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    Star-Eater Chronicles 2. The Stars Are Fire...
    Star-Eater Chronicles 2. The Stars Are Fire...
    Star-Eater Chronicles 2. The Stars Are Fire...
    Ebook126 pages1 hour

    Star-Eater Chronicles 2. The Stars Are Fire...

    By Dennis E. Smirl and Ian Hall

    ()

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    About this ebook

    "Doubt thou the stars are fire?
    Doubt thou the sun doth move?"
    Hamlet, Shakespeare

    Seth Gingko has a dilemma.
    He is the owner of the fastest Human ship in the galaxy; but if he returns to earth, he'll be branded a criminal, and his ship confiscated.
    He has the only star-chart of the nearest 16 galaxies... but if he returns to earth with this valuable information, his best friend will be ripped to pieces.
    He alone has intelligence of an alien invasion... but will he risk a prison sentence to deliver his news to the authorities?

    After spending five years on his solo flight, Seth soon finds he has inherited a crew member. he's put off his guard; she's a woman, and to make matters worse, she's British, with an accent! Seth's not sure to be intrigued or annoyed.
    Read part two of this brand new Science Fiction series.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherIan Hall
    Release dateJan 7, 2016
    ISBN9781311959850
    Star-Eater Chronicles 2. The Stars Are Fire...
    Author

    Dennis E. Smirl

    Dennis E. Smirl has been an Air Force officer, a salesman for a Fortune 500 company, a school psychologist, a computer science instructor at several colleges and universities, and a business owner. Married to his college sweetheart for more than half a century, he has spent time in Mexico, Japan, and South Vietnam, but prefers to take family vacations in the USA and Canada. A writer for as long as he can remember—he attempted a first novel at age ten—his first taste of national publication was a race report written and published in 1965. A science fiction fan for almost the same length of time, Mr. Smirl joined the Science Fiction Book Club when member numbers were much shorter. Beyond his interest in Science Fiction, he has had a lifetime interest in horseback riding, auto racing (as a driver), golf, photography, computers and information processing, and mystery novels. He has written thirteen novels and more than seventy short stories and novellas.

    Read more from Dennis E. Smirl

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      Book preview

      Star-Eater Chronicles 2. The Stars Are Fire... - Dennis E. Smirl

      This book is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living, dead or undead, is purely coincidental.

      Copyright © Dennis E. Smirl. Lost Aardvarks Press. Smashwords Edition.

      Copyright © Ian Hall. Hallanish Publishing. Smashwords Edition.

      Published by Dennis E. Smirl & Ian Hall at Smashwords

      ISBN- 9781311959850

      All rights reserved, and the author reserves the right to re-produce this book, or parts thereof, in any way whatsoever.

      This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      Introduction

      Book Intro

      Chapter 1

      Chapter 2

      Chapter 3

      Chapter 4

      Chapter 5

      Chapter 6

      Chapter 7

      Chapter 8

      Chapter 9

      Chapter 10

      Chapter 11

      Chapter 12

      Chapter 13

      Chapter 14

      Chapter 15

      Chapter 16

      Chapter 17

      Chapter 18

      Chapter 19

      In ancient days before humans spread their populace to the stars, a company that got too big for its britches would find the Government gently reining it in or roughly shackling it down. And when a company got too big for Government oversight, usually its own weight would cause an implosion; the force of natural expansion and demise.

      When a company gets bigger than its Government, then you have a problem on your hands. The MacCollie Company got bigger than that: they ruled travel to the stars. The development of the L-Space drive—the first practical FTL drive—created a monopoly that allowed access to the stars only to those the MacCollie company felt they could trust.

      At first, they trusted only the Government—the Fellowship of Humanity. Slowly, carefully, cautiously, they expanded access to a few independent businesses, and the race to colonize other worlds took shape.

      That put Earth’s problems in a new light. When you’re orbiting Aldebaran three checking for possibilities of Terra-forming, a flood in Bangladesh seems a long, long way away.

      Of course, even with the L-Space drive, interstellar space travel was in its infancy. It took twelve years to reach Earth’s nearest neighbor, Alpha Centauri. With the advances in drive technology, it took only took four years to reach Luhman 16. It took a mere six months to orbit the planets of Epsilon Eridani.

      Yeah, we humans are good that way; give us a problem, and we’ll work it out.

      But let’s get distances into perspective… Our galaxy is 200,000 light years in diameter. Flying at Light Speed (LS), to get to the nearest edge would still take us 87,000 years.

      Then Hector Faber (a MacCollie scientist, of course) discovered and developed the H-20 Drive; capable of faster than light speed by quite a bit. As usual, Earth politicians took two years to decide what to call it; the ‘H-2O Drive’, the Faber Drive, but the pilots were way ahead of them. The invention was Faber’s, the process was simply called FTL-VII (Faster Than Light, Version II). Yeah, it didn’t make a dent in those Galactic-Edge distances, but it sure sped up travel in the Fellowship Worlds. Thanks to MacCollie, planets were colonized tout suite!

      When MacCollie Scout Benjamin Steele discovered jump holes, it was the time to head into the unknown en mass. Basically rips in time and space which, like a star, seemed to exhibit long stable periods, they transported FTL material across huge distances in an instant.

      MacCollie jumped at the opportunity like only they could. In a year they manufactured 1000 Survey-Scouts, recruited 1000 pilots, and fired them to every corner of the Milky Way.

      Enter our hero… Seth Gingko.

      This is the second novella in the Star-Eater Chronicles and to be honest, you should read book 1 first…

      …just because.

      However, for those who won’t, or those who have forgotten, here’s setting the scene…

      Seth Gingko is a MacCollie Survey-Scout. Sent to map to the edge of the galaxy, he is promised his ship as payment for his contract. But on taking command, he finds two new alien races, one of whom is taking over the galaxy at an alarming rate. Armed with crucial intelligence and an alien hybrid ship, he races home to help earth win the fight. Then he remembers he’s going to arrive before his messages; to the MacCollie Corporation on Earth, he’s in breach of contract. Book 2 continues the story…

      "Doubt thou the stars are fire

      Doubt that the sun doth move…"

      Hamlet; William Shakespeare.

      Picture the scene.

      You’ve just found out that an alien race is invading your home galaxy, but you can’t report to Earth, because you’ll be put in jail.

      You’ve got the fastest ship in the galaxy, modified by friendly aliens, but you can’t show it off—or even enjoy it all that much—because the greedy MacCollie Corporation will steal your ship, rip it to bits to study the technology, and you’ll still end up in jail.

      Add to that, you’ve got the only star map of the nearest sixteen galaxies, but you can’t bring it to Earth because greedy MacCollie Corporation will steal your ship, stick you in jail, and smash your only friend to pieces.

      It’s called a dilemma, and since I was shooting through space at 1.6 million kilometers a second with an Earth interceptor by my side, I had a decision to make.

      Ship?

      How easy would it be to break formation, pull the tightest turn that wouldn’t kill me, and piss off into deep space?

      Yes, very much so.

      I gave it another moment’s thought. The idea of interrogation and prison didn’t sit well with me.

      Do it.

      I felt safety straps slip over my body, and the chair tilted back; that was a new one. Man, those alien plant-hybrid cyborgs had been aboard the ship for a couple of days, and we still hadn’t worked out all they’d done.

      Bam!

      Acceleration unlike anything I’d ever felt before. Stars slid from left to right on my screen, then started shooting past at an unbelievable rate. When the digits started showing us in excess of Light times 10, I called a halt. Well, I called a slight deceleration. We’d shot off like a cheetah, leaving the lowly house cat light years behind.

      How long before they get our last message needle?

      Yes! Tell me again!

      Yeah, that was the camel that broke the straw’s back. So we’ve got two and a half years to potter around before my contract’s actually over.

      "And you have the most advanced space map ever

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