Battlecruiser Alamo: Tales from the Vault

by Richard Tongue

   Then came Logan Winter. I've always been a noir fan, and the idea of writing space noir strongly appealed to me, and I wanted to get back into fiction writing. Already the seeds of dissatisfaction with office life were abuilding, and I saw a chance for escape. So I started work, creating a setting heavily inspired by Beam Piper, after the collapse of a series of interstellar empires, and a roguish character who was meant to be a mixture of Indiana Jones and Sam Spade.

   In 2012, I wrote first 'Picture Worth A Thousand Stars' and 'Malware Blues' in quick succession, in less than six weeks, as I recall. I've included both of them in this collection, as they are really the first step forward towards Alamo, and there are a few hints and traces of what was to come in the books. Logan's character strongly appealed to me, but I was still struggling a little, and I knew it. Nevertheless, I released them on Amazon. They flopped. Sales were tiny...and after a while, I took them down, determined to rethink. (I also wrote a fantasy novella, heavily inspired by Robert E. Howard – that remains up to this day in slightly revised format.)

   I still knew that I wanted to write, and it was around then that I took another giant step forward – when I first contacted my most important critical collaborator. Keith Draws. As I recall, he advertised a sale on one of the forums I haunted, and I loved what I saw of his work. Sitting at my desk, sometime in very late 2012, I ordered four covers, and then had to decide what I was going to do with them. I did think about revisiting Logan Winter, but that failure was still a little fresh. At the time, I was reading Jack Campbell's 'Lost Fleet' series, and I think that's what pushed me over the edge. I had that War Studies degree, and when I wasn't reading science-fiction, I was reading military history.

   That did it. I was going to write a trilogy of military science-fiction novels. At this stage, you're going to be wondering where 'Battlecruiser Alamo' came from...and I'll tell you in all honesty that I don't have the slightest idea. One of my interests has always been the Texas Revolution, and I've read considerably on the subject over the years, and I'd been reading 'Castles of Steel', a great naval history of the First World War. (And I'd been watching the new Battlestar Galactica series, which had not a little impact on my thoughts.) In any event, Alamo was born...but that's as far as it went at that point. I had a name, but nothing more. I chose names for those first three books – Not One Step Back, Price of Admiralty, Fermi's War – and started to work.

   Recently, I dug through my old drafts. For the first part of the year, I poked around at ideas, creating a setting that I thought was actually plausible, and a bit different. There was an interstellar civilization, but one based on trade and commerce rather than colonization. About a hundred years before, humanity had beaten back an alien trading empire called the Cabal, and taken over large portions of their trade network. Now the Cabal were back, seeking revenge…

   I thought it had potential, but looking back, I'm heavily channeling Campbell in the first two drafts, though with some interesting twists. A young commanding officer assigned to a beaten-up old starship, who turns it around and forms up a task force to take the fight to the Cabal after what amounted to Pearl Harbor in Space. Reading them again, I was actually rather surprised at how readable they were, though obviously there were quite a few rough edges to wear out. (If for no other reason than that they never went to a second draft.)

   I kept poking away, but I wasn't getting anywhere, and I knew it. Something had to change, and that something was my thirtieth birthday. I was getting to eight years at the company, and as that day approached, I looked around. I'd actually done well enough – promoted twice, increased responsibilities, and I was good at my job – but I realized that I was caught in a trap. If I didn't do something soon, I knew I'd be there for the rest of my life, for twenty or thirty years. This wasn't what I'd dreamed of when I was younger, wasn't what I'd wanted to do. It took me a while to nerve myself for the jump, but one night, I handed in my notice, and three months later, I was out. With a few thousand pounds in the bank, and no completed novels. (Sound familiar? I'd managed to spend nine years to get exactly where I had been at twenty-one. The difference this time was that I was ready to make the attempt – though I'd still stress that you shouldn't try this. I took a hell of a risk, and I knew going in that there was a strong chance that it wouldn't pay off. I probably could have got my old job back if I'd had to…but that part of my life was over.)

   So, in February 2013, I was unemployed, with a little money, and a plan. I took a fortnight off, my first real break in a while, then started to write, along the same lines as the earlier attempts. None of them worked, at least, not to my satisfaction. I couldn't quite seem to get things together, and everything I did just felt derivative. The money started to run low, and I came up with a new idea, going all the way back to my university days.

   My primary specialization when I was taking my degree was nineteenth-century naval warfare, largely because of an absolutely inspiring Professor. As a result, I wrote my degree thesis on the Great Lakes campaign of the War of 1812, and got interested in the origins of the United States Navy. Gradually, an idea came into my head, of an analogy of the War of Independence, treated from a naval viewpoint. A fleet of long-range raiders, another Decatur – and at that point, I was thinking about following the historical pattern. The Quasi-War, the Tripolitarian conflicts, the War of 1812 – very much Hornblower in Space.

   That birthed the Triplanetary Confederation. Three worlds who had declared independence from Earth, made it stick after a long war, and were now trying to forge a nation. A small space fleet, formed from the old planetary navies, trying to work together. Six ships – because of the original Six Frigates of the United States Navy. I read a load of books, and started to plan, and after a while, took a punt at a draft.

   It failed.

   And yet, looking back, I'm not sure why. I told the story from three points-of-view – one of them a politician back home, as well as the ship commander, William Marshall (He would change to Daniel later on…) and a rogue shuttle pilot, Trak. (Orlova, take one.) I've re-read the draft, and it's actually not bad – but not quite there, and I spent too much time messing around back home, and not enough at the point of the action. I learned a critical lesson right there – get right to the point. Don't waste time on prologue – launch into the story, and get the reader involved from the very first page. You can fill in the background later on.

   With that in mind, at the start of May 2013, I began Price of Admiralty. Originally, it was meant to be exclusively from the viewpoint of Captain Marshall, but a smuggler named Margaret Orlova forced her way into the plot, and it quickly became clear that I was going to have to involve her more heavily than I had planned. The setting was Ragnarok, a lost colony, the first of a succession founded during a forgotten first wave of interstellar colonization, brought into life largely because I wanted to have human settlements with some age to them, whilst still launching the beginnings of expansion into deep space. At this point, I knew that the Cabal was the ultimate enemy, but that was about all I knew – they were simply a name at this juncture, nothing more than that, and I dropped them in with the idea that I would explore them later on.

   Writing that book was a lot easier than I thought it would be, looking back; eighteen days to have it finished, and everything just seemed to flow so quickly, the characters forming into life as I wrote, the setting dropping into position, and the introduction of the first in a long line of Kamikaze Sergeants. Even at this point, the setting was still forming, still evolving, but by late May, I had a finished book. And one I decided not to publish – at least, not yet. I wanted to have the second book ready before I released the first, to have one in reserve.

   So Fermi's War was born, originating out of a paper I read on natural nuclear reactors. I set it on the moons of Uranus for one simple reason – I couldn't remember reading any other novels set there! (I'm sure there are some, but…) That fleshed out the setting still more, cre
ated the Belt People's Republic – which I've never actually gone back to, though I've meant to many times – and set up the Lunar Republic as the main adversary. They'd been the bad guys in Price of Admiralty, but I tried to instil them with a sense of humanity, to encompass a sense of inevitability about the conflicts they were falling into.

   Orlova came front and center in that book, and something unexpected happened. In my mind, she became the leading character. Like Spock in Star Trek, she'd pushed herself past Marshall, and while he was always a major character, I had the sense that Orlova was the big star – and that, I will say, was completely unplanned. It changed the focus of the storyline, made me determined to give her interesting things to do. (Much the same process would take place with Pavel Salazar, years later – a minor character who became a major player, much to my surprise.)

   One of the toughest scenes I've ever written came at the end of Fermi's War, Warren's funeral. I spent ages preparing for it, writing it in a grim ninety minutes, after which I was emotionally shattered. The only thing that transcended it was the death of Daniel Marshall, but that's far, far in the future from this. Fermi's War was, in some ways, a strange one, in that it didn't go as far as I'd meant it to. A lot of bits and pieces were set up for future books – some of which have yet to play out – but I'd rather liked Shakespeare Station as a setting, and never ended up going back there again. Though I suppose there is still plenty of time.

   A couple of days after finishing Fermi's War, I took the greatest leap of my life, and hit the button on Price of Admiralty, releasing it into the world. I was braced, frankly, for failure – the reason I'd written the second book was partly to avoid discouragement if it didn't work, so I could release a second one, build some momentum. That was the idea, any way. Though it didn't work out that way in the end. On the first day, I sold eleven copies. After four days, it was fifty. And then, liftoff. I started selling ten, twenty, thirty copies a day, and before I quite realized what was happening, I'd passed a thousand sales.

   Somehow, it had worked.

   It was a struggle to hold off for four weeks before releasing Fermi's War – and by then, I had finished the third book in the series, Victory or Death. When I started work on it, sales were trickling in, so I knew that there were readers, and I knew that it was working at some level. I knew that this was going to explore the Cabal in a little more detail, and I wanted a 'Vietnam' style setting – so Jefferson was born, a world settled along the same lines as Ragnarok, but one inhabitable by humans.

   In that one, I wanted to explore a few other elements – such as the paucity of Espatier equipment. It only seemed to make sense to me. These were Space Marines, trained and equipped to fight in artificial environments or in the depths of cold space. Drop them in a jungle, and they're in trouble. I think I managed to portray that fairly well – and dropping some of Alamo's regular crewmen into the mix was fun as well. (If I remember correctly, Chief Kowalski turned up in that book, and he's been a stalwart member of the crew ever since.)

   And of course – the dive into the atmosphere. That was great fun to write, and oddly enough, it's accurate; I actually simulated a similar maneuver, and it worked pretty much as I'd outlined in the book. Not many times that I've done that, but I was still feeling my way at that point, and it seemed important to try and get it right. As far as I'm concerned, it was the first of my 'epic' battle scenes – there have been a few more since then, but this was where that concept began. (The race through the shattered planet is another of my favorites...)

   I did a lot more work on Jefferson than ever came out in that book or the sequel. Though something has come up recently that means that it might get some use after all, happily. What I was returning to, though was the American Revolution theme, with elements of Vichy France – and Orlova's father, stranded for a decade, which added to the fun. I threw Caine in as a point-of-view character in this one, fighting her way across the surface with Orlova. Though I continued with her in future books, it didn't quite work in my head – though I might return to the idea in the future.

   Once Victory or Death was written, I had a problem, and one I wasn't expecting. The series was a success – a big success, actually, and I froze solid for three months. It was weeks before I could write anything usable, and writing that fourth book was a tremendous struggle. I've always thought that Tip of the Spear could have been better, that perhaps the nightmare I had writing it shows, but I can't see it when I reread it. I guess the lesson is that the reader doesn't really care about the process, only the finished result. (Which if true makes this essay a bit of a waste of time, but I digress.)

   That was an entertaining one. Dietz had rather outgrown his original plot, so I dropped him from the line-up...and regretted it fairly quickly, but I have still got an arc in mind for him. He's returned a few times, and likely will again, but that's for the future. I wanted to put Caine in the command chair, to explore the idea of an officer with no real feel for command – and after a fashion, it worked. Nevertheless, I resolved to do somewhat better next time, and I came up with the idea of the cruise through unknown space. It had become apparent to me that Alamo worked best at the frontier, and though I did sometimes forget that lesson in future books, I always returned to that concept in the end.

   I did want to explore something a little more...intrigue-based, and I wanted to bring back Logan Winter. I had a soft spot for the old rogue, and it occurred to me that with a little work, I could bring his character into the setting I had established for the Battlecruiser Alamo and her adventures. I always planned to rewrite the original adventures to fit, but somehow, that never happened – one reason that I present them in this volume, as I'm anxious to get them back into print.

   That's how Spitfire Station happened. I wanted a 'Deep Space Nine', something I could potentially use as the launching point for adventures in a 'Casablanca in Space'. 'Not One Step Back' was intended to introduce the setting, and Logan as well – which is why I brought him on board Alamo for that adventure as a point-of-view character. At the same time, I wanted to make more use of Harper.

   Kristen Harper. There hangs a tale. Most of my favorite characters seem to come into place completely by accident, and she's been no exception. I wanted a hacker, and someone who could do some of the sneaky-intrigue stuff, and I came up with the 'wild child in uniform' idea as something that I hadn't really been done before. There was always meant to be more along those lines that there was – but moving her over to Spitfire Station essentially aborted those plans at an early stage.

   Not One Step Back was the last of the original covers I'd purchased. I knew I wanted dog-fighting in an atmosphere, and that meant the creation of the gas giant – simply to have something to fight over. Spitfire Station itself was meant as a melting pot, and again, it's a setting I rather enjoyed, even if I've moved on from it in the narrative of the stories. Oddly, I can't remember that much about the writing of it – though I know that I'd considered killing off Marshall or Caine in that book, if only to shake things up a little. All that stopped me was that I knew that Marshall's father was going to be a major player in future books. (At one point, Daniel Marshall was to die, replaced by William Marshall as commander of Alamo – I did explore that a little bit in later books, though it was the father that ended up dying, rather than the son, in the end.)

   Spitfire Station, though, is a book I have very fond memories of. It was a blast to write, exploring the setting in more detail, and working with Logan Winter and Kristen Harper was a joy – one that I've continued to experience time and again in writing the books. They've got to be two of my favorite characters. (The others? Pavel Salazar and John Clarke, no question. There's a reason that the POV characters ended up as they are now. Orlova's fun as well, and Cooper was great fun – except that he ran out of plot in the end, and I either had to kill him off or give him a happy ending. I felt that he had deserved the latter.)

   I'm a big fan of old movie
s. Casablanca's one of my favorites. And let me tell you a little secret – Victor Lazlo is a Nazi agent. I'm quite serious – it makes the plot work a lot better with that assumption. We know he's traveled across Europe leaving a trail of dead resistance fighters in his wake, and the local Germans wouldn't just let him walk without doing something. Maybe not arrest him, but there would be a bullet with his name on it. Or a cannon. Unless, of course, they wanted him to escape.

   That was the starting point for Triple-Cross. I'd intended that to be the first of a long-running series, but somehow, it just never happened. I started writing the next book on three different occasions, but one just didn't work, and the others turned themselves into Alamo books, until finally I gave up almost a year later, and brought the two books back together with Ghost Ship.

   Then came Battle of Hercules, and the introduction of Gabriel Cooper. Again, he was meant as a one-shot character, a low-ranking space marine who was meant to die at the end of the book...but he had other ideas. To be blunt, I just enjoyed the character too much to kill him, especially his burgeoning romance, and I decided to spare his life at the last minute. Another critical character came in here, as well – Frank Nelyubov, who would spend the next dozen books in unrequited love with Margaret Orlova before finally meeting his end in Final Orbit; that was something planned months in advance, but it still hurt.

   Of course, William Marshall also came in, though he ended up only in the next three books, dying when his son fought his way back from Cabal space. That was a plot I'd always intended to string on longer, but using him as the bait to draw the ship deeper into enemy territory was something that only occurred to me much later in the proceedings. In original concept – Hercules was the prize at the end of the book, not the introduction to open it.