Illuminae - The Illuminae Files 01

## Synopsis

This morning, Kady thought breaking up with Ezra was the hardest thing she’d have to do.

This afternoon, her planet was invaded.

The year is 2575, and two rival megacorporations (Wallace Ulyanov Consortium and BeiTech Industries) are at war over a planet that’s little more than an ice-covered speck at the edge of the universe. Too bad nobody thought to warn the people living on it. With enemy fire raining down on them, Kady and Ezra—who are barely even talking to each other—are forced to fight their way onto an evacuating fleet, with an enemy warship in hot pursuit.

But their problems are just getting started. A deadly plague has broken out and is mutating, with terrifying results; the fleet's AI, which should be protecting them, may actually be their enemy; and nobody in charge will say what’s really going on. As Kady hacks into a tangled web of data to find the truth, it's clear only one person can help her bring it all to light: the ex-boyfriend she *swore* she'd never speak to again.

## Plot

BeiTech invades the planet Kerenza IV after discovering that it harbours an illegal Hermium mining colony, killing most of the population in the hopes of taking the planet over for itself. Ezra Mason, Kady Grant, and her mother are among the few survivors: Ezra on the warship *Alexander,* Kady on the accompanying research vessel *Hypatia*, and her mother on the supply ship *Copernicus*, trying to reach the Heimdall Jump Station waypoint before the BeiTech Warship, *Lincoln* intercepts and destroys them.

While they try to escape, a deadly bio-chemical weapon that BeiTech released on Kerenza IV has spread from contaminated refugees to the crew of the *Copernicus*, who in turn bring it to the *Alexander*. When the *Alexander*'s Artificial Intelligence Défense Analytics Network system (AIDAN), discovers this, it goes rogue and destroys the *Copernicus,* killing Kady's mother and all of the other refugees there. Ezra and Kady have to work together with engineer Byron Zhang, who communicates cross-ships with Kady to not only beat the *Lincoln* to *Heimdall*, but also to disable AIDAN.

The virus attacks and debilitates victims' nervous system. The more deadly strain of the virus, dubbed *Phobos*, doubles the effects, as demonstrated by the little girl in Bay 4 who stabs and penetrates the hazmat suit of James "Jimmy" McNulty, who later kills himself when he feels the virus affecting him, and whose last testament Kady finds when she boards the *Alexander* in an effort to help AIDAN delay the *Lincoln* from catching the fleeing *Hypatia.*

The mutating virus, however, spreads further and the Afflicted break out of Bay 4, the designated quarantine zone, and go on a killing spree; prompting the few remaining persons of command to make a desperate run for the launch bays to escape to the *Hypatia* with some 1000 civilian survivors. Slightly less than 250 of them make it to the *Hypatia*, and not all of those make it unscathed by *Phobos*, which weighs heavily on Kady, as she was the one navigating for most of the small groups that did not make it.

Once on board, Captain Ann Chau of the *Hypatia* quarantines the fighter pilots and med-evacs similarly in different hangars. To protect the rest of those on board the *Hypatia*, she flushes Mikael "Chatter" Carlin and his group of Cyclone pilots out an airlock, due to a few possibly infected among their numbers. Ezra nearly misses being spaced in that group; he was med-evaced because of his broken arm, presumably in the mad dash for the launch bays. AIDAN, however, has tricked Kady into believing that he was dead in order to get her to carry out her mission of battling the *Lincoln* from the inside out.

Together, she and AIDAN attack the *Lincoln* using the *Alexander*'s Défense Grid System (DGS). However, after the attack, the *Alexander* had been damaged to the point that there was seemingly no escape for either of them, but AIDAN leads a radiation-poisoned Kady to the last Cyclone left on the ship and into the waiting bay of the *Hypatia,* where everyone watches the *Alexander* "die*".* AIDAN remains faithfully in Kady's data pad, always ready to assist her.

To add:

[Talk between the Illuminae Group and Lenannae]

[Ezra and Kady get back together]]

## References

The Illuminae Files Book 1

The Illuminae Files Wika