“No, sir!” The squad snaps the words out in perfect unison.
Some of them have the same deadly serious look on their faces as Shelby. Some are grinning hungrily. Like they’re already spoiling for a fight.
“That’s right,” Shelby says. “Fubar is what we do best. So get to it. Secure the perimeter, then find the Pioneer’s squad and make friends. I expect to see all of you assembled outside ground control in thirty. Copy?”
“Sir, yes, sir!” they shout.
“Then move your butts!”
At that, the marines scatter, tearing through the anxious crowd like shrapnel.
“Given the general anxiety level right now, that seemed unnecessarily aggressive,” Beth observes, as Dad struggles to answer the questions that bubble from the pioneers in their wake.
“Lieutenant Shelby isn’t subtle,” Grandpa says, coming down the ramp to join us. “But she’s good at her job.”
“Not if her job is to keep us safe,” Beth points out, her voice coated with ice. “Stress and anxiety make people stupid. We can’t afford to be stupid right now.”
“Astute,” Grandpa says, offering her a smile. “As always. Hello, Beth. It’s good to see you.”
“Is it?” she says, turning to look up at him. “Under the circumstances?”
“Beth!” I protest. “That’s—”
“Where the hell is Alice, Eric?” Dad interupts in an urgent whisper.
“Asleep,” Grandpa says, not bothering to keep his voice down.
“Excuse me?” Dad isn’t just startled. He’s flabbergasted. He knows just as well as I do that Mom would never sleep through this. These are her people. They need her. There’s nowhere she’d rather be than taking care of them.
And yet she’s still in that shuttle.
“Alice has been awake for more than two days straight, and spent much of that time in a spacesuit, repairing the ship that holds our survivors,” Grandpa says, still talking loud enough for the others to hear. “My daughter saved more than ten thousand lives today. I think she’s entitled to some rest.”
A little sigh ripples through the pioneers around us, like they’re watching a really exciting three-sixty drama and something cool just happened.
“What was wrong with the ship?” someone calls from the depths of the crowd.
“Is it stable now?”
“Is there a list of survivors we can access?”
Dad throws Grandpa a look that’s somewhere between a question and a challenge. “They need her.”
“I don’t care,” Grandpa says, pitching his voice low so only we can hear him.
Dad shakes his head. “You never did understand her.”
Grandpa grabs his arm. “Nick,” he says, “Alice is a grown woman. A leader. There isn’t much I can protect her from anymore. So when I see a burden I can carry for her, I will. I need to.” His gaze goes to me for a long, pointed beat. Then he looks back up at Dad. “I’m sure you understand.”
Dad’s eyes jump from Grandpa to Beth and me. He sucks in a breath and then he lets it out, deflating in the process. “Excuse me.”
He ducks up the ramp into the Trailblazer.
Grandpa turns to face the crowd.
“I am Admiral Eric Crane,” he calls, his voice effortlessly quelling the jostling conversations around us. “Some of you know me. All of you will. I’m sure you have a lot of questions. I’ll do my best to answer them.”
The crowd explodes with anxious demands. Everyone is talking at once. I don’t know how Grandpa keeps track of it all, but he does. He supplies answers calmly, one at a time, talking directly to each person but somehow including the whole group. With each new piece of information, the pioneers get a little calmer.
My flex buzzes. It’s Jay again. The goofy picture assigned to him in my contacts makes me ache. He’s out with Dr. Howard’s foraging team. His text says they’re still hours away, but they’re heading back as fast as they can.
That means Chris’s dad isn’t here, either. Where is Chris? I don’t want him to be alone right now. And what about Leela? She must be taking this hard. But when I search the crowd, I realize I’m having trouble focusing my eyes.
I blink, trying to clear my head. The setting sun stabs at my retinas, throwing off chilly white shards of light as it sinks into the mountains. The sun was midsky when Mom and I took off. Yesterday. No, I realize abruptly, the day before that. I may not have gone on the EVA, but I’ve piloted two transorbital flights since then, and I’ve been awake for nearly two and a half days. No wonder I can’t seem to focus. My brain is shutting down.
I need to sleep.
I start walking. I don’t say goodbye to Beth or look for my friends as I push through the crowd. If I stop now, I’m afraid I won’t make it to my bed.
The streets of the Landing are empty. The quiet amplifies the lonely pit inside me, making my exhausted body feel even heavier.
I trip, but I don’t fall. For a second, I can’t figure out why. Then I realize that there’s a hand gripping my arm, steadying me. I look up and find Beth standing next to me. She doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t even really look at me. She just tugs me forward gently, urging me to keep going.
We get to the greenhouse and she pushes the door open. I walk between the lush rows of Tau plants growing in sample pots, past the little stands of Earth corn and wheat, and into the storage closet my sister and I have turned into a makeshift bedroom. We’re supposed to be sharing a cabin with Mom and Dad, but those units aren’t really designed for privacy, and four adults, two of whom are happily married, are a lot for one cabin.
I collapse on my cot and reach for my boots, or I mean to. But my arms aren’t cooperating. My whole body feels tingly, like it’s fallen asleep and my mind has yet to follow.
Beth kneels in front of me and unfastens the bindings on my boots, then pulls them off.
“Sleep,” she says.
“Beth.”
“Sleep,” she repeats, before I can figure out what I want to say to her. “I’ll be here.”
I don’t even remember lying down. I must have. I’m cocooned in my sleeping bag when the whispered sigh of the greenhouse doors opening wakes me up.
I open my eyes. It’s dark. Beth is asleep on the cot across from mine.
Then Jay is there, the hover servos in his leg braces whining gently as he kneels down beside me.
I hurl myself at him.
His arms close around me and I dig my fingers into the ropes of muscle that run over his shoulders and down his back. Clutching the sweat-stiff fabric of his T-shirt. He squeezes me closer, burying his face in my sleep-wild hair.
After a while, the tension ebbs from the embrace. I lean against his shoulder. His fingers rub the base of my neck, right at the spot where the muscles always knot together. Mom is the only other person who can find that spot. It weirds me out a little bit that he knows my body that well. But it’s good weird.
“Are you okay?” he whispers.
“No,” I say.
I feel his chuckle more than I hear it.
“Me neither,” he says. “But I’m glad to be home.”
Two days ago, one of us would have qualified that statement. We would have reminded ourselves that this isn’t home. But today, it is.