Rift Wind
Endless miles and asteroids to dodge. Never stopping for too long. To stop meant death. I know, because its happened before. Despite knowing I just wanted to stop and make an end of it, but then everyone would die. I couldn’t allow that so the journey through the stars would have to go on. On until something happened. Something that would change everything. I prayed it would only happen soon or else I might loose my faith, as it was all the other remnants of my people already had. That’s why they were dead and I wasn’t.
Siringo Collins the leader of a worn fleet of survivors, constantly has to fight against the urge to give in to what seems inevitable, their extinction at the hands of an ancient enemy. His fleet of ships is the last of his people that he knows of. They are wanderers through the outer worlds of creation. Vagabonds of space and friends of none, but their own kind. As a people they lost their home long ago. As long as they stay together there is hope that something better might occur one day to change all that has gone terribly wrong for the Melungeons of Soluranami.
Rift Wind is a continuation of a series of western sci-fi novels that feature adventure, action, and faith. Christian Speculative Fiction – learn to love it!
EXCERPT:
Briandy kept glancing at me, as if begging me to tell her to resume control of the ship, but I remained silent.
It was dark as very little reflected starlight made its way into this interior cavern, which had been created but moments before. There in the darkness ahead a bright glow of color illuminated the cavern suddenly as a rocky portal opened with a shimmering haze in the cavern wall just ahead.
Moving very slowly the ship entered through the portal. I got up and made my way to the primary hatch.
The skeleton crew I had brought along with me hung about me in expectation of not sure what. This was going to be no raid into another ship as one of our rehearsed snatch and grabs. This mission would depend entirely upon diplomacy and faith.
The ship settled and I nodded to Sam. She engaged the hatch release and with a hiss of expressed air the ramp lowered.
I walked down it and out into the expansive hanger bay that existed entirely hidden within the confines of this asteroid. Such an ingenious and superlative creation of manmade ingenuity.
Steam hissed from a canopy of overhanging pipes and I walked out into the expansive theater of another people’s best response to the need to survive at all costs. It appeared to all the world that we were alone, but I knew that wasn’t the case.
I could feel watching eyes upon me. Motioning my small party to a stop I stepped forward several more steps to then stand motionless in expectation of whatever the hidden watchers intended for us. We were entirely at their mercy.
Out of a cloud of steam off to my left came a voice rich with both hostility and the unmistakableness of a female confident in her ability to dominate, “Tell me why we shouldn’t kill you right here and now?”
Turning my head toward the voice resonating from the steam off to my left I shrugged and said, “No reason really. Unless that is if you’d like to exchange your cozy home here for someone else with a sky overhead and the feel of grass beneath your feet. Now if that is the case then you have every reason not to pull the trigger.”