1
The paper garland hung crooked across the viewport, a pathetic string of folded ration wrappers that Juni had spent two hours creasing into something vaguely festive. She stood on her tiptoes, which didn’t help much at five-foot-three, and tried to adjust the droop in the middle.
“O Holy Night” hummed its way past her lips on automatic.
“For the love of God, Juni, if you don’t stop with the Christmas carols, I’m going to shove you out the airlock.”
Aida didn’t even look up from her datapad. The engineer sprawled in the corner of their cramped quarters, one leg hooked over the arm of her seat, grease still smudged on her knuckles from helping with repairs in the cargo bay. Her pixie-cut hair stuck up at odd angles.
Juni grinned and just kept humming. Louder.
“I mean it.” Aida finally lifted her head, her eyes brown and sharp. “We’ve been on this tin can for six weeks. Six. Weeks. If I have to hear ‘Silent Night’ one more time, there will be violence.”
“It’s not ‘Silent Night.’ It’s ‘O Holy Night.’”
“I don’t care if it’s ‘Deck the Halls.’ Stop.”
Finley laughed from her bunk, the sound nervous and quick. She’d been glued to her datapad for the last hour, reading everything she could find about KT-6174’s climate zones. Again. Her auburn hair escaped its bun in frizzy tendrils around her face. “Let her hum. It’s better than sitting here in dead silence waiting for?—”
“Don’t say it.” Val’s voice cut across the cabin, sharp and commanding even when she wasn’t trying. The oldest of them, she sat with her back straight, steel-grey eyes fixed on the viewport. Former military, and it showed in every line of her posture. “Talking about it won’t make it happen faster.”
Autumn shifted on her bunk, tucking her braid over her shoulder. “We should know soon though, right? They said this morning.”
“‘Morning’ is relative in space.” Anja paced the narrow strip of floor between the bunks, all controlled energy with nowhere to go. Tall, athletic, and sharp-featured, she’d been pacing for an hour. “Could mean anything.”
Juni tugged her tunic down over her hips and immediately regretted it. The movement just drew attention to the fact that the standard-issue clothing fit her all wrong. Too tight across her chest and hips, too loose everywhere else. Finley had the same problem with length… the pants pooled around her ankles, but at least she was slender enough that the tunic didn’t cling.
Stop it. Nobody’s looking at you.
She forced her hands away from the fabric and reached for another crumpled wrapper. If she folded it just right, she could add a little dimension, make it look less like trash and more like?—
The door panel beeped.
All six of them froze.
The door slid open, and one of the Latharian crew members, J’Ren, ducked through, his massive frame filling the doorway. He had to be six-and-a-half feet tall, with shoulders as broad as a shuttle. Dark hair was pulled back in warrior braids, and he had green eyes with those strange pupils that still made her brain stutter when she looked directly at them.
“We’ve received word from the surface.” His voice rumbled through the cabin, deep enough that she felt it in her chest. “The colony has completed the lottery. Your hosts will be waiting for you when we land.”
The air went tight.
Her fingers clenched around the ration wrapper, crinkling it into a ball. This was real. This was happening. In a few hours, she’d be on an alien planet, assigned to an alien man who’d been forced to take her through a lottery system, living in his home for six weeks while they figured out if they were compatible enough for…
Yeah. That.
“Thank you.” Val’s voice stayed steady as she stood and nodded to the Latharian. Professional. Controlled.
He hesitated, his gaze sweeping across them. The expression in his eyes was unreadable. “The assignments will be transmitted to your personal datapads within the hour. Landing sequence begins in ninety minutes.”
He left. The door slid shut behind him.
Nobody moved.
“Well.” Aida broke the silence first, her voice too bright, too sharp. “Guess we’re really doing this.”
Finley made a sound that wasn’t quite a laugh. Her hands twisted together in her lap, knuckles white. “I can’t. I need to… the statistical probability that we’ll all be placed near each other is?—”
“Low.” Anja stopped pacing. “But we knew that.”
