Please welcome award winning author Stephanie Osborn to
the blog today. Billing herself as the “the Interstellar Woman of Mystery” she
has been a real life rocket scientist and is the author, co-author, or
contributor to more than thirty books including a number of science fiction
mysteries. Today she shares an excerpt from her new book, Division One, available in both print and eBook. Dr. Megan
McAllister, aka Omega, and her experienced partner, Echo, handle everything
from lost alien children to extraterrestrial assassination attempts and more.
Division One Excerpt
“I don’t get it,” said Romeo from his seat in the training
observation room. “Y’all didn’t put ME through all this testing crap.
Creativity testing and obstacle courses and puzzles an’ junk. I know we’re
shorthanded an’ all, but...what gives? It’d be way simpler an’ quicker to just
put her through the old testing.”
“We’re getting ready to start up a new department,” answered
Fox, across the small conference table from Romeo; next to the younger agent
sat his new partner, India. “Echo’s already agreed to head it up, while you
were laid up with the leg. Good to see you off the crutches, by the way.”
“Damn good to be off ‘em. Still hobblin’ around a little,
but that’ll go away eventually; ‘s why I’m keepin’ a cane handy for a while. So
tell me about this new department. If you can, yet.”
“I can. It’ll be a kind of combination SWAT team and
commando unit. Teams from this department will take the point whenever we have
the really dangerous situations—the interstellar terrorists, the galactic
invasions, things like that. We think, with her background, she may have what
it takes to make it in this department. We sure as hell can’t send her back
where she came from. She seems intrigued by the idea, at least. And no family
complications to worry about. Single, only child, birth family gone in a car
accident.”
“But, Fox, what if she can’t hang?”
“I don’t know yet, Romeo. We’ll cross that bridge—”
“We won’t have to,” interrupted Echo, coming into the
testing observation room and moving past the table around which the others were
seated, directly to the observing window. “She’ll make it.”
“But how do you know?” asked Romeo. “‘Got a feeling’?”
“Yup. Same one I had about you, junior.”
“WELL, the lady’ll hang, then.” Romeo sat back in his chair,
satisfied.
“Damn,” muttered India.
Echo shot her a hard look, then returned his attention to
the observation window overlooking the course.
“Have we started yet?”
“No,” Fox answered. “We’re still getting set up. And we were
waiting for you.”
“I’m here. Let’s get rolling.”
“Done.” Fox hit a button on an adjacent control console.
Romeo, Echo, and India watched as the observation window, as
well as a hooded monitor on the command console, showed several aliens of
various types entering the obstacle course. Romeo gasped as he recognized a
Betelgeusian giant arachnoid, possessing, by his estimate, a good fourteen-or
fifteen-foot leg span—accompanied by several Division One agents sporting
flamethrowers, lasers, blasters, and disintegrator rifles, entering the course.
Two heavily-armed guards in black armor moved into position at the entrance.
Romeo and India noticed then, with a shock, that they were FACING the course,
as if the concern was from something inside.
“Hope she’s not afraid of spiders,” Echo remarked
offhandedly.
“Hope she’s not afraid of death,” Romeo murmured to India.
“Shit.”
* * *
Megan came into the observation room just then. She was
wearing black workout leggings and sports-bra top, but the rest of her attire
was somewhat odd: menswear-style black lace-up dress shoes, a black tie, a
dress leather belt, and a pair of the special goggles-cum-sunglasses strapped
to one hip. An unusual device, like a large plastic bangle bracelet, was fastened
around her right ankle. Sensors attached to her head and torso connected to a
small transmitter pack on her back. Echo met her and led her to the command
console.
“All right, Megan,” Fox began, waving a hand at the view in
the monitor, which now only depicted a door and two guards, “this is the
obstacle course. When you go through that door,” he pointed to the image of the
guarded door on the monitor, “you will enter the first of a series of six
rooms, each of which has various...impediments...to your progress. Your
objective is simply to reach the exit of room six as quickly as possible. The
tracking device on your ankle will enable us to monitor your progress. You may
make use of anything on your person, as well as anything you find along the
course. In addition, you may select from one—and only one—of the items on this
side table.”
Megan eyed the monitor display in detail before Fox led her
over to the table. On it was an eclectic collection of items: a Phillips-head
screwdriver, a small glass bottle, a pair of wire cutters, a coil of rope, a
pen knife, a jar of cheese spread, a pocket-sized Winchester & Tesla Mark
II death ray, a packet of facial tissues, and a chocolate bar.
Megan was in no rush. She scanned the table carefully,
considering, as the four Division One agents watched. She looked herself up and
down, fingering the items she already carried. Echo watched as she flipped over
the tie and checked to see what was on the label. He smiled inwardly, pleased
as he followed her mental processes, realizing he understood how she thought.
Finally she reached out, picked up the pen knife, and clipped it to the belt at
her waist.
Echo raised an eyebrow in carefully-hidden surprise and
looked at Fox, who returned his gaze unemotionally. Romeo and India watched the
whole scene in amazement.
“Ready, then?” Fox asked Megan.
“As I’ll ever be.”
“All right. Follow me.”
As Fox led Megan out, Echo turned to the console, put on a
headset, and began entering commands. Romeo and India walked up to the
observation window, and Echo hit a button. Blast shutters on the window began
to close.
“Sorry, kids. Can’t watch this one; you’ll have to go
through this yourselves soon enough.”
“Oh, joy,” India muttered.
“You can monitor her progress on this schematic.” Echo hit
another sequence of commands, and a panel opened on the wall. It showed the
layout of six variously-shaped, interconnected rooms, a number on each room.
“How are you gonna evaluate her if you can’t see what she’s
doing?” Romeo asked him, as he and India sat back down at the table, across
from the schematic.
“I didn’t say Fox and I couldn’t watch. I’ve been through
it. You haven’t. Yet.”
Fox re-entered the room. “She’s ready, Echo.”
“All right, then.” Echo handed Fox another headset, then
keyed the microphone switch. “Megan? GO!”
* * *
The door opened, but Megan was
in no hurry to charge through it. Any obstacle course that had a funky-looking
little weapon like that strange pocket-sized ray gun as one of the equipment
options was not one into which she intended to go running headlong. Let alone
the armed guards stationed around it. So she eased around the left side of the
doorframe, surveying the room from the threshold.
How odd, she thought, as she scanned the room; it looks like an ordinary study: hardwood floors, bookcases lining the
walls, cozy fireplace on the far side, with a wing chair and decorative wrought
iron side table next to it.
A heavy walnut desk with
granite top stood in the center; a lamp and crystal decanter sat on one corner.
Waterford crystal, it looks like. An
EXPENSIVE study, then.
The door into the next room was
in the far wall, to the right of the fireplace.
She stepped forward into the
room.
* * *
Romeo and India watched the
display as the first block lit up with a big red ‘1.’ Echo and Fox leaned
together over the screened closed-circuit monitor.
“She’s in,” Echo observed.
“Aaannd the timers have
started,” Fox noted. “Both of ‘em.”
India and Romeo exchanged glances...and
thoughts. BOTH of ‘em?
* * *
Megan had taken no more than
two steps into the room when she heard a faint, almost inaudible click off to
the left. Quickly spinning, she saw bookcase holograms fade away to reveal a
blank wall with horizontal slits halfway up. Oh shit, she had just time to think. She dropped flat on the floor
as a flurry of projectiles whistled through the space she had occupied
fractions of a second before.
Suddenly the fireplace roared,
belching a tongue of flame into the room. She rolled to her right, out of its
reach, in the barest nick of time. Another projectile barrage opened up.
Scanning the room, she swiftly combat-crawled over to and under the desk, where
she caught her breath as she analyzed her situation.
* * *
“She actually heard that,” Echo
remarked in surprise. “Damn. I knew her ears were pretty sharp, but wow.”
“Pulse, one-twenty and steady;
blood pressure, 130 over 90,” Fox read off the sensor readouts. “Respiration,
twenty-three. High left hemispheric encephalographic activity. Trigger the
plasma jet, Echo.”
Romeo and India spun around and
stared in dismay at the two calm men. Plasma
jet?!
* * *
A faint whine was the only
warning Megan got before the plasma cannon behind the right-hand wall opened
up. She crouched farther back, under the desk, until its initial salvo was
complete. Then, in a momentary lull between projectile bank, flame-throwing
fireplace, and plasma cannon, she reached up with her right hand, over the
desktop, and grabbed for the decanter she had seen there. Miraculously, it was
unbroken, having been below the level of the projectile barrage. She
unstoppered it and sniffed the decanter mouth. Brandy. Perfect. She put on the special glasses.
She timed her next move
carefully. In the split-second after the projectile weapons fired, while the
plasma cannon built to discharge again, she emerged from her cover and flung
the stoppered decanter with all the force and accuracy she could muster,
straight at the plasma gun, then she turned and pushed with all her might
against the back of the desk.
The desk slid across the
polished floor just as the crystal decanter crashed into the now-firing
cannon...and exploded. The improvised Molotov cocktail melted the circuitry and
ignited the fuel tank, sending a geyser of flame out into the center of the
room. But the desk was no longer in the center. Instead, it was now overturned,
with its substantial polished granite top largely blocking the flame-throwing
fireplace.
Megan held her breath, closed
her eyes, and crouched in the desk’s opening until the flames from the plasma
cannon subsided and the current round of projectile barrage ceased. Then,
slightly singed, she scuttled on elbows and knees behind the wing chair. She
overturned the marble-and-iron side table, heedless of the useless trinkets
which tumbled off it, and caught it up in her left hand, holding it by the
wrought iron pedestal. Using the tabletop as a shield, she moved up into a
crouch, ducking behind it when the next round of missiles opened up.
“Aahh! Dammit!” A ricochet off
the nearby marble mantelpiece winged her right shoulder. But she had reached
the exit door. Still shielding herself with the table, she tapped the door
handle warily with her right hand; no booby traps. She opened it; stepped sideways
to her right...
* * *
Block 2 of the schematic lit
up.
“Pulse, one-thirty and rising;
BP, 135 over 92; respiration twenty-five. Hemispheric activity high and equally
dominant,” Fox called out.
“Staying calm, thinking fast
and getting creative. Great. Fox, did we get the fumes vented properly?” Echo
asked, glancing over his shoulder at the two younger agents, so very intent on
the largely-blank schematic, with a grin. Good
idea Fox had, letting them see only a small part of the test. Ups the ante for
‘em, and gives us a chance to see how THEY react to the pressure.
“Yeah, no problem,” Fox
responded. “Didn’t want it building to potentially dangerous levels, anyway.”
* * *
Fumes? What kind of fumes? Romeo and India sat staring,
unbelieving, at the schematic while listening to the two men. WE’RE gonna have to go through this?
“How’s she doing?” Echo asked.
“If she maintains this pace,
she’ll equal the record,” Fox responded.
“Dayum! Who set it?” exclaimed
Romeo.
“I did, about six months ago,”
Echo remarked, offhanded, his attention never wavering from the lithe figure
going through its paces on the monitor.
* * *
This room was a formal dining
room, of all things, complete with chandeliers and elegantly-set banquet table.
Funny notions they have about obstacle
courses, Megan thought. Whatever she had been expecting, so far this wasn’t
it.
Megan discarded the side table
and moved cautiously into the room, on the lookout for booby traps now. Her
nose caught it first: an acrid, pungent odor. Then she saw the wisps of vapor
rising from the floor.
“Acid!” she cried out in
horror. The flooring was being eaten away underneath her.
Do they really want to kill me? I didn’t think that Echo-guy
would’ve...but at least they would be rid of an eyewitness. Damn. Is this all
just a set-up, then? An excuse for knocking me off? I am in such trouble...
An adrenalin-propelled standing
leap took her to the near end of the banquet tabletop, irrespective of china
and crystal, which tumbled this way and that, shattering. The way out, an open
archway, was at the opposite end of the long table, but the opening was far out
of reach of her ability to jump. The floor was now out of the question; large
holes were starting to appear in it, a bubbling fluid underneath. She looked
up.
The row of chandeliers ran
almost the entire length of the oblong room, and were of the ornate Victorian
candelabra style. Jumping up, Megan caught onto the one overhead and swung on
it, tugging, testing. Strong enough, but
not far enough, she thought, easing back down to the tabletop. If they only hung a little bit lower...
Abruptly, the table dropped out
from under her, lowering by a full six inches, as what was left of the floor
gave way. Megan lost her footing and fell, smashing china and sliding across
the polished wood, over the edge. Digging her fingernails into the wood, she
halted herself, her bent knees mere inches from the acid that now pooled around
the bottom of the table. She slowly clawed her way back onto the tabletop. At least now I know how deep the acid is...
Suddenly, she whipped off her
tie and belt. She threaded the leather belt through its buckle, making a loop,
then used the pen knife to enlarge the last belt notch. Replacing the pen knife
securely on her hip, where it clipped to the waistband of her leggings next to
the glasses case, she quickly threaded the small end of the silk tie through
the hole in the belt and knotted it firmly, jerking it hard to test it. Then
she ran to the far end of the tabletop. She didn’t know if it would hold, but
there was no time to change her mind. The table legs were starting to
disintegrate now.
“Hope the farm skills are still
with me,” she muttered as she swung the makeshift lasso.
The leather loop caught a prong
of the chandelier, and Megan jerked it tight. Backing up as far as her
improvised rope would allow, she made a running start, then swung forward.
No time to check the next room, she thought as she swung through
the air. I just hope I hit the door
opening straight, or this is gonna hurt bad...
“BANZAI!” she yelled as she
reached the top of her arc and let go, flying head-first, arms stretched out in
front, hands fisted, through the open doorway.
* * *
“Wow. Nice Superman jump,” Echo
noted with a grin.
“Yeah, I liked it too,” Fox
agreed, nodding.
Romeo and India just stared at
the two men in consternation.
* * *
As soon as she was well through
the opening, Megan realized she was in a bad way. Landing hard, she rolled,
looked up, and blanched. At the far end of the room crouched a giant, hairy,
black spider-like creature, with a leg-spread of at least fifteen feet, in a
huge cage. To Megan’s horror, the front of the cage began to slide slowly up.
“Spiders. Dammit. I hate
spiders. Why did it have to be spiders?” she muttered.
Stephanie Osborn ©2017
Award-winning
author Osborn is a 20+-year space program veteran, with multiple STEM degrees.
She has authored, co-authored, or contributed to more than 30 books. She
currently writes the critically-acclaimed Displaced
Detective Series, described as “Sherlock Holmes meets The X-Files,” and the
Gentleman Aegis Series, whose first
book was a Silver Falchion winner. She “pays it forward” through numerous media
including radio, podcasting and public speaking, and working with SIGMA, the
science-fiction think tank. Osborn’s website is http://www.stephanie-osborn.com.
1 comment:
Wow, impressive action and writing Stephanie. I can tell this is a non stop read.
MikeC
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