Ascendant Saga Collection: Sci-Fi Fantasy Techno Thriller by Brandon Ellis (easy to read books for adults list txt) 📕

Shaughnessy bypassed the network’s security protocols, working his way around firewall after firewall. He’d been at this for hours, staying up late and alone in central ops, telling all the scientists before they left that he had more work to do and he’d close up when he was done.

He touched his necklace hanging over the holocomputer. A necklace Jaxx found at one of the pyramid sites years ago, gifting it to Shaughnessy before he left Starship Atlantis. It was the only thing that kept him company. The office was dark and empty, the way he was feeling right now.

He rubbed his leg, digging his fingers into his pants, wiping the sweat off his hands. If he was caught, especially by Slade, he was dead.

“I’m doing this for you Jaxx.”

In truth, he didn’t care about the bullshit politicians on this flying boat. What he cared about was Jaxx’s mission, a mission to save an entire civilization on Callisto from utter destruction.

He tapped a few more keys. He had just one more step—to initiate the plan. He steadied his shaking finger with his other hand and pressed the tip of his nail through the hologram.

He held his breath, the moment he’d been waiting for.

A beep and, NEW COORDINATES, popped up on his screen.

He was in. All he had to do was password protect it and then put in the coordinates.

He pulled up a new window and clicked on a box labeled, CHANGE PASSWORD.

He typed in SLADE ISAAC ROBERSON. If anyone found out the password, perhaps they’d go to Slade first and point their finger at him.

He went back to the coordinates, tapping in, Astronomical Units 19.826, Eliptical Latitude 0.63, Eliptical Longitude 308.55, HG_Lat 5.14, HG_Long 131.32, HGI_Long 232.64. Uranus.

He closed his eyes and thought of his colleagues debating the nutritional merits of the reconstituted layered protein that was used in the chili in the mess hall, and the beefy taste the kitchen was able to replicate.

He opened his eyes and gulped. It was done.

COORDINATES LOCKED. AUTOPILOT INITIATED. TO BYPASS AUTOPILOT, PLEASE ENTER THE SECURITY CODE.

He walked to the window, eyeing the incredible behemoth, Star Haven, off in the distance—Jupiter’s colorful aura coming into view. He opened his mouth in awe. Star Haven was indeed changing directions, slowly, but surely. They were heading to their new destination—Uranus—and exactly where they belonged; up the solar system’s ass.

This was going to cause a shit storm and Shaughnessy knew it.

He sat at his desk, glancing at his computer screen. He gasped and his eyes shot wide open. “Who the…? How?”

DETONATION INITIATED.

“What’s detonating?” He stood, his knees hitting the front of the desk, tilting it a bit off the ground. It clambered loudly when it came back down. He landed his fist on the desk. “What’s detonating? And why?”

He went into the Secret Space Program’s mainframe again, moving quickly from window to window.

A ship, a small destroyer—The Gladstone—floating in space next to Star Haven was highlighted and blinking red.

He clicked on the ship. Going into the ship’s network, patching through binary code, he found what he was looking for. The Gladstone was a war machine, but if the 2300-Megaton nuclear reactors and 4800-Megawatt ion tanks overheated, the ship would blow.

PATCH INITIATED. SELF DESTRUCT UNDERWAY, blinked across the screen. That ship was never intended to explode and self-destruct, but something was initiating it, something or someone had patched through a code that would work the reactors to death, causing it to cause an inferno throughout the entire ship.

10.

9.

8.

“No...what?” Shaughnessy bypassed the destroyer’s firewall.

5.

4.

He found the negative patch. It came from Starship Atlantis, central ops station 9. He looked at a placard on the right side of his desk. 9. His ops station was 9.

2.

1.

He raced over to the window, pressing his hands against the nebula-strength glass. He eyed the ship next to the newly re-routed Star Haven. It was the destroyer-class ship, The Gladstone. A flash of light consumed the ship, a red, blue fire erupted inside of it and sparked for a second, then extinguished.

Pieces of the destroyer spun wildly in space.

Shaughnessy dropped to his knees, his heart in his throat. “What did I do?” His heart skipped a beat, then two. His mind raced and vomit hurtled out of his mouth and onto the floor.

He’d been setup.

20

E-Quadrant, Earth - Lookout Mountain, Tennessee

He saw the cameras in the corners of the room the moment the Chinese soldiers burst through the oval office’s French doors. Drew put his hands up after just turning off the computer. He was a dumbass. Another rookie mistake. Of course there would be surveillance monitoring every pocket of this facility.

“Don’t shoot.” His eyes were like saucers, his mind moving in and out of his current predicament and the videos he had just seen.

General Yu pushed a guard aside. “You not obey.” His eyes were cold. “You die.”

All he could think of to say was, Thanks Mom for leading me here. But he refrained. It wasn’t his mom’s fault. It was his. His thoughts led him here, his subconscious obviously using his mind to mimic his mother’s voice. But why would he lead himself to die? How could he possibly know Anonymous was the passcode to Anderle’s root file?

And who was invading the world and why wasn’t anyone out there fighting them? All other questions were now background noise.

A guard grabbed Drew and spun him around, putting cuffs on him, the cold steel squeezing hard against Drew’s wrists.

“What’s going on?” said Anderle, walking in, Lord of the Rings robe on, yawning. “You woke me.” He stopped in his tracks when he saw cuffs on Drew. He bared his teeth at the general. “What are you doing? We didn’t talk about this.”

The guard pushed Drew forward. He dug in his heels. “Why didn’t you tell me? A global invasion is happening right now. We need to get these Chinese, all Chinese and our military and any other country that still has a standing army, and mobilize them to