Careless Electronica

Book Eight of the Celestial Serenade

Available on Kindle (and Kindle Unlimited) and in Paperback!

Two lifetimes of suffering lay in his past.
One promise binds him.

Crash landed on an unfamiliar planet and hindered by the ion storm that chokes its atmosphere, Rynick and Morumi struggle to come to terms with the results of their search for the legendary Kantis. The tiny planet to which their clues led appears to have no high-tech facilities, leaving no indication where the warrior might be found.

Though Rynick is loath to give up his quest and determined to return to his sister, despair has begun to set in. If he and his new Caltaran companion have come to the wrong place, he has no idea how to get back on track. Worse, signs increasingly indicate that even if he can wake the legendary Kantis, convincing him to help Earth might not be as straightforward as he initially assumed.

Three wars lay in Kantis’s past, making him no stranger to suffering. But the world that lies before him now is entirely different than the one he left, making it feel strange and alien. Never before has he awakened to peace. This might be his first chance to avert the disaster of bloodshed.

But the Caltaran Empire has grown apathetic to everything outside of their immediate concerns. And Earth has moved beyond the border of the land to which Kantis is bound. While he cannot ignore the strange behavior of his creations, he can only do so much without committing an ethical violation.

His most difficult choice might be which oath he should break.

A hundred tiny creatures or one large one?
Damn this planet. Damn this system and its ion radiation field. Damn the poor luck that marooned them here and damn-

“Uh, Morumi?”

“Not now, I-“

A twig snapped. A shiver shot down Morumi’s spine. Something like a growl reached her ears and turned her blood to ice. She reached for her flashlight and grabbed Rynick’s arm instead. He seemed to have been reaching for her at the same time. The end result was that they stood clinging to each other.

Rynick swept his light in a half circle, revealing a wall of reflective eyes. Each pair glimmered yellow-gold before they came into the focus of the light. While they were within the illumination, the eyes seemed perfectly normal, soft grey and brown, but they became wide and reflective as soon as the light moved on.

It took several seconds for Morumi to regain control of her flashlight. She swept it in a similar motion behind them and swallowed hard. Her light reflected another wall of eyes.

The eyes belonged to a swarm of small creatures. At first, they looked like puppies, so adorable Morumi wanted to bend over and reach out to them. But all resemblance to cute pets died the moment they opened their mouths to reveal rows of razor-sharp teeth. Then they started to remind her of hyenas. Their ears were floppier, and their bodies were smaller. They couldn’t have been much larger than cubs, but they were obviously fully grown. Their feet ended in round paws from which wicked, curved claws protruded.

If Morumi had to guess, she would say they looked hungry.

Considering how many of them there were – at least a hundred – they had moved with shocking speed and silence. Perhaps they had been lurking in the tunnels beneath the forest, waiting, like Morumi and her companion, for the storm to end. What they normally ate, Morumi couldn’t guess, but it looked like she and Rynick comprised the current menu.

With a shaking hand, she pulled the laser pistol from her belt. Rynick did the same, though he looked altogether unconfident about his capability.

“Next time someone asks me one of those questions about a hundred tiny creatures or one giant one, I know what to answer,” he muttered.

With a high-pitched howl, one of the creatures bent low in the beam of Rynick’s flashlight. Then it leapt into the air.