QSFer Elaine Burnes has a new FF sci-fi book out: Endurance.
What if you were stranded. On a spaceship. Four light years from Earth. With a hundred tourists. And you are the captain. Then things start to go wrong. Welcome aboard the Endurance. It’ll be the trip of a lifetime.
For five years, Captain Lyn Randall of the Endurance has ferried tourists around the solar system for Omara Tours. Now, as she takes in the rings of Saturn for the last time, she’s looking forward to indulging in simpler pleasures like flying antique airplanes over her childhood home in Montana.
The routine tour becomes anything but when a mysterious phenomenon flings Endurance and two other ships into the Rigil Kentaurus system, four light years from Earth. Stranded, with no way to get back.
Lyn’s first duty is to rescue survivors from the other ships before she faces the most daunting task of her life, much less her career. She has to control her fears and grief to lead an untested crew and panicked guests on a quest for a new home planet or risk a return to their solar system that could kill them all. Unfortunately, Lyn’s past with a clandestine military mission gone wrong doesn’t sit well with some guests and crew members, and they don’t quite trust her.
Diana Squires, rescued from another stranded vessel, grudgingly reveals her identity as the daughter of scientists who researched traversable wormholes. To complicate everything, Lyn develops an affection for Diana, something at odds with her responsibilities as captain and her unhealed grief over her own lost loved ones.
Feelings aside, suspicions aside, her own doubts about her ability to lead aside, Lyn has to fight to protect her passengers, her ship, and her heart.
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Excerpt
IT BEGAN WITH a low rumble intruding on a dream. Lyn stood at the edge of a high cliff as vibrations rattled her body before the ground suddenly fell away. She jolted awake to a brilliant flash filling her cabin and the pressure of her blanket snapping tight. The bed shook her like a carnival ride. Not the bed, the room. Not the room, Endurance. Darkness, then the dim glow of emergency lights. Her lamp, toiletries, tablets, everything not locked down spun and swirled like leaves in a gale. A shriek of metal tearing, glass shattering. A high-pitched whine, metal under stress. It sounded like the ship was being torn open. A memory rushed of a tornado ripping the roof off the barn. Alarms whooped the shrill warning of hull breaches. She was immobilized by the bedding, facing the ceiling. It buckled and bent then sprang back into place. Instinctively she activated her suit and squirmed a hand out to flip the hood on. The soft faceplate stiffened and the suit sealed her in, applying pressure against any potential decompression. Gloves deployed from her cuffs. Red lights flashed, life support failing.
She opened a com link. “Captain to the bridge. What’s going on?” There was no response.
The room spun. Her stomach heaved. She wiggled out of the tight bedding, a safety measure for just such circumstances, only to be flung across the room, slamming into her dresser. She grabbed for the railing circling the room and steadied herself. The ship shuddered. Her teeth chattered.
Lights streaked by outside the window. Stars spinning. No, Endurance spinning.
“Captain to Engineering. Respond, Chief.”
Nothing.
“Captain to Medical! Activate!”
Lyn lost her grip and somersaulted, bouncing off walls and furniture. Photos swirled past her head. That family gathering two summers ago with her parents and four remaining brothers smiling into the camera. Tara and her by their tent in the Bitterroots. Books thunked against the clear front of the case, matching her heart pounding against her ribs. She fought to grab the railing. The force pulled on her shoulders then slammed her into the wall. Inch by flinging inch, she made her way out of her bedroom, through her suite and office to the door to the bridge.
“Medical to the Captain,” Dr. Amos replied, calm. “Do you have an emergency?”
“Sure sounds like it from the alarms I’m hearing. What’s going on?”
“I’m waiting for status updates,” he said.
“Go to Code Red, and remain active until I release the order. Assist any injured.”
“Acknowledged.”
She crashed into the ceiling, like a vicious version of her brothers’ crack the whip. Or when her dad would twirl her in circles by her hands. Screaming with joy and mock fear. This was not fun. She’d trained for this, but it had been a long time and under controlled conditions. She pressed the door switch. It didn’t budge. She flipped the manual release.
“Petra,” she said, connecting to the ship itself. “Status report.”
“Forces from an unknown source are altering our momentum and trajectory,” Petra answered. “We have lost attitudinal control. I’m sorry, but I can’t be more specific at this time. I’m not able to access the required systems.”
That was disturbing. Lyn braced her feet against the wall and heaved on the door. The ship vibrated up her legs. The door slid in a stutter, wide enough for her to squeeze through. The bridge was dark except for lights from the walkways and instrument panels. Ani, suspended and tumbling, flailed to corral an unconscious Ghez. Lyn joined her, batting away loose debris. Together they zipped nir helmet into place and strapped nem to the navigator’s seat. She opened a link. “Are you okay?”
“Yes,” Ani responded. She dodged a flying chunk of metal. “Controls are down.”
Author Bio
Elaine Burnes lives in western Massachusetts. After 20 years working and writing for a variety of environmental nonprofits, she tired of reality and turned to writing fiction in her spare time, publishing her first short story, “A Perfect Life,” in Skulls and Crossbones (Mindancer Press) in 2010. Since then, she’s had more stories published, including “A Certain Moon,” in the Golden Crown Literary Society Award–winning anthology Wicked Things from Ylva in 2014, and “Auto Repair,” which earned an honorable mention in the 2015 Saints and Sinners Short Fiction Contest. These are collected in A Perfect Life and Other Stories (GusGus Press, 2016), which won a Rainbow Award for Best Lesbian Anthology/Collection. Her first novel, Wishbone (Bedazzled Ink, 2015) received a 2016 Golden Crown Literary Society Award for Dramatic/General Fiction.
| Author Website | https://elaineburnes.com |
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| Author Twitter | https://twitter.com/ElaineBurnes |