Ascension: A Hard Sci-Fi Novelette

By Rann Murray

A remote outpost stationed at the extreme edge of the solar system goes silent.
The determined commander and his rescue fleet must find out what happened to the outpost and the thirty lives on it.
As they reach their destination, what they don't find startles them all.
But what they do find forces them to rewrite all of human history.
And now they are faced by a terrifying new enemy.
A deep space science fiction story by author Rann Murray.

Cover image: NASA image of the Black Widow Pulsar forming its bow shock wave as it moves through the Milky Way at one million kilometers per hour.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: May 5, 2016
• ISBN: 9781483569284

Book preview

Introduction

Bow Shock

A bow shock is a wave that forms in front of the solar system’s heliosphere shell as the sun moves through the interstellar medium. This is similar to the bow shock that forms in front of a ship’s hull as it moves through water.

Chapter 1

We lost visual, Colonel, Zakiya said. Two Scamper bots went through molecular decomp at the Array’s secondary airlock. One of the bots attempted to lock on to its partner when it sensed its distress and we ended up losing both of them. They started to disassemble and then completely disappear. Very similar to what’s already happened to unmanned ships and probes that enter that area. No crew members found, no life signatures of any kind.

Those bots are our eyes and ears. We can’t afford to lose any more of them. Get the rest out now! Order the other two ships to do the same, Commander Truman demanded. What are the rest of the bots reporting?"

We got lucky. The two Scampers that were destroyed had time to uplink their memory banks to the others as soon as their systems were compromised, Zakiya said. Sci-Ops is analyzing the data now.

Just like everything else that has entered this area of space, Truman said. If there’s an intelligence behind whoever or whatever is causing these disappearances, it makes for a damned effective weapon. We’d better get this done fast and move out of here before we suffer the same fate.

Chapter 2

Colonel Alex Truman, commander of the three ship NASA-ESA rescue mission, had completed a difficult 2G acceleration run to hasten arrival at the unexpectedly silent Sagan Outpost Array. Each ship, designed for long duration missions, had a large aft module containing the fusion drive, which was connected by dual tunnels to a smaller habitation module. The hab-module, housing twenty ship personnel, was located below the upper science and engineering decks.

Braking maneuvers positioned the fleet at the edge of the sun’s bow shock terminator. To arrive and match the Array’s non-orbital position vector relative to the bow shock, fuel expenditure for the three ships had been enormous. The modified fusion drives had proven themselves up to the task.

Assuming command came naturally to Alex Truman. Unlike most of his astronaut peers, he had a military background and had led numerous missions involving observation satellite placement and retrieval as well as military intelligence related operations. He had developed a finely honed political competence which proved useful in knowing whom to approach, when to approach them, and how to assure that his ideas were perceived as their own. It was a skill his father, secretary of commerce during the Freeman administration, had taught him.

Alex bypassed the NASA-ESA director and went directly to the president’s science adviser, whom he knew on a first name basis. The adviser was impressed with Alex’s mission plan and pushed for his appointment as mission

Reviews for Ascension

[Richard Murray · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Well written and had an ending completely unexpected. Highly recommended.