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    Required to Assist
    Required to Assist
    Required to Assist
    Ebook52 pages38 minutes

    Required to Assist

    By Kate Macleod

    ()

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    About this ebook

    With life on overpopulated Earth no longer tenable, Lorna Wincott grasps at the chance at a fresh start colonizing a new world. The price exceeds her modest means, unless she volunteers to serve as the ship's emergency assistant.

    But the ship only wakes the assistant when a problem arises that stumps the ship's AI and android crew. All of her training focused on matters well within the ship's capabilities. What could possibly require waking her?

    Just one thing: murder. And the murderer left no clues. Lorna's training fell short of covering the solving of locked room mysteries. But the longer she takes to solve it, the more people will die.

    "Required to Assist", a science fiction murder mystery novelette set in an isolated generation ship lightyears from any safe harbor.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRatatoskr Press
    Release dateJul 10, 2018
    ISBN9781946552785
    Required to Assist
    Author

    Kate Macleod

    Dr. Kate MacLeod is an innovative inclusive educator, researcher, and author. She began her career as a high school special education teacher in New York City and now works as faculty in the college of education at the University of Maine Farmington and as an education consultant with Inclusive Schooling. She has spent 15 years studying inclusive practices and supporting school leaders and educators to feel prepared and inspired to include all learners.

    Read more from Kate Macleod

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      Book preview

      Required to Assist - Kate Macleod

      Required to Assist

      REQUIRED TO ASSIST

      KATE MACLEOD

      Ratatoskr Press

      CONTENTS

      Free eBook!

      Required to Assist

      Sci-Fi Serial Podcast!

      Complete Series: The Travels of Scout Shannon

      New Series: The Ritchie and Fitz Sci-Fi Murder Mysteries

      Also from Kate MacLeod

      Also from Ratatoskr Press

      Free eBook!

      About the Author

      Also by Kate MacLeod

      FREE EBOOK!

      Like exclusive, free content?

      To get two prequel short stories to THE RITCHIE AND FITZ SCI-FI MURDER MYSTERIES as well as a bonus prequel novelette to the completed six-book series THE TRAVELS OF SCOUT SHANNON, signup for my monthly newsletter here.

      Thank you!

      REQUIRED TO ASSIST

      Shifting from a lack of awareness of anything to a vague feeling of warmth and comfort is not really waking up. And I guess I was half-sensing someone calling my name, but that warmth was so, well, comforting, I just wanted to sink back down in it.

      And then my sinuses filled with the assault of ammonia and I was up, not just awake but sitting up, pushing the offending source away from my face as I struggled to scramble back from it. That was harder to do than it ought to be, my muscles still lax from the long hibernation, my joints not as young as they used to be. So I just flailed.

      Miss Lorna, please be calm.

      The voice had an odd tone to it, a deep yet vaguely female voice, but too deliberately soothing. I had opened my eyes when the ammonia fumes had hit me, but it was still too bright to see, and I was blinking madly, trying to decide between the pain of eyes open and the confusing lack of information of eyes closed.

      I was still flailing. Someone was near me, someone was assaulting me with horrible smells, and yet I didn't know where they were.

      Please be calm, Miss Lorna, the voice said with more urgency. I do apologize for startling you. Often if I remain motionless for too long humans forget that I am there. I have startled many people, I am sorry.

      Get rid of the smell! I all but shrieked.

      It is already gone. Just take a few deep breaths, Miss Lorna.

      Don't call me that, I said, but I stopped flailing. I threw my legs over the side of the metal table I was sitting on – not cold, there must be a heater beneath it keeping it at just the right soothing temperature – and let my head fall forward then slowly opened my eyes. No longer staring straight into the lights, they finally had a chance to adjust. A field of white came into focus, then I saw the speckles of shiny gray embedded in the white and realized I was looking at the usual flooring of a medical bay.

      Would you prefer Miss Wincott?

      Lorna is fine, I said. Just Lorna. No miss. I raised my head to see narrow feet in shiny white boots. My gaze traveled up past the knees where the boots didn't end, then past the hips that still seemed to

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