The Last of the Coffin Ships - E-book - ePub

Leaving the planet used to be a death sentence, but Jurn returned from the Shadow Squares solar installation with the news of the Corps-caused global disaster. No one was surprised when he disappeared. But he hadn't returned emptyhanded. Hidden deep beneath the skin in his hip, Jurn has smuggled tech which could change everything. He is secretly helped by Denni, a thirty year old trapped by societal judgement in her parents' basement.
She had taken on the unenviable task of cleaning up the internet, and with it reforming the way that knowledge was collected and understood. As secret as a spider in her web, Denni has toppled regimes, built universities, funded science, and espionage in her fanatical devotion to a secret project that she dares not utter aloud. Tason was sliding sideways through a gamer's life when his parents demanded that he support himself.
They never imagined that he would talk himself into a job with the Indian space agency and then with the Corps. Gathering a team of misfits from the Dharavi slum of Mumbai, Tason cons their way into orbit, already planning how he might turn the latest change in their luck to their advantage. Setting in motion an impossible project, two ships out of Bangkok force an asteroid and a comet to collide.
They have set their sights on far Proxima, and a generation ship to take them there. Busy calculating a slingshot around the sun and Jupiter and worrying that their fragile ship will disintegrate, they refuse to divulge their intentions to an Earth distracted by environmental and social collapse. With as many projects as there are people to suggest them, Earth is either on the cusp of a galaxy-wide civilization or is merely making technological noise before it falls into mayhem and biosphere collapse.
In the centre of the struggle, Denni connects people with technology, ideas with those who can fund them, and vision with those brave enough to carry them to fruition.