The term “knot” described five human-sized tanks, filled with amniotic gel, and gathered in a bunch. Each tank held one soldier. The other four pods you were grouped with, held your future team members. A jumble of tubes and cables connected each cluster of pods to various medi-tech at its centre. At the heart of each space station was a locked room dedicated to rows and rows of these developing knots.

Once harvested from these cultivation tanks at age twelve—which ensured mental and physical maturity—a knot trained together in space warfare as cadets, and then worked together until age thirty-five. Life in space was hard and it was thought that beyond thirty-five, the reflexes slowed and deteriorating general health impacted performance. This was the cycle of a genetically enhanced space soldier. If your knot was lucky, you were all recycled at your expiry date; if your knot was unlucky, you were all killed in battle and immediately replaced. It was important that the number of active soldiers remained constant. The total of 4000 was constantly replenished from the hundreds of knots cooking in the tanks at any one time.

She wondered if she’d been part of the same knot before, in another cycle. Their bond sure felt that way. But Romy knew the geneticists liked to try different personality combinations in order to find the ‘ultimate team’. She hoped Knot 27 would stay together until the return to Earth—though the wish was neither likely, nor in her control.

Thrym and Romy prepared two of the debris pods for launch while the twins changed from fatigues to orange spandex. The one thing Romy liked about debris clean-up was that the chore didn’t necessitate space suits. Sure, there were emergency suits in the pod—making the ventilation spandex space suit underclothes necessary—but no one ever had to actually use them.

Debris duty was the most menial task you could get in this life, the bottom of the heap. Just below kitchen duty. And high command didn’t take too kindly to the quirks of Romy’s team. Elara was lazy, the twins were trouble, and Romy had her head in the stars. Thrym was focused, but he still ranked fun alongside duty just like the rest of them. It was not an ideal quality in a space soldier. Seeing as knot demotion was the only real form of punishment aboard the orbitos, Knot 27 found themselves as the lowest of the low.

Not that it bothered Romy to be poorly ranked.

The small, circular pods sat half in and half out of the outer wall of the Earth dock. The dock was situated on the outer wall of the orbito, facing their ruined world. The white alloy exterior of the pods was completely smooth and round. Romy entered a quick code, hardly looking at the screen, and in response, the pod’s uninterrupted surface fractured with a hiss, retracting into a circular entrance.