Excerpt!
“Pilot’s seat.” Erys got the words out between clenched teeth. “Quickly.” He was working overtime to hang on to consciousness.
Kaytee put her arm around his shoulders and steered him to the command chair. Pounding on the hull reverberated through the small hopper cabin. Their attacker was not giving up. At least his presence was keeping his fellows from firing on them.
Erys’s arm trembled. The smell of the chief’s apprehension was rank in his nose. Behind him, Kaytee stood stiff as an iron rod, her hands gripping his shoulders. He stretched his hand toward the control panel, stroked it gently. His fingers left a trail of blood.
He inhaled sharply. Suppressed a curse.
This time he did not seek to neutralize the controls but rather visualized them in their operating state. The hopper hummed to life. His energy sapped, he sank back in the pilot’s seat and ratcheted up his pain shield.
He reached his other hand to the left side of the control panel. Flinched as he forced the contact. Then he took over with his mind, and the craft rose from the ground.
The main view screen flashed on automatically when the hopper took to the air. The man hanging onto the hatch door released his hold, falling to the ground. The remaining thugs crowded onto the landing pad below them. One raised a large tube to his shoulder. The crumbler. With its settings adjusted from micro-assault to maximum width and range, the illegal weapon could definitely bring down a hopper.
Erys toughened his resolve, his will holding the controls in a life-or-death grip. He was a better than average pilot—but what he was doing now went beyond any evasive maneuvering he had learned in his training.
An earsplitting boom rumbled through the hopper. Then, the groan of twisting metal. The caustic fumes of melting plastic. The tingle of overworked circuits pulsing in the control panel beneath his hands.
They had taken a hit.
Author bio:
CHERYL ARKO is a science fiction author and an accomplished senior data scientist with a long career in IT and medical data analysis. She has loved reading science fiction ever since she could connect letters into words, devouring everything from Andre Norton to E.E. "Doc" Smith to more and more authors through the years who have shared their thought-provoking ideas of imagined places and alternate realities.
TOUCH OF THE ELEGRIAN is Cheryl's debut novel and was a Killer Nashville Claymore Award Finalist for best Science Fiction/Fantasy. She writes stories that take her to the stars, imagining who we might find out there, inviting readers to come along for the ride to visit new worlds and their people. To explore what makes us different—and what makes us the same. And to discover the inherent good that exists in the universe to balance against darkness, no matter how far we travel.
A seasoned dog trainer, Cheryl lives with her beloved Airedales in a tiny house nestled within thirty acres of serene Minnesota pine trees.
Prejudice. Legacy. Redemption.
Erys carries a secret that could shatter his world. The telepathic Elegrian has spent his life atoning for his dead father’s role in humanity’s disastrous first contact. Now, as a tech specialist for the Earth-led alliance, he serves in silence—until sabotage threatens the lives of dozens of human children. And the traitor is one of his own.
Forced to work with a brilliant but hostile human engineer, Erys must dismantle not only the deadly conspiracy but also the deep-seated mistrust between their peoples. With time running out, he faces an impossible choice: break the fragile Elegrian-Human treaty and invite the death penalty to forge a forbidden mind link with a human… or let innocent lives be lost.
Two worlds on the brink. A single act of defiance. Can compassion rewrite a doomed future?
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CHERYL ARKO is a science fiction author and an accomplished senior data scientist with a long career in IT and medical data analysis. She has loved reading science fiction ever since she could connect letters into words, devouring everything from Andre Norton to E.E. "Doc" Smith to more and more authors through the years who have shared their thought-provoking ideas of imagined places and alternate realities.
TOUCH OF THE ELEGRIAN is Cheryl's debut novel and was a Killer Nashville Claymore Award Finalist for best Science Fiction/Fantasy. She writes stories that take her to the stars, imagining who we might find out there, inviting readers to come along for the ride to visit new worlds and their people. To explore what makes us different—and what makes us the same. And to discover the inherent good that exists in the universe to balance against darkness, no matter how far we travel.
A seasoned dog trainer, Cheryl lives with her beloved Airedales in a tiny house nestled within thirty acres of serene Minnesota pine trees.
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