Rox: A Space Exploration Novelette: Lost Colony, #1.1

By Mark Bilsborough

Time to Read: about 45 minutes to one hour

 

Forced into a risky mission to the outer reaches of the solar system, Roxanne "Rox" Weaver is about to confront a horror from her past, and a threat to humanity's future.

Lost Colony is a quarterly publication of mid-length (10,000 to 25,000 words) science fiction and fantasy in all of their varieties. This ebook edition also includes an Editor's Note in which the editor explains why this story was chosen for publication.

• Language: English
• Publisher: M.E. Pickett
• Release date: Jan 18, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201665937

Book preview

Rox © 2022 Mark Bilsborough

Editor’s Note © 2022 M.E. Pickett

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any means whatsoever without written permission from the copyright holder, except for brief portions quoted for purpose of review.

Cover image by 80’s Child via Shutterstock

Cover and interior design by M.E. Pickett

Lost Colony is a publication of Lost Colony Books, a division of Great Pond, LLC

www.lostcolonymagazine.com

www.lostcolonybooks.com

Lost Colony and its colophon are trademarks of Great Pond, LLC

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Volume 1, Issue 1

January 2022

Contents

About Lost Colony

Rox

About the Author

Editor's Note

About the Editor

Support Lost Colony

About Lost Colony

Lost Colony publishes one masterfully crafted piece of mid-length (10,000-25,000 words) speculative fiction (science fiction and fantasy in all of their manifestations) every quarter. Quarterly stories are published for free on our website (with ads) and for one or two dollars as an ebook (without ads). Once a year, all four of the stories that have appeared in the magazine are published in an annual anthology, both electronically and in print. If you buy the ebook of either the quarterly story or the annual anthology, or if you buy the print version of the annual anthology, you will also get editor’s notes that explain why each story was chosen for publication.

I started Lost Colony after I wrote a mid-length story and very quickly ran out of outlets to submit it to. I thought that the mid-length story should get more love, so I decided to launch this little publication.

I named it Lost Colony because I had moved to Roanoke, Virginia, shortly before launching it. Roanoke, Virginia, has nothing to do with the lost colony of Roanoke (which was in North Carolina), but it was the first thing that I thought of when I learned about the city, so it made sense to me. It also evokes a sense of mystery, the supernatural, or even the exploration of the cosmos, so it fits nicely with what I’m looking for in the stories that I publish (for more details on what I’m looking for, check out the Submission Guidelines).

Rox

By Mark Bilsborough

The shuttle Pegasus nudged its way gently towards the orbiting dockyard arm of Osiris Station, matching the station’s spin as it slowly rolled around its axis. Landing lights flashed invitingly, but Rox wasn’t looking forward to a return to gravity after three months of weightlessness. Osiris Station only spun to a third g, but it would still make her tired bones creak and keep her awake at night. No more zero-g sex for a while, she thought ruefully, casting a glance over to the other occupant of the shuttle. Not that she really minded. Dmitry was inhibited and undemanding, and she’d grown tired of his passivity; she suspected he’d be relieved too.

She fastened her helmet in place as Pegasus settled to a halt and docking clamps rammed with a heavy jolt onto her landing fins. Like most of Osiris’ bays, Docking Station Six was open to vacuum, so they’d have to walk, suited, to an airlock. They had to weave past a scurrying mass of spider-limbed Bots, already swarming for Pegasus’ cargo.

Good trip? said a short, heavy-set, balding man in a middle-management blue tunic as she walked out of the airlock. She’d already taken in the room: two security grunts positioned by the outer door, no viewscreens, no table, two chairs bolted to the floor against the port-side wall. To starboard, a rank of storage bins embedded in the wall: two slowly glided open as she watched. Lighting bright enough she wished she still had her suit visor on. Telltale surveillance camera pimples in the corners of the ceiling. No visible means of exit apart from the airlock to raw space behind her and a bulkhead door in front. If Osiris didn’t want anyone getting past that room, then they pretty much wouldn’t. People in the chamber with her was the