(Fiction) My Dad's In Space Patrol: Chapter One

(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!