The Journing Plague - Webb Shaune Lafferty

Kai Astada is a member of the Journer caste, a once-respected class whose members are responsible for piloting passengers and freight across Pedora. Now, however, the Journer wards have been quarantined in a bid to stifle a raging plague that their totalitarian government alleges is being spread by the reckless behaviour of the Journers.

Two years after graduating from the Lycea, the pilot training academy in Ularon City, Kai is lured by an old friend to the Duck Down Club, an infamous haunt of the lower rank of Journers. Here he is tricked into joining the Resistance, a rag-tag cohort of misfits who charge Kai with the seemingly impossible task of exonerating their caste by disproving the damaging allegations made by the Pedoran government.

What Kai uncovers in the course of his mission will ultimately turn his world on its head.