She reached down a hand to rest on the blurred, opaque outline of each face. She said her goodbyes, one by one. She spoke out loud to them, her voice soft but unwavering. Sharing her memories, thanking them for what they had learned, what they had taught her. If they could speak, would they accept their fate? Or would they beg, plead, fight for the same chance at life?

Up above, Hixon was probably still running numbers, hoping for an eleventh-hour save, a way to bend the impossible to her will. Naomi saw what was in front of them, just as Valerie and Lebedeva had. Hart knew, as a doctor, but she’d be hoping for a miracle, if partly for her wife’s sake.

There was no other way. If there was, one of the five of them would have found it by now.

They hadn’t introduced the flaw to the system, but it was difficult not to feel responsible. Especially when it was people you knew. Emotion clouded logic.

She said goodbye to Cole last.

She remembered marrying under the fake stars of the Hayden Planetarium in New York, eight months after she’d met him. She still didn’t know why she raced towards marriage so quickly and why she’d agreed to such an expensive wedding. It’d been a beautiful ceremony underneath shifting nebulae in greens, blues, pinks, and purples. A kaleidoscopic projection tinging the faces of the attendees—most of whom were Cole’s friends and family rather than hers.

Valerie had walked her down the aisle. Naomi had constellations sewn into her dress—the Hydra serpent; Andromeda, the girl rescued from the sea creature; Cygnus, the swan; Lyra, the poet and musician. At the bodice, Ran, Aegir, and Cavendish had been stitched in silver thread for luck.

Cole had been sharp in his tux, backlit by the false galaxy. Valerie had officiated as well, leading them through their vows. Naomi thought she’d been telling the truth, that she was promising to stay with him until the end. Thick and thin and all in between. Naomi had worn a ring of meteorite—she’d left it back on Earth, of course—and Cole one fashioned from a piece of the aluminium composite from the scrap metal of the Ares ship.

“That was the problem, wasn’t it?” she asked him, softly. “In the end, we loved our careers more than each other. Or you wanted to stay married to your work and you were only too happy to let me divorce from mine. You wanted to trot me out as an astronaut’s wife, but that’s not all I wanted to be.”