Black Hole Drive

By W. Strawn Douglas

Captain Hardesty and Commander Bowman must shelve their romance long enough to rescue a mining colony and their sentient spaceship, known as Candide, from the threats of a corrupt policeman and a few opportunistic thieves. Bowman shines as she deduces the fate of Candide and all inside of him pivot on a sixty year old fulcrum that calls out to a rebels rebel, a player left offstage for six decades. Bowman has the choice of survival and success or the end of her command. She chooses survival. All the while opening a new tomorrow to the newest addition to her manifest, the miner girl Piglet whose youth and vigor threaten Candide with happiness and new adventures.

Black Hole Drive is a tome on hope and spins a tale of true satisfaction for those in its world. Piglet is thus launched into intrigues and art with few to guide her but the crew she has just met and the mining colony that has been her home for nearly two decades.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Feb 24, 2012
• ISBN: 9781468509762

W. Strawn Douglas

William Strawn Douglas writes under the name W. Strawn Douglas, because there are too many more famous William Douglas's he'd otherwise have to compete with for name space!This Douglas, born in 1961, grew up immersed in the medical system. His father was a physician at the world famous Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. His mother was a nurse and nursing instructor. A grandfather was a physician as well.Douglas currently resides in the U.S. in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Previous to his 2016 move there, he spent more than two decades as a resident at Minnesota's State Security Hospital, in Saint Peter, Minnesota. He had been committed there by the courts in 1993, diagnosed as Mentally Ill and Dangerous. That was after he assaulted a young woman during a schizophrenic episode, his disordered thinking wanting to create an "incident" to draw "the law's" attention to local drug distribution he found objectionable.Douglas has attended the University of Minnesota, in Minneapolis. He is a U.S. Marine veteran, and has worked in the oilfields of Wyoming and as a cook at the famed Seward Café on the West Bank of Minneapolis. He has worked as a graphic artist, and in life before Saint Peter, he was also an avid bicyclist.Douglas admits to having been active for years as a user of what he calls short order soft drugs. He says he has even participated in distributing some of them. But he also claims to have never used the harder addictive street drugs.These days, Douglas' schizophrenia is stable and controlled by medication. He spent much of his time at Saint Peter reading science fiction and works on philosophy, psychology, psychiatry, conspiracy theories, and drugs and addiction. Within his studies, Douglas has maintained a focus on ideas about how the shapes of future governments could impact personal liberty, and he has tried to combine all of his interests within some of his published science and speculative fiction.

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© 2012 W. Strawn Douglas. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 03/28/2012

ISBN: 978-1-4685-0977-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4685-0976-2 (e)

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Book One:

Thor 47

Section One: Thor 47

Section Two: Piglet’s Pride

Section Three:

Back against the wall

Book Two:

Black Hole Drive

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Return of the Dark Star

The Game Preserve

The Game Preserve—II

Book One:

Thor 47

Section One: Thor 47

Angela lived in a tower apartment, on Thor 47, in a backwater sun just past Medina Prime, near the Yormagunder nebula. She was 16 years old, just about 17.

Thor 47 was smaller than Earth. Gravity was a bit lighter, a bit less demanding of the people of the world. Oh, for sure, one could grow to young adulthood, as Angela had, with no real problems. One had enough gravity that the muscular development of a human body would grow in an Earthlike fashion, but that was not a problem. On Thor, one got down to the ground; but it was a softer landing than it was on old Earth.

Angela’s father was a tool pusher for the mining labor pool on Thor. He was not at the top of the food chain, but he was high enough in it that Angela felt the sting of importance. Here, 50,000 light years away from Earth, Angela had to live in the shadow of a great man in her community. She completed her calculus and her chemistry, just so her father would look good and have a daughter that he could be proud of. It all seemed a bit predictable. Dad was this big great man and she was his perfect kid. She liked that.

For her, it was an honor to have a father she could be proud of. So many of her schoolmates just shuffled from one family crisis to another; parents employed for a while and in on-again off-again jobs. Angela’s father readied loads of refined precious metals for shipment from heavy space-time dilation ships and demilitarized black hole drive merchant stellar ships.

Angela laughed for a moment on her way out of school. The space-time dilation ships were called the sexless wonders. As their initials of their drives were STD, it was like saying the whole colony had a sexually transmitted disease.

Having an STD spaceship orbiting at an altitude of 800 miles meant that gravity towers and chemical launches were the only way to get people, equipment, and tons of refined metal to the ship.

She walked out of the illuminated cave carved out of rock and into the corridor to the pressurized rapid transit train. From there, she walked to the cave near her family’s apartment in the tower called Morton. The Floating Point Mining Company dug a mass of gold out of rock of a thousand tons per year.

She went home to the 13th floor of the Morton tower. She wore her father’s Lord Drilling jacket left over from his days as a petroleum driller. He still drilled holes into rock, but the process was more like the old black powder rock-drilling done on Earth before the invention of dynamite. Chinese workers had bored holes in rock using chisels and hammers, and then put black powder into those holes and exploded the black powder into the rock. This created holes to drill steam engine railway locomotives through mountains of stone.

Things were a lot better now. They used anti-matter and precision-guided computers for detonating strata with precious metals and gems in them. Nonetheless, they still needed a driller and a drill rig. Somebody who would not cowboy the brake and get the drill bit stuck. Tripping pipe, though, was another matter entirely.

Angela was proud enough of her father that she wore his jacket with its company logo on it. Being a Christian, she also was amused by the Lord Drilling logo on the coat she wore. For her, the double meaning made sense.

It was a simple life but a good one.

*     *     *

Earth Corporate desired the anti-matter that Floating Point received from the ghosts. In this instance, the corporate front was from Gallium Corporation. They saw the other races using anti-matter as engine fuel or a power plant heat source. They wanted in on the game. The ghosts, though, saw them as soulless fiends, and never let such people into their temples.

On Medina Prime, one could find the ghost’s temple. There, the trans-dimensional life form called the Unionist Collective was in residence. They granted wishes to people and healed or inspired. They also gave away tools. They gave anti-matter to Floating Point mining.

*     *     *

There were Tories and Whigs. There were Winschells and Lippmans. There were Conservatives and Liberals, Republicans and Democrats.

Over the span of time there were many labels. Here in space there were three options; Earth Corporate, Freelancer, and the Fleet. Fleet included the shipyards in space over Earth’s skies and all of known space from Tanith Field to Tanhauser Gate, and all of the space around Earth for 50,000 light years in all directions. Even when measured in thousands of light years, the span of space was one that had been barely explored. Only the skin of the apple had been investigated; there was more to the fruit than just the skin.

Out here, 50,000 light years from Earth, the Spacer Freelancers were without tether or leash. Here there was freedom and danger; opportunity for great wealth or calamity.

Earth Corporate wanted the ghostly anti-matter. Floating Point Mining had the most powerful explosive known to the human race. One magnetic bottle full of that odd compound could destroy a planet. Earth Corporate was a big machine that couldn’t maneuver easily. They were great at buying a whole planet, but unskilled at creating peace between two fighting tribes. Gallium Corp wanted to profit greatly by creating new spaceships powered by anti-matter. Floating Point was not cooperating.

*     *     *

Fleet was often the mediator between Earth Corporate and the Freebooters. Going with the Free, one had a plethora of gray market goods: fire gems, vegan tobacco, and Furian furs from Veldbeasts by the thousands.

Fleet needed trade from the Free and also was addicted to Earth’s shipyards where new ships were created. Both Earth Corporate and the Free had claim to the left and right of a Fleet trying to serve two masters.

Earth Corporate exploited the xenophobic and released the leash on business. Trillions of solar credits moved into Earth Corporate’s bank accounts. The Free felt that this profit was coming from their expansion into the depths of space. In part they were right, but even the most libertine and permissive freedoms came with prices.

One could always find extremes of philosophy in both the Earth Corporate and the Freelancers. Always there were executives looking to shred value for being paid obscenely. And as well, there was freedom at the fringe. Was this the best ambassador to greet new races with? The quick cash attracted both extremes. Neither was immune.

As far as Angela was concerned, it was better for women in the bigger city (of which Thor 47 was not). The rural areas and Earth itself held all sorts of exploitive qualities. During this time of social upheaval in space, our heroine Angela Pignatti Santori was one girl against all of the potential pitfalls of a brave new world.

In this world she was not Angela. To her friends, she was something completely different. She was Piggie. That was short for Piglet. The pig names were abstractions of the name Pignatti. Piglet was the name of the adventurer and the quest that was soon to find her.

Section Two: Piglet’s Pride

This story was never run up the flagpoles of society. Nobody gave addresses or plaques or medals. Nobody won a cash prize or built a temple or memorial.

There was a small cadre of citizens, in a small community in space that knew most of the secrets and could piece together what happened. One person knew it all. Her name was Piglet.

Piglet stood about 5' 2" tall. She was slender and had that willowy quality of youth. Her hair was jet black in a waist-length braided ponytail and her eyes were as dark as coal.

This year in school she was doing vectors in math and theoretical physics for space time dilation space travel. She had no idea how to create an STD projector, but she had the bare essentials of how to pilot a ship with such a device.

Sergei Pyoter Kuznetsov was her best boyfriend. She called him Spike. Both teens worked for the mining company. She clocked in hours with the local clinic, transporting aged and frail wheelchair-bound patients. One could give them powered chairs, but that meant if they had a medical emergency, one could only be there after the fact. The real value in having Piglet there was to have a live body in charge of the disabled body.

Piglet was waiting for her mother to arrive at home. Mother had an assistant and a job title—Junior Human Resources Manager. She only had to answer to the senior manager and to the management team. Having a husband that was a tool pusher made for a dynamic married couple on Thor’s base. Piglet enjoyed the prestige of having a double shot of success in her family.

As her mother was not home yet, she called Spike on the videophone in her hand.

Yeah, Piggie, what’s up? said the young man’s face on the phone’s video screen.

Mom’s not here yet, so I thought we could get together and plot overthrow. What’s up with you? she queried.

He replied with a scrunch of wrinkles on his face. Nothing much going on. It’s been a whole hour since Beastie’s class on physics, he said while referring to the class both he and Piglet both shared. (The teacher was named ‘Beasly.’) They agreed to meet in the commerce center in an hour.

Spike was Piglet’s age; 17 years on a calendar, but they were in the same school grade. Both were eligible for higher education next year. Piglet was a month younger than Spike. In a year and a month she would be 18 and legal to ship out on a space vessel to colonial worlds and even Earth itself.

She had been born on Earth, so she had her citizenship intact. She could vote in Earth elections two birthdays from now, but she had no faith in Earth Corporate to get a real political representative of the people. Earth people were so poorly educated. They had no clue as to how Corporate behaved out here in the nether reaches of deep space. Earth Corporate was there to pillage and reward its executives with huge bonuses for every corporate theft that came down the road of time.

Piglet and Spike knew this all to be true. Piggy’s father was all about optimization of profit rather than Earth Corporate’s quest to maximize profit. Both approached the same collection of assets and Corporate would, without doubt, try to bite off the biggest portion possible, while Floating Point would take only what they really needed. That left Floating Point with a more maneuverable, nimble, business profile. This was all to be very telling in terms easily understood by nearly all of Thor’s people. It was so when they found the artifact.

*     *     *

Piglet was startled by the Klaxon siren sounding off. That dreaded sound came with only a small collection of possible outcomes. Most were bad; cave-in at the mine, explosion, or pressurization breach.

The house phone’s video screen’s strobe light flashed. She immediately went to it and hit the receive button on the console.

Angela, said the bearded white-haired miner named ‘Digger John.’ Where is your dad? We have a problem here at the mine.

I don’t know. He was working at the refinery. His suit has a homing crystal. I can get you his number. Hold on.

She darted into her parent’s bedroom and found her father’s A1 sheet and went to the video console next to her parents’ bed. She hit the button and Digger John was looking at Piglet, holding out an A1 sheet from her father’s pressure suit. She said to Digger John, Here’s the number, 12057996. That should do it for you, John. Good luck on finding him. What’s going on? Why the sirens?

I can’t talk about it now, but maybe your father can fill you in, when it’s not an emergency. Something has truly ‘emerged.’ I’ll talk to you later. The phone’s video screen went blank, leaving Piglet to wonder about Spike and her job at the clinic.

She picked up her phone and called Spike’s number. She looked into Spike’s amazed facial expression.

Piggie! What’s going on? Everyone working gold-pit four is on quarantine. The whole section is off limits, said an astonished Spike.

I can call the clinic, said Piglet. I’ll have more clues soon. With the whole base on ‘Orange Scale’ we won’t be able to meet until this is all settled down. I’ll call the clinic, and then I’ll call you.

Piglet looked