Places Unknown

By Michael Black

The second book in The Ship series, Places Unknown continues the Curran Family story. Daniel, Angie and Angel explore not only each other, but a new addition to the family.

Fate plays with Daniel and 'his girls', as they are called upon to explain a huge star ship that was found 800 feet 'under' Area 51, discover new mysteries involving The Iscris dragons, discover a strange metal planet that came from nowhere; and locate a billion year old diary that brings closure to The Old One's heritage...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Michael Black
• Release date: Dec 13, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463110812

Michael Black

I was born in 1948, to two delightful parents, in Brockton, Massachusetts. From about 5 years old I knew I loved Science Fiction and Horror movies. I graduated from Braintree High School in 1966. The Military draft was going strong then, and since I didn't want to be conscripted, I joined the Naval Reserve the next year. From 1968 to 1970 i served on my first ship, going to the Mediterranean on one 6 month cruise, being released after my 2 year obligation. From 1970 to 1972 I did Weekend Warrior time on two reserve Destroyers once a month, and two weeks in the summer. Just before my enlistment was up, I found I liked the life of a sailor, and reenlisted in the regular Navy, for the remainder of a twenty year carreer.After that, I went to work for a private Ship Yard, and spent the next 24 years working on more Navy Ships, making much more money of course. I retired in 2016, and have been learning how to enjoy retirement ever since.

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Places Unknown

By Michael Black

Copyright 2018 Michael Black

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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Table of Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

About Me

Prologue

The battle had lasted for three days, and now it was over. They were the last ship alive now; the many others in this system just scrap metal. The Captain knew this was a waste of lives and ships; all for their King’s ego trip. There were no ships anywhere now; they were the last. There would be peace now, like it or not…

The Captain flipped a single switch, turning on the ship wide announcing system, and addressed his people, There was no Honor in this fight my people; we honor our dead, and we go home. Collision avoidance at maximum. Navigator, set course for Betera, minimum speed until we clear the debris field…

The Navigator punched the course into the computer, and the AI took over, placing the ship into a shallow turn. As it settled into its primary course, the AI noticed a slight fluctuation in the power feed to the distortion generator; but it had its orders and continued on. A natural distortion enveloped the ship; all would be well; except that the fluctuation caused a power spike that amplified the spacial distortion and the ship suddenly found itself somewhere else entirely; travelling at a thousand miles per hour in a strange planet’s atmosphere; headed straight for the planet itself. The AI called out over the speaker, ‘Transient distortion! Transient distortion! Approaching unknown planet, slowing down"…and then cut out as the ship slammed into the ground.

The distortion generators worked for a time, boring a hole that the ship could slip through; but they overloaded in a spectacular way, burning out every power circuit in the ship. The ship stopped; embedded in solid rock far below the surface…

They tried to repair damage for two weeks; but it was truly hopeless…and the air was already stale; they would die. So they all took to their customary places, their battle chairs, and strapped in.

The ship and her crew would never travel anywhere again…

Chapter 1

Daniel was a bit anxious today. Angie had come a long way in the past year, becoming ever more comfortable with being a card carrying living human. She had overcome her initial fear of large numbers of people around her, and them bumping into her occasionally; and had even found the courage to speak to them casually. Daniel was proud of his wife…Angela had even found a friend.

Jane Prescott was your average everyday happy girl; bubbly personality and everything. Jane was about 23 and just enjoyed life…the first time Daniel, Angie and Jane had sat next to each other at the weekly music concert downtown, Jane had turned to Angie and said; I just love this piece, I’m going to tell him so too. I can see you love it too, want to come with me?

Angie had been swaying with the violin music, as she often did with her eyes closed, but when she heard that her eyes popped open wide, and she looked to Daniel with a ‘Should I?’ look written on her face. This was brand new territory for her…Daniel just gave her a smile that told Angie all she needed to know; it was her decision based on how she felt about it. So after a couple of seconds, Angie smiled at the girl and said, Yes, I think I would like that. When the man finished his solo performance, Jane took Angie’s hand, and off they went to let the man know how his music affected them.

Thirty minutes later, the two young women were friends for life, laughing and jabbering away at each other constantly; only stopping to listen to more of the night’s music. After exchanging cell phone numbers that night, it became a daily ritual for them to either call or text about any new experience at all. Daniel and Angel both had to caution Angie about letting her background slip into any conversation with Jane. Allowing high ranking ‘officials’ to know that she was essentially an alien from another part of the Universe was one thing, but doing it with the average acquaintance was quite another. Both of them got an annoyed response from Angie, though; she had thought of that problem all by herself, thank you, and she would be very careful with Jane. Angel helped in that respect, since she was Angie’s ‘sister’ so to speak, and a highly advanced Star Ship with nearly unlimited abilities on top of that.

Angel took to monitoring all of Angie and Jane’s conversations after that, but never had to caution Angie at all; she told Daniel about it one day, and it took all of Daniel’s willpower not to praise Angie for being so conscientious. It turned out that it didn’t matter anyway, as Angie blurted out to both of them that she knew she was being ‘monitored’; since she was ‘tuned into’ her sister’s frequency all the time, she could ‘feel’ the echo in her head. She did understand the need though, so she laughed about it. Being an advanced alien who doesn’t lie does have that effect. Angel thought it was a practical necessity for a while, but the monitoring slowed to a stop about three months later...

Having a friend of her own helped Angie deal with her emotions quite a bit, simply because she could now talk to someone other than Angel and Daniel about how she felt about things in general. ‘Girl talk’ requires that you have another human girl to confide in you know. The talks could be about anything at all really, but usually ended up centering on ‘men’, and how different they were. Sex was a favorite subject for both Jane and Angie; something men aren’t supposed to know, but do; and Daniel found himself playing the role of ‘Experimental Lab Animal’ as a result. Some of the ideas the two girls came up with would actually make him blush, but most he found arousing too, so it all evened out. Daniel was learning too!

So it was a bit of a shock the day Angie was supposed to be out with Jane, but walked into the house crying. She had run home from the strip mall by herself; being only a half mile away, that wasn’t a big thing by itself anymore, but the reason for it was more than big. Angie and Jane had had a falling out over a seemingly innocent comment Jane had made while the two were walking along and jabbering away. The subject wasn’t even important, but Jane had responded with, That is just plain stupid Angie! Angie, being still relatively new with emotions, took it as a personal insult, and ‘felt angry’. All her cultural heritage kicked into high gear, plus Daniel’s counseling about ‘dangerous emotions’ and she walked away from Jane. Once outside the mall, Angie broke into a run and made it home before Jane had even realized that Angie was upset and started looking for her.

Angie leapt onto Daniel, wrapping her arms tightly around his neck, Oh Daniel, Jane called me stupid! What am I to do, I got angry and walked away. She will hate me now!

Daniel never liked it when Angie was unhappy, and he certainly didn’t like her being so upset over her first ever ‘best friend’, but something didn’t sound right. Angie my love, are you sure she was calling you stupid? That doesn’t really sound like her at all. Neither one got a chance to say anything else then, as a frantic knocking on the front door startled both of them. Jane had driven to the house bringing her own fears, complete with Niagara Falls pouring from her eyes, Angie, what happened? I was talking and suddenly you weren’t there, I was so afraid something happened to you!

Daniel eased back out of the living room to let the two women find themselves again, and was rewarded fifteen minutes later with two happy campers again, even with rather soggy blouses.

The ‘incident’ did point out a glaring discrepancy though; both Angie and Jane were beginning to trust each other completely, and that posed a dilemma of its own. Trust demands complete honesty, always, and Angie keeping her history from Jane just wasn’t right on a cosmic scale. While the human race as a whole didn’t trust each other, the one on one trust was something entirely different. What it boiled down to was, either you trusted your best friend or you didn’t…there just isn’t any middle ground. So after a few more weeks of debate with his inner conscience, Daniel called a ‘family meeting’ while they were onboard Angel one evening. It’s easier to ‘talk’ with both your girls when you can see and physically touch them both.

Daniel pleaded his case about trusting Jane to know all about Angie, and by default Angel, and the question of whether Jane could keep the secret. Angel, always the practical half of the two, had little trouble with the problem, The question of whether Jane can keep a secret is not the question at all. The real question should be whether or not Jane can deal with the knowledge herself; would it hurt her in some way emotionally? Humans are very diverse in that respect, having not had millions of years to learn to accept not only each other, but to accept the idea that there are even more people out there than they ever imagined. That is the most important part of this, can she accept it inside herself…

That one point became the focus of the discussion for two more hours, before it was unanimously decided that they had to have a little more faith in Jane as a person.

Jane surprised them all with four words, after Angie spent two hours explaining her life history to her, That is so cool! When Jane explained herself, it became clear that she was just as fanatically into Science Fiction as Daniel was, and she had always wanted to meet an alien, or see the insides of an alien star ship too. When Jane was told the story of how Angie was actually half of an alien AI super computer, who had developed human emotions during a 65 million year wait on the moon, the poor girl lost her ‘cool’ entirely, hugging Angie tightly and crying all over Angie’s shoulder yet again. She simply could not wrap her mind around the idea of being trapped inside the Angel/Angie matrix for so long, having no help at all until they found Daniel.

All in all, Jane took the revelations quite well, despite the several outbursts of emotion for both Angie and Angel. Once Angel tuned her in to the family frequency, Jane was off and running again, jabbering away to