CHAPTER 1
THE LAST HOUR
ELENA - NEW TERRA
Fate isout for blood today. It picked my name.
The levels above us bleed orange through the cracks, sirens howl, and impact tremors are knocking concrete loose from the ceiling. Twenty women sprint through what might be the last surviving corridor on New Terra, and it’s barely holding on. I’m one of them. The dust burns my nose, acrid and sharp, like scorched wiring inside a fried processor. Everything looks like someone spilled molten solder across the entire planet and then torched it for good measure.
Honestly? That’s probably close.
It's funny what fades into the background when the survival rate drops below statistical relevance. Like how my lungs scream for mercy, but all I can focus on is the gold ring digging into my finger and palm. Retro and impractical. A keepsake from my grandmother, who once told me, “If you’re going to be vaporized, Elena, do it with style.” Her version of wisdom. So I’ve got a death grip on this heirloom like it can save me, even though it’s been useless in every practical sense since the day she gave it to me.
It’s from Earth. That still counts for something, right?
We hurdle over fallen girders, duck under half-collapsed signage. Banners hang black with soot. Sloane’s behind me, silent except for her breath, one arm tucked tight around a data chip.
Dana and Tessa are just ahead of us. Dana plows forward like she’s got charges to file against the hallway for obstructing justice. Tessa, barely five feet tall, weaves through the rubble. I hear a sob behind me—Piper, maybe—and then the mechanical clunk of her prosthetic as she pushes harder. Three years of training for this, and we've run out of time.
Maya’s keeping pace in the front, but she should be in the back. We can’t spare anyone with medical training—including me. Maya’s the real deal. I’m just an engineer cross-trained as a trauma nurse. I’ve got a multi-tool and a medkit and I pray they’ll be enough to fix whatever might be wrong with the escape ship we’re heading for. If we make it.
Women aren’t usually targets of war, what with the shortage of fertile uteruses in the galaxy, but the enemy made it clear that if they can’t have us, no one will.
If we survive this, I’m building something better. That’s not optimism. That’s necessity.
The enemy will not take us. We’ll go down fighting.
We round the final corner into the evac bay, and I almost barrel into Tessa. She’s doubled over, hands on her knees, trying to suck in air that barely counts as breathable.
The bay is a wreck.
The launch gantry overhead leans at a dangerous angle, half-collapsed and sparking like it’s trying to start a fire we can’t afford. And the shuttle. Ugh, the shuttle. It's technically present. But it looks like it died ten years ago and someone slapped a bandage on it and hoped for the best.
Foam insulation peeled back like dead skin. Hull scorched. Paint blistered off in jagged patches. And yet, miracle ofmiracles, the hatch is open, and someone has started the liftoff sequence and opened the long tunnel hatch that will get the ship out of this buried hangar. Its underbelly beacon blinks a steady rhythm, calm and impersonal:
LIFTOFF IN 4:09
We’re forty floors underground, but the air feels thinner than it did on top of the atmospheric stack. My lips sting. My skin itches. Heat radiates from the bulkheads in strong waves. Two of the outer bay doors have already fused shut, their seams melted into something unusable.
When that counter hits zero, anyone not on that ship is out of oxygen, organs liquefying.
Six of us run up the boarding ramp. The pilot’s dead. Sophia gets three other women to help her take his body outside and dump him. Poor guy. He was so close to being the only male evacuating with one of the last groups of fertile human females from New Terra. His death won’t stop us. We brought our backup.
Sloane.
“Only ten seats,” Sloane breathes, voice almost too soft to hear. Her protective glasses fog, clear, then fog again, fast as her breathing. Sloane's pilot training is all simulator hours and no sky. As a pilot, she's going to need help.
“Seats are optional,” Dana grits out. She's already at the hatch, planted across it. "We stack."
She’s the only one taller than I am, and she knows it. Elbows wide. Chin up. Shoulders squared like a challenge.
I step in behind her. “Now’s not the time for personal space, Dana.”
“Is there ever?” she snaps. There’s something oddly comforting about it. If Dana’s still arguing, we’re still alive.
The others crash in behind us, a flood of limbs and survival instincts. The bay fills fast—elbows, sweat, heat, breath. Everyone moves with the same singular focus.
Don’t die.
