Terminal Point by K.M. Ruiz Page A

environmental change, the ruling classes thought Mars was the better option for them, just not for everyone.”
    Kerr shook his head and put the packet back into the box. He resealed it before handing it to the nearest scavenger. He reached for another one, ignoring the twinge of sore muscles all across his back and down his arms. Everyone was past the point of exhaustion, but they kept going. The only person excused from doing heavy lifting was Threnody. She was back in Alpha shuttle, sleeping off the exhaustion of opening the seed bank. Jason checked up on her once every hour or so. She hadn’t woken up yet and wasn’t getting any better.
    The temperature in the three storage vaults was set at -18 degrees Celsius and needed to remain that cold to keep everything viable. They methodically worked their way through each of the vaults, taking half of everything: seeds, cell lines, DNA samples, frozen embryos, and everything else in the inventory. Aside from the boxes of seeds, the frozen zoo would hopefully repopulate empty continents and oceans one day through cloning. None of them expected they would live to see that miracle.
    Lucas wanted more than what they were stealing, but two days was all they could risk on Spitsbergen; one day of recovery, one day of work. Then it would take hours to fly to Antarctica. The environmental systems on the shuttles had been prepped at a near-freezing temperature to handle the cargo. Each was equipped with a limited amount of cold-storage units, and they had to factor in space for the disassembled terraforming machines, but not all the stolen goods would fit in cold storage.
    Looking up from his datapad, Lucas nodded to Jason. “This stack is ready. Get it out of here.”
    â€œRight,” Jason said. He wrapped his telekinesis around the stack of boxes and teleported out. Appearing outside a shuttle in the marked-off arrival zone, Jason waved tiredly at Everett as the other man came down the ramp.
    â€œHow many more?” Everett said as he eyed the pile that Jason had brought out.
    â€œWe’re barely halfway done,” Jason said. “You can expect two more loaded gravlifts in about fifteen minutes.”
    Everett frowned. “We’re full up on three of the shuttles already, and one of the shuttles needs to carry the terraforming machines.”
    â€œLucas needs to check if those are still in working order. It’s been a few hundred years since they were taken apart and stored.”
    â€œTell him to hurry it up then. We need to know in order to calculate volume and weight.”
    Jason shrugged and teleported away, carrying Everett’s concerns with him. Lucas didn’t even look up from the datapad in his hands as Jason finished reporting. “Everything will fit. If we need to make space for the weight, we’ll leave people behind.”
    Jason stared at him. “You said we couldn’t risk leaving any evidence of our passage.”
    â€œNo one will think to look for bodies in the water. Get back to transporting these things to the shuttles. Matron has a stack ready for you in the second vault.”
    Jason left. He knew better than to argue with the man who still had an iron grip on their lives.
    It took hours of nonstop cataloguing, transferring, and pure grunt work to get the job done. Seeds were infinitesimal in weight, but with the amount they were transporting, it quickly added up. Toward the end, they ripped open boxes, taking just one or two packets of the remaining seeds, or just one vial of DNA, one stored embryo. For the more important items—such as algae and countless tree seeds and grains—the amounts were never reduced.
    Only when the last cargo door closed and everyone was settled in for the flight did Lucas strap himself into the navigator’s seat in Alpha shuttle. Matron was piloting again, and Threnody was laid out between them, unconscious and liable to remain that way for hours. The flight deck