Read On Mars Pathfinder (The Mike Lane Stories Book 1) Online
Authors: Jim Melanson
On Mars Pathfinder (The Mike Lane Stories Book 1) (42 page)
Now it was time for the women to be surprised. They looked at each other, a bit confused, “Say again?” Achael said after keying her COM unit. Neither one of them had their COM units on VOX while they were having the meeting. This was so that the contents of the meeting would be private.
“They all just buggered off towards their home base. All five of them. They advanced to 80 km, then they withdrew, then they left.
Pfffttt
. Just like that.”
“Ladies?” Mike said. Hlef looked at him and responded, “The five scout ships that were watching your base just left. No warning. They just left. That’s strange.”
“Very strange,” added Achael.
“Ummm, perhaps this is the retreat before they start blowing the shit out of me? Us?” Mike looked worried.
“No.” said Hlef. “No, the Eridani don’t withdraw their drones just because they might get destroyed in an attack. That’s unheard of in a thousand years of Eridani battle tactics. It has to be something else.”
Achael
She was indeed confused by this turn of events. If anything, the drones should have pressed their advance, or at least had more drones join them. Having them withdraw actually made her breathe a bit easier for the human, but it was still damn odd. It might even be complicating the current situation, rather than simplifying it. She had to get a hold of the Lieutenant General.
She stood up and her sister joined her, “Mike, I think we need to get hold of Mom and talk to her about this. The drones leaving, I think that something is up, that we all may have missed. We need to talk about it, and get some direction.”
“Sure, sure,” Mike said, he sounded a bit prissy. “I’ll just sit here and twiddle my fraking thumbs, shall I? All y’all bugger off for your secret meetings and decide my fate and fortune. That how we’re going to play this?”
Achael got pissed at that herself. This human may be cute and admirable, but he just had no clue about interstellar politics or interplanetary war. She had a bit of an edge to her voice, surprising Hlef, as she responded, “Yes Mike. That’s exactly what you are going to do. You are going to do nothing until we get hold of you again. Remember, we are on
your
side here, Mike.”
Hlef forced herself to be calm and soothing, much to Achael’s surprised irritation, “Yes Mike. We
are
on your side,” Hlef smiled. “Don’t doubt that for a moment. We knew your arrival would piss off the Eridani, but Mom has a plan to deal with them. Well, unless something has changed.” She smiled again.
Achael watched her sister and wondered who the hell she was? That meltdown of hers certainly brought some changes with it. Her own temper flare-up towards the human had calmed down quickly, and she tried to be reassuring before departing.
“Mike, we’ll be back as soon as we know something and bring you up to speed. We’ll see what this change in tactics may mean, and let you know how you can handle it.”
She glanced at Hlef and decided maybe a little fib would help settle him down. She stepped around the table and stood right in front of him. “Mike, you are a player now. You’re at the table and part of this. We’ll keep you in the loop and bring you in deeper after we get a handle on this,” she smiled again.
She could tell Mike was holding his temper in. She didn’t think he believed a word of the white lie.
Mike
I did a little mental deep breathing and held my temper. It wasn’t this woman’s fault. She was a pawn, like me. She had others to answer to. This was indeed going to be a very special report to Mission Control. The video of this meeting was going to rock a lot of worlds. I knew it wasn’t transmitting, but the Hab system was still recording the internal cameras. Knowing I was playing with the big boys made me glad I had added a plugin to my laptop as I was having breakfast. The plugin would automatically back up the video files from the main Habitat server.
Not for one second did I believe her B.S. about me being a player. I was a pawn. Period.
She reached out and took my hand, her freakishly long fingers wrapping around my hand, a feeling I would soon become very accustomed too. She smiled and said, “We’ll be in touch soon.”
I forced a smile back at her and said, “You are welcome back any time.”
She picked up her helmet and stepped back. The hot one walked over to me and smiled, giving me a wink, “We’ll be back soon, Sweetie,” she smiled again, “Very soon.”
I couldn’t help the genuine smile. Her hand was strong but soft, tough yet yielding. Her eyes, regardless of how big and odd they looked, were dreamy pools of invitation. “You are most definitely welcome back any time.”
She couldn’t have missed the slight emphasis on the “you” in that statement. By her slight blush and quick withdrawal of her hand, I could tell she picked it up. The one called Hlef, the hot one, my future wife, picked up her helmet and stepped back beside my future sister-in-law. As Achael reached for her COM unit on her wrist, Hlef said, “When we come back, is there anything you want, Sweetie?”
I chuckled, “Bring more cookies.”
They suddenly weren’t there anymore. I was all alone again.
I sighed heavily and made another cup of tea from my dwindling supply of tea bags. I sat at the table and slowly ate three more cookies with sips of tea while thinking about what had just transpired.
“Yep,” I said to myself, “this is going to get a
lot
worse before it gets
any
better.”
Join Mike, Achael, Hlef, Gilda, and the others in the sequel to Pathfinder…
On Mars:
Murder at Hellas Planitia
The Mike Lane Stories, Volume 2
Fall of 2015
Cultural References
This book is peppered with cultural references from some of my favourite books, TV shows, and movies. Here is a list of them from the book and the source they were taken from. These are all from people much bigger and better than I am. I did so, only to pay homage to those who have given me such joy over the years!
“
frak
” - As an author trying to appeal to wide range of ages, I have to be careful about too much cussin’ and such. I used the word “frak” as an expletive. I first heard this word being used on Battlestar Gallactica (the original and the remake). It’s been used in at least 17 other T.V. shows according to Wikipedia. Don’t confuse it with “frack” which has to do with oil drilling.
“
chew bubble gum and kick ass
” - My nod to a really great sci-fi B-movie starring the great Canadian wrestler, Rowdy Roddy Piper. The movie was called “They Live”.
“
Spinning Wheels. Cue Blood, Sweat & Tears
.” - I’m referring to the song “Spinning Wheel” by the jazz-rock group Blood, Sweat and Tears. The opening lines of the song go like this:
What goes up must come down, spinning wheel got to go round, talking about your troubles it’s a crying sin.”
“I decided right then there would be no retreat. Hell, I just got here.”
– Battle for Los Angeles (movie). Aaron Eckhart’s character in that movie was half the inspiration for the character of Mike Lane.
Feh-wu
– A Mandarin phrase for “junk” from the greatest science fiction TV show ever,
Firefly
.
“Miles to go before I sleep”
– From the Poem “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost.
“Ugly giant bags of mostly water”
– Alien lifeforms’ description of humans, from an episode of ST:TNG (S1E18).
“So much for the best laid plans of men, and mice.”
– Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy.
SOMP (suit of many pockets)
- A nod to the Canadian adventure clothing company Tilley Endurables, in reference to their fisherman/photographer vest the VOMP (Vest Of Many Pockets). Read more at www.tilley.com.
“
most Riki-Tik”
– An occasional expression used by character Gen Thomas Ryan, played by Robert Patrick, in the TV show
The Unit
. The phrase is most likely derived from the Rudyard Kipling character Rikki-Tikki-Tavi in the Jungle Books, volume 2.
“
John Carter would have been proud
” – In
A Princess of Mars
(Edgar Rice Burroughs) we meet John Carter who impresses the Tharks with his ability to jump vast distances. A combination of low-g and his human strength.
“
Grog the Caveman
” - Was the hairy little quintessential caveman in the “B.C.” comic strip by cartoonist Johnny Hart.
“
“I. Don’t. CARE.” Achael punctuated each word like it was its own sentence.
” - A nod to my hero, James Tiberius Kirk.
“
Rage Against The Machine”
- AKA RATM, they are a rap-metal band from Los Angeles, California, formed in the early 90s.
“
shake of a lamb’s tail
” - Is a term used to denote the interval of sequential steps in a nuclear explosion. One shake of a lamb’s tail is equivalent to 10 nanoseconds. I first encountered this term in popular fiction in the book, “Sum of All Fears” by Tom Clancy.
“well, then we’ll just have to begin some aggressive negotiations.”
- A nod to my much beloved Star Wars, mimicking something Anakin said in reference to his Jedi Master, Obi-Wan Kenobi.
“
I’m a bad, bad man
.” - One of my favourite lines of the character Malcom Reynolds, played by Nathan Fillion, in the greatest science fiction TV show ever,
Firefly
. Nathan Fillion’s writer/crime solving character Richard Castle is the other half of the inspiration for Mike Lane.
“
I was more worried about pulling a Dorothy
.” - In the
Wizard of Oz
, the protagonist Dorothy was transported to the land of Oz by a tornado, a cyclone. My editor’s name is also Dorathy (pronounced the same, just spelled with an ‘a’ instead of an ‘o’).
“
Pro’s from Dover
” - a Nod to M*A*S*H, one of my fav TV shows growing up
. The term comes from the 1968 book M*A*S*H by Richard Hooker.
“
Hello Sweetie”
- A demurely sexy line delivered by the character River Song, played by Alex Kingston, in the TV Show
Doctor Who
. Alex Kingston was who I loosely had in mind while crafting the character of Hlef. Closely associated, I was loosely thinking of Eve Myles, the black-haired lead character in the
Doctor Who
spinoff called
Torchwood,
as my character Achael.
“
Oy! Enough with the poodles already
” - From the Gilmore Girls, season 3. Great show!
“
Do or do not, there is no try
” - Do I really need to explain that one?
Check out the sites for the men who inspired me to actually start writing:
Rick Fearnley
Kenneth Lord
Jim Melanson
P
oet, programmer, procrastinator, sci-fi geek, coffee snob, actor, writer.
A devoted Christian, Jim is a quiet and thoughtful man who tends to think deeply, and act slowly. Much of this inner reflection and self-assessment shows up in his writing. “Capturing what truly motivates us,” is how Jim describes his approach to both fiction and non-fiction. This author has a very direct, and sometimes
in-your-face,
way of writing. He tries to always use conversational language; and as one test reader of a work in progress put it, “made the complexities of space flight seem almost understandable.”
Jim read his first novel by Laura Ingalls Wilder at the age of eight, and so this began his love affair with the written word. Jim’s first foray into personal writing, as a child, was poetry. These and other poetic scribblings provided the content for his first book,
I Apologize for Nothing
, published in April, 2014.
Life, a child, a career with the Police Service, and a part-time business authoring software; all got in the way of pursuing his desire to write. In his 40’s, Jim decided to turn his hand back to writing, mainly on topics surrounding self-development, spirituality, and Reiki. However, none of these really satisfied that craving for creativity. In 2013, Jim decided to pursue his creative yearnings, and he began writing for pleasure. Drawing on a solid work ethic from his experience authoring technical manuals and writing business proposals, Jim found writing for himself to be liberating and enjoyable. While working on his first fiction novel, he kept getting sidetracked by other ideas. He dusted off an old stage play he had written and published under the title,
Mama’s Slippers
, with the hopes of attracting production interest. He currently continues work on both science fiction and Christian themed projects.
Originally hailing from the East Coast, Jim now lives just outside Cobourg, ON.
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www.wattpad.com/user/torontojim