Do You Dream of Terra-Two?

BEFORE THE LIGHTS CAME back on, Jesse gathered with the rest of the Beta in the crew module to say goodbye to the seniors. Poppy was sobbing quietly, wiping tears away with the sleeve of the old Dalton leavers’ hoodie that she wore on top of her flight suit. It said ‘Class of ’12’ on the back, with the names of the school’s ‘Final Fifty’ printed inside the numbers. She and Juno were searching under cushions and chairs in the crew module as Juno ticked items off an inventory. As they’d had so little time to pack, the room looked as if it had been in the path of a hurricane, blankets slipping off sofas, wires hanging from open equipment panels and trailing out of drawers. Chess pieces toppled, three knights rolled under the spine of a book, Harry Potter in Korean, a rook mired in a puddle of baked beans.

Fae emerged from the infirmary still wearing what she had been yesterday, hair falling loose of her bun. When Jesse asked how their commander was doing she simply shook her head sadly.

Cai and Igor were helping Harry gather the equipment needed for their flight, piling it up near the hatch. Juno looked up from her clipboard and said, ‘Astrid should be here by now.’

‘I haven’t seen Astrid,’ Poppy said, her arms full of books. ‘Not for the past few hours. Or Eliot, for that matter.’

Fae hissed, and glanced at her watch. ‘Now is not the time for them to be wandering around.’

‘I’ll look for them in the engine room,’ Igor said, heading back in that direction.

‘And I’ll do a quick sweep of the greenhouse,’ Cai said.

They stood in silence for a moment. Everyone absorbed by their own thoughts of the trip ahead. The small cabin in which they would live for six months was nothing compared to the spacious beauty of the Damocles. It broke Jesse’s heart to say goodbye, but as the hours approached a shameful, secret excitement began to dawn inside him as he contemplated Earth, his sister and his parents. Returning a kind of hero.

Fae broke the silence. ‘So, as there are no members of the senior crew on this last mission home, Harrison Bellgrave is now acting commander.’

Harry looked up, his watery eyes strangely vacant. ‘Me…’ He fingered the badge on his lapel, the bronze pin that he’d fought for years to wear. Then he glanced up at Jesse. ‘You know what, Jesse Solloway? I don’t know how or where you learned to fly like that but… it was the greatest thing I’ve seen in all my years of Command School. We wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for him.’ Tearing off his badge, he turned to the others and said, ‘I’d be dead if it wasn’t for Commander Sheppard… and Jesse.’

Then he did something Jesse had never imagined he would: he handed over the badge. It glinted in the low light, cold to the touch. ‘I know it’s not worth much, now that we’re going back to Earth, but…’

Jesse didn’t know what to say.

‘You did save us,’ Poppy said, and she flung her arm over his shoulder and kissed his cheek with a loud smack of her lips.

‘I’m proud of you,’ Fae said, putting her hand on Jesse’s shoulder.

‘And glad you came with us,’ Juno said, her eyes warm. She embraced him too, and Jesse’s chest swelled with gladness.

‘All of us are,’ Harry said.

It was all he’d ever wanted. Their acceptance, their warm embrace, and it had come too late.

As Fae reached for Jesse the main lights came on. For a moment they appeared so bright they bleached his vision.

‘What’s happening?’ Harry rubbed his eyes as if he’d just woken up.

‘I don’t know,’ Poppy said with a gasp. In the same moment, the vents along the sides of the room activated, and air whooshed out like smoke. ‘Maybe everything is fixed?’

‘That doesn’t make sense,’ Fae said, running over to examine a booting-up monitor on one of the walls.

Juno clenched her fists. She already knew the answer.

‘It’s Astrid.’

Chapter 46 POPPY

^{4.30 P.M.}

POPPY HAD ALWAYS HATED arguments in her own house. One morning at breakfast her mother had told her boyfriend at the time that she would be home late, words that – from their facial expressions – clearly sent shockwaves down through some unseen well of domestic resentment. He’d reached across the table and slapped her mother with such a hard whack that blood sprang from her nose, and she looked around, her eyes whirling in surprise. Poppy had stared between the adults in horror and, even afterwards, when they were making tea for each other and kissing, something of that fear remained. Buried deep in Poppy and transformed into a sticky dread of conflict, a need to please, to plan the parties, to keep everyone smiling.

Which was why she would have said anything to quell the argument that ensued when Astrid and Eliot emerged from the lower deck. Igor had found them in the shuttle. They’d disabled it and, against orders, enacted their plan. Taking its life support apart and attaching it to the Damocles.