Den of Thieves: The Slow Space series - Book 1 - Softcover

Hatch, Daniel

Softcover

ISBN 13: 9798992039726

Publisher: Bigwaves Publishing, 2025

Synopsis

This is not your grandfather's space colony. Nineteen ships and 100,000 colonists, ready to land. But someone is standing in the way ...

Guy Stanger is a scout just coming of age on the icy world of Asgard. Scouts have been waiting for decades for Colony Day, the arrival of the breakthrough colony, and now it's here.

Using a soliton drive, the colonists have traveled from Earth at the speed of light, leaping across space and time in an instant. Now they are 25 light years from home, expecting the scouts to help them learn to live on a world gripped by an ice age, and Guy is prepared to do all he can.

Guy and the colonists aren't expecting the Kolbergs - a party from an earlier expedition to another star - who already have arrived on Asgard before Colony Day. As the scouts and colonists wrestle with the problems of the new world, they also struggle with a big question: What do the Kolbergs want?

Several sections of the novel first appeared in Analog.

About this title

About the Author

"I've done a lot of things that would be really impressive if someone else had done them."
Daniel Hatch is a veteran science fiction writer whose stories have appeared in Analog and elsewhere since 1990. He served four years in the U.S. Coast Guard and is a graduate of the University of Connecticut with a degree in journalism. He has 40 years of experience as a reporter and an editor, including work for the Hartford Courant, the Connecticut State News Bureau, the New York Times, and 35 years at the Journal Inquirer. He now works for the Hearst Connecticut Media Group, which bought the Journal Inquirer in 2023. As a reporter, he covered the 1980 presidential campaign and the first space shuttle launch and interviewed Ben Bova, Paul Newman, and Buzz Aldrin.

From the Inside Flap

"It's my sad duty to report to you that only nineteen of our ships have completed the journey from Sol," she said. "Our friends and comrades on the Hollister have been lost. A moment of silence in their memory is now in order ... thank you."
The image dissolved into a blank screen. Then another announcement appeared: "...STAND BY TO SECURE FROM SOLITON DRIVE QUARTERS..."
The moment of silence continued long after the Captain disappeared from the screen.
Then the significance of the report sunk in.
Until that moment, the risks that the Asgard Breakthrough Colony faced in their interstellar flight had all seemed academic to Emily. She was never very good with math anyway, and percentage of failure rates involved one set of fractions too many. Of course it was dangerous. Everyone knew that. But she didn't have any way of weighing what that meant to her personally.
She hadn't realized how the survivors would feel.
There were 5,000 people on the Hollister. Three dens. Mothers, fathers, children, babies. Livestock and equipment. Plans and hopes. And now they were all gone.

Edition details

• Publisher: Bigwaves Publishing
• Publication date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 13: 9798992039726
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 382