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Echelon #2
Empyre
QUEEN MAUD LAND, ANTARCTICA
Chip, chip, thunk.
His axes biting into clean ice, Ryan Laing tried to recall the events that had led him here--clinging to a granite fang under Antarctica's cold sun. Surely there were better ways to start the day. So why was this the only place he felt comfortable? Climbing ice and rock in a barren land. Alone.
The past lapped over Ryan, his own mixing with that of Antarctica's extreme topography. Tension and release played out here in the slow thrust and ebb of granite and ice. And it played on a grand scale.
Chip, chip, thunk.
His axes cut into the vertical.
Antarctica was dreamed in myth long before its actual discovery. Aristotle and Ptolemy predicted a great unknown Southland as a counterweight to the landmasses of the North. To Ryan, that felt about right. To be here was to cling to the world's keel.
Queen Maud Land lay between the trailing tip of the Stancomb-Wills Glacier and the encroaching thrust of the Shinnan Glacier. Its twenty-five million square kilometers were claimed by Norway, but this was a place beyond claiming. There were no permanent residents here--no indigenous populations. Here, man was a tourist. That suited Ryan just fine.
Most of Queen Maud Land lay encrusted in thick ice. Thousands of kilometers of frozen desert. And then, like something out of a fairy tale, granite spires sprouted from the white and vaulted into the sky. Once these spires had stood bare but, with the climate change, there was now enough moisture and heat shift to generate ice sheets on their lower flanks. The ice rose like a wolf's gum, locking each massive tooth into the snow.
It was here that Ryan climbed: It was here that he tried to escape his past. And the world he had created.
Chip, chip, thunk.
Shards sparked down on him with each swing. He lost himself to the smooth beat of his axes crunching ice, finding purchase, taking his weight. Churning thoughts stilled with the slow burn of exertion. His arms ached with the strain, fingers curled tight around the handles, wrists chafed by the axes' leashes.
Heat suffused him, wiping away the last of his morning sludge. A glance through his legs at the gaping space below offered the familiar adrenaline rush that beat the shit out of any cup of coffee. Ice descended below him, then flattened into an unending white plane. Each exhalation puffed a soft cloud into the air, forcing life into the landscape. Everything else stood angled sharp and dead still.
An unyielding rage had driven Ryan to this farthest end of the earth. Every morning, he woke consumed by it. This morning, like the one before, and the one before that, he had pushed it away, refusing to acknowledge that rotten space within him. Instead he closed it off, boxed it down and let it settle into a sour, acid rumble deep in his gut.
It hadn't always been like this. For a time, there was hope. There was a future. There was a woman. Sarah Peters had filled that black space within him.
Chip, chip, thunk.
Like the ice shearing under each swing of his axes, Sarah had helped him discard the shell that a lifetime within Echelon had generated.
Two pillars had supported Ryan Laing's existence: Echelon, and the woman who helped him destroy it. They had done it for the right reasons. But that didn't matter anymore.
Even now, years later, Ryan found it hard to fathom the sco
Chip, chip, thunk.
His axes biting into clean ice, Ryan Laing tried to recall the events that had led him here--clinging to a granite fang under Antarctica's cold sun. Surely there were better ways to start the day. So why was this the only place he felt comfortable? Climbing ice and rock in a barren land. Alone.
The past lapped over Ryan, his own mixing with that of Antarctica's extreme topography. Tension and release played out here in the slow thrust and ebb of granite and ice. And it played on a grand scale.
Chip, chip, thunk.
His axes cut into the vertical.
Antarctica was dreamed in myth long before its actual discovery. Aristotle and Ptolemy predicted a great unknown Southland as a counterweight to the landmasses of the North. To Ryan, that felt about right. To be here was to cling to the world's keel.
Queen Maud Land lay between the trailing tip of the Stancomb-Wills Glacier and the encroaching thrust of the Shinnan Glacier. Its twenty-five million square kilometers were claimed by Norway, but this was a place beyond claiming. There were no permanent residents here--no indigenous populations. Here, man was a tourist. That suited Ryan just fine.
Most of Queen Maud Land lay encrusted in thick ice. Thousands of kilometers of frozen desert. And then, like something out of a fairy tale, granite spires sprouted from the white and vaulted into the sky. Once these spires had stood bare but, with the climate change, there was now enough moisture and heat shift to generate ice sheets on their lower flanks. The ice rose like a wolf's gum, locking each massive tooth into the snow.
It was here that Ryan climbed: It was here that he tried to escape his past. And the world he had created.
Chip, chip, thunk.
Shards sparked down on him with each swing. He lost himself to the smooth beat of his axes crunching ice, finding purchase, taking his weight. Churning thoughts stilled with the slow burn of exertion. His arms ached with the strain, fingers curled tight around the handles, wrists chafed by the axes' leashes.
Heat suffused him, wiping away the last of his morning sludge. A glance through his legs at the gaping space below offered the familiar adrenaline rush that beat the shit out of any cup of coffee. Ice descended below him, then flattened into an unending white plane. Each exhalation puffed a soft cloud into the air, forcing life into the landscape. Everything else stood angled sharp and dead still.
An unyielding rage had driven Ryan to this farthest end of the earth. Every morning, he woke consumed by it. This morning, like the one before, and the one before that, he had pushed it away, refusing to acknowledge that rotten space within him. Instead he closed it off, boxed it down and let it settle into a sour, acid rumble deep in his gut.
It hadn't always been like this. For a time, there was hope. There was a future. There was a woman. Sarah Peters had filled that black space within him.
Chip, chip, thunk.
Like the ice shearing under each swing of his axes, Sarah had helped him discard the shell that a lifetime within Echelon had generated.
Two pillars had supported Ryan Laing's existence: Echelon, and the woman who helped him destroy it. They had done it for the right reasons. But that didn't matter anymore.
Even now, years later, Ryan found it hard to fathom the sco
- GenresScience Fiction
ebook
First published January 1, 2007
About the author
Josh Conviser
2 books13 followersJosh grew up in Aspen, Colorado, went to high school in Santa Barbara, California and graduated from Princeton University in 1996. He has lived in Europe, Asia and Australia. An avid mountaineer, he climbed in ranges around the world, including the Himalayas, before giving up the mountains for the jungles of Hollywood where he pursued a career in screenwriting. He is the Executive Consultant on HBO's series, Rome, and has several films in development. Random House published his first novel, ECHELON, and its sequel, EMPYRE. Josh lives with his wife and daughter in Santa Barbara.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
June 25, 2024
I hadn't read the beginning of the series. It didn't seem to matter too much. I can tell I missed some callbacks. Probably some major character development as there wasn't much here. Universe is interesting future tech sci fi.
October 9, 2019
Not into this kind of sci-fi
October 8, 2018
I pick this up on a whim, and both the world and plotting just did not really make sense or track. I plowed my way through it, but really wouldn’t recommend it to anyone.
August 1, 2010
Josh Conviser’s debut novel ECHELON was a solid, if by-the-numbers effort: Nanobot-powered superspy Ryan Laing realized that the organization he worked for was actually bad in a Big Brother way, holding the Earth’s populace back from its potential in exchange for stability. He was then forced to kick a serious amount of ass and utilize a practically unheard of amount of awesome technological toys to bring down his former masters.
It sounds great, but the execution didn’t live up to the summary – ECHELON never quite lived up to its back-of-the-book promise. But little more than a year later, Conviser has delivered on ECHELON’s promise with the sequel EMPYRE.
More: http://www.bookgasm.com/reviews/sci-f...
It sounds great, but the execution didn’t live up to the summary – ECHELON never quite lived up to its back-of-the-book promise. But little more than a year later, Conviser has delivered on ECHELON’s promise with the sequel EMPYRE.
More: http://www.bookgasm.com/reviews/sci-f...
April 25, 2013
2 1/2 stars.
Just not my cup of tea. I wasn't pleased with the characters, the language used or the graphic scenes described. I'm no prude, I curse like a sailor and have no problems with blood and guts. But it seems that a lot of the language could have been cut down, and it seemed that the graphic scenes were there just to show how spiffy the main character could be (some of the times). I think it is a great idea for a book and could be very interesting, but this writing style was just not for me.
Just not my cup of tea. I wasn't pleased with the characters, the language used or the graphic scenes described. I'm no prude, I curse like a sailor and have no problems with blood and guts. But it seems that a lot of the language could have been cut down, and it seemed that the graphic scenes were there just to show how spiffy the main character could be (some of the times). I think it is a great idea for a book and could be very interesting, but this writing style was just not for me.
February 1, 2008
Great sci-fi book, second in the series. The protagonists are hugely biomodded and the future is a scary place!
August 21, 2015
Echelon continues... Sort of.
Found it kind of hard to keep the minor characters differentiated sometimes.
Found it kind of hard to keep the minor characters differentiated sometimes.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews