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Gravity of a Distant Sun: Volume 3 (Shieldrunner Pirates, Band 3) - Softcover

Buch 3 von 3: Shieldrunner Pirates

Stearns, R. E.

 
9781481476935: Gravity of a Distant Sun: Volume 3 (Shieldrunner Pirates, Band 3)
Softcover
ISBN 10: 1481476939 ISBN 13: 9781481476935
Verlag: Saga Press, 2020

Inhaltsangabe

Adda and Iridian have survived the murderous AI that tried to kill them in Barbary Station and an evil megacorporation in Mutiny at Vesta but now they’ll need all of their ingenuity to make it to the end of this epic trilogy.

Adda Karpe and Iridian Nassir are on the run—both from the authorities who want to imprison them and the artificial intelligence that want to control their minds. Trapped on a desolate black-market space station on the edge of Jupiter, they’re nearly out of allies—and out of luck.

Now, they have one last shot to find a safe haven where they can live together in peace—across the interstellar bridge to another galaxy. Getting onto that mission will take everything they’ve got and more. But on the other side of that bridge lies the life they’ve always dreamed of...if they can survive long enough to reach it.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

R.E. Stearns is the author of Barbary Station and Mutiny at Vesta. She wrote her first story on an Apple IIe computer and still kind of misses green text on a black screen. She went on to annoy all of her teachers by reading books while they lectured. Eventually she read and wrote enough to earn a master’s degree in curriculum and instruction from the University of Central Florida. She is hoping for an honorary doctorate. When not writing or working, R.E. Stearns reads, plays PC games, and references internet memes in meatspace. She lives near Orlando, Florida, with her husband, a computer engineer, and a cat.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Chapter 1: Days until launch: 99
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CHAPTER 1 Days until launch: 99
A machine whirred and clicked beside Adda’s bed. It kept distracting her from the world. This hospital’s rooms were white and green. This was her . . . second? Hospital. This month? That was strange too. Gale-force air-conditioning rustled the antimicrobial curtains around her bed. She had a blanket, but she was still cold. The curtains covered only two sides. The other two were walls.

At least she had her family with her: her little brother, Pel, her wife, Iridian. A cam fed their images to rows of small projectors in the virtual window’s frame on the wall by Adda’s bed. Several stories beneath the window, Iridian crouched behind her shield next to a big cargo bot. It was stopped in front of the building across the street. Iridian frequently turned her beautiful eyes, so brown they were almost black, up to the cam that fed Adda’s window. Pel huddled between Iridian and the other building’s wall, with his arms crushing his curly hair against his head.

The part of the machine tracking Adda’s heart rate twitched and flashed new numbers that flickered into bright green starbursts. If someone else were in the room, they’d call the starbursts a product of Adda’s imagination.

The window wouldn’t show her what was scaring Pel, because she couldn’t reach the cam controls. Her comp was somewhere else. Without the comp, she couldn’t ask the artificial intelligence that managed the hospital’s environment controls to move the cam for her.

That—the intelligence, or rather, another like it—was why she was here.

Remembering was awful. Sometime within the past few weeks, she had let an intelligence trick her into trying to kill Iridian. Iridian had survived because Adda had overdosed on sharpsheets to stop herself. The overdose was why Adda was in a bed in a hospital, and why Pel and Iridian were . . .

Time slipped. Remembering was awful. Why are they in danger?

You’re awake! The whisper in Adda’s ear startled her, even though it was just Iridian talking over their implanted comm system. Adda must’ve subvocalized her question. The lump in her throat wouldn’t let her speak. Don’t worry about us, Iridian said.

On the street below, Iridian grabbed Pel’s shoulder with the hand not holding her mech-ex graphene shield. Her golden-brown skin glowed in the cam feed beside Pel’s white neck, which paled further when Iridian said something to him. The glow might’ve been in Adda’s head, but with sunsim shining pretend sunlight beyond the walls of her room, she believed in it. Iridian was speaking to Pel louder than the range her throat mic would pick up. Pel’s arms were thinner than they should’ve been. The three of them had been saving money by eating as little as possible since . . . ? Since. He took them down from around his head.

People on the projection stage at the end of her bed sometimes talked about her and Iridian. The nurses and doctors reacted when the figures said Adda’s name, so that wasn’t a product of her damaged brain. Maybe the newsfeeds had more information.

The pad that controlled the stage was next to the clicking machine, inside the curtains. She poked the pad until it put TAPnews on the stage. A familiar figure rose an arm’s length high, just beyond Adda’s blanket-covered feet. The figure represented a real woman, not a newsbot, dressed in fashionably iridescent purple that complemented her olive skin. Her dark hair twisted to hide itself behind her head until she turned toward the cam.

This correspondent was a fan of Sloane’s crew. That’d been Adda’s and Iridian’s crew too, until . . .

“. . . Suhaila Al-Mudari, here with the latest on the search for former Sloane’s crew members Iridian Nassir and Adda Karpe,” said the woman in the newsfeed. Adda had met her in person once. “They’ve been spotted outside Ceres Station’s Fortuna Hospital—”

In Adda’s ear, Iridian whispered, Babe, I’m getting Pel out of here. No matter what the ITA or the damned AIs do, I’m coming back for you. Do you understand? I’m coming back.

The Interplanetary Transit Authority. Awakened artificial intelligences, ones with wills of their own and no supervisors, were guiding the ITA toward Adda and Iridian, because they . . .

Because . . .

The machine blinked Adda’s pulse in red starbursts as her heart pounded in her chest. Oh gods, the ITA was here, and even the newsfeeds knew Iridian was too. She and Iridian had broken a lot of spacefaring laws with Sloane’s crew.

And Adda was stuck in this bed. Even if she had her comp, she couldn’t help Iridian and Pel. Every time she used it, she saw and heard and felt terrifying hallucinations. Sometimes she bled from the nose, which was what had scared Iridian enough to bring Adda to this hospital. She’d bled all over her face and her shirt last time.

On the street below the window cam, Iridian leaned to put her shaved head close to Pel’s brown hair, then gave him a shove. He stumbled away from the cargo bot. If she turned her head, Adda would see him out the window, but TAPnews had a higher perspective on the same street. The TAPnews cam drone rotated to offer an even clearer view. Suhaila was still talking, but it just sounded like noise. That happened sometimes, after Adda’s overdose.

Iri, she subvocalized through the mic implanted in her throat. Drones. If the newsfeed was using them, then the ITA and Ceres Station law enforcement would be too.

Damn, said Iridian. How can I get them both out? Sometimes Iridian subvocalized when she didn’t mean to. The small version of Iridian on the projection stage yelled something at Pel. He ran down the street in the opposite direction of whatever was happening on the other side of the cargo bot.

Something hit Iridian’s shield and knocked her back a half step. She had a gun, a cheap projectile weapon they’d bought during their flight from Sloane’s crew and the ITA. She only held her shield now, though, with both hands, in a constricted stance Adda had never seen her use before. Crammed into a doorway in the building across the street, Iridian looked small and alone.

A drone the size of Adda’s head swept into existence on the stage. The motion flickered in the corner of her eye too. Up! Adda clenched her hands in the foam mattress beneath her and hoped she’d actually said that to Iridian.

Iridian pivoted to put the shield between herself and the drone above her while she pressed her hand to the pad beside the door. The door stayed shut. She leaned against it. The doorway only hid a few centimeters of her. She drew the gun, finally, and shot at the drone. It bobbed in place.

The door to Adda’s room opened to admit three stern people in blue ITA armor, their faces projected in three greenish-white dimensions against the black backdrop of their helmet faceplates, glowing through the curtains around Adda’s bed. A nurse came in behind them and pushed the curtains open. According to the time stamp on the newsfeed and what Iridian had told Adda on the way to this place, she’d only been in the hospital overnight. In those dark hours, the ITA had found them.

“This is...

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Verlag
Saga Press
Erscheinungsdatum
2020
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1481476939
ISBN 13 
9781481476935
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
432
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Simon and Schuster Netherlands BV
info@simonandschuster.nl

Herculesplein 96
Utrecht
3584 AA
Niederlande