Metal Boxes

Coming of age is hard for anyone. But for Blackmon Perry Stone it is life threatening. At 15, he is struggling and barely manages to graduate from the empire’s cadet training by a talent for unusual problem solving. Stone, fully expecting to languish in an unassigned status for years, is surprised when he is given a shipboard assignment on huge warehouse ship. He assumes life will become more enjoyable once he is onboard a spaceship, but just like many things he thinks about during his time at the academy, it doesn’t take long to find out how wrong he could be.

Life in the Emperor’s navy is not any easier and Stone is having trouble settling in. His supervisor is no help. He has been assigned the most boring job, in the most uninteresting place on board, during the most monotonous shift possible. He is having difficulty making few friends. Without anyone to turn to for comfort or help navy life is hard, but life becomes harder when he uncovers a ring of thieves aboard the huge ship. Living becomes even more treacherous when they killed him.

Stone is ejected into hyperspace in an escape pod without hyperspace engines. Fully expecting to die, he reconfigures the sub-light engine to escape the inescapable. To his surprise it works, but only well enough to do little more than crash on an uncharted planet. It will surprise him if he can make the engine work again, but not as much as it will surprise everyone else if he can come back from the dead.

If Stone knew the problems awaiting him when he returned to the Empire’s navy, he would have stayed dead.