(This is a piece of science fiction I am working on)
My Dad’s In Space
Patrol
Chapter 1: The History of the Colonies
I shouldn’t have done it: gotten
onto the patrol ship, slipped aboard when Dad wasn’t looking, but I did. I wanted to see what his day was like. My Dad was tall: six foot three inches. He wore a cool suit, with space worthy
protective material and even laser proof protection built in: at least
low-level laser blast protection.
He was a patrol officer in the
Colony Police Service. He would take a
daily trip across the solar system, The Dury Leev System, named for the star
that supported all eleven planets, Dury Leev, which was Umdin for “beautiful
guardian.” Dad, in his Patrol Vessel, would soon be stopping at mining
stations, patrolling moon bases and visiting inhabited planets looking for
trouble or just making a presence. He
was one of three officers assigned to the system. His patrol ship was equipped with all kinds of cool gadgets
including a zoom bike, and a terra-buggy for surface missions where he needed
to get closer to the situation.
Today he would patrol a third of
the system. The solar system of Leev
Tong Bova was broken into three parts: the mining area, the capital planet zone
and the outer reaches where some planets were still largely unexplored.
Our people had come from earth and
Umdin, an alien ally of ours in the United Planets Cooperative. The Umdins and humans, established a colony
on the capital planet, New Umdin, many years ago before my father was even
born.
New Umdin was a planet much like
earth. It had a moderate climate,
oceans, jungles and deserts, but New Umdin had one major difference from earth:
it was even more beautiful. The
landscape was fantastic with deep canyons, filled with a variety of colorful
life forms and high mountains loaded with brightly colored plants and animals
unlike anything on earth. But, the sky
on Umdin was blue and the grass and trees were in many ways the same. Although Scooter trees were known to get up
and walk; sometimes after rooting in one spot for many years.
The mining colonies, the space
stations and outer reach areas where rogues and misfits of the colonies went to
live were all under the dominion of the Constitutional Republic of New Umdin.
For the most part there were no
known sentient beings in the New Umdin system.
This was a good thing and one reason why the founders settled here. There was a tribe of Gumfish (not really
fish and not really gum) who lived on the planet, New Australia, but their
sentience was debated and besides all this, they were left alone by our people
and allowed to live in peace and they posed little threat to us as their
technology was far behind our own. The
Troggs (colonials called them Troggs, but they called themselves the beautiful
ones, or how they would pronounce it “Ung-shiv-warts-weenaws” were also a race
of humanoids who were not considered sentient, although this too was
debated.
The Troggs were a brutal race of
furry, stocky men. They looked like our
old earth cave men, but they had dog like, clawed hands, they were covered in
thick fur, they had tails and they had forked tongues. They were only five feet tall, but very
muscular and broad shouldered. Our best
estimate was that their IQ were about 60, but their perception of their
environment, their ability to hide and stalk prey, was far beyond our own. The
troggs lived only in the outer reaches and posed little threat to the inner
system colonies.
There were tales of other species,
of alien contact. There were even
myths, but none of it had been proven.
The Swamp dragons had all been extinct before I was even born. The moon-bats were all killed by early
colonial hunters. The giant beetles
were also killed by hunters. At some
point animal rights groups began preserving land for the many creatures, some
of whom were dangerous to colonists.
These preserves became tourist attractions, but the threats of old, the
dangers that the early settlers faced were mostly gone.
Today, my Dad was going to patrol
Precinct One.
He would check out the
mining colony on asteroid Delphus.
He
would scan the atmosphere of New Australia for residual traces of warp drive
fuel.
He would orbit the moons of New
New Jersey and finally he would land on Ursala and patrol by terra-buggy and
even meet with the Gumfish to see how they were doing.
My dad cared about the Gumfish, but other
patrol officers thought he was wasting his time.
Space Patrol Theme Song!
