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around me, and I feel safe for the first time in more than three centuries.
    â€œI want to know more,” he tells me in a low voice. “We’ll talk later.” Over the top of my head, he barks, “Bledsoe!”
    A woman a few rows away stands at attention. I gasp—I know her. She’s the woman Orion nearly killed, the one Elder and I saved while Theo Kennedy drowned in his cryo box. My mind goes back to the chart I made three months ago. Emma Bledsoe, thirty-four years old, a US Marine originally from South Africa.
    â€œSir,” Bledsoe calls back to my father.
    â€œOperation Genesis in effect,” he says.
    I don’t know what Operation Genesis is, but Emma Bledsoe obviously does: she immediately begins calling out to individuals—the other military personnel who’d been frozen—and instructs them to line up in the space between those from
Godspeed
and those from Earth.
    I glance over the heads of the military people and catch Kit’s eyes. She’s struggling to keep her nurses working on the remaining injured, but there’s real fear in the way she holds her stiff body, the way she won’t fully turn her back to us. Fear of my people—fear of my father.
    â€œDad,” I say, “there are a lot of injured people. The crash was—”
    â€œSir!” Bledsoe calls back, interrupting me before I have a chance to mention Elder’s theory that the pterodactyl-looking things caused the crash. Her voice is loud and clear, but she has an odd accent—British, maybe, or Australian. “There are three casualties among the shipborn.” She moves to stand over the bodies of the people who didn’t survive the landing.
    â€œWhat happened?” My father ignores me as he moves through the crowd to inspect the bodies. “This woman looks as if she was choked.” In the crowd, I can see the dead woman’s friend quietly sobbing as my father roughly tilts the woman’s head to look at the marking around her throat.
    I notice Lorin, the woman whose shoulder I stitched, standing to the side, staring down at one of the dead men. She shuffles nervously back as Bledsoe and my father draw closer to me, too afraid to try to move past them. Her panicked eyes meet mine, and I shoot her a sympathetic smile.
    â€œWhat happened?” Dad barks again.
    â€œWe had to use tethers to secure the people during the landing,” Kit says, trying to keep the quaking out of her voice. “It slipped around his neck, and—”
    â€œWhy didn’t you use the magnetic harnesses?” Dad snaps.
    â€œMagnetic . . . harnesses?” Kit asks.
    Dad stomps over to the wall—Lorin squeaks in terror and darts out of the way—and he bends down at the floor. His fingers feel along the tiled metal, and he does something—a flick of his wrist, a push of a button—and the metal panel lifts up. Reaching inside, he withdraws a handful of canvas straps with big, black buckles. “There are three thousand harnesses in storage here just so that you can secure your people to the floors and walls in the event of an emergency shuttle landing. Why didn’t you use them?” His voice is angry, accusing.
    â€œWe . . . we didn’t know they were there,” Kit says meekly, her eyes wide with shock.
    I can’t rip my gaze from the dead. What a stupid, stupid way to die. Killed just because we didn’t know about the damn harnesses.
    â€œThe captain should have known about the proper procedures for emergency shuttle launch,” Dad says. He exudes frustration and anger, and even though he’s wearing a silly green medical gown that opens in the back, he still carries with him more authority than I’ve ever seen from him before, and everyone—people from
Godspeed
and those from Earth—is listening to his every word.
    â€œIt’s not like that,” I say. “You don’t