Sky Hunter (Targon Tales Book 0)
Air Command pilot Nova Whiteside is assigned to a remote outpost to guard the construction of a new orbiter, Skyranch Twelve against rebel sabotage. The difference between the well-ordered Union air fields and this dusty garrison is made painfully clear when she runs afoul a brutal commander of ground troops.
When she is trapped behind enemy lines in a bloody uprising she meets Djari, a civilian whose trust in the governing Union is shattered by what he has witnessed.
Her assignment takes her from the midst of a bloody uprising to the elegant new space station where she hopes to train for her Hunter Class pilot grade. But not all runs according to protocol and she soon suspects that more than farming is being done up there. When she uncovers the treacherous and illicit schemes taking place, it seems that local riots are the least of their troubles.
BEST DEALS
About the Author
Books by Chris Reher
New: Metamorph
The Targon Tales - Nova:
Sky Hunter
The Catalyst
Only Human
Rebel Alliance
Delphi Promised
The Targon Tales - Sethran:
Quantum Tangle
Terminus Shift
Entropy's End
Sci-fi Fantasy:
Flight to Exile
Space Opera is people. There it is.
Space opera has fabulous space ships, fantastic planets, laser weapons and epic battles. We’ve discarded the idea that future astronauts wear spandex suits and silver lipstick, and now our heroes get to wear real clothes. They have adventures and super technology and they meet aliens and save the galaxy again and again.
But when I look at the science fiction stories that have appealed to me the most, I see that they focus on the characters. Their plights, faults, idiosyncrasies are what give life to the backdrop of planets and space ships. I suppose you could place Han, Leia, Luke and Anakin in a contemporary setting right here on planet Earth and the dynamics would still work. It’s still a fun story without the lightsabers. But not the other way around. Without the characters’ story, a big chunk of Star Wars would lack considerable luster.
So that is the route I’ve taken with my stories. The absolute freedom of escaping Earth’s gravity and inventing things (always keeping within the realm of probability, of course) is why I love science fiction. I can make it rain mercury if I want to. I think I do, actually, somewhere.
But it’s the people in these stories—not too alien, not too perfect, not always happy with their lot or each other—who give meaning to the mercury rain and the space elevators. The people, for the most part likable people, are what turns science fiction into space opera. (Well, and space guns. Must have space guns.)
For my space operas, I’ve taken the problems of our human condition to see what we’d do with them in outer space. Most fascinating to me are the grey areas between good and evil and how we assign those qualities.
The Targon Tales is an action-packed space opera collection of related but self-contained books revolving around a hundred-year-old conflict between a colonizing Commonwealth of allied planets and those who rebel against it. In struggles like these, can there really be a “good guy” and a “bad guy”? The main characters, having chosen sides, must find ways to hang on to their ideals while working within a system that doesn’t always play by its own rules.
At times violent, sometimes light-hearted, the collection takes us to the many worlds of Trans-Targon to meet species who seem oddly similar as their shared DNA offers an ongoing mystery. But the similarities that bring them together are also at the root of the trouble between them all.
Please visit my web site at www.chrisreher.com for info about my books and some of the (non-fiction) science behind some of the concepts used in the stories.