STARQUAKE! Book One, Brief Overview

John Sabertail, the genetically modified Black Labrador Retriever, and his crew of abandoned GM mine-colony command officers team up with gypsy, Chase Appleby, and his quirky, close-knit, and highly skilled Family clan of Travellers, space nomads, who inspire the lab-raised GM’s with notions of Family, Faith and Fortitude, as they join forces to defeat the evil android madman Waveform, and stop the viral spreading of his pirate empire, to prevent them from taking over the deep space mines of the Tarantula Nebula of the LMC and killing all free biological life he did not himself enslave or mutate!

But can they also survive a white dwarf binary supernova triggered by an unexpected catastrophic starquake, and get home in time to save their family clan from the surprise invasion already underway? It is left to inexperienced hyperactive gypsy teens left home alone to defend their colony in only a handful of Mustang super-predator warbirds they’ve never flown against overwhelming invasion forces culminating in a fierce dogfight amongst the slag heaps of the frigid alien landscape they may never call home again.

The setting is in the Tarantula Nebula of the Large Magellanic Cloud, or LMC, which is a nearby dwarf galaxy, on a profitable mine and colony founded by explorer William Yor. Under threat of invasion he abandoned the mine, most of the humans and all his genetically modified (GM) command crew to be killed or enslaved by the military experiment gone mad which is now calling itself Waveform, spreading piracy, illegal genetic mutations, and Phantom Code, an unstoppable virus code written in a language only he himself can read.

The crew are John Sabertail, a Black Labrador, his counterpart, Golden Lars, who was killed in the initial attack, and the other GM officers include Rocky a Bear, Fenix, a Fox, Beatrix, a deadly kick-boxing rabbit, Leonard a mouse IT expert, Arabel a boar and a medical doctor from Reichenbach’s labs, CJ an evolving thinking machine platform, and an unexpected ally in both Juno, a rescued pirate GM wolverine with illegal cerebral implants, and Stanley an older, freed cargo company slave.

The crew are abandoned again this time by the military rescuers who refuse to offer aid to any non-humans but John and the crew find help when they welcome a family of Travellers–space gypsies–namely Chase Appleby and his quirky but high skilled family clan, and who show the GM’s what it means to belong to a family, something laboratory created GM’s never knew. At a lavish and mostly home-grown ‘thanksgiving feast’ clan patriarch and matriarch Papa Morgan and Momma Appleby and others fill their hearts with notions and Family, Faith and Fortitude, as they team up to fight back and launch a surprise counter attack bringing the fight right back to Waveform’s derelict Carnival Space Cruise Lines spaceship pirate lair. The pirate ship has been stranded in orbit around a dangerously misbehaving cataclysmic variable binary pair of a white dwarf and red supergiant star, orbiting around a third distant neutron star, that unfortunately suffers a starquake, probably the most feared astrophysical phenomenon known to science, which triggers the inevitable, a supernova, briefly creating a neutron star but which then collapses into a black hole, disrupting the binary pair’s orbit sending the other star off, now gravitationally unbound, as an HVS, a high velocity star, a true space gypsy to travel the far reaches of deep space alone but free!

The away team including John, Rocky, Beatrix, Juno, Chase, Leonard, Carlton, Rife, Lasky, Django, Patrick-Dan, Jakso and a few others suffer heavy losses in the counter-attack but which is only partly successful and which may turn out to be completely irrelevant as Waveform not only anticipated their retaliation, he counted on it!–and used it as a cover to launch a simultaneous second invasion of the now unprotected colony and mine. Four years away traveling at the speed of light, John, Chase and Rocky must dangerously surf the supernova shockwave to get back into the local hyperlight tunnel node in record time but also return home too late to do anything to stop the invasion and uploading of Waveform’s command process into the colony mainframe servers.

The ONLY HOPE in stopping the second invasion rests in a handful of mostly hyperactive gypsy teens, Quill, Nicker, Zub, Jug, Mars, Stephan and a few others who have mostly never flown a real combat aircraft before, but are tasked with the desperate defense of their home and family who are now trapped on the small colony with no way to escape. Self-less, self sacrificing and downright heroic the small team flying in 12^th generation super-predator attack aircraft of P-X force Mustang warbirds greatly even the odds in the overwhelming invasion force as they engage the pirate forces of hundreds of swarming pirate pods, augmented by a few stolen military warships, in a fierce dogfight among the mine slag heaps–but the real threat is not war but the continuing upload of Waveform’s install program into the colony servers, which once activated will kill every human man, woman and child still alive in the colony and take over the planet as Waveform’s new pirate base. Can they repel the invasion in time? Can young Jug destroy the transmitter and survive or will he have to make the ultimate sacrifice to save his family and friends?

Book one of Three

Book one of three, Starquake, the Attack of the Bantam Bay, follows the adventures of John Sabertail, Fenix, Beatrix, Rocky, Leonard, CJ the thinking machine, Juno the freed pirate, Arabel and Dr Belair a freed doctor slave who is also a Boar from Reichenbach’s labs, and of course Chase Appleby and his family clan of deep space Travellers, gypsies, who defy all odds and single-handedly put a stop, albeit temporarily, to the expansion of Waveform’s diabolical pirate empire in the outer reaches of the Tarantula Nebula of the Large Magellanic Cloud, also called the LMC.

Seeking Literary Agent, Publisher

Book One is ready to preview and I am looking for help with concept art, critical feedback on plot, character development and astrophysics, and either a literary agent or publishing contact to help me bring this story of family, faith, military honor, true science and real astrophysics, with quirky, at times comical but endearing cultural idiosyncrasies of GM’s, gypsies and space colonists to a wider audience, the big screen, and then to help steer the development of Books Two and Three, of which I only have a basic outline and few vignettes done so far.

I am posting various character sketches, vignettes, and sample chapters as they are ready to read. And I enjoy and look forward to your feedback. After all, who’s mine is it? It’s Yor’s! And when Yor left, what once was Yor’s … is now mine!

• STARQUAKE Character Sketch: Beatrix
  Beatrix ‘Flipkick’ Mintz, Rabbit (MarsTech Labs)   Beatrix is a 5-foot-9 bunny, well, she’s a GM largely based on a bunny. As an athletic champion, and the most lethal beauty in all of space-dom, she may look like a giant rabbit, but acts more like a noble Lioness! Unfortunately, she has no babies, as GM’s can’t reproduce, ...
• STARQUAKE: Can you help me with Concept Art?
  I’m looking for help with Concept Art for several things right now for STARQUAKE. GM characters mostly, but also space ships. Can you draw? Do you want to help me? Who knows we could one day even name a planet after you! Like CS Lewis I am writing a series of books to show ...
• Triceratops for Lunch (STARQUAKE vignette)
  Starquake Book 2, or Vignette File date: March 24, 2021 11:37 PM This is a short character sketch, not yet in the main story, and may be used after the battle is over (but before the Second Thanksgiving big feast) just as a vignette somewhere or maybe in the beginning of Book Two as a way to ...