Daily Excerpt: November 27

[jupitersings.livejournal.com]

This is your Daily Excerpt Post!
Post an excerpt of your novel here rather than anywhere else!
Please try to keep it under 1500 words. Thanks!

<b>Username:</b> <b>Any background information:</b> <b>Excerpt:</b>

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[oxfordtweed]

Any background information: In which I talk about space ships and make a point about Mercedes-Benz.
Excerpt:

The airlock led to the small two-seater, which was a terribly misrepresentation on the manufacturer’s part. The Class-µ had been advertised and marketed as a two-seater, because it had two seats at the console. In practise, it could hold a medium-sized dinner party, if people didn’t mind getting close to one another, and standing for the full journey.

Behind the seats, Darling had several large trunks, and the inside had been decorated with many strings of beads and silk flowers, faded tie-dye wall-hangings, and dozens of small jade carved figures. Random reached out to pick up a carved arachnid elephant.

“Please, don’t touch that,” Darling said suddenly. “It’s ceremonial.”

“Sorry.” Random pulled her hand away. “Ceremonial for what?”

“Christening ceremony,” Darling explained as he fed a series of coordinates into the ship’s computer.

“Oh, are you a priest?” Random asked. Looking around the cabin again, she realised she probably should have sussed it sooner.

“Yes, on Anhandle,” he said.

“I’ve never heard of that,” said Random. “Where is it?”

Darling fed a final set of instructions to the autopilot, and turned his seat to face his guests. “In the Peacock system, in Pavo, about 180 light years away. There’s a spaceport there, so you should be able to get a bit closer to the Galactic Centre from there.”

“Can’t you take us?” asked Random hopefully.

“I’m officiating today,” Darling said. “I could probably make a trip out that way if you don’t mind waiting, though.”

Random and Mown looked at one another, as though telepathically trying to decide what to do.

“I think we can wait,” said Mown.

“Yeah, all right,” agreed Random.

“I can get about twenty parsecs an hour with this thing, so it should only take us a little under three hours to get there.”

“That’s a lot faster than the Business End ever did it,” Mown said. “We never even went to a full light year in an hour.”

“That’s Vogons for you,” said Darling. “Er. No offence.”

Once the Star Runner cleared Barnard’s Star, the windows slowly blacked themselves out, and replaced the Galaxy around them with a graphical representation. The reasoning behind this being that if the windows weren’t blacked out, the Galaxy constantly winking in and out of existence would often give people a terrible feeling of vertigo, but with the windows blacked out, the trip often became quite boring.

As the ship entered hyperspace, the galactic representation moved slowly across the windows in a way that was universally considered aesthetically pleasing. The stars outside the ship tracked the way they would naturally, but without all the disorientating winking in and out of existence.

“I’ve never been on a ship that’s done anything like this,” Random mused.

This was a considerable thing for her to say, since most of her life up through this point had been spent on spaceships.

“Not even the RW6 did this.”

“I’ve heard the RW7 does,” said Darling. “It’s a brand new feature, just recently developed by Zebec-Menders.”

“Oh, yeah,” said Mown, appreciatively. “If you want to know what every spaceship will have standard ten years from now, look at whatever Zebec-Menders is up to.”

[imaginepageant.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. Is Mown's full name a Nanowrimo anagram? Like, Arion Mown? Noria Mown? Raion Mown?

[oxfordtweed]

Nope. Constant Mown.

I'm not sure if Vogons have a last name, but his father was Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz.

[imaginepageant.livejournal.com]

Background Info: The zombie apocalypse is just beginning, and our protagonist, Dr. Noah Elliot, is discovering the carnage that occurred at his hospital overnight.

Excerpt:

The elevator doors slid open as soon as Noah hit the call button — something that didn’t happen often in a normally busy hospital. He stepped inside, but Jack didn’t follow.

“I can’t go back up there.”

“Why not?”

He heistated. “You’ll see.”

The doors closed and Jack’s face disappeared. What could be up there that a surgeon couldn’t bear to look at? Noah felt a shiver run through him as the elevator carried him to the fourth floor.

When the doors opened again, Noah was confused to find less devastation than he’d seen on the first floor. The walls were more or less clean, and the white tiles were only mildly scuffed with bloody footprints. But then he turned the corner around the nurses’ station.

There, on the floor, lying in a lake of its own blood, was one of the few bodies left behind. Noah knew she’d been a nurse from the blood-soaked uniform she wore, but beyond that, there was no way to tell who she was, because she no longer had a face. The flesh over her forehead, cheeks, and jaw had been torn off. Her eyes, nose, and lips were all gone. All that was left was raw meat and bone.

Noah had performed countless surgeries throughout his career. He’d been elbow-deep in patients’ chest cavities, and he had seen exposed brains pulsing with blood. He’d observed autopsies on victims of grisly car accidents and brutal murders. He’d barely even flinched.

But this — this made his stomach lurch in horror and disgust, and for one terrible moment he thought he was actually going to vomit.

It wasn’t the blood or the flayed flesh or even the fact that he’d known this person, whoever she was. The thing that struck him like a bullet in the chest was that her face seemed to have been eaten off.

[ayumidah.livejournal.com]

"I see your point but..." He reaches out and touches the medication bottle still resting on her desk. "Alison needs me." He gazes down at the yellow bottle mocking him from between his fingers and shakes his head. "I'll stay out of the way, I just want to be involved, know what's happening..." He looks back up, peering at her intensely. His eyes are dry and clear, despite the sadness in his words. "Please."

She seems to be considering him, taking in a deep breath and releasing it. When she stares back at him, her eyes are sympathetic and soft. "Fine," she concedes after another long moment. Before he can thank her, she raises a hand. "I want you to stay in my car whenever we're searching for her. Things can go bad very fast, and I refuse to drag you into the middle of a dangerous situation. Do you agree?"

He hisses a breath out and nods, not entirely happy with the situation but knowing it's the only way she'll allow him close to the graveyard. He knows that with the disappearance, every one of the seven graveyards in the area will be watched closely for anything else suspicious-- from tourists or not. "Yes, fine."

She looks away for a minute before turning back to him. "There's something I should've told you from the start... it just didn't seem right, since I didn't know if I could believe you or not. Either way, now I'll tell you. Alison isn't the first."