Beth McKay is excited to be a passenger aboard the transport star ship Orion. They are heading to a far flung space colony called EOS5, to colonise and make it their own ‘Earth-type’ home. Her mum is a Commander aboard, her dad responsible for the farm that supplies all their fresh food.

In order to reach EOS5 they must make jumps across space. The ship controls each jump after the crew and passengers go into sleep mode. Billions of light years jumped, they awake groggy and strange, but ready to resume life aboard until the next scheduled jump.

One day as the children and teens are in their sleep pods preparing for a jump, a huge crash judders through the Orion.

‘ATTENTION ATTENTION. PREPARE FOR IMMEDIATE JUMP’ alerts Ship – the Orion’s AI.

Beth wakes up to a quiet Orion. Ship‘s hologram avatar appears in front of her announcing Beth is now in charge. How can that be? She is only 13! No adults can be woken as they were not far enough through the jump/sleep protocols and it might be catastrophic to their brains and memories.

With Ship’s guidance, Beth wakes a handful of other young teens she hopes will use their own special skills to help her run the ship.

Frightened, envied by another, and constantly over-whelmed with her responsibility, Beth does the best she can with her Command training.

Working together they achieve small accomplishments in sorting out the Orion. There are problems too – almost too many to count. They quickly find things that don’t add up. Where is Beth’s diary? Where is her friend’s special tablet with Orion’s ship data info on it? Why don’t the constellations and stars match up with their maps?

This sci-fi grabbed me early in this trip through galaxies toward a new life. A small group of teens are suddenly faced with running a starship on their own, fighting off space pirates (Scrapers), avoiding aliens (Videshi), and learning while doing, as they keep their crew and passengers alive.

When they realise they suddenly aren’t sure what’s true and what’s fabricated aboard the Orion, mistrust between them builds. Things aren’t making sense, and their personal confusions adds to an onboard creeping menace that threatens to overcome them. Who can they trust? Where are they? And what is hiding aboard the Orion?

Twists and turns will keep you turning pages.

Author – Alastair Chisholm

Age – 9+

(Space, Colony, Leadership, Captain, Aliens, Space Pirates, Time leaps, Light years, Sci-fi, Spaceship, Space travel, New Planet, Betrayal, Artificial Intelligence, Action, Stepping up, AI, Conflict, Jealousy, Chain of Command)