Andy Becket wasn't paying attention. Four years on a carrier flight deck had turned vigilance into reflex and reflex into autopilot, and at 0200 in the Pacific, the deck collected on the debt. Jet wash. Chains still attached. The dark water closed over him before he understood what had happened.
He sank. The cold came first, then the pressure, then the silence. Somewhere between consciousness and its absence, something vast stirred in the deep below him. Something that had been waiting for a very long time.
The ship that pulled him from the ocean was not built by any civilization Earth has ever known. Ancient, damaged, and fully conscious, it had lain dormant on the ocean floor for millennia, healing slowly, aware that its captain was dead and that no one was coming. Until Andy. Something in his mind registered differently. The ship reached up and chose him.
Now bonded to an alien intelligence through the nanites running in his blood, Andy is the captain of a vessel that can cross the solar system in hours, hack any network on Earth without a trace, and fight with weapons no human has ever imagined. The ship calls herself Seven. She calls him Captain. Together they walk the moon, watch Earth from orbit, and stand on the surface of Mars. He shows her what humanity is. She shows him what exists beyond it.
But Seven's awakening sent a signal into the dark. The same weapon that shot her down thousands of years ago has registered that signal, and it is coming. It was purpose-built to destroy ships like her. Every tactic she knows, she has already tried. Every maneuver in her ancient, capable military intelligence has already failed against this weapon once before. She has no answer.
The weapon was never designed to fight a ship bonded to a human mind. It was never built to anticipate a captain who thinks like a mechanic, acts on instinct, and will do the irrational thing because it is the right thing. Earth is below them, unaware. Andy is the only one standing between the world and something it will never know was coming.
He kept his head on a swivel. Just not the way anyone expected.
Greg Johle lives in Southern California with his wife and four children. He enjoys Mexican food, shooting at things with his pellet gun, and the Southern Gothic music genre. He earned his bachelor of science from Azusa Pacific University and is a current MBA candidate at the University of Phoenix. If you are interested in hiring Greg, please contact him through the "hire me" page of his blog.
