Description
The Planet Trap is book 1 in the Expendable Heroes series by Patty Jansen
About The Planet Trap
The last thing Steven remembers was waiting in a prison cell for the results of an appeals trial. His crime: speaking out against unfair treatment of workers. His opinion of his sentence: it’s political.
Next thing he wakes up on a commercial ship run by the Merlin Company, where he meets Luciane, Rollo and Jack, fellow prisoners of an inconveniently political nature, and the four will be sent down to a planet where a research team has vanished.
Everything needed to survive and return is on the abandoned base, and all the company wants is to know what happened to twelve scientists.
Except the company is lying. They know what happened to the scientists. They’re testing something, and the four are guineapigs. They’re not supposed to come back. The space craft to return is not even at the base anymore.
But one discovery will change everything.
Here is a sample:
A lone human building on a planet where you’re the only human inhabitants, where the previous inhabitants have vanished into thin air for some mysterious reason, was not a relaxing place, as Steven could attest to when he tried to sleep at night.
He listened intently for every sound, and when there was a sound, he had to decide if it was just another one of Rollo’s strange snores drifting in from the next room or something he needed to worry about.
The orbiting ship had not been on the same time schedule as the planet and he didn’t feel tired. His body’s rhythm was still messed up from being in stasis, anyway.
The humid air made him sweaty and clammy at the same time. He couldn’t go back to splash water on himself because it was too dark to find his way to the suiting room. And anyway, they were conserving filtered water. He could hear Rollo scratching himself in his sleep and after complaining about itchy sap, he didn’t want to suffer the same fate.
In fact, it was so dark that he saw purple spots before his eyes. It could be pretty dark on ships when the lights went off, but there was usually a little pinprick of light somewhere to show that a piece of machinery was still keeping everyone alive.
Not so in this place. There was no power, no light, and no familiar sounds. They had to conserve power from the devices they’d brought.
There was nothing he could do except wait for morning, which, on a planet with twenty-two hour days, was five hours away, according to Xander’s information, when Steven grew too impatient and turned on his reader for a few seconds.
Five hours of staring at the ceiling, listening to every little sound, wondering if it was the building creaking, someone snoring—and Rollo in the next room was putting up a show—or a creature creeping into the building ready to devour them all.
Someone started rummaging around in the common room early. When Steven went to check, he found Luciane going through the box of rations by the glow of the single light they’d found in the storeroom that still worked.
She turned around when he came in.
“Oh. It’s you. Sleep well?”
“Don’t ask.” Steven went to the table and picked up one of the food packets. It was too dark to read the label, although daylight was not far away, judging by the faint glow that peeked between the vegetation that covered the skylight window.
Luciane snorted.
“Could you imagine being married to Rollo and having to sleep with that fucking chainsaw in your bed?”
Steven wanted to say, He can’t help it, but she would know that, and it was useless to bicker over stuff like this. There would be plenty of things to bicker about later.
“Anyway, I’ve started making a list of shit we need to do today,” Luciane continued into the uneasy silence.
She pushed her pad across the table.
She had written with her stylus on a screen called an X-note. Which meant that Xander was watching. Or he would be once they turned the power back on and could communicate with the ship.
Steven scrolled through the list.
Most of the items made perfect sense to him.
Locate and uncover the solar panels and get them to work again.
Check the electricals.
Check the food situation.
Communicate these things with the ship in orbit so that they could asses what the situation on the ground was, and whether they needed to send extra supplies.
Slashing the vegetation away from the building and uncovering the windows so that they could see again.
And then, when the electricity was on, and the batteries were charging, and the windows were cleared, and they had taken stock of what they needed for survival, they could look into the labs to see if there was any indication why twelve people had disappeared into thin air.
“At least we haven’t found any dead bodies,” she said.
“That doesn’t mean they’re not there,” said Jack, who had joined them in the darkness, and pulled back a chair.
Luciane snorted. “Good morning, cheerful comrade.”
“You’re welcome.” Jack grabbed a food packet and ripped it open. There was a straw to the side of the packet, which he stuck inside and sucked. “Urgh, what junk is this?”
“Soy yoghurt and strawberries.”
Jack sniffed the open packet. “This crap has never seen a strawberry.”
“Well, we can’t be too picky,” Luciane said.
Continue reading. Get The Planet Trap now.
Need the Bookfunnel app?
