Zanzibar’s Rings
by Jemima Pett
A Galactic crisis: the entire comms system destroyed. No waypoints, no navigation aids, no database access… and how will spaceships in flight get home—or to any destination?
Dolores is stuck in warp with a very dangerous passenger, Pete gets his shuttle back home on manual. But how come anything in close contact with pure orichalcum fixes itself? Just flying through Zanzibar’s Rings solves the problem—as the Federation’s fighters find, as they descend on the Viridian System to take possession of the planets.
Zanzibar’s Rings brings the Viridian System series to a conclusion with a bang—and a lot of whimpering. And possibly a view of things to come.
4 out of 5
This certainly grabs your attention at the start. Alien worlds, space travel, unforgettable characters, and almost insurmountable odds. This is sci-fi in every sense of the word, and Pett has a style reminiscent of most literary fiction. I really enjoyed the descriptions, and the suspense of watching as the characters tried to navigate everything thrown at them. A great read for space sci-fi lovers.
07:00 Corsair timezone (southern hemisphere);10:00 Sunset Strip
Pete Garcia finished unloading a set of pallets destined for the small store at Corsair Central. The three thousand or so residents of the Corsair community on Viridian System 3b did not feel comfortable calling the entire planet Sunset Strip, after the main settlement in the northern hemisphere. Calling their own first settlement area Corsair Central was a step towards making it their home, even though Pete had advised against it.
“You’ve got our petition to the Elders?” his sister Maya asked as she accompanied him across the level grassland back to his shuttle.
“Yes, safe here.” Nowhere safer than his inside vest pocket. He kissed her and gave her a hug for good measure. “I’ll persuade them, don’t worry. The main thing will be to work out what to call the planet. They might resist change. Like you resisting dropping the Corsair link. If that senator hears…”
“He won’t hear, and besides, lots of places in the galaxy have the same names. Two Sunsets might work, instead of Sunset Strip.”
Pete sighed. He was losing his argument over using the name of their former planet, owned by the Imperium senator who’d bought land on Pleasant Valley. “Any idea gives people something to start on. Lars agrees with the concept, I think. That’s a start.”
“Give him my love.”
He raised one eyebrow. “Are you sure?”
His sister was a married woman. Teasing her about a possible relationship with Lars was second nature to him.
“When will you be back?”
“I’ll check out the progress of that order for seeds from Pankut. And have another chat with Tylene Smithson about releasing your seeds. I’m sure we can show they won’t endanger the southern hemisphere biota somehow. And we’ve already got evidence that they can’t cross to the north.”
“I’m worried they won’t even be viable after all this space travel.”
“Don’t worry about it now. I’m on it.”
Maya smiled and stepped away as Pete climbed into his shuttle. He gave her thumbs up from the door, and closed the outer hatch. He stood, letting the decontaminant system do its thing, then went through to take his place in the pilot’s seat. He checked that everybody had cleared the area, and set off for home. Maybe he’d call Dolores from near space.
09:00 Corsair time; 12:00 Sunset Strip
Pete never tired of the view as he cleared the atmosphere and had the whole of Sunset Strip curving below; a ball of variegated patterns where the storm sector in the equatorial zone would rip anything that entered it to shreds, the smoother cloud formations to the north and south, above the habitable zones. And the dark of first sunset creeping across the world like a monster eating a cookie.
His sister and the rest of the Corsairs were right, though. Sunset Strip was the northern settlement and the continent where he lived. It had never been suitable as a planetary name. Neither was Pleasant Valley, for the co-orbital planet, either. Whole worlds named for a single settlement. It wasn’t logical.
He frowned. Something else wasn’t logical. That flicker of green lightning running through the Van Allen belt. And what the heck was going on in the galaxy? The normal blue-silver disc of the spiral galaxy was speckled with green lights.
The green lightning headed straight for him. “Shields up!” he called to his AI, although surely it would be ahead of him. Why hadn’t it alerted him to something in the sensors?
His control panel went dead.
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Jemima Pett has been writing stories since she was eight, but went down the science path at school, and into a business career before retraining into environmental policy research. She wrote many manuals, papers and research documents before returning to fiction, publishing the Princelings of the East in 2011. That led to ten books in the series of the same name, written for older children. She started the Viridian System series in 2014.
Jemima reckons she read all of the science fiction in her local library, and most enjoys alternative universes, time travel, consequences of social change and unusual ideas surrounding alien species. Her favourite authors included Anne McCaffrey, Fritz Lieber, Poul Anderson, John Brunner, Robert Heinlein and Arthur C Clarke. These days she likes Becky Chambers, Matt Haig, Lindsay Buroker, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Clare O’Beara, M T McGuire, Jennifer Ellis… She also loves series – once involved with characters she loves to read their continuing adventures.
She has degrees or diplomas in maths, earth sciences and environmental technology and studied with the Unthank School of Writing while she lived in Norfolk. She now lives in Hampshire, where she enjoys rewilding her garden, raising organically grown vegetables, and birdwatching.
She would most like everyone to use their natural resources sustainably, since we only have the one planet to support us.
Her latest book is Zanzibar’s Rings: Viridian System Series (Book 3).
Visit Jemima’s website at www.jemimapett.com or connect with her at Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads, Instagram and Pinterest.
