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Terminal Uprising (Janitors of the Post-Apocalypse, Band 2) - Hardcover

Buch 2 von 3: Janitors of the Post-Apocalypse

Hines, Jim C.

 
9780756412777: Terminal Uprising (Janitors of the Post-Apocalypse, Band 2)
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0756412773 ISBN 13: 9780756412777
Verlag: DAW, 2019

Inhaltsangabe

Hugo award-winning author Hines returns to science fiction with the second book of the Janitors of the Post-Apocalypse, featuring the unlikely heroes that may just save the galaxy from a zombie plague.

Human civilization didn’t just fall. It was pushed.
 
The Krakau came to Earth in the year 2104. By 2105, humanity had been reduced to shambling, feral monsters. In the Krakau’s defense, it was an accident, and a century later, they did come back and try to fix us. Sort of.
 
It’s been four months since Marion “Mops” Adamopoulos learned the truth of that accident. Four months since she and her team of hygiene and sanitation specialists stole the EMCS Pufferfish and stopped a bioterrorism attack against the Krakau homeworld. Four months since she set out to find proof of what really happened on Earth all those years ago.
 
Between trying to protect their secrets and fighting the xenocidal Prodryans, who’ve been escalating their war against everyone who isn’t Prodryan, the Krakau have their tentacles full.
 
Mops’ mission changes when she learns of a secret Krakau laboratory on Earth. A small group under command of Fleet Admiral Belle-Bonne Sage is working to create a new weapon, one that could bring victory over the Prodryans … or drown the galaxy in chaos.
 
To discover the truth, Mops and her rogue cleaning crew will have to do the one thing she fears most: return to Earth, a world overrun by feral apes, wild dogs, savage humans, and worse. (After all, the planet hasn’t been cleaned in a century and a half!) What Mops finds in the filthy ruins of humanity could change everything, assuming she survives long enough to share it.
 
Perhaps humanity isn’t as dead as the galaxy thought.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Jim C. Hines has published more than forty short stories as well as numerous fantasy and sci-fi novels, including the humorous Jig the Dragonslayer trilogy; the Princess series, which re-imagines traditional fairy-tale princesses as butt-kicking action heroines; and the Magic Ex Libris series, about a centuries-old secret society dedicated to the use and control of book magic. In 2012, he won the Hugo for Best Fan Writer.

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MARION “MOPS” ADAMOPOULOS’ twelve years in Hygiene and Sanitation Services had left her little time for sightseeing. At least, not the kind of sights any human in their right mind wanted to see.
Despite incidents like the semi-ambulatory brown mold on deck E, courtesy of a contaminated bottle of illegal shell-thickening supplements smuggled aboard by one of the Krakau crew, Mops had never complained about her work. She’d considered herself fortunate, one of the few humans to be given a second chance. Her species had turned itself into monsters. The Krakau had found a way to save some of them. In Mops’ judgment, she and her fellow humans owed the Krakau everything.
And then she’d learned how the Krakau and their cold-water cousins, the Rokkau, had been the ones to tear down humanity in the first place, and how they’d spent a hundred and fifty years covering it up.
Mops had complained quite a bit more after that.
Stealing the EMCS Pufferfish and searching for proof of the Krakau Alliance’s crimes had given her the opportunity to see so much more. Again, few of these sights were ones she would have chosen. Like the swarming lights that signified an incoming missile barrage from a Prodryan attack force, or the aftermath of explosive decompression on the ship’s algae tanks following a lucky A‑gun shot by an EMC scout ship.
But every once in a great while, she got to appreciate a sight like the one currently displayed on her monocle, a sight that filled her with awe and reminded her how vast and wondrous the galaxy truly was. She wanted to reach through the emptiness and touch the marvels floating before them.
To her left, Wolf said, “Those are some big damn space fish.”
And just like that, the moment was past, as dead as the bag of spikeshell snails Wolf had brought onto the shuttle for a crunchy snack.
“Yes,” Mops sighed. “Yes, they are.”
The big damn space fish were called Comaceans. The closest member of the herd drifted roughly ten kilometers in front of the Pufferfish shuttle. Far in the background, the gas dwarf Tixateq floated like a swirling red-and-yellow marble.
The Comacean that was their destination stretched almost a kilometer in length. Its blue-black skin shone in the light of the distant sun. Fins as long as an EMC cruiser extended outward from the tubelike body, not for navigation, but to help the creature shed excess body heat.
Reluctantly, Mops turned her focus to the far less awe- inspiring sight of the shuttle interior. “Prep for approach, people.”
Wolfgang Mozart—communications technician, would‑be soldier, and the largest member of Mops’ small crew—was stretched out on one of the fold-out metal benches running lengthwise through the cabin. Wolf sat up and brought a muscular hand to her mouth, smothering a yawn. Her brown hair was a short, unkempt mess. Moving at a lackluster pace, she brushed shell crumbs from the front of her black uniform, then secured the attachment points on her equipment harness to matching buckles on the cabin wall, locking her in place.
Sitting alone on the opposite bench, Vera Rubin double-checked her own harness. Rubin was a former security grunt who’d risked her life helping Mops in a shootout a while back. Dark scars marked the side of her face and neck. Around her neck, a clear teardrop- shaped pendant three centimeters wide held a tiny microbiome of water, algae, and a pair of pink alien maggots—two of the dozen or so “pets” she’d brought with her when she joined the Pufferfish crew. She tucked the pendant inside her uniform before tightening her harness.
“Anyone else find this creepy as hell?” asked Wolf. “That thing’s as big as the moon, and we’re gonna march into its belly?”
“The Comacean is only a fraction of the size and mass of Earth’s moon,” Rubin corrected. “And we’ll be meeting our contact in one of her lungs. That’s where the main biorefinery operation is set up.”
Wolf snorted. “What happens if the damn thing sneezes?”
“We’d be crushed and expelled through the blowhole, along with a substantial mass of crystalized mucus, but that’s highly unlikely. There’s only been one recorded Comacean sneeze in the past fifty years.” Rubin’s gaze appeared unfocused—probably watching the approach on her optical implant. “The Quetzalus install nerve blockers to prevent coughing, sneezing, vomiting, and flatulence. The real concern is hiccups. They haven’t found a cure for those yet.”
Wolf chuckled, then frowned. “You’re joking, right?”
Rubin ignored the question. “She’s beautiful.”
“How do you know it’s female?” asked Mops.
“She’s larger than the males, and her belly is smooth instead of ribbed. I wonder what her name is.”
“According to the briefing, ‘Biorefinery Eighteen,’ ” said Wolf.
Comaceans spent most of their lives in hibernation. Traversing the emptiness between Tixateq 1 and its sister planet took decades. It would be thirty-six years before the herd of more than a hundred Comaceans would reach Tixateq 2 to awaken to feed and mate. Then, once the planet’s orbit took them farther from the warmth and blue-white light of the sun, they would begin the long return journey to Tixateq 1.
In the interim, the Quetzalus harvested eighteen different substances from inside the largest of the creatures, including two mineral compounds, a raw form of a potent Glacidae narcotic, and a gel that had proven to be highly effective in fighting Krakau sucker-fungus.
Monroe twisted around in the cockpit, his white-haired head poking through the narrow doorway to the cabin. He was former infantry, and one of only two people on Mops’ team who’d proven they could get through the various piloting simulators without multiple casualties and/ or explosions. “I’ve got a yellow blinker on the communications console. Is that a problem?”
“That should be the landing beacon,” said Wolf. “Have they assigned us a docking platform yet?”
It wasn’t that Mops’ team was inexperienced. It was that their experience was with things like unclogging plumbing lines and swapping out filters in the ship’s environmental system. Nothing in their time keeping the Pufferfish relatively clean had prepared them for the work involved in running the entire ship. Four months of tutorials and on‑the-job practice couldn’t make up for official training and experience.
Monroe’s years with the EMC infantry had given him a slightly wider range of experience. A Prodryan grenade had put an end to his infantry service. Krakau surgeons had replaced his right arm, along with a good chunk of his torso. He wore his hair long over the right side of his head, hiding the scars where his ear used to be.
His sense of balance had never fully recovered, but his discipline had made him an invaluable second‑in‑command. More importantly, Mops trusted him.
“They’re sending us to platform three.” Monroe tapped the console, transferring an image to the green- tinted monocles worn by the team.
Mops studied their destination. Pinpoints of light surrounded a metal blister forty meters ahead of a dorsal fin. Two additional lights flashed at a circular platform to one side.
“I tried to acknowledge,” Monroe continued. “That should be the blue one, right? Nothing happened.”
“You’re still on intersystem communications. You need to switch to intrasystem.” Wolf unclipped her harness and...

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Verlag
DAW
Erscheinungsdatum
2019
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0756412773
ISBN 13 
9780756412777
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
336
Kontakt zum Hersteller
DAW
https://www.aeuln.top/

Kl?nenfeldstr. 22
Muttenz
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Verantwortliche Person
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