the most squalid place in the entire colony and had decided to throw her lover into jail.

Even if she was finding her father surprisingly mean, she probably still loved him and would want him to die a slow and peaceful death, one that occurred naturally, as a result of old age, she wouldn’t want him to be attacked and shot — and especially not by Hawk.

Hawk knew Tekla’s hatred of the General Secretary well, and he understood it. He could see why she hated the General Secretary; and, in fact, he was rather upset that the General Secretary would’ve done such a thing to Tekla, because it was completely unjustified.

She had been taking the test to be commissioned early and he failed her because she refused to do something that wasn’t even a part of the test. It was completely contrary. As much as it made Hawk the only person in the history of the Emim to receive his CES at the age of fifteen, he wouldn’t necessarily have been opposed to sharing that record with someone if they were capable of doing it, as Tekla had been.

So if Hawk were to tell Tekla that he wasn’t sure he ought to kill the General Secretary he was sure that she would end up losing her mind at him and telling him that the General Secretary should’ve died years ago.

Unless Hawk could succeed in doing the other ideas of collecting up the unmanned probes and launching an attack of his own via the attack-from-below method that he had suggested and was not impressed that the General Secretary had cast aside without even attempting.

Or even the idea of seeing who else out there was discontent with the General Secretary, or even thought him an outright idiot for continuing to send probes followed by attack forces only to have the probes shot and the attack forces turn back.

Game Changer: Day 11

Word Count: 66,052

Summary of Events:

Hawk was tortured and thrown in jail for insubordination by the General Secretary; but was pleased to learn that — like many a low-ranking officer — Corporal Ognianov was working as a prison guard to earn some extra money and so had someone to talk to who wasn't mean to him, and could check up on Cvita. Another low-ranking officer Hawk knew — but sorely disliked — came by to take Hawk for more torturing and taunted him, causing Hawk to get upset and knock him out before proceeding to attempt an escape, which failed and got him even more beat up, landing him in the prison hospital to recover . . .

Excerpt of the Day:

He heard the sound of the door being unlocked and turned to see Corporal Ognianov slide the door open before stepping in, sliding it shut, and locking it.

She walked over and sat down on the bed so close that her hips were resting against his hips, then she put a hand on his chest lightly.

“How are you feeling?” she asked.

“Kind of better,” Hawk replied.

“That’s good,” she said. “Maybe this good news will help you feel even better.”

“Oh?” Hawk said, intrigued.

“The probe was shot as soon as it was in range and the fighters pulled back to regroup, as they weren’t supposed to attack until the probe was transmitting,” she said. “So many and severe casualties have been averted.”

“For now,” Hawk replied dismally.

“I’d thought you’d be happy to hear that,” she said, sounding almost insulted.

“The General Secretary doesn’t give up that easily,” Hawk replied. “Sure he didn’t end up getting his mission to work the first time, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t going to try repeatedly again until he does succeed, or has run out of soldiers to send out toward their ships, whichever happens first.”

She sighed. “I guess that is true.”

“He probably hasn’t seen his stupidity yet,” Hawk said. “And who really knows if he is ever going to see it?”

“I’d like it if he didn’t and someone got so frustrated with him that they killed him,” she said.

“I could do that Corporal,” Hawk said.

“Please,” she said. “It’s Tekla.”

Hawk looked at her. “You think I deserve to know your first name?” Hawk asked.

“Oh I’m sure you knew it, considering how you looked up my page before coming to talk to me,” Tekla replied. “I’m just allowing you to call me by it.”

“Why?” Hawk asked.

“You should know that too, considering the discussion we had the other day before you made your escape bid,” Tekla replied.

“Well then I guess it’s only fair that you call me Hawk,” Hawk said.

“I have to admit that I don’t really know if Hawk entirely suits you as a name,” Tekla said.

“According to what I was taught at the Institution a hawk is a type of bird that hunts animals to eat,” Hawk said. “I think that fits. I don’t necessarily eat the people I kill, but I hunt them down and I make them look like something ate them before I’m done with them.”

“Oh,” Tekla said. “It does fit you then.”

“You’ll keep me posted on how many times the General Secretary bangs his head on the wall before he realises that he’s not going to be able to break it by that method?” Hawk asked.

“I will,” Tekla replied. She lifted her hand off of his chest and stroked it through his hair, which was starting to get long enough for him to consider too long, at least on the top of his head. “We can laugh at him together.”

Game Changer: Day 10

Word Count: 60,064

Summary of Events:

Hawk was summoned, with all of his fellow officers, to a meeting where the General Secretary told them how he meant to attack the Sons of Nahash: he meant to send a probe to them like they had to him, followed by an attack force. Hawk knew such a plan would result in much death for the Emim and followed the General Secretary to his office to confront him about it relentlessly . . .

Excerpt of the Day:

The General Secretary slapped Hawk again. “Be silent!”

“No,” Hawk declared. “I will not be silent. For the good of our people I will not be silent.”

Heavily the General Secretary slapped Hawk’s face twice more. “I will not have this insubordination!”

“You mean to destroy our people by this tactic!” Hawk shouted. “You mean to bring an end to the Emim and leave it between the Sallu and the Sons of Chesil who gets Tamah!”

“You insubordinate wretch!” the General Secretary roared. “You will suffer for these words!”

“I cannot let my people be destroyed,” Hawk replied emphatically. “We will not give up so easily, fail so foolishly, we cannot.”

The General Secretary seized Hawk’s throat and dug his fingernails in deeply. Hawk could feel his skin giving under the pressure and blood starting to ooze. The General Secretary’s face contorted into savage expressions.

“I am the General Secretary!” the General Secretary roared. “And I will not suffer this insubordination! You have gone too far! You have turned my daughter against me and into a wench and now you dare to challenge my authority and call me stupid! You will die for this!”

Hawk pried at the General Secretary’s hand with both of his own and released it from his neck, allowing him to breathe properly again.

“You mean to kill us all,” Hawk said. “ And I will not let that happen.”

“I mean to kill them all!” the General Secretary roared. “And I will kill them all! I am the General Secretary!”

“That doesn’t give you any superpowers!” Hawk cried. “You’re just as killable as anyone else!”

“So!” the General Secretary bellowed. “That is what you mean to do! You mean to kill me!”

“No sir,” Hawk replied, doing his best to keep a steady voice. “The Sons of Chesil mean to kill you. And they will succeed because you are playing right into their hand.”

“You know nothing about military strategy,” the General Secretary growled.

“Then why do you claim that the military strategists at the Institution are among the best the Emim have?” Hawk asked. “I was taught military strategy, and I have received much commendation and even promotion because of my competency with it.”

“This type of war you were not educated for,” the General Secretary said.

“Yes I was,” Hawk replied. “We are trained to be crack troops no matter what the scenario. That’s the whole point of the Institution.”

“I am your penultimate superior officer,” the General Secretary said.

“It’s ultimate sir,” Hawk said before the General Secretary could speak again. “Ultimate is top, penultimate is second from the top. General Mihaylov is my penultimate superior officer. You are my ultimate superior officer.”

The General Secretary slapped Hawk across the face again. “I have had enough of you! I am your penultimate superior officer, that means that I know more than you do in every single thing!”

“You should,” Hawk said. “But you don’t. Because if you did you wouldn’t be this stupid.”

Game Changer: Day 9

Word Count: 54,039

Summary of Events:

The General Secretary was severely displeased with Cvita's body modification and ordered Cvita — and Hawk, by extension — to move out of their residential unit within his quarters to a unit in the most undesirable residential station in the colony. While they were packing and moving — because the only other option was for Cvita to get the work undone, which she refused to do — Hawk saw an explosion and learned that an unmanned probe was making for the military headquarters. He immediately went to help prevent it from getting in, but nothing could stop the probe, which got inside and connected itself to a computer, making the screen go black . . .

Excerpt of the Day:

Gradually a picture appeared on that portion of the screen; it was of a man with dark brown eyes, black hair, and bronze skin.

He was wearing a green beret on his head that had a golden pin of the Sons of Chesil insignia, atop hair that was cut similarly to Hawk’s, except that his short hair was longer than Hawk’s and his long hair was shorter than Hawk’s.

A thin moustache decorated his upper lip and narrow lines of facial hair went straight down from the corners of his mouth to his chin, from which sprouted a somewhat thin goatee that hung down to the second gold button on his green, military-style coat, which was also adorned with gold braid.

His expression looked sinister and when he began to speak he had an accent to his voice that wasn’t the same as any other accent Hawk had ever heard before in his life.

“Greetings, Ikkesh of the General Secretary,” he said. “I am Gökhan Tiryaki, Caliph of the Sons of Nahash.”

There was a murmur of unease throughout the group.

“Did you think we were dead?” he asked, then chuckled. “We were not so, but indeed, we spent three hundred years away for the purpose of strengthening, rebuilding, planning, preparing, and plotting.”

The Caliph crossed his arms.

“Now we are finished with all of that, and we have come from Deep Space to get not only what we want, but what we deserve,” he said. “We want control of Tamah — and we will get it — but we also deserve revenge.”

There was even more uneasy murmuring throughout the group.

“Revenge for the abject humiliation which you made us to suffer,” he declared. “Revenge for the losses of good men, the losses of supplies, the losses of craft, the losses of innocents, and the losses of so, so much more, all of which was taken from us by you.”

Hawk, for one, felt a wave of resolution to fight against these wretched invaders who’d shown up and killed so many of their own good men and destroyed their craft.

“In addition, we will fulfil our original goal of controlling Tamah and will usher in a new world order,” the Caliph said. “If you wish to spare yourselves or to transform from being a fatherless Ikkesh to a Son of Nahash, we will accept you, but everyone else dies as the payment for the lost among our brothers.”

For himself personally — as he couldn’t speak definitively for everyone — Hawk saw no allure in going to the Sons of Chesil, he was going to steadfastly refuse, no matter how hard anyone might try to convince him to bow the knee to their authority, he would not do so.

“Let it be known among all your people that we declare war against you unless you repent of your despicable behaviour and come under the teaching of our people, who are the true ones,” the Caliph declared. “Let all the Ikkesh die, all is for the Sons of Nahash.”

Pronunciations:

Ikkesh: ihkesh

Gökhan: gaukhahn

Tiryaki: teer'yahkee

Game Changer: Day 8

Word Count: 48,042

Summary of Events:

Hawk paid a visit to Corporal Ognianov in an effort to figure out just why he didn't recognise her and found her rather unwilling to answer his questions, not seeming to understand why his lack of recognition bothered him so much; when she got up to refill her drink, however, Hawk made a significant discovery . . .

Excerpt of the Day:

As he watched her he observed that she had a large, significant scar across the back of her neck and Hawk’s mind suddenly flashed up a memory of a little girl, a large knife, and lots of blood.

Hawk slid off the fingerless black glove that covered his right hand unless he was in water or bed and looked at the straight mark across the back of his hand. His mind immediately transformed it to be near-gushing deep red blood, the whitish colour of the long, slender metacarpals showing for the nanosecond after he lifted the corner of his shirt off of the wound to look at it again.

He looked up at her when she returned and suddenly his mind realised why he didn’t recognise her.

“You’re a blonde,” Hawk said, looking her in her eyes, which sat underneath eyebrows that were the same sort of golden-brown colour as his were.

She looked defensive.

“You’ve coloured your hair brown,” Hawk said, keeping his gaze locked on hers. “I thought you died. You were laying facedown on the floor, blood running from the back of your neck. I may’ve been two years away from my CES, but you sure looked like your head had been severed to me. I never heard anything of you again after that.”

Slowly she reached up and rubbed the back of her neck where he knew the scar was from the knife that had been wielded against not only Corporal Ognianov and Hawk, but over three dozen other exceptional students at the Institution, some of whom had been killed by the kid who’d been punished for cheating on his tests and was going to be sent away from the Institution to be educated for a different job.

From what Hawk had heard afterwards from the older kids the kid who’d attacked them had blamed them for besmirching his reputation because one of the exceptional girls in his class refused his romantic advances.

In order to stop him one of the commanders was forced — after shooting him in several wounding places to no effect — to shoot him in the head and kill him.

The scar under Hawk’s left eye and the one across the back of his right hand were his only wounds because he’d been rather late to the conflict. He’d not seen the young woman who now sat before him get struck.

“Why were you hidden away?” Hawk asked. “He was killed.”

“I couldn’t go back,” she replied. “You seriously think a six year old could return to a place where she nearly got her head chopped off?”

Hawk shifted his jaw. “Not even when you were older?”

“I was fourteen when I was finally able to face the fear and go back,” she replied. “It was advised anyways, with the progress I was making on my own they wanted to see me in an environment like that before they acquiesced to my seeking a CES test, and they also told me I needed to face that fear because I was going to be wounded in combat someday.”

Game Changer: Day 7

Word Count: 42,228

Summary of Events:

Hawk was required to be present at the inspection of a unit returning from battling the Ozem on Tamah for their regular leave — not that he was sure why he was required to be there — and he discovered one of the unit members was a young woman who he would've been educated with and had even fought in a significant battle with recently, but didn't recognise at all, which bothered him; on top of that, on the information page about her was a note identifying who her mother was, which made Hawk check out his own information page . . .

Excerpt of the Day:

All of the data was known to him; his birthday, physical specs that showed him to be just 43.2 centimetres taller than Corporal Ognianov and 38.1 kilograms heavier, his age, his birthday, his CES*, all of his promotions — including the one to lieutenant almost nine months before — and all his notable achievements.

At the bottom of his page, however, there was no note suggesting the identity of his parents was known. Admittedly Hawk felt a little disappointed, not that he was altogether sure why. He’d never really cared about whether he’d had parents or not before; he’d had no time to, having just been desperately trying to survive at the Institution.

Hawk returned to Corporal Ognianov’s page, looking for more information, but there was none to be had on the general page, so he input the Special Access Code to see what else he might get.

As a lieutenant, Hawk technically wasn’t supposed to have the Special Access Code, it was restricted for generals and up — which was just the General Secretary — only, but when he’d surreptitiously espied a superior officer viewing a page that had more comprehensive information about a comrade Hawk knew well than Hawk had been able to find he’d started his pursuit of the means to unlock that further information and had eventually discovered the Special Access Code, which was changed every two months on a rotation through five-digit numbers.

After being locked out by the code change and forced to guess the new code a few times Hawk managed to find a way to get himself sent the notification all the others who had access to the code received telling him what the new code was, allowing him unobstructed access to the most comprehensive information on everyone and everything that was known to the Emim.

The page blinked and immediately Hawk saw the additional information; she had a different date of transfer than her birthday, which meant that she’d either been registered and handed over or found with identification when she was hardly a week beyond three years old.

So he should know her. He would’ve been nine when she arrived, and she would’ve been nine when he’d left. Why didn’t he know her?

*CES = Commission for Early Service

Pronunciation:

Ognianov: awgkneeahnawv

Game Changer: Day 6

Word Count: 36,045

Summary of Events:

Hawk and his fellow officers met with the General Secretary again to share their ideas about what should be done next; Hawk's idea, to his upset, was not well-received by his comrades, although the General Secretary thought it not bad. Later that day Hawk took Cvita out to dinner at her behest — he didn't like going out to dinner because people looked down on him for being an orphan, despite all his military accomplishments . . .

Excerpt of the Day:

At the moment, Hawk happened to be in one of those very same unpleasant positions he preferred to avoid whenever and however he could; he was following Cvita — who was spellbindingly attractive in a long, narrow, relaxedly-fitted satiny red dress — through a restaurant to their seats.

Cvita’s dress was beautiful even from the back, featuring two rather narrow straps over the shoulders that made to cross, fanning out into several straps each before they did so.

The straps that fanned out wove through each other as they crossed before anchoring to lower and lower points down the side of the dress, leaving Cvita’s back only covered by a series of narrow red straps that were rather loosely woven together, making a latticework over her skin.

When they reached their seats Cvita turned around and sat down, revealing the equally beautiful front of her dress, which tapered out from the straps, widening to go under her arms to where the back straps attached on the outer sides while the inner edges tapered a bit more slowly to join down at a point at least halfway — if not two thirds of the way — between her collarbone and her navel.

At her bust a golden ring inlaid with red stones was somehow attached to the dress so as to keep it from potentially falling open, or more likely being pried open by some overzealous man who wanted to see what wasn’t his to see.

Her rather long, dark hair was gathered up into a labyrinthine mass of curls adorned with golden glitter and small red jewels that were somehow adhered to her hair — at least until morning, as usual.

Softly Cvita’s red-coloured lips smiled at Hawk, who gave her his typical subtle smile back. As a military man he wasn’t allowed to dress in a casual dinner suit. If he was going out on a special occasion he wore his dress military uniform.

Since most of the Emim men were in the army, though, this meant that he wasn’t the only one wearing a medal-adorned uniform with epaulettes, insignia, and the like; in fact, it was the men who wore dinner suits that were the anomaly, as every able-bodied man was to fight, it was only those who had some handicap that prevented them from being effective warriors or whose skills were so incredibly gifted in something that was good and helpful who weren’t in the army.

Hawk removed his military cap and set it down so that it hung over his knee. An attractive waitress came and took their drink order before leaving them to decide what they wanted to eat.

Game Changer: Day 5

Word Count: 30,033

Summary of Events:

Hawk informed the General Secretary of the destruction of the Ozem fighters and was pleasantly surprised to hear that the range he'd been told by his computer had been corroborated by the second reconnaissance force. Later that day the General Secretary ordered a meeting of the officers in which he announced that the reconnaissance force — in spite of being completely cloaked the whole time — had been annihilated. Everyone was tasked with thinking up ideas for the next course of action, and Hawk spent much time over the next few days doing that . . .

Excerpt of the Day:

Hawk’s second idea was a much more daring, dangerous, and risky idea that Hawk had his suspicions no one was going to want to carry out aside from himself: to set out with cloaking and depart for Maarath, gradually descending until one could possibly pass underneath Maarath and attack the ships from the bottom, as not only was it highly unlikely that there would be guns down there, but who really thought about reinforcing the underside of their ship? 

Most ships were reinforced on the sides, and even the top to some extent, because those parts of the craft were where everyone was predisposed to attacking. Pretty much no one attacked from underneath; this not os much because they didn’t want to but because they probably didn’t think that they could.

The thing was, though, that if fighters were to go underneath the ships and attack the hopefully vulnerable underbellies they would have to fly straight upward, which could be dangerous if they got too close to the ship they were attacking before they undertook evasive manoeuvres, not that war didn’t entail casualties or anything like that.

Gunships had guns that they could point upwards without having to face that way for themselves, but fighters had fixed guns, often mounted forward of the cockpit; there was a little bit of left-right turn and the smallest of upward lift allowed — which somewhat disqualified them as true fixed guns — but generally the guns were forced to fire only at oncoming attackers.

Of course, that was suitable for fighter-to-fighter combat, or even for normal surprise attacks on gunships where cloaking provided cover before the gunship could detect them, leaving them able to get close enough to fire devastatingly on the ship.

Seeing as the Sons of Chesil had extraordinary gunships — at least when it came to range — they had to be attacked from underneath; and a person had to hope that they were genuinely vulnerable underneath so they would actually be harmed by the projectiles being fired at their undersides.

Of course, if their guns had super-long ranges then what was to say that their ships didn’t have super-strong protection? How could Hawk be sure that kind of a gamble would work?

He couldn’t, nor could he even hope that they might be able to bomb the Sons of Chesil because bombs only worked on Tamah, which had the gravity to pull them downward onto a target so that they could detonate as was desired.

Thanks to gravity on Tamah bombing could possibly even be done from a ten thousand kilometre height, one would hope, but yet the calculations to make sure a bomb dropped from that height would actually hit its target and detonate could be torturously difficult and complicated and could lead to a lot of failures before finally the first success would occur, by which time the Sons of Chesil would be well aware of their intentions and would have fired back or even possibly sent out challenging fighters.

Game Changer: Day 4

Word Count: 24,018

Summary of Events:

Hawk continued to monitor the progress of the fleet of Ozem fighters heading toward Maarath, observing that the fighter whose cloaking failed didn't turn back; Cvita, however, wasn't interested in watching the fighters travel and so managed to get the computer to continue doing the tracking without zooming in and Hawk couldn't actually figure out how to change it back, so he was forced to give all his attention to Cvita until just after midnight two days after he'd noticed the fighters leave Ebed's orbit, when he heard what sounded like gunfire and was informed by the computer that it could no longer locate the uncloaked fighter it'd been tracking . . .

Excerpt of the Day:

“Where was it’s last recorded position?” Hawk asked.

“Two hundred and ten thousand kilometres from the surface of Maarath,” the automated voice replied. “Gunfire has been detected in the same vicinity starting at zero hours, twenty two minutes.”

“What time is it now?” Hawk asked.

“Zero hours, thirty one minutes,” the automated voice replied.

Hawk activated his holo-screen, connecting it to the computerised window. “Computer, download tracking footage from zero hours to present.”

“Downloading,” the automated voice replied.

While he waited, Hawk glanced toward where Maarath was approximately located; although it was likely to only be a small red speck from here, considering how it was three days of non-stop flight to reach the planet.

“Download complete,” the automated voice announced.

“How many shots were fired?” Hawk asked.

“Twelve,” the automated voice replied. “The first shot was fired at zero hours, twenty two minutes, the final shot was fired at zero hours, twenty nine minutes.”

Hawk disconnected his holo-screen from the window and went to the footage that had been downloaded.

Although he had requested thirty one minutes of footage, Hawk skipped through the first twenty minutes and then paused it at the twenty minute mark.

The uncloaked fighter was visible, as were the Sons of Chesil’s ships orbiting around Maarath; additionally, the cloaked fighters were actually visible as black shapes against the large, silver-and-green ships of the Sons of Chesil, which Hawk guessed was because of the angle the camera was at not being something that was considered by the cloaking devices.

Hawk couldn’t really tell the distance between the Sallu fighters and the Sons of Chesil ships, even though he knew the size of the former well; this he also attributed to the angle of the footage.

“Computer, how far from the surface of Maarath are the . . . ships in orbit there orbiting?” Hawk asked, not sure if the computer would know what he meant were he to say Sons of Chesil.

“The . . . ships in orbit around Maarath are orbiting two hundred thousand kilometres from the planet surface,” the automated voice replied.

Hawk nodded and started the video. He watched as the fighters moved closer to the ships, after a long time — although it was just more than a minute — there appeared to be changes on the side of the Sons of Chesil ship that could be seen the best; Hawk quickly realised this was gun hatches being opened.

In spite of the fact that it was recorded footage Hawk actually startled when the first shot was fired and exploded the uncloaked fighter.

“If the ships in orbit around Maarath are two hundred thousand kilometres from the planet surface, then that shot had a range of . . .” Hawk trailed off, recalling the number the computer had told him.

Two hundred and ten thousand kilometres. The longest-range gun Hawk had ever heard of before had a three hundred kilometre range. The Sons of Chesil’s guns had over three times that range.

Game Changer: Day 3

Word Count: 18,024

Summary of Events:

Hawk was informed by the General Secretary that he wasn't going to be leading the second reconnaissance mission, as the experienced reconnaissance pilots had asked him not to be involved, which Hawk was okay with — except for the fact that the General Secretary effectively ordered him to use the time now available to him to impregnate the General Secretary's daughter. Having woken up before his alarm one morning, Hawk lingered in bed and watched out the window as a growing party of unmarked but Ozem-style fighters orbited around Ebed, preparing, he suspected, to embark on their own reconnaissance mission toward Maarath and the supposed Sons of Nahash . . .

Excerpt of the Day:

Glancing back up toward Ebed Hawk saw the party of Sallu fighters heading away from Ebed in rather a loose formation; in fact, it was a deliberately disorganised sort of formation that had no real shape to it which was often used in convoys and reconnaissance missions to force those who meant to attack to have to re-aim their guns significantly between shots.

As they progressed away from Ebed their trajectory was already clear to Hawk: they were headed for Maarath, to investigate the Sons of Chesil.

It wasn’t long, maybe a few minutes after they left the orbit of Ebed, that the Sallu fighters started to disappear, but not in explosions, they just vanished, meaning that they had activated their cloaking devices.

If Hawk were to get the computer-integrated window in the unit — which was located in the main living area — to zoom and enhance where they had disappeared Hawk was sure he would be able to see the fighters still somewhat faintly, as their cloaking wasn’t as effective as the Emim cloaking, and that because of the fact that the lights they used to achieve it weren’t as small, thus the stars and such that moved across them moved haltingly, while the smaller lights the Emim used allowed for a smoother appearance.

Before Hawk could slip out from underneath Cvita to go to the computer-integrated window and see what he could see of the Sallu fighters, however, there was a distant flickering — about as far away as the Sallu fighters had been — and flashes of one of the fighters started to appear before finally the fighter was more visible than invisible, the lights of the cloaking only occasionally flickering parts of the fighter into hiding.

It was several minutes — in fact, Hawk observed by way of the clock in the room that it was over fifteen minutes — that the fighter flickered before finally it stopped and remained uncloaked.

As a result, it appeared to Hawk that the fighter’s cloaking device had failed, or possibly been damaged.

Hawk didn’t know how the Sallu cloaking devices functioned or where the activation terminals were — as the control button, switch, or lever was in the cockpit, but what it triggered didn’t necessarily have to be housed in the control panel, or even underneath the protection of the craft’s cladding.

As a rule — at least for the Emim — activation terminals and other things that were important to be kept in good working order were put under the protection of the cladding so that debris — such as was abundant in open space around Maarath since the destruction of all the ships and small colonies that had surrounded Maarath when the Sons of Chesil had arrived — and space rocks couldn’t damage it.

Pronunciation:

Cvita: sveetah

Game Changer: Day 2

Word Count: 12,007

Summary of Events:

Hawk returned and gave his report to the General Secretary, who was furious to learn that Hawk had been accompanied by inexperienced soldiers on his reconnaissance mission, instead of the veteran reconnaissance team the General Secretary had ordered accompany him; he was also dumbfounded at the idea that the Sons of Nahash could have survived in Deep Space and returned; in fact, the General Secretary — among others — wasn't wholly convinced it was humans, but speculated that some other intelligent life forms had appropriated the insignia after finding wreckage or abandoned ships bearing it . . .

Excerpt of the Day:

Hawk personally believed they would be human sons of Chesil as, aside from the animals, he’d never seen any other living creatures aside from human beings in his life, and he was pretty sure that if any had been found they would’ve been documented whether for the purpose of remembering or because of the fact that they might not necessarily have gotten along peaceably.

There was no recorded history of other creature groups aside from the ones that Hawk knew, leaving him hard-pressed to believe the idea that there were other creatures out there other than the ones already discovered — all of whom called Tamah home — even if it seemed odd that there would be this whole large and expansive universe and only human beings and animals they could use for food, help, and companionship dwelling in it; much less that there was only one planet on which all life could be sustained without any sort of aids like the oxygen processors that the colony had.

The General Secretary continued to answer questions of men who had their qualms about the invaders, and those who also were rather nonchalant and considered the fleet of Deep Space arrivals to be no threat whatsoever to them or their bid for control of Tamah.

Hawk personally didn’t see how people could be so nonchalant about the idea of ships emerging out of Deep Space and annihilating every single thing that they found orbiting about Maarath.

After all, if these were the Sons of Chesil — as Hawk, for one, was convinced they were — then it was more than likely that they had come back not only because there was nothing else, but likely because of the fact that they wanted revenge for the humiliating defeat which they had suffered at the hands of the Emim, particularly.

Even if they didn’t necessarily mean to stay, but meant to return to wherever they’d gone for three centuries, they meant to get revenge, particularly on the Emim, Hawk was sure, and it was not going to be at all a pleasant experience to get attacked in revenge, especially not considering just how accurate their fire had been on those dozen ships.

There had really only been one or two missed shots, although Hawk had certainly felt like one of those stray shots had actually been meant to harm him, even if the Sons of Chesil shouldn’t have been able to see or detect him with his cloaking on.