by Ivy Bard (@ivybeewrites)
Adult Science Fiction
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Query
I’m excited to present to you THE GRAVITY OF HOPE, my adult stand-alone romantic sci-fi complete at 84,000 words. The near-future space-colonisation and LGBT romance of Barner’s Moonrising meets the post-apocalyptic world of Thesh’s Some Desperate Glory. It’s perfect for fans of survival competitions, climate fiction, and second-chance rivals-to-lovers romance.
Avery Clark needs life-saving medicine that’s only available for the rich or essential personnel of coloniser spaceships bound for humanity’s next home. An off-the-books engineer, who’s lived illegally in the last overcrowded city on Titan ever since he was labelled a military deserter, would never qualify. When an intense job interview contest call goes out for pilots and engineers, Avery enters. If he wins, he’ll get meds, a pardon, and a guaranteed job for the next ten years on a coloniser bound towards a distant planet. If not, he will die trying, which is preferable to the gutters of Titan.
Silas Katona—a decorated space pilot—is desperate to escape the crumbling city on Titan and secure a better future for his family, especially his artistically inclined neurodivergent niece. When she fails the entry test to the civilian school, Silas enters the competition. If he wins, his family gets a new life on a new planet. If not, his niece may be stuck with a doomed military future.
When the tournament sends them to the dead planet Earth, Silas comes face-to-face with Avery, who he thinks deserted their previous mission to Earth eight years ago and left him to die. Silas doesn’t know Avery was stranded on Earth for six years and his reward was his current terminal diagnosis. As the competition turns violent, Silas and Avery must set aside past grievances (and unresolved feelings) and team up if they want to get back to Titan alive.
I’m a queer author writing stories with LGBTQIA+ romance and morally ambiguous characters. I’ve completed several fiction writing programs at the Australian Writers’ Centre. I won the WriteHive ’24 mentorship competition, and the I Am Writing Sci-fi / Fantasy '24 competition with a different manuscript. This manuscript was a RevPit ’25 winner and has been revised with an editor.
Thank you for your consideration.
First Five Pages
Avery Clark runs a gloved hand over the shining metal surface of the behemoth he’s been building diligently for the last six months. An interstellar coloniser that will become, without a doubt, the grave of hundreds. Avery has long decided he wouldn’t be one of them. Yet, he can’t help the longing that has grown into a monster crawling through his skin from the inside. It hungers, filling him with a desire Avery refuses to acknowledge.
A deep, calming breath filters through his mask. He plucks the broken screw from the ship’s hull, as the cold air runs down his throat and chills his lungs. The panel slips and, with another jump of his pulse, Avery catches it before it lands on him. Gravity is a bitch and so is the almost minus 200 degrees Celsius on Titan’s surface. There is a part of him—a wild, nothing-really-matters part—that wonders what would happen if he let that panel slip, let its sharp edge cut through suit and skin. If his blood would spill under the headlight or freeze instantly inside him.
He secures the panel in place with perfectly polished screws. They look new, either because they are, or because they’ve been kept outside the city’s artificial atmosphere. That’s an advantage of this place: no water, no oxygen, no danger. Not to metal, anyway. The engineer can suck it.
He does. Avery sucks his teeth as he walks back to the ship’s airlock. His mask hisses like in a hundred-year-old B-category sci-fi movie that couldn’t quite capture the shitty reality of a post-Earth colonising humanity. Titan’s surface was never meant for humankind. The moon voices its opinion on colonisation with its ridiculously high death rate. That’s why people risk their lives on illegal interstellar ships built by fugitive engineers like Avery.
He steps through the entrance and flicks a series of switches. The buzz in his veins awakens as the low-voltage power courses around him. The airlock fills with breathable air. Avery removes the mask once the thermometer climbs to a brisk fifteen degrees Celsius. The ship inside is both huge and claustrophobically small. Tight, echoing corridors and metal bridges connect cavernous halls and boxy sleeping cabins. Most of it is unfurnished, with only a few scattered items hinting at its future purpose. Not Avery’s problem. His job is to make the ship fly, not liveable.
He steps through another hissing door and onto the bridge, where his boss, Shahi, is standing with his back to him, staring out the front window into the darkness. This is the only place fully equipped with built-in control panels, safety seats, and the latest digital front window stretching from wall to wall. All that’s missing is a digital table that will map the ship’s journey to its new home. Nea Arxi.
“Will it fly?” Shahi turns towards him.
Avery stares at his boss, at the freshly trimmed grey beard and soft lines of age around the kindest grey eyes. The beard is new. It suits him. Avery doesn’t want to tell the truth. He’s brilliant enough to make scrap metal fly, but unfortunately for his conscience, he’s also smart enough to know scrap metal will not last a ten-year-long interstellar journey. It will fall apart just as the passengers’ dream of a home. And they will all die inside (outside?) of something Avery has built with his two hands. But he is here to do a job. He cannot control other people’s choices. All he can do is build the ship and tell the truth. What Shahi and his people do with it is not on him.
But then there are things people say about the messenger, and while he’s pretty sure that honesty will not get him shot this time, it can cost him his pay.
“Not far enough,” he finally replies. Fuck. Avery walks to the control panel, his fingers dance across the console, flipping switches and pressing buttons without conscious thought. It’s muscle memory, which is funny, because he’s never flown a coloniser. But he knows how it works, down to the very last screw.
“That’s why I need you,” Shahi says. “Not just now, but once this miracle you’ve built is en route.”
It’s not a miracle; it’s just a pile of scrap metal. But as the engine rumbles to life, and the vibration crawls under Avery’s skin, he wants to melt into it. Sparks fly outside the window at the sudden burst of energy, sizzling through the cave designated as a hangar. The engine’s soft blue illumination vanquishes the darkness.
That monster of longing purrs inside him, satisfied. Shahi might not be wrong. It is a miracle. Avery’s own kind of magic. His superpower. With laser focus and steady hands, he can turn panels and wires into something useful, something alive. But his hands become less steady with every passing day, and his focus won’t last as long as Shahi needs him.
“I don’t want to be boxed up in a coloniser with a thousand people for ten years.”
“We’re travelling light. It’s an old ship, you said so yourself. We’re only taking five hundred.”
That monster of longing pops its head up once more. He could take this job. Travel across the galaxy, become one of the first illegal colonisers of Nea Arxi. If Avery agreed to Shahi’s offer to maintain it throughout the journey, the ship could stand a chance.
A wave of weakness washes through him, a sick, nauseous feeling that is as much physical as it is a premonition. Ten years is too long. “Good luck.”
He swipes a hand over the window screen, pulling up tests and alerts, searching for errors. Numbers run down the window, most checks flashing to green as they complete. The second airlock blares red, the outer door still missing some sealant.
“I’ll check,” Shahi says. “You finish up here. In the meantime, think about it. The offer stands until we depart.”
Once Shahi leaves, Avery lounges in the captain’s chair and gives it a spin. It creaks. He slams his feet on the grey metal ground with a bang to stop it and heads off to find grease. Nothing is perfect, and there is still much to do, but after six months of relentless work, this scrap of a coloniser can fly.
Once the chair spins smoothly, and tests are running down the glass window in front of the yellow-tinted darkness outside, Avery’s eyes close. His mind wanders to what it would be like to sit in this chair while stars blink beyond the screen panel, the endless space stretching in every direction, as they’re hurtling towards a new destination. Towards home.
The word is foreign in his head. Maybe back when humanity lived in one place, it meant something different. Now, home is nothing more than a philosophy, a train of thought. A dream people cannot get enough of, while they exist in this evanescent space between a planet lost and another found.
Even if Nea Arxi was a home, if this distant planet that has become a beacon of hope for humanity, turned out to be everything promised, it would take one too many miracle for this starship cobbled together from scavenged parts and the hollowed-out hull of a hundred-year-old coloniser to complete the decade-long journey. The ship will survive take-off. It will fly. That’s all Avery can promise. Beyond that, it’s all just prayers and lies.
There’s another blare. Avery opens his eyes to flashing red. The blueprint of the ship is outlined on the screen, an error signalling insufficient shielding over the cargo hold. His breath hitches. Sparks of panic run through his insides, wild and uncontrollable, jolting his heart with every pulse.
Suddenly, he’s not playing captain of this ship, but he’s a stowaway in the belly of another tearing through space. Blood rushes in his ears, his body aches, skin itches, and his mind is desperate to escape, yet he’s stuck inside this painful trap of a memory he wishes he could forget. Avery’s breath comes short and quick, and there’s a logical, reasonable—or just well-trained—part of him that forces his body to lean forward and take deep, calming breaths.
Shahi enters the bridge, his movements a blur. The alert goes silent, and the flashing image disappears. Avery’s head swims, stomach churning, as images flash through his mind, but he’s finally fighting his way back to this bridge, to the no-longer-squeaking captain’s chair. With each inhale, the sparks inside settle into a steady flow of energy.
“How often do you have these attacks?” Shahi asks.
Avery leans back on his chair and takes his first full breath. “I can do my job, don’t worry.”
“I’m not worried about the job. I’m worried about you.”
“I’m fine.” Avery turns his attention to the screen. The tests are complete. For the few that are orange or red, he downloads the results to his digital bracelet to analyse later.
“If you ever want to talk about it—”
“The engine is ready, but I’ll need to work on the back-up thrusters for a couple of weeks. Then it’s all yours.” Shahi can do whatever he wants with this ship. Take it for a flight across the galaxy. Just don’t try to get Avery to talk about his past.
“You could also help with the interior works,” Shahi says. “Plenty of tasks needing an engineer, if you are up for it.”
Avery doesn’t have the luxury of picking jobs based on whether he’s up for it. “Let me finish this one first. Then we’ll talk.”
“Fine,” Shahi replies with disappointment. “Let’s take your list to the market.”
Avery shuts off the engine, and they make their way back to the airlock. The thin insulation suits hang by the door alongside the masks. Avery pulls on the flimsy suit. Once outside, all that will protect them from freezing to death is one millimetre of ridiculously expensive material. Avery opens the airlock and shuts off the emergency power.
Foggy yellow light beckons towards the cave’s entrance. They step out into the midday sunlight choking in sulphur haze from a too-distant sun. No wonder so many risk their lives to escape this place—the darkness and gloom. Avery may be from a generation born in this shithole, but the human need for natural light has been burned into their genes. The further people go from the star that gave life to humankind, they stop living.
A hundred feet ahead, an endless transparent wall shimmers, stretching in all directions until it disappears into yellow smog. Shahi limps towards it. The city beyond is a beacon showing the way, drawing Avery back to its crushing, hateful embrace. He heeds its siren call.
There’s a home somewhere inside, hidden by the dirt and the hunger, and the crowded streets and cramped apartment blocks built on top of each other. Beyond the sickness and the lies, and the hope the city was named after. Elpis.
The airlock in the wall may have been an emergency exit once, or a research gate, but it’s been long abandoned, used only by smugglers, criminals, and the desperate. The pressure isn’t any different on the inside, yet Avery’s shoulders slump, the layers of the city pressing its impossible weight down on all who live on the surface. His gaze slides upward, awakening that nauseous desire until he slaps it back to its place, sending it to slumber in the pit of his stomach. Somewhere high above live the rich and the powerful without the weight of the city on their shoulders, in fancy houses under amplified sunlight. And when it’s not enough, they take cruises in space, departing from the orbiting space station attached to the city by a retractable bridge.
“We start at the usual place.” Shahi’s words are like gravity, pulling Avery back to the ground he hates so much. Back to the work he loves.
Shahi leans on his cane with each step as they make their way through a corridor carved into ice. There’s no light, but they both have walked this path a hundred times since Avery started to build the ship, and Shahi has been sporadically paying him for the work. He has little reason to complain. There aren’t many illegal jobs that would let him do what he loves, what he’s good at. Without a valid ID, he cannot get a legal one.
The last turn ends abruptly on a ledge in the side of a circular arena. Shahi grabs onto the rope and descends into the most fascinating black market. Avery trails Shahi through a crowded sea of dust-coloured tents. The haphazardly arranged rows of mismatched tables stretch into the hazy distance, the corridors between them terminating in abrupt dead ends. The great maze of Titan.
Meat and vegetables are as popular—and expensive—as guns, drugs, and sex toys. Avery is just as fascinated by the food products as he is by the last two, but for very different reasons. His legs shake as he follows Shahi across the market, reminding him that his next pay would be spent on post-radiation meds rather than food. He shouldn’t take the meds without food, but the surface level of Elpis forces its inhabitants to make hard choices.
“Here we are.” Shahi points at a stand hidden under an alcove.
There are a few things on the table Avery recognises. Reprogrammed bracelets just like his, that work without connecting to the ID chips implanted in every legal citizen’s arm. He scratches the fabric bracer meant to hide the scar where his chip was cut out. Small fuel cells used for home cooking. Replacement pads for RFID locks. People have been using electric locks since the late twentieth century, and it’s still the dumbest popular invention ever. A simple power surge can leave an entire block locked in (or out) of their homes. Whatever.
“How can I help,” the shopkeeper’s question sounds more like a statement.
Avery pulls up the list on his bracelet and projects it onto the stained table for the shopkeeper.
“It will cost ya,” they say.
Shahi says, “Next week. I’ll pay my engineer, and we’ll pick up the parts then.”
“No money, no parts,” the shopkeeper says, and they enter the order into their hand-held computer not so different from the one Avery uses to run checks on the ship, except that the screen isn’t connected to a spacecraft’s console.
The computer blares with a red warning, just like it did on the ship, and Avery’s stomach drops.
“A raid’s coming,” the shopkeeper says, and swipes their wares into a cart in a blur. “I expect you back here with six thousand credits next week.” They glare at Shahi until he nods, and they disappear through the door in the back wall.
“Your turn,” Shahi says, and laughs at the confused glance Avery gives him. “Get the fuck out of here. Which part of ‘a raid is coming’ did not register with you?”
Sirens cry overhead, announcing the military raid on the entire complex. Avery’s legs turn to lead, planted firmly in front of the empty table. His bracelet is buzzing. Shahi is shouting in his ear. His boss is urging him to leave, but the words melt into static inside his head. Shahi shoves him towards the back door and cracks the cane across his thigh. The pain pulls him back. Shouting mingles with the sirens. Soldiers spread across the aisles, arresting those too slow to leave.
Avery stumbles through the back door. It opens to the tunnels where goods are transferred and stored. Unfortunately, the tunnels also connect to the city’s sewer system, and everything in here that isn’t wrapped in protective plastic is wet or dripping to form a thin layer of dark slush on the concrete ground. Sickness hits Avery so hard he staggers as people run past him, shoving one another. He cannot tell if it’s from that awful stench or just his body’s inability to cope with… well, anything since he’s come back. Maybe his time on Earth used up all his survival skills, or maybe it is the radiation that almost killed him once, still pulling him slowly towards the hell he deserves.
Five minutes of sprinting proves two things: One, he is in no shape whatsoever. His legs and arms are shaking, and he stops to catch his breath. Second, that while the market seems like the great maze of Titan, it is nothing compared to the maze that hides underneath. He’s wading through the twisting, wild belly of the monster that is the city of hope, and from this angle, it doesn’t feel hopeful at all. Not that he’s seen it from a hopeful angle in years. People thin out and disappear down dozens of different corridors, and Avery follows one randomly that at least feels like he’s moving away from the market.
A door slams open not far away, the sound echoing in his ears, making his head spin, vision blur, and stomach churn as shouts of orders fill the air. He takes a left turn, and another to the right. The pipes above his head let out an angry hiss. He keeps going. It’s the worst time to feel sick, and yet, his stomach doesn’t settle, proving that it has very little to do with the smell. The corridor blurs ahead.
Not now… please not now…
But his legs are too heavy to carry him forward. Two hands grab him and pull him through a service door. His skin is crawling and his stomach heaves with another wave of nausea. He’s caught. Light flashes in his eyes, so bright that it blinds him as he sways on his feet.
“Clark?” The voice is painfully familiar, as if coming from the distant past or a recent nightmare. Avery is too busy trying not to collapse. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
The man who stands in front of him doesn’t wear a military uniform, but somewhere beyond this all-consuming weakness that’s trying to swallow him, Avery’s mind registers that this man really should be wearing one. Because he’s only ever seen Silas Katona in uniform.
Avery would swear himself, if he didn’t have to clamp his mouth shut to avoid throwing up all over his ex-lieutenant. His ex-lieutenant, his ex—Something. When he last saw Silas eight years ago, things were getting complicated. Then he was left on Earth, Silas branded him a deserter, and that uncomplicated things very quickly.
Silas’s punch collides with his face, and Avery finds only mild satisfaction in the fact that he throws up on Silas in return. His legs give in, and he falls on his knees. The room is spinning out of control. He slaps the emergency signal on his bracelet that not only notifies his best friend, Clara, that he’s in trouble, but also lets her track his location. Because he might be a mess, but there’s that rebel part of him that wants to live. If Silas doesn’t kill him, then the oncoming soldiers might.
Yet, hope lingers, like a sickness that infects every desperate person in this damned shithole of a city named after it. The bracelet pings with the successful message, and Avery passes out in his own vomit at Silas’s feet.