“What if we’re wrong about everything?” she asked, the question slipping out before she could tether it. “What if the people who sent us out here—what if the lies are bigger than we think?”
The Echo of Nine
Kanata stopped drifting. He reached out, and his gloved hand pressed against hers. Through the two layers of fabric and metal, she felt nothing. But she saw the conviction in his posture.
“You’re thinking too loud,” he said. “I can hear your brain grinding from here.” -DB- Kanata no Astra
She looked past him, at the endless black sewn with distant, cold stars. It was not the void that defined them. It was the small, fragile arc of light—the Astra —and the nine hearts beating inside it.
They were lost. But they were lost together .
“Aries.”
The void does not whisper. It does not threaten. That is what Aries Spring feared most as she drifted, tethered by a single silver thread to the rusted hull of the Astra . Below her, the planet they’d named “Shummoor” rotated—a marble of ochre and violet, beautiful and utterly indifferent to the nine teenagers clinging to life above it.
And that, Aries realized, was the only north star they had ever needed.
“Then we’ll find a bigger truth,” he said. “That’s the deal. We don’t leave anyone behind. Not in space. Not in the past.” “What if we’re wrong about everything
Behind them, the Astra ’s airlock cycled open. Quitterie’s annoyed voice echoed over the comms: “Are you two having a moment ? Because the atmospheric processor is beeping, and Luca burned the rehydrated eggs again .”
Aries laughed, a brittle sound. “I’m mapping the gravitational lensing of the next jump. If we miscalculate by even 0.3 degrees—”
She adjusted her helmet, the click of the visor deafening in the perfect silence. Breathe, she told herself. One… two… three. Through the two layers of fabric and metal, she felt nothing