Saturday, April 4, 2009

Healing Wounds

29 March ….

This has been another long week, as construction, storms and the ongoing heightened awareness of the Hun is still driving us to keep our patrols and defenses manned at 100%. Private Wells is still alive, but has been unconscious with fever. The other two men are doing well but are still on bed rest. Doc Armstrong says if all continues to go well with their recovery, the wounded men, excluding Private Wells, will be back to work in another week. Wells is going to be day-to-day on his recovery for at least a month, or until the RTS Santa Fe battlegroup returns. Then he will be transported back to Earth for further treatment in better-equipped hospitals. Camp Trafalgar’s doctors came to assist Monday and provided some homegrown remedies they have found here on Venus. There is a blue colored powder derived from a berry plant's leaves that they use for a pain reliever that works quite well. It is amazing how different plants have different effects on alien planets.

Corporal Redfeather’s crew began construction on a brick kiln so he can make proper roads with bricks, as we have not found a gravel pit or rock quarry as of yet. Corporal Jones keeps piling the lumber up to dry (which is always a chore on rainy Venus). He has almost filled the open warehouse to the roof and will actually stop work at the sawmill next week in order to construct another covered warehouse for storage. Corporal Mendoza’s water well crew is making repairs as they hit some hard rock just north of the Aetherpad.

Sergeant Garcia and Sergeant Cromwell surprised me at the NCO club yesterday with a roast. Seems it has been ten years of years of service under my command when they were raw recruits and nine years since I pulled them through those moist Yucatan rainforests all those years ago. We were part of the first offensive during the Yucatan Conflict and the Frogs and Mexicans were not expecting an attack so far from the border. The Republic of Yucatan is now one of our closest allies, closer, in fact than any nation other than Great Britain. All of the NCOs took a part in the jest and it was quite a pleasant evening. The toast was also premature as it has almost been eighteen years since I enlisted in the service of the Republic.

[Editors Note: The Republic of Yucatan extends south-west with Villahermosa as the border city extending down to Guatemala. The capital is in Campeche and is fortified from the sea. The Republic of Texas and Great Britain recognized them as an independent country in 1874.]

4 comments:

Eli Arndt said...

The saga of Venus is really nice reading. I do not know how much colaboration you guys do on this, but it's all good stuff.

J Womack, Esq. said...

Mostly I let Jim go his own way on Venus, as I am doing on Mars. We have settled on an approximate timeline year, finally - 1881.

We developed a pretty detailed alternate history timeline, but it doesn't really have a lot of VSF in it. This is something I am working on very slowly, integrating the VSF elements into our other timeline.

I'm glad you are enjoying his work. I am too. My only collaboration on Venus is the editing and the occassional continuity fix. Well, and I introduced the races that are their, as part of the ideas for gaming on Venus.

Eli Arndt said...

I have been giving thought to VSF gaming on other worlds and am curious if there is room for creating VSF versions of other worlds.

Has this been done?

I have had to put my VSF pursuits on hold for the meantime to focus on other projects further along and more central to my gaming but I still love the genre.

-Eli

J Womack, Esq. said...

Why wouldn't there be? I mean, its about a style and a technology level more than a place, I would think.

Good luck with those other projects. I am really really trying not to get distracted from my VSF projects. I have too many of those as it is to give any one of them proper attention, as shown by the lack of progress in the last two or three weeks.