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‘Yes, Selene. The biggest racing challenge in the Pegasi system. It’s an endurance test where the best pinnace pilots seek to break records for the one million-mile race around Eden II’s wider orbit. Entrants don’t need any previous piloting experience. Divided into 21 legs, it features between 10 and 20 individual races. Pilots can choose to complete the full circumnavigation or select individual legs.’
‘And who’s behind the challenge?’ Selene asked.
‘It’s organised by a committee that includes Xion and Zane. The committee raises the sponsor fees to supply a fleet of support yachts, each with a fully qualified pilot, first aid, food and even a med bay to guide the crew safely.
‘Interesting. I’d love to watch it one day,’ Selene responded, looking out of the holo screen onto a silver, cold wilderness featuring dead volcanoes, impact craters, and dried-up lava flows from eons gone by.
‘It’s quite the spectacle, I can assure you. You should know that Kainan and Kage won the grand prize title three years ago with a yacht Kainan designed himself.’
‘Is that right?’ Selene murmured, even more intrigued.
‘Enough, Mirage,’ Kainan warned roughly.
The AI obeyed, falling mute. Selene, too, reading the room and the tense set of Edenite’s shoulders.
The ship flew low over the landscape, coasting above the crusted rocky surface covered with regolith, lava plains and lunar mares. The light gradually dipped until all that was visible were the jewels of stars and celestial bodies in the cloaked skies above.
‘Does anyone live out here?’ Selene asked.
Kainan remained silent, seemingly lost in thought.
Mirage piped up instead. ‘Naam. A few brave residents and those who can afford the costs of setting up their biomes. They’re also a few moon walk replenishment stations for stop-overs at convenient locations throughout the moon plains.’
‘What about this J’Urg Mihòr place? Is it inhabited?’
Kainan stirred and replied, not looking at her. ‘Only by the owners of the mountain ridge. It’s all private. It runs along the mountain’s apex, reached only by a flyer or craft like this one. A minimal number of ships are permitted access.’
Selene took in the shared information quietly. She suddenly felt tapped out. Her mind was close to a complete shutdown, so she let her head fall back to the chair rest.
Kainan’s gold-flecked eyes sliced over to her. He gave a long look and then commanded. ‘Sleep. I’ll wake you when we arrive.’
She barely had the energy to nod, and soon her eyes fluttered shut, and the world around her fell away.
II
You are only truly alive when you live amongst the stars
6
A Lair in Eden
Selene
The sky was immense, dark, dotted with fireballs, meteors and falling stars that whirled past so fast she felt light-headed.
Selene stood before the vast expanse, transfixed and spellbound by the sheer magnitude of the scenery. Only thick sheeted glass separated her from the uninhabited realm beyond. Yet still, she felt small, a tiny creature, placed in the centre of a wild, unadulterated, starlit megacosm.
She cast her eyes over the dark, black mountain ridge and then below her to the oceans of silver-laced sand that rolled almost in waves against the base of the soaring crags.
The fine powdered sand had a potency of its own. It whipped and danced in powerful surges of energy, almost as if it was magnetised and rippling to the tune of a fearsome, invisible force below the moon’s surface.
Selene felt the same overwhelming storm raise her heart rate and throb through her veins. She held a hand to a heart and gave in to the moonscape’s thundering power.
Moments later, she heard a slight sound. She turned to see Kainan bring in the last load from his ship, parked in the shuttle bay built into the mountainside.
They’d landed on a pad that stretched out from a mountainous ridge face a few minutes ago. A magnetised walkway had enticed Selene into an ample cavernous space dominated by a soaring transparent force field. The view had since bewitched her.
Kainan reached her side and glanced down at her, their eyes clashing.
