Page 4 of Queen Isabella

“So, I was arrested for transporting a rusted three-hundred-year-old projectile weapon from my dig. What about you?” she whispered to Audre.

“Murder. A patient died on my table. They were suffering severe trauma from a hover vessel malfunction,” Audre spat.

Isa’s mouth dropped open. Even with all the safety measures in hovercraft, there were still thousands of casualties every year. To blame the emergency surgeon was absurd.

“I certainly didn’t steal some sort of chemical weapon. I work with computer programs, not chemicals. Two separate kinds of engineering, two separate sectors at Intech. The morons!” Reina muttered through a clenched jaw, steam practically coming from her ears.

She didn’t need to hear what Elizabeth had done. One look at that girl’s face screamed she too was innocent of whatever charges that landed her here.

“I see.” Isa nodded, the picture becoming clearer. “This whole thing was a set-up.”

The government knew full well they weren’t going to get volunteers for this mission. The people they needed to start a sustainable colony were too smart to agree to go along with their hastily cobbled together plan. It was a guaranteed one-way trip and a definite death sentence.

“Mm hmm.” Audre scowled as she again surveyed the winding line steadily disappearing into the spaceship.

“So why do you think it’s all women?” Isa asked.

Audre raised a brow at her and smirked. Isa wasn’t a moron, she knew society and those in charge were biased against women.

“Just humor me. Tell me from your perspective,” Isa snorted. It was the first time she’d laughed in weeks.

“Well, I’d say that the UF wants there to actually be a settlement on Tellus when the special people arrive. They know we’re less prone to violence and dick measuring contests.”

“And we’re not aggressively rebelling, because we’re already used to accepting the garbage that’s been dished out by the patriarchy. God, I’m so sick of this shit,” Isa growled, not caring that she blasphemed in front of perfect strangers.

Making a run for it looked better by the moment. Even if she was killed in the process, it would be worth it to foil the bullshit government’s plan.

“Girl, I’m almost glad I’m leaving this dying rock,” Audre snorted, pointing at the desiccated trees trying to grow in the baked earth beyond the tarmac.

“Oh, we’re going to die out there, too. They may have perfected the stasis technology to put us to sleep for a hundred years, but this ship is guaranteed to have issues,” Reina interjected, like the ray of sunshine she was, though she was only voicing what they were all thinking.

And they weren’t wrong.

“Stasis pods ejecting. Stasis pods ejecting,” the automated ship message snapped Isa out of the memory.

“Shit! Shit! Shit!”

Her eyes widened as the pods visible through the window shot out of the ship, and then she too was spinning through inky blackness. Isa scoured her mind, trying to remember what theemergency instructions had been. But in a situation like this, how was she supposed to remember the brief boring automated message given just before she was put to sleep? She was freaking out then, just like she was now. Her mind spun as her pod also continued its steady spiral through space.

“Oh god!” she gasped at the terrifying view.

Intermixed with the scores of stasis pods was mechanical debris.

Too much ship debris.

Her breath sped up, fogging the window, making it hard to see. Except, she didn’t really need to see the nightmare that was going on out there. She already knew she was fucked. They were all fucked. The Manifest suffered catastrophic damage—obviously. It didn’t matter if they were hundreds of lightyears from Earth or just a few days, no one would come fetch the lady convicts. Tears fell from Isa’s eyes. She knew this was a death sentence, but there’d been a slim chance they might actually reach Tellus. Even after all the horrible things she heard and knew to be true about the voyage, she clung to that small glimmer of hope. She’d prayed that God would look kindly on her, after her government and her own family totally screwed her over.

“Apparently, God really does hate me.” More tears slipped down her cheeks.

Isa pulled in a shocked gasp when there was a loud whoosh and her pod suddenly veered to the right.

That’s the thrusters,she recalled. The pods had the ability to navigate toward something like a ship or planet, if it wasn’t too far away.

That’s when she saw it—the pink sphere in a sea of darkness. Her mouth dropped open.

Tellus is pink, isn’t it?She frantically tried to remember the images of the planet shown on the news feeds. Her heart beatfaster as hope again bloomed. Maybe they’d made it to the distant planet after all.

The pod continued its slow spiral and the planet drifted out of view.

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