McNulty, J, Sgt: Order must have come from Torrence. The Ai can’t make calls like that

Mason, E, LT 2nd: Then why the fuck didn’t Torrence transmit the order? He must’ve known Prophet wasn’t going to waste 9 shuttles of civi without meat authorization

Mason, E, LT 2nd: we couldn’t just fucking kill them

McNulty, J, Sgt: chum, I know

McNulty, J, Sgt: I would’ve done the same thing in your boots

Mason, E, LT 2nd: The brass has got pants full of bricks over this AI, jimmy. I dunno wut’s up, but it smells brown

McNulty, J, Sgt: Dorian said they pulled the plug on it

Mason, E, LT 2nd: … on AIDAN?

McNulty, J, Sgt: ya. is why the engines are off

Mason, E, LT 2nd: Then what’s flying the ship?

McNulty, J, Sgt: momentum, afaik

Mason, E, LT 2nd: …

Mason, E, LT 2nd: fuck me

McNulty, J, Sgt: I got some rocket fuel from a squaddie. He got a line to the spanner monkeys. Come over and have a drink chum

Mason, E, LT 2nd: neg

McNulty, J, Sgt: come onnnnnn best cure for those sorrows is to drown em, boy

Mason, E, LT 2nd: no drowning these ones, chum

Mason, E, LT 2nd: these badboys can swim

Subject: Nightmare time

Date: 07/23/75

Today’s group counseling session was taken up by a lady called Martha, who worked GeoSpec Analysis on Kerenza. I think. I guess it doesn’t matter where she worked.

Martha had three daughters named Julie, Lela and Katya.

Julie was six. She died during the evacuation of her school.

Lela was two. She died when their car crashed on the way to the evac shuttles. Martha’s husband Tony had Lela on his lap. He died too.

Katya was eight. Martha doesn’t know how she died, or if she died, just that she never made it off planet.

She’s been so quiet through all our sessions. Like me, she never really spoke. You couldn’t tell what was going on in her head. She’d sit there, hands folded in her lap, listening. But she’s been slowly coming unfastened, the last month or two. Strands of hair hanging loose from her normally perfect bun. Buttons done up wrong. Shirt untucked. Little things you see everywhere, but never before on Martha.

Today, she just imploded. She was sitting right beside me.

I don’t even know what set it off, but one minute I was counting ceiling tiles, and the next she was talking. One of the guys in the group, Thanh, was in the middle of some story, but he went quiet when she started. He knew it meant something that she’d chosen that moment to speak.

She told us about the girls, and her husband. She said she thinks a lot about whether Katya and Julie were scared at the end. That she wasn’t there for them. And then she started gasping for breath. Short, sharp, hoarse breaths, like she couldn’t drag in enough air, her whole body shaking.

Some people, when they lose it, they scream, they fight. I hope that would be me. Martha just slowly slid down off her chair and folded in on herself. Everyone stared at her like she was contagious, and I reached out like—I don’t know, maybe I was going to touch her or something. And suddenly she was crying. Long, low moans that sounded like they were wrenched out of her. All her grief and pain in those noises, like her body couldn’t hold it any longer. One piece too many got added to the load, and she couldn’t do it anymore.

The group leader called the medics, and by now Martha’s probably under sedation, but I’m not.

I’m lying awake in bed, wondering what will happen if one piece too many gets added to my load. Wondering if there’s any way out for Martha. Any chance she’ll ever be okay.

I can hear every sound in my dorm, every rustle as someone turns over, every sigh.

It’s impossible to sleep.

There are a lot more of us on board than there were ever supposed to be—the Hypatia’s a research vessel, so they have a lot of space, but most of it was intended for samples, labs, stuff like that. There are over 2,000 of us jammed in where there used to be just 500 crew.

My living quarters used to be a storage facility for geological specimens, by which I basically mean rocks. The air leaves a sharp, metallic tang in your mouth, almost salty. It clings to your hair, so you carry it with you and the scent wafts around you when you turn your head. The air is also HOT and kind of humid, because the scrubbers just weren’t designed to recyc for this many people. Makes you really, really wish we weren’t on water rations. You get used to it, though.

They’ve taken down the shelving and crammed sixteen of us in here. Each person has a bunk that’s kind of a shelf sticking out of the wall (you have a belt to stop yourself rolling out at night). Being the youngest in the dorm I’m up at the very top. I don’t mind being up high. Sometimes it almost feels safe.

But I still can’t sleep. This isn’t my room, isn’t my place.

There’s nothing around me that’s known, anymore. Sure, I have routines—there are times to eat, times to sleep, times to train. I just never realized on Kerenza, there was this background comfort level, the knowledge of safety, that was the bedrock under everything else. My big adventure was going to be college. My little adventures were hikes, choosing classes at school, Ezra, even.

I thought he was going to be a big adventure, but that’s a whole other thing.

Point is, I had no idea how safe I was, because I’d never been unsafe. Ezra said that to me once. He was right. I took it all for granted. The constant and comforting background static of the universe.

Now, though there are more routines than ever before, nothing’s certain. The Lincoln could catch up with us at any point. It’s months until we reach the waypoint to Heimdall. Even when we do, we’ve been isolated for half a year. We could be in the middle of a war, for all we know.