A sci-fi adventure series by Ernest L. Ortiz

Malcolm Diego is a cyberjacker living on Unity Station, orbiting Earth. Work is scarce, money is tight, and his options are running out. When his ex-girlfriend asks him to deliver a package to her mother on a colony in the Asteroid Belt, it seems like a straightforward job.

It isn't.

What follows is a fast-paced journey across the solar system — from Earth orbit to the Asteroid Belt to Jupiter — full of smuggling runs, corrupt officials, ruthless factions, and more trouble than Malcolm ever bargained for.

The Package Trilogy is sci-fi adventure for readers who want a great story without dozens of pages of setting exposition and technobabble. Three novelettes. Three locations. One cyberjacker trying to survive.

The Stories

Novelette 1 — The Package

For cyberjacker Malcolm Diego, opportunities for work are slim at Earth's Unity Station. As he prepares for his one-way trip out of the station, his ex-girlfriend Jess Harman asks him to deliver a package to her mom living on Typhod Station in the Asteroid Belt. It's a decision that starts Malcolm off on a journey that results in more than he bargained for.

10 chapters — approximately 10,800 words

👉 Get it on Gumroad

Novelette 2 — The Package: Foul Run

Cyberjacker Malcolm Diego dealt with corrupt security officers, pirates, a few attempts on his life, and being blackballed throughout the inner system. All because he delivered a package to his ex-girlfriend's mother, Sandra. Now, he's settling into his new home at Typhod Station in the Asteroid Belt working for Typhod Holo Services. But when certain employees want him gone, he turns to Sandra for another package job. This time, the job takes him to Jupiter's Jove Station. Will he face the same problems as before, or something worse?

13 chapters — approximately 12,600 words

👉 Get it on Gumroad

Novelette 3 — The Package: Sovereign

Malcolm Diego, cyberjacker and smuggler, has faced two encounters with the Progressive Alliance. Now, the stakes are even higher as they come out of the shadows. With Marla, the woman in the purple jumpsuit, the two have to rely on each other as they face the PA head on. In this third and final trilogy installment, join Malcolm and Marla as they try to survive what could be humanity’s biggest threat.

15 chapters — approximately 19,700 words

👉 Get it on Gumroad

Start Reading

Not sure where to start? Read the first chapter of The Package free right here on the blog.

Each novelette is available individually for under $3.

👉 The Package 👉 The Package: Foul Run 👉 The Package: Sovereign 👉 The Package Trilogy Paperback – Available when complete

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An excerpt from The Package (Novelette 1)

Another pack of instant ramen noodles with imitation eggs and sausages for lunch today. Need someone to install ransomware on a criminal’s holocomp? Bypass a Top Secret Station Security access? Divert gold coin mail transactions from Sol Mafia? I’m your guy, Malcolm Diego. However, business is slow despite being an awesome cyberjacker, and my savings are dwindling.

Unity Station Security cracks down big time on its War on Hacking. I take a couple days off when security arrests the majority of the cyberjacker network. The mediocre skilled are in jail and the best are floating outside the station without a spacesuit or turn into protein packs.

The good news, I’m still alive and have a month of savings. The bad news, Station Security is eyeing my every move. It’s only a matter of time before Chief Mascow comes up with some dumb excuse to arrest me. I guess I can find a corporate job until the heat dies. Nothing wrong trying to be legit.

I activate my armcomp to update my resume and search for any job openings. With some embellishments, I put in enough experience to wow the HR departments, despite my criminal history. Maybe I can also add “Bypassed security encryption to obtain $250,000 from the Bank of Unity.” Or, “Collected and analyzed AIFutCom President and CEO’s sexual history” in my Accomplishments section.

LunaStar might be hiring, but Moon Police are still looking for me as a person of interest in a price-gouging scheme after a colony accident. Apparently, trading oxygen and food one cent higher than the “fair price” is illegal. How about MarsSAM? No, wait. The CFO’s daughter thinks I impregnated her. I didn’t even talk to much less touch her, I swear. Maybe one of the Asteroid Belt colonies? They always need a good holocomp tech.

However, a trip to the Belt is about four to six months, including turnover, and no one has invented faster-than-light travel yet. I worked as a holocomp maintenance tech on a Luna-Mars-Luna transport a few times. But you’re packed in those tiny living quarters like sardines and there’s only so much you can do to pass the time before you start acting like an asylum patient. But I need the moolah, so I’ll take any job available.

The Spacers Guild currently has plenty of ships heading for the Belt. I cross-check ship and colony job listings. The transport ship Hella Awesome needs a part-time holocomm/holocomp tech and offers the standard pay and benefits. Typhod Station desperately needs holocomp techs, and the pay is five times the current market rate.

Typhod Holo Services gives me the job after eighteen minutes of radio sending/receiving. Hella Awesome accepts my application after seven minutes, and it departs at 1800 at Terminal Nineteen. I slurp my last ramen noodle. Time to pack.

My duffle bag includes an EVA skinsuit and helmet, two spares of civvies, work jumpsuit, and a toothbrush. I transfer all my Bank of Unity savings to my CryptoCoin wallet stored in my brain implant. Goodbye Unity. Now the hard part is leaving without being hassled by Station Security or bad guys with a grudge. I program the station’s computer to close my housing and utilities accounts the second Hella Awesome departs.

Station time is 1213. Plenty of people to hide behind during lunch break traffic. I’m hoping the baseball cap obscures me from the facial recognition surveillance software. I walk behind the big and tall (which is most people), slip past shoulders, and don’t make any eye contact. Employees from a clothing store and ramen restaurant curse at me while I’m exiting through their back doors.

But that isn’t enough. My shirt tightens and my lungs restrict. A bear-like figure spins me around. He towers over me and a growl rumbles from his diaphragm.

“Shut up and don’t move.”

I comply, and the familiar assailant puts himself between me and my escape to Central Docking Bay and Terminal Nineteen. In my most polite voice, I greet the man with the security badge.

“Hello, Chief Mascow.”

Chief Warrant Officer Emery Mascow snorts.

“You didn’t think you could leave this station without me knowing, did you?”

I smile, knowing Mascow can throw my ass in jail for any reason.

“No, of course not. Nothing gets by you, Chief.”

Passersby ignore us and keep on walking while Chief Mascow shoves me against the wall. He pokes his cigar-shaped finger at my chest.

“For years, I’ve wanted nothing more than to see you rot in prison or spaced towards Earth’s atmosphere. But I guess I’ll have to settle with you leaving this station forever. I don’t care where you’re going. Actually, I do. So I can warn the poor sucker that has to watch you. You better not come back or else. You hear me?”

My chest hurts but a few words escape from my lungs.

“Crystal clear, Chief.”

Chief Mascow spins me and hurls me back into the crowd. I walk and don’t look back. Going to miss that big lug.

Get The Package, with both EPUB and PDF, on Gumroad for $3. Foul Run and Sovereign are also available.

#adventure #gumroad #epub #novelette #PDF #sciencefiction #scifi

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For sci-fi adventure fans, Novelette 3 (19,700 words) of The Package trilogy series is finally published. It’s $3 for both EPUB and PDF versions on Gumroad.

Click on the Gumroad link here: https://ernestortizwritesnow.gumroad.com/l/thepackagesovereign

The Package (Novelette 1) is also available. Click on the Gumroad link here: https://ernestortizwritesnow.gumroad.com/l/thepackageone

The Package: Foul Run (Novelette 2) is also available. Click on the Gumroad link here: https://ernestortizwritesnow.gumroad.com/l/thepackagefoulrun

I’m currently making the paperback version. All three stories will be on one single book. I will keep you updated.

Let me know what you think. Thank you for your support!

#adventure #gumroad #epub #novelette #PDF #sciencefiction #scifi

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The Long Journey to Finish a Three Novelette Trilogy Series

Note: This article is written for my Ernest Ortiz Writes Now Substack. But you have the chance to read it before they do.

It seems like a long time ago. Every 6 a.m., I sat in my Toyota Camry outside someone’s house, sipped my iced mocha, held my camcorder, and waited for my subject to do something.

I was a private investigator specializing in workers compensation. Long hours, including weekends and holidays, lots of waiting, in extreme heat and cold. Most of the time boring. Until, everything happens in a blink of an eye.

I’ve worked in several states, got to see the beautiful sights and sounds. More importantly, it taught me many things about human behavior, specifically how people behave when they thought no one was looking. Those two lessons always stuck with me whenever I wrote fiction.

Now, I’m a stay-at-home dad of two boys. The stakeouts replaced by school pickups, cooking, cleaning, changing diapers, and emotional negotiations. But I never stopped writing. The jobs change, but the struggle to write always stays.

The story I’ve been working on

Since late 2018 I’ve been building a sci-fi trilogy called The Package. Most of it in my head before putting it down on paper a year later. Created multiple drafts with dozens of revisions. Even hired someone on Fiverr to create two ebook covers for the first two novelettes, until I got tired of the project and put them on the backburner.

It wasn’t until I created my blog ErnestOrtizWritesNow.com last December that gave me the drive to finish The Package. The first two novelettes are out now on Gumroad. The third and final one drops in August.

Here’s the setup:

Malcolm Diego is a cyberjacker. Think hacker, but wired directly into computer and comm systems via an implant at the back of his neck. He lives on Unity Station orbiting Earth. Work is scarce and money is tight. His ex-girlfriend shows up and asks him to deliver a package to her mother on a colony in the Asteroid Belt.

He says yes. He shouldn’t have.

What follows takes Malcolm from Earth orbit to the Asteroid Belt to Jupiter, through smuggling runs, corrupt officials, pirates, and a conspiracy that turns out to be much bigger than one package.

I wrote the kind of sci-fi I wanted to read: fast-paced, character-driven, no technobabble, no fifty-page prologue explaining the political history of the solar system, not even a timeline. Just a guy trying to make it through the next problem without getting killed.

Originally, it was supposed to be one short story. But it turned out bigger than I expected. Sometimes, ideas can expand more than you can handle and the best you can do is to contain as much as possible.

Why short fiction instead of a novel

Each installment is a novelette, around 5,000 to 20,000 words. The third story, Sovereign, is almost 20,000. You can read one in a couple of hours.

I’m a stay-at-home dad. I don’t have time to read novels or nonfiction books anymore. My readers are probably busy people too. Short fiction that respects your time feels right to me.

There’s also something I love about novelettes and novellas as a form. It’s long enough to build real characters and real stakes, yet short enough to stay tight. No filler. Every character, every scene, every sentence earns its place.

Where to get it

Both novelettes are available on Gumroad, both PDF and EPUB included in a ZIP file, no subscription required, just a one-time purchase.

The Package (Novelette 1 – 10 chapters, 10,800 words) > ernestortizwritesnow.gumroad.com/l/thepackageone

The Package: Foul Run (Novelette 2 – 13 chapters, 12,600 words) >

ernestortizwritesnow.gumroad.com/l/thepackagefoulrun

The first book is $1 while the second is $3. Both ebooks are less than a premium coffee, as I keep saying, because it’s true and I’m not above using it.

The third installment, The Package: Sovereign, lands in August or sooner. Subscribe here and I’ll let you know the moment it’s live.

What to expect

I’ll be posting here about writing, the craft, the process, what it’s actually like to write fiction and nonfiction as a stay-at-home dad, and former private investigator, with limited hours and no quiet. I’ll share behind the scenes on the trilogy and whatever comes next.

Until I say otherwise, I will post two articles on Substack every month, one free and the EOWN Letter for paid subscribers. It’s $5/month and $45/year.

If you read The Package and want to tell me what you thought, reply back. I read everything.

Thanks for being here. Until next month.

• Ernest L. Ortiz, ErnestOrtizWritesNow.com

Thanks for reading. This first issue is free for everyone. If you’re interested in more of The Ernest Ortiz Writes Now Letter, it’s $5/month or $45/year.

#writing #fiction #letter #newsletter #novella #novelette #privateinvestigator #scifi #stayathomedad

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For sci-fi adventure fans, Novelette 2 (12,600 words) of The Package trilogy series is finally published. It’s $3 for both EPUB and PDF versions on Gumroad.

Click on the Gumroad link here: https://ernestortizwritesnow.gumroad.com/l/thepackagefoulrun

The Package (Novelette 1) is also available. Click on the Gumroad link here: https://ernestortizwritesnow.gumroad.com/l/thepackageone

Let me know what you think. Thank you for your support!

#adventure #gumroad #epub #novelette #PDF #sciencefiction #scifi

Discuss...

For sci-fi adventure fans, Novelette 1 (10,800 words) of The Package trilogy series is finally published. It’s $3 for both EPUB and PDF versions on Gumroad.

Click on the Gumroad link here: https://ernestortizwritesnow.gumroad.com/l/thepackageone

Thank you for your support!

#adventure #gumroad #epub #novelette #PDF #sciencefiction #scifi

Discuss...