UNKNOWN

Irene was born and brought up in the colony on the moon, where her parents were killed in a laboratory explosion. She's built a reputation for leadership and problem solving around the solar system. She's the right person for the job when the new modulated integral soliton stream opens up the opportunity for her to command a survey mission to the Alpha Centauri star system.

One planet, designated AC4, looks particularly promising.

The survey is going well for the team, and seems ideal for a colony, when a member of the ship's crew decides to do some exploration on his own, and conceals some critical discoveries.

Will this kill the colony? Will their reports even be believed? Do they want them to be believed?

This is hard science fiction - that is it tries to be true to all the sciences, for readers who are keen to explore realistic possibilities of future science and technology.

Klandor Encounter is Book 1 of Klandor Rising and a finalist in the 2025 Realm Awards for Speculative Fiction (Novella).

Marti Ward is an award-winning writer, teacher, scientist and entrepreneur known for his serial startups and his interdisciplinary research.

Marti hasn't been into space yet, but has travelled extensively on this planet, living in half a dozen countries and speaking and reading a variety of languages with varying degrees of fluency. He hasn't yet built an AI as sophisticated as Al or Alice - but is working on it.