text: There are two cargo pods housed in the pressurized dome out by the quarry pits. Until the attack, they had been used regularly by Hamaritus to haul the mine's products to your customers over on Big Chodry, and then to bring supplies back on the return trip. They are utilitarian vessels, chemically propelled on quinterium-fueled engines, and absolutely devoid of creature comforts. One is painted in a yellow-and-black pattern of diagonal stripes, like a mechanical space-faring bee. The other is nearly identical, but with red stripes instead of yellow.
  
  Has it really been twelve years? Dad bought both of these at auction when you were just sixteen, and they seemed well-used even then. Still, they were much better than the beat-up Xteria he had been using for years up until that point; that thing was so old that he needed to keep three others on hand just to cannibalize the parts. The Xteria had seemed hopelessly obsolete to you, with a fuel-burn rate so high Dad must have been losing money every time he used it. This was one of the times when sentimentality had gotten in the way of his reason, as the antique Xteria had been bought brand-new by his father, Nabor Crident, about fifty years earlier.
  
  You had accompanied Dad to the auction at which the assets of Wetherburn Industrial Resources were liquidated, after a market collapse on Atam had dried up that company's customer base. All of the other Chhota Chandrama mine operators were there too, like flies descending on a carcass Dad said, seeing a competitor's demise as an opportunity to buy equipment cheaply. Your father had found the process distasteful, but economically necessary. There was other equipment up for bid that might have been useful for Crident Extraction as well, but you had convinced him that he seriously needed to retire the Xteria.
  
  "You think it's time, Shahad?" he said, calling you by your nickname.
  
  "Dad, even Grandfather would want you to retire the Xteria," you said.
  
  "Just because something's old doesn't mean you throw it away."
  
  This struck you as an unusually trite expression for someone like your father. The old ship, its age and condition plainly evident despite a fresh coat of paint, was perhaps Nabor Crident's last remaining worldly possession still in daily operation at the time. What would Dad think if he knew the Xteria now sits in its final resting place out on the surface of Chhota Chaandria, with the other half-dismantled Xterias piled up next to it?
  
  It was Wetherburn's yellow cargo pod that caught your eye first, and you were excited to see Dad giving it serious consideration. Secretly, you imagined this becoming your own personal cruiser, as you would soon be old enough to fly on your own. What you saw at the time was not a boxy cargo-hauling pod, but a sweet-looking speedster that was just the right size for you... and perhaps maybe one special friend. Imagine having the independence to fly back and forth between the two planets in a zippy little thing like this!
  
  "Do you think maybe we should bid on both of them?" he asked, referring to the red pod as well. "If nothing else, it may be useful for parts."
  
  You were indifferent on the red pod, until you realized that if he bought both it increased the odds he might give one of them to you. "Go for it!" you said.
  
  There wasn't much competition in the bidding process. In retrospect this was a good thing because it kept the price low, but at the time Dad was worried that perhaps the other miners knew something about the pods' maintenance records he didn't. But in the end his were the winning bids on both pods; he paid less for these two used haulers than we would have for one brand-new one.
  
  Neither was given as a gift to you, however. In fact, it wasn't until you were eighteen that you ever got the chance to fly one. Dad had finally consented to let you apply for your pilot's license, and these two little ships were the best options available for a novice to practice in. Of course, you chose the yellow one, which he had since bestowed with the prosaic designation "Pod A."
  
  And so now, ten years later as you plan your foolhardy return to Chaandria, you choose the same craft — Pod A. The past decade has not been easy on the paint job, and perhaps you should have kept a closer eye on Cosmo Hamaritus and his ham-fisted flying skills. Still, you had not heard of any mechanical issues with Pod A, and so you drop the canvas bag on the copilot's seat as you settle behind the control stick.
  
  "If you're not carrying a load, there's not much to learn," Dad had said that day when you first climbed into the control seat at age eighteen. "These controls here are for the antigrav system, and the stick there is for the main thrust. You couldn't find a simpler ship if you tried."
  
  The cargo pod seemed rather mundane to him, and you remember feeling disappointed that he didn't share your romantic view of its potential. For eighteen-year-old you, this was one of the coolest moments ever.
  
  But that was then. Now the pod feels sadly empty without your father sitting next to you. To remedy the situation, you pull out the photo you found in his room and prop it up high on the control panel where you can easily see it. Happily, there is room for the image of Diden and Baby Ihon next to it.
  
  Untethered to a heavy load, the pod almost has too much speed. You fear that your clunky steering technique, as you attempt to harness the craft's energy and convince it to fly in a straight direction at a reasonable velocity, might alert the Iib Ch'iib to your presence and doom you before you even get started. So you keep low over the surface of Chhota Chandrama until you develop a better feel for the controls.
  
  "Mrs. Ureste! Are you really going to leave without saying good-bye?"
  
  It's the voice of one of your drill operators over the radio. Baron Halfdale was always one of your more affable employees, and this unexpected hail is a reminder that your departure has been so swift you never even took one last look at what had been your family's grandest project.
  
  "Mr. Halfdale. What's your status?"
  
  "We're getting under way now, ma'am," he says, unaware at how you always smart at that word. Ma'am. Hell, you're four years younger than he is. Halfdale has three kids of his own on Atam, including a girl about the same age as Ihon. Such... formality has been the price of being in charge, you guess.
  
  "My old friend Kokkinopole isn't causing any trouble, is he?"
  
  "No, ma'am. He doesn't even know I'm talking to you. Mr. Tello told us what you're doing, and I think that's pretty awesome of you."
  
  "Why, thank you, Baron."
  
  "You were a great boss. I just want to wish you good luck, and I hope to see you again someday."
  
  "Same here. Stay safe, Baron. I'm sure we'll all meet again soon."
  
  The radio then goes silent, which is probably for the best; the less unnecessary chatter there is, the less likely any of it will be overheard. But what an unexpected call! It makes the pod's cab feel all the more empty when you realize Halfdale might be the last human with whom you ever speak.
  
  The mine is on a remote corner of Chhota Chandrama, many thousands of kilometers from the planet's sole Sanrakshak base. This part of the world is facing away from Big Chodry now, which means you have a long distance to go before your destination even comes into view above the horizon. You keep your altitude over the little planet relatively low, abiding by your hunch that you will be less visible to the Iib Ch'iib this way. After a certain point you'll need to leave this cover behind, though, and make a run across the 300 thousand kilometers of open space between the twin planets, where you will be completely exposed. How will the alien fleet respond if they detect your presence? Will they be able to spot you at all? Perhaps there was more wisdom than you thought when you chose Pod A today, with its bee-like paint scheme. Do they have giant bees on the Iib Ch'iib homeworld? If so, then perhaps they'll welcome you as a fellow insect.
  
  An hour passes before Chaandria comes fully into view. You point the nose of the cargo pod directly at the bigger planet and engage the secondary thrusters, accelerating out of Little Chodry's misty atmosphere and into empty space. Thirty... twenty-nine... twenty-eight.... You make the countdown in your head, cutting the thrusters when you hit zero. At this speed you'll reach your home planet in about six hours. You assume you could get even more out of the pod, but the idea is not to call attention to yourself; too fast, and you might look like a powered ship trying to evade detection. At this speed, hopefully you'll just register as a random piece of space debris, not worth the effort to investigate.
  
  The canvas bag that you brought along is now drifting weightlessly over the passenger seat, so you reach over and strap it down with the safety belt. The emptiness that surrounds the pod is not what you anticipated; the radar equipment back at the mine had revealed an entire fleet of alien ships in the space between the planets, and so you had half expected you would be dodging their ships the entire way. But here you are, and all you can see with your own eyes is the same vast, empty space you've always seen while making this same journey under less stressful situations. If the hive ships are out there — and you know they must be — the distance between you is too great for ordinary vision. You thought these pods had some kind of low-grade radar navigation system, but there is no such thing in this cramped cab as far as you can tell. Maybe it was just Pod B that had been so equipped?
  
  Even Chaandria itself seems perfectly serene from this distance. The planet is still the same green-and-blue-and-white orb you've always known it to be, spinning on its rotational axis just as it always has, as if this were any typical day. Clouds swirl over the greenish-brown continents, and a typhoon is growing over the Aandhee Ocean. It would be an ordinary day at home, alien invasions notwithstanding.
  
  To your surprise, you feel uncomfortable now at the controls of the pod. Isn't this the moment you had once fantasized about: an independent young woman at the helm of this fleet little ship, making the journey from the mine to your home without anyone nagging you, coming and going on your own schedule? Except that now the situation is all wrong. You are heading to an unknown peril, with an enemy that surrounds you even if you can't see them. As far as you know the Sanrakshak fleet has been destroyed, eliminating all hope of salvation should you get into trouble. Thus you are likely the last human who will ever dare to make this journey. How will you be remembered for attempting to do what you are about to do? Will you be remembered at all?
  
  For three months you had taken shelter at the mine, watching helplessly as everything you had ever worked for — everyone you had ever loved — was gassed out of existence, by a force no one had predicted. The Naya Gyaan and their curious beliefs about their relationship to God — gone. The city of Ummeed ka Shahar and the jhabbe village where you grew up — gone. The Sanrakshak forces — gone, without anything close to a fair fight. The home you bought with Diden just before you got married — well, let's not jump to conclusions. But very likely gone, too.
  
  So here you are, returning to Chaandria, committed to a course of action that seems less clear the closer you get to your destination. Perhaps all of that isolation had starved your human need for adventure, until the desire for action burst out of you and inspired this ill-advised quest. But where else can you go, when you really think about it? Channdria and Chhota Chandrama are the only two worlds you've ever known. Listening over the wireless channels to the destruction of one planet as you huddled in the distant reaches of the other was like being stripped of your identity, of the meaning that had once given every day its direction. The Chaandrian banks that had held your accounts, the ministries that recorded your marriage, your licenses, your property titles — all of them up in flames, probably, the records of your existence now ashes incapable of proving anything. The men at the mine still called you ma'am out of habit, even though there had been no pay since before the attack. All productive activity had become immediately pointless; you had merely been seven people sheltering in the same place, adult orphans with nowhere else to go.
  
  Thus you now approach Chaandria with growing dread, a small speck in a gigantic sea of indifference, adrift on its unknowable currents with far less control over your fate than you have been led to believe. At any moment an enormous maw could emerge from the darkness to swallow you whole, but Chaandria would never flinch in its rotation, nor would the Chaandrian sun wince at the tragedy of your demise. Yours are the only eyes in this vast blindness, the only heart in this unending numbness. A billion stars may shine in every direction, but they do so coldly, at an impossible distance.
  
  For a moment, trapped in the cab of the cargo pod, surrounding only by the flat, static images of the people you loved, you sense your life as it really is: alone and purposeless, lurching from one momentary preoccupation to the next, oblivious of your own spiritual agony. The vacuum that surrounds you is actually a crushing pressure that would've already compressed you into a crumpled rag, but for the meaningless constructs with which you have been filling your life all these years.
  
  Once, when you were very young, you asked Dad why your family did not observe all of the same religious practices as the Naya Gyaan. Even in your jhabbe village their vibrant culture was like a living force that surrounded your home, with its long list of holy feasts and spiritual pilgrimages, with the dancing bhedak women and the pujaarees with their colorful robes parading through the streets almost on a monthly basis. Their happiness was seductive, even if you couldn't understand the words to the songs they sang.
  
  "Because, Shahad," he replied, "they see nothing but mysteries."
  
  "So?"
  
  "So, they seek answers to the wrong questions."
  
  At the time, questions were merely questions to you. How could some be wrong, and how could they divide people from each other?
  
  "They see life as a series of riddles that only their Bhagavaan ke Bachche could solve," Dad continued when he saw that you had been confused by his explanation. "They don't understand that if they had picked his pocket when he was still alive, they might have found his code book. Then each one of them could be his own prophet, and they wouldn't need all of this ritual to give their lives meaning."
  
  You still didn't understand what he meant, but because these words were spoken by your father you presumed them to be true. Still, for all these years there has been a nagging doubt, a lingering question you didn't dare raise for fear it might be the wrong one:
  
  If the Naya Gyaan were living in ignorance, then why did they all seem so contented?
  
  Your head is dizzy, your heart rate accelerated. You feel like a kaee tree that has been knocked askew by a strong gale, never to stand straight again unless guyed into place. But what draws you back into the present moment is a chirruping noise on the control panel before you. Something urgent requires your attention.
  
  Deep breaths. Take deep breaths. In, out, in, out, until the anxiety recedes, however long it takes.
  
  The bird-like sound is a proximity alert, an oddly gentle reminder that an object has been detected in your direct flightpath — and you might want to do something about it. The sensor is very rudimentary in design, capable of giving you no further details. The best you can do is scan the open space ahead of you, but still you see nothing.
  
  Minutes pass before your breathing returns to normal. Never have you felt so out of control of your own psychology before, so overwhelmed by circumstances. Whoever that was who had been sitting in this same space a moment ago, it wasn't the daughter your father had raised. There is a peril in thinking of existential matters too objectively, of pulling back the magnification with which you examine your own life as you would an amoeba. The amoeba known as Theryl Ureste, overwhelmed by the currents of metaphysical context in which she as been swimming all her life. Another panic attack like that, and you might as well point the pod at the nearest Iib Ch'iib hive ship and get this over with quickly.
  
  The chirruping alarm is becoming more frantic, indicating the object is getting closer. Should you bring the pod to a stop? Change your heading? Maybe the sensor is malfunctioning, because you still can't see a thing.
  
  There it is — something very small, dead ahead. It can't be more than three meters in length, like a torpedo coming straight for you. Except it's not a torpedo. It veers to the side, removing itself from your path, and the proximity alarm suddenly falls silent. Whatever the object is, you've just lost track of it.
  
  You nearly jump out of your seat when it abruptly appears in the periphery of your vision, so close outside the pod's pressurized cab that you could throw stones at it, if you had any. Whatever this thing is, it's flying on its own power. A drone? But whose? It seems to be checking you out, spewing small puffs of vapor as its maneuvering thrusters edge it closer to your pod, then back away. You see no markings on its cylindrical hull, nothing to identify who it might belong to.
  
  So this is an unexpected development. Have you just been discovered by a distant operator — and if so, whom? What if this were an Iib Ch'iib device, a mechanical drone operated by an insect-like drone? Or it could just be a lost Sanrakshak probe, wandering this interplanetary space like a stray dog. Although you had never seen one, it was well known the military had employed unmanned drones like this in its mission to run down smugglers. But an asset of the Sanrakshak would've been clearly marked as such, right?
  
  The probe is now paralleling your course, flying just a few meters away. The maneuvering thrusters puff away some more, and the little craft nudges up so close outside your window that for a moment you think its going to ram you. But it stops short of that, and you see a camera eye looking you over. This looks very much like a human device, and its actions are becoming so specific that there almost has to be a human operator somewhere nearby.
  
  Then, as unexpectedly as it appeared, the drone angles away from your pod and zips away into deep space, almost at a right angle to your current course.
  
  Could there really be another human out there, probing the space between the planets looking for other survivors? If so, the idea of following the drone back to its source suddenly seems appealing, more so than rushing headlong into an alien siege force. But hold on there! You have no idea what you just encountered, or who is controlling it. And you've already embarked on one impulsive mission so far today....
  
  > continue to Chaandria.
  No, this is no time for nonsense, or for following vague notions and wishful thinking — at least, not more than you've already done. As foolish as the idea of trying to sneak past the Iib Ch'iib fleet may be, there is at least some heart behind this decision. People you love are on Chaandria, as is your only remaining purpose in life. This is where your focus must remain.
  
  You move the family photos so that they are now directly ahead of you, their corners tucked into the plastic trimming around the display board. Lest your attention wander again, you put the one that shows you with Diden and Ihon in front of the other, because those are the people who now need you the most.
  
  Nevertheless, you look around the empty space that surrounds the pod, craning your head to see in every direction possible. Basically, from within the cramped confines of this cab, that means you can see directly ahead as well as ninety degrees to port and starboard. You can see through the cockpit canopy above you, but nothing but your feet when you look down, and nothing but a solid greenish-gray panel when you turn to look backward. Considering the antic disposition the drone had been putting on, you can't entirely rule out the possibility that it is still out there, lurking in these two significant blind spots. Just because you can't see it doesn't mean it's gone.
  
  That said, there haven't been any more of those mild outbursts from the proximity alert, nor have there been any more mechanical eyes spying on you from outside any of the transparent panels that make up the pod's canopy. In fact, there is nothing but the hum of the ship, as the force of the thrusters send vibrations of sound through the hull. It's best to just forget about the drone; if it returns then it returns, but until then you need to guard against paranoia. It falls into that category of things that you can neither predict nor control.
  
  In a strange way, though, you miss the chirruping sound of the proximity alarm. Not that you want something else to pop into your flight path and come at you — just the opposite, actually — but it was an interesting little noise, a curiosity for your brain to latch onto and study. Otherwise all you have is the monotony of the thruster-hum, and the nervous shifting sounds you make as you fidget in the seat.
  
  This same seat that Cosmo Hamaritus used to sit in. So how did he do this, anyway? Handling the boredom and confinement, you mean. It was not a thought that ever occurred to you before; he never complained, you wouldn't have cared if he did. At least, not at the time. Now is different, though, as you occupy the same space he once haunted. Hamaritus was no introvert; a place with no people in it was no place he wanted to be. But when he was making a cargo run to Chaandria, he wouldn't have been worried about any alien invasion fleet. He would've opened up the fuel valves and made the trip at maximum speed, knowing that if he reached his destination ahead of schedule the extra time would have been his to spend as he please.
  
  In retrospect, Hamaritus wasn't that bad of a character. He had no political agenda of his own, no personal desire to interfere with the management of the mine. He simply went along with the flow, like iron filings lining up with a magnetic field. The problem was the magnetic fields he chose to align himself with. In the years you dealt with him as his employer, you noticed a clear tendency on his part to defer to authority — but he seemed to make a clear distinction between male charisma and female charisma, with a demonstrated preference for the former.
  
  Case in point: Thyos Kokkinopole was his clear favorite, and Hamaritus hung around him with sycophantic regularity, even though Kokkinopole had no management status at the mine — never did, never would. But that wasn't the kind of power Kokkinopole exhibited anyway; he was a loner, someone who wanted people to believe he depended on no one for anything other than a paycheck, even if that image wasn't entirely true. Thyos had been in prison, had punched bosses he didn't like, had gotten women pregnant without lingering to participate in the consequences, and showed no symptoms of remorse for any of it. In reality there were few people left who would hire him, and if he wanted to keep his paychecks coming then there were certain lines he knew he could no longer cross — and those lines were now drawn tightly around him. The idea that he was self-made, above the problems he created for other people, was just a fantasy, but Cosmo Hamaritus ate it up like pudding.
  
  If Kokkinopole wasn't around, then he would be perfectly polite and deferential to Rufus Tello, just like a model employee. And you don't recall ever seeing Hamaritus giving your Dad a hard time. But you? A woman's charismatic quality as a leader was a non-thing; like a distant star in the sky, it couldn't be seen while the sun was shining. He didn't directly disrespect it; he simply didn't respond to it, unless there were no other men in the room. On the rare occasions when you needed something from him, he often wouldn't talk directly to you, but would instead direct his words to Tello, as if you were speaking an incomprehensible language and Rufus was the translator.
  
  It was only on the handful of occasions — and by "handful" you mean the two or three times this ever happened — when you approached Hamaritus directly, with neither Kokkinopole nor Tello anywhere in sight, that he looked you in the eye and conversed with you as if you were an intelligent being who knew a thing or two about running a mine. These were beautiful moments for you in a cruel sort of way, because he was clearly uncomfortable with these one-on-ones. But there were limits to your cruelty, and you never kept him on the skewer for long.
  
  So look at you! Sitting here at the controls of this pod, spending what may very well be your final hours with memories of Cosmo Hamaritus. This is not exactly how you envisioned the end. But how did he handle the blankness of this journey? There must have been something about all these unfilled hours that held some kind of appeal... something about being here alone, with no one watching over him. And perhaps that "appeal" is still here.
  
  To amuse yourself, you begin an intensive search of the cab. It's not a big space, and so there aren't many places to investigate. You plunge your hand in the narrow space between the two seats, and your fingers feel the cold smoothness of a glass bottle. It takes a bit of effort to free the bottle from its hiding place, but you have nothing better to do at the moment. Eventually you maneuver the bottle to a place where you can reach it with your other hand, directly underneath the pilot's seat. Wodson's Reserve Gin, Product of Kaitoo. It's a 750-mL bottle, still two-thirds full. So this was his secret.
  
  You have pulled the stopper and are about to sniff the contents when the proximity alert sounds again.
  
  This time there is no mystery what is approaching you. It is a large object, dun-colored like a large rock, except that this particular rock is moving out of Chaandrian orbit and turning straight toward you. You've never seen an Iib Ch'iib ship up close before, of course, but clearly that's about to change.
  
  Certainly the thing is unlike any ship you've ever seen; rather than constructed in a preconceived design configuration, it looks rather like a termite nest flying on its horizontal axis through space — its "hull" an accretion of mineral deposits instead of an assemblage of high-grade metal alloys. There is no doubt that it has spotted you and is moving to intercept your course, though, because it is moving far more deliberately than the drone did, its hyperbolic course correction about to put it directly in your path.
  
  This is no time to succumb to fear; when you chose to return to Chaandria this morning, this was precisely the moment you were setting yourself up for. Even if you didn't directly contemplate this specific situation, you had to know that something like this was a strong likelihood, right? You already had one anxiety attack earlier today, and the experience didn't suit you. Now is the time to be clear-headed and take definitive action.
  
  You let go of the bottle of Kaitooan gin, and it drifts away. (Probably not a good idea to let it float in the microgravity, but there is no time to secure it.) With your eyes on the ship ahead of you, which appears through the canopy shield just to the left of your family photos, your hands grasp the control stick, awaiting inspiration from your brain.
  
  This termite hill that's coming your way is huge and bulky, whereas Pod A is tiny and highly maneuverable. Somewhere here there must be a clear advantage you can exploit. In many ways, nothing in your life has directly prepared you for this moment — which is to say you've never been a tactical pilot facing down an enemy warship. But you have faced down many other challenges, so rather than dwelling on the fear of what you don't know, you choose to face this developing predicament as a potentially solvable problem, perfectly adapted to your skill set.
  
  So what option do you have? Not one, but two come to mind, both of them requiring the full use of the pod's speed and agility. One is almost counterintuitive: instead of running from the thing you dread, you should speed toward it and buzz so close over its rocky hull that the Iib Ch'iib can't do anything about it.
  
  The other option is to act as if you were going to run, drawing the Iib Ch'iib ship further out of orbit — and then making a quick turn for the planet.
  
  > go in close over the Iib Ch'iib ship.
  There is no time for indecision. With one hand on the flight control stick and the other on the thruster controls, you open the fuel valves, punch the thrusters, and steer the pod directly toward the front of the incoming ship. The rapid acceleration presses you into your seat, requiring you to use all of your available strength to keep your hands on the controls. The gin bottle slams against the panel behind the passenger seat and sends globules of gin radiating throughout the cab.
  
  In a way, this is the type of thing you probably would've done had your father fulfilled your teenaged fantasies and given you this pod a decade ago — not the part where you're flying for your life directly toward a deadly foe, but the part where you are recklessly speeding, barely maintaining control as you push the small ship to its limits. If you can't afford to experience fear, then why not submit to the sheer exhilaration of the moment?
  
  "Whoooooh!" you shriek as the Iib Ch'iib ship grows larger, with the photo of Diden and baby Ihon cheering you on; Dad couldn't be prouder as he stands next to you in your wedding gown. What had been a hum a short time ago is now a roar, as the thrusters burn through quinterium like never before, and the hull creaks and strains under the significant forces of acceleration.
  
  The Iib Ch'iib open fire, their shots making tracer streaks through the vacuum. "Bullets!" you shout defiantly to no one in particular. "What kind of advanced alien race fires bullets?" With a subtle motion of your wrist, the pod rotates to port and the salvo passes harmlessly by. The warship fires more shots, but as the distance between you rapidly decreases, so does their available response time.
  
  Thus you safely pass the leading edge of the mineral-surfaced ship, thrilled that your opening gambit has worked. You are drenched in gin, but at least gin doesn't have a strong smell. There is a small, tear-like dribble on your cheek, which you lap with the tip of your tongue. It can't possibly be this easy to evade these damn insects, though. Can it? After all, this is the fleet that eliminated not only an entire population, but the elite military forces that protected it. How can you be anything more than a mosquito in a minefield of fly swatters?
  
  You do not need to wait long to learn how the Iib Ch'iib plan to respond. Just past a tumorous bulge in the rocky hull of their flying termite hill, you see a cloud of objects moving in your direction. Soon you realize these are small ships, deployed in your honor no doubt. It makes sense; if you're too small for them to shoot down with their artillery of anti-warship guns, then the wiser course of action is to scale their countermeasures accordingly.
  
  Are these little ships manned or unmanned? In this case, will there be a difference? If the descriptions of the Iib Ch'iib that you picked up from Chaandria's final wireless transmissions were accurate, and they are a species with similarities to insects, then perhaps a drone is a drone is a drone, regardless of whether it is mechanical, biological, or otherwise. Experience and ingenuity are not personal traits, but the results of group-think and communal agreement. Right? All of this is purely theoretical, but at the moment it's all you've got.
  
  The bottom line is that the incoming ships intend to engage you in a fight of some kind, one you have no hope of winning. Even if the pod were armed — and it most certainly isn't — the longer you stayed in proximity to the alien fleet, the shorter your lifespan would be. Therefore you decide to double down on your strategy of confusing the enemy by speeding straight toward them.
  
  The proximity alarm has been chirping like a nuthatch in heat. You estimate there are about two dozen craft coming your way, all flying in a swarm-like formation. You decide to angle the pod upward, away from the mothership, and predictably the drone ships follow suit. Then at the last moment, just as you give yourself a matter of seconds before collision, you plunge downward, diving underneath the swarm.
  
  A moment later you clear the aft section of the Iib Ch'iib warship, with a clear view of Big Chodry just beyond. You are nearing the exosphere, and who knows what dangers await you further down. But up here, in the planet's low-orbital space, you still have to deal with the warships and their drone swarms. By sheer good fortune you have cleared the first hurdle, but in your peripheral vision you can see three other termite hills moving toward you, closing the gap created when the first ship moved to intercept you.
  
  Dear old Pod A is going about as fast as she can, hurtling toward Chaandria's upper atmosphere. Entry could be an issue, but you'll deal with that in due time. You maintain your course, heading for that gap in the fleet's formation....
  
  What you don't see in that big blind spot is the return of the first drone swarm. One ship in particular had been less fooled by your antics than its comrades, and it recovered its bearings more quickly. Rather than simply shooting you down, it has decided upon the more guaranteed strategy of ramming you out of the sky. Thus it speeds up on you from behind. The pod's proximity detector, which only looks forward, never sees it.
  
  It is not a direct hit. The drone ship clips your port thruster, sending each of you careening at angles away from each other. You only recognize what it was that hit you when you see the enemy craft spinning away to port. With one thruster forever knocked out of commission, your own pod begins to spin into the atmosphere. Before you pass out from the wild G-forces, you cut the starboard thruster; this won't stop the spiraling, but it won't increase it either.
  
  When next you come to, the pod's outer hull is glowing with the frictional heat as you continue to plunge toward Chaandria like a three-ton knuckleball. Everything beyond is little more than a blur. You feel like you are a prisoner of the centrifugal forces. Once more, you lose consciousness.
  
  This time while you are out of it, your brain flails as if in a feverish dream. An idea, any idea, might be a ledge of solid ground onto which you might step and put an end to the chaos.
  
  And then it comes to you, as stupid as it might be. Your eyes open, and you see that you are in the same dire situation. Seconds might have passed since your previous brief bout with lucidity, or maybe it was minutes. But if you're still in the air, you still have time to try this last act of desperation. You force your right hand toward the control panel, against the Newtonian forces that would pin it to your seat with the rest of your body. The button you need is a bit out of reach, but you are especially motivated to make the extra effort. It is protected by a flip lid, and the act of opening it with your unsteady fingers adds to the ordeal of the situation. But once the tip of your middle finger makes contact, the cover makes no further trouble for you. Fearing that what you're about to do might actually make your situation worse instead of better, you see no other viable options. So you press the button.
  
  Behind you, between the twin thrusters, the pod's emergency 'chute explodes from its compartment. Will it simply rip away, unable to withstand the excessive forces? Or will it tear the pod to shreds instead? What you hope it will do is stabilize your fall through its drag.
  
  One more time. Your eyes reluctantly open, and your brain feels like a mass of queasy jelly. You feel like you've been on the worst merry-go-round ride ever, or that you're hungover from downing an entire case of Hamaritus's gin. Your vision is still spinning, but after a minute of staring blankly, trying to find something on which you can focus, you notice that there is a single horizon before you. The emergency 'chute did its job and has stabilized your downward trajectory.
  
  Having resolved this one problem, it is now time to tackle the next. You need to find a way to crash this pod in such a way that its lone occupant might survive.
  
  > Next page.
  Ruins of Buddhimaanon ka Shahar, an unknown time later.
  
  You don't remember much of the woman who helped you. She was older, her eyes were care-worn, but her hands were firm. Those hands rested on your forehead several times a day with the tenderness of a mother. She seemed to know how to make the breathing easier, and she knew chikitsa would help reduce the pain in your chest; you could tell it was chikitsa by its pungent smell, like cut grass. She doled it out in small doses, placing tiny pinches of the herb on your tongue twice a day.
  
  "Achchha, achchha, achchha," she muttered idly through the grubby bandana that covered her face. The words meant "Good, good, good" in Hindi, but they couldn't have been meant for you, as "good" was hardly an accurate description of your state of health; and at any rate you had no capacity to reply. In your delirium you could not tell where you were, or how you had gotten there. You could not tell how much time had passed, nor could you be certain this wasn't a dream. The woman may have been some symbolic conjuration of your id, tending to your suffering when in reality you suffered alone.
  
  Nevertheless, whether she was a dream or a real human being, the Naya Gyaan woman remained with you for days. From all that you could see in the haze of your consciousness, she had been skilled at the art of motherhood. And yet you had never seen any indication of a family. There was no one else in this place who suffered the fever beside you, also needing her care, nor was there anyone who helped her provide care to you. She stayed as a result of an unknown motivation, caring for you as if you were all that remained to her. In that respect she was not unlike you: a mother without a child, adjusting to the devastating new reality of a Chaandrian existence.
  
  And now she is gone, too. You sit back against the wall, alone in the room in which you awoke from your feverish sleep. You had been laid out across three cushions on the floor, not on your back but on your belly, your arms flat beside you, palms up. You had remained there for many minutes at first, waiting for the strange dreams to return, and slowly realizing that the fever had broken. Then you rolled over, seeing for the first time your surroundings: a school room, round in design, the empty desks of children arrayed in a circle, the teacher's desk at the center, a dusty Chaandrian globe on the corner of that desk, illustrations of the forty-seven characters in the Devanagari alphabet on the walls. Light came in from above, through a dome-shaped skylight above the teacher's desk.
  
  You have been sitting here for a long time now, longer than you had been lying awake on the cushion, waiting for your consciousness to compile, although the "cotton" that seems to fill your head is working against that process. There are only a few basic facts about your existence on which you can be certain at the moment: your name is Theryl Ureste, you are on Chaandria but nowhere near where you wanted to be, and you feel like utter crap. Perhaps it's true you are in better shape than you were a day ago, but crap is still crap.
  
  How long ago was it when you were in the cargo pod, falling to earth like an errant angel? Impossible to tell, but at least you are certain that event did happen: being knocked out of the sky as if by a giant finger, spiraling wildly through the atmosphere, gaining some semblance of control only when the emergency 'chute acted like the tail of a kite and righted your descent long enough for you to engage the antigrav generator. By the time you were done with it, the 'chute had been shredded into colorful rags. With the one thruster destroyed you knew the pod would never leave this planet again, but it did still possess the ability to make a controlled landing. You had been falling so fast, though, that you had to ride the cushion of antigravity for many kilometers, as you had no other braking ability.
  
  Buddhimaanon ka Shahar, the City of the Wise. This was the only recognizable landmark, but seeing the spiraling white spire rising from the city's center told you only one thing: you had arrived at a point on Chaandria that was several thousand kilometers away from your home. That was not a distance you would be able to cover on an antigrav loft alone, and so despite everything you were still effectively no closer to Diden than if you had stayed at the mine.
  
  The pod's antigrav failed about five kilometers outside the city, its ability to keep you in the air degrading steadily until you came to a soft but abrupt landing. You felt like a deflated balloon, running aground after riding the winds as long as you could. The frictional heat from the fall through the upper atmosphere had fused the seals on the hatches, leaving you no choice but to shoot your way out with the plasgun. And then, for the first time in months, you breathed the Chaandrian air.
  
  Your bodily decline began that same day, but there your memories cease being helpful. You seem to recall staggering across the field in which you landed, and then down a road leading toward the city. There were people present, but all were prone, none came to your assistance. Pain filled your lungs instead of air, as if you were breathing water instead of oxygen.
  
  Then the woman, then the troubled dreams on the cushions, then "Achchha, achchha, achchha," and the knowing hand on your forehead checking to see if the fever had broken.
  
  Then waking up here in the empty classroom, where you now sit as your perception comes back into focus. There is a cloth bundle on the floor beside you, almost certainly left there by the woman, like a parting gift before she abandoned you here. There is a note attached: "Agar tum kal tak jeete ho," it says; If you are still alive. Not the most hopeful message, but you concede its fairness: based on what you've just been through, you're as surprised as anyone to still be here.
  
  The only sound you hear is the rattling of some piece of loose sheet metal on the roof of the school, rising and falling noisily in an idle breeze. There are no voices, no sounds of footsteps, no murmurs from other people who are perhaps as sick as you have been. You wish the woman would return, so you could at least tell her Dhanyavaad for her efforts while you were in the grips of whatever strange illness had seized you. Maybe she was forced to move on. Maybe she is obtaining more supplies, and is already on her way back.
  
  Your attention returns to the cloth sack to your right, still in the exact spot where it had been left. If you are still alive, scratched out in barely legible script. "While you are still alive" might be a better way to put it now, so perhaps you should open the sack and see what your prize is. Twine is cinching the package shut, but a slight tug releases the knot. The white fabric falls away, revealing an envelope and a small box. Inside the envelope are a few pinches of dried chikitsa, an offering in the event the pain in your chest returns. Inside the box you find six pieces of van angoor, a popular native fruit from Chaandria's kaee forests. The little bite-sized globes bear a salmon-pink color and taste vaguely like grapes. You haven't had one in months, although for that matter who knows how long it's been since you've eaten anything? However much time has passed, it might be a little bit longer, because right now your stomach feels as though it is filled with wood.
  
  These items amount to a meager supply of rations; either your caregiver hadn't been willing to bet more of her precious resources on someone who was unlikely to live, or these were the only items she could spare.
  
  Then you notice the way two more pieces of twine have been woven though the corners of the cloth itself. Moving the envelope and the box of van angoor aside, you discover the sack is actually a makeshift face mask, the twine long enough to loop over each of your ears. Just what exactly is this supposed to protect you from?
  
  Your face feels sore, as if you had at some point lost a fight with a kaantedaar hedge while you were unconscious. When you touch your hands to your cheeks, dried blood crumbles under your fingers. What has been happening to you here? Are these wounds on your face another symptom of the disease that has rendered you helpless, or the results of some physical injury you can't remember? You're not aware of any illness that would act so swiftly and cause such harm, but maybe this is something that the Iib Ch'iib have brought with them, a plague from their homeworld delivered to humanity with grim efficiency.
  
  Enough time has now passed since you awoke that you decide to attempt movement. Your legs are feeble, and you need to lean against the wall to keep from falling over. But once your body is vertical, you find that you are stable enough to stand. And walk. There is nothing for you in this abandoned classroom, so you head for the door leading to the hall. The door opens with no resistance, and it reveals an equally empty hallway. The Iib Ch'iib attack had occurred on Ravivaar, a day of the week when schools were routinely closed. There would've been no one here, but nevertheless it all seems odd. You've never been inside a school when there were no other people in it.
  
  You see just what you need a few meters down the corridor. Quickly you make your way to the opposite wall, and then follow it down to the entrance to the girls' lavatory, your hand brushing over a mural of Naya Gyaan children marching over an open field, an enormous spaceship behind them; it a stylized depiction of the original human landing on Chaandria, not exactly an historically accurate image but one calculated to evoke patriotic pride. For you, in this particular moment, the mural is beside the point; the painted wall is merely your insurance against falling over as you walk unsteadily toward your destination.
  
  The restroom is dark, and no light comes on when you enter. Leaning against one of the washbasins, you wait for your eyes to adjust to the low light. Slowly your image appears in the mirror before you: gaunt from the prolonged illness and a lack of any caloric intake, matted hair from days of feverish sweating, long lesions across your face where it appears the skin dried severely and began to split open. The gashes are no longer bleeding, so you can only assume the tissue has already begun to heal.
  
  Was the purpose of the mask to help you hide your disfigurement? You turn the faucet handle, and a meager stream of water pours forth. It looks discolored even in the dark, but at least it doesn't smell. You splash it over your face, rinsing as best you can the dried blood and sweat.
  
  Hobbling down the circular corridor, with each classroom you pass arranged along that circle like flowers in a weedy crown, you reach the main entrance to the school. It is at the end of a short side corridor boxed in on both sides by what had been the administrative offices. The school seems to be preserved just as it was on its last day of official use before the attack, as if it could reopen at any time. Nevertheless, it still seems appropriate to refer to it in the past tense, since clearly no one but you and your nameless caregiver have had a need for the place in the last three months.
  
  A black doormat sits before the twin entrances, and you notice the muddy footprints that have been stomped into the coarse fabric. They are larger than what a child would make but about the right size for a woman's foot. The door opens with a loud click from the locking mechanism, which echoes off the silent walls behind you, and then it slides outward to reveal a leaden day. Steps lead downward from the door to a short concrete walkway, which cuts through a wilderness of unmowed grass and toward a cluttered street.
  
  And there lies a scene of grisly chaos. The city street is filled with decaying bodies, all arrayed in the same direction as if a horde of frantic people had collapsed in death as they sought to escape some unseen threat coming from the right. When you see that nearly half of them had been wearing face masks similar to the one the old woman left behind for you, you quickly loop the scratchy twine over your ears to cover your nose and mouth. The corpses in the streets are from people of all ages judging just by the variety of sizes, but they have become so bloated and fetid that you cannot go near them. Did they really all die like this, all at once with their bodies neatly arrayed in the same direction? It seems just as likely that some group of survivors had a hand in the arrangement, laying the dead ritualistically so that their heads pointed eastward, toward the Tomb of the Bhagavaan ke Bachche in the Holy Village of Anant Kaal ka Dvaar.
  
  You close the door and collapse to the floor, overtaken by the scene in the street. It is almost enough to convince you to remain locked up here forever, within the seeming ordinariness of the school. Perhaps this is why your benefactress brought you here to endure your sickness: to sequester you from the abundant death outside.
  
  But she survived, whoever she was, and so far so have you. You are tired, weak, lost, but for reasons you cannot answer you are still alive. If you are, then so might other people, right? Death may surround you, but it does not seem prepared to claim you — not yet. And if a population of survivors exists on this world, however sparse, aren't these now your people? Everyone left alive on Chaandria will be dependent upon each other in ways you might not've ever imagined previously. Each of you will be vulnerable to the cruelties of the Iib Ch'iib, those amoral gods who arrived three months ago from the depths of unexplored space to inflict their horrible judgment on humanity. And you will all face identical odds should you desire an escape from this place, to seek a chance to restart your lives someplace safer.
  
  If Diden survived, and if he somehow managed to keep your child alive, then you are now obligated more than ever to find them. On Chhota Chandrama, the idea of family reunification had seemed more like a moral dilemma, a question with no satisfactory answers: do you honor the memory of your husband and son by saving yourself, or was it necessary to sacrifice your physical safety for the sake of preserving your spiritual sanity? Sure, you could have boarded that shuttle with Tello, Kokkinopole, and the others, but while your body would not have come to harm the deliberate abandonment of those you love would have split your soul in two.
  
  Here, as you sit in the school foyer gathering your resolve, you decide your motives need to be more clear-cut. Why did you hide for so long on Chhota Chandrama, fearful to leave in any direction, either toward or away from harm? The Iib Ch'iib may be agents of amorality, but Theryl Ureste cannot afford to be as distant from Diden and Ihon as she has been, either before or since the attack. However horrific this world has become, the devastation that lies outside this door can't be any worse than what your family has already endured — or what they have succumbed to. Thus you have no choice but to exit the safety of this building and subject yourself to those same horrors. If you don't, then every decision you've made up to this point will be meaningless.
  
  All that being said, there are some practical considerations you must face: How can you learn for certain the fate of your family in the presence of such apocalyptic death? How can you travel to Ummeed ka Shahar, so many hundreds of kilometers away, when the streets are filled with rotting bodies? And at a more primary level, how can you rebuild the strength of your own body, weakened as it has been by the sickness? Clearly you're going to need more than just a handful of pink woodland angoor and a pinch of medicinal herbs to get by.
  
  It does take a few moments for you to collect all of these thoughts, but ultimately you realize that even if you never asked for such seismic changes in your existence, they are here anyway. There is nothing left for you to do but ride the shockwaves.
  
  And so you stand up once again, dust the dirt off your clothes, and turn to face the door. After one deep breath you push it open. The dead may be rotting uncovered in the open air, but you are the survivor who must now walk among them, seeking the people whom you love.