They both hugged the Rabbit tightly. His nose twitched rapidly with his joy at seeing his friends, and he hopped in excitement. They wanted to know everything that happened as they pulled seats close. The Rabbit started with the bad news of who they lost during the fighting, starting with former DI Katlind. The three friends continued on their emotional roller coaster, ending with the fact that Cain and Ellie were breaking up.
“What happened?” Briz cried through his vocalization device.
“The truth happened, Briz. We are friends, good friends, and that’s what we need to be, nothing more. I’m not right for Ellie and she’s not right for me,” he said as he smiled at her. They held hands for a moment, then let go.
“We need to get to work. I’m sure you people were messing up my sewage pumps while I was away. Who knows what kind of mess I’m going to find when I get down there.” Cain laughed as he walked away, not a light, easy laugh so much as one that you find from someone who wants to be happy, but carries too many burdens.
Far too many people had died during their foray into IC1396. Cain could say that the Concordians were hostile and turned a successful trip into a failure, but it wasn’t a failure. With the information that Jolly downloaded from Graham, they’d have updated star charts only a few hundred years old. They had a list of where humans had relocated. They could hop from habitable planet to habitable planet without having to search. The only thing they needed to do was be wary of how the inhabitants had changed since resettlement.
Cain wanted military training for those on the deep space ships, so they were better prepared for situations like this. But no one had seen as much combat as the crew of the Cygnus-12. They were the de facto experts. I feel like I don’t know anything, Cain told himself, then chuckled. I’m the expert and I don’t know anything.
The crew went about the business of preparing the ship to travel through space, which meant repairing the hatches so they could seal, sanding and painting the scorch marks, cleaning up any remaining blood, and making the ship look like battles had not raged within.
It took four days before the second shuttle launched itself from the valley beyond the village of Fairsky. A number of helicopters and their crews were working near the shuttle when it fired its engines. More Concordians died. More irreplaceable helicopters were lost. And many hours later, the shuttle was eased into the hangar bay, turned just so to allow the doors to close and the bay to seal.
The Cygnus-12 was returning home to Vii, well ahead of schedule, but with a shuttle of the ancients, weapons of their enemies, and eight less crew members. One victim of an accident and the rest from an enemy that they didn’t know existed.
The crew went about their business, sad yet diligent. Many covered work that friends used to do. They were short-handed, and would be until they could staff more crew.
Every day, the captain walked through every space, shaking hands with all his people, happy to have them, happy himself to be alive. He constantly massaged his new arm, 3D printed and attached in place of the one he lost. He had feeling and could flex his hand. He could open hatches or throw a ball. He couldn’t eat with that hand yet, but the med bot assured him that he would eventually master the arm’s motor skills. Captain Rand looked like he’d aged twenty years over the course of one trip.
Space was hard, but the mantra of the Space Exploration Service was solid. The ship is life, save the ship and you save yourselves, even if you have to kill to do it.
The End of Cygnus Rising,
The first book in the Cygnus Space Opera
Research Notes:
http://www.ewao.com/a/1-did-nikola-tesla-discover-the-secrets-of-antigravity/
http://www.physics-astronomy.com/2015/07/nasas-impossible-em-drive-works-german.html#.V8A9IjXHkkT – the EM Drive
Star Systems within 10,000 light years - http://www.atlasoftheuniverse.com/nebclust.html
Stellar classification - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_classification
Free Trader 6 – Free Trader on the High Seas
Free Trader on the High Seas is about search and discovery, then liberation. When Micah’s father is abducted by the strange Bots from the undersea world, the Free Trader and his companions come to the rescue.
With an open ocean exploration laboratory that Holly recovered, they head to sea where they find more than an island – they find the source of fear.
Free Trader Book Six – Free Trader on the High Seas, coming soon, exclusively on Amazon.
Postscript
Thank you for reading the Cygnus Rising!
If you like to see the series continue, please join my mailing list by dropping by my website www.craigmartelle.com or if you have any comments, shoot me a note at [email protected]. I am always happy to hear from people who’ve read my work. I try to answer every email I receive.
If you liked the story, please write a short review for me on Amazon. I greatly appreciate any kind words, even one or two sentences go a long way. The number of reviews an ebook receives greatly improves how well an ebook does on Amazon.
Amazon – www.amazon.com/author/craigmartelle
Facebook – www.facebook.com/authorcraigmartelle
My web page – www.craigmartelle.com
Twitter – www.twitter.com/rick_banik
About the Author
Craig is a successful author, publishing mainly in Science Fiction. He’s taken his more than twenty years of experience in the Marine Corps, his legal education, and his business consulting career to write believable characters living in realistic worlds.
Although Craig has written in multiple genres, what he believes most compelling are in-depth characters dealing with real-world issues. The backdrop is less important than the depth of the characters, who they are and how they interact. Life lessons of a great story can be applied now or fifty years in the future. Some things are universal.
Craig believes that evil exists. Some people are driven differently and cannot be allowed access to our world. Good people will rise to the occasion. Good will always challenge evil, sometimes before a crisis, many times after, but will good triumph?
Some writers who’ve influenced Craig? Robert E. Howard (the original Conan), JRR Tolkien, Andre Norton, Robert Heinlein, Lin Carter, Brian Aldiss, Margaret Weis, Tracy Hickman, Anne McCaffrey, and of late, James Axler, Raymond Weil, Jonathan Brazee, Mark E. Cooper, and David Weber. Craig learned something from each of these authors, story line, compelling issue, characters that you can relate to, the beauty of the prose, unique tendrils weaving through the book’s theme. Craig’s writing has been compared to that of Andre Norton and Craig’s Free Trader characters to those of McCaffrey’s Dragonriders, the Rick Banik Thrillers to the works of Robert Ludlum.
Craig finds the comparisons humbling. All he wants is for his readers to relate to the characters, put themselves into those situations described in Craig’s books and ask themselves, what would they do if they were there instead?
Through a bizarre series of events, Craig ended up in Fairbanks, Alaska. He never expected to retire to a place where golf courses are only open for four months out of the year. But he loves it there. It is off the beaten path. He and his wife watch the northern lights from their driveway. Their dog has lots of room to run. And temperatures reach forty below zero. They have from three and a half hours of daylight in the winter to twenty-four hours in the summer.
It’s all part of the give and take of life. If they didn’t have those extremes, then everyone would live there.
www.craigmartelle.com
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Fire!
Six Months Ago
The Obstacle Course
First Classes at Space School
The Routine
Space
Welcome to the RV Traveler
Damage Control
Peace of Mind
Ship Training
Man Against Machine
A New Partnership
The Return Home
A Return to Space School
Space School Graduates
Last Preps to Join the Crew
Cygnus-12
Getting Underway
Set Course for Interstellar Space
Activate the ISE
Engineering’s On Fire
Report!
A Rapid Recovery
Into the Well
Fellow Humans – The Decision
A New World and New Life
Prepare to Repel Boarders
Run and Hide
One Down, One to Go
Take No Prisoners
Kill them, kill them all.
The Concordians, They Come
Deck by Deck
The Concordians Are Gaining on You
They’re in the Engine Room!
Hide
Jolly’s Return
Clearing the Pad
Prepare to Leave Orbit
Postscript
About the Author
Cygnus Rising: Humanity Returns to Space (Cygnus Space Opera Book 1) Page 25