Brandon Excerpt

 Meet Lieutenant Brandon Lockhardt 

Loyal to his duty even while being shot at, here’s a scene with Brandon near the beginning of the book…

Brandon used the back of his hand to punch the release and get Clark out of his harness. Simultaneously he pointed and released a short-range missile into the side of the lander: the fastest way out. Wrapping his arms around Clark, Brandon jumped into the open air. Only Clark had an emergency chute strapped to his back, and Brandon knew that once it deployed he’d have to hang on to whatever he could.

“Pull,” he instructed.

Clark wedged his hand between them and yanked on the chute’s cord. A loud fluffing sound roared in their ears and Brandon clenched his strong body even closer to Clark’s scrawny one.

The jerk, once the chute opened, wasn’t so bad on Brandon, but he imagined how it must have felt to Clark. He was wearing the cuffs and the extra weight would hurt anyone’s shoulders.

He searched the sky for Palmer and the other lander while praying that the colonists were bad shots. But they weren’t shooting at Brandon and Clark; they aimed for the  lander. Brandon saw the missile that was going to hit its target. They were still too close to avoid the explosion that was about to come. “Hold tight,” he said to Clark.

The blast blew the two men sideways. Brandon took the brunt of it and with his face turned, so did his inner ear. It knocked him out. Dreamland wasn’t so bad, a slow floating feeling until he woke up realizing that Clark now held onto him.

Brandon heard the man’s heavy breathing and was thankful that his arms had been positioned over Clark’s shoulders. If not, the frail man wouldn’t have been able to hold onto Brandon loaded down with all his gear. “You’re tougher than you appear,” Brandon said.

“You have no idea,” Clark said.

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Terry Persun writes in many genres, including historical fiction, mainstream, literary, and science fiction/fantasy. He is a Pushcart nominee. His historical novel, Sweet Song , was a Silver IPPY Award Winner. His new fantasy novel is Doublesight . Terry’s utopian / dystopian novel, Cathedral of Dreams was a ForeWord magazine Book of the Year finalist in the science fiction category. His other science fiction titles include the sci-fi thriller Revision 7: DNA and the newly released space opera, Hear No Evil .



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