This week’s snip is from Epsilon: Broken Stars–a bit of prose in which Aaron Taylor thinks of his beloved mother, Madeline, dead for several years by the time the story begins.
In a universe where the fate of free worlds hangs in the balance, can one man make a difference?
The Resistance is a thin line of defense for the free planets of the Borderworlds. The strip of former colonies forms a shrinking boundary between the Earth-controlled Drilin Imperium and the Epsilon Alliance, superpowers locked in a cold war a hundred years old. It’s a no-man’s land home to billions living under the constant threat of Imperium invasion, a place where the Alliance dares not intercede for fear of sparking all-out war.
Aaron Taylor knows what’s at stake when he volunteers to join the Resistance. The son of an Imperium general, the Alliance-trained military spy’s existence can be officially disavowed at a moment’s notice. It’s work that’s already cost him everything he holds dear–including his beloved partner of seven years.
He joins the Resistance as a man with nothing left to lose at a time when the Resistance needs men like him the most. It’s far from the disorganized rabble both the Alliance and the Imperium think it is, but without more able hands, the Borderworlds are doomed. Soon, he begins to believe as they do–that there’s no hope for humanity without the men and women willing to fight and die for their homes on the border.
Torn between duty to both, when the chips are down, which will Taylor choose: the Alliance that made him, or the Resistance that made him its own?
Snippet below the break.