Dad hugs me, and we stand together like this for a long time. And even though we hold each other tightly, it still feels as if there’s something between us, something that makes us unable to really reach each other. And I realize there is something between us, something that will always be between us: the ghost of Mom’s memory, reminding us of what we’ve lost.

Dad goes to talk with the military. About guns, and how many remain. And how to arm the big one on the space station.

And then it’s just me.

I sit on the floor and pull my knees up under my chin. The .38 digs into the soft skin of my belly, and I pull it out, staring. Inside it are five hollow-point bullets . . . the only bullets I have left.

I set the gun down beside me. I wore it before because it made me feel safe and it appeased my parents’ worry. But now I think about those five bullets and what they can do. It is no longer simply a precaution. I intend to use them, and I will.

I understand the part of my dad that wants to kill the aliens, even at the price of blowing up the whole planet with them.

I hug my knees, burying my face in my arms.

This room feels very large, and I feel very small.

52: ELDER

I know what I have to do.

The question is: can I?

I wait until night falls. The entire colony has spent the day fluctuating between tension and grief, fear and panic. The military is on edge, more people than usual during each shift of patrols.

But I know I have at least one ally.

Chris.

He might not be my favorite person, but he was with me when I argued with Colonel Martin and I know that, like me, he’d do anything in his power to protect Amy.

He waits for me about an hour after the suns set. “What have you got planned?” he asks me softly as we head down the path through the colony.

“Neither of us wants Colonel Martin to play around with whatever bomb the FRX has up at the space station, right?” I ask him.

Chris nods. “I don’t trust the FRX.”

“Good,” I say. “Neither do I.”

We sneak through the alleys of the colony, then I duck behind the first row of buildings so I can get to Amy’s window. Chris frowns at me—Amy was too caught up in grief earlier today; how can we expect her to help now? But I can’t imagine doing this without her.

“Amy,” I hiss. I think Colonel Martin is assisting with patrols, but I don’t want to risk it.

Amy sits in the center of her room, her knees drawn up to her chin, her eyes sunken and hollow. But she looks up at me and, after taking a deep, shaky breath, stands and crosses the room to the window.

Her eyes spark with curiosity when she notices Chris standing nervously behind me.

“What’s going on?”

“I have a plan,” I say. “Come with me?” I try to hide the hope and trepidation in my voice. Amy has every reason to say no—her mother just died, and we’re all scared of whatever the aliens are planning for us next.

But a moment later she’s lifting herself up on the windowsill and jumping outside.

“You okay?” I whisper.

“No,” she says simply.

It is the honesty of this statement that makes me know that although all of this has cracked her, she’s not broken.

“But I want to do something,” she says for my ears alone. “I can’t stand the thought of being alone right now.”

“That something you want to do,” I say. “It’s not the same plan Colonel Martin has, to detonate whatever weapon that is up in the space station, right?”

Amy gives me a look that is wholly her. “Of course not,” she says. “I’m not Dad.”

“Let’s go,” Chris says, looking around. Helping me now isn’t exactly against Colonel Martin’s orders, but getting caught would lead to questions he probably doesn’t want to have to answer.

I lead them both in the direction of the probe, not bothering to sneak through the tall grass of the meadow. Two guards are on patrol on this side of the colony, but they don’t dare stop us. We are the leader of the shipborns, the daughter of the colonel, and a soldier—they have no reason to doubt us. We walk straight toward the compound as if we’ve been ordered there, and the guards don’t even stop to ask questions.

I let out a sigh of relief when I see the outline of the giant auto-shuttle on the compound—and no guards. I glance at Amy. Her eyes are glass, her face slack as she stares at the rows of boxes, each carrying a person, one holding her mother. I touch the back of her hand, and her watery eyes focus on me. “I’m okay,” she lies.

We may have made it through the colony without arousing suspicion, but if Colonel Martin or any of his people were to see us here under the shadow of nearly five hundred dead people, they wouldn’t let us pass just because we pretended to have confidence.

“What’s the plan?” Chris whispers. I pull out the glass cube Amy gave me earlier and use it to light our way to the communication room, covering it so only a dim glow escapes. I hold it so tightly my fingers ache, trying not to imagine just how much damage it could cause if I dropped it against the cement floor.

Chris stands back, looking around us nervously as if expecting Colonel Martin—or worse, the aliens—to show up. Amy presses her thumb over the biometric scanner. It flashes HUMAN and unlocks. It’s not until the door is shut again that I feel safe to speak in a normal volume.

“Here’s what we know,” I say. Our faces are lit eerily by the glass cube on the floor between us. “We know that the aliens are smart, and they have better weapons and technology than us.”

Amy stares over my shoulder toward the auto-shuttle. Chris just watches me.

“But we don’t know what they are. We’ve never seen one. We don’t know what their weaknesses are. And while the FRX has promised us a weapon that can kill them, we don’t know what the weapon is.”

“Which is why it’s so dangerous,” Chris adds.

“I agree,” I say. “A weapon that can wipe out an entire alien species? Why wouldn’t it wipe us out too? Or destroy the whole planet? It’s not safe to use something that powerful that we don’t understand.”

“So—what? What are we going to do?” Amy asks.

“Not ‘we.’ Me. I’m going back to Godspeed.”

Amy’s eyes widen and her mouth drops open. Chris just stares blankly at me. “How can going back to the ship do anything?” he asks.

“I have very good reason to think that the ship holds the answers we need. First, the drug that was used to kill . . . ” My voice trails off as I glance at Amy.

“The drug used to kill my mother,” she states flatly.

“And the others, yes. I want to know how we have that same drug on the ship. And Orion’s last clue that makes me think the answer to everything is still on Godspeed.” I pause. Outside the window, the auto-shuttle looks huge and dark. I try not to look at the hundreds of dead bodies still strapped inside the transport boxes.

I turn to Chris. I don’t want to confess this to him, but I have to. “Also, I left some of my people on the ship.” I think about the video feed we saw before. I hope I’m not too late. I hope Bartie’s kept the black patches to himself. “I can bring them back here, along with more supplies. We need their help. We barely have any food left.”

All of that was stored on the shuttle.

“You’re going to take the auto-shuttle?” Amy asks. “What about . . . ” She swallows, and when she speaks, there’s an odd tremor to her voice. “What about the people in it now?”

“I thought . . . ” I force myself to look her in the eyes, to recognize the pain I find within them. I know of no way to make her feel better about what’s happened, but at least I can give her some peace. “I thought I’d release them to the stars.”

Amy bites her lip and looks down, then nods.

“But . . . how can you take the auto-shuttle?” Chris asks.

“It’s automatic, right? I don’t have to actually fly it.”

“Yeah,” Chris says, “but it’s designed to go between here and the space station. Nowhere else.”

I nod. “I’m hoping I’ll be able to reprogram it,” I say. “There is—we found live video feed of Godspeed being sent here. If we can manipulate the signals to reprogram the auto-shuttle to go to Godspeed rather than to the space station—”

“Then you can fly there, get the information you need, and return with your people,” Chris says, excitement rising in his voice. “Yeah, I think that could work!”

“And Dad won’t set off the weapon, not when there’s a chance your information could stop the aliens without resorting to it,” Amy adds. She pauses, determination flashing in her eyes. “We won’t let him set off the weapon, not till you’re back.”

“Let me work on the programming,” Chris says, striding toward the control panel. In a few minutes, he has the screens lit up and is typing rapidly.

“Wow, you’re good at this,” Amy comments.

Chris pauses without lifting his fingers from the screens. “Oh, it’s not that complicated,” he says. Soon he steps back. “Okay, I’ve got it! You should have no trouble getting the auto-shuttle to Godspeed.”

I take a deep breath. “Good. Let’s do this.”

Amy looks anxious. “That’s it? You’re going right now?”

Chris looks at the two of us. Even though he’s just triumphantly programmed the auto-shuttle and is helping us to find a way to stop the aliens without relying on some mysterious FRX bombs, he looks defeated. “I’ll go prep the shuttle,” he says, leaving us behind in the control room.

Amy grabs both of my hands tightly. “You come back to me,” she says, the words fierce. “You do whatever it takes; you come back to me.”

“I will,” I say.

“I mean it.” Amy says forcefully. “I’ve lost nearly everything else I love; I can’t lose you too.”

“I’ll always come back to you,” I say, pulling her close.

She kisses me, and just as I’m about to lose myself in it, I taste salt. I step away from her and see that she’s crying again. I wipe away one tear with the pad of my thumb, and she swipes her arm over her face, embarrassed.

We walk to the shuttle, Amy a few paces behind me. I can hear her sniffling, trying to cover up the tears she can’t keep from falling.

Chris pushes a button on the controls embedded into the asphalt by the auto-shuttle, and the transport boxes disappear, metal panels automatically enclosing them with a reverberating slam. Next, he motions for me to follow him to the front of the shuttle, where a small metal ladder extends up into the bridge. “It looks like you’re right; everything should be automatic,” he explains. He says this as if there’s no doubt in his mind that I’ll be able to fly myself into orbit around Centauri-Earth, but there are worry lines at his eyes and every muscle is tense. “There are simple flight controls in the bridge and a manual override if things go wrong.”