“… just a few more days to figure out what’s going on over here,” Matthew’s voice buzzed on the transceiver.
Alison Nagita pressed the red button in front of her and leaned into the microphone.
“Roger that, Corvus. Take your time. We’ll check back in soon.”
“Thanks, Control. Corvus out.”
The transceiver crackled and went dark. Alison sat back from the microphone and let her eyes wander from the quantum transceiver to the other displays in front of her—readout screens showing the levels of oxygen and CO2 in the air, reserve energy, food and water supplies, and a map showing the trajectory of their orbit. Higher in her line of sight was a video screen of the view outside; it showed the surface of planet Earth sliding by silently below as the Ark 1 space station—the station where she lived and worked—orbited above. At the moment, though, Earth’s surface wasn’t actually visible—the ground was covered by a massive dust cloud, flashing here and there with lightning.
The view would be the same on the other side of the planet, Alison knew—no matter what part of Earth Ark 1 orbited over, no matter where the camera was pointed, all the video screen ever showed was dust and electrical storms in every direction. Conditions on the planet had continued to worsen in the century since the Exo Project participants had gone into the freeze and been launched across the galaxy. Battered by extreme heat and solar radiation, Earth had become a desert from pole to pole. Winds whipped across the continents, picking up dust clouds that reached into the middle of the oceans, and the static in the air from the blowing sand created dry electrical storms the size of massive hurricanes.
Alison stared at the screen and wondered, once again, if anyone was alive down there.
If her family was alive—her mother, father, and younger brothers.
Over her shoulder, someone cleared their throat, and Alison swiveled in her chair to face the control room. It was arranged in tiered rows of workstations much like hers, and on a normal day there would be techs at each chair, speaking softly into headsets as they monitored the space station’s life-support systems.
But today was not a normal day. By order of the OmniCore leadership board, the room had been cleared, the techs replaced with a retinue of senior leaders, mostly men. Alison sat in the lowest tier, the men arrayed behind and above her, staring down at her intently. She recognized some of them—men who’d scarcely noticed her or acknowledged her existence as she passed them in the hallway between her sleeping quarters and the control room every morning.
There was one man, though, whom she didn’t recognize—a man in the back of the room, sitting in the top tier in a chair with a view of the entire control room. Everyone in the room turned to this man and waited for him to speak.
Alison hadn’t seen him before, but she’d heard the whispers. Rumor had it that he was the legendary Charles Keane, the powerful and brilliant OmniCore officer who’d masterminded the Exo Project one hundred years ago. He was in his forties when the exoplanet expeditions had been launched, and should have been long dead by now—but he’d gone into the freeze with the rest of the Exo Project participants, with instructions to wake him if any of the expeditions found a habitable world. So far, the Corvus was the only ship that had landed on a planet that might be habitable, the only crew who hadn’t had to take the suicide pills. OmniCore had taken an active interest in what was happening on the surface of planet H-240 in the Iota Draconis system one hundred light-years away.
“What’s your name, miss?” Keane asked.
“My name’s Alison, sir. Alison Nagita.”
“Ms. Nagita,” Keane said, nodding toward her with a smile as he sat forward in his chair. “Tell me about yourself.”
Alison’s eyes narrowed. “Sir?”
“I like to know something about the people I work with,” Keane said.
“What do you want to know?”
“How did you come to enlist in OmniCore? You seem a bit … young.”
“I’m seventeen, sir,” Alison said. “I applied through the internship program.”
“Ah,” Keane said. “A trainee. And you’ve been with us … ?”
“For a year,” Alison said. “Ever since …”
She trailed off and swallowed. Keane nodded.
“I know,” Keane said. “I’ve been briefed.”
Alison let out a breath. If Keane had been briefed, then what he knew was that it had been just under a year ago when the storms began, when what was left of the OmniCore government fled to the skies and the rest of humanity went underground, seeking shelter with the only world powers that could still protect them: corporations. The world’s largest corporations had been secretly preparing for the complete collapse of civilization for years, and when it finally happened, they were ready—ready to survive, and ready to help others survive, too. For a price.
Communications with the underground compounds on the surface were spotty at best, and Alison—who’d been living on the space station for only a couple of weeks when things fell apart on Earth—still didn’t know if her family was alive or not, if they’d managed to pay their way into one of the corporate compounds or if they’d died with billions of others when the planet’s food supply finally gave out, when the last of the fresh water finally dried up.
“May I ask why you enlisted with OmniCore?” Keane asked.
“I wanted to go to space, sir,” Alison said. “I wanted to help find a new place for humanity to live. Earth is—well, you know what’s happening on Earth. And my family …”
Alison’s voice stopped. She couldn’t go on. She dropped her gaze to her lap.
“I understand. They’re on the surface?”
“Yes, sir,” Alison croaked. “If we find a planet, I want to find them and—”
“When we find a planet, Ms. Nagita,” Keane cut in, lifting a finger in the air. “When, not if. And when it happens, mark my words—we’ll find your family, and together you’ll be among the first to settle there. You have my word on that.”
Alison smiled, squinting slightly as she studied Keane’s face, his inscrutable brown eyes behind his black-rimmed glasses, and wondered if he was telling the truth. She hoped so.
“Now then,” Keane said. “You’ve been the one to speak to the crew of the Corvus, yes?”
Alison nodded, glad to be moving on to another topic. “Yes, that’s right.”
“And what is your assessment of what’s going on down there?”
Alison pondered for a moment. “It sounds promising, sir. The radiation levels they’re reading are troubling. But it’s still the first exoplanet expedition that hasn’t died in the first—”
“Yes, I know,” Keane interrupted with a wave of his hand. “As I said—I’ve been briefed. But what about this young man you’ve been speaking to, this …”
“Matthew Tilson, sir,” Alison offered.
“Yes. Matthew. What’s your opinion of him?”
“Meaning, sir?”
“Meaning, is he trustworthy? Are his assessments of the situation solid? Is he telling us what we need to know to determine if this planet is habitable?”
“He didn’t communicate with us for a while, sir. There was a space of about eighteen hours where the comm just went dark. But when I’ve spoken with him, he seems to be forthcoming. I think they’re doing the best they can out there.”
“I see,” Keane said. He lifted himself from his chair and strode forward, standing on the edge of the top tier, the tips of his shoes right up against the edge as he towered over everyone else—the other men and, at the bottom of the room, Alison.
“You’re right about one thing, Ms. Nagita,” Keane said. “It’s a promising situation out there. H-240 may be the planet we’ve been waiting for. But you’re also wrong about one thing.”
“And what’s that, sir?”
Keane tilted his head down at her. “That boy is lying.”
“But why? Why would he lie? And how can you tell?”
Keane shrugged. “It’s a hunch. Nothing more. But I’ve learned to trust my hunches over the years. They’ve never led me wrong. As for why he’s lying, though—that, I can only guess.”
“So what do we do about it?” Alison asked. “They’re light-years away. We can’t control what they do or what they tell us.”
Keane lifted a finger in the air. “That’s where you’re wrong.”
Alison squinted. “How, then?”
“It’s called leverage, Ms. Nagita,” Keane said.
His mouth stretched into a grin that revealed a row of perfectly straight, perfectly white teeth.
“You didn’t think I’d send them halfway across the galaxy without leverage, did you?”