“Preparing for The Farpool: Marauders of Seome”

Sometime after the completion of Tales of the Quantum Corps, with the publication of Johnny Winger and the Battle at Caloris Basin, I’ll be starting on the sequel to The Farpool.  It’s called The Farpool: Marauders of Seome.

Here’s a sneak peek at what it’s about:

The Farpool: Marauders of Seome

The Ponkti send mercenaries and agents through the Farpool and wind up in mid-20^th century Earth.  They don’t have quite the same precise control of Farpool operation as the Omtorish…so they wind up initially in a different time period…in the middle of a great war…in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.  They witness a U-boat attack on a convoy off America’s East Coast.  This intrigues them. Ponkti are always intrigued by conflict and combat…they are an aggressive kel and they believe the combatants have technology that will help them dominate Seome.  To learn more, they hook up with the Nazis.  The Ponkti have stolen Omtorish technology (the Em’took procedure and the lifeship and lifesuit) and have modified themselves to operate as amphibious beings.  The Ponkti are very interested in German U-boat technology and especially their torpedoes.  For their part, the Nazis are interested in what the Ponkti can to do to help them defeat Allied sonar and successfully assault Allied convoys.

 

NOTE:  The Umans abandoned Kinlok Island in The Farpool, pulling out the 1^st Time Displacement Battery and leaving Seome and the Sigma Albeth system.  The star-sun has already suffered multiple starball hits and won’t last too much longer.  The Seomish know this.  The ruined Time Twister was re-located to an island called Lik’shpont, in the Omt’orkel Sea, and re-built as a sort of wavemaker machine, re-built enough to re-open and stabilize the Farpool.  The Farpool is vital to the future survival of the Seomish race.

 

1.     The story opens with some fisherman off the coast of North Carolina witnessing a curious bank of very large, bright waterspout funnels appearing on the horizon.  The sea becomes rough and their boat capsizes.  Then they see strange small craft cruising just below the surface and they report to the Coast Guard that midget U-boats are around. They don’t know it but a Ponkti team of lifeships has just come to Earth’s Atlantic Ocean through the Farpool.  They have a critical mission.

2.     German U- boats have been attacking an American convoy off the coast.  The Ponkti observe what happens and are intrigued with the underwater technology of the Germans.  They observe the U-boats and follow them during the attack, then follow one as it returns to a U-boat pen at Bremen, on the German North Sea coast. The Ponkti resolve to find a way of meeting with the operators of these strange metal craft.  Several Ponkti, wearing lifesuits, walk up out of the water at a U-boat pen and accost technicians working on a U-boat in harbor.  Shots are fired, but the lifesuits are armored and the Ponkti are able to render the Tailless unconscious with blinders and sound suppressors (that give off deafening sound bursts that can render an enemy unconscious).  One man, staff officer (from Berlin) Werner Kleist, is nearby.  He is more intrigued than afraid.  When one of the Ponkti (the Germans call them ‘Froschmann’…‘Frogmen’) gives Kleist an echopod, Kleist eventually understands what it is for, that these are intelligent beings and that they want to talk, to communicate, through the translator. This process takes some hours, but eventually a meeting is organized around the waters of the U-boat pen.

3.      This first meeting occurs at a Nazi Kriegsmarine base in Bremen, Germany…staff aide under Adm. Doenitz meets with Ponkti representatives (using an echopod translation device provided by the Ponkti) in a bunker near the U-boat piers.  It’s January 1943.  The aide is Fregattenkapitan Werner von Kleist, of the German Navy OKM (Naval General Staff).

4.     The Ponkti ask many questions…about the conflict, about the U-boat, tactics, torpedoes.  Kleist and the Germans are having trouble dealing with new Allied developments in sonar and U- boat tracking.  The convoys are getting through. 

5.     The Ponkti sense an opportunity and offer to help, using genetically modified seamothers (they describe how they can bring newborn calves through the Farpool in special pods attached to the lifeship and accelerate their growth in Earth’s waters) to attack Allied convoys, while U- boats pick off stragglers.  The seamothers should be impervious to Allied air attack, since they assault from underwater.  Plus they can breed and grow fast, under Ponkti control. To the Allies, the seamothers will look like whales.  But they will be fully under Ponkti control.  But the Germans are skeptical (sensing an Allied ruse) and need to see the Ponkti techniques and ideas demonstrated before they commit to anything.

6.     The Ponkti agree to this and the Germans provide information on a convoy going to the UK.  The Germans send several U-boats out from St. Nazaire, France to observe and help.  But the Ponkti don’t need help.  They arrange for another team to bring two nearly mature seamothers through the Farpool and these animals are commanded to attack the convoy.  Every ship is sunk and the U-boats have nothing to do.  The Germans are both impressed and convinced.  They sign agreements with the Ponkti.

7.     The Germans now agree to provide torpedo technology (and complete torpedoes) to the Ponkti, who are interested in anything they can use to defeat Omt’or.  They also agree to provide plans and schematics for how to build a U-boat.  The Ponkti want to construct a fleet to dominate Seome.

8.     Back on Seome, an Omtorish research mission at the wavemaker island (Lik’shpont…a newly relocated wavemaker after Kinlok is abandoned by the Umans) is doing maintenance work on the device that keeps the Farpool open and operating.  They have witnessed the Ponkti teams coming and going through the Farpool.  This is reported to the Metah of Omt’or.  The Metah (Mokleeoh loh) convenes the Mek’too and it is decided to form a special operations team (that will include Chase Meyer, still modified by em’took) to go through the Farpool after the Ponkti (if they can figure where and when the Ponkti went…they determine this from settings in the wavemaker).  The Omtorish special ops team must prevent the Ponkti from doing or damaging anything that would prevent Seomish emigration to Earth’s seas when Sigma Albeth finally starts to go dark, which won’t be too long.  Already plans are underway to begin this emigration and the Metah Mokleeoh loh wants Omt’or to lead this effort.

9.     The Ponkti have also stolen Omtorish technology (itself taken from the Uman Time Displacement Battery) on how to create destructive whirlpools on demand.  These could be used to scatter convoys and destroyer screens and make them easier to defeat.

10.  But the Omtorish know that the Ponkti have used the Farpool and they now send their own special ops team through the Farpool to counter what the Ponkti are doing…the Omtorish know that Sigma Albeth B can’t last much longer and the Ponkti are ruining the seas of Earth as a likely home for full Seomish exodus if their sun goes dark…or supernova. 

11.  Somehow, the Omtorish team must discredit and defeat the Ponkti in the eyes of the Nazis, so they won’t gain new technology and won’t ruin Earth for future generations of potential Seomish immigrants.  The Ponkti know about Sigma Albeth’s problems too (though not in the detail the Omtorish do) but they want to control all of Seome and become masters of all the kels before any exodus. 

12.  The Omtorish have developed a means of thought-bonding with the seamothers to keep them docile and not assaulting Allied convoys, or interfering with sonar.  After some initial setbacks, this technique seems to work.  The Omtorish are able to bring the seamother herd under control and limit the fast breeding the Ponkti can do.  Allied convoys start to get through. U-boats are again being sunk at a record rate.

13.  The Nazis are furious at the Ponkti and now accuse them of treachery.  The compact between them begins to unravel.  The Ponkti know the Omtorish have a team on Earth and they have to engage the Omtorish if they have any hope of regaining influence with the Nazis and protecting their technological gains.

14.  The Omtorish rig the Farpool so that the Ponkti team can’t return, without special equipment.  Their lifeships are sabotaged by Omtorish agents.  The Ponkti are now trapped on mid-twentieth century Earth.

15.  To regain the initiative and try to get back through the Farpool with their new technology, the Ponkti decide they must engage the Omtorish in a climactic battle.  Both sides use their own seamothers and other weapons and gear to prevail.  The battle occurs off the Outer Banks of North Carolina.  There is a great hurricane also churning out at sea and U-boats are prowling the coast, picking off freighters and smaller craft. 

16.  The Omtorish prevail in this climactic battle and all but one of the Ponkti team and their seamothers are killed.  Their carcasses wash up on the beaches after the hurricane passes, mixed in with debris from sunken American ships and some dead human bodies.  Local residents know a great storm has passed and a great battle has occurred off shore…they believe the U-boats have been driven off.  They believe the battle was between U-boats and US Navy picket ships and aircraft.  Some of the bodies are puzzling though, not resembling anything the locals have ever seen from the sea before.  They do not understand that the real battle was underwater, between the Omtorish and the Ponkti.

17.  As they puzzle over the carcasses and debris, locals witness another series of curious waterspouts appearing on the horizon, larger, brighter and taller than ever seen before, seeming to extend well up into the clouds.

18.  They don’t know this but the spouts are the small fleet of Omtorish lifeships leaving Earth, entering the Farpool for transit back to Seome, six thousand light years distant.

 

The Farpool: Marauders of Seome will take place on Seome (in the same time frame as The Farpool) and on Earth in the mid-twentieth century.  It involves kel members from Omt’or and Ponk’et as well as Nazis.  What a combination.

 

One issue yet to be resolved is whether to bring Angie Gilliam, Chase Meyer’s girl friend from Scotland Beach, back into the story.  Their relationship is a big part of what drives The Farpool, so I’ll have to manipulate the outline and the time frames to make this happen.  I think the story would benefit from having these two teenagers go at it all over again. 

 

The next post to The Word Shed will come on September 19.

 

See you then.

 

Phil B.