Aaron Sheridan doesn’t want to live anymore. His family just died in a shuttle crash and he’d been the one flying it. The Transit Authority ruled it "instrumentation error", but he knows his mind was drifting. He knows a few millimeters wouldn't have made a difference. And unable to handle the guilt, he signs up for the Fleet expecting a fatal deployment to the Rim War...but is instead assigned to their most prestigious command school, Corinth Station.

The school's infamous for its ferocious sink-or-swim instruction, sporting the highest attrition rates in the Fleet, psychologically breaking and rebuilding students. Initially, Aaron takes the brutality and the Machiavellian tactics of his peers in stride, but after he sticks up for his only friend, he makes himself a target of the most feared cadet on the station, Caelus Erik.

Unsure of whom to trust and worried that anything he does will make others targets as well, Aaron retreats deeper and deeper inside himself, unwilling to play an unwinnable game. However, when he discovers that officer training isn’t the station’s sole purpose, it becomes increasingly clear that risking everything is the safest thing he can do.

Contains graphic language/violence and has an accompanying soundtrack that can be heard at: soundcloud.com/trapdoorsocial/sets/the-lakes-of-mars-soundtrack.