My latest release now available on Amazon.
In 2073, America is wracked with financial decline from pandemics, middle east wars, and widespread automation, including sales, teaching, transportation, and technology. The newly elected President secretly sells NASA’s equipment, the space station, the moonbase and their platinum mines to China to repay heavy debt.
On Mars, astronauts sabotage the landers necessary to carry the teams of explorers to orbit for their return. The program is ending, but they want to stay. Now, astronauts on Mars struggle to establish a permanent colony on Amazonis Planitia, searching for water, fuel, shelter, and a way to grow food.
When moonbase and American space station workers learn, a ship is coming to force astronauts and settlers to Earth, they revolt. Lunar engineers are building a huge ship from discarded fuel tanks and moonbase equipment. Space station astronauts commandeer the military ship, incarcerate its crew, a Chinese and an American General plus a squad of Chinese troops. They load the station’s nineteen new ion drives aboard the ship and travel to the Moon.
There, moonbase settlers join them aboard the amalgamated ship, Moonbird. They achieve orbit with stolen chemical engines and travel to Mars under constant, ion drive thrust to join the marooned explorers, but two military ships led by the generals and are coming, filled with Chinese troops to force them home.
L. K. Pinaire 