One Giant Leap

by Heather Kaczynski

  I climbed to my feet also and called to him before he left the room. “Wait. You couldn’t have known I would bring this with me, if I didn’t figure out what it was. You didn’t know we’d end up on the same side.”

  He stopped at the doorway, turned halfway, and shrugged. “I didn’t. I just hoped.”

  Fourteen

  LUKA SET THE ship’s internal clock to Earth time, so we would experience the same twelve-hour day and night cycle our bodies were accustomed to.

  The ship didn’t require much supervision, but Luka did spend a few hours each day ensuring everything was running optimally. I had even fewer tasks available to me: eat, sleep, plan. I spent a lot of my time in my bunk, trying to let my body and mind recover, without succumbing to grief or homesickness. I used the time to slip into that gentle sea again. It wasn’t quite the same without the drugs helping to maintain my mental state, but it was meditative and calming—and, I hoped, helping Sunny and me to continue to bond.

  I needed to make my body stronger, too, in order to face what was to come. I started each day with push-ups, lunges, squats, jumping jacks—only able to achieve a fraction of what had once been my standard. But bodies are remarkable at rising to challenges. Even if it cost me sweat and shaking muscles, I’d get back to where I used to be.

  Luka and I drifted together and apart on an increasingly easy rhythm, meeting for meals, passing each other in the corridor or keeping each other company as we felt like it, falling into companionable silence when we ran out of ideas for how we were going to survive the future.

  I spent more time in the presence of the weapon, sitting on the floor a respectful distance away, hoping to glean something about it through either Sunny’s research or osmosis. Either one seemed a decent bet at this point.

  Luka and I slept in the crew quarters. Separate bunks. We weren’t ready to be as close as we had once been, but neither of us wanted to be alone.

  On the sixth or seventh night, Luka’s voice floated over to me in the dark, low and soothing, with the intonation of a wildlife documentary. “In most social species, it is typical for the individuals in a group to keep in constant communication. Birds, zebras, humans—if you notice, when they are together, they are always making noise. But the forest falls silent when a tiger approaches.” The space between my ears filled up with mechanical humming before his voice returned, steady and reassuring. “That’s why we are so discomfited by silence. Noise is the assurance that we are safe. Silence is a harbinger of danger.”

  “What are we going to do when we get back?” I asked, my voice hushed in the din. “What if the vrag beat us there?”

  “We will have to be quick,” he said. “And not give them the opportunity to shoot at us.”

  “Oh, that’s a good plan. I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “The vrag will not instigate an all-out war,” Luka said. “Not at first. Their weakness is that they have only the one ship—they are alone. They’d rather use the planet as bait to lure the last remaining megobari to them.”

  “But why?” I asked. “Why, if they’re vulnerable and alone, are they so intent on killing megobari instead of doing what your people are doing—trying to find a new home?”

  “Revenge,” he said simply. “They are too stupid to start again. They only know hate. They will kill us until their last breath.”

  “Humans will fight back,” I assured him.

  “But the vrag don’t want to fight, they want to win. Even with their stolen ship, they are still one ship against an entire planet full of deadly weapons. They will try coercion first. Humans will be difficult for them to understand; they have not had the time to study you as we have. I’m not sure where they’ve been this whole time; maybe they’ve discovered other alien species and have learned a few things. They only know that we are interested in this planet, and that alone is enough to wish Earth harm.” He paused. “If manipulation does not work, they will take advantage of the inevitable chaos of first contact and move in on their own.”

  “Move in?”

  “They are using stolen megobarian technology. Very old technology, because they do not understand how to build their own. But even our outdated weapons are more advanced than anything on Earth. You saw how even Exodus, a research vessel, was unequipped to defend itself against the ship the vrag inhabit. I’m sure you don’t need to imagine that power used against human technology.”

  I suppressed a chill, bringing the thermal blanket up around my chin. “So how do we fight them?”

  “I’m still working on that.”

  “Luka . . . this weapon. I have a theory that maybe your people . . . chose not to use it. For a reason.”

  He gazed at the ceiling and I heard him suck in a weary breath. “That’s not beyond the realm of possibility. But it’s worth adding that they did not use it, and thus our world was destroyed.”

  It was a good point. “Sunny says there’s more information than she can process at this time. It’s taking all her processing power to search, and I don’t even know that she’d be able to translate anything she found so that I can understand it.” Which might be why I had not been hearing much from her lately. “I hope we can find out once we’re back on Earth.”

  Luka turned his back to me and went quiet. But he wasn’t asleep. “Cassie, we could be home by morning. And when we return . . .” He let the phrase dangle, a future and a fate yet uncertain.

  “We’ll do what we have to do.”

  “I should like to have a more concrete plan in place. We do not know what kind of situation we will be returning to. We must be prepared for all things . . . including the possibility that we may be parted.”

  I didn’t like what he was implying. But he wasn’t wrong.

  We were flying alone through space and time, leaving our dead companions and the circumstances of their murder behind us. No one at home knew what had happened or what was coming for them. There was no way to know the state Earth would be in when we returned. Who knew what might have happened since we left?

  There was no way to know. And I hated not knowing.

  “My family set up safe houses back on Earth. I have one in particular in mind. It’s isolated enough that I feel we can safely land Penelope nearby and keep it hidden. We can make the house our base of operations as we plan our next moves.”

  “What are we going to do about the weapon, though?”

  He was quiet a moment. “Hide it. Study it. Keep it safe until we know how to use it.”

  “I hope we don’t have to.”

  His silence lasted so long I fell asleep without knowing if he ever answered.

  Fifteen

  WHEN I WOKE up, something was different.

  The humming. A specific variety of bone-jarring vibration that I’d become accustomed to over the past few days was just—gone.

  Curious—and afraid—I touched the wall beside my bunk. What is going on?

  Sunny responded immediately. Cassie, the Alcubierre drive has deactivated. We have reached our destination.

  We’d made it?

  Home!

  I leaped out of my bunk, finding myself alone in the crew quarters. I ran down the corridor, tugging on my boots as I went, and found Luka where I expected him to be: standing at the bridge controls.

  “I wanted to let you sleep,” he said by way of explanation. “I thought you would need—”

  “Is it . . . ,” I asked, a grin splitting my face before I could even finish my sentence.

  He slid his fingers across the interface, and black space enveloped us.

  Through the transparent walls of the ship, a blue marble shimmered in the distance. A tiny silver pearl hovered in its orbit. Two jewels in an invisible crown.

  A wave of relief washed over me, unscrewing muscles that had been wound tight for days.

  “She’s so beautiful,” I murmured, unable to help myself. The back of my neck tingled.

  There wasn’t time to admire the view. Penelope’s scanners didn’
t pick up any suspicious readings, but Luka warned that the vrag had probably been here for days, and were more than capable of hiding their heat signatures.

  “I sent a message to the other Megobari ships. In case they are within range to receive it, they will know what is going on here. If we fail, they may be our last chance to save Earth.”

  I nodded. Stick to the plan. First order of business: suit up. We dressed in our black spacesuits, taking turns to check that each was undamaged and ready to go.

  Luka held my helmet between his palms. “Cassie. I’m wondering if it might be better for you to take the shuttle to Earth. Alone.”

  I bracketed my hands on my hips, feeling the tension ratchet up between my shoulder blades. “Why?”

  “It would be easier to hide you and the droneship if we each went our separate ways. The vrag might already know we’re here. We will light up like a beacon the moment we arrive.”

  I tried to steady my breathing. “I don’t know how to use the shuttle.”

  “It’s just an emergency escape pod, same as we used last time. The droneship isn’t suited for passengers when it enters the atmosphere, but it will keep the weapon safe. You’ll have some directional control but the shuttle moves like a brick, so just be careful. Once you land, don’t forget to destroy the pod.”

  “Is this Mission: Impossible, or what?”

  “I don’t understand that reference. Cassie, this is important. I can set the shuttle to destruct on its own, but I can’t know when you’re at a safe distance. I trust you to do it. We can’t have evidence of your landing for humans to find.”

  I looked at the view screen again, at the matching blue and silver crescents. “You don’t think we could just . . . land Penelope on the White House lawn?”

  He raised his eyebrows. “I do understand that reference. Sunny will help you,” he said, putting my helmet into my hands. “Don’t worry. This will be the easy part.” Luka held my face and gazed down at me for a moment, eyes dark and somber. “I’ll see you on the surface. Okay?”

  I stiffened at the contact. We hadn’t been so close in days. As he dropped his hands from me, I said, “You’re going to be careful, right?”

  Before he could answer, the bulkhead filled with flashes of red, a pulse of warning. Luka had only begun to respond when the entire ship tilted violently on its side, throwing me on a collision course with the opposite side of the bridge.

  My back hit the wall with enough force to knock the wind out of me. Gravity was gone. I scrambled to grab hold of something, to right myself. Which way was up? The world was flashes of red, the ceiling now under my feet.

  I might not have trained like a traditional astronaut, but I remembered what to do. I found a reference point and righted myself, finding my helmet floating nearby. I yanked it over my head and immediately felt Sunny’s presence in surround sound. Her main brain may have been implanted in the back of my neck, but a remote copy of her program was still in my suitboard computer.

  Cassie, this ship is being fired upon.

  “Yeah, I figured!” I shouted over the alarms. I caught sight of Luka at the controls, anchoring himself to the floor. I pushed off the bulkhead with my feet and soared across empty space toward Luka, grabbing the console to keep from colliding into him.

  He didn’t need to tell me that the vrag had found us. The view screen was still up, showing Earth far ahead of us. Only now it seemed Earth was getting a little bigger. “What are you doing?”

  He didn’t look up. “I don’t think they’ll fire on us if we get close to Earth. I’m going to try to outrun them.”

  I stared at him. “Will that work?”

  He shook his head and shrugged at the same time, his eyes a little wild. “No idea!”

  The ship rattled again. “Are we hit?”

  “Just a glance,” Luka said. His hair was damp with sweat. “Why aren’t they using their main weapons?”

  “Maybe you’re right—they don’t want to have a firefight so close to Earth.”

  “The heat signatures are definitely going to attract some attention,” he agreed, just before another glancing blow made Penelope shudder, and knocked me off my grip.

  Luka reached out and grabbed my arm, swinging me back beside him. “Are you ready to go?”

  “What do you mean?”

  His eyes locked with mine. He turned, swiped some sort of color code into the interface, and a door slid open nearby. “Cassie?” He said it very slowly, despite the chaos going on around us. “It seems you are going to Earth alone after all.”

  “Luka? No, don’t you dare—not now!” I saw Earth looming larger in the view screen. The swaths of red alarms drenched Luka’s skin, flashed like lightning in his eyes. His face was shadows and angles and set in stone. I knew that look.

  “I’ll see you down there,” he said. “I’m sending the droneship to the surface with the weapon. It’ll hide itself somewhere near the safe house. You need to go with it and keep it from them. Sunny has the coordinates to the safe house and I’ll meet you there when I can. Now GO!” His hand pushed against my back, urging me away.

  I held on for one moment longer, trying to read his eyes. I felt the logic of his plan pull at me and hated it.

  I let go. Pushed off with my feet to the back of the bridge and into the open pod.

  Seconds before the pod door closed, I had an image of Luka, standing on the bridge of a ship under fire. Like his father.

  He wouldn’t sacrifice himself for me the way his father had. He’d lost everyone else. He wouldn’t do that to me. Would he?

  Luka, don’t you dare—

  His eyes met mine and I heard his voice in my helmet. “Just like we planned, Cassie.”

  The door slammed shut, and then I was alone in the darkness of space.

  Luka Kereselidze, you’d better not be lying.

  Sixteen

  I EXPECTED NOISE. But there was only a soft hiss of air as the pod released, and then nothing but silence.

  A black void, pricked with stars, sped over me. But without a reference point, it was hard to tell I was moving at all. I didn’t even catch a glimpse of Penelope burning silently behind.

  The only sense I had of movement was how all my organs seemed to shift—my tongue was pushed back into my throat, my jaw against my skull, my internal organs into my spine. My arms and legs were welded into the pod. I had to force my diaphragm to open in order to inhale.

  I was flying through empty space in an alien coffin.

  Computer readouts danced in faint colors in the clear material in front of my face, but I couldn’t understand them.

  At this speed, all it would take would be a chunk of debris from Penelope or a micrometeoroid in the wrong place and I’d be dead.

  I couldn’t see Earth. I couldn’t see Penelope.

  I was hyperventilating but I couldn’t calm down, couldn’t think. My heartbeat was a long string of continuous beats, a drumroll. At this rate I’d use up all my oxygen long before reaching Earth.

  Cassie, your remaining oxygen should be sufficient to reach Earth, based on your current velocity and trajectory.

  Of course, Sunny could read the alien computer language. But I didn’t miss her “should.”

  Earth. Where was Earth? What if Luka miscalculated the trajectory? Maybe I would shoot right past Earth and keep going through space forever until I shriveled up like a mummy, my carcass traversing the universe for millennia, eventually falling into a black hole a million light-years away from the place I was supposed to be.

  Cassie, your trajectory is currently set to have you land at latitude 31.968599, longitude -99.901813—

  “Sunny, I’m not a GPS satellite, I don’t know what that means!”

  —in the vicinity of Winters, Texas.

  “Where the hell is Winters, Texas?!”

  Sunny gave me the coordinates again, which I ignored, as I saw the ominous shadow looming in the distance.

  The vrag ship. Black ship on black space, li
ke a titan’s shadow, a nightmare rising out of the deepest corners of my dreams. Nothing but an absence of stars.

  I didn’t want to look at it, but I couldn’t not see it. The transparent lid of the pod was half filled with its shadow, the other half with Earth—small and vulnerable in comparison, though I knew it was only a matter of perspective.

  I must be thousands of miles away and it looked like a small planet, like a black hole that might pull me in. Maybe even big enough to have its own weak gravity.

  Had the vrag ship spotted me? Maybe they were aiming their weapons at my helpless shuttle even now. I screwed my eyes shut, bracing to be blasted into vapor.

  Cassie, the vrag ship is moving away from us.

  My eyes flew open, scanning the darkness, finally seeing it—only visible from the faint glow of its engines.

  Luka was leading the vrag away from Earth. Away from me.

  “No!” I screamed. But the pod rotated again, pulling me away from the view.

  Black gradually shifted to blue white as I fell into Earth’s pull. My eyes watered with the effort of forcing my abs to keep my stomach in its rightful place, but I could see ice crystals form on the window and then melt and steam away as I fell and fell and fell.

  Small rockets on all sides of the shuttle fired, repelling gravity, using air resistance to slow my fall and correct my descent. The shuttle rotated, tilted, and then I saw North America spread out like a map before me, clear as day and larger than life. It was both a still life and a living, breathing world. I saw the sunshine dancing on the water of the Gulf of Mexico. A sliver of shimmering ice somewhere in Canada. Strands of white clouds stretching like scarves across the Midwest. The Rocky Mountains, gray and snowcapped—the golden deserts—the emerald farmlands—the forested green hills of home.

  Tears warmed my eyes. Home. Still here. Still green and blue and lovely.

  The shuttle shook as I fell through the atmosphere, turbulence vibrating through my body. A small rumble as boosters deployed, fighting my descent, and the shuttle slowed—but what I guessed was the Texas panhandle was still rushing up to meet me at a terrifying rate, until I was so close I couldn’t even tell where I was anymore.