“It’s so weird,” Amy says. “It’s like we’re upside down, facing the planet, but it doesn’t feel like we’re upside down.” She swipes her hand over her hair, futilely trying to smooth it down, but it just floats up again.
“Orbit break initiating,” the computer says.
All three of the big red lights blink on and stay on. The shuttle is pushed forward, straight toward the planet. I glance at Amy: her eyes are wide with fear, her fingers curled over the edge of the armrests of her chair. But I know—this is what she wants. Giving her Centauri-Earth is the only way I’ll ever be able to make her truly happy, to make up for the fact that my careless actions trapped her in the cage of Godspeed with the likes of Luthor and people who will never be able to accept her.
“Deorbit burn,” the computer announces.
“Ready?” Amy whispers.
“No,” I confess. I want to give Amy the planet, but I wish it wasn’t at the cost of the only home I’ve ever known.
The shuttle picks up speed, aiming at a downward angle toward the planet. All three red lights on the monitor in front of Amy glow brightly. A few smaller lights, scattered between the bigger one, blink on—more rockets are firing, increasing our thrust toward Centauri-Earth.
“Entry interface acquired,” the computer says.
The planet fills the window. Blue-green-white. I can just see the nose of the shuttle, a dull grayish-green that starts to glow red. Something bright silver sparkles in the corner of my eye, but as I turn my head to see it, the shuttle dips again. Flashes of orange and yellow and red flicker around the window.
I glance over at Amy. Her little gold cross floats around her neck. She snatches it with one hand, clutching it so tightly that her knuckles whiten. Her mouth moves silently, forming words I cannot hear.
Lights blink chaotically across the control panel—rockets are bursting on and off, making our descent veer into an angled zigzag, designed, I suspect, to slow us down. I occasionally catch glimpses of the planet, but for the most part the windows are blurred with orange and red—flames? Or just heat from the deorbital burn? I don’t know, I don’t know, and by all the stars, how did I ever think we could land a frexing shuttle by ourselves?
Something smashes into the side of the shuttle—or at least, it feels that way as the entire shuttle wobbles and veers suddenly off course. A dozen lights flick on and off, and the computer chirps, “Landing signal disrupted. Manual mode on.”
“What’s going on?” Amy yells.
Red lights on the ceiling of the bridge flick on, casting a bloody glow around us. I look to Amy, and I can tell that she realizes the same thing I have: something’s wrong. “Ground impact in T minus fifteen minutes,” the computer says in a perfectly calm tone.
“Ground impact?” Amy parrots, her voice high and cracked. “We’re crashing!”
My heart stops as I realize she’s right. I grab the small steering wheel that juts out from under the control panel and do the only thing that makes sense—I jerk it back as hard as I can, hoping that somehow I can at least make it so we don’t hit the planet head-on. The horizon wobbles on our screen, and more lights flash on and off on the control panel.
“Eighty kilometers above surface,” the computer says. “Active deceleration initiated.”
Several of the lights blink out, and the shuttle seems to drop—or maybe it’s just that gravity kicks back in, slamming us into our chairs fully. Amy screams, a short burst of sound that is nothing but vocalized terror.
Something—a rocket failing? a computer malfunction?—knocks the shuttle off course again. I can see features of the planet’s surface now: mountains and lakes and cliffs.
And we’re going to crash into them.
3: AMY
I’ve heard that when you’re in a life-or-death situation, like a car accident or a gunfight, all your senses shoot up to almost superhuman level, everything slows down, and you’re hyper-aware of what’s happening around you.
As the shuttle careens toward the earth, the exact opposite is true for me.
Everything silences, even the screams and shouts from the people on the other side of the metal door, the crashes that I pray aren’t bodies, the hissing of rockets, Elder’s cursing, my pounding heartbeat.
I feel nothing—not the seat belt biting into my flesh, not my clenching jaw, nothing. My whole body is numb.
Scent and taste disappear.
The only thing about my body that works is my eyes, and they are filled with the image before them. The ground seems to leap up at us as we hurtle toward it. Through the blurry image of the world below us, I see the outline of land—a continent. And at once, my heart lurches with the desire to know this world, to make it our home.
My eyes drink up the image of the planet—and my stomach sinks with the knowledge that this is a coastline I’ve never seen before. I could spin a globe of Earth around and still be able to recognize the way Spain and Portugal reach into the Atlantic, the curve of the Gulf of Mexico, the pointy end of India. But this continent—it dips and curves in ways I don’t recognize, swirls into an unknown sea, creating peninsulas in shapes I do not know, scattering out islands in a pattern I cannot connect.
And it’s not until I see this that I realize: this world may one day become our home, but it will never be the home I left behind.
“Frex, frex, frex!” Elder shouts, pulling so hard against the steering wheel that the veins on his neck pop out.