Dad decided he shouldn’t wait for Mom to get back before they broke the news to the rest of the team. The Prairie is so big you can see her from the ground, even during the day. There was no hiding this.
I reply to my friends, but I’m not sure what I write. I can’t focus on anything but the tiny figures slowly but surely unfolding the last of the Prairie’s busted solar sail.
“Jo?” Mom says over the open feed.
I reflexively jump to my feet, like I could run to her. “I’m here!”
“We’re done,” Mom says, exhaustion lowering her voice. “Wait for the Prairie’s orbit to stabilize before you dock.”
“Understood,” I say. My voice is small. I feel small.
I watch them clamber back up the golden disk and disappear into the ship.
Then I wait.
I’m hungry.
I’m thirsty.
It’s been hours since I last ate or had any water. I should grab a hydration bag and a ration bar.
I don’t.
I just sit there, watching the Prairie.
After what feels like an eternity, the enormous ship’s wobbling progress steadies. It’s working. As soon as she starts to rotate, I can dock.
Then what?
There are ten thousand people on the Prairie. They’re almost all still in inso, but they can’t stay that way for long. The human body can’t withstand deep sleep for more than a year, and the survivors on the Prairie have been asleep for at least six months. We’ll have to wake them up soon and bring them down to Tau.
A new strand braids itself through my guilt.
Tarn.
What am I going to say to Tarn?
Tarn is leader of the Sorrow, one of the two native sentient species on Tau. But Tarn wasn’t “the Followed” when my friends and I accidentally made first contact with the Sorrow. He was just Tarn. His brother, Ord, was the Followed then.
Ord almost destroyed Tau by weaponizing our Stage Three terraforming bacteria to wipe out the planet’s other sentient species, a race of predators we call phytoraptors. I promised Tarn that humans would leave his world if he stopped Ord. Tarn had to kill his brother to keep his end of the deal. I convinced Mom to help me hold up my end of our bargain. We were going to leave. Go back to Earth. Start over and search for a new planet to pioneer.
We can’t do that now. Earth is gone. None of the other planets the ISA has scouted for colonization are close to ready for civilians. We have to settle on Tau. We have nowhere else to go.
Ten thousand people.
That’s not just breaking a promise. That’s a betrayal.
On the wall screen in front of me, the Prairie finally starts to rotate.
Finally.
My hands dart to the navigation app to press the shuttle into motion. But I’m moving too fast. I accidentally trigger the landing thrusters and send the Trailblazer shooting off course for about three seconds before I manage to turn them off again.
Thankfully, my mistake sent the shuttle away from the Prairie, instead of crashing into it. Wouldn’t that be spectacularly ridiculous? Watch Mom and Grandpa fix the colony ship for six hours and thirty-two minutes, then slam the Trailblazer into her and wipe out the human species by accident.
I force myself to slow down as I reach for the nav app again. I very deliberately bring up thrust control and just tap the maneuvering rockets. Once. Twice. Then I give the shuttle just a little extra momentum from the boosters. And just like that, I’m on course to the Prairie’s docking ring.
So easy, and I nearly screwed it up.
Maybe it’s a good thing that I didn’t go out there with Mom. Who knows how much damage my stupid, nervous hands might have done?
I put the shuttle on autopilot to dock.
I never do that. Docking is one of my favorite parts of flying. It always has been. But now all I can see are the hundreds of mistakes I could make.
Autopilot is so slow.
I feel like I’m going to crawl out of my skin, waiting for the computer to find alignment and bring us in. But I’m too afraid to do anything else.
So I wait.
The second the Trailblazer’s computer announces that it has a hard seal with the Prairie, I hurl myself into the airlock, slam the inner hatch, and demand that the computer “Match pressure and release outer door seal!”
“One moment, Joanna,” the computer replies. I know I’m imagining the mildly injured tone in its too-perfect-to-be-real voice. The Trailblazer’s AI doesn’t have empathy subroutines like the educator does. Its feeling can’t be hurt.
I add a thank-you anyway.
“You’re welcome, Joanna,” the computer says. Green light starts to bleed through the red of the exterior hatch. A little stab of fear comes with it. I smack it away. It’s one thing to be justifiably afraid of deep space. It’s another to be afraid of airlocks. I refuse to be afraid of airlocks.
I don’t realize that I’m holding my breath until the hatch goes green and I shove it open. Air explodes from my lungs in unison with the sigh of warm, humid air that rushes in from the Prairie.
The ship’s docking ring is huge—a two-story-wide tube that runs as far as I can see in both directions. The air is so humid, it almost feels like it’s going to rain. The Prairie uses the same algae-based purification system the Pioneer does, and it must be working overtime now that the ship is back on full power.
I expected Mom or Grandpa to be here, but they aren’t. So I wait. I wait so long that I’m nearly in tears again before it occurs to me that I can find them.
I rip off my flex and press it to the wall screen beside the airlock. The moment it syncs with the Prairie’s computer system I say, “Locate Commander Watson’s flex, please.”
“Certainly, Joanna,” my flex replies. “Located. Commander Watson’s flex is in the ISA Colony Ship Prairie’s sleep center.”
That’s weird, but I’m too anxious to be curious.
I just want my mom.
“Please show me the fastest route to the deep-sleep center,” I request as I pull my flex off the wall. A glowing green line snakes across the floor tiles, starting at my feet and slipping across the floor ahead of me.
I follow it for what must be half a kilometer. Just when I’m starting to think something’s wrong with the Prairie’s computer, a bulkhead melts out of the seemingly infinite gray ring ahead of me.
The green guidance line runs up to the single door in the center of the bulkhead. I step through it into a more human-size hallway that’s bustling with activity. Men and women in dark blue Marine Corps uniforms and pale gray ISA uniforms, calling out requests and dirty jokes as they pass each other and completely ignoring me.
The green line keeps going. I follow it past a locker room and through the Prairie’s bridge, which is surprisingly small—about the same size as the one on the Pioneer, despite the ship being a hundred times bigger.
The green line leads me past the Prairie’s medical center. It’s full of people who are fresh out of deep sleep—still bald and covered in insulating gel. I’m surprised they’re waking so many people so fast. Doesn’t Mom want to at least tell Tarn what’s going on before we start pouring humanity all over his planet?
By the time I reach the doors labeled Sleep Center, I can feel my pulse racing against my clenched jaws. My anxiety collection has gotten so big, I don’t even know what I’m freaking out about. There are too many things to choose from.