I started with a novella, you see. I don’t know if I can sustain 2K words a day for NaNoWrimo, but then I don’t have to. Even if I am aiming at 60K words, I’m already 29% of the way there. But it’s good to start as strongly as possible.
118-G-002
Tomb Worlds
2368 AD
The radio was full with the keening of ghosts.
You can hear them best at the apex of a suborbital hop; One-Eighteen’s unique combination of atmosphere and magnetosphere might be creating the feedback, but it gets drowned out at sea level. You have to be up high for it to come through. A lot of hauler pilots filter out the ghosts, but I don’t. They don’t do me any harm; and if it weren’t for them I’d be up here, leaving a wake through the atmosphere of a dead world.
Funny, though: the world doesn’t look dead. Some of the Tomb Worlds live up to the name, but not this one. From up here, One-Eighteen is blue and green and lovely. It reminds me of Jefferson, or the pictures I’ve seen of Earth. Well, at least during the day. At night, the only lights you’ll see on the ground are the ones humans brought with us. Or turned back on.
A beep from the console reminded me that the hauler was about to do its descent to Luxor base. I shrugged off my reverie and started the landing checklist; apogee was the proper place for woolgathering (that stuff comes from sheep, in case you were wondering and aren’t from Jefferson). Now was the time for full attention, with none left over for ghosts.