Though they had sent various probes through the rings and back again, Earth’s sundry countries were too afraid to build the warp ring directly in lower orbit or around the moon. It wasn’t essential for the warp drive, but it helped ensure the craft was in the proper location and their calculations were exact. The Atalanta would make its slower, sublight journey to Mars with the ion engines. Once it slotted neatly into the ring, they could go anywhere.
Their destination was ten and a half light years away.
Cavendish.
The Atalanta was still bolted to its construction hub. It was an ungainly host, filled with scrap and the latest model of drone robots originally designed by Naomi’s mother, not dissimilar to the ones that had just helped launch the shuttle. Last week, these ones had still been skittering along the shining hull, tightening every screw, bringing it to life. The Atalanta had been assembled far enough from the Lunar Orbital Platform Gateway and the International Space Station that the astronauts on board those vessels would not be able to easily stop the five women.
In two weeks, the new crew was meant to board the Atalanta to head out to Cavendish to determine whether or not it was a viable new home for humanity. Naomi had worked under the new proposed commander, Shane Legge, during her time at NASA. She’d also seen him outside of work more than she’d cared to—he’d been her ex-husband’s close friend. He was brilliant, but a terrible leader. One who deliberately made others feel inferior, who nursed resentments and stoked petty competition. Even if they all managed to keep the Atalanta going from a science point of view, they’d be at each other’s throats by Mars.
The capsule drifted closer to the Atalanta’s docking port. Valerie knew this ship—Lockwood’s veneer over the security systems couldn’t keep her out. NASA and Lockwood hadn’t thought to stop access from orbit, had never anticipated Valerie would be able to take off from the surface without their knowledge. Earth couldn’t stop them, not without huge costs. Even if they tried to interfere with the warp ring at Mars, Valerie could turn off the Hawthorne robots on the surface remotely. Worst-case scenario, they could still use the Alcubierre drive in another location, though it would require a lot of extra calculations on Hixon’s part. And a lot more risk.
The crew held their breath as their craft slid into place. The probe connected, drawing the two vehicles together. A hiss as the seals tightened. Naomi exhaled.
Valerie gave them all a wordless signal and the astronauts unbuckled their seat belts, floating up in the capsule. Naomi moved her weightless arms in wonder.
Lebedeva twisted the latch on the craft, hauling the steel door open. The astronauts glided into the ship. Their ship. Naomi still felt cramped—the airlock wasn’t much bigger than the capsule. All was pitch-dark until the motion detection lights flickered on, too bright after the dimness.
They’d connected to the main body of the ship, the centre holding the loading bay to the back, the bridge to the front, and excess storage along the right side of the connecting hallway.
As they moved into the corridor, Naomi drank in every detail. She had seen this spaceship countless times on the simulators, either on two-dimensional screens or through virtual reality that was almost like the real thing. Almost.
“All clear?” Valerie asked, her voice tinny through the speakers around Naomi’s ears.
Hixon gave a thumbs up.
Valerie’s hands rose, twisting off her helmet. Curly brown hair that normally fell to her chin haloed her face. Her normally stern features opened with a wide, toothy grin.
Naomi followed suit, her helmet hissing. She breathed in sterile, scentless air. She was here, her body untethered by gravity. The closest she’d come was either underwater in the Neutral Buoyancy Lab during NASA training or brief thirty-second bursts at the tip of parabolic flights on zero-G planes. She took off a glove. Touched the cool white wall of the hallway. Solid. This was not a recreation. This was reality.
The others took off their helmets. These were the women Naomi would see every day for the foreseeable future. Soon their features would be as familiar as her own.
Valerie pushed off the wall of the corridor, making her way to the bridge. The others followed, silent as ghosts. It was a small ship, all things considered, just large enough to comfortably fit up to seven crew and all the supplies they’d need to make it to Mars, the ring, and Cavendish. Naomi wanted to swim through the air and explore every corner of the vessel. It was novel, but soon it would hold no secrets.
In the bridge, they paused, hovering above the seats and the consoles.
“Well, goddamn,” Valerie breathed.
Below them lay Earth.
It didn’t look like a marble; it was too clearly alive. The clouds crawled slowly, the planet bisected by the line of day and night. On the night side, the lights of cities glimmered. There was Europe, a gleam of brightness over Paris, Berlin, Kiev, strung together by smaller cities like linked synapses. Southern Europe was largely dark in summer as people who could fled north to places like Finland or Estonia. Lightning flashed over Morocco. Far to the north was the green glow of the aurora borealis. Charged particles from solar wind burning up in the atmosphere. It was Naomi’s first time seeing the Northern Lights. She’d seen the Southern Lights, and thought them beautiful on the expedition to Antarctica during her undergraduate degree, smothered in a parka as she gazed out at the horizon. From up here, it looked like magic.
The day side illuminated what the night could not—there was no ice in the Arctic Sea. The Antarctic wasn’t visible from here—this time of year was constant darkness for the southern pole. In summer, it’d show expanses of black land dotted by large, turquoise lakes, some the size of small European countries, the glaciers melting. She wondered if the lights from the oil rigs recently put up in the Ross Sea would be visible from space. The Antarctic treaties had been broken long before they were meant to run out in 2048.
The land on the other continents was too brown and golden, the green too sparse. There were swathes of land where humans could no longer survive, and the habitable areas were growing crowded. There was even some gold-green in the oceans from dust storms blowing off the continents and fertilising phytoplankton blooms. They’d managed to fish out most of the Great Pacific garbage patch, at least, though even if they hadn’t, it might not have been visible from orbit. Earth was such a little, vulnerable thing in the grand scope of the universe. Down on the surface, those mountains were larger than life, but from the ship they were only a ripple. The world she’d known was nothing but a suspended, lonely rock. It’d keep itself alive, in the end, but that didn’t mean large animal life would do the same. Humans were finally confronted with their fragility. Within a generation, they could all be gone. They’d outgrown this world, drained it dry. They needed a new one.
The women held their helmets, gathering around the window. The exhilaration and adrenaline of launch was fading, everyone sobering as what they had just done set in. They knew what they risked, yet that was different from being confronted, so baldly, with what they stood to lose. With what they were so desperate to save, they’d steal a ship.
“We spent so long thinking about getting off the planet, it’s easy to forget this is only the beginning,” Hart whispered, the blue light making her brown skin glow.
How well did Naomi know these women? She’d trained and worked with them, but they were also the only humans she’d interact with for years. Valerie’s chosen aegis.