The Belt Loop - Sneak Peek

    Washoe touched controls on his console. “Ahh, sir, at present course it would be headed directly for Sol. Looks like the ship was headed for Earth, captain.”
    Earth! The Corpus Christi was roughly 810 light years from Earth patrolling the void between Alnitak and Mintaka, two huge suns that were almost 100,000 times more luminous than our Sun. Yet here was a vessel, if Mister Washoe was reading the algorithms correctly, heading right for the dim star that birthed the Human race. Captain Haad shook his head. Was such a thing actually possible?
    “Double check your figures, Mister Washoe,” Haad said.
    “Astrogation confirmed, sir. At her present speed and course, she would have made Earth in, ahh, six point six billion years.”
    Thin laughter rippled across the bridge. “Good thing we came along, captain,” Ensign Hoge said.
    “Should I alert all commands, sir?” from Nono Gant.
    Haad had to laugh out loud. “That’s going to be the highlight of my Threat Assessment Report: incoming alien warship at the speed of snail. Power up the defensive shields, the planet is in peril. . .”
    Finally some of the edge came off the blade and the bridge was relaxed again. Haad considered what he had just been told. The alien ship was on a course that would have taken it into the home system but was moving so slowly that more than likely the Sun would probably not even be there when she arrived. Kick this can down the road? Not on your life. As long as that ship was capable of moving, as long as she showed any kind of life at all, a potential threat existed. Even now, with Yorn’s team probing the inside of the derelict, they could accidentally trigger some kind of defense mechanism, some kind of intruder alert protocol that would bring the worm out of its hibernation. Maybe even activate some version of a star drive engine that would be powerful enough to burn it out of the confining Higgs Field and propel it on its original course. As unlikely as those scenarios seemed, Haad had to put the bantering on pause and get his crew back on mission. Slow or not, the worm was still active.

The above excerpt is from "The Belt Loop" and the completed novel should be ready to download as a Kindle eBook before Labor Day, 2011. Filled with high adventure and alien mysteries, follow Captain Uri Haad and his crew on the Colonial Navy Ship Corpus Christi as she plies the void within one of the most interesting places in this arm of the Milky Way.