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  Dropnauts

  Liminal Sky: Redemption Book 1

  J. Scott Coatsworth

  Published by

  Other Worlds Ink

  PO Box 19341, Sacramento, CA 95819

  Cover art © 2021 by J. Scott Coatsworth, typography by Sleepy Fox Studios. Cover content is for illustrative purposes only and any person depicted on the cover is a model.

  Dropnauts © 2021 by J. Scott Coatsworth and Other Worlds Ink. Second Edition.

  All rights reserved. This book is licensed to the original purchaser only. Duplication or distribution by any means is illegal and a violation of international copyright law, subject to criminal prosecution and upon conviction, fines, and/or imprisonment. Any eBook format cannot be legally loaned or given to others. No part of this book can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law.

  To request permission and all other inquiries, contact Other Worlds Ink, PO Box 19341, Sacramento, CA 95819, or visit https://www.otherworldsink.com.

  This book is dedicated to the hope for the future, hope that we may never have to face the world in these novels - a climate change future that almost destroys everything. We must always have hope.

  * * *

  It’s also dedicated to my husband Mark, the man who gives me reason to get up every morning. Love you, Mark!

  Contents

  Redemption Map

  Martinez Base Map

  Acknowledgments

  Principal Characters (Glossary at End):

  1. Launch: 6.15.2282

  2. Bridges

  3. Launchpad

  4. Interregnum

  5. Drop

  6. Fall

  7. Grounded

  8. Squall

  9. In the Dark

  10. Scoop

  11. Battlefield

  12. Run

  13. Harley

  14. Farmhouse

  15. Crank

  16. Up

  17. Memories

  18. Awakened

  19. Orbit

  20. Heat

  21. The Preserve

  22. Wonderland

  23. Reunion

  24. A Fragile Alliance

  25. Pappy Jack

  26. Core

  27. Dragonfire

  28. Falling

  29. After the Fall

  30. Testament

  31. Judgment

  32. Meeting

  33. Haywire

  34. Falling Together

  35. Merge

  36. Endgame

  Epilogue

  Glossary

  About the Author

  Also by J. Scott Coatsworth

  The Stark Divide

  Acknowledgments

  This story wouldn’t have happened without the help of a village of people.

  First of all, thank you to Poppy, who suggested I come up with something new and big for my next novel.

  Hugs to Gus Li, who edited the book for me for Pitch Wars (and in fairness, I have made extensive changes since then, so don’t blame him for any typos, which are exclusively mine).

  Tash McAdam and Cari Z., my own personal Pitch Wars and agent query cheer squad, also deserve special recognition for their love and support.

  My friend Donna gets a shout out for reading the book after a particularly crushing agent critique and for reassuring me that yes, I can write.

  And finally, none of this would happen without my handsome, understanding husband Mark, whose support makes all of this possible.

  I love you all!

  Principal Characters (Glossary at End):

  Aidan Thorn: Ally’s brother, a 22-year-old who grew up at Boundary Peak

  Alessandra Thorn (Ally): Aidan’s sister, a twenty-five-year-old from Boundary Peak

  Alpha: The Redemption city mind

  Chen Tien (Chen Tai): A 27-year-old doctor and part of the Zhenyi drop team

  Cimber (CIMBER: Cybernetic Interactive Mechanoid Bio Enhanced Rover): Ally and Aidan’s robotic pet canine and protector

  Gordon Gillam (Ghost): A 24-year-old bi engineer, and member of the Zhenyi drop team

  Harley: the city mind for San Francisco

  Hera Jezabel Quinn: 24-year-old pilot for the Zhenyi, a paraplegic who wears biframes for mobility

  Rafe Wilde: Redemption’s top press agent

  Rylan “Rai” Ramirez: A twenty-one-year-old gay botanist and member of the Zhenyi drop team.

  Sam (SAM - Synthetic AI Mechanoid): A mech who reached consciousness during the Crash and now runs the “Return” program

  Sanya Thorn: Reporter at RedNews

  1

  Launch: 6.15.2282

  O Earth! dost thou too sorrow for the past

  Like man thy offspring? Do I hear thee mourn

  Thy childhood’s unreturning hours, thy springs

  Gone with their genial airs and melodies,

  The gentle generations of thy flowers,

  And thy majestic groves of olden time,

  Perished with all their dwellers?

  * * *

  —“Earth,” by William Cullen Bryant,

  from Poems From a Distant Earth, by Chen Tien

  * * *

  We’re going home.

  Rai sweated inside his suit, white-knuckling the arms of the retrofitted launch chair under his suit gloves. He watched the Zhenyi’s launch countdown clock.

  Sixty, fifty-nine, fifty-eight…

  Outside he was calm, but inside he vibrated like an erhu string, his stomach doing acrobatics in his chest. I’m not ready.

  Five teams of dropnauts had strapped themselves into their jumper ships, prepared for the ascent from Redemption on the lunar surface to Launchpad station. Outside his porthole, the blue-green marble of Earth beckoned.

  Forty-five, forty-four…

  Rai cast a nervous glance at his three teammates. Hera was doing her preflight check, her back to him, sweat dripping down the umber skin of her neck from her short-cropped, curly black hair.

  Behind him on his right, Tien’s eyes were closed, and she was still as a golden statue. Zen.

  He turned to find Ghost looking at him from behind. His ex grinned, running his hand through his lanky, dirty blond hair, his green eyes twinkling. His skin was as white as Rai’s own, but with a dusting of freckles over the bridge of his nose.

  Rai managed a pale imitation of a smile back. -It’s totally safe.- Ghost’s voice pinged in his head, em to em.

  -Sure. Easy for you to say.- Ghost had never feared a thing in his life.

  Rai sighed. If he had to, he could take the small ship apart and put it back together with his bare hands, a skill learned under Sam’s supervision—the mech was as harsh a taskmaster as any human Rai had ever worked for. Still, he felt like puking. The speeches and adulation of the farewell celebration were over, and now his doubts circled like vultures. I’m not ready.

  Thirty-two, thirty-one…

  -You’ll be ok.- Hera’s determined voice this time. She turned to squeeze his knee, and then fired up the Zhenyi’s hydro-fuel engine. He flashed her a sheepish grin.

  A hundred meters away, the Bristol’s takeoff shook the landing pad. Rai watched it rise, carrying Dax, Jess, Ola, and Xiu Ying, the London team, toward the bright stars above. The jumper’s expelled water froze almost instantly, falling as snow over the snaking lava tube that held the city of Redemption. A lunar blizzard whipped by them and shimmered into nothing.

  Rai closed his eyes, remembering the night before. Jess, laughing and dancing with him at Heaven, the clear dome of the lunar sky sparkling above them, the heavy beat of the thro
mb club pulsing through his chest. Dancing like no one was watching.

  He rubbed his jaw. It still ached from the fist he’d taken to the face. Wild party. And a wilder night with Ayvin, the jack he’d picked up at the club.

  “Zhenyi, ready for liftoff in T-Minus ten seconds.” Sam’s voice, coming from Team Five’s ship, the Liánhuā, was cool and collected. Did the mech feel emotion, like the nausea that was boiling in Rai’s guts? His teammates were strong, smart, and prepared for anything. I can do this. Besides, it was too late to back out now.

  “Affirmative.” Hera shifted in her seat, her biframes stretching her paralyzed legs for her.

  “You’ll do okay, tiger.” Ghost elbowed him in the ribs.

  “Six, five, four…” Hera swiped the glossy white control deck, and the launch controls appeared, floating over the white surface.

  “Leave him alone.” Rai could hear the icy frown in Tien’s voice.

  He closed his eyes, willing his stomach to calm. Here we go. Nothing he could do about it now.

  “Three, two, one… hang on.” Hera fired the engines, and the craft lifted on a cloud of steam into the star-filled skies of Luna.

  Rai squeezed his armrests again as G-force pushed him hard back in his seat. He was committed now. Poppies, Chinese Houses, Fiddlenecks, Baby Blue Eyes, Yellow Pansies, Star Lilies… Reciting the flowers of the old San Francisco basin helped soothe his abraded nerves as the rumbling of the little craft rattled his bones.

  He opened his eyes to see Redemption receding below them. The great lava tube was striped with sparkling bands of solar receptors that let sunlight into the city below. Rail lines snaked out from Redemption to the transit center like roping vines—to the seed launcher at Copernicus Crater, to Renewal colony, and beyond.

  As the city shrank below them, his fear turned to sadness, a lump forming in his throat. He’d taken his home for granted, enthralled by the idea of joining humankind’s greatest adventure in a century. Now he might never see it again.

  The hydro rocket thrust them up out of Luna’s gravity well into naked space, toward the bright blue skies of the empty Earth above. Rai stared at it, that enigmatic ball in space which no one had visited in over a century. What secrets are you hiding?

  The roar cut off as quickly as it had begun, leaving the Zhenyi drifting upward in silence as they slipped out of Luna’s grasp.

  Hera’s hands flew across the deck, swapping the launch controls for navigation, and nudged them onto a new course following the Bristol toward the Launchpad.

  Rai let go, his breath coming out in a heavy sigh.

  “See? That wasn’t so bad.” Ghost unbuckled his seatbelt and stretched, yawning as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

  God, he’s beautiful. Pale as his namesake under his mop of dirty blond hair, the engineer’s thick arms were just a suggestion under the bulky suit, but Rai could still see them in his mind. Ghost’s well-toned muscles, the smell of his skin after—

  “You okay, buddy?” Ghost was staring at him, one dark eyebrow raised in concern.

  Rai bit his lip and looked away. “Just nervous. Wondering if we’ll ever make it back home.”

  “Hey, if things go well after the drop, maybe you and me could open the first Earthside bar since the Crash.” Ghost leaned over him from behind to stare at the Earth through the porthole, his cheek close to Rai’s.

  “That’s crazy.” But his spirits lifted. It was idiotic. And just the distraction he needed.

  Ghost sank back into his own seat. “Every outpost needs a good bar where the colonists can blow off a little steam, right?”

  Rai laughed in spite of himself, warming to the idea. “We could call it ‘The Frontier’.”

  “Or ‘The Wild Hookup’.”

  “Best beer this side of the planet.”

  “Only beer!”

  Rai snorted. Just like old times. He hadn’t forgiven Ghost, though. Not yet. He looked down at his gloved hands, emblazoned with the leaf-and-orb of Redemption’s space service.

  Things had ended badly between them—crash and burn bad. Still, they’d be too busy the next few weeks to think about anything but the drop. The survival of Redemption and the remnants of humanity depended on them.

  He could let it go. I have to. He’d managed the launch, after all. I can do this too.

  Ghost squeezed his shoulder and closed his eyes, touching his temple and bobbing his head to a song only he could hear.

  Rai turned away.

  You’re stronger than any of us. Hera had told him that the night before. Still, he didn’t feel strong.

  He looked out of the porthole again at the Earth—the same view they’d had from Heaven. And yet somehow, it looked different. More real.

  Poppies, Chinese Houses, Fiddlenecks, Baby Blue Eyes, Yellow Pansies, Star Lilies…

  He touched his hand to the porthole. Even through the glove, it was cold. We’re going home.

  Rai spun his seat around to face Ghost. “Feel like a game?”

  The ending strains of Thus Spoke Zarathustra faded into the background as the Zhenyi settled into her new course. The ship would be on autopilot for two days as they hurtled toward the Launchpad.

  There was nothing more for Hera to do for a while.

  She pressed the releases on her biframe, pulling off the metal braces and tucking them into the webbing behind the seat.

  Up here in space, she was free—in zero-gee her useless legs weren’t a hindrance. Through the suit legs, she touched the scars where the medics had cut her open to replace her crushed bones with rods printed from gumdust—the pulverized moon dust they’d used to make her whole again.

  Luna would always be a part of her, no matter how far she roamed.

  Somewhere behind them, Tovey waited for her return. She could still feel the touch of their lips on hers.

  She shook her head, dispelling the memory. Don’t let yourself get lost in homesickness.

  She got up and squeezed past chair and the gunmetal gray walls to her own seat, and settled in next to Rai. She snapped her seatbelt closed and peered out of her porthole. The red running lights of one of the other jumpers blinked in the distance.

  Rai had swiveled his seat around, and he and Ghost were playing chess on one side of the cramped five-seat craft. Behind Hera, Tien was staring out at the stars, her overhead light dimmed.

  Along with Tovey, her teammates were Hera’s family.

  She’d known Ghost all her life, and Rai and Tien for two years while they’d trained on Luna, learning how to operate the jumper’s modified flight systems, packing her brain with everything there was to know about the Earth. They’d spent six more intense months together in the full Earth gravity of the Launchpad, time which had sealed their bond.

  She’d met Tovey there too, but they weren’t a part of the mission. Pain gripped Hera’s heart. What if I never see you again?

  Hera needed a distraction. She released her seat and swung it around to face Tien, the only one of them raised by her birth parents. She wondered for the thousandth time what it would have been like to have actual parents instead of creche parents. “How’d it go with your parents, Ti?”

  “What?” Tien turned toward her, dark brown eyes glassy. They shimmered and Tien was back in the here-and-now, staring at her.

  Sometimes Hera still saw Tai in her features, the man Tien had been when they first met. “I’m sorry, didn’t realize you were busy—” Hera braced herself to get up. She could watch the view from the pilot’s chair.

  Tien flashed her a warm smile, brushing a long strand of black hair back behind her ear. “It’s okay. I was just reading poetry. What did you ask?”

  “Your parents. How’d it go?”

  Tien’s smile became a grin. “Better than I hoped. My father called me his daughter—for the first time. They told me they were proud of me and gave me their blessing to go.”

  Hera’s jaw dropped. “That’s amazing, Ti.” She squeezed Tien’s hand. “What are yo
u reading?” Anyone I know?”

  “Probably not. Emily Dickinson. From the old United States.”

  “Read me a few lines.” Hera loved poetry, especially the lyrical Old Earth stuff Tien found.

  Tien’s lenses shimmered again. “Okay. How about this one?”

  Hera closed her eyes to listen.

  * * *

  There is no Frigate like a Book

  To take us Lands away,

  Nor any Coursers like a Page

  Of prancing Poetry—

  This Traverse may the poorest take

  Without oppress of Toll—

  How frugal is the Chariot

  That bears a Human soul.

  * * *

  Hera bit her lip. “What does it mean?”

  Tien bit her lip. “Hmm. That words have power. They can cross centuries to transport us to other worlds.” Tien smiled wanly. “That what we do now can still matter so much later.”

  “That’s beautiful.” Tien was a closet romantic, but the old words still confounded Hera sometimes.“What’s a frigate?”

  “A bird, or maybe a warship. It’s not really clear.” Tien frowned. “I can try to find out—“

  Hera grinned. “Let’s say a bird. Better than a warship—”