Russell Zimmerman's latest update for Over The Stars

Mar 4, 2016

[We’re going to jump right into the introductions here, mid-chapter, in order to keep y’all from having to read a couple thousand more words in this ’update readers’ format.  As before, apologies for any formatting issues introduced by copy-pasting it over here, and remember this is an early draft, so names may change well before publication.  Enjoy!  --RRZ]

“And here, representing the technological innovation and elbow-grease of our proud Democratic Federation Army, is the twenty-fifth season’s first contestant! Corporal Madeline Jane, DemFed Army!”

She looked like just a speck on the screen, spread-eagled like the rest, falling.  There was a rippling grav-chute behind her slowing her descent, heightening the anticipation of their proper, Army, boots-on-the-ground arrival.

“Corporal Jane is a combat engineer,” and here, alongside Randy’s over-excited voice, the basics of her personnel file scroll onto the screen, age, height, weight, years in-service. “Hailing from a mid/heavy-grav world, and a proud graduate of basic and advanced combat training from the Neros Cluster’s Army Pioneer School, Jane isn’t only our first contestant this season, she’s our first blue-lister!”

“The Army’s not afraid to serve up their reserve options to our show, Randy.  They always insist that their first choices aren’t their only qualified contestants,” Danny cuts in with a lopsided smile. The Marine veteran’s smile always turns lopsided when she’s talking about the Army. “And they’re not shy about showcasing non-coms, instead of officers, either!”

The in-screen pictures scrolled through a series of short Jane videos—her pink hair shaved up high on the sides, lazily swept back on top—with her face alternately smudged with grease or streaked with camo-paint, sharply uniformed or crawling in the mud, smiling at the camera or scowling like she was here to murder the competition. The scowl looks more at home on her tanned face.

Jane’s data is slid into the first column—TECH—on the smartcast screen, just before she’s allowed to drop out of the picture, distortion in the air above and behind her from her grav-chute, and the next speck is hauled into focus.

“Next up? The Army’s tactical specialist for this season, Sergeant Iskander Isaac!” Another zoomed-in spec, another stream of data, another montage of combat, parade, and training scenes. Isaac was almost half-again as tall as Jane, with the rangy build of a low-grav worlder and skin a shade darker than Mosi Randhawa’s. He also, in every vid-clip they could manage it, was carrying a big, big, gun.

“The Sergeant—“

“Another non-com, bold move!” Danny cut in.

“The Sergeant is a specialist in recon and marksmanship, with four years in-service with the New Kanos Rangers. His jacket is filled with confirmed kills from sev—“

“We’ll see how he stacks up to a Marine Scout/Sniper later this season, Randy,” Danny interrupted with another lopsided smile. Within seconds, her Flitcast ratings climbed almost four points.

“Ha-hah,” after another well-practiced laugh from Randhawa, and the camera slid to the next leaper against the perfect New Hibernian sky. The TACTICAL column filled with Isaac’s information as the next contestant fell into focus.

“And representing the Army in the skies is Lieutenant Baptiste Presley. A close-support pilot hailing from the Nine-Twenty-First, ‘Antarean Cutters,’ he’s not quite made ace yet, but three kills is still impressive for a—“

This time it wasn’t Danny’s anti-Army bravado that interrupted Randhawa’s announcement, it was his own wide eyes, his own genuine reaction, his own disbelieving glance from screen to screen; the cameras were working hard to track the next contestant’s grav-chute descent because he wasn’t in a grav-chute descent.

In clear focus, the falling—plummeting, really—figure was flapping his arms, scissor-kicking his legs, flailing to stay right-side-up. The formation was ruined, the neat line of contestants turned as jagged as a dip in ratings.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Danny spoke over Randy eagerly, eyes lighting up. Drama already. “It appears one of our Low Protectors is having trouble with his grav-chute, now. My Skyborne training was quite a while ago—“

She waited for Randy’s well-practiced chuckle, but didn’t get one. He was staring at the monitors, pupils pinpricks.

“—but, err, I’m sure that even in the Army, they’re trained to deploy a reserve chute. Stay with us, please, citizens, as we look into remote operation options, or…”

Or the show’s first season-opening fatality, her tongue flicked across her lips.

Lens-drones whirred and buzzed, straining to keep the fast-falling contestant in clear focus, only for a second figure—wearing the same gray jump-suit—to streak into the picture and body-tackle the first, mid-air. There was no grav-chute distortion behind either of them, now, and they spun, twisted, and fell in a tangle of limbs. The show’s Flitcast ratings were sky-rocketing as fast as the young soldier was falling.

“We’re getting word now that a—is this right?—that a Lunar Guard contestant seems to have deactivated their ‘chute, it seems, in order to break formation, and…”

One waving arm emerged from the tangle of limbs, elbow jerking back like a hydro-farmer starting up an old pull-engine unit by yanking on the cord.

“And there we go!” Danny’s smile was flawless, Randy’s whoop filled the airwaves of a billion listeners. The tumbling Army contestant jerked out of the picture, appearing to rise compared to the fall of their life-saver. “That’s deployed the reserve grav-chute of that contestant—flagged as Army, yes, according to our trackers—and any second, we hope that…there we are!”

After a stabilizing spread eagle, angling their fall a safe distance away, the rescuer’s own secondary grav-chute deployed. The formation was a wreck, but none of the show’s producers would complain. They’d just gotten more drama out of the first five minutes of flashcast than ever before in the show’s history. A short montage of a young man in a flight suit and helmet, a combat vacc suit, or the cockpit of an in-atmo gun-cutter flashed onto the screen, along with a hurried stream of basic data.

“Our Lunar Guard contestant—sorry, we’re trying to get that data ready for a flashcast—has also safely deployed their own reserve grav-chute, and, ah, we’ll be able to tell you more shortly.”

Anticlimactically, the FLIGHT column filled with Lieutenant Presley’s information.

“Bear with us for a moment folks, as we re-align our cameras and check tracker codes to see who our mid-air hero was!” Danny’s smile was gorgeous, eyes bright. ‘Captain X’ loved a good story, and she’d just gotten one.

“While we prepare to announce our Lunar Guard contestants—including our falling friend with the level-head!—please enjoy a word from our sponsors, and remember that tonight’s Low Guard are entering the field aboard a Mustang Dynamics Morgan-class; good enough for them, good enough for you!”

Fade. Cut to commercials. The show-runners knew their business; segueing directly to advertisements, straight from a crisis where half the universe’ adrenaline had spiked at the prospect of an on-air death, would do wonders for affiliated sales.

It was drama like that that kept The Protectors on top.

[Check back in for a few more excerpts, introducing the rest of this season’s contestants!   Thanks for your continued support, and please keep spreading the word! --RRZ]