Landfall: The Ship Series // Book One

by Jerry Aubin

  Praise for Landfall

  Welcome to your new favorite YA sci-fi series! Landfall: The Ship Series Book One hurls us into a frightening and fascinating future rich with action, mystery, and unforgettable characters. With elements of Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game and the best of Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson books, Landfall kept me burning through the pages. I hope Jerry Aubin is typing right now, because I can’t wait to return to The Ship!

  - Owen Egerton, author of Everyone Says That at the End of the World

  If you purchased this book without a cover it would be pretty surprising. You’re missing a cool cover! Go out and buy a copy that actually has a cover.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2015 Jerry Aubin

  Illustrations copyright © 2015 Jerry Aubin

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  For any information, please contact zax@theshipseries.com.

  The main text of this book was set in Georgia.

  The chapter title text was set in Avenir.

  Lekanyane Publishing

  Austin // Amsterdam // Cape Town // Sydney // Christchurch

  ISBN 978-0-9970708-1-1 (pbk)

  ISBN 978-0-9970708-0-4 (ebk)

  For K, P, W, and Q.

  You know what that's like, right, Zax?

  Hello, lunch.

  We haven’t met yet.

  Nothing but a milk run.

  It’s coming right at us.

  Forget about him!

  It’s your chair now.

  It looks habitable.

  There’s nothing out there.

  That doesn’t make sense!

  What happens if it’s not empty?

  Don't do anything stupid in Marine Country.

  I just saw my mentor and he says hello.

  I'm going to be your tour guide.

  This is where the dangerous stuff starts.

  Right now.

  We’re all going for a little ride.

  A lot.

  It must have been the pain meds.

  Non-lethal does not mean non-painful.

  Weapon malfunction.

  Look who we have here.

  You may go first.

  I heard everything.

  Pretty cool!

  You ready?

  These little guys can fly!

  Are you OK, cadet?

  Listen carefully to what I say next.

  I have orders to do yours first.

  It means you have a message waiting.

  You said ‘if’, sir.

  Look at me—I’m a blubbering mess.

  You’re the pilot.

  He sent you here for this?

  I said it before and I will say it again.

  What I'm about to tell you will sound insane.

  What are you doing here?

  Hello, lunch?

  CHAPTER ONE

  You know what that's like, right, Zax?

  The Ship blazed in sharp contrast to the inky void of space which framed it. An asteroid which measured roughly one hundred kilometers long by fifty wide and ten thick served as its foundation. Towers, some as tall as the space rock was deep, blanketed its smooth top. The vessel’s brightness came from millions of exterior windows whose light outlined the warren of artificial structures. The bottom portion retained its natural, craggy state except for the thousands of hatches which peppered the surface. Shuttles darted to and fro as they transported cargo between the cavernous cryostorage and agricultural holds carved into the asteroid’s interior.

  Zax never tired of viewing the real-time imagery of the Ship beamed in from the distant perspective of a perimeter drone. He marveled at how the vessel appeared to be the result of someone using a giant shovel to send one of Earth’s cities—bedrock and all—aloft with one tremendous scoop. Something about the current image seemed wrong and tickled at the back of Zax’s perception for a few secs before he identified it. His hand shot up and drew Sayer’s attention.

  “Sir—what’s going on with that large block of darkened structures in civilian sector twenty-eight?”

  “I can’t see anything abnormal, cadet, so I’m not sure. Let’s zoom in and check it out.”

  The instructor closed his eyes for a moment and used his neural Plug to interface with the holoprojector. Zax’s typical pang of jealousy was replaced a moment later by excitement at the realization his personal countdown had finally reached double-digits. He only had to wait ninety-nine more days to graduate from Zeta Cadre and get Plugged In to the Ship himself.

  Sayer, a nineteen-year-old fighter pilot from Kappa Cadre, was only four years older than Zax and the other Zeta cadets in the training room. This small gap in age between the instructor and his trainees was by design. Ship tradition held that the best way to transfer knowledge was for Crew who were only slightly older and more experienced to pass on their hard-won lessons to the younger cadets who followed in their footsteps. Sayer was easily Zax’s favorite instructor as he embodied everything Zax dreamed about with regards to his own career. This type of aspirational thinking was also the intent of the officers in the Omega Cadre who ran the Ship when they established the Crew training protocols generations earlier.

  The holoimage projected in the space above the cadets’ heads zoomed in on the civilian sector and a large swath of darkened structures became obvious. “Wow, Zax, I’m amazed you noticed that. There could very well be room for you in the Pilot Academy with that kind of observational skill. Ten credits. As for why that section is dark, I have no idea. There have been more and more isolated power outages in recent years, but I didn’t think things had gotten bad enough to knock out such a big area.”

  Zax beamed, but his happiness was not from Sayer rewarding him with the ten credits. Though he obsessed about his ranking and desperately chased opportunities to increase his already prodigious Leaderboard score, what really excited Zax were the two magic words—Pilot Academy. Zax had chased his goal of earning command of a fighter since his career started ten years ago. Being near the top of the Leaderboard was a requirement for becoming a pilot, but that alone did not guarantee admission. If an instructor like Sayer was noticing his potential, Zax could hold out hope that the Omegas who made career assignments were seeing it as well. His reverie was broken a sec later when Aleron chimed in from the back of the class.

  “Maybe some idiot civilian puked on a power unit and that’s why all those structures are dark. You know what that’s like, right, Zax?”

  Laughter erupted around the room and Zax’s cheeks flushed. He had long grown accustomed to Aleron and his band of morons enjoying themselves at his expense, but it stung to have the cadets who had only recently been added to Zeta pile on as well. What hurt the most were the braying giggles which emanated from Kalare.

  Zax hadn't given much thought to girls during his first two years in Zeta Cadre, but that had changed when the Omegas mysteriously moved a handful of cadets from rival Epsilon Cadre into Zeta a few weeks earlier. Kalare was at the head of the line as the group walked into the Zeta berth for the first time, and her arrival literally took Zax’s breath away. She stood a quarter meter taller than he did—Zax hadn’t experienced a growth spurt yet—with jet-black hair and brilliant blue eyes which were iridescent from gold flecks. Her features were as distinctive as Zax’s mousy brown hair and dark brown eyes were common, and they drew him in like the pull of a massive black hole. The first time he witnessed her smile
it melted a lifetime’s indifference to the opposite sex, and Zax was shocked when he involuntarily mouthed “magnificent.” Those feelings faded within a few, short days as Zax regretfully concluded Kalare was a complete scatterbrain not worthy of his attention or admiration, but it still rankled to be the object of her amusement.

  “Twenty-five demerits for speaking out of turn, cadet.”

  Sayer’s words quieted the laughter and then he closed his eyes. Zax allowed himself a tight smile at the knowledge the instructor was using his Plug to interface with the Leaderboard to add ten points to Zax’s score and deduct twenty-five from Aleron’s. His ranking was already well above the bully’s, but the possibility of massive demerits due to a stupid training injury or mistake on an exam always nagged at Zax and made him grateful for any additional scoring cushion. A sec later Sayer opened his eyes and spoke again.

  “I can’t dispute Aleron’s observation that civilians are idiots. Unfortunately, they’re our idiots and you must be careful you never ever lose sight of their role—however minor—in the Mission to preserve our species. The inhabitants of a dying Earth built this Ship and filled its cryostorage holds with a billion civilians who would be dispersed to new colonies throughout the universe. One hundred thousand Crew were put in command and ten million civilians stayed awake alongside them to perform the more menial jobs. Everyone in this room is a direct descendant of that dead world’s most brilliant and talented people. They were carefully selected to be that first Crew and we all emerged from the Ship’s artificial wombs genetically optimized to inherit their duty. Part of that duty is respecting how the civilians are as much a part of the Ship as the chairs you’re sitting on. Though, it’s probably not fair to compare them to something useful like chairs.”

  Everyone laughed and Sayer allowed them to enjoy the humor for a few secs before he continued.

  “OK…let me finish what I was talking about before Zax’s observation sent us off on a tangent. I’ve already covered the history of the Faster-Than-Light engine, but I’ll get hit with some demerits myself if I neglect to mention the emergency evasion process.

  “When we’re battling aliens and operating under Condition 1, the Captain may choose to give the Flight Boss tactical command of the Ship. The Boss then has the ability to order an emergency FTL evasion. Something with as much mass as the Ship can’t shift course radically in a short amount of time, so a key defensive mechanism is our ability to evade danger by using the FTL drive to jump to another location in the system. Since it’s impossible to plot an FTL Transit within the confines of a star system, this is accomplished by queuing two Transits to occur back-to-back. The first jump takes the Ship to a location far enough away for FTL to be possible, at which point a second Transit is automatically performed to return the Ship to the original system, albeit in a location intended to provide a far better tactical position.”

  Zax raised his hand and Sayer acknowledged him once again.

  “Sir, that seems crazy. Transits are safe when the Ship has sufficient time to recalibrate the FTL, but aren’t we begging for one of those gruesome failures which sometimes happen with our scout ships if we do two of them so quickly?”

  “Great point, cadet, ten more credits for you,” Sayer replied. “But you also shouldn’t lose sight of how nuts it is to knock everyone unconscious in the middle of an enemy engagement. Crew training lets most of us recover and regain alertness quickly, but even the best of us occasionally suffers from sustained FTL fog after one Transit, much less two in such a short time period.”

  The instructor closed his eyes for a sec and then spoke again. “Speaking of FTL, it’s almost time for today’s Transit. I’m flying Combat Air Patrol when the jump is over and need to prep so let’s finish early. Dismissed. Zax—please hang back for a min.”

  The cadets filed out while Zax remained seated. A sharp blow knocked his head forwards, and he looked up to find Aleron grinning having “accidentally” whacked him with an elbow as he walked past. Zax refused to give the twit the satisfaction of any reaction, but that didn’t prevent another wave of raucous laughter from the bigger boy and his henchmen.

  Sayer observed all of this impassively from the front of the room. He spoke once the last cadet exited and they were alone.

  “I admire how you didn’t let Aleron derail you, Zax. A lot of cadets your age would have shut down and not spoken again after being the brunt of such a public joke.”

  “Thank you, sir. It really doesn’t bother me.”

  “I can see that. You’re obviously a smart and likeable kid, so I’ve been confused about how it seems like you don’t have any friends. Why is that?”

  Zax paused. He could easily answer the question, but debated whether he should. His admiration for Sayer was so great that he eventually took the plunge.

  “Well, sir, there’s no one in my Cadre smart enough to spend any more time with than what’s absolutely required.”

  Sayer smiled, though there was a hint of emotion behind the expression which Zax couldn’t identify. Sharing such private thoughts already made Zax uncomfortable, but his inability to fully decipher the instructor’s reaction was even more unsettling. Non-verbal social cues caused frequent consternation, and this was a second, unspoken reason why Zax avoided relationships with his classmates.

  “Good enough, Zax. What about a mentor, though? Don’t you think you could learn a lot from someone older who has already navigated the challenges still ahead of you? When I was your age, my mentor had a big impact on me. My scores weren’t as high as yours at first, but she gave me a ton of great advice that helped me move up and ultimately got me high enough to qualify for the Pilot Academy.”

  The instructor had already answered his own question. Zax didn’t need a mentor to help improve his scores because, unlike Sayer, he had been perched near the very top of the Leaderboard since he was six. Unless he somehow lucked into a mentorship offer from one of the powerful officers in the Omega Cadre, Zax couldn’t imagine finding anyone where the value of their “guidance” would offset the cost of having to communicate regularly with someone else and deal with his or her opinions. In consideration of Sayer being the only member of the Crew who had ever gone out of their way in an attempt to help him, Zax responded with something polite rather than the truth.

  “Thank you for the suggestion, sir.”

  Sayer smiled one last time as he turned to leave. “Get to your berth, cadet. They’ll be ringing the bell for the Transit soon.”

  Zax intended to follow Sayer’s directive and return to the Zeta berth to prepare for the FTL jump, but he had one critical stop to make along the way. He walked briskly to a Replicator station and used its interface to call up the fabrication template he had perfected during many weeks’ worth of off-duty time. He issued the command for the Replicator to commence and was dismayed thirty secs later when it still appeared to be evaluating his request.

  “I’ve loaded my template,” Zax said, “why aren’t you fabricating?”

  “You’ve never submitted a design before,” replied the Ship’s AI. “This template is far too complex for someone your age and with your lack of experience to attempt. The Ship needs to conserve consumable mass rather than risk it on templates which will likely result in a smoldering pile of goo.”

  Zax sighed. “I’ve given you my chits—one thousand seventy-two of them. What difference should it make to you what happens now? If I want to risk a year’s worth of savings, isn’t that my choice? Maybe I like goo and will be thrilled if that’s the result—did you ever consider that? You may be the brilliant Artificial Intelligence that helps run the Ship, but we still get to make our own choices—right?”

  The AI paused as if it wanted to sigh right back at him, but instead the Replicator initiated. Thirty secs later its door opened with a cloud of escaping steam which revealed Zax’s shiny new creation.

  “Hey, where’s my goo?” Zax asked with mock frustration. The AI ignored his comment, so Zax grabbed the dev
ice—still warm from fabrication—and sprinted off towards the Zeta berth. As he did so, a single bell echoed through the passageway to signal the FTL engine would soon spin up. Zax was almost giddy with the anticipation of deploying his invention once the Transit was complete.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Hello, lunch.

  The sour, gag-inducing odor hit Zax the moment the bells woke him. He knew the scent would be there but was both dejected and ragey anyways. He opened his eyes and the source swirled around him. “Hello, lunch,” he muttered. Well, what was left of lunch after it spent time in his stomach. A tangle of noodles, appearing almost the same as they originally had on his plate, slow-danced two meters above his face. Zero-g managed to make puke seem balletic, but with or without gravity it still smelled nasty.

  Like every other child born on the Ship, Zax learned the pattern of space travel before he could crawl. One bell signaled the gravity-generator was shutting down in fifteen min, so you needed to stow your belongings and strap into your grav-chair. Two bells meant the Captain would engage the FTL in five min. The barely-understood black magic that produced faster-than-light travel would jump the Ship from one star system to the next and knock all of its inhabitants temporarily unconscious in the process. When you awoke to the sound of three bells, it meant the Transit was successful and the grav-gen would restart in one min. If you didn't wake up to those three bells, well, Zax avoided thinking about that altogether.

  While most kids only worried about the 1–2–3’s of space travel, Zax was forced to add the 4–5–6’s of space puke at a young age. Soon after his sixth birthday he developed a previously-unseen reaction to the FTL engine and began throwing up whenever the Ship jumped between stars. The medics tried everything but failed in their efforts to help. They assured him it could be corrected once he was Plugged In, but until then it was yet another reason for the other kids to abuse him. Though both cruel and uncreative, the nickname "Puke Boy"—tossed out by that tool Aleron during their first month as cadets—had scored a direct hit and stuck.