Hero of the Solar Union

By Edmund de Wight

A treasure worth killing for.

Garrett Ata, a disenchanted war hero who self-exiled to the furthest reaches of the solar system, has found something in the outer dark that could earn him enough to retire and never have to deal with other people again.

Framed for a heinous murder, he has to protect a beautiful woman in distress, and a priceless artifact that everyone wants.
Hunted by gangsters, and government agents he must find a way to survive to get his payday.

Garrett finds himself in a race for his life from the depths of the asteroid belt to the drowned Earth.

A sci-fi short story in the tradition of noir thrillers that will keep you on the edge of your seat.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ionosphere Press
• Release date: Apr 29, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201459482

Edmund de Wight

Author of gritty, high octane fiction with a touch of terror and daring heroes and heroines! Visit his website and sign up for the newsletter to receive a free e-book and regular entertaining content.  Ed writes stories that can be classified as either Horror, Science Fiction, Urban Fantasy or Thriller depending on the tale.  Some say Edmund de Wight was found wandering the desert as a baby, others say his mother won him playing craps, yet others say that aliens were spotted near Vegas on the night he was brought into the world. Draw your own conclusions. Edmund has always had a thirst to learn new things. He's pursued such diverse careers as a carnival barker, a cryptologist and linguist in military intelligence, a computer technician, bartender, and owner of a small retail business. He's traveled the world and managed to see the entire USA with the exception of two states. Ed brings a wide worldview to his writing. For hobbies, Ed has pursued hobbies as varied as wood carving, relief printing, sword fighting, and of course, never-ending efforts at home remodeling.  

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Acknowledgements

Iwant to extend a special thank you to my early readers  Tim Taylor, Lisa Baker Bayen, and Pattie Braidy Dealy.

Thanks to the judges at Writers of the Future for the Silver Honorable Mention.

And as always, all my love to my wife Sarah for putting up with me as I write.

BUTTERFLIES PERFORMED acrobatics in Garrett Ata’s stomach. He couldn’t decide if it was the zero-gee, the fact that he had not visited Ceres in three years, or because of the Thing in the cargo hold?

"Ceres Comms this is Hopper Black Bird, can you try again to patch me through to Jonas N’go? He lives in Calypso pod, berth forty-seven charlie."

Ceres Approach demanded that he park out on the ass-end of nowhere while they found a bay for him. He’d been waiting for four hours. There was absolutely nothing to do but float, read, and try, for the fifth time, to contact his broker.

Jonas knew to expect him. They had spoken three weeks ago, albeit with a two-hour delay each way, and arranged to sell the Thing. Where could he be? He might be a conniver, but it wasn’t like him to leave Garrett flapping in the wind. He had served under Garrett for a dozen years. The men were brothers-in-arms, a bond formed through combat and bloodshed that ran deeper than the bond between siblings. You don’t leave your brother hanging.

Minutes dragged by until the bored communication tech’s voice crackled from the speaker.

There’s no response from that berth sir and his comm is not forwarding. There’s nothing I can do.

Shit.

Garrett punched the back of the pilot’s chair and rocketed back in reaction. The tether arrested his motion within a meter and snapped him back to slam against the chair.

He knew better than to do that. Three years out in the Kuiper belt should have trained away any gravity habits he retained, but emotion had a way of overriding training.

I’ll wait until I dock to speak with him in person. Thanks for trying Ceres.

Should he check the cargo hold again? The compulsion to check the Thing—he always thought of it as the Thing, with a capital T—grew stronger the closer he got to Ceres. He could retire from asteroid prospecting if he got as much as Jonas thought they could. Why would someone pay millions for it? It made no sense to him, but what did he know, he was just a soldier who had been put out to pasture.

The Thing was an irregularly shaped slab of reddish-brown mineral. It reflected light in strange ways, shifting colors as photons bounced off its surface. He couldn’t tell if it was stone or metal, or more accurately, his Hopper’s spectrometers couldn’t tell. What made the Thing valuable according to Jonas was the writing covering one surface; at least he assumed it was writing. The incised shapes had an almost hieroglyphic appearance, but they were like no hieroglyphs that Garrett had ever heard of. The shapes were sinuous and when viewed from the corner of the eye they moved and slid into and out of each other as if they were alive. He couldn’t swear to it, but he thought that they changed position every time he looked at them. He found it unsettling. His eyes throbbed just looking at the markings. If it had come from some sunken city back on Earth it might be nothing more than a scientific curiosity, but Garrett found the Thing embedded in a chunk of rock that had been whirling