The sun angle shifted, painting the cockpit golden, shadowing the women’s faces. As the engines blared to life, Valerie started ticking tasks off on her fingers. “Take a little jaunt to Mars and its shiny new warp ring. Fold space and time. Travel ten and a half light years. Establish a hardy colony on an alien planet. Wait for Earth to build the ships to start ferrying people across. Save humanity. Sounds doable enough, right?”

Her laugh echoed through the bridge as the ship coiled in on itself. The orbit gave them a 17,000 mile head start and they slungshot out into the stars.

They didn’t scream this time. It was different to leaving the Earth in the capsule. Quieter, smoother, and so much more final. Soon the planet beneath them would be nothing more than a memory.

Naomi locked eyes with Valerie, who held her head up. Beatific as a saint, she smiled.

“It’s time to find our world.”

CHAPTER FOUR

4 Days After Launch

122 Days to Mars

245 Days to Cavendish

No amount of training or simulation could have prepared Naomi for the Atalanta.

The engines were so quiet. She hadn’t anticipated how odd it would be to walk along the corridor of the centrifugal ring of the ship and its artificial gravity. It felt flat enough as she walked past the closed, white doors—here were the sleeping quarters, there the med bay. She patted the door of the greenhouse as she passed it. The canteen, the rec room—fully outfitted with virtual reality for much needed variety and stimulation in downtime—the gym, and the observation room, which served as a second rec room, office, or meeting room.

The floor curved up at the end of the hallway. A perfect circle that would align with the warp ring, forever turning above the static, gravity-less main body of the ship. Once they arrived at the ring, it’d be a push of the engines, a pulse of negative energy, and they’d bend space and time. The Alcubierre drive made possible and concrete. They’d either slow down on the other side of Mars after the test jump, or they’d die horribly.

“It’d be painless,” Hixon assured them, sipping her third cup of lukewarm tea. No boiling water allowed. As second in command, she got up before the rest of them, going through and assigning them their daily tasks. That left Valerie more time to strategise and design the base on Cavendish.

“Liar,” Naomi pointed out mildly, sprinkling some of their precious stock of brown sugar over her instant oatmeal. If they sped past their destination, they’d be stranded until their food ran out. Not quick or painless unless they chose to help things along.

“To be determined in one hundred and twenty-two days,” Hixon said, far too cheerily. If they survived the test jaunt, it’d be another five days’ travel back to the ring for the proper jump to Cavendish.