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

But for a short, flitting moment, she no longer considered herself abnormal, her body healed to near prime condition, her skin smooth and pink. That normal disappeared around Jaxx, and back to abnormal she went. Because of this abrupt adrenaline sensation, the freakish energy spike, Jaxx had to be nearby.

She closed her eyes, trying to locate the prick. She saw an energy trail, leading from one room into another. She followed it with her mind—her pineal sixth sense—then hit a psychic wall and everything went white. Perhaps she wasn’t psychic enough to see that far—however far she was from him.

The walls bare, monitors lined against one wall. All black. Nothing displayed as if Slade or the scientists left her here to rot. But they didn’t. She’d be six feet under by now if they wanted her dead. Perhaps they kept her strapped to get to her later, and experiment. A window on another wall with chairs on the other side, computers, and more monitors streaming data she couldn’t make out, cemented her thought.

She located a door. A control panel similar to the ones in the SSP, Secret Space Program, was on the wall abreast the door.

“I’m out of here.” She hopped off the table.

She stepped toward the door, punched the green open button on the lower portion of the panel, and the door whooshed open. A corridor stood in front of her with a window in clear view, revealing a star-filled night. It didn’t take her but a second to know where she was. “Space. My home away from home.”

She took a step into the corridor, fists at the ready, glaring through the window. Mars, off in the distance gave off a brilliant yellow-tan halo, stars highlighted around it. She stopped. Could she trust her senses? They’d done so much to her when they held her in Underfoot Black. They could make her hallucinate a space ship approaching Mars before they’d even had their damned breakfast. They were manipulative assholes, every last one of them.

Footsteps came down the hall. “You ever heard of security cams and motion detectors? Get back in your room, Rivkah,” Captain Richard Fox, her old squad leader, grimaced. The man never spoke. He snarled, spat, barked, and glowered. He wasn’t capable of civil interaction. At least, not with her. He was made of spite and malice, at the cellular level. He raised his stun rifle, the two other soldiers behind him held their rifles toward the floor.

She turned, getting into a Mui Thai stance. The angles of her feet rotated and faced Fox. He walked toward her, his eyes cold.

Rivkah put her hands up in a fighting position, her right elbow and forearm close to her body to protect her solar plexus, liver, and ribs, her right fist close to her cheek bone; her left arm away from her centerline, also protecting the ribcage and solar plexus; her left fist at nose level.

She could feel Jaxx close by. And her odd powers fueled, sending more secret-sauce into her blood—whatever that secret-sauce was. She needed to get to him. Feed off him, tank up, drain his power source and take it into herself. She was a woman on a mission. But right now, she had to eliminate Fox to get to Jaxx. Heck, they both needed to be eliminated. The message was as clear as any idea she’d ever had in her thirty-two years alive. Fox was a speed bump on her road to Jaxx, and Rivkah Ravenwood had no time for speed bumps. She ate speed bumps for lunch.

“You looking for some action, Foxy?” She spat on the ground and Fox halted, his free hand in a fist. His men stopped.

Fox aimed, and slipped his finger through his trigger guard. He smiled.

Rivkah didn’t smile back.

3 Starship Atlantis - M-Quadrant, Solar System

The Lectern beeped. Fleet Admiral Lon 'Wolf' Varnadore of the Secret Space Program appeared on the hologram. His black hair slicked back, he eyed Colonel Slade Roberson and President Craig Martelle, a wolf sizing up his next prey. He beamed a fake smile Slade saw through. “Mr. President. It’s nice to meet you. Colonel, nice to see you again.”

Martelle adjusted his tie and nodded by way of greeting.

“The mission has changed, gentlemen,” said Lon.

Slade cocked his head to the side, his back straightening. “What do you mean?”

The hologram shifted from Lon’s face to a massive ship orbiting Callisto. Jupiter, its luminous reds, tans, and turquoises, hung ominously in the background, its immense bulk dwarfing everything nearby, including Star Carrier Star Warden.

Lon’s voice boomed, “This footage reached us only minutes ago.”

The camera zoomed in on the ship, passing through the ship’s exterior armor, swiftly moving past the hanger deck and into the engine room. It zipped through the entire floor, recording crew members in their bunks, the mess hall, and at their duties, then looped through a lobby and into the launch bay. There it stopped for a nano-second, perhaps a glitch in the network, then moved to the officer briefing room and up into the bridge.

Slade adjusted in his chair. “Why are you showing us this?”

“As you know, gentlemen, that’s Star Warden, one of three Star Carriers in the Secret Space Program fleet. It’s impenetrable. Or, so we thought.”

Slade leaned in to get a better look at Admiral Gentry Race now on the screen, someone he knew very well, but wasn’t too fond of. “Why are you showing us this, Fleet Admiral?”

“Let the holovid explain.”

Star Warden’s bridge shuddered and Gentry fell to the floor. The camera view shifted to the ship’s exterior, panning from Star Warden to Callisto, then racking focus on the turrets moon-side as they blasted electric-blue fire orbs at Star Warden, hitting it with ease. Star Warden returned fire. Plumes of rock, destroyed turrets, and dust filled Callisto’s atmosphere.

Slade sat forward in his chair and glowered.

More turrets popped up from Callisto’s surface as if the moon had an unlimited