Brothers in Exile — Excerpt 8

They set off down the windowless corridor, their helmet lights illuminating the way. Little flecks of dust lit up like tiny stars as they walked by, suspended peacefully in the air until the wind from the brothers’ passing wrenched them back into the darkness. With the closeness of the walls, though, Isaac felt a little more at ease.

Aaron was right—this place was designed a lot like their home station back in Delta Oriana. He almost expected to see icons on the lintels of the doors they passed, or catch the smell of incense wafting from one of the local deck churches. Megiddo Station hadn’t been much bigger than Alnilam Station, and it was only a few light-years closer to the Coreward Stars. The Oriana Star Cluster was still squarely in the Outworlds, but it was settled thickly enough that none of the systems was completely isolated from the others.

Not that that had saved any of the ones who had stayed behind.

“I wonder if these arrows on the ceiling mean anything,” Aaron mused. “The green ones go back to the stairs, but the blue ones seem to lead somewhere else.”

Isaac shrugged. “So long as we don’t get lost.” Since the station was small enough that they could walk the whole length of the rimside corridor in less than an hour, there wasn’t much danger of that. Probably.

The corridor came to an end at a maintenance closet. The door was open, giving them a view of the equipment lockers and control panels for the stationwide systems. Surprisingly, the computer terminal seemed to be in pretty good shape.

“I wonder if we can access the station records from here,” Isaac mused.

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Brothers in Exile (Sons of the Starfarers: Book I) is available for $.99 from Amazon, Amazon UK, Smashwords, Barnes & Noble, and now Kobo. The price will rise to $2.99 by the end of the week, though, so be sure to get it now if you want it for less.

I’ll post a couple more excerpts between now and then before resuming my normal blogging schedule (inasmuch as “schedule” describes anything that goes on around here …). In the meantime, thanks for reading!

Excerpt 1
Excerpt 2
Excerpt 3
Excerpt 4
Excerpt 5
Excerpt 6
Excerpt 7

By Joe Vasicek

Joe Vasicek is the author of more than twenty science fiction books, including the Star Wanderers and Sons of the Starfarers series. As a young man, he studied Arabic and traveled across the Middle East and the Caucasus. He claims Utah as his home.

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