* * *
The door hummed open and Nanto pulled the bedcover over her head. Her mind was useless. She couldn’t even sense who had overridden the lock to her quarters.
Sorel’s melodic voice gave her away. “Hiding won’t help, Nanto, and you still have much to offer, even without your bridge-building talent. Now I will give you ten minutes to wash and dress and then we are going outside.”
Outside? On this cesspit of a planet?
The door clicked shut. Nanto sulked for a few moments, but the longer she stayed cocooned in her bed, the more her cheeks burned at the thought of Sorel waiting for her. With a muffled curse, she threw back the cover and swung her feet to the floor.
When Nanto finally opened the door her friend eyed her hair. “Never mind, a brush will not help you now.”
A vast understatement, Nanto decided a short while later.
Clambering up a wall ladder in a long skirt was awkward, but the gale blowing across the top of the ship nearly sent them flying. They squealed and fought their way to a protruding structure on the ship’s hull that would provide a convenient handhold.
Keeping a tight grip on their lifeline, Nanto squinted at their new home between the fingers of the hand protecting her eyes. Splintered fragments of the Asterean fleet littered a cracked mud plain that stretched out to a mountainous horizon. Flashes of electric charge ripped apart the sickly-green sky. A distant sun barely touched the planet with its warmth.
No wonder it was so cold.
Closer to the broken ship, strange aliens fought to secure flapping walls to ramshackle shelters held together by hope. Some were naked despite the horrendous conditions. Others could barely stand upright.
Nanto’s thudding heart could not drown out the eerie howl of wind and beast.
The ship protected them for now, but how long could civilization last in a place as wretched as this?