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Troubador Publishing Ltd - Geoff Gaywood

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162 pages

English

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In just a few generations Mankind will have the means and the necessity to emerge from its cosy planetary isolation and confront other intelligent life forms in the Universe. Are we ready? Against a backdrop of relentless global warming and deepening social conflict on Earth, an expedition sets out to secure a foothold on a distant planet thought suitable for human habitation. Almost immediately, the crew are sorely tested by a violent internal conspiracy, alien aggression and simmering emotional tensions. They complete a spectacular transition to a remote solar system where they find that their goal, as dangerous as it is exotic, already has the ominous attention of another civilisation. Moreover, a series of perplexing events suggest that their mission may be subordinate to a much greater power with its own strategic agenda.Essentially an adventure story, spiced with the conflicts, sex and humour typical of mankind as we know it,Omnipotenceraises the scientific, philosophical and moral issues that will arise in such a venture. It is the story of how people like us might cope and how the values of human civilisation may evolve in our fast-approaching future.

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Science fiction

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Publié par	Troubador Publishing Ltd
Date de parution	28 mai 2017
Nombre de lectures	3
EAN13	9781788031615
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	2 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0250€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Omnipotence
Book 1

Geoff Gaywood
Copyright © 2017 Geoff Gaywood

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, eventsand incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

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Contents
1 A Hole in the Sky
2 Wild Oats
3 The Team Comes Together
4 Into Virtual Reality
5 The Passion of Julia Rogers
6 Ethnicity Ubiquitous
7 The Paragon and her Context
8 The Grilling
9 Prometheus is Born
10 Underway
11 Pandora Strikes
12 Bad Salad
13 Uneasily to the Threshold
14 Into the Wormhole
15 Assault
16 The Wayward 19
17 An Unwelcome Discovery
18 Fire Red 1
19 The Test
20 Stargazers and Dreamers
21 Planet Omega 16-3
22 Footfall on Ceres
23 Phase Two
24 The Safari
25 La Cucina Ceresana
26 Mayhem on Prometheus
27 Chang’s Descent
28 Sombre News
29 Dark Shadow
30 War Games
31 Silver Streak
32 The Truth in the Parable
33 The Battle of Ceres
34 Shaping the Future
35 The Parting
36 Omnipotence Theory
1
A Hole in the Sky
Arlette raised her head off her sweaty wrists and blurrily surveyed the expanse of soft white sand before her.
“Henri, where the hell’s my piña colada?”
There was a grunt from the direction of the brightly painted bar just across the beach, then a shadow fell across her upper body.
“Your phone ’as been buzzin’,” said Henri.
She rolled over and smiled up at him.
“Come down here and smother me with that sublime black body of yours.”
He dropped onto one knee, carefully balanced the glasses on the sand under the shade, and pulled her up into his arms as though she were practically weightless. He caressed her face with such tenderness that she could have purred with pleasure, and she opened her eyes to soak up his great brown eyes with their huge, silky lashes. There followed a long, languid kiss that left her limp and breathing deeply.
He laid her down on the sand, sat up and pulled her phone from his trunks.
“You ’ad three calls,” he announced, “all from the same … from Washington.”
“I know,” said Arlette quietly. “I’d have let them through if I had wanted to” – she pointed at the finely textured little black disk of her earphone – “but I’m not receptive right now – to phone calls.”
Henri grinned. ‘A powerhouse, this woman,’ he thought to himself. ‘Tender, almost vulnerable one minute, utterly and unquestionably in command the next.’
“We’re going to enjoy the rest of our day together – to the full,” said Arlette with exaggerated lust.
At 8.00 a.m. the following morning, the breakfasters on the terrace of the Acapulco Paradise hotel witnessed the soundless arrival of a craft that appeared from nowhere and hissed to a standstill on the grass before them. Arlette, dressed immaculately in the pale blue uniform of a colonel in the International Space Exploration Agency, stepped smartly across the lawn towards it. Her mouth barely moved as she responded to her incoming call. “Yes. Who? Oh.” The machine almost imperceptibly engulfed her as she reached it.
Seconds later it was gone. A wave crashed on the beach.
The birds, only slightly confused, began to sing again.
Arlette sat back, tightly belted in her contoured seat, as the machine hurtled into the stratosphere. She did not glance to the left or right, but intensely studied the plush, pinkish padding above her and turned over in her mind the sole piece of data she had just been provided with – General Lee, Special Operations, 9.00 a.m.
‘Why is he in Washington?’ she thought. ‘And why do I have to be snatched off the beach with no notice?’
No explanation was obvious to her and, conceding to herself that she would find out soon enough, she relaxed into a comforting reverie that began with her recalling a hilarious story that Henri had recounted over dinner the previous evening. It had begun with his mother in Haiti, a chicken, a priest and some underwear. It had gone on and on, articulated in his charming fractured English, becoming more and more absurd until the tears were running down her face and her throat ached from laughing. “Oh, Henri, I do love you!” she had blurted out, and instantly regretted it.
But Henri knew exactly what she meant, which was not what she had said, and anyway he was far too savvy to allow a slip like that to spoil the mood of the evening. So he had taken her hand, pulled her graciously out of her chair, and walked her along the beach as the light of an exquisitely beautiful honey-coloured moon had danced on the sea beside them. At the end of the beach he had stood her against a palm tree, given her one of those deep, languorous kisses and then, without any hesitation or change in his almost perpetually joyful expression, he had lifted her off her feet and made love to her, there and then.
She sighed and shifted in her seat. It had irritated her intensely when he had told her later that she had “yelped like a puppy”. But in the end he was just a man, a source of entertainment, social and physical, nothing to get overly sentimental about. Their relationship had sprung from a chance meeting, his perfect manners and his irresistible banter. It had barely touched the cultural or intellectual, and yet there was a tantalising mystery about him. He was somehow deep and powerful under all that polish. Arlette cleared her head.
The machine juddered, the engine note changed and then died. A door slid open.
“Good morning, Colonel Piccard,” said a fresh-faced young lieutenant with an impeccable uniform and an obsequious expression. “Welcome to ISEA Washington HQ. You have twelve minutes to freshen up. General Lee will see you in his office.”
Arlette ‘freshened up’. She followed the young lieutenant down a corridor lit by a kaleidoscope of moving images of space equipment and events, breathing deeply and thinking to herself, ‘I don’t really need this. I am thirty-seven years old, have a brilliant career behind me, I’ve been decorated for gallantry and I’m happy with myself. I am not going to be sold some tedious mission requiring years of self-deprivation and hardship for some obscure purpose.’
She stiffened as she entered General Lee’s spacious, brilliantly lit office.
He was standing with his back to her, looking at one of perhaps a dozen screens of ongoing space operations. He was a tall, elegant Han Chinese, perhaps fifty, with a great mop of very black hair, wearing a heavily decorated uniform.
“Good morning, Colonel,” he said brightly. “I am so sorry to snatch you away from your well-deserved leave. We’ll have you back in Acapulco later today. Please sit down.”
Arlette sat.
The General glanced at a file on his monitor, frowned, and then came and sat with her, an expression of good-natured attention on his face as though he was about to be sold something he actually wanted.
“What was it about Acapulco that attracted you?” he asked.
Arlette surveyed this innocuous question with some suspicion – he most certainly knew where she had been in the previous three months, but she answered honestly.
“I love the place and felt there would be no one there who might recognise me and chase me around,” she said simply, “and it worked.”
“Oh good,” said the General, and, after a pause, “I notice you are not wearing your Crimson Star.”
Arlette raised her eyebrows. “I haven’t got round to it, General. It’s rather – prominent – and I’m not overly fond of ceremonial trinketry.”
The General’s face hardened. He rose and walked back to his monitor.
Rather testily, he said, “Colonel Piccard, you have recently been awarded the most prestigious decoration with which this great global institution can honour its heroes. There are no other living recipients. It says on the record that you showed exceptional courage in the face of almost certain disaster, that you personally intervened medically to save the lives of two severely injured crew-mates, that you showed extraordinary ingenuity and presence of mind to resolve complex technical problems in conditions of extreme personal danger and that you were instrumental in saving the Dalian space station and nineteen of its twenty-four crew members.”
Arlette looked at the floor.
“You will wear your Crimson Star out of respect for this institution and your five dead crew-mates, and you will not allow your personal vanity to detract from your responsibilities as an example of the qualities we aspire to.”
“Yes, General,” said Arlette in the most deferential tone she could muster.
General Lee returned to the chair next to her with the same good-nat