A Dead Ship in the Deep Black

Rene Astle

Aug 2021 · The Lyra Cycle Book 1 · Armchair Alien

About this ebook

Rule number 1: Whatever you do, don't open the box.

Well, that’s rule number two actually. Rule number one is don’t take salvage jobs from people who’ve tried to sell you to an Antillian bug salesman.

Neara “Tink” Bell is used to a life of odd jobs and even odder crewmates, working as the engineer and all-around fixer on the cargo ship Lyra. But when the ship picks up two new crew members and a salvage job on a third-rate space station, things go sideways in a cosmic way.

Alek Wa is on the run. And he’s pretty sure he can hide amongst the motley crew of Lyra. But that’s not the only reason he’s on-board. He has a mission. If only his minders had told him what it was.

Captain Rebeka Mino just wants to retire with a whiskey and a steamy novel. She’d even let the ship’s cat sit on her lap, provided he keeps his claws to himself. Too bad the ship keeps getting shot at.

And when they arrive at the coordinates for the salvage job, they're confronted by a dead ship in the deep black.

Can Tink keep the Lyra running despite unexplained accidents? Can Alek outrun the people hunting him? Can Rebeka prevent their pursuers from blowing them up? Most importantly, can they keep their curiosity in check and not look in the box?

Find out now in this rollercoaster ride of a sci-fi adventure!

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KEYWORDS: scifi, science fiction, space opera, science fiction adventure, scifi adventure, galactic empire scifi, scifi engineer heroine, salvage ship, ragtag crew scifi, scifi cargo ship, ensemble crew, found family, scifi cat

Ratings and reviews

A pretty good space opera. I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. The only jarring note was the mistake many average authors make - that of calling a star system a solar system. Our sun is named Sol and our system is the Solar System. All other star systems should be named after their particular sun. A minor quibble I know but it separates the average author from the great.

A difficult starter. Character development is lacking, causes of mistrust between characters are vague. Feels like ideas were rushed into publishing before being sufficiently proofread and edited. Good plot, though, and looking forward to seeing how the story develops.

I'm on edge. In a bad. Stories like this always make me worry they're to make a predator a hero.

About the author

Rene Astle is the science fiction pen name of C. Rene Astle. She gained a love of fiction, fantasy in particular, and a voracious appetite for story literally at her mother’s knee, being read The Hobbit and Chronicles of Narnia – because those are the types of stories her mom wanted to read.

From her father, she got an enduring curiosity about the universe, earned shivering in the dark beside a telescope on cold, Canadian winter nights waiting to witness some celestial event.

Now she fits in writing between her day job, gardening and getting out to enjoy supernatural British Columbia.