Earth Girl

The year is 2781. Lieutenant Drago Tell Dramis is a newly trained fighter pilot heading out on his first mission. This is the moment he's dreamed of for years, but his dream is turning into a nightmare. Drago's team leader hates him, and it's hard to focus on a routine mission when the whole team is anxiously waiting for news of something far more important. A comet is on a collision course with one of humanity's oldest colony worlds. Today is the last chance to save the planet Hera from total destruction.

Into the fire!2788. Only the handicapped live on Earth. While everyone else uses interstellar portals to travel between hundreds of colony worlds, 17-year-old Jarra is among the one in a thousand people born with an immune system that cannot survive on other planets. Sent to Earth at birth to save her life, abandoned by her parents to be raised a ward of Hospital Earth, she lives a regimented life in one of their impersonal residences. Tortured by the knowledge the stars are forever out of her reach, Jarra dreams of learning to fly a plane so she can at least make the skies of Earth her own. She gets her chance to become a qualified pilot, but learning to fly turns out to be far more difficult and dangerous than she imagined, sending her into a literal trial by fire. EARTH AND FIRE is a prequel novella, set in the distant future of the Earth Girl trilogy (Earth Girl, Earth Star, and Earth Flight). Note that the first two chapters of EARTH AND FIRE have appeared as the title story in the EARTH 2788 short story collection. The other fifteen chapters are entirely new.

Don't breathe!2788. Only the handicapped live on Earth. While everyone else uses interstellar portals to travel between hundreds of colony worlds, 17-year-old Jarra is among the one in a thousand people born with an immune system that cannot survive on other planets. Sent to Earth at birth to save her life, abandoned by her parents to be raised a ward of Hospital Earth, she lives a regimented life in one of their impersonal residences. Jarra is spending the summer at New York Fringe Dig Site with her school history club. While her friends search for lost treasures on the ground, Jarra is airborne in a survey plane and hoping to become a qualified pilot, but the sprawling ancient ruins of New York contain the lethal legacies of the past as well as its treasures. EARTH AND AIR is the second of the prequel novellas set in the distant future of the Earth Girl trilogy and featuring Jarra. At over 60,000 words it is actually longer than standard novella length.