Drayton’s Discoveries, Book 1 by JL Nich (yes it’s mine) soon to be released in December this year.  The main character Herman Drayton, an ex-NASA pilot was given cybernetic limbs in this future Space Opera novel.  For which I gave him 3 extra inches of height.  He now stands over 2 meters.  Read a sample of his description here:

Drayton’s Discoveries, Book 1, Partial Sample Chapter 1

His bushy gray-haired eyebrows dipped down from the worn NASA ball cap, separating from his thicker hairline, as Dr. Herman Drayton’s focus was disrupted by a small gauss meter within the nearby vid panel.  His intense navy-blue eyes narrowed.  The meters’ jerky movements distracted him while he scanned through the millions of bits of scrolling code to discern specific sequences of known elements that could be found and “acquired” for a marketable sale on the galactic market.  He scratched his forehead, baring his teeth.  Finding the right zero, one, and two sequence of combinations within the rapidly falling matrix of numbers to pinpoint possible findings of gemstones, minerals, or even specific liquids that might indicate areas to further pursue, should be his only focus. 

Knowing he only had one hour’s worth of dedicated ship energy, his thick mustache twitched as he tried to concentrate.  That blasted bouncing needle, vacillating between high and low readings of magnetic feedback, quashed the endeavor.  Reaching up, he tapped the virtual screen, to hopefully stop the strange behavior, a long-ago habit he perfected while flying some rather antiquated aircraft in his previous NASA pilot career.  Of course, it was an electronic display and not the actual gauge.  His efforts did stop the tick for a moment.  He quickly went back to the central monitor and its rapidly scrolling data.  

The electro-metric scanner hummed loudly within the ship walls, drawing almost 65 percent of power usage, as its sensors roamed over the charted but unexplored planet surface below, bouncing data back up within the ship.  Given the limited use to drain the reserves, Herman did not need any distractions.  Although his programming would eventually parse the data findings, his sharp eyes and equally keen mind captured and interpreted the information flying across his system screens almost without thought.

That little movement continued.  Seen only by his peripheral vision, its dance stirred memories of younger days inside the fighter plane, a discernible frolicking image he perceived outside both sides of his jet canopy during takeoff–the rush of speed, or the mirth of death’s laughter.  Whatever caused them, those wind streams captured his aircraft in its arms and hurtled him through space.  Back then, as a cocky, young pilot, risking a quick look to either side, cleared the murky death hands to grasp, but not so this time.  As if cavorting in the throes of a frisky tango, the needle improvised its back-and-forth action, pausing to complete a complex quivering before rushing onto the next.   Intense light blue eyes narrowed a hard gaze at the offensive needle.  He looked at another sidebar to determine the radiation levels and found the readings nominal.

“Why would this magma-filled dirt ball tick off my magnetic relay? We are over 12K clicks above the bloody surface,” he thought aloud as he studied his equipment, his American southland Georgian regional burr sounded dry and edgy.  A magnetic trigger being read this far from the surface would hypothesize that Atax exceeds the magnetic field of 0.00005 tesla, of Old Earth.  No big deal with that agreement since the tiny planet did attract more than one moon.  But ISC recorded the core as dense, without movement.  Unlike Old Earth’s partially molten center.  The center at which the motion within the molten core makes the core a magnetic object.  So, what would cause a higher magnetic reading, if the planet composition itself was not a factor?  He was not often stymied by unexplained readings.  

Growling with frustration, he threw down his electronic stylus on the nearby data sheets and reached up to swipe the surface of a nearby comm.   An impatient voice broke through filling his lab with a deep rumbling gruffness.

“What’s up, Drrr. Drrrrayton?  I am fourrr of my six eyeballs deep in floating schematics and do NOT want to blink.”  Kut Brugg, the captain of the dubiously named ‘Icarus’ class six Starchaser, tended toward the cranky side of the Trabid species nature when he was not in the mood to deal with interruptions, which happened often.  His inflection of rolling R’s seemed to rumble on forever in his deep baritone voice.

“Sorry to stop Spaceball madness strategy, Captain Brugg, but I’m getting a strange reading bouncing up to us from the planet and I need to dig a little deeper,”  Herman remarked derisively.  He’d heard detailed gossip about the Captain’s addiction to galaxy sports. Internally, he regarded their current figurehead as little more than a brute with a title.  Brugg’s idea of handling a delicate situation was to pound it into dust and have his underlings clean up the mess.  The plus side of having a tyrannical Trabid be in charge of Icarus’s activity was that Brugg was not observant.  That bad habit was quite useful, at times, to his human Science Officers.  But today was not the day to quickly circumvent activity.  Herman had to go through the Captain to enter a phase of discovery by disturbing the planet.  “Do you think we could send down a slug-bot to get some samples?”

A moment of silence was endured.  A heavy sigh ensued through the com. 

“My team alrrready plummeted in the loserrrr’s brrracket anyway.  I’ll go ahead and courrrse corrrrect, but I don’t want to go atmospherrric without cause.  Ask the LT. forrr the bot.”  Brugg’s voice rose slightly from the deep bass timber as he mentioned the ship’s electronics expert Lieutenant Jor Parker, an exotically beautiful Alteric female, whom Drayton suspected the Captain enjoyed staring at with at least three of his six eyes–regardless of where she was in a room.  “I’ll have Petie brrrring us down to 9000 clicks.”  His voice growled through the audio.  

Herman grimaced at the mention of crew member Petie ‘can’t-shut-up’ Brock, the only other human crew member of the contract reconnaissance team.  He was the primary pilot of the Icarus, hired for his unquestionable skills in that regard.  However, his capability as an adult human was in serious doubt.  His features resembled the younger side of a pimply-faced teenager and for Herman Drayton, well into his middle age at sixty years, he just couldn’t seem to feel safe with that kid behind the wheel.

Ignoring that familiar sinking sensation that occurred whenever Petie was mentioned as driving their ship, Drayton nodded in agreement.  Nine thousand clicks would take less time for a bot to drop and it was far enough away to allow time for any emergency action if necessary.  

“What arrre we looking at?”  The question from Brugg startled Herman who’d already begun to mentally list his specific bot request in his head.  

He glanced back at the jumping needle on the dial and unconsciously rubbed a finger along the side of his once-broken nose.  “Not sure yet, but my nose itches.  Comm off.” Herman Drayton smiled and imagined all six eyeballs of Brugg’s flat features widening at that remark.  The last time Drayton’s nose “itched”, they found a pure, deep green Grabble nugget on some barren planet the size of an Alteric shill coin, large enough to cover his human hand and valued high enough to buy the electrometric scanner they now used.

With a grunt of sudden energy, he pushed back from the data screens and stood.  Both his titanium leg prostheses pinched slightly where his mid-thigh sleeves were inserted.  He wiggled his metal knees to adjust and relieve the draw on his muscles.  Herman still felt like a whiny bitch trying to reconcile the false limbs he now used to his own missing flesh.  But it had been years now.  His twenty-eight years of active service in Earth’s space patrol forces provided the nice benefit of a survivor’s income and superb medical when his flight craft was caught too close to a rogue nova…