Last week was rough. Got fewer than three thousand words done TOTAL on the episode. Today started a little better. Got 2113 words for the day, and I like what I got.
I also managed to get the Bashtyk Nokyd tracking bar up in the right sidebar, so if you’re so inclined, you can follow along on my progress even on days when I don’t do a word-count post in here.
Here’s a tiny snippet from today’s work.
NOTICE: This material is copyrighted, unchecked raw first draft, probably buggy. Please don’t post typos or corrections (I do my edits at the end of the first draft of the project and will not see your comments when I revise). This material may not survive to publication. Do not quote or repost anywhere or in any format. Thanks.
Three days later, with the Longview refueling at the Paderick’s Free Zone Station, Shay was still floating on the coup of having successfully snatched Bashtyk Nokyd out from under the universe’s nose.
Sullying her happiness, though, was her current mission, which was to pick up the replacement for Charlie, the Longview’s previous Pact Covenant Observer, or PCO.
PCOs came to the Longview and other Death Circus ships straight out of their training, lasted a few years before the horrors of their job overwhelmed them, and either fled while on leave, or joined the Longview crew after the Longview reported they’d committed suicide. Committing suicide was one of the Pact Worlds’ expected outcomes for that particular job class, and flight while on leave was another. No PCO administrator ever questioned the truth of either report.
PCOs were malleable, and sometimes, like Charlie, they were salvageable.
But they were also mandatory spies for the Pact Worlds, and bringing each new one on board was a fight. Fresh out of their training, they thought they were fighting a war for the preservation of the Covenants, and they were pains in the ass until reality rubbed the green off of them.
Leave a Reply