“What do you think?” said Aaron, breaking the silence that had inadvertently fallen between them.

“The design for the cryotank is crude. I don’t think we can thaw her with any of the equipment here.”

“We’ve got to take her with us, then, and find someone who can.”

Isaac frowned. Something about that idea made his stomach turn.

“We’ve already gone further here than we ever should have,” he said. “Besides, for all we know, she’s already dead.”

“Dead? What are you talking about, man? If there’s even a chance that she’s alive, we should do all we can to save her.”

He’s right, Isaac thought to himself. Still, something held him back: a sense of foreboding that screamed at him to go back to the Medea and forget that they’d ever come to this place.

“Someone else will come eventually. If she’s still alive, she’s frozen in stasis, so it won’t matter how long it takes for someone else to find her.”

“And what if those people are slavers?” Aaron asked. “You really want to take that chance—to have that on your conscience?”

“No,” Isaac admitted.

“Then let’s bring her out. There’s a freight airlock not too far from here—it won’t be difficult to load her up with the rest of the cargo.”

“Do we have the space, though? Our hold is still full from Nova Minitak.”

“If we don’t, we’ll just dump enough to make room. It won’t be much, and saving this girl is a lot more important than our next trade anyway. Besides, we’ve built up enough credit in this sector that the loss shouldn’t be a problem.”

Isaac nodded slowly and took a deep breath. “Right. I’ll get a maglift from the maintenance room, then.”

“No need—she’s already loaded up on one. All we’ve got to do is take her out.”

Right again, he thought, checking the underside of the cryotank. They really did want someone to take her. It was as if the girl was the last hope of a long-forgotten people, a precious artifact lost across space and time. How long had she lain here, waiting to be brought back to the realm of the living? He traced the intricate henna patterns with his eyes and wondered why she’d had them done. Perhaps someday he’d be able to ask her.

This is the final excerpt for Brothers in Exile (Sons of the Starfarers: Book I). It’s also the last weekend in which it will be available for $.99. To pick up a copy, visit the links in the sidebar.

I hope you’ve enjoyed these excerpts–posting them has been something of an experiment for me. Now that they’re complete, I’ll get back to blogging like I normally do.

As always, thanks for reading!

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A mostly decayed body lay curled up beside a small cylindrical storage tank in the middle of the floor. The body itself wasn’t much different from any of the others, but the tank was something else entirely. It was built like a coffin, with the upward-facing part made almost entirely of glass. And inside of that glass was the perfectly preserved body of a beautiful young woman.

Chills ran down the back of Isaac’s neck as he stared at her. In this mausoleum, she stood out like a brilliant young star in the midst of a dense, obscuring cloud of gas and dust. She was a little shorter than Aaron and probably not much older, with long black hair and dark olive skin. Her face was round, with dark eyebrows, a flat nose, and full lips. As with anyone under cryo, she was naked, though she had a full-body henna tattoo that almost made her look otherwise. It ran from her wrists and arms across her chest and down past her navel, which was obviously the center of the design. The dark brown ink seemed to form a set of intricate parallel fractals, reflected across an axis that ran down the center of her body. The fine attention to detail was almost religious in its precision.

“She’s gorgeous,” said Aaron. “Have you ever seen anything like her?”

“No,” Isaac admitted. He ran his gloved fingers over the glass as if to reach out to her. The henna designs accentuated the natural curves of her body, emphasizing every feature while imbuing her with a sense of poise and dignity. Instead of feeling like a voyeur for staring at her, Isaac felt as if he stood before a shrine.

Brothers in Exile (Sons of the Starfarers: Book I) is available until Sunday as a $.99 ebook. Check out the links in the sidebar to pick up a copy! After Sunday, the price will go up to $2.99. Thanks for reading!

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“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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