The Survivor

by BRIDGET TYLER

  The lieutenant flashes a sharp grin. “And now you know why your mama’s so pissed.” She shakes her head. “Commander’s got a point. Dropping a gang of civvies on a hostile planet with no training and minimal shelter really shouldn’t be plan B.”

  “Tau isn’t hostile.” The words pop out reflexively. “It’s just—”

  “It’s just home to two different sentient species, one of which is a dangerous predatory race, the other of which are manipulative bastards with freaky superpowers they’ve used to turn said scary-ass predators on your people not once, but twice? Killing, what, eighty-three people?”

  “Eighty-six,” I say. I don’t know if it’s embarrassment or lingering terror at her summary that’s making my heart pound all over again. “And they did it three times. The Sorrow manipulated the phytoraptors into killing the original scout team, too.”

  “And eating them,” she adds.

  “And eating them,” I acknowledge, sick despair twisting in my guts.

  She smirks again. “Sounds pretty hostile to me.”

  I want to tell her she’s wrong, but I know she isn’t. I’ve spent all this time worrying that we’ll be a disaster for Tau, but Tau has been just as much of a disaster for us.

  As always, my face is thinking out loud. The lieutenant claps me on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, Junior.” She grins. “We got this.”

  “We?” I say.

  She snaps into a salute. “Lieutenant Emily Shelby, 156th Infantry.” Then she slouches out of the salute and adds, “We’re as hostile as it gets.”

  The sleep center doors slide open and Mom storms out.

  Grandpa follows, calling after her, “This is no time to panic, Alice.”

  She spins, stalking back toward him. “I’m not panicking, Dad. I’m . . .” She shakes her head. The next word comes out choked. “. . . despairing. I . . . I don’t see a way forward that isn’t hideous and so I am shaking my useless, ineffectual fists at the universe.”

  Grandpa doesn’t flinch away from her sadness. “We’ll find a way. We have time.”

  “Eighty-two days,” Mom says. “That’s not time, Dad. Not to wake up ten thousand people and drop them on a planet that doesn’t want them.”

  “Can’t you fix it?” I blurt out the question. Mom tosses me a glare so withering that I can feel my words shrinking as I continue, “You fixed the sail. You can’t—”

  “I’m a pilot, Jo,” she snaps. “Not an engineer. I knew how to fix that sail because I helped Penny fix it during the test flight. But Penny is . . .” She gasps, like the memory of her best friend’s death is a punch in the gut. “I can’t fix this alone.”

  “You’re not alone,” Grandpa says, holding a hand out to her. “We’re together. And this family doesn’t give up.”

  Mom squeezes her eyes shut, like she’s hoping her vision will clear and she’ll see something new when she opens them. But when our eyes meet again, the despair is still there, drenching her amber-speckled brown irises with tears.

  She takes Grandpa’s hand, letting him pull her close. Her shoulders are shaking. She looks small, wrapped in his long hook-shouldered frame. She and I are the same height now, but I don’t think I’ve ever thought of her as small before.

  Lieutenant Shelby clears her throat pointedly. Grandpa nods and then murmurs something into Mom’s hair. She shakes her head.

  He looks up at me. “Joanna, can we rely on you to pilot the Trailblazer for us?”

  “We’re going down to Tau?” I say.

  He nods. “It’s time.”

  Mom pushes out of his arms and strides up the corridor without waiting for the rest of us. I start to follow, but he stops me.

  “Give her a moment, Little Moth,” he murmurs.

  “Half the squad’s still bald,” Lieutenant Shelby says. “For the record.”

  “Leave them here,” Grandpa says. “For now. They can continue reviving vital personnel while they’re growing out their lustrous locks, then follow in shuttle 3212.”

  “You’re the admiral,” Shelby says. Her tone is sardonic, but the sharp salute she offers him is respectful and professional.

  “Grandpa,” I say as she jogs up the hallway after Mom. “You . . . we . . . Mom is right. We can’t drop a bunch of people on this planet and start building. The Sorrow. The phytoraptors. They deserve better than that.”

  Grandpa smiles gently, enfolding both of my hands in his.

  “You’re right, Little Moth. But I”m going to find a way to make this work,” he says. “Because this is your world now. I don’t want you and your generation to just survive. You’re going to thrive here. I’ll do whatever it takes to make sure you do.”

  People say stuff like whatever it takes all the time. But my grandfather ended the Storm Wars and invented a system to repair a whole planet. When he says that, it means something.

  “I’m glad you’re here, Grandpa,” I say.

  His return smile is broad and uncomplicated. Like I’ve just given him a gift.

  “Me too.” He wraps an arm around my shoulders and tugs me up the corridor. “Come, Little Moth. It’s time to show me your world.”

  Three

  Shelby and half a dozen other boisterous, heavily armed people are already on the shuttle by the time Mom, Grandpa, and I board the Trailblazer. They’re acting like a bunch of teenagers on a field trip, but they’re obviously marines.

  I expect Grandpa to make them stow their weapons. One accidental discharge and we’ll all be sucking vacuum.

  He doesn’t.

  As pilot, I could ask them to stow their weapons myself. But maybe I’m overreacting. They’re just blowing off steam. If it were a problem, Grandpa would shut it down.

  He takes the copilot’s chair, beside me. I expect Mom to object—that should be her place. But she just collapses into a chair in the front row and curls into a ball. Her vivid despair makes my stomach clench. I’ve never seen her this way.

  By the time I finish calculating our trajectory, her eyes are closed. But I don’t think she’s asleep. Her body is coiled too tightly for that, like she’s trying to fold up into herself and disappear. Grandpa’s hands shake as he takes my flex to check my math. Guilt digs in like splinters under my fingernails. They’re both so exhausted.

  The flight is long. Our timing wasn’t ideal, and we have to do nearly a full orbit before the Trailblazer can dive through the atmosphere and into the icy gray evening that’s settling on Pioneer’s Landing as we touch down.

  Most of the Exploration & Pioneering (E&P) team, including Dad and Beth, is gathered on the airfield by the time I get the engines shut down and the ramp open.

  I’m the first person off the shuttle. The soaking wet breeze cuts through my uniform as I walk down the ramp. Dad grabs me into a hug before my boots hit dirt.

  “Oh, thank goodness. You’re okay.” He gasps the words, like he’s been holding his breath this whole time.

  He was worried about me. I was sitting safe and sound in the Trailblazer’s passenger cabin and he was down here worrying about me.

  Embarrassment flushes up the back of my neck, making my hair prickle.

  “Nobody is okay, Dad,” I mutter, pulling back. “It’s literally the apocalypse.”

  “According to Mom’s message, Earth became uninhabitable approximately five months and seven days ago,” Beth says. “Roughly seventeen days after the Prairie began its journey. The apocalypse has been over for some time.”

  My eyes roll of their own accord. “Post-apocalypse, then. Same difference.”

  “I doubt it,” Dad says. His face looks like someone is pulling his skin tight against his bones. Probably because he’s empathizing with the billions of people who were left behind to die, not cracking terrible jokes about them.

  What the hell is wrong with me?

  “Dad,” I say, reaching out to him again. “I’m—”

  The thud of boots on the ramp behind us drowns out my attempted apology. Lieutenant Shelby strides o
ff the shuttle, breaking the tentative connection between Dad and me as she leads her squadron out onto the airfield.

  They fall into two straight lines at stiff attention.

  “Marines!” she shouts. “Welcome to Tau Ceti e. As always, situation is fubar. But does that bother us?”

  “No, sir!” The squad snaps the words out in perfect unison.

  Some of them have the same deadly serious look on their faces as Shelby. Some are grinning hungrily. Like they’re already spoiling for a fight.

  “That’s right,” Shelby says. “Fubar is what we do best. So get to it. Secure the perimeter, then find the Pioneer’s squad and make friends. I expect to see all of you assembled outside ground control in thirty. Copy?”

  “Sir, yes, sir!” they shout.

  “Then move your butts!”

  At that, the marines scatter, tearing through the anxious crowd like shrapnel.

  “Given the general anxiety level right now, that seemed unnecessarily aggressive,” Beth observes, as Dad struggles to answer the questions that bubble from the pioneers in their wake.

  “Lieutenant Shelby isn’t subtle,” Grandpa says, coming down the ramp to join us. “But she’s good at her job.”

  “Not if her job is to keep us safe,” Beth points out, her voice coated with ice. “Stress and anxiety make people stupid. We can’t afford to be stupid right now.”

  “Astute,” Grandpa says, offering her a smile. “As always. Hello, Beth. It’s good to see you.”

  “Is it?” she says, turning to look up at him. “Under the circumstances?”

  “Beth!” I protest. “That’s—”

  “Where the hell is Alice, Eric?” Dad interupts in an urgent whisper.

  “Asleep,” Grandpa says, not bothering to keep his voice down.

  “Excuse me?” Dad isn’t just startled. He’s flabbergasted. He knows just as well as I do that Mom would never sleep through this. These are her people. They need her. There’s nowhere she’d rather be than taking care of them.

  And yet she’s still in that shuttle.

  “Alice has been awake for more than two days straight, and spent much of that time in a spacesuit, repairing the ship that holds our survivors,” Grandpa says, still talking loud enough for the others to hear. “My daughter saved more than ten thousand lives today. I think she’s entitled to some rest.”

  A little sigh ripples through the pioneers around us, like they’re watching a really exciting three-sixty drama and something cool just happened.

  “What was wrong with the ship?” someone calls from the depths of the crowd.

  “Is it stable now?”

  “Is there a list of survivors we can access?”

  Dad throws Grandpa a look that’s somewhere between a question and a challenge. “They need her.”

  “I don’t care,” Grandpa says, pitching his voice low so only we can hear him.

  Dad shakes his head. “You never did understand her.”

  Grandpa grabs his arm. “Nick,” he says, “Alice is a grown woman. A leader. There isn’t much I can protect her from anymore. So when I see a burden I can carry for her, I will. I need to.” His gaze goes to me for a long, pointed beat. Then he looks back up at Dad. “I’m sure you understand.”

  Dad’s eyes jump from Grandpa to Beth and me. He sucks in a breath and then he lets it out, deflating in the process. “Excuse me.”

  He ducks up the ramp into the Trailblazer.

  Grandpa turns to face the crowd.

  “I am Admiral Eric Crane,” he calls, his voice effortlessly quelling the jostling conversations around us. “Some of you know me. All of you will. I’m sure you have a lot of questions. I’ll do my best to answer them.”

  The crowd explodes with anxious demands. Everyone is talking at once. I don’t know how Grandpa keeps track of it all, but he does. He supplies answers calmly, one at a time, talking directly to each person but somehow including the whole group. With each new piece of information, the pioneers get a little calmer.

  My flex buzzes. It’s Jay again. The goofy picture assigned to him in my contacts makes me ache. He’s out with Dr. Howard’s foraging team. His text says they’re still hours away, but they’re heading back as fast as they can.

  That means Chris’s dad isn’t here, either. Where is Chris? I don’t want him to be alone right now. And what about Leela? She must be taking this hard. But when I search the crowd, I realize I’m having trouble focusing my eyes.

  I blink, trying to clear my head. The setting sun stabs at my retinas, throwing off chilly white shards of light as it sinks into the mountains. The sun was midsky when Mom and I took off. Yesterday. No, I realize abruptly, the day before that. I may not have gone on the EVA, but I’ve piloted two transorbital flights since then, and I’ve been awake for nearly two and a half days. No wonder I can’t seem to focus. My brain is shutting down.

  I need to sleep.

  I start walking. I don’t say goodbye to Beth or look for my friends as I push through the crowd. If I stop now, I’m afraid I won’t make it to my bed.

  The streets of the Landing are empty. The quiet amplifies the lonely pit inside me, making my exhausted body feel even heavier.

  I trip, but I don’t fall. For a second, I can’t figure out why. Then I realize that there’s a hand gripping my arm, steadying me. I look up and find Beth standing next to me. She doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t even really look at me. She just tugs me forward gently, urging me to keep going.

  We get to the greenhouse and she pushes the door open. I walk between the lush rows of Tau plants growing in sample pots, past the little stands of Earth corn and wheat, and into the storage closet my sister and I have turned into a makeshift bedroom. We’re supposed to be sharing a cabin with Mom and Dad, but those units aren’t really designed for privacy, and four adults, two of whom are happily married, are a lot for one cabin.

  I collapse on my cot and reach for my boots, or I mean to. But my arms aren’t cooperating. My whole body feels tingly, like it’s fallen asleep and my mind has yet to follow.

  Beth kneels in front of me and unfastens the bindings on my boots, then pulls them off.

  “Sleep,” she says.

  “Beth.”

  “Sleep,” she repeats, before I can figure out what I want to say to her. “I’ll be here.”

  I don’t even remember lying down. I must have. I’m cocooned in my sleeping bag when the whispered sigh of the greenhouse doors opening wakes me up.

  I open my eyes. It’s dark. Beth is asleep on the cot across from mine.

  Then Jay is there, the hover servos in his leg braces whining gently as he kneels down beside me.

  I hurl myself at him.

  His arms close around me and I dig my fingers into the ropes of muscle that run over his shoulders and down his back. Clutching the sweat-stiff fabric of his T-shirt. He squeezes me closer, burying his face in my sleep-wild hair.

  After a while, the tension ebbs from the embrace. I lean against his shoulder. His fingers rub the base of my neck, right at the spot where the muscles always knot together. Mom is the only other person who can find that spot. It weirds me out a little bit that he knows my body that well. But it’s good weird.

  “Are you okay?” he whispers.

  “No,” I say.

  I feel his chuckle more than I hear it.

  “Me neither,” he says. “But I’m glad to be home.”

  Two days ago, one of us would have qualified that statement. We would have reminded ourselves that this isn’t home. But today, it is.

  He rolls his shoulders as he sits back on his haunches, his leg braces sighing and shifting as he uses them to lever himself to his feet. He grimaces.

  “How long have you been in those things?” I ask quietly as I lead him out of our makeshift bedroom. He follows me between tidy rows of plants to the cluster of orchid tree specimens at the far end of the greenhouse. We have a spare camp bed and some chairs arranged in the private hollow created by
the trees. Leela and Chris and I set this up when the weather got too cold to hang out in the square.

  Beth complained about it at first, but not in a way that made any of us think she actually minds. Dr. Howard must know it’s here, but he doesn’t seem to care either. I guess he’s just happy Chris has somewhere to be when Dr. Hunter is busy on foraging trips.

  “Twenty hours.” Jay shoves the chairs aside and eases himself down on the bed, back against the plexiglass wall.

  “Jay!” Since he was stabbed during Ord’s attack on the Landing, Jay hasn’t had full control of his legs. He uses braces to walk. They work pretty well, but he isn’t supposed to wear them for more than twelve hours without a break.

  He waves off my concern. “We started back right away when we got the news. James had been on the stick for eight already and nobody was gonna wait out a rest period, so . . .” He shrugs, like that was that.

  “First things first,” I say, dropping to the camp bed beside him and pressing the power-down switch on his hip.

  “I can tough it out a little longer,” he protests.

  “Why?”

  A little smile sneaks over his lips as he realizes I want him to stay the rest of the night. I think it’s the first genuine smile I’ve seen from anyone since the Prairie burst over Tau’s orbital horizon.

  We work together in silence, unlatching the matte black Teflon bands that encircle his legs at the ankle and above and below his knee. Each one vibrates gently in my hand as it breaks the wireless connection with the nanoreceptors embedded in the nerves of his legs. He winces when my hand brushes a spot where he still has sensation. He’s in more pain than he admits.

  Once the braces are off, he lays them on the ground and switches them to charge mode. They pulse with gentle yellow light—pulling power from the greenhouse through the floor tiles.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t reply to your texts,” I say as Jay settles back on the camp bed beside me. “I was just . . .”

  “A little busy helping save the species?” he says.

  More like having a panic attack and refusing to help save the species, but before I can tell him what happened up there, he adds, “My mom and my sister are on the Prairie.”