As always, my face is thinking out loud. The lieutenant claps me on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, Junior.” She grins. “We got this.”
“We?” I say.
She snaps into a salute. “Lieutenant Emily Shelby, 156th Infantry.” Then she slouches out of the salute and adds, “We’re as hostile as it gets.”
The sleep center doors slide open and Mom storms out.
Grandpa follows, calling after her, “This is no time to panic, Alice.”
She spins, stalking back toward him. “I’m not panicking, Dad. I’m . . .” She shakes her head. The next word comes out choked. “. . . despairing. I . . . I don’t see a way forward that isn’t hideous and so I am shaking my useless, ineffectual fists at the universe.”
Grandpa doesn’t flinch away from her sadness. “We’ll find a way. We have time.”
“Eighty-two days,” Mom says. “That’s not time, Dad. Not to wake up ten thousand people and drop them on a planet that doesn’t want them.”
“Can’t you fix it?” I blurt out the question. Mom tosses me a glare so withering that I can feel my words shrinking as I continue, “You fixed the sail. You can’t—”
“I’m a pilot, Jo,” she snaps. “Not an engineer. I knew how to fix that sail because I helped Penny fix it during the test flight. But Penny is . . .” She gasps, like the memory of her best friend’s death is a punch in the gut. “I can’t fix this alone.”
“You’re not alone,” Grandpa says, holding a hand out to her. “We’re together. And this family doesn’t give up.”
Mom squeezes her eyes shut, like she’s hoping her vision will clear and she’ll see something new when she opens them. But when our eyes meet again, the despair is still there, drenching her amber-speckled brown irises with tears.
She takes Grandpa’s hand, letting him pull her close. Her shoulders are shaking. She looks small, wrapped in his long hook-shouldered frame. She and I are the same height now, but I don’t think I’ve ever thought of her as small before.
Lieutenant Shelby clears her throat pointedly. Grandpa nods and then murmurs something into Mom’s hair. She shakes her head.
He looks up at me. “Joanna, can we rely on you to pilot the Trailblazer for us?”
“We’re going down to Tau?” I say.
He nods. “It’s time.”
Mom pushes out of his arms and strides up the corridor without waiting for the rest of us. I start to follow, but he stops me.
“Give her a moment, Little Moth,” he murmurs.
“Half the squad’s still bald,” Lieutenant Shelby says. “For the record.”
“Leave them here,” Grandpa says. “For now. They can continue reviving vital personnel while they’re growing out their lustrous locks, then follow in shuttle 3212.”
“You’re the admiral,” Shelby says. Her tone is sardonic, but the sharp salute she offers him is respectful and professional.
“Grandpa,” I say as she jogs up the hallway after Mom. “You . . . we . . . Mom is right. We can’t drop a bunch of people on this planet and start building. The Sorrow. The phytoraptors. They deserve better than that.”
Grandpa smiles gently, enfolding both of my hands in his.
“You’re right, Little Moth. But I”m going to find a way to make this work,” he says. “Because this is your world now. I don’t want you and your generation to just survive. You’re going to thrive here. I’ll do whatever it takes to make sure you do.”
People say stuff like whatever it takes all the time. But my grandfather ended the Storm Wars and invented a system to repair a whole planet. When he says that, it means something.
“I’m glad you’re here, Grandpa,” I say.
His return smile is broad and uncomplicated. Like I’ve just given him a gift.
“Me too.” He wraps an arm around my shoulders and tugs me up the corridor. “Come, Little Moth. It’s time to show me your world.”
Three
Shelby and half a dozen other boisterous, heavily armed people are already on the shuttle by the time Mom, Grandpa, and I board the Trailblazer. They’re acting like a bunch of teenagers on a field trip, but they’re obviously marines.
I expect Grandpa to make them stow their weapons. One accidental discharge and we’ll all be sucking vacuum.
He doesn’t.
As pilot, I could ask them to stow their weapons myself. But maybe I’m overreacting. They’re just blowing off steam. If it were a problem, Grandpa would shut it down.
He takes the copilot’s chair, beside me. I expect Mom to object—that should be her place. But she just collapses into a chair in the front row and curls into a ball. Her vivid despair makes my stomach clench. I’ve never seen her this way.
By the time I finish calculating our trajectory, her eyes are closed. But I don’t think she’s asleep. Her body is coiled too tightly for that, like she’s trying to fold up into herself and disappear. Grandpa’s hands shake as he takes my flex to check my math. Guilt digs in like splinters under my fingernails. They’re both so exhausted.
The flight is long. Our timing wasn’t ideal, and we have to do nearly a full orbit before the Trailblazer can dive through the atmosphere and into the icy gray evening that’s settling on Pioneer’s Landing as we touch down.
Most of the Exploration & Pioneering (E&P) team, including Dad and Beth, is gathered on the airfield by the time I get the engines shut down and the ramp open.
I’m the first person off the shuttle. The soaking wet breeze cuts through my uniform as I walk down the ramp. Dad grabs me into a hug before my boots hit dirt.
“Oh, thank goodness. You’re okay.” He gasps the words, like he’s been holding his breath this whole time.
He was worried about me. I was sitting safe and sound in the Trailblazer’s passenger cabin and he was down here worrying about me.
Embarrassment flushes up the back of my neck, making my hair prickle.
“Nobody is okay, Dad,” I mutter, pulling back. “It’s literally the apocalypse.”
“According to Mom’s message, Earth became uninhabitable approximately five months and seven days ago,” Beth says. “Roughly seventeen days after the Prairie began its journey. The apocalypse has been over for some time.”
My eyes roll of their own accord. “Post-apocalypse, then. Same difference.”
“I doubt it,” Dad says. His face looks like someone is pulling his skin tight against his bones. Probably because he’s empathizing with the billions of people who were left behind to die, not cracking terrible jokes about them.
What the hell is wrong with me?
“Dad,” I say, reaching out to him again. “I’m—”
The thud of boots on the ramp behind us drowns out my attempted apology. Lieutenant Shelby strides off the shuttle, breaking the tentative connection between Dad and me as she leads her squadron out onto the airfield.
They fall into two straight lines at stiff attention.
“Marines!” she shouts. “Welcome to Tau Ceti e. As always, situation is fubar. But does that bother us?”