| 
Barre turned up the music, and it transformed his mind into a concert hall with perfect acoustics, transporting him more than a dozen wormhole jumps and a few centuries away from the ruined bridge of the broken ship. The resonance of the strings swelled through him, vibrating the bones of his skull and his chest. If Ro called, he would definitely not hear her. He clenched his jaw and focused on tracing the chaos beneath the console. It was work a tech drone could have done, but that was another on the list of the dozens and dozens of things they needed but didn’t have. So while Ro was doing something in engineering, Barre was wedged into this cramped space, comparing the half-melted mess with the schematic she had pushed to him. The ancient symphony soothed him, and as his hands did the grunt work of stripping wires and creating splices, his mind composed a more modern counterpoint, weaving synthesized computer tones though the main theme. He knew Halcyone was monitoring and got the sense the ship approved. It wasn’t Halcyone’s fault she couldn’t fly. It was Ro’s. An alarm tore through the music. As Barre jerked up, his head clipped the bottom lip of the console. Swearing, he scrambled to his feet, and pressed his hand against the dripping cut on his forehead. He shut off the symphony. Barre sent a trill of four questioning notes to Halcyone. The AI silenced the alarm and sent the same notes back in reverse order. An apology. The sudden quiet made his ears ring. He played the command tone and Halcyone opened the internal comms. At least they worked. “Ro? What the hell are you doing?” “Not now.” Her clipped voice filled the bridge before she killed the channel. | Line up your summer reading Free SF&F by Massachusetts-based authors This time limited offer includes Ithaka Rising: Halcyone Space, book 2, so here's your chance to read it if you haven't yet. Don't worry - you won't be subscribed again to my list! A derelict ship and a splintered crew are not the rewards Ro had hoped for when she helped disrupt her father's plans to start a war with smuggled weapons. But with the responsibilities of full Commonwealth citizenship and limited resources, she is forced to take her father's place working as an engineer on Daedalus station while she and Barre try to repair their damaged freighter, Halcyone. Barre's brother, Jem, is struggling with the disabling effects of his head injury, unable to read or code. His only hope is to obtain a neural implant, but the specialists determine he is too young and his brain damage too extensive. When Jem disappears, his trail dead ends at the black market. Ro and Barre race to find Jem before he sells his future, risking his mind for an illegal neural implant. But they're not the only ones looking for "The Underworld" and its rogue planet, Ithaka. What they find endangers more than just the three of them and forces them to confront a very different truth about the war they believed was ancient history. Get ITHAKA RISING free, here, along with a selection of other SF&F books written by Massachusetts area speculative fiction writers. Available through August 31st only! If you have read and enjoyed any of my books, I would very much appreciate it if you might consider leaving an honest review. | 
