We know it’s a ship. As big as a planet, and old… very, very old. We also know it drops out of its Faster-Than-Light speed when it approaches an inhabited star system, where it often collects a careless ship that comes too close.

Around the “Great Wanderer”, as we call it, there is an invisible force field that shuts down the electric systems of any ship that crosses it, forcing incoming vessels to crash on its surface, and preventing outgoing ones from ever leaving. The survivors of each crash have, therefore, to contend with each other (as well as the airless environment) if they ever want their species to survive.

Already spanning 8 chapters of 21 pages each, this story follows a group of men and women – along with a third alien species – against the colony’s enslavement by a despotic alien race of cyborgs called the Ghorro-Bohm.

Chapters 1-2: World setting, we meet Karl, a petty thief and a coward who finds himself injured and isolated on one of their remote outposts. After returning to his apparently empty colony, he is captured, interrogated and processed by the Ghorro-Bohm.

Chapters 3-4: Karl returns on one of the Gorro-Bohm units, as result of a system malfunction, and redeems himself from his past crimes by saving his former squad leader Kevin, as well as his team, from a mysterious creature they find deep below the surface.

Chapters 5-6: We are introduced to a third alien species, the nicknamed “Diskheads“, who intend to build interspecies cooperation and foster a peaceful environment instead of the hostile one everyone lives in. Things don’t turn out that way, as the Ghorro-Bohm eventually enslave the humans, a few of which manage to escape and form a resistance movement on the outskirts of their former territory.

Chapters 7-8: We follow that resistance movement and witness its crushing defeat, which forces the survivors into the arms of the “Diskheads”, who, instead of handing them over to the Ghorro-Bohm, offer to provide assistance and protection.

The idea for the next chapters is to start throwing multiple challenges, defeats and setbacks, so that each victory feels earned and actually moves the plot forward. The end will be the same, the defeat of the Ghorro-Bohm, but the way to achieve it is still to be written in detail. Let’s just say that, for now, it will involve Karl’s return. 

After this particular story ends, I’d like to engage in a series of self-contained episodes of exploratory nature through the immenseness of the Wanderer’s surface.  There’s a lot of room for imagination, but I prefer to finish the current story before I fully commit to the next.

We’ll see how it goes 🙂