Chapter Two

Tenley folded another of the cloaks over her arms, trying to ignore the feelings that were bubbling up inside her. Before she could get the garment the rest of the way folded, however, her arms dropped, and she turned toward Michael where he stood across the bedroom, emptying the large wardrobe.

“Are you really sure about this?” she asked.

It felt like she had asked the question dozens of times already since Rain first appeared, but she couldn’t stop the thought from moving through her mind. Michael seemed so confident, but she couldn’t bring herself to feel the same way. She wished that she could. She wished that she could have the same positivity and drive that her husband did. He looked at her and she could see that he was frustrated but was trying not to let that frustration develop into anger toward her. This was challenging for everyone and he was struggling to be sympathetic toward the difficulty she was having even as he felt his own excitement toward the possibilities that were ahead.

“Yes,” he said, dropping the clothes in his arms to the bed. “We’ve been over this. I’ve told you that this is exactly what I want. It’s what I’ve been dreaming of for more than 115 years. It’s what both of us have been dreaming about.”

“Is it?” Tenley asked.

Michael looked at her strangely. He took a step around the bed toward her.

“How many times have we laid right here in this bed talking about Earth? How many times have we thought about what it would have been like if we hadn’t been on the crew and didn’t end up here?”

“I know,” Tenley said, tossing the cloak onto the bed.

She could remember making that cloak. It was one of the first garments that she had made for Michael after they crashed on Uoria. She was ambitious and determined to move forward then. Though she had heard some of the rumblings throughout the crew that they shouldn’t give up and should keep trying to find a way that they could return to Earth or at least communicate with mission control, that hadn’t been her first compulsion. Instead, she went into survival mode. Her mind blocked out any reality beyond what they were experiencing right at that moment and she immediately pushed ahead to make sure that they would be able to get through that first afternoon, then the night, then the next day. Every moment was an accomplishment and she focused entirely on preserving the strength, morale, and cooperation of the crew. It was all too possible that the entirety of the crew would rebel, small factions within them breaking off and choosing to fight against those who didn’t agree with them rather than attempting to cooperate. She strove to prevent that, to keep them united and ensure that whatever they were going to do, they were going to do it together.

As hard as she pushed in those first few hours, days, and weeks to make sure that the rest of the crew stayed focused and they were able to establish the beginnings of a settlement to keep them safe on the strange and foreign planet, Michael had pushed in the opposite direction. He wanted to immediately try to build a vehicle that would sustain them to the nearest space outpost. Even if they were able to get to a small planet that hadn’t yet cooperated with Earth, they would have a chance of utilizing their technology to communicate with mission control and mobilize a rescue unit. She compensated for this pressure with more efforts to settle. He had started pulling apart what was left of the engine of the StarCity in a feeble attempt to restructure a vehicle from the salvaged parts and so she began to pull apart the seats and the carpeting, salvaging the threads and the fibers from them so that she could repurpose them. It took her several long days, but soon she learned to take those threads and weave them into fabric that was soft and warm, ideal for making into cloaks that they could wear to protect them against what they learned was often unpredictable and sometimes bitter weather.

Giving him the cloak was a message. It was meant to tell him not just that she loved him and wanted him to be comfortable, but also that there was more to taking what was left of their mission and giving it new life than trying to get off of Uoria. She wanted to show him that they could have more, that even if they had to stay here for a time, they could turn what they had into what they needed. She never allowed herself to think that they would be there forever.

Then things changed. Time passed. Years went by. Michael abandoned the parts of the engine where they lay and eventually they disappeared, going into some other project and taking on new meaning for the crew. What Tenley had thought was going to be just crisis mode, managing their new reality step by step became daily life and soon thoughts of trying to get off of Uoria had disappeared from her mind. Even when they awoke from the lock imposed on them by the Covra, her goals hadn’t changed. She was happy to just go back to the life that they had established for themselves, even letting the arrival of the Denynso roll over her as though nothing different had happened. Then Rain suddenly appeared again. Everything shifted and the fire within Michael was back.

“You always wanted to go back to Earth,” Michael said. “You always wanted to leave here and go back to the life that we were supposed to have.”

“No, Michael,” Tenley said. “That’s what you wanted. I talked about being on Earth. I wondered what it would be like if we had never left. I never talked about going back. If I had a choice, I would never have thought about Earth again.”

“But why?” Michael asked. “Earth is our home. It’s where we built our life.”

“No,” Tenley said again. “It’s not. It’s where we had the life that we used to have. It’s where we met. But that was only the foundation. That wasn’t our life, Michael. This, right here, is our life.”

“This is far from anything that we ever knew, Tenley. This isn’t a life. When we joined Nyx 23 we were young. Everything was exciting and thrilling. We had no concept of anything that might happen to us. We thought that we were going to be able to save the world and couldn’t possibly face any real consequences. Then we ended up here. It took everything from us.”

“It didn’t take each other,” Tenley said. “We might have been together when we were on that ship, but this is where we really fell in love. This is where we really learned about each other and how to rely on each other. This is where we got married and had our first home together. The settlement is what we know. Uoria is our home now. It’s been more than 115 years since we left Earth. We don’t know anything about that planet now. We don’t have a life there or a home. That’s all gone. What we have is right here. Each other. The life that we built here. Our home. Our marriage.”

Tenley felt her throat tighten with emotion and heard her voice grow high and sharp. She took a breath to calm herself and turned back to the clothing in front of her. Out of the corner of her eye she could see Michael come around the side of the bed toward her. He reached out and took her waist, pulling gently on her until she turned to face him.

“This stopped being an adventure a long time ago, Tenley,” he said softly. “This was our dose of reality, forcing us to realize what could really happen.”

“I don’t think that it’s an adventure,” she said. “That’s not why I want to stay here. I want to stay here because it isn’t an adventure. It’s comfortable. It’s home. I worry that that is why you want to leave.”

“What do you mean?”

“I haven’t forgotten the type of person you were when I first met you. I remember the spark that was inside of you. There was nothing that could scare you. Nothing that could keep you from taking on a challenge or finding that next thrill. As much as you say that you can’t stand being here and that you wish so much that you were back on Earth, I honestly believe that if before we got on the StarCity someone was able to tell you that we weren’t going to complete our mission and instead were going to end up on some distant planet that hadn’t even been identified yet, you wouldn’t have hesitated. You would have thought that was an amazing prospect, something that was even better than just being able to free a prison colony. It’s a whole new world! A new experience! Something that no one has ever seen before. You wouldn’t have seen the danger or even if you did, you would have thought that that just made it even better. That part of you still exists and I think that it’s that part that’s making you so excited to leave here. You are craving another adventure. You want something more than what you have here.”

“That doesn’t mean that I want more than you.”

“It might as well.”

“What about you?” Michael said, sounding almost angry now. “You used to have that fire in you, too. You were the one who found out about the Nyx 23 project and convinced mission control that we could be trusted to be a part of it. Then we got here, and all of that was gone. You didn’t even want to try to get back. You just gave up the second that the StarCity crashed.”

“Gave up?” Tenley asked disbelievingly, pulling out of his hands and taking a step back away from him. “Is that what you think I did?”

“What else am I supposed to think? Everyone was scrambling around trying to figure out how to get back on course or how we were going to contact mission control, but not you. You were just resigned to being here and didn’t care about whether we ever got away.”

“Everyone was scrambling because our ship had just smashed into the ground. People were dead. There was blood and broken glass and twisted metal everywhere. The sky was black with smoke and fires as far as we could see. Don’t you remember any of that? Don’t you remember how terrifying it was when we realized that the ship’s control was gone and that we were just hurtling toward the ground? We didn’t know if we were going to survive the next ten minutes much less the next day or week or month. When we had crashed and we made it out of the ship, all that mattered to me was that we were both breathing. I couldn’t think about the mission anymore. The mission didn’t matter. It was over. It was gone. Our pilot was dead. Our friends were dead. Our ship was destroyed. What did matter was figuring out what we were going to do next. I didn’t give up. I kept going. You were thinking about the past and going backwards. I was making sure that we would have a future.” She drew in a shaking breath. “Now you want to throw all of that away.”

“I don’t want to throw anything away,” Michael said, some of the softness coming back to his voice. “That’s not what I’m doing. I know how hard you worked to make sure that we got the settlement in place and that we all could get back into as normal a life as possible. But I always thought that you wanted to get back to Earth as much as I did.”

“There was a time when I did,” Tenley admitted. “Once we were settled into life and life seemed like life again, I started thinking about going back to Earth and being able to pursue all of those plans that we talked about, things that we never would have been able to do on Uoria. Then we got married. We found out about the Mikana and life became easier and more comfortable. A few years passed. This became home and I stopped thinking about Earth. The only time that it ever really crossed my mind was when you were talking about it. I knew it was something that you wanted so much and I couldn’t bring myself to ask you to stop talking about it. So, I listened to you. I shared your thoughts and your dreams, and I talked about what I thought it might be like if we were there. But I never thought that it would happen. We had already tried everything that we could think of to communicate with Earth or to get off of the planet. Even the Mikana couldn’t help us. We didn’t know about the Denynso. There was nothing that we could do and I didn’t see any point is us continuing to try so hard. It was just wasting the life that we had trying to think of a way to get to a life that we might have had if things had turned out differently.”

“And now?”

“It hasn’t changed. The thought of going back to Earth doesn’t excite me. It doesn’t make happy. It terrifies me. What is the planet like now? What will they think or say or do when they find out that we are who we are? We have no idea what the military or the government are like now. Maybe they won’t want the public to find out anything about us and what happened to us, and they will take steps to make sure that they never do. Here, we know what to expect. Here, we know where we are and what life is like. Here, we’re safe.”

“That’s just the thing,” Michael said. “We aren’t. We aren’t safe. We don’t know what to expect. We didn’t know what to expect when the Covra came and we didn’t know what to expect when the Denynso came. We didn’t know what to expect when Rain came back. Life here isn’t any more predictable than life on Earth, it’s just smaller. We have a chance to get out of this settlement and back to the mission that we thought we were going on in the first place. You heard what Rain had to say about the war that is on Penthos. What’s happening right now has been going on since before we ever left Earth. This is about us just as much as it is about any of the rest. Don’t you want justice? Don’t you want to make sure that everyone who is responsible for this is held accountable?”

“Us being here is what really brought us together,” Tenley said. “If we didn’t crash here, I don’t know if you ever would have wanted to settle down. You might have never figured out a time when you thought you were ready to stop traveling and create a home together. What happens if we leave? If we go right back to Penthos and to whatever is waiting there, what is going to happen to us? And Penthos—do you really want to go back there? Don’t you remember what happened when we were first there? It was horrible. I don’t ever want to see that place again. I don’t want to remember what I saw there any more clearly than I already do. How could you?”

“Because I have always carried with me the horror that we ran away. We didn’t accomplish what we went there to do. When we left Earth it was with the intention of getting to Penthos, finding out as much as we could about the prison colony, and making a show of strength so that we could then mobilize a rescue effort that would free the prisoners and bring the guilty species into custody to be dealt with by the Intergalactic Committee. Instead, we got there and we panicked and then we fled.”

“We freed some of the prisoners,” Tenley protested.

“Yes, a few. But what good did it really do? Rain has already told us that when the Earth military went back to Penthos there was no sign of anyone there. No one. Not the people running the prison colony. Not the prisoners. No one. Those prisoners obviously didn’t get away. I don’t know what happened to them, but it seems to me that us getting them out of their chains didn’t really do them much good. All we did for them was make them fight for themselves again. Then we abandoned them. We just left them.”

“We didn’t just leave them. We followed protocol. We weren’t equipped to handle an assault to that magnitude. That was always the plan, and you know it. We wanted to go there and make a difference, but we knew that if things started to get too intense and dangerous that we were to get back into our ship and immediately reach out to mission control for reinforcements. We had no way of knowing that the Valdicians were going to sabotage our ship and compromise our communication and control systems. That was something that we couldn’t prepare for and that wasn’t our fault. We did what we had to do.”

“And countless people suffered because of it. You might feel differently, but I can’t stand the thought of everything that happened because we left when we did. If we had stood our ground, things might have been different. Mission control would have figured out that we hadn’t responded and would have sent exploratory teams or reached out to roaming guard ships and directed them to us for help. We could have kept the Valdicians there rather than letting them get back to Earth and start all of this.”

“You don’t know that,” Tenley said. “The Valdicians were able to convince the humans that did come to create an alliance and begin the experiments. Who’s to say that they wouldn’t have done that to any of the teams that might have arrived?”

“No one,” Michael relented. “But we don’t know. The point is that we didn’t try then and now we have the chance to make it right. We can’t just throw that chance away.”

“I don’t want to be thrown away either.”

“Tenley. I could never do that. I would never just put you aside. Marrying you wasn’t something that I did because I had to. It wasn’t something that I did because we ended up here and I had no other choice. You’re right. I was wild when we were on Earth and the thought of settling down and not traveling wasn’t something that I ever contemplated. But that doesn’t mean that I thought any less of you. Any time that I thought of the next mission or the next journey, you were always right there with me. That hasn’t changed. Me loving you isn’t reliant on us being disconnected from the rest of existence or having our lives taken from us in the way that they were. I love you.” He stepped up to her again and looked deeply into her eyes. He leaned forward and touched his lips onto each of her eyelids as she closed them. “I love your eyes for everything that they’ve seen and the way that when they look at me I know exactly what you are thinking and feeling.” He kissed either cheek. “I love your face for being the most comforting thing that I saw the entire time that we were on the StarCity and every single day after, and for being what I want to see every morning and every night for the rest of my life.” He kissed her lips and she pressed hers against his, seeking the familiarity of his taste. “I love your lips for the sound of your laugh, for every time that you tell me that you love me, and for always being the one to tell me the things that I need to hear.” He brushed his lips across each of her earlobes. “I love your ears for listening to me when I need so much just to let everything that is inside me out and for never making me feel as though I should be embarrassed for it.”

“Michael…” Tenley breathed, but she felt his fingertip touch her lips.

“Shh,” he said. “I’m not done.” He touched a kiss to the spot just above her heart and she felt herself shiver with the feeling. “I love your heart for the incredible beauty that is there, and the strength. The courage. The determination. The love.” He ran his hands down her arms from her shoulders and intertwined their fingers to lift both hands in front of him so he could kiss the back of each. “I love your arms and your hands for always being there to hold me when I need it, and all of the times that you have been able to manage the work of three people when others around you were giving up.” Michael lowered himself to his knees in front of her and gently moved her shirt up and out of the way so that he could access the skin of her stomach. He ran a trail of kissed from her chest bone down the center of her stomach to her navel, where he let the tip of his tongue dip briefly before looking up at her. “I love your body for everything that it has been able to accomplish and everything else that it will do. I love you not because we’re hidden away from everything or because of all of the danger and challenges that we’ve faced, but in spite of it. I will go on loving you no matter what we do. As long as we are together, that’s all we need.”