While the Scharnhorst drive made it possible to reach stars as distant as Sirius and Procyon, travel between the fledgling colonies and their parent star was still measured in years. The Geminate settlers were on their own, and they knew it.
Three hundred years passed. In the mid-twenty-fifth century, a pair of Alliance scientists discovered a way to fold spacetime, bending the compactified branes that were stacked within the Bulk of extradimensional space. Thus, the Calabi-Yau gates were born.
These specially-tuned, ‘pair-partnered’ gates provided instantaneous travel between star systems, regardless of distance. For the first time, far-flung civilizations reconnected in real time, and true interstellar commerce became a reality.
Those back in Sol had formed a loose association known as the Coalition of Worlds. The Coalition eagerly embraced the Alliance’s gate tech. Treaties were signed, leases granted, and soon the Geminate government had gates at each heliopause.
A robust and vigorous trade developed between the settled worlds, ushering in a prosperous new era for every star nation involved—with one exception: Akkadia.
The star nation orbiting Rigel Kentaurus had built an export economy around handcrafted materials whose value was based on scarcity, forced by Scharnhorst limitations and slow trade routes. This was utterly disrupted by the gates.
Akkadia plunged into a recession. Desperate circumstances allowed an oppressive regime to wrest power from its premier. The planet went from an artisan’s enclave to a totalitarian government.
The current Ministry of State Security was rumored to have its hooks in every star nation from Terra to Sirius. It stole tech where it could, sabotaged when it couldn’t. Such actions propelled Akkadia into a state of cold war with the rest of the settled worlds.
And then the Akkadian Premier set his sights on the Geminate gate tech.
The Alliance has no idea how far Akkadia is willing to go to achieve this goal. They’re also unaware how thoroughly they’ve been compromised, but they’re about to find out….
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This particular book became challenging to write mid-stream, not because the words wouldn’t flow, but because I suddenly found myself without a means to type them.
Mid-December, I landed in the ER with a boxer’s fracture in my left hand. I ended up dictating more than 80,000 words—a good two-thirds of this book—instead of typing in the conventional manner.
Special thanks go out to a cadre of incredibly talented people who helped bring this to you in a timely fashion, a mere four weeks after its original release date.
These beta readers helped me spot inconsistencies and catch errors where dictation software rendered ‘hangar’ as ‘hanger’ (anathema to a pilot like me!).
John, as always, thank you for being my science sounding board. Steve and Dawn, thank you, not only for the years of military service you gave to our country, but also for lending me your expertise. Any mistakes readers may find are entirely my own.
Manie and Charlie, your keen sense of story helped catch places where the spoken word had veered slightly off course. I have Crystal and Marti to thank for that, too. Your eagle eyes caught a plethora of misspellings that invariably crop up in a manuscript of this length.
Above and beyond all this is the incredible work of an editor who not only gets me, she gets the characters, and the story. Thank you, Jen, for helping me to stay true to Thad, Ell, Micah, and the rest. You’re an angel.
Lastly, I want to thank Marty for picking up the slack these past seven weeks while my hand was in a cast—especially when 2021 told 2020, “hold my beer,” and then proceeded to dump us into extraordinarily cold temperatures that resulted in broken pipes and a flooded home. To say you’re the best is an understatement.
ALSO BY LL RICHMAN
You can always find the most up to date listing of book titles on LL Richman’s Amazon Author Page.
The Biogenesis War
– The Chiral Agent, June 2020
– The Chiral Protocol, September 2020
– Chiral Justice, February 2021
The Biogenesis War Files: The Early Years
– Operation Cobalt, December 2020
– The Chiral Conspiracy, June 2020
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
L.L. Richman has a diverse background, balancing a career as a film director with evenings spent running a linear accelerator.
Physics is a big part of Richman’s life—particularly radiation physics. Whereas most people keep plates and cups in their kitchen cabinets, Richman’s are filled with radioactive materials, lead-lined gloves, and a Geiger counter.
A self-proclaimed ‘NASA brat,’ some of Richman’s earliest memories are of following her father through the Johnson Space Center, of being inside Mission Control (but not while it was active), of fast planes and astronauts.
Richman went on to become a pilot, and can often be found flying a Piper Cherokee, or photographing Deep Sky Objects (DSOs) late at night.
She shares her home with a physicist and three cats, two of whom are appropriately named Maxwell and Faraday.
For more information on upcoming releases or the latest news on space science and technology, like LL Richman’s Facebook page, or join the Biogenesis War Facebook group.
Chiral Justice: A Hard Science Fiction Technothriller (The Biogenesis War Book 3) Page 37
