D.A.N.I.

DANI had landed a shuttle car at Mount Messier’s summit for today’s activity, and it was helpfully projecting an avatar for him as the Ranger troops arrived. The children had eaten breakfast, warmed up with camp chores and little games, and by late morning they were ready to make the final push from their camp to the top of the mountain. Even though the gravity was a third lighter at the peak than at the bottom, that last stretch was still a hard ascent by anybody’s standards, meaning most of them had burned off enough energy to actually sit down and listen to a lesson by the time they arrived.

School was for skills, academic knowledge, research, and learning. The Rangers were as much about teaching them who they were and who they would be as it was about survival skills. That meant telling them where they were, why they were there, and how it all worked.

That was one of DANI’s favorite tasks. Among other things, it basically meant talking about himself to thousands of Ranger troops simultaneously. But his favorite group was Walker’s, for one simple reason—Walker took on the special cases.

Every last member of his troop performed far above the ship’s average on a variety of performance metrics, while the ship’s averages in turn were superior to most of the human race they’d left behind in Sol. They weren’t confined to a single field. Some were physically impressive specimens, others were budding creative geniuses, mature for their age, or just…possessed of some indefinable spark DANI couldn’t detect but which the Rangermasters absolutely could.

Even little Rose Durand, at seven years old, had caught the Rangermasters’ attention. DANI wasn’t exactly sure why yet, but he’d learned to trust them. They had never yet been wrong, in his experience, and he himself was by no means all-seeing and all-knowing. Humans had a vexing capacity to surprise him, all too frequently.

On days like these, however, the Rangermasters stepped back and let the younger kids learn from the older ones. It was good for both groups—the senior Rangers got the chance to prove they knew their stuff, and the younger Rangers got to see what they could grow up to become. Role models close to their own age were important.

Naturally, DANI’s avatar was left waiting. He didn’t mind one jot—his attention span was effectively unlimited, and events elsewhere on the ship occupied his attention while Roy blustered gleefully around the top of the mountain, reminding all the kids to air out their feet, hydrate, change into a dry shirt and dry socks…all the little steps that made the difference between walking back down the mountain comfortable, fit, and happy, or walking back down it with a rash, blisters, and a miserable cloud of pain over their heads.

With that job done, the younger ones sat in a half-circle around Nikki as she introduced them to the Universal Tool.

“The U-Tool,” as Nikki explained, “is incredibly useful. It’s probably the most wonderful thing you could possibly carry with you in a survival situation…but it’s not a survival tool. Anybody care to guess why I say that?”

DANI watched the children with interest, gauging tiny changes in skin temperature, sweat, eye dilation, pulse, and a dozen other things to guess which of them knew the answer but couldn’t remember, which genuinely had no idea…and most importantly, which of them knew the answer and were too shy to speak up.

Arianna Mayweather, he decided. It was simplicity itself to transmit that information to Walker, who was patrolling at the back where the kids couldn’t see him, and he in turn discreetly pointed Arianna out to Nikki as he passed.

Nikki knew the drill. She put on an encouraging smile and skewered her reluctant troop-mate with it. “Arianna? Care to take a guess?”

“Uh…” Arianna glanced around in case somebody wanted to jump in front of her, but quickly gave up and ventured an answer. “Because…because a survival tool has to be simple?”

“Right!” Nikki beamed at her and Arianna relaxed. “But why?”

“Uh…because if it’s simple…it won’t break?”

“Oh, it’ll break. Everything breaks eventually. But think about what I’d have to do to fix my U-Tool when it breaks.” Nikki shifted her seat. “I’d have to fire up a diagnostic console, decompile, dissolve, regrow, and recompile. Take a few hours, maybe. And if it’s completely f—,” Nikki hesitated as Walker’s eyebrow nudged upwards a fraction, “—fried beyond saving, I’d recycle it to build a new one on the omnifactory.”

She let that sink in.

“Now. Let’s say my steel knife gets damaged,” she said. “What do I do?”

This time, DANI was quite certain none of the kids knew. They hadn’t had that course yet, which was scheduled for the evening, anyway, and none of them were showing any signs of having picked up the information independently. Again, he passed his observations on to Walker, who gave a slow shake of the head.

Nikki smiled and produced a couple of damaged knives from her bag.

DANI watched with interest. Outerdeck engineers were a select crew, who recruited young and demanded not just the brawn to hack sustained higher gravity, but the brains to solve practical problems on the fly. Nikki and her brother were the best young engineers DANI had yet had the pleasure to train, and Nikki was at her most effusive when she got to talk about something technical.

“Okay, here we go. One chipped knife, and one totally broken one.” She showed the abused blades to the gathered kids. “Now, I’d still keep the broken one, because, I mean, it’s still sharp, and I can still use it with my fire steel.” She demonstrated by pulling the steel in question from her pocket and scraping off a few good sparks. “And with a good stone and some time, I bet I could sharpen the chip right out of this other one. So the thing about a steel knife is, it’s still useful when it breaks! My U-Tool though? If this thing breaks, it’s basically just dead weight.”

She put the broken blades away. “Survival can get tough when things start going wrong; that’s why we carry spares and simple things that won’t go wrong so easily. Remember the rule: Two is one and one is none. We load up with all the things we need first, then we load up with spares of the things we need, and only then do we load the things we want. Your U-Tool is the first item on your list of wants.”

“That being said,” Walker added from the back, “today we’re going to learn about our U-tools, because they do make life much easier…Which is why today, we’re going to trust you with a full unlock.”

There were excited nudges and whispers among the seated Rangers. A Ranger’s U-Tool by default was set to its “safe” functions: flashlight, holographic monitor, communicator, and medical sensor. Fully unlocked, it could be so much more than that…and thus dangerous. Still, there was nothing alarming about their enthusiasm. Walker had a way of making responsibility seem exciting.

Walker grinned at DANI, who smiled back. “Functions unlocked,” he confirmed, sending a pulsed command to every U-Tool in the group, which all promptly reported that they were in standby mode, no restraints.

“Thank you, DANI. Okay, Nikki, show ‘em how it works.”

Nikki beamed at him, then turned to her “pupils.” She always got chattier and more enthusiastic when she got to show off some technology, DANI had noticed. Left to her own devices, she was generally happy to tinker, cook, experiment, make things with her hands, and she didn’t have a lot of time for small talk, except among her very nearest and dearest. Give her a chance to show off her knowledge, though, and the full McKay boisterousness gleefully bubbled to the surface. She waggled her U-Tool at the Rangers, turning it over to show it off.

A Universal Tool was basically just a sturdy grip with an emitter at one end and a receiver in the other, designed to fit ergonomically in (mostly) any human hand regardless of size. It was slightly ovoid in cross section, easy to orient, with its controls placed next to where the thumb and fingers would naturally rest.

Inside that grip was a clever arrangement of solid-state components: a potent little computer with all the usual sensor-on-chip accoutrements, a powerful transceiver, a short-range forcefield emitter, and its associated high-capacity power cell. It was as rugged and simple as the ship’s fabricators could possibly make it, quite capable of taking a beating and still ticking along reliably. Despite Nikki’s cautionary words, breaking one was actually quite a feat.

“Okay, so…the tool has a lot of different functions: it has a flashlight, a communicator, a magnetic compass, a signal light, motion sensors, and all that. It also has a high-powered emitter that can start fires, weld, and cut metal. The sensors onboard are all really good, so it can function as a general scanner, and it can assemble a screen for viewing text, video, or images, including maps and sensor data…but of course, you knew all that.”

She grinned at them as she cycled through the safe functions, finishing with the screen. U-Tool screens were stored inside the handle as a crystalline dust. When activated, the dust flowed out with a hiss to form a hand-sized opaque touch screen.

“The bit you guys have never used before is this receiver on the back,” Nikki said. She dismissed the screen, and flipped the tool over to show its other end to her students. “You pull it open like this, and…voilà! This right here can accept compatible cartridges that do all kindsa different things, depending on what kinda cartridge you put in there. Medical cartridges can be used to inject antitoxins, anti-allergens, coagulants, regenerative gel, and other emergency field care. With an engineering cartridge, it can print small single-material components, like springs or firing pins. But I think the coolest one is this guy here, the dust cartridge.”

She rammed the little red nodule home at the base of her U-Tool, thumbed the controls, and a shimmering scarlet blade as long as her arm hummed into existence with a seething crackle. Several of the kids made suitably awed words and noises.

“This cartridge is full of the same crystalline dust it uses to make the screen, just way more of it. The emitter can instantly assemble it into basically any simple shape, especially blades,” she explained. “If you wanna use your U-Tool as a machete or knife, you use the dust cartridge. It’s light, but not completely weightless, ‘cuz that would be super dangerous, so you’ve got some weight to help you. It can assemble a blade anywhere from six to a hundred and fifty centimeters long, and the red glow is a holographic safety feature—without it, the blade is invisible, and believe me, it’s sharp. Sharper than anything. Treat it with respect.”

By way of a demonstration, she turned to the thick branch Roy had thoughtfully hauled up the mountain for her and wedged upright between some rocks. With a casual swipe, she neatly and cleanly cut off the top thirty centimeters. Even DANI was impressed—Nikki’s arm barely twitched, and aside from the heavy thump as it fell to the ground, the wood barely made a noise.

She turned back to the awed, silent Rangers with a grin, and dissolved the blade. The crystal “dust” flowed back into the emitter with a sandy hiss.

“Anyone wanna see what else it can do?”

Captain Amida Torres

A population of one million people fell into an interesting sweet spot, as far as Amida could tell. It was neither too big nor too small; big enough to convey the full weight of a culture and carry it forward, small enough that whatever rifts and schisms developed in that culture likely wouldn’t cut too deep and tear them apart.

One of the side effects of such a Goldilocks population was that the things they took seriously, they took very seriously. And there was nothing onboard that got the people fired up quite as much as the Shipboard Olympics. Oh sure, each hamlet and town (and farming district, too) had their sports teams. Games like baseball and cricket, bowling, soccer, target shooting, video games, or competitive Sudoku were certainly fun, and they scratched that human itch to play. Almost everyone played at something, but those were mostly casual affairs.

Ship-wide events, however, were fiercely contested, and none more so than the Olympics. Merely qualifying for an event was a big deal in anyone’s life, and many of the ship’s most influential celebrities had their start in a particularly fantastic bout of sport. There was track and field of course, as well as swimming, gymnastics, and all the other classics, but where the people got really excited were the most intensely individual sports: the strength events, and the martial arts competitions.

And in those events, apparently, there was a growing problem.

The games weren’t due until next year. The thrice-blessed genius who’d first set them in motion had timed them so they’d immediately precede Arrival Day, and thereby give the first-wave colonists the chance to enjoy them before they headed dirtside to start building Newhome. The process of qualification and selection was well underway, and from what Amida could gather, there were a few young up-and-comers in nearly all the events who were totally distorting the competition. Even worse, the two most extreme examples of this phenomenon were in precisely the events that garnered the most attention.

Naturally, that could not stand, at least if the most vocal were to be believed. Concerned parents and commentators had raised their objections both broadly and specifically, which had been picked up by Antony Mayweather, one of the civilian council’s more populist members. He in turn had brought it to the council, and as captain, it was Amida’s job to sit in on, mediate, and moderate such discussions.

“All I am saying is we need to reconsider the weight classes! Two of the entrants—who, by the way, are entered as adults even though they’re still merely teenagers—utterly dominated their class last year, and are doing so again. At the level they’re playing at, it just isn’t sporting anymore. It’s almost cruel.”

“Well, that’s the nature of competition,” Uddam Ahuja, the Olympic committee’s chairman, replied evenly. “We haven’t seen any need to modify the weight classes at any point since leaving Earth, other than adding the unrestricted class twenty-five years ago. Sometimes you do just get exceptional talent. I should also remind you that the existing weight classes are already much higher than the ancient norms.”

“The fact that you haven’t updated them doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be updated,” Mayweather retorted. “Just that you haven’t had reason to until now. Humankind progresses over time, including athletically. By your own admission, the current classes were once much lower. We’ve updated them before, and we need to again.”

Amida decided a little more objective information was needed. “Okay,” she interjected as diplomatically as she could, “who are the two you mentioned?”

Mayweather sent over their files, and Amida was forced to raise an eyebrow. “My, those are big lads. You say they’re only teens?”

“Barely, at that. Both of them are so big, they had to cut weight to make it into the adult super-heavies. They’re also unmatched athletes despite their enormous size. Nobody can compete with them at any level, except perhaps a few older adults in the unrestricted class. And there are more like them following in their footsteps. I don’t know what it is, but this upcoming generation are qualitatively different.”

“And these two…what are they guilty of, besides excellence?” Ahuja objected.

“Excellence that takes them so far beyond the others in their weight class that it’s a competition between them for the gold, and then between everyone else to see who takes bronze,” Mayweather said. “I don’t see how that can be called fair.”

Amida looked at the files a bit more closely. Both young men had racked up…well, she wasn’t deeply knowledgeable about such things, but there was hardly a second place among their long, long award lists.

“They seem to be in the habit of winning,” she noted drily.

“They can hardly help themselves. Which isn’t surprising, once you’ve seen them. Look at their stats and their photos.”

Amida scrolled down, took one look, and lifted her eyebrow further. “…Dang.”

“Indeed,” said Mayweather.

There really wasn’t any other word. The stats were…impressive, though Amida didn’t have enough of an athletic grounding to properly grasp what they meant. Nevertheless they were genuinely huge lads. Huge, and obviously elite athletes.

For her, it was the photographs that told the real story. Both had thick, sinewy necks wider than their own blocky heads, severely handsome faces and intense ice-blue eyes. One was a shorter and broader juggernaut with close-cut, inky black hair, the other heroic and tall with a long platinum-blond mane. Both were so ridiculously athletic looking, so absurdly well-muscled and so obviously powerful, it wasn’t hard to see the root of everyone’s objections.

“Well…I presume everything is on the level with these two?”

“Of course,” DANI added. “They and their coaches have been scrupulously honest. They pride themselves on their work ethic and have had no advantages over the other youths, beyond their own discipline and genetic good fortune.”

“A luck which has placed them in a league of their own,” added Mayweather.

“And which nobody can control,” Ahuja retorted. “Are we seriously considering punishing these fine young men because of their genes? Where would we stop, with such an idea?”

Amida read through the file while the two gently bickered. Mayweather did have a point, in that it really did seem that everybody else onboard was competing for a distant bronze next to the pair of teenage supermen she was considering. She had to agree with him, that didn’t sound particularly fun or fair.

On the other hand, the suggested remedy didn’t sit well either.

“It seems to me like you’re asking the committee to punish them for excelling.”

“Far from it. I’m asking for them to be given the chance to prove themselves in a fair contest. It’s not fair on them to so totally dominate their brackets any more than it’s fair for all the people they dominate. They aren’t being given the chance to shine that they so richly deserve.” Mayweather sounded fervent. “But it’s not just them.”

“It’s not?”

Mayweather shook his head. “The last two Olympics saw a lot of ship records smashed. This year, some of those records have been broken during the qualifying rounds. I don’t know why or even how that would be, but just in the last eight years or so, we’ve seen some truly incredible young people in all kinds of competitive fields. Not just sports but the math championships, the literature and music contests, the film and game jams…And the problem with truly exceptional people is they can eclipse the merely very good who are also deserving of recognition.”

Amida nodded. “Well. You’ve both made your cases. I don’t think this is an issue that’s subject to a Captain’s Decision,” she said. “For what it’s worth, I do think you both have valid points, but in the end, the Olympics cannot be static and unchanging. People change, and their culture must change with them. So, I’ll book this for a discussion in Council on…hmm…”

DANI, ever attentive and helpful, popped up a few recommendations on her tablet. “August the eleventh,” she offered.

“Thank you, Captain,” Mayweather said.

Ahuja nodded resignedly. Clearly, he’d been hoping for Amida to decide in his favor. Both men shook her hand, and once the door closed, there was peace.

“That was more interesting than I thought it would be,” she said aloud. DANI’s avatar formed opposite her, seated primly in the chair Mayweather had just vacated.

“You usually find the minutiae of such things rather tedious,” he observed.

“Oh, the whole ‘weight category’ thing was dull, but have you seen Mayweather’s data? He’s not wrong about those ship records.”

“I’ve seen the data,” DANI confirmed.

“What do you make of it?”

“Steady, broad improvement of human ability throughout the duration of the ship’s mission, and not merely in sport. I’m quite pleased by that.”

“I suppose so…” Amida agreed. “Still, Mayweather’s right. You can’t ignore the standouts. Especially if they’re as unexpected and exceptional as he claims.”

“True.” DANI offered nothing more.

That was significant because DANI was normally a chatty sort. If he didn’t venture more, it meant he didn’t consider the matter to be particularly important. Amida smiled to herself and let it drop. DANI lacked a physical body of his own, unless one counted the titanic cylinder of the ship itself, and that could hardly do back-flips. He was fascinated by outstanding athletes and displays of human physicality and was sometimes prone to gushing about particularly impressive feats. If he didn’t consider the matter important, then it wasn’t.

She let him have his way and moved on. “What’s next?”

“A few members of the planetology team want to petition the council for funding for a survey probe to fly ahead and take a closer look at Newhome.”

“Seems like a waste if we’re going to be in orbit next year…did they say why?”

“They’re concerned about wood smoke levels in the atmosphere, which is probably just forest fires, but they want to survey for ‘other causes’. I’m inclined to agree with you. Why waste the resources when we’ll be close enough for detailed ground mapping soon anyway? Should I send them in?”

“Yes, sure. That sounds like an easy one,” she agreed, “assuming it falls under my powers to make a decision?”

“It probably will. I’ll inform you if not.”

“Thanks, DANI.” Amida stood and made herself a coffee. She had half a dozen more meetings and felt like approaching this one with a hot drink in her hands.

Just those, and she could go back to listening to what the Rangers were up to…

Amber Houston

The weekend passed in a happy blur for Amber. She liked her troopmates. They were kids, and some of the boys could be McKay-sized handfuls in their own right, but they were uncomplicated, and she truly meant that as a compliment. Her home life was nothing but complicated, a stressful tangle of feuding parents and the looming question of her future career on the horizon…

Well, except it wasn’t so much a question as a hard conversation she’d been putting off for a while. Ranger weekends were a chance to forget all that. They were an opportunity to hang out with her friends, to have fun, to swim and tell stories around the campfire and sing along to Walker’s marching cadence and all the other stuff that was just so blessedly simple.

Even so…she wasn’t able to forget entirely.

The big thing on her mind was Newhome. Dandelion was a colony ship, there was just no getting around that fact. Colonizing the planet was what they were for. Which meant, in a way, it was what Amber herself was for. In the hundreds of years the ship had been flying, all the generations before her had just been counting off time, waiting for the ship to reach its destination and trying to leave it intact and functioning for the eventual grandchildren who would have the privilege of completing the mission.

Amber was one of those privileged ones, if she wanted to be. And…she did. She wanted to go down to the surface and be a colonist.

But the twins didn’t.

She’d been grappling with that, but it was a conversation on the morning of their walk back down the mountain that finally tipped something over in her mind.

Floyd Harris was about the geekiest kid Amber had ever met. He and slim, blonde Arianna Mayweather were entirely inseparable, and Amber honestly didn’t know if they were just the closest of friends or something more. Both, probably, because they were effusive about what they’d be doing down on Newhome: science, and lots of it. They were complimentary sides of the same coin, with Arianna being fanatical about botany, Floyd being equally enthralled by zoology, and both were enthused by virtually nothing else all the way down the mountain.

“Did you see that thing about the smoke in Newhome’s atmosphere? Doctor Kowalski was talking about it on her podcast last night.”

“Aww, I missed it! Did she think it might be forest fires?”

“Yeah!”

“I knew it! It’s so hot down there, there’d have to be forest fires every year…”

Kelly Liu shot the pair of them a dismayed look as she walked alongside them. “That sounds…bad?”

Amber smiled to herself. Kelly was a few weeks younger than her, and brilliantly smart, but anybody who spent five minutes around her knew her passions lay elsewhere. She loved to dance, paint, sing, paste things into scrapbooks, and a hundred other things that had at one point or another temporarily caught her fancy. Any space she occupied for more than a few minutes tended to end up having been doodled on or decorated in some way. She had a pure creative soul, that much was for certain, but it wasn’t exactly focused.

Then again…she’d never needed to focus it yet.

“Oh, no!” Arianna grinned at her. “Forest fires are great! There were, like, whole ecosystems back on Earth that depended on them!”

“Didn’t they burn down whole towns and stuff?”

“Only because people didn’t know how to manage them properly back then,” Floyd sniffed. “They used to stop them from happening so instead of little healthy seasonal fires that were normal for the forest, they got huge big ones they couldn’t contain that burned everything down…”

“I bet there’s all kindsa plants down there that need fire to spread their seeds and stuff…” Arianna mused. “I can’t wait to name one!”

Kelly sighed. “You two are so lucky you’ve got it all figured out. I have no idea what I’d do down there…I don’t even know if I’m gonna go down, yet.”

“Aww, we’d miss you if you don’t!”

Kelly gave Floyd a touched smile. “I probably will, I guess. I just don’t know what I’d do…What about you, Amber? I know the twins aren’t coming. They’re gonna be outerdeck engineers, right?”

Amber sighed. “That’s right,” she confirmed.

“What would you do if you did come down?”

“Medicine,” Amber admitted. “I think I’d make an okay doctor. But maybe I’d find something else, I don’t know.”

“Wouldn’t you miss Roy and Nick though?” Arianna asked.

Amber looked forward toward the head of the column, where the twins were trading their usual brand of physical affection as they hiked, arguing loudly about something. The truth was, yes, she would. They and the rest of the troop felt like the best things in her life, sometimes. She worried about going down to the colony only to find herself just as lost and dissatisfied down there and then she’d have to work through it without the twins to turn to.

But in her gut, she knew that wouldn’t happen. As fascinating and impressive as Dandelion was, there were times when it felt like her whole body was itching with the urge to break free of the ship’s confines. To feel real gravity instead of spin. To look up at night and see stars, not city lights. To look to the distance and see a horizon…

Huge as Dandelion was, sometimes Amber felt claustrophobic.

“Amber?” Kelly gave her a concerned look, and Amber realized she’d gone quiet.

“Sorry.” She forced a smile. “I just…Yeah. I’m gonna miss them a lot.”

It was such a small thing to set her in motion, but it really was the first time she’d actually talked about the subject with…anyone. She hadn’t mentioned it to her parents of course, nor any of the McKays because how could she? She probably could have discussed it with Walker, or DANI but…well, worrying about wasting their time was foolish. Walker would have gladly made time, and wasting DANI’s time was literally impossible. But still, she hadn’t taken it to them. Maybe she should have.

Kelly gave her a sympathetic smile, and a walking half-hug. “It’s a pity they’re not coming down. Roy’s pretty cute!” she smirked.

“Kell!”

“What? He is!” Kelly had a musical giggle, which Floyd and Ari joined in with.

“Ugh.” Amber tried not to dignify her antics with a smile and failed miserably.

She was, mercifully, rescued from any further teasing by the sound of Walker’s voice calling a halt for lunch. They were about a third of the way down the mountain, with another few hours of hiking ahead of them before they were back in the city. Up ahead, Nikki waved back at her down the column and gestured for her to join them while waving a meal pack. Amber waved back to acknowledge her, shared a “see you later” with Kelly as Ari and Floyd wandered off discussing forest fires, and took a steadying breath. She’d been putting the hard conversation off for too long, waiting for the right moment.

But there never would be a better time to have it than now.

All resolutions aside, the conversation didn’t actually happen until they were on the move again. The twins set a brisk pace, and pretty soon they’d put several twists of the trail between themselves and the rest of the troop. Amber had been waiting for that; it gave them some privacy.

“So uh…” she cleared her throat and began. “I decided on my apprenticeship.”

Nikki looked pleased. “Oh cool! You gonna go into medicine like you said?”

“You should be a sports therapist!” Roy boomed, bouncing around Amber and Nikki with far more light-footed grace than one might expect from such a big burly boy. His cheery self-interest in his own suggestion couldn’t possibly be more obvious.

Nikki poked at his ribs. “You just want free help when you hurt yourself!”

Roy grinned sheepishly but didn’t dispute the charge. “Sometimes I gotta wait a whole week for an appointment!”

Nikki giggled and backhanded his bare shoulder with a solid, meaty thwack. “Your superjock is showing, bro.”

“Well, um…” Amber interrupted them by clearing her throat a second time, and took the plunge the moment she had their attention again. “A–actually I, uh…I thought I’d go down with the first wave.”

Their faces fell. Nikki’s instantly, as if her smile just slid right off. Roy’s grin faded more slowly, over a few seconds.

“Uh…but…Amber…” He didn’t seem to know how to start.

“We’re staying up here!” Nikki said.

“Yeah,” Roy echoed.

“I know!” Amber assured them. “I know that. I just…that’s my choice.”

“But it’ll take months before the ground-to-orbit link can handle anything but mission gear!” Roy was almost whining like a big dog.

“We won’t see you for…like, a whole year!” Nikki agreed.

“At least!”

“Guys, you’ll see me every day, I’ll call—”

Roy shook his head. “It’s not the same!”

“How’re you supposed to be friends if you can’t even hang out?” Nikki agreed.

“Guys. I love you too.” Amber swallowed and did her best not to cry. She’d been dreading this, for good reason. “But I have to do this.”

“But why? There’s gotta be something up here on the ship that grabs you—”

“Don’t you think I’d have found it by now if there was?” Amber sighed at the hurt-puppy expression she was getting from both and willed herself to stay patient and calm. She didn’t want to fall out with her best friends, especially not now.

Nikki sighed miserably. “So you’re gonna be…what? A frontier doctor?”

“It’s going to be tough down there. People are gonna be separated from their family…their friends…” Amber managed to work a sad little smile into her observation and got its echo back from them. “People are gonna get hurt as we build, or when we run into stuff we don’t know anything about, yet. It’s safe up here, mostly. Down there…I’ll always have somebody to help.”

“Your mind’s really made up, huh?” Roy said, quietly.

Amber nodded. “Yeah. I just…I don’t know why,” she said, “but it’s like…it’s a calling. I think I’d have chosen this a long time ago, but I was hoping…I was looking for…” she trailed off. “…I know I’m meant to do this. You understand that, don’t you Roy?”

He looked away and shook his head. “That’s not fair!” he accused, though he said it with a small, sad smile. “Who’s gonna bore me with philosophy while you’re gone?”

Amber found some real humor from somewhere. “Who’s going to bore me with their latest performance stats?”

He didn’t get the chance to form a comeback, because the next contribution to the conversation came in the form of a punch in the arm from Nikki. It was the kind of loving, painful punch she reserved only for the most special people, followed by the tightest kind of hug.

For whatever reason, Nikki had always been awful at expressing her feelings. In this case, though, she didn’t need to be good at it. She nuzzled hard into Amber’s shoulder and held her tightly. A moment later, Roy joined in too, and that was the start of a long, quiet interlude where nobody said a word.

Nikki broke the silence with a muffled sniff. “…You made me cry. I hate crying.”

“Nikki, I …” Amber rubbed her back. “I’m sorry. I just…”

She didn’t know what to say, but it didn’t seem to matter. Nikki nodded damply into her shoulder, then let go and turned away, probably so she could wipe some moisture from her cheeks. She hadn’t gotten even half of it off by the time she looked back with a complicated expression that was almost a weak smile.

“I guess…I mean, if this is what you need to be the best you, then…I mean, I’ll never drag you down, Amber. Neither of us will.”

Amber squeezed her hand, and looked to Roy, who put on a brave face for her despite the water in his own eyes.

“I know,” she promised.

“Okay. Okay,” Roy said, to himself as much as anything else. “I can dig it. I think it’s brave, y’know? And I guess we’ve got a year to get used to it…but the least you owe us is plenty of couch nights. Got it?”

That was the thing Amber would miss the most—the closeness. The McKay twins knew everything about her, and they shared everything with her, too: their home, their food, their little embarrassments, even sometimes the foldout hide-a-bed in the living room for their occasional Bad Movie Nights.

Living without them would be harder than anything else she’d face down there.

But her mind was made up.

Getting her big confession off her chest left her feeling…lighter, somehow. It helped that the twins, once they’d accepted it, were throwing themselves into helping her with their usual limitless enthusiasm. It was a slow and easy walk down Mount Messier, and Walker was setting a gentle pace so the Rangers could talk among themselves.

“So are you gonna go for doctor or nurse?” Nikki asked. “I mean, I know folks are probably gonna ship back up here if they need a surgeon or whatever, but—”

“I guess I’ll see which one calls to me more,” Amber said. “I mean, I’ll have barely started my apprenticeship by the time I go down there. It’s gonna take years before I’m qualified either way.”

“You’ve definitely got the brain for it,” Roy said. “I don’t think I ever saw you read the same book twice.”

Nikki chuckled. “And you can barely read a book once. You’d be a terrible nurse.”

That of course offended Roy’s pride, and he leapt to defend his ability to do absolutely anything well. “Nuh-uh! Nurses have to move folks in and outta bed, right? Gotta be good and strong for that. And I’ve done dirty jobs, I could totally change folks’ clothes, clean ‘em up…”

“Roy, I think your ideas about what nurses do might be a couple hundred years out of date,” Amber told him.

“Whatever!” Roy snorted “I could still do it!”

Amber and Nikki met each other’s eyes, and wordlessly agreed not to humor his competitive instincts any further.

“I wonder how quickly you’ll go?” Nikki mused instead.

“Pretty quick, I hope…” Amber said. “I mean…I don’t mean, uh—”

“Relax, dork,” Nikki gave her a gentle knuckle in the arm. “So you’re eager to get on with it. We get it. We’re not completely useless meatheads, y’know.”

“Sorry.”

“I mean, I guess you’re right…” Roy said. “Seems kinda dumb that we spent all our lives flying here and me and Nikki aren’t gonna live down there…”

“Somebody’s gotta look after the launches and stuff,” Nikki reminded him. “And we’re good at it! Hell, we’re about the best at it, too!”

Amber nodded. She’d recently visited the pair when they were at work on the outerdecks maintaining Dandelion’s huge launches, and the gravity out there had been oppressive. With it being bit over two Gs at launch level, she’d felt like there was a second, invisible Amber sitting on her and dragging on her arms. Just standing up had been exhausting, so how the twins, their dad, or the hundreds of other outerdeck engineers managed to work full day shifts was beyond her.

Seeing Roy casually hang one-armed from a launch’s ceiling while he inspected behind a panel, easily pulling himself this way and that, was impressive enough. Watching him fling himself through that opening and up into the launch’s guts without so much as a grunt of effort—using just that one arm, and with the other hauling on a heavy-looking tool-kit, no less—that had been enough to drop her jaw.

It wasn’t surprising in retrospect—all outerdeck engineers were functionally monkeys, in her experience—but seeing what that meant up close was another thing entirely. They weren’t even in the deepest gravity, either. The outermost decks were just over three Gs and the outrigger pods were even worse. Amber knew she couldn’t stand in such oppressive gravity, but she had no doubt Roy could handle it.

For once he’d been clothed head-to-toe in a launch engineer’s safety clothing: boots, pants, a tough long-sleeved shirt, and stout work gloves. He couldn’t have been comfortable, though. His work shirt had been completely drenched through with sweat, and his face had been ruddy from the work. Nikki hadn’t been much better off herself, as she’d been tending to the tools and staging all the incomprehensible equipment Roy was ripping out and replacing.

Even so, Amber had watched them work for a long while, and at no point did either of them show any signs of slowing down. At all. Amber couldn’t say the same, and she didn’t dare sit down for fear she might not be able to stand back up. It had all been worth it, though, just to see their faces when she unveiled her gift—a massive beef and broccoli stir-fry with jasmine rice, their favorite.

She was going to miss them terribly.

“I guess it’s also, like…I know this ship,” she said and looked around at it. As stunning and weird as the biodeck was, she’d seen the same view every day for fourteen years, and from pretty much every angle. It wasn’t that she was bored of it, exactly, but it was familiar. “I don’t know what it’s going to be like down on Newhome. That…calls to me. I mean, imagine being the first human ever to climb a new mountain!”

“That would be pretty cool,” Roy admitted wistfully.

“Or building a town from the ground up…” Nikki added. “Imagine building someplace brand new for people to call home…”

“Are you thinking of coming with me now?” Amber asked, half-jokingly.

Roy stopped in his tracks and gave her a serious look for a moment. “…Nah,” he decided. “I mean, it sounds cool, but there really aren’t many people who can do what we do. DANI needs engineers like me and Nikki.”

“We fit up here,” Nikki agreed.

“We’ll still visit, though! And I’mma climb that mountain, too!”

“Of course you will!” Amber grinned. “But I’ll have climbed it first.”

“Atta girl!” Nikki gave her a hug, then gestured to pick up the pace by trotting ahead a short ways. “Come on! If we get back down to the lake before the rest of the troop, we can go for a swim!”

That sounded like heaven. It was certainly all the encouragement Amber needed, and she was moving even before Roy. Naturally he immediately went charging past her, which turned into a race, which turned into the twins vanishing around a bend in the path, then coming back for her…

And when they got to the lake, the water was cool and refreshing.

All in all, it wasn’t a bad way to finish Turnover Day weekend.

Home, however, was a different matter. It took hours to get back to the city and line up on Sagan Plaza, receive one last inspection and some words of encouragement and praise from Walker, and then…that was it. Their little adventure was done. Dan and Petra McKay turned up to take Roy and Nikki out for dinner somewhere, and all the other Rangers went home with their parents or whatever…

Amber’s parents didn’t show up. She walked home alone.

She was totally safe. The city wasn’t like cities back on Earth, which if the movies and stuff were to be believed had been full of muggers and other dangerous people just waiting to jump out at a lone pedestrian. They were probably exaggerating, but nobody ever got mugged on these streets. The militia responded instantly to any disturbance, because DANI saw all, heard all, knew all.

That sounded a lot more sinister than it was. Probably.

The shadows were long, now. The sun lamps were all the way down at the ship’s far end, and fading from daylight mode to moonlight. The heating was off too, cooling the air, slightly. Amber had no idea how accurate Dandelion’s simulated day cycle was compared to the real thing, but it didn’t feel wrong to her. She walked past bustling bars and took a detour through the park as she headed home, past the lingering scent of extinguished barbecues.

The city was dense, tightly packed to fit as many people into as small a footprint as possible. There was only a finite amount of space on the biodeck after all, and it all needed to be used efficiently. Even the luxurious features like Mount Messier and the lake were there for practical reasons of training and recreation, to take the pressure off a hard-working populace.

The towers and skyscrapers around her were so tall that the curvature of the ship’s hull narrowed the gap between them to mere cracks. Only the open park spaces and widest avenues enjoyed much “sunlight.” Down at ground level, the lighting came from shop hoardings and street lamps that, combined, gave the streets a cozy feel.

She stuffed her communicator into her ear. They’d had it with them but turned off over the weekend, but now that she’d been dismissed, she could use it for something other than emergencies again.

“They forgot me again, huh?” she asked aloud.

Sure enough, DANI’s soft voice was sympathetic in her ear. “I am afraid they are engaged in another argument. I tried to remind them to come for you, but—”

“But they told you to shut up?”

“Yes.” There was a momentary pause, and when DANI started his next sentence, he was using exactly the tone of voice she’d predicted he would. “Amber—”

Amber stopped dead in the street and aimed a glare down the street toward the huge painted ship’s emblem at the front of the biodeck. Behind that enormous metal wall was DANI’s central data center: In the absence of one of his avatars, it was the closest thing she could get to looking directly at him. “I told you, I don’t want to raise a complaint.”

“I will respect your autonomy,” DANI replied diplomatically.

Satisfied that was the best she was going to get on the subject, Amber started walking again.

“They’re my parents,” she explained.

“I am aware.”

“And I love them,” Amber added belatedly.

“As you say.”

“DANI…” Amber sighed. “As you say” was DANI-speak for “Whatever.”

“Forgive me. For what it is worth, I am quite sure they love you, too.”

“They have a funny way of showing it,” Amber muttered, and scuffed her boot irritably on the pavement. “Can’t even come to fetch their own daughter…”

“Would you like a drone taxi?” DANI offered.

“No, thanks. I’m fine walking.”

“As you wish. But I stand by my assessment. I am perfectly certain they remain married only because they think it is what is best for you.”

“Great. They put up with each other because they think that’s what I need?” Amber shook her head. “Idiots.”

“Amber…”

“I know, I know…” She scuffed the other boot for balance. “But you make them sound like idiots when you put it that way.”

“That was not my intent.”

“I know, you were just trying to be reassuring.” Amber sighed and straightened up again. She could at least hold her head high for her walk of shame.

One of DANI’s little drones finally showed up, zipping down from rooftop level to buzz along beside her. It projected a holographic avatar for him, which strolled at her side with its hands behind its back.

DANI’s avatars interested Amber. He’d carefully chosen a slim and dapper appearance, with a thin chin and boyish face. Cute, rather than handsome. Maybe he wanted to seem harmless and meek, to try to offset some of the awesome power he held. Or maybe it was just one of those personal quirks he was so proud of. Either way, everybody knew what DANI “looked” like.

“I stand by it,” he repeated. “They are enduring a marriage they both hate out of love for you. That they misunderstand your feelings does not change their intent.”

“Idiots…” Amber muttered, though DANI’s opinion made her feel a little better.

He “walked” with her in comfortable silence, all the way down the straight length of Herschel Road and into Keplerton, where her parents lived on Aldrin Avenue. It was a wide road, cheerfully lit by fairy lights strung between the venerable beech trees that lined it on either side. Apparently somebody had hung them up there in the early days of Dandelion’s flight, and they’d become a local landmark.

DANI tutted as he noted that one of the strands was dark. Knowing him, it would be repaired within the hour.

She stopped in front of her home block and stared up at the lit windows on the top floors for a moment. “DANI?”

“Yes, Amber?”

“Could you stick around while I deal with this?”

He nodded solemnly and dissolved his avatar. The drone whined up into the darkness above and vanished among the fairy lights. “Of course.”

Amber took a deep breath to steel herself, let herself in through the front door, and finally put her pack down with a relieved sigh as she stepped into the lift. Home was the top two floors of the block, the fifth and sixth. It was a simple arrangement—the laundry and stuff were on the ground floor, then each pair of floors above that was a two-story apartment big enough for a family of four.

Fortunately for the neighbors, each apartment was soundproofed. Amber didn’t hear raised voices until she stepped off the lift and was confronted by their door.

“Have they been shouting at each other this whole time?”

“Yes, indeed.”

Amber sighed and took her earpiece out; the apartment was fully equipped to let him hear and help her. DANI unlocked the door for her, and the robust conversation within stopped instantly.

Jade and Alan Houston were standing in the middle of the kitchen, both wearing expressions that were either agitation with each other or embarrassment at being caught. Or both. Amber gave them both a carefully blank stare, then walked between them to put her pack away in the cupboard under the stairs.

“I’m home,” she said.

“Uh…welcome back,” Alan said after a second.

“You walked this whole way?” Jade asked.

Amber stowed her pack and returned to the front door to take her boots off. “Yup.”

“Why didn’t you call? We would have come and—”

“You knew exactly what time we were supposed to get back to the plaza,” Amber said. She wrenched her left boot off and put it away without looking at her. “And DANI tried to remind you.”

“We, uh…we got to talking about—” Alan began, but the moment Amber had the other boot off she brushed past him and headed toward the stairs.

“I’m tired. I’m going to take a hot bath.”

“Amber—” Jade began.

“You two have fun discussing whatever.”

She trotted up the stairs, counting under her breath. She was nearly at the top when she heard a muttered, quiet comment in a bitter tone of voice from her mum, a sharp retort from her dad—and just like that, the argument was back on. A little quieter now, maybe, but…

“Oh, for the Authors’ sakes…” she muttered, and tried to tune them out. “Hey, DANI, could you run a bath for me?”

DANI’s voice spoke from the wall console. “Certainly.”

“Thanks.”

“Are you quite sure you would not like me to talk with them on your behalf?”

Amber ducked into her bedroom to grab her pajamas and her favorite scented soap. Her mum had a bad habit of using it up if she left it in the bathroom. “No, thanks,” she repeated firmly.

“As you wish. Your bath is nearly ready.”

“Thanks.” Amber wasted no time getting out of her trail-stained and sweaty Ranger clothes, which went into the laundry hamper. She laid her pajamas out on the bed, grabbed her favorite fluffy towel from the top shelf of her wardrobe, and wrapped it around herself for the short trip to the bathroom.

She had to hand it to DANI; he knew exactly how to draw the perfect bath. It was covered in a pillowy cloud of bubbles, and hot enough to make her hold her breath as she lowered herself into it. Therapeutically hot, but just shy of hurting.

She sank until her ears were submerged and lay there for a while, listening to the muffled sound of water and her own breathing. It went some way toward relaxing her, at least. After a while she sat up, squeezed most of the water out of her hair, and scrubbed at her face as she listened carefully.

“I don’t hear an argument any longer. Have they stopped?”

“They have moved to separate rooms,” DANI explained.

Amber nodded and grabbed her hair care basket. She was never able to properly look after her dense curls in the field on Ranger weekends, and she wasn’t looking forward to the minor pain she was about to endure, but…well. Better that than the agony of having a giant dreadlock to deal with later.

“How’re the McKays?”

“They are enjoying dinner at Sorrentino’s. Roy has just spilled red wine on his last remaining white linen shirt. I shall need to remind him he’s due for a fitting.”

Dandelion didn’t technically have an age limit for drinking alcohol as was common on Earth, though under-eighteens needed a parent or guardian’s approval. That hardly stopped anyone, of course, but as long as people kept their cool, nobody made much of a fuss, and DANI didn’t grass to parents except in serious cases.

Amber hadn’t been impressed by alcohol herself when she’d tried it—beer was too bitter, wine added flavors to perfectly good grape juice that she didn’t enjoy, and she had no idea why anybody would torture themselves with spirits. Her one evening of sampling different drinks had quickly resulted in her getting giggly and falling asleep. It had been fun, but she hadn’t really seen the point.

“He never could handle alcohol,” she observed. “All that clean living I guess.”

DANI chuckled. “Now his mother has told him to ‘stop whining.’”

Amber smiled. Petra McKay had the best awful sense of humor.

“Would you like to send them a message?” DANI asked.

“No. I don’t want to bring them—nngh—down.” Amber grunted as she encountered a particularly difficult tangle, and realized she was going to need help. She gave up, set the basket aside, then lay back and shut her eyes to enjoy the warm water for a little while longer.

Sometime later—she wasn’t sure how long—DANI got her attention with a polite beeping sound, and she realized the water had become tepid without her noticing. A quick inspection of her hands found them to be pruned and wrinkly beyond belief.

“Did I fall asleep?”

“You dozed.”

With a sigh, Amber heaved herself out of the bath and was surprised to find she felt refreshed and awake. Feeling she ought to try to at least have some kind of a positive relationship with her parents, she rinsed quickly, dried herself off, changed into her pajamas, and took her hair basket downstairs toward the sound of movies.

Jade was curled up on the couch with a glass of wine in hand, watching something soppy and heart-warming. She gave a strained, sad smile and made room.

“How was the mountain?”

“It was fun, mostly,” Amber said, sitting next to her. “I fell and grazed my knee—”

“Again?”

“And my hair’s a mess,” Amber added, “but apart from that, it was great.” Her mum nodded, grabbed the brush, and set to work. “I told the twins about my apprenticeship.”

“You’re still going planetside?”

“Yeah.”

“How did they take it?”

Amber sighed. “I made Nikki cry…”

“Nikki? Crying?” Jade’s brush stopped for a second. “That must be a first.”

Amber nodded. “Roy’s eyes watered up, too. They’re…supportive. You know how they can be about these sort of things.”

Jade nodded. “You’re lucky. I wish I’d had friends like those two.”

“Mm.” Amber nodded. She shut her eyes and enjoyed the sensation of her mum’s fingers working their clever magic all over her scalp.

“I know they’re special to you,” Jade said after a few quiet minutes. “I don’t think you ever said why you’re willing to go down there and leave them behind.”

“It’s…complicated.”

“Amber, if it’s because of your father and me—”

“Mum…I really don’t want to talk about that right now,” Amber said, mentally adding an “or ever.” She’d already said everything she was going to say to them about their endless fighting. There was no point in saying it again.

“So it is because of—”

“I said I don’t want to talk about it!” Amber snapped. “Please.”

For a second she worried she’d gone too far and ruined the moment, but after pausing for a second, Jade heaved out a huge breath and kept brushing.

“Alright.”

They sat in slow and comfortable silence as Jade methodically brushed, combed, picked, and pinned all the tangles and knots out of the thick, curly hair they shared. Finally, she made a satisfied noise and put the tools back in the basket.

“There,” she announced. “Done.”

Amber nodded. Her head felt lighter somehow. And cleaner.

“Thanks, Mum. I’d better say good night to Dad. I have school in the morning.”

“Sure.”

They traded cheek-kisses, and Amber left her to her movie.

It was funny, in a way. She liked both her parents well enough on their own, but they brought out the worst in each other, and there were times when she found herself hating them collectively but loving them individually. Which made no sense, but…

Her dad worked from home, but his office was always open to Amber. She knocked anyway and slipped inside when he called back, “Come on in, Mon Bijou!”

It meant “my gem” in French. Every dad needed a nickname for his daughter, Amber had been named for a kind of gemstone, and Amber’s dad loved to play around with old languages, so…

He wasn’t working right now. He was playing a single-player videogame of some kind, which he paused before half-turning his chair as she entered.

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

“Look, Amber, I’m really sorry—”

“Dad…” Amber sighed and sat down in the comfy armchair. “Let’s not start.”

She really, really wanted to tell him she didn’t need an apology, she just needed a good reason to believe it would never happen again, but he couldn’t possibly give her one, so there was nothing to do except not have that conversation again.

“What’re you playing?” she asked instead.

“This? Oh, it’s a twenty-first century classic shoot-em-up.”

“That sounds…violent?”

“It is. Not for young eyes, sorry…How was rangering?”

“Good!” Amber said, pleased to get onto more pleasant subjects. “It made me feel a lot more confident about being a colonist.”

Alan nodded. Like the twins, he intended to stay on the ship when they arrived. He was an engineer, too, of a different stripe—an agricultural engineer. His job involved trotting all over the biodeck to maintain, certify, and repair the systems and machinery that kept their crops growing. Funny how a man so scatterbrained and irresponsible in his family life could be so successful at a job that carried such enormous responsibility. Maybe he expended it all at work and came home on an empty tank.

“I don’t suppose you had any luck talking the twins into joining you?” he asked.

Amber smiled, “They were tempted for a second, I think, but they’re right. They fit too well up here, doing what they do. I can’t take that from them…”

Alan rolled his chair back from his desk and turned to face her completely. “You never have been totally happy here on the ship, have you? Ever since we first told you that yours is the generation to settle Newhome, you’ve been…restless.”

Amber shrugged. She drew her feet up onto the chair beneath her and curled up comfortably. “Is that so weird?” she asked. “I mean, if you’re going to dangle something like that over me my whole life…”

“No, it’s not weird. I’m actually immensely proud of you,” Alan said, to Amber’s surprise. “There’s a lot of people out there doing everything they can to dodge what this mission is all about. And sure, the ship will be an important part of the colony for decades, but…”

“But there won’t be a colony if nobody goes down in the first wave.”

“Exactly.”

“You’re…really proud of me?” Amber asked. He’d never said that before.

“Absolutely.” He smiled, though there was a sad undertone to it, and slid forward off his chair to kneel next to hers and give her a hug. “You’d better go to bed. Don’t you have school in the morning?”

“Yeah…Bonne nuit, Papa.”

He smiled and waved her goodnight. “Toi aussi, Mon Bijou.”

With her duties thus tended to, Amber padded past the couch, traded good-nights with her mum, trotted up the stairs, and flung herself onto her bed to think.

She wasn’t tired, really. Her little nap in the bath had woken her up, and she lay back to stare up at the glow-in-the-dark star stickers on her ceiling. Her dad had put them up there for her nearly ten years ago, carefully matching them to the constellations of Earth’s northern hemisphere.

She’d once wondered which one was Newhome, only to learn that Newhome had been too faint to see with the naked eye from Earth.

“That wasn’t so bad in the end.”

DANI, as always, was happy to pick up a conversation from nowhere. “I confess, I was not listening. Privacy, you understand.”

“Thanks. Um…is dad okay?”

“As far as I know.” DANI sounded perplexed. “Why do you ask?”

“He said he’s proud of me. I just…that seemed…I don’t know.”

DANI simulated a “Hmm…” and a thoughtful pause for her benefit.

“You couldn’t tell me if there was something wrong, huh?” Amber hazarded.

“That’s correct. But no, I do not think there is any cause for alarm. If I had to guess, I believe your father is becoming acutely aware that his little girl is growing up and plans to leave home soon. That is a traumatic time for a father.”

“I’ll be here for at least a year…” Amber pointed out. She rolled aside so she could pull the blankets out from under herself and wriggle under them.

“The future is intimidating,” DANI said. Amber thought about that as she stared at her stars some more.

“I guess…” she said slowly. “But isn’t that the point of an adventure?”

“You long for adventure?”

“I don’t know. I guess so?” Amber said, stifling a yawn. Her bed was far too comfortable. “I mean, what is an adventure?”

“Classically, the hero leaves home and is thrust into the unknown, where they face and are transformed by a series of trials and temptations.”

“The ‘leaves home’ part sounds nice…” Amber admitted with a sleepy mumble.

“I’ve always felt it was a metaphor for life. Leaving home and being transformed by the world is normal, for humans. At the end of the cycle, the hero often returns home only to find that it is no longer the same to them. Sometimes they no longer fit comfortably there; sometimes they find they finally understand and are at peace.”

“Hmm.”

That was about all the reply Amber could muster. She thought she said something more, maybe. Or maybe it was a dream that crept up on her as she fell asleep.

She did hear DANI wish her good night. Her dreams were filled with heroes.

They were back at school the next day. She genuinely enjoyed it. She’d read once about how school had once been structured back on Earth, and it sounded awful as far as she was concerned. School on Dandelion wasn’t about sitting down in ranks and memorizing stuff, nor were there standardized tests or grades. The educators who’d first designed the shipboard curriculum a hundred years ago knew that people weren’t all identical robots—everybody learned differently, had their own interests and talents, and looked at the world their own way, so the system was designed to reflect that.

It was structured like a game. There were missions, and trials, and challenges to face, and a sophisticated points system that let students and teachers alike track how they were progressing. Nobody could progress without covering certain essential basics, but the real fun was in confronting the higher-tier challenges and earning the rare achievements.

In Amber’s case, it fed her passion for mathematics, history, languages…and people. As she’d gone through life and shown more interest in some subjects over others, DANI had taken note and helped her teachers supply her with an education that suited her individual tastes. Mostly that involved giving her books to read and then write a short report on. Other kids learned working skills in the workshop, or practiced their cooking, or played around with chemicals and lasers in the labs…Amber read. A lot. She guessed she was about halfway through the school library.

After a weekend of hiking and doing ranger-y things in the woods, followed by the depressing reality of her home life, about the only thing she felt up to at school today was curling up in a corner and reading.

She’d picked a book about The War.

From what she’d read, Amber got the impression that pretty much every era in human history had a “the war,” a defining event in people’s lives, the big conflict that completely tore up the status quo and echoed through the generations to come…until the next “the war” arrived. Until then, every other conflict demanded a qualification. Some nickname like “the Vietnam war” or “the war on terror” or “the Martian-Belter war” to distinguish it from the current the war.

But this “The War” had capital letters. And in the nearly four hundred years since its armistice, nothing had seized its crown. Its terminology remained fixed in modern language: The Great Madness, OGRE teams, the Long Exodus…the Bullet From the Black, the Nighttime of Reason, and the Seven Minute Slaughter.

Then there were the Alt-Human colonists of the Jovian moons, divided into their specialist gene-strains: Apostles, their Shepherds and Knights, the Brutes, Adepts, and Nomads. They’d come in-system at the very height of the war, bearing the New Book, which in turn had kindled the Dawn of Humanity…

And ultimately, barely, with the human species teetering on the very edge of self-inflicted extinction, they’d brought peace.

Dandelion was their doing, too. They’d seen the solar system for what it was, a single tiny basket in a much bigger sky. They’d built the ship from the wreckage of the old order and sent her off with their fond hope that she would never return.

Amber had to admit, it was enthralling. She felt kind of guilty about that, considering The War had been two decades of abject misery that had claimed billions of lives and left the human race a splintered fraction of its former glory…but it really made for a gripping read.

At least, it did until she was interrupted by a huge, looming shadow.

“Hey, Amber.”

Amber lowered her U-tool and looked up. “Why is your shirt ruined?”

Roy chuckled at her and thumped down into his favorite extra-big beanbag. His shirt at least wasn’t completely torn apart, but it had picked up a couple of rips and a burn mark. He looked pleased about it rather than irate, so it must have been something fun or worthwhile. “You hafta ask?”

“Well, I figure you might learn some restraint eventually…”

“What?” Roy laughed. “I like to play hard! What’s wrong with that?”

“Ignore her, she’s being a troll again.” They looked up as Nikki joined them. She was almost looking better groomed than her brother for a change.

“You have a mountain of sawdust in your hair,” Amber told her. Nikki grinned and flomped down next to her.

“That’s what little friends with clever fingers are for,” she said.

Amber rolled her eyes but obediently dug in her bag for a comb and began the process of getting little flecks of wood out of Nikki’s hair, which was fortunately a lot more manageable than Amber’s own mass of curls. Nikki’s was straight, and she wore it in a short and easily cleaned pixie cut. That was kind of the point; it would constantly get scorched, matted, caught on stuff, or covered in paint otherwise.

“What were you making?” Amber asked as a shower of woody particles fell on her knees from the first pass of the comb. “Did you just chip up a whole log for fun?”

“I made a rolling pin on the lathe!”

Baking was one of Nikki’s few classically “girly” hobbies. Then again, all her hobbies involved making a mess. It didn’t seem to matter to her whether she wound up covered in flour, eggs, and chocolate; in sawdust, solvent, and glue; or in mud, sweat, and blood. She didn’t view it as a successful day unless she went home with something staining her clothes.

Roy immediately looked hungry. “Ooh! What’re you gonna bake?”

Nikki shrugged. “I don’t know yet. Sweet potato pie, maybe? Oh! Or maybe that recipe of gran’ma’s, the peach and goat’s cheese puff pastry with honey.”

“Wouldn’t that be expensive? The goat cheese in particular…” Amber asked.

“Throw off my macros, too…” Roy pointed out, though it looked like it caused him physical pain to admit it. He knew a lot about food—in fact, about the only time Amber ever saw him open a book was to delve into the arcane worlds of nutrition and anatomy. On Walker’s insistence, and a few hints from DANI, he’d also branched out to studying bush tucker and how to preserve food, because everybody was supposed to have a “colony skill” at Newhome, even the spacers.

He’d also taken to raising chickens in their community green plot, “for the eggs.” But mostly he studied exercise, nutrition, and the role it played in keeping his body in top condition. It was amazing how much he ate, actually. He’d even talked DANI into giving him an increased allowance of natural beef credits, one of the few commodities onboard that was tightly rationed rather than being left to market forces.

As long as he remained diligent with his studies, work, and training, Roy was allowed an extra three hundred grams of prime-grade hamburger every other day, and a large steak every week. That part especially made Amber super envious.

“Ugh, you and your macronutrients again!” Nikki complained.

“What? I’ve got the Olympic qualifiers comin’ up in like six months, and the regional meet in a few weeks. I gotta make weight!”

“Don’t give me that line, lil’ bro.” Nikki rolled her eyes. She was the older by about twenty minutes, and calling him her “little brother” was a long-standing joke between them. “You’re already as big and dumb as a bus, and you’re so fat you’re in the adult super-heavyweight bracket!”

“Naw, muscle’s way heavier than fat! I’m too ripped!” Roy lifted his shirt and pinched up the thin skin clinging tight to his powerfully corrugated midriff. “See? Ain’t any on me!” He blew out his breath and rippled his eight-pack abs, just for fun.

Amber giggled internally. There was almost nothing Roy enjoyed more than harmlessly showing off. Outwardly, of course, she always pretended to be tired of it, but secretly…Well, he wouldn’t have been himself without that particular quirk.

“Fine, but there’s no way you’re gonna blow weight. You won’t even need to cut!”

“Naw, I’m already twelve kilos over!” Roy boomed. He raised his arms and flexed his huge biceps until the seams of his ragged shirt tore. “See? Biggest on the ship I bet!”

Okay, maybe it did get a little tiresome…

Both Amber and Nikki rolled their eyes. “What-ever!” Nikki snorted. “You’re not gonna miss and you know it. You can afford some of my pie, you big meathead!”

“Nuh-uh, because I don’t wanna worry about cutting too much weight, gotta keep super lean! Plus I want to fight Kyle ‘fer the gold; he’s almost as good as me!”

Kyle Findale lived out in one of the farming towns clear on the other end of the biodeck, and in many ways he was Roy’s doppelgänger, the yin to his yang. Amber would have guessed that would make them bitter rivals, but they got along like a house on fire. Heaven help the McKays’ home when Kyle eventually paid a visit.

“Whatever. You’ll still eat my pie,” Nikki predicted.

Roy’s stomach growled, and he looked down at it with a scowl. “Traitor,” he muttered, and gave his belly an accusatory poke.

“So…you’re going to blow all that money on one pie?” Amber asked. “Are you sure you want to do that?”

“Oh come on, live a little! I haven’t had that peach pie in years.” Nikki sighed fondly. “I really miss—”

Whatever she was about to say next was drowned out by an alarm.

The school building had a few alarms. There was the one to mark session ends, the fire alarm—they’d all heard that one a few times, in fire drills—but it was also tapped into the ship-wide alarms. It wasn’t the hull-breach. If that alarm ever went off, it would basically mean everybody was already dead, or doomed.

This one, though…this one held the silver medal for dreaded sounds.

It was a mournful, all-encompassing whoop that bounced and echoed strangely around Dandelion’s cylindrical interior, and above it was DANI’s voice, ear-punchingly loud, with a resonant kick of bass to really sell the urgency of the situation.

Amber noticed almost unconsciously how the twins had surged to their feet the instant the alarm sounded. She was still sitting listening to the announcement when Nikki grabbed her arm, hauled her up, and hustled her toward the emergency exit. It took her a few seconds before DANI’s words sunk in and made sense…

But when they did, something cold dropped right down her spine.

“ALL HANDS REPORT TO YOUR EMERGENCY STATIONS. THIS IS NOT A DRILL. REPEAT: ALL HANDS TO EMERGENCY STATIONS. THIS IS NOT A DRILL…”