Chapter 3
Frederique
My hands were clammy, so I kept them clasped behind my back, my posture ramrod straight so as not to betray my nerves.
This mission was sanctioned by the European consulates, who were rapidly losing power inside the emerging UAR power structure.
We knew—all of us—that if we did not act now, the UAR would control all of Earth and, soon, expand to include much of the Quadrant.
We could no longer offer resistance on our own; we needed help.
“Did you hear?” Kadri said under her breath from my left.
She had her braids piled high and, against protocol, wore a beautiful, colorful scarf as a headband to keep them out of her face.
No one had told her to take it off, because this mission would take us so far, we might never see our families again.
We were grasping at straws—reports of a species that had once tried to defy the early formation of the UAR, back when it was still underground and unknown to the greater public.
The Kertinal. We were going to travel through deep space, in stasis, for at least two years to find these people and hope they were willing to help.
We needed a powerful counterpart to keep the Dragnell and the Praxidar in check, and they might be it.
“Did I hear what?” I asked Kadri just as quietly.
Our commanding officer was standing on the tarmac in front of us, giving us a departing speech that was boring and long-winded.
He had a bushy mustache just this side of regulations, and a bald head.
His odd, shuffling steps as he paced in front of us—a crew of ten, plus myself—made me think of Poirot.
My mom had devoured all those books, reading them to me on sunny days in the hospital when she fell ill.
They had forever inspired me to remain curious and to always ask questions.
“New laws went into place in America, something about ending prisons, as they’re inhumane.
Now it’s fines or straight to execution, no appeals.
” I twisted my head to stare at Kadri in utter shock.
What now? How was that possible, and why weren’t people rioting in the streets about this?
I was not entirely surprised I’d missed it, we’d been quarantined, completely sequestered, for the past seven days.
I’d been consumed with mission prep, not outside news.
From my other side, Jones twisted his torso just enough to lean in toward me.
“England is in the final stages of abolishing its royalty. They’ll join the UAR next—no doubt.
” That would make them the seventh European country to make that pledge.
NATO was already gone; it was just us, this final push from nations unwilling to take that fatal plunge.
“Do we really have to wait for him to finish his speech?” Kadri asked, the urgency in her voice obvious.
It was that same urgency I felt, but five minutes wouldn’t make much of a difference on a two-year journey.
By the time we’d reached the Kertinal, the UAR could already have control of everything.
We just hoped that they would see the danger of so much concentrated power bordering their Quadrant and be willing to make some kind of treaty about it.
Something that would stop the UAR from massively mistreating the people in it.
Finally, our commander finished his speech, and we boarded the spaceship waiting for us.
It had been fueled to the max and outfitted with as many automated systems as possible.
Once we launched, the entire crew would go into stasis, and we’d rely on the autopilot and auto-wakecycle to guide us to our destination and wake us.
It was a terrifying thought—to trust a machine to that extent—but a chance I was willing to take for a glimmer of hope.
I was in charge, but I’d only received mission control by a hair’s breadth.
It had almost been Davidson instead. As an experienced navigator and pilot—skills rarely combined at such high quality—he’d nearly gotten the post. My background in xeno-biology and diplomacy had won out.
Not that I’d ever been a diplomat myself, but both my parents had been, and I’d been all over the world, seeing the insides of many embassies as a result.
They’d wanted someone at the helm who could control their temper and have a greater understanding of the alien species she was dealing with.
Davidson had been pissed, but he was dealing; his desire to be on the mission regardless of status was admirable.
He was standing just beyond Jones, spine straight, shoulders out, the handsome profile of his chin jutting forward.
A beautiful man, he’d made a few advances toward me before it became clear I’d be his superior officer.
Then he’d refocused on Kadri, and she’d blown him off, since she batted for the other team—which was totally fair—and he’d taken that rejection with laughter and grace.
This was a good crew, dragged together from the corners of Europe, with Jones our one American defector, his role programming the stasis pods absolutely crucial.
This was a one-way trip, possibly doomed to fail.
As we marched aboard the ship and took up our positions, we all knew it.
We shared grim but determined looks as we went by rote through the launching sequence.
Then came the hard part, when we reached space and had to navigate through the ships patrolling Earth’s solar system.
Dragnell ships of superior build and speed, more advanced than anything Earth could cook up.
A Praxidar science vessel was there to observe and study—supposedly to help us overcome all disease—but I had much darker thoughts on that subject.
They’d been there nearly a century now, and cancer still wasn’t out of the world. My mom had died from it.
This was when Davidson proved every bit of his worth on the mission.
As a navigator, he assisted our pilot for whom he was the backup, in case the pilot was out.
The two worked well together, heads ducked close, Davidson’s nav port gleaming where the thin cable connected to the base of his skull.
Like trusting a ship to wake me when it was time, I had a hard time trusting a wire going directly into my brain not to fry any brain cells.
The ships were much more daunting to look at when we passed them in space.
At the same time, they also seemed smaller.
I’d thought they’d be bigger, given the pictures I’d seen and the stats I’d read on them.
Everything seemed smaller in space, though—especially Earth: a tiny blue ball with a pretty cloud cover, one half in the dark, glittering with lights.
“First time in space for you, right?” Jones asked quietly from next to me.
The older man was fit, which had helped get him on this mission, but he was also a very experienced stasis technician.
He’d done hundreds of flights to and from the colonies, with lots of stints in stasis himself.
He seemed calm, in his element out here, and I was grateful for that kind of steadiness.
I just nodded, not willing to voice it loudly where Davidson could hear.
It made him scoff, chafing at the bit to know that the captain in charge had never been off the planet before, despite my specialty being alien species.
“Don’t worry. Soon you’ll be in stasis, and you’ll feel no worry at all.
” Somehow, those were not exactly comforting words.
When, three hours later, we exited the solar system completely unhindered by the Dragnell or Praxidar, it became the moment of truth.
I had to lead by example, so I was one of the first to go under inside the captain’s quarters.
My wake sequence would be set to go first, and I’d trained with Jones on how to wake him in case the computer didn’t do that automatically.
He had assured me multiple times that the computer would not fail, not unless it was sabotaged.
Then Craven, our head engineer, had assured me that sabotage was out of the question, he’d checked every bolt and screw himself.
So that was it. I lay down in the pod, said my goodbyes—couched in “see you tomorrow”—and out I was, sleeping like the dead for two whole years.
I might as well have died in that time; I wouldn’t have known if it happened.
I just knew that when I woke, everything would have changed. If I woke...