Sentence starter #2: 200 words: SCIFI theme

[Doctor Setebos]

You know the drill. Or, actually, maybe you don't. Sentence starters (http://www.colonyofgamers.com/cogforums/tags.php?tag=sentence+starter) are a fairly simple concept. I'll post a sentence. You write everything that follows that sentence. That's it. It's just flash fiction. Make it interesting. Make it compelling. Make it yours.

The word count for this starter is 200 words. Remember: the word count isn't meant to be a hard and fast goal, merely a suggestion. But for those that wish to use sentence starters as true exercises in forced writing, it will be welcome practice in attempting to stick to set goals.

And a new addition to this starter: your contribution should be set within the genre of science fiction.

So, without further ado, here's your sentence starter:

The tiny craft shook violently as the engines signaled their fast and terribly inconvenient failure.

[Kielaran]

The tiny craft shook violently as the engines signaled their fast and terribly inconvenient failure. It wasn’t a surprise. None of them were experiences in making vehicles such as this and all of the components were what could be scrounged up from everyday materials. The crew knew they stood no chance. They looked at their comrades, only four of them brave enough to take the risk. Success would have given them freedom, but instead, their failure would make their end. Death would be merciful compared to what they expected to experience in the near future.

They could already see the creatures gathering. They crawled out from caves, climbed down from their treetop perches, and skulked out of the shadows, all wearing the horrible grin that would never leave their faces.
With a dull thump, the craft landed on the soft sand. Immediately, the creatures began clawing at it, tearing it apart, exposing those inside to their wrath. It had been commanded to attempt to leave the island was to go against the master. The creatures knew what to do with those who disobeyed the master. The deviants were taken into the caves. They would taught to obey.

[Shadowstorm]

The tiny craft shook violently as the engines signaled their fast and terribly inconvenient failure. "Pull up! Pull up!” Mantren, the co-pilot screeched. "I can't! I can't! I fucking can't do this shit anymore!" Sporadic and harsh static penetrated the craft's COM system as Base Control attempted to establish contact with their lone vessel. This was a recon mission gone wrong.

Another ring of pulsating energy headed toward them. “Oh fuck. Mantren, go to secondary impulse engines, prepare for evasive maneuvers, take power from life support and shift it to helm control!”

Mantren nervously obeyed. Small slivers of hope were subconsciously draining from his spirit. “Green, hit it!”

The body of the craft was hit violently with the alien weapon. “REPORT!” The pilot shouted. “REPORT, REPORT!” He shouted again. “SHEILDS ARE BEING DRAINED. 80% --- 70.” Mantren yelled back. “COM control is offline! Main computer failure! Hull at 12%! Life support critical!” A sitting duck. Almost.

Several menacingly large alien spacecraft approached them. Faceless and haunting.

The pilot shifted the ship. “Mantren, on command, I want you to prepare for a head-on collision with the biggest vessel. Thrusters 100% capacity for a ten second burst, then take away power from everything else and shift it to engines then blow the entire damn reactor. We’re not going out without a boom.”

220 words.

[Khrymsyn]

The tiny craft shook violently as the engines signaled their fast and terribly inconvenient failure. Inconvenient, not for the pilot of the twin engine fighter; he was already dead, but for the bridge crew of the Saratoga.

“Starboard full burn NOW Ensign!” bellowed Captain Brown.

With a bang, the massive feat of engineering lurched slowly, too slowly thought Brown, to the right. The fighter’s engine failure included a venting of superheated plasma, which altered the course of the single manned vessel. It was now on a head on course with the bridge, the only part of the Battleship a crash like this would do catastrophic damage.

The Raptor class fighter struck the Battleship in a large fireball, melting plastics and alloys, but narrowly missing the fused transparent metals that formed the bridge main window. Expended fuel and catalysts splashed against the hull of the Saratoga, only to drift off to space harmlessly as the components separated in the vacuum.
“Tactical, get some goddamn fire on the le…” was all Brown to get out as the bridge was again shaken, this time not by a downed fighter, but by something more substantial, and dangerous.

“Captain, what in the hell is THAT?!”


According to Word... 200 words on the nose. BOOYAH!

[shunoshi]

Whew, 200 on the dot. :D

The tiny craft shook violently as the engines signaled their fast and terribly inconvenient failure.

“Kreiger, where the hell are my engines?!”

“Uh, we have a bit of a problem, Captain!” exclaimed Kreiger, digging under a maintenance table and retrieving a fire extinguisher. He sprinted across the storage bay into engineering and let loose a torrent of white smoke from the extinguisher. His nose crinkled as the fumes from the melted impulse coupling wire wafted past.

“Kreiger! We’re about 90 seconds from docking front end first and if you let that happen, mark my words, you’ll be losing a lot more than you job!” The captain of the Fleeting Sparrow stood red-faced in the entryway. He was a portly man whose jowels shook as he barked threats at his first mate.

“I’m working as fast as—“

“Attention approaching vessel,” the ship’s com-unit blared to life, “this is Ganymede docking bay 247. We’ve detected that your approach exceeds regulatory docking speeds. Please slow your craft immediately!”

“One minute, Kreiger!” Captain Syl stormed back to the bridge and grimaced at the sight of the docking clamps moving steadily toward his ship. He shook his head at the thought of what the repairs would cost, not to mention the hefty fine Ganymede’s finest would levy against him.

“Kreiger!!”

[National Kato]

The tiny craft shook violently as the engines signaled their fast and terribly inconvenient failure.

That was that, then.

Borya powered down the phase coils and watched as the board’s azure glow slowly faded. The OLEDs across the cabin pulsed in their slow rhythm, allowing just enough light to see the cramped confines. The starfield slowly skewed upward as the craft began its free drift. This was going to take some time; time they didn’t have.

“I suppose this means I’m back on the clock?” Cenek’s gravelly voice chirped from the box to Borya’s right.

The captain punched the comm. “You know the drill.”

“Yes, I do,” Cenek replied, all mirth gone from his voice. “I’m just wondering, friend, how far she’ll go this time.”

“Just leave the wondering to me, Cenek, and fix her up.” Borya looked out at the starfield, scanning for any approaching craft. “Or the next clock you punch may very well be on Akhmerov.”

“Point taken, friend.” The box went silent.

Cenek would do his job. As far as engineers go, he was as good as any a rift trader could afford. Borya knew he was in it for the commission, but who wasn’t? His loyalty had been proven time and again.

Cenek would do his job; he had to.


.

[Khrymsyn]

This one I started worrying about word count, but decided to throw that away somewhat since I already entered one with the right word count. =) Pretty much an experiment by me, and not sure how I feel about it, but here it goes...



The tiny craft shook violently as the engines signaled their fast and terribly inconvenient failure. First Lt. James “Hellfire” Shiraz adeptly flipped the switches to enable emergency power and his pulse beacon.

As trained, he began his assessment of the situation. Life support check, but emergency power at 45%. That only gives me about 30 minutes left. Shit, it’ll be at least 35 until S&R arrives.
What in the hell happened? WHAT HAPPENED? Nothing on radar, then BOOM! Bullshit… I better relax or else I’m in no way making it until S&R gets here.

20 minutes left. It’s not like I’m a damn trainee. How could we have been jumped like that? For that matter, were we jumped? I didn’t see anything, and I know Vampire didn’t before he bought it. Was it some sort of radiation or cosmic flux?
10 minutes left. Fucking flight suit is too small, too STALE. Why the hell can’t they improve these things? Shit doesn’t move right, no tactile response on the controls. They really didn’t learn how important that is with piloting on Earth at least. 5 minutes left. Goddamn SUIT. Couldn’t they put an air freshener in these things? After an hour flight your breath gets pretty rank. I've got to freshen up before I get back to see Mom. She’d be so proud of me. 3 minutes left. Passing academy was so tough. I’m glad she’s able to make it. Dress Blues are so tight and uncomfortable though, and I’m sure that it doesn’t help it’s so damn cold in here. Who puts the AC on in the middle of winter? 2 minutes left. Maybe I should take a nap before the awards ceremony. Dealing with all of those people really tire me out. Damn uniform is so unconfortable. Just close my eyes a few minutes…

[crazyD]

The tiny craft shook violently as the engines signaled their fast and terribly inconvenient failure.

"Well, crap," Spaceman Jim said. "That is pretty inconvenient."

Spaceman Jim slowly climbed out of his hover La-Z-Boy, and walked over to the engine room. He looked at the engine for a few minutes, then smacked the casing twice.

"Engine crap out again?" yelled Spaceman Todd from his bed pod.

"Yep," replied Spaceman Jim.

"Damn, that is pretty inconvenient. Have you tried hitting it?"

"Twice," Spaceman Jim replied.

"Wellll..." shouted Spaceman Todd, "I'm out of ideas. Could you try hitting it again?"

Spaceman Jim shook his head at the futility of the situation, and gave the engine casing yet another open palmed smack. The metal rang from the impact, and the engine roared to life once more. Triumphant, Spaceman Jim headed back to his hover La-Z-Boy, as Cheers reruns were about to start on STV (Space Tele-Vision).

"Hey Todd," Spaceman Jim said, walking past Spaceman Todd's room. "Got it working."

"Oh yeah?" said Spaceman Todd, in a matter that suggested he really didn't care. "How'd you do that?"

"Smacked it again."

"Crappy inconvenient engine."

[Khrymsyn]

Lol crazyD. I like! haha

[Doctor Setebos]

"Crappy inconvenient engine."It is a pretty inconvenient engine, isn't it?

[Shadowstorm]

CrazyD, you could have easily won the internets if you included this IT Crowd reference in there: "Have you tried turning it off and on again?"

[Young Al Capone]

The tiny craft shook violently as the engines signaled their fast and terribly inconvenient failure.

Not now, not like this. He cursed himself for not figuring out the controls faster. Dying didn’t bother him; it would be a relief. Just not here, anywhere but here.

The events leading up to this incredible circumstance flashed before his eyes. His friends’ terrified faces as the steel cephalopod lowered down behind him, the sharp sting on his neck and the powerful hug, then nothing.

The timeless cell, with its smooth steel interior and single window peering into the abyss of interstellar space was all he ever knew of the space station. His abductors were human, apparently, though he only saw them in fleeting glimpses.

With a start he was brought back to the present, the violent illness and the steel cephalopod finally taken off of autopilot only to immediately die in his much less capable hands.

He shook off the delirium and remembered what he was doing; anything to keep from getting home. Whatever was in his blood was killing him, and he was quickly becoming convinced that his abductors had put it there for him to share when he returned.

It was too late.

The last thing he saw was the southern tip of South America, as if on a map, as he broke through Earth’s atmosphere hysterically begging to be anywhere else.

216 words, close but not quite, and I cut a lot. This one is getting some good responses.

[shunoshi]

Haha, good one crazyD, felt very sitcom like.

[crazyD]

It is a pretty inconvenient engine, isn't it?

I just really liked your use of the word "inconvenient", and decided to run with it.

CrazyD, you could have easily won the internets if you included this IT Crowd reference in there: "Have you tried turning it off and on again?"

Unfortunately, I'm not a fan of the IT Crowd. I tried to like it, but just couldn't.

[Doctor Setebos]

The tiny craft shook violently as the engines signaled their fast and terribly inconvenient failure. The crowd that had gathered on the shoreline might have cheered, had they not been struck with horror at what they had just witnessed. The vessel containing their departing captors had been quickly and irreparably damaged. As the small group stood watching in harrowing silence, the ship began a steep decent towards the continent to the north. It would crash there, and its crew would be completely obliterated. That alone should be reason enough for celebrating.

But the Darsian military had been the ones to blast the craft out of the sky. An artillery regiment, secreted away high atop a cliff overlooking the encampment, foretold the impending forces that would follow. Would it be days until they came? Hours? How long would they have to wait until they traded their fleeting freedom for dominion once again? It always seemed to work that way. Just as they finally managed to rid themselves of one set of conquerors, another came to take their place. But this was how it had been dictated; the edict sent throughout the known galaxies was clear and urgent.

Humans weren't allowed to be human anymore.

[DangerousDaze]

The tiny craft shook violently as the engines signalled their fast and terribly inconvenient failure. The vector-cell line system was just microns away from the adenovirus DNA when the minuscule machinery driving it through the cell wall froze solid.

Again.

This was the fourth time in as many months that the experimental nanomachinery had failed and the project was now almost certainly to be terminated by the board.

Nanotoxicology alert in late stage one motility unit, sub-section three, zero, alpha,…

Dr. Harlan Kantrell stared numbly at the glowing red trends crawling across the monitors before him while the soothing female monotone of the processing platform conveyed the bad news, and seethed.

‘Well that was inconvenient’ Gregg Stranlan pronounced to no one in particular.

‘Inconvenient? It’s a goddamn fucking disaster!’ barked Kantrell as he stalked away from the surprisingly compact medical equipment. Kantrell all but punched the schematic of the failed unit projected onto the multi-media work surface that covered most of the far wall and turned back to Stranlan.

‘It’s attacking itself! Why?’

Stranlan stared desperately at the process data, daring the answer to jump out from the charts. It didn’t.

‘There’s a meeting in the morning. We’ll have to prepare a report.’

/edit - thanks to Wraith whose indent tag I stole mercilessly! Looks much nicer.

[Wraith]

The tiny craft shook violently as the engines signaled their fast and terribly inconvenient failure. Stanley observed his seatmate. Name: Coleman Stearns, gender: male, skin: Caucasian, eyes: blue, hair: graying black, estimated weight: 180 pounds, estimated age: 55-65 years. Mr. Stearns appeared frightened. Jaw clenched, arms gripping the armrests of his aisle seat tightly, pupils dilated, heart rate elevated. The most probable cause for Mr. Stearns' current physiological condition: the impending crash of the small vessel they occupied, along with 13 other passengers and 4 crew members. An event that he estimated would occur in 43 seconds.

Stanley had found that making an optimistic statement in such situations often comforted people around him. Stanley turned toward his fellow passenger and smiled, reassuringly. "You should know, Mr. Stearns, that you have a 67% chance of survival, based on our current altitude, our current rate of descent, and the crash survival rate for ships of this make and model within the last five years."

"Damn robots," Mr. Stearns said through clenched teeth.

Noting Mr. Stearns' hostility, Stanley instead turned to face the window, observing their descent toward the rocky surface below. 15 seconds. Several passengers began crying. Stanley performed internal emergency shutdown procedures. 10 seconds. Before disabling his vocal and language subsystems, Stanley said, in a calm voice, "Hold tight, Mr. Stearns."

[civil]

“The tiny craft shook violently as the engines signaled their fast and terribly inconvenient failure, the black rainbow carrying my wife and daughter toward a freedom that I hoped would come to me later. Red and yellow arms waved to me from the ground. Waved goodbye.”

“I understand that must have been difficult for you, Mr. Franklin, to see your family die by –“

“My daughter saw me damage the flaps. Do you know what it’s like to have someone trust you to do right by them, no matter what it may look like at the time?”

“I have a family of my own, Mr. Franklin, and I hope we have the kind of trust you talk about. I’d like to know they can trust me. Trust me to do the right thing. Trust you to do the right thing.”

“I did do the right thing.”

“That’s what we’re trying to figure out, Mr. Franklin. I need to know which of your daughters was on that ship. I know that a woman and only one girl were seen boarding. Was it Samantha? The carrier? Was she the one on that ship?”

“If you can ask me tomorrow, you'll know."

[BLeeP]

The tiny craft shook violently as the engines signaled their fast and terribly inconvenient failure. The trip was supposed to be a quick jaunt from the mining planet of Salshakur, located in the Tabul region, over to the decadent planet of Cokyjarr, located in the far reaches of Konter space.

It is important to understand what this failed operation will mean to both involved parties. The Salshakurenians have long searched for a use for the abundant minerals that crowd their homeland, mining it day in and day out just to find room to live comfortably. The proud Cokyjarrists have grown tired of eating the same variety of foods and look forward to the arrival of the foreign spices. With the death of this crew, the Cokyjarrists will most likely see their failure to arrive as an insult and will declare war upon the somewhat simplistic miners.

The captain, knowing this all too well, looks at his crew and lets out one long, sad word as their ship collides into unknown territory.

"Bzzzzzzzz."







EDIT: I ended up short on the wordage, but I am happy with it, so I will not be adding more.

[Wasson_]

The tiny craft shook violently as the engines signaled their fast and terribly inconvenient failure. The distinctive pattern across the displays, the sensation of drifting with the asymmetric force of what the tiny scout-class Mantis had been hit with, brought the planet below more into view. His craft was yawing hard to the left and the electromotive drives on this fighter were linked to drive engines, not the primary power plant. In other words, Capt. Rehora was dead in the water.

Dazzled momentarily, locked only in terror for a split second, he began going though his check lists. First on priority, ensure left engine wasn't damaged beyond function. Sure, he could hit the battle short maybe give him enough time to escape...but pulse fusion engines have nasty tempers, if the absorption field was compromised, the engine would fail within seconds, the contained plasma would escape destroying the engine...and giving away his pinpoint location to whoever got a lucky hit on his small stealthy craft and he'd be dead instantly.
So there his fingers hung over the display calmly querying him "Restart?" as his heart pounded as he read on the damage indicators, "INCONCLUSIVE. BATTLE SHORT ENGAUGED, DISENGUAGE?"

"UGH...FUCK..."

But what was he thinking? Yes...only the heavy assault fighters he had been used to flying, before the shit hit the fan, had really in depth damage control systems, only they could actually sustain a degree of battle damage and keep flying. This thing, this Mantis was an all together different beast. It's shields were designed with failure in mind, as a multi-use phase pod...just to stop that one golden bee-bee, that one in a million shot at all costs.
He remembered now most of what that old pro of a Line Sergent told him,
"Yeah, they'll overload the system completely when the ships configured for infiltration...it's a deflector-type so they don't have a capacitor to feed off of. The engines will pulse one last large reaction, giving the system maximum power and it'll ALL go to the shield, the ships jammers and stealth systems WON'T fail! You'll just need a second for the powerplant to re-prime the catch-fields in the engines"

"That's it then..."

Capt. Rehora, threw caution to the wind, he turned the battle short off, ignored his damage indicators, pulled his "throttle" back to zero and restarted the engines. They started, his controls returned, and he felt the icy hand of death leave his shoulder once again.

"Not today you sons of bitches..."

He shuttered the icy chills away and continued on towards his nav-point as the still distant cruiser went back to firing at what was surely the faintest of sensor contacts out in maximum orbit, it's dull crimson beams of plasma lanced far into the night striking nothing more than concern in a shaken Capt. Rehora. Were he closer to it's envelope of fire, he probably would have been destroyed and the precious recon data would have been lost.

[VerseD]

The tiny craft shook violently as the engines signaled their fast and terribly inconvenient failure. After a brief glance at red lights twinkling on the dashboard, Will Schaefer flipped off the aural shield and reverted the engines to a low cycle, slowing the craft to sub-sonic speeds.

He had been trained to deal with breakdowns like this in flight school. The red dust of the world below so often caused catastrophic meltdowns in their delicate engines that nearly every landksipper pilot had dealt with one, but this was Will’s first. It was his nineteenth hop, and he was right in the middle of it, hanging in the red at the zenith of his atmospheric arc between the skyport in Bradbury and the water station at the north pole.

None of Will’s simulations had rattled him as much as his landskipper was now, and he was quickly losing his cool. He chomped down on the capsule in his mouth, flooding it with a medicinal taste. In moments, his heart rate slowed, his mind cleared, and his suit soaked through with sweat. He hated the damn pills.

In a flurry of practiced movements, Will inflated the emergency skids, activated the safety net, and flipped on the locator beacon. That was all he could do. When it was over, he climbed out and sat in red Martian soil in the shade of his downed craft. He lit a cigarette and raised his right thumb to the sky, just in case anyone was watching the satellite feed.

[Wasson_]

Yours and young Al Capones are pretty cool I'd have to say. I like Capone's a lot however, it's probably the most imaginative one so far.

[Young Al Capone]

Yours and young Al Capones are pretty cool I'd have to say. I like Capone's a lot however, it's probably the most imaginative one so far.

Thank you so much, I am humbled.

I really liked yours VerseD and Wasson_, it is hard to come up with your own jargon for future tech, and I am always impressed when someone does it.