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

“You’ll destroy a resource bed that we could use for eons. And, we don’t know if they’re truly hostile. It could be an automated response. Perhaps we’ve entered a ‘no fly’ zone and the machines are programmed to repel all ships they don’t recognize…”

“They shot first. That’s hostile enough. Their technology is more advanced than ours, Bogle.”

A weapons officer chimed in. “Nuclear warhead ready. Keys locked in. All we need is yours, Admiral.”

Gentry paced to an officer’s station. He typed in a code on the station’s control panel and a small drawer slid outward with a long, thick shining key tucked inside. He grabbed the 'fire control' key and slid it into a keyhole designated 'admiral'. He glanced at two officers standing side by side, their own 'fire control' keys inserted into their designated nuclear launch keyholes. “Fire everything we have as a distraction.”

The bridge heated up and vibrated as missiles and plasma cannons lit space, and zipped through the Callisto’s atmosphere.

The Admiral eyed the officers. “Commencing launch in three, two, one...now.”

They turned their keys simultaneously.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Bogle’s shoulders slump. She needed to grow a set. This was war. The sooner she learned that, the better off she’d be.

The view screen dimmed, to save the crews eyes from the coming nuclear explosion.

The warhead wasn’t large, but it was powerful. In ten seconds, a mushroom cloud would erupt on Callisto.

The turrets on the moon locked onto the warhead the second it left Star Warden. In a flash, the turrets fired in unison, filling the view screen with a blinding white light. The screen then filled with orange and red flames that quickly evaporated in the vacuum of space.

The warhead was hit close to Star Warden. Too close.

Gentry watched in horror as the bridge cracked in half. The view screen split down the middle and all the air got sucked into space, along with everything and everyone.

Bogle reached for Gentry as she spun toward Callisto, and as he catapulted in the opposite direction. Her mouth agape, his probably mimicking hers.

Star Warden buckled in on itself, explosions blasting holes in its sides, extinguishing seconds after.

People spilled out of the decimated ship, spinning in space’s cold, oxygen-deprived death grip.

Gentry’s vision narrowed, blackness crowding in, until he lost sight entirely. His body stiffened as the oxygen drained from his blood.

His heart stopped.

His brain shut down.

Darkness filled him, followed by a flash of light. He was a man among the stars, just as he’d always wanted.

1 Starship Atlantis - M-Quadrant, Solar System (Near Mars)

“Aw, shit, did you feel that?” Jaxx pressed his knuckle into his solar plexus. “I’m telling you, Slade, there are forces out here that we know nothing about. Waves, particles, energy frequencies…I’m feeling them right here, in my core.”

“Quit gawping at the stars. They’ll be here when you get back.” Colonel Slade Roberson nudged Kaden Jaxx’s chair with his boot.

Jaxx didn’t budge. The stars were so close he could almost grab them by their tails and swing them about his head. He wanted to lie in his chair, staring, forever. The signals he picked up were out of sight. He was a human tuning fork, newly tuned to a cosmic frequency. The songs of his childhood wouldn’t leave him alone. He was Major Tom, on a rocket ship, spinning in space. It was wild.

“It’s time to come out of your hole, Jaxx.” Slade wasn’t screwing around. Jaxx wondered if the guy ever did.

Slade had recruited him, back on Earth, to interpret the glyphs found on Callisto’s pyramids and—apart from the forced hypnotherapy, the time in the sensory-deprivation tank, being shot at by Slade’s henchman Captain Asshole Fox, the returning memories of his time off-world, and the realization that his life in no way resembled the life he thought he’d built—the job Slade had given him was a dream-come-true.

In his heart, he wanted to run down the sleek, elegant corridors of Starship Atlantis and into the ops center and take up where he left off, but Slade had been such an unrelenting jerk, he didn’t want to give him the satisfaction. Slade’s organization, the Global Safety Administration, had treated him like a lab rat. And when not a rat, they used him to decode hieroglyphs on pyramids on a Jupiter moon, Callisto. Apparently, he’d done well and now he’d come along for the ride to said moon.

But, like Jaxx, no one understood Jaxx’s telekinetic abilities other than he had a bigger than normal pineal gland. One that was activated more so than science observed on any human to date. His pineal’s activity margin compared to the rest of humanity was like an Olympic sprinter in a race against a middle school child, Jaxx the Olympian.

He looked from Slade to the far-off stars outside his window. “No thank you. I’ll give it a pass.”

Slade returned in kind, dropping his eyelids like a puppy dog. “I understand.” He took a step forward, then kicked Jaxx’s chair. “Get your sad, piece of shit self up and out of that chair, Jaxx,” Slade’s voice boomed. Jaxx didn’t know if it was because of thirty plus years of yelling practice in the military or if this room had a remarkable sound quality to it.

Jaxx sat up alert, his heart on overdrive. He didn’t take his eyes from the window.

Slade grabbed Jaxx’s arms, pulling him into a standing position. “Do you want me to kick your ass again?”

Jaxx huffed, his hand coming to his ID badge clipped to his shirt. “Aye, Colonel.”

Slade curled his hand into a fist, then relaxed. He let out an exasperated breath. “Look, we have someone on board who needs your help.”

Jaxx felt it again, a deep chord struck right in the center of his chest.

Captain Rivkah Ravenwood—the woman he’d betrayed; the woman he’d saved; the woman who hated him with a white-hot-hate—was on the ship. He closed his eyes and let wave after wave of energy pass through him. He gave