Voyage of the Pequod

By E.B. Dawson

Commissioned to hunt down straggler MICs (Mechanized Intelligence Cruisers) in the outer reach of the great Commonwealth, the starship Pequod sets sail only to find out their captain has his own agenda. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: E.B. Dawson
• Release date: May 24, 2019
• ISBN: 9781386763291

E.B. Dawson

E.B. Dawson was born out of time. Raised in the remote regions of a developing nation, traveling to America was as good as traveling thirty years into the future. So, it’s really no wonder that she writes science fiction and fantasy. Her stories acknowledge darkness, but empower and encourage people to keep on fighting, no matter how difficult their circumstances may be. And as an avid philosopher, she infuses her work with Socratic questions. When not writing, she tries to make a difference in the world by showing love and compassion to those most broken.

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

HOW DOES ONE RETELL a classic like Moby Dick? Retellings are tricky in general. Some readers will go into it hoping for the exact same experience they had with the original and be disappointed by changes. Others will be searching for something fresh and will feel that too many references and parallels to the original will quench the story’s own individuality and create something stale.

With Moby Dick I faced another problem: I was taking a story almost two hundred years old and placing it five hundred years in the future. The entire plot of the story is centered on an industry that is largely illegal in the world today and would be viewed by most people as repulsive. Despite the irrelevancy of key plot elements, when I read Moby Dick for the first time I found the emotions, themes, and struggle of the story to be incredibly relevant. They transcend the time period and the whaling industry in particular.

Many critics have speculated as to what those themes are. This short story is my interpretation of them. Though it only scratches the surface of that illustrious novel, I took the characters, themes, tones, and imagery that impacted me the most and set them in a far future world, while maintaining the old-fashioned feel. The result is one of my favorite things I have ever written. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

I have the utmost respect for Herman Melville and his original work and sincerely hope this tribute captures a fraction of the depth of Moby Dick for a more modern audience.

VOYAGE OF THE PEQUOD

2525

Commonwealth Territory

Massa Colony

New Bedford Space Harbor

The Starship Pequod

IN THE YEARS SINCE the war, New Bedford Space Harbor had gained a paradoxical reputation. It was known to the public as a bit of a ‘scabby’ place, the unfortunate intersection point for those less-than-savory characters who seemed to enjoy shirking society’s rules. To anyone who had worked at a Space Harbor, however, it was respected as the most efficient operating harbor in the Commonwealth.

Its population may offend most of the average citizens of the Commonwealth, but its staff and patrons alike had been on the front lines of the war, and they were no strangers to death, loss, and destruction. In the years following the war, they embraced life with the hearty appetite of those always expecting a last meal, yet they continued to run their harbor with military precision and the decisiveness that only comes from dealing with every worst-case-scenario imaginable.

The harbor itself was a striking sight. A dozen jagged asteroids balanced snugly between the gravitational fields of the green planet Bildad and its fiery moon, Peleg. The harbor had been constructed in rings around these jagged asteroids, allowing for a great fleet of ships to dock at once, if need be. New Bedford had rarely been entirely operational, even during wartime. Now almost half of it had been given over to the teeth of time, and only seven docks were maintained on a regular basis. The other