The Marsco Sustainability Project

by James Zarzana

The Marsco Sustainability Project continues The Marsco Saga. Fifty years have passed since the escape ship, the Sirius Odyssey II, secretly left Earth’s solar system heading for a distant, habitable planet. During a routine check of her crew in cryogenic stasis, Zot Grizotti, the ship’s hiberman, discovers that Sirius has been reprogrammed to head back to Earth. Tessa Miller, Mei-Ling Shanghai, and Zot now face returning to the Marsco world, a world they desperately sought to escape. What awaits them upon their return? Arrest for their crimes? Celebration of their scientific feat? A world with Marsco still firmly in control? Since its rise to power in 2070, Marsco repeatedly pledged to loosen its iron-fist control. In 2141, Marsco agreed to The Six Accords, which restored countries and re-instated democracy worldwide. But some leaders in Seattle are having second thoughts and are willing to renege on Marsco’s agreement for freedom in the newly-formed federations. Instead of releasing highly-trained Security and Auxiliary battalions to the new feds, Marsco is building up a hidden army to remain in power. To ensure loyalty from its officers, Marsco HQ is offering them sustainability, an enticement few can refuse.Near Sac City, the capital of the Western Constitutional Federation, Trent Brunel, a successful granger, struggles to implement these ideals—democracy, free elections, rights for all citizens. He has been appointed to West Con’s provisional assembly as it begins the process of self-determination. Kyle Roncalli, a Marsco cadet, knows the history of Brunel’s grange. His family once lived next to it when Walter Miller started what Brunel now calls New Grange. Will this cadet’s knowledge destroy the comfort and security of the Brunel family? And how will his presence at New Grange affect Brunel’s daughter, Sarah, who believes this land—her father’s land—will eventually become hers? Sarah’s limited circle, like the entire world, is rapidly shifting, but she is determined to stay at New Grange and run it as successfully as her father has. The whole of the Marsco world is on the brink of something new, something cataclysmic, something unknown.

587 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 30, 2019