CHAPTER 1
A pressurized hissstartled Cordelia from her dreamless sleep, but it wasn’t enough to pry her eyes open. She sighed, shifting against the soft cushions cradling her. The crook of her arm pinched as she moved, and she sluggishly rubbed at the sensation. Sleek plastic tubing tangled with her fingers, tugging against her skin. She fell still.
An IV?
Was she sick? She didn’t remember coming to the hospital.
Something cold and chemical flushed up her arm, filling her mouth with a sickly flavor and causing her heart to pound. She groaned as nausea rolled through her, and she flushed from head to toe. A sweat broke out on her skin.
Her eyes fluttered open, grainy and unfocused. Adrenaline surged as she realized she was in a closed space; her nose was only inches from a pane of glass.
No, no, no, not again.
She slammed her hands against the glass and sucked in a breath to scream. It whirred at her touch, pulling up and away from her in a rush of cool, metallic air.
The ship glowed red, indicating the backup lights had kicked on at some point in the journey. A shard of fear stabbed into her heart.
“Warning: energy reserves critically low,” the silken voice of the ship’s AI intoned.
She slumped against the side of her cryopod, quivering as the drugs that were meant to wake her warred with those that had kept her in stasis.
Deep breaths, Cordelia,the familiar voice of her government-issued therapist recited in her mind.Breathe deep until it passes.
Sorry for cutting out on you early,another voice murmured from the depths of her memory.
Her heart twinged. She pressed her hand over her chest, as if there was any tangible means of soothing the pain. Fisting the soft fabric of her shirt, she forced herself away from the temptation of self-pity. Two other pods were cracked open, glowing with the same warm light as hers.
The rest of her crew.
No one else seemed to be awake, the glass of their pods open only half an inch from the seals. Her gaze cast to the other sealed pods—the load of colonists she’d been tasked to deliver to Lapillus, a small moon lush with compatible native life. Lapillus was the closest habitable body their current spacecraft could reach within any reasonable amount of time. It was a ten-year trip. The nearest compatible planet past Lapillus was nearly eighty years away.
Groaning, Cordelia clambered to her knees. She was panting by the time she’d righted herself, half-slumped over the edge of the pod. Cordelia braced herself against the side, she peeled away the tape holding in her IV line. Her breath hissed through her teeth as she pulled the line out, pressing the hem of her T-shirt over the bead of blood that formed in its wake.
The chill of the metal paneling bit at her bare feet as she climbed out of her pod.
“Millions of dollars went into this ship, and they couldn’t spare a few thousand for heated floors,” she muttered to herself, turning in a circle as she gathered her bearings.
TheCassandrawas tiny and efficient, built to do little more than shuttle sleeping passengers back and forth through space. There was a lavatory, lockers, and a kitchenette on one side of the ship. On the other were the pods, lined up in a severe row like so many coffins.
She blinked hard to dispel the visions that flitted across her mind at that thought.
Cordelia padded across the cold floor to the helm of the ship. Her heart was in her throat as she climbed the stairs toward the controls and the shielded pane of glass separating her from the stars.
Text flashed on the three screens just below the window, myriad alerts that must not have been serious enough for the ship’s AI to rouse the crew. The most recent was the warning that their energy stores had grown dangerously low. For some reason, they had reached the threshold where they would soon be unable to use the thrusters to land. She frowned, tapping the notification and squinting at the sprawling readings.
They should have had enough power to make the trip three times over. Lapillus would have no way for them to refuel, which meant she was potentially looking at waiting around for years for someone to be able to ferry her back to Earth. She flicked through several weeks of readings, but saw no energy spike that would explain the drain.
Her eyes fell on the bottom right corner of the screen where the date and time should be. It only read ‘Error’.
She pulled up the navigation screen to gather her bearings.
Error: Navigation cannot be calibrated.A dark premonition slithered through her, but she tamped it down. Nyx would be up soon, and she’d get the navigation back online. Though Nyx was technically their communications officer, she had interned with the International Spacefaring Academy after college and helped develop the very programs the ship was running.
Cordelia looked up at the shielded window above her screen, skin crawling as an uneasy feeling spread through her. When they’d put her under, her last thought had been of this moment—of hitting the button to raise the shield and seeing the deep, beautiful void of space from among the stars. She’d been so excited for this moment, the culmination of years of training to be an astronaut, a dream that she’d nearly died for once already. Yet now…
Get it together.
She was the Commander of theCassandra. She had to remain rational; lives depended upon it.
