The Pioneer Read online

  REET! REET! REET!

  A shipwide alert shreds the quiet like claws through flesh.

  “Is this a drill?” Leela shouts over the alarm.

  Fear snaps across the back of my neck as the wall screens burn white and then drop to black. “I don’t think so.”

  The ship rears and bucks under us. Leela yanks Teddy and Miguel safely down to the deck, but Beth loses her balance, stumbling into Chris. I smack the autoconnect button on my utility harness as I throw myself forward, looping one arm around her waist and grabbing Chris’s hand as his feet fly out from under him. My tether lines snap out, automatically bonding with the nearest airlock as another hard jolt rattles the ship. My harness bites into my shoulders and my waist, but the tether line keeps all three of us from being thrown across the bay.

  Between one heartbeat and the next it’s over. The ship is abruptly steady, and the reboot sequence snaps up on each panel of the wall and floor screens.

  “Everyone okay?” Miguel says, breaking the stunned silence.

  “I don’t think so,” Chris groans. His deep brown skin is tinged with gray.

  “I think his shoulder is dislocated,” Beth says, carefully helping Chris ease into a seated position.

  While Miguel works on Chris, Teddy pulls off his flex and starts texting.

  “What happened?” Leela asks.

  “No replies yet,” he says.

  The words tie my stomach in knots. The computer should have a status update by now. Repair assignments should be going out.

  Something is really wrong.

  “We should report to stations,” Leela says. I’m about to agree when my flex flashes and buzzes with an incoming message.

  “It’s Mom.” Relief hits me so hard that my hands shake as I unfold my flex and hold it up so the others can see. “Can’t be anything terrible if she’s got time to call.”

  Mom appears on-screen. Her eyes are grim, and blood is dripping from her left ear.

  Suddenly I’m not relieved anymore.

  “Is the Wagon intact?” she asks without preamble.

  “It should be,” I say. “But Mom—”

  “Good,” she says. “You’re abandoning ship.”

  “What?” Teddy says. “No, Mom, we’re here. We can help!”

  “Yes,” she says. “You can. There are twenty-five civilians in inso crates that haven’t been hooked into the system yet. Load them onto the Wagon with the forty-two you brought up, and then abandon ship.”

  “It’s that bad?” My voice is so fragile I can hardly hear it over my pounding heart.

  She nods. “We got hit by a massive solar flare. The early-warning systems missed it, so the shields were off-line, and the electromagnetic radiation fried the computers. Now the engines are melting down, and the core’s auto-eject system is completely nonfunctional.”

  Clammy dread soaks my skin. “What about the manual override?”

  “There’s a hull breach blocking our access to the engine room.” She grits her teeth. “No more questions, Jo. You’ve got less than twelve minutes before core breach. Get moving.”

  “What about you?”

  “We can’t get to the escape pods, either,” Mom says. She swallows hard. “I love you. Now go!”

  Her image disappears. I stare at my blank flex, uncomprehending. The air feels as though it has turned to ergofoam in my lungs. Forcing it in and out feels more like vomiting than breathing.

  “Joanna.” Beth’s sharp tone tells me that it isn’t the first time she’s said my name.

  “Yeah?” I feel like I’m moving underwater as I turn to look up at my sister.

  Her gaze grabs mine and holds on, reeling me back from the abyss of should-have-beens. “We don’t have much time. You need to get the Wagon ready for departure.”

  “She’s right,” Miguel says, swiping at the tears running down his face. “The rest of you, help me load those inso crates.”

  “No way!” Leela protests. “We have to try—”

  “We have to save as many people as we can,” Beth says. “Which is not the same as trying to save everyone, given the circumstances.”

  “She’s right,” I say, hating every word. “We need to be well clear when the engines blow.”

  “Screw that,” Leela snaps. She turns to me, pleading. “We can’t just give up. There has to be a way. You know every centimeter of this ship, Joanna. Think!”

  I can hardly find the strength to shake my head. My body feels like it’s wilting. The Pioneer is going to die. My parents are going to die. All of our parents are going to die. And there’s nothing I can do about it.

  Or maybe there is.

  “Wait!” The word punches past my teeth. “I think . . . I think . . .” I can’t even complete the thought, my brain is working so furiously. I jab at my flex to pull up the maps app and swipe through to a schematic of the Pioneer’s maintenance tubes with shaking hands.

  “What is she doing?” Chris says.

  “Just chill a sec,” Teddy says. I can hear the thin threads of hope weaving through his voice. It steadies my hands as I scan the map. I have this ship memorized, from the hull strength all the way down to the suction settings on the vacuum toilets. But I need to know that I’m right before I tell them.

  Because if I’m right . . .

  “We can save the ship.”

  “Joanna—” Beth starts to say, but I cut her off.

  “There’s an access hatch to maintenance tube thirty-two right there,” I say, pointing across the bay. “We can take thirty-two to fifteen to ten, which should get us to the corridor just outside the engine room. Then we can release the manual override clamps, eject the engine core, and—”

  “We can save the ship,” Teddy says, staring at the map. I can almost see his brain spinning up to match mine. “It won’t take all of us. Miguel, you still need to get those crates on the Wagon and get the civvies out of here, just in case we screw this up.”

  “Copy that,” Miguel says, already heading for the door. “But don’t screw up.”

  “You’re all being ridiculous,” Beth says, talking over him. “If a plan this simplistic would work, Mom would have thought of it.”

  “Not necessarily,” I say. “She probably hasn’t looked at the maintenance tube layout since she signed off on the final design plans. That was years ago. I’ve been poring over the Pioneer’s schematics for months. We can do this.”

  “No, you can’t,” Beth insists, every word accelerating. “The odds of teenage cadets being able to save a spaceship when senior command staff cannot are astronomically low. And my whole family will be dead when you fail, which is the only plausible outcome.”

  “You’re right, sis,” Teddy says. I open my mouth to argue, but he keeps talking. “The odds aren’t great. But if there’s a chance, we have to take it. That’s who we are.”

  My older siblings stare at each other for a long moment. Then Beth nods. “I’ll help Miguel with the insulated-sleep crates. Please . . .” She trails off, searching for the right word. “Just be improbable, okay?” She spins and half runs out of the bay before either of us can reply.

  Chris follows her. Teddy turns to Leela.

  “You need to go prep the Wagon.”

  “What? No,” Leela snaps. “I’m with you.”

  “You’re cleared for space flight,” Teddy says. “They can’t evacuate the civilians without you.”

  “But if you’re going to eject the core, then—”

  Teddy takes her shoulders, turning her so she has no choice but to look him in the eye. “Lee-lu,” he says, “I need you to make sure they’re safe. I need you to be safe.” Then he kisses her. Hard and gentle all at once. “Please?”

  She stares up at him for a long breath. Then she shoves him away and marches to the airlock where the Wagon is docked. The look on Teddy’s face as he watches her go is electric and strange. Unreadable. Like his emotions are suddenly speaking a language I don’t understand. Finally, he turns back to me.


  “Come on, sis.”

  The maintenance tubes are narrow, so we have to crawl through them. Tube ten is so cold that it tears at the skin of my palms. We must be close to the hull breach. I pull the sleeves of my uniform down over my hands and keep going. It’s just a little farther.

  The tube dead-ends in a hatch. I pop the seal so fast that I almost fall into the corridor beyond. The smoke billowing from the engine room gives the air a sharp, poisonous tang. I fumble for the flex-breather I keep stashed in my utility harness as Teddy crawls out of the hatch behind me. “You carrying O²?” I say.

  “Always,” he says, pulling out his own breather and fitting its translucent membrane over his nose and mouth as we head for the engine room.

  Inside, flames are chewing on the walls and the ceiling. The smoke is so thick I can taste it even through my O² mask. The Pioneer’s fire-suppression system must be busted, which is lucky. If it were online, it would have sealed this section and vented the oxygen.

  There are nine emergency override switches that have to be thrown in order to release the massive carbon-alloy claws that hold our electromagnetic engine cores in place. They are evenly spaced along the walls at knee level and covered with panels marked EMERGENCY ONLY. Five of them are on the other side of the fire.

  “You handle this side,” Teddy says, darting between the flames before I can argue.

  I drop to my knees beside the nearest manual release. I flip open the panel and grab the flat red handle inside. It pulls out easily enough, but it takes all my strength to twist it to the UNLOCKED position.

  I stay on my hands and knees and crawl to the next panel. The smoke is a little thinner down here, but it still rasps over my skin like steel wool. I feel raw all over by the time I finish releasing all four switches. “Done!”

  “Get out of here,” Teddy calls. “I’m right behind you.”

  Between the smoke and the tears streaming from my burning eyes, I can hardly see. I trip over the lip of the door and go sprawling into the hallway. As I scramble to my feet, a new, deeper alert blooms from the engine room.

  Terror rips through me.

  “Teddy!” His name shrieks through the chemical desert of my throat. But it’s too late. The engine room doors slide shut between us.

  “Fire-suppression system activated,” the computer says. “Venting atmosphere now.”

  I pound helplessly on the blank touch-screen surface of the sealed door. I think I’m screaming. My throat is so raw, I can’t tell. I don’t care.

  Then my flex buzzes. I have an incoming call.

  I rip my flex from my wrist and shake it out. Teddy’s soot-smudged face appears on my screen.

  “Well,” he says. “That was poorly timed.” He’s trying to be funny, but I can hear the fear crackling in his voice. It’s been a while since I thought my big brother was invincible, but the fact that Teddy’s afraid still freaks me out. “How long until the doors unseal?”

  I check. “Four minutes, twelve seconds.”

  He throws a look over his shoulder toward something I can’t see. Probably a status readout on the engines. “Whole ship will be space dust by then.”

  Panic sinks its teeth into my neck, but I shake it off. There’s no time to freak out now. I have to think. I have to—

  “Override!” I say, pressing my flex to the wall screen next to the engine room doors. It sticks there as I pull up the Pioneer’s main menu on the wall screen beside it. As I work, I say, “If fire suppression is back online, the crew must have managed to reboot the computer. I should be able to get into system controls. I can override the door seals from there.”

  “Then what are we standing around for?” Teddy says, shooting me an adrenaline-charged grin.

  My fingers fly over the wall screen, pulling up window after window. This is going to work. I’m going to save Teddy, then we’re going to save the ship. “I can do this. We’re going to make it. You believe me, right?”

  He grins. “Always.”

  Reality abruptly slices through my optimism. “No. No, no, no, no—”

  “What’s wrong?” Teddy says.

  I smack the wall screen in frustration. “If I unseal the doors before the section repressurizes, the core will rip free and take the engine room and most of this corridor with it.”

  “Damn it!”

  We’re both quiet for a moment. Searching for options we don’t have. Then he says, “Do it.”

  “What? No,” I say. “You’d die. And right after that, I’d get sucked out into space, suffocate, and die.”

  “Yeah,” Teddy says. “But everyone else would live.”

  “There has to be another way!”

  “No, there doesn’t,” he says. His voice is thin but he sounds so sure. Steady, despite the fear I can see in his eyes. “We can do this, Jo.”

  “We can save them.” I whisper the words. A whisper is all that can slide through the jagged chunk of terror lodged in my throat.

  “We can save you, too,” Teddy says, brightening with the thought. “It takes twelve seconds for the hull to seal over a breach. Tether in. With your breather, you can survive a hard vacuum for that long.”

  “Teddy—”

  “Tell me you can do this, Jo. Tell me you’re going to be okay.”

  I’m not going to be okay. Even if I live through this, I’m not going to be okay. Teddy will be dead. That will never, ever be okay.

  I force my shaking fingers to press the autoconnect button on my utility harness. The line snakes out and bonds with the nearest contact point, behind me.

  “I’ll be okay,” I say. I almost sound like I mean it.

  “Are you ready?” he says.

  “No.”

  That makes him laugh. “Neither am I,” he says. “I love you.”

  My throat feels like it has rusted shut. I have to force each word free. “I love you, too,” I say. Then I press my fingers to the wall screen and initiate the override.

  It happens so fast, it’s like I don’t see the engine room tearing away. The Pioneer just spits me out into the shining dark. I spin and tumble, falling in all directions at once. Then my tether snaps tight and all of my ribs break at the same time. I feel it, but it doesn’t hurt. Nothing hurts. Does that mean I’m dying? I’m not sure it matters anymore. My tether starts to retract. I feel my heart breaking, like my grief is imploding in my chest. Teddy is out there somewhere. Dying. Maybe already dead. And now he’s going to be alone.

  The infinity around me starts to collapse. The brilliant black is replaced by a dull, close darkness. The Pioneer’s hull is sealing itself. I’m safe. Or maybe I’m dying, and that’s my brain, shutting down. Either way, I’m gone.

  One

  I lurch upright in my inso crate and throw up all over the deck.

  The environmental controls in the deep-sleep center circulate air faster than in the rest of the ship. The soft, artificial breeze feels good on my hypersensitive skin.

  Mom is crouched next to my crate. She rubs my back as I cough up more of the opalescent gray gel. “That’s right, Jo,” she says. “Get it all out.”

  Inso gel tastes foul and looks worse, but it’s better than getting deep-fried by the space-time bubble that the Pioneer’s engines generate around the ship in order to move faster than the speed of light. I scrub the sticky stuff from my eyes, blinking until the world slides into focus.

  Mom and I are alone in here. The wall screens are set to a soothing, artificial-sunset glow. Since insulated-sleep crates look more like freight than medical equipment, the sleep center is an odd combination of a hospital ward, a cargo pod, and the fancy saunas we visited on vacation in Iceland when I was twelve. The Watson family isn’t big on time off, but Dad forced Mom to take a few days on our way home from an equipment test in the IntGov Arctic Wilderness Preserve. The valleys that were left behind when the polar ice melted are just about as remote and uninhabited as you can get on Earth.

  When I can breathe without choking on goo
, Mom hands me a bag of water. I take a big gulp and swish until my mouth tastes less like rotten candy. Then I spit the water out into the drain at the bottom of my crate and take another drink. I’m so dehydrated, I can feel the slippery chill of the liquid tracing down my esophagus and into my stomach.

  “Better?” Mom asks. Her hair curls in a dark halo around her face. Her eyes are chocolate brown, with flecks of amber lingering at their edges. All three of us kids inherited them. I wonder if she sees Teddy’s ghost when she looks into my eyes, the way I see him in hers?

  The thought burns. I slather it with sarcasm to dull the ache.

  “Are we there yet?”

  A snicker sneaks through Mom’s exhaustion. “Almost. We’re in orbit.”

  That takes me by surprise.

  “Aren’t civilians revived planetside?” I say as I climb out of my crate. The heated ergofoam deck has the resilient give of flesh under my bare feet. It’s meant to be comfortable, but it just makes the air feel colder.

  “Technically,” Mom says, steadying me as my muscles remember how standing upright works. “But I wanted the whole family to be together the first time we land on Tau. I thought you’d want that too.”

  Of course I want that. But I can’t have it. Neither of us can. Teddy is dead. Our whole family is never going to be together again. Just thinking about it makes me feel as though my throat is swelling shut. It’s like I’m having an allergic reaction to reality.

  “Would you like me to stay for your physical?” Mom asks. She sounds so unsure of herself. I hate that. My mother doesn’t do hesitant. At least, she didn’t before the accident. Now she acts like I’m made of glass and the wrong word will shatter me.

  “I’ll report to medical after I hit the showers,” I say.

  “Before,” Mom says.

  “Seriously?” I wave a hand at myself, indicating my attire or lack thereof. I’m wearing a one-piece bathing suit. My head is shaved. Insulating gel is drying on my bare scalp and my bare legs like crusted snot.

  “Your heartbeat is being maintained by a flock of nanomachines floating in your blood,” she says. “Nanomachines that have been running without maintenance for the last eight months while you were in inso. So yes, I’m very serious.”