The ops deck was offensively lush. The anti-spalling had been made to look like red-velvet wallpaper and the light came from silver-and-gold sconces all along the walls. Erich sat in the captain’s couch. His good hand was moving over the deck in his lap, his bad one holding on to the straps. Peaches was in the navigator’s couch, her eyes closed and her smile beatific.

“Grab a couch,” Erich said with a grin. His old friend and not the criminal boss who needed to keep Amos in his place. He switched to the ship system. “Brace for maneuvers. Repeat, brace for maneuvers.”

“That’s not how they really do that,” Amos said, strapping in at communications. “That’s just something they say in the movies.”

“It’s good enough for now,” Erich said, and the couches shifted under them as the thrusters turned the ship. Slowly, the moon hove into view, and behind it, the sun. Silhouetted, Luna was a disk of black from here except for a thin limn of white along one edge and a webwork of city lights. Peaches chuckled like a brook, her eyes open now, her hands pressed to her lips. The tears welling up in her eyes glittered.

“Didn’t think you’d see this again, did you Peaches?”

“It’s beautiful,” she said. “Everything’s beautiful, and I didn’t think anything ever would be again.”

They were all silent for a moment, and then Erich switched the view, pulling it slowly down. Below them, Earth was a smear of white and of gray. Where the continents should have burned in the permanent fire of lights, there were only a scattering of dim, dull glowing points. The seas were hidden, and the land. A funeral shroud was over the planet, and they all knew what was happening beneath it.

“Fuck,” Erich said, and it carried a weight of awe and despair.

“Yeah,” Amos said. They were all quiet for a long moment. The birthplace of humanity, the cradle of life in the solar system, was beautiful in its death throes, but none of them had any doubt that was what they were seeing.

The comm controls interrupted them. Amos accepted the connection and a young woman in UN naval uniform appeared in a high-priority panel.

“Zhang Guo, this is Luna Base. We do not have an approved flight plan for you. Be advised this space is under military restriction. Identify yourselves immediately, or be fired upon.”

Amos opened the channel. “Hey there, Luna Base. Name’s Amos Burton. Didn’t mean to step on anybody’s toes. If you’ve got someone up there named Chrissie Avasarala, pretty sure she’ll vouch for me.”

Chapter Forty-six: Alex