“You’ve got something in your future that you need to do,” Nisreen said.
“Something I can’t do here?”
Her mom looked down at the floor and nodded. “You have greatness in you that you need to let out. If you stay here, you will never do that.”
“Why?” she snapped. “This is my home.”
“Because here you will always be Nisreen’s daughter. Nothing great ever grows in the shadows.”
“How can you say that?” Arika gasped. Her mother’s arrogance swelled up like a wall between them and crushed what hope she had of ever reaching out to her again.
“It is true,” she said. “You don’t know it yet, but this is the right thing. Someday you will appreciate that.”
Commander Walker reappeared in the loading tube doorway. “I hate to do this, but it’s time to get you aboard,” he said. “Phobos just set and we need to catch the Wolf before it gets out of position.”
Her mother stood up and held out a thinpad and several electronic documents.
“What’s this?” Arika grabbed the items from her hand with a snap as she stood to gather her things.
“They are your new identity docs,” Nisreen said.
She opened the files and stared at it. Anju Soresh.
“It was as close as I could get to your father’s name,” her mother said. “That was the name he’d picked out for you before you were born and if you had ever had a sister, we would have named her that.” She paused biting down hard on something else she wanted to say. She shook her head again. “He loved you so much. Almost as much as I do.”
Arika-Anju bent over and grabbed her two bags off the floor, dropping her documents into a pocket. Squaring her shoulders, she drew in a deep breath. “In all of this, do you know the one thing I will never get over?”
Nisreen shook her head.
“I never learned to swim.”
125 years later humanity spreads its wings and discovers
what it truly means to not be alone in the universe.
Catch the ride on Wings of Earth
One hundred thousand colonists can’t disappear.
No bodies. No evidence of an attack. Just gone.
On what should have been a routine cargo run to the far edge of the Coalition, Captain Ethan Walker is carrying a payload of medical technology and two passengers returning home to Starlight Colony. When they arrive, they discover that everyone on the planet is missing.
The company he works for wants him to leave immediately, but he’s obligated to report to FleetCom that the entire population has vanished. Captain MacKenna of the Magellan, tells him stay put until they can arrive to begin an official investigation.
Caught between his legal responsibilities and the need to know what happened, Walker has to resist increasing pressure to defy orders. Unfortunately, his passengers make a decision that forces him into doing the one thing he can’t do.
Captain Walker must risk his ship and crew to return to the surface even though it may ultimately cost him everything.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Eric Michael Craig is a Hard Science Fiction writer living in the Manzano Mountains of New Mexico. He is the former Director of Research for a private consulting laboratory in Phoenix, where he experimented with inertial propulsion and power generation technologies.
Fascinated with the "cacophony of humanity," he dedicated much of his life to observing society and how people relate to each other and the world around them. Ultimately this drove him to write full time.
When not writing, Eric is active in Intentional Community Design, plays guitar and bass, occasionally dabbles in art of various forms, and designs websites. He also owns way too many dogs.
Eric is a founding member of the SciFi Roundtable. The SFRT is an active online group dedicated to supporting indie and traditional authors by networking them with other writers and professional resources.
Connect with Eric at:
ericmichaelcraig.net
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From the Desk of Eric Michael Craig
Other works by Eric Michael Craig
Atlas and the Winds
Book One: Stormhaven Rising
Book Two: Prometheus and the Dragon
Shan Takhu Legacy
Book One: Legacy of Pandora
Book Two: Fulcrum of Odysseus
Book Three: Redemption of Sisyphus
Box Set
Shan Takhu Legacy - The Complete Trilogy
Wings of Earth
Book One: Echoes of Starlight
Book Two: Dust of the Deep
Short Story
Ghostmaker
Shan Takhu Legacy Box Set - With an Extra Bonus Story Page 89