Troy J. Grice

Gaiastan Troy J. Grice

"Finally, a bright star appeared unto them? the brilliant Astarte, reflecting the sun and illuminated by 50,000 degree plasma. She fell from the heavens into the sea with a cosmic roar. Naval hovercraft rapidly converged upon her and the blackened and pulverized titanium space can was hoisted onto the deck of a floating retrieval ship.

Her doors were frantically pried open with crowbars. Indigo was extracted first and did the best he could to help with a physiology that had forgotten how to overcome full gravity. The strain caused him to almost immediately lose consciousness. He was poured onto a gurney and hauled away. Staley made no effort to leave the Astarte's womb at all. They pulled him out clumsily, breech style and face down. It was not immediately known if he had survived re-entry.

There were originally seven crewmembers aboard the Astarte."

Gaiastan is an adventure set in a post Agenda 21 dystopia.

Indigo and Staley are the only two survivors of the seventh failed mission to Mars. They are sent out on a National Triumph as conquering heroes, but their tour takes them beyond the reach of their totalitarian masters. They venture across the vast Dehumanized Zones and into the wild lands populated by the caste of serfs who are known as 'undermen'. It is out there, in the tiny village of Hegeltown, beyond the omnipotent social pressures and omnipresent surveillance, that an unexpected series of events begins to unfold.

The wounds left by their disastrous Mars mission drive Staley off on an opiate-induced walkabout and Indigo into the arms of the beautiful exile D'naia-- herself a failed elite, cast off by the Overman rulers for her refusal to be conditioned.

Mr. Lever, an immortal 'Sunstein Agent'-- an ancient order of secret police-- is commissioned to investigate the disappearance of the two national heroes. But his confrontations with the transformed spacemen alter the nature of his mission. He decides that they can only be salvaged if they have their brains reformatted.

All the while, the unhuman cannibals close in...