Eight men and women techs aboard a space ship awaken, expecting a normal work day on a routine Earth to Neptune cargo run. The initial scenes include cozy crew quarters as in Ridley Scott's movie Alien, but any comparison ends there. When these passengers step from their sleep pods, the reality on board instantly exceeds their worst nightmare. For lead engineers Ridge and Brenna it's a man-woman love story and survival odyssey with deep and painful mysteries as well as glories. Their only hope is to reach a hidden, wonderful deck called Largo where echoes of old Earth live on... including tango music for New Earth to be danced on rainy neon streets. That's right, on board a derelict starship filled with horrors and ghosts. This is a novel unlike any other. See darksf.com for more info. Nothing on this ship is as it seems. It's actually a galactic derelict (to use Andre Norton's classic phrase). It's a starship, Nebula Express, a vast ocean liner of dark wreckage hurtling among stars and nebulae toward infinity. Over eons, life on board has evolved in new ways. The engineers are like day flies living in a tragic and terrifying illusion. Two such day flies, Ridge and Brenna, are courageous and determined not to let this cruel, brutal fate define their brief lives. They will find that secret deck called Largo, where miracles may come true. Ridge and Brenna each deeply love a spouse and children back on Earth, but are deeply bound to each other by a powerful love that transcends understanding-until they (and we) learn the truth about their lives and the ship they're on. Amid the ship's dark terrors is Captain Venable, a mere ghost, a memory, some brain tissue floating in a dish. The captain is part of an ancient story of what really happened between Ridge and Brenna eons ago, in a love triangle involving a Buenos Aires billionaire named Colfirio, who built the last starship fleeing a doomed solar system. The ship's evolved biology includes thousands of mummies, mutants, and sleepers. Nasty creatures called Cleaners are part of the ship's life cycle. Every day (36 hours) a new batch of engineers are brewed and born in their crew pod, and awaken thinking they are living normal lives. They will age and die within hours. Each carries a mix of memories and personalities of thousands, almost all dead except a few sleepers the Cleaners haven't killed. Also on board is a dreadful Queen, insect ruler of the Cleaners, with her own insane agenda. Ridge and Brenna refuse to accept their fate, doomed to age and die like day flies.They insist their lives are real and have meaning. The spouses and children they love may be illusions but they lived once, and can live again, in the endless DNA juke box remix of short lives emerging daily to become food for the Cleaners and victims of their Queen. Their six friends die heroically, tragically, one by one, but Ridge and Brenna set out to beat the odds, find Largo, clean the ship of its mutant life, and reprogram the ship to find New Earth out there among countless habitable planets in the universe. Largo is a swatch of old Earth, a night city, a street filled with restaurants and tango music from Colfirio's Buenos Aires, a place full of forgotten magic and hope for new life. You have never read anything remotely like this fresh, original novel. There will be a happy ever after, though getting there is a very dark journey that will have your hair standing on end all the way. The journey is well worth it.
