The Rat Queen

The galaxy is becoming increasingly hostile towards humanity. Now, survival or extinction is in the balance.

Nations of various galactic beings have not forgiven humans for how they forced their way into space, colonising planets that weren't theirs. They say, everywhere humans have gone, rats and cockroaches have followed - vermine, all the same.

Three refugees from a doomed planet are thrown together on an empty spaceship during a botched evacuation: a young man named Elton, a baby girl whom he names Becky, and a rat. With no one on board who can pilot the ship, it simply speeds onward on "auto", at just under light speed, to nowhere, until they're captured by galactic beings. Elton, is kept prisoner and joins other humans being held on their space station, while Becky escapes into the rat infested ventilation shafts. She grows up feral, thinking she's a rat. She smells like a rat, squeaks like a rat, and though she is rather large, the other rats think she's a rat.

A family of orphans, a girl and two younger boys have also managed to remain undetected, surviving in an empty section of the space station. They find Becky, and adopt her into their "family".

The non-human Galactics decide to send their human prisoners to resettle a vacant planet that had been abandoned by the previous human population. There was a reason it was abandoned, and they don't expect the humans to survive.

However, one galactic being among them, is sympathetic towards humans, and takes an interest in Becky. One very small modification he makes in her brain, plus a fluke caused by the spins of a binary black hole, become the catalyst for Becky and her rats being the game changer for all humanity..

If you like stories of survival in the harshest of environments, plus a bit of speculative evolution, this is for you. Begin your journey by downloading the first instalment of this Space Opera trilogy.