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A Whiff of Grapeshot: Science Fiction
Nov. 1st, 2005 08:40 pm"A whiff of grapeshot is all they need to settle down," he said grimly. One of the other soldiers looked up from whetting his knife.
"That's what they said the last time this happened," he commented. "Didn't seem to work for very long, now did it?"
From outside the barracks, they could hear the roar of the mob. It was a hungry baying that would send shivers down any honest man's spine. Fortunately, he was not an honest man. He'd carved out a very comfortable life for himself this far out on the frontier, a life funded in many ways by the oddities that he was able to smuggle past customs thanks to his position and the military posts that traveled regularly between the stars and were less likely to suffer onerous investigation by their brothers in space-black.
Inspiration: "a whiff of grapeshot," whelk, and whet.
Story Potential: High.
Notes: I didn't think much of this story at first, but as soon as smuggling came into it, it became much more interesting to me. Now there's an interesting character, I says to myself. Throw in a distant outpost on an alien planet, something that spurred things towards a riot, and a smuggler who might just be about to find himself in hotter water than he'd ever reckoned on, and well, you've got yourself a story...maybe. Might even be a novel in there somewhere.
"That's what they said the last time this happened," he commented. "Didn't seem to work for very long, now did it?"
From outside the barracks, they could hear the roar of the mob. It was a hungry baying that would send shivers down any honest man's spine. Fortunately, he was not an honest man. He'd carved out a very comfortable life for himself this far out on the frontier, a life funded in many ways by the oddities that he was able to smuggle past customs thanks to his position and the military posts that traveled regularly between the stars and were less likely to suffer onerous investigation by their brothers in space-black.
Inspiration: "a whiff of grapeshot," whelk, and whet.
Story Potential: High.
Notes: I didn't think much of this story at first, but as soon as smuggling came into it, it became much more interesting to me. Now there's an interesting character, I says to myself. Throw in a distant outpost on an alien planet, something that spurred things towards a riot, and a smuggler who might just be about to find himself in hotter water than he'd ever reckoned on, and well, you've got yourself a story...maybe. Might even be a novel in there somewhere.
