COLD SLEEP by Luke Hindmarsh

GENRE:  Science Fiction

BLURB

It’s the perfect score—stealing valuable data from a VIP in cryo-freeze midway through a decades-long interstellar crossing. If it works, Kara will have enough money to buy what she’s always wanted—a Captaincy.

But with the rest of the crew and the cargo of one hundred thousand colonists still frozen, Kara and her accomplice, Zed, realize they’re not the only ones awake. The murdered woman they find is only the first victim of whoever or whatever has woken from Cold Sleep.

EXCERPT

Stretching out the stiffness, my joints pop and crackle. One of the problems with lying in cold-sleep: you wake up feeling like arthritis has set in. With the synthetic dopamine and endorphins fading, I’d probably just want to curl up somewhere but good old synthphenethylamine’s still getting me going. A few seconds more for the upload of the quasi-intelligent virus to the ship’s system to finish.

Speaking of risks, getting caught with QI tech would see me court-martialed and spaced before any appeal notice could reach Earth. But this gig is worth it; it’s not for the thrill, it’s for what the payoff will get me.

Upload complete. And the ship’s systems stop registering our unscheduled revival.

A quick check back through the records shows all evidence of disruption to the normal cold-sleep routine has been erased. My little QI viral hitchhiker is back safe in the link-key, its work done for now.

Of course, a full virtual forensic check, stripping away every level of the programming and examining the source code, will make my tampering as obvious as a cometary impact. But the QI virus has laid the same evidence trail to each of the eighteen crew, four officers, and one hundred thousand passengers on board.

If you can’t hide your crime, make sure the evidence points to someone else. Better yet, everyone else.

For now, we’re ghosts aboard a sleeping ship.

AUTHOR Bio and Links

A Brit now living in the Scandinavian wilds of Denmark with his wife and half-Viking kids, Luke worked as a Criminal Barrister in and around London for over a decade dealing with everything from minor theft cases to a real life axe murder and everything in between. Thanks to parents in the military he grew up being dragged around the world–while living in the Far East he picked up a love for the martial arts which continues to this day, as he passes on what he’s learned to a select dojo of students. Cold Sleep is his third novel. His first was Amazon cyberpunk bestseller Mercury’s Son, his second a UK set supernatural suspense novel 3:33 AM.

• Twitter: @LukeETHindmarsh
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