Family Law 3

Past 98K words.

Projects… Works on the side

When I get an idea for a book I usually write a chapter or two. I have a half dozen in various stages. I’ll get back to them if I can but the series get first call on my time.
However, here is a little teaser.

A Quick Clean Victory

Chapter 1

“What are the numbers?” Commander Three Fingers demanded.

“Oxygen is about one part in five, maybe a little low, gravity is high, eight parts per hundred extra from standard. Spin is about seven-eighths of a standard day. The planet must have a big iron core,” the navigator/astrophysicist Blue mused.

“Temperature?” The officer asked gruffly. He wasn’t interested in abstract knowledge now.

“Well below the zero point of water freezing at the axis ends, all over the scale elsewhere. I’m seeing some areas at near half the scale to boiling, the terrain is rugged with large mountains and active volcanism on several continents. Temperature varies with altitude and proximity to the large bodies of water. It has a big tilt to its axis too. There’s more water than land, and it seems to be deeper than we can measure on passive scan out this far. Once we get well inside the orbit of that big moon I’ll get a reading.”

“Why don’t you sweep it with low frequency radar then?” Three Fingers asked, irritated.

“There is a technological presence on the planet. They may easily detect us, if I go to active scan.”

“Shit.”

“Worse than that, I detect neutrino emissions and artificial satellites,” Blue said, quietly.

“People?” Three Fingers asked, tense.

“Not our kind, nor Tigers, nor Bugs,” Blue assured him. “But whatever they are there’s a lot of them. I can already see surface artifacts.”

“Set for stealth running, no emissions, not even internal wireless,” Three Fingers ordered. The flight deck sounded with a brief buzz, as a dozen belt communicators vibrated, and displayed a notice that all com was restricted to hard wired.

“There’s no artificial radiation from other planets in the system,” Blue added.”I’d be surprised if they are advanced enough to detect such low powered emissions.”

“So would I,” Three Fingers agreed. “And the last thing I need right now is any more surprises. I wish we could just pass on to the next few systems, and not have to deal with them.”

“Chances of a planet on which we could survive are so low it would be suicide. We have limited life support, several critical systems without redundancy, leaks it is impossible to evaluate without going EV, and a lot of our spare parts were blown to hell in the beam hole blown through decks twenty-six and twenty-seven by that Bug cruiser. Most folks would say we are unbelievably lucky to take a clean through beam weapon hit and not break up. Have you ever heard of it happening before?” Blue asked.

“No, but odds were pretty slim we’d come out of jump fifty man lengths from the Bugs. They were so close the beam didn’t have enough range to spread. And the bridge record shows they fired faster than any biological reaction time, so it was an automated response. They probably never saw any need to program their systems to hold fire if the target was too close.”

“And we jumped back out on automatic too,” Blue reminded him needlessly. Their problem then had been that they couldn’t turn the faster than light drive off, and nobody had ever proposed such a problem occurring, much less a fix. They had finally cut the power panel to the whole ship, to let it drift, allowing someone to disassemble the drive controls, coasting dark and without any gravity. “The beam was probably still on when we disappeared. I imagine none of them actually saw us until later when they reviewed their cameras as to why their weapon fired, and why there was a sudden debris field expanding away from them. We appeared and left faster than your brain could register it. I just wish our weapons had been programmed to fire automatically too.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Three Fingers assured him. “The tidal forces from jumping out that close will have warped and damaged the Bug cruiser badly. I don’t know about Bugs, but the tidal gradient would have been sufficient to kill or injure most of our crew were our actions reversed. If they didn’t have help close at hand, they might not have had sufficient crew functional to save the ship. Be glad they didn’t have it automated to jump out first if there was a ship too close.”

“Pilot, ease us into an orbit around the metastable point between the planet and the giant moon, with as little observable drive use as possible. Make it a big enough loop we are not silhouetted against the bright face of the satellite. I want to know some basics before we go in any closer. How many natives, some idea what they look like, and the level of their technology. Start accumulating data about their language, and if it has an acoustical component we can hear or speak. I’m exhausted. I’m taking a rest period, as should any of the prime team who have been up so long. I’ll examine your reports when rested, and we change shifts.”

* * *

“How many languages?” Three Fingers asked. Blue wasn’t sure he believed him.

“I’m pretty sure I’ve identified seventeen, but I really expect to find more.”

“This is insane. We don’t have the assets to deal with that many languages. They have world-wide travel, why would they retain isolated languages?”

“I have no idea, but here is something interesting. They use one language for air traffic control. The same language that is used at several widely separated, but large areas on the planet. We’re concentrating on it, because we can record their instructions to an aircraft, and then watch how it maneuvers.”

“That has promise,” Three Fingers agreed. He put his inside thumb along his jaw and his three fingers cupped across his chin, deep in thought. The maimed hand still bothered Blue, after serving with him for years, but he forced himself not to look away.

“They have image transmission, in fact sequence video, which gives us a good idea how fast their nervous systems work and how fast they can react,” Blue boasted. “They are really similar to us. Upright bipeds with a similar face, but only one thumb, thinner, and the young feeding glands are weird, up near their arm pits instead of down on their hips. I’ll put a couple on the screen,” Blue offered.

After a few minutes study Three Fingers asked to make sure, “These are all the same race?”

“Yes, there is quite a wide range of physical size, pigmentation, and hair patterns.”

“I’d have said they are dainty compared to us, except for that fellow,” He pointed out a screen capture of a Suma wrestler, scowling with greased hair tied back tightly.

“Yes, he reminds me disturbingly of my mother-in-law,” Blue revealed. “The same hair too.”

“No wonder you signed up for the deep sky services,” Three Fingers understood at last.

“We have an approximation of their basic unit of length. Their man length is about two of their units called meters. They run an extra one part in ten taller than us – mostly,” Blue hedged. We have their numerals with some certainty, which are base ten, and enough videos had time counters we found there common short time unit is very close to our second. But it appears they count time in increments of sixty instead of a hundred. Don’t ask me why.”

“If it looks like they have never had contact with another race, that’s to the good,” Three Fingers said, “because they won’t have technological weapons. By this cultural stage territorial disputes should be historic, and military weapons a curiosity in museums, if they’ve never faced anything like the Bugs.”

“Maybe…I’ve seen some strange things I can’t explain,” Blue admitted.

“Like what?” Three Fingers demanded.

“We saw several groups of ships like this,” Blue explained, putting an overhead view on the screen. It showed a number of surface vessels clustered around a big ship. “Look at the big ship closer,” he invited and zoomed in on it.

“Aircraft? Fixed wing aircraft on an ocean going vessel? Do they need them for refueling stations? Do they use really low energy density fuels? I can’t see this being economically viable. How big is that vessel?” he demanded.

“Half the length of the Protector,” Blue told him. “Greater than half our volume though.”

Three Fingers contemplated that silently a bit.

“However, they don’t store them all on deck, like we grapple our combat shuttles. They take them below decks on elevators and carry a variety of aircraft. Most of them seem to loiter around the ship awhile, and then land again. They will fly a big oval above the group at about a hundred-sixty man-lengths per second. A few times they would sprint off at three hundred man lengths per second. The thermal signature indicates they use air-breathing rockets.”

“That’s mighty expensive technology,” Three Fingers protested. “Back on Home I, there were only a couple hundred fast couriers using that sort of engine.”

“They have thousands of aircraft using that sort of propulsion,” Blue assured him. “Oh, and while we were watching, a small aircraft left this small island here,” he drew a circle on the screen with his pointer, ” and it landed on the big ship deck. It flew at over seven hundred man- lengths per second. As close as we can see it doesn’t have any wings. It must derive all its lift and control from the body shape.”

“There have been proposals to build such a thing from time to time,” Three Fingers acknowledged. “In theory it could be done, with exotic materials, but it would cost hundreds of times what a conventional aircraft would. The Bugs and the Tigers certainly have never made one, so we have little incentive to make one to match them. It seems like if you are going to that much expense, you might as well go ahead and build an orbital shuttle.”

“Oh, the neutrino emissions I spoke of? It is hard to localize, but it appears some of the ships are nuclear powered. It is an odd pattern, as if it is not just one fuzzy dot localized on the big ship but several nodes in the neutrino detector nearby. You know it doesn’t give a super sharp image,” Blue said.

“Nuclear powered wet navy? It just keeps getting stranger and stranger. We need to send some drones, maybe even a manned shuttle down to collect data. Draw up a list of things that caught your interest. Oh, and send a long range disk drone to get a close look at that big ship. If we ever make it back home, they won’t believe that without pictures.”

* * *

Well away from land in the Indian Ocean, the battle group around the CVN 147 George W. Bush looked for hazards to come to them from the north and west, from the Indian subcontinent or Africa. That didn’t mean they didn’t watch the entire horizon. The Bush was the last built of the three carriers still in service of the double hulled Clinton class. All the new ones were submersibles. It had three times the deck area of the old Ford class. It could launch its entire fleet of aircraft in fifteen minutes, since none of them needed catapult assistance, and it could land them on four capture lanes, staggered at three minute intervals. The elevators took the recovered aircraft down on the inside, in the sheltered space between the hulls, to access three hanger decks.

“Cap three turn to one-seven-three and go to FMP. Climb to 28k meters. We have a radar return that does not fit any known aircraft or missile closing at five, five, zero knots. We wish you to make a visual of the bogey in passing.

“Cap four, go to 30k meters on one-seven-four, and loiter for possible intercept. We are broadcasting the standard warning to turn aside before the three hundred kilometer limit.”

Battle Group Commander Higgins had splashed three intruders in the last two years, who had tried to see how close they could get. Two were unmarked which was disturbing, and one had Pakistani marks which he flat out didn’t believe. Three hundred kilometers was way too close to allow something to approach so aggressively on a direct line for his carrier, but it was published doctrine for peace time, whatever that was. If he had an ongoing attack, he’d open his exclusion zone to a thousand kilometers, and if that happened to overlap the tip of India or Sri Lanka, tough shit. He had eight thousand lives and a couple Trillion dollars in his battle group, and he intended to return home with them all safe.

“Cap three, come left slightly as you will pass at five hundred meters on your current heading. We’d like to get that down to two hundred. Activate your sight camera, but do not go hot on weapons. You may back off FMP after passing and come around.”

Cap three, Alex Davison, put a little pressure on his stick to the left, and then came back on course, flipping the switches for the gun camera.

“Passing in twenty seconds from…Mark!”

At a combined speed of around three-thousand kilometers an hour Alex wasn’t going to read any nose art on what went past, but he was very unhappy at what he saw. At his silence the CDC prompted him. “Can you identify the intruder, Captain?”

“It’s an anomalous circular aircraft sir, very thin in cross section, and silvery metallic, sir.”

“What?”

“It’s a frigging flying saucer!” he blurted out. Crap. It might be a flying saucer, but if it didn’t turn aside pretty quickly, it was going to be confetti raining down on the ocean. He reduced power and started a long easy turn to the west, getting well away from behind what he was pretty sure would soon be a target.

“Splash him as soon as he is a centimeter inside the limit,” the Director ordered. “I don’t give a damn if he is waving at us, green with deely boopers, he doesn’t get a shot at the carrier.”

“Cap four, turn to one-seven-one and descend to 29k meters. You are weapons hot, repeat, weapons hot. Fire upon target lock. You should have him in range already.”

“Roger, hot and descending,” Hal Roberts acknowledged.

From when he activated the targeting radar, until acquired the incoming craft was only about three seconds. He selected a missile that was designed for head on shots, but once it was released to his designated target it homed on its own radar. A gentle squeeze of the trigger on his stick sent it on its way. It popped from his weapons bay with a lurch, and a slight shudder of the airframe as the port opened and closed to allow it not to drop, but be thrown out. It launched inactive, but stabilized and the engine started. It passed him in less than a half second. It was a measure of his confidence in the weapon that he hadn’t asked to fire two of them. In the time it took him to blink there was an exhaust contrail to infinity from his viewpoint, the actual missile out of sight. In another two seconds there was a hot white spark of light at the end of the white thread. “Splash one,” he announced.

“AWACS confirms debris falling. That’s a definite kill,” CDC told him.

Does that mean I get to paint a little saucer on my kill marks? Hal wondered.

* * *

“Shiny, you’ve slicked drones like that around Bug missiles before. What happened?” Three Fingers asked. He didn’t seem angry, just genuinely curious.

“Oh, I jinked hard,” Shiny said, nervously wiping the bald top of his head that gave him his name. “I have to say that missile could really turn, and it was making radio emissions, I think it had its own radar, besides the one on the aircraft.”

The commander looked at the weapons operator, still sitting at the drone controls, digesting that. “Who the hell could afford to throw away an expensive radar set, on every individual missile they shoot off?” He finally asked. He didn’t really expect an answer, but the tech answered very literally, “Maybe they are all filthy rich.”

“They were repeatedly transmitting the same sequence on several different frequencies,” Blue said behind him. “I think we need to prioritize the words in that transmission in building the dictionary.”

“Sure, go ahead,” Three Fingers allowed. “But I think you can eliminate, ‘Welcome Galactic Travelers’ from your phrase list.”

Well this is very nice! – and an update

Amazon put a page up to buy entire April series as a collection. This was something I was thinking of doing but they beat me to it and probably did a better job. I like that it shows if you already bought a book so you don’t irritate people by duplication.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00ZRPA51C/ref=series_rw_dp_sw

Follow-up. Response from Amazon:
We are glad to hear that you liked our new feature which is called ‘Series Bundle’ that is displaying all the books under the series titled “April.”

However, I’ll have to be honest with you that this is still in testing phase and therefore we have provided this feature only to a certain set of publishers.

Having said that, the additional feature where one can buy all the books in a bundle has not yet been added to your books and which is why your reader has to buy each book individually.

Therefore, I’ve went ahead and introduced this feature to your series bundle so that customers can buy all 6 of your books with just one click. Please note that it may take up to 24 hours for this to update on our website.

International sales –

I’ve sold regularly to the US of course… Denmark, Canada, Australia, UK, France and recently India, but this month I added Japan and The Netherlands.

Re-edited “Down to Earth”

I took a couple day break to re-edit “Down to Earth”.
It was pretty rough and it bothered me. I also worried it’s errors would keep some people from continuing with the series.
It’s hard to edit you own material but I’ve been away from it so long a lot jumped out at me that wouldn’t immediately after writing it. Amazon also sent me a list of five misspelled words which helped goose me to do it.
I also am aware of several systemic errors I repeated often in the earlier books and repaired those. I think I’ll have it uploaded sometime tomorrow (6/11)

And – Done. In the system processing.

Short snippet of Family Law 3 – at the 80K word mark. As always rough and unedited.

“Then do so and inform Captain Frost when you are ready to depart. Any other questions?” Gordon asked, leaning forward aggressively and showing a smile that was toothy and not at all pleasant. In fact he visibly ground his fangs a bit in irritation.
“No sir,” Twin said quickly. Talker just shook his head no in the Human manner.
“Fine, then I’m off shift and we are done,” Gordon said closing the conference. “Thor you have the conn to dismiss the shift. I suggest you have the alternate shift set a short orbital watch. I’ll be in my cabin.” He left without looking at Talker.
It was a bit past shift end, but Vigilant’s crew was not hanging around the bridge entry waiting to chit-chat at the change-over. They had undoubtedly made the short retreat to the mess after hearing the exchange at the end. They wanted to be out of Gordon’s sight and attention.
Thor waited until Gordon was well away, and unlikely to pop back in. He looked at Lee, amused.
“People think I’m a terror and Gordon is the easy going one. I love it when they abuse his patience until he knocks heads together. I think that’s the first time I’ve ever heard a Bill say ‘sir’.
“One will not forget the lesson,” Talker promised, rattled. “I never want him to smile at me again.”
“Well yeah,” Lee agreed. “I’m sure you’ll find it easier to negotiate with the Bills than Gordon.”
“Is that what we were doing?” Talker asked in horror. “It didn’t feel like it.”

A short snippet of WIP – rough as always

“I’m just thinking about the hooting,” Lee admitted. “If it has to be understood as a matrix instead of linear then it may be really complex. You might have to read an instruction on how many rows and columns to assign the rest of the statement. Probably a number upfront too. What if they read them on the diagonal too? And what if they do different geometries? What if they arrange statements radially around a center one? At different radii to show probability or strength of emotion? ”
“Is there some coffee available?” Talker asked, overwhelmed.
* * *
Hoót-hoöt-hôôt – stared at the screen in shock and amazement. These insane scary beings had actually tried to say something coherent. It was as crude as a six segment grub might do, but it clearly was an attempt at structure. But what was the statement? He could read it three ways easily. And a couple meaning held subtle inferences…
But no. Subtle wasn’t something to look for here. The ugly thing was off center, weighed to the side and crooked. It was… curt, without any moving images. Just like the aliens had barked at them before. They weren’t trying to be rude, Hoót-hoöt-hôôt realized. They were horribly handicapped in language.
Several eyes needed to see this before he replied. Wisdom is multiplied by the abundance of a word, he remembered the school phrase so often repeated. The matrix was one word to him, and his language an infinity in which a word was composed at need and might never be repeated. Linear sentences were for simple limited minds. Hoót-hoöt-hôôt called six of his peers.

54K words on F.L. #3 Another rough snippet –

“Congratulations for your credit on the paper,” Vigilant Botrel said, as he sat to breakfast.
“I have no idea what you are talking about,” Choi Eun-sook told him.
Vigilant raised an eyebrow. “In the ship’s public net. Ernie lists all his papers for any unusual stars or planets we visit, and of course his theories about their formation or other aspects. It’s fascinating really. He has a talent for describing things without all the dense jargon most papers use.”
Choi still looked at him blankly. Omelet poised on her fork uncertainly while she tried to think.
“He named you as co-author on the latest,” Vigilant clarified.
“He did? About what?” Choi demanded.
“I believe the title was, ‘A major planet altering asteroid impact. Rotation and inclination changes from a retrograde strike.’ See what I mean? You can actually tell what the paper is about without a thesaurus or a brain transplant. It’s just one of maybe twenty or so. He listed Jon Burris as co-author on the one he did about the spatial distribution of Brown Dwarfs,” Vigilant said. He seemed quite serious and not joking.
“Oh, we talked about that on orbital watch,” she admitted, wondering if he’d reprove her for inattention on duty.
“That must be it,” he agreed. “He found your hypothesis that it might have been a military action instead of a natural occurrence insightful. Given we have activity in the system that was inexplicably curtailed there certainly may have been a conflict. He is very eager to know what dating of the mining artifacts shows, to know if the events could have occurred in the same time frame.”
“Uh, yeah.” She didn’t have near enough coffee in her to be following this.
Vigilant smiled and gave attention to his own breakfast.
Didn’t you have to give permission for your name to be on a publication? Choi wondered. Was she going to look like an idiot if the miners gave up on the deposit a few hundred years ago? Wait, they said the reflectors had a lot of micro-meteor erosion didn’t they? At least on the ones they found outbound. That had to take awhile. Maybe she wouldn’t look too bad. Even if she did, who would care for a ships officer? She wasn’t a scientist for God’s sake.
“I guess I better read the thing if it has my name plastered on it,” she told Vigilant.
“Well sure,” he said, looking surprised. “Take a look at the earlier ones too.”

Short snippet of Family Law #3 – rough unedited

The piece of junk was dark. Ming Lee’s radar showed it about fifty meters away and it was clearly rotating. Every time he saw it rotate on radar he saw a glint of starlight off it too. The star wasn’t that bright. Maybe about like the sun from a bit out past Mars. He wasn’t about to grab onto the junk by hand and get yanked all over. It looked ragged so it might have sharp edges or other hazards.
The line he trailed went in the back of a simple tube mechanism. It was meant to recover dead or disabled people in suits, but it worked fine for junk too. A fine net was folded into wad at the bottom of a slight cone, on top of a double spring. It had a counter weight and friction brake enclosed in the rear of the tube. The cords on the edge of the round net were covered with barbed fabric and after an uncoated band the rear of the net had loops.
When Ming Lee was about ten meters away he didn’t think he could miss, and pulled the trigger. The tube barely moved in his hands, the counterbalancing system almost canceling the reaction out. The fine net didn’t weigh much more than a hundred grams anyway. It spread very cleanly into a disk and then the center pulled ahead slightly and it looked very much like a jellyfish pumping water.
The center touched the junk like the top of a bell and snagged on it. If it hadn’t been rotating it would wrapped smoothly around the target and enclosed it like a sack. It still enclose it but lop-sided with most of the net bunched up on one side. When it was rolled up in a ball it started winding the line around itself until it took up what little slack it had. By then Ming had let go of the launcher tube and the ball of netting climbed up the line like a yo-yo returning up a string. When it hit the tube it threw it off enough it stopped winding line around itself, but it had momentum toward the shuttle.
Allen from engineering was waiting at the open shuttle hold with a net on a pole and a hooked gaff. He chose the gaff and hooked the net with some delicacy. He let the rotation pull him but not enough to lose the firm footing he had on the deck of the hold. But he avoided ripping the net so they could save it and repack it.
“Wow, this is pretty much in one piece,” Allen said. “It’s smacked out of round but I think it started as a sphere, maybe a pressure vessel for maneuvering thrusters or something. It has a flange and stuff still attached trailing wires.”
By then Ming had returned close enough to get another net-gun. Allen tossed it to him with the effortless grace of someone used to no gravity. It sailed across with no rotation at all and just cancelled some of Ming Lee’s motion toward the shuttle.
‘There’s another decent piece I saw beyond this one. Mr. Wong can you nudge the shuttle along behind me, please?” Ming asked on com. “I’m afraid I may run out of line on that one. It was receding a little still when I grabbed this one.”
“Sure right behind you. Lead off,” Wong invited.
“Ming Lee turned around and oriented himself to the star. He gave a little nudge on the thrusters. He had to get about a hundred meters out before he saw it on his suit radar, off center from where he was aimed but he corrected and changed the angle closing on it. He didn’t bother to look back for the shuttle. Wong was a slick pilot. If he’d asked Wong could scoop a piece up by sliding the shuttle over it so it went in the hatch. They hadn’t found anything big enough to require that, but the man was that good.
This was the same piece he’d seen. Long and skinny. It was barely turning by some random miracle. It was bent in the middle and tapered. If it wasn’t massive he could catch it by hand and save the net packing.

progress…

40K words on “Family Law” #3. Having fun.

A short snippet of Family Law #3 as always raw/unedited

Alex their shuttle pilot was smooth. Better than Lee remembered Gordon or either of her parents ever being at landing. She wasn’t even sure exactly when they touched down. He had all three pads touching the ground but most of the shuttle’s weight still held against the thrust.
Outside a storm of salt blew away in their exhaust. It calmed down quickly as the loosed surface blew away. The salt a few centimeters down was much more consolidated, and the jet was hot enough to melt the surface of the salt that didn’t blow away easily sealing it.
The noise subsided as he eased the throttle back, putting more weight on the landing jacks. His fingers stayed hooked over the T handle, ready to jerk it back hard if the surface was just a crust and gave way. He watched the cameras showing the flat pads at the end of the struts rather than try to feel a drop by the seat of his pants. When the full weight didn’t make it sink he blipped the throttle twice with his finger tips making the lander bounce against the suspension. It seemed solid.
When they went out Ernie might be insightful but he was also cautious. He had an square steel bar sharpened to a point on the bottom, and the back two thirds turned down round to fit his hand and knurled coarsely to give a good grip. He jammed this in the ground before trusting his weight to it, even though the lander seemed stable. The salt was sufficiently thin that small ridges of rock poked through it here and there. A few dark streaks of fine gravel or sand colored it occasionally too. All of them aligned the direction they were going.
“Walk right behind me until we’ve tested out more than just one spot,” he ordered. The pilot stayed with the shuttle and Lee and Ernie headed for the first lake about five hundred meters away. This one they’d picked to sample because it had a deep green color and might have bacteria. It was only about three kilometers across, but almost a hundred kilometers long. They should be able to see the other side easily. The more so because the other side was an abrupt escarpment. The few places it showed any beach at the bottom were far too narrow to consider landing. This side the salt flat ran right up to the water.
“Did you feel that?” Ernie asked.
“No. I didn’t feel anything,” Lee said. “Or I just thought it was you poking with the bar.”
“Stand still with you feet flat and don’t move shift around,” Ernie said. He turned far enough to be able to watch Lee, and leaned on the bar like a hiking staff.
Lee stood like he asked, and was patient, but nothing was happening. She was tired of it quickly and about to suggest they move on when the ground rumbled a little under her feet. It felt like when a big truck went by on her visit to Earth.
“OK, I felt that.” Lee looked back to make sure it wasn’t the shuttle. The lander was quiet and the engines hadn’t been restarted.
“That was a little earthquake,” Ernie said. “I’m thinking this long lake must be in a rift from a fault line in the crust.” He was back-lit a little and Lee could see his face inside the faceplate. He had a serious look, thinking hard about something so she kept quiet and let him process.
“I have to talk with some of the others, and look up some material on our web faction, but I’m thinking the two planets with interacting magnetic fields and the tidal forces must keep the cores stirred up. That’s why we see all these little volcanoes,” he decided.
“And why not any big ones?” Lee wondered.
“Maybe it’s so active they get leveled out,” Ernie speculated, resuming his walk to the water.

Finally got an answer –

Well I finally got a clear answer on updating a book (April), on Amazon. Short of it is they have to send it out to old customers. When you update a book it only changes for new purchases.
The changes have to be what they consider as having a significant effect on quality, and they want a list of them with locations.
This is a major undertaking.
I’ll do it but not quickly. Also I have not kept every revision I made so I’m hoping I can find one old enough to show what I want.
Crud.

I adjusted my foreign prices.

I used to let Amazon do the currency exchange calculation for the US value.
I realized that would run the price up and down every few hours. 3.76 Euro one day 3.81 the next.
I set it at even numbers so people know what to expect from day to day.
Also exchange rates have gotten so far out of whack – the Australian dollar is at 76 cents US.
My buddy Mike Williamson gives his books away to anybody interested enough to communicate with him from India. He had one fellow who is an Engineer who makes less than $500 a month over there. It’s a significant burden to even buy a $5 e-book. It affects all US products.

A snippet of “Family Law” 3 raw unedited as always

“Wake up, Jon. They’re coming back in,” his com insisted loudly.
Jon muttered something that probably meant, “Yes, I’m getting up.” He sat up, rubbed his face with both hands and sealed his soft boots up. He’d never taken them off and still had a suit liner on. He staggered in the head and relieved himself, considered dressing differently for the now pressurized hold, and decided Caterpillars had no idea about the difference between a suit liner and a ballroom gown.
“Ship – Connect me to the galley deck,” he called loudly enough to reach from the head. “Would you have whoever is free bring me a double espresso to the lock?” Jon asked. “I need the caffeine badly. And a com headset, please.”
When he got to the lock the shuttle commander Fat Ortega was waiting with the requested drink in hand, the radio headset in his other hand, and the inner door of the lock already open.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to bother you, sir,” Jon said, embarrassed.
“I happened to be in the galley and as free as anybody,” Ortega said. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Thank you, sir.” Ortega nodded and didn’t say anything about him just wearing a suit liner.
He cycled out quickly since there wasn’t that much of a pressure difference now. The Caterpillars were about where he’d set up his displays yesterday. Jon took the chair from where he’d left it walked up much closer than before. They shouldn’t have any reason to be shy after yesterday. They had a load on the floaters, but not his stuff. This was going to be interesting.
Jon unfolded the chair and sat down, did a com check to make sure he was in touch with the shuttle, moved the mic to the side a little extra, took the cover off the cup and had a sip.
One of the aliens was watching him rather than the others lifting items off the plates. It was hard to tell what interested him. You could tell which way their eyes were looking, but not as exactly as another human. Maybe that would come with experience. He had one of the devices they suspected was a camera in one tentacle and another instrument of some sort in another. He moved his head around a little, not just his eyes, watching Jon unfold the chair. Jon wondered if they had the concept of furniture at all? Perhaps they could stand for hours on end with so many legs. Jon had the sudden insight that with that many legs you could stand on a few and rest others.
Ah – they did have one of his pieces. The bust on a pedestal. They even figured out how to switch the turntable on and off, because the fellow setting it up did that as Jon watched. They’d kept the camera and monitors however.
The Caterpillar who seemed assigned to watch him came up close, much bolder than yesterday. He seemed to be much twitchier about the tentacles, especially the small ones down lower. Jon assumed he had a mouth in there somewhere. He brought the other, unidentified, instrument up and tipped it right over Jon’s coffee. Well, that was interesting. He appeared to be scanning it.
The tentacle wrapped around the instrument unwound a couple loops, and before Jon could react, the Caterpillar plunged it in his espresso and swished it around a bit.
“Holy… ”
Commander Ortega quickly cut him off and spoke in his ear through the com set.
“Before you say too much: Remember they are eventually going to understand what we say, and very likely go back and review every word we ever uttered,” Ortega warned him.
“Uh, yeah… Holy Mackerel,” Jon finished, wisely.
The alien transferred the instrument to a smaller tentacle and withdrew it into the mass of small tendrils before bringing the big one back to the cup. Just as Jon had moved slow to avoid scaring the alien yesterday the Caterpillar reached slowly with his larger tentacle and curled it around the cup. Jon had to smile at how delicately he did so. The Caterpillar wasn’t assertive. He grasped the cup and didn’t tug at all, but the request was plain. Jon let go of it slowly and withdrew his hand, folding his hands in his lap.
“Are you sure you don’t want one last sip?” Ortega asked in his ear.
“You have an evil sense of humor… sir,” Jon replied.
The alien carried the cup carefully, almost reverently, to the others and after much hooting and new noises they each carefully dipped a tentacle in turn, and one might assume tasted. One of them exited the hold and seemed to be in a bigger hurry than when they came in.
The others had a mechanism of some sort positioned in front of the pedestal with the bust on it. It looked more like a studio microphone than a camera however. They also had a low boomerang shape they brought over and laid about a half meter in front of him.
Jon’s handler had returned and was standing to the side. He waved his tentacles a bit and gave a couple hoots like a ferry boat getting ready to undock. Jon had no idea what he wanted.
The alien stood still looking at him. Jon wondered if he was disgusted at how stupid he was or upset with himself for not being clearer. After a bit he tugged the smaller tentacles in close and held the two big ones out straight in front of him. When that got no reaction he swept them both up vertically like a football referee calling a good goal.
“I’m obviously supposed to know what that means,” Jon said, out loud. “But I’m clueless.”
The alien held the tentacles out straight again and slowly made both ends turn up at right angles. Even not having tentacles it looked uncomfortable. Then he crossed and uncrossed them a couple times.
“Oh, my arms?” Jon asked, holding his arms out and turning his hands up palms out like the alien. That produced a melody of hoots and one of the other Caterpillars came rushing over with one of the floating plates. Really, just super high tech hand carts, Jon thought.
The assistant put the boomerang shape on the cart, made it float a bit higher, and then pushed it back in front of Jon, even a little bit closer. The alien did the uncomfortable tentacle waving thing again.
“Oh, it wasn’t close enough,” Jon figured out. He reached out straight armed and crossed his wrists with his palms out just like the alien and uncrossed them, wondering if it was going to play music or what. The air in front of him filled with an image of the bust from hand to hand. Jon thought the displays their ships used were high definition. He was wrong. This just looked real. Real as a hole in the air with a view of the bust he’d brought along. He pulled his hands back and the image grew closer. As an experiment he closed one eye and then the other. It was in 3D.
“Wow.”
“Wow what?” Ortega asked in his ear. “Do you need pom-poms? You look like a drunk cheerleader waving your arms around.”
“We just got richer than we ever imagined. And some of the Fargoers have pretty vivid imaginations. A few of them have been writing million dollar IOUs for their poker games,” Jon said.
“What are you talking about? I see they brought out some things. Are you trying to trade for them?”
“Yes sir. I certainly shall. Anything they want. Have you ever seen really old grainy movies? The sort that were on actual film before they were digitalized? Grayscale even instead of color?”
“Yes I have. They called them black and white during that era. Don’t ask me why,” Ortega said.
“Well the Caterpillars just showed me a 3D video system that makes our displays look about as sad as those old movies,” Jon told him. He tried withdrawing his hands, but the image followed. He tried taking one back and not the other and it rotated. This was a great display but he couldn’t hold his hands out for hours. The alien made the lifting gesture again.
“Oh… ” Jon unbent his wrists and swept both arms straight up away from the display. It stayed put.
“Damn, this looks so good,” Jon said. Ortega didn’t even reprove him.

The Undead…

I don’t DO zombies. If you need a fix try my buddy John.

A real military guy who has been on the pointy end and zombies. Obviously I don’t suggest this after a double pepperoni pizza and margaritas at bed time.

He assures me this might be more to my reader’s tastes…

Snippet of April 7 – rough/unedited

Chapter 2
April’s com signaled a priority message. She only had a dozen people on that list. It was Jeff Singh.
“Lunch in the cafeteria in twenty minutes? And some show and tell?” he offered.
April looked at the time in the corner of her screen, 1124, that would get them in just ahead of the mid-day rush. “Yes, don’t be late or there will be a line,” she told him. She realized she hadn’t had her second cup of coffee and poured it in a thermal mug for Jeff.
Jeff wasn’t late, rather he was a few minutes early when he came in the door, carrying a portfolio, and found April waiting for him. There was a line but it was short and moving along.
“Is the minestrone soup any good?” Jeff wondered.
“I had it last week. It’s from a mix, but it wasn’t bad. I think Ruby doctored it up from just the straight out of the bag mix. I’m going to get breakfast though,” April said, “the pancakes with dried banana chips and pecans in them are good. We’ve got some real butter right now too.”
“I’m ready for shell eggs and heaps of bacon,” Jeff admitted. That was shocking. Jeff was usually so indifferent to food that April worried about him eating enough. But he didn’t look thinner when she examined him carefully. He looked good, actually. He hadn’t noticed the covered cup in her hand. Or if he had he didn’t mention it. April set it on his tray.
“It’s not shell eggs and bacon, but that may help your cravings,” April promised. Jeff just raised his eyebrows.
April led Jeff away from the knot of folks who still sat in front of the coffee pots even though they were empty. She knew when he opened the lid how the odor would carry.
Jeff showed restraint, buttering his baguette and tasting his soup before taking a sip from the mug.
“Ahhh… I know you really do love me,” he said.
“I don’t usually carry it outside my place,” April explained. “I don’t want to incite jealousy. But if you come by to visit I’ll make a half pot.”
“We should be getting some more coffee in six months, eight months for sure. It’s going to be Indonesian through Australia. I already have it on the short list after silver wire, medical supplies and some special graphene bonding adhesives,” Jeff said.
“Then I can be a little freer with mine,” April decided, “I mean, if I’m on the distribution list. I’d planned on making mine last a year if I had to.”
“Of course you are going to get some. It gets split six ways,” Jeff revealed.
April didn’t ask who else was getting it. She could guess a couple of them.
“Freight is pretty safe for us to receive, April said, waving at her meal like it was just arrived on the dock, “but what about people? I’m still concerned we’re going to be terribly isolated by this. We were growing and getting good quality people. Who’s going to want to come here if it’s like jail? People want to be able to go off on vacation or visit grandma without sitting out a quarantine.”
“Jon and Doc Lee have been talking to me about that. There was some tech invented before the epidemic that let you sense an infection just hours after exposure. If they can’t find documentation on it I’m going to have some of Chen’s fellows on Earth hunt it down.” Jeff lost his pleasant countenance. “They’ve done marvelous work for us on Earth even as bad as things got there. Worse comes to worse since we know it can be done we just have to re-invent it if it was lost. We’ll be able to stop infected at the lock once we have that system.”
There was something about Jeff’s cold face April had seen before and worried her. “Jeff, are they hunting for who started it? Nobody has plainly said they want to find him or them and press charges. After all the millions hurt surely somebody is looking.”
“Chen’s men knew who conceived it weeks ago. They’ll make sure the people he used to do the technical work can’t do it again,” Jeff promised.
“But they didn’t arrest him?” April asked.
“The Earth governments aren’t even acknowledging this was an engineered disease. The few who suggested that were denounced publically as nut cases and conspiracy theorists. So they’d hardly be looking to arrest someone as criminally responsible even if we offered them up. If they did want them our evidence couldn’t be presented in court,” Jeff said. “That’s the fault of Earth laws and courts, not the quality of the evidence. It was beyond a doubt as they say.”
“You didn’t just kill him, did you?” April asked, concerned.
“You should know better,” Jeff said. He really looked hurt. “Chen’s men held him long enough to question him electronically. They didn’t get rough with him or harm him before they released him. April… Some things are beyond our ability to adequately reward or punish. Not to get all mystical on you, but I honestly doubt he can escape the karma of such a horrible act. Killing him would have been far too quick and easy on him.”
“Thank you, I’m happy to hear that,” April said.
Jeff recapped the mug and proceeded with his meal, as did April. She found the pancakes plenty sweet without syrup. When he was done Jeff finished the coffee last, sipping it reverently. When he was completely finished he pushed the tray to the side, wiped his hands rather thoroughly and opened the portfolio. He smiled, and looked inordinately proud of himself, presenting her with a blank sheet of paper.
“Thank you,” April said, unsure what she was supposed to do with it. She looked at both sides carefully. It was a bit thin for printer paper and white, but not the brilliant white of coated paper, more crème. But it had a slick feel. It seemed to be standard letter size, or close to it.
“It’s not from Earth,” Jeff explained.
That was a big deal. They didn’t have trees or enough rags to waste them on paper. Paper meant sani-wipes and hard print documents, packaging for food and medical items. Her favorite artist, Lindsey, would be very interested in paper April realized, beside the practical items.
“Oh… So what is it? Synthetic fibers? April guessed.
“Soy protein fiber, and a little turnip pulp filler and tiny amounts of soy adhesive and titanium oxide. We can make a soy based ink too,” Jeff said.
“That means we’ll have tofu soon?” April asked. “I’m not a huge fan but it’s pretty good deep fried with a peanut sauce.”
“And soy milk, protein powder to add to other stuff, and some pretty good fake cream cheese. It’s even a good base for some useful industrial glues and plastics,” Jeff added. “The fibers that make paper can make cloth too.”
“I didn’t know you were trying to raise soybeans,” April said.
“There was a special kind that grow very low,” Jeff said. “They don’t need much vertical space so you can space the trays closely. They’re working out nicely.”
“Good. One more thing we don’t have to lift from Earth,” April said. ” Aaron Holtz thinks we’ll make so much of our own goods we may not grow back to the same lift traffic for a few years.”
“The name doesn’t ring a bell,” Jeff admitted.
“Former fund manager from New Zealand,” he writes a couple times a week for What’s Happening, Wiggen’s site,” April said.
“You’re sure it’s hers?” Jeff asked.
“Unless she’s deliberately fronting it for somebody else,” April assured him.
“When it first came out I thought you might be behind it,” Jeff revealed.
“All my other hobbies and time to manage a general news site for Home too?” April objected.
” A lot of the views expressed sounded like yours, and they have avoided gossip from the start. I know how you feel about the gossip boards. But yes, it grew too big and I knew you didn’t have the time to be reviewing and directing that much material,” Jeff said.
“Don’t you think I’d tell you if I had something like that going on?” April asked. Sometimes Jeff didn’t seem very socialized to April. He wasn’t deeply strange like some very smart people could be, but he just lacked – finesse.
Jeff screwed up his face in concentration. “I guess you would, eventually. But just because we do so much together… You aren’t obligated to tell me everything you’re doing. I have no doubt I have no idea about a lot of what Heather is doing at Central. I don’t expect to be told every little thing. If it’s important she’ll get around to telling me.”
That sort of trust was a huge compliment, but April was too much of a snoop. She did want to know what everybody was doing. For the first time she had doubts that was always a good idea. Even worse, April suddenly realized Jeff might not be strange, but simply a better person. It was a disturbing idea. She still wondered how much of ‘every little thing’ Jeff didn’t tell her encompassed. But now April felt just a little pang of guilt for wondering.
“Do you think we need a way to get our own views out,” April asked Jeff.
“The majority of folks seem to want the same things we do. I’ve certainly been happy with most of the votes in the Assembly. If we sponsored a public news site or even write a regular feature then people will start to see us as having an agenda. I don’t think you know how much influence you have, but it’s partly because you aren’t beating a drum constantly. You need to be aware of this. A casual word might have influence you didn’t anticipate or want. Chen has told me he runs into people doing intelligence work who know he has a relationship with us. He said people ask what your views are on matters, assuming he has the inside track on your opinions. ”
“They do? On what? And why would they care? I’m no official, and have no power,” April said.
Jeff looked amused. “Yet you can call Jon up and tell him you want to see him, right now, and you are sitting in his office with Gunny telling him he may have to quarantine the station in the time it takes you to walk over. Do you really think everybody gets treated that way?”
“Jon and I have a special relationship. We formally agreed to be allies back when I wasn’t 14 yet. When I told him about that first USNA spy he had the sense to see I knew what I was talking about. When somebody agrees they are on your side and will watch your back I expect them to mean it.”
“I’m very aware,” Jeff said. “And God help anybody who forgets it or doesn’t mean it. How many young girls do you think would put conditions on helping the head of security and demand he treat you with respect? Much less ask for a formal relationship. Scratch that – Demand a certain relationship. You might be surprised how many people have picked up on that. You have a reputation as being formidable all out of proportion to your age or any official position. Chen gets asked how you will vote on things coming to the Assembly or what you have said about Heather and things at Central. He even gets asked what you say about me. And I don’t just mean the tacky interest some gossip sites have in exactly how we three regard each other. They want to know if you support specific business projects and plans.”
“I’ve never thought to tell Chen what I think!” April said, surprised. “He’s right out on the pointy end of things, or at least his agents are. I try to use what he tells me for our purposes, but I wouldn’t presume to try to tell the fellow doing the dirty work and seeing so much more than me what it all means. I’m sure he has his own firm opinions.”
“I’m sure he does too. But with Chen and you people are aware who works for who. Chen said he always tells them that the information flows from him to you and not the other way. That you hold your cards closely, and he has no idea what you think most of the time. Indeed he often has no idea why you ask certain questions that seem non sequiturs to him. Sometimes it is unexpected and scares the snot out of him when he finds out the answers to these weird questions.
“Like when you called him from the Fox and Hare and asked about the names of Spanish royalty from the ninth century. He kept muttering about that for days – ‘How the hell could she possibly know that?’ – You connect the dots that are not even close to each other, and as an intelligence officer he admires that. If you haven’t noticed – I take it very seriously when you suggest something. For example, it was you who suggested we needed to have our own bank, remember?” Jeff reminded her.
“Yes, thank you, and Heather agreed,” April said, uncomfortable with praise. “Barak is another one you don’t want to ignore,” she said deflecting attention. “He gets sudden insights that amaze me.”
“I agree. Then he irritates me by saying it was obvious,” Jeff said.
“We’ll try to train him out of that,” April decided. Jeff tried to cover his smile, unsuccessfully.
“Thank you for the coffee,” Jeff said quietly, setting the mug back within her reach. That meant he was ready to go, April knew.
“Stop by and visit when you want more,” she suggested.
Jeff looked at her oddly for some reason April didn’t understand, but said, “I will. Sunday?”
“That would be nice. I’ll expect you,” April said.
I wonder how I’m being trained? Jeff thought as he left. But the idea didn’t worry him.

Will add subscriptions –

I didn’t think about subscriptions to posts as well as comments. The lady doing my site will add that option soon. For those who want the snippets especially as my other post tend to be short.