Code White
(Joan) nodded silently unable to take her gaze off the grey curves of the planet. She already knew that neither the words, nor the pictures filtered by the camera would be able to render the slight vertigo she felt from up inside the UNSS Audacious as it flew over the theatre of operations.
A factory.
The surface was nothing else but a single infrastructure the size of a planet. Born on Hephaïstos, Joan had grown up in an industrial complex that spread over thousand of square kilometers; but nothing here seemed comparable.
She thought of a virgin forest, an exuberant and chaotic metal wilderness. She was unable to identify any kind of logic in its design: The landscape was jagged and covered in smog, heavy industry running wild.
Joan started when the pilots voice crackled in the intercom:
"We're going down, it might shake a bit."
The engines of the UNSS Audacious roared as the ship dipped forward and dived towards the surface. Joan held on to the sides of the window and stuck her cheek against the cool glass. At ground level, she could make out the outline of enormous structures that reminded her of the Hephaïstian refineries, with their tentacular networks of ducts and pipes. Black oily smoke rose to the sky here and there, covering the wide plains of steel. On the factory world.
– Code White
Written by John B. Appleton and Alexis Chelev, the novel Code White tells the adventures of Joan Casey, a journalist for the Ava Daily (see Cry Havoc vol.14 and Ava Daily 1 to 6), who is searching for her daughter lost in action somewhere on the factory world of Damocles. Her journey will lead her from behind the scene of the Avan presidency right into the entrails of the mechanical world, where she will have to overcome a thousand unexpected perils.
Code White is a journey like no other. The secrets of the past are sometimes more painful than bullet wounds… Join Joan Casey, a woman who rushes into the hell of war to exorcise her own demons.
He who does not read Code White will never understand the depth of the world of AT-43.