QSFer Erik Schubach has a new FF sci fi book out, Fixit Book 5: “Sedition.”
This short novella follows Fixit, a worker on the surface of Tau Ceti Prime in another adventure.
As Tau Ceti Prime recovers from the deadly Pacification Code the Galactic Federation of Old Earth killed hundreds of thousands of people of Prime, they must build defenses that can gain some time to complete their own defensive fleet.
The leaders turn to the dirtside pinger mechanic, Fixit, once again. But Vega refuses to build weapons for anyone, so Prime leadership agrees to do things her way. And a great deception begins.
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Excerpt
I heard Flower squealing outside of the maintenance bay of Agri-grid A1 here on Tau Ceti Prime. Her warbling alternating of high and low tones sounding suspicious like, “Fixit!”
I looked from the tender we were working on in a repair bay to the door and cursed silently to myself. I told the weapon’s tech who was assigned to learn how to maintain the harvesters and tenders which helped to supply food to the floating cities above, “Stay here… and don’t touch anything! I’ll be right back.”
Things have been hectic here since the Galactic Federation of Old Earth attempted to secretly wipe out our colony here in the Tau Ceti system because they simply suspected us of sedition. The sick irony of it all is that… they weren’t wrong. Tau Ceti has been building a fleet to rise up against the oppressive system the government of Terra has used to keep all the human colonies in line with their thinking.
My thoughts went to Ursula Prime. They had been talking about the totalitarian governance that the Galactic Federation had over the other star systems and were about to vote on independence when their entire star system had been taken out by a freak accident, a quantum fusion meltdown of their orbiting power generation station.
Whispers on the solar winds were that it had actually been the covert Obsidian Pacification Force which the Galactic Federation has hidden from the member systems for generations. I had thought it to be just one of the spooky stories mom told me as a kid, an urban myth.
I recently learned of Prime’s Covert Sciences, which had this Dark Fleet of our own being built somewhere to defend against such draconian pacification here in the Tau Ceti system. Again, it was ironic that this fleet, though just a whisper on the wind, was what brought the Obsidian Pacification Force to our doorstep.
They had no proof, only rumors, but it was enough for them to engineer our fate as another Ursula Prime. Only… we didn’t fall. Their plan had been virtually flawless since, unknown to all of the inhabited systems, the Galactic Federation, who supplies all the control crystals to the various star systems, had embedded code buried so deep in the command subroutines that it was virtually undetectable unless you knew exactly what to look for.
This code, when activated by the Obsidian Pacification Force, could take control over any system the crystals were integrated into. And worse, they embedded that same code into the Asimov inhibitor chips installed in every pinger and drone, effectively turning them into killing machines within their target’s own star system. An army of assassins who were no longer limited by the three laws of robotics.
They almost succeeded in wiping out our entire system with just one coded transmission from a cloaked vessel when we were at our most vulnerable. When all of our people were on-orbit in the floating cities that had navigated from the gravity wakes in the sky, where there is an equilibrium between the gravitic up-currents with the static gravity well of the planet, and into orbit during the superstorms of the Perihelion Pass.
The mega-storms and planet quakes hit every thirty-four years when Prime was at its closet point in our orbit around our star. And the Galactic Federation knew this and waited patiently for the pass to begin, knowing that all personnel dirtside would be evacuated to the floating cities for Exodus, and everyone in the system would be together, on-orbit.
Author Bio
I got my start writing novels by accident. I have always been drawn to strong female characters in books, like Honor Harrington. And I also believe that there is a lack of LGBT characters in media. So one day I came up with a story idea that combines the two… two days later I completed the manuscript for Music of the Soul.
Each of my books features strong likable female characters that are flawed. I think that flaws and emotional or physical scars make us human and give us more character than simply conforming to some “social norm”.
I write in many genres including romance, scifi, fantasy, paranormal, dystopian, and even cozy mysteries.
My most ambitions undertaking is the Techromancy Scrolls series that is an epic adventure in the world three thousand years after a mass extinction event. Mankind is rebuilding in a world where magic and technology collide.