D.A.N.I.

DANI might have been entrusted to make important decisions in life-or-death emergencies, but ultimately he answered to the crew via the Crew Council…and naturally the Council wanted to know exactly what had happened. One of the captain’s many duties was to be the chair and Speaker of the council chambers. She even had the executive authority to veto motions if she deemed it in the best interests of the ship’s mission.

Ultimately, however, it was still a democratic system, and that meant it was full of…interesting personalities who collectively had their hand on the very literal switch that could sever DANI from Dandelion’s systems at any time if they deemed it necessary. When people like that demanded to be brought up to speed on recent events, DANI did not argue. His report had begun with a brief summary of the type of object they’d so narrowly dodged, and the measures he’d taken to avoid it. Now he was recounting the total resource expenditure.

“Three-point-four-one million kilograms of water, one-point-two million kilograms of air, twenty thousand kilograms of cold propulsion gas, six hundred grams of fissile material, and two thousand launches carrying the entirety of the Ranger Corps, all Rangermasters, and their emergency colonization payloads,” he finished. “I have exhaustively scanned along the object’s approach trajectory and found no other hazards.”

Councilor Jackson was the first to speak. “And the good news?” she prompted.

DANI simulated the sound of awkwardly clearing his throat. “I apologize, Councilor. That was the good news.”

He let a moment of silence hang in the air before elaborating. “The bad news is, our approach to Newhome is ruined. We are now in an entirely wrong orbit and at this point it won’t matter how long we burn the engines; they just don’t have enough thrust to restore our trajectory. I have been forced to calculate alternatives.”

He simulated clearing his throat again and plowed forward. “I have come up with three possible plans,” he said, and brought up a whirling simulation of the Newhome system. The bright blue dot in the middle represented Dandelion, and he sent three bright lines racing ahead of it to curve around the outer planets. “Course Alpha, the fastest and most aggressive plan, will return us to Newhome orbit in six years.”

Dismayed gasps filled the air. He let the shock settle in, then continued.

“Unfortunately, this approach leaves no margin for error. If anything at all goes wrong and we are forced to take evasive action again, or if we miss a scheduled burn, Dandelion will either be drawn into this gas giant here”—he indicated it with a red pulse and split the projected path to show various calamities—“with obviously disastrous consequences, or else drift off into interstellar space, having completely exhausted our water fuel reserves, and therefore with no hope of ever returning.”

For the second line, the view pulled far out until the orbiting worlds filled only a comparatively small part of the simulation. “At the other end of the spectrum is Course Bravo, the most conservative and efficient approach, which involves rendezvousing with and mining an icy body in the outer system, completely replenishing our water reserves for the trip back in. This leaves us with a maximum margin for error in the event of future emergencies…but it will take us fifty-four years to make Newhome orbit.”

More muttering, and plenty of shaking heads. “I think you will agree this is not an ideal solution,” he said drily, and was relieved when a few small chuckles and laughs cut through the tension. “Fortunately there is a third option, which I think may be the best balance between caution and alacrity.”

He highlighted it in bright green. “Course Charlie involves a prolonged burn here.” He pulsed on the map. “We will expend a considerable amount of our water fuel, but that will allow us to slingshot around this other gas planet, and specifically around its third moon, a water ice body similar to Europa back in Sol. A quick fly-by water mining operation should allow us to return to Newhome in eight years, while replenishing much of our expended fuel in case we’re fired upon again.”

He waited anxiously as silence swept the hall and lingered for long seconds before Councilor Hayes finally broke it.

“Fired upon? You…think we were attacked?”

DANI sighed. This was the moment of truth.

“Yes, Councilor,” he said. “I do.”

“Your proof?” Hayes asked.

DANI pantomimed a few seconds of solemn contemplation before he spoke, as though gathering his words carefully. “To be completely truthful, Councilor, any near-miss event like this will always be more likely to be an attack than not.”

A few of the councilors nodded, the ones who had a better grasp of the scale involved. Most of the others frowned at him or whispered among themselves. Hayes simply inclined his head.

“Explain,” he said.

Although DANI could, when pressed, think far faster and more rationally than any human, he usually didn’t. Most of the time he simulated being an otherwise ordinary person and processed his thoughts in much the same way as any human. First came his intuition, a gut reaction, a feeling about what he wanted to say. Then came judgment based on his feelings and intuitions, and finally he came up with a reasoning which explained his feelings.

At this moment, however, he swung into overdrive and calculated how the conversation might play out down to every foreseeable detail, created an itemized list, and picked the optimal path from among the options in the time it took Hayes to blink. He hated doing that—it felt like cheating—but some occasions were just too important.

“Compared to a human, Dandelion is enormous,” he said carefully. “Compared to all that space out there, however”—his avatar waved a hand to indicate the empty black infinity that was the whole rest of the universe—“we are very small indeed. So small that for us to be in the same place as anything else at any given time takes serious, deliberate effort. If I had not performed minor course-corrections with every day’s thrust phase throughout the voyage, we would have missed the Newhome system entirely, never mind the planet itself. You all know this, of course.”

There were nods all around the room. Everybody on Dandelion had learned the basics of their ship’s interstellar journey early in their life.

“So. Something very small—us—left one solar system, and two hundred and eighty-four years later we happened to find ourselves on a collision course with something even smaller at just the moment we entered arrived and began final approach,” DANI summarized. “Coincidences do not get much larger.”

“But if you didn’t know—” Councilor Mayweather began.

DANI interrupted him, “Forgive me, Councilor, but there is more. I back-tracked the object’s trajectory.”

He spun up the system simulation and tracked the object’s course right back to the surface of the system’s second planet.

“The angle and velocity at which it left the planet’s surface is consistent with a short-rail magnetic catapult. Admittedly it is also consistent with volcanic activity or an asteroid strike, but that would just layer more and more coincidences on top of an already highly improbable event.”

“Wouldn’t your telescopes detect an impact or volcano anyway?” Torres asked. DANI acknowledged her with a nod.

“Probably,” he agreed. “But in any event, I must always assume the worst. The mere fact that I suspected the object could have been a weapon compelled me to treat it as though it was a weapon.”

“Why?” Hayes inquired.

“Because if it was a weapon, but I treated it like it was just a dumb rock…who knows. Maybe it could have course corrected. Maybe it could have exploded. It did not do either of those things, but I had no way of knowing it would not, and reasonable grounds to believe it might.” DANI paused and animated a deep breath for effect. “And you can rest absolutely assured, Councilors, that humanity has developed many different weapons which could have effortlessly destroyed Dandelion, no matter how aggressively I took evasive action, or how much reaction mass I added to the equation in the form of the launches.”

That last sentence turned out to be a misstep. Humans, alas, were never quite as predictable as DANI thought.

“Reaction mass?” Councilor Mayweather looked absolutely livid and stood up, trembling with rage. “You jettisoned our children as reaction mass?”

“Evacuated,” DANI corrected him. “Happily, the lifeboat launches also gave us some extra thrust to evade the hazard—”

Mayweather interrupted him, looking thoroughly appalled. “You used our children as propellant?” he choked on the last word. “You threw our kids overboard onto an alien planet when you thought something might be shooting at us?”

He turned to Torres, looking utterly furious. “Captain, I move we take a vote of no confidence in DANI and curtail his executive functions.”

Several of the other councilors stood up and started shouting as well. Most leapt to DANI’s defense, but at least half a dozen were on Mayweather’s side. DANI calmed himself by calculating Pi to several million digits—a human would have taken a deep and cleansing breath—and waited. He’d anticipated something like this, but it still hurt.

Captain Torres finally managed to calm everybody down by beating her gavel so hard on her desk that the old oak surface took a few dents. The rabble subsided, until only Mayweather and a few of his loudest supporters were still on their feet.

“DANI,” Torres said once order had been restored, “do you have anything to say in your defense?”

DANI gave her a grateful look and summoned the words he had carefully assembled during the hubbub.

“Option one,” he said, “was not to launch the lifeboats at all. In which case, if the ship had been destroyed, your children would have died with the rest of us.

“Option two,” he continued over the objections of Councilor Mayweather and his supporters, “was to launch the lifeboats empty and recall them once the danger was past. This suffers from the same problem as option one—it might not have been enough, and your children would have died onboard along with everybody else.

“Option three: I could have launched the lifeboats with your children on board, then recalled them. But if we are shot at again, Councilors, we will be right back to square one, and we will not be within evacuation range of Newhome next time.”

He let them digest those options for just a heartbeat.

“I chose,” he finished, “option four. I saved your children’s lives and completed Dandelion’s primary mission by delivering a viable population of colonists to the target planet. By a happy coincidence, this course of action also maximized your own odds of survival, so I beg your pardon, Councilor, but no, I did not ‘use your children as propellant’—I made use of the opportunity this presented to ensure that you will, hopefully, live to see them again…or if you don’t, to ensure they will live.”

There was a clanging silence. Councilor Mayweather gave DANI’s avatar a long, shaky look, then sat down quite abruptly without another word.

Captain Torres stood up to replace him. She looked around at the councilors, then directed a fearsome, level stare at the camera drones and the hundreds of thousands of Dandelion crewpersons watching from all over the ship.

“DANI’s first responsibility is to the mission,” she reminded them all. “His duty is to maximize the chance of mission success and minimize the risk of mission failure. He’s quite right—thanks to his actions, Dandelion’s mission is already a success; we are alive, and most importantly our children are alive. Councilor Mayweather, with respect to your feelings, I exercise my authority to veto your motion.”

“Understood, Captain.” Mayweather sighed. Torres softened slightly.

“Antony, I won’t see my husband for at least eight years,” she reminded him. “Walker went with the kids. We’ll be getting downright old by the time we see each other again; do you really think I like this, either? But DANI still has my full confidence, and he should still have yours.”

“Thank you, Captain,” DANI said softly. “I will do my best to be worthy of it.”

The chamber was silent for a few long seconds before Torres cleared her throat and straightened her back.

“Is eight years really the best we can do?” she asked.

“It’s the best balance between speed and caution,” DANI repeated. “I appreciate that separating parents from their children for so long is a lot to ask, but if somebody shoots at us again, I want to be able to dodge again.”

“You’re entirely convinced it was an attack?” Councilor Hayes asked. “I know you’ve made the case for probability, but…for something to be waiting here ready and willing to shoot at us as we arrive seems just as unlikely.”

Councilor Jackson nodded emphatically. “Anything with the technology to shoot at us would want to take a good look at us first, wouldn’t it?” she asked.

Hayes shook his head. “That’s a big assumption, Kayla. It’d have to be an alien of some kind, so who knows how it thinks?”

“And who says it didn’t get a good look at us first?” Torres asked.

DANI cleared his throat and answered Hayes’ question. “It might be going too far to say that I’m convinced, Councilor…I mean, ‘convinced’ is such a strong word.” A scattering of dry though slightly nervous chuckles swept the chamber. “But we should assume the worst and hope for the best. If another hazard comes our way, we’ll know we’re being shot at.”

“And…if we are?” Jackson asked.

Torres answered her while DANI was still calculating his reply. “Then I for one am very glad the children are no longer aboard,” she said firmly. Nods bobbed around the room. She stood from her desk and strode to the middle of the chamber.

“Thank you, DANI. Councilors, there will be many difficult decisions to make over the coming days and weeks,” she said. “The Department of Population Control must weigh the possibility that we really were attacked and whether we can justify continuing to have new babies as we conclude our voyage. The Department of Resource Management needs to prepare for the next eight years. Counseling must be made available to parents who couldn’t go with their children…For now, however, if somebody would please move that we commit to following DANI’s Course Charlie and begin to plan accordingly?”

Jackson stood up. “I so move,” she declared.

Hayes took to his feet as well. “Seconded.”

Torres thanked them both with a nod, then addressed the rest of the councilors, “As many of that opinion, say aye?”

A sullen, but unanimous cry of “aye” went quietly around the chamber.

“And against?”

Silence.

“The ayes have it. DANI, make it so.”

Relief flooded DANI’s system for a microsecond. “Aye, aye, Captain.”

He turned his attention away from proceedings to make his course corrections.

The biggest concern was water. Quite aside from being there for the crew to drink and clean with, it was both their fuel and their shield against the harmful radiation forever slicing through the cosmos. Dandelion fused ordinary distilled water, extract energy very efficiently from it, and use that energy to power the engines.

In the emergency, he’d also flash-boiled enormous volumes and vented the steam. Doing so had produced far more thrust than the main engines did all by themselves, but it had decimated their reserve. He was going to need to replenish, and do so cautiously. If they were under fire, he needed every liter of reserve water in case a second shot came their way.

Gently, slowly, he started bringing the nose around to align Dandelion along its new thrust axis. Completing that rotation would take nearly two days, but that was probably for the best. People were going to need time to adjust.

He was distracted from his thoughts by a voice from the council chamber.

“DANI.”

Councilor Mayweather had slipped away to one of the ship terminals at the edge of the chamber to speak privately. DANI really wasn’t in the mood to speak with him, but the look on Mayweather’s face convinced him to at least give the man a chance. There was a healthy degree of shame there.

“Yes, Councilor?”

“I’m sorry.”

DANI blanked on how to reply. He simply hadn’t foreseen a straightforward apology, or at least, not so soon.

Mayweather filled the silence. “I crossed the line just then. I let my feelings get the better of my judgment, and…I’m sorry,” he repeated lamely. “I feel like a heel.”

“I confess, your call for a vote of no confidence was hurtful,” DANI confided. “I appreciate your apology, but…” Frankly he was still much too sore to give Mayweather his forgiveness just yet.

“I know. And…I understand if you don’t roll over and forgive me just because I said sorry.” Mayweather sighed. “But I still am.”

“What brought it on, then, may I ask?” DANI inquired.

“I…I didn’t get to say goodbye to Arianna. She’ll be an adult by the time I see her again, and…” Mayweather went very quiet. In that moment, DANI felt, he looked even older than he was.

If DANI had still been projecting an avatar, it would have hung its head at that point. Instead he poured sympathy into his tone of voice.

“I will try to accept your apology in due time, Councilor,” he promised. “And I would like to rebuild our positive relationship.”

“I’d like that too.” Mayweather cleared his throat miserably, then seemed to think of something. “A-are they…okay?”

DANI focused. In the hours since their departure, the lifeboats had accelerated at an incredible rate and were now flashing across the Newhome system, bent on delivering their precious cargo as quickly as possible. They’d decelerate just as fiercely as they fell in toward humanity’s new world, and the children on board were probably having an utterly miserable time of it, but nothing was outside of what it should be.

“All of the lifeboats are functioning perfectly,” he assured Mayweather. “The first one should make landfall in about five days.”

“And…what happens then?”

“Then, Councilor,” DANI said, “human civilization on Newhome will begin.”

Amber Houston

“C’mon sleepy head, wake up!” Amber woke to Roy pawing at her shoulder and bouncing heavily to his feet. “Gotta do jumping jacks!”

Out of habit, Amber let out a reluctant groan as she sat up, but the truth was she felt well-rested and energized. Her body was still a little sore from the high-G pounding it had endured for several hours yesterday, but she’d slept incredibly well, considering her bed was a thin roll on a metal deck. She stretched out and clambered to her feet.

She glanced at the countdown: ninety minutes. She’d been asleep for six hours.

“Jumping jacks?”

“Yup! We’re gonna spend eight hours in the couches, so we need exercise!”

“Don’t we need breakfast?”

“That comes after. Come on!”

To be fair, between them, Walker and the twins managed to get everyone thoroughly exercised and eager to sit down just in fifteen minutes. Amber could see the logic. The next few hours were going to be punishing, and the routine was going to last for probably days. They needed to move, or else it would be ten times worse.

But she was beyond glad when they finally finished.

Her breakfast pack turned out to be scrambled eggs with bacon and an English muffin. The “eggs” were kind of a chewy yellow log, but at least the packed-in blueberry granola bar and cinnamon toaster pastry were nice.

She was cleaning her fingers with a wet wipe when Walker did the rounds to check that everybody had eaten everything, including the hated “eggs.”

“Everyone, wipe down as best you can, we need to keep hygienic,” he ordered. “That goes double for you two, McKays.”

Roy objected straight away, “I always keep clean!”

“Good! Keep it that way.” Walker grinned, “We’re all going to be rank enough by the time we get there anyway.”

Nikki grumbled to herself quietly, but did as she was told.

Fifteen minutes of exercise and half an hour for breakfast left forty-five minutes before they had to be back in their couches. That was deliberate; with a whole troop on board, they needed that time to make sure everybody used the only toilet, a cramped little stall at the back of the launch that even Amber found claustrophobic. She had no idea how Roy or Walker squeezed themselves inside.

She spent the rest of her time wandering around the deck to keep her legs stretched and thinking, up until the moment she spotted the cluster of kids gathered around the command couch at the front, gazing out the forward canopy.

She joined them and lost herself for a little while in staring at the stars.

They were so different from city lights, or the little glowing stickers on her bedroom ceiling. They were…hard to describe to herself, actually. Each one was so tiny that she couldn’t really grasp it, like her eye knew something was there, but she couldn’t put a width to what she was seeing.

There were patterns, too. In front of the light dusty trail of the galaxy, a few of those stars burned prouder and brighter, and she spent a while tracing imaginary lines between them, trying to spot the images they made.

Floyd Harris seemed to have the best knack for it. He’d point and sketch lines with his finger and name a constellation like it was effortless. There was Rover the Dog, Bruce the Bat, the Bottle…he picked out one that looked remarkably humanoid and proudly declared that he was naming it after DANI.

“I kinda doubt DANI will want a constellation named after him,” Walker commented at that one, and made them all jump. For such a solid man, he could be incredibly quiet at times.

“Can I call it Walker, then?” Floyd asked.

Walker was clearly touched, but he shook his head. “Better not. Let’s wait and see before we name things after people, okay? Is everyone clean? All used the toilet?”

The kids all gave honest replies along the lines of “Yes, sir,” and Amber nodded.

“Good. We sit down in ten minutes. If there’s anything you need to sort out before then, go do it. Okay?” He gave Amber a nod that clearly communicated she was in charge of the young ones and continued on his rounds.

“Anybody?” Amber asked.

“When are we going back to the ship, Amber?” Rose asked.

Remembering her promise to Walker, Amber decided against telling them the whole truth…but she didn’t bluff or lie, either. “I talked with Walker about that. He’s waiting to hear more from DANI. In the meantime, let’s get strapped in,” she said, which seemed to be enough for now.

Getting them all settled and ready, making sure their clothes were smoothed out under them so no wrinkles or seams would press into them, and doing the same for herself was good, honest work, but it didn’t distract her from her thoughts. She traded hugs with the twins as they sat down, and Walker returned to the front, but again didn’t comment when she heard Danish musing on when they were going to turn around.

In fact, she realized as the higher-gravity acceleration resumed and an elephant settled on her chest, she was beginning to be glad they wouldn’t.

A few hours later, mostly she was just hoping for a distraction.

Being able to see the countdown that told her when their three-G torture would end and she’d have another spell of normal gravity to enjoy was a torment all its own. It seemed to be counting down with a kind of malice, being far too slow while she watched it, and barely moving at all when she didn’t.

About four hours in, Roy finally provided the longed-for distraction.

“Hey, Amber?”

Amber tore her eyes away from the glacial clock. “Hmm?”

“I’ve been thinking.”

Despite the grinding discomfort, Amber still found it in her to tease him a bit. “A dangerous pastime.”

He shook his head gently, though a smile touched his face. “You studied orbital mechanics a bit, right?”

“Yeah?”

“I’ve been thinking ahead to when we land. How long we’re gonna be down there. You know? Before the ship catches up with us.”

Amber shrugged as well as she could manage in her restraints and the gravity load. “That depends on what happened, how hard DANI maneuvered, in what direction…If he completely spoiled the approach, it could be…I don’t know.”

“Years,” Nikki interjected in a dull voice.

Amber gave a shallow nod again. “Yeah. Could be.”

The twins were silent for a few seconds before Nikki finally gave voice to what they were probably both feeling.

“Well…crap.”

“Yeah,” Roy agreed fervently.

Amber shrugged again. “No sense worrying about it. Que sera, sera.”

“Kay what-now?”

“It means, ‘whatever will happen, will happen,’” Amber explained, and shut her eyes. Maybe she could sleep away the hours instead of clock-watching. She was beginning to get a serious headache, and her limbs were being slowly but relentlessly pummeled by their own exaggerated weight. There was nothing to do except lie back and try to endure it.

Maybe she succeeded a little bit, too, because she lost track of the conversation as the twins mulled over the ramifications of maybe making groundfall rather than their original life plans. Nikki showed some of her nervous habits; she drummed her fingers and asked all sorts of rhetorical questions, mostly in hushed tones so as not to annoy the other Rangers nearby. She fretted about their parents a lot.

Roy settled into something…stoic. He mostly nodded along and kept his own counsel. His usual exuberance around friends was thoroughly absent, for now.

Although the details got hazy and blurry and Amber couldn’t recall them afterwards, she was jolted back out of her half-doze and into the present by a sudden burst of characteristic Roy optimism, though it sounded a bit forced.

“Well, it’s not all bad. I bet we get to eat steak every day after this!”

Nikki snorted. “Yeah, good luck getting any when we land.”

“Hush, you. There’s gonna be something we can eat. Fish maybe!”

“Guys,” Amber groaned. Everything ached. “Please don’t start a tussle now…”

Roy looked a little hurt by that. “Amber, you know me better than that. Tussles are for play. This ain’t playtime.”

Amber opened her eyes and gave him a suffering look. “No. Sorry. I just…”

“You’ve got a splitting headache, and you can’t breathe properly,” Nikki finished for her. She leaned over as far as her restraints would allow and laid a hand that felt as heavy as an iron bar on Amber’s shoulder in the closest thing she could manage to a hug. “We know.”

“Here.” Roy looked at the mission clock, then Walker. “Permission to stand up?”

“What for?” Walker asked.

Roy gestured toward the medicine cabinet. “Amber’s got a headache, an’ there’s low-dose aspirin in there for exactly this.”

Walker nodded. “Granted. Give some to everyone over twelve,” he ordered.

“Blood thinner?” Roy asked. Amber nodded shallowly to herself, as much as her neck support would permit. The lifeboat’s seats had massagers built in, and the one-G rest breaks were there so they could stand up and avoid nasty things like bed sores and blood clots…but one of aspirin’s useful side-effects was to thin the blood, which would help with those problems and their headaches.

Walker nodded again “Yup.”

“Will do, boss.” Roy reached above his head, pulled down his pack without much effort, and pulled out one of his special bars. He looked at it, wrinkled his nose, ripped open the package, and demolished the whole thing in a few efficient bites, chasing it down with his whole water canteen.

The bars were a little something DANI handed out to all the outerdeck engineers. Amber had no idea why anyone would ever want to eat them. They tasted unpleasantly like nothing but pure whey protein, and the texture was just…gummy and chewy, in the least appetizing way. Sure, they were full of energy and such, but they really weren’t fun to eat.

Roy clearly didn’t enjoy it much, either. But it seemed to do something important for him, perhaps helped psych him up for the work ahead. He sat still for a minute, maybe waiting for the bar to do…whatever it was it did. In any case, when he was ready, he nodded over at Walker, who nodded back. With care, Roy unhooked his restraints and scooted forward in his couch until he was perched on the edge.

Once his feet were firmly underneath him, he planted his hands on either side of his hips and heaved himself upright with a satisfied grunt. He bounced heavily in place to stretch for a moment, then picked his way over to the medicine cabinet with a cautious, practiced gait. If it was a strain, he did a good job of hiding it as he shuffled across the deck like he’d done this a hundred times before, and regained confidence with every step.

By the time he thumped back to Amber, Roy’s goofy grin and intrinsically bouncy nature had firmly reasserted itself. He held out a couple of small pills and a water pouch. “Drink it all, okay?”

Amber nodded, and Roy went about his work. It was…impressive to watch. His usual goofiness was there, but this time it was a mask to disguise his concentration on the task at hand. What he was doing was dangerous, after all; a fall in three G meant nobody would be able to help him, not even Walker. He had once tried to shuttle Roy in a fireman’s carry, and only barely managed to make it twenty-five meters…and that was on the biodeck in one G. Roy had grown considerably since then, too. All that was clearly on his mind because he was careful, confident, focused on the risks and the task at hand…and managed it handily.

Amber realized just how lucky they were. Right now, in this situation, Roy was the only one who could deal with the crushing gravity they were under and fix any problems that came up. Walker could probably stand up in short doses, and Nikki probably would have been just as mobile in slightly lower gravity, though she looked like she was kicking herself for not being able to help more…

But Amber felt a stab of sympathy for all the lifeboats who didn’t have a Roy on board. As awful as this ride was, it would have been far worse without him cheerfully making the floor creak under his big bare feet as he passed out the painkillers.

He also re-checked everyone’s harnesses individually and re-cinched their packs down—he was almost too short and had to stand on his toes at each couch. He even climbed up and across the maintenance ladder to the top of the Launch without obvious effort, all so he could lock down a window shade that had vibrated loose. The sun was blazing through and dazzling Kelly, for whom Roy had always had a soft spot.

That done, he looked around idly, giving Amber the impression he didn’t really want to return to his seat just yet and was looking for anything else to do.

Her suspicion turned out to be on the money when he grinned happily down at Walker. “Anything else?” Roy was clearly enjoying his respite from the crash couch.

“Not that I can see,” Walker replied. “Get yourself seated again, please.”

“Okay!”

He climbed back across the ceiling and down the wall, confident and strong as always. Once down, he sauntered back over to his crash couch with a huge grin, a bit of showmanship, and plenty of his playfully macho swagger on display. The kids ate it up and the mood lifted considerably. Roy was like a protective big brother to everyone on the team, and couldn’t stand seeing anyone feeling down.

He looked like he wanted to show off a little more, too, but a raised eyebrow from Walker said all that needed to be said—not the time for play. Chuckling ruefully, Roy lowered himself back into his crash couch with a quiet, satisfied sigh that was barely loud enough for Amber to hear, and swore under his breath.

“Are you okay?” Nikki whispered.

“Yeah! Good exercise!” Roy panted and mopped the sweat from his face but grinned back at her reassuringly. “Don’t worry ‘bout me. Felt good to help!”

Amber smiled at him, then checked the mission clock. To her quiet delight, it had ticked down much more than she’d thought.

With nothing better to do, she closed her eyes again and tried to sleep some more. There were four more days of this ahead of her. She had no choice but to endure it and save her energy.

She was going to need it.