Something about the Nova Alnilam system felt wrong. Perhaps it was the silence that greeted Isaac and his brother as they exited jumpsace near the fifth planet. The deep blue ice giant world shone pale in the crystalline light of its sun, while all their commscans picked up nothing but empty static. For a planet that was supposed to have a mid-sized orbital colony of more than a thousand people, that was highly unusual.<\/p>\n
\u201cAlnilam Station,\u201d he said, transmitting across all the major radio bands. \u201cThis is Isaac of the Medea<\/em>, requesting docking permission. Do you copy?\u201d<\/p>\n Silence. Isaac counted to five and glanced at his younger brother Aaron.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think they\u2019re picking us up,\u201d he said. \u201cHow\u2019s our orbital trajectory?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s coming, it\u2019s coming,\u201d said Aaron, his eyes practically fused to his display screen. \u201cJust give me a second.\u201d He brushed his unkempt brown hair out of the way and scratched at the patchy stubble on his chin.<\/p>\n Isaac sat back in his chair and mentally reviewed what they knew about the system. A class F star on the barely inhabited Outworld fringes of the south second quadrant, it lay almost six light-years from the nearest established settlement. The first colonists had arrived about a hundred and twenty standard years ago, but all the records since then were spotty and inconsistent. An obscure astrographical survey in the Gaian Imperial catalog showed that the system was rich in uranium and other radioactives, which if true would make it the perfect third leg in a trade route of the local stars. Few starfarers ever came out this way, though\u2014for all Isaac knew, they were the first people to visit this colony in a generation.<\/p>\n ==========<\/p>\n Brothers in Exile (Sons of the Starfarers, Book I)<\/strong> is coming out later this month. This excerpt is the opening scene, taken from the first chapter.<\/p>\n To be notified by email when it comes out, you can sign up for my mailing list here<\/a>.\u00a0Brothers in Exile<\/strong> is also listed on Goodreads<\/a>, so feel free to add it to your to-read list. It doesn’t have a cover yet, but that should be coming out soon.<\/p>\n Thanks for reading!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Something about the Nova Alnilam system felt wrong. Perhaps it was the silence that greeted Isaac and his brother as they exited jumpsace near the fifth planet. The deep blue ice giant world shone pale in the crystalline light of its sun, while all their commscans picked up nothing but empty static. For a planet… Continue reading Brothers in Exile — excerpt 1<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Here's a short excerpt from my forthcoming novel, BROTHERS IN EXILE. This is the opening scene.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[862,855],"tags":[474,756],"class_list":["post-9317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ssf-i","category-ssf","tag-excerpts","tag-new-releases","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iXK-2qh","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9317"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9317\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9319,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9317\/revisions\/9319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}