Kindle Edition Amazon Category:  Science Fiction Publisher: John A. Autero ISBN-10:  1545271895 Type: Fiction Pages: 216 Copyright: May 27, 2017 ISBN-13: 9781545271896 Price: $2.00 (eBook) “Evil doesn’t have a problem finding the middle of nowhere.”  “Evil doesn’t have a problem finding the middle of nowhere.” Earth is ravaged by a Vermiculira epidemic which threatens every human life on the planet. The only way to save humanity and propagate the species is to restart civilization someplace else. That someplace else is Mars. The plan is to relocate humans that have not been contaminated by the disease to the red planet and leave the crazies back on Earth.  To ensure that no infected are allowed to reach Mars, a network of decontamination depots has been placed in space, half way between the two planets. Passengers and cargo are sniffed for traces of the disease before they are allowed to proceed on their journey. Charlie and Linda Kennedy live a quiet life on Decontamination Depot, D.D. 315. Charlie operates the spacecraft refueling station, and the hydrogen fuel condenser facility, while Linda’s role is to lovingly provide her guests with a friendly smile, a couple good meals and then get them on their way. But, their peaceful existence is terminated when people onboard are savagely murdered. Charlie needs to stop the carnage and vows to protect Linda, his loving wife. To make matters worse, the killer has programmed the depot to self-destruct unless Charlie can figure out some way to stop it. “Honorable intentions can lead to horrifying consequences.”       Excerpt A large dose of adrenaline hit Charlie’s bloodstream as he jumped to his feet and looked below him to try and find McCormick. But after frantically scanning the plant floor below, he was unable to spot him. It was easy to find a hiding place among the myriad of tanks and pipes running through the plant and McCormick must have found a good one. “You won’t find Linda on D.D.315.” Charlie shouted. “I put her in a life-pod hours ago and shot her into space. I told her to stay there until I got this mess cleaned up.” McCormick answered from below, “A very good idea my friend, but I walked through the dock area about thirty minutes ago and I saw the life-pod still sitting there. I had planned to use it to escape this lovely depot of yours since I’m not a pilot and wouldn’t be able to use the Elysian Fields.” Charlie had always prided himself on his planning and preparation but it seemed that McCormick was always one step ahead. Charlie ran his grimy hands through his sweat soaked hair and huffed with frustration. He knew McCormick was armed with a knife after observing the carving job he had done on Salsbury, but he wasn’t sure if he had another weapon—maybe Jozef’s side arm perhaps. Charlie slid his firearm from its holster and set the intensity level to lethal. Then he clenched his jaw and headed for the ladder. “Okay McCormick. No more games. Let’s get this thing settled. I’m sick of screwing around with you and this needs to be finished.” Charlie reached the top rung of the ladder, slipped his firearm into its holster, and started to climb down. “You are a scholar and a gentleman Mr. Kennedy. A real man of character. I think you have a great idea. Come down from that ladder and let’s end this. I can’t wait to carve my name into your dead carcass.” Charlie looked below as he climbed down, trying to identify where McCormick’s voice was coming from but he saw nothing. As he reached the bottom rung, stars exploded behind his eyes and an ocean of pain rushed from the back of his head. Charlie lost his grip and fell to the metal grate below him, his side arm popping from its holster and bouncing away. Writhing in pain and nauseated, he slowly opened his eyes to see McCormick standing over him still wearing his green prisoner uniform. McCormick coiled the edges of his mouth into a wicked smile as he looked down at Charlie with a two-foot section of pipe in his hand. “Don’t blame gravity for this one. I take all the credit.” McCormick’s face glowed with excitement as he held the pipe in his right hand and tapped the end of it into his left. “You may be a scholar and a gentleman, Mr. Kennedy, but you tend to do very stupid things. Trying to stop me from killing you and your wife is one of them, but as I said, being a man of character, you feel it necessary to at least try.” McCormick lifted the pipe above his head and slammed it into Charlie’s upper thigh.

Five Body Bags
Hyper is an exceptionally well written sci-fi/mystery novel. If, as a kid, you liked reading Popular Mechanics, you’ll love this book. (The technical description of the hydrogen condensing process is brilliant.) It’s written by an engineer, who knows his stuff.

When Earth becomes no longer a fit place to live due to a good intention, an immunization program, that back fired; then, if you’re one of the lucky ones, and your lottery number is called, you get to leave Earth and spend your days in a giant can (decontamination station) in space. As the Earth went through this rough patch, half the people turned to God and the other half turned away.

This is a who-done-it. Charlie’s co-workers start dropping dead. Five body bags will be filled before the killing stops.

Hooked Again
This book is simple amazing: by the end of the first chapter, I was hooked. By the end of the second chapter, it was a different book entirely and I was hooked again.

Autero absolutely nails his characterisation. His chapters alternate between the small cast of characters, I sympathised with each and every one of his characters which is what brought the suspense to a knife's edge when it came to figuring it out whodunnit.

His description of the engineering aspects clearly come from a place of expertise - if sci-fi mechanics are your catnip, this is going to do good things for you.

For me, the thing that brought the whole story together was the idea of evil coming from within, that you had to decide who was killing off the other characters based on their moral compass.

It's amazingly well written, with the clues seamlessly laid out throughout the narrative until they all make sense at the very end without any gaping plot holes.

I finished this book in 24 hours and was delighted to discover that the author has a couple of other books that I can dig in to.