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    Europa
    Europa
    Europa
    Ebook107 pages1 hour

    Europa

    By Stan Butler

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    About this ebook

    Europa is a novella written to explore the science of science fiction and is full of current and future technologies wrapped around a story-line that forces the reader decide who is good and who is bad. It is set on Europa, one of the moons of Jupiter in the medium future.
    The book has been written for my Extended Project Qualification (EPQ), an extra qualification available in the UK at A-Level. Highly graded EPQ's are valued by universities and this book is being published to complete the process of writing a book.
    Any comments or reviews would be highly appreciated.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherStan Butler
    Release dateSep 16, 2015
    ISBN9781311724342
    Europa

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      Book preview

      Europa - Stan Butler

      Europa

      Book 1 of the Shadow war

      By Stan Butler

      Written as an Extended Project Qualification novel

      Smashwords Edition

      Thank you for downloading this eBook. You are welcome to share it with your friends. This book may be reproduced, copied and distributed for non-commercial purposes, provided the book remains in its complete original form.

      Table of Contents

      Prologue

      Part 1: On a land of ice...

      Part 2: A foe of shadows...

      Part 3: Four shall die...

      Part 4: Salvation comes...

      Afterword

      Prologue

      The world glittered in the faint light of the distant star, the giant planet it orbits filling the sky with a swirling palette of colours. Great swathes of reds, ochres and burnt umbers creating a scene as if the work of a great modern artist’s painting session.

      Another moon entered the vista, a world of great volcanic activity, creating great arcs of plasma as some of the greatest volcanoes in the solar system erupted.

      The faint light accentuated the beautiful heat-carved spires, water-cut valleys became shrouded in shadow, some flowing while others just dry beds. The great sheets of ice that formed the world creaked and groaned under their monumental stresses, but other than that all there was, was silence, the silence of a world surrounded by the black canvas of space watched unnoticed by the eyes of a hundred thousand stars.

      Silence soon broken by a strange droning noise.

      We’ve escaped! laughed one of the two scientists piloting the tracked sled

      Not yet Efra, we still need to reach the relay station. spoke the other, looking forlornly out of the thick rad-glass window as the research station which had been their home for the past twenty years disappeared from sight and sighed

      Damn that creature for ruining everything.

      Efra shuddered as he remembered the massacre they had found when they returned with their algae samples and at the sight of a dear friend frozen to death then shattered into smithereens like the others.

      What did it want? pondered Dave It can’t have been food as it disintegrated its prey and we did nothing to aggravate it so unless it was sentient and thought we were invading it’s world. I can think of no other reason for the attac...

      The power was out. replied Efra Perhaps it was similar to a terran fire ant and was drawn to electricity, took out the power then due to pain induced madness killed the scientists?

      Dave did not reply.

      What do you think Dave? he asked, turning to look at him.

      Frost covered his body and his skin was turning blue.

      A figure behind him was revealed by the cold induced mist. It raised one hand towards Dave and after a blinding flash, all that was left was a few slowly melting shards.

      W...Why? stammered Efra. Are yo...you d...doing this?

      There is a war coming. replied the once again invisible figure, filling the crisp air with flecks of crimson as a blade flashed unseen through the scientist’s neck

      The creature opened the rear door of the sled and jumped out, rolling to absorb the impact.

      And it begins.

      The sled drove onwards, propelled by two caterpillar tracks as the atmosphere was too thin for hovercar technology, the tracks throwing aside crystals of ice that had lain undisturbed for eons.

      In the cabin the air was slowly venting into the thin atmosphere of the world, blood still hung in the air and as the cabin cooled, these droplets froze, tiny beads of life that fell to the steel floor next to the body they had once called home, shattering on the floor in little shards that reflected the harsh light of the LED’s that lit the cabin with piercing white light.

      The two bodies lay on the floor surrounded by these red shards, one of them mixed their own shards with these new shards while the other stared up at those LED’s with unseeing eyes that slowly glazed over as his life fled in fear, head surrounded by a crimson halo of death, three feet from the body it once animated.

      Little crystals of ice formed in the air, little wisps of cloud as well that split the light into the whole spectrum, creating rainbows in the air. Eventually these crystals of ice grew large enough to fall from the air and within the confines of this sled, snow graced the now pale blue body of Efra Finn. It was as if the world was giving him a farewell, a meteorologist frosted with snow formed from his last breath.

      Two minutes later the sled ploughed into an ice cliff and the wisps of cloud spun into complex vortices and eddies, the shards of blood, flesh and bone lifted off the floor and fell again, re-organised, redistributed and intermingled in death.

      For an instant, the vortices in the clouds formed the image of two figures being lead away by another cloaked figure, but that could just have been a trick of the light.

      The engines ticked down as the batteries were drained, cut off from the star that usually powered them, the lights dimmed, flickered, before eventually casting the cabin into near darkness, ice crystals only glittering in the faint light of a distant star.

      Part one

      On a land of Ice a storm shall rise

      A storm that drowns out innocents’ cries

      Reaps souls from their unprotected chests

      And lays waste to all the rest

      Chapter 1

      The void surrounded him, hiding the truth

      Voices called to him, calling him to war.

      Drums beat, to lead him on

      He reached out into the never-ending darkness and found his hand clenched around a gun.

      A figure emerged from the darkness, or perhaps he moved forwards, it wasn’t clear.

      The figure raised it’s head, reptilian scales revealing it as a VortronWarqueen.

      He raised the gun and levelled it at the kneeling creature.

      The trigger moved under his finger and a beam of harsh white light smashed into the beast’s face, removing a huge chunk of flesh, leaving a gruesome wound. It was all charred edges and slowly leaking blood around a pulsating grey mass that had once been a brain.

      Sakara Frost woke, disgusted.

      Every time he had that dream he pulled the trigger, no matter how hard he tried not to, he killed the defenceless creature.

      He hated himself for this.

      Not only that but the dream was coming more and more often.

      He rose in the semi-dark of his room and turned the windows to transparent, filling the space with amber light of dawn. A wide expanse of grass was revealed, beyond which was a large lake complex.

      He sighed.

      Today they were leaving all this behind to go sell Agri-Tech to a newly established colony on Exlixia. It

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