Doors to the Stars Sample Chapter

Doors to the Stars is a found-family space opera about choosing what you’ll lose to save worlds that never gave a damn about you. For readers who loved Ship Breaker’s survival grit, Skyward’s pilot-with-baggage energy, and protagonists who break—but keep going anyway.

Sign up for updates and exclusive content!

Chapter One: Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust

My boots crunch on shattered glass as I pick through the city’s skeletal remains. Towers that once pierced the sky jut up like broken teeth, clawing at a bruised, ash-streaked horizon. The air reeks of rust and rot, a constant reminder of a world that vanished centuries before.

A battered, patched-up spherical metal ball hovers over my shoulder, humming faintly as I step forward. Ahead, a colossal ship’s wreckage squats, its cracked hull half-buried in the ruins like a beast crushed by its own weight. Torn panels and wires dangle from its sides, catching the faint light. My breath fogs in the icy air, my pulse racing as I scan the debris for something to keep the camp’s heaters alive.

“It’s so quiet here, Gus,” I whisper, as if my voice might wake something in this graveyard.

The silence feels wrong, split only by the creak of shifting steel. I grip my rucksack’s strap tighter, a chill snaking up my spine as shadows flicker inside the ship’s gaping maw. This dead place is alive in all the wrong ways, as if the city and its fallen intruder are waiting for me to disturb their restless sleep.

My thoughts are interrupted as Gus’s singular ocular sensor flashes white in a smug stutter, warning me not to wake the ghosts. He communicates in Luminix, an archaic language of light pulses I finally figured out through a lot of trial and error after we met.

I laugh softly at the quip.

“Stow it,” I tell the levitating bauble. “I’m too old to believe in old man Grendel’s bedtime stories. If we don’t find a power cell or something, it’ll be another cold night for the kids.”

Especially for Cassandra. She won’t make it another night, not with her lungs rattling like they’re full of gravel.

With the fear of radiation poisoning from the crash, junk rats like me usually steer clear of this part of the city, but people have picked everything else clean, so here we are—more out of desperation than anything. Me, my annoying drone, and the wreckage of a rebel cruiser that plowed through blocks of buildings as it came down fifty years ago like a boulder grinding through wheat.

I make my way carefully over hills of shattered duracrete and twisted metal as Gus drifts ahead, alert for danger. Six years ago, when I was ten, I nearly fell through a collapsed floor on my first scavenging run, and I haven’t trusted ruins like this since.

Teetering atop a mound of rubble and creaking in the chill wind, a faded and peeling billboard of a human man raising his fist to the heavens proclaims The Stars Belong to the Strong: The Ascendancy Shields Your Future! Someone has spray painted a devilishly twirled mustache and goatee on his stern face in neon orange, and I can’t help but laugh as I work my way past it.

A dozen or so yards from the looming bulk of the ship, something poking out from under a buckled armor plate catches my eye, and I crouch down to inspect it.

Once, they say, we were united in peace through a network of orbital and planetary gates connecting worlds, but ever since those died we’ve been a cosmos divided with a boot on our necks.

It’s the corner of a small clamshell container, battered and scorched. Gus drifts over, his eye glowing amber. The plating is too heavy to lift, and I have to dig around and under the case with my collapsible entrenching tool to get it loose.

I brush a strand of hair out of my eyes and wipe the sweat from my forehead with the back of a glove before giving it a final tug that yanks it free.

Gus moves in closer, pulsing in alternating amber and green with cautious excitement.

“Gotta have something valuable inside, right? I mean, this container is up-armored plastasteel. And that lock… Are your scans picking up anything?”

He gives a shrug-like bob.

Biting my lip, I fish a multitool out of my pocket and get down lower to study the lock. It’s biometric, but that’s not a problem. After popping off the retinal scanning panel, I pull out the wires and splice them into a harness I’ve cobbled together for just such an occasion.

“Your turn, buddy.”

Gus floats in closer and then hesitates, shooting me an amber pulse.

“Doubt it’s booby-trapped. Where’s your sense of adventure? You losing your edge?”

He shoots me a stutter of red expletives and extends a small probe from within his casing to interface with the harness. His eye flashes amber for several long moments and then erupts in an alarming red strobe.

My heart leaps into my throat and I jump away, but his eye begins to pulse white in a slow chuckle. There’s a dull click of the locking mechanism disengaging and the container opens with a hiss of pressurized air.

“Dammit, Gus. That wasn’t funny.”

He disagrees. Pretty funny.

“No, it wasn’t,” I say, picking myself up and brushing off my pants. “Njelek tenan.”

He gives me a curious green pulse and indicates the case. I move over and open it slowly, revealing…

I’m not sure what, exactly.

Cradled in foam inside the case is one of the oddest things I’ve ever seen. It’s small and thin, about the size of a saucer, with gear-like notches around the edges—intricate, almost fractal in their precision—and made of some dark bronzed material, an impossible mix of metal and stone… and it’s old, covered in a thick greenish-blue patina. Etched into its surface, barely visible beneath the patina, are hair-thin glyphs that catch the light in weird rainbow flickers.

Sitting back, I raise an eyebrow to Gus. He flickers back staccato green and bobs.

“What is this? Must be valuable, right? Think it was thrown from the wreck?” I reach out to touch it, but hold back momentarily and Gus flashes white. “Lambemu! Of course I’m not afraid of it. My edge is sharper than ever.”

He eggs me on and I frown at him, lifting the thing out and holding it up with both hands. It thrums slightly, warm against my palms, and the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I cough the apprehension away and give Gus a brave face.

The underside is slightly concave, with a raised plug in its center, ringed with microfilaments that quiver when I tilt the disk. I turn it over in my hands, its worn surface glinting iridescently despite the verdigris—smooth in places, rough in others, shaped by centuries of handling. This will sound strange, but it almost looks organic, like it was… grown.

Resting in my hands it feels… I don’t know… alive.

“Any idea what it is? Other than weird and really old?”

Another shrug-like bob, followed by a sequence in amber.

For a second, I’m about to agree with him, but I shake my head. “What? I’m certainly not tossing it away.” I’ll admit I share his apprehension, but I also have to be pragmatic about things, even alien artifacts that send a chill up my spine. “Right buyer, this could set us all up for a long time.” I wrap it in rags and stuff it into my rucksack, then stand, cracking my neck. “We’ll figure out what it is later. Come on. Burning daylight. No, I don’t think it’s dangerous.”

My bravado’s back, but it’s a thin mask, and Gus knows it.

Once at the cruiser, I put my hands on my hips and purse my lips, surveying the hull. The wreck looks bigger up close. Mountainous, really. About six meters overhead, the gap of a busted airlock yawns open.

Tossing a dark braid over my shoulder, I turn to the drone. “Guess I’m climbing. Do you mind checking things out?”

He pulses amber with uncertainty.

“Oh! Now who’s afraid of ghosts? Get up there, you big baby.”

A red flash, telling me where to stow it, and then he’s up and shooting inside the wreck. I wait, studying the surface of the hull for handholds. It’d be easier if I were taller or lankier, but I’m not. Eli says I’m as short as a scrumball. But he’s always picking on us girls, leering with that acne-filled grin.

This ship’s just another casualty of the galaxy’s endless skirmishes—nothing like the wreckage The War must’ve left behind. That’s a distant memory, though, half-shrouded in tales I find too impossible to take seriously, a conflict that fractured the united planets of the Galactic Concord into isolated islands ruled by the Ascendancy.

Once, they say, we were united in peace through a network of orbital and planetary gates connecting worlds, but ever since those died we’ve been a cosmos divided with a boot on our necks.

Maybe we always were. I don’t know what to make of some of the legends.

Several minutes later, Gus reappears, floating overhead and pulsing green with excitement.

“Yes, a T-189 would work!” I shout up to him. “Is it operational? Thank Kiva. How bad are the radiation levels?”

Gus bobs in the air and his eye pulses amber in contemplation, followed by a quick series of flashes.

“Couple hours before my hair starts falling out and I vomit blood?” I catch myself fidgeting, twisting the braided red and gold cord around my wrist, Arjuna’s clumsy knots still holding after all this time. “But if we’re quick, it won’t be too bad, right?”

He responds with an angry red flare.

“I know it’s not a joke.” I sigh, pulling my mother’s old batik-patterned scarf over my nose—as if that would help against the rads. The indigo swirls and golden motifs are faded, and it’s frayed, but I’d never let go of it. “I don’t really have a choice. I’ll be quick.”

We pass a mural of freedom fighters, weapons raised in the air, emblazoned with the slogan: No Silence, Only Defiance. The Spark Ignites Today!

But their spark died, their voices silenced, and the Ascendancy rolls on, same as it ever has.

Same as it ever will.

The route up the hull I’ve mapped out in my mind isn’t easy, the rough metal scraping at my calloused hands as I make my way up the buckled hull plating, boots digging in against rivets for toeholds. Arjuna was a good climber, like a monkey. I can almost feel his small hand tugging at my sleeve, begging me to take him scavenging, but I said it was too dangerous for a six-year-old. If I’d found the antibiotics in time back then, maybe he’d be climbing beside me now.

Maybe.

I promise myself I won’t fail Cassandra like I failed him. She might not be family—I don’t have any now, and it’s better that way—but the least I can do is give her a fighting chance. Truth be told, I’d rather be on my own, but the kids need me, and Eli certainly wouldn’t risk his neck to save one of them.

The climb, difficult as it is, feels good, stretching out muscles cramped from scurrying at a crouch from cover to cover. The ghostly city core is mostly unoccupied, but it’s home to more than just the specters of old wars; scavengers aren’t the only lifeforms out there.

Upon reaching the busted airlock, I pull myself over the lip and squat on the edge, pausing a minute to survey the shattered landscape for any pursuers. Gus’s pulse of yellow caution turns to a humorous white flicker as he teases me.

“It’s not paranoia if they’re out to get you,” I remind him, before moving into the airlock as he drifts ahead with a hint of swagger. As we enter the corridor, the temperature seems to drop a few degrees, and the beam of light my drone projects sparkles off patches of frost on the metal bulkheads. Ceiling panels and dead lighting arrays swing softly in the stillness, and I push them gently out of my way as I weave further into the old wreck. We pass a mural of freedom fighters, weapons raised in the air, emblazoned with the slogan: No Silence, Only Defiance. The Spark Ignites Today!

But their spark died, their voices silenced, and The Ascendancy rolls on, same as it ever has.

Same as it ever will.

“How far away’s the power cell?” Gus gives a bob and flashes me a short sequence of green and white that’s about as informative as it is cheeky, which is about par for the course with him.

Whether the ancient recon drone was originally programmed to be a smartass, or got his personality routines corrupted over centuries of isolation before I found him, is anyone’s guess.

A faint buzz cuts through the thick hull, probably an Ascendancy drone, patrolling the city’s edge. I’m not too worried; they don’t care about kids picking through old junk unless we find something they want.

After another ten minutes wandering dark passages, Gus leads me into a control room. The wreck lies at an angle, so I’ve been toeing my way down frost-slick decks at an incline, and I can feel it in my calves. Inside the room, Gus’s beam sweeps over busted holoprojectors and shattered consoles—and a couple of dead crewmen, skeletons now, with uniforms tattered and chewed by rats. The bodies don’t startle me; scavenge for long enough and you’ll see plenty of corpses.

At least these ones don’t smell.

Then his beam falls on a stubby cylinder thick with a blanket of dust, and I crouch down, heart beating fast with excitement.

“It’s a T-189 all right.” I brush off the dust before unhooking the power couplings. It’s heavy, but small enough to hold in both hands as I check the gauge. “Sixty-four percent. What a score. Good find, Gus!”

He flickers green in excitement and makes a small loop in the air before moving to exit the room.

“No, we’re not leaving just yet. A ship this big has to have more, and we still have time. I want to scout it out.”

Green flashes turn to amber, and I’d swear he’s putting his hands on his hips—if he had any. Hands, that is, or hips for that matter.

I shrug off my ruck and load the power cell inside. “She who dares, wins, my little friend.“

---

DOORS TO THE STARS
April 28th, 2026

Join the revolution today for early access!

Age Range: 14+, though mature younger readers (like my 12-year-old daughter) loved it. This sits alongside Children of Blood and Bone and Hunger Games on the darkness scale—real consequences, real trauma, real stakes.