Truehearts & The Escape From Pirate Moon by Jake Macklem (ebook audio reader TXT) 📕

a find is this place? “Yes?” for Fauna? Seriously? There’s supposed to be some information here. Is this report real? These numbers can’t be right; like an order of magnitude off. Barely bigger than the Earth’s moon, but…Cam did the math. Seven times as dense as Luna? That was denser than any known element in the Verse. Twenty-five percent heavier than solid gold. How did this nonsense even get recorded?

What if the atmosphere readings were as bad as the rest? Will I be able to breathe? Cam was suddenly hit with a bad feeling. This isn’t an accident or an oversight. It feels like it’s on purpose.

Wait.

There is no G-link and Ophelia interferes with all kinds of tech. Of course there wouldn’t be a detailed surface report. Calm down, Cam. He took a deep breath.

It’s just small stuff. No matter what, I’m coming home, Gwen.

He felt the pod shift. The gravity of the moon and the gas giant were taking hold. My least favorite part. As he hit the upper atmosphere the pod started to shake. Cam’s white-knuckled grip on the seat did little to comfort him or stop him from feeling the vibrations of the descending craft. The shaking increased and started to rattle the panels. Cam watched as one screw started turning itself. It’ll hold.

Just when Cam thought the shaking was going to break his neck, it stopped

That was all kinds of unpleasant. Now the long fall. After a few minutes, the chutes deployed and the sudden jerk spun his stomach and pressed him deep into his seat. And that’s why I don’t eat before drops. An endless three minutes later the pod landed.

Cam wasted no time. He unfastened his harness, donned his hat, and removed his gun from the security drawer. Chambering a round, he sighed, feeling complete again. He then stepped to the door and peeked through the thick glass window. The plains were covered in red grass and the pale, pink-green sky was filled with thick, slowly roiling clouds, hazy and yellow. Watching for a minute, he saw no movement.

Cam spun the wheel to retract the lock bolts and shoved the door open with his toe. He leaned up against the wall of the pod to steady himself and stuck his head out for a quick look.

The heat was stifling. Like home. He took a deep breath, tasting the metallic tang of the atmosphere. Bringing the rifle up to his shoulder, he stepped out of the pod. He kept his back to the capsule as he worked in a circle, eyes scanning for threats or life forms. The moon seems to give off heat. Metal traps the heat of the sun. It’s gonna be hotter on the surface than the tech-heads thought. Gonna need more water.

Lowering the rifle, Cam walked back to the pod’s entrance. He filled out his touch-down log and set the parameters for the pod‘s retrieval protocols so it could be picked up when the Po’olu’u returned. The pod would ignite the burner and launch itself back into space for pickup while they sent another down to the pickup point—over three hundred kilometers away. Can’t afford to replace these things.

He methodically went through his departure checklist. Combat armor, backpack, helmet, rifle, GPS, camera, global survey scanner. The list was short because 90% of his gear was in his backpack, which he had triple-checked back on the Po’olu’u. He tied his helmet on to his pack, deciding to stick with his cowboy hat in the heat. No use hanging around.

As always, he paused at the door and made one last check to be sure he had everything. Pushing the door shut, he pulled the lock release. The pod would be unopenable until the proper codes were entered by the technician on the ship. Putting on his backpack, he rested his rifle in the nook of his elbow and tossed the useless lock release. Cam headed into the wild of the moon. Here we go again, Gwen. Got a good feeling. This is the one to get us all off Earth. Someplace with real opportunity for the boys… and for us.

 6: Ace

A monotonous buzz hummed in Ace‘s ears. Insects? She opened her eyes, her blurry vision saw objects, but no details. Through the cracks in the roof, beams of sunlight offered the only illumination in the darkness. The beams came to rest on Ace’s stomach, above her belly button, she tried to wipe away the discomfort, but it persisted. It’s so hot.

She moved from the beams and sat up. Grabbing one of the rags she had made from what was left of her uniform, she dipped it into the makeshift bowl that was the Tree-knocker skull. The yellowish tinted water dripped from the rag back into the bowl as she squeezed out the excess. Sitting up, she wiped the rag over her face and neck, letting the water run down her body. The relief was temporary but helped regulate her temperature. It also refreshed her senses and quieted the buzz in her head.

It had taken weeks, but she had turned the fallen tree pile, over the ravine, into a place to survive—a multilevel hut. She slept in a hammock near the top, with two nearby escape routes in case something came in from the ground entrance. One of the upper exits was blocked with pieces of debris from a storm. But there has not been a storm in some time, she was not sure how long.

Carefully, she climbed down to the ground. She looked at her “calendar tree,” close to a hundred gouges, one for each day that had passed. Did I do today? No, I just came down… Did I do yesterday? She shrugged and walked past the supplies and a set of sharpened sticks to use in defense of the hut. She had also brought electronic devices from the ship, hoping