Thirty-One
I rip my clothes off as I race through the ship to the airlock where Shelby is already hauling a fresh suit from the lockers for me. She fumbles it with her limp, useless arm, but I snatch the gear before it hits the floor.
“You couldn’t keep him busy ten more seconds?” she demands, reaching for a helmet as I stuff my legs into the suit. Terror makes my fingers clumsy.
“I’m still earning the poker face.” I gasp, shaking my hands out before I shove the suit seals into place.
“Well, let’s hope you live long enough to be a better liar,” she mutters. Then she calls out over the comm, “You holding it together out there, Divekar?”
“Oh sure,” Leela replies, her voice trembling. “Got a view of Tau and everything.”
That’s bad. If Leela can see the planet, she’s beyond the Vulcan’s shadow. EVA tethers are longer than the ones in our regular harnesses, but they aren’t infinite. Once she’s out of reach, we’ll never get her back.
I don’t realize that Beth’s behind me until I feel a second pair of hands pulling the O2 tank onto my back as I seal the suit and it slithers tight over my body.
“You’ll have to complete the docking tube seal first,” she says as I jam my feet into EVA boots and grab the helmet from Shelby.
“I know,” I say, sliding the helmet over my head and initiating the exterior cameras and comms.
“You can do both.” Beth’s voice is muffled as I wait for the cameras to come online. “You can save Leela and the ship.”
“Maybe,” I say as the three-sixty inside the helmet goes live, revealing my sister standing in front of me. “But if I can’t—”
“It’s improbable,” Beth says. “But that’s never stopped you before.”
“In other words,” Shelby says, “get it done, Junior.”
With that she pulls Beth out of the airlock and seals it behind them.
“Decompression in ten . . . nine . . . eight . . .” I can’t listen. I can’t think. I just watch the red light running around the hatch.
I hit the autoconnect button on my harness. My hands are shaking. It takes three tries before my tether slithers out to bond with the airlock tether point.
What you’re afraid of isn’t out there, Jo, Mom’s voice whispers in my brain. It’s in here.
Okay, Mom. Okay.
The hatch turns green.
I swipe the door release.
The exterior hatch pops open, letting in the silence of space.
There’s no time for hesitation.
I jump.
Then I panic.
I’m spinning, falling in every direction at once as infinity opens around me. I’m screaming. In my head. Out loud. I can’t tell. It doesn’t matter. I’m alone. In the dark. Just like Teddy.
My tether snaps taut.
“Hotshot!”
“Joey!”
“Joanna!”
The voices of my friends layer over each other through the comm line. Concern. Fear. Love. The snarling panic fights back, but the pull of their voices is stronger than the fear.
“Snap out of it!” Leela’s voice roars over the others.
I breathe. Again.
I’m not falling. I’m tethered. I’m suited up. I’m breathing.
I’m okay.
“Copy,” I whisper.
An avalanche of concerned questions fills the open comm line. Instead of responding, I grab a handhold on the twisting docking tube and pull myself forward, toward the Vulcan.
My panic attack stole fifteen seconds. I need to get them back.
I plant my boots on the next handhold and push off, shooting past the next one to snatch the one beyond it.
This is still too slow.
I curl my body into a crouch and tuck my boots against the twisting tube.
“What are you doing?” Beth demands over the comms as I push off and shoot up the tube, bypassing the next three handholds.
“Being improbable.” I gasp, grabbing the final handle and pulling myself onto the hull of the Vulcan. Jay is clinging to the other side of the docking ring, his snapped tether floating out behind him like streamers on a little kid’s bike handles.
In my head, I can see him losing his grip. I can see him disappearing into the dark. I blink, hard, driving the fear away.
I grab the free edge of the warping docking tunnel and pull, dragging it toward the hull. But I’m moving too fast. The Teflon-Kevlar weave twists in on itself instead, snapping me out into the stars beyond the linked ships.
Memory shrieks through me. My fear is like a club pounding on the inside of my skull. I ignore it this time, dragging myself back along the tether line.
I check my chrono. That just cost me eight more seconds.
“How do I keep this thing from bucking me off again?” I demand over the comms as I hurl myself back toward the tube.
“You need to straighten out the kink before you connect it,” Shelby replies.
“How?”
“Your tether,” Chris chimes in. “If you can create a second contact point at the center of the tube, you should be able to straighten it gradually as you move toward the Vulcan.”
“Right,” I snap, reaching out to grab a handhold at the midpoint of the twisted tunnel. I don’t have any anchor points, so I loop my tether into a mooring hitch knot.
Grandpa’s hands fold over mine in my head, shaping my fingers around a different, rougher rope. The memory is so vivid, I can almost smell the sea around us. I snap the knot tight, dispelling the ghosts it carries as I do. Then I leap straight for the Vulcan’s hull. I don’t have time to be cautious now.
“It’s working!” Chris crows over the comms. I don’t look back. I don’t look at anything but the EVA handle I’m aiming for on the Vulcan. Moving between two handholds this far apart is incredibly stupid, even tethered in. If I miss, I’m dead. But I can’t care about that right now.
I need eighteen more seconds.
My glove connects with the Vulcan’s hull.
I wrap the fingers of my left hand through the EVA handle and lean back to grab the still dangerously torqued emergency tube with my right. I can see the contact points—three glowing red disks on the tube’s docking ring. I pluck them free and smack them against the Vulcan’s skin.
Then I reach for the warped edge of the docking tube once more.
I hook my fingers under the rim.
I pull.
The tube twists, straightening behind me. Pulling tighter and tighter until . . .
The contact points snap together, turning green silently under my fingers.
“Sealed!” Chris shouts over the comms.
My eyes leap to the chrono in my helmet. I still need twelve seconds I don’t have, but I think I know how to get them.
I release my tether and try not to watch the fine black cord eat itself up, unraveling the quick-release knot I tied on the docking tube as it races backward into the fabric of my harness.
My fingers are all that’s between me and the black.
My harness vibrates gently as the tether settles.
I plant my boots against the EVA handle and reach up, stretching my body over the hull.
I kick off.
My untethered, frictionless momentum carries me forward over the skin of the ship, the tips of my gloved fingers stretched out in front of me.
The Vulcan’s folded wing rises ahead of me. I cup my hands, sliding up and . . .
“Magnetize!” I shout at my suit.
My boots magnetize. The force of their sudden attraction to the Vulcan’s hull yanks me backward so fast that whiplash snaps through my neck.
“You’re insane,” Leela breathes over the comms.
I don’t reply. I don’t stop moving. Ignoring the pain in my head, I crouch, my knees almost to the hull.
I can see Leela now. A glowing speck in the darkness.
I lean forward, stretching over the inner dip of the wing.
“Mag off.”<
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Then I jump.
I shoot down the wing and up, off the edge like a snowboarder on a half pipe.
Eternity explodes all around me.
It’s so beautiful that, for a single heartbeat, there is nothing else.
“Joanna!” Leela’s voice yanks me back into the moment. She’s floating ahead of me, arms and legs carefully tucked to try to create as little momentum as possible.
My hand shoots to the autoconnect button on my harness.
My tether hurtles out behind me. I don’t look back to see if it connects with the Vulcan’s hull. I can’t risk breaking my momentum. I can’t take my eyes off Leela.
I reach my hands out to her, fingers stretching. Straining.
She shifts her body, risking the momentum gain to reach out for me. Then her hand is in mine. I close my fingers. They catch, hooking into hers as our combined momentum throws us into a dead spin.
I hang on, reaching up to grab her wrist with my free hand as her other hand closes over mine.
I can’t see her face, just the many faceted lenses that line her helmet.
“You caught me.” Leela gasps. “You jumped off the stupid ship and caught me.”
“Couldn’t let you have all the fun,” I heave back, trying to focus on Leela, not the stars and planet and ships blurring around us.
Any second now, my tether is going to reach its full extension. It will snap tight. Then we’ll stop spinning.
Except we don’t.
My harness vibrates gently.
“Contact failed,” the computer informs me. “Out of range.”
My tether didn’t connect.
“It’s okay, Jo, it’s okay,” Leela chants. “You tried. Which was a stupid, ridiculous thing to do. But I love you and we came so close and I thought . . . It’s okay, Jo. It’s okay.”
Teddy’s voice slips over hers in my head.
Tell me you can do this, Jo. Tell me you’re going to be okay.
We aren’t okay.
Soon, we’re going to be dead.
This can’t be how it ends.
Then the blunt silver nose of 3212 flashes in the corner of my eye. We’re spinning so fast and so aimlessly that it’s impossible to tell which direction our momentum is taking us. Could we be headed back toward the shuttle?
I smack the autoconnect button on my harness.
My tether starts to retract.
I breathe in.
I breathe out.
My harness vibrates.
I hit the autoconnect button again.
The tether flies out.
Searching.
Searching.
Searching.
All the air slams out of my lungs as my tether snaps tight.
“Oh my god.” Leela gasps. “We’re tethered. We’re . . . Holy crap, Jo, you did it.”
I can hear Jay and Chris and Beth shrieking over the comms, their joyful voices tangling with each other. But in my head, there’s just one voice. A distant one, echoing across time and space.
Tell me you’re going to be okay.
We aren’t okay yet.
Thirty-Two
Tarn and Nor are waiting for us just inside 3212’s aft airlock.
“Did it work?” I demand. “Did simulation twelve work?”
“Hurry,” Tarn thrums in a broken harmony that makes me want to weep. “They need you.”
It didn’t work.
Leela is already sliding down the ladder at the other end of the corridor that leads to the cargo bay and the emergency docking tube. I fling myself after her, across the bay, and through the airlock into the tube. It has contracted, pulling the two ships together. Its flexible canvas gives under my feet like a trampoline, turning every step into a leap.
We charge onto the Vulcan, but a few meters from the bridge, she skids to a stop so fast I nearly slam into her.
“Leela,” I start to say, but then I see why she stopped.
Chris is sitting in the corridor in front of her with his back against the wall, staring at the opposite wall screen, which is covered in apps and diagnostics.
“What happened?” Leela cries, dropping to her knees beside him. “Are you okay? Simulation twelve—”
“I can’t access it,” he says. His voice is grim but calm. Adult. All the little boy squeakiness is gone. “The ship is on autopilot and the whole system is completely locked out.”
“Where’s Grandpa?” I say.
He points up the hallway toward the bridge.
“Shelby said she was going to shoot him. I couldn’t . . .” He shakes his head. “I left. I just left.”
I bolt past them and hurl myself onto the bridge.
The Vulcan’s dome of wall screen isn’t as big as the Pioneer’s bridge, but it’s big enough to make it look like we’re standing in space. Tau is stretched out below us, shrouded in flecks of green light. A countdown clock is superimposed over the planet. T – 00:12:32:57.
Those green dots are scrubbers, I realize. The Vulcan’s computer is tracking their progress.
Jay and Beth are just inside the door. Grandpa is standing in the center of the bridge, outlined against the cloud of death he’s gathering around our world.
Shelby is standing in front of him with a pistol pointed at his head.
“Don’t!” I cry.
“Why not?” Shelby snarls. “We may have lost, but that doesn’t mean he’s going to win.”
“We haven’t lost yet!” I say, pointing down at the countdown clock. “We have time. Let me talk to him. Let me try.”
“I know you’ve got great faith in your own charm, Junior,” Shelby snaps. “But he’s about to vaporize two hundred fifty-odd people, including a bunch of kids, for no good reason. I think I’m just gonna shoot him.”
“Go back into the corridor, Little Moth,” Grandpa says. “You don’t have to see this.”
“You’re a piece of work, old man.” Shelby snorts. “Acting like I’m the one traumatizing your precious granddaughter when you’re about to vaporize her mama.”
“Alice didn’t give me a choice!” Grandpa howls at her. He seems just as devastated by the idea as we are.
“What did she do, Grandpa?” I ask. “Why don’t you have a choice? Why are you really doing this?”
“I told you—”
“No,” I say, cutting him off. “You didn’t. You said a bunch of stuff about unity and protecting the survivors that makes no sense. You’re about to kill everyone who knows anything about this planet, along with some of the most skilled human beings left in the universe. Engineers. Scientists. Doctors. Teachers. They’re our best hope. You must know that. And as for unity, you crafted the Storm War Accords. You really expect me to believe you can’t find a way to compromise with your own daughter?”
Grandpa opens his mouth to respond but closes it again. He shakes his head. “No amount of compromise will change what’s already done. What had to be done.” He sucks in a breath that’s close to a sob. “I did what was necessary. I know that. But Alice will never, ever understand.”
“And surviving and living with yourself are two different things?” Jay says, from where the others are gathered in the doorway behind me. All the stuff I knew but didn’t yet understand slides together into a single, horrifying truth. I know why my grandfather turned on his own people. On his own family. And it has nothing to do with a fresh start for humanity.
“Grandma told you to save humanity from itself,” I say, each word shattering my heart into smaller pieces. “But you couldn’t, could you? It was too late. There were just too many people.”
“Until the atmo scrubbers melted down and killed most of them,” Jay says. He’s put the pieces together, too.
“No,” Shelby says, shaking her head hard, like she can somehow hurl the truth away. “No way. Not even this asshole would kill billions of people on purpose.”
“I did what needed to be done,” Grandpa says. His voice is quavering. Teary. “I knew there would be consequences
. I thought I was prepared to face them. But . . . I am a surprisingly selfish man. I should have realized that. I should have known I wasn’t strong enough. I never have been. Not alone. Not without Cleo. The day after she died, I was lying in our bed, staring at the ceiling. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t move. I felt like I was pulling G’s just lying still. Then your mother came in.” He moans, like the memory is physically painful.
“She just stood there. Looking at me with this expression . . . She was disappointed in me. She was only a little girl, but even she knew I wasn’t what she needed. I knew it too. So did her mother. That’s why Cleo forced me to make that ridiculous promise. She knew I was too selfish to be a good father on my own.”
“You were a good grandfather,” I say. “To me, at least.”
His smile makes me want to weep. “That was selfish, too. By the time you came along, I thought I’d fulfilled my promise. The atmospheric filtration system. A monumental feat of human engineering that should have saved us all. And for a while, it looked as though it was working. But a few years after you were born, it became clear that we were wrong. All the atmosphere scrubbers did was buy us time. And not nearly enough of it.”
The memory of his ashen face, staring out at the lake from his chair, surfaces in my mind. I must have been two or three at the time. And he’d just figured out he couldn’t save Earth.
“I wanted to give up completely,” he continues. “To give in and follow Cleo into the dark. But there you were. So tiny and ferocious and so determined to make me smile. You gave me a reason to go on. Maybe, if I’d been able to see your mother that way, things would be different.”
His jaw quivers, like he’s biting down on a sob. Then his whole body shudders. “No!” He hurls the word at us. “I refuse to toil under regret. If I had made different choices, Earth would still be choking to death on human greed.”
“Perhaps,” Beth says, stepping past our friends and coming to stand beside me. “Or perhaps someone else might have found a better way.”
“Someone like you?” he snaps, anger swallowing what’s left of the remorse I had seen in his eyes.
“Perhaps,” she says.
He snorts a hard little laugh. “I suppose you come by your arrogance honestly, little girl.”
The Survivor Page 28