Space Race

The race is on! Maxton and his family are entered to compete in the big land rush on planet Caerus. This is the opportunity of a lifetime. The problem? Everything seems to go wrong. Their secondhand ship keeps breaking down, their cousin goes missing, and someone steals half their funds. They have to turn to a staffing agency to get somebody to take a look at their shipboard computers.

When Clara accepts a temp job aboard the Merit, she figures she’ll only be on the ship for about an hour. That’s all the time she needs to run a diagnostic on the computers, but then Max shocks her with an invitation to join his team. The man is handsome and single, and participating in the competition could change her whole life. But can they win?

Although this ragtag group may not look impressive from the outside, they have strength, determination, and smarts. They’ll need all those qualities if they want to win this amazing space race.

Content: This book contains a sweet romance, a dilapidated space ship, and a great deal of running.


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Excerpt from Space Race
The blare of an alarm cut through the crew cabin of the ship. Maxton immediately jumped off the treadmill he’d been running on and headed for the main compartment. Whatever the problem was, it did not impact the artificial gravity, because his feet stayed firmly on the floor.

“We’ve got another air leak,” his sister, Aeliana, announced. She spoke to him over the internal comm system from her position on the flight deck.

“Where?” Max was already grabbing a roll of polyamide tape and an ultrasonic probe.

“Sensory nodes indicate the leak is on the starboard side of the galley,” Aeliana replied. “It’s between the air intake, the air diffuser, and the aft cabinet.”

His ears popped as he went to the wall his sister indicated. Their cousin Violet—her hair dyed as purple as her namesake—joined him.

“How bad is it?” Violet demanded.

“Bad enough,” Aeliana answered. “Pressure has dropped hundreds of kilopascals over the last hour. You need to plug that leak.”

Violet groaned. “Either we took a debris hit, or this old hull is so fatigued we’re about to become a flying sieve. Air is rushing out that hole at nearly the speed of sound.”

Those were not words Max wanted to hear while surrounded by the vacuum of space. He turned on the ultrasonic probe, which resembled a blunt hand drill with a display screen. Escaping air caused a high-frequency shriek and tiny vibrations. Though the sound wasn’t detectable by ear, the probe would pick up on the noise. He aimed it at the wall and began sweeping the area.

He held his breath.

“If we had more sensors embedded in the hull, we could more accurately triangulate the location of the leak,” Violet griped. “Of course, the newer ships have self-monitoring and self-repairing hulls. This ship is practically an antique.”

Yes, the Merit had been around a long time and had more than a few issues, but it was the best secondhand ship they had been able to afford.

Max watched the readout on the screen as he searched for the breach. He didn’t exhale until he found it. Finally, he spotted an opening that was smaller than the tip of his little finger.

“Got it. The hole is over here next to the storage cabinet.” Even as he spoke, he slapped a piece of tape over the puncture.

There was a momentary delay before the alarm cut off, leaving them with the muted hum of the onboard equipment.

“I’ll get the patch kit,” his cousin said. “Even that’s only a temporary fix, though. I need to go outside the ship to make proper repairs. There could be further damage to the impact shield and thermal insulation.”

Max trusted her assessment. Violet was the closest thing to an engineer they had on board, though mechanic would have been a better description.

“Aeliana, how is the radiation shield holding up?” he asked, resisting the urge to cup his hands over his more valuable bits of anatomy.

“Radiation deflectors are at a hundred percent,” she assured him over the comm. “We’re good.”

“Oxygen?” He didn’t have a headache or dizziness, but he wanted to be sure.

There was a pause before Aeliana sighed in relief. Maybe she had been holding her breath too. “Oxygen generators are already compensating, and backups are standing by. I think we’re okay.”

“Are you kidding me? We’re far from okay.” Their other cousin, Berin, made this pronouncement as he wandered into the galley. As was the typical fashion for singles on their home planet, he wore his ash-blond hair brightly dyed—in his case, in a rainbow of streaks. “Half the damn ship is being held together by tape and patches. Can’t we go one kilometer without something falling apart on this junker?”

As if to answer him, another shrill alarm ripped through the cabin.

“Korin, you’d better get to the cockpit,” Aeliana called to her husband, their captain. “I’ve got a computer malfunction. Navigation just went down, and our drive is off-line. We’re drifting blind.”

“Switch to secondary systems,” Korin ordered.

“They’re not responding,” she informed him.

Max shared a worried look with his cousins.

“Berin, you’re our computer expert,” Violet pointed out. “Go help our captain and copilot.”

“This was not what I meant when I said I was good with computers,” Berin grumbled, but he hurried up to the flight deck.

 Max went with him, though he wasn’t sure what he could do. He was pretty good with his hands, but his talents lay in farming and construction. His job wouldn’t really start until they reached the surface of Caerus. If they reached that faraway planet. The ship seemed intent on falling apart first.