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Is this a spacefaring Viking's last stand?
When Ivar Shieldbreaker and a handful of Dawners crash-land in the brutal alien environment of the aptly named Moon of Sorrows, waiting for rescue is not an option. To save themselves, they will face a decision harsher than any surface conditions.
In a faraway system that has become the nomads' temporary home, the Dawn's many dead are buried and plans are laid to raise a rebel horde. But Arixa has not forgotten those she lost. She intends to mount a rescue mission, but first she needs a ship capable of making the voyage. And when Arixa needs something, she does not long let it be denied her. But can she reach her people in time? Or will a rescue mission turn into one of revenge?
Dine in the hall of a reptilian Baron and bear witness to betrayal, bravery and blood sacrifice on THE MOON OF SORROWS!
START READING...
The hold of the Mogg-Yidiion shuddered as if the wolf Fenrir had seized the ship in its great black snout and squeezed, tossing its head back and forth. Every few seconds brought a crash like thunder, the beast snapping its jaws in the hope of sinking tooth through hull to devour the flesh and bones of twenty mortals inside.
Only harnesses holding them snugly into cushioned alcoves prevented the twenty from flying all around inside the Mogg, careening into bulkheads and each other. Ivar saw fright on the faces of grown Scythian men and women who rarely showed it. Some were just barely grown, like Leimya, and Matas's son Plin.
Wide-eyed, tense and vibrating in tune with the ship's hull, Ivar emitted what amounted to a sustained grunt through teeth clenched to breaking. He could scarcely hear the sound inside his own skull for the cacophony without. Then he could no longer see at all, for light vanished, plunging his world into darkness so deep he was certain for a few seconds he had died.
But signs of life remained. An intense pressure persisted in trying to crack his rib cage. The sonic assault of screeching and whining and booming filled his ears with an undiminished intensity.
Whatever death was like, whether maidens winged him away to a golden hall or he sank into a cold sea to join Hel's legion, this wasn't it.
No, he was still strapped into the Mogg-Yidiion hurtling toward the Moon of Sorrows through a gauntlet of alien fire thrown by Jir spacecraft.
At any instant, Ivar knew, blasts might peel back the walls of the Mogg like stormwinds would a felt tent, leaving the twenty survivors of Nemoora exposed to the void of space.
He knew that humans, even augmented ones, couldn't survive in that void without special suits.
He wondered what he would see if that happened. Maybe nothing at all. The hold was pitch black and so was space, mostly.
For long seconds after the light was gone, Ivar sat groaning along with the Mogg on its desperation-driven dive toward an inhospitable sanctuary. Then came a clap of thunder far louder than any that had come before, and the darkness before his eyes became the silent kind that might well have been death.
Genre: Science Fiction
When Ivar Shieldbreaker and a handful of Dawners crash-land in the brutal alien environment of the aptly named Moon of Sorrows, waiting for rescue is not an option. To save themselves, they will face a decision harsher than any surface conditions.
In a faraway system that has become the nomads' temporary home, the Dawn's many dead are buried and plans are laid to raise a rebel horde. But Arixa has not forgotten those she lost. She intends to mount a rescue mission, but first she needs a ship capable of making the voyage. And when Arixa needs something, she does not long let it be denied her. But can she reach her people in time? Or will a rescue mission turn into one of revenge?
Dine in the hall of a reptilian Baron and bear witness to betrayal, bravery and blood sacrifice on THE MOON OF SORROWS!
START READING...
The hold of the Mogg-Yidiion shuddered as if the wolf Fenrir had seized the ship in its great black snout and squeezed, tossing its head back and forth. Every few seconds brought a crash like thunder, the beast snapping its jaws in the hope of sinking tooth through hull to devour the flesh and bones of twenty mortals inside.
Only harnesses holding them snugly into cushioned alcoves prevented the twenty from flying all around inside the Mogg, careening into bulkheads and each other. Ivar saw fright on the faces of grown Scythian men and women who rarely showed it. Some were just barely grown, like Leimya, and Matas's son Plin.
Wide-eyed, tense and vibrating in tune with the ship's hull, Ivar emitted what amounted to a sustained grunt through teeth clenched to breaking. He could scarcely hear the sound inside his own skull for the cacophony without. Then he could no longer see at all, for light vanished, plunging his world into darkness so deep he was certain for a few seconds he had died.
But signs of life remained. An intense pressure persisted in trying to crack his rib cage. The sonic assault of screeching and whining and booming filled his ears with an undiminished intensity.
Whatever death was like, whether maidens winged him away to a golden hall or he sank into a cold sea to join Hel's legion, this wasn't it.
No, he was still strapped into the Mogg-Yidiion hurtling toward the Moon of Sorrows through a gauntlet of alien fire thrown by Jir spacecraft.
At any instant, Ivar knew, blasts might peel back the walls of the Mogg like stormwinds would a felt tent, leaving the twenty survivors of Nemoora exposed to the void of space.
He knew that humans, even augmented ones, couldn't survive in that void without special suits.
He wondered what he would see if that happened. Maybe nothing at all. The hold was pitch black and so was space, mostly.
For long seconds after the light was gone, Ivar sat groaning along with the Mogg on its desperation-driven dive toward an inhospitable sanctuary. Then came a clap of thunder far louder than any that had come before, and the darkness before his eyes became the silent kind that might well have been death.
Genre: Science Fiction
Used availability for P K Lentz's The Moon of Sorrows