Difference between revisions of "Defending Elysium"

|cover=DefendingElysium.jpg

|released=Holiday 2009

|annotation=bwsp:3737

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== Background ==

 

== Summary ==

The story opens with [[Jason Write]] in his private cabin aboard a shuttle, watching a video playback of a woman thrashing in a hospital bed. He could do nothing for the woman right now, not until he reached [[Evensong]] - an orbital platform hanging between Saturn and Uranus, and the frontier of humanities conquest in space.

As the shuttle begins to dock with the Evensong, his support operative, [[Lanna Write|Lanna]], enters Jason's cabin informing him that his colleagues have been sent on assignment elsewhere and she is the one that will be accompanying him. Lanna has booked Jason in to a hotel under a peculiar alias, suggesting that Jason is actually an agent.

Lanna has arranged their return to Jupiter for 10:30 PM local time. But Jason suspects something might be amiss, that the ambassador's death and Denise are related. Jason then contemplates the vast differences between their races, how underdeveloped humans are while quoting from Virgil a passage of the Elysian Fields. Comparing it to Elysium, space is the place heroes go when they die.

 

While contemplating Denise's fate after she'd been kidnapped, Jason comes to a startling conclusion. Rushing into her room he experiments with the light settings - making them harsher than a regular human could stand - and reveals her to be a Varvax imposter.

Trying to settle his theories Jason makes his way back to the hospital. Telling Lanna to inform the police to ignore reports of a madman attacking an orderly, Jason enters the orderly lounge and locates the man he'd seen back at the cafe - the one who'd hidden himself when he'd taken Denise from the hospital. The man turns to run but Jason catches him and implants the idea that he can read minds.