Restricted Species

When the Worst Thing Goes Wrong Earth Wars veteran Jim Turhan loves his quiet life on supply planet Mossera 4, teaching young cadets the art and science of xeno-farming. Pollinator drones never sting or bite. They simply do their jobs. Then crops all over Mossera 4 begin to fail. Will Jim discover the cause before starvation, or worse, turns his dream life into a nightmare? A Dispatches from the Galaxy Novella Also available in the collection Dispatches from the Galaxy: A Space Opera Novella Trio An excerpt from Restricted Species: Maerlis leaned forward, holding the comm in her lap. “I know we’re a fresh food outpost, so I hate to ask. What happens to our supplies in that time?” “Considering that the freighters won’t bring a damn thing with them?” Jim said. “Besides what little we can’t grow here. Even if we warn them, they won’t likely be able to detour to another supply planet.” “There aren’t any other ones close by.” Rob’s face was as pale as it had been flushed. “Not that they could re-route to.” Jim scrubbed his face. His brain didn’t want to see the answer, much less say it out loud. “We won’t actually starve to death. At least I don’t think so. You’ll know the nutritional deficiencies we’ll run into better than I do, Maerlis, with a year or more before we get a good harvest. But we’ll have a planet full of miserable cadets and furious miners on our hands.” Jim kept his true worries, and his memories, to himself. He’d seen people as rough and hardened as the miners on a desolate planet. At the end of the last wars on Earth. He knew how more shortages and hardships they weren’t prepared for could turn a difficult situation into a nasty one.