Category: Sons of the Starfarers

“I’m turning a corner,” said Aaron, his voice as clear as if he were standing just a few feet away. “If this is like Megiddo, then—yep, the corridor continues on the other side of this maintenance room. Following the blue arrows. Passing one door, two doors …”

The display screen flickered, then showed a new menu with dozens of option sets. Most of them had labels like SECURITY DECK 2A and brought up a password field when Isaac tried to select them. At the top, though, he found an icon labeled PUBLIC ACCESS. He selected it, and a new menu opened up, this one not unlike the main screen on the Medea.

“… four doors. Arrows end here. It looks like someone left it open. Stepping inside …”

Isaac scrolled down to where the ship’s log would usually be. Of course, there wasn’t one for the station, but there was a document file labeled TO WHOEVER COMES. He selected it.

“… It’s the station master’s office, all right. There’s an official looking desk with its own terminal and dual displays. There’s a wallscreen, too, but it’s dead, with a crack down the center.”

To whoever comes, the document read. I am write this station master Nova Alnilam. Datestamp 1.8.1192, New Pleiades reckoning. We are very tsavadet, food medical supplies are tvilo adamansvi since two year, no can we contact outside star …

“Looks like there’s a side room. Door is open, just like the main one. There’s a lot more dust here for some reason, not sure why. Stepping inside right now, and—holy shit!”

Isaac’s blood ran cold.

“Aaron? Aaron, what do you see?”

“You’ve got to come see this, Isaac. You’ve got to come right now.”

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Brothers in Exile (Sons of the Starfarers: Book I) is now out–check out the links on the sidebar to pick up a copy! It’s $.99 right now, but after Sunday the price will rise to $2.99.

One or two more excerpts, and I’ll be finished. Thanks for reading!

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They set off down the windowless corridor, their helmet lights illuminating the way. Little flecks of dust lit up like tiny stars as they walked by, suspended peacefully in the air until the wind from the brothers’ passing wrenched them back into the darkness. With the closeness of the walls, though, Isaac felt a little more at ease.

Aaron was right—this place was designed a lot like their home station back in Delta Oriana. He almost expected to see icons on the lintels of the doors they passed, or catch the smell of incense wafting from one of the local deck churches. Megiddo Station hadn’t been much bigger than Alnilam Station, and it was only a few light-years closer to the Coreward Stars. The Oriana Star Cluster was still squarely in the Outworlds, but it was settled thickly enough that none of the systems was completely isolated from the others.

Not that that had saved any of the ones who had stayed behind.

“I wonder if these arrows on the ceiling mean anything,” Aaron mused. “The green ones go back to the stairs, but the blue ones seem to lead somewhere else.”

Isaac shrugged. “So long as we don’t get lost.” Since the station was small enough that they could walk the whole length of the rimside corridor in less than an hour, there wasn’t much danger of that. Probably.

The corridor came to an end at a maintenance closet. The door was open, giving them a view of the equipment lockers and control panels for the stationwide systems. Surprisingly, the computer terminal seemed to be in pretty good shape.

“I wonder if we can access the station records from here,” Isaac mused.

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Brothers in Exile (Sons of the Starfarers: Book I) is available for $.99 from Amazon, Amazon UK, Smashwords, Barnes & Noble, and now Kobo. The price will rise to $2.99 by the end of the week, though, so be sure to get it now if you want it for less.

I’ll post a couple more excerpts between now and then before resuming my normal blogging schedule (inasmuch as “schedule” describes anything that goes on around here …). In the meantime, thanks for reading!

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Isaac sighed heavily and shook his head. “Haven’t we seen enough already? Everyone is dead—that much is abundantly clear. We can refuel the ship from the external tanks, so there’s no need to investigate any further.”

“Yeah, but don’t you want to find out what happened to these people? Maybe if we go up, we’ll find some sort of—”

“No.”

Even through the copper-tinted faceplate, Isaac could see his brother’s scowl.

“Come on! Why are you always the one who decides these things?”

“Because I’m the oldest.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

Isaac didn’t answer. Now was not the time to get into another argument about who was in charge and whether Aaron could take care of himself. Stars knew they had far too many of those arguments already.

Aaron took a deep, raspy-sounding breath. “Well, fine. You do what you want down here. I’m going to go check out the upper levels.”

“What? Hey, stop!”

But Isaac was too late. His brother was already heading toward one of the narrow stairwells leading to the upper decks of the station.

“What the hell are you doing? You come back right now!”

“You’re not my captain. I don’t have to do what you tell me.”

“Dammit, Aaron! We’re supposed to stick together!”

“Then come with me. It’s not so bad. If everyone’s dead already, then what’s there to be afraid of?”

Take a look around, you idiot.

Isaac took a deep breath and clenched his fists. “Aaron, please. Think about what you’re doing. This isn’t the time or the place to throw a fit like this. This station isn’t safe. We should go back to the ship and get ready to leave the system.”

“You’re not going to stop me, Isaac. I’m going.”

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Brothers in Exile (Sons of the Starfarers: Book I) is now out on Amazon, Amazon UK, Smashwords, and Barnes & Noble. In a couple of weeks or so, it should be out everywhere else. Right now, it’s available for $.99, but the price will go up to $2.99 at the end of the week.

I really hope you guys enjoy reading this book as much as I enjoyed writing it. 😀 If you do, please writing a review so that someone else can enjoy it as well!

Here are the links to the other excerpts I’ve posted on the blog so far. As always, thanks for reading!

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They found the first body a short while later. It had decayed so much, with the skin stretched tight across the dry old bones, that it almost looked like a bag of discarded waste. Only when they came up to it did the human form become apparent.

“Stars of Earth,” Aaron swore, jumping back. “What is that?”

Isaac crouched and gripped one of the curled up arms as gently as he could with his oversized gloves. The suit did not transmit the sensation of touch, but the blackened skin peeled off like dry paper, the bone snapping off at the elbow joint. In the eerie silence of the station, the crack of the broken bone sounded surprisingly distinct through the external mike.

“What are you doing?”

“Investigating,” Isaac said softly as he laid the bone back in place. The body was curled up in a fetal position, with ribs poking out from the stomach and stringy black hair still hanging from the scalp. It was roughly adult-sized, with the gaunt remains of facial muscles pulled back from two rows of worn, flat teeth. Strangely, there was no sign of clothing—perhaps the colonists had preferred organic fibers over synthetics. Either way, the only indication of the body’s sex was in its bone structure, and Isaac didn’t know enough about that to tell whether it had been a man or a woman.

“Sol, Earth, and Luna, Isaac,” Aaron swore. “Step away from that thing.”

It’s not a thing; it used to be a person, Isaac wanted to say. Instead, he stood up slowly and took a step back.

“I can’t tell how long it’s been since he died, but clearly, it’s been a while. Years, at least.”

“At least,” Aaron agreed. “Stars, it gives me the creeps.”

Brothers in Exile (Sons of the Starfarers, Book 1) is coming out this weekend to Amazon, Smashwords, Kobo, and Barnes & Noble. It is a novella about 36,000 words long–about the same length as Star Wanderers: Deliverance (Part VIII), perhaps a bit longer. It will be $.99 the first week, and $2.99 after that.

To be notified when it comes out, be sure to sign up for my new release email list if you haven’t already. Or you can just keep watching this blog.

Thanks for reading!

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The moment the helmet clamps sealed with a hiss, Isaac felt as if he’d been cut off into his own private universe. The glass faceplate gave a slightly copper color to everything outside, while the indicators in the corner of his vision lit up softly with his vitals. He took a deep breath of the canned oxygen, and the hiss of the airflow filled his ears.

“Need a little help?” he asked, toggling the external speakers by clicking his right thumb and ring finger twice.

“I’ve got it,” said Aaron, his voice coming through a bit tinny. The pickup on the microphones wasn’t all that great, probably because the designers hadn’t considered them an important feature. After all, there was no sound in space.

“Great. I’ll be waiting for you in the airlock.”

Isaac barely lifted his feet as he shuffled through the heavy durasteel door into the starship’s only airlock. Even so, he could hear the clang of the metal grating against his boots through the fibers of his suit. The greenish-yellow LEDs shone down through thick plastiglass, protection from the harsh vacuum. Unlike the rest of the ship, the walls and ceiling were made of the same durasteel plating as the rest of the hull, designed for exposure to the void.

He stopped and stared at the opposite door. The rhythmic hiss of the airflow mingled with the silent pounding of his heart as he wondered what lay on the other side. The sweat pooling against the back of his neck felt strangely cold. He wished his brother would hurry up.

“All right,” came Aaron’s voice, followed by a short burst of static. The suit’s radio sounded a lot clearer than the external microphone.

“Are you ready?”

“I’m right behind you.”

“Great,” said Isaac. “Let’s get started.”

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Brothers in Exile (Sons of the Starfarers, Book I) is coming out later this week–I’m very excited! I think you guys are really going to like this one, and the new series that it’s going to launch. It’s set in the same universe as Star Wanderers with some of the same characters, but takes that story in a much different direction.

To be notified by email when Brothers in Exile is out, be sure to sign up for my mailing list if you haven’t already.

Thanks for reading!

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On the dark side of the horizon, where the ocean of stars met the blackness of night, a tiny point of light gradually grew brighter than all the others. It was the station, reflecting the starlight. As they came closer, the man-made structure gradually took shape: two narrow wheels running at cross-purposes to each other around a fat central cylinder with long antennae on either end. Isaac gripped the flight stick a little tighter and rechecked the nav-computer to make sure that they were still on course. Down below, a flash of pale blue lightning lit up a tiny patch of the planet’s atmosphere, but only for an instant. Whatever tempest swirled in the clouds below them, it preferred to brood in the shadows.

“We’re coming up on the station,” said Aaron. “One klick and dropping.”

“Can you try to contact them as I make the final approach? Be sure to try the shortwave too—if anyone’s still alive in there, chances are better that they’ll have something rigged up on those bands.”

Aaron shrugged, but he went ahead and did it anyway. Isaac kept an eye on the main screen as he made the final maneuvers to put them in a parallel orbit just 500 meters away.

“So this is Alnilam station,” he mused as he peered out the forward window. The station’s hull was a dark gray, the beacons at the ends of the antennae a deep flashing red. The starlight was too dim to give anything more than the basic shape of the structure. On the inside of the wheels where the windows should have been, there was a blackness as dark as the night on the planet below.

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Brothers in Exile (Sons of the Starfarers, Book I) is my latest book, due to come out later this month. It expands the Star Wanderers universe and starts an epic new story arc that will eventually tie in with the Gaia Nova books as well.

To be notified when it comes out, be sure to sign up for my mailing list if you haven’t already.

Thanks for reading!

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“There,” said Aaron. “Got it.” The main cockpit holoscreen lit up between them, showing an image of the planet with their current trajectory in green. Around the sphere representing the planet itself, a red ellipse traced a separate orbit.

“What’s that?” Isaac asked.

“The station. Since they aren’t responding to our hails, I figure we ought to calculate our own approach vector.”

Isaac frowned. “I’m not so sure that’s a good idea. We don’t know what else is down there. For all we know, our approach could put us on a collision course with local traffic.”

“What traffic? We’re picking up nothing but radio silence across all bands—for all we know, the station is dead.”

Dead.The suggestion sent chills down the back of Isaac’s neck. He sighed and shook his head.

“If the station were dead, wouldn’t the colonists have set up some sort of distress beacon?”

“What’s the point in setting up a distress beacon if you’re more than two parsecs from the nearest help?”

What if they are dead? Isaac wondered. What if that’s why they haven’t hailed us?

“Something is definitely wrong,” he said softly. “Maybe we should just cut our losses now and leave.”

“What? You mean turn around and go back to Nova Minitak?”

“That, or move on to Esperanzia. This isn’t right—we’ve been transmitting on every major frequency, with no response. Something about this system is very wrong, and I don’t want to get involved.”

“Involved in what?” asked Aaron, his face incredulous. “If something is wrong, maybe they need our help. How can we turn around and leave them if they need us?”

We can’t help them if they’re already dead.

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Brothers in Exile (Sons of the Starfarers, Book I) is coming out in ebook format later this month. It is the first book in the Sons of the Starfarers series, which takes place in the same universe and timeline as Star Wanderers. To be updated when it comes out, be sure to sign up for my mailing list if you haven’t already.

Thanks for reading!

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