The Moon Platoon

Chapter 29 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 30 (#litres_trial_promo)

Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)

Also by Jeramey Kraatz (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

Congratulations, 2085 Scholarship Winner! (#ue42fd947-824a-5259-8944-55775bef9441)

On behalf of the Elijah West Scholarship for Courage, Ambition, and Brains (EW-SCAB), I am pleased to inform you that, out of the millions of applications we received this year, you have been selected to receive an all-expenses paid two-week trip to the Lunar Taj – the galaxy’s first (and only!) off-world resort. Located on five hundred acres of prime Moon real estate overlooking the Sea of Tranquility, the Lunar Taj offers countless opportunities for adventure, including zero-gravity sports, scenic Space Runner treks across the dark side of the Moon and access to the latest in cutting-edge virtual reality technology. Ever wonder what it would be like to play weightless basketball? You’re about to find out! Itching to explore craters no human has ever set foot in? Join one of our off-resort expeditions! There may even be an opportunity to meet the legendary adventurer and inventor Elijah West himself!

And, of course, the fun doesn’t stop on the Moon: upon completion of your two-week holiday, you’ll receive an EW-SCAB trust fund of one million US dollars!

To begin the enrolment process, we’ll need a biometric signature from your parent or guardian. In addition, please upload heat-scan measurements so we can begin work on your custom-made space suits right away! Don’t delay – your Space Runner will be launching soon!

Congratulations on this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,

Pinky Weyve

Executive assistant to Mr. West

ABOUT THE SCHOLARSHIP

Since 2080, Elijah West – philanthropist, innovator, and Time’s Man of the Millennium – has opened the doors of his preeminent Lunar Taj to the best and brightest of Earth’s youth. Recipients of the EW-SCAB have gone on to earn early acceptance to top-tier universities, find success in burgeoning Space Runner racing leagues and even land coveted positions as full-time staff members at the Lunar Taj. Despite the amount of entries received every year, Mr. West alone selects each scholarship recipient.

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Benny Love was three-quarters of the way to the Moon when he discovered his holographic spider was missing.

“Aw, man,” he murmured into his open rucksack, “I had such big plans for you!”

He’d been practising with the spider for the better part of a year. Or, more specifically, mastering the controls of the tiny hover-mech that flew around projecting the arachnid onto whatever surface Benny saw fit – most of the time someone’s shoulder or the ceiling of his family’s RV in the middle of the night. He was good at it, and had hoped to show off his skills by pranking some of the other scholarship winners. So much for that idea. He wondered which of his little brothers had swiped the spider from his bag the night before, because he definitely remembered packing such vital gear. They were probably playing around with it now, getting sand in the hover-mech’s delicate parts. He made a mental note to figure out a way to repay them when he got back to Earth. Maybe with a terrifying story about the three-headed child-eating aliens he encountered at the Taj, or by infecting them with an incredibly contagious case of imaginary lunar flu.

He tried not to dwell on the spider and instead looked out of the passenger window just in time to see a satellite fly by – a shining speck against the black backdrop of space that quickly disappeared among the pinpricks of stars located light-years away. He glanced at the readouts on the dashboard. His Space Runner was travelling at just under fifty thousand miles per hour.

Benny was a very long way from home.

He hadn’t quite wrapped his head around the fact that he was riding in a car capable of blasting off from Earth and travelling to the Moon. A luxury vehicle sleeker than any sports coupé ever imagined, crammed full of next-generation artificial environment systems and touch-operated holoscreens and powered by one explosive gravity-manipulating fission hyperdrive under the hood. A total beast of a machine. It was the type of car Benny had seen in ads and news stories on his HoloTek datapad but never in person. At least, not until today. Certainly it wasn’t the type of vehicle he’d thought he’d ever have a chance to ride in. His caravan back on Earth – like every other roaming pack of cars and mobile homes in the Drylands – was made up of sand-battered rust-buckets cobbled together from bits and pieces of old wrecks and whatever salvageable parts the members of his group had come across in their travels. The RV that he and his brothers and grandmother lived in was so old that it ran partially on fossil fuels.

And yet, here he was. Not only was he riding in a Space Runner, but he’d probably get the chance to meet the person who’d invented them eight years ago. Elijah West. Benny had read all about him online. The man was an adventurer who’d redefined space exploration. Who drag raced across Mars on weekends. Eccentric, certainly, and maybe even a little crazy (he did live full-time on the Moon and, according to some reports, spent millions of dollars a year having cargo ships full of his favourite fizzy drink shipped to the Taj).

But he was also the world’s biggest philanthropist. The fact that Benny was currently shooting through space and would have an unfathomable amount of money waiting for him when he came back to Earth was proof enough of that. Benny had never met Elijah, but the man had already shaped his future. The EW-SCAB trust fund he’d come home to in two weeks represented more than just the latest datapads and hologram tech. A million dollars wouldn’t make him rich compared to a lot of people, but it was the promise of a real home, a way out of the Drylands and all the dangers and struggles he and his family faced in the desert wastes that had once been the West Coast of the United States.

In fact, Elijah’s very existence was kind of comforting to Benny. Every biography or profile of the trillionaire mentioned that he’d been born with nothing and became the mogul he was today because he simply refused to believe in limitations. That anything was impossible. Late at night, when Benny told his little brothers that they wouldn’t have to live in the Drylands forever, it was Elijah he was thinking about.

Benny tossed his rucksack to the floor and dragged his hands across the front of his space suit a few times, trying to wipe off the dust and grit he’d got on him while rummaging through it – nothing from the caravan was ever really clean, no matter how often you washed it. Eventually he just accepted that he’d be a little dirty when he got to the Taj, and propped his feet on the dashboard. The shiny black surface under his boots lit up in a flurry of colours and holograms. He realised his mistake a split second before a mixture of drums and instruments that sounded like laser pistols blared through the cabin. He bolted forward and tapped at what he thought might be an off-button, but that just caused the lights inside the vehicle to pulse along with the thumping bass.

All the noise woke Drue, the kid in the seat next to him. The first thing Drue had done when he met Benny was claim the pilot’s chair, even though the trip to the Moon was completely automated by an onboard guidance system. Then he’d fallen asleep before their Space Runner took off. He’d stayed that way, mouth open and head lolling back and forth, for the past few hours. Not that Benny really minded. It gave him a chance to quietly stare out at the stars and the forty-nine other gleaming Space Runners holding the rest of the scholarship winners that were all heading towards the Moon like a fleet moving in for invasion.

“Aren’t we there yet?” Drue asked, blinking sleep away. He didn’t wait for Benny to respond. “Ugh, why aren’t we moving faster? What’s the point of having a hyperdrive if they aren’t going to push it?” He leaned forward and drew a half-circle anticlockwise on the dashboard in front of him, the blinking lights reflecting off the gold buttons on the cuff of his space suit. The music died down to a faint pulse.

Benny watched this carefully. He wasn’t sure what Drue’s deal was, but there was something about him that seemed off. Maybe it was the way his brown hair was so perfectly slicked over to one side, unlike his own black hair that usually stuck out in all directions thanks to a mixture of sweat and dust. Or maybe it was Drue’s space suit. Benny’s had been made for him by the people at EW-SCAB – close-fitting, dark blue coveralls made out of some rubbery, radiation-blocking substance. A thick band around the collar contained an emergency force-field helmet and oxygen supply, should he find himself outside of the artificial atmosphere of the Taj. His last name was stitched in silver over his heart. It was the first brand-new piece of clothing he could remember getting in years – not counting the stuff his grandmother made for him – and the same suit everyone else had been wearing before take-off. Except Drue’s. His suit was just a little bit shinier, and his last name, Lincoln, was spelled out in gold on his left chest pocket. It looked expensive. Like something Benny would be thrilled to find in an abandoned farm or town back on Earth because he could probably trade it for a decent hover-scooter, or at least new tyres for his dune buggy.

Drue looked at the dirt smudged across Benny’s space suit and crinkled his nose.

“What have you been doing while I was asleep?” he asked.

That’s when it clicked – Drue looked at him like a lot of people did on the rare occasions when the members of his caravan would buy supplies in the cities bordering the Drylands. Such places had grown more and more overcrowded and expensive as the ongoing drought forced people to abandon their homes and move further east. Those who could afford to live in the cities didn’t seem to want people like him and his family hanging around for too long. He could tell that from the way they avoided eye contact or clutched their bags close when he walked by. On a few occasions, shop owners had even told him that he should go back to the desert if he didn’t have any money to spend.

“Nothing,” he said to Drue, crossing his arms over the front of his suit. “Just trying to remind myself that this is real. I can’t believe I’m about to be on the Moon. Have you heard of the reverse bungee jumping they have at the Taj? Where they tie you to a Moon rock and then shoot you into space?”

Drue just shrugged.

“It’s cool, I guess. The first time is fun, but after that it’s just OK because there’s not really a lot for you to look at from that high. The Moon’s actually kind of ugly up close.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Benny said, shaking his head and raising his hands in front of him. “You mean you’ve been up here before?”

“Sure. Last summer. I told them they should add jet packs to the bungee jumping if they really wanted to make it worth doing.” Drue smirked. “The best part of the trip, though? I totally shook Elijah West’s hand.”

Benny narrowed his eyes. One of the few rules in the scholarship application was that the recipients should be kids aged eleven to thirteen who might not have the chance to visit the Moon otherwise (which, Benny understood, was a really nice way of saying that the EW-SCAB was charity and not for someone rich enough to actually visit the Lunar Taj with their own money).

Drue leaned back in the driver’s seat and put his feet up on the locked steering yoke in front of him. “This time I want to go inside Elijah’s private garage. I hear there are all sorts of Space Runner prototypes hidden away in here. I’m hoping he’s got something more like a motorcycle with a hyperdrive. Super fast. Sleek. Now that I would get pumped about.”

“I’m pretty into ATVs. Maybe he’s got something like that.”

Drue let out a snort. “If Moon buggies excite you, you’re going to have the best time of your life.” Drue’s eyes lit up a little as a smile spread across his face. “You’re lucky you got assigned to my car. Stick with me and I’ll show you the good life. You’ll have a great time! Trust me.”

“Can’t wait,” Benny said, not sure if that was the best or worst choice he could make. It didn’t matter, though. He was stuck in the Space Runner for the time being. Plus, there was something else on his mind. “So … what’s Elijah West like?”

“He’s seriously the most awesome guy in the universe,” Drue said. He shook his head a few times, like he couldn’t believe such a person really existed. “I mean, I only got to say a few words to him, but I feel like we made a connection. Did you know that after inventing the Space Runner, he took it out himself on a test run because he wanted to be able to say that he was the first person who drove a car into space, even though it was crazy dangerous? And when he was overseeing the building of the Lunar Taj, a bunch of businesses offered to give him a ton of money for a stake in it, but he spent his own fortune so he could have full control over the place? Also, did you know that he’s trying to figure out how to turn the rings of Saturn into a race track? That dude is cooler than anyone alive. Or dead, probably.” Drue let out a long breath and closed his eyes. “When I’m a trillionaire, I’m driving a different Space Runner every day.”

Benny caught his own reflection in the shiny black dashboard and realised that a huge, goofy grin had taken over his face. He was so close to the Taj. Soon, he was going to be walking on the Moon.

“So, it’s not weird being there, right?” he asked. “It just feels like Earth? Because I heard that one tiny hole in the Grand Dome around the Taj would mess up the pressure inside so badly that it could suck your brain out of your nose.”

Drue’s right eye cracked open, staring at Benny.

“Uh, not true. The artificial atmosphere isn’t that strong. Plus, the whole resort is actually encased in a gravity force field. Who told you that?”

Benny shook his head. “Actually, that might be something I told one of my dumb brothers to scare them. I spent a lot of nights this week telling them about imaginary space wars to get them to stop complaining about me getting to go on this trip.”

“You’ve got brothers?” Drue asked.

“Two, yeah. You?”

“None. I’m an only child.”