Down on the surface, those mountains were larger than life, but from the ship they were only a ripple. The world she’d known was nothing but a suspended, lonely rock. It’d keep itself alive, in the end, but that didn’t mean large animal life would do the same. Humans were finally confronted with their fragility. Within a generation, they could all be gone. They’d outgrown this world, drained it dry. They needed a new one.

The women held their helmets, gathering around the window. The exhilaration and adrenaline of launch was fading, everyone sobering as what they had just done set in. They knew what they risked, yet that was different from being confronted, so baldly, with what they stood to lose. With what they were so desperate to save, they’d steal a ship.

“We spent so long thinking about getting off the planet, it’s easy to forget this is only the beginning,” Hart whispered, the blue light making her brown skin glow.

How well did Naomi know these women? She’d trained and worked with them, but they were also the only humans she’d interact with for years. Valerie’s chosen aegis.

Tears clung to Hixon’s face, clustering by her nose in a bubble. Hart reached out, wiping them away. Naomi drifted closer, pressing her hands against the window. To her right, Lebedeva was inscrutable as always, her cheekbones standing out in stark relief against her white skin. Both of them had shaved off their hair when they were in quarantine. Hart had taken out her braids and cut her hair short months ago, and Hixon had a pixie cut since she was twelve. The Russian had buzzed her own blond hair into a bristle before snipping Naomi’s dark locks. Naomi had watched them fall to the ground, realising she wouldn’t be able to take gravity for granted much longer.

Valerie gave a whisper of a sigh before hardening. “Hixon.”

The pilot nodded, coming to attention, her military background embedded deep. She pulled herself down to the console and started the sequence to disengage the Atalanta from the construction hub.

An error message blared, harsh and jarring in the quiet. A red flash against the blue-white.

Hixon tried again. Another burst of red.

“They’ve locked the ship to the hub from the ground. That’s a recent spec change.” Valerie pointed to the world with her chin. “Oh, they’re so spitting mad. I love it.”

As if her voice conjured it, a different beep sounded—an incoming message from Houston.

“Do we answer?” Hart asked, chewing at the edge of a fingernail.

“Of course not,” Valerie said. “Lebedeva. Lovelace. Dig out the EMUs.”

Naomi worked through her words. “You can’t mean—”