Breaking Orbit: vol1 of the Titan Run Trilogy

Breaking Orbit
vol1 of the Titan Run Trilogy

Science Fiction

October 21, 2016

ASIN: B01M8LQ41J
ISBN: 1539561364

Sign on for the deadliest job in the Solar System.

200 years in the future humanity is no longer a victim of gravity and circumstance. Earth's children have realized their birthright and colonized the Solar System. Mars, the moons of Jupiter, the asteroids ... but none of those fantastic worlds is as welcoming as Earth. To warm the frozen surface of Mars humans look into their past and employ internal combustion technology to blanket the red planet in heat-trapping greenhouse gasses. In this future where Earth has become an ecological utopia there is only one place in the Solar System that has the hydrocarbons Mars desperately needs: the moon Titan.

Join the crew of the mining ship Krakken as she embarks on her three-year journey into the depths of Solar space -- far from other people, far from other ships, far from help.

An excerpt:

By the middle of the fifth month, Susan’s anger was spent and she no longer writhed in agony or yelled in anger. She had accepted her fate, even as her life lingered on. On a day much like that day three months past she called out to her daughter. There were tears on Susan’s face. In all of her fits of rage and sorrow to date she had never shed tears.

“I know it’s coming — it’s inevitable, Annie. I’m going to die.”

“Oh, mom, no,” Ann said reflexively.

“I am, Annie. You’d have to be stupid not to think that and I didn’t raise you to be stupid. But I think I’m ready for it. Yes, I’m definitely ready for it. The pain — I thought I’d get used to it, like a hangnail or a broken arm — but this, Annie, it never stops as long as I am awake. If I’m only away from the pain when I sleep, then please, please help me sleep? I’m so tired, Annie. So tired. Please help me sleep?” 

Fresh tears rolled down her face as she quietly begged her daughter to help her one last time. It was the same request she had made many time before, but it had always been with anger and accusation. This time Susan was asking her daughter with a sincerity that not even she could fake. This was no expression of frustration with her lot, no clinging to life. 

Uncomfortable with her mother’s plea, Ann glanced habitually at the dampener’s display unit and noted the level of the PD; it was at its maximum setting. The device could not do any more for her mother — not in its regulated and unmodified form. Susan’s sincere and tear-filled plea had finally broken through Ann’s hardened heart. Ann remembered from the training class the quickest way to hack the dampener, just as they had been told not to do. All she would need as a screwdriver.