Earthlight Space Academy Boxset Read online

  Earthlight Space Academy Boxset

  Heather Lee Dyer

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s very active imagination or are used fictitiously.

  EARTHLIGHT SPACE ACADEMY BOXSET. Copyright © 2020 by Heather Lee Dyer. All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from HEATHER LEE DYER, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  ISBN: 978-1-7350377-1-4 E-book

  www.heatherleedyer.com

  Contents

  Border School

  1. Crash Test

  2. Prep School

  3. The Tunnels

  4. Kai

  5. Hells Canyon

  6. Show of Force

  7. Rand

  8. Tension

  9. Tension

  10. Attractions

  11. Danger on the Horizon

  12. Wednesday

  13. First Kiss

  14. Hiding

  15. Friday

  16. Cameron

  17. Testing

  18. Celebration Interrupted

  19. Torture

  20. Rescue

  21. Good News

  22. Political Anger

  23. Death and Chaos

  24. Getting Ready

  25. Secret

  26. Under the Wall

  27. In the Dark

  28. A New Beginning

  Year One

  1. Rand

  2. Kai

  3. Josh

  4. Security

  5. Grissom

  6. Security Concern

  7. The Seven

  8. Double Trouble

  9. Greenhouse

  10. The Project

  11. Friendship

  12. Threat

  13. Going on Offense

  14. Philip

  15. Cam

  16. Drone Spaceship

  17. Safety in Numbers

  18. In Custody

  19. Facing Fears

  20. Truth Sucks

  21. Dark Friday

  22. Brainstorming

  23. Teamwork

  24. The Board

  25. Destruction

  26. Moving Forward

  Year Two

  1. Crash Land

  2. First Day

  3. World Domination

  4. The Commander

  5. Best Friends

  6. Gab Talk

  7. First Earthquake

  8. The Kagawa

  9. Second Chance

  10. Academy Hacked

  11. Dark Past

  12. Big Picture

  13. New Normal

  14. Virtual Assembly

  15. Heart Attack

  16. Secrets Revealed

  17. Attack Warning

  18. Real Nightmare

  19. Hunkered Down

  20. Damage Control

  21. Trapped Again

  22. The Leviathan

  23. To Live and Thrive

  About the Author

  Also by Heather Lee Dyer

  Border School

  1

  Crash Test

  I stare through the bug-smeared canopy at the tan desert floor rushing up to meet me. Bile creeps up my throat as the harness digs painfully into my clavicles. Fighting against the pain and nausea, I pull the small plane up and hard right. Rocks, sagebrush, and sand come into eerie focus as I skim Pickle Butte. I get myself out of the spiral dive, barely able to tell which way is up. I blink and calm my racing heart, taking several deep breaths.

  My readouts are back to normal, and my visor shows green in all settings. I glare at the bright yellow plane off to my right, but I don’t depress the comm button to say what I’m thinking, because it really is my fault, not his.

  But seriously? That was close, even for Instructor Terry’s hard-nosed lessons.

  To my left, the third plane spins off back toward the base. Instructor Terry used my best friend, Kai, to distract me. It was only for a few seconds, but it could’ve cost my life. And his.

  I won’t make that mistake again. I cringe, imagining the lecture I’ll be getting as soon as we land. My flying record is perfect so far. Terry knew I could handle the near collision, but I’m still shaking.

  Taking deep, calming breaths, I take third position and fly wide over Hells Canyon and the farmlands. Squares of different colors make a patchwork of the ground beneath me. I sink lower, buzzing the familiar fields, knowing my little brother is down there somewhere grinning up at me.

  I’m low enough to smell the basil and onion fields through the gaps in the old plane. I straighten out and head back to Gowen Base.

  Since building the border schools and the Earthlight Space Academy a bit north of us, our state moved all public air transportation and commercial businesses down south. This whole valley is now solely dedicated to military, diplomatic, and space training flights. And of course, farming to feed all the people stuck here.

  And I do mean stuck. There are only three choices for those of us unlucky enough to be surviving here: toil in the fields, work in the mines, or make it into the Earthlight Space Academy.

  I will get my family out of here. It’s important that I make it into the Academy this year. Because next year I’ll be eighteen and the government could send me to the mines.

  I shiver.

  I’m given the green light for a runway, and I square up for landing. Kai heads toward the opposite end of the base. I frown and shake my head, my helmet rattling against the firm headrest.

  Outside of school and the academies, both our newly restructured New American Republic and the New China government, still have a hard time acting like we’re allies. Especially in the Borderlands.

  Kai’s plane lists slightly, and I hold my breath. I circle just under the white, puffy clouds and line up for my runway as I watch him out my side window. He gets straightened out and lowers to the ground. I don’t let my breath out until he’s on the ground, smoke rolling from his wheels on the New China runway. He usually lands with the rest of our class, but his limo must be waiting to take him home early tonight.

  I sigh. No time for us in the simulators this evening, then.

  An alert turns my attention back to my own landing, and I concentrate on the narrow training strip Instructor Terry has chosen for me today. I bite my lip as I lower slowly to the old pavement that looks barely wider than my cockpit. The cracked and uneven ground tries to grab me off course, but I hold on and make a perfect landing.

  I grin as I roll into the hanger and the ground team efficiently detaches the vids and drones hooked onto my plane. I climb out of the cockpit and down the ladder. The familiar acrid smell of jet fuel and grease greets me as I cross the hanger. I wonder if I’ll still smell that in the space station docking bays.

  Instructor Terry is waiting for me by the door to one of the classrooms. His arms are crossed, and a sour expression is etched onto his face.

  He always looks sour.

  But I still hesitate. He’s been here since before the Dragon Wall was built over five years ago. He even worked on this base when it was a half-public and half-military airport. He’s seen a lot of changes, and he doesn’t like them. But he’s an excellent flying instructor. And I need my wings to get into the Academy.

  I stand in front of him, one hand behind my back, the other clutching my secondhand helmet. I wait for him to talk. If I speak first, I’ll get yelled at. I take shallow breaths as I wait for a torrent of swearing at my lapse in focus.

  “Perfect landing, Miss Tol
and,” he says formally. He pivots and opens the door to the classroom.

  Speechless, I follow him.

  He leads me through the classroom and out into the corridor to the main building. I match his stride and keep my mouth shut. This isn’t what I was expecting, which means he has something else on his mind.

  And somehow it involves me. My stomach twists as I stare at the back of his flight jacket. He stops at a secure door and flashes the security badge that he wears at all times around his neck. The sensors along the perimeter of the door turn green and the door swings open. I step inside and my mouth falls open.

  Every wall is covered with large vid screens and there are white-uniformed officers at every computer console. I hurry to follow Terry, snapping my mouth closed and try not to openly gawk around at the room. There must be a dozen or so of top Earthlight Space Academy officers in here as well. I suddenly feel extremely underdressed in my sweaty, green pilot’s jumpsuit.

  Terry leads us to a console in the corner that’s empty and sits down. His fingers fly over the glass touch screen.

  The vid screen overhead comes to life and I recognize Kai’s plane. My stomach sinks and my palms start to sweat. Here comes the lecture. He was just waiting until I could visually see where I went wrong. I peek to the side to see if any of the officers are watching. I’m relieved to see they all seem engrossed in their own vid screens.

  Terry backs up the footage to where he ordered Kai, without me knowing, to bank toward me. I see Kai hesitate after the order is given, but then he turns straight at me.

  I barely had two seconds to react once I saw the propellers of Kai’s plane heading for me. We’d been in a loose triangle formation. He was so close to me I could see him frown inside his cockpit. My palms sweat just thinking about seeing the fear on his face.

  The cameras on the outside of my plane show just how close the tip of Kai’s plane was to mine as I desperately pulled away. Inches.

  I look down at Instructor Terry in horror. It could’ve killed both of us. My mouth drops open again.

  He looks up at me. “Never assume just because it’s your friend flying next to you, that you’re safe. You never know what will happen. Out in space hardware malfunctions, meteorites, or human error could kill you in seconds. No parachutes up there.”

  I clamp my mouth shut.

  “You have excellent reflexes. Keep putting extra time in the simulators. You’re one of the best bioengineering students and pilots at the prep school. We hope to have the largest class in history graduate and enter the Earthlight Space Academy this year. We need to show the rest of the states we’re more than just border immigrants for them to turn their backs on.”

  I nod slowly. I thought this whole time it was about the money for him. The more students enrolled in the space academies; the more money is sent to our state. Which we desperately need, but it seems from his bitterness that he wants to use us to make a statement as well. Shocked, I just say, “Yes, sir.”

  “And Anja? Try to see if you can help Kai with his nerves up in the air. I know he has the skills; he just needs to get over his fear.”

  I try to make my face as expressionless as possible. “I always try to help my fellow classmates, sir.”

  Terry looks over my shoulder, and then back at me. In a quiet voice he says, “I know he’s been helping you with the bioengineering assignments. You’ve come a long way in the last year. Far exceeding the normal.” He pierces me with his steel-gray eyes.

  I swallow. “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir?” I’m not sure what else to say. I’d get in a lot of trouble if Instructor Terry were to turn me in for befriending Kai.

  Kai has helped me through my bioengineering classes by providing me with study texts. Which I didn’t know Instructor Terry knew about. But Kai’s also done so much more than that to help my family.

  He’s literally kept us from starving.

  Although politically, our two governments are peaceful now, it’s still forbidden to have interpersonal relationships. Even though we go to the same prep schools and space academies.

  Unfortunately, Kai is the best friend I’ve ever had. We hit it off the first day of school a few years back. He was in one of the first groups of Chinese students brought over the Wall to share our prep school. The Dragon Wall physically separates us from our former west coast states — the ones the Chinese government bought from ours. My home was in one of them. Now I’m here, an immigrant in my own country.

  The foreign money paid off our country’s debt, funded its restructuring, and helped build space prep schools and the space academies. Space laws don’t care which country their workers come from.

  The New Space Laws work; in the space stations, in the outer space academies, and even on the long-distance international missions. No wars and no poverty up there.

  That’s why I want to get up there. I need to get up there before I turn eighteen.

  My hands and armpits start sweating. Between knowing my future and Cam’s hang on the line with every test I take and knowing how much trouble I’d get into if Kai and I were found out is enough to make me dizzy.

  Terry turns off the vids and stands up, forcing me to take a few awkward steps backwards. “Work with him over the weekend. Tight spaces, too. You never know when they’ll decide to test you all.” His eyes drill into me, and I have to bite my cheek to keep my mouth shut. A ton of questions bubble up inside me as he stares knowingly at me, but I’m painfully aware of the room full of high-ranking officers behind us. I stay quiet.

  The tests aren’t supposed to be for three months. After the harvest. We should have plenty of time for practice, right? Is he trying to tell me we won’t have three months? My heart races as I follow him out of the high-tech command room and toward the ground transport side of the base.

  The rest of my classmates are lounging on the grass outside the admin building. When I walk up with Instructor Terry, they all jump to their feet and stand at attention. I join them in line.

  The lecture starts. We’re all used to it by now. Thankfully, he doesn’t mention me in particular, but he’s critical and tells us all to spend more time in the simulators. When he dismisses us, everyone scatters quickly.

  The rich kids walk over to the newly paved parking lot where expensive personal cars and chauffeurs wait. They all drive north away from the base, winding their way toward the foothills that are dotted with large, oversized homes.

  I hurry over to a flatbed truck idling in the far corner of the parking lot. Several students already sit against the cab, so I have to find a spot in the middle. I don’t mind. Years of balance and centrifuge training have developed my core muscles, so I don’t even need to use the ropes strung taught across the bed. And besides, I don’t feel like talking to anyone right now. I keep replaying in my head what Instructor Terry said and a sense of dread sinks deep into my bones.

  The old truck starts with a lurch, sending smoke trailing behind us. We pass the guards at the gate and head in the opposite direction of town. Soon, the two-lane paved highway gives way to a one-lane gravel road. As we bump along, the dust envelopes us and we all pull our shirts over our faces to cover our noses and mouths.

  In the distance I see humongous yellow and green tractors roll slowly toward their barns for the evening. Semi-trucks full of corn and sugar beets pass us, forcing our truck to the edge of the irrigation ditch that follows this road. Now I hang on to the coarse ropes for dear life.

  As the trucks pass, I count them. Ten today. I smile inside my shirt. That’ll be good paychecks for us at the end of the week. Even though I’ve been at school all day, Cam has been in the fields and I get a ration for attending the prep school. Two weekly rations for three people.

  Our truck lurches to a stop at the school, allowing the farmers’ kids off first. They get into dirty pickup trucks and a few head across the fields on foot. Our driver then continues toward the canyon, stopping at the old lookout point to let the rest of us off. We wave to her as she leaves,
dust covering us once again. The smell of basil is strong here at the edge of the fields. I wrinkle my nose as I turn away from them.

  I brush myself off and head down the trail into Hells Canyon. Out of several hundreds of us at the old primary school, only sixty of us made it into the newest border school. By us, I mean those of us living down in the canyon.

  At the top of the trail I look down into Hells Canyon. Tents of all colors and shapes dot the banks of the lazy river far below. Living this close to the Dragon Wall, our state decided not to build any emergency apartments like all the other states did to house their West Coast immigrants.

  Those of us who could afford the tents and space permits offered to us, were allowed to camp out at the bottom of canyon near the river.

  The unlucky ones were shipped off to the mines.

  I follow the familiar trail, going over the whole day once again. I think about what I could improve, and what Instructor Terry said. A tingling in the back of my neck makes me shiver. What if they move up the academy tests? Will I be ready? Will Kai?