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“So a pirate,” Tez pressed.
“I got us what our people needed to survive, along with my crew.” He waited for some judgmental snark, but it didn’t come, so he continued. “Station was at the edge of the known universe, so no one much bothered us. Few years ago we strayed out of our normal path and spotted a half-mile-long chunk of hull out in the middle of nowhere. Had text on it…Olym.”
Tez halted again.
“Keep walking.” He nudged her forward.
“You found theOlympus?”
“We did. And we’re fixing it.”
“Where was it?”
“Just drifting. Only about a million miles from our station. Coming straight for us on a collision course. And, you know… waypoint stations don’t move.”
“So you… It…”
“We considered blowing it off course at first, or just flat out destroying it. Or calling on another colony to come figure out what to do with it. But after a few scouting missions, we decided it was salvageable. Figured why not build our own colony? Look for our own New Earth.”
“But that’s—”
“Crazy. We’re aware, trust me. But we got life support online. Then sanitation. Now we’re bringing up thrusters, because she’s still pretty damn hard to steer.”
“Steer? How do you expect to steer it without a commander? And don’t tell me you’re trying to break the gene lock,” Tez said.
“No. We’re working on it.”
“Working on it how?”
They found themselves on the edge of their crater, looking down at the crash site below.
Home sweet home.
“Working on it how, Stag?” she repeated.
“Not for me to say.” He shrugged.
Whatever protest was coming was cut short by a tremor beneath their feet. Their helmets turned to each other as the ground settled, then began to shake again, with more vigor this time.
“Get back.” Tez’s helmet tilted in confusion. “Now.”
Stag seized her arm and dragged her back from the crater to the flat, open sheet of rock behind them. The rumble of the quake intensified as they ran, and he heard Tez’s cry in his ear as she stumbled and crashed to her knee. He hauled her up, and after seeing her limp a few steps, tugged her arm over his shoulder, taking her weight. Deep, reverberating cracking came next, and Stag realized it was the rock splitting behind them, running from the edge of the crater outward. They had to go faster. He hoisted Tez over his shoulder in a now-familiar move and forged ahead, his side cramping as he struggled to outrun the splitting ground.
Finally, the rumbling subsided, though the ground was still trembling beneath his feet. When they were out in the open space of the rock-sheet, away from the crater as well as the twisting stone columns littering the landscape, Stag set Tessa down. They crouched low, facing each other. All they could do, he realized, was wait for it to stop, and hope it did so before they ran out of air. He quickly checked the oxpack readout on his sleeve: they had a half-hour left.
“We’ve never detected quakes on Arvex before.” Tessa sounded dazed beneath her helmet.
“We should stay out here as long as we can, ride out the aftershocks,” he said. “Then refill the oxpacks first thing in case we need to make it out again later.”
He said this with a sinking feeling, realizing they didn’t have much oxygen left in their packsorin the ship. He could only hope that someone heard the message she had set up to broadcast up there, and that they were coming. But if they’d detected a quake on the surface, would they even risk attempting a rescue?
Stag swallowed as the woman next to him—still his enemy, technically—slid forward, pressing her helmet into his chest. She rested a hand on his bent knee. He realized that unlike him, she’d probably never experienced a quake before. He could only imagine how frightened she must’ve been, knowing there was nowhere to run and that the ground could swallow them up at any moment. Stag sat on the trembling ground and slid both arms around her, pulling her against his chest.
CHAPTER7
TEZ
She’d never felt anything like that before—the entire world shaking around her, the ground splitting beneath her feet. And there was nothing to do, nowhere to run. All she could do was follow Stag, regardless of where he was leading her. He covered her with his body until the tremors passed. Even once the ground stopped rumbling, he waited with her for as long as their limited oxygen supplies would allow. Tez feared what they’d find when they returned to the ship. They traversed over the cracks at the top of the crater and picked their way to the bottom, Stag helping take her weight with the injured knee.
