Amber looked at the ship. She tried not to see the smoke. She tried to look through the emergency doors at the hold and imagine two thousand people sleeping there tonight. She threw in a snowstorm to help weigh down the vision and a couple generic howling-monster sounds. She pictured Jonah with his jacket off the next day, arranging teams to work in shifts clearing the halls, repairing machinery, sorting supplies, and later, building gardens and houses and latrines. She saw him taking charge and it was an easy thing to see. She saw the ship turning into a colony after all, and maybe it would only be the shell of one at first, but as she pulled back the camera of her mind, she could see the ship in a better time, in the summer maybe, with crop-fields and canals in orbit around it, a thriving hub of life and hope and—

—or it could all blow up in an hour, she thought, in a voice so clear it might as well be someone speaking directly in her ear. And she saw that pretty damned clearly too: the wind, just like it was now, whipping the giant fireball of its belching destruction into an orange tornado for maybe two or three seconds before blowing it all away. Nothing would be left but the crater where they landed, the twisted skeleton of the hull, and a Rorschach scorch-mark burned into the stone, maybe in the shape of a butterfly.

“I can’t stay here,” Amber heard herself say.

Nicci raised her head and looked at her.

“Not tonight,” she amended. “I think…I think maybe Scott’s got a point about the perimeter thing. Maybe it would help these people start coping faster if we took some of the mystery out of where we are.”

Scott looked surprised for a second and then smiled.

“So here’s what I think. I think we should make a camp…” She looked around and pointed. “On that ridge. Call it a lookout post. We’ll organize a team and take whatever supplies we need to set up, you know, some latrines and supply tents. If nothing else, it’ll give people something to do who don’t know how to fix doors or program emergency beacons. And who knows? We might look down from that ridge and see…I don’t know, a lake or whatever they have for cows or someplace easier to live than this.”

Jonah shook his head, not in denial, but in mute helplessness. He looked out at the survivors and then down at her. “Can you give me until morning to work with them? Please. We can take a head-count, get some kind of inventory for our supplies…If nothing else, give me that time to see if anyone is trapped in there.”

That wasn’t unreasonable, she thought, and said instead, unexpectedly, “No. I’m sorry, but if anyone is trapped in there, they’re already dead. The ship is on fire. It is not a safe place. We have got to get away from it tonight.”

His gaze was troubled; his hands, warm. “They won’t be moved tonight.”

“Then move as many as you can. We…” can’t save everybody, trembled unspoken on her lips. She swallowed them, wondering where in the hell this was all coming from. She didn’t feel panicked, but maybe panicking was like being crazy or having a fever, where you couldn’t tell just by feeling at yourself. “We can’t stay,” she finished.

Jonah looked at the people again, watching them the way another man might watch the tides. His eyes went back and forth, tracking motion no one else saw.

“I think a lookout post is a great idea,” Scott announced. “I’ll start putting a team together.”

“I can’t leave them,” said Jonah quietly.

“I said I’d do it,” said Scott, frowning again. “I want to be in charge. Of the lookout team. You can be in charge of these people.”

“I wish you’d come with us,” Amber said. The words felt heavy, too much like a confession.

“Yeah, well…I wish you’d stay.” Jonah uttered an oddly thin laugh for such a big man. “When the lights go out, things are going to get a lot worse. I was really starting to hope you’d stick around because I’m going to need someone to roll around with if I’m going to get any sleep tonight.” He rubbed at his head, shook it, rubbed some more. “That was offensive. I’m sorry. I’m just…”

Scared. And fear does weird things to people.

“Jesus, man!” Scott was staring. “I can’t believe you just said that!”

Amber gave Jonah a lopsided smile and squeezed his slack hand. “I’ll help you sleep plenty at the lookout post, Lieutenant Lamarc. Just come with us.”

Scott gaped at both of them now.

“Another time, Miss Bierce.” Jonah pulled in a breath and let it out as a military man. “I can think of a few men who you might want along. I’ll talk to them.”

“I’ll come back,” said Amber. “As soon as the smoke stops, I swear.”

He nodded, started to walk away, and then stopped. When he came back, she thought for one dizzying, unreal moment that he meant to kiss her and she’d already made up her mind to allow it (total stranger old enough to be my father for god’s sake and what he’d want in a chubby little white girl like me i don’t know he probably doesn’t either but fear now fear does weird things oh yeah play it again sam fear can really fuck you up), but instead, he put out his hand.

They shook.

“Take care of things,” said Amber.

“I will,” he replied. “Come back safe.”

“I will.”

They walked away then, and as things turned out, those were the last words they said to one another and they both lied.

6

Crewman Scott put himself in command. This initially made for some tense moments when he was trying to recruit for what he was calling ‘reconnaissance and establishment of a forward operations base,’ particularly from the Fleetmen, who certainly seemed open to doing something but were visibly hostile to the idea of taking orders from a Manifestor in a make-believe uniform. No punches were thrown, but Scott quickly moved his efforts to the cluster of sobbing, shock-eyed civilians.

Amber left him to it without much hope and distracted her jangling nerves as much as she was able by venturing into whatever exposed areas of the ship she could reach, picking through the wreckage for anything they could use. Since the supplies had been evenly distributed among each mod throughout the ship, there was plenty to find, even if it was all mashed together in the aftermath of the crash. Unfortunately, the crates were all marked with such baffling examples of Fleet-speak that she had to bust them open to find out what the hell was inside. This was a lot of work with little reward; none of the really useful things were portable and most of the small stuff was ridiculous. Thumbtacks. Baby bottles. Yarmulkes. Replacement sponge-heads for the oscillating arm on a model Dynamo-3Z cleanerbot. Swimming goggles, for Christ’s sake, perfect for lounging around the colony pool on Plymouth.

The frustrating search ultimately turned up a stash of duffel bags (each one proudly screaming out the Manifest Destiny logo), which she started stuffing with the one useful item she had dug out of the wreckage: some Fleet-issue ration bars packed like bricks in a khaki-colored crate where the available flavors were listed as Choc, Van and Other. These were Other. Nowhere on the individual bars did it indicate what Other was, but she guessed as long as it wasn’t worm, booger or bubblegum, she was fine.

“Ma’am?”

She looked up without stopping, taking stock of the four Fleetmen coming toward her—three boys and an older man—and making up her mind right then that if they pulled some bullshit military rule out of their asses to stop her from taking this stuff, she’d kick it right back up there.

But, “Lieutenant Lamarc said you were looking for a few good men,” said one of them, putting out his hand. “Eric Lassiter. Engineer Second Class.”

“Engineer?” she said uncertainly. “Did Jonah, um, Lieutenant Lamarc tell you what I wanted was to get away from the ship?”