The last thing James remembered was his own death. He had been trying to stabilize the backup reactor of an old pre-Coalition orbital station when some component of the millennium-old infrastructure failed. He recalled manually detaching the module from the station in an effort to save his team, relaxing his muscles in final resignation, and finally, the searing white light that should have certainly vaporized every cell in his body.
Yet, to his dismay, he was undeniably very much alive.
He had been awake for nearly six hours now, locked in the fetal position on some sort of hospital cot. He was facing a wall covered in white cabinets, and he was entirely unable to move. At first, this had been a considerable dilemma, and the rapid tempo of beeps streaming from his heart rate monitor adequately reflected his distress.
He steadied his breathing—the one function he seemed able to control beside his eyes—and listened as the beep, beep, beep of the monitor slowed to a less concerning frequency. He had built his
entire legacy on observing fine details; this was no time to break character.
James decided to approach his predicament just as he would the initial step of an archaeological dig: methodically.
All right, Jim. Point blank. What do you see right next to you? he thought, and the answers flooded his mind. First was his body. Despite his lack of ability to exert motor control over his extremities, he was still able to feel they were all, fortunately, intact. This surprised him, as his first thoughts upon regaining consciousness had been nightmarish visions of the atrocious injuries he must have sustained in the explosion.
Good. That’s good. I’m all here in one place, at least.
Next, the cot itself. The mattress was firm but comfortable, and the pillow under his cheek was internally cooled. Though a light sheet covered his body from chest to foot, the slight pressure around his midsection indicated the presence of a retention belt.
I guess that means I’m still in zero-G, then. A hospital station, perhaps? Or the medical bay on a Fleet transport? He couldn’t tell. He would need more evidence to determine what sort of vessel he was aboard, but no matter how hard he strained his eyes, his visual periphery was not wide enough to observe more than the wall he faced.
So, he looked upward toward the top of his head, where the heart monitor gave its constant readings. The medical data may as well have been in a foreign language, but the equipment it supported was enough to assist his investigation immensely. A pressurized canister fed a constant drip of fluids intravenously into his arm; this came as no surprise. He assumed that under the sheet, an array of various catheters and tubes was sustaining both the input and output of his digestive tract, while the IV itself kept him hydrated and medicated. That was typical of an automated med station like this. However, the second pressurized canister attached to the monitor was not ordinary at all. A coiled, transparent tube full of pale yellow liquid stretched from the canister and disappeared behind his field of view.
As he searched the annals of his brain for its purpose, he became aware of the slight pinch of pressure at the base of his skull. He was now sure the coiled tube was attached behind his head. Furthermore, he was sure the yellow fluid it ferried into his body was the cause of his paralysis. Images of the suspected substance being used on dangerous convicts—a banned disciplinary measure, he had previously thought—danced through his mind.
What are they using a nerve insensator on me for? Usually these drugs are for immobilizing criminals. What have I done? Who is doing this to me? Oh my God, what is happening?
His mind raced, and the beep, beep, beep of the machine mimicked his frantic heartbeats.
No. Stop it. Stop it now, he reassured himself. You were badly injured. They had to make sure you didn’t move during the healing process. Think rationally, Jim. You’re not a prisoner. You’re a patient, and you aren’t doing yourself any favors by stressing yourself out.
He let out a slow breath, and the beeps once more returned to their pacified pace. It came as an even greater shock, then, when he felt the sensation of a hand on his shoulder.
“I’m right behind you,” a voice spoke softly. “Don’t try to move, you’ll only strain yourself.”
James Enoch is supposed to be dead. Last he knew, his illustrious archaeology career had ended, along with his life, in the fiery climax of a botched excavation. Chief Engineer Lania Surkov, on the other hand, is a disgraced planetologist with no desire beyond restoring her prior standing with the Terran Coalition and returning to Earth. Thawed from cryo-sleep after a century-long journey, these unlikely candidates find themselves tasked with a dangerous mission six lightyears from home.
The planet they land on, Cambridge II, is supposed to be a barren, lifeless wasteland. However, they are shocked to find that there is a successful, pre-Coalition human colony already thriving planetside, enabled by the enigmatic functions of an alien terraforming device. Tensions boil over into outright hostility as Lania and James become the only things standing between humanity and full-scale interstellar war.
If you follow me on social media, you probably know about my devastating One Drive syncing troubles, but if you don’t, you won’t know that I’ve lost multiple interviews thanks to improper syncing, among them a fantastic interview with Patrick Leitzen on his debut novel, Silence of the Stars.
Patrick is a former military radio operator (forgive me if I get that wrong, Pat, I don’t have the interview, grrr) and told me about how he spent his down time on deployment in Afghanistan writing this novel. So far it’s been well-received and if you enjoy space opera, I hope you’ll pick up a free copy today (8/21/23) and leave him an honest review!
No guarantee that these books are clean, but they do have ratings you can take a look at.