Saga of Eve (eBook)

Books 1-3

D. R. McIntire (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2025 | 1. Auflage
720 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
979-8-3178-1069-6 (ISBN)

Infos

A mysterious young woman appears during a freak storm with nothing but her name. ...Eve. Her unique looks set her apart from everyone else, as do her occasional glowing eyes. Those eyes end up being an asset when an alien attack threatens her new-found world, but at what cost. Eve proves to be a brilliant tactician, but is it enough? Mysterious indeed, but who is she?

Dan began forming the worlds that make up his universe when he was in the fourth grade. His imagination knew no bounds. He loved playing roleplaying games, especially the sci-fi favorite Traveller. He enjoys traveling and seeing new places and is a firm believer that not all who wander are lost.

Textauszug

Prologue

Makenna Island

 

Pausing on a bluff overlooking the lagoon where the damaged airship rested, Jon Maersk waited for his companion to catch up. Ignoring occasional curses amidst the sounds of snapping branches down the slope below, he gazed with tempered pride at the giant craft floating near the crescent shaped beach. Half a kilometer long from its rounded nose to its tapered tail with an oval cross section containing cargo holds, crew quarters and passenger cabins, the airship lay on the calm, shallow water like a huge, silvery fish. Unlike others of its kind that carried people and cargo over the dangerous depths of Vandon’s encompassing oceans, this one had survived a freak storm that had struck with sudden ferocity. No other conventionally built airship would have.

Letting his eyes rove down the length of its experimental woven-alloy hull, Jon’s sight stumbled on a black scorch mark pointing to a tangle of twisted beams just to the rear of the long, broken windows of the bridge. The remains of the number one engine pod. Two crewmen had disappeared in the explosive flare of lightning that had disintegrated the pod. Vividly recalling the slashing fragments of the bridge windows flying past him in the instant an orange-white line of energy had touched the doomed pod, he winced at the memory of tearing metal as the multi-bladed propeller had spun into the airship’s side. Fortunately, unlike the lost pod mechanics, none of the remaining crew had been in the way as the blades slashed through the ship. However, Jon grunted looking toward the tapered tail, that hadn’t been the worst of the damage.

 

Where elegantly swept fins had provided stability and direction, only the lower rudder and unseen elevator on the opposite side of the ship remained. Of the dorsal fin and rudder, only a fragment rose from the spine of the ship while nothing but a jagged laceration was left of the near elevator. During the havoc of racing clouds, rain turning into hail, lightning, and wind gusts strong enough to throw the massive airship on its ends like some child’s toy, something had hit it with enough force to rip the large fins away and slam everyone to the shuddering decks. That something, a glittering globe of crystal or ice glimpsed through fractured windows and driving hail, was why he impatiently waited on the bluff of a small island for his muttering assistant.

Hearing the girl huffing up the slope, Jon sighed. He understood that most of the ship’s crew would be needed to repair the damage from the storm they’d encountered. He’d even told Captain Bennit that he would search alone for whatever had hit and wrecked the steering vanes so as not to take anyone off of needed work, but his friend had refused, declaring that no one left the ship without a partner and a radio. He agreed with the radio, that made sense in the case of an emergency, and he would’ve had no problem with one of the crewmen, but they were all busy with the repairs. Only the ship’s medic could be spared, since the worst injury had been a crewman whose wrist Jon had broken while saving the man from falling to his death during the storm.

After arguing with Bennit, the captain had finally ordered him to take the medic or stay on the ship. Even though he owned the airship and Bennit actually worked for him, Jon knew that the captain of any airship was the law onboard. Seeing the young woman trudge into view, he turned and continued walking. Now he was stuck with an inexperienced girl that could barely carry her survival pack, let alone keep up with him. Of course, he thought while casually shoving branches and vines out of his path, few could.

Tall and powerfully built, the Lord of Vandon waded through the thick vegetation without slowing. Along with a rugged face and gray-tinged, short, black hair, Jon knew he tended to intimidate most others, though he rarely had the need. On a planet where the overwhelming majority of the population tended to be dark-skinned, dark-haired islanders, the high cheekbones, wide nose, and eyelid folds of his Chentaran heritage distinguished him from the rest.

The most striking difference, he snorted while drawing his long blade to cut a path through the thick growth, were his eyes. Like the rest of his distant brothers and sisters, Jon peered through the island jungle with amber-gold eyes. Though they’d served him well enough through the years, more recently he wished for the fabled sight of those ancestors. Especially now, he grimaced scanning the endless vegetation, when light and dark seemed to trick his vision. Goaded forward by muttered curses from the approaching medic, Jon sighed and continued toward the opposite side of the island.

“Maersk,” the captain’s voice rasped from the hand radio on Jon’s belt, “found anything yet?”

“Nothing,” he grumbled into the radio. Imagining Bennit’s smirk as he ducked through a patch of trees, Jon slapped a vine out of his way. “Just a girl that keeps following me around.”

“She’s there for a reason.”

Hearing the ill-concealed amusement in his friend’s rough voice, Jon shook his head. Muttering to himself about ways to get even with the old captain, he kept walking while raising the radio again. “What reason would that be, Bennit?”

“To keep you from injuring yourself,” his friend matter-of-factly replied, “and to see things you’ll probably miss in your single-mindedness.”

“I’m not single-minded, Bennit,” Jon snorted as he kept walking through the brush, “and she’s not likely to keep anyone from injury, including herself.”

“Fine,” the captain retorted, “call if you find it, or anything else weird for that matter.”

“Sure.” Clipping the radio to his belt, Jon paused at the absence of the constant muttering from the medic. Looking around in disgust, he didn’t see the woman anywhere. Grumbling in irritation, he started back down the trail he’d made. They’d never be able to properly search the small island if she kept stopping for rest. Retracing his steps, he found where the medic had left the path he’d made for her and followed her tracks up a low hill. Fuming at the wasted time as he neared the top of the hill, Jon frowned at the setting sun. Cresting the hill, he saw the medic standing on the opposite side, gazing out across the island.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Jon growled as the medic turned to glance back at him. “We don’t have time to sightsee.”

Walking up to her, he noticed the woman looking at the beams of sunlight streaming through the scattered clouds. Dusky skin and noticeable curves through the ship’s loose jumpsuit, Jon thought irreverently, still couldn’t hide the girl’s subtlety masculine face and thin lips. Long, black hair roughly tied back, exposing brown eyes, completed her uninspiring appearance. Add her obvious lack of physical endurance, Jon irritably thought, and it was no wonder she hadn’t stood out during the abbreviated cruise. Pausing behind her, he watched as she stepped around the top of the hill a few meters, looked out at the distant coastline, and reached into a pocket.

“That thing you and the captain saw in the storm,” the medic murmured without turning away from the horizon, “looked like crystal, right?”

“Yes,” Jon said curtly, “and we won’t find it unless we keep searching for it.”

“I’ve already found it,” the medic said casually, pointing across the island, “If it’s really like crystal.” Pulling a small case out of her pocket, she gestured for Jon to stand next to her. Irritated, but intrigued by her claim, he walked up to her. Turning to look in the direction she indicated, he narrowed his eyes. Seeing a reflection off of something in the distance, he grunted as he reached into his pack. Pulling a pair of field glasses out, he raised them to his eyes and trained them on the glare.

“Looks like a bunch of broken glass,” the medic said as Jon trained his field glasses on the distant shimmer, “and they’re spread all over that beach.”

Finally bringing the glimmer into sharper focus, he grunted. “How did you see that,” Jon asked as he lowered the glasses and checked the built-in compass. “I can barely bring whatever it is into view with these.” Turning at her chuckle of amusement, he noticed her eyes had changed from an uninspiring brown to featureless black.

“I have excellent eyesight,” she smugly replied, “and I protect my sight with these.” Gesturing to her shadowed eyes, the medic smiled at Jon’s look of comprehension. Emberrin eye-shields, he nodded recognizing the protective contacts used by the black-skinned humanoids against their ruddy star. The eye-shields not only protected human sight from harmful light but could also be made to enhance vision as well. Looking back toward the far-off sparkle, the medic started carefully down the hill. “Coming, Sir?”

“Humph,” Jon snorted as he put the field glasses away. “Since your sight is so good, lead on.”

Gesturing for the woman to continue, Jon walked slowly after her. Following the medic down the slope, he noticed she paused occasionally to scan the ground ahead before winding her way forward again. Twice as they made their way across the island, Jon watched as she stopped, then turned away from their course. Each time he’d followed her winding path, he’d missed a potentially dangerous obstacle she’d seen and avoided. They were going slower than he’d have liked, but faster than expected. Bennit probably knew this woman had superior sight when he’d insisted she come along, Jon thought wryly....

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 14.7.2025
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Fantasy / Science Fiction ► Science Fiction
• ISBN-13: 979-8-3178-1069-6 / 9798317810696