Shards of the Abyss

By Ronald Brandenburg III

Jesse Ownsman has survived boot camp and made it to his first assignment, the bleak planet of Aridia on the outskirts on inhabited space. No sooner does he arrive though and the planet's observatory discovers an intruder attempting to sneak up on them. With no hope of reinforcements before this stranger descends upon them, the very survival of Jesse and his compatriots rests solely on their shoulders.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ronald Brandenburg III
• Release date: Jun 4, 2016
• ISBN: 9781311196293

Ronald Brandenburg III

Ronald Brandenburg III was born in the United States in Alabama and grew up on the northern coast of the Gulf of Mexico. Growing up on a small farm meant having few neighbors and thus delved into the worlds of fantasy and science fiction. Major influences include Harold Coyle, J. R. R. Tolkien, Edgar Rice Burroughs, J. K. Rowling and many others. Ronald studied mechanical engineering at the University of Alabama in Huntsville where he graduated with honors. Since finishing school, he is a Systems Engineer for a Fortune 500 company. Alongside table top strategy games and computer games, writing is a favorite hobby.

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Shards of the Abyss

By Ronald Brandenburg

Published by Ronald Brandenburg at Smashwords

Copyright 2016 Ronald Brandenburg

This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite eBook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

This short story is a sequel to The Lonely Station set in the Other Worlds universe, I recommend that you read that story first to get a firm grasp on where the protagonist, Jesse Ownsman, grew up and came from before continuing on with this story. If you finish this, or any other story that I’ve written, please leave a review online where you downloaded it from. Thank you and happy reading.

Aridia was a desert world, uninhabited except by a New Order outpost and a few corporate mining sites. A lack of local population meant that the corporations could mine in the cheapest way possible, without care for pollution. That was where Jesse Ownsman was stationed after his brief stint in a New Order Navy boot camp. Still, it wasn’t Uriah and he was fed three meals a day.

In truth, Jesse was happy. He had a purpose in life and a real job, with a steady pay check. Back on Uriah, he was cramped, hungry, and cooped up in his bunk and the hallways of the station waiting for some critical piece of equipment to fail and hoping he had the expertise and spare parts to fix it. Here, he had firm ground under his feet and breathable, if slightly polluted air to breathe.

Boot camp had been rough. It had been discovered early that Jesse couldn’t read all that well. His instructors had actually failed him out of his first attempt and sent him to an adult learning center to improve his education. That alone endeared Jesse to the New Order, his limited education aboard the Uriah had only been sufficient enough for him to do his job. Once his reading and writing was deemed acceptable, he was re-entered into boot camp.

The combat training that Jesse received was grueling, but he had lived within an extreme environment his entire life. The most difficult part was adjusting to a higher gravity on the planet where the training took place. The NOS doctors had given him a physical before and after training and remarked about how a low gravity environment and lack