Tiny Suns

They watched their world burn through the cockpit window of the ship that was supposed to save them. Nora stood with eyes the color of despair, her heart-shaped locket burning a scar into her palm. The ship’s metal hummed with the engines keeping them alive; the push and pull of sorrowed lungs breathed echoes that spoke nothing of the hellscape miles beneath them.

Nora moved to the control deck, not feeling her feet at all, but they clicked in a slow thrum as she went: one, two, one, two, one, two. She brushed her hand across the control panel of Lifeline to wipe away the horror-stricken face of the young NASA engineer left to deliver the news. They were too late. War had fallen, and it had consumed.

They watched as tiny suns lit up the surface of their home, beautiful balls of destruction. Nora had screamed when one of the suns landed near her tiny nowhere town, hovering at the edge of daylight. She hoped they had still been sleeping, her husband and his smile that never went quiet, their sweet boy with his own daughter of sunshine. She had been born the day they landed on Lutera12 and Nora had thought it was a sign. This had all been for them after all; the mission, the shining new settlement waiting for humanity to tend its soil. All of it.

Nora, with her eyes turned the color of sorrow, faced her crew. Some of them had fallen to their knees, others stood locked in denial, but that would soon fade. Twelve humans. The entirety of humanity floating in space thousands of miles from anything. The locket that held what remained of her family pulled at Nora to join them, but her journey was not yet finished.

“What do we do?” Ade, the chief scientist, asked.

“Can we even make it back to Lutera?” Grant asked, his eyes searching Nora’s for anything that resembled hope.

“What’s the fucking point? This is it. Mission failed. Just open the hatch and be done with it.” That was Rasha, the co-pilot with her voice of lightning.

Nora looked at them, not feeling much of anything, and said, “We vote. I’m your commander, but this is beyond me now. We do this together.”

“Vote on what? That…” Rasha started, pointing at the planet covered in smoke and fire, “… is what humanity is. Do you really think that we deserve saving?”

“You don’t mean that,” Anders said.

“Yeah, Anders. I do. Plus, do you really expect the twelve of us to repopulate humanity? Or are we just going back to Lutera to die of old age?”

“Stop it, Rasha,” Ade said.

“There’s no one on the other side of the cameras anymore. I can say whatever the fuck I want.”

Young Nina shook, and Nora had to do something. They were hanging on by a thread, and she was their commander. “Rasha, that’s enough. You’ve said enough. Anyone else?”

“I think we should go back to Lutera. We can at least try,” Ade said.

“Rasha has a point, though. What do we do when we get there?” Anders asked.

“We have everything we could ever need there. The settlement was meant to home a hundred people when we returned,” Ade said.

But there weren’t a hundred people anymore. Not in the entire universe.

“Our mission was to save humanity. We can still do that,” Ade continued.

“How?” Nina shook.

“You’re the doctor. How do you think?” Rasha asked.

The crew fell silent, and the engines hummed.

“Noone has to do anything,” Nora said.

“What if some of us don’t want to go back?” Nina asked after a while.

“Whoosh,” Rasha said with a flourish of her arm.

It was cruel, but Nora thought it sounded a peaceful way to go. Better than the fire.

“We need everyone. Especially you, Nina,” Anders said.

Nora didn’t think he only said it because she was the doctor. It gave her hope.

The crew spoke, and Nora went to the window. The suns had finished their show, leaving the atmosphere to glow orange. An ancient saying ran through her head as she watched it:

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

It was fitting in a sad sort of way.

“Nora,” Anders said. “What do you think?”

“I think we should try.” They could do better. Teach better. It would be different this time. Third time’s the charm, right?

Nora stood next to Rasha as she punched in the coordinates for Lutera12. The screen flashed their arrival date, July 2nd, 2263. The engines hummed, and they left the fires of New Earth behind.