Excerpt From Chapter 1, Deep Cover

Hi ya'all! It's your family neighborhood, The Writer's Corner Blog, coming from yours truly, Scott Vreeland. I'm stoked to be talking with ya'all about my work in progress piece, Deep Cover. A little note there, I recently changed the title from The Rise of the Exeterains to Deep Cover because the new title fits the outcome of the story much better. Still, as ya'all get to know my story, you may have another title option for me to consider. My plan is to give an excerpt of my novel in this post for everyone to read. My original plan was to share the entirety of chapter one. I had a little time to reconsider that since I don't want to overwhelm some readers, so the best practice I see here will be to keep it simple by posting an excerpt within chapter one, instead, until I get a feel for the community of readers I hope to create on this platform of fiction readers and writers.

My goal is to build into the platform family community to bring their fiction stories and share an excerpt from their work with our neighborhood corner community for literary feedback and writing improvements. The thing I ask of everyone, when it comes to giving feedback to others, remember our work is often sensitive for us, so I sincerely request that our comments not focus on the author, themselves, but keep it focused on the piece, itself. We don't want anyone presenting their work to feel on the defense. Similarly, it is advised when coming to give an author feedback on their work to do it politely and respectfully, to keep an atmosphere of pleasantry and growing in our writing portfolio. I'm extremely excited to hear everyone's piece and to see ya'all keep coming back for more. We can make this a fun adventure!!

This is my first time to share, Deep Cover, with the public. Originally, the creation of, Deep Cover, happened while attending Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU), where I started it off while working on my Bachelor's degree in English and Creative Writing (BA). It is intended to be finished to a publishable state, while working on my master's degree in English and Creative Writing (MFA) at SNHU.

Here goes my excerpt from, Deep Cover, the opening of the story begins:

The siren faded as the last of Captain Devon Nicholas' crew streamed onboard the battlecruiser, Phoenix, and the door shrushed shut behind the last of the rushing stragglers. "Release the docking latches, Lieutenant Aetna," She said with an edge of urgency, seconds after getting the all-clear from Earth's orbital station, Rising Dawn; Devon's base station to which she has been assigned.

Captain Devon Nicholas, in her mid-thirties, tall for an earth female, a toned V-shaped torso, creamy-smooth olive complexion, was a seasoned battlecruiser captain, having served two cycles of duty. Prior to her promotion to captain, she flew fighter craft defending corporate cargo freighters bound for the corporate-controlled colonies in the galaxy. Many times she received citations for bravery above and beyond the call of duty, earning her the coveted nickname, "Skyblade" by her comrades, a name that evokes precision and swift strikes, as she continually displays in her missions.

"Yes sir, Captain." The Ship's navigator reaches to touch the holographic screen to the ship's control panel, to which is a multidimensional view. Second Lieutenant Horace Aetna swiftly swipes the red blinking light, indicating the docking mechanism release.

"Engage starboard pulse thrusters and bring us around 90-degrees, Horace. Set coordinates for Genesis and take us out of here, double time!."

Devon, listening to the humming sound flaring as the engine revved, felt a slight weightlessness just as the battlecruiser's gravitational field came online. As the Falcon slipped forward, the slight inertia tugged at her center of gravity, causing butterflies to flutter in her. She never got use to the effects of G-forces, barely noticeable during sudden accelerations. Devon reflects on her time in flight academy, allowing her to fly many ships of old, when Earth relied on fossil fuels to fuel their ground and aerial vehicles and ships. There is no technology in them to withstand accelerated G-forces, and representing a time forever lost, a much slower time than now. "On my order, Lieutenant Aetna, launch into slipstream."

The ship's antigravitational system is Dromedain technology, and able to counteract inertia with lightning mobility, without disrupting the occupants. Slipstream technology, another Dromedain invention requiring an array of crystalline banks, when used in correlation with the ship's electromagnetic propulsion system, can make travel through the universe in a relatively short time when compared to humankind's first trips into space, and ships in the mid-twentieth century relied on fossil fuels to power their rocket ships. Once, it took years to reach Earth's first colony on Mars, now with slipstream it is only a few hours. Factoring in wormhole travel, going anywhere in the universe where coordinates are known. When the Dromedins educated Earth's scientist on this phenomenon, traveling intergalactic space became normal practice for trading.

The captain, sitting in the bridge command chair, speaks to Falcon's artificial intelligence (AI), Alice: "Alice, intercom."

Alice, being newly installed, is continually updating her memory banks each mission into deep space, and in some respects is still in her infant stage of growth. Her capacity to understand life and what it means to be human is staunchly forthcoming within her emotion banks, often wondering what it would be like to be human, with a soul.

"Attention, all crew members! The Falcon has been ordered to rendezvous at Genesis. Command was alerted the moon base, Genesis, is in siege by Exeterains. Everyone to your posts!"

During the late twenty-first century, Earth was a world of many nations that fought wars of mass destruction since the turn of the twentieth century. Technology of the time could annihilate nations, leaving them toxic from fallout, and a barren wasteland. By the late twenty-first century, Earth's population succumbs to starvation from global climate control environmental conditions and its wars, leaving most of the planet Earth becoming a wasteland and barren of all life. It was a time almost everyone looked for a savior to ease their miserable existences. It was during this time, the Droms came to our world seeking help from Earth's leaders, threw some kind of switch and Earth's military were not able to fire their weaponry on the aliens or themselves, rendering them defenseless against Andromeda. The Dromedains brokered peace between the nations, howbeit, not entirely for selfless reasons on their part. They had irrefutable evidence showing a cyborg race from the planet Exeter has been on a planetary conquest throughout the universe, and their belief they are on a flight path leading to Earth and them to Andromeda. Andromeda made the promise, if we accept their terms, they will share their technology with us for galactic space travel and weaponry to help defeat the Exeterains.

Well, I think I'll end the excerpt here and promise to pick it up again at a later time. I was going to share further into the story, to complete the scene, but it is getting too long and as I said earlier, I don't wish to overload anyone. Remember, when giving feedback, keep it respectful for everyone. I didn't realize it until rewriting this excerpt how much it cried to be revised again.

Thank you all for sharing your comments. I plan to use them for a future revision of, Deep Cover!

Scott Vreeland