#Indieauthors #Sciencefiction #Spaceopera #Starshatter #Books "A lonely space shuttle was making its way through the asteroid field. The surrounding space was filled with irradiated, molten rocks – evidence left from a battle fought many decades ago. The outer hull of the shuttle was covered with armorplates, all beautifully painted over with various scenes depicting many heroic, ballsy deeds. The center figure was that of a young woman wearing a bulky, but extremely well-made spacesuit, armed with a long revolver-looking pistol. The girl had pale white skin, blue eyes – her long blond hair was braided, reaching below the waistline. Her ship was short, wide, and had thick wings, ending with vertical atmospheric stabilizers. The ship’s designer had used the space wisely, because it was created not only with exploration in mind but combat, too. Between those stabilizers, the shuttle had two long railguns mounted and armored to the side by long plates of megasteel. It also sported one rotating quad turret at the back of the ship, which was well hidden between its two powerful plasma drives. Leaving a long trail of ionized gas, the ship careened to the side, and rays from the local star shone upon its name – FSS (Free Spacer Ship) Princess Frog, written in Cyrillic. To an educated observer who had remote knowledge of Terran fauna, that ship would look quite similar to a frog. Its forward sensor-package even protruded forward from the ship’s nose, giving the impression of a tongue-like appendage sticking out in search of food. And indeed, the ship’s instruments found something – far ahead, at the center of this asteroid cluster, there was an area devoid of rock, but full of man-made debris. Sitting inside the navigator’s command pod was that same spacesuit-wearing young woman from the outer hull paintings. Her beautiful face was sweaty – in complete concentration, her eyes were transfixed on the shuttle’s holo displays, reading all the navigational data her com...