Monday, May 23, 2016

Eons Semester (Book 8 of The Rim Confederacy) by Jim Rudnick

Release date: May 14, 2016
Subgenre: Space opera, military science fiction

About Eons Semester

 

"Jilted by his Royal fiancee, captain Tanner Scott is assigned to Eons and the newly constructed RIM Naval Academy buildings and the duty is anything but a reward. His days are full of squabbling University professors and construction types all nitpicking for changes to plans and additions and extra and the boredom of detail is a horrible side-effect.

As he learns, there is more to looking after a successful construction project than being at the top of the heap and the machinations of the Issians who run Eons and it’s mind-readers comes to him for help. He knows that the Baroness is somehow also involved but the openness of the Master Adept and her Inner Circle that controls Eons is what is so surprising to him.

As the Naval Academy is finally ready to open and the heads of state of many of the RIM Confederacy planets arrive, the protesters against the Issians make their play to publicly humiliate the Inner Circle and their own plans to strengthen their ranks via the death of twins and Tanner must find a way to quell the uprising…”

Excerpt:



On Tavira, the moon that lay above Eons, in the capital city of Aporia, in a Secure Medical ward, an Issian lay in restraints and sometimes fought them but they were too too tight to give even an millimeter. She was a youngish woman, in her thirties but had long ago given up any kind of care and concern for her look or her body too. Half-conscious and always in a drug-induced stupor, the woman lay quietly on the bed.
Her hair, now tangled and knotted and even missing in some spots along her one temple, should have been blonde but was now brown with dried blood and puss from an open sore. It hadn’t been washed or cleaned in months.
Her toenails, were long as were her fingernails, curled and dull yellow as the keratin was thick and unkempt and if anyone ever got close enough she would try to rake them with those nails. But that was before the dosages were upped and she hadn’t tried that in weeks.
Her teeth were once shiny and white and now were yellow and brittle and even a few were missing; for some reason she would worry a tooth with her tongue and do that long enough and often enough that she would spit out a tooth onto the plain steel ward floor. They fed her via a gastric feeding tube that had been inserted through a small incision in the abdomen into the stomach and was used for long-term enteral nutrition. She hadn’t tasted food in almost a year but she just didn’t care at all.
Her eyes were light blue but such a light tone as to be almost white; each had a huge iris that took up almost the whole of the eyeball—the coal black pupils were large too. Staring at her many had found was treacherous—one could easily fall right into her brain some said. And what a brain it was—she was an Issian twin with all the anxiety that that might mean.
Her gown, if it could be called that, lay on her frame like an old tarpaulin on rough ground. She had the usual female parts but not a single one would be called a curve.
She was anything but attractive—in fact she was anti-attractive to anyone who could see the real woman.
Of course, that never happened up here in the Issian Secure Ward.
No one came.
No one visited.
No one cared.
In fact for a full sixty feet around this ward room, no one was ever allowed to enter, except the medical robo drones that the ward staff used to tend to her. Once a week a real live Issian Doctor attended who read charts and nodded and did nothing.
There was nothing to do—she was a twin.
And now change was coming and as yet, no plans had been made for this twin…

 

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About The Rim Confederacy series:

 


 

About Jim Rudnick: 

Being a youngster in the 1950's meant that I was a voracious reader in what has been called the Golden Age of Science Fiction. That meant that for me, my heroes were not on the hockey rink or gridiron - but instead in my local Library where at 12 I had a full Adult card (thanks Dad!) and took out more than 5 books a week.

Everyone from Heinlein, Norton, Leiber, Pohl, Anderson, Simak, Asimov, Brackett, Van Vogt and more....I fell in love with and eventually owned Ace Doubles of my own. While I never knew who wrote the Tom Corbett - Space Cadet series, I fell in love with them and they had a place of honor on my own bookcase too!

With that kind of an introduction to Science Fiction, it's no wonder that when got my writing work done, I turned my own fictional side of my brain to writing same. It's one thing I know to write - and a totally different matter to release same to the world - something that I've just started to work on....suffice it to say my own works are rooted in that Golden Age and it's that era that I'd like to one day be known as a teensy contributor to in some small way…
 

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