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It takes five days to arrest her.
The Hail Mary’s engines fire, and the Project officially ceases to be. The power afforded to Stratt slips through her fingers as the ship grows farther and farther away from Earth. She’d known the consequences would come. She skirted too many laws and pissed off too many people for them not to. She accepted her fate early, and she carried the planet’s hope because she knew she was the only person who could.
We expect to see you in Geneva.
The message comes from an encrypted email. No date, no name, but she knows that it is not an order she can ignore, even as she faces flits of frustration. It will take 26 years to know whether or not the Hail Mary was a success. So much can happen between then and now, and there’s still work to be done. She gets the itch to dig her nails in and find the next thing, but time is up.
She takes few days to break down everything at Baikonur, and give people the time they need to get home. She whispers ideas into Dimitri’s ear, hands the name of a critical contact over to Lokken, and gives Leclerc the name of a lab in India that’s doing remarkable work in agricultural science. Hatch gets a few recommendations in his email a few days later as he returns to his family and Redell finds immunity for his crimes and a preliminary draft for an Astrophage-powered power plant system in his arms. The Project might be over, but she is not going to let the world languish for the next 26 years. If she's lucky and the stars align...
“They’re really taking you away, aren’t they?” Ryland Grace asks on the eve of her departure. They stand outside their trailers, staring at the empty launchpad. The Hail Mary is gone, and it feels empty.
“Yes,” she says, because that’s all she can do.
“After all that?” he asks helplessly.
“Because of ‘all that,’” she says, mirroring his inflection. “I do not regret what I’ve done, Dr. Grace, but there are consequences.”
He’d been a remarkable find, she muses. This awkward science teacher with unkempt hair and askew glasses slotted into her team seamlessly. He was one of the few people who truly didn’t mind giving her the truth, who would always think of the mission above all else. She hadn’t intended for him to grow through the ranks like he did, turning into her second-in-command as the Project drew to a close. If it weren’t for him, they wouldn’t have caught the clerical error that nearly vaporized them. He had been the only one to take the ravings of a Malaysian scientist seriously and catch the critical errors in the coma system just 24 hours before launch.
“Yeah, but…” he trails off. He finds his words a moment later. “But there’s still so much to do.”
She looks at him and raises an eyebrow. “I thought you wanted to return to your old life.”
He falters. “I mean, I do, but… But there’s more for you to do.”
She shakes her head.
“Not anymore, Dr. Grace. Not anymore.”
He decides to come with her in the end. As the rest of the Project jet off to their old lives, he refuses to leave her alone for this moment. Dimitri and Carl catch wind of it and reschedule their flights. Whether it’s for her or for Grace, she isn’t sure. When she points out the inconvenience, they shake it off.
“I mean, there are flights from Switzerland to San Francisco,” he says light-heartedly. “And this is my last chance to fly in a private jet.” He and Dimitri spend the flight talking in science babble while Carl plays with one of Grace’s bean bags. It sends her to sleep.
When she steps off the jet, it officially becomes the property of the International Criminal Court. Five men in dark suits and even darker sunglasses meet her on the tarmac.
“Eva Stratt, you are under arrest.”
She wonders what they’ll charge her with as they place the handcuffs around her wrists. Environmental destruction, certainly. Extortion and racketeering? Probably. Someone could make the case for smuggling—it would be interesting if they got her on piracy.
She turns to give her final good-byes to Grace, Dimitri, and Carl, her heart stops.
“Ryland Grace, you are under arrest.” Grace stands there, shocked as an officer manhandles him. The silver cuffs sparkle in the sunlight. Carl and Dimitri protest as she stands there in shock.
It hits her as quickly as a bullet. He’d been her second-in-command. He might not hold responsibility for every decision within the Project, but he’d facilitated her work in ways that should could not have alone. Stratt was the Project’s architect and Grace was its executioner. His signature held as much weight as hers, and while she’d gotten her hands bloody, there was dirt beneath his fingertips. Grace turns to her, eyes wide and desperate.
“He’s not—!” Stratt protests, but she’s taken away. Her last look is at Grace in tears as he’s shoved into a car.
He wasn’t supposed to be a part of this. This wasn’t supposed to happen to him. She was to be the sacrificial lamb, the one slaughtered before international law.
It wasn’t supposed to go like this, and that haunts her more than anything.
She doesn’t see him again until the trial a year later. He looks different after a year in prison. His hair is cut short, and his nose is crooked. She wonders what got him into a prison fight, but she isn’t allowed to speak to him. His eyes are hard as they look upon the tribunal, yet when they fall upon her, she sees a softness there. She doesn’t deserve his kindness.
She mouths, “I’m sorry,” but she’s not sure if he sees her or understands. There is little she regrets, but she does regret this.
They’re convicted for crimes against humanity. Grace laughs as the verdict is read.
They’re branded. A tattoo to show the world that they have no place in society anymore. For life, the tattoo means.
His eyes become cold that day, and she never forgets that.
It takes five years.
They put in her isolation, with no hope of outside contact. She is denied internet access and witnesses the world through the whispers of her fellow inmates. They frustratingly focus on things of little importance, but she gets glimmers of the world outside. Talks of trade negotiations. Slowing crop yields. Plans for what the planet will do next to stay warm.
Despite the science showing the benefits, no nation agrees to continue the Antarctic bombings. Penguins, of all things, stay their hands. Ridiculous. Penguins will thrive as they all perish. She learns of a rogue nation who does it anyway through a newspaper slipped in with her breakfast. As that country’s president stands before the world, he declares, “I believe in the Hail Mary.”
It’s the first time Stratt realizes that she’s not just launched a ship, but a movement.
She thinks about Grace often. It was supposed to be her. She prepared mentally and emotionally for what the rest of her life would be. She had plans, of course, but it was a matter of whether those connections would come through, if she’d built loyalty among her men. Grace was never a part of those. He was a casualty of her decisions, and that haunted her more than anything.
She finds a note immaculately tucked into an apple one day, and she realizes her plans are coming to fruition.
A month later, a gas mask tucked into her sheets and a hastily written note sets the rest into motion. It takes only ten minutes to escape. The gas takes the guards and her fellow inmates within minutes, and before she’s realized what’s happened, a guard whose name she doesn’t even know is unlocking her door.
“It’s time, Miss Stratt.”
It’s chloroform, she later learns. A knockout gas which leaves the prisoners mostly unharmed as she walks through the front door of the prison.
The first person she sees when she escapes is Grace, who stands there with a soppy grin and the satisfaction of a job well done. She clocks the differences right away. There’s a scar on the side of his face and burn marks on arm (an accident in the cafeteria, he later claims). His hair is unkempt and uneven, the result of an inexperienced hand, and he stands differently. Stronger.
Some men, she learns, are forged in fire.
Dimitri and Carl are next. They high five when they catch sight of her, proof of a job well done. Redell is on the phone, no doubt coordinating their next step. But her eyes are locked on Grace.
“Hi, Eva,” Grace greets. She’s struck by the use of her name, an informality she never tolerated on the Project. But the Project is over, and what’s to come next goes beyond anything they’ve ever done before, so she lets that bit of decorum slip away.
“Hello, Ryland.”
He drags her into a hug. Tears tumble down her face as she just lets herself feel for the first time in years. Five years in isolation does a number on a person, even to Eva Stratt. If she clings to him longer than necessarily appropriate, no one minds. Ryland quietly says, “I’m sorry it took so long.”
It’s been six years since the Hail Mary launched, and Eva spends her time catching up.
They’ve acquired a ship. A contact of Lokken, a friend of a friend who owns a shipping business needed to get rid of an icebreaker ship in need of repairs. Redell found them a captain who can keep quiet for the right price. The first time Eva meets him, he tips his hat to her and says, “I believe in the Hail Mary, ma’am.”
She learns that Ryland escaped just a year before her, with the help of Dimitri, morse code, and bird calls (he apparently had a remarkable ear for music, though his karaoke performances left much to be desired). He led the charge to get her out, and she's not sure she deserves that from him.
The first cracks in the world’s governments have begun to show. Corn production in the United States is down. Russian wheat crops die suddenly in an unexpected freeze. Chinese rice production is slammed with an unfortunately timed bacterial infection. Already, countries around the world are breaking into their stockpiles, but it won’t last long. Exports slow as nations cling to what they have.
Migration has begun. People with the means to move leave some of the coldest places in the world to go south. Yet, new immigration restrictions stymie many more from transitioning. They can’t quite call themselves refugees yet, but even that might not be enough to open borders.
Eva has people loyal to her still, and it takes only a few strategic calls to find them. The leaders of Libya are more than happy to help them, given the incredible economic boon she’d given them with the Astrophage farms. Dimitri’s connections to Russia are never more valuable. Redell navigates the underground with ease, while Lamai finds friends in high places in the far east. Shapiro has the ear of some of the world’s most prominent scientists.
First, they need to build. They no longer have access to the world’s bank accounts or its armies, so they need to get clever. Thankfully, the others used the past six years wisely. Redell completed the blueprints for Astrophage powerplants and licensed those designs out to world governments, which brought in millions. Leclerc, with Shapiro’s help, has designs underway for genetically-modified crops that can survive in supreme cold and less light. The only thing they’re missing are proper tests, but once complete they’ll not only feed the world, but line their pockets.
Their group grows. They find a spunky woman from Pakistan whose potential is wasted. She hijacks satellites for them, protecting them from detection from the nation-states still determined to capture her and Ryland. A scrambler she builds from electronic scraps confuses any drones unlucky enough to get close to them.
A man from the UK frustrated with the world’s slow response to the Astrophage crises comes on board as a doctor, freeing Lamai for the research she’s desperate to do in support of their medical needs. A farmer from Kenya establishes a hydroponic garden on the ship, lessening their reliance on supply drops. A helicopter captain from Peru transports people and supplies from their contacts on solid ground.
“We believe in the Hail Mary,” they say as they come aboard.
They stay on the ice as much as they can, for it’s one of the places that few people want to go. Dimitri and Lokken discover a way to utilize Astrophage as a fuel and heating source, lessening their reliance on gas. Ryland maintains a small Astrophage farm on board.
They have one mission: keep the world together long enough for the beetles’ return.
Eight years after the Hail Mary’s launch, and alliances between nations grow tenuous as resources constrict. Europe faces its greatest challenge when an unusual blizzard rages across Norway for 25 days. People starve in their own homes. Some are lost to carbon monoxide poisoning, while others freeze in their beds, desperate for a smidge of warmth as the cold closes in.
Lokken loses her entire family, including her three-year-old niece.
She is never the same after that.
“This is only the start, isn’t it?” Ryland asks her. They stand on the bow of the ship in the cutting cold air. The rest of the crew is at dinner, though Lokken remains in her cabin, mourning a wound that will never fully heal. Eva likes the cold, it anchors her. Ryland shivers and wraps his coat tightly around him and pulls his scarf tighter.
“Yes,” Eva says quietly. His eyes lift upward to the glimmering stars above them. Their eyes train on the one star constantly on their minds. Tau Ceti. Five more years, and their astronauts would arrive. He shifts closer to her.
“They have it easy, don’t they?” he says, his voice cracking. He’s close, closer than Eva would have ever deemed appropriate on the Project. But here, without the pretense of work propriety, she lets that shield down, ever so slightly.
“They get to choose their death, and they will be heroes for it,” she says.
“If there’s anyone around to see it.” The cynical statement takes her by surprise.
Ryland didn’t used to be like this. He’d held such optimism for the future and always looked for a path forward. Little brought him down. Yet, in this new future, the reality of their situation darkens his eyes, creating frown lines to accompany his laugh lines. She places her hand on his arm, and he starts at the touch.
“There will be, Ryland,” she says with all the conviction she can. “We will make sure of it.”
Norway’s government collapses in the next year as its allies turn away from them, leaving Lokken stateless. The United Nations begins to lose members. She finds comfort in the arms of Leclerc, who begins predicting the next phase of this planet’s destruction.
The jet streams become erratic. Global flight is down 20% from five years ago, and delays and reports of extreme turbulence are growing. Many countries are now funneling millions to refurbish or build new rail systems to support new demand.
Trillions of dollars still goes to space and agricultural research. Every possible spare dollar is spent on Astrophage research and new infrastructure to support farming warehouses, something to help crops live longer under the coming years. Leclerc and Shapiro begin selling their genetically-modified seeds, which brings in millions more.
It takes a few years, but Redell manages to set up a shell company under the guise of a philanthropy to fund new and extreme research ideas. Much of it is controversial, yet it gets done anyway.
Shapiro spends days deep in her lab genetically engineering a version of Astrophage which might not take so much from the sun. It’s a long shot, but that’s all they’ve got to rely on nowadays. They discuss the potential consequences of introducing a new, unknown species into Venus.
“It’s hard to keep up with her,” Ryland says one evening. He has a beer in his hand, a rare treat that's courtesy of one of Dimitri’s contacts, and a smile on his face. “She’s thinking scores above me.”
“Do you think it’ll work?”
He frowns and turns to her. “I trust that she’ll be able to design something that will destroy Astrophage,” he says. “But whether or not it’ll be enough to stop the sun’s dimming, I can’t say.” Eva meets his eyes. “That’s why we have to keep going at it.”
There’s something about his smile that gets her nowadays. They’re living in international waters, sneaking away from the eye of the governments that would have them both arrested and in jail. The Earth is dying, the sun is dying, and yet he looks at her with a smile that suggests there is no other place he’d rather be.
Her fingers curl around the railing as she asks a question she’s not sure she wants an answer to, “Ryland, if things hadn’t turned out the way they had, is this where you’d be?”
The question washes over him, and his gaze slides over her. She feels naked, like he’s looking beneath the layers of wool and into her very soul. His eyes soften and she realizes that maybe, just maybe, the hint of emotion which she’s suppressed about him might not be unfounded.
“Probably not,” he admits. “Before they, you know—“ he gestures to his wrists. “—arrested me. I had a flight book backed to San Francisco. I was going to meet an old friend—the one who originally told me about the Petrova problem, actually.” He laughs at the irony of it. “Maybe see if my school would hire me back.”
“I’d made a few calls,” Eva interrupts. “They would’ve.” His lips curl up.
“I should’ve known you’d be prepared.” A breeze blows through them, ruffling the hair that’s not buried beneath a cap. “I was…scared, that day. And angry. I know you expected the arrest, but it… I just couldn’t believe they’d do it after all that. Then, when they arrested me…” His voice trails off. “I was just so angry.” He sees the way her expression falters and he quickly adds, “Not at you, but the world. How could they turn their back on you, on us after what we’d done?” He lets out a breath. “I didn’t think we’d be able to break you out, really.”
“So why go to the trouble?”
He fidgets, his breath catches, and for a moment, she wonders what pops into his mind. He lets out a shaky breath. “Because it’s you,” he says, as if that explains everything. And, somehow, her breath hitches too. There’s the sound of Carl and Dimitri boisterously laughing, and the moment between them fades away.
After a breath, she says, “We should get back.”
As he turns, she gets a glimpse of the tattoo on his neck that matches hers.
For life.
For a moment, it feels less like a sentence and more like a promise.
Ten years after the launch of the Hail Mary and the first wars begin. In all honesty, Eva is surprised it took this long.
It starts with China. The superpower with the largest population begins expansion efforts in a desperate attempt to build their agricultural base. There are rumors of state-sanctioned executions. A despot elected in the United States turns to South America with blood in their eyes. The next year, Russia looks to the west, and the European Union faces a challenge the likes of which its never seen before. The question rises: Can these countries really afford a war when even their stockpiles are diminishing?
It becomes a bloodbath, and alliances crumble.
The death toll is in the millions, the combination of climate disaster and war takes its toll, and about 100 million are dead. As Leclerc explains, what comes next is the landslide. That 100 million will become 200 in less than half the time it took, and then 400, and so on.
The ice sheets expand, and their options for travel grow. They manage to commandeer another two ships, both abandoned after the collapse of the Scandinavian states. From there, they expand.
A baby is born on the ship. Despite their age and the environment, Lokken gives birth to a baby girl in the spring named Olivia. Leclerc is soppy father, Ryland is an enthusiastic uncle, and Eva is a distant aunt. It’s a reminder that in the darkest of times, life finds a way.
It’s also a reminder that even in uncertainty, there can be joy.
Ryland returns from a babysitting session, crumbs over his clothes from whatever idiot gave the child crackers. Before she even thinks about it, she brushes them off him. He grows a little pink.
“How is she doing?”
“Well, all things considered,” he said, wistfully. “She’s so smiley.” Eva's lips upturn.
“And Shapiro’s work?” His face falls.
“Not as smiley,” he jokes. “There’s something we’re missing, and we’re starting to lose scientists.” Eva frowns. Things are more unstable than ever, and countries are beginning to close their borders. International communication is collateral damage in all this. The contacts with whom they ideated and relied on for collaboration slowly disappear from their feeds. The research that they’d funded may be ongoing, but updates are scarce or non-existent.
“We can’t let the Earth’s entire scientific infrastructure disappear,” she says. “We need something at the ready for the beetles.” Her gaze goes up. It’s light out, far too bright to see the stars, but she doesn’t need them to know where to look. Every day she takes a moment to look up at Tau Ceti. Their last hope.
“Yeah,” he says.
“We need to establish an underground communications system,” she says, eyes still trapped on Tau Ceti. “Something untraceable, something encrypted.” Ryland muses this.
“Almost like government intranet,” he says, contemplatively. His fingers tap against the railing, like it always does when he’s thinking. “But we’d need to send people into these countries to set that up.” He swallows. “There are war zones, Eva.”
“Yes.”
He wrestles with the idea, or maybe he’s merely thinking through logistics, but he knows that she’s right. If they want any hope of success, the infrastructure must be there for the beetles’ return. There are still people in space now, but there’s no guarantee that there will be in 15 years. They need to put their fingers on the scale, and that starts with this.
“I bet Dimitri and Redell know some people who can help,” he says. There’s the sting of something as he says it. The Ryland Grace that she knew ages ago would have protested the idea, even if he’d eventually come around to her side. But this Ryland was tempered by years of toil and hardened by a future where there are no guarantees. She’s rubbed off on him.
“There are precautions we can take to ensure their safety,” she says, and he relaxes a little. Because for all he’s become her, she’s become a little like him too.
“Yeah,” he breaths. “Yeah.”
Thirteen years.
It seems so long, and yet they’re only halfway.
“They should have arrived by now,” Ryland says. It’s been an evening of celebration, a milestone to mark. DuBois, Yáo, and Ilyukhina are the first humans to travel to another solar system, and they are the Earth’s only hope.
No one knows the death tolls anymore. Countries stopped counting, and NGOs (those that still exist, anyway) can’t verify. It’s at least a billion.
“Yes,” she says. “They’re there.”
A million things could have gone wrong. An astral object could have destroyed the ship. A navigation error could have pointed them in the wrong direction. A medical emergency could have killed them before they even arrived. They might never know.
“What do you think they’ll find?” Ryland asks. Eva frowns.
“I don’t know,” she says softly. They’d spent the years contemplating it. Shapiro was convinced they’d find some sort of Astrophage variant, one that evolved without the same destructive properties. Dimitri is convinced that an advanced alien civilization figured it out. Lokken offered the cynical opinion that there might not be anything there.
“I bet Astrophage has a predator,” Ryland says. “From what we know, it seems like Tau Ceti was patient zero for the Astrophage crisis. I bet the variant we see is one that evolved to travel long distances to get away from that predator.”
It was, in a way, a more cynical opinion than Lokken’s. If there was a predator on the surface of the sun, then they would have no way of retrieving the sample—the ship was simply not equipped for that. If he was right, then the solutions would be there, out of their hands forever.
He glances over and frowns. “You shouldn’t leave your wrists uncovered.” He reaches over to pull down her sweater’s sleeves over her bare wrist. “Frost bite hits quickly, you know.” He shivers as if to demonstrate. She rolls her eyes.
“I know, Ryland.”
His fingers linger over her hands, and her heart skips a beat. She lifts her head to meet his eyes. He’s got a trace of hesitancy, as if he wants to say something, but the words are caught in his throat.
She thinks to Lokken and Leclerc, who found joy in the darkness, to their little girl who speaks a garbled combination of English, French, and Norwegian (with a little Russian in there, courtesy of Dimitri). To Shapiro, who laughs even though the person she grew attached to was 11.9 light years away. To Dimitri and his wife, who persevere through it all.
Why do they dance around this?
The world is ending; there’s no point in holding back. Eva closes the gap between them with a gentle kiss. Ryland gasps but doesn’t pull away. He lifts his hand to her head and cradles her cheek, which is red from the cold. Distantly, she hears someone whoop.
“Ryland,” she says softly. He doesn’t respond, he just kisses her fiercely and protectively, like he’s been waiting for this. The soft side of her breaks and she holds him. Even if it doesn’t work out and the world crumbles beneath their feet, then they at least have this.
It takes three years to fully set up the underground network. A dark web for science, their hacker once joked. They have two more ships now, and Ryland takes to calling her Admiral Stratt with that goofy grin that makes her heart soften. One ship becomes the lab, the center of all scientific work in the fleet. The other becomes a moving farm. Supply drops become more infrequent as wars take their toll, but they find a way to manage.
The fleet becomes the thing of legends. People whisper about the ghost ships that haunt the arctic, that fund unprecedented science, that strive to keep enough infrastructure alive to ensure that when the beetles return, they can act upon the information they find. And there will be when the beetles return. Not an if. People seek them out, and her crew grows week-by-week, and day-by-day.
“I believe in the Hail Mary,” they vow.
They estimate the dead at 1.75 billion. Leclerc watches the numbers tick off with a grimace on his face. The true death toll is unknown. It will remain unknown for years.
There’s hope on the horizon. For all the failures in the ecosystem, humans are terribly and irrevocably resilient. A company seeded by them manages to efficiently use Astrophage to heat homes, eliminating the need for natural gas, which has skyrocketed in price as supply chains crumble.
It doesn’t take long for Ryland to move into her cabin. They need the extra space anyway for all the new faces that come aboard. The additional warmth in her bed certainly helps among the frigid cold outside, and when they make love, it lets her forget about the world for just a little bit.
There are days he’s absent. He is split between the science ship and the commanding ship. Some days, he sleeps in his lab, exhausted between experiments. Eva doesn’t mind, because she knows that he’s doing what he loves. The rest is spent at her side, expertly commanding the men and women around them. He’s her righthand and there are some days that he knows what she’s thinking better than she does.
Leclerc is determined to manufacture cold-resistant grapes so they can create wine, but that is an experiment that struggles.
Currency is losing its value now. Global economic systems have crashed, and a country that might have accepted a Euro five years ago, now uses their own currency system. They pivot to trading resources. They get food, Astrophage, clothing, and other materials by finding the right people and making exchanges. It’s amazing how much societal progress regresses in just a few years.
“It’s impressive,” Ryland says one day, laying in bed with her. “What this has turned into.” He’s mussed from a night of sleep, and she’s learned over the years that it takes quite a bit of perseverance to get control of his hair. He’s sporting a beard now, which is twinged with gray.
Her hair is gray now too. The combination of pressure and time has aged her. She twists to see him, expecting a tablet in his hand. Instead, he’s looking out to the window. It is summer now in the Arctic, and the sun hasn’t set in days.
“What makes you say that?” she asks, turning over.
“You’ve built a community, Eva,” Ryland says. “You know, we’ve actually got a little school going on Ship D now with all the children that have come on board.”
She scoffs. “We shouldn’t have children in this fleet to begin with.” It’s an argument that she’s long let go. This was no place for children, but she quickly came to find that if she wanted the best minds in her fleet, then she needed to allow them to bring their families on board. Ryland wraps his arm around her shoulder and squeezes.
“Milana is determined to give them an education in the classics,” he says. Dimitri’s wife had been quite indignant when she realized that while these children were getting the best science education they could ask for, there was little room for the arts. She was going to fix that personally. “She’s leading the charge, and I think Redell is bringing in a shipment of textbooks at the next drop.”
“Will you help her out?” Eva wonders. He’d loved teaching, she knew that well, but would he want to return to it after all those years?
“Here and there,” he says, looking at her kindly. “But I’ve got more important things to do here.”
They lay in bed together for as long as they can before the world comes calling again.
It has been 17 years since the Hail Mary left.
They intend to marry in a quiet ceremony, just them, an officiant, and a witness. But word gets out, and the desire for a little joy turns into a celebration that they hadn’t intended.
Their love was never one of butterflies or fluttering hearts. It wasn’t long walks on the beach or a stroll through the garden. Their love was about commitment and cause. It was represented by a steady hand on a waist and a whisper in a meeting. It was about finding peace in their home while the wild world swirled around them.
Ryland builds her ring himself, using scraps they find and stones they source through trade. He uses a precise skill that she didn’t know he possessed to craft it. His own ring was forged somewhere on the science ship, and it looks good on his hand.
Olivia Leclerc gifts them flowers she and her father grew in their rooms while people dance and party around them. Ryland pulls her into a dance, and the wine they'd managed to procure keeps her from protesting. As they spin, she sees his matching tattoo and her heart feels full. For life.
They let go, if only for a night.
Twenty years after the Hail Mary, and critical infrastructure is dying.
The nations with the resources to sustain space programs are pulling away funding at a time when they should continue investing. That intel makes Eva furious, but it also gives them their next plan of attack. The Arctic has served them well, but it’s time to move on.
Roscosmos has been abandoned, and Russia and its new outlying states are suffering. For a nation that’s held on for over one thousand years, the cooling planet proves to be its downfall. Millions have left in a mass exodus and millions more are dead. They seek to take Baikonur, the place where it all started, and resume control of all international space operations.
There are still astronauts on the ISS, some of whom are now stateless, who continue the work they’ve long lived for. Six more years. They just need six more years. Their team is able to establish communications, but there’s still far more to do before they can rest.
Three billion are dead.
It’s amazing how the Earth finds ways to recover at such great death. They noticed it ten years prior, back when they were still a small operation, whales are everywhere. They see polar bears and seals and other life peeking through the ice.
They assemble a team of hunters and whalers. They come back with carcasses and bodies, and like their ancestors before them, they use every inch of their kills to feed and nourish the crew. Tailors harvest the skins and outfit many with sealskin coats. They use whale blubber to extract oil and their bones to build. Eva figures that even if the International Criminal Court still stood, whaling is just another charge to add to the list.
Ryland settles beside her, their arms touching through their thick coats.
“Our spies have returned,” he says quietly. “There is still a military presence around Baikonur, but they seem to be in low spirits. I don’t think it will take much convincing.” She taps her fingers against the railing. A whale emerges and disappears into the depths.
“Do you think they believe in the Hail Mary?” she asks.
“If not, I think they’ll come around with some food and vodka.”
Taking Baikonur will only solve some of their problems. They need a full accounting of what’s available, and what may have been raided for parts. They may need to do a rocket launch, which would require significantly more manpower than they have. Dimitri and Lokken have developed a new Astrophage-based engine that would get them off the ground, but they haven’t been fully able to execute tests on the ship for the safety of everyone around them.
They’re running out of time.
Ryland’s hand drifts to hers and she’s anchored. “How is our weapons stockpile?”
“In good condition. We’ve got people doing inspections now.” A former general from the United States now oversees their weaponry and makeshift army. It was something Eva would have rather not concerned her with, but the number of ongoing wars meant that she needed to find a way to protect themselves.
“We move in 15 days,” she declares. He gives her a nod.
“Of course, General Admiral Eva Stratt,” he says a salute and a drip of humor. She rolls her eyes at him. Sometimes she wonders why she married him.
“You can call me Commander,” she says instead. He chortles and bows.
“As you wish, Commander Stratt,” he says with a waggle of his eyebrow. She shakes her head fondly and pulls him in for a kiss. Six more years.
It’s been 26 years, and the beetle contact window officially opens.
They took Baikonur easily and quickly, with little bloodshed. The Kazakhstani ‘army’ that guarded it was more than happy to open the doors with food.
Four billion people have died, by their best guesses. The global media conglomerates that once dominated the airwaves have also died, leaving communications scarce and sparing. The northern nations have been all but abandoned, and those who remain have rebuilt and live in quiet isolation. Even the warmer equatorial states are not immune to the Earth’s cooling, for unpredictable storms and changes in the water level mean many die in floods. Others die in the wars, while others have died at the hands of governments who decide that their existence is not worth the resources required to keep them alive.
They save the International Space Station. With the help of former astronautics employees, they manage to launch a rocket that once belonged to a private company. It had been near completion when they arrived, they merely took control of it. They’ve built a town around the launch pad, by their estimates, there are 3,000 people living there—not counting the people aboard their fleet.
They all believe in the Hail Mary.
The first beetle is detected four and a half months after the contact window opens. The timing is off, Eva realizes at once. The astronauts were only given three months’ worth of food, for that’s all they could fit with weight requirements and their timeline. Ryland shares her concerns and holds her close as her mind unwittingly goes to the worst-case scenario.
They capture the beetles’ navigation system a week later and direct them towards Earth. It’s too far for any information transmission, but that day is coming soon. They all wait with bated breath. If Hatch were still alive, he would be proud.
Then, one afternoon, Ryland bursts into her office. Papers go flying.
“We’ve got a signal.” He’s out of breath. “We’re downloading the files now.”
It all comes down to this. Whatever is on those files will determine if humanity will live, or if will perish in the ice and snow. She steps forward and brings him in for a kiss. He gets that goofy grin he always does whenever she shows him affection.
“Broadcast it,” she says. “Everyone here deserves to know if they succeeded or not.”
“Already on it, commander,” he says slyly. She rolls her eyes at him and proceeds to the mission control room. She wants to witness this herself. Ryland is just on her heels, his face back to its usual seriousness. As she steps in, the room goes quiet. An analyst, someone they picked up from Nigeria years ago, stands.
“Madam Stratt,” he greets. “The data should be available shortly.” She nods and he sits, eager to return to his computer. She clears her throat and looks upon the worried mass. Ryland is in the corner, watching. He gestures to a microphone that a junior scientist holds. She takes it. He gives her a nod and she speaks.
In the past, she might have planned this out, taken what she was to say to a speechwriter to refine it. But such things seemed superfluous now, because today determines whether or not her life was a waste or not.
“Today is the biggest day in human history,” she starts. She hears her voice echoing as it’s projected to the large team of scientists that all work for her. “Today, we will learn the fate of the Hail Mary, its crew, and the planet. We honor the sacrifice of Li-Jie Yáo, Olesya Ilyukhina, and Martin DuBois for what they’ve done for our planet and for us. No one loved humanity more deeply.” She lets the moment breathe. Her eyes scan the small group, who watch her intently.
She thinks of the billions who have died, who have succumbed to a world which values power over collaboration, who have taken land in the name of their people, who have killed the weakest among them because they couldn’t conceive of a place where they might have value. They were lucky, in some ways, to find a community of their own. She couldn’t say she was entirely innocent, there was blood on her hands too. All she could hope was that it was worth it.
“I trust that the crew of the Hail Mary did everything in their power to find the answers we need, but it is also possible that the opposite is true, that there was nothing out there for them.” A few people sink. “Regardless, the work does not stop here. Already, we have promising solutions to the Astrophage problem in production, and we would do well not to forget that we have the smartest minds on the planet gathered here. We are resilient, and we will persevere.” She pauses, her eyes land on her husband. “I believe in the Hail Mary.”
A chorus of cheers erupt at her words. The final data downloads, and a series of files fill the screen. DuBois, it appears, was diligent about documenting everything he’s seen, while Yáo kept strict daily logs.
A video, simply labeled WATCH FIRST, stands out. The analyst gives her a questioning look and she nods. Ryland saddles up to her side and gives her hand a reassuring squeeze.
On screen, they see DuBois and Ilyukhina with serious expressions upon their faces. Yáo is absent, and Eva's heart sinks.
“Hello, Earth,” Ilyukhina says, waving her hand. DuBois raises his arm for them. “We have much news from Tau Ceti!” Eva’s heart pounds. “We have Astrophage solution!” Ryland’s grip tightens and she squeezes back. DuBois holds up a box made of an odd-looking material.
“In this box we have an organism that we picked up from a planet in the Tau Ceti system,” he explains cooly. “It feeds on Astrophage while they’re breeding, thereby controlling the population. We’ve decided to call it Taumoeba.”
“Because it looks like a little amoeba!”
DuBois’ expression grows tight, and he gets choked up, “We are sorry to say that Yáo died during an EVA during the retrieval process.” Ilyukhina looks down. “To his friends and families, know that he was so brave. He… he knew the risk but did it for us. Did it for you. We will be joining him soon.”
It explains the time discrepancy, Eva realizes grimly. With one less mouth to feed, they could make the food stretch longer.
“Tau Ceti had many surprises,” Ilyukhina says after a beat. “It turns out we are not only life in galaxy looking to save their sun.” They separate, and into view comes two…two…things? Creatures? Aliens. Ryland gasps. “Please meet Rocky and Stony. They are engineer and scientist from 40-Eridani system, say hi!”
They give…jazz hands? A sound eerily similar to whalesong echoes, before a mechanical computer voice intones. “Hello, Earth. I am Rocky. Ilyukhina, Yáo, and DuBois help save our planet too! We will never forget them, they will be honored on our planet.”
“Holy shit, it’s an alien,” Ryland whispers, awed. Eva is too entranced with the video to remark on one of his rare expletives.
“We have left video logs and detailed notes on what we’ve learned out here, including some considerations for the handling of Taumoeba. It cannot handle any nitrogen, so please ensure that it’s handled in a controlled environment,” DuBois says. “We have personal messages for our friend and families on the drive.”
“It has been absolute honor,” Ilyukhina says, saluting. “Good luck, Earth. We love you.”
The video cuts, and silence stands. The cheering begins soon after, but Eva stands there numb. Ryland gently interlaces their fingers together. He is happy, no doubt, but not elated. He’s no doubt feeling the same emotions she is.
These were people that they knew. Their last message from friends.
“Come on,” Ryland says softly, pulling her. “They know what to do next. You can step away for a moment.”
She lets him lead her away as the revelations wash over her.
It was all worth it. They’d done it. The Hail Mary had worked, and the solution to the planet’s Astrophage problem was currently on a trajectory to the ISS for capture, study, and eventual launch. She’s dazed as he pulls her into her office. He closes the doors and closes the blinds.
She falls to her knees and sobs. Ryland is next to her in an instant, his hand on her back. He doesn’t speak as she lets three decades of pressure, worry, and terror wash away from her. He pushes her hair behind her ear and offers her a box of tissues. If she were in any better state, she might make a joke about being the one to cry for once, but can’t find the spirit within her for that. When she finally looks up at him, she realizes that he’s crying too.
Saps, the both of them.
“We did it,” he says quietly. She wipes the snot and tears from her face, even as they still fall.
“Yeah,” she chokes out. “We did.”
Believe in the Hail Mary, for life.