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

the sun’s rays highlighting the ship through the newly created hole in the forest canopy.

There was the standard pffftcha of a ramp unlocking from the airtight craft, then steam curling around the opening. A large man in an armor suit stepped through, his boots clanking on the ramp at each step.

“I’m Special Agent Nick Cole. Do you need my assistance?” His voice was loud and digitized through the helmet's external speakers.

Jaxx shook his head. He had Rivkah in his arms, holding her like a husband carrying his bride.

A crack came from behind the craft. It could have been a shot, but it could have been the octo-hippo searching for lunch. Cole took no chances. In one leap, he was on top of his craft. He balanced like a tightrope walker on a tension wire and reached for his rifle, the IPR-9, magnetized to the back of his titanium suit.

He aimed and riddled the forest with plasma fire, each shot followed by a tracer. Trees snapped in half and brush caught fire until he created a circular inferno around his ship. The perfect, unassailable perimeter. No one could get in or out.

Jaxx stepped onto to the ramp, desperate to get Rivkah on-board, where she could get the medical attention she needed. The craft looked wider on the inside than the outside. A hospital bed in one corner. A pilot and a doctor rushed to him, helping him rest Rivkah on the bed.

“She’s lost a lot of blood,” Jaxx said.

The doctor waived a medical wand over her. It lit up. Diagnosis and instructions shot out from its holographic display.

The doctor knelt next to her and felt her pulse. “The Med Stave suggests a foreign material is keeping her alive. I don’t understand the material type, other than it’s a mixture of a highly heated golden ash and concentrated spring water, abundant in mineral content. Some minerals I’ve never heard of. Sagitium? It also says she has less than an hour to live.”

Cole ran into the craft, the door hissing shut behind him.

“She’s lost 1781 milliliters of blood. We have to cauterize the wound and get more blood into her, STAT.”

Cole sat next to the pilot. “Not before we exit the exosphere. Strap in.”

“We don’t have time,” Jaxx yelled. “Help her now.”

They placed restraints around Rivkah’s wrists and ankles.

The pilot hurried to his chair, pressing buttons on the control panel. “We’ll be up in a few seconds. We can help her then.”

Rivkah moaned. “I’m...thirsty. Water.”

Jaxx stroked her forehead. “Soon. Very soon.”

“Get in your seat, Lieutenant. We’re getting this ship off the ground.” Cole thumbed at a seat behind him.

“I’ll be right back, Rivkah.” Jaxx raced to his chair and plopped down, buckling in.

The pilot pushed his visor down. “Heading to the stars, fellas.”

Out of the view screen, Jaxx saw the trees rush by in less than a second. His body sunk down with the ascension and they soon past the clouds, shook hot through the atmosphere and jetted through the exosphere into space.

And out in space, debris was everywhere. Starfighter debris.

Jaxx didn’t know if the terrible mess was mostly from the squadrons he splintered off from or if the thousands of bulky and singed pieces were from Taiyonian starfighters. From the expert way the Taiyonian’s flew, he guessed most of the debris belonged to his squad-mates.

Right now, though, space was at rest. Vacant. No fighting, at least not in this ship’s proximity.

“We have a problem,” said the doctor, rummaging through a silver supply box. “No blood. The med team didn’t replenish after our last search and rescue. It’s been mad up here.” He moved things around in the box, still searching. Unsuccessful, he threw his hands up.

“We have Jaxx,” Cole mentioned. “I’m signing him up.”

Jaxx unstrapped and stood. “I’ll volunteer. You need my blood?”

The doctor beckoned him over. “Yes.”

43

June 9thCharlotte, North Carolina

Drew had on a hoodie and a Parka, with a full, face-covering faux-fur hood. He didn’t pull the hood up because that would draw attention. Instead, he buried his face as deep as he could and hoped that the bulk of the hoodie made him look tubby.

His mother was right. Her compound crawled with Secret Service types. Did those guys not know how to blend in? Not just the suits and the shiny shoes, but the squiggly ear-pieces.

Drew and Laura didn’t go through their usual “who are you? do you know my son?” routine. Instead, Drew introduced himself to the nice people at the front desk as a her third-cousin, twice removed, come to tell her that she’d come into some money. Money always threw people off the scent. It had the advantage of being both exciting and private. No one would interrupt them.

They made their way to the far side of the garden and admired the flowers, making mindless chit chat. Drew was careful not to say anything that his “muddled” mother might not understand and she, who perhaps had done this act for some time, didn’t let on she knew who she was or what she’d told him over the phone.

Until they sat down.

“You sent me your phone?” Laura was more Laura than she’d been for nearly fifteen years.

Drew had trouble keeping it together. “I did.”

“Good lad. I taught you well. The pictures you took were outstanding, but it was what wasn’t in the pictures that interested me.”

Drew gawped. There was nothing else he could do.

“I can’t tell you what I did or when, because I’ve signed the Official Secrets Act, but I have skills.” She smiled.

Drew’s heart broke a million times over. His mother had been inside the shuffling, confused woman, all these years.

“I tracked this GSA organization and hacked their files.”

Drew’s eyebrows took it to new heights, his mouth to all-time lows.

“Close your mouth, there’s a train coming.”

He laughed. It was something she used to say when he was a kid.

“They aren’t the sharpest knives in the drawer, these men you are investigating. In fact, I’d go so far as to say, they’re idiots.”

Drew nodded. Couldn’t