The Lesser Magellanic Arm

Posted on September 28, 2016 by BR
Location of the Lesser Magellanic Arm (corporate systems that appear in Loyalty to the Cause, Last Measure of Devotion, and Hero of the Republic)

Location of the Lesser Magellanic Arm (corporate systems that appear in Loyalty to the Cause, Last Measure of Devotion, and Hero of the Republic)

Although the focus in Hero of the Republic is squarely on Caden Twist and his part in the Brevic-Hollaran War and the opening shots of the Parasite Conflict, I especially enjoyed writing Part III of the novel. I knew that I wanted to expand the lore in the corporate systems portion of the universe and exploring the Covington family from Seshafi was a great way to do so. In the final book of the original This Corner of the Universe series, Last Measure of Devotion, there is a single sentence near the end referring to Aoife Covington and the Marines. I chose the Marines for a very specific reason that will become evident in the next book, Across the Blue Line (you may have already figured it out from the clues and sequence of events in Hero of the Republic). Additionally, by choosing a branch of service different from the Navy, it afforded me a chance to detail other aspects of corporate life.

One could argue that Part III is one, big metaphor. Aoife is loved by her family but she certainly didn’t fit in as well as her brother. Part III of the book is sort of the red-headed stepchild of Hero of the Republic. It’s interesting and fun to read (hopefully) but I suspect more than one reader wondered exactly how it fit in. I know that my beta readers each asked me this question. However, like Aoife, Part III is a late bloomer. Not only does the section of the book provide a bit of relief from the tense, almost oppressive atmosphere in the Brevic Republic, it will yield some wonderful fruit in Across the Blue Line.

As stated earlier, the other purpose of Part III was to add to the setting of the corporate systems. If Sade (from the original series) is patterned after 18th century England, and Seshafi is the US Colonies, how do the remaining two systems fit in? I was able to fit the third piece of that puzzle (Ardea) into Hero of the Republic, by giving it a significantly French flavor. I don’t know if I will have an opportunity to bring Lagrin to life in the current series but it will have a Spanish influence if I do.

Of course, this is only one, small portion of the corporate systems throughout the galaxy. Syntyche was covered, briefly, in Loyalty to the Cause but there are the Central Corporate Systems located in the heart of the Solarian Federation and the Periphery Corporate Systems at the Brevic border near the edge of explored space.

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History Repeats Itself

Posted on September 19, 2016 by BR

(Warning: This blog post is about scene inspiration in Hero of the Republic and contains spoilers!)

“After our fighter attack, the Hollaran main force shifted its course toward us.  We made a run toward the Cres tunnel point but distance and speed were against us.”  The admiral shook his head disgustedly.  “The Hollie bastards followed our own fighters home.”  Twist’s mind raced across military history.  That wouldn’t be the first time.

During the first battle at Kalyke, the Brevic fleet commander (Hayes) wisely keeps his heavy carrier out of the standard 20 light-minute detection radius of the Hollaran invasion fleet.  This simple maneuver keeps Hayes’ carrier relatively safe from Hollaran fighter attack.  After all, it’s hard to destroy a target if you can’t find it.

However, after launching an anti-ship fighter attack, the surviving Hollaran carriers launch their fighters with orders to simply follow the Brevic fighters back to their home carrier.  Even though the actual attack against the Brevic carrier (Avenger) is not described in the book, it is obviously successful as later in that battle, Caden Twist sees firsthand the horrible aftermath of the attacks.  (In Loyalty to the Cause, Garrett Heskan also sees the aftermath while in the New London star system as Avenger retires to a repair yard.)

In Hero of the Republic, most of the major fleet actions involving carriers have a distinctly World World Two, Pacific Theater vibe to them.  That’s certainly no accident.  As a history aficionado, I knew I wanted to have a heavy flavor of that period of our history.  Having written Avenger out of the war in LTTC, I always wanted to write the actual battle that knocked her from the war.  HOTR seemed to present my best chance to do so.  When devising that battle, I looked for opportunities to add an element of history.

In a sense, First Kalyke bears a tiny resemblance to the Battle of Midway.  In Sponde, the Commonwealth and Republic had recently fought one of the galaxy’s first fleet actions involving carriers (analogous to the Battle of the Coral Sea) and the next major carrier battle (like Midway) would involve multiple carriers and be an astounding success for the faction that lost in Sponde.

With that theme running through my head, I stumbled upon the idea of how the Hollarans would “find” Avenger.  The answer was obvious.  In the Battle of Midway, after a very successful American aviation strike that resulted in the sinking of three of the four Japanese carriers involved in the conflict, the sole, remaining operational Japanese carrier, Hiryū, quickly launched its aircraft for a counterattack.  At the time of launch, the Japanese had no precise location for the American carriers but the Japanese pilots simply followed the American strike craft returning to their home carriers.  The result would be a successful attack against USS Yorktown that would precipitate the eventual sinking of that ship.

Yorktown at the moment of impact of a torpedo from a Nakajima B5N. Picture from Wikipedia.

Yorktown at the moment of impact of a torpedo from a Nakajima B5N. Picture from Wikipedia.

I’ve included many other references or homages of past conflicts in my books.  Even the Type-88 Allison-Turner drives of the Brevic ships are a reference to a very famous military engine company with the number “88” a separate reference to one of the most devastating anti-aircraft/anti-tank weapons in World War Two.  It’s wonderful to be able to write in a genre where my love of history can play such a fun role.

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Writing Sponde Without Rewriting Sponde

Posted on September 13, 2016 by BR

When creating the outline for Hero of the Republic, I knew I wanted to start the main character in OTS, or Officer Training School. Garrett Heskan was already a full lieutenant (and ship captain to boot) at the start of This Corner of the Universe and I thought it would be interesting and different to begin Caden Twist right at the beginning of his military career. Shortly after that decision, I quickly decided to place Caden into the same OTS class as Denise Gables. Anyone who has read the first series knows the running joke about how Gables is the one character that will always survive, regardless of the odds. In that series, she is pretty much the opposite of a red shirt in Star Trek. I even had Caden encounter Denise very briefly in OTS (and advance the mystique of her indestructibility during it).

Given that I was writing HOTR inside an already established timeline in the early part of the first series, I knew that the Battle of Sponde was coming up.  It offered a very fascinating opportunity to insert Caden into that battle but have his experience and attitude be very different from that of Garrett Heskan’s during the same time. The danger, however, was I couldn’t rewrite history. Everything that happens in HOTR during the battle could not conflict with anything from the original series.

Fortunately, there were two Brevic fleets participating in the Battle of Sponde and that gave me just enough leeway to create an interesting (hopefully) story while still remaining faithful to the canon created in the Heskan-focused books. I tried my absolute best to keep the facts of the battle identical. Missiles fired, fighters launched (and lost), ships destroyed should all be exactly the same. In fact, in the missile attack against Task Group 2.2, a command cruiser takes a Hollaran missile hit in the very first wave in No Way to Start a War (Book 2 of the original series), which ends up being a pivotal sequence aboard Lochaber for Caden Twist in Hero of the Republic. Even the dialogue between fleet admirals is the same.

What’s different are the attitudes and takeaways by Caden Twist when compared to Garrett Heskan. Besides being able to tell a new story from inside the battle (the fate of Twist and Lochaber), I really enjoyed writing how Twist’s belief and faith in the Republic makes him leave the battle with a very different attitude than Heskan did in No Way to Start a War. Since the reader (most likely) sees the battle from both points of view (Twist’s and Heskan’s), I hope it gives the reader a chuckle at how the same event can be interpreted so differently depending on your perspective.

The other main function Sponde serves is to introduce Twist to Garrett Heskan and begin a long and twisting relationship between these two characters. This relationship will be an important one going into Across the Blue Line for reasons obvious at the end of HOTR.

When writing Sponde, I had to go back to old notes from NWTSAW to ensure accuracy before writing the battle from Lochaber’s perspective. Below is the actual missile attack between TG 2.2 and the Hollaran Main Fleet. I was trying to figure out how long it would take Twist to inspect the damage from the first missile hit. I also drew up a very crude organizational chart for Lochaber although it doesn’t appear in the book because I knew that the ship would only appear in the first part of the book.

sponde-battle-1

Twist running to Turret November. In the novel, the flash he sees is actually the destruction of a Brevic heavy cruiser from the eighth Hollaran missile wave.

org-lochaber

Org chart for Lochaber. You can see Lucy Holt’s original first name before I changed it (Lochaber’s captain also got a name change).

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