Galactic Adventures of Hazel

Starlight

Description

Hazel's thrilling galactic adventures continue in this second book of The Galactic Adventures of Hazel series, as she and her classmates go on a much-awaited school immersion program to the Ptorysium Star System. While planet-hopping, Hazel, Dmitri, and Richie stumble upon a world that is in dire straits. Their adventures take on a whole new league when her impish cousins, Nuke and Nike, get involved, and before they know it, there is too much stuff on their plates - warding off Pepops, making new friends and (also) enemies, negotiating terms, and at the same time juggling with their intergalactic classes.Praise for Book One: The Galactic Adventures of Hazel - Gurecoa Amazon:* Written by author, Starlight, The Galactic Adventures of Hazel: Gurecoa is a sensational science fiction adventure...My favorite two elements of this book were the world-building and the characters. This book is a fascinating and unique take on what the future may hold.* A futuristic adventure of universal proportions! Goodreads:* This is a great read and will appeal to kids and adults alike. I am curious to see what kinds of trouble Hazel is going to get the group into next.

Sujets

• Science fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Date de parution: 31 août 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781645757153
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

The Galactic Adventures of Hazel
Book 2 - The Rogue Planet
Starlight
Austin Macauley Publishers
2020-08-31
The Galactic Adventures of Hazel About the Author Dedication Copyright Information © Acknowledgment Chapter 1: The Storm Riders Chapter 2: The Immersion Program Chapter 3: The Hiccups Chapter 4: Foxtail and Ptorysium Chapter 5: Where Are We? Chapter 6: The Rogue Planet Chapter 7: Projects in Full Flow Chapter 8: Dmitri’s Celebration Chapter 9: The Interschool Competition Chapter 10: Christmas Eve on Rogue Chapter 11: Good, Bad and Ugly News Chapter 12: Shultie Chapter 13: The Deal Chapter 14: The Moving Hamlet Chapter 15: Hope and Revival Chapter 16: The Farewell
About the Author
Starlight is the author of the series,  The Galactic Adventures of Hazel,  which is an inspiration from her fascination with space and the “unknown” ever since her childhood. Through these series, she wants to bring imaginative adventures from different corners of the universe to young and inquisitive readers.
She is a software engineer and has an MBA degree from Drucker School of Business, Claremont Graduate University. She also took a summer class from Oxford University. With her knowledge of computer science and management skills, Starlight makes these galactic adventures not only a fascinating and entertaining story of future possibilities in artificial intelligence, technology and space travel, but also a tale crafted with problem-solving skills and ideas.
Dedication
To Planet Earth – our home, sweet home.
Copyright Information ©
Starlight (2020)
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher.
Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Ordering Information:
Quantity sales: special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, contact the publisher at the address below.
Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication data
Starlight
The Galactic Adventures of Hazel
ISBN 9781645757139 (Paperback)
ISBN 9781645757146 (Hardback)
ISBN 9781645757153 (ePub e-book)
Library of Congress Control Number: 2020906981
www.austinmacauley.com/us
First Published (2020)
Austin Macauley Publishers LLC
40 Wall Street, 28th Floor
New York, NY 10005
USA
[e-mail]
[phone]
Acknowledgment
I would like to thank my family and close friends for their constant support and encouragement.
Thanks to Mom and Dad for reading my early drafts and giving me their expert advice.
I would like to show my appreciation and gratitude to Austin Macauley Publishers as they continue to bring “ The Galactic Adventures of Hazel ” to the public.
My thanks to all my readers, without whom this series wouldn’t be a success.
Chapter 1:
The Storm Riders
“Thanks, Grandpa,” Hazel said quickly when their Grandpa Pong finished yet another narrative about the developments in Argyre Basin on Mars. Grandpa Pong was a historian and the children absolutely loved to hear stories about the past, because he made sure to make them as suspenseful and as dramatic as possible.
Today though, Hazel, her brother Richie and their best friend Dmitri got up rather abruptly after only a couple of such stories. Grandpa looked quite stunned. After all, it was Hazel’s 13 th birthday and they were having a nice late afternoon celebration at Uncle Bridge’s ranch on Mars.
And as if to add more fuel to the fire, Nike, Nuke, and Juli, their cousins, got up from their seats and without a word followed Hazel.
Grandma Jasmin smiled. She turned to her husband and said, “Don’t worry ‘Grandpa.’ I know where they are headed. They’ve been talking about renovating the wild garden.”
“Ah,” he said, feeling jealous about the garden. “That explains it!” He showed his disappointment by bringing down his fist onto the coffee table, a little firmly than intended causing the cookies to summersault on their plates.
Lyca, Hazel’s mother, laughed and said, “Dad!”
“Calm down Pong,” said Zee, Hazel’s dad. “You know how kids are, one minute they are giving you their full attention and the next minute they are completely oblivious to the fact that we are even sitting next to them.”
Hazel and her company made their way out through the back door and ran towards the old unused barn which was about less than a quarter-mile away from the house. As kids, Hazel, Richie, and Dmitri used to play there with Nuke and Nike but they hadn’t been to this part of the ranch for several years and when the topic came up to visit the garden during this trip, Nike and Nuke had been putting it off due to some ongoing ‘construction’ and the area was barricaded.
Today, on Hazel’s birthday, they decided to explore the garden to see what state it was in and the areas that needed attention and renovation.
Hazel was the first to reach the gates to the brown barn. It used to be a guest house back in the day. Although a little dilapidated it was now being used as a storehouse to hoard haystacks and odd little things.
Hazel opened the black gate that creaked with a nostalgic and familiar screeching sound. A wide path lay ahead curving itself to the right, away from the barn and leading into the wild garden. She ran down the rugged path and saw her favorite mango tree. Although it seemed to have aged a bit, it still stood majestic and strong, right at the front of the garden. When they were little, they used to climb the tree to pick mangoes and Hazel remembered it as if it were yesterday navigating every branch, turning every leaf looking for a ripe mango or two; the scene still vivid in her mind. The garden looked wild but clean, precisely like it used to be as if someone had recently taken the time to prune and trim it.
Richie and Dmitri stood by the tree admiring it from every angle. Soon, Nike, Nuke, and Juli caught up with them. They were smiling.
Hazel glanced at her cousins and with a wry smile she said, “Closed for construction, eh!?”
Now, she knew the reason why this area had been closed for ‘construction.’ Nike and Nuke deliberately kept this area off-limits in order to secretly work and make this garden look beautiful just in time for Hazel’s birthday.
“Looks exactly the same, wild!” Richie exclaimed with delight.
“Look, there is the guava tree!” said Dmitri. His favorite fruit was the guava. He climbed the tree and began looking for guavas.
Nuke said, “Take your time. We will meet you at the Tarian treehouse.”
Hazel saw her three favorite eucalyptus trees still standing tall along the wall of the barn. Diagonally across, stood the lime tree, pomegranate tree and some shrubbery along the compound wall of the barn. Opposite the eucalyptus trees, was the green patch of grass where they used to set camp during the night back in those days.
Hazel made her way to the back of the barn and exclaimed, “Ha, ha, we have papaya trees! I think our cousins have been doing quite a bit of work on this garden for quite a while to make it look exactly like the old times!”
“Yeah, but only where it was needed. It still looks wild just to our taste!” said Dmitri.
Indeed, the wild garden had retained its characteristics. It had never been overly maintained, trimmed or pruned and was left to be a slightly unkempt so that there was always something new to explore.
The garden was filled with tropical trees but the deeper one traversed into the garden, the thicker and more alien the vegetation became.
The three of them ran across the patch of grass and passed by the second guava tree and stone benches that spattered the area, to reach a strange looking tree. This was the Tarian drumstick shrub known for its famous long stick-like hanging fruit. This marked the beginning of Tarian flora in the garden.
Tarians were an alien species who made Earth their home, a millennium ago. Thanks to Zee’s part Tarian heritage, this garden found itself enriched with some rare Tarian plant species that were difficult to get hold of, in those days.
“Let’s go. Nike, Nuke, and Juli are waiting at the treehouse!” said Hazel with her mouth full of guava. “This Tarian pine is new!” she said, looking at a tall tree that had spiky greenish-yellow colored needle-like leaves.
“Oh, look, there’s the blooming tree!” Richie said as they walked farther into the depths of the garden. A bed of small white flowers covered the ground around a small tree; there was a sweet lingering fragrance in the air.
Nike called from somewhere above, “Oi, coming?”
Hazel, Richie, and Dmitri looked up and saw Nike, Nuke, and Juli making their way up the giant Tarian tree. They were in one of the oversized fruit shells that usually held bunches of fruit when raw. When the fruits ripen these thin papery but hard basket-like shells fall away to the ground. Hazel remembered building this elevator using one such fallen shell of the tree. It was their summer holiday project years ago. They had put nanotechnology at its base creating an interface with their personal AIs. They even programmed the interface in such a way that the shell could act like an elevator taking a straight path up and down the massive trunk. Hazel smiled feeling nostalgic. She flicked her AI that was embedded in her bracelet. AI was their modern-day all-in-one personal gadget.