Captain Hawkins
by H. Peter Alesso
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BLURB:
Jamie Hawkins was living on an obscure planet in the twenty third-century when on one fateful night—his life changed forever. His heroic effort to save the lives of innocent women and children, caught in the cross-fire of war, placed him squarely in the crosshairs of avenging soldiers.
A former marine, Hawkins was stunned when his rescue effort was seen as treachery. Unfairly convicted of treason by a corrupt judge, he was sentenced to life imprisonment at hard labor on an infamous penal colony.
Once in prison, Hawkins was mistreated by a paranoid warden, but his courage and perseverance won him the admiration and trust of his fellow convicts. While he was plotting his escape, an enemy attacked the planet—giving this daring warrior his chance. Together with his fellow prisoners, he launched a bold assault and high-jacked an enemy warship.
From then on, the exploits of Captain Jamie Hawkins became legendary.
GENRE: Sci-fi
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EXCERPT:
Joshua licked his lips and took a deep breath to gather his wits.
“Now let’s start again with our portrait of various colors of gray, brown, black, and flesh tone that shows the image of Mona Lisa. Next, suppose that I took a black felt pen and drew a sketch of Captain Hawkins right over the portrait, only I centered it catty-corner. I could still recognize the image of the woman with its stark colors, but overlaid on that, I would also see the outline of a man in ink, in its skewed position. My brain could flip, back and forth, between the two; seeing them individually, as well as a composite. If I cut this into a thousand irregularly sized pieces and spread those pieces out. Can you image how you would go about reassembling them?”
“I don’t get where you’re going with this.”
“Let’s say a kid looked at the thousand pieces of our puzzle and was told to assembly them into a portrait of the Mona Lisa. Once he began, he would connect pieces of vivid colors and woman’s image would emerge, but he would, also, see thick black lines crossing through the woman. At first he wouldn’t be able to recognize that the black lines connected in a meaningful way, but eventually, as he filled in more and more of the puzzle, he would see both the Mona Lisa image and a second image, the outline of a man.”
Hawkins looked at him.
“That’s what happened to me,” said Joshua, becoming agitated. “I’ve decrypted a pattern in the enemy’s communications, and as I was decoding some of their orders, I began to recognize an overlapping pattern.”
“That’s great. Why didn’t you just say that?”
“Because the secret communication pattern, I was working on—had the overlying pattern of the deep space signal, I was also interested in. When I was putting the first ‘image’ together, I recognized the second.”
“Huh? I don’t understand?”
“Neither does the enemy security forces. They’re running around thinking they have outside agents penetrating their security organization when the conflicting orders and misdirection they are experiencing, are really a result of deep space signals.”
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AUTHOR Bio and Links:
As a scientist and author specializing in technology innovation, H. Peter Alesso has over twenty years research experience at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). As Engineering Group Leader at LLNL he led a team of scientists and engineers in innovative applications across a wide range of supercomputers, workstations, and networks. He graduated from the United States Naval Academy with a B.S. and served in the U.S. Navy on nuclear submarines before completing an M.S. and an advanced Engineering Degree at M.I.T. He has published several software titles and numerous scientific journal and conference articles, and he is the author/co-author of ten books.
Website Address: http://www.hpeteralesso.com/Default.aspx
Goodreads Address: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/413852.H_Peter_Alesso
Congrats on the tour and thanks for the chance to win :)
ReplyDeleteI have been a fan of H. Peter Alesso for a while now. I am excited to read this.
ReplyDeleteThank you for hosting.
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