INT – Day – Bridge
Helton at command, Cooper, Quiritis, Bipasha sit at the controls keeping an eye on things.
Cooper: Got incoming. Small ship, looks like a private craft.
Continue reading
Author Archives: Rolf
The Stars Came Back -067- Boarding
Fade in.
INT – Day – In the cargo bay, looking out onto an unidentified small space-port landing pad
View from inside the cargo bay, looking out through the lowering aft loading ramp, across the landing field toward the control tower and port buildings. The sun is high and bright. Two armed and armored soldiers are standing darkly silhouetted against the bright background. As the ramp lowers, we see that there is a small crowd of a few dozen refugees standing not far from the landing pad, random average folks and families with packs, bags, and what they can carry. Continue reading
The Stars Came Back -066- Refugees
INT – DAY – Tajemnica’s bridge
Helton leads the way into the bridge, Quiritis following behind. He goes to the command stations, but she stops at the hatchway, stands there and just looks around, a rapt look on her face. Continue reading
The Stars Came Back -065- Quiritis
Fade in
INT – day – ships garden
Allonia and Helton are chatting in the hydroponics garden. The light panels are bright, there are many levels and racks of trays full of lush deep green plants – some obviously lettuce, melons, and tomatoes, a few compact blueberry bushes, and a lot of less obvious greenery. Some trays are hydroponics, some trays just look like they are filled with good dirt. Quinn is playing in some of the dirt, putting it into small pots. Continue reading
Gun Song – Dana Lyons – Cows With Guns
What can I say. A classic. With animations.
Hope to see some of you at Boomershoot.
Boomershoot Patch Update
Got the patches delivered today. I’ll have a box-full at Boomershoot for purchase, pre-orders get priority. All the variations are here.
Prices are:
Continue reading
Gun Song – Sousa – Man Behind The Gun
Seems like a good day for a march, even if it’s April.
John Phillip Sousa wrote a LOT of military / march music, and like them or not, he had quite an influence on the popular music at that time. He and his band actually toured and played for large crowds. He also didn’t write ALL his music down – that is to say, his music as published and sold was often not how he had his band played it. The performance that people paid to come and listen to had some subtle details changed to make them better – people always said that they never sounded the same when he played them than when other bands of similar size and skill played his purchased sheet-music. He knew how to protect his franchise. This particular march isn’t a lot better or worse than any of his other works, but was selected because of the title. Enjoy
John Philip Sousa, 1852 – 1932
He was a US Marine, one of the all-time best trap shooters, a writer, opposed the mechanical recording of music, and overall was an interesting guy. If you liked military / march music, he’s an icon. If you don’t, and claim he only wrote two marches in a hundred variations each, you still cannot deny his popularity and influence in his day.
The Stars Came Back -064- BBQ
Fade in
EXT – DAY – above a LARGE BBQ gathering.
Aerial flyby shot of a very large gathering near a large farm ranch-house spread. A number of buildings scattered around, lush greenery in the background, a lot of small fliers parked all over the place, to one side a couple of corrals of horses and cattle, lots of BBQ pits, smokers, and equipment, including an open pit with a whole pig on a spit over it, and a lot of rising smoke. On another side is a long cleared patch with various tables and targets set up on it. Adults and kids and dogs and dining tables and various groups everywhere. To one side, Tajemnica, looking old and dirty very non-dainty, the largest ship there by a fair bit. A large and well-attended shin-dig. Continue reading
The Stars Came Back -063- Ranch
Fade in
INT – DAY – Officer’s mess
Helton, Lag, Harbin, Allonia, Bipasha, Kaushik, Kaminski, Sar, Stenson, and Quinn sit at the table, having dinner. Sandwiches and finger-food. They all look a bit tired and drained.
Helton: I think that canceling R&R on Capella, and having the parts shipped to us, would be the more discreet choice. Continue reading
The Stars Came Back -062- Rumble
Fade in
EXT – night – space not far from the corp-war robo-mil-moon
The gas giant and the moon hang in the distance. Tajemnica streaks by, space glowing faintly around it. A short ways behind it, a formation of four long, lean, lethal-looking space-craft, obviously streamlined for atmospheric flight as well. The contrast is stark – a single larger, blocky, angular, dirty, old hauler, versus a pack of sleek, elegant, new and shiny hunters in bright paint. An elderly moose fleeing a pack of wolves. The interceptors are clearly moving faster, the glowing molecules excited by their drives are brighter and further out from their hulls. Not a match-up odds makers would use small numbers in. Continue reading
The Stars Came Back -061- Dammit, Helton!
Cut to
INT – Day – Bridge of the HMS Hussein
The captain sits in his raised command chair, brooding.
Sensor Tech: Sir, I think I found them!
Hussein Capt: On the main screen! Continue reading
The Stars Came Back -060- Avoiding Judgement
Fade in
INT – DAY – Tajemnica bridge
Helton, Bipasha, Lag, Kaushik, Cooper, Allonia are present, in their normal spots. Kaushik is in an armored space suit again. On the screens, the curve of the planet is slowly shrinking as they clear the atmosphere. Continue reading
The Stars Came Back -059- Pickup
Fade in
EXT – DAY – space near Emerite II.
Tajemnica arcs across space, headed for the planet in the distance. It is a vivid mix of blue seas, greens, and tans, with a goodly scattering of clouds. An orbiting space-dock is in the near distance, with numerous ships docked at it. Most are fairly small, a few a larger liners and cargo ships. One is the liner Helton met Bipasha on. The star Capella is bright in the far distance. Continue reading
The Stars Came Back -058- RoboMilMoon
Fade in
EXT – night – space, Capella system, many AUs from the star
The darkness and star-field are as far as the eye can see. The Capella sun is simply the largest star. In the distance, a planet, a large gas giant with a whole flock of moons, hangs, seemingly motionless in the vastness. In the nearer distance, a pock-marked moon covered with small circles slowly spins. Then, a patch of space shimmers, as the few molecules of dust and gas in the near vacuum of space get REALLY pissed off by an emerging starship, and glow a bit as their universe shares it’s space with a bunch of others, and don’t quite know which book of physics to follow. The transition field collapses, and in it’s center, Tajemnica. Continue reading
The Stars Came Back -057- Ammo Run
Fade in
EXT – day – parking lot outside Cobb’s
There are a lot of vehicles in the parking lot. Kaminski, Helton, Sar, and Kwon pull up in a light truck, park, and hop out. Kaminski, and Helton have small gun bags, and they are also wearing gun belts with holsters and pistols, as does Kwon. They head inside. Continue reading
Gun Song – Elton John – My Father’s Gun
Elton John has always been kind of hit or miss for me. He’s got some songs I really like, some I can’t stand, and like a lot of long-timer writers / performers, a fair body of work I’ve never heard before. This is one of the latter. I was looking for something else, and I came across this. Not sure just what I think of it. Classic Elton John style, but I’m not sure exactly what he’s trying to say. The words are clear enough, but the meaning? Not so much. I can think of a couple of reasonable interpretations, but nothing for certain. Seemed like a good Friday Gun-song choice to kick around a bit.
Elton John, of course, is one of the big names in popular music, who should need no introduction except to those on the “whipper-snapper” end of the age-range. Politically controversial and outspoken, he’s been doing his thing and having people listen to him for a long time, now. Love his work or hate it, he’s talented, accomplished, well-known, and rich.
Beach trip
Got back from the beach yesterday. Oregon coast sand, Pacific ocean, visit a relative. Flying kites, flying dogs, flying kids, a sand-storm in the rain. Lots of fun. It’s 45 and raining, so the kids have to go wading, running, and splashing in the ocean, of course. I only half-jokingly say we use a color-coding system – red is fine, blue means time to head home. The dog, which we think is a border collie – greyhound mix, is FAST, and she loves to chase waves coming in; I paced out her strides, and she’s covering something over 10 feet per stride, and she’s picking them up and putting them down at a rate of a bit more than four strides per second, or a bit more than 30 mph (camera doing 8 frames per second, slightly more than a full stride every two frames; at 5 fps is seems like almost a stride per frame). Found out that the Cold Steel “Special Forces Shovel” also makes a mighty fine kids sand-toy, MUCH better than the normal cheap plastic one, and sprout #2 can ALSO have fun chopping on drift-wood and kelp with it. Offspring #1 preferred the Gerber folding E-tool to build a fox-hole sand-castle. Got down to the Tillamook Air Museum, looked at old war-birds with sprout #2. Pics below the fold.
Oh, yes – The Stars Came Back will also pick back up tomorrow. Continue reading
Gun Song – Johnny Horton – Battle of New Orleans
It doesn’t have the word “gun” in the title, but it’s definitely in the gun genre. I first heard it when I was in grade school, and I loved it. Loved the whole album. It is one of my son’s favorite today, along with Sink the Bismark. Clear words and singing, good story, with clean music and a rousing beat. We fired our guns and the British kept a’comming / wasn’t not as many as there was a while ago / fired once more and they begin to run’n / down the Mississip to the Gulf of Mexico.
Johnny Horton – Battle of New Orleans
Horton sung a lot of historical stuff, about battles, wars, mountain men, gold miners and various turning points and interesting points in history. His style is called rockabilly, and would have likely produce a lore more stuff and been an even bigger name if he’d not been killed at age 35 by a drunk driver in a head-on crash while crossing a bridge in 1960.
The Stars Came Back -056a- Recap and open thread
Slightly different today. I’m near one of those holes in the story I told you about, AND it’s nearly spring break, and the family is going to the coast. I don’t want to leave you hanging in the middle of a mission mid-explosion or anything, so I will give a quick recap and summary, then an open thread for you to talk about what you like, don’t like, expect, how you see the characters so far, favorites, what sort of things you might see coming up, how you interpret some minor things that might be connected, etc., etc., etc., while I patch holes and take a break with the kids. Continue reading
The Stars Came Back -056- Letter
Fade to
INT – Day – Main cabin of intruder’s ship.
In it are eight very violently dead men in lightly armored dark uniforms, and there is a fair bit of blood splattered around. One of them is lying on his back, showing a badge on his chest. They all had carbines. Kat, Kaminski, Harbin, Horkle, and Helton look over the carnage. Continue reading