About Pandora Project: Runaway Star
Written by Anah Crow and Dianne Fox
202 pages / 90000 words
ISBN: 978-1-60370-610-0, 1-60370-610-0
Available file types - html, lit, pdf, prc
Elios Campbell is working on a top-secret project: translating messages
from the Pandora, an alien spaceship on the edge of human territory. A
favor from his mentor drops Elios into the arms of Sender Kinnison, a
pilot who seems like everything Elios has ever wanted.
Their attraction is immediate and threatens to lead to more in a hurry.
Even Elios' wary heart and Sender's burdened soul can't keep them apart,
until a single tragic moment changes their lives forever. Elios is
helpless, as Sender, driven by ghosts and duty, goes racing out of
reach. Fate brings them together one last time, but can Elios take
another chance on his runaway star?
Review
Sara Bell, author of The Devil's Fire, writes: In the distant future, a
galactic threat is emerging, one that fighter-jet test pilot Sender Kinnison and his team are desperate to stop. Joining that fight is a
crack team of scientists, including linguist Dr. Elios Campbell, one of
the top minds working on decoding messages sent by the alien invaders.
Unfortunately, the alien menace isn't all Sender and Elios are fighting.
In addition to working against their intense attraction for each other,
Sender is battling centuries of prejudice mandated by his people's
cult-like religion, and Elios is fighting a loss in his past so
devastating it threatens his ability to have a future with Sender or
anyone else.
Good sci-fi romance is hard to find. Focus too much on the technology
and you have a space opera with a couple of sex scenes thrown in. On the
other hand, focus too much on the romance and the sci-fi aspect becomes
watered down and tasteless. In Pandora Project: Runaway Star, Anah Crow
and Dianne Fox have struck that rare balance. In Elios and Sender they
give us a couple to fall in love with and root for, at the same time
building a world the reader can identify with and become immersed in.
This is both a tender romance and hard-core sci-fi at its best. I can
only hope this isn't the last we'll see of this world, or of the
explosive collaboration between the dynamite team of Crow and Fox.
Sample
Prologue
Life was perfect, or as close as it could come while death remained unsolved. People spoke often about whether or not Elysium had been attained in the land of the living. The old wounds that had scarred the Earth were healing, there was little hunger, and there was room enough for all. Slowly, the Earth was being returned to a garden state, and five great colonies hung in space around her like attendants to a queen. There were no armies, no wars, and little strife. It seemed that the human race had outgrown its terrible past; alone in all the universe, it had finally come to peace with itself.
And then, one day, the noises came. They would've gone unheard save for a mining station listening at the verge of what humanity considered to be its territory. At first, they went unattended, but then they came with greater frequency until they could no longer be explained as random phenomena seeping out of the great unknown. They had a cadence to them that spoke of urgency and a pattern to them that could only be language.
Quietly, in the recesses of government research centers, satellites were built and cast out into space, weaving a net to catch as many of the strange noises as possible. And in the basement of a small building on the colony of Tethys, everything heard was gathered to be deciphered.
The team dedicated to the project was small, one professor of linguistics, two graduate students, and one intern. For five years they worked in secret, and one day, they understood what was being said.
Something was coming. Something large, something dangerous. Something like a multitude. And they were coming, too.
Two weeks later, a probe chasing whispers through deep space encountered something that had not been there before. It came from nowhere and hung floating in the void, whispering the message that they had been hearing all along. They called it Pandora, because they had no idea what might be inside her.
In the face of opposition from those who thought the human race would be better served by staying home and minding its own business, a small handful of scientists, soldiers, and adventurers scraped together the funds and the approval of the Senate.
They dusted off an old colony ship from the days when the human race thought it might like to reach further out into the stars, found long-abandoned plans for starfighters and weapons, and began making their preparations to go meet Pandora and find out what she had brought the human race. And, perhaps more importantly, to find out what might be coming behind her, of which she had tried so desperately to warn them.