‘Quick, bring fresh meat!’ Aadi ordered.
‘I love them!’ Bronwyn said to no one’s surprise.
‘Little Daksha, you are my first and I am proud of you,’ Aadi cooed to the baby Tortoid that cried with hunger. The others cracked through their shells in order. The companions each took turns feeding them raw venison from small sticks. Fea fed them from pieces skewered on a claw. The male ‘cats couldn’t be bothered with the children. Fea committed to teaching her two orange men yet another lesson when the time was right.
Even the Rabbits took a turn.
Braden couldn’t tell them apart, but didn’t want to let his friend know that. Micah smirked at him, suggesting that Aadi already knew.
And the Tortoid could not have been prouder. Six baby Tortoids, which he didn’t consider bad for a new parent at two hundred cycles old. He was the most well-traveled Tortoid both on and off Vii, and he wanted that for his children, too.
This is the end of Free Trader 6 – Free Trader on the High Seas
Cygnus Rising
Humanity Returns to Space
Cygnus Space Opera – Book 1
A Tale from the Free Trader Universe
takes place over 100 years after Braden & Micah’s adventures
Sample Chapter of Cygnus Rising
Chapter 1 - Fire!
Flames shot through the open hatch. Cain yelled, “Engineering’s on fire!” as the klaxons continued to scream, echoing down the corridor away from him. He sensed, more than heard the anguished cry.
The hatch was open. The automated fire suppression system had failed.
He ripped open the damage control panel and pulled the tank out. He threw it hastily over his shoulder, reached behind him with a well-practiced maneuver to start the flow of air, and wrapped the dangling mask across his face. He draped the fire hood over his head as he ran. He didn’t have time to put on the whole outfit. People he knew were dying.
He hit the flames of the doorway at a dead run. The intense heat scorched his bare forearms as he passed. He yelled into his mask as he slid to a stop in the middle of the space, looking for survivors. A Rabbit lay under a terminal, an ugly scorch mark cut across his white fur, leaving blackened hair around burned pink flesh underneath. The Rabbit moved – Briz was alive.
Cain slid him from under the melting terminal. The Rabbit was dense and blocky, half Cain’s height, but the same weight. Cain pulled an equipment cover off the back of a chair. He took it and wrapped it around the Rabbit’s head and over as much of his body as he could, then hefted him, trying not to touch the injury. Cain lumbered toward the hatch, ducked his head, held his breath, and jumped through the flames. He deposited the Rabbit in the passageway and raced back into Engineering. Ellie was in there somewhere.
He should have been alarmed that the flames didn’t seem to hurt as much this time. The next victim was a Wolfoid, horribly torn apart from the force of an exploded containment vessel. He saw something odd about the way the Wolfoid’s body, bigger than a human’s was laying on the floor.
A pink-fleshed hand snaked out from underneath the heavy gray fur. Without remorse, Cain heaved the Wolfoid’s shattered body to the side. Ellie was dazed, but seemed to be okay. The Wolfoid must have taken the full force of the rupture, protecting her. Cain’s breath caught as he looked at her silken black hair, the ends curled and brittle from the heat that had passed over her.
He pulled her to him as blue lights started to flash within Engineering, signaling the imminent flooding of argon gas into the compartment. He kneeled, rolling her from a sitting position over his shoulder. He stood without much effort. She wasn’t heavy and laid easily over his shoulder as he hurried for the hatch. The flames had died down somewhat, but he still ran through, hoping speed would keep them safe. Once through, he stopped, took off his hood and breathed deeply of the better air in the corridor. The hatch to engineering closed.
The klaxons stopped as someone helped Ellie from his shoulder. He looked at the closed hatch. Anyone still in the space would be denied oxygen, just like the fire. The argon gas was supposed to be flushed in a matter of seconds, but it would be too late. He was surprised that he didn’t know how many people worked in the space. Three? Four?
“Holy Rising Star, Cain! You shouldn’t have gone in there. Why the hell would you do something like that?” the Captain’s words were harsh, but his eyes were grateful. As the older man looked at the two survivors in the corridor, he added, “but I’m glad you did, son. Looks like you saved two lives, irreplaceable lives.”
The two Hillcats waiting for Cain and Ellie in the corridor couldn’t have agreed more. Carnesto yowled in pain as Ellie came back to her senses. The burns on her lower body attacked her with waves of agony. He put a furry paw on her head to help her through the worst of it.
Why had Cain risked knowing what his death would do to his ‘cat, to his family? He had no choice. It’s who he’d always wanted to be. It’s who he was. He’d spent his short life trying to live up to one man, the Space Exploration Service Captain who showed him how a hero acts.
Free Trader 7 – Southern Discontent
The Free Trader goes from village to village to make the announcement that Old Tech is alive and well and functioning in a place called New Sanctuary located south of the rainforest.
With an open ocean exploration laboratory that Holly found and recovered, they head to sea where they find more than an island, they find a gateway to the former residents of White Beach who’d been seduced by the intelligence from the Western Ocean Research Facility…
Free Trader Book Seven – coming in 2017, exclusively on Amazon.
Postscript
If you like the Free Trader and want to see the series continue, please join my mailing list by dropping by my website www.craigmartelle.com or if you have any comments, shoot me a note at [email protected]. I am always happy to hear from people who read the Free Trader. I try to answer every email I receive.
Please consider writing a short review for me on Amazon. I greatly appreciate any kind words, even one or two sentences go a long way. The number of reviews an ebook receives greatly improves how well that ebook does on Amazon.
Here are some important links
Amazon – www.amazon.com/author/craigmartelle
Facebook – www.facebook.com/authorcraigmartelle
My web page – www.craigmartelle.com
Twitter – www.twitter.com/rick_banik or @rick_banik
Braden and Micah’s adventures will continue throughout 2016. Free Trader 5 – Free the North! will take you north of the Great Desert where Braden and Micah need to keep things from spiraling out of control. Has someone destroyed the trade-based civilization that Braden was raised to respect? In Free Trader 6 – Free Trader on the High Seas, Braden, Micah, and the companions go in search of the villagers from White Beach who were taken to the Western Ocean Research Facility.
The Misadventures of Jacob Wild McKilljoy
You can only get this short story for FREE! If you sign up for my email list – www.craigmartelle.com and you are three clicks away from downloading this to whichever device you want.
The first in the Rick Banik thriller series – a new patriot for a new age. America on the brink. ISIS in D.C. Bureaucracy. Individual agendas. Money. Can Rick save the people from themselves in time to stop the terror?
Now available in Audiobook, too!
About the Author
Craig is a successful author, publishing in both the Science Fiction and Thriller genres. He’s taken his more than twenty years of experience in the Marine Corps, his legal education, and his business consulting career to write believable characters living in realistic worlds.
Although Craig has written in multiple genres, what he believes most compelling are in-depth characters dealing with real-world issues. The backdrop is less important than the depth of the characters, who they are and how they interact. Life lessons of a great story can be applied now or fifty years in th
e future. Some things are universal.
Craig believes that evil exists. Some people are driven differently and cannot be allowed access to our world. Good people will rise to the occasion. Good will always challenge evil, sometimes before a crisis, many times after, but will good triumph?
Some writers who’ve influenced Craig? Robert E. Howard (the original Conan), JRR Tolkien, Andre Norton, Robert Heinlein, Lin Carter, Brian Aldiss, Margaret Weis, Tracy Hickman, Anne McCaffrey, and of late, James Axler, Raymond Weil, Jonathan Brazee, Mark E. Cooper, and David Weber. Craig learned something from each of these authors, story line, compelling issue, characters that you can relate to, the beauty of the prose, unique tendrils weaving through the book’s theme. Craig’s writing has been compared to that of Andre Norton and Craig’s Free Trader characters to those of McCaffrey’s Dragonriders, the Rick Banik Thrillers to the works of Robert Ludlum.
Craig finds the comparisons humbling. All he wants is for his readers to relate to the characters, put themselves into those situations described in Craig’s books and ask themselves, what would they do if they were there instead?
Through a bizarre series of events, Craig ended up in Fairbanks, Alaska. He never expected to retire to a place where golf courses are only open for four months out of the year. But he loves it there. It is off the beaten path. He and his wife watch the northern lights from their driveway. Their dog has lots of room to run. And temperatures reach forty below zero. They have from three and a half hours of daylight in the winter to twenty-four hours in the summer.
It’s all part of the give and take of life. If they didn’t have those extremes, then everyone would live there.
www.craigmartelle.com
Table of Contents
Battle for the Amazon
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Humans and the Intelligent Creatures
The Line Is Drawn
War It Must Be
An Old Evil Returns
McCullough
Expanding the Trade Route
Settling the Refugees
Snakes in the Grass
The Road to Trent
Hi, Mom
There’s Nothing to Fear
Dad’s Home and There’s Hell to Pay
The Eastern Ocean Anchor
Next Stop, Cornwall
The Three Laws of Trade
Seal the Deal
The Aurochs
The Great Southern Plains
Recovery
The Road to Sanctuary
New Sanctuary
Optics
Intelligence
Four Turns From Now…
“Crap, More Androids…”
The Wolfoid Rush
The Clone
Yes, It Will Hurt
The Lizard Men of the Rainforest Level
A Run to the Village
The Wolfoid Games
Home to New Sanctuary
War Comes Closer
What’s the Intel?
A Plan Starts to Take Shape
Gear Up!
Running North
The Villages
Race to Bliss
No Road Ahead
The Army Moves
Fighting Their Way South
Turns Melt Into Turns
Running of the Bulls
The Slog Ahead
Setting up an Ambush
Just a Little Farther
The Herd
Where Have You Been?
Prepare to Attack
Like We Belong Here
Attack the Weakest
The Overlords
A Reunion Long Overdue
Bronwyn
Still Wet
The Seven
A New Normal
Free the North!
Acknowledgments
A Helping Paw
Seeing the Trade
Back to New Sanctuary
Meeting Old Friends
Reunion at New Sanctuary
A New Plan
The Call of Old Tech
Construction of Something Incredible
Blooding the Pups
Heading North
Villages on the Ocean
Into Devaney’s Barren
The Wagon Exploded
The Oasis
Recovery
The Heat
A Refreshing Break
Oasis 03 – Tiskanay’s Pause
The Tortoise Consortium
Taking the Plunge
Whitehorse
Everything’s Different, but the Same
Cameron
“There Will Be No Provincial Government”
Ava
The Warehouse
Securing Cameron
The Road to Jefferson City
Can’t Abide an Outpost
The Dark Clouds of War
The Story of Jocelyn
The Governor
Jocelyn
A New Governor
The Power of Hope
It’s a Man’s World
Yowls, Nips, and Purrs
Some Personal Business
Missing ‘cats
Race to Water
One Down, Two to Go
Another Sacrifice
02, then 01, then…
The South
Free Trader on the High Seas
Acknowledgments
Raiders!
River Crook
The Beach
Bad News
Preparing for War with an Unknown Enemy
Leaving New Sanctuary Behind
A Rolling Stone Gathers Moss
The Open Ocean
An Ocean Voyage
The Storm
The Evil Ones
All Ashore Who’s Going Ashore
The Island
The Professor
An Unpleasant Surprise
Together We Go
Micah Ashore
Bounder Ashore
Strider Ashore
Braden Awake
Pik Ashore
The Underground Complex
Bounder and Ferrer to the Rescue
Strider is Coming
The Underground Complex
The Companions Unleashed
The Old Professor
Recovering
Rest at Sea
The Tunnel
A New Enemy
Run!
Fight!
Med Bots Unite
Gloria
Recharging to Go Again
A Final Battle
Bronwyn to the Rescue
A New Day
Leaving Atlantis Behind
White Beach
The Babies
Cygnus Rising Humanity Returns to Space
Chapter 1 - Fire!
Free Trader 7 – Southern Discontent
Postscript
About the Author
Free Trader Box Set - Books 4-6: Battle for the Amazon, Free the North!, Free Trader on the High Seas Page 67
