Tenacity launches on June 4. You can preorder now on Amazon or, you know, wait and I’ll have links to other retailers like Bookshop.org, where, to be honest, I buy my print books that I can’t get locally.

Tenacity is a sequel to Endurance. I’d like to think it stands alone, but just in case, if you haven’t read Endurance, feel free to pick one up now.

What’s Tenacity about? I don’t want to give too much away, but it takes place a couple of years after Endurance ends. Here’s a peek.

This scene is not the opener, so to set it up, you’ll learn Lyn Randall, former captain of the Endurance, now lives in Montana and works in the family business, Randall Restoration. Space had been closed to tourism after the events of Endurance and only now reopened, two years after Lyn and her crew brought Endurance back from Rigil Kent. On Earth, climate change and a world war devastated the land and RR uses repurposed wartime innovations to restore the landscape. But not everyone likes technology, namely anti-geoengineering luddites nicknamed Antigen. In this scene, Lyn’s dealing with a vandalized pump jack. Lyn is the “her” in the opening line. Setting is just outside the “ghost town” of Big Timber, Montana.

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The unmistakable purr of the Ag-Cat, a propeller-driven biplane, caught her ear. It was a far cry from a spaceship, but Ani loved it and Lyn could see why. An electric replica of a twentieth-century crop duster, it was a thing of beauty with two stacked main wings that gave it authentic old-fashioned appeal. The “Ag” stood for agriculture, not antigravity, Ani was always explaining to curious clients. It was small and nimble, able to fly a few feet off the ground, stay level for the drop, and turn sharp to do it again. Fly low with antigrav and you can’t get the seed to stay on the ground.

Ani buzzed past Lyn and rolled the bright yellow plane.

“Show off,” Lyn said into her com.

Ani circled, looking for a level spot to land, a cargo drone following. She rolled to a stop near the pump jack, and the young pilot climbed out of the cockpit and hopped down off the wing.

“Rodriguez Rescue Service, at your service,” she said emphasizing the rolled Rs of her Puerto Rican accent. Formerly the chief pilot on Endurance, she’d traded Omara Tours’ flight suit for Randall Restoration’s coveralls and vintage aviator sunglasses. Her long brown hair was pulled back in a utilitarian bun, the effect achieved of a dashing pilot out of the previous century. Ani could present a lot of flash, but underneath she was calm control through and through. She’d honed that flying in space, but Lyn didn’t doubt she’d succeed at whatever she tried. Case in point, repairing a pump jack. Lyn argued she could handle it herself, but Ani teased that Fúlli had warned her to keep an eye on R4, “Before you do more damage than you fix.” Plus, she could make up the time by flying a little faster, she said with a not-so-innocent smile.

Together they pulled the toolkit from the drone and set it by the jack. Lyn casually asked if she’d heard the news about space, but Ani was more interested in ranting about Antigen.

“One of these days, they’re going to kill someone,” she said.

As they were tightening the last bolt, Lyn’s com pod sounded an alarm. She eyed the display then peered to the northeast. Dark clouds roiled on the horizon. No, not clouds.

“Shite, Ani. There’s a duster heading this way.”

“Oh, hell.” The last thing Ani needed was to fly an electric plane through a dust storm. If the dust didn’t blind her the static electricity would short the whole system.

“I can finish up,” Lyn yelled into the wind. “Get out of here!”

Ani dropped her gloves into the toolbox and with a wave, hightailed it to the Ag-Cat. In less than a minute she was airborne, the drone behind her. She tipped her wings as she flew off to the west.

Lyn hauled the toolbox into the shed. A rolling mountain of dirt loomed over the far hills, dimming the sun and turning the sky a yellow-brown. A quick calculation of the speed and distance showed she might get away in time. These storms could last for hours and she didn’t want her Sportster sandblasted. She ran to her skim, powered up, and launched. Dirt pinged against the hull, dust obscuring her view. Thank god for dirt-piercing sensors. She detoured south till she got well ahead of the storm then circled east to continue across the state to the Randall homestead north of Nakota, a town once named for an Army general. The new nation saw no use in honoring Indian killers.

As the sky cleared, she relaxed and patted at the dust in her jeans, then thought better of it before she coated the interior. She chugged water to clear the grit from her mouth. The storm formed a wall of dirt for several miles, though by historic standards it was small. Until the first nukes went off in the 2110s, dust storms had been rare since the Great Depression. But growing up in the forties, Lyn hunkered through quite a few. Decades of drought had depleted the plains of nutrients, and the organic topsoil and vital fungal network eroded into dust storms eerily similar to those of the 1930s. “Where’d all the dirt go?” young Lynnie had asked her dad. Jephson had pointed to the east, “The Dakota Dunes and beyond.” Some landed there, some rose on winds to block the sun for days at a time, traveling as far as the Atlantic Ocean. To Lynnie, it was as though the earth itself was fleeing, leaving home, never to return.

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