Jake Young, Chapter 2 The Lance vessel, a spearhead against the void, sliced through the cosmic sea as it traversed the Sagittarius arm's labyrinthine coils. Starlight, ancient and indifferent, glanced off its hull—a surface etched with the heraldry of Earth's aspirations. Within the ship's heart, nestled in a chamber that buzzed with silent activity, lay Jake Young, his form suspended in the nourishing embrace of cryo-sleep. As he dreamed within his high-tech cocoon, unaware and unaging, the ship bore him and his family across the unfathomable distance, charting a course parallel to the Scutum-Centaurus spiral's sprawling expanse. Outside the protective shell encasing Jake's dormant body, sensors busied themselves with collecting data. They were the ship's eyes, never closing, always watching. They scrutinized suns that burned with a ferocity untouched by human awareness, nebulas blooming like cosmic flowers in the dark garden of space—each a canvas of radiant dust painted in hues no artist on Earth could conceive. The instruments aboard the Lance ship did not discriminate in their hunger for knowledge; they devoured every photon, every particle that crossed their path, encoding the information into streams of binary whispers. These whispers, once captured, shot across the interstellar divide, hurtling back to Earth where eager scientists awaited a trove of secrets from the heavens. Each discovery, a testament to the ambition of those who dared reach beyond the terrestrial cradle, was a legacy written in the stars that Jake, even in slumber, contributed to. Amidst it all, the Lance vessel continued its lonely vigil, a sentinel at the edge of the Milky Way, bearing its quiet passenger towards a destiny written in the constellations. Meanwhile, Earth's voice, once vibrant and constant, stretched thin across the light-years. The messages found their way to the ships' receivers, each packet of data a digital missive casting ripples through the void. Updates from Lance Command punctuated the silence, carrying news of familiar faces, whispering of triumphs and tribulations back home. Letters scrawled with longing, pixelated emotions from family and friends, all funneled into the archives for the crews to peruse upon awakening. But as centuries cascaded like sand through the cosmos's hourglass, the tone of transmissions shifted. The optimism waned, supplanted by an undercurrent of unease. With each successive update, a darker narrative unfolded, the threads of stability fraying, painting a tapestry of a civilization grappling with unseen adversaries. It was amidst this cascade of dire bulletins that a message of unprecedented gravity arrived. It bore such weight that the artificial intelligences, ever-watchful stewards of the Lance fleet, deemed it necessary to shatter the sanctity of hibernation. Tim Young, Commander and patriarch of the vessel entrusted with his lineage, felt the cold bite of reality as he was roused from stasis, his mind torn from the tranquility of induced dreams. "Commander Young," the ship's AI intoned, its voice a dispassionate harbinger of urgency. "A message has arrived you must view immeadiatley." Tim's eyes fluttered open, the serene blue of the cryo-chamber lights washing over him as he rose to consciousness. Confusion laced his initial thoughts, a tangle of slumber-fogged neurons attempting to parse the anomaly of his early revival. One hundred years too soon, the clockwork precision of their mission had been disrupted. "Report," he demanded, his voice a rasp that clawed its way past unused vocal cords. "Please proceed to your terminal, Commander, the AI insisted with a clinical promptness that left no room for argument. Draped in the authority of his position and swathed in the vestiges of dream logic, Tim maneuvered out of the cryo-pod. His limbs, though weak with hibernation's residue, carried him forth with a determination fueled by both duty and dread. At the console, he brushed aside the cobwebs of hypersleep from his intellect, focusing on the screen before him. The messages cascaded down, a relentless stream of text and images documenting two centuries of Earth's strife. Each update, increasingly grim, told of a world unraveling at the seams until the final bulletin painted a stark portrait of silence—a planet muted, its fate obscured by calamity. "Earth..." Tim whispered, the word a hollow echo of what once signified home. He gazed at the stars beyond the viewport, ensnared in a moment of profound isolation, acutely aware that the delicate thread connecting them to their origin might have just snapped. The cold light of distant stars cast their unwavering glow upon the Lance ships, scattered like silver seeds on the edge of the cosmos. Within the confines of his vessel, Commander Tim Young's fingers danced over the holographic console, a gateway to the network of his counterparts across the void. A symphony of digital pings and soft chimes filled the command center as messages streaked between the ships, each carrying the weight of survival and strategy. "Options," Tim murmured, his eyes scanning the data-streams as they wove through space-time, a tapestry of hope and desperation. His voice, though calm, bore the undercurrent of urgency that had taken root in his chest—a knot wound tight with the threads of duty and the unknown. "Re-routing power matrices to the communication relays," Samantha confirmed from an adjacent station, her hands deftly manipulating the controls. Her blonde hair glinted in the stark light, her expression set in concentration as she orchestrated the symphony of science keeping them tethered to one another. "Can we enhance the bandwidth?" Tim asked, not taking his eyes off the screens before him. "Already on it," Samantha replied, her tone both warm and efficient. Weeks melded into a relentless procession of debates and calculations, where every hushed conversation was laden with the gravity of their plight. Ideas sparked and flared out, strategies formed and reformed, as they sought to salvage a future from the cinders of Earth's silence. The crew's shared intellect, once focused on cosmic cartography, now turned to preservation and contingency. Finally, an accord resonated through the network, a decision honed by collective will and necessity. It materialized on the main display, a directive that would chart their course forward, etching new destinies into the fabric of space. "Initiate sequence for rendezvous protocols," Tim commanded, his voice steady, the choice made manifest in the cascade of acknowledgments from the other ships. "Coordinates locked. Propulsion systems calibrated for synchronous arrival," the AI intoned, its voice devoid of the fear or anticipation that hummed beneath the crew's composed veneer. "Let's fold the sails, then," Tim said, a metaphorical nod to the ancient mariners of Earth who once navigated treacherous seas. Now, they sailed a darker ocean, one without shore or horizon, with only starlight to guide their odyssey. "Commencing fold," Samantha announced, initiating the complex sequence that would reel in the vast solar arrays, tucking them away like wings drawn close for protection. As the Lance ships altered their trajectories, aligning with the grand design set forth by their commanders, the vacuum around them remained indifferent to their plight. Yet, within the silent expanse, a spark of human resolve ignited, propelling them toward a new haven, a fresh start amongst the stars—a planet they would call Celestes. "Let there be no mistake," Tim addressed the crew, his gaze sweeping over those who looked to him for assurance, "we are charting more than just a route through the galaxy. We're laying down the tracks for humanity's legacy." "A lonely legacy," echoed Samantha softly, her green eyes reflecting the flicker of console lights and the depth of their shared purpose. *** A sensation akin to the gentle caress of sunlight on chilled skin crept across Jake's consciousness, a herald of life returning to his numb extremities. The cryo-pod, a cocoon of preservation, had relinquished its hold, its interior lights glowing softly in the quiet awakening ritual. In the abyss of space, where time held little meaning, his body embarked upon the deliberate journey from stasis to vitality. Eyelids fluttered open, rebelling against the harshness of artificial beams that bore into retinas unaccustomed to such brilliance. Vision, bleary at first, gradually sharpened as the once-dormant orbs adjusted to the light. The pod stood open, and above him loomed a figure—a woman whose features spoke of many years, etched with the wisdom and wear of age. Her hands, steady and experienced, navigated the array of medical apparatus, infusing warmth into Jake's bloodstream through tubes that tethered him to life. Perplexity clouded his thoughts. The surrounding technological landscape was familiar, yet the presence of this elderly attendant struck a discordant note in the symphony of his expectations. Had an error or accident spurred an untimely return? Perhaps the vessel had veered off course, delivering him not to the frontier of human exploration but back to Earth's embrace. Musings coalesced into a singular question, left unvoiced: Was she a guardian dispatched from terrestrial realms to oversee his reentry into the world? Disoriented, he searched for some semblance of order within the chaos of his reawakening mind. He sought footholds in memories of weekend afternoons spent unraveling scientific queries at fairs or strategies over chessboards—a testament to his analytical prowess. Yet here, amidst the clinical sterility of the command module, such pastimes seemed distant, irrelevant to the immediate puzzle presenting itself. He attempted to articulate his bewilderment, to demand an explanation for this deviation from protocol, but his tongue lay dormant and unresponsive within his mouth—a stubborn relic refusing to acknowledge its master's urgency. The woman, noting his struggle, placed a hand upon him—a touch that radiated reassurance through the faint tremors of his reawakening flesh. "Slowly, don't rush it," she intoned, her voice weaving through the fog of his confusion with strands of inexplicable familiarity. Each syllable seemed to resonate with echoes of conversations long past, yet the source remained tantalizingly out of reach. In the dim luminescence of the pod bay, shadows played across the woman's features as she maintained her vigil. Jake, caught in the liminal space between worlds, could only acquiesce to the gradual thawing of his faculties, trusting in the guidance of this enigmatic caretaker. Jake's eyes tracked her movements with growing clarity. She glided from panel to panel with practiced ease, her fingers dancing over controls, adjusting settings that escaped his understanding for now. Her gray hair was drawn back in a functional knot, strands escaping to frame her weathered face—a map of experience and untold stories. The woman paused in her tasks, turning to a side table where she arranged items with meticulous care. A set of clothing lay neatly folded, its fabric unfamiliar to Jake's recollections. But it was the tray she prepared next that caught and held his attention. Upon it rested a glass filled with a vibrant liquid that captured the ambient light, casting prismatic reflections onto the metal surfaces around them. Beside it, nestled against the curve of the container, was a fruit unlike any he had encountered before. Its rind shimmered with a lustrous purple hue, a stark contrast to the utilitarian grays of the ship's interior. Intrigue kindled within him, a spark of his innate curiosity flaring to life. Here was a puzzle, a piece of this strange new world awaiting his touch, his taste. It was an orange in form, yet not; a cosmic variant born from the stars perhaps, its lineage traced through the constellations they had charted on their journey. That such simple sustenance could bridge the gap between the known and the unknown stirred something deep within Jake—an eagerness to explore, to understand. He watched the woman, this guardian of his awakening, as she completed her preparations. Though her back was turned, there was an air of expectancy about her—as if she were waiting for the moment when his faculties would align, when the questions teeming in his mind would find their voice. For now, he remained silent, absorbing the details of his surroundings, each observation a thread weaving the tapestry of his current reality. As the minutes passed and the room solidified into crisp focus, Jake's thoughts turned to the significance of the woman's task. She was not simply tending to his physical needs but was also curating his reentry into a world profoundly altered. The very existence of the purple fruit served as testament to that change—a harbinger of revelations yet to come. With a clarity that pierced the fog of his long slumber, Jake's tongue loosened, permitting him at last to articulate the query that gnawed at his mind's edge. "Where's my mother?" His voice, though weak, carried the weight of centuries and an unspoken dread. The woman ceased her ministrations, turning toward him with a smile that seemed to cradle a multitude of untold stories. Tenderly, she reached out, her fingers grazing his cheek with the lightness of a leaf dancing on a breeze. "Oh, darling, there's so much to tell you." Her words, suffused with warmth, held back the tides of truth awaiting their moment to break upon his shores. Jake lay still, the touch of her hand anchoring him to this alien reality as he braced for the flood of revelations to come. He regarded the woman with a perplexed scrutiny, her features an echo of familial lineage yet distorted by the passage of unyielding time. "You look like my great-grandmother," he stated, the words slipping out in a mixture of awe and incredulity. The corners of the woman's eyes crinkled as she offered a knowing nod. "I suppose I would," she replied, her voice carrying the weight of untold years and experiences that had etched themselves upon her visage. In the quietude of the command module, now aglow with the gentle luminance of age-old stars peering through its viewports, Jake struggled to reconcile the visage before him with memories that had preserved his family as perennially unaltered. The incongruity gnawed at his sense of continuity, leaving him adrift on a sea of temporal dissonance. A cascade of questions teetered on the edge of Jake's consciousness, each one jostling for primacy as he sought to unravel the enigma that was this woman's presence and her unsettling familiarity. His mind, a whirling vortex of curiosity and confusion, coiled tightly like a spring waiting to unspool in a flurry of inquiries. But before he could voice a single query, an intense heat surged through his veins, a searing tide that swept away coherent thought. Jake's lanky frame, still adjusting to the sudden reanimation, betrayed him; it convulsed with a feverish intensity. Beads of sweat emerged upon his brow, clustering like constellations lost in the vast expanse of his pallid skin. The woman—whose identity seemed to lie just beyond the reach of his understanding—reacted with swift grace. Her hands, lined with the roadmap of years and wisdom, moved deftly, retrieving a dampened towel from the nearby console. With a tenderness that belied her weathered appearance, she pressed the fabric to his forehead, the coolness a balm to the inferno that raged within him. “It’s okay, darling,” she soothed, her tone imbued with a calm that contrasted starkly with the tempest of Jake's internal state. “That’s just your metabolism starting up again. It will pass in a few minutes.” Jake drew in a labored breath, the air hitching in his throat as he rode out the physiological storm. The comfort offered by the cool compress was a lifeline, tethering him back to a reality that felt both alien and achingly familiar. As the heat receded, ebbing away as though it were a wave retreating from the shore after crashing against the rocks of his constitution, Jake found himself clinging to the solace found in the woman's steady gaze. In the aftermath of the flash, a fragile equilibrium settled over him. The encounter left him with an acute awareness of the frailty of his own body—a vessel that had traversed the cosmos while he lay dormant, now awakening to the consequences of such a journey. Exhaustion clung to Jake like a second skin, his chest heaving as the fiery waves of the hot flash subsided. With every labored breath, the heat that had coursed through his veins dissipated, leaving him drained yet inexplicably invigorated. His eyelids, heavy as lead, surrendered to the weight of centuries of slumber, and he succumbed to the darkness that beckoned him. Time lost meaning in the void of unconsciousness, but when he fluttered open his eyes once more, the world around him had softened into shadows. The woman, her role still a mystery to him, sat silently in repose, a gentle snore escaping her as she leaned back in the chair, her features relaxed in sleep. The dim light of the command module cast her in a warm glow, lending an ethereal quality to the scene before him. With a cautious deliberation, Jake eased himself upright, muscles protesting the sudden shift after their long hibernation. He swung his legs over the side of the cryo-pod, noting the peculiar sensation of blood coursing through limbs that had not moved in ages. As his feet met the unforgiving chill of the metal floor, a lightheadedness swept over him, sending the world tilting precariously on its axis. His hands shot out, grasping the edges of the pod with a white-knuckled intensity. The cold metal beneath his fingertips served as an anchor, grounding him in this alien reality that teetered between the familiar and the unknown. The dizziness waned incrementally, each heartbeat a drumbeat marking his gradual return to stability. In the silence that enveloped the chamber, Jake's thoughts became his sole companions, whispering questions that yearned for answers yet remained elusive as shadows dancing at the periphery of his mind. Jake steadied himself against the pod's edge, the cold metal a stark contrast to the heat flushing his skin. A disconcerting sense of weightlessness buffeted him as he attempted to ground himself in the reality that unfolded in slow, dreamlike waves. His feet barely obeyed, tingling with pins and needles as if awakening from their own deep slumber. “If you fall, there won’t be anyone to pick you up,” the woman said, her voice piercing the haze of semi-consciousness. She lifted her head, eyes locking onto Jake’s with an intensity that belied her earlier repose. The warning resonated within Jake's chest, a reminder of his profound isolation despite the presence of this enigmatic figure. He swallowed hard, working saliva into a mouth dry from centuries of disuse. Focusing on the woman’s lined face, Jake’s mind clawed its way toward coherence, latching onto the one anchor that had always given him solace—his family. "Where's my mom and dad?" His voice emerged as a rasp, words tangled in the thick fog of reanimation. The room swirled momentarily before snapping back into focus, revealing the woman’s gaze, which held a depth of knowledge yet to be shared. The directive came not as a suggestion but as a command, its authority rooted in the woman's seasoned voice. "You should sit down," she stated, her tone firm yet not unkind. The room's confines seemed to bend towards her will, anticipating the necessity of compliance. Jake hesitated, his long limbs still grappling with the gravity that anchored him stubbornly to the ship's floor. His fingers released their desperate clutch on the pod, betraying him as they betrayed his desire for independence. He sought his parents, the twin pillars of his life, whose absence now gnawed at the edges of his reality. "Tell me, I want to see them," Jake said, his voice gaining strength as he sought leverage from within the chasm of uncertainty. The words hung between them, laden with a yearning that transcended the millennia of his slumber. There was an urgency in his eyes, the deep-set need for familial connection that had been preserved intact through the ages of cryogenic sleep. The woman observed him, her expression inscrutable as the ancient stars that had silently witnessed their journey across the cosmos. She moved then, with the grace of countless years etched into the lines of her face, and gestured towards a nearby chair constructed from materials harvested beyond Earth's reach. "Sit," she reiterated, softer this time, as if understanding the weight of her revelations would press down upon him more heavily than the gravity of any world. Jake's legs betrayed him, folding as his mind reeled with the enormity of the woman's revelation. He collapsed into the chair, its unfamiliar texture pressing against his skin through the thin fabric of his recovery suit. “There was a war, a terrible war,” she began. “Earth is gone.” "That's not possible," he murmured, his words a protest against history itself. His mind grappled with the concept, trying to fit this catastrophic puzzle piece into the idyllic image of Earth he had preserved within his subconscious. "We're the most enlightened and technologically advanced civilization in history." The woman's nod was solemn, her eyes reflecting the somber hues of a nebula mourning its own demise. Her voice, when she spoke again, carried the weight of centuries, the burden of knowledge that had seen empires rise and fall within the confines of a spacecraft. "Enlightenment does not render us immune to our baser instincts, Jake," she said, the words spoken like a eulogy to a dead world. "Technology, for all its wonders, cannot always prevent or heal the schisms of humanity." Around them, the ship hummed with life—a stark contrast to the stillness that now enveloped Jake's heart. The silence felt oppressive, dense with the ghosts of possibilities that would never come to fruition. In the echo of those quiet moments, Jake could hear the distant whispers of his past life, whispers that were now just relics in the vacuum of space. Jake's fingers gripped the arms of his chair, a lifeline to steadiness as the world he knew shattered into fragments too sharp to touch. The woman before him—her features etched with lines of hardship and wisdom—stood against the stark backdrop of the command module, her shadow long and wavering in the artificial light. "There was a last garbled message from the Destiny," she continued, undeterred by Jake's visible shock. "We’ve had to fill in the blanks and guess at what it said, but we think the Destiny and Aurora launched while under fire from enemy forces." Her hands moved through the air as if she could pluck the words from the nebulous history they now faced. "We don’t know if they made it, and we don’t know if any of the other World Ships that should have been nearing completion by then made it either." The old woman paused long enough for Jake to comprehend what she was saying. “The Lance Ship Commanders, including your father, faced a void darker than the one outside the portholes. They had to make a decision.” To the woman's eyes, a distant resolve returned like the faintest star re-emerging in dawn's light. "It was decided that we need to assume nobody from Earth made it, and that we were the last of humanity." "Where's my mom and dad?" Jake's words emerged sharp and brittle, breaking the tense silence that had fallen between them like a frost. His face, usually animated by inquiry and quick smiles, now lay blank and ashen—a pale canvas on which fear painted its cold hues. The woman took a measured breath, preparing to bridge the chasm that time and events had placed between them. Her posture spoke of strength, even as age bowed her shoulders, an atlas bearing the weight of their new world alone. "Jake," she began, her tone softened by empathy for the son before her, yet firm with the gravity of truth. "Before you can understand where they are, you must come to terms with where we all stand now—in a place far removed from the home we once knew, cast adrift among the stars with only our resilience to guide us." The sterile air of the command module prickled against Jake's skin as he processed the gravity of the woman's revelations. With each word she spoke, the remnants of his old universe seemed to unravel further, leaving him adrift amidst a nebula of uncertainty. "Your father and the others formed a new plan," she continued, her voice a steady beacon in the disorienting fog of his awakening. "The entire Lance Fleet dropped out of hyperspace and drifted while we sent only six Lance ships to deploy their space stations." Jake's brow furrowed, a reflexive skepticism knitting itself across his forehead. He sat upright, the movement languid and cautious as if the very act of confronting this new reality could shatter it—or him—into irreparable fragments. "That wouldn't do any good," he countered, his voice gaining strength despite the tremor that underpinned it. "You need three-hundred Lance ships to make the map." A silence bloomed between them, punctuated only by the soft whirr of machinery and the distant echo of his own pulse. The woman regarded him with an expression both serene and sorrowful, as if she bore witness to the inevitable collision of hope and pragmatism—a cosmic event unfolding within the confines of human flesh and blood. The woman's hands moved with practiced ease, her fingers tracing the air as if she were conducting an invisible orchestra, orchestrating a symphony of history and survival. "It was enough for two percent of the galaxy to be mapped," she replied. Her voice, a rich timbre that seemed to carry the weight of centuries, resonated within the cold metal confines of the command module. "We found a habitable world, and every Lance ship, along with the six command modules from the mapping stations, rendezvoused at the new planet." A pause lingered as her eyes found his, holding them with an intensity that spoke of untold trials. "We've left three of the space stations in orbit to send out a beacon in the hopes that one of the World Ships made it, but we’ve never heard a word from anyone." Jake's gaze drifted away from the woman's face, seeking solace in the familiar yet alien pattern of blinking lights on the control panel. His mind raced to align this fragment of information with the puzzle that had become his existence—stranded in time, severed from the Earth he knew. His tall frame, coiled with tension, unspooled slightly as he sought the equilibrium necessary to process the reality laid before him. "Why was I left in cryo?" he asked, each word punctuated by an effort to transcend the chasm between what was and what could no longer be. His question hung in the sterile air, a testament to the fragility of human comprehension when faced with the vastness of the cosmos and the capriciousness of fate. The old woman's face softened, creases deepening with empathy as she absorbed the shock that reverberated through Jake's query. The room seemed to contract around them, the enormity of their conversation dwarfing the physical space they occupied. "All the children were, it was our only option," she said, her tone imbued with the solemnity of a confession. "Without knowing the future that awaited us here, without assurances of safety or sustenance, your generation represented the hope that humanity might endure beyond the darkness that engulfed our home." As the implications unfolded within his consciousness, Jake felt the familiar pull of analytical thought. It was a welcome distraction, the mechanics of reason providing a bulwark against the tide of emotions threatening to overflow his mental barriers. He folded his arms across his chest, the action instinctive, a shield against the vulnerability of the unknown. "Remember, the Lance Ships were not constructed for colonization,” the old woman explained. “We had limited resources and food. We didn't possess even rudimentary instruments such as shovels or ploughs, nor a sufficient cache of seeds for more than the hydroponic gardens intended for the space station." Her eyes, reflecting a history of untold struggles, fixed upon him. "We didn’t even have weapons for hunting or protection. During the first year alone, we lost sixty-three souls to predators, viruses, and a myriad of other perils we had to comprehend through trial and error. We couldn’t risk humanity’s last generation, you had to be kept safe." As she spoke, the gravity of their plight anchored itself within the recesses of Jake's mind. The realization that he and his peers were shielded, preserved like sacred relics from a civilization lost to calamity, was overwhelming. The infrastructure he took for granted, the scientific achievements he studied—mere memories in the annals of this new world. A burgeoning clarity pierced the veil of disorientation that clouded Jake's thoughts. The woman before him—the architect of their salvation—was not merely a guardian of his slumber. She was the matriarch of the last remnants of Earth, the custodian of their collective future. "Mom?" The question emerged unbidden, a reflexive plea for anchorage in the unfamiliar narrative unfolding before him. “Yes, darling,” she whispered the affirmation. “Where’s Dad?” The woman before him, time-worn and steeped in sorrow, held on to herself as though bracing against the gravity of her own words. “I’m sorry, sweetheart, he passed away three years ago.” A silence, profound and heavy, filled the space between them. It was a void where once there had been laughter, shared glances over dinner, and the reassuring presence of a father. Jake's muscles tensed, an involuntary reaction to a pain that was both new and ancient, echoing across the lost years like ripples on a cosmic scale. Standing with limbs that felt alien in their uncertainty, Jake crossed the minimal distance to the old woman who bore the map of their trials etched into her skin. In a gesture bridging epochs and heartaches, he enveloped her frail form within his embrace—a silent communion of shared grief and nascent resolve. “What do I do now?” he inquired, his voice a hushed tremor amid the vast stillness of the command module. The question lingered, a specter of the unknown that awaited outside the protective shell they inhabited. It was not merely an inquiry into the next immediate step, but a plea for guidance through the labyrinthine future that lay beyond the threshold of cryo-induced dreams. Samantha's voice, a susurration that seemed to carry the weight of centuries, barely disturbed the silence. "We almost waited too long," she whispered, her eyes reflecting a history too vast for the confines of the command module. "There are only twenty-five of my generation left. It’s time for you to leave this command module and join the other children. The colony is yours now." Jake nodded, feeling the mantle of responsibility settle upon his shoulders like the gravity of a new world. His mother's declaration did not come as a surprise, yet the weight of its truth pressed upon him with an unexpected force. He was a link in a chain stretching into an unforeseen future. He released the woman he barely recognized, and crossed over to the hatch. The portal to the new world beyond cycled open, and natural light stung at his eyes. He stepped outside and looked up at the crude dome that was forged from the Lance ships. Standing in a group, huddled together for safety, or comfort, stood the three-hundred children and teenagers of the Lance Project–all staring at him. Samantha came up alongside Jake. “They’re waiting for you.” “What? Why?” “Darling, you are the oldest by three days, you are the Colony Leader. They’re waiting for you to take command and tell them what to do.”