Fantasy Making of a Starship Captain

"Ready to give up, Murshad?" said Taylor. He waited only a half second for a response. "No? Mister Garrity, lock forward megajoulers on the Simbashi manske."

"No!" Prime Minister Nabil cried. "The Simbashi manske is a Galactic Heritage Site, deemed so by your own World Government."

"Not for much longer. They'll have to revise the list. Mister Garrity?"

"Weapons... locked."

"The Simbashi manske has the priceless Dagger of Laquinta!"

"I'm sure," said Taylor. "Mr. Garrity, fire!"

The Relentless fired again, blasting a second manske in south-central Al Sa-Naa.

"Ready to give up?" Taylor inquired.

Murshad sputtered, "I will kill each hostage, one by one-"

"I guess that means no," said Taylor. "Mister Garrity, lock weapons on the Ercusha manske, right by the spaceport."

"No!" said Nabil. "Not the Ercusha manske!"

"Why not? It's a brand new manske, just last year. Much less valuable than the Simbashi manske I just destroyed.

"Weapons... locked," said Lieutenant Commander Garrity.

"No, stop now!" Nabil turned to the holoimage of Murshad. "Release them, now!"

"No! We will never release them!" Murshad cried. "You are soft, and weak, old man. You-"

Nabil nodded, and a man stepped into the holocam view, with a giant sword, and he cut Murshad's head off. It went rolling off of holoview, as his headless body, spurting blood, fell to the ground.

"I thought so," said Taylor.

"All your hostages will be released unharmed," said Prime Minister Nabil. "Please, just stop firing."

"Mister Garrity, cease firing... for now," said Taylor.

"Yes, sir," said Garrity.

Nabil's image faded, after he promised that the hostages would be returned within an hour.

Taylor turned to Ensign Redding. "Were you paying close attention, Ensign?"

"Yes sir," said Ensign Redding.

"Good," said Taylor. "Because that is what's expected of a Survey Service Captain."

And then the bridge crew started to clap spontaneously.

"You're his last hope," said Taylor, kissing Audrey King's neck.

"His last hope?" said Audrey King. "Aren't there ten billion other women in the galaxy?"

"You know what I mean." Taylor continued to kiss her neck. She shuddered ecstatically.

"Why is this so important to you?" Audrey asked.

"You wouldn't understand," said Taylor, putting his hands on her breasts. Even through her uniform it made her excited.

"Try me," said Audrey.

"I see in Miles what I used to be."

Audrey laughed. "That's impossible! Miles... he's weak, and shy, and his self-confidence is down in the dirt... and he's just so... weak, Captain!"

"Exactly how I used to be."

"I don't believe it," said Audrey King. But his kisses were beginning to have an effect. So were his hands. "If... if I do this, what's in it for me?"

Taylor looked at her. "There's no I in team, Audrey. You're contributing to his professional development."

Audrey laughed as she felt Taylor's hands roaming her. "By fucking him?"

"Exactly."

Audrey considered. "All right. If I do this, there's no I in team, I understand that. But there is an I in Michael Tiberius Taylor, is there not?"

Taylor looked at her for a long moment. There were certain lines he had vowed not to cross with pretty young yeomen. But this was for an exceptionally good cause.

"All right," he said. "Once. But you must never, tell anyone. Especially not Ann Marie."

"I promise, Captain!" She cried. She kissed him joyfully on the lips, and pressed her breasts against him, and started to wrap her legs around-

She found herself gently pushed back. "Business before pleasure."

Audrey got up, and adjusted the front and back flaps of her miniskirt. "All right, Captain. Just remember our motto. We don't leave anyone behind."

As she turned and left, Taylor stared at her high, well rounded ass. "I'll never forget it."

Sophie entered his quarters just as Audrey was leaving. Sophie raised an eyebrow, as if she could almost screan that something of significance had happened... only Sophie didn't have the ability to screan.

"Admiral Chellina wishes to speak to you, sir."

"I'm sure."

"-and Commissioner Harshbarger has insisted we bring you up on various war crimes, including charges of crimes against humanity."

"I'm sure," said Taylor.

"I must say, Mike, you don't look very concerned about any of this," said Admiral Chellina.

"Should I be?" Taylor asked, giving Sophie a knowing glance.

"I would think so. You succeeded in rescuing all the hostages, except for the poor Ambassador. However, you blew up two manskes in the process. The Ramadhans said you murdered 617 innocent civilians, many of them women, children, and babies."

"I'm sure," said Taylor.

Chellina's eyes narrowed. "Young man, what is it you think you know that I don't?"

"Quite a lot, actually," said Taylor. "Sophie?"

"The Intelligence Branch has suspected for some time that the Ramadhans have been stockpiling arms prohibited under the Treaty of Nantes," said Sophie.

"Suspected, yes," said Chellina.

"Under the terms of the Treaty, the Survey Service is permitted to inspect any facilities on Ramada it thinks might be used for stockpiling arms... except for 'sensitive cultural institutions'."

"Such as manskes," said Taylor.

"Such as manskes, yes," said Sophie. "Under the instruction of Captain Taylor, we have been conducting round the clock surveillance on a number of manskes in Al Sa-Naa. In certain of these manskes, we noticed a high volume of trucked shipments coming from factories to these manskes. When we magnified our imagers, we could even see armed soldiers operating checkpoints preventing ordinary civilians from entering or leaving certain of these manskes. In short, they appeared to be closed military facilities."

"You say appeared to be," said Chellina. "The Ramadhans claimed you killed over 600 civilians. Do you have any proof to back up your suppositions?"

"Only this, Admiral," said Sophie. She displayed two holoimages a split screen. "The first is results of our attack on the Laquisha manske. The second is the Simbashi manske. Note the explosions in slow motion." She played them for the Admiral.

Chellina noticed it immediately. "There are secondary explosions."

"A lot of them," said Sophie. "Of weapons and munitions being blown up. The crater on the Laquisha manske was almost a quarter mile wide; on the Simbashi manske, it was more than twice that. You don't get that kind of impact from simply blowing up an empty manske."

"Or a manske full of people," said Taylor. "But you do get that kind of explosion when you blow up a manske full of munitions. In the first three Ramadhan wars, it was common for the Ramadhans to store weapons in manskes. Nothing's changed."

"So are you saying... no civilians were killed?"

"Some certainly were. It's unavoidable when you store weapons in a civilian neighborhood," said Taylor. "But under the terms of the Copenhagen Convention, when a civilian area is used as a place of war, either to launch attacks from, or to garrison soldiers or weapons, that civilian area is deemed to be a military target."

Admiral Chellina considered this. "But... you blew up the Simbashi manske. Which contained the priceless Bloody Dagger of Laquinta."

"Respectfully, Admiral, do the research," said Taylor. "If you look in the database, there are exactly 147 manskes which claim to have the actual Bloody Dagger of Laquinta."

"146," said Sophie.

"What?" said Taylor.

"There are now only 146 manskes which currently claim to have the Bloody Dagger."

"Oh, I stand corrected," said Taylor. "Admiral, If you saw the transcript of the attack, you may have noticed that Nabil surrendered when we targeted the Ercusha manske. That's a brand new manske at the spaceport. There's nothing special about it. But Nabil capitulated, even though we had already destroyed more impressive manskes."

"We have identified the Ecrusha manske as a major transshipment point for arms," said Sophie.

"So the Prime Minister... our friend...."

"Our friend, as you call him, is heavily involved. As you saw, he was capable of ending the standoff whenever he liked. And my impression is that he even may have instigated this whole incident to begin with," said Taylor.

"All this evidence... puts things in a different light," said Admiral Chellina, speaking slowly and thoughtfully. "I'll have to review the evidence you've presented, Mike, and confer with others on the Admiralty. But if it is as you say, it seems you've done us a tremendous service. It looks like the Ramadhans may be preparing for another war, and we were practically blind to it." She suddenly sat erect in her chair. "Thank you, Captain, and you as well, Commander. I will be in touch." Her image faded.

"'Thank you' seems rather understated for all you've done," said Sophie. "You rescued the hostages and alerted the Survey Service that Ramada is preparing for war."

"I didn't expect any more than that," said Taylor. "A Survey Service Captain doesn't expect any more than that. It's all part of the job, Sophie," he said, and he felt proud saying it.

Later, Taylor was relaxing in the officer's lounge when Sophie arrived. "Allyson Harshbarger has officially left the ship."

The crew broke out in sustained applause. "I do not know if she will be able to recover, though, after that confession she made on live holovision," Sophie observed.

"You mean the one denouncing the Survey Service in the worst terms, calling us child molesters and murderers?" Taylor asked, reclining in his chair as Ann Marie Queen fed him grapes.

"That's the one," said Sophie.

Taylor grinned. "In the World Government Diplomatic Corps, that will probably earn her a promotion."

"And you don't care?"

"Not really," said Taylor, taking another grape from Ann Marie's teasing fingers.

"Perhaps there is someone else you will care about more." Sophie gestured with her hand, and Mohammida Najjar entered the Officer's Lounge.

"Michael!" she cried, hugging him.

"Mohammida!" Taylor grinned.

"I'm about to be transferred to Renown, and eventually back to Earth," said Mohammida. "Listen, Michael I just wanted to thank-"

Taylor held up a hand. "Mohammida, there's no need. We're the Survey Service-"

"-and we don't leave our people behind," she grinned at him. "Could I hug you, one last time?"

"Sure," said Taylor.

They embraced for a moment, while Ann Marie watched idly, chewing on a grape.

When Mohammida pulled back, Taylor said, "So what will you do now?"

"I was thinking of going back to Earth. Maybe I could teach feminist studies at Berkeley, or something like that."

"Where'd you ever get that idea from?" Taylor asked.

"Sergeant Chappie," said Mohammida.

"Sergeant Chappie?" said Taylor.

"He was a very insightful man, Michael. For a Chinese man," she said hastily.

And then she said her goodbyes, and was gone.

Sophie looked around. "I don't see Ensign Redding. He is usually here at this hour."

"I'm sure he's somewhere," said Taylor.

"Nor do I see Yeoman King."

"I'm sure she's somewhere too." Taylor looked up at her. "Everyone is somewhere, Commander."

"You are always at your most profound when you are at your least profound, Captain," Sophie said.

The next day, Taylor learned that Allyson's mousey assistant Monehan Janney had left with Allyson on the Renown. Taylor smiled as he remembered her horror when she thought the crew was blindly following his orders to attack civilian targets on Ramada.

Taylor couldn't prove it, but he suspected Monehan Janney was a big Survey Trek fan, like he was. On Survey Trek, Captain William Burgess would ask his crew to do bizarre, dangerous things without explaining the reasons behind his actions to them in advance. That always bothered Taylor. He felt it was unrealistic. And so, before he had asked his crew to fire on what seemed to be civilian manskes, he had thoroughly briefed his bridge crew about the evidence linking the manskes to the storage of military grade weapons. That's why his crew didn't hesitate to obey his orders.

Taylor didn't see any need to brief Monehan Janney about any of that, however.

He had heard back from Admiral Chellina earlier in the day. The Admiralty had reviewed all the evidence, and concluded that his conduct in this affair was exemplary. He had saved nearly all the hostages, and alerted the Survey Service to the Ramadhan's intensions.

"But the Ramadhans will never forget this, Mike," she had told him.

"Good. They shouldn't," Mike had responded, as his chest puffed up with pride.

Michael Taylor was home.

As the Captain sat in his command chair on the bridge of the USS Relentless, listening to the hum of ship's systems and the voices of his crew around him, he realized that life didn't get better than this. This is what he was made for. He sat with a relaxed air of confidence, his chin up, his chest out, with one leg casually crossed over the other. As he stared at the out at the stars on the holoviewscreen, a small smile graced his lips.

Sophie noticed his smile, of course, but said nothing.

A few minutes later, Ensign Redding stepped on the bridge. Sophie glanced at him once, looked away, and then quickly reversed herself and looked at him again.

It was like he had been transformed.

The Ensign's hair was slicked back now, and now also stood up on his head. When he walked, he squared his shoulder and thrust his chest out. He spoke in a deep, confident, manly voice. And when he looked at women, he smiled!

Sophie watched wordlessly as Redding flirted shamelessly with Yeoman King who tittered uncharacteristically and shifted from one high booted leg to another, before finally taking his bridge post. When he saw Sophie watching him, he smiled with an almost Taylor-like grin and said, in a deep voice, "Commander," in a way which almost made her nipples tingle, before turning back to his post.

Taylor saw the exchange, and waggled a finger at Sophie. Reluctantly, Sophie went over to his command chair.

"A question, Commander?" Taylor asked.

Sophie lowered her voice. "Captain, as your first officer I have seen many incredible things in our travels together."

"Yes, Commander, I'm sure you have," said Taylor, smiling with extreme cockiness.

"But would you have me believe that one... tumble in the sack... has transformed Ensign Redding into that?"

"No, Sophie, I wouldn't," said Taylor. He pursed his lips and nodded for a moment. Then he said, "I believe Yeoman King told me it was two."
​

The End

***************

Author's Note,​

This book was originally going to be something else entirely.

The book I didn't write:

It would have been provocatively entitled "You", and would have exposed the workings of the human mind, through the daily lives of a family of ordinary people. I'm fascinated by the concept of the brain. We are a collection of billions of neurons, each one encoded with memories, abilities, or preferences, and every time we take a decision there is an instantaneous vote of all of them, a gestalt, so seamless, so effortless, that we ourselves don't realize that we are a conglomeration of millions of smaller wants and desires. We just slap the label "Me" on whatever decisions we make, without realizing the components of what makes us Us. I wanted to peel back the curtain to show people what they really are and how they make decisions. In the story I had planned to write, one would have seen the struggle between different brain factions as each character decided every decision they made in their lives, from the time they got up in the morning to the time they went to bed, and it might have gone something like this:

Getting dressed. White socks or black socks? Preference for white is stronger, so choose white today. Cereal or oatmeal for breakfast? Choose cereal, preference for solids greater than the throat's need for mushy wet. Once the reader understood the process, the story would quickly have evolved to focus on bigger life decisions: Should I ask the boss to treat me nicer? Fear of being fired wrestles with ambition. Should I ask Betty out to the movies? Lack of self confidence wrestles with desire and attraction.

And so on.

But while I realized it would be interesting for readers to observe the struggle between factions in their minds initially, I also realized it would quickly get tedious. If I wanted to present things from a mental perspective, I had to pair it to a more interesting story, and so... that's what I did here. In the end it turned out to be more of a biography story than a story about mental processes, but I am very, very pleased with the result.

This is a "Coming of Age" story. Generally speaking, I despise "Coming of Age" stories. They are so simplistic, trite, and predictable. When I was a kid I used to gobble up Robert A. Heinlein's coming of age novels. At the time I thought they were somewhat enjoyable only because the alternative "science fiction" was even worse, mind numbingly dull. Now, years later, as I mined books like "Space Cadet" and "Starship Troopers" for ideas, I realized how two dimensional and wooden their characters were. My brother and I would mockingly call them "Jim and Joe" books, because the characters were all of the "I am sensitive, and kind, and I want to do good!" variety. (Usually paired with the "What is a girl, why do I feel so strange around them, and what would I do if I had one?" theme).

I have written an entirely different kind of coming of age story, with a much broader palette of character traits than one might see in such a novel. I am very proud of the result, because it is wholly original: as far as I know, I have written the only book in existence to give the main character's motivations (Lust, Inadequacy, Ambition) their own points of view. It is a very, very rare thing to be able to say that one has created something wholly original. But I did it here.

Some people might compare this to "Ender's Game", and when I went back to reread Ender's Game, I was in for a shock. I remembered the part where Ender fought in the battle games being interesting, but the book has not aged well. The character of Ender was flat and boring. He cried a lot and felt bad and was a wet blanket for most of the book. That was his character. And the kids around him told a lot of fart jokes. Fart fart fart fart fart! How exciting. Subplots involving his brother (still a child) becoming a politician and his sister becoming a political influencer (she's still a child too) were ridiculous. The essence of a good story was there, could have been there, if the characters had been more interesting and their interactions had been more vivid.

I agonized a long time over whether to start this book with Mike's childhood years. I realize I could have made the book much more popular by starting with Mike's Academy years, and simply said he was shy around girls. I thought, and still think, the book would be more popular if I took the first two chapters out. But I kept them in because I felt the dramatic effect of the story would suffer. I thought it better to SHOW that Mike had intimacy issues with girls, rather than simply TELL the reader that. A major arc of the story is that he is incompetent when it comes to women in the early part of the book but then he becomes a "Super Captain Kirk" type by the end of the book. In order for this to have the dramatic effect I wanted, I needed to show how he was before in order to create a much more striking contrast with what he became.

I now understand writer's block, and now also understand why most writers take years to write books, and usually only write a few books in their lifetimes. They simply run out of ideas. Although this massive, 233,000 word book was written in only about three weeks, working out the outline took almost as long. I knew the general outlines of the story almost immediately, but filling in the details was tough. I knew Taylor had experiences in high school, and in the Academy, and in the Westerner, and the Relentless, but I had no specific idea what they would be, until I spent several days pacing back and forth over my oriental rugs, eating Twizzlers and working out the details (Did you know that Twizzlers in small bags taste different from Twizzlers in large bags--they are aged more and taste different. Better.) I almost begin to have sympathy for normal writers, whose imaginations are a fraction of the size of mine, and can begin to understand why they take so long to write their books (which doesn't negate the fact that they are still retards, however).

And then I look at an author like George R.R. Martin, who can write pages and pages about the history of an Inn or an obscure minor character, and I realize that to be able to write like this must require an imagination that is non-stop which borders on mental illness.

Like most writers, I write about what I know and get ideas from decades of science fiction shows, movies, and books. The chapter about the Westerner was inspired by the Star Trek episode "Friday's Child". I liked the idea of a third party, a wild tribe, forcing the good guys to compete against the bad guys. The idea to blow up the space bus to create a signal flare was not from Star Trek but rather the Space 1999 episode "The Last Sunset", where Doctor Helena Russell blows up an Eagle with a space bazooka. The idea for the Academy came from Heinlein's Space Cadet (where the Commandant was also blind!), though the book was so tedious that there wasn't much to be mined from it, just the basic concept. The idea for the competition on Sheppard's Planet was inspired by the competition for Sherman's Planet on Star Trek's "The Trouble with Tribbles" (which we never actually got to see in that episode, but was referred to). Sergeant Chappie from the Academy was inspired by Lou Gossett's Jr.'s drill sergeant character from An Officer and a Gentleman and I think Gossett played a different character named "Chappy" in the movie Iron Eagle. I loved how Gosset's character would abuse Richard Gere (the gerbil man--google it!), and yell in his face "I want your DOR!" (DOR was drop on request--I don't really know why he had to ask people to quit, rather than just firing them, but it added a very amusing twist to his abuse of the recruits).

Doctor Vladek was inspired the Gerry Anderson series UFO, Vladek Sheybal played "Doctor Jackson", a very creepy doctor/psychologist/interrogator/lawyer who talked... like... this....

The story of the virus on the USS Charleston was inspired by the Star Trek episodes "The Naked Now" and "The Naked Time". The scene with the Razorback and people sticking their hands into holes was inspired from a scene from Flash Gordon, the movie, where they did the exact same thing! The character of Sophie Astor was inspired by T'Pol from Star Trek Enterprise, the only reason to watch Star Trek Enterprise. Chief Ashanti was inspired by the very annoying Michael Burnham of Star Trek Discovery.

Captain Renton and Lieutenant Everett, from the First Prologue, just happen to be towns in Washington State. I didn't even realize what was I doing until after I did it. When I was in Washington, I used to stay at the La Quinta hotel chain. Sometimes the Ramada hotel chain too.

There is a reference in the end of the book to the USS Kincaid; as I wrote this, California was experiencing one of its largest fires ever--the Kincade fire. These things just leak into my writing unconsciously.

When I wrote this book, I made a list of skills (such as judgment, restraint, and determination) that Taylor needed to develop, and after I wrote the outline, I filled out how each experience contributed to a development of a key skill. I hate books where Main Character has a Very Minor Experience, and then it is up to you and your English teacher to figure out the "grand meaning" of it. Reading this book, you can see step by step what part of Taylor's personality was affected, and how it was improved.

Creating the outline of the book was like painting layers of paint on a house. Take the Academy chapter, which was the most complicated one to plan. The first "layer" was to sketch the general events--struggling with academics, struggling with physical requirements, struggling with girls, and advanced training. The second layer was specific details to flesh out the first layer. The third layer was putting everything in an order which made sense for dramatic purposes. The fourth layer was figuring out which cadet flunked out at what point. The fifth layer was sprinkling the other cadets into the story, being careful not to add them after the point at which each one dropped out. And the sixth layer was the psychological aspect, figuring out what motivations were at play and where best to put them.

In the final chapter on the Relentless, Taylor is supposed to be nearly fully evolved. I wanted to make him like an over the top version of Captain Kirk, the ultimate alpha male, super confident, always thrusting out his chest and bedding his attractive passengers not just during but even before and after commercial breaks. Perhaps it bordered a little on parody, but I found that the idea of making him an ordinary hero boring. Ordinary confidence is boring. Ordinary "good" is boring. I wanted to make the ultimate version of Taylor something... different. Entertaining. I hope I succeeded.

If you thought the scene where Allyson Harshbarger put on a burka to show respect for Laquinta was ridiculous, it was based on historical events. Right after 9/11, when radical Islamists killed 3000 people, President Bush brought his female homeland security advisor and White House spokeswoman to a mosque, where they covered their heads and participated in religious prayers. This really happened. This was the mindset of the federal government and its response to terrorism.

The scenes where Michael went totally off the wall crazy on the Charleston was inspired by the Farscape episode "Crackers Don't Matter", where a similar thing happened to John Creighton. I'll never forget him donning a cape and yelling "Humans are SUUUPERIOR!!!!!".

Here's a tip on how to be a good writer: think like a girl, and write like a man.

1) Think like a girl. Every time something happens in a story, think how it will affect characters, and their thoughts and feelings for other characters. Express them. Male writers come up short because they lard their stories with action scenes and descriptions of places and objects which don't show impacts on people and character development.

2) Write like a man. Think of how to write witty dialogue between characters. Many female writers come up short because while they are good at expressing emotions, their descriptive dialogue is boring, not witty, not tense, not dramatic, and worst of all, their characters are all two dimensionally good and sensitive types who make you want to vomit or fall asleep... but mostly, to vomit.

It was only recently that I acquired these skills, from rereading Game of Thrones over and over. Now it's as easy to me as flying is to a bird. That's all I do in my books--I try to make action scenes (which I hate) as short as possible, and provide as few descriptions as possible in my stories. Things happen in my story, but I describe them as briefly as possible. My books are all about people expressing feelings in situations. You could almost think of them as plays. That's what gives my science fiction a literature-like feel, but in a good way.

I'm very glad the way this book turned out, and especially pleased with Sophie Astor--because of her, I may write another book of her and Taylor's adventures. What really worked for me was writing the story in layers--on the bottom level was Taylor and his actual experiences; on the middle level was his motivations (such as Ambition and Inadequacy), and on the top level was Galactic Hope and Galactic Despair, which was manipulating everything below them. I also really enjoyed writing a story which took place over a long period of time. It allowed me to take characters I created at the beginning of the story (like Allyson Harshbarger, Cherry Oteri, and Andrea Farber) and when I brought them back later in the story, we didn't just have a description to tell us about them, we saw them actually being part of the first half of the story, which made their characters feel much more vivid and real in the second part of the story. That's why fantasy novels (like Game of Thrones) can have much more vivid characters, because we can see them evolving over several books, and they develop a history we can refer back to.

This book was written during a giant fire which destroyed a good chunk of northern California. Imagine me sitting in the dark, surrounded by choking smoke, writing without electricity by extremely dim candle light on my battery charged ipad... because for a few days, that really happened. This book took about three weeks to write, but without the power failures and mass disasters, I could have finished it a few days sooner.

Well, that's about everything for now. I hoped you enjoyed reading the book as much as I enjoyed writing it.​