By Benjamin F. Jones
Futuristic/Sci-Fi, 414 pages
Cover art by Richard Stroud
Blurb:
Reaching the planet’s surface, Dyandra is horrified to discover
that only half of the crew touched down. The rest are trapped in space by a
mutiny. With inadequate provisions and separated from family and friends she
must battle for survival in an environment she doesn’t understand.
Excerpt:
One
Alexandra looked at the slack faces of
her fellow crewmembers and wished she’d taken the sedative too. The
deceleration couch gripped until it hurt. Her pill was stowed beneath her but
she wasn’t going to get it—not this close to separation.
Her daughter was in another lander,
one of sixteen. Alexandra tried to thread her. The network was busy. That had never happened—but then neither had landing.
The ship was 400 years between stars; they had almost reached their goal: Tane.
She listened to the landing craft
running through diagnostics.
The ship rattled with sounds she
didn’t recognise.
A thread from the ship’s AI whipped
her alert. She thumbed the valve to release the couch and staggered upright.
The room was a network of struts, installed in the lead-up to landing. She hit
her head and swore. The AI’s thread listed open hatches—several of them. How
can that be? I was the last to leave the mothership. I sealed those hatches
myself.
Her arm struck a bulkhead and she
swore again.
Freya opened one eye and looked at
her.
“What’s happening?” Her friend’s
question was ill-formed and smothered with emotion. It connected directly to
Alexandra’s mind but felt elusive as a breath.
“I’ve got to go,” Alexandra threaded
back. Freya was barely conscious; her thoughts kept bursting through with links
to older memories and snapshots of them together.
“I’m scared.”
“I’ll be back.” Alexandra pushed away
Freya’s contact that wrapped through the network.
Alexandra broke the seal on her own
craft and went out into the mothership’s central corridor superstructure which
housed the ship’s drive and the AI, a long tube with hatches that lead to the
landers. There were sixteen craft and they should all be readied for
separation. Part of her hoped the open hatches were due to a sensor
malfunction. Hatches don’t open themselves—every non-essential component
had been cannibalised to repair life support functions and make repairs to the
farm modules.
Alexandra threaded the countdown on
the network. Twenty minutes to sort out the problem and get back to my
craft.
It was not a sensor error—the hatches
were open—now that she was in the mothership she could see them.
“What’s going…?”
She threaded the ship’s AI but it had
disappeared from the network. Alexandra felt fear growing—her whole life she’d
never known the AI to be unreachable. The machine was their lifeline, the
controller of the mission. She tried her daughter…unavailable. Alexandra rested
her hand on the bulkhead nearest to her and took a breath. In her forty-seven
years of life, she had known nothing but routine maintenance and repairs.
She felt alone—uncomfortable without
the AI. She threaded Freya but the contact was a mess of terror. Her friend
would be no use until the launch window was a million miles behind them.
Looking up the central core of the
ship, she could see several open hatches. The drive eased off. She fought back
nausea but she’d experienced half-gee before, so it didn’t last long. The
change in the drive’s tone brought it to her consciousness.
She moved towards the nearest open
hatch. The reduced gravity made her climb rough and uneven. Arms flailing, she tried to reach out for a hold and her elbow
smashed into the bulkhead. A superficial injury, but the pain added another
layer to her lack of coordination. The metal edge of bulkhead had ripped
through her coverall; her blood showed against the material—red on natural
cotton.
She heard a shout from above her.
“Alexandra...”
At last someone has come to help. Donna was hanging out into the
central corridor, holding onto the safety rail with one arm. Her blonde hair
was tied back, revealing a wide expanse of forehead.
“Help me with these hatches,” yelled
Alexandra.
“Go back to your craft,” Donna called
back.
Alexandra couldn’t believe what she
was hearing.
“We separate in minutes,” Alexandra
said. “Get the farms closed up—we won’t survive without them.”
Donna laughed. The sound caught
Alexandra by surprise. Has she gone mad?
“Alexandra, for the sake of everyone
on board—go back to your lander—please.”
The tone made Alexandra falter. Panic
had stopped her seeing Donna clearly. Donna’s face wasn’t smothered with fear,
nor was it sedated; her face showed regret.
“We have fifteen minutes to do this or
the whole mission is...” Alexandra pulled herself past Donna and started to
wind closed the hatch to one of the farms. Seconds bunched up. Working in
half-gee had the added disadvantage that she couldn’t brace against her weight.
She cursed loudly each time the windlass completed a turn; her elbow hurt.
The latch on the farm unit’s airlock
closed with a worn thunk. The status lights that showed the farm’s readiness
for launch flicked from red to green. Alexandra didn’t have time for a smile as
she moved to the next hatch. She was aware of Donna yelling from farther along
the central corridor. What was wrong with her? Arms crying in agony, Alexandra
turned the windlass on the second hatch. She was breathing hard. Her ears
popped—she swallowed to clear the discomfort. The ship was making adjustments
to pressures, readying for separation.
“Stop!” Donna yelled.
Alexandra put all her effort into
closing another hatch. Her back ached. Her fingers were numb and she could feel
nothing but adrenaline. She wasted a couple of seconds trying to thread the
AI—nothing. She queried the network. The result filled her with hopelessness;
this wasn’t a couple of hatches that had accidentally been left; this was
planned. It was mutiny.
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