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Zero-G: Book 1: A Novel (Samuel Lord Series, The, Band 1) - Softcover

Shatner, William

 
9781501111563: Zero-G: Book 1: A Novel (Samuel Lord Series, The, Band 1)
Softcover
ISBN 10: 1501111566 ISBN 13: 9781501111563
Verlag: Simon & Schuster, 2017

Inhaltsangabe

In this heart-pounding science fiction adventure from William Shatner, debonaire, eighty-year-old director Samuel Lord and the “Zero-G” men are in charge of investigating terrorism, crime, corruption, and espionage aboard the space station Empyrean—and stopping the Chinese from accidentally destroying the Earth.

In the year 2050, the United States sends the FBI to govern its space station, The Empyrean. Under the command of suave, eighty-year-old director Samuel Lord, the “Zero-G” men are in charge of investigating terrorism, crime, corruption, and espionage and of keeping an eye on the rival Chinese and Russian stations.

NASA is conducting a top-secret project in the agricultural center of the US space station Empyrean, using microscopic robots called nanites to construct a vine that can survive in space. The plan is to grow structural material for an elevator that will reach from the Empyrean and Earth. Unfortunately, a Russian spy inadvertently causes the growth to rage out of control, not only threatening the Empyrean, but the Russian space station Red Giant.

Under the guidance of Director Samuel Lord, Zero-G must identify the spy, help find a way to reverse the fast-replicating vine, and manage a form of “space zombie” birthed by the nanites. The surprising solution takes Lord and a Russian pilot on a dangerous mission to Venus—where a shocking discovery awaits.

“A tightly paced blend of police procedural, military science fiction, and space opera, set in an intriguing near-future world” (Publishers Weekly), Zero-G is an exciting installment from a master of the craft.

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Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

William Shatner is the author of nine Star Trek novels, including the New York Times bestsellers The Ashes of Eden and The Return. He is also the author of several nonfiction books, including Get a Life! and I’m Working on That. In addition to his role as Captain James T. Kirk, he starred as Denny Crane in the hit television series from David E. Kelley, Boston Legal—a role for which he won two Emmy Awards and a Golden Globe. Find more information at WilliamShatner.com.

Jeff Rovin is the author of more than one-hundred books, fiction and nonfiction, both under his own name, under various pseudonyms, or as a ghostwriter, including numerous New York Times bestsellers. He has written over a dozen Op-Center novels for the late Tom Clancy. Rovin has also written for television and has had numerous celebrity interviews published in magazines under his byline. He is a member of the Author’s Guild, the Science Fiction Writers of America, and the Horror Writers of America, among others.

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Zero-G: Book 1
ONE

FBI ASSOCIATE DEPUTY Director Adsila Waters sat at his desk in the cramped, windowless command center on board the Space Station Empyrean. The comm was the headquarters of what was officially designated as the FBI Off-Earth Investigative and Intelligence Unit. The newly formed division was familiarly known as Zero-G.

Just a year out of Quantico—where he graduated at the top of the FBI academy—Adsila still had that head-of-the-class bearing. His certainty did not come just from learning and following the book but from adding a few footnotes during the eleven months he worked at the Data Intercept Technology Unit at Hoover Command in Washington. He’d had his eye on this job, a space job, since Zero-G was first announced in 2049. To put himself at the front of the line of applicants, he had learned everything he could about FBI operations involving space, especially regarding the hyperplanes that ferried passengers on suborbital flights—what they smuggled and how, sometimes whom they smuggled and how. Adsila had used his vacation and weekends to take flights himself. He had staked out airports and their personnel, learned firsthand about the many ways they communicated information. As a full-blooded Cherokee, raised to respond to human and animal nuance in a world otherwise full of noise, he also saw low-tech things that even seasoned agents missed, from hand signals to fingers drumming code on luggage.

At the moment, Adsila was monitoring reports from Earth, scanning intel from Earth-based operatives watching space-bound departures. He was also overseeing the desk staff of three.

Several floors below, the official opening of the most ambitious construction project in human history was about to get under way. Though the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Empyrean space station had been in operation for two months, the shakedown period was officially ended and the first guests were about to be welcomed. There were going to be speeches, a party, and networking—none of which interested Adsila. The twenty-eight-year-old was happier doing a job that had made his family proud of him, a job that he hoped would matter. As his great-grandfather, a powerful shaman, used to say, “When you were born, you cried and the world rejoiced. Live your life so that when you die, the world cries and you rejoice.”



Adsila’s IC continued to be filled and refreshed with the usual torrent of information, card-size virtual screens accompanied by customized sounds—in this case desert winds and animal life that reminded him of home.

Suddenly, the cry of an osprey shocked him to full alert.

Adsila watched the public advisory that came with it and immediately activated a channel to his superior.

“Director Lord!” Adsila said. “Sir?”

There was no response. Adsila tried again, this time using his full ­title—a mouthful that Lord disliked and disavowed in the same way that he disliked and disregarded the bureaucracy that had coined it.

“Deputy Director of Earth Orbit Operations Samuel Lord,” he said. “Please respond.”

The tweak did not get a reaction either. Lord’s IC was truly off. Again.

Janet Grainger looked over from the desk to Adsila’s left. In the two weeks since they’d arrived, the communications director and Empyrean liaison—technically, the Associate Executive Assistant Director—had frequently heard her superior use that tone of voice when communicating with Lord.

“Why won’t Director Lord keep his IC on?” Adsila complained. It wasn’t so much a question as a lament. He didn’t expect everyone to live in the Cloud the way he did, but he expected to be able to contact his superior anytime, anywhere.

“Agent Waters, what is it?” Grainger called over.

Adsila flicked a finger, passing the alert to Janet’s IC. He could have used his eyes to transfer the data; that angry snap was yet another outward show of the impatience he was feeling.

“Dear God,” Janet said as she forwarded the news alert to the other agents.

This is not acceptable, Adsila thought as he rose. Lord was old enough to have amassed a long list of achievements, and that deserved respect. But seniority did not entitle him to rogue behavior. Cherokee elders honor tribal tradition and instill devotion among the young; why can’t he?

“I’m unplugging,” Adsila said, using a snap of his eyes to clear his IC field of vision so he didn’t run into anything. “Keep on top of this and contact me if there’s an update.”

“Will do, sir,” Janet replied.

As Adsila strode toward the door his focus was already turned inward. Neuronic bursts blazed in the paraventricular nucleus of the hypothalamus.

And then he did something that Janet had not yet gotten used to.

As Adsila moved, the nearly six-foot-tall pan-gender shifted into his dominant female gender. Adsila had found it useful—at times ­necessary—to make her way through Quantico and HooverComm primarily as a man. It was less of a distraction than being stared at. But her hourglass figure, strong cheekbones, and frank sexual allure made it easier to maneuver quickly through a group comprised predominantly of men. They seemed to back away like desert dust devils, no less silent and full of wind.

The transition happened swiftly. The visual aspect of the change was controlled primarily by fluid redistribution—quick, sure, and delicate. Breasts and hips formed like blown glass. Adsila’s biological sexual flip was achieved with a migration of reproductive organs that had been genetically engineered in the womb. The smart fabric of the FBI tunic adjusted. The switch was accomplished without Adsila breaking stride, though the dynamics of her walk shifted noticeably.

None of the other three team members acted as if they’d witnessed anything.

And why should they? Janet thought as she turned back to her feeds.

Space, after all, was the abode of miracles.



Kristine Cavanaugh never imagined she’d be disappointed by space.

Since receiving the invitation to the ribbon-cutting on the Empyrean, she had tried to imagine the journey, had watched the live shuttle casts on her IC: the Earth falling away, slowly revealing its rounded edge; her youthful ego shrinking as the cosmos loomed; the moon and stars sharp-edged and brilliant; spiritual revelations bursting in her terrestrial brain like World Unity Day fireworks. During that month of high anticipation, Kristine hadn’t read science treatises but listened to her SimAI read poetry. William Cullen Bryant seemed to capture her euphoria best in a paean to the planets when he wrote, “Happy they born at this hour, for they shall see an age whiter and holier than the past. . . .”

But the trip had not been what she’d seen or pictured. It had been a crush of noise, stale air, delays, and human proximity that bordered on cow-herding. And then, with other attendees, she was hustled from the ferry to the observation bubble in which the ceremony was to take place.

“Are you ready to hear a few dozen words in a dozen languages by a dozen speakers?” asked the American colonel standing beside her.

She nodded carefully, still unaccustomed to the lack of...

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Verlag
Simon & Schuster
Erscheinungsdatum
2017
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1501111566
ISBN 13 
9781501111563
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
368
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Simon and Schuster Netherlands BV
info@simonandschuster.nl

Herculesplein 96
Utrecht
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