‘Stars.’ Pepper pinched the bridge of her nose. ‘I really – ugh, I really can’t think about this right now.’ She let out a tense breath. ‘Are you sure you’re okay?’
‘I’m fine. I promise, you don’t need to worry about it. I’ll explain later.’
Pepper pressed her forehead into the side window and shut her eyes. A silence filled the pod. One second went by. Two. Five. Ten.
Tak leaned forward, sticking his head over the back of the front seat. ‘I would really love it,’ he said, ‘if someone could tell me what’s going on.’
JANE, AGE 19
Laurian sat down in the right-side chair and strapped in tight. She looked at him – nervous, not quite trusting, but willing to follow her. Under other circumstances, she would’ve wondered why he was there at all. She had no idea what she was doing – not a damn clue – and there was a non-zero chance they might blow up or decompress or die in a dozen other horrible ways in the next three minutes. But in comparison to the place she’d taken him away from . . . yeah, this was a better option.
Jane adjusted herself in the sagging seat. Owl had their ascent plotted, their course to the border charted. Jane wouldn’t have to steer at all; she could learn that later. Owl couldn’t do anything fancy, but then, they wouldn’t need that. Jane hoped they wouldn’t need that.
‘Engines on,’ Owl said.
It took Jane a second to make the connection. She chuckled. ‘Fuel pumps, go,’ she said, smiling at Owl’s camera. Okay. Okay. She could do this. ‘You ready?’ she asked Laurian.
Laurian swallowed hard. He nodded harder.
‘Right,’ Jane said, gripping the armrests. She could hear her pulse in her ears. ‘Okay, Owl. Let’s get out of here.’
Jane had turned the engine on before, switched the thrusters on, made the shuttle hover just a bit above ground to make sure it worked. This felt nothing like that. This was a thud, a kick, a girl clinging to the fur on the back of a running dog. The thrusters roared, and Jane was aware of how small she was – she and Laurian both. So small, so squishy. They’d strapped themselves into this explosive hunk of scrap and aimed for the sky. How was this a good idea? How had anyone ever thought this was a good idea?
She wasn’t sure if she was doing it for herself or for him, but she reached across the gap and grabbed Laurian’s hand. His fingers latched onto hers, and they held on with all they had as the shuttle shot away from the scrapyard, curving up and up and up.
They climbed, the sun burning bright. They met the clouds, then left them behind a moment later. They pierced the sky until there was no sky left. It melted away in an instant, changing from the roof of all things to a thin line below, shrinking smaller and smaller, hugging the curve she’d been told of but had never seen.
And there were stars. There were stars, and stars, and stars.
In the back of her head, she was aware of different sounds: the thrusters switching over to propulsion strips, the low hum of the artigrav nets (which worked!). She’d built those things, fixed those things, and they’d taken her away. They’d let her escape.
She unbuckled her safety straps and ran into the main cabin. ‘Jane!’ Owl called after her. ‘Jane, wait until we’ve stabilised.’
Jane ignored her. She ran on shaking legs to the viewscreen beside the hatch, the one she’d never used for more than a minute or two to check the weather. She never wanted to see the scrapyard once she’d left it, never wanted to turn it on one day to see a dog or a Mother staring back. But now . . . ‘Turn it on,’ Jane said. ‘Please. Please, I need to see.’
The viewscreen flickered on. The only planet she’d ever known lay below. Clouds tumbled thickly, but she could see through the patches between them, down to the scrapyards, the factories and pockmarked land that stretched on and on until they reached . . . seas! There were seas down there, stained sickly orange and grey. But those colours faded, gradually clearing into a deep, breathtaking blue. The shuttle continued around the planet, using gravity to throw itself free. Seas met land, and Jane saw cities – sparkling, intricate, flocked with green. They were so far from the scrapyards neither would ever know the other was there. You could live your whole life in one of those cities and never know how ugly it was somewhere else.
‘Why?’ she whispered. ‘Why’d you do this? How could you do this?’
Jane clung to the wall, breathing hard. Her head swam, but it had nothing to do with launch, or the fake gravity, or any of that. Everything was too much. Too much. The planet was beautiful. The planet was horrible. The planet was full of people, and they were beautiful and horrible, too. They’d made a mess of everything, and she was leaving now, and she was never coming back.