Planet of Lies: The Deception of Avii Saga, #1

By Ellie Jay

Zenya Cobb has had enough of a traditional life with her husband-to-be, Pavell. She returns to her life as a space pirate, setting out to find and claim as much gold and other treasures as she can.

Except, due to a freak accident, she crash-lands on a planet that shouldn't exist - The mythical lost planet of Vunerth, reputed to have been the galaxy's richest spot until an asteroid destroyed it many years ago. But it's still very much around, and holds more secrets than even Zenya can imagine. She meets the mysterious natives, a peaceful alien community of traders with their own secrets, and hears whispers of conspiracy. Could Vunerth's disappearance be part of a web of darkness perpetuated by the government?

While Zenya reels, her determined partner, Pavell chases her across the galaxy. But when they are reunited, they must make a choice. Leave this bizarre planet in their past and return to a life of peace, or risk their lives teaming up with the natives to save the planet and expose an intergalactic lie?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ellie Jay
• Release date: Sep 2, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223214557

Ellie Jay

Ellie Jay is an independent author with a love of fiction and a nasty habit of sarcasm. She writes books of all different genres, and ties them all together with sarcastic third-person narration. At the moment, her published works include The Secrets Series, a trilogy of Russian Mafia action thrillers with dashes of sci-fi and overarching sarcasm and Planet Of Lies, a sci-fi story that is packed full of witty dialogue and narration.

Book preview

Chapter One

Looking down over the metal edge at the hard, freezing ground below her, Zenya hesitated. Was this a mistake? She was safe and secure here; despite the problems she was facing. But once she made that leap, she couldn't take it back.

Then she heard his voice calling for her, and the anger was back, burning in her chest. Without another thought, she leapt.

Hitting the frozen ground jarred her whole body. She pulled herself up from the snow, brushed it from her thin leggings and tried to ignore the tingling cold sensation it left. She had never got used to this. And that was his fault too. Everything was his fault.

She stamped off across the snowy wastes, not wanting to give him time to find her and start wheedling again, telling her to 'be reasonable', yet refusing to listen to a word she said. She would rather hear the wind howling across the empty landscape than hear his voice right now.

Still, it was a long, cold march to the hanger, and her outfit, consisting of leggings and a tank top, with an old leather jacket thrown over the top, wasn't exactly designed for trekking through ankle-deep snow. At least she had her boots on, she thought. She never went out without them, much to Pavell's despair. He hated the clumping sound they made and the heavy straps around them. Apparently, they were 'unsightly'. Zenya didn't care a jot. They clumped because they had good thick soles, with a firm grip and a little switch on the side to turn on magnetic mode. Useful in a wrecked ship. But he wouldn't understand that. Nor why she pinned her tools to the straps.

Smugness joined anger in her chest, warming her from the inside out as she purposely stomped her feet, leaving the distinctive prints from her boots in the snow. The sharp crunching of ice below her was a satisfying side effect.

Putting the weather aside, though, she had another reason to appreciate the boots. Right now, the fact that they symbolised everything Pavell hated about her meant a lot.

He complained endlessly about the way she dressed, the way she styled her hair and most of all, about her career. The boots were part of her fashion and her job, both of which were frequently the subject of his rants. Her job was, in Pavell's incredibly strong opinion, everything from a waste of time to outright immoral. He thought it should be banned. Funny, he hadn't complained when they met, and he certainly didn't complain when she arrived home with a new horde of treasure. He would just spirit it away, and if she wanted a share for anything, insisted that she should let him handle the money. She detested that, knowing full well that she made more than him and handled it far better. He whined about that idea too, arguing that he made plenty, in fact, she didn't even need a job in the first place, she could just settle down and plan their wedding. When they were married, he said, he wanted her at home with him, not off on adventures.

The scornful way he said the word set her teeth on edge. He presented these arguments in the calm manner of one explaining the way the world worked to a child, and she couldn't help but argue with him. She knew she had what he described as 'a temper issue', but did he have to criticise everything? Again, he had been so sweet to her when they met.

Why, then, did he now seem to want to change everything about her? He had once admired her for being a stubborn, fiery Quathieran space pirate with a bold sense of humour. Then he had taken her back to his home, and now he wanted to turn her into another vapid Enzorian housewife, in a fancy dress and apparently entirely without a brain. Well, she was getting sick of it. This stupid dinner with his parents had been the final straw. She wasn't going to sit quietly by, letting him and his father 'discuss’ every aspect of her, while his friendly but immensely boring mother spoke only to offer her 'fashion tips' and bland food.

He could take her - all of her - as she had and would always be, regardless of his 'traditions', or he could leave her if he truly hated everything about her so much.

She was headed towards something else he hated too. Bitterness and stubbornness had made her decide that she couldn't stay with him a moment longer, and so she was returning to the only other home she could. Her ship. And she reminded herself of the bitter anger to shut out the sadness as it tried to pour in.

She wasn't going to think about how stupid she might be to throw away her engagement to someone who had shown her so much affection. Not when he was being this stupid. If he pulled his head out of his arse and decided he still loved the real her, he could reach her EQuere and let her know. Until then, she would return to work. Nothing like bucketloads of gold to make a girl feel better.

She pushed on through the snow drifts and reached the hangar door just as a few new flakes began to whirl around her. The gleaming sheet of metal was raised slightly, sticking up from the ground. She bent down, pulled her Accessor, and tapped in her code. The metal rolled back noiselessly.

A few moments later, it slid back into place. Zenya had reached the bottom of the stout steps that led deeper into her underground hanger. Normally, she would leave the door open, ready for take-off, but in her current mood, she wanted to spend some time enjoying the comforting surroundings of the place in which she felt most at home again before she left. And no, she told herself firmly, she wasn't stalling, just in case he reached out to her before she left Enzorian space.

She was just going home, she reminded herself as she walked up to the sleek turquoise ship. The colour was... She lovingly described it as 'striking', but she had been painted that way when Zenya had first discovered her in the desert, and after cleaning her up, she didn't feel up to re-painting her, too. So somehow, after all these years, it had stuck. So had her little nickname for the ship. 'Skymammal'. The name had come about because she felt that the ship flew as a mammal might. She didn't soar like a bird. She was wide, flat, and almost rounded, like a plate, with a deeper part in the centre where the captain’s quarters were. The ship had surprisingly slender wings. Her comparative bulk - if set against the more modern, narrow, swift little ships - meant that she lumbered through the air, moving with the juddering motion of an angry beast with a leg injury.

Yet Zenya found that, having worked to restore the ship and made it her base of operations for years, she couldn't help but love the Skymammal. She slipped her hand into a small gap between two of the ship’s metal side panels and pushed against the panel she knew was loose. It slipped out easily and revealed a cord. She tugged the cord. A ladder dropped down, and by the time she had bounded up the three simple little steps, she was grinning all over her face. She didn't need to bother about Pavell anymore. She was home.

Taking a few minutes, she wandered around the ship. A thin layer of dust coated it. It had been a while since she had last gone on a raid. Pavell would whine so much when she left, saying that he didn't want to be without her. Most of the time, she would give in and stay. It was only when he made her really angry that she stormed out. Then, she consoled herself with her homely little ship and the pots of gold she would find on her trips. So, it had definitely been a while since her last trip to her beloved ship. But now, feeling like she had spent too long listening to him, she walked along, brushing dust from her makeshift furnishings.

She brushed her hands across the metal workbench-cum-table, then swept clean the tops of the old crates that served as chairs. This was where she sat and gambled with any other pirate or chancer who she trusted enough to bring back here. Some were old friends; others were strangers she stumbled across when she stopped to refuel. All were welcome so long as she didn't think they wanted to rob her or steal her ship.

Beside this dubious set-up stood a set of uneven, rickety shelves that she had built in her teen years. She was surprised they were still upright, but she cleared the dust from them, praying they didn’t collapse at her touch. Today, they held a half-empty bottle of whiskey and some old trinkets that she had never bothered to haul off the ship and take home. A piece of silver ore, still unrefined and lumpy, that she had won in a game. The mysterious old drunk who she had bet against had told her it came from the legendary Lost Moons of Handooros. Handooros was a huge planet on the other side of the galaxy. Once upon a time, it had had four moons, but the story said that they had been destroyed when greedy people tried to mine them. She shrugged. The old man was probably having her on. Even dust alleged to be from those moons sold for a ridiculous price. But this ugly little lump and its story had amused her, so it sat on the shelf. Beside it was a shell from a huge bullet that had narrowly missed her on one adventure. Another story. The shelves usually housed things like that, things that spoke to her, regardless of their value.

The actual valuables were more often kept in the cargo hold. Or rather, the small storage pod that came built into the ship. It served as a wardrobe and a cargo hold simultaneously. But she knew, even without checking, that today it was completely bare.

Last time she had been here, she hadn't thought she'd be back anytime soon, so she had more or less cleared the place out. And this time, she had brought nothing. Great. She almost sighed at her own hasty stupidity, but the vicious rage returned. No, this wasn't her fault, and she would prove it. She would make him apologise or she would never go back, even if she had to start out with nothing and make her way from there.

Shadows danced on the walls, and she looked up fondly. The EShadow readers she had plastered all over her tiny 'living space' showed her parents, now distant memories, in all their glory. The moving 3D images had always been known as shadows because their developers argued that they could follow the movements a real person would make so closely... While their critics argued they were a shadow of human interaction and would never catch on. If they did, they warned, it would be to the detriment of society and real people. But her father had taken a strange fancy with the evolving technology and had salvaged a recording and reading set one day. He had made a few shadows, in which his wife spent most of her time shaking her head with despairing fondness while he followed her around.

The recording brought a smile to her face, as always. It reminded her of home. The vivid red sand in the background and her parents gently arguing but never really disagreeing. Life on the desert world had been hard but still, sometimes, carefree. At least for her. She had played in the dunes and laughed with her parents.

The shadows copied reality, though, and now, in the glare of the simulated sunlight, every careworn line on her mother's tanned face showed up clearly and every fleck of grey in her father's dark hair was harshly apparent. The sequence rewound, and she watched again, comparing her own tanned skin to her mother's, her short, slicked-back, jet-black hair to her father's... Until it became too much for her, and she turned away.

Now, she was faced with two choices. The little door off to the right, or the one at the end of the room that headed down into the ship's broad, curved 'nose'. She headed right first, opening the door, and stepping into her little sleeping quarters. She had, at least, left her nightclothes, a loose dark red jumpsuit, laying on her unmade bed, amid a tangle of black sheets. It was something. Wandering over, she sat on the bed and brushed the dust off the old square stone that she had found and kept. It had been a novelty at the time, now it served as a bedside table and a reminder of home, with its almost glowing orange colour.

For a while, she sat there and sank back into the memories of her old life. Then, finally, she stood up and walked back out, through her living space, to the final door. Here was where the action happened, Zenya grinned to herself as she stepped back into the ship's control centre. It had been too long.

Chapter Two

Time seemed to stand still for a while, all the constant troubles of life fading away as Zenya settled into her captain's chair again, staring down at her controls. Her ship was silent except for the familiar voices of her parents' shadows, distantly playing in