“If anyone’s still alive—”
“They can’t be. If they were, they would have fixed the leak.”
Aaron bristled. “How do you know that? For all we know, the engineers are gone and none of the survivors knows what to do about it.”
“If there are any survivors, why haven’t they hailed us?”
“How should I know? All I know is that it’s possible. You can’t refute that.”
I guess I can’t, Isaac thought. Instead of admitting it, though, he kept silent, peering at the ghostly derelict as if lost in thought.
“We should dock and go in there,” said Aaron. “Peek inside, take a look around. Even if there aren’t any survivors, maybe we can at least find out what happened to them.”
“Are you crazy?” said Isaac, his heart beating a little faster at his brother’s suggestion. “We have no idea what’s in there. For all we know, the place is infested with some sort of disease.”
“So we go in in EVA suits and take a quick sterilizing spacewalk before we come back. No big deal.”
“It’s still a dumb idea. We’re not going.”
Aaron scowled and rolled his eyes. “So what, you just want to turn around and leave? Abandon this place without finding out what happened?”
“That’s right. We know that the station is dead, and that’s enough.”
“But we don’t know that,” said Aaron, raising both of his hands. “We don’t know hardly anything. All we know is that no one has answered our transmissions and there’s a small reactor leak at the hub, but everything else looks fine.”
It does not look fine, Isaac thought to himself. His palms felt clammy, and he was already beginning to regret his decision to come to this system at all.
==========
Brothers in Exile (Sons of the Starfarers, Book I) is coming out the weekend of May 17th. The cover art should be out soon–I’ll post it as soon as it is! In the meantime, I’ll keep posting these excerpts to give you a taste. If you’ve enjoyed Star Wanderers and the Gaia Nova books, I think you guys are really going to like this new series!
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Thanks for reading!
