A cracked-mirror tale of sex-fuelled and blood-soaked revenge.
Spark, an elite Space Academy pilot, barely survived a deadly battle. After years in a coma, he emerges to find a crippled world and his memory in tatters. Humanity faces threats from many sides, often self-inflicted. And a new evil is coming. Something that will wipe out the human race for good.
With a dwindling number of fighter pilots, Spark is forced back into active duty, where he meets another cadet, beautiful and enigmatic. Together they work to restore his memory, and Spark is tested to see if his fragile nerves can face the approaching disaster.
But Spark's world turns into a surreal mystery, and he is caught up in a strange and sinister conspiracy.
A tale of love, jealousy, obsession and revenge.
A cracked-mirror tale of sex-fuelled and blood-soaked revenge.
Spark, an elite Space Academy pilot, barely survived a deadly battle. After years in a coma, he emerges to find a crippled world and his memory in tatters. Humanity faces threats from many sides, often self-inflicted. And a new evil is coming. Something that will wipe out the human race for good.
With a dwindling number of fighter pilots, Spark is forced back into active duty, where he meets another cadet, beautiful and enigmatic. Together they work to restore his memory, and Spark is tested to see if his fragile nerves can face the approaching disaster.
But Spark's world turns into a surreal mystery, and he is caught up in a strange and sinister conspiracy.
A tale of love, jealousy, obsession and revenge.
āin the darkness lies deception.
senses slowly awake.
eyes flicker open.
floating. weightless. hands and feet move in small circles. body canāt move. pressure on shoulders. pressure around waist. pain bites in like a lightning strike, every part burning.
smell: metallic. bile. his nostrils fill with a stifling vegetative scent. the acrid odour crawls through his face and into his lungs, jolting his body.
sound: hiss. long. air escaping. heavy breathing. struggling breathing. someone nearby. a high-pitched but faint ringing. something knocks against his arm. unbearable pain.
sight: so much darkness. small spots of light, so far away, slowly spinning. an asteroid the size of a house grazes past, close enough to touch. then dozens more asteroids in varying sizes.
hundreds.
thousands.
more.
glass. he wears a helmet. arms and legs bend at unnatural angles inside a spacesuit.
help me echoes in his ear.
he tries to speak. āiām here.ā what he utters are barely words.
another bump from the left.
please, i beg.
a choking scream. a deep, gut-wrench cry of agony. dread grips him. what will he see if he turns his head?
he turns. the pain is unbearable. the rim of his helmet restricts his view but allows his imagination to conjure horrors.
the helmet wonāt move. he cranes forward, but all he sees is part of a shiny black object pulsing like an organ. shouldnāt there be another pilot?
red droplets float from the side toward the windscreen, suspended, and then splatter in a horizontal ribbon. a finishing line. more red, blotting out parts of the windscreen.
space. heās in a spacecraft. a fighter. a defender. what happened?
a memory: behind him, the ship contains an escape pod. if he presses the eject button, the cabin will be evacuated, creating a vacuum. he and the co-pilot will be snatched into the pod and ejected free of the ship. all he needs to do is press the button.Ā
the screams intensify into a rolling wave of agony.
his thumb hovers, stroking the top of the red button. but whatever causes the cacophony of anguish is attached to its victim. if they are drawn into the escape pod, the thing eating his co-pilot will come along.
he cannot save his co-pilot, not without compromising his own rescue.
he should not take a dead body. who knows what could be living in it.
only one escape route remains.
the red becomes a flood, everywhere, coating all surfaces with blood. it lasts for an eternity. the body next to him stills. the black shape moves, drifting, undulating; a twisting worm, splitting and reforming into stretched tendrils, then coalescing into a congealed mess of oil and devoured body parts.
now it comes for him. floating, slowed by the lack of gravity. it approaches.
smell. metallic. bile. stronger. it crawls through his suit, fills his nostrils.
a shape forms: an elongated oval. it splits down the centre and bulbous lips peel open sensually to reveal hundreds of fangs. inverted symbolism. a death canal. it wants him inside.
tendril fingers stretch towards him, questing from the edges of the oval. it touches his suit, leeching into the fabric.
he presses the button.
there is nothing but pain. then darkness.
Galaxy by Mark Lingane was an exciting, manic two-part story set in space, the moon, and an Earth in an unknown future time. The first part, called āAfter,ā is the story of Spark, a renowned space fighter pilot who has survived a deadly encounter with an alien being referred to as the āoil-egg.ā His co-pilot was not so lucky. His recovery from his injuries has taken a long time; he was in a coma for seven years. After regaining consciousness, he is released from the hospital to return to service on the moon. Recruits are dwindling in numbers and potential, and Spark is needed desperately to re-enter the fight, but heās barely able to walk under his own power. Lingane employs a minimalistic style to deliver Sparkās point of view. I liked how the almost āstream of consciousnessā delivery conveyed the characterās confusion in what he was thinking, feeling, and observing around him. It took a little getting used to, but it worked well for me as the story progressed. At first, there was a fogginess about it, and it mimicked what was going on inside Sparkās head. The story unfolds at an exciting pace, frenetic, tense, sex-fueled, and desperate as Sparkās world devolves into chaos.
Part two, āBefore,ā is the story of Verum, a social media influencer whose family has a tradition of military excellence; his uncle, until recently, had been the flight brigadier at the Space Academy. Verum has thousands of admiring followers, leading to his overinflated opinion of himself as a superior contender for Space Academy training as a pilot. He is a spoiled, entitled, overgrown brat, yet I still wanted him to straighten up and become the hero he imagined himself to be. The story of his attempt at pilot training is also fast-paced and sex, drug, and alcohol-fueled. With its unpredictable twists and turns, the book was unputdownable.
However, the āAfterā and the āBeforeā stories didnāt quite match up for me. There are recurring characters, and one that dies in the āBeforeā story is alive again in āAfter,ā and I found this confusing. Also, I didnāt get a clear understanding of who or what the aliens were or what had transpired in their war against the Earth. On the other hand, I really liked the world of the Space Academy that the author has created, especially the multistoried accommodations for the pilots and other regular staff with their numbered disk entry keys, the barracks for the recruits, the rec area, and bar. I will probably reread this one in the future and enjoy it all over again.
I recommend Galaxy to Sci-fi readers who have read and enjoyed this authorās works in the past and those who like stories of humans struggling and training to overcome an alien threat to the Earth.