Colonial Prime: Humanity
Author: Nielsen L Kevin
Date: 2018-02-01 00:00:00+00:00
Description: Captain Amara Corrin, hero of the late Solar Wars, commands the first colonial fleet. Full of hopeful dreamers looking for a new home, world-weary ex-soldiers, and those just seeking escape, five ships set out from Earth with the hopes of humanity behind them. Full of hopeful dreamers looking for a new home, world-weary ex-soldiers, and those just seeking escape; five ships set out from Earth with the hopes of humanity behind them. But Amara soon finds herself with more trouble than she can handle. The Council, Earth’s new governing body, has saddled her with their political rivals, exiling th

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© 2018 Kevin L. Nielsen
http://kevinlnielsen.com/

Cover Art by Garrett Harmon
https://ghamon.weebly.com/

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ASIN: B077TBVN1S (Kindle Edition)

Contents

Part I

1. Colonial Prime – Cargo Hold – Day 1

2. Colonial Prime – Command Bubble – Day 1

3. Colonial Prime – Lower Level – Day 1

4. Colonial Prime – Captain’s Office – Day 1

5. Colonial Prime – Captain’s Office – Day 1

6. Colonial Prime – Gardens – Day 1

7. Colonial Prime – Command Bubble – Day 1

8. Colonial Prime – Conference Room – Day 1

9. Colonial Prime – Gardens – Day 1

10. Colonial Prime – Captain’s Office – Day 1

11. Colonial Prime – Corrin Living Quarters – Day 1

Part II

12. Colonial Prime – Service Tunnel, Engineering Section – Day 271

13. Colonial Prime – Mess Hall – Day 271

14. Colonial Prime – Captain’s Office – Day 271

15. Colonial Prime – Corrin Living Quarters – Day 271

16. Colonial Prime – Mess Hall – Day 271

17. Colonial Prime – Corridor leading to Gardens – Day 271

18. Colonial Prime – Empty Crew Quarters – Day 271

Part III

19. Colonial Prime – Corrin Living Quarters – Day 365

20. Colonial Prime – Gardens – Day 365

21. Colonial Prime – Service Tunnel, Engineering Section – Day 365

22. Colonial Prime – Gardens – Day 365

23. Colonial Prime – Command Bubble – Day 365

24. Colonial Prime – Engineering Corridor – Day 365

25. Colonial Prime – Gardens and Corridor – Day 365

26. Colonial Prime – Upper Deck Corridors – Day 365

27. Colonial Prime – Command Bubble – Day 365

28. Colonial Prime – Corridors near Command Bubble – Day 365

29. Colonial Prime – Access Corridor to Command Bubble – Day 365

30. Colonial Prime – Command Bubble – Day 365

31. Colonial Prime – Command Bubble Ventilation Shaft – Day 365

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

About the Author

For Keri, who prefers science fiction, but still reads my fantasy anyway

For Nicholas James West, who fought the good fight, lived life to the fullest, and inspired me in too many ways to name

For Kaitlynn, who upholds the flame

Jaelyn Corrin shifted against the safety harness that kept him glued to his chair. The straps were tightened as far as they would go but, Jaelyn was small enough that there was a little room for him to move. The thrusters’ roar faded to a soft hum as they passed out of Earth’s atmosphere and entered real space. Their ship was vertical still, meaning Jaelyn was oriented in a position that aligned with an Earth orientation of being vertical. The pressure against his back eased for half a moment, the weightlessness born of being in real space allowing him a small measure of relief. A heartbeat later, the artificial gravity kicked in and the pressure keeping his back against the chair switched to his feet instead.

He blinked and swallowed to calm the nausea that threatened to overwhelm him at the change in perspective. His mind always oriented itself much faster than his stomach. He hated takeoffs. Actually, if he was honest with himself, he hated anything that made him feel uncomfortable. Suddenly reverting from the upward force caused by the ship’s propulsion engines pushing him back against his seat to the “lighter-than-Earth-gravity” artificial gravity pushing him horizontally was definitely uncomfortable.

The speakers crackled and his mother’s voice blazed over the intercom.

“This is your captain speaking. We have left Earth’s gravity. Those wishing to get their last glimpse of the planet should proceed to the viewing stations. All crewmembers will please report to their assigned duty posts until after the refueling process has been completed at the Jupiter Launching Station.”

The speakers crackled again, signaling an end to the announcement.

Jaelyn breathed a sigh of relief and pushed the button to release his harness. It unclasped with a faint pop and zipped back into the chair, retracting out of the way. Around him, hundreds more popping noises signaled that everyone else within this particular cargo area was mimicking his motion. The occupants of three other cargo holds within Colonial Prime, flagship of the small convoy and collective representation of the new government’s desire for peace, were likely doing the same.

Along the walls, metal and gears creaked as the protective metal shield rolled up, revealing the thick DuraGlass observation windows. Nearly 15 centimeters thick and stronger than a meter of cement, the DuraGlass was crystal clear, giving the viewers a perfect look at the retreating form of Earth’s blue-green orb. It also gave them a view of the four other ships that made up their small convoy. A colonization mission. The colonization mission.

A symbol of hope.

Jaelyn almost rolled his eyes at the thought. So much after the war had seemed like people were simply doing things just to be seen doing them. Not much of any real substance got done, as far as Jaelyn could see.

People got to their feet en masse, Jaelyn included, breathing sighs of contentment at being able to stand and ease aching muscles. Most headed for the DuraGlass. A buzz of muted conversations filled the over-oxygenated air.

Crewmembers dressed in the ship’s muted blue-grey uniforms streamed toward the lighted exit, while the passengers, mostly small families or young couples, hurried to get a last glimpse of the planet they had – up until this moment – called home. Jaelyn cleared his throat and followed the crewmembers toward the exit.

He almost made it. Three meters from the door into the hall his wristband chimed and a smooth, masculine voice spoke.

“Sir, the captain wishes you to remain here with the passengers.”

Jaelyn gritted his teeth and blew out his breath through his nose. Every blasted time. “She knows I hate crowds.”

“I am sorry, sir. The captain feels that your presence would assist with morale aboard ship. This is a trying time, after all.”

“What about my morale?” Jaelyn complained, standing in place and making the crew part around him. None of them complained. They knew who he was, or rather, who his mother was.

“Shall I ask the captain?”

“Oh, shut up, Ace.” Jaelyn snapped, turning around and heading back toward the observation areas.

“As you wish, sir.” The watch beeped, signaling an end to the conversation.

Jaelyn didn’t need Ace, the Automated Electronic Assistant that was integrated into the ship’s computer system, asking Captain Amara Corrin about his feelings. He already knew the answer. Jaelyn’s morale was a pithy victim of being the captain’s son. He absolutely hated crowds, and being around other people in general, but he hated disappointing his mother even more, even if her requests sometimes made his skin crawl with discomfort or forced him to hide in the ship’s gardens for a week or more to recover his nerves. And that was without her daily drills and borderline overprotective paranoia. Not that he could really blame her, not after what she’d gone through in the Solar Wars. And it wasn’t that the crowds themselves really bothered him, exactly. Mostly, he bothered them in that he never seemed to fit their expectation of how someone his age should think or act.

He joined the throng of people watching Earth fade through the long windows, though he stayed near the fringes. People still noticed and tried to make way for him, but he shook his head, letting them stay where they were, forcing aside the urge to shrink away and hide. His mother was the commander of the colonial fleet – the first in mankind’s history. Unlike some of the earlier exploratory flights, this mission was not one where the people ever intended to return. He could sense the fear and nervous energy among the families. He saw it in the tears that stained cheeks and heard it in the muted whispers shared between lovers or parents and their children. They were leaving behind all they had ever known.

Others were solitary figures, standing alone in the sea of bodies, staring out at the receding blue-green orb of Earth behind them. With everything that had gone on during the wars, it was a surprise that the atmosphere retained enough of the appropriate chemicals to allow life to continue. Life continued despite the efforts of humanity to end it. Jaelyn recognized these solitary figures from news reports and articles during the war. They were the exiles, the remnants of those factions that had come away defeated in the late wars. They looked back at a world they’d fought over, a world where they’d lost loved ones, friends, and family. They looked back on an emblem of their own failure. Jaelyn couldn’t even begin to describe the mix of emotions that crossed these figures’ faces.

For Jaelyn, all he had ever known was the inside of ships, following along with his mother’s transfers. He had almost as much attachment to Earth as he did to his clothing. Both were easily outgrown and replaced. Still, he couldn’t help but feel a small pang of regret as Earth faded from view. Despite it never being a true home, the blue-green planet held everything he’d ever really wanted out of life. Stability, normalcy, a chance at a regular life. Now, relegated to the bowels of a ship that would never return, that hope was gone, buried in the same place he kept all his unrealized dreams.

After a few long minutes standing at the back of the crowd, shifting under the sidelong glances of half a dozen older onlookers, Jaelyn decided it was time to leave. He was small for his age, looking younger than his thirteen years by a surprising margin, which invariably drew the attention of adults far more often than Jaelyn was comfortable with. He’d made his appearance and fulfilled his duties in regard to his mother’s wishes. It was time to get to know the ship that was now the exact width and breadth of his entire life for the next forty-five years.

Captain Amara Corrin stood with her hands clasped behind her back, her posture one of perfect parade rest in her typical position in the Command Bubble. Personally, Amara hated the familiarity and laziness of the term. A bubble was something children played with while taking a bath. This – this was where futures were decided. This was where lives were either saved or lost, with this voyage in particular. She was commander of the first colonial fleet. Her decisions would affect not just her own life, but the collective life of everyone aboard her own vessel and the four sister ships that accompanied her, an entire branch of the human family tree. To call this place a bubble simply because of spherical resemblance was ludicrous and demeaning to its very nature.

“Captain,” a younger man said, approaching along the catwalks that stretched from workstation to workstation across the room.

Amara recognized him almost immediately, the son of one of the high ranking generals under whose command she’d served during the recent world war. Had this young man still been a part of the military, he would be well on his way to the rank of commander himself, even though only in his late twenties. Nepotism was as common in military life as bullets. Aboard Colonial Prime, where Amara had yet to fully organize her command structure, he was simply another crewman, the same as everyone else.

She nodded to him, indicating that he could speak.

“The applications for your executive officer have been uploaded to your datapad, sir,” he said, proffering the thin device. “Navigation reports we should be at the Jupiter Launching Station within the hour.”

Amara winced, though the expression was barely able to be called such. Anyone who did not know her well would have missed it. Those that did, would have noticed the minute tightening around her eyes, or the slight tension that hovered at the corner of her lips. Cruel experience in the war had taught her to school her emotions, an edict which held even more true when one was in a command position.

“I know protocol dictates I be addressed as ‘sir,’” she said, taking the datapad. “But I prefer to be called Captain.”

“Yes, Captain.”

The man turned to leave, but Amara stopped him. “What’s your name, Crewman?”

She knew it already, but wanted a moment to study him as he spoke. He didn’t look much like his father. With a thin frame and youthful features, he looked almost boyish. And his hands were thin and nimble-looking, the hands of an artisan, perhaps. His eyes, however, bespoke a knowledge and depth that belied his youth. Very dissimilar from his father, indeed, except for the eyes. The eyes were the same.

“Nathan Esquina, formerly a lieutenant in the United Continental Army of the Americas.”

She made a mental note to check into his file. “Thank you, Crewman.”

He nodded. “Will that be all, Captain?”

She dismissed him with a wave and glanced down at her datapad. Five names stood on the list of candidates for executive officer. Amara wished she didn’t have to make that decision, but at the same time was glad she got to pick her own command structure. The new world government, the Grand Council of Nation-States, had left it in her hands. It would make the transition from a militaristic lifestyle to a colonial one that much easier. In theory, at least.

And, Amara thought to herself rather ruefully, there were factions aboard ship that needed to be kept in check. It was imperative her command structure be in place before they left the Jupiter Launching Station. The Grand Council had saddled her with the political exiles too dangerous to let remain on Earth. Not only that, the passengers themselves were as far from a homogenous group as it was possible to be.

Peoples from every nation-state, from every geopolitical boundary in the world, congregated here on Colonial Prime and her sister ships, each and every one of them making the decision to turn their back on their homeland and journey across space on the chance of having a new world free from the chaos and history of the old one. She only hoped that the terror and chaos of the world they’d left behind didn’t follow them here. They needed unity. They needed hope. They needed peace.

They needed to begin their lives anew.

If only she could figure out how to make that transition herself. Not that she allowed herself the luxury of granting the idea of not transitioning any purchase. She was the commander of this fleet. Though her sister ships, the Delta, the Omega, the Alpha, and the Beta, had their own captains and individual problems, they all reported to her. She was the figurehead here. She had to be the steady, larger-than-life rock upon which the colonists could rely. She had to be, more than just do. She had to become. She didn’t have any choice.

Gritting her teeth, she selected the first name on the list Crewman Esquina had given her and pulled up the file.

Jaelyn trudged through the bowels of the ship, ignoring the inquisitive looks of the crewmembers that passed by. Outside of the Command Bubble, there weren’t any other restricted areas aboard ship so he could go where he pleased, as far as the actual rules were concerned – written ones, at least. Each ship had its own system of implied and unwritten rules, though they often developed over time and as Jaelyn discovered them. Having spent most of his life moving from fleet ship to fleet ship with his mother’s transfers during the Solar Wars and later during the Third World War, his system of exploring new ships was something he wasn’t willing to change. He always started on the upper decks and worked his way down.

The belly of the ship was where all the interesting things were kept anyway. The engineering sections where the massive engines and fuel compartments rested, the gardens – which spanned an entire deck by themselves – and much of the cargo areas, those not previously used for housing passengers during takeoff, all lay on the bottom decks. Those cargo holds would be filled with the requisite supplies to last their decades-long journey when they reached the Jupiter Launching Station. The ship was massive, easily ten times as large as even the largest Fleet ship Jaelyn had ever been aboard, so his explorations would likely take more than a single day. Perhaps he should adjust his regular routine.

“Ace,” Jaelyn said, activating his wristband, “how long ‘til we reach Jupiter?”

“According to the NAV system, the ship will dock with the Jupiter Station in 27 minutes, sir.”

Twenty-seven minutes. Plenty of time to explore the gardens.

“Where are the gardens, Ace?”

“From your current position,” came the crisp, masculine voice, “take the second corridor on your left and it will be the doorway on the right.”

He followed the directions, reaching the indicated doorway without incident. The doors were large, though not as big as the ones on the cargo bays. They slid open at his approach, letting out a wash of clean, fresh air.

He breathed it in, relishing the pure, earthy smell as he ascended the dozen steps into the room. Unlike most other compartments, the main garden rooms were massively tall, spanning the entire height of the ship in certain sections. They had to be that size to accommodate the veritable forest of trees and other plant life that grew within them. Walkways stretched across the expanse at varying heights all the way up to the ceiling, with stairs leading up to them. Planters were arranged throughout the space, the soil extending at least 15-20 meters beneath the walkways themselves to accommodate the root systems. Other areas of the deck would be lower-ceilinged, filled to bursting with some of the more docile crop-style plants, stretching the entire length of the deck. Sun-replicating lights made the room bright, even considering its enormous size.

A grin stretched across Jaelyn’s face. Now this was a garden.

“Can I help you?”

Jaelyn jumped. He hadn’t heard anyone approach. Turning, his gaze fell upon the woman who had spoken. Hard grey eyes regarded him from a weathered, slightly wrinkled face. Her hair was the sort of dirty brown Jaelyn associated with dying leaves, though tinged at the temples with a hint of grey.

“I’m just here for the garden,” Jaelyn said.

“Really? I thought you were here for a drink of Irish beer.”

Jaelyn blinked and opened his mouth before closing it again. Irish beer?

“This is a very delicate ecosystem,” the woman snapped, adjusting her uniform, “humidity, temperature, light saturation, soil density, pollination all have to be kept at specific levels. I can’t have some errant child wandering in here and messing up the balance. Out with you.”

“But I –”

“Out, I said.”

She grabbed him by the shoulders and spun him around so he was facing the door. Jaelyn was too stunned to protest. Didn’t she know who he was? Usually new crewmembers aboard one of his mother’s ships were provided an image of him so they’d know beforehand. Had she not received it? Did she simply not care? As she pushed him toward the stairs, however, he noticed something so surprising it cut through his incredulity.

“Where on Earth did you find Bartramia halleriana?” he asked, pulling out of the woman’s grip and rushing over to the edge of the nearby planter to study the thick patch of the rare moss that covered the ground between two massive trees. “I thought it had gone extinct in 2025. How do you maintain the moisture requirements without rotting out the roots of these two trees? And what about the temperature requirements? It feels like it’s around 76 degrees Fahrenheit in here. Apple moss flourishes best at around 69 degrees.” The words tumbled out in a rush, piling on top of one another like puppies at play.

The woman tugged at her ear. “Is this some sort of joke? Did Tyrel send you?”

“Who’s Tyrel?” Jaelyn asked, distractedly, dropping to his knees to study the moss more closely.

“This has to be a joke. Only a handful of people in the galaxy have even heard of Bartramia halleriana, let alone recognize it by sight. Who are you? Don’t you dare touch that moss!” she said, stomping toward him.

Jaelyn pulled his hand back quickly and got to his feet, reluctantly brushing the dirt from the knees of his jumpsuit. “Jaelyn Corrin,” he said as the woman reached him. “I guess you could call me a plant enthusiast.”

“Captain Corrin’s son?” the woman asked, seeming unimpressed. “We’ll see about the other part. What’s that yellow-tinged plant over there?”

The question came quickly, fired almost like a bullet from a gun. Thankfully, a single glance was all Jaelyn needed. “Poison oak,” he said, promptly.

“That tree over there?” she asked, pointing.

“That appears to be a Douglas fir.”

“What are the main components of a leaf?”

“Petiole, margin, veins, lobe, blade, midrib, and sinus.”

The woman frowned, though Jaelyn knew he’d answered correctly. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, uncomfortable under her scrutiny.

“I was not informed the captain’s son was a closet botanist,” she said at length.

Jaelyn shrugged. He was reclusive at best and his interest in horticulture was rather – odd – in an age of space exploration and technology. It certainly didn’t surprise him that his mother hadn’t told anyone about it.

The woman studied him a moment longer and then stuck out her hand.

“I am Dr. Alexis Martin, ship’s botanist and resident geneticist.”

Jaelyn felt his eyes widen. “The Dr. Alexis Martin? I read your paper on the genetic hybridization of the common rose and how it led to the plant’s original extinction.”

She raised an eyebrow as she shook his hand. “Heavy reading for a young man of fourteen.”

“I’m thirteen, ma’am.” He said, letting go of her hand quickly.

“Heavier still, then. You’re older than you look, and you talk like you’re at some sort of formal staff meeting.”

Jaelyn shrugged. He led a solitary life as much out of habit as a result of being isolated as the captain’s son. When his most frequent companions were books and his mother’s staff or peers, it tended to leave him speaking and acting far older than he was. Usually, at least.

“Has the captain given you a duty post yet?” Dr. Martin asked, idly picking at some dirt under one of her nails and then glancing up at him.

Jaelyn shook his head. His mother would get around to it, he was sure, but she had other things on her mind, like who her officers would be. Some political thing with the new government had kept her from choosing them beforehand. He hadn’t really paid much attention when she’d tried to explain it to him.

“How would you like to work here?”

Jaelyn grinned.

“Captain,” Sheawn Olliard said, leaning back in his chair and interlacing his fingers beneath his perfectly square chin, “I don’t know if you can really afford not to make me the XO.”

On the other side of the desk, Amara frowned pointedly. She could detect a hint of a threat in his words, which was simultaneously odd and mildly troubling, not to mention annoying. Those aboard ship were a ramshackle bunch of former military and political exiles all but shanghaied into making this journey deep into uncharted space. This man, this Sheawn Olliard, spoke with more than the common bravado and ego of the career soldier. He spoke like a politician.

“Why is that?”

“It’s simple, really. I have the most command experience. I was an admiral in the late war, exiled to this colonial ship by spineless men bending over for the sake of peace.”

Amara arched an eyebrow. “This is a colonial ship, Crewman.” She put a little emphasis on the word “crewman,” watching for his reaction. “The officers aboard this ship will mostly just be administrators on our voyage through space. If still alive when we land at our destination, they will become government leaders. The political arena is a completely different battlefield than a military one. It’s a question of bureaucracy rather than potency.”

Sheawn smiled, not taking the bait. “Of course. I am well acquainted with the charter under which our fleet flies. I am familiar with the roster of who serves aboard her as well. Several passengers were under my command in the late war. They would be strong assets to a wise commander.”

Amara narrowed her eyes. She saw the words for what they were. If you appoint me as your XO, then we will work with you. If you don’t, well, we’ll work against you. She hated politics. She’d heard of Admiral Olliard and his exploits during the war. An armchair admiral, a politician to the core with nothing better to do than interfere with those who actually did their jobs. A man who looked good in a uniform, but knew absolutely nothing about what it really meant to be a soldier.

“You’ll be informed of my decision within the hour,” she said, her voice cool.

He stood up a little stiffly, his bushy eyebrows coming together above his nose. His face was tight and controlled.

“I trust you will make the right decision,” he said, and left.

Amara sighed, rubbing at her temples. Each one of the other four candidates had behaved in similar manner, though none had been quite so blatant about it. While some of the three thousand colonists were here by choice, a large number of them had been essentially exiled after the war. Many of the exiles carried with them remnants of ideals and processes of thought that had no place either aboard her ship or back under Earth’s new unified rule. The Council had enough trouble keeping itself together without adding more radicals to the mix. Their “solution” had been to saddle her with the outcasts’ keeping.

Now, here they all were, headed toward the one place where neither radical nor pacifist would be of any trouble. For the Council, at least. It left Amara, however, with the threat of constant, unceasing headaches and bureaucratic nightmares. She’d have to have security personnel watch the more bothersome exiles, like this Sheawn Olliard, and ensure they didn’t incite others to actions best left back on Earth. None of the colonists needed to be reminded of what they were leaving behind or that the mission they were on could be seen as forming a penal colony as much as any true colonization.

“What am I going to do?” she thought out loud, massaging her temple with her free hand.

Any choice put her at the mercy of one faction or another. Politics was the arena of bureaucrats, not soldiers.

“Yes, Captain?” the computer’s voice asked, coming from the console on her desk.

Amara ignored it.

“How may I be of assistance?” the computer asked one final time, as it was programmed to do.

Amara sighed. “Ace, tell me how many people here have served under my command before.”

“Seventeen, Captain.”

“Are any of them capable of serving as my XO?”

“I would be unable to speculate about that, Captain.”

She’d known he wouldn’t be able to give her an answer, but it gave her the time she needed to think. She didn’t just need an executive officer, she also needed a chief engineer and a weapons officer, not to mention a master chief to look after the crewmembers who would not end up with commissions. She knew Rajesh Kuthar had volunteered for this mission. The man was a legend of organization, having spent the vast majority of his career as the diplomatic liaison between the various factions and, over the last few years, serving as the bureaucratic hand behind the effective and efficient structuring of this very mission. If she could persuade him to be the master chief, perhaps she had some hope of staying ahead of the factions remaining here aboard ship. She needed all of them to be loyal to her, or at least to the purpose of the mission itself, not some archaic way of life left behind on a planet that would no longer be their home. She had someo –

“Ace,” Amara said, reaching a decision before the rest of her thoughts even coalesced, “send for Crewman Esquina, please.”

Nathan Esquina glanced down at his wristband as it vibrated slightly and the computer’s automated voice sounded through the little speakers embedded in the intricate machine. Nathan still found it fascinating, the amount of computing power integrated into such a small device. Fully linked with the ship’s main computer, it was also an autonomous program, capable of storing terabytes of individualized data within any specific unit and functioning even when not connected to the mainframe.

“Nathan,” the computer said, “the captain would like to see you.”

“Thank you.” Nathan said, getting to his feet.

He nodded to the other clerks as he walked by, walking past where a number of them were busy doing the final calculations for their descent to the Jupiter Launching Station. They returned quizzical looks, but all he could do was shrug.

Captain Amara was an enigma among the United Fleet. The only female captain among an armada of men, she had been instrumental in the ending of the war, multiple times influencing both the outcomes of battles and peace talks with the authority of her presence. She’d been the youngest captain by at least a decade, a position earned after spending almost a year as a prisoner of war during the start of the Solar Wars. Some of the legends spoke about her in almost reverent tones. How was he to know what she wanted?

He turned right at the end of the hallway and hesitated for a moment, one finger tugging at the collar of his uniform before knocking on the captain’s door.

“Enter.” The captain’s voice sounded muffled through the heavy metal doorway. Nathan thought he heard a little weariness in her tone as well, though it could have been his own imagination grasping for some way to humanize her. Taking a deep breath and steeling himself, Nathan opened the door and stepped into the room.

Captain Amara sat behind her desk, face illuminated by the light from her datapad. A few wrinkles touched the edges of her expression, though clearly more from the stress of her occupation and past than from actual age. Her red-brown hair didn’t have even the hint of grey, though it was pulled back into an intricate bun behind her head. She was thin, trim, and smaller than he remembered, though it was hard to tell with her sitting as she was. Nathan hadn’t really noticed her height in the Command Bubble earlier.

She looked up after a long silence, setting aside the datapad she’d been studying. Nathan met her gaze, forcing himself not to swallow nervously at the green-grey eyes that regarded him coolly.

“Take a seat please.”

As he sat, Nathan couldn’t help but glance down at the captain’s datapad, which was still on. His own photo seemed to stare back at him from the screen. His file?

“How can I help you, Captain?” he asked, his voice expressing the true depth of his curiosity. Had he done something wrong? He couldn’t fathom why Captain Amara would be looking at his file when she was in the middle of organizing her command structure. Had he done something wrong in preparing the files of the executive officer candidates earlier? He couldn’t think of anything he’d done.

“Why are you here, Nathan?”

Nathan shrugged. “You asked me to come to your office.”

She gave him a level gaze. Nathan smiled, knowing the question hadn’t been what he’d answered. So he had a sarcastic streak. So what? Wasn’t humor one of the things a good officer was supposed to have?

“Why are any of us on this journey?” he said after a moment. “Earth’s governments are unified, but we all know it won’t last or we wouldn’t be here. You can’t have that many factions sitting and stewing for that long. There’ve been too many years of in-fighting, too many geopolitical conflicts that allow patriotism to trump logic and what is good for humanity. But this ship, this colony, has the potential to be a truly unified world. Earth can slide back into its nation-states and wars, but humanity can and will continue on through us. And, just maybe, we can become a better example of what it should be.”

“A bit of a romantic, aren’t you?” Captain Amara let a little bit of a smile touch the corner of her eyes. Nathan couldn’t tell if it was a mocking one or not.

He shrugged again. There was no point in denying the obvious.

“Isn’t your father one of the Sitters on the Council now?” Where was Captain Amara headed with this line of questioning?

“He is,” Nathan said.

Captain Amara leaned back, steepling her fingers beneath her chin. “And what does he think about you coming on this voyage?”

“I didn’t ask,” Nathan said curtly. “He and I have very dissimilar political views.”

“I read your file. Highest honors from the Military Academy. I believe your scores on the aptitude tests for mechanical and technical acumen are still the current record holders. The Corps of Engineers threw a lot of money and effort into recruiting you, but you turned them down for a post close to the front lines. Why?”

“Wars are not won by machines, Captain.” He stayed away from the Corps of Engineers for the same reason he didn’t want to be part of that department now. It was simply too tempting, too addicting, to have that much power. And—well—he wasn’t sure he even understood his aptitude with technology himself. Not really.

Amara inclined her head toward him. Nathan took it as a sign of agreement and felt a momentary flush of relief that he covered with another question.

“May I inquire about the purpose of this discussion, Captain?”

Amara gave a half a smile, a funny little quirk of the corner of her lip that instantly brightened her otherwise stern face. Nathan felt himself put at ease almost instantly.

“I’m trying to decide where to place you in my command structure.”

Nathan blinked. “Me? But I’m not even on the list of candidates.”

Amara’s lip twitched into a smile again, this time giving her eyes a soft twinkle. “A list provided by bureaucrats and politicians, all vying for their faction to have a strong foothold within the colony. When the Council granted my request to command this voyage, they gave me unilateral control of its command structure. For the time we are in space, every person aboard this convoy is under my command. Why would I then give up that power by allowing one of their cronies to become my XO?”

Explained that way, Nathan could see what she meant. That the geopolitical ideologies of Earth’s land-based traditions would continue onto the ship was an obvious and unavoidable fact. But why should she compound the issues by placing someone who supported the division in a position of command. But –

“Wait, your XO?”

“Yes,” Amara said, growing serious again, “you have little experience with such a large command, but you are an outspoken opponent of internal divisions.” She hesitated, then continued. “I served under your father for a time when I was younger. When he found out you were going to be a part of this voyage, he sent me a letter recommending you for the post of chief engineer.”

He had? Nathan hadn’t heard from his father in years. There were bitter feelings between them from the last time they had met. And that meeting had been about Nathan’s choice of post in the war. He’d never understood why Nathan hadn’t wanted advancement into the leadership roles he himself had craved. He’d never understood that Nathan’s desires in the war differed so greatly from his own. Nathan turned his focus back toward the captain, who had continued speaking.

“I already have a chief engineer and master chief in mind with whom I have worked in the past. So that leaves me with two positions, executive officer and weapons officer. You are going to be my executive officer. Effective immediately it will be entered in the ship’s log that you’ve been granted a commission with the rank of commander, serving as executive officer to Captain Amara Corrin.”

Nathan blinked, stunned. Executive officer? How was he going to command a convoy of over 3,000 people?

“I had the computer upload the files of some of my choices for the weapons officer and master chief to your wristband. Please look over their files and let me know your recommendations within the hour. I will make the shipwide announcements before we leave the Jupiter Station.”

Nathan nodded and stood.

“Oh, and Commander,” Captain Amara said as he turned to leave. He turned back. “I’m putting a lot of trust in you here. Please don’t make me regret that choice.”

Nathan nodded, his resolve suddenly growing. He straightened and flashed a quick, wide grin. “You never will.”

Jaelyn worked his spade through the soft loam and detritus of dirt, fertilizer, and dying plant matter, tilling the compost to add the right amount of air to the mixture. He braced himself as the ship settled into the Jupiter Launching Station’s enormous launching clamps and the ship began turning in a geosynchronous orbit around the massive gas giant.

Soon, after the cargo holds were loaded with all the supplies and fuel needed to make the forty-five-year odyssey through space, the ship would begin to spin around the planet faster and faster, pulled inward by gravity and centripetal force until reaching launching speeds and being hurled out into space. What was more, since space had no frictional force, the speed at which they launched would remain the speed at which they traveled for the duration of the voyage. No wasted fuel except for minor course corrections. According to the reports Jaelyn had read, the artificial gravity inside the ship would counter the massive g-forces that spinning around the planet would cause.

He’d heard some of the stories about what had happened to the first few test pilots back when they were testing the device. Insides crushed, burst blood vessels, exploding organs. He shuddered, turning his mind and attention back to the task at hand. Still, he couldn’t help but swallow against the lump of fear that worked up his throat. Normal launches were bad enough.

“I think the soil is ready, Dr. Martin,” he said.

The older woman looked over at him from where she worked on the outside of the planter, arranging a number of potted rose bushes. Within just a few minutes of introducing herself and offering him a duty post she had put him to work and left him to it, returning to her own devices. That was fine with Jaelyn. He preferred the solitude and appreciated working with someone who didn’t feel the need to fill the empty spaces of the room with equally empty conversation. Besides, the work helped him focus and it was good to be in motion with the diminished gravity inside the ship. The more resistance his muscles experienced, the less likely they would atrophy over time.

“You think?”

Jaelyn rolled his eyes. “The soil is ready, Dr. Martin.”

“Good. Always be direct and assertive in your words,” the woman said, picking up a few of the potted plants and lifting them up to him. “Passive phrasing leads to misunderstanding and allows others to perceive you as beneath them. Now, dig me enough holes to get these planted.”

Jaelyn grumbled to himself, but set to the work anyway, rather savagely digging his spade into the dirt to start a hole. Adults liked to lecture, even when some things were better left unsaid.

He’d just set his spade to start the second hole when the sound of crackling speakers cut through the silence. Jaelyn’s mother’s voice filled the air.

“Attention passengers. Loading should be completed within the next few minutes. Launching will begin shortly thereafter and we will truly take our first steps toward our final destination. There will be no turning back after this – fuel will be inefficient to do much more than correct our course after launch.”

Jaelyn paused in his work for a moment, adjusting his shoulders and suppressing a shiver.

“To help us on this journey, we welcome Commander Nathan Esquina as executive officer, Commander Jackson Li as the chief engineer, Lieutenant Commander Holly Chalman as the chief weapons officer, and Rajesh Kuthar as the master chief. Other duty stations and commissions will be assigned throughout the day as each officer decides the breakdown of their own command structure. Please check your wristbands periodically for updates. May we all have a peaceful voyage.”

The speakers crackled again, signaling the end of the announcement.

So his mother had picked her command structure. Good for her, he thought as he finished up digging the holes for the rose bushes and bent to take one of the plants from Dr. Martin for planting. Honestly, his mother had been through so many different posts Jaelyn didn’t usually pay much attention to those with whom his mother served. He’d grown accustomed to the fact that they’d just be transferred again soon and there’d be new people to meet and smile at to further his mother’s military career. Getting attached to people, to friends, was an exercise in frustration and futility. It was a much simpler matter, a safer matter, to simply devote himself to his studies, to learning, to his passion for plants and genetics, than to try and be the typical child everyone expected him to be.

He dropped the first plant into a hole he’d dug, careful of the thorns. This time it was different though. He had to keep reminding himself of that. This time there would be no more transfers. This time he wouldn’t be moving to any other ships. This was as much a home as anything he’d ever known. It wasn’t like he was going anywhere else for the next forty-five years. Maybe he should pay more attention to these ones. It would certainly make his mother happy, and that’s all she cared about at least.

A soft whooshing noise and the mild rasp of metal on metal signaled someone entering the gardens through the sliding doors near them. Jaelyn glanced up to see a distinguished figure stomp up the steps, heavy military boots clanging against the metal flooring. He started talking almost before reaching the top of the steps.

“What does this idiot woman think she’s doing?” he demanded, addressing Dr. Martin. “Did you hear who she appointed as her executive officer? Some arrogant little pup barely off his mother’s tit. I warned her what would happen if she didn’t appoint me. Did she listen?”

Dr. Martin raised a hand, gesturing sharply and nodding toward Jaelyn. Jaelyn pretended not to notice, shoveling dirt over the rose’s root system and tamping it down, though he noted the exchange and filed the information away.

“We all face our own little disappointments, Sheawn.” Dr. Martin said, handing Jaelyn another potted rose. “I’m sure our good captain has reasons for what she’s done.”

The man, Sheawn, looked Jaelyn up and down, grumbling under his breath. Jaelyn studied the man himself out of the corner of his eye. With a square jaw, greying hair, and distinguished features, the man was the picture of military decorum. A careerist.

Careerists were a scheming, conniving lot, according to Jaelyn’s mother. They did best in situations where they could have job advancement and recognition. When they didn’t get it, they took their ambition and channeled it into other avenues. One of his mother’s favorite sayings was that the difference between a military careerist and a criminal was where they directed their ambition.

“I’ll talk to you later then,” Sheawn said, turning on his heel, “2100 hours at the bar.”

Dr. Martin waved a hand after him in acknowledgement, though her eyes looked troubled. In spite of, or maybe because of the fact that Jaelyn didn’t like conflict or being around too many people at once, he’d gotten good at reading their emotions and facial expressions.

“Everything alright, Doctor?” he asked.

“Everything is splendid,” she muttered. “Just splendid.”

The ship shook ever so slightly as it completed the final revolution around Jupiter, clamped into place on the launching deck. Even with the artificial gravity generators working at peak efficiency, there was no way to completely compensate for the massive g-forces created by the near light speed revolutions around the massive planetary body.

“Brace yourselves,” the computer’s calm voice advised over the system speakers.

Nathan envied the computer’s ability to ignore the emotions that were swelling through his body at that precise moment. He’d only been out to deep space once before, during the war, and had thrown up shortly after the launch. He remembered somewhat ruefully his friends’ laughter as he’d heaved into a trash receptacle near his desk.

He wouldn’t have the luxury of throwing up, or having friends, as the executive officer.

Nathan leaned forward slightly, putting his hands on the catwalk’s railing for support as he watched the stars zip by though the Command Bubble’s DuraGlass walls. Next to him, Captain Amara did the same, her face the unchanging mask it always was. Why had she chosen him as the XO?

The ship lurched.

Nathan couldn’t stop his fingers from clenching around the metal rail as if frozen in place. The stars outside the Bubble seemed to blur into one long streak of light. Nathan let out a long breath in as inaudible a sigh as possible, though it still came out sounding like something halfway between a huff and a gasp. A quick glance around let him know that no one but Captain Amara had heard and she didn’t appear as if she was going to acknowledge it outside of a slight glint in her eyes.

“Ready a fleetwide broadcast, Commander,” she said. Nathan nodded and hit a few buttons on his wristband. When he looked back up, Captain Amara had a hand covering her mouth as she coughed. For half a moment, Nathan wondered if she was covering up a laugh, but almost immediately dismissed the thought. He wondered what a genuine laugh from her would sound like. Could she laugh?

“Ready, Captain.”

“We have launched,” Captain Amara said in her steady, feminine voice. Nathan felt, more than heard, it echoing throughout the ship and knew it was being broadcast to the four other vessels of a like size flanking them. “As our ancestors before us, we’ve taken a step further along the path of progression for humanity. Each of you, each of us, is a branch of the great family that is mankind, reaching forth across the stars as we leave behind the home of our parents to become our own nation. Come success or failure, life or death, happiness or misery, we cannot go back. We’ve passed that line of demarcation. Forty-five years will forge us anew before we reach our hallowed home.”

Nathan couldn’t tear his eyes away from Captain Amara’s face as she spoke. Her expression held such conviction, it was all Nathan could do not to cheer. Or weep. It was, well, it was a beautiful expression on her otherwise stoic face.

“Whatever our allegiances were back on Earth,” she continued, “our allegiance is to us now, to our new home, to the continuance of this branch of humanity. Everyone aboard this ship and this convoy is no longer a stranger. We are family. Let us become and remain such over the next forty-five years.”

It took Nathan a moment longer than it should have to realize Captain Amara had stopped talking and was waiting for him to end the transmission. He quickly tapped the necessary buttons on his datapad.

“Thank you, Commander.” Captain Amara turned on a heel and began walking down the long walkway toward the far side of the Command Bubble. “Please have the department heads assemble in the main conference room. 21:15 Earth standard time, if you please.”

“Yes, Captain.”

As Captain Amara walked away, Nathan found he couldn’t help but admire her.

Amara leaned back in her chair at the head of the long conference table and closed her eyes. She hadn’t thought of herself as anything but Captain Corrin in such a long time. Since just after Jaelyn had been born, really. That was the last time she’d thought of herself as simply Amara, the day she’d come to accept what had happened to her and moved on with a focus and determination to become the best soldier, the most well-respected and feared warrior, of any woman ever. She hadn’t been a captain then, of course, just an ensign, but the sentiment was the same. Still, this was a new life, a new responsibility. She had a duty not just as a captain, but as a colonist. Just Amara was what she needed to be more than Captain Corrin.

The small beep that preceded the door opening cut through the stillness of the room. Amara’s eyes were open and she was sitting fully erect and straight-backed by the time the door slid all the way open.

Commander Nathan Esquina entered the room followed by the department heads, including her senior officers. Nathan walked with military efficiency, back straight, chin parallel to the floor, expression schooled into calm confidence. With his trim brown hair, stark blue eyes, and square-jawed almost boyish face, Amara was suddenly hit by just how striking he appeared. He was the picture of military decorum, but not pompous by any means. He was the type of man people would grow to look up to, over time. She’d made a good choice, picking him. She let her gaze linger on him a moment longer before moving on to the rest of the group filing into the room. She knew them all by name and by the image that came on their dossier, but she’d only met a few of them in person before.

First behind Nathan came the senior officers. Chief Engineer Jackson Li, a short, wiry, older man who had formerly belonged to the Asiatic Coalition of Nation-States before joining this fleet, took a seat at the far end of the table almost immediately.

Chief Weapons Officer Holly Chalman came next, long red hair pulled up into a severe bun. In contrast to that, she held a bright smile on her young face and winked at Commander Li as she passed him. One would never know to look at her, but she held the record for the single most kills in hand-to-hand combat in the late war. Just the thought of all that blood on the woman’s hands made Amara’s skin crawl and she had to force herself not to shudder at the recognition that she wasn’t much better herself. The act that landed her as captain of this voyage across the vastness of space had put plenty of blood on her own hands.

The last of her officers, well, staff really, since he would have been a non-com in a standard Fleet vessel, Rajesh Kuthar, took a seat next to her and pointedly looked down at his hands, the salt and pepper of his hair contrasting with the dark tone of his skin. The short man had been part of the old nation-state of India before it had fallen. He’d lost more friends and family in the war than anyone had a right to. He was a silent, hardworking man, but a genius at keeping things running smoothly behind the scenes. Amara knew she would come to rely on him greatly over the next few decades. Persuading him had been even simpler than asking Commander Esquina.

The remaining department heads filed in and took seats around the table. Commander Esquina took a seat to Amara’s right. A woman Amara recognized as Dr. Alexis Martin, a botanist and head of the Life Sciences department, took a seat at Amara’s left.

“Thank you for coming,” Amara said after a brief pause. “I trust you all heard the broadcast upon our launch from the Jupiter Station. This is our journey now, our life, and our legacy. I trust–”

Amara cut off as the door’s proximity alert sounded again and the door slid open. Sheawn Olliard stepped into the room, a wide smile that showed far too much tooth plastered on his face. Next to Amara, Dr. Martin let out a soft groan, so quiet Amara was sure only she had heard it.

“My apologies, everyone,” Sheawn said, speaking through his smile and displaying that rare talent politicians and salesmen had to speak without parting their teeth. “But I didn’t get the memo until just now. New ship and all.”

“I don’t believe you were invited,” Amara said, voice hard. “You’ve interrupted a rather important meeting for what purpose, sir?”

Sheawn’s eyebrows rose and almost disappeared into his receding hairline. He stopped near the far side of the table and raised his hands, gesturing toward the table and the occupants there. Amara held the man’s gaze.

“This is a meeting of the senior staff and department heads, yes?” His tone was pitched perfectly, the exact mixture of confusion and innocence that almost involuntarily elicited a response whenever it was used.

“You are neither,” Dr. Martin said before Amara even opened her mouth. “Kindly remove yourself, Sheawn, or I’ll ask Holly to escort you.”

Holly grinned. “I’d have fun tossing this one through an airlock.”

“Captain,” Sheawn said, expression contorted into perfect affront, “are you going to allow your people to make threats against me? I am an admiral in the Fleet. I—”

“Not anymore, sir,” Amara interrupted, forcing herself to keep a level, calm tone. “Aboard this vessel, Fleet does not exist. For all intents and purposes, Earth itself no longer exists. Dr. Martin, Holly, I trust you to keep a civil tongue. Mr. Olliard, despite the manner in which it was said, Dr. Martin is still correct. You are not invited to this meeting. Please excuse yourself, sir.”

Amara kept her gaze locked on Sheawn’s, so she noticed the flash of anger there and the sudden tightening of his facial muscles as his jaw clenched. He nodded – a perfunctory motion at best – turned on a heel in textbook-perfect about-face, and strode from the room without a word. The door slid shut behind him with a hiss.

“Ace,” Holly said, “please lock the door.”

“Yes, Commander,” came the computer’s reply.

“Well now,” Amara said, eyes lingering for a moment on the closed and sealed doorway, “let’s get down to figuring out how we’re all going to mete out our existence for the next forty-five years.”

Jaelyn stood up and wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. His back ached from long hours spent almost completely doubled over, gently tilling the soil in a long planter set against the back of the garden deck. Dr. Martin had been gone several hours now, but he didn’t mind so much. The solitary work suited him and he had Ace read him a half dozen reports and articles of interest as he worked.

This particular section of the gardens would be planted with foodstuffs to supplement the supplies they already had. Other sections of the gardens, which almost literally stretched the entire length of a deck of the ship, would be converted to house grains and the like for the small number of livestock they had aboard ship as well.

“You do quick work.”

Jaelyn jumped and nearly dropped the spade he’d been holding. He spun to see Dr. Martin suppressing a chuckle. He hadn’t heard her come in.

“I, um…uh, thank you.” Jaelyn licked his lips and attempted to still his thundering heart. His hands twisted on the shovel’s metal haft, as if he were somehow attempting to strangle the thing.

Dr. Martin smiled and shook her head. Jaelyn found himself returning the smile. She gestured for him to follow her. “Come on, help me load the seed sprayer and we’ll get these fields planted.”

“How’d the meeting go?”

Dr. Martin shrugged a single shoulder. Jaelyn hadn’t really ever seen the gesture from the rear before. It made him have to suppress a small laugh. “It went the way meetings about forty-five year journeys through space normally go, I expect. Lots about co-fraternization, duty to populate the new planet with humanity, population controls while still aboard ship, etc. Boring stuff and the like.”

“Seems interesting to me.”

Dr. Martin snorted, stopping at a section of wall and pressing several buttons there. A massive section of the wall slid back, revealing a deep storage chamber filled to bursting with sacks and sacks of seed.

“Captain’s son,” she said, stepping into the room.

“Can’t help who you’re born to.”

Dr. Martin snorted. She seemed to do that a lot. “You don’t have to act like it, though.”

Jaelyn didn’t say anything. He was reasonably sure she was joking, but either way, she was probably right.

“They did discuss one thing I found rather interesting,” Dr. Martin continued, gesturing for him to pick up one of the large sacks. “Something that concerned you, actually.”

Jaelyn grunted with the effort of lifting one of the sacks onto his shoulder. It smelled musty and earthy, which wasn’t altogether unpleasant.

“Yeah? What?”

“I’m not sure I should tell you,” Dr. Martin said. “You may not like it.”

Jaelyn grunted again, unable to articulate much more under the weight of the sack he carried. Dr. Martin reached out and helped him lower it to the walkway next to the long field he’d just aerated.

“I—” Jaelyn cut off as a door slid open and an angry voice preceded the entrance of a man Jaelyn recognized.

“Alex!” Sheawn Olliard, the man from earlier, all but shouted as he strode into the room. His square-jawed, handsome face was a ruddy shade of scarlet and he glowered as he strode toward them, booted feet thumping and echoing off the metal walkway.

“Calm yourself, Sheawn,” Dr. Martin said, holding up a hand. “Jaelyn, fetch me three more of these, will you?”

Jaelyn nodded and headed back the way they’d come. He’d been around militant adults long enough to recognize a dismissal when he heard it. Still, his mother’s long years of – well, he’d called it paranoia at the time, but it had proven effective in the late war at least – instruction left him walking more slowly than normal and straining to hear what was being said.

“Calm yourself, Sheawn,” Dr. Martin said in a soft voice that nonetheless carried in the metal room. “What possessed you to make such a scene?”

“That woman. That woman. Who does she think she is? Does she not know who I am?”

“Who you were, you mean?”

Jaelyn reached the door to the supply room and palmed the door open. The sound of it sliding open drowned out the man’s response. Reluctantly, Jaelyn stepped into the room before he could hear anything else, grabbed a bag of seed, and hurried back out as best he could. Dr. Martin was talking when he returned.

“I don’t care how you feel about it, that’s what you’re going to do. I didn’t spend all my personal and political favors getting you aboard this vessel to have you throw it away over your feelings.” The fierceness of Dr. Martin’s tone startled Jaelyn, though he did his best not to let it show as he brought the bag over and tossed it down on top of the first one with a grunt. The two adults had walked a little ways away, but even still, they remained silent until Jaelyn was almost back to the storage room.

“What do you expect me to do? Sit around and knit?” Sheawn’s voice resonated with suppressed anger.

“As our good captain put it, fraternize. This is a long trip. Many of us won’t make it all the way to the other side. It’s our duty to replace ourselves and grow our small populace. Find a girl. Settle down.”

Jaelyn missed the man’s response as the storage room’s door opened and he stepped inside. He couldn’t help but snort a little, though. It sounded exactly like something his mother would say. Pragmatic to a fault, it was just like her to talk about procreation and their life aboard Colonial Prime in terms of duty to humanity. How hard was it to just say that people needed to be making babies like a normal society?

He picked up another bag and slung it over his shoulder with a grunt and then headed back to the door with a slightly quicker step than he’d had before. He was, frankly, curious now. Dr. Martin and this Sheawn fellow were having an interesting conversation. He didn’t want to miss it.

The door slid open. At the same moment, the speakers popped and an odd sound, like a whistle bouncing from one note to another and then back again, preceded a smooth male voice coming through the speakers.

“Colonial Prime. Congratulations from the Earth United Council. You have stepped out into the great unknown, a beacon of hope, trust, community, and cooperation for all of us back here on Earth. May your journey be filled with peace and vigor. As we struggle here through our first few years as a fledgling union, we will look toward you as our example. Other colonial voyages will follow, but you are the first. Our first hope. God Speed, Colonial Prime.”

The same whistling trill sounded again and then the speakers popped, signaling an end to the transmission. Jaelyn stood motionless in the doorway for a long moment. He vaguely recalled his mother telling him they’d still be in communication range with Earth for the first few years of their voyage. He hadn’t remembered her saying anything about their ability to send shipwide broadcasts, though. Maybe they’d just contacted her directly and she’d patched it into the ship’s speakers.

But still, it was, well – odd. According to his mother, they were supposed to leave all ties to Earth behind. Why would they broadcast things talking about Earth and their struggles? Hadn’t leaving been hard enough without reminders?

Someone snorted, and Jaelyn blinked, snapping out of his internal musings. The sack on his shoulder suddenly felt like it weighed a thousand pounds. He tottered forward and tossed it onto the pile and glanced over at Dr. Martin and the man called Sheawn.

“Look toward us as their example, huh?” Sheawn was saying. “Perhaps they’ll learn a thing or two.”

Dr. Martin blew out what could only be described as an exasperated sigh. “Off with you, Sheawn. I’ll see you at the commissary later.”

Sheawn grunted and turned on his heel, but not before Jaelyn got a look at his expression. His face had become thoughtful, introspective. For some reason, the look made Jaelyn uneasy. He suppressed a small shiver threatening to creep up his spine.

“Ready then, Jaelyn?” Dr. Martin asked, walking up to him with a smile. “We’re an example of hope and cooperation and all that. Let’s get this strip of earth planted, shall we?”

Jaelyn nodded, feeling his unease lift. He let the shadow of a smile creep onto his face. “Sheawn sure does like to use you as a venting board, doesn’t he?”

Dr. Martin raised an eyebrow, though the smile never left her weathered features. “That’s the trouble with being related, I guess. You always complain to those with whom you’re most comfortable. It’s rude to eavesdrop, you know.”

Jaelyn shrugged. “I’m not deaf and he’s not quiet.”

“Fair enough,” Dr. Martin said with a soft chuckle. “Fair enough.”

She bent down to open one of the sacks, simultaneously pressing a button on a small remote-control type device attached to her belt. A large drone detached itself from the ceiling high above them and zipped down toward them, rotor blades spinning and keeping it aloft.

“So,” Jaelyn said, shifting on one foot and watching Dr. Martin closely. “What was it you were saying before our loud friend came in?”

“Hmm? Oh yes, something about your mother’s meeting. What was it again?”

“You said it may interest me? I’m assuming it’s not about fraternizing.” Jaelyn made sure to put a funny little twist on the last word, just for fun, to see how she’d react. Older people always got so squeamish when people they deemed “children” talked about sex.

“Nothing so banal as that,” Dr. Martin said without pause. “Ah, yes, the apprenticeship system. That was it. She’s implementing an apprenticeship system for all posts aboard ship. I think the idea is that many of us – ahem – older folk, won’t be fit to do many of the things we’d need to do when we arrive. Cross-training, is what she called it.”

Jaelyn felt a small rush of excitement wash through him. Could she possibly mean…?

“How would you like to be my apprentice?”

Jaelyn grinned.

“You handled it then?” Captain Amara asked, looking at him over steepled fingers from behind her desk.

Nathan nodded. “That broadcast seemed to spark something in several of the passengers. Apparently, someone from the United Americas thought they were better than someone from the African Confederacy of Nation-States. Something about manual labor and motherhood, I’m not sure of the details. It escalated to a fight, but was broken up relatively quickly.”

“You handled it, then?” Amara repeated, no more firm, no more loud.

Nathan felt himself flush and struggled to keep the color from his cheeks. “I set them to work together scrubbing out the sewage pipes.”

“Together?”

“Um, yes. Something my father always used to say is that if you take two people who aren’t getting along and separate them, there’s no chance they’ll ever understand each other. Distance breeds division. Working together, they’ll at least get to know one another.”

Captain Amara pursed her lips into not-quite a frown. “And you don’t think they’ll just break into more fighting? One would think such action would exacerbate their situation rather than rectify it.”

“Oh, one of Holly’s security officers is there to supervise.” Nathan licked his lips and had to suppress the desire to fidget.

“Well done, XO.” Nathan breathed out a sigh of relief, then caught himself as Captain Amara continued, a small smile playing about the set of her eyes and the corners of her lips that, somehow, made him even more uneasy. “You should be more confident in your decisions. As long as you have a justification for what you’ve done that is logical and sound, I will support it.”

Nathan nodded. “Thank you, Captain.”

“Amara is fine when we’re alone.”

“Yes, Captain – Amara.”

Captain Amara, no, just Amara, gave him a whole smile this time, and the expression made her eyes twinkle. It was, Nathan decided, a very nice smile, one, he assumed, rarely graced her features. The world – well, the ship really, but that was the width and breadth of their world now – was a far worse place for it. He shifted in the chair, glancing around Amara’s ready room as a means of reorienting his mind back to the task at hand.

“Were there any other incidents after the broadcast?” Amara asked.

“Nothing that escalated to violence. A few insults, some name calling. There was a fair bit of cheering and crying as well. It became much more real when they heard the Council’s voice.”

Amara raised an eyebrow again. Nathan had always harbored a little envy of anyone who had mastered that particular ability.

“That’s a rather strange way of referring to your father,” Amara said.

“From a certain point of view, I suppose.” Nathan knew he likely sounded a lot harsher about it than he intended, but it was too late to change now. It was a recording, after all. Of course, his father wouldn’t have made a live broadcast. He’d been too busy for that.

Amara gave him a level, appraising look. She’d served under his father during the war, he knew. In fact, it was during that time she’d acted upon her hunches to effectively end the war entirely. But the general was not the same man as Nathan’s father. No, the general cared about his officers far more than he ever had about his own son.

“Well,” Amara said with just the barest hint of a frown. “I suppose you’d like to know about the rest of the information relayed in the broadcast. Various reports and the like, updates on our trajectories, etc.”

Nathan swallowed and nodded, forcing himself not to linger on the dark thoughts that had sprung up within the shadowy recesses of his mind. “Anything interesting?”

“The usual. A few reports of odd celestial bodies that may move across our path over the years, a half dozen letters from home.” Amara hesitated and by the way she held his gaze, he knew she was doing it for effect alone. Was she testing him? “And a small report regarding an incident that involved your father.”

Nathan couldn’t raise an eyebrow the way Amara had, but it was obvious from the sly look she gave him that his expression still served sufficiently to share his curiosity.

“It seems there was an attempt on his life,” Amara said, holding up her datapad and making a show of reading from it. “A group of dissidents made several assassination attempts on a number of council members. Notably your father, and the other major remaining members of what was once the Northern United Coalition.”

Nathan blew out a long breath. Obviously, they’d failed or else Amara wouldn’t have used the word “attempts,” but having it in a report could only mean one thing, really.

Nathan swallowed and itched under his nose with a knuckle. The dissentions back on Earth would spread here. There was no question in his mind. Despite Captain Amara’s best efforts to keep the information contained, the people here would eventually figure it out. There were ways to get messages in and out of this ship and back to Earth so long as they were within the Communication Grid. The seeds of dissent were already here, if the earlier meeting of department heads and officers was any indication.

“Amara,” he said, giving her a pointed look, “we have to tell everyone.”

“Out of the question. This stays here, between you and I.”

“You know this is going to get out eventually. Wouldn’t you rather tell them all yourself and have the chance to see their reactions? See whose loyalty is still with the factions back on Earth, rather than here?”

Amara paused, pursing her lips slightly as she thought. Nathan tried not to smile as she tapped a finger against her lips. For someone many years his senior, he couldn’t help but appreciate how attractive she could be when she let her captain’s mask fall away.

“I can’t justify spreading information I know will cause discord and dissent among the colony. This is a colony – a one-way trip. What news they receive from Earth will be official broadcasts only. Earth is no longer our home.”

“That’s a lovely sentiment.” Nathan kept his tone carefully neutral. “I wish it were true for all of us.”

Amara gave him a sharp look, the pert cuteness of a moment before hardening into steel in the blink of an eye.

“I appreciate your candor, Nathan. We are a new colony. We are one people. Nothing is going to change that as long as we hold firm to the belief, to that knowledge. It is fact.”

Nathan nodded, not sure how to respond to the fervor in her voice. Belief was a wonderful thing, an important, motivating emotion that had more than once changed the course of mankind’s history. Nathan’s father – despite, and perhaps because of, his many other flaws – always held that above all other things. It was a soldier’s mentality, a monochromatic picture of black and white.

“As you command, Captain.” Nathan said with a small inclination of his head.

Captain Amara’s lips tightened into a thin line.

“Dismissed.”

Jaelyn yawned and massaged the small of his back with one hand as he trudged along the corridor toward the quarters he shared with his mother. His whole body ached with the semi-pleasant pain of having worked hard all day long. Dr. Martin had worked him hard, but alongside him instead of as a demanding taskmaster. He’d honestly been surprised by her stamina. She was probably in her late fifties or early sixties and had matched him step for step the whole time. It was – well, it was surprisingly nice. He’d grown so used to working alone that he’d thought the company would be irritating at best, but it hadn’t been. Far from it, in fact.

“Ace,” Jaelyn said, hearing the weariness in his own voice and feeling oddly proud about it. “Start the showers for me, will you? And pull up some music, too, while you’re at it. Something loud.”

“Yes, sir.” The computer’s voice sounded from his wristband and echoed off the metal walls of the narrow corridor.

Jaelyn made a mental note to adjust the volume later. He was simply too tired to do it now.

“Sir?”

Jaelyn looked down at his wristband, a habit he had yet to break. “What’s wrong, Ace?”

“Your mother has overridden your request for shower and music.”

Jaelyn let loose a small groan. Of course she had. It was close to 22:00 in shiptime, which was late by anyone’s estimation. He’d hoped his mother would still be busy with captainly duties with it being the first day of the voyage, but obviously, she’d made it back to their quarters ahead of him. He wouldn’t be relaxing in a shower anytime soon. He wished she’d just leave him alone, sometimes.

“Tell her I’m coming, Ace.”

“Yes, sir.”

As much as Jaelyn wanted to, he didn’t drag his feet or slow his pace at all. It wouldn’t do him any good. He reached the door to their quarters in just a few minutes and paused before entering the room. He was in for a long night. He half contemplated just turning around and heading back to the gardens, but didn’t allow it to gain any real purchase in his mind. Being the captain’s son came with certain responsibilities, not the least of which was just being the captain’s son.

With a sigh, he stepped forward and the door slid open.

Their rooms were, if Jaelyn was honest with himself, rather nice. The entire far wall was made of DuraGlass, giving them an amazing view of the blackness of vacuum space outside. Granted, there were stars and other celestial bodies out there, but Jaelyn had spent his entire life in ships such as this. Even breathtaking beauty got old when it was one’s day to day sustenance. Perhaps that’s why he liked the gardens so much. Every day the plants changed; flowers bloomed, trees grew, the leaves shifted between colors of green and red and gold. Life was constantly in motion.

A few padded chairs sat around a table in one corner of the room next to some cabinets, and a small kitchenette was set into the wall. The heating coils of the stovetop lay hidden within the stove itself, though they were far more efficient than any of the old stoves he’d seen in videos. They could heat a gallon of water to a rolling boil in less than two minutes. That could have been an effect of being in space, rather than efficiency of heat transfer, but Jaelyn really didn’t care. They wouldn’t use it much. The captain ate in the mess along with everyone else. That meant Jaelyn would as well.

The rest of the room was rather spartan. A low couch-like bit of furniture lay against the DuraGlass wall, but it looked as comfortable as any of the military furniture he’d been familiar with on other ships, which is to say, not at all.

His mother stood in the center of the room wearing a pair of tight-fitting leggings and a sports bra, standing perfectly still as if she’d been waiting for him. He was sure she had.

“I expect you here by 21:00 every evening,” she said without preamble. “21-22:00 we will practice our regular routine as we always do. Understood?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Jaelyn made sure to keep his voice level, though he was sure some measure of his frustration made a small burr in his tone. He’d hoped this mission, this voyage, would be different than the other posts. That he and his mother could grow closer to being a normal family. Apparently, that hope was as empty as the vast recesses of space.

His mother raised an eyebrow. “No argument?”

“Would there be any point to it?” He slipped out of his shoes and rolled up his sleeves, taking a position on the floor next to his mother, but with enough space between them that they wouldn’t get in each other’s way.

“You know this is for your own good. You’ll thank me for this later.”

Jaelyn didn’t respond. A moment later, the music started and Jaelyn slipped into a modified capoeira stance, moving with the time of the music through the motions he’d been practicing every day of his life for as long as he could remember. Beside him, his mother did the same.

“Thank you.” Jaelyn hadn’t realized he’d spoken until the moment just before his mother replied.

“For?”

“Letting me apprentice under Dr. Martin,” he said between calm steady breaths and the interweaving motion of his hands. It wasn’t what he’d meant to say, any of it, but the words came anyway. Why did his mother have that effect on him? He could be frustrated with her one minute and thanking her the next. “She didn’t say anything, but I know she would have cleared it with you before offering me the spot.”

“I do love you, you know, even if I’ll never understand your fascination with plants and dirt.”

Jaelyn didn’t say anything for a long while. Part of it was because he’d entered a complicated sequence which involved every part of his body and most of his concentration. Part of it was simple doubt and confusion. He’d lost count of how many times he’d wondered if his mother loved her career more than him. Frankly, when she’d informed him they were going on this voyage and leaving everything they’d ever known behind, he’d questioned it most strongly.

But there’d been a small part of him, a small child’s voice that hoped it would be a time when he and his mother could grow closer again, like they used to be. Back when Jaelyn’s personal memories were still shadowed by time and how young he was when those memories were formed. Back before he knew why his mother was so devoted to her career or understood why he’d never known his father. Back before he’d learned about the ugly side of humanity and that he’d been conceived while his mother had been in a POW camp back on Earth. A simpler time. A happier time.

“I love you too, Mom.”

Nathan shimmied forward in the service tunnel, wriggling forward with a quick twist of his shoulders and buttocks together at the same time. If someone were behind him, or watching him on one of the service cameras, Nathan was sure they were laughing their heads off right about now. It was an undignified thing for an XO to do, he was sure, but he’d go to hell and back before letting something he could fix go unrepaired simply because the crewman assigned had no idea what he was doing.

“There you are, you little motherless goat,” Nathan swore, reaching the panel he was trying to get to.

He pulled the paneling loose, exposing the wires, circuits, and piping inside the wall itself. The engines hadn’t been performing at peak efficiency over the last week or two. They didn’t use the engines often, allowing their momentum to carry them forward without wasting fuel. The only time the engines were engaged was to correct their course, which was done mostly by the ship’s internal navigation computers. Still, the issue was a simple one to fix, for Nathan at least.

With a few deft motions, he pulled a couple wires free, not even feeling the tingling pulse of electricity running within them, and then reattached them in a different order, slipping a miniscule resistor onto one of the wires before he did so. With the wires reattached, a few small alarm bells started sounding. The power wasn’t routing correctly, but that was readily fixed. He placed his palm against the circuit board, holding it flat on the surface. The board shifted beneath his palm, circuit pathways rerouting of their own volition.

The alarms stopped.

Sighing, Nathan popped the panel back onto the wall and did his best to ignore his trembling hands. It was an aftereffect of his ability, one which he’d never fully gotten used to. Not that he’d ever really known what his ability was either. He didn’t speak to others about it, nor advertise it. Still, those few who did know thought him a freak. It was, well, it was the real reason he’d come on this one-way trip. He was tired of his father’s judgmental looks, his fear. Here aboard this ship, no one knew, not even Amara, despite what she’d become to him over the last nine months, Earth time. All they knew was that he had a knack for knowing how to fix just about any machine aboard ship, which was, after all, a useful if odd thing for an XO to be able to do.

After a moment, the shaking subsided and he shimmied back out of the service tunnel and into the engine room.

“All set, Chief,” Nathan said as he slid out onto the floor. “It should be working perfectly now.”

Chief Engineer Li gave him a level look as he glanced up from his datapad. Nathan didn’t doubt the datapad was already showing an increased output of at least 25%. He also knew it was technically impossible, according to the Fleet specifications of the capacities of this type of craft, but it was still true either way.

“Right, sir. That it is.” Li said looking down at his datapad and then back up at Nathan. “Um, how’d you do that?”

Nathan grinned and shrugged. “Just gave it a good kick.”

The wiry engineer snorted. “Right, sir. Fine, don’t tell me. I’ll figure it out. Just give me a couple weeks.” He ran a hand along his balding pate and looked down at his datapad again. “Or months. We’ve got time.”

“Take all the time you need,” Nathan said, brushing off his uniform. “I’ll see you at the staff meeting later, Chief.”

Li nodded and snapped a quick salute, which Nathan returned. Li would stew over what he’d done for weeks before admitting defeat. It was a fun little game they played, one which allowed Nathan a much-needed respite from the strain of dealing with the million-and-one things under his jurisdiction aboard Colonial Prime. Not to mention the growing tension between certain factions aboard ship.

Nathan strode through the long corridors, saluting at passing crewmembers or nodding to passengers. He had some security concerns to deal with first, then a shift in the Command Bubble, which would basically mean staring out into space for a couple hours with nothing to do but maintain appearances. Still, it was better than it could have been. He still had engineering to distract him when the need arose, among other things.

Nathan smiled slightly and picked up his pace.

The food in the mess, Jaelyn decided, wasn’t any better nine months into the voyage than it had been when they’d first set off. Granted, some of it was better now that they could supplement it with fresh produce from the gardens, but Jaelyn preferred most of it raw and freshly picked rather than cooked and swimming in sauces like the cooks prepared it. Still, Jaelyn ate with as much of a smile on his face as he could muster to keep up appearances, though he sat alone at a table in a corner of the mess, often ignored by both the crew and passengers of their ship.

Jaelyn pushed his “stir fry” back and forth on his plate with his fork for a moment, then took the time to look up at the room around him, more in an effort to put off having to eat the stuff than out of any real desire to look around. This room never changed.

At almost three hundred meters long and a dozen tall, it was the largest single space not designated as a “cargo area” within the ship. Metal tables and benches that had been bolted to the ground during takeoff months ago and which were now free of those restraints, covered the majority of the area, though there were two areas where a wide swath of the floor was open, except for some more portable chairs. One of those areas was behind a long bar that rested in the corner of the room closest to Jaelyn.

His mother had insisted on the addition of the bar as a means whereby people could mingle and fraternize that was somewhat more casual than the regular mess area. Jaelyn wasn’t sure it was really needed, even if he’d been inclined to drink. As with most locations where food was served, the mess was always a hub of people coming and going or else lingering long into the wee hours of the night nursing a cup of coffee or other beverage. Eventually those supplies would run out, but the cargo holds of the ship were still bulging with storage at this point and there were coffee plants growing down in the gardens ― a hybrid version, at least, one that should last the voyage and be hardy enough to take on the climate of P3X11A, the planet that would become their new home.

The other open area was in front of the kitchen itself and the long counter for the actual serving of food that sat in front of it. Jaelyn couldn’t remember ever seeing it without at least a small line of hungry folk there, either serving themselves or being served by the kitchen staff. At the moment, a dozen or so people were serving themselves. Another forty or so sat at tables throughout the room, most clustered into small groups of less than a dozen at a handful of tables about as far from one another as they could get.

Now that he noticed, Jaelyn watched with growing curiosity as one of the people in line at the serving station finished and moved toward the seating area. The man, a tall, lanky fellow with flaming red hair, avoided the first table with people at it, and headed straight for the second. The people there saw him coming and waved him over. It was…

Someone tapped him on the shoulder.

Jaelyn jumped and spun his head around so fast his neck popped. Dr. Martin chuckled as she sat down next to him. She set a glass of an amber-colored liquid on the table before her. She must have come in through the door by the bar.

“Alright there, Jaelyn?”

“If I can get my heart rate under control, sure. Were you trying to kill me?” Jaelyn made a show of holding a hand over his heart, breathing heavily in an equally exaggerated fashion.

“If I were trying to kill you, you’d already be dead. You were so lost in your own little world just now I could have brought an army in here and surrounded you before you would’ve even noticed.”

Jaelyn looked down at his plate and covered his growing flush by taking a quick bite of soggy vegetables. Dr. Martin chuckled softly, a quiet sounding thing that Jaelyn had come to find rather comforting over the last nine months as her senior apprentice, and took a drink from her glass.

“What had you so wrapped up in thought that you missed my grand entrance?” she asked when Jaelyn had finished swallowing.

Jaelyn shrugged and took another bite of the now fast-disappearing stir fry. Dr. Martin gave him a level look over the top of her glass. Over the last year, Jaelyn had come to recognize that expression as the one that came just before she pressed an issue. He raised a hand to forestall her and swallowed.

“I was watching the other people sit down,” Jaelyn said in a voice that got quieter toward the end.

“Ah, people watching. A worthy pastime. I’m guilty of it myself from time to time. Great way to learn.” Dr. Martin took another drink and frowned down at her glass, which was now empty.

“Great way to…what? I was…well, what?”

Dr. Martin smiled, and to Jaelyn the expression was halfway between a grin of amusement and rueful consternation.

“Our world isn’t shaped by our environment, Jaelyn, it’s shaped by the people around us,” she said, putting the glass down on the table again. “We learn by observation.” Dr. Martin wiped her mouth with one hand and then pursed her lips, meeting his eye. Jaelyn recognized the thoughtful expression as the one she wore when she was about to give him a lecture of some sort.

“If you were to see a plant leaning to one side,” she continued, “the stalk permanently bent, what would that tell you?”

“It was competing for sunlight as it grew.”

“Precisely. And if you saw a tree with an oddly formed knot, what would you assume happened?”

“Some sort of aberration was on the tree or branch as it grew. But what – ”

Dr. Martin held up a hand, cutting him off. “And when you’re looking at tree rings, what do they tell you?”

Jaelyn frowned. “Lots of things. The level of wetness in the environment during that growing period, the harshness or lightness of a given winter, floods, weather, any number of things, even whether or not fire or bugs had gotten to it.”

“Right. You learn about the natural world and the plants with which we work by observing them. The same is true of people, though it’s much more complicated than with plants.” Dr. Martin held up her hands. “Look at my hands. What do you see?”

He’d seen them before, obviously, but he looked at them again, this time with purposeful intent, humoring her.

“They’re hard and calloused,” he said. “You’ve got scars on several fingers and across your left palm. You’ve never been married, or it was long enough ago that any calluses from rings have faded. There’s dirt under your nails.”

Dr. Martin gave him a flat smile. “And what does that tell you about me?”

It was Jaelyn’s turn to give her a flat look. “It means you’re not afraid to get your hands dirty.”

“And?”

“And…” What more did she want? “I’m not sure what else you’re looking for.”

“It tells you I’ve devoted myself to that life. I don’t care about other people knowing what I do, or I’d scrub under my nails. I prefer solitude to company. I’m what people would call ‘strange’. Understand?”

Jaelyn nodded, recognizing how she was extrapolating on the information he’d provided.

She nodded. “Good enough.” She gestured out at the other tables, taking in the room. “What does watching them teach you?”

Jaelyn looked out at the other tables again. Most of the people who’d been at the serving station had taken seats at one of the occupied tables. A few had taken seats together at a new table. He looked from table to table, trying to puzzle out what Dr. Martin was getting at.

“Um,” he said, “I’m honestly not sure.”

Dr. Martin snorted. “That’s the coward’s way out. Try again.”

Jaelyn grumbled, though he’d half expected the response. Dr. Martin and his mother differed in any number of ways, but neither of them believed in making anything easy. Most of the time Jaelyn was fine with that. Sometimes, though, they should at least try to make something simpler for him, shouldn’t they? For the sake of fairness?

“Well,” Jaelyn said, buying himself more time, “they separated themselves into groups almost immediately. They all seem to know exactly where it is they need to go.”

“Go on.”

“Um, they don’t interact with each other much. If they were plants, I’d say they don’t cross-pollinate well, or at all.” Jaelyn glanced back at Dr. Martin in time to see her nod.

“Right. That’s it precisely. There’s no interaction between them. What you’re witnessing here is a direct aftermath of the war back on Earth.”

Jaelyn frowned. “How can you tell? I thought we left all that behind.”

“Not hardly.” Dr. Martin picked up her empty glass and peered down into it, as if she were trying to find some hidden measure of its contents she hadn’t already consumed. “How can I tell? It’s right there before you. Watch how that redheaded fellow refuses to turn his back to the other table there.” Dr. Martin gestured at one of the tables with the hand holding the empty glass, without looking up. “Look at the distance between occupied tables and the way each group interacts with the other members of the group. See that man there?” She pointed at a man that was walking back to one of the tables from the serving station holding a salt shaker. “He spilled his salt shaker a few minutes ago. He could have just gone to one of the other tables and asked to use theirs, but he didn’t. He walked by two other occupied tables to go get a new salt shaker. There’s no trust there.”

“Maybe he just didn’t want to bother anyone.”

Dr. Martin snorted again. “Again, not hardly. He didn’t do it, because he doesn’t trust the other groups. Watch the passengers when you’re about the ship, Jaelyn, and you’ll see it. Have Ace pull up some history for you on the war. You’ll start to see it.”

She stood up, holding the glass in one hand. Her expression was twisted in a look Jaelyn hadn’t really seen before, one that seemed distant, maybe even a little sad.

“Take the afternoon off. I’ll see you bright and early tomorrow, Jaelyn, alright?”

“Sure.”

Dr. Martin started walking in the direction of the bar, then paused and half turned back to him.

“Think about what I said. It’s an important thing to understand. Even for a botanist.” With that, she walked away, leaving Jaelyn in a tumble of overlapping thoughts and emotions.

Captain Amara looked down at her datapad screen for perhaps the fourth time in as many minutes and, once again, realized she wasn’t overly fond of the bureaucracy of running a colony ship. And that was putting it mildly. During the war, it had all been about actions and counter-actions. Movements and response. Aboard this ship, in its undeviating course toward the far reaches of space, toward a distant planetary system thus far only explored by probes, it was all about reading reports, sitting around, and attempting rather futilely to get everyone to work together and coexist. She felt more like someone attempting to herd cats into a bath than the captain of a grand colonial mission.

She sighed and forced her mind back to the task at hand. Regardless of her personal preferences, she still had a duty to perform. The door sounded a proximity alarm as someone approached her office. She’d stopped calling it a ready room as much as possible in an effort to shift away from Fleet staff regulation and toward a more lenient colonial role.

“Enter,” she said, without looking up.

The door slid open and Rajesh Kuthar, the master chief, walked in, a datapad in one hand, a small book of prayers in the other. Amara had been surprised to discover that her chief of staff was a practitioner of the Hindu religion during their first meeting. Most religions had died away over the course of the last few centuries. When she’d asked him about it, his response had been that “eternal law” didn’t fade simply because fewer people believed in it.

“Punctual as usual, Chief,” she said, looking up.

Rajesh didn’t respond outside of taking a seat opposite her on the other side of her large desk.

“What’s the report this morning, Chief?”

“Medical reports a few minor injuries during an accident in one of the science labs along with a couple bruises from a fight that broke out between passengers,” Rajesh said in the same matter-of-fact tone he said everything in. “Sciences report an accident in the labs, but also note they’ve cleaned it and repaired the damage already. The engines are operating at above peak efficiency due to a few modifications the XO made this morning. All other stations report no change.”

“Thank you, Chief. Anything else to report? Any other trouble or activities of note?” She asked the question every morning, even though Rajesh had never had anything additional to say. If it wasn’t a part of his official report, it simply didn’t exist, as far as he was concerned.

“No, Captain. I – ”

The speakers crackled and then the three notes that preceded an official council transmission blared through the room. Amara steeled herself for the transmission, feeling a small flash of annoyance at the interruption. A female voice, one Amara didn’t recognize, began speaking.

“We are saddened, today, by the loss of several key members of the Earth United Council. Sitters Esquina, Verithas, Clark, and Mutahma were killed in an explosion perpetuated by persons as yet unknown.”

Amara felt a cold fist of fear close over her insides.

“While we do not yet know how, who, or why, rest assured these losses will not go unpunished.” A hard edge crept into the woman’s voice, one which turned the fist of fear into a sharp knife instead. “Those responsible will be found and dealt with most severely. While this takes place, the Fleet will be securing a perimeter around Earth to prevent departure from the planet. Once the terrorists are caught, the blockade will be lifted. At this time, we request a moment of silence in honor of those who have fallen. May God bless them on their way.”

The haunting echo of the woman’s words faded away until it was swallowed by the thick, tense silence that followed. A long moment passed, during which Amara did her best to order her thoughts and give proper respect to those who had died, while at the same time wrestling with the torrent of conflicting emotions waging war within her. When the shrill whistle sounded again to signal the end of the transmission, it took all of Amara’s force of will not to jump. Still, her mind and body urged her to move, to go and do something. She was a woman of action, of conflict, of resolution.

“Damn,” she found herself saying instead.

Rajesh didn’t look up from his datapad, but he made a small grunt of protest even as his fingers flew over the screen.

“Why did they have to send this to us? We’re already well outside the solar system.” Amara voiced her thoughts more to have something to focus on than in an attempt to actually get an answer.

“They didn’t.” It was the edge in Rajesh’s voice more than the response that made Amara’s eyes dart to him, her entire focus resting on the man. He still hadn’t looked up from his datapad, but he did continue as if feeling her gaze. “It was a general broadcast sent to all Fleet vessels, simultaneously transmitted on every frequency to every communication array in the entire grid. We received the message fourteen separate times within microseconds of each other.”

“Who reported that so quickly? The communications engineers?”

“I heard the slight glitch in the voice when it first started, before the computer compensated for the overlap, and pulled up the logs.” He touched something on his datapad and a report appeared on the screen set into one of the room’s walls. “Look there. And here.” Another report appeared alongside the first. “We’re already getting reports of transmission requests to people earthside. Three dozen already. People are wanting to check on loved ones left behind, searching for sources of information on their own.”

Of course they were. Amara wanted to do the same herself, but knew she couldn’t if she wanted to maintain order aboard her own ship. If the captain didn’t obey the rules, why would anyone else?

“The captains of the other four ships have also requested a meeting,” Rajesh added.

Amara suppressed the urge to groan or massage her temples. This wasn’t what she’d meant when she said she needed a little action earlier.

“Let’s get to it, then. Have Commander Esquina report to me after my meeting with the other captains.”

Jaelyn snapped his book shut and sat up as the transmission ended. He didn’t even care that the motion threw the book onto the floor, potentially damaging the expensive binding. His mother would likely get after him for it later – the books were relics of an older day, after all, antiques – but even that threat paled in comparison to the news in the transmission. His mother now had far worse problems to occupy her time.

He’d come back to their quarters after wandering the halls of the ship for a couple hours after lunch. Dr. Martin’s words had left him deep in thought and he ended up leaving the mess with his plate still half-full and his eyes wide open. He studied each person he passed in the halls, both crewmembers and passengers alike, and noticed the small things Dr. Martin had pointed out. The suspicious glances, the closed off way in which they avoided one another in the halls, even the way in which people always seemed to travel in clumped groups through the halls.

Most telling of all, however, was the silence.

Normally, a ship buzzed with the soft hum of movement and life. Conversations in the metal halls bounced, echoed, and carried down an entire passage. The movements of machines, of people, of animals even, created another layer of sound that mingled with the low conversation, creating something altogether new and different from either parent sound. The sliding of doors, the whirring, clicking, and beeping of people about their daily tasks, and the movement of air through the ship added a third note on top of that. It was as if the ship itself were breathing, pulsing with a lifeblood made up of the people who lived within it, like the sound of the wind rustling leaves in the forests back on Earth.

The corridors here were silent. Still. The calm of fear before a battle.

The realization of it, and the fact that he’d missed it up until this point, left him so ill he’d come back to his quarters and grabbed one of his mother’s books as a means of calming himself.

And now this.

Jaelyn stood and walked to the center of the room, not really knowing what it was he was doing until he’d fallen into the capoeira stance he practiced with his mother each night. He almost fell into the opening sequences, but stopped himself. That wasn’t what he needed right now.

His thoughts immediately went to the gardens even though Dr. Martin had given him the day off. He could still go there, but he didn’t think it would bring him the comfort he needed right then either.

“Ace, where’s my mother?”

“She’s in her ready room, though she is in a meeting and cannot be disturbed.” The computer’s voice was immediate and precise.

Of course she was.

The proximity alert for the door sounded. Jaelyn jumped despite himself. He almost told whoever it was to simply enter without question, then changed his mind. “Who’s at the door, Ace?”

“Commander Esquina.”

Commander Esquina, her mother’s executive officer. He’d spoken with the man a few times in passing, more so recently than before. He’d even been by their quarters a couple times to speak with his mother. Wait, Esquina…?

Jaelyn stepped up to the door and pushed the button next to it, forcing it to open. Commander Esquina stood framed in the doorway, the stronger lights of the corridor behind him casting his face and body into shadows.

“Commander?” Jaelyn said.

“Hello, I – ” For half a moment, the commander seemed at a loss for words, his hand waving in a decidedly vague gesture. Then his back straightened and he tugged on the front of his blue-grey uniform as if to straighten it. “Your mother requested that I join you here until after her current meeting is through, then we are to meet her at her ready room. By your leave then, sir?”

Jaelyn nodded and stepped aside. A small voice in the back of his mind that sounded remarkably like his mother snapped at him for letting a “stranger” into his room, but he pushed it aside. His mother had let the man in several times. She’d never done that with anyone else that he could recall.

“Thank you, young sir,” Commander Esquina said as he stepped into the room and the door slid shut behind him.

“Do you want to sit?” Jaelyn asked. “I think we’ve got some drinks or some food or something if you want.”

Commander Esquina nodded, though Jaelyn wasn’t sure to which offer, and walked over to the couch. Jaelyn turned toward the small kitchenette, then back to Commander Esquina, opening his mouth to clarify, then snapped it shut again. He wasn’t good with social situations.

“Is that a book? An actual book?” Commander Esquina’s voice dripped with surprise.

Jaelyn almost sighed with relief. He seized on the question, looking up from his twiddling fingers in time to see Commander Esquina bend over and pick up the book he’d let fall to the floor earlier. The tall young man flipped it over in his hands to look at the cover, hands surprisingly gentle on the cracking leather cover.

“Les Misérables?” Commander Esquina’s voice was a mixture of surprise and respect, though the look he gave Jaelyn was a quizzical one. “That’s pretty heavy reading.”

Jaelyn shrugged, though he felt a flash of annoyance course through him. Would people ever stop commenting about him not fitting into their mold of “normal” for his age? “It’s my mother’s. She says that hanging onto relics of the past can ground us in the present.”

Commander Esquina nodded, a hint of sorrow creeping across his face as the set of his eyes narrowed ever so slightly and the muscles of his jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. “My father says – used to say something very similar. He and your mother served together in the late war.”

Jaelyn shifted uncomfortably, the question dancing on the tip of his tongue for the space of two long breaths. Commander Esquina must have seen Jaelyn’s discomfort because he shook his head and blew out a long sigh.

“Yes, that Esquina. My apologies for becoming maudlin. I thought I’d left it all behind, but apparently some connections run deeper than distance.”

Jaelyn met the man’s eyes. “You got to know your father, at least. I never met mine and I still find myself thinking about him sometimes, wondering who he was or why he did what he did to my mother.”

Commander Esquina looked at him with what Jaelyn took to be a mix of surprise and annoyance, mouth slightly open as if he’d been about to say something, but stopped partway there. The man held the expression for long enough that Jaelyn started to squirm under the scrutiny. In retrospect, what he’d said didn’t sound exactly how he’d meant it, but he had meant it as a helpful comment, rather than a chastisement. Still, communication was more about how people took what was said, rather than how it was meant. Jaelyn tensed, ready to spring away if necessary.

Commander Esquina started laughing. Jaelyn watched in confusion as the man laughed for almost a minute, tears filling his eyes. Jaelyn took a few steps away from him.

“Are you alright?” Jaelyn asked, not bothering to hide his confusion. Had the man cracked? Some people did when exposed to long periods of space travel. The confines of a ship were only so expansive. Some people buckled under the restriction of it all, of the thought of all that space on the other side of a ship’s wall, ready to boil their blood in seconds, and suck out their air.

“You definitely inherited your mother’s directness,” Commander Esquina said, holding up a hand. “Thank you. I needed that.”

Jaelyn gave the man an awkward smile, still not understanding. “Are you ok?”

Commander Esquina smiled and wiped at his eyes with one hand. “I’m fine now, thank you. I promise, I’m ok.” He coughed and shook his hand out, flipping little beads of moisture onto the couch. “Your mother tells me you enjoy plants and growing things. I’ve never been able to grow so much as a flower.”

Jaelyn shrugged, though inside his mind raced. It wasn’t like his mother to talk to other people about him. She, well, she was a bit overprotective at times. Some might even call her paranoid in some regards. Trust never came quickly with her, or ever, for that matter. If she was talking about him to Commander Esquina, she clearly trusted him as much as she trusted anyone. That realization made him wonder why she’d never really talked much about Commander Esquina with him. Did she, perhaps, not trust her own son? Jaelyn didn’t know what to think about that.

“Jaelyn?”

Jaelyn looked up, pulled from his thoughts by the quiet earnestness in the commander’s voice.

“Hmm?” Jaelyn asked.

“Are you alright? You seemed lost in thought just then.”

“Fine. I’m fine. Just remembering that I’d forgotten to check on the southern fields down on the garden level earlier today.” The lie was simple enough. He had actually forgotten to do just that, but he’d remembered earlier and rectified the situation.

Commander Esquina smiled, and it was a warm, welcoming one that immediately made Jaelyn feel at ease. Again. “I think Dr. Martin will forgive you. She seems a decent enough woman.”

“She’s a genius with plants.”

“You’d know that better than I. I just – ” Commander Esquina cut off as Ace’s voice chimed from the man’s wristband.

“Commander, security requests your presence in the mess. There’s been an incident.”

Nathan forced himself not to turn his brisk walk into a run, though his boots made loud echoes off the metal floor and corridor walls that worked in time with the much softer, muted thumps of Jaelyn’s footfalls. The boy – no, young man – walked alongside him, keeping close. Amara had been very specific in her instructions to remain close to her son until the aftereffects of the…of the transmission could be ascertained and contained. That meant he had to come along.

Despite the echoing retort of their steps, silence hung heavy between them. The air was thick with it, which was never a good sign aboard a ship. Even through the wash of conflicting emotions running through him, Nathan could feel the thick weight of the ship, the collective tension of its many occupants. It was…well, it only made Nathan want to break into a run all the more.

A pair of security personnel met him in front of the doors to the mess hall. Armed security personnel. Trepidation mingled with the other emotions within him and made his hands tingle as if circulation were returning after long disuse.

“Sir,” one of them said, “I don’t know how it happened. I mean, here, aboard our ship?”

“How what happened?” Nathan let some of his frustration slip into his voice, allowing it to snap a bit.

The man shifted his grip on his concussion rifle, knuckles immediately going white as his grip tightened.

What happened? Nathan felt his mouth go dry, though he was able to push down the surge of—was it anxiety or fear—that surged through him.

“It’ll be best if you just see for yourself, sir,” the other security officer said. He seemed a little more in control of himself than his companion, standing with the proper erect posture, holding his weapon in a firm, yet relaxed grip, and even snapping Nathan a quick salute as he spoke, which Nathan returned.

“Stay close, Jaelyn.” Nathan said, stepping around the two security officers and pushing into the room.

“Sir,” the calmer guard said, “maybe it might be best if he stays outside with one of us.”

“He stays with me.” Nathan didn’t slow as he replied to the guard over his shoulder.

The smell hit him first, before Nathan was even able to take in the sight before him. The mixed scent of viscera and blood, the smell of fear, rage, and pain. The smell of war. A hint of memory flickered through Nathan’s consciousness, but he pushed it back as he stepped deeper into the room.

Tables and chairs had been flung about or thrown into piles to act as barricades for those huddled behind. Various figures could be made out behind the barricades, peering out from gaps in the furniture. Blood stained the floor around bodies that, for a moment of distilled stillness and shock, Nathan thought were dead, until they moaned or stirred. Armed security personnel stood in the center of the room, weapons pointed outward at three such barriers. The musty smell of blood lay sharp and pungent in the air, like the perfume of the damned. Beside him, Jaelyn made a small sound that hovered halfway between a gasp and a cry of protest and then sucked in a sharp breath.

Memory flashed through Nathan’s mind, recollections of a day and time he’d rather have left forgotten, a time of battles, the cries of the wounded dying, just like those around him now. By reflex, Nathan reached for a weapon, something he could at least use to defend himself and the boy, then remembered where he was and stilled his hand.

How did this happen?

He knew, really, what had sparked it. The damnable Council had saddled Amara with their problems. They’d known this was a possibility. It was like handing a loaded gun to a toddler. Nathan suppressed his anger and put a hand on Jaelyn’s shoulder, giving it a squeeze.

As they stepped forward, Nathan began to pick out raised voices coming from several different directions. Commander Chalmers noticed Nathan and Jaelyn as they approached and met them between two of the barricades, her concussion rifle steady. The large weapon looked unwieldy in her small hands, but it never wavered from its mark. Nathan did his best to shut out the low murmurs of pain and fear buzzing in the air around him.

“What happened?” Nathan let his voice be hard, though calm. He felt like shivering, like shutting his eyes and ears against the scene of carnage around him, the scene of a war he thought had been over. Or hoped had been over. Had it ever really been?

Commander Chalmers grimaced. “That damn transmission, sir. I’m not sure how it all started, exactly, but when I got here, they were all at each other’s throats. Literally, in some cases.”

“I can see that.”

Commander Chalmers glanced over at Jaelyn and then looked back at Nathan, the question clear in her eyes even if she didn’t say anything.

Nathan ignored the question. “Is medical on the way?”

“Called them the same time as yourself, sir. Three seriously injured, half a dozen minor wounds, who knows what else behind the barricades. Would’ve been much worse if not for her. She quieted ‘em down after things got violent.” Commander Chalmers nodded behind her.

Nathan looked in that direction, noticing a figure approaching.

“Dr. Martin?” Jaelyn said.

Nathan recognized the woman as she approached and berated himself for not recognizing her sooner. As the department head for the Sciences division, she was in most every bureaucratic meeting they had. She walked up to them now, looking far wearier and older than she ever had before. Her normally well-kept greying hair lay in a haphazard array about her face, which was itself covered in a thin layer of grime marked with blood from a cut above her eye. Her uniform, a simple one-piece jumpsuit affair that made it easier for her to work in the gardens below, was ripped along one sleeve and was bloodstained as well, though Nathan couldn’t tell if the blood was hers.

“What are you doing here, Jaelyn?” Nathan recognized the tone of her voice, the resignation. It was the same sound every soldier’s voice had held during the war.

“He’s with me,” Nathan said. “Can you tell me what happened here, Dr. Martin?”

Dr. Martin didn’t look away from Jaelyn for a long moment, but when she finally did, she met Nathan’s gaze and nodded slightly. Before she could speak, however, someone shouted out from one of the barricades.

“I can tell you what happened,” a male voice shouted, “those racist pigs over there claimed it was a good thing our Comandante got killed. Said it was a blessing.”

“You lying little ingrate,” another voice Nathan recognized as belonging to Sheawn Olliard yelled from another of the barricades. “Your people were the reason the war started in the first place. Juan Andrade was a butcher. I saw his handiwork personally during the war.”

“And James King wasn’t?” another voice, one Nathan also vaguely recognized but couldn’t place, yelled from the third barricade.

“You little—” Sheawn shouted back, though the rest of his sentence was cut off as more shouting exploded from the various groups, overlapping with one another to the extent that Nathan couldn’t tell what was even being said at all. Something flew out from one of the barriers, striking and bouncing off the closest one and narrowly missing one of the security officers in the open space between them. Nathan moved without thinking, leaping in front of Jaelyn and shielding him with his body. Dr. Martin stepped in close as well, mouth twisted into a snarl. A bit of metal—it could have been part of a bench at one point—clanged off the metal floor only a foot away. One end glistened with a red wetness. Behind Nathan, Jaelyn made retching noises.

Commander Chalmers snapped off a shot.

As with all concussion rifles, it didn’t make a sound from the shot itself since it was simply a high frequency pulse directed in a somewhat narrow field, but when it struck one of the metal tables, it rang with such force that Nathan had to fight the urge to cover his ears. The people hidden within that barricade cried out in obvious pain.

“Now, now, folks,” Commander Chalmers said, voice ringing in the sudden silence, “let’s not start all this up again. Don’t you think you’ve done enough fighting?”

Nathan moved before he’d fully formed the decision to do so. He stepped up and put a hand on Commander Chalmers’s shoulder and she fell silent. He walked to the center of the three barricades, motioning for the security officers to step away. Dr. Martin shifted closer to Jaelyn, putting an arm around the young man’s shoulder. Holly stayed close to them both.

“You all know who I am,” Nathan said, pitching his voice so it would carry. “I’m the executive officer of this ship, Commander Nathan Esquina, and one of the men who was killed was my father.”

Silence filled the room. Nathan took a deep breath, pushing down the emotions that welled up within him. A murmur rose up from one of the barricades, but was immediately quelled by a shout from one of the security officers. Despite his efforts to contain them, anger, frustration, and pain flooded Nathan, coloring his words with a somber and powerful timbre.

“I have more right than any of you to be upset, to be angry, to want to rain destruction down on those who killed my father. But I can’t. I won’t. No one who did that is here.” Nathan swallowed hard and balled his hands into fists. “I came on this trip knowing I would never see Earth again, knowing I may not even see our destination. What happened during the war has no place here. No one who did any of that is here.”

Nathan turned as he spoke, making sure he faced each of the barricades in turn. He distantly heard one of the side doors open behind him, but didn’t turn to see who was entering.

“I don’t care what started this, or who started this. It ends now. There are wounded men here, your friends, your fellow colonists. Haven’t you seen enough bloodshed? Haven’t you watched enough of your friends, family, and countrymen dying before your eyes and been unable to do anything about it? Are you afraid to help them now, cowering there behind your walls?”

Nathan felt his expression harden and the trio of emotions within him merged into an iron-hard fury.

“Now, you’ll come out from behind those barricades and help the medical staff see to them, and anyone else that’s hurt, and then report to the brig, or I swear to God in Heaven I’ll have every last one of you jettisoned out the airlock.” Nathan bit off the last word, making it into a snarl.

It hung there in the air, defying the silence for a long, long time. Then, slowly, as if the people hidden within the barricades were somehow afraid to break the silence, tables shifted aside and men and women shuffled out, eyes downcast, moving immediately toward the fallen. Medical staff in white and blue uniforms appeared among them, directing the work.

“Holly,” Nathan said softly, not looking away from the working men and women, “If anything starts, stun them, and drag them to the brig.”

“Gladly, sir.” Commander Chalmers’s response was immediate.

Nathan nodded and turned on his heel, executing a perfect military about-face. He noticed Dr. Martin standing next to Jaelyn and was only mildly surprised to see Amara standing on the other side of her son, tall and perfectly austere in her pristine captain’s uniform. Her eyes followed him though. Behind her, almost two dozen security personnel stood with concussion rifles trained on the working groups.

“That was quite the threat, Commander,” Dr. Martin said, blandly.

Nathan kept his still shaking fists clenched at his sides.

“It wasn’t a threat,” Nathan said, then strode from the room without looking back.

“Well, that was surely a surprising day, to say the least,” Dr. Martin said, walking alongside Jaelyn in the direction of the gardens.

“That’s one way of describing it, I guess,” Jaelyn said. He suppressed a shiver as he walked, remembering the state of the mess hall and the smell of it all. Bile welled up in his throat and he had to swallow to keep it down. After Dr. Martin’s wounds had been seen to, they’d both been ushered out of the room, Jaelyn’s mother leaving him in Dr. Martin’s care.

“How would you describe it?” Dr. Martin asked, tone rueful.

“A nightmare rearing its head up from the depths of hell.”

Dr. Martin chuckled wearily. “Accurate. Fair enough, we’ll go with yours.”

“You sound tired.”

“Well, as you say, I just lived through ‘a nightmare rearing its head up from the depths of hell.’” Dr. Martin’s voice was wry, though the weariness remained. Medical staff had cleaned off the blood and put a bandage on the cut on her head, but she’d refused any other treatment.

“Fair enough. Your friend, Sheawn, was with one of the groups, wasn’t he? I think I saw him there.”

“The fool. A couple weeks in the brig will do him good.”

Jaelyn almost stumbled at the sudden harshness in her voice. He’d grown close to Dr. Martin over the last months, closer than he was to just about anyone else he’d ever known. She was usually so calm, so in control of her emotions. So much the rock upon which Jaelyn had come to rely when his mother’s stresses and frustrations with being captain spilled out into their daily life. A nightmare indeed.

“I…I…” Jaelyn paused and swallowed again, stopping in place to suppress a shiver. “What happened?”

Dr. Martin stopped and turned back to him, a look of concern on her grandmotherly features. She put a hand on his shoulder. They were alone in the corridor, though Dr. Martin still looked around rather ostensibly before leaning down so they were eye level with one another.

“Human nature happened, Jaelyn,” she said, putting one hand on each of his shoulders. “Human nature. Fear leads to outward expressions of anger, which is at the heart of fear. Even our stalwart executive officer lashed out in response to his own fear and grief. Granted, he channeled his rather well, but it’s the same thing. It’s like we talked about earlier, people cling to what they had before, even if they don’t have it anymore.”

Jaelyn felt himself starting to shake, but didn’t know how to stop it. He felt ill, nauseated, cold, and weak, all at the same time. His mind kept replaying images of the still forms on the ground and the spatters of blood throughout the room. They hadn’t bothered him initially. Why were they nagging him now?

“Hey, now, it’s ok. It’s settled now. They’ve got it all under control.” The concern in Dr. Martin’s voice was almost palpable. One of her hands lifted from his shoulder and briefly settled on his forehead, as if she were checking for fever.

All that blood.

She pulled him into a hug and Nathan welcomed the warmth and closeness of it. It felt safe. Secure. His tensions eased, troubled mind slipping into calmer thoughts as he returned the embrace.

“Come on,” Dr. Martin said, stepping back from the hug and straightening. “Let’s go down and plant those grape shoots we hybridized. How does that sound?”

Jaelyn swallowed hard and focused on the thought, blinking back tears that had welled in his eyes and clouded his vision.

“I’d like that.” He said with a wan little smile.

An hour or so later, Jaelyn looked up from his work as one of the doors slid open with a hiss. Dr. Martin had excused herself a few minutes earlier to deal with some minor issues in another section of the gardens. As usual, Jaelyn didn’t mind working by himself, but he had come to enjoy Dr. Martin’s stalwart presence, and especially after the day’s events, it had been a comfort to him. His thoughts lingered on the violence he’d witnessed earlier that day, the blood, and the death. It was – well, it was the most horrible thing he’d seen in his life so far. He wasn’t sure he’d soon forget any of it.

A young woman who looked like she was from the Asiatic Coalition strode into the room, walking along the catwalk a dozen meters or so above Jaelyn toward a particularly dense section of trees. Jaelyn frowned slightly, but didn’t say anything. It wasn’t unusual for passengers to wander through the gardens. In fact, much of the garden area above the soil boxes had been built with benches set up every few meters specifically for the occasional visitor.

What was odd, however, was the hour. It was well after the time most passengers would be in bed, hours into their dreams. Jaelyn himself was beyond tired, bordering on exhaustion, but couldn’t bring himself to face the images that he knew would come to him in the darkness. And, it was a young woman alone. Jaelyn only vaguely recognized her, though couldn’t place either her name or where he’d seen her before.

The girl walked past where Jaelyn worked without looking down at him, walking to a bench near one of the only windows in the place. Setting her back to the window, the girl took a seat facing a stand of conifers that grew near the center of the room. Jaelyn watched her with absent interest for a few moments before returning to his work pruning some of the smaller shrubs.

“My dad says we’re going to end up turning around before we get to the new planet.” Jaelyn looked up at the sound of the voice. He looked toward the girl sitting on the bench above, his lips already forming a response, but then realized she wasn’t even looking in his direction. “I don’t suppose that would be too bad, would it? I mean, all my friends are there still.”

Jaelyn frowned. Was she talking to herself?

“I did say goodbye to them all, but it can be like a surprise, right? ‘Hey, you remember that time I said I was leaving all you behind to go to a new world because this one sucks? Yeah, I was just kidding.’ Sounds like a good plan to me.”

Jaelyn felt the corner of his mouth twitch toward a grin. That would be an interesting conversation. If it happened, which it wouldn’t. Would it? He wasn’t entirely sure anymore. The ship was teetering on the brink of something.

“On the other hand,” the girl continued, gesturing at the trees before her. Was she talking to a tree? “Who wants to grow old inside the confines of this old ship? I mean, forty-something more years? Which is the worse nightmare?”

“They both sound pretty bad,” Jaelyn said before he realized he was even talking.

His gaze darted upward toward the catwalk. The girl peered down at him curiously, regarding him with almond-shaped eyes that looked a dark, dark blue or possibly black. Her ebony hair cascaded over her face as she looked down over one shoulder at him. Jaelyn licked his lips, oddly nervous. The girl smiled.

“You’re not wrong,” she said. “But I believe I asked which would be worse.”

Jaelyn gave her a slight bow in the form of an exaggerated nod. Her smile widened.

“I haven’t seen you around here before,” the girl continued, her voice lilting with an accent Jaelyn couldn’t quite place and which he hadn’t noticed before when her tone had been more musing than conversational. “Do you help out here often?”

“I’m the head apprentice to Dr. Martin,” Jaelyn said, “and I don’t really recall seeing you around here much, either.”

The girl frowned and got to her feet, then walked over to the catwalk’s railing and peered down over the edge at him. She squinted, revealing small dimples on her cheeks in her otherwise perfectly oval face.

“No, I definitely don’t recall seeing you here. The head apprentice, you say? I’m here most every night. I come talk to the trees. They remind me of home.”

Jaelyn smiled in sudden understanding. “That would explain it then. I generally don’t work any of the night shifts. Not that we can call it night, really. We’re in space, after all, and…” Jaelyn trailed off as the girl gave him a flat look which included both a raised eyebrow and a glare at the same time. Even looking at her, Jaelyn wasn’t sure how she’d accomplished it. Presently, she looked away, turning back to the tree.

“So, you miss it too, don’t you?” the girl said.

“Miss what?”

“Earth. The green. Plants. Life.” The way she said it, Jaelyn didn’t have to see her face to notice the eye roll.

Jaelyn shrugged, feeling dumb. Was he really having a conversation with a strange girl while she sat fifteen feet above him staring at a tree?

“I didn’t really spend much time on Earth.”

“Spacer?”

“Not at all. My mom was in the Fleet, but I was born on Earth.”

The girl was silent for a long moment and Jaelyn wondered if the conversation was over. Oddly, he found himself slightly saddened by the thought. He shrugged again and moved to return to his work when the girl spoke again.

“So, you’re him, huh?”

What was with her way of asking such vague questions? “Him who?”

“The captain’s son.”

“Jaelyn Corrin,” he said. He looked up and noticed the girl was looking down at him from almost directly overhead. When had she moved? He smiled and nodded at her, making it almost a small bow.

“Kathryn.” She nodded at him and then frowned, her eyes meeting his with an intensity that Jaelyn found uncomfortable. “So, what is she going to do? Your mother? Are we going back, or not?”

“I don’t know. She doesn’t talk about that sort of thing with me.”

The girl made a face. “Well, I hope she’s as strong as the stories say.”

“You want to keep going, then, to the new planet? I thought you wanted to go back to your friends. Didn’t you say they were both bad choices?”

The girl rolled her eyes. “I wasn’t serious.”

Jaelyn shifted his weight from one foot to the other, not saying anything. He wasn’t sure what else there was to say. Eventually the girl sighed, then yawned and waved one hand down at him as she turned away.

“Good luck, Jaelyn Corrin,” she said over her shoulder. “Come what may. Maybe I’ll see you around.”

She was gone in a moment, the door sliding closed behind her. Jaelyn looked after her for what seemed an eternity, watching the door and thinking over both what she and Dr. Martin had said. They seemed at odds with one another, but, at the same time, very similar. What was going on? How would his mother handle this?

With a sigh, Jaelyn pushed the thoughts down and returned to work, but his movements were slower now, his worries refusing to be tamed.

Amara leaned against the doorframe, peering into the darkened room and, for perhaps the first time in her life that she could remember, felt unsure how to proceed. Stars streaked by through the window on the far side of the room, their soft incandescence the only light falling across the silent form that sat at a desk near the window. The silent form of Commander Nathan Esquina.

She wasn’t sure how she felt about the man in that precise moment. Oh, she definitely had feelings, ones that would have landed them both court-martialed in a regular military unit, but right now those emotions mixed with a smoldering anger. He’d taken her son into that hell hole in the mess. He’d then gone and put himself, unarmed, into the middle of the three groups, and lectured them. Amara was sure she would have been even angrier if it hadn’t worked. The nerve it must have taken, the anger, the passion…the pain. She felt like smacking him upside the head. Or kissing him. Probably both.

“I’m sorry, Amara.”

Nathan’s voice was almost a whisper, though Amara heard it easily enough. The room wasn’t that big after all. A simple, rather spartan affair. They weren’t even his quarters. It had taken her far longer than was necessary to find him after she’d seen to the clean-up in the mess. Somehow, he’d disabled his wristband locator chip, which had made finding him a matter of asking around and hunting him out the old-fashioned way. Disabling a wristband wasn’t supposed to be possible, but he’d managed it somehow. Maybe she really should have made him the chief engineer.

“Sorry for what?”

Nathan didn’t answer. Amara wasn’t sure if he intentionally remained silent or if he hadn’t heard her. She stepped into the room, letting the door slide shut behind her.

“Sorry, for what, Commander?”

Nathan shifted in the chair, turning his head to look in her direction. She could only make him out in profile, his silhouette outlined by the backdrop of passing stars.

“He’s really gone, isn’t he?” Nathan said.

That wasn’t the question she’d asked, but she’d seen enough soldier’s reactions to death to recognize where his thoughts were lingering.

“He’s really gone,” she said. She took a step closer to him. “I’m sorry, Nathan.”

She saw his head move up and down and recognized him nodding.

“I thought I’d dealt with this already. This is a one-way trip, after all. I left him behind. He was too attached to the world he’d just helped conquer. He’d fought too long and hard to unite it to leave it behind.” His voice trailed off.

Amara stepped closer. “He would have been proud of you today, with what you did in the mess hall.” Why was she saying that? Part of her wanted to berate him for his foolishness, but she knew what she said was true. She’d spent far too long under the late admiral’s command to not know the truth of it. “He always believed in directness and absolutes.”

“I know.”

“I’m glad you came, Nathan.” Amara stepped closer, stopping only a few inches from him.

“I believe in this mission, Amara. I believe in the cause. I wouldn’t have come on this voyage if I didn’t believe, whole-heartedly, that this was the only way to start fresh. Humanity reforms itself on a new world. A better humanity not doomed to repeat its past.” He sniffed and swallowed, the sound a hollow click in the darkness. “But maybe we’re not meant to leave Earth. These people won’t leave it behind if I can’t even do it. Maybe we should just go back. Maybe…I don’t know.” He leaned his head down, forehead coming to rest against her sternum.

Amara’s heart pounded in her chest. She raised one hand up to the back of his neck, leaving it there. The other she rested against the side of his head in an awkward sort of embrace.

“I know.” She said softly, fingers wrapping into his hair.

“I’m sorry,” Nathan said, and wept, his hands coming up to meet hers and his fingers intertwining with her own.

Amara held him there, long into the night.

Amara sat in her room, waiting for the doctor and her intern to return. The contents of her stomach seemed to flutter, reflecting the nervous tension she felt. So much was going on right now. Her ship, the colonial voyage itself, was fit to implode, and they were only a year into the trip. How were they going to survive forty-three more years?

They were going to pass out of range of the transmission network soon, and that would help, but the seeds of those earlier missives had already taken firm root. True, there did seem to be a small group of individuals that were devoted to the mission itself and were working to build bridges between the factions, but they were few and far between.

She blew out a long breath and cleared her mind, realizing she was allowing her thoughts to wander. Where had her stern rigidity gone? Where was the military decorum, the sense of duty and iron-hard will? Still there, likely, just covered now in a layer of pragmatism. This was far from a military mission. If it had been, Amara would have court-martialed the dissenters and left them on some asteroid prison in the Keiper Belt months ago.

The proximity alert on her door sounded.

“Enter.”

The doctor, a tall, thin woman who looked far too young to be a medical professional and whose name Amara could never remember, walked in. Her intern was noticeably absent. The woman walked over to where Amara sat on the low couch and took a seat next to her, one hand wrapped around a small rectangular container of some sort.

“Well, Captain,” the doctor said with a pert smile. “Congratulations are in order, I think. You’re pregnant.”

Amara sucked in a breath. She’d suspected, known even, but hearing it confirmed was still a small shock to her system. A swelter of emotions made war in her chest, though she did her best not to let any of it creep into her expression.

“I trust I can count on your discretion in this matter, Doctor,” Amara said, licking her lips.

The doctor inclined her head. “I ran the test myself and logged the results under my personal records. They’re all locked under my password and voice control. No one can access them but me.”

“Thank you.”

The doctor nodded again. “Doctor patient confidentiality actually means something to some of us, Captain. Not all of us are as accustomed to the lack of privacy that comes with being in the military as you are.” She lifted the container she held and proffered it in Amara’s direction. “Here. These are some pre-natal vitamins and something to help with the nausea. There’s nothing I can do about your stomach starting to show, but I can at least help you maintain a little dignity. It wouldn’t behoove a captain to have to run from the Command Bubble to go throw up.”

Amara gave her a grateful smile. No, it most certainly wouldn’t do to have her running off like that. Or showing weakness of any sort right now. She took the container, placing it on her lap.

“You haven’t asked who the father is,” Amara said.

The doctor got to her feet with a small smile. “It’s none of my business how you spend your free time, Captain.” She turned to leave, then hesitated at the door and turned halfway back around. “Whoever he is, I’m glad you have him. Being captain is a lonely, solitary thing sometimes, I’m sure. Especially here.”

“Thank you, Doctor.”

The doctor smiled and left.

Amara leaned her head back against the DuraGlass window, feeling the cool of empty space bleed through the foot-thick barrier. Pregnant.

How could she bring a baby into this mess? A wash of emotions filled her, battling with one another. She was thrilled, that wasn’t in question at all. Despite their age difference and the impropriety of it all, she’d come to love Nathan more than she’d ever thought possible. He was earnest, gentle, and kind. What was more, he complimented her stern practicality with a stolid optimism and earnest vulnerability that always made her want to do more and be better. Not that she’d ever admit that to him aloud. She didn’t need him thinking he’d got the upper hand in their relationship, after all. She was still the captain. She had to keep outranking him somehow.

But beneath that happiness, fear swam in the darkness, like an enemy ship shrouded in the shadow of a nearby planet. Her relationship with Nathan was secret. Sacred. The one bit of privacy she’d allowed herself aboard this mission. This would shatter that, one way or another. And how would Jaelyn react? It was all she could do to keep it from him to begin with. After all, how many meetings did a captain have with her executive officer that lasted all night long and took place in the captain’s bedroom?

Beyond that, Amara knew the ship itself was primed and ready to explode. Old fears, biases, and alliances she’d hoped had been left behind were now stronger than ever. If the mounting tension boiled over, she’d have a mutiny on her hands, a riot aboard ship that she wasn’t sure she was equipped to handle. And they still had forty-three more years left to go.

Amara sighed and let one of her hands move up and rest on her stomach. She wasn’t far enough along to show yet, but all the same, she swore she could feel the little life pulsing within her. With her other hand, she picked up her datapad and pulled up an image of the planet to which they were headed. It didn’t have an official name yet, just a designation, P3X11A. About Earth-sized, but with fewer oceans, the planet looked as innocuous and innocent as any other image.

“You’ll need a name,” Amara said. “Sooner or later. Let’s just hope we all live to see you.”

“Make sure you space those trellises out far enough,” Jaelyn said, looking up at the other apprentices. “Place them too far away and the vines won’t be able to climb.”

Several of the apprentices grumbled softly to themselves, but made sure to shift their trellises a little closer to the plants.

“I don’t see why we have to do this by hand,” one of the girls muttered. “We’ve got machines that can do it.”

“We won’t have machines when we get where we’re going. Best learn how to do it by hand now so you don’t have to relearn it then,” Jaelyn said. The girl glowered at him and whispered something to her friend.

Jaelyn almost smiled. It amused him more than he would ever admit how much the other kids hated work. It was almost humorous enough to make him forget the last three months of tension and stress that had left the ship ready to burst at the seams, the inhabitants aboard primed and ready to burst into flame like dry wood in a fire. Almost.

“The shift is now over.” Ace’s computerized voice chimed from everyone’s wristbands at the same time.

At the same instant, the security guards who had been lurking in the shadows of a nearby corridor stepped forward to escort the other apprentices on to their next duty stations or else back to their rooms. The other apprentices left their equipment where it lay and formed into a rag-tag line, following the security guards from the room.

Yep, definitely just almost.

“Well,” Dr. Martin said, walking up to him from another direction, “best get this done and settled. Here, I’ll lend you a hand.”

Jaelyn shrugged. “I can handle it. Don’t the people from the mess hall incident get released today? I figured you’d want to be there when Sheawn gets out.”

Dr. Martin dusted off her hands and gave Jaelyn a wry smile, one which made the slight wrinkles deepen along one side of her face more than the other. “That’s thoughtful of you, but no. He dug his own grave this time. Let him climb his way out of it.”

Jaelyn wasn’t sure how to respond to that, so he switched topics. “I could definitely use the help, in that case.”

Dr. Martin smiled. “They probably didn’t do it right, anyway.”

Jaelyn returned her grin. “Probably not.”

They worked in silence for a few hours, straightening the trellises and planting the shoots so they’d grow the right way to make the trellises work. Over the time they’d been working together, they’d both grown used to the way the other worked, their process for getting things done. Talking was unnecessary, and Jaelyn liked that just fine. Even still, after the second hour passed without a word, Jaelyn couldn’t take the silence any longer.

“So, you suppose they’ll do anything for the anniversary?” he asked.

“Anniversary?” Dr. Martin didn’t look up from the shoot she was adjusting.

“Of when we left Earth. One year ago today. Colonial Prime’s birthday, if you will.”

Dr. Martin paused, looking thoughtful. “It is now? Well, there’s still forty-three more long, depressing years to go, Jaelyn. I doubt they’ll celebrate it.”

“Well, you didn’t have to go and make it all sad and depressing.” Jaelyn didn’t care if it sounded pouty. She’d crushed his budding ease with a single sentence. That was just rude.

“Realist.”

Jaelyn threw a clod of dirt at her.

The little clod of dark, rich earth struck her just as she turned, exploding on her chest and covering her in a fine, dark powder. A bit of the dirt landed on her nose and stuck there. Surprise followed by anger crossed across Dr. Martin’s features. Jaelyn wasn’t sure if he should apologize or just start laughing.

“Really, Jaelyn?”

Jaelyn couldn’t help himself. He started laughing, not bothering to even try and stop. Dr. Martin spluttered for half a moment, then started laughing herself.

The speakers crackled, the whistling trill of an Earthside communication sounding through the room.

The laughter cut off immediately. Jaelyn felt immediate dread spread through him as feedback blared through the speakers, like the sound of falling water.

“No!” Dr. Martin said, stepping close to Jaelyn and wrapping one hand around his forearm in a painfully tight grip.

A faint voice cut through the static and noise.

“…fallen. War has…” A sharp retort, like the snap of a whip or perhaps shattering glass cut through the voice. After a moment, the voice returned. “Help us! Anyone out there. The Council has fallen. Thousands have died. Factions are killing one another again. I – ” The sound came again and the voice cut off with a scream.

Dr. Martin’s grip on Jaelyn’s arm stiffened into iron. Silence stretched into the eternities. Even the sound of Jaelyn’s beating heart sounded like the thunderous roar of starship engines. The speakers crackled again and then another voice spoke.

“Unitatis Sangrinus forever!”

The speakers cut off abruptly and this time, Jaelyn was sure they wouldn’t come on again. No final whistling tone sounded, but it was as final and complete as any blaring call.

“Well,” Dr. Martin said in a low whisper, “damn. That complicates things. I’d half hoped they’d failed. I guess not.”

Jaelyn licked his lips and tried to turn, but her grip on his arm dissuaded any movement.

“Can I have my arm back?” he asked.

Dr. Martin didn’t release him. Instead, she stepped around in front of him. Jaelyn looked up at her, surprised to see anger, pain, and a raw, smoldering something in her eyes as she looked down at him. Jaelyn felt a cold shiver of fear work down his spine and come to rest in the pit of his stomach, like a great weighty stone.

“Dr. Martin?”

“I’m sorry, Jaelyn,” she said.

Before Jaelyn could even ask, the light vanished as something fell over his head and thick, calloused hands closed around his torso, squeezing him tight.

The conduit had clearly been severed. Sabotaged. Nathan wished it surprised him, but it simply didn’t. Not anymore. Not after four other similar incidents over the last week. He suspected they were all carried out either by the same individual, or at least by someone working with a group that had the same goal. Taken individually, none of the incidents amounted to much. Taken together, they would render the engines useless for anything other than minute adjustments to trajectory and velocity.

And it meant someone with access to engineering sections of the ship was behind it. No one else could have known how.

He sighed, and started back the way he had come, crawling back along the access tube at about half the speed he’d come in with. He could fix it himself, sure, but it wasn’t something outside the purview of a standard engineer. It would be better if Nathan let one of the regular engineering staff handle it. Nathan paused, struck by a sudden thought. Why had Li, the chief engineer, called him down here in the first place? Usually, the man waited as long as he possibly could to call Nathan. The man certainly had a stubborn streak when it came to admitting he needed help.

“Commander?” The voice came from his wristband, though it wasn’t the computer’s voice. Li must have gotten the communications network up and running again.

“Yes, Chief?”

“Everything alright in there?”

Nathan frowned. Li sounded agitated for some reason. Surely Nathan hadn’t taken that long to assess the damage, had he? Or maybe…

“Is everything alright out there, Chief?” Nathan asked. “Everything’s fine in here. Just standard maintenance wear and tear. I can fix it if you like.”

“Is…is that so, sir?” came the reply. “Um, no, I’ll have one of the men come by later to repair it.”

Nathan licked his lips, realization dawning in a moment of sudden clarity. Li had sabotaged the ship. Why? Why would he do that? Of all the people aboard the ship, aside from Amara, the chief engineer had been the closest thing Nathan had to a friend after his promotion to executive officer.

“Why?” The question came out before Nathan realized he’d spoken aloud.

No response came back through the wristband, instead, the access door behind Nathan opened. Nathan looked back, rolling onto his side, in time to see the barrel of a concussion rifle shoved into the narrow corridor.

Nathan reacted instinctively, slamming one hand against the wall and willing the power conduits hidden behind the thick metal paneling to overload. The lights in the corridor flickered for half an instant, then a panel further down the corridor burst outward in a shower of sparks. In the same moment, whoever was at the end of the corridor must have fired because the metal panel rang and suddenly shot back toward Nathan a moment before a muted wave of oppressive sound hit him.

Nathan rolled onto his stomach, head suddenly throbbing with confusion and pain. He blinked, ears ringing, unable to think through the pain and fog of his mind. He knew he’d been hit by a partial stunning blast and that should worry him, but he couldn’t recall why. Something struck him alongside the head and he felt warm liquid begin sliding down the side of his face.

Blood. Had he been cut?

He struggled forward, crawling out of a primal urge to flee rather than conscious decision. The lights flickered again and then went out, leaving him in near absolute darkness, except for the light streaming forward from behind him. An open doorway. That’s right, someone had shot at him. The electrical overload. He struggled forward. Blood dripped from his head onto his arms.

Someone seized him by the ankle. Nathan kicked out with his other foot and he felt something crunch. His pursuer shouted out in obvious pain, but Nathan only barely heard the sound over the ringing in his ears. Panic fueled his flight, making him crawl faster. His lungs burned from the effort of shuffling forward. Blood thundered through his veins and poured from the wound on his head. His thoughts seemed sluggish, slow to form, and remaining for a far shorter time than what Nathan thought was the normal amount. One thought lingered, however, overclouding all others.

What is happening? Run!

He continued forward. Eventually, he came to a door and he fumbled with the levers trying to get it open. After what seemed an eternity, the door popped open and Nathan all but slid out into the room beyond, collapsing onto the floor. Light made him blink, but it was a dim light, barely more than the soft glow of the stars. A storage room of some sort.

Amara.

The name came to him through the cloud and fog that made up the recesses of his mind. Amara. She was in danger if he was. Whatever else was going on, it was clear someone wanted him dead. Between that and the sabotages, it could mean only one thing.

Mutiny.

Nathan pushed himself up onto unsteady feet and stumbled toward the door.

Jaelyn groaned and strained against the cords which held his arms behind his back. They held tight, not moving so much as a hair’s width.

“I wouldn’t do that, Jaelyn,” Dr. Martin said, looking over at him from a few steps away. Sheawn and a number of other men Jaelyn didn’t know stood around her. They all had concussion rifles in hand and spoke in muted tones that nonetheless carried. They were taking over the ship.

Dr. Martin was in charge.

“Go to hell,” Jaelyn spat. Anger surged through him, anger and a deep, abiding sense of betrayal and pain. Dr. Martin was his friend, wasn’t she? She’d been on his side, on his mother’s side, on the right side of this all along, hadn’t she?

Sheawn chuckled. “Well, boy, I have to say, I’ve always admired your spirit. You would have made a good soldier. Pity you won’t make it that long.”

“Hush, Sheawn,” Dr. Martin said, raising a hand. The man quieted instantly. Dr. Martin walked over to where Jaelyn huddled against a wall, hunkering down to look him in the eye. She reached out a hand, as if to put it on his shoulder, but Jaelyn flinched away.

“Don’t touch me.”

Dr. Martin gave him a pained look, but pulled her hand back. “Don’t be like that, Jaelyn. This is only temporary. We only need you as leverage in negotiations with your mother. As long as she agrees to turn the ship around and grant us control, everything will be fine, alright?”

The absurdity of it forced Jaelyn to stop struggling. She couldn’t be serious, could she? “Turn the ship around? We’re a year out from Earth.”

“That we are, but a year from now, the war back on Earth will need reinforcements, and a surprise attack from the most advanced ships ever made could all but end the war. Permanently this time.”

Jaelyn’s mind spun. Dr. Martin was the last person he’d have suspected to be attached to any particular political faction. Why was she doing this? What possible reasons could she have? It just didn’t make any sense. Sheawn had been the one to act as if he couldn’t let go of the past. He’d been the troublemaker, hadn’t he? Dr. Martin had stopped him so many times. Had she really been playing them all the entire time?

“Alex,” a woman Jaelyn didn’t know said, stepping up to her from behind, “two of the other ships report that they’ve been able to subdue the resistance on their vessels. We still have a few pockets of fighting aboard our ship, and we haven’t heard from engineering.”

Dr. Martin’s expression twisted into a grimace, though she didn’t stand. “And the other ships?”

“No word. They’re probably still fighting. We did manage to cut communications here so no one will pick up any transmission from them if their crew resists.”

“Very well. What about Captain Corrin?”

Jaelyn’s heart leapt into his throat.

“We have her surrounded in the Command Bubble. Surprisingly, she didn’t resist all that much, though she’s refusing to provide the commands necessary to adjust the ship’s course.”

Jaelyn swallowed hard. Of course his mother wasn’t giving up the codes.

“Why?” Jaelyn blurted. “Why are you doing this?”

The woman who’d delivered the report to Dr. Martin snorted, a look of contempt crossing her otherwise pretty features and making them appear somewhat hawkish in contrast. “To win the war, idiot,” she snapped.

Dr. Martin raised a hand and the woman quieted, stepping back to converse with Sheawn and the others in muted tones.

“Peace, Jaelyn. For peace, true and lasting.”

“The war was over! We had peace back on Earth. We had peace here. Until you went and did all this!”

Dr. Martin snorted. “Did all this? I didn’t really have to do much at all. A few comments here, a little there, let Sheawn appear as the scapegoat and instead let the missives from the Earth United Council do their work with the factions already here. People don’t let go of attachments that easily, Jaelyn. They don’t ever let go of them, not really.”

Jaelyn struggled into a sitting position, using the wall to push himself up. His hands snagged on something and he almost cried out, but instead grimaced and ran his fingers back over it. A protruding corner? Something sharp…

“We were headed to a new world,” Jaelyn said, struggling to keep calm mentally as a plan formed in the back of his mind. “A place without war. Why would you let everyone fight again when we could have been one strong, united people in our new home? Why do all this at all?”

“I had a sister, once,” Dr. Martin said. “Sheawn’s wife. She died at the hands of one of the men sitting on the Council. She died, believing in a world without war, hoping that someone would eventually win and unite Earth under singular leadership. Strength through unity, not compromise. The Council was a system built on compromise and filled with murderers, child killers, and rapists of hope and humanity. They didn’t deserve to rule. Why, Jaelyn? For my sister, that’s why. For justice. For family. For blood.”

“My mother will never give you what you want.”

Dr. Martin tilted her head and narrowed her eyes at Jaelyn. The boy felt his veins run cold with apprehension.

“Your mother is a woman of unparalleled strength, Jaelyn,” Dr. Martin said. “I can respect her for that, even if she represents everything that I despise. In one thing, though, we are the same, she and I. We will do anything to protect our family. Anything.”

With that, Dr. Martin stood up, turning her back on Jaelyn and walking back toward the others. “Sheawn,” she said. “Go to the Command Bubble and inform Captain Amara that we have her son. If she doesn’t provide the access code to change the fleet’s course within the next twenty minutes, we’ll jettison him out an airlock.”

Jaelyn’s blood turned to ice, a great chunk of it settling into the pit of his stomach. The frankness with which Dr. Martin said it struck him harder than anything. He recognized the tone. It was the same way she relayed facts about botany and horticulture, about things in which she was already an expert. A statement. A simple announcement of truth. Jaelyn had no doubt she meant every word.

“As you wish, Alex.” Sheawn nodded and turned to go, flanked by half a dozen others.

Jaelyn licked his lips and watched them leave, hands slowly working against the rough corner on which he’d snagged his skin. He had to escape, and he had to do it now. The fate of everyone on this ship potentially depended on it.

Amara spat blood onto the walkway between work stations in the Command Bubble, not caring in the slightest that she missed the edge of the path and her bloody spittle dropped a dozen feet to splatter against the Bubble’s glass. The body of one of her junior officers already rested there, lying up against one of the metal support shafts that ventilated the room.

“Now, Captain,” Amara’s attacker, a middle-aged man wearing the garb of a mess hall worker and clearly a member of Unitatis Sangrinus, said. “If you just give me the command codes, I can stop all this.”

The man gestured with a bloody-knuckled hand at the chaos in the room. Armed men and women ushered Amara’s command staff to different work stations, bunching them together in manageable groups. Those that resisted the mutineers were beaten into submission. After the one initial death, what fighting remained was easily subdued.

“Go to hell.” Amara spat the words, ignoring the throbbing pain in her cheek and the sharp stab of it from her split lip. She could live with pain. She’d done so before. Bound as she was, hands behind her back, she had to force him to keep hitting her in the face. She curled her knees up as much as she could, offering her stomach as much protection as possible. They’d taken her by surprise, not so badly that she couldn’t have still taken them, but she’d hesitated, unsure how to react with the child within her in such a new and delicate state. That hesitation had cost her.

Jaelyn. Nathan. Where were they? Her anxiety for one matched her fear for the other. She found she loved them both equally, and, somehow, that realization both comforted and terrified her.

“Hold!” a booming voice called out, as the mess hall worker lifted a fist to strike again. The man stopped with his fist raised, fresh blood staining his knuckles.

Sheawn Olliard walked over to Amara, the normal swagger she’d grown accustomed to seeing in his step completely absent, replaced by a cool confidence that was, somehow, far more disconcerting.

“You go to hell too, Admiral,” Amara said, straightening.

“I’ll see you there, Captain,” he said. “We veterans of the war, we all did things worthy of landing us in the bitterest fires of damnation.”

Amara retained her silence, but met the former admiral’s gaze without flinching. His eyes narrowed.

“I could have spared you all this, you know. I told you you’d come to regret not choosing me as your executive officer. Instead you had to go and put your hero’s son in charge. Not a smart move, on your part.”

“Not killing me when you had a chance wasn’t a smart move on your part,” Amara retorted.

Sheawn smiled. “All in good time, Captain. All in good time. First, we need those codes to unlock the computer.”

Amara spat in his face. Sheawn, for his credit, barely flinched. A second later, though, he simply raised his hand and backhanded her across the face. Only reflexes honed by decades of practice allowed Amara to roll away from the blow an instant before it struck. Still, it hit with enough power to knock her off her knees and onto her side, cheek throbbing just below her eye. Her vision blurred slightly, but she retained her silence, careful to force herself to roll onto her back and not onto her stomach.

“For that,” Sheawn said, standing and shaking the hand he’d struck her with, “I’ll personally break every bone in your son’s hand, in front of you, until you give me those codes.”

Amara’s blood ran cold.

Jaelyn.

She didn’t let her fear show on her face, instead rolling back onto her knees and matching his gaze again, chin up, back straight, expression cold as the steel floor beneath her. “And for that,” she said, “I promise that when you die, and you will, trust me, I’ll make it quick and painless.”

Sheawn arched a wide eyebrow, square-jawed face twisting into a small, disbelieving smile. “You’re welcome to try, anytime.”

Nathan struggled to still the ringing in his ears, heart pounding, adrenaline making his hands shake. His breath came in short wheezes, spittle mixed with blood flying from his lip on every other exhalation. He should have spent more time doing cardio at some point. If he lived through this, he’d have to rectify that. His mind worked slowly, as if he were trying to mentally slog through sand.

Mutiny.

Nathan blinked and tried to focus on that thought as he rushed down the long corridors of the engineering level. He knew being out in the open like this was dangerous. Part of him half wondered if Li would be appearing around the corner at any minute, some form of energy weapon ready to bring to bear against him.

Jackson Li, my friend…

How could he? Hadn’t they been friends? Nathan growled, spitting blood that had dripped down into his mouth from a cut just below his right eye. How could he tell friend from foe at all anymore? Was the mutiny widespread or just isolated to a small section of the passengers and crew? Could he risk trying to find that out?

He touched his wristband, mentally willing the computer’s tracking software to cease functioning. He should have done it earlier, but his mind wasn’t working as quickly as it should have. He needed to think, needed to figure something out.

“Ace.” Nathan was surprised at how raspy his voice sounded. He’d been in combat before, seen death, but somehow his body still didn’t handle it well. “Where are Amara and Jaelyn?”

“I do not have authority to provide that information. Location assistance has been locked down.”

Amara was the only one who could lock down the whole system. Was she safe?

“What’s the status of the ship? Are there known casualties?”

“I do not have authority to provide that information. Status and casualty reports have been locked down.”

The whole system then. Definitely Amara’s work. He needed a manual terminal. He could override the lockdown easily enough, but he needed something with a little more computing power. If he remembered right, there was a terminal in one of the storage rooms ahead of him. If he could –

A door slid open behind him.

“Freeze, Commander!” Li’s voice. He’d survived the explosion earlier.

Nathan froze where he stood, slowly turning around. Chief Engineer Jackson Li stood a half dozen meters behind him, leaning against a wall. Blood stained his engineer’s uniform, dripping down from innumerable lacerations on his face. It looked like his nose was shattered beyond repair, the flesh a lumpy, twisted mess beneath the blood. The right side of his face was blistered and burned, parts blackened and flaking away from the skin around it. Despite that, the concussion rifle in his hands was steady and pointed directly at Nathan’s heart. Nathan didn’t need to see the little red indicator on the side of the weapon to know it was set to kill, not stun.

“Jackson,” Nathan said, carefully. “What’s going on?”

“Don’t play stupid with me. You know exactly what’s happening. We’re taking over the ship, Commander.” The last word was said with a sneer, Li’s mouth twisting into a grimace at the end.

“Who’s we?”

“Unitatis Sangrinus, of course. Who else would we be? As we speak, Admiral Olliard and Dr. Martin are taking over the ship, readying us to return to Earth.”

Dr. Martin? That stunned Nathan as much as anything had up until then. Dr. Martin. Hadn’t she been the one calming the masses aboard ship? Hadn’t she fought with Sheawn Olliard on almost every topic? All an act. All…

“Jaelyn!” Nathan said, voicing his thought as soon as it entered his mind.

Li snorted, a sound that sounded wet and muted from the broken nose. Li winced and Nathan took that moment to take a quick step backward.

“Hold still!” Li snapped. “Move again and I’ll drop you where you stand.”

“If you were going to kill me, you would have done it already, instead of talking to me,” Nathan said, voice surprisingly calm of its own accord. Most men, when facing down the imminent threat of death, would have begged or pleaded for their lives. Nathan didn’t have a death wish, but he had realized the truth of his words as he spoke them. They needed something from him, or else he would be dead. That knowledge gave him leverage and leverage gave him power. It was one of his father’s favorite sayings.

Li nodded slightly. “Yes, you’re right. We do need you, but not badly enough that your death would hamper our plans overly much. Dr. Martin has the kid, so our beloved captain will turn over control of the ship eventually. The fleet will follow her lead.”

Nathan had to restrain himself. They had Jaelyn. Even though the boy wasn’t his, Nathan loved Amara as much as he loved anyone. Jaelyn was her son. Her flesh and blood. Nathan clenched his hands into fists at his side, careful to remain levelheaded and calm. At least on the outside.

“Why? We have an honest chance to start fresh on a new planet. Why go back? Why not just let go and move on to a new life? Why hold on to the past?”

“Why not? Our past shapes us. We owe it to our own histories to go back to Earth and finish the game that was started. Why start over when we can simply fix what was broken?”

“Where does that end, Jackson?” Nathan asked, mind racing to try and figure out how to get away. Anger had given him clarity of thought, the rage pushing back the lingering buzz until it became a distant, ignorable hum. “Where does it end?”

“For you,” Li said, “it ends here. Can’t have an Esquina rallying your late father’s followers now can we? I – ”

An explosion cut off the rest of Li’s words. Nathan dove to the side, even as he watched a spot of bright red color appear on Li’s chest, fresh blood spilling out over the older, darker stain already present there. Nathan landed hard on his left shoulder, but rolled despite the pain and got to his feet, eyes searching out a weapon, any weapon. The former chief engineer slowly sank to his knees, chin dropping onto his chest. The concussion rifle dropped out of suddenly limp fingers to clatter dully against the metal floor.

“Commander,” a heavily accented voice shouted. Rough hands wrapped around Nathan’s upper arm and lifted him to his feet. Nathan struggled, watching Li slump face-first onto the floor, then realized who was holding him.

“Master Chief Kuthar?” Nathan barely heard himself speak. How many more explosions could his hearing take before permanent damage was done?

The short Indian man nodded curtly, drawing an old-fashioned revolver from his belt. That must have been the explosion. A gunshot. In such a small, confined space, the sound of the revolver going off was amplified into a much louder, more pressing noise.

“What’s happening?” Nathan shouted.

“Mutiny, sir.”

Obviously.

“What’s the status of the ship? They have the captain in the Command Bubble and are trying to take over the ship.”

Master Chief Kuthar nodded. “I know. Commander Chalmers and I have parties throughout the ship taking it back from those that seized it.”

“I, what? How?”

“I notice things, as the master chief. I heard the whisperings and knew what to wait for. Most people on this ship came for a new life. They were willing to fight for it, when told of the situation.”

Nathan marveled, stunned. How had this man managed to do what he and Amara hadn’t? Why wasn’t he an officer? And, most importantly, what should they do now?

“Orders, sir?” Master Chief Kuthar asked.

“I should be asking you. I am in your debt, Master Chief.”

“I’m not doing this for you, sir. Even though I won’t live to see it, this mission brings hope for a better tomorrow for the next generation. I’m doing this for them. For the memory of my own children who never got that chance. Orders, sir?”

Nathan blinked, swallowing a lump in his throat.

“Get some men and secure the engines,” Nathan said, bending down and retrieving the concussion rifle. “Hold them and, if you can, have a party meet me at the portside entrance to the Command Bubble in half an hour. I’ll get the computer back up enough to get some communications working.”

“Yes, sir.” Master Chief Kuthar snapped off a quick salute and turned on a heel.

Nathan licked his lips, fingering the rifle. When all this was done, they’d have to figure out some way of thanking that man. For now, they had to take back the ship. The first thing he had to do, then, was take away the opposition’s leverage.

Jaelyn felt the cord begin to give, sweat mingling with blood and making his hands slick. Though he couldn’t see them, he knew his wrists were torn and raw, skin lacerated by the pressure of the cords against it. He watched the ebb and flow of people coming into the room. What seemed like dozens of them, reporting in from every section of the ship. Dr. Martin was at the heart of it all.

Traitor!

The thought burned through Jaelyn’s mind on a wave of anger, bitterness, and rage. He’d trusted her. He’d liked her. He’d…he’d been a fool. He could see it now, in retrospect; how easily she’d set herself up to be in this position now. Ingratiating herself to the captain by siding against Sheawn during public meetings, and again in front of Jaelyn himself. Pretending to be Jaelyn’s friend, just to get the ever-distrustful Amara to allow her to get close to him. He was a pawn in a massive, living chess game. Simply a piece to be moved.

The cord snapped, giving way so suddenly Jaelyn wasn’t prepared for it. He lurched forward, then righted himself as quickly as he could, clasping his hands back together behind his back. Dr. Martin must have noticed the movement out of the corner of her eye. She looked over at him, frowning. Jaelyn looked away, holding his breath and willing her to look away.

Don’t come over here. Don’t come…

Wait. Maybe he did want her to come over. He looked up, meeting Dr. Martin’s cool green-blue eyes.

“You were my hero, you know,” he said, letting a large measure of honest bitterness turn his words into a close approximation of a sneer. “Traitor.”

Dr. Martin’s face clouded and she broke off the conversation she was having with a pair of middle-aged men carrying concussion rifles. She strode over to him and, just as before, hunkered down before him, her face only a few feet away from his.

“Traitor, Jaelyn? It’s your mother who’s the traitor. The great war hero, savior of the world. She turned her back on the war, leaving it behind to lesser men and women. She could have been the face of the new world order. She could have been the greatest military threat against any opposition. But she left it all behind. Why?” Dr. Martin leaned closer. “For you, Jaelyn. She wanted you to have a better life.”

“She’s a better person than you’ll ever be,” Jaelyn whispered.

“What?” Dr. Martin leaned closer.

Jaelyn struck, years of his mother’s constant training taking over. He whipped his head forward as hard and as fast as he could. His forehead connected with the bridge of Dr. Martin’s nose. He felt it shatter beneath his forehead and then intense pain shot through his head. He squeezed his eyes shut as his vision blurred, but struggled to his feet, hands flying forward to shove Dr. Martin, who was cursing between screams of pain, before running for the door. He wobbled slightly as he ran, his eyes watering with pain and his head throbbing with the beginning of a contact headache, but he made it to the door in less than the time it took to draw two breaths. It slid open and he slipped out into the hall a split second ahead of the sudden shouts from the stunned witnesses he’d just left behind.

He didn’t look back, bolting down empty corridors as fast as he could. His booted footfalls echoed off the metal walls, announcing his presence to anyone who may have been listening, but he didn’t care. He simply ran. He heard the sound of pursuit within only a few short moments, but by then he’d put a decent distance between himself and the gardens. He turned left, then darted right again as soon as he was able, hoping to throw his pursuers off. He was in good shape, so he didn’t tire quickly, but the pounding in his head quickly became a fierce headache that swelled into a migraine in seconds. He stumbled as a wave of pain hit him, nearly falling into a wall.

“Stop!” someone shouted from behind him.

Jaelyn shoved himself off the wall and kept running, pushing aside the pain as best he could. A figure appeared in the hallway ahead of him.

“Jaelyn, drop!” Commander Esquina shouted, raising a concussion rifle.

Jaelyn flung himself to the ground, acting purely on instinct. He felt something pass over him, like a stiff breeze, followed by several thuds and clatters from behind him, then all was still. Jaelyn waited, panting. His head ached, his hands were numb, and he didn’t know what was going to happen next. They were all on a ship in the middle of open space. All anyone needed to do was break an airlock somewhere and their air would be vented into space. Realizing his thoughts were rambling, Jaelyn sucked in a deep breath and looked up.

Commander Esquina knelt before him, hand extended. “Are you alright? How’d you get away?”

Jaelyn accepted the proffered hand, trying to play it cool when Commander Esquina noticed the lacerations on his wrists and raised a curious eyebrow.

“It’s not as bad as it looks, Commander,” Jaelyn muttered.

“Hardly. There’s no time to look at it now, though. Follow me.” Commander Esquina turned on a heel and hurried down a side corridor. Jaelyn followed, then sped up so they were walking side by side.

“Commander?” The sudden voice made Jaelyn jump before he realized it was coming from Commander Esquina’s wristband.

“Yes, Master Chief?”

“We’ve secured the engineering sections, sir. We have communications back up.”

“I can hear that. What’s the status of the ship?”

“Main computer systems are still down. There’s a power run which appears to have exploded down here that is causing minor malfunctions. The Command Bubble is locked down with no access in or out.”

Commander Esquina swore. Jaelyn whole-heartedly agreed with the sentiment.

“Sir?” The voice sounded again as Jaelyn and Commander Esquina approached one of the many ladders that led up to a higher deck.

“Yes, Master Chief?”

“The other ships in the convoy have been in communication with the rebels aboard Colonial Prime. It appears this was a coordinated effort across all the ships. Two of the vessels have broken formation and are moving into positions which would render us indefensible if they decide to fire upon us.”

Commander Esquina swore again. Jaelyn felt the panic that had been subsiding up until that point flow back through him with full force, clutching at his chest with claws made of ice. His hand slipped on the ladder, but he caught himself quickly and pulled himself up after Commander Esquina.

“Can we do anything to prevent it?”

“Not without losing precious speed.” A new voice this time. Female.

“Holly, is that you?” Commander Esquina sounded relieved.

“You bet your sweet rear, Commander,” the woman said. “I can stop the other ships, or at least out maneuver them, but I’m going to need full access to the computer and we’re going to lose speed.”

“Do it, Holly. I’ll get you the computer back.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Master Chief, is that squad ready at the Bubble?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’ll be there with Jaelyn in a few minutes. Have them ready.”

Nathan rushed through the halls, mind racing. He’d never enjoyed ground combat, or any combat, for that matter. He’d much rather be working on an engine, or something mechanical, but he’d received the best hand-to-hand combat training in the Fleet. His father would be proud that Nathan was finally going to be putting it to use. And Nathan found he wasn’t afraid. Looking at the concern for his mother on Jaelyn’s face, a match for Nathan’s own concern for the woman he loved, he found only determination welling within. And a fierce, burning anger.

“Stay back when we get to the Command Bubble,” Nathan said, glancing over at Jaelyn as they quick-stepped toward the bow of the massive craft. He kept his concussion rifle trained ahead of him, eyes darting back and forth across each corridor and side tunnel they passed. The ship was quiet, too quiet. Where were all the people the Master Chief said were on their side? Where were the other ships in relation to their own? What was Holly planning?

“Not a chance,” Jaelyn said.

“It’s going to be chaos in there. I’m not going to chance someone taking you out with a stray shot.”

“It’s my mother in there.”

“I know that. And I’ll get her out alive. I promise.” Nathan glanced down at the boy and was startled to see tears staining his cheeks. He stared up at Nathan with anger and defiance in his youthful features.

“She’s my mother. Unless you’re going to tie me up and leave me somewhere, I’m going in. If you’re worried about me, give me a gun and point me in the right direction, but I’m going in with you.” Jaelyn’s voice was almost a snarl.

Nathan felt a little of his anger and frustration boil up inside him and color the timbre of his voice. “Don’t make the mistake of thinking you’re the only one that loves her, Jaelyn. If something happened to you, she’d never forgive me.”

“I…wait, what?” Jaelyn stopped dead in his tracks. Nathan stopped as well, confused and annoyed at the delay. “You and…my mother?”

Comprehension dawned in Nathan’s mind. He hadn’t meant it to come out like that, but yes, that’s what he’d just said.

“I don’t know if this is really the time or place for that discussion, Jaelyn, but yes, your mother and I. Now, let’s go. We don’t know how long she has.” Nathan gestured aft with the barrel of his rifle. Jaelyn worked his mouth a few times, as if searching for words that simply wouldn’t come or else didn’t exist. Then, after a moment, he shook his head and nodded.

“Right, Commander, let’s go,” he said. Then added, “But if we live through this you and I are going to talk, sir.”

“I look forward to it.”

They ran on in silence. Nathan knew he hadn’t handled the situation well. Jaelyn finding out that he and his mother were more than just Captain and her Second in Command was a delicate bit of information and it should have come from Amara, not him. But it was too late for that now. The focus had to remain on staying alive and rescuing Amara. Nathan had no doubt whatsoever that none of them would make it out of this alive if the mutineers were able to achieve their ultimate goals.

A dozen men and women waited for them at the end of the last corridor. Nathan hesitated for half a moment until he saw Master Chief Kuthar standing with the group, looking calm and collected as he always did, despite the situation.

“Commander,” he said, nodding deferentially to Nathan.

The group of men and women behind him snapped off salutes that contained varying degrees of precision. Nathan was surprised to see that most of them were dressed in the common work clothes of passengers rather than the uniforms of security personnel or crew. Asian stood alongside American, Hispanic alongside European. Yet each of them, including some as young as Jaelyn, held weapons, from concussion rifles to simple energy weapons—those typically meant for land combat—with a sure grip. Their expressions radiated determination.

“Master Chief,” Nathan said, returning the salutes. “Who’s watching the engines?”

“Commander Chalmers, sir.” Master Chief Kuthar still held his large pistol in one hand, the weapon reflecting the dull corridor lights. Nathan allowed himself to wonder where the man would have gotten such a weapon, but dismissed it almost immediately. Did it matter?

“When all this is done, you’ll have to tell me how you got everyone to work together without argument.”

“None of us want to go back, Commander,” a young woman said. “Yeah, we haven’t been so good at getting along, but we all want a new life. We’re tired of the war. We want to start over.”

A chorus of affirmations sounded from the rest of the group.

“Just took us losin’ the hope of having that for us to remember why we left in the first place, I guess.” The speaker was a man in the back. Nathan couldn’t tell what his nationality was. “I weren’t happy to be in among the people who killed my family, no sir. But we’re all one family now. We’re moving to a new place, sir. We’re starting over. For our kids. For a future with peace.”

“That’s right!” the first woman said. “Guess we all just needed to realize we have the same goal, in the end.”

Nathan shook his head, marveling. Both he and Amara had been saying that since the very first day. It took nearly losing it all, a mutiny aboard ship, for them to realize it? Nathan pushed the thought aside. Now wasn’t the time for that either.

“Let’s get along then. I’m sure they’ll have guards in the corridors leading up to the Bubble, so we’ll need to take care of those. Stay low and be careful. We can’t afford to lose anyone else, alright?”

They all nodded and Nathan took a moment to memorize each face, locking it in his mind. He wasn’t sure what would come of this, or who would make it out of this alive, but he wanted to remember these men and women. This was the defining moment of their new lives. This moment of decision would determine the fate of their little colony.

“Master Chief,” Nathan said, pushing to the head of the group. “Take the rear with Jaelyn. And Master Chief, have someone give him a rifle.”

If Master Chief Kuthar thought those orders strange, he didn’t say anything. Instead, he snapped a quick salute, gestured for Jaelyn to follow him, and grabbed a concussion rifle held out by one of the group members as they passed. The weapon looked large in Jaelyn’s hands, but the boy held it with the ease and confidence of one who had practiced with it. Trust Amara to train her son in such things.

“Let’s go, and may whatever deity you believe in watch over all of us,” Nathan said, and started down the corridor.

Amara watched with growing trepidation through the Command Bubble’s glass as two of their sister ships cut ahead of them, moving into positions that would effectively block Colonial Prime from continuing in their forward motion. It seemed that whatever it was Sheawn and his cronies had planned, it spanned the entire colonial fleet. The premeditation of it all was as clear as the fear hanging thick in the Command Bubble. Amara cursed herself for not taking the blowhard admiral more seriously, but he’d clearly mastered a level of deception far greater than she’d anticipated.

A door slid open, drawing Amara’s gaze. A small group of people entered the room, four men with concussion rifles surrounded a fifth individual that Amara couldn’t quite make out from her position on the floor. Sheawn hurried over in that direction. Amara pursed her lips, curious who it could be and hoping it wasn’t Jaelyn. She wasn’t sure she could handle them torturing him. Her stomach turned at the very thought.

“Leave it, Sheawn,” a muffled voice that Amara nevertheless recognized snapped. “I’ll be fine.”

Dr. Alexis Martin stepped through the press of bodies, walking up to Amara with a clearly hostile spring in her step. The woman’s face was a mess of hastily and poorly cleaned blood below her nose and massive bruises were forming around her eyes. The nose itself lay swathed in white bandages, though it was clear what had happened. Someone had broken the woman’s nose. Amara felt her anger and bile rise as the woman stared down at her with a soft, muted anger in her expression. Fires blazed behind the bruised eyes, smoldering in sharp contrast to the darkening patches beneath them.

“Amara,” the woman said with a slight nod.

“I should have known Sheawn didn’t have the brains to pull this off.”

Sheawn made a disgruntled noise, but Dr. Martin held up a hand silencing him before he could speak.

“I hear they took you rather easily. I’m surprised. Your reputation speaks much more highly of your self-defensive capabilities.”

Amara didn’t answer. Questions passed through her own mind, wondering how and why this woman could do this, but she retained her silence. The answers didn’t matter. Not anymore. What mattered now was what was going to happen next.

“I tire of all the fighting, Amara,” Dr. Martin said. “And I tire of being made a mockery of. Someone has taken control of the engines and there are reports of groups moving through the ship, taking out my men.” Amara felt a rush of hope and pride, but quelled it in moments. “This is irritating. I think they forget there are multiple ships in this convoy. I am willing to die for my cause, if I must, as are my men. Give me the command codes to turn this ship around or I’ll simply contact my associates on our sister ships and blow a hole in the side of this ship. Try resisting when the oxygen is being vented into space.” She said it coldly, so matter of factly, Amara knew she meant every word. She didn’t care if she died. She didn’t care the cost. She was devoted to her cause. A fanatic.

“If you’re just going to kill me anyway, what point is there in giving up the codes? Why would I help you?”

Dr. Martin grinned, and it was the look of a predator menacing its prey. Amara had only once before been on the receiving end of such a look, though she’d given it several times over her military career.

“Well, I can imagine at least two reasons why. One gave me this broken nose and, let me assure you, I will return the favor as soon as I find him.”

“And the second?”

“The child inside you, or its father. Take your pick.”

The fear Amara had felt up to this point died beneath a blanket of absolute, uncontrollable terror.

Nathan nearly shot the woman that appeared suddenly around a corner. The woman let out a little yelp as a pair of men grabbed her and pulled her back, guns leveled on her the whole time.

“What are you doing here?” Nathan whispered, glancing around the corner. They were only a single corridor away from the main entrance to the Command Bubble. Their group had already had to wait for Dr. Martin’s group to pass, hiding in the shadows of a side passage as she’d walked by. The bruises on the traitor’s face made Nathan smile at the time. Jaelyn had certainly done his job well.

The woman’s eyes were wide and her whole body shook with what Nathan took to be fear. She wore a long white coat over her crew jumpsuit uniform, but Nathan didn’t recognize her.

“I – I umm – I…” the woman stammered and swallowed hard, gaze darting to the weapons trained on her and then back to Nathan, confusion and fear plain in her posture and expression.

“Dr. Phillips?”

Nathan turned as Master Chief Kuthar walked up, Jaelyn at his side. Nathan arched an eyebrow at the man, who held up a hand forestalling any questions.

“What are you doing here, Doctor?” Master Chief Kuthar asked, repeating Nathan’s question.

“I – I was down with the others, as you instructed, when I heard that the captain had been captured.” Dr. Phillips licked her lips and glanced first at Jaelyn and then back to the master chief. “I – can’t say why, but she may be in need of my services.”

Master Chief Kuthar’s eyebrows went up, about as blatant an expression as Nathan had ever seen on the man’s face, but he nodded and turned to Nathan. “Commander, Dr. Phillips is a woman of impeccable honor. I take her under my responsibility, if you please, sir.”

Nathan nodded, looking in question at the man. His expression didn’t change.

“Very well, Doctor,” Nathan said. “Stay with the master chief. Did you happen to see how many guards are down the corridor you just passed through?”

Dr. Phillips licked her lips and nodded, again looking at Jaelyn before responding. “Three outside the door. All armed.”

“Thank you. Alright, let’s get this over with, then. Any chance someone has a couple concussion grenades handy?” He looked around hopefully, forcing a smile. A few people chuckled, but everyone shook their heads. “Head on it is, then.”

“Wait,” Dr. Phillips said, putting a restraining hand on Nathan’s arm. “You’re not just going to run in there shooting, are you?”

“Do you know a better way?” Nathan asked, readying his rifle.

The woman met his gaze with tear-filled eyes, concern playing with fear in her eyes. Nathan was surprised at how much older the woman looked than he’d first thought, perhaps in her early forties but still looking younger than him. She licked her lips and glanced back at Master Chief Kuthar again.

“If you have something to say, Doctor,” the master chief said, “I urge you to say it. There may not be another chance.”

Dr. Phillips swallowed hard and leaned forward, clearly wanting to speak so only Nathan could hear. Out of the corner of his eye, Nathan noticed both Master Chief Kuthar and Jaelyn lean forward as well.

“Captain Amara is with child,” the woman whispered. “If you go in there firing with abandon, you could hit her. A blast from a concussion rifle, even a low powered one, would kill the baby. Maybe it’s pointless already, but - well, I wouldn’t want to take that risk.”

Pregnant? Stunned disbelief washed through Nathan, rendering him speechless. Too many emotions to identify thundered through him and he felt suddenly light headed. Pregnant? He was going to be a father?

“Pregnant?” Jaelyn said, voice almost thunderous by comparison to the whisper. “You got my mother pregnant, Commander?”

It took Nathan half a moment to process what Jaelyn had said, but the moment of realization pulled him out of his mental introspection with the force of a blown airlock. He looked up and found all eyes in the corridor on him, the silence between them all both heavy and thick. Nathan didn’t know what to say.

Master Chief Kuthar cleared his throat, breaking the silence. Dr. Phillips lowered her head and stepped back, clearly wanting to stay away from whatever was about to happen.

“We have more pressing concerns than personal squabbles, right now, Mr. Corrin,” Master Chief Kuthar said to Jaelyn, then turned to Nathan. “Commander, I recommend that we first assault the guards at the entrance and then regroup at that time. I may have an idea that will address Dr. Phillips’s concern.”

Nathan nodded, grateful for the shift in attention away from him. “Thank you, Master Chief. That is a solid recommendation. Let’s move out!”

Pushing aside the tumble of thoughts and emotions bouncing around within him, Nathan took up the lead as they charged.

Being at the rear of the group, Jaelyn didn’t see when the lead gunners attacked, but he did hear the sound of bodies hitting the ground over the muted sounds of footfalls against the metal floor. The master chief, a man who was far more astute than he seemed at first glance, ran at his side, heavy revolver held low in one hand. Dr. Phillips nearly clung to him as she followed, face white and wan.

His mother was pregnant. Commander Esquina had…was…

His mother was pregnant!

Jaelyn pushed the thoughts aside, following the group as they surrounded the doorway into the Command Bubble. The girl from the gardens, Kathryn, was among the group, but he hadn’t done more than nod back when she’d acknowledged him there. The shooters made sure to stand far enough back from the door to not activate the proximity alarm. Commander Esquina was in the process of disabling it as Jaelyn walked forward with the master chief. Three bodies lay on the ground, still and unmoving. Some of the men in Jaelyn’s group were collecting the concussion rifles that had fallen, handing one to Dr. Phillips.

“The alarm is disabled,” Commander Esquina said in a low voice, putting the small access panel back on the wall. “What’s your plan, Chief?”

“Jordan,” Master Chief Kuthar said, “come here, please.”

A thin, older man stepped from the group and came forward. He wore the dull uniform of a maintenance worker, though his eyes were bright.

“Yes, sir?” he asked.

“Where is the access hatch to the ventilation shaft running through the Command Bubble?”

“Ventilation shaft?” Commander Esquina asked, “What good is that going to do us? It’s tiny.”

The master chief ignored him, gesturing for the maintenance worker, Jordan, to show them. The thin man nodded and moved around Commander Esquina to a section of metal wall that looked no different than the rest of the corridor, tapping a section of it with his knuckles. It rang softly, a distinctly hollow sound.

“Here, sir. There’s an open section here behind the wall. You have to shimmy through until you get to the vertical shaft, but it’s here.”

“Open it up, please.”

The man pulled a thin metal rod from his pocket and, with a few deft twists, popped the metal plating off the wall, revealing wires, pipes, and a small space beneath them barely wide enough for a particularly small adult to pass through. Or maybe a child…

“Hold my rifle, Master Chief,” Jaelyn said, shrugging out of his uniform’s light overcoat and letting it fall to the floor.

“What?” Commander Esquina said, stepping forward. “Why?”

“Do you know anyone else that can fit in that?” Jaelyn asked, pointing at the narrow shaft. “It was designed for a probe or a remote droid of some sort, not a person. I assume the shaft in the Bubble is a little wider than this?”

The maintenance worker, Jordan, nodded. “It’s wider, but not quite so tall. You’ll have to contort oddly, but you’ll fit just fine. Good luck, kid.”

Jaelyn nodded, accepting his rifle back from the master chief.

“Wait, do you even know how to use that?” Commander Esquina asked. Jaelyn spun on the man, the torrent of emotions he’d been suppressing until that moment flooding out of him in a rush.

“Better than you, I expect. I’ve spent my whole life with my mother constantly badgering me to learn everything I can about being a soldier and protecting myself. I’m certified in three different forms of hand-to-hand combat and over a dozen weapons. Why? Because of what she went through in the prison camps where I was conceived. You’d know that, if you’d ever thought to ask when you were over gallivanting with my mother. Now, if you’ll shut up and get out of my way, I have work to do.”

The look on Commander Esquina’s face was simply priceless. He looked completely at a loss for words, mouth working. Then he blinked, and nodded.

“Good luck, Jaelyn. Shoot straight. Dial the focus as narrow as you can and make sure your mother stays safe, ok?”

Jaelyn grunted and got down on his knees, pushing the concussion rifle into the small passage ahead of him.

“You, your name was Jordan, was it?” Commander Esquina said. “How long would it take for Jaelyn to get through to where he could fire down into the room?”

“There’s three vents around the room, spaced evenly. Best one to shoot from’d be the top one, but it depends on where the people in the room are standing, I guess. Ten minutes, maybe?” Jordan shrugged.

“You have ten minutes, Jaelyn,” Commander Esquina said, squatting down next to him. “Shoot anyone that comes close to her.”

Jaelyn nodded and slid into the narrow space.

Amara’s head whipped toward the portside entrance to the Command Bubble. Had someone just tried to enter? No, those muted thumps were the sound of falling bodies. She knew the sound well enough from her experiences in the war.

“Sheawn,” Dr. Martin said, lounging against the rail near where Amara sat. “Go see who’s trying to pay us a visit, will you? Take a squad.”

Men rushed toward the doorway, weapons at the ready. The door didn’t open. Dr. Martin swore.

“Alex,” someone said, “the ship is moving. It’s launched both energy weapons and missiles at our two ships.”

Amara felt her heart leap into her throat. Who was firing?

Nathan.

Somehow, she knew he was behind it, in some form or another. But they must also be in desperate straits indeed if he was comfortable with firing on two ships at once. The odds of surviving a lopsided endeavor such as this were slim, even with the element of surprise. All it took was one stray shot and they’d all be exposed to the vacuum of space.

“Move! Tell them to move. Don’t fire back. We can’t risk the ships getting damaged!” Dr. Martin scrambled to the nearest console, shoving the person there out of the way. “Delta, Omega, come in, this is Colonial Prime. Don’t fire back. I repeat, don’t fire back. Hold!”

Amara craned her neck, looking out through the DuraGlass. Tiny streaks of light shot out across the darkness, like shooting stars. In her periphery, Amara saw them hit, exploding against the sides of the other colonial ships blocking their path. Whoever had fired the missiles had also taken them off course, shifting them thirty degrees along the y-axis and slightly to one side. She felt a delightful satisfaction at seeing Dr. Martin’s look of panic and frustration.

“They’ve hit the weapons array on both ships, weapons are inoperable on both the Delta and Omega.” Sheawn’s voice. He’d run back from the blocked doorway and was leaning over a different console a little further down.

“Seems that not everyone shares your desire to head back,” Amara said, pitching her voice to carry over the noise and chaos now rampant in the room. If she could keep the woman distracted, whoever was blockading the door would have more time to do whatever it was they were planning. “If you give up now, I can assure you safe passage for the remainder of our voyage to Villa Nova. In the brig, of course.”

Dr. Martin barely glanced at her. “Villa Nova? That’s what you’re calling it?”

“It’s as good a name as any. Not very original, a bit on the nose, but I think it will work.”

“Sheawn, take a squad and go to the engine room. Use the other door. That’s the only place they can be doing this from.” Dr. Martin’s words were almost a shout. Sheawn hurried off, passing between Amara and Dr. Martin as he rushed by. “You’re mistaken, Captain, if you think this is over.”

Without warning, Dr. Martin picked up a handgun, the kind with actual bullets, and shot the crewman next to Amara. The bullet took him in the chest and he fell with barely a sound. The echoing retort of Dr. Martin’s shot resounded off the DuraGlass dome.

“Give me the codes to unlock the ship’s computer or I start killing crewmen one at a time.”

The cramped confines of the original access tunnel had given way to a much wider vent when Jaelyn had reached the side of the Command Bubble. He’d nearly cursed the man, Jordan, for not warning him about the thick grate there, and again when he’d nearly fallen down the steep shaft on the other side. Apparently, the ventilation shaft went down as well as up. He was now making his way up the shaft, rifle slung over one shoulder, but placed before him as he kept his back pressed up against one wall and his feet up against the other.

The climb wasn’t terribly difficult, but Jaelyn kept playing over scenarios in his mind, wondering what could be going on in the room below him. His mother was pregnant. Commander Esquina was the father. What would that mean for Jaelyn? What was more, what was going on inside the room?

Sweat beaded on Jaelyn’s forehead and dripped down to soak his shirt, making it slick against the metal ventilation wall. A stiff breeze seemed to push at his back, making the sweat-stained shirt seem cool against his skin. Twice he almost lost the concussion rifle, but he caught it just in time. What little light there was in the shaft filtered down from above or else emanated from his wristband, which was slowly ticking away the ten minutes he’d originally started with.

Eventually, the slope of the curved shaft allowed him to lean forward into a sort of half-crawl, half-scoot as he approached what he assumed was the first ventilation grate, judging from the way the light spliced across the sides of the shaft. He approached as silently as he could and glanced at his wristband. Only three minutes left.

He felt a moment of sudden, absolute panic. It had taken him seven minutes to get to the first air grate. Jordan had said they were all spaced evenly, meaning he still had a way to go before he hit the one he needed. He needed to pick up the pace. He spared a glance through the grate.

People scurried back and forth far below him and Jaelyn experienced a moment of vertigo. It had to have been at least a 15 meter drop from where he was. He swallowed hard, pushing the panic down as best he could, but it was like trying to prune a vine. No matter how well tended it was, tendrils of the thing still managed to get everywhere.

He didn’t see his mother, though he caught a glimpse of Sheawn Olliard as he rushed toward the door where Commander Esquina and the others were waiting.

“Time’s up!” Jaelyn said under his breath, moving past the grate at as fast a shuffle as he could muster and still retain some measure of silence.

He crawled with dogged determination, glancing at his wristband every few seconds to make sure he stayed ahead of the countdown.

Two minutes.

Jaelyn picked up his pace. The concussion rifle slipped from his shoulder and struck the ventilation shaft with a dull, metallic thud. Jaelyn didn’t slow. The time for stealth had passed. He looked at the time.

Forty-five seconds. A loud noise sounded from below. A gunshot?

Where had the last minute plus gone? It hadn’t felt that long, had it? He urged himself faster. Breaths came in ragged gasps, lungs filling with dry, musty air. Light appeared ahead and Jaelyn noticed the slope of the shaft leveling out. Sweat dripped down into his eyes, but he didn’t slow to wipe it away, ignoring the sting.

Fifteen seconds.

Jaelyn reached the grate, finding the shaft around it nearly entirely horizontal. The shaft wasn’t tall, but it was enough for him to swing into a sitting position with his head half crouched over, back bent. The bars in the grate were spaced apart just widely enough for him to get the barrel of the rifle through. He looked down, expecting the vertigo this time and readying himself for it.

Dr. Martin stood with a gun pointed at his mother. Two still forms lay on the DuraGlass bubble far below them, though they appeared small and insignificant from Jaelyn’s vantage point.

Dr. Martin had a gun pointed at his mother.

Zero Seconds.

The door on the far side of the room burst open, Commander Esquina and his men charging through, silent guns firing as evidenced by the men and women in the room falling over as if shot. Dr. Martin glanced that way, though the gun in her hand never wavered.

Jaelyn willed his mother to move, to act, as she’d always trained him. She was barely feet from Dr. Martin. The moment of distraction was more than enough time for his mother to cover the distance between them, disarm the woman, and take her down. Amara didn’t move.

“Come on!” Jaelyn said. He dialed the diode on the side of the concussion rifle, turning up the frequency. It would create a beam so narrow, it would be thinner than most standard bullets. A perfect sniper’s weapon. Getting hit with that sort of frequency not only killed, it pretty much destroyed a person internally as well.

Commander Esquina’s team had already taken out over half of the people in the Command Bubble. Dr. Martin shouted something and some of the defenders ran for the other door, but Jaelyn couldn’t see what else was happening in that direction from his vantage point. Dr. Martin turned back to his mother.

Jaleyn dropped his finger onto the trigger of his rifle, sighting through the small scope. He focused on Dr. Martin’s chest.

He hesitated. Could he do this? Dr. Martin had been his friend. She’d been –

Dr. Martin fired. The sound of the shot hit Jaelyn like a thunderclap. Jaelyn saw his mother go down, saw her fall over the side of the catwalk and land in a heap on the Command Bubble glass below, next to the two bodies. For half a second longer, Jaelyn sat there, frozen in stunned shock.

He pulled the trigger.

As usual, no sound came from the weapon, but almost instantly, Dr. Martin collapsed. His shot had been true. Even at this distance, he knew she was dead, blood coming from one of her ears. Jaelyn felt hot tears on his cheeks, and heard someone screaming. It took him a long minute to realize the screams were his own. His mother…Dr. Martin…he’d failed.

Jaelyn awoke some time later, coming from blissful darkness to cognizance in between two breaths. Bright, white lights blared down at him from above and…was he lying down?

He sat up in a rush and immediately regretted it. Blood rushed to his head and he started seeing spots. A headache blared and he hastily brought his hands up to the sides of his head, massaging at his temples.

“Careful, Jaelyn. Not too fast, now.”

Jaelyn’s blood ran cold. He whipped his head in the direction of the voice and saw his mother in a sterile, white hospital bed alongside him. Despite the thin, white blanket, Jaelyn could see the slightly off-white bandages wrapped around her shoulder and chest, though, thankfully, no blood showed through.

“Mom!” he all but shouted, struggling to get out of his own bed while still tangled in the sheets and thin blanket that had covered him. “You’re alive. I – I saw you get shot, you fell, you – ” Jaleyn stopped, mouth working as his mind danced through half a dozen images and memories before finally settling on one. “You’re pregnant,” he finished, lamely.

His mother smiled and then winced as she shifted in her bed.

“Yes, I am, Jaelyn. Commander Esquina is the father.”

“I know.” Jaelyn hopped out of his own bed, ignoring the dizziness, and walked over to his mother’s side, taking her hand in his. She squeezed it gently.

“You know? I guess that’s not a surprise. Nathan, Commander Esquina, knew too. This mutiny spoiled any chance I had of telling him myself, I guess.”

“That wasn’t very nice of those mutineers, was it?” Jaelyn joked, though it sounded flat even to his own ears.

His mother let the silence hang for a moment before breaking it by speaking. “Thank you for what you did, Jaelyn. Commander Esquina told me what happened.”

Jaelyn shrugged. He didn’t really want to think about it. He sensed the hesitation in her voice, the stiff way she referred to the man who was the father of her baby by his rank rather than his name. She was nervous, he realized. Of him and how he’d react. At least Dr. Martin had been able to teach him something about reading people, even if she’d been a traitor. Jaelyn pushed the thoughts aside, focusing on the moment at hand.

“You’re my mom. I couldn’t lose you. I...” he felt tears well up in his eyes again, but refused to cry. It was so undignified for one to cry in front of their mother. “I thought I was too late.”

His mother smiled. “Just in time, I think.”

“Dr. Martin and the others?” Jaelyn asked, voice soft.

“Dr. Martin didn’t survive, though many of her people did, including Sheawn Olliard. They’re aboard the Delta and Omega ships, limping back to Earth. They’ll get there in about six or seven years, if their fuel holds out on them. The landing may be a bit rough.” His mother grimaced again and tried to sit up. Jaelyn helped her as best he could, then stopped, realizing something.

“Wait, they’re aboard the Delta and Omega? How’d you manage that? We would have had to stop completely for that to happen.”

His mother nodded. “We did stop. We didn’t have much choice, really. We’re back underway again with the other two vessels in tow. They’d managed to hold their own against the mutineers there. Nathan is confident he can get us back up to speed with a few modifications to the engines. He’ll have his hands full, as executive officer and chief engineer, but we’ll manage. We’ve still got almost a full complement of crew and as many passengers. They’ll shift duties often enough.”

“That many?”

Amara smiled. “Yes, that many.”

“We’re really going then, for reals this time?”

“We’re really going,” Amara said. “All of us are headed to Villa Nova. We’ll be about a year longer on this voyage than we thought, but it’s not that much longer, relatively speaking. Of course, we’ll need you to take over the gardens and our botany team, son.” She hesitated and then took Jaelyn’s hand again. “You, me, the baby, and Nathan have a chance at starting something new together as a family, Jaelyn. If you want.”

Jaelyn was surprised to hear the nervousness in her voice, the yearning for his approval and acceptance. In the light of everything they’d just gone through, the stress, the chaos, and terror of the mutiny itself, a new life sounded perfect.

“I’d like that,” he said, and smiled.

The proximity alarm on the door sounded and Jaelyn turned as it opened and Commander Esquina stepped inside, stopping just inside the door. Jaelyn couldn’t decide if he should grimace or smile, or both at once, somehow. Commander Esquina, for his part, shifted in his stance, fingers moving back and forth across the datapad he held in one hand. He still looked the worse for wear, but – well, there was something about the earnest look of concern in his eyes when he looked from Jaelyn to his mother that Jaelyn couldn’t refute. Still, his mother…

“Be nice, Jaelyn,” Amara said, squeezing Jaelyn’s hand. Her voice was soft, but Jaelyn could tell by the slight shift in Commander Esquina’s posture that he’d heard as well.

“I didn’t say anything,” Jaelyn muttered, but didn’t meet her eyes. Fine, he’d give the man a chance. He seemed a decent enough man, after all. Still, he couldn’t suppress the questions running through his mind. What was the new life going to be? Were Commander Esquina and his mother planning on moving in together? Would they get married? How would that change his life? Jaelyn couldn’t help but push down a knot of fear and anxiety that threatened to strangle him.

“Nathan,” Amara said, raising her voice a little and beckoning to the man with her free hand, “is everything underway? Holly doing alright?”

Commander Esquina nodded and stepped forward, reaching out and taking Amara’s other hand as he came alongside the bed. Jaelyn found he didn’t mind sharing, which surprised him.

“We’re underway and on schedule. The doc says she’ll be fine. A few scrapes and bruises, but she’ll live.”

“Wait,” Jaelyn asked, “Holly? Chalmers? The weapons officer? What happened?”

Amara nodded. “A group of the mutineers tried to take back the engineering section while Nathan and you were rescuing me. She held it until Kuthar could get there with reinforcements.”

“How many did we lose?” Jaelyn asked, licking his lips.

Amara and Commander Esquina’s expressions immediately sobered. “All together? Seventeen dead on our side, fifty-three on theirs, between all the ships. We lost about fifteen hundred that chose to return to Earth.”

Jaelyn couldn’t help but shudder. That was almost a third of the entire colonial force. It was a serious blow to their sustainability as a species. Perhaps a fatal one.

“I know what you’re thinking, Jaelyn,” his mother said, voice stern. “We’ll still make it. I have the geneticists and other scientists working on colonization scenarios already. We have forty-four years to figure this out.”

“Forty-four years, huh?” Jaelyn said, making a face. “Such a short time, really.”

Commander Esquina chuckled. “That’s what I said.”

Jaelyn pointed at Commander Esquina and looked at his mother. “He’s a smart man.”

Amara smiled and squeezed Jaelyn’s hand, looking from him to Commander Esquina and back again.

“It’s a new life, Jaelyn,” she said. “A wondrous, happy, new life. Let’s all make the best of it, whatever comes.”

Looking at the happiness in her eyes, and the smile on her face – the first true smile he’d seen in years – Jaelyn couldn’t help but agree.

The End

This project started out as a writing whim. I had a cousin, Nicholas James West, who started writing a sci-fi story called “Cancel the Ark.” At the time, I’d only written fantasy novels and had only every entertained the idea of writing science fiction as a whim. A few days after talking to Nick, I ended up starting a project I called “Whim.” Now, a few years later, we have this story.

Many people helped me along the way. My wife and kids are my biggest help and support. They make my life full, meaningful, and worthwhile. If you ever get the chance to meet my wife and you enjoyed this book, you probably owe her a cookie or at least a hearty “thank you.” Several beta readers also greatly assisted me with this process. Melissa Meibos (aka Lysandra James), Kristiann Frasier, Shaun DeVore, Rachel Nichole Huffmire, Emma-Louise Smith, Melissa Cluff Cooke, Alyson Peterson, and Mandi Diaz provided invaluable insight and assistance. Thank you.

Thanks goes to Immortal Works for accepting and publishing this work of science fiction. Also, I’d be remiss not to acknowledge the fine work of Garrett Hamon, who did the cover work for this novel. He is as skilled an artist and fiction enthusiast as I have ever known.

Finally, I’d like to thank you, the reader. None of this would be possible without you. So thank you. And read on!

Kevin owes his publishing debut to a kindly librarian back in the 6th grade, the LTUE Symposium, a purple shirt, and a passing editor who didn't mind some mild sarcasm. His books have been Utah State Book Awards finalists, Whitney Award Nominees, and #1 bestsellers on Amazon.

He currently resides in Utah with his amazing wife and three wonderful children. He's still writing and continuing a lifelong quest to become a dragon rider. Kevin occasionally plays duets through his nose and spends too much time inside his own mind wondering why anyone considers Swiss to be an edible variety of cheese.

Find Kevin on his website, www.kevinlnielsen.com, where he pontificates about writing, living life with three small kids, and balancing writing with a day job and a family.