The two remaining ships loomed above us, pinned like butterflies in a display, struts and braces holding them in place. They were nearly identical in outward appearance, both to each other and to Tiger, which my mother had put me on ten years ago. I couldn’t remember how they differed beneath the surface; I wasn’t sure my mother had ever told me. By the time I was twelve, she had mostly given up hope that I would follow in her footsteps.

To the right was a corpse with her arms slashed to ribbons, her throat cut, and so much blood staining her jumpsuit that the fabric appeared brown rather than white. Linna, a fuel scientist, who had in life had a big, hearty laugh and a bawdy sense of humor. She must have had the same idea as my mother, to flee using an experimental ship, only for her it had been too late. The parasite was already inside her. She bled to death after trying to carve it out with a scrap of metal from the recycling system.

I pushed myself to the nearest workstation and tapped the screen to pull up the ten-year-old flight schedule. Tiger was on the calendar for a drive efficiency test the day after the outbreak. Two days later, Brahmin was scheduled for a navigation test. Jackal was not on the schedule at all. It was flagged for environmental system repairs: air filters, thermometers, high-g couch positioning.

I found the Brahmin information. The test was to have three stages: journey outward, hold and reposition, return on command. The flight path would take the ship near the radio station at the L2 Lagrange point. I pressed my fingers to my aching head; grainy, dragging exhaustion was muddling my thoughts. It had to be good enough. I didn’t know how to change the ship’s course, but they could abort the flight midway through, during the repositioning test.

“Okay.” I took a breath; the cold burned my throat. “Xi, Baqir, you’re getting in that ship.”

Xiomara looked toward the ship, but Baqir was watching me. “What about you?”

“We’re going in the other one,” I said. “But I’m launching you first.”

I kicked my way over to Brahmin and let myself inside. The small cockpit was at once breathtakingly familiar and painfully disorienting. I found the control panel and called up the preflight sequences. Turn on the lights. Raise the temperature. Filter the air. Test the reactive cushioning in the seats.