Ronald Jenkins

The Salvage of Rapha Ronald Jenkins

An accident leaves a crew of four salvage contractors stranded on the silent moon of Rapha Three. Feeling responsible for the accident, inexperienced engineer Nelson struggles to regain the respect and understanding of his captain and crew - especially Beck, a former soldier back from a long tour of duty and strangely out of touch with humanity. The crew discovers a city, once prosperous but now apparently abandoned. Around the empty city the ecosystem is dwindling rapidly towards a mass extinction and gravitational changes are tearing the moon apart, all for no clear reason. The only possible source of answers is a solitary alien who discovers the crew trapped under the city and offers to lead them to escape by means of a device that sounds too good to be true. But when the alien loses consciousness it falls on Nelson, Beck and the others to outrace the destruction and conquer alien technology themselves in hope of escape. Each must decide whether to trust each other, whether to trust their alien guide, and whether the unsettling implications for escape are worth facing at all.