It’s my intention to finish the science fiction novel I’ve been working on for nearly two years open to the public eye. There are several reasons for this, but most important, it’s to get feedback from readers of speculative fiction, and if I do well, I hope for their support. ACEY Entangled is a high-concept, space opera set in a 25,000-year-old galactic empire connected by world Gates discovered by early explorers from now mythical earth. I’ve finished the first draft and am well-started into the second draft. While this site is still very much under construction, I propose to post here in episodes regularly. This means that all the words are not set in stone. There will be changes and alterations. It won’t be perfect. That’s why they’re called “drafts.” TWhen I have the mail system set up and the mechanics of the blog I need, you can sign up for notification of when the postings will begin. There’ll also be a lot more author’s notes as we go along. I am looking forward to reader comments (and conversations) that will help me make this a better book. Thanks for participating!
PART 1
KALGOORLIE
In the late 24th millennium of the Galactic Era, a Terran Union exploratory mission found and claimed a new Gated world. The M-class star poked like an interstellar hernia between two star systems. The Kiihacchet system in Pansil Muwadan space, and Sakos, in the Republic of Arcturus. The event could easily have exploded into a dangerous political incident between the Terrans, the Muwadans, and the Arcturans. Three of the six splinter entities of the ancient Terramonah Empire’s million-plus, Gate worlds. However, the lone planet wheeling around the aged red dwarf star appeared worthless. Only marginally habitable. Still, the Terran Union applied for ownership of the new star system, identified simply as 870552 in the Imperial Interworld register. The request failed to raise a ripple of dissent. So, by default, after the requisite waiting period, the interworld registrar on the Throneworld of Delagua granted the TU unilateral dominion.
In 24,942 GE, sixteen years later, that analysis changed. A planetary assessment team identified a rich vein of Rhomentium in the bleak mountains southeast of the windswept planet’s equator. A Muwadan mining consortium estimated the lode of valuable metal could be lucratively strip-mined to depletion over approximately two hundred years. Their seemed to be no other reasonable incentive for human habitation.
The Gate world’s reevaluation entitled it and the new system to a name. A TU bureaucrat on Nuwerth with a love of mythic Earth lore declared the star to be Billabong and labeled its solitary planet Kalgoorlie. And for good measure, optimistically designated the assessment team’s initial landing site, Neaveau City, as its capital. The duly awarded Muwadan contractors recruited itinerant miners from neighboring Gate worlds settling them in a rough mining camp at Whitehorse Harbor. A convenient site on the windward slopes of the newly dubbed Dunduin Mountains below the Rhomentium deposit. From here, they would mine, load, and ship barges across an inland sea to Adelaide spaceport for off-world shipping. And so, the amorphous settlement began to spread along the rocky eastern coast like an out-of-control patch of spikeweed.
It was fifty years later, when Master Scientist Edouard Mondeleros arrived in Whitehorse accompanied by his two young grandchildren, Acey, nine, and Quin, only four. Mastersci Mondeleros established himself as an intense, not-to-be-bothered, recluse willing to spend Imperial Stellars freely. He spared no time or expense in acquiring strictly off-world construction and technical expertise to construct and embed a reinforced blockhouse in the Dunduins foothills above Whitehorse. For seven months, materials, resources, and manpower flowed from through the spaceport in Neaveau City across the landlocked sea to the settlement. The blocky structure rose four stories above ground to house his new Interworld Geological Institute on the bottom two floors. The two floors above were reserved for the family’s residence. No mention was made at the time of what might lay below.
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