Donald Nicklas

The Sakkara Donald Nicklas

Deep in corporate space, the Romani freighter Castalia was returning from delivering a cargo of rare wood to the Highline Corporation. They were taking the profits from the sale to their next destination to buy more cargo for delivery. The ship was not what it seemed but was also a sophisticated spy ship that was one of a fleet of cargo haulers the Romani sent out to keep an eye on the corporations. As she was passing through the N9723 system, she picked up a degraded telemetry signal. The Romani intelligence service loved to while away the time deciphering random signals. You never knew what you might come across. The signal was corrupted but contained the partial name of a ship lost eight centuries before during the Great Spinward Exodus. This was a time when space mining corporations first became the powers in human destiny. Earth was gone as a factor after the last World War, and became a museum planet when the radiation finally dissipated. The corporate CEOs ran their parts of space like warlords and would not tolerate dissent. As a result all intellectuals and dissidents were banished eight centuries in the past and many of them did not survive the trip. Those that did formed a new civilization outside of corporate space. They based their civilization on the ancient Roman Republic and called themselves the Romani. One of the vessels that never reached the end of the Great Spinward Exodus was the Sakkara and she held a secret that could prove devastating for the future of human space. It was now up to the Romani to investigate and they gave the mission to their most trusted captains, Christopher and Alaya Slone. What they would discover was beyond anything they could have imagined...