Heavy Weight of Darkness

Willard Bennett - court marshaled, imprisoned, and class status revoked, he is now like most people: limited freedoms, no opportunity to advance, rights and privileges restricted, life-extending health services denied, and worse, the shame of once having it all, and then losing it. Many hard days and fitful nights he had dreamed of retracing his footsteps, finding the woman who did this to him, and ending her.

In a desperate act to curb insurrection on Earth, space command's admiralty and tribunal branch offers him redemption in the form of a new mission: track, find and kill Cassandra Kurtz. In return, he will receive his freedom, commission, life extending health care and a return to his former glory.

Originally enthused, he researches Cassandra's origins, the once first class, full citizen from the oldest family of the Third Republic turned insurrectionist on Earth and a full-blown terrorist on Mars. But it's after his investigation of the Delta Quarter, where it all started for Cassandra, that Bennett's resolve diminishes.

Drawing inspiration from Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, the Heavy Weight of Darkness is the sequel to the Endless Fall of Night where questions are answered, lives are altered, and truths come out in the final confrontation between Acting Captain Willard Bennett and the infamous disrupter, Cassandra Kurtz.