The Last Hour of Gann by R. Lee Smith Page A

attacked.
    To Amber’s knowledge, Nicci had never hit anyone or anything in her life. It was the last thing she was expecting; she never thought to duck away but only stood gaping as her baby sister slapped her in the forehead, the ear, the chin and the nose. Then Nicci burst into fresh tears and lunged in to hug her, howling, “You promised there wouldn’t be dreams! I want to wake up now! Right now!”
    Amber brought up her arms and hugged her back. If it wasn’t for the mild throbbing of her nose— Nicci was no better at hitting than Amber at dodging—she’d wonder if it had really happened at all. Nicci didn’t hit people and Nicci would never hit her . They were sisters. They were all either of them had left.
    ‘She’s in shock,’ Amber decided. ‘People in shock do weird things.’ “Come on, Nicci,” she said out loud. “Get your bag.”
    “I don’t want it.”
    “Get it anyway. We have to go.”
    Nicci allowed herself to be pulled from the Sleeper and put on her feet, but she made no effort to do more than that. Amber had to pull down her duffel bag and put it in Nicci’s arms, and then had to take her sister by the hand and physically lead her through the door. Nicci moaned when she saw what was waiting outside and refused to step out onto the broken ledge, but Amber didn’t try to force her yet. She didn’t know where to go either. Following the green line back through the ship to the boarding bay was the only thing she could think of; it seemed that the ship had broken cleanly off at the perimeter wall of Mod A, suggesting that the rest of the ship was still there. That it might be a very bad idea to go any deeper into the burning ship did not yet occur to her. She let go of Nicci, who promptly began to cry harder, and eased carefully out along the ledge until she could reach the keypad beside the sealed door that separated the women’s dorms from the rest of the ship. The ship was slanted so that gravity pulled her into the wall, which was lucky because she was not the most coordinated person under the best of conditions. When the door didn’t open at her touch, Amber turned around and put her back to it, utterly lost. Where was she supposed to go now?
    Down.
    She looked down through shifting walls of smoke and saw Mod A and the rest of the Pioneer about five meters below her, all three levels— crew civilian and ship’s functions thank god for all those informative seminars i learned so much —pancaked together in a rumpled ruin, like a burnt blanket someone had tossed on the floor. Beyond it, the blackened scar of the ship’s landing reached out for miles, lifeless.
    But someone was alive. The screaming/sobbing/hysteria had never stopped, never even slackened. People were alive and they weren’t in Mod A, that was for sure.
    Amber crept back along the wall to Nicci. “We have to get down from here,” she said firmly. She felt better, having a goal, a plan. “So we’re going to drop down—”
    “No! No, we can’t! We’ll fall!”
    “It’s not that far, Nicci. We can do this.”
    “We have to stay here, okay? Someone will come and get us, okay?”
    “Maybe,” said Amber, looking doubtfully back at the sealed door that led deeper into the ship and where she knew (in the shocky state she didn’t realize she was in) the crew and the Fleet were mobilizing to meet this emergency. “But it could be a long time before they get to us and the ship is on fire. I’m not waiting. We’re going down.”
    Nicci shook her head frantically, even as her tears subsided. She had to be tugged out onto the ledge, but after that she moved on her own. Giving orders made Amber feel better; taking them had the same effect on Nicci.
    “Right there.” Amber pointed to the little jut that was left in front of the mod door. “That’ll be the shortest drop. Send your bag down first and try to land on it.”
    “You go first, okay?”
    Amber shook her head. “I’ve got to check the other