St. Cyprian's School for the Shipborn

About this book:

Eight hundred students. Six miles of riveted steel. A Victorian boarding school hurtling through the dark, its bells still ringing for Latin and Euclid, its prefects still policing collar studs and curfews—while outside the leaded windows, the destination star refuses to grow larger.

Arthur Pym has spent sixteen years mastering the curriculum: celestial mechanics calculated by candlelight, Latin declensions recited beneath artificial gaslight, the unshakeable faith that *Per Ardua Ad Astra*—through hardship to the stars—is more than a motto. But the sensor logs don't lie. The great ship *Britannia* hasn't decelerated in two decades. The Headmaster's hands tremble over a red-wax dispatch. And the masters who enforce the rules are the same men keeping the truth locked in the archives: there is no new world waiting. Only the void, and a lie the size of a civilization.

At St. Cyprian's, discipline is the only shield against the dark. But some secrets are too heavy for tradition to carry. As the hull groans with metal fatigue and the lower decks whisper mutiny, Arthur and his fellow prefects face a final examination no syllabus prepared them for: whether to preserve the order that keeps them human, or break the hull-lock on a truth that could destroy them all.