The gruesome death of the Moonbase Collins' chief sets the professional UN Astronaut Corps against the United Nations Space Operations Command and its oily Director General when he attempts to sell the post of Chief Engineer to the highest bidder . It's not quite a mutiny, but the corrupt head of UNSOC is determined to crush any sense of independent action by the willful astronauts, especially the new commander of the UN Space Station Roger B. Chaffee, Lisa Daniels. All of the workers 'upstairs', in orbit and on the Moon, are under the gun--the work is hard, dangerous, and unrelenting. The morale budget is cut to the bone, the only luxuries are the ones that the shuttle pilots can smuggle up, the vendors using the manufacturing space are being squeezed for bribes at every turn.
Then a massive explosion rocks the South Polar region of the Moon, spewing radiation and a huge volume of rock into cis-lunar space. Fifteen minutes after the blast, Moonbase Collins falls silent.
Lisa Daniels and her crew are in incredible danger. Not only have they absorbed radiation equivalent to ten-thousand X-rays, they may be in path of the debris plume blasted off of the Moon. The Director-General, faced with losing the source of his bribe money, has forbidden evacuation of the Chaffee. Besides, he has spent his twenty years of rule squeezing the maximum amount of cash from the Chaffee. Non-essentials, like lifeboats, were never funded.
Lisa has a plan to get everyone to Earth, but to put it in action, she will have to sacrifice everything she has worked so hard for all of her life, as well as drag in everyone else on the ground into her mutiny. The real question is: dare she do it?
**
Review
"This book is candy for real hard SF fans!" - Felix R. Savage
Description:
The gruesome death of the Moonbase Collins' chief sets the professional UN Astronaut Corps against the United Nations Space Operations Command and its oily Director General when he attempts to sell the post of Chief Engineer to the highest bidder . It's not quite a mutiny, but the corrupt head of UNSOC is determined to crush any sense of independent action by the willful astronauts, especially the new commander of the UN Space Station Roger B. Chaffee, Lisa Daniels. All of the workers 'upstairs', in orbit and on the Moon, are under the gun--the work is hard, dangerous, and unrelenting. The morale budget is cut to the bone, the only luxuries are the ones that the shuttle pilots can smuggle up, the vendors using the manufacturing space are being squeezed for bribes at every turn.
Then a massive explosion rocks the South Polar region of the Moon, spewing radiation and a huge volume of rock into cis-lunar space. Fifteen minutes after the blast, Moonbase Collins falls silent.
Lisa Daniels and her crew are in incredible danger. Not only have they absorbed radiation equivalent to ten-thousand X-rays, they may be in path of the debris plume blasted off of the Moon. The Director-General, faced with losing the source of his bribe money, has forbidden evacuation of the Chaffee. Besides, he has spent his twenty years of rule squeezing the maximum amount of cash from the Chaffee. Non-essentials, like lifeboats, were never funded.
Lisa has a plan to get everyone to Earth, but to put it in action, she will have to sacrifice everything she has worked so hard for all of her life, as well as drag in everyone else on the ground into her mutiny. The real question is: dare she do it?
**
Review
"This book is candy for real hard SF fans!" - Felix R. Savage