What are the coordinates for this planet? she typed.
Slowly, sluggishly, the screen changed.
0-0-0
Andra ran a hand through her shorn dark hair, her fingers catching on the knots. She shouldn’t have been surprised the ’bot was glitching. It had obviously seen better days.
Did we crash?
The screen blanked for a moment. I’m sorry. I don’t understand the question.
You had to be so specific with these models. Andra wiped away a trickle of sweat before typing, Did the Ark crash?
No.
“Where is it?” she asked. The holo’display responded.
In geosynchronous orbit.
She took a deep breath. Okay. If the ship was orbiting the planet, she was on Holymyth and the rest of the colonists had to be here too.
The Ark was big. Big enough to hold a million people. Because of its size, it couldn’t be built on-planet. It would require too much force to boost through the atmosphere, so it was built in space by a crew of astro’constructionists. After the colonists had been put in stasis, ’bots had shuttled them to the Ark, and then—because the ship couldn’t land either—used the same shuttles to take them to the planet’s surface once they reached Holymyth. They’d been in stasis the entire journey, so Andra never actually saw the inside of the ship that carried her across the galaxy, but at least it was still in orbit above her.
“The Ark colonists, where are they?” Andra asked.
The holo’display blipped, the harsh sun gleaming off the ’bot’s open palm, and she heard the kachunk, kachunk of an overheated processor. She just hoped the data files weren’t as corrupted as the ’display.
“Where is everybody? Are they still asleep?”
“Is who still asleep?” Zhade asked from behind her, and she realized she’d started speaking out loud. “The other goddesses? You’re the last.”
The last? The last what?
She turned to Zhade, narrowing her eyes, and examined him. He was a soldier. She could tell by the way he held himself, the calculating look in his eyes. The armor, of course. He was trying too hard to look casual, comfortable, but really, he was reading the situation, creating contingency plans. Why would he need contingency plans?
“Where are we?” she asked slowly. “What do you call this place?”
He shrugged, looking around the village. The crowd still watched, mesmerized. “The wasters call it the Hell-mouth.” He gestured to his surroundings, as if to say, Can you blame them?
Andra tugged at the too-tight sleeves where sand had wedged against her skin. “Well, that’s ominous.”
“Scuze?” He laughed to himself. “No shakes. Now that you’ve woken, we can convo how you can—”
“You woke me up,” Andra interrupted. She tried to ignore the fact that this random person—not a cryo’tech, not a doctor—had pulled her naked from her ’tank and then dressed her. She’d come back to that later.
He grimaced, annoyed, and ran a hand through his blond hair. “Certz. I’ve been looking for you for four years, and I had no plans to fork that grave all the way back to Eerensed. Have you tried lifting that thing?”
“You’ve been looking for me?”
He nodded.
“For four years?”
He nodded again.
Just as soon as Andra thought she’d fit all the pieces together, they fell apart in her hands. Maybe . . . maybe her ’tank had been lost once they reached the colony, and people had been sent to look for her. But how had she gotten lost? And how had she ended up here—in an obviously remote part of Holymyth? She swallowed her panic.
The soldier crossed his arms. “I’ve been looking ever since they peaced me out. You, my reluctant little Goddess, are my mark back acity.”
“Zhade,” a new voice said, a reprimand.
Behind Zhade stood a man dressed just like him—unkempt, sand-stained clothing beneath leather armor. His expression was kinder, though. He had a warm brown complexion, a tousle of chestnut curls hanging over piercing black eyes. Dimples beneath a thin beard.
He stood apart from the crowd, as though he didn’t quite belong with them, and bowed to Andra. “Goddess.”
She was really starting to hate that word.
“What Zhade purposes to say,” the man said, straightening, “is that your people need you. Eerensed is dying. Without a goddess to sustain the gods’ dome, it will fail. We were . . . sent to find you.” His accent was formal and obviously didn’t sit comfortably on his tongue.
“I don’t understand . . . any of that,” she said.
Zhade placed a hand on the other man’s shoulder, pushing him back gently. “Scuze, Wead. Give her airspace. You overwhelm her.” He turned back to Andra. “Soze, we need to go soon and sooner. Four years, Goddess. Time runs.”
It didn’t make sense.
Four years.
She’d been missing for four years.
Andra’s stomach dropped at the thought of her family and friends living those years without her, moving forward while she was in stasis. Oz would be thirteen now. He had become a teenager while she was still one herself.
She turned back to the ’bot. “Where are the Ark colonists?”
It whirred, kachunked, and the light in its pupilless eyes dimmed as its humming devolved into a grinding whine.
“Damn it,” Andra mumbled to herself, then turned to Zhade. “Do you have something long and sharp?”
He looked confused for a moment, but then reached for something—a dagger?—in a sheath at his side. Then, he seemed to think better of it and turned to his friend. “Wead? You hold a stick?”
His friend blinked, expression blank. “Neg. I’m not forking a stick in the middle of a Wastern village.”
One of the villagers—a woman about Andra’s mother’s age, with stringy hair and paper-white skin—let out a startled cry and ran into a nearby boulder hut. Moments later, she returned with a metal spike. Resting it in her open palms, she bowed and offered it to Andra.
She took it hesitantly. “Uh, thank you?”
The woman beamed. Andra turned back to the ’bot. It was dark and still, but if it had truly died, its working nanos would have been released to find new homes. It probably just needed a reset. She turned the ’bot around, found the port at the base of the neck, and drove the spike home.
The crowd gasped.
“What are you doing?” Zhade demanded, and he sounded offended, maybe even scared.