Jeramey Kraatz - The Moon Platoon

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2017

HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd,

1 London Bridge Street London, SE1 9GF

The HarperCollins website address is: www.harpercollins.co.uk

Copyright © Full Fathom Five, LLC 2017

Cover illustration © Jacey

Jeramey Kraatz asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008226404

Ebook Edition © 2017 ISBN: 9780008226411

Version: 2017-04-06

For anyone who has shot for the Moon,

ended up in the grass, and tried again.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2017 HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd, 1 London Bridge Street London, SE1 9GF The HarperCollins website address is: www.harpercollins.co.uk Copyright © Full Fathom Five, LLC 2017 Cover illustration © Jacey Jeramey Kraatz asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work. A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins. Source ISBN: 9780008226404 Ebook Edition © 2017 ISBN: 9780008226411 Version: 2017-04-06

Dedication For anyone who has shot for the Moon, ended up in the grass, and tried again.

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Acknowledgements

Also by Jeramey Kraatz

About the Publisher

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.

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.