Drusilla sees the flash that means her parents have died in
an explosion. She's in a space station, an apprentice aged
16, and her parents were at the space elevator on Mt
Kilimanjaro, which was built to send freight up to
geostationary orbit. Terrorists seeking separation of the
new Lunar state have destroyed the project. Debris now
floods the path of anything trying to come up or go down
and Kenya, the equatorial country where the elevator had
arisen, is devastated. War is declared.
Dru and her fellow apprentices are conscripted, given basic
army training in low gravity, shown how to handle rifles
and when she shows promise, is trained as a sharpshooter.
For relaxation she writes mails to her girlfriend far below
on Earth. She gets fitted with a skin-tight smart space
suit, learns about tactics and eats food made from algae.
But on Earth civil unrest and police actions are in the
news, and the loss of the lunar mines is causing economic
chaos. Dru is among a team sent to steal a freighter of
supplies from the Loonies. Not all lunar citizens are
supportive of the terrorists, but they don't get any choice
in their actions. Battle is brutal, especially in vacuum
where everything spins wildly and a blast of sand can blow
a suit apart. Surviving, and having given orders, Dru is
made a corporal, but her challenges are only beginning.
In DEBRIS DREAMS the jargon and descriptions are good,
especially the delicious sensory experience of showering in
zero g, but not always explained. For instance reference is
made to L1, L2, L3 etc. the Lagrangian points; a little
astrophysics at the time instead of in a glossary wouldn't
have hurt. The tale comes across as a blend of 'Starship
Troopers', 'Green Mars' and 'The Forever War'. Dru happens
to be gay and looks at other women, but in wartime there
isn't much chance for a relationship or even a cuddle. The
descriptions of deaths by being flash boiled or impacting a
fast-floating screw are far from pretty while communication
difficulties mean that there isn't always a clear chain of
command. A Chinese-American alliance has emerged to get us
into space, in this tale, but other social events are less
easy to swallow. David Colby has given us a hard-graft
tale in DEBRIS DREAMS, full of realism and unpleasantness
but friendship and bravery as well.
2068
1.5 million kilometers above the surface of the Earth
Drusilla Xao has only seen a tree in movies and vid-games.
She has never breathed air that wasn't recycled, re-
filtered, and re-used a hundred times over again. She has
never set foot on the Earth.
And now she never will.
When a terrorist attack by a radical separatist group on
Luna destroys the space elevator that had called so many -
including her parents - to live permanently in space, Dru
is cut off from any hope of ever reaching Earth and her
beloved girlfriend, Sarah. The Chinese-American Alliance
declares immediate war on the rebels and conscripts
everyone they can get their hands on...including Dru.
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