Maximum Experience: Gap Year in Space

By Misty Dais

A gap year gone wrong....

.... A spaceship of comatose adults

.... A mysterious stowaway on board.

 Can the surviving teens work together long enough to find the cure?

 Can a last-ditch, all-is-probably-lost-anyway team save the day?

 

Go on a space adventure with the Youth Space Corps! Pick up your copy today.

 

 

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Misty Dais
• Release date: Sep 2, 2018
• ISBN: 9781540104465

Misty Dais

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Book preview

Chapter 1

~

My mind easily bends me back to that moment.

Ssscrreeecchhhhhhh.

What is that?

The scratch echoes through the air, making a scraping sound just like the sound the kitchen cabinet door has begun making since its wood began to swell in the humidity. But it can’t be the cabinet door; everyone agreed to the food rationing. And everyone is here in the common room. I roll over onto my side, not as coordinately as I’d like, and count the sleeping bodies in the room. One, two, three, four, five blanket lumps, all here. Phew, I don’t want to confront a friend. Or an alien. Or worse. I roll back onto the pillow, close my eyes, strain my ears and try to place the blame on my wild imagination. It is probably just the lingering sound effects from a dream memory I tell myself. I breathe in and hold my breath for a moment; the breath's oxygen courses through my system. I slowly let the breath out. Sccreeetttcch. Another scratch fills the air. My breath hitches and I freeze like a deer in headlights. The sound is definitely the swelled cabinet door catching on the frame. What do I do? I turn my head towards where the kitchen door is a patch of light in the darkness. I wish I was braver like Abby; she would go and investigate instead of being a doe-eyed deer. Maybe it is just a stowaway mouse; nothing that needs investigating. Maybe it is better to be a deer. They say that the deer will do more damage to a hover car, than the hover car to the deer. Or maybe that's a moose. I've never seen either; the zoo in my city doesn’t have any. My brain begins to spiral into a tangent of what is at the zoo in my city.

The distinct crinkle of a candy wrapper and the crisp snap of chocolate breaking pierces my ears. Definitely not a mouse. Panic fills my toes and I clench my eyes shut. I try to think of which one of the five blanket lumps to try to wake up. Wait five? There are still seven of us left. Noah! Noah, who is too cool to bunk out with the rest of us in the common room. Seriously! He agreed with the rest of us that we would ration the food. I throw off the covers and tear out of the room. The salt lamps light the room in shadows. I jeopardise the poise of my outraged confidence when I bump into a console table. The bump causes me to stumble and nearly fall into the kitchen. Thankfully my balance returns just in time for my grand entrance. Eating our second to last chocolate bar, Noah has no shame.

What the hey Noah!

Noah is a few inches taller than me, with a languid build and tight muscles that scream his success as last year's Galympic gold medalist for diving.

The person in front of me is definitely not Noah.

My brain catches up to my eyes just as the Not-Noah turns around and stares at me, mouth open, ready to receive the chocolate.

Deer. Headlights.

My brain commands, be a moose! More damage to the hover than you!

My traitor mouth says, uhm.

The chocolate is drawn away from the mouth and is replaced with a Hello and an outstretched hand.

I stare at the hand and draw my attention back up to the face it belongs to. Young, around the same age as the others and me; freshly graduated from high school and embarking on a gap internship to gain extra cash for tuition fees and acquire some life stories to tell our future new college friends. The accent has a formal and precise clip to it, different from Noah's drawl. With entrenched politeness I lift my hand and walk closer, sliding my other hand along the counter, searching. A hand grasps mine in a firm handshake and the stranger dips his head down before letting my hand drop. As my shaken hand drops back down to my side, my other fingers find the button they are looking for and press firmly down. A glaring alarm squeals up and the ship voice system comes online.

Fire alert, kitchen quarters C-9. All emergency personnel to respond. The alarm repeats itself before switching to Fire alert, kitchen quarters C-9. No smoke or abnormal heat source detected. All engineering personnel to respond.

It would be more helpful for the ship to request all combat personnel to respond, as the stranger reaches for his hip and pulls out a proton blaster and aims it directly at my head.

The saying doesn't say what happens to the deer when the hover has proton blasters on it.

I said hello nicely, there was no need to trigger the alarm, comes the stranger’s smooth voice.

There is no emergency or engineering personnel that can respond to the alarm, but I have to delay until at least someone responds with hopefully a proton blaster of our own.

Look, I say, in what I hope is a calm, reasonable voice, but is more likely completely squealing panic, you drop your weapon and I will drop my mine.

You do not possess a weapon.

Technically true, I am in my lightest pair of pyjamas with bare feet to try to combat the lack of air-conditioning, but it seems like the thing to say in this situation.

My hand grabs for the nearest solid thing. I raise it in front of me as I crouch down into the best imitation of a fighting stance my imagination and coordination can agree on.

That is not a weapon. That is a spatula.

Oh, haven't you read the old history books? Government agents always have weapons that look like everyday things. And this is a government spaceship.

"I believe that is just a spatula and this is definitely a XeXe Proton Blaster. And your spatula is dripping."

I glance at the spatula and sure enough the batter from our questionable dinner is sliding down the edge of the spatula and dripping onto the floor. Another quick glance around the kitchen tells me that we should probably do a clean-up before we dock at the station tomorrow.

Are you willing to risk that this is just a spatula? I attempt to saunter back.

Thankfully I don't have to hear his answer as the others crash into the kitchen.

Charlotte is the first around the corner and the first to start in with the questions on what is happening now. All of which I have no answers for. This, I flick the spatula in the direction of the stranger, is in our kitchen.

And this, the stranger says as a drop of batter strokes its way down a curl above his eye, is a shipnapping.

The silence stills the air as a second drop trails its way down to the corner of the stranger’s mouth. His tongue peeks out, pulling the offending drop into his mouth. As it relaxes into his taste buds, his eyes widen, his mouth sucks in and panic fills his eyes and a curse escapes his lips. Poison? I've been killed by a spatula. Incredulous disbelief, with a hint of impress, mixes in with his accent.

The dinner was bad, but not that bad. I think about it; it may have been a bit too salty.

The stranger's collapse to the floor ends with a loud thud. It wasn't the spatula batter that caused the stranger to collapse to the floor. It was the stun bolt from Abby's inferior generic proton blaster. She had taken advantage of his cooking critique drama and crept in the exit door behind the stranger.

I go and crouch over the unknown and prod his chest. I wonder if he has armour under his shirt to make his chest this rock hard.

Abby pries the proton blaster out of his fingers and asks, where did he come from?

I don't know, I answer, curious myself to the answer.

Abby hands off the XeXe to Charlotte.Hold this and keep it trained on him as we tie him up and get him to the brig.

As Charlotte walks over to take the XeXe, her foot crunches on the chocolate wrapper that fell out of the Stranger's hand in favour of the XeXe. He ate our chocolate, she says with disbelief.

Abby’s eyes flash with hunger, forget the brig, let's space him.

I am not quite ready to become a murderer for chocolate yet. Let's let the officials decide on the long-term decisions when we dock at the station tomorrow, I suggest.

The others apparently are also not keen on being murderers either. We maneuver the unconscious stranger onto a hover cart and take him off to the brig.

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Outer Space: 0

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Maximum Experience: 1

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Chapter 2

~

My foot stretched out from under the blanket searching for any cooler air outside the stifling blanket. As light as the blanket was, it was still trapping my body heat in. The air on my outstretched foot was only slightly cooler than under the blanket. I stretched out my toes trying to achieve the least skin on skin contact as possible. I turned over, which only resulted in twisting the blanket around my foot and entrapping my ankle. I hoped the engineers at the station would be able to fix the temperature control thing when we docked at the station tomorrow. Today, not tomorrow I reminded myself. Entrapping; the word tugged at my attention. My mind flooded with the image of the stranger we had trapped in the airlock last night after we realized we didn't actually have a brig and the insulation room at med bay was already full of comatose adults. I awoke fully with a cursed startle that my mother wouldn't be proud of, but my aunt would be, and tried to stand up. The flimsy blanket was now caught around both ankles. I kicked my legs and, not very gracefully, tried flinging the blanket off by shaking my legs in the air. I resorted to trying to push the blanket off with my hands, but I was still flailing my legs in the air. A laugh hit my ears from the doorway of the kitchen.

Need some assistance there Red? Noah grinned as he leaned against the doorframe. I looked up at him, way up at him, and trailed my eyes down to his socked feet standing on a chair. I hauled my eyes back up to his green eyes and eyebrows that were arched in amusement. He was dressed in his Corps uniform looking like a model on the recruitment advertisement.

I cringed at what I knew I must look like. My morning look was not that of the actresses in the holovideos who woke with their hair perfectly, slightly sleep tousled and their make-up impeccable. Mine was more of a bird’s nest on top of a gargoyle look.

Today I was a very clumsy gargoyle who was trapped in the nest. I stopped flinging my legs and untangled the blanket with just my hands. I looked over at Noah and asked where the others were.

Wilbert is in the kitchen. The others are getting dressed, I think. You were out cold, we tried waking you.

I vaguely remembered people in my dreams asking me if I was awake.

We dock at the station in one hour.

One Hour? Ugh. That was barely enough time to get washed up and respectable enough to meet the officials at the station. I lowered the mental bar on the level of good impression I hoped to make to my future potential employers. Thankfully the station was just a minor out of the way station on the edge of the Corps inhabited territory. We originally were not supposed to ever be this far