A meeting of department heads

…

First impressions, I was told, were everything.

Back on earth, before this mission, before I had been selected for the crew, we had to spend time learning diplomacy.

I didn’t mind it because I was used to working with multiple nationalities as crew members aboard the cargo ships I worked, some often at odds with each other, and I had to broker peace.

But this brand of diplomacy was more about meeting aliens from other worlds and what to do, even though those running the sessions really had no clue.  The problem was, we would have no idea of what their customs and rules were, much like on earth where the same applied, but you could look them up before going to an ‘alien’s destination.

I could say that now I had experienced one encounter.  And nothing we did in any of those sessions gave me any help or guidance on what I should do.  Yes, we may have learned a little about their culture, but that was never going to be enough, not in the time I had in front of them.

What needed to happen was for us to set up something similar to the old-time embassy where we could exchange information and prevent the problems of new travellers before they got here.  And there would be more travellers now we had the spaceships and not everyone was going to be a positive influence’ ad the Russian example quite clearly illustrated.

But, getting someone or some people to stay with unknown people on a relatively unknown planet, was going to be a difficult ask.

It was one of a dozen topics on the head of department meeting I had called immediately after being transported back to the ship’ joined by the Princess’ whom we had agreed to return to her people.

I suspect that the aliens who had all but incarcerated her did not want to wear the wrath of her people.  Perhaps we would be treated better and hopefully, we would be able to engage in meaningful diplomatic discussions.  It was a subject I had raised with the Princess when escorting her to her transit quarters. Accommodation befitting a Princess.

She was hateful to come aboard but she seemed apprehensive to go home.  That was something else that would fuel another conversation. Because there was definitely more to that story. I didn’t quite trust our so-called new friends.

The next task was to ensure the princess had a private security detail, and dampeners installed to prevent her being transported off the ship.

After that my first call was to the diplomatic unit where I gave them five minutes of my thoughts on the subject before heading back to my quarters to freshen up, and get down the bare bones of the report I was eventually hoping to send on our first encounter, one that I doubted was over yet. 

I will still be getting over the fact they knew of our existence, lived among us, and we had no idea.  And they didn’t believe we were worthy yet to be told.  Sadly, given my knowledge of humankind, I was not really surprised, but others like the Admiral would be shocked and offended and it was their reaction I was worried about.

It was also not so much of a surprise there were others out there, places and people, we knew nothing about because our telescopic technology still wasn’t up to see beyond the limits of our known galaxies and we were the first well technically the second to go beyond it.

And now we proved we could get to that theoretical barrier, set at Pluto, perhaps a telescope launched from there might help us see what was beyond in the first instance because they did hint at a number of civilisations with their own galaxy.

My idea would be to suggest caution and not hit them with a flood of ships but to spend time building a space station at the edge, and then launch exploratory forays from there, when it was complete.  It would take time ten or more years, but the aliens weren’t going anywhere.

But I knew it didn’t matter what I thought.  That was up to the Admiral and the rest of the Space Alliance, and they would want to be out there getting as many aliens on side, much the same as the others would.

The Russian ship had stayed long enough to offload the prisoners and get ready for the return trip.  That was going to be some homecoming because the Space Alliance was going to want answers long before it hit Earth’s outer limits.

Stolen technology, an unannounced foray into space that could have ultimately destroyed any chance of relations with our nearest space neighbours, I wouldn’t want to be the captain of that vessel, at home, or in front of an international jury.

It highlighted just how easy it was to make mistakes, or how badly everything could go wrong very quickly over a nuance.  His background hadn’t helped him either but that shoe could also have fitted elsewhere too.  I had been lucky, he had not.

I walked into the conference room packed with both relevant and interested parties, all eyes on me.  It was, to say the least, uncomfortable.  Whatever noise there was had subsided into silence.

There was one seat remaining.  Mine.

…

© Charles Heath 2021-2022

It could be said that of all the women one could meet, whether contrived or by sheer luck, what are the odds it would turn out to be the woman who was being paid a very large sum to kill you.

John Pennington is a man who may be lucky in business, but not so lucky in love. He has just broken up with Phillipa Sternhaven, the woman he thought was the one, but relatives and circumstances, and perhaps because she was a ‘princess’, may also have contributed to the end result.

So, what do you do when you are heartbroken?

That is a story that slowly unfolds, from the first meeting with his nemesis on Lake Geneva, all the way to a hotel room in Sorrento, where he learns the shattering truth.

What should have been a high turns out to be something else entirely, and from that point every thing goes to hell in a handbasket.

He suddenly realises his so-called friend Sebastian has not exactly told him the truth about a small job he asked him to do, the woman he is falling in love with is not quite who she says she is, and he is caught in the middle of a war between two men who consider people becoming collateral damage as part of their business.

The story paints the characters cleverly displaying all their flaws and weaknesses. The locations add to the story at times taking me back down memory lane, especially to Venice where in those back streets I confess it’s not all that hard to get lost.

All in all a thoroughly entertaining story with, for once, a satisfying end.

…

Available on Amazon here: https://amzn.to/2Xyh1ow

…

For a story that was conceived during those long boring hours flying in a steel cocoon, striving to keep away the thoughts that the plane and everyone in it could just simply disappear as planes have in the past, it has come a long way.

Whilst I have always had a fascination with what happened during the second world war, not the battles or fighting, but in the more obscure events that took place, I decided to pen my own little sidebar to what was a long and bitter war.

And, so, it continues…

 

By the time they reached the outskirts of Munich, what the Standartenfuhrer considered their biggest hurdle, it was quite dark and almost impossible to see where they were going.

The whole city seemed to have disappeared so effectively was the blackout.  

But there was one benefit, there was little or no traffic on the roads, which lessened the chance of running into another car or truck.

And it was time to refill the tank with two more petrol cans, leaving two remaining.  Filling up now, the Standartenfuhrer said, would get them to Innsbruck.

He sounded confident, but Mayer got the distinct impression it was mostly that he was putting on a brave face.  There had been one instance, the checkpoint before Munich where he nearly lost his nerve.  For the first time, there had been SS guards at the checkpoint, and which had been entirely unexpected.

An SS officer of the same rank had been summoned and he had requested their written orders.  They had paperwork, but Mayer wasn’t sure if it related to their current situation, further confirming his belief this had been a very carefully planned operation to get him out of Germany, and that there was a more pressing reason why.  It definitely had something to do with the V2’s, but had their intelligence services found out about something else, something he didn’t know about?

Given the level of risk to the two men with him, and that at every turn there was a possibility of capture or death, given the level of planning and the run so far, one he would have never thought of trying on his own, he didn’t have a very high level of confidence that they would get away with it.

Those in the SS were not fools, trusted no one, believed nothing they were told, and disregarded anything written on paper.  Check, double-check, then check again.  Take nothing as read.  The document he’d been given on what made a first-class SS officer in the eyes of the Reich, was fundamentally not him, nor most of the German population.

The officer at this checkpoint reminded him of the one who had shot the shooting in the hotel, and for at least ten tense minutes, during which time the other two had conferred quietly in English, one suggestion they cut and run.

That would have invited a hail of machine-gun fire that none of them would survive.

Both looked visibly relieved when he returned, having obviously called the name of the officer who had signed the order.  The only explanation he had for this was that the level of discontent among officers Military of SS must be greater than he thought.

They managed to cross over into Austria without any problems, the route they had taken, a series of back roads and tracks which had been given to them.  Once again, Mayer was surprised that so many people could be working against their own country, but, of what he’d seen, conditions were harsh no matter which part of Germany they were in.

The war was not going the way the German people were being told, and it was hard to see any resolution of the conflict any time soon.

Perhaps everyone in the high command was hoping the new V2 rockets were going to change the country’s fortunes in the war.  If they were, they were going to be bitterly disappointed.  What they needed was the jet-propelled fighters and bombers, something that remarkably had not been implemented years earlier, and would have given them air superiority.

He’d worked on those early jet engines and they were remarkable, and faster than anything the British or the Americans had.  It was hard to comprehend why high command had not pushed forward the new jet-propelled planes that Belin had finally decided to implement.  

And just when the trio had agreed that everything would work out about 100 kilometers from Innsbruck, on the road to the Italian border crossing, they took the wrong route.  It was a mistake brought on by tiredness, and a momentary lapse in concentration.

A checkpoint where there shouldn’t be one.

© Charles Heath 2020

Once again, instead of writing, I have been obsessing over the planning and creation of a website for the book.

And, that being the case, now I have to give the book a name so I can name the site/blog after it.

The word Starburst has featured in the story so tentatively I’m going to name it “The Starburst Conspiracy”

The site will be on WordPress.  There will be progress blog posts, there will draft writing and possible chapters for beta reading and comment.  There will be separate pages for each of the characters.

I’m not sure how I’m going to build an email list so perhaps I’ll build a following first.

So, having mapped out a plan for the site, I’ve made the first post and written the ‘About’ page which basically gives a bit of history about the book.

Bear in mind the original book of about 400 pages scribbled over a long period of time, and not really a book in the sense of the word (more a collection of ideas set in some form of chronology) and set in the early eighties and will probably stay there but will be the basis for the new novel.

Another interesting aspect of this exercise is to see how far I have come writing-wise in the last 30 years and how easy it is to spot the issues with the original manuscript.

I’ve also created a master page for the cast of characters and only a page for the main character so far.  Others will follow.

There will be another page with an ongoing, updated synopsis.

Shortcuts to these pages, as the information flows will be in subsequent posts.

 

For now, it’s back to writing, after a long gap, and the ideas have been churning in my head.

 

© Charles Heath 2016-2020