Something unearthly is calling Jester Lewis.

’Anu pashyanti - can’t you see?’ Urges the voice from his dreams. ’Isten quivi ea servavi - you must save them.’

The year is 2081 and a manned mission is launched to the edge of the asteroid belt where the so called planet X (Marduk) will briefly intercept our solar system. Jester Lewis - a somewhat shy and awkward youth who suffers still from the distant loss of his mother, and the recent loss of his best friend, Toad - stows away on board the Redemption hours before its launch, believing in the imperative he keeps receiving in his dreams that he must save the crew. He won’t understand until later that his presence has further endangered them and the mission, and he earns the wrath and venom of the Divus Nex - a religio-political spiritual advisor sent along to ‘oversee’ the mission; and the respect of Stark ‘Naked’ Dekan - an often crass and chauvinistic ladies man who is pulling double duty as ship’s medic and security officer.

Filled with painful secrets (not least of which is the knowledge of who’s behind Toad’s murder), and carrying a burden of responsibility that threatens to break him, Jester must find the strength and courage to face his past; himself; and the mounting danger. His altruistic sacrifice seems in vain however, as events don’t go according to plan, compounding his sense of failure and the likelihood of his own demise.

Adventus Malum is a completed manuscript approx. 18,700 words