Odessa headed for the changing room, hoping that Athena’s one thing was more sensible than what the rest of them had picked.

  Chaser was leaning against the wall outside the door. He seemed surprised to see her coming from this direction.

  “Hey,” he said. “I thought you’d be getting dressed already?”

  “I’m about to,” she replied.

  “Oh, well I just wanted to wish you luck.”

  “Thanks.” Their conversation felt so stiff, like they’d forgotten how to talk to one another.

  As if Chaser felt the same way, he suddenly grinned and remarked, “And I wanted to know who the cute blonde was?”

  That was more like a Chaser comment. Odessa smiled. “The blonde? That’s Dash. And he’s taken, by Jade, the green-haired girl.”

  “Bummer.”

  She could still see the playful sparkle in his eyes. She’d missed that.

  But then she thought of Bambi, who she’d just seen in the main hangar. She still remembered the way the woman had looked before she’d told Odessa what Chaser had done. That pained, apologetic expression was somehow even worse now, given she knew how unemotional Bambi was most of the time. Seeing them both in such a short period made everything feel so recent, so raw. A part of her wanted to forgive him, but another part was still so angry. No, not angry. Afraid.

  Somehow this was more terrifying than sitting on top of a giant explosion.

  So she smiled and replied, “I’ll see you when we come back down.” She just needed a little more time. Maybe a different perspective. Space was a very different perspective.

  Half an hour later, Odessa was back in the main hangar all suited up, final suit and health checks all done. She found Amanda leaning over the railing overlooking the pit. She was talking to her husband, Sirius, who was in charge of the launch day pit crew.

  The rocket had to be constructed in secret so they’d done it inside. But inside was also mission control. Launching the rocket from here was not an option, even with a firestarter of Amanda’s caliber. Launch had to be done outside. Amanda had said, as long as it was outside, right next to the building was fine, but just to be safe they were taking the rocket a bit further away than that.

  Initially, Odessa had assumed they could use telekinesis, until Amanda had pointed out exactly how many people that would require and the coordination involved in such a feat. Better to have just a few telekinetics for minor adjustments and most of the movement force come from elsewhere. It was the same issue with strongarms and most other magics. The rocket was just too big. Coal had said he might be able to summon it, although he’d admitted that even he had never summoned something quite that big. Nobody wanted to risk years of work on a maybe. So they had built a ramp.

  It was a very very subtle ramp, only a fraction of a degree in decline and then incline again up to the launch pad. The rocket sat in a cradle, built on top of a large sled at one end of the ramp, locked into place. Stella had managed to find a precision ice elemental who was going to coat the entire ramp with a thin layer of ice, hopefully in a reasonably uniform manner. A small group of telekinetics would walk alongside the rocket making minor stability adjustments as needed.

  “Is everything set?” Odessa asked.

  “As ready as it can be. How are you feeling?”

  “Terrified.” Odessa grinned. She turned to Sirius. “How’s the rocket relocation team doing?”

  Sirius was a big guy, bigger than Dash, bigger than anyone. Quite intimidating to look at, and a strongarm to boot, but he had the soft spoken yet sturdy way of speaking that made one want to listen and be useful. It was like everything he said had been considered very carefully and tested thoroughly. That might make it seem like he wouldn’t be very quick in a crisis but the truth of it was that quick thinking was one of the few traits he shared with his sister, Cat. That and the height, jet black hair and green eyes. Sirius could rapidly respond to a crisis and do it well. He was just a lot more polite about it than Cat was. That made him perfect for running the rocket relocation team. Any adjustments to the rocket movement would need to be communicated quickly and calmly. Sirius was in charge of watching the readouts from the laser that would monitor the rocket’s movement. Leave anything too long and the entire thing could topple over.

  Sirius gave a single nod. “Ready to relocate. You’ll let me know if the moon’s actually made of cheese when you get up there right?”

  Odessa snorted. “Sure, I’ll let you know.”

  Sirius gave a nod of appreciation. He wasn’t one for showing too much emotion. That was probably why he and Amanda worked so well together since she seemed able to read anyone.

  “What’s up?” Amanda asked Odessa once Sirius had returned to preparations.

  “Stella said there’s a dragon circling.”

  Amanda nodded. “She did seem more rattled than usual.”

  Odessa laughed. “Than usual? Stella’s always so put together.”

  Amanda shook her head. “That’s only because she tries so hard to hide it. She overcompensates and ends up too stiff.”

  “Meanwhile I’m a nervous wreck.” Odessa held out a shaky hand. She wasn’t sure if she was shaking from nerves or excitement. Maybe both.

  “You’re the one who’s brave enough to admit it,” Amanda replied as if it were a simple fact and not the best compliment Odessa had heard that week. “I can handle a few dragons,” Amanda added with a brief smile. “And the rocket should be fast enough. It won’t be subtle though. I think that’s what Stella’s worried about.”

  “What if there are too many or they go for the building?” Odessa asked. It was stuff they’d gone over but there was no such thing as too prepared.

  “We have an evacuation and distraction plan in place and backups of everything essential. Command can move easy. As for you guys, the rocket should move fast enough as long as you can clear the takeoff zone.”

  Odessa nodded. Clearing takeoff was the hard part. Part of the appeal in the ice ramp was the ability to move fast.

  “She wouldn’t send you in to space if she thought it was too dangerous.” Amanda said.

  Again Odessa nodded. “Yeah...” But Odessa wasn’t sure about how sure Stella was. Theoretically, everything else should work though. “You ever have that uncanny feeling like you’re forgetting something?” Odessa asked.

  “Like the dragons?” Cat asked from behind her.

  Odessa groaned. “I haven’t forgotten about the dragons.”

  “You sure, cause there’s one circling. That means your window just dropped by half,” Cat insisted.

  Odessa glanced at Amanda who looked unsure. For everything she loved about the woman, math wasn’t Amanda’s strong suit. Cat was better at it but Odessa doubted she’d actually done the calculations. Cat could be clever but she mostly operated on instinct.

  “How high would you say it is?” Odessa asked as she reached for a pen and paper. She wasn’t doing this math in her head.

  Cat shrugged. “5 km, let’s say 7 km worst case.”

  “Wait, wouldn’t 5 km be worse?” Amanda asked.

  Odessa shook her head as she sketched a quick diagram and wrote down some numbers. “No, the risk is midair interception, right after launch, not at or before launch. The more height it gets, the closer it is to us in the air but more importantly, the more speed it can pick up with the help of gravity.”

  “Right, it dives from above.” Amanda nodded as she understood.

  “So let’s do the math,” Odessa said. “We assumed a few minutes for a dragon to notice us and launch but if it’s already circling-”

  “Then it’s already on high alert,” Cat said with a smirk as she crossed her arms and took a seat on the edge of a nearby desk.

  Odessa ignored her smirk. She was pretty sure the math was still going to work out in their favor. They’d done the calculations before. She just wanted to double check.

  “Okay, so we’re about 50 km from the mountains right?” Odessa asked.

  Cat shrugged. “More or less.”

  Odessa stared at her but it wasn’t until Cat caught Amanda’s look that she buckled. Amanda had five kids and had long since perfected The Stare. Even Cat wasn’t immune to The Stare.

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  Cat nodded. Shifting a little under the weight of Amanda’s gaze she replied more seriously, “Yeah, 50 km conservatively, the dragon’s in little further in.”

  “Okay, and what’s the top speed for a dragon?” Odessa turned to Amanda. They probably both knew, but dragons were Amanda’s specialty. She trained animals for a living, mostly ungulates, but sometimes dragons. Her pyrokinesis gave her an edge there.

  “Dive speed?” Amanda asked.

  Odessa nodded.

  “900 kmph.”

  Odessa’s writing hand hovered over the paper thinking about that for a moment. She hadn’t remembered them being that fast. It was worst case though. She wrote it down then drew a triangle. “The height is basically negligible,” she remarked to no one in particular.

  “I thought you said higher was worse?” Amanda asked in a confused voice.

  Odessa nodded. “I did but, compared to the horizontal distance, the dragon can drop its height in seconds. We can just assume a minimum flight distance of 50 km I think, which at 900 kmph gives us an intercept of 3 minutes 30 seconds.” She turned to Sirius who had rejoined them, “How long is slide time? 90 seconds?”

  “90 seconds,” he agreed.

  “And once we’re locked until we hit 20 km up... that should be high enough right?” She turned to Amanda.

  Amanda shrugged.

  Odessa scrawled some more numbers down. “From launch pad lock time to 20 km up... that gives, 2 minutes. 2 minutes plus 90 seconds is...” She slowly looked up at the others as she said the answer, “3 minutes 30 seconds.”

  “Good luck being dragon food,” Cat quipped.

  “Why are you even here?” Odessa finally snapped at her.

  Cat shrugged. “Entertainment.”

  Odessa took a breath then replied in a calmer tone, “But that’s worst case and using dive speed which implies almost vertical but the horizontal makes up most of the distance, so we should be good.”

  Cat shrugged again. “It’s your fune-”

  “Cat!” It was Amanda who snapped at her this time, and in a voice that made Odessa want to sit up straight and pay attention.

  Cat clamped her jaw shut and said no more.

  “Indi!” Odessa called. Indi was their math genius.

  “Hi.” Indi popped her head up from behind her computer.

  “Can you come check something for me?”

  “Sure.”

  Indi soon concluded, “...about 30 seconds to a minute extra safety window. Let’s say 30 seconds.”

  “30 seconds for what?” asked Dash as he and Jade joined them, also dressed in their launch suits. But he figured it out himself before Odessa could answer. “Oh, dragon math,” he remarked as he studied the page.

  “Yeah, dragon math,” Odessa agreed.

  “Can we speed up slide time?” Dash asked, looking to Sirius.

  But even Odessa could see that Sirius didn’t look happy about that idea.

  She shook her head. “Better not to change anything last minute. 30 seconds is heaps.” She’d survived narrower calls before.

  “Dash certainly thinks so,” Jade remarked in such a deadpan delivery that it took a few moments for anyone to realise what she was referring to.

  “Oi.” Dash said, “It was plenty enough for you.”

  “We were on a schedule,” replied Jade.

  Odessa narrowed her eyes. “Hang on, you guys were ahead of me. Why’d it take you so long to get suited up?”

  “Just saying goodbye to the earth,” Dash replied in a perfectly casual tone.

  It earned him a snort from Amanda, a squeak from Indi, and a cocked eyebrow from Cat. Sirius’s expression barely changed from his usual stony look.

  “Okay,” Dash said, taking on a serious tone. “Let’s do this.”

  “Where are the other two?” Odessa asked.

  “Already on board.”

  Dash and Jade headed to join them while most of the others dissipated back to their usual spaces. Only Amanda remained.

  Odessa stared at the massive several story high glass doors the rocket would soon be moving through. “Once the shields are lifted there’s no backing out,” she remarked under her breath.

  “There’s no backing out for the rocket,” Amanda corrected. “Odessa, I likely can’t distract a dragon away from a chunk of metal that big. If there’s any delay between the shields dropping and launch I want you to evacuate okay? Don’t cut things that close.”

  Odessa nodded. It was hard to think of abandoning years of work. She doubted it could come to that though.

  Odessa took her time climbing up the stairs to the shuttle hatch, her mind running through a last minute checklist.

  More people were in the hangar than usual, not just the pit crew, but investors and friends too. She spotted Chaser in the crowd. He waved.

  She waved back.

  What if she didn’t survive this trip? What would that do to him? Chaser had lost a lot of people in his life. She could understand why he’d tried to spare her from it, even if his methods hadn’t been the best.

  Her gaze turned back to the rocket and she knew she was making the right choice. One could live their life without risk but then what kind of life would that be?

  The hatch opened into the lower deck of their two deck shuttle. It felt as if she were climbing into a room that had been laid on its side. She’d have to get used to that she supposed. There wasn’t any up or down in space, not without gravity.

  The others were already strapped in and all were deadly silent. This was serious now and they all knew it. With the exception of Athena, all of them had trained together, not just in lab test scenarios but also a few outdoor day trips; kayaking, climbing, canyoneering, caving, diving. Odessa had wanted to get to know them under a variety of conditions, to understand how they operated under real world high pressure situations. Dash might initially come off as a clown but he knew when to reign it in. Carmen could be quiet but she would speak up if it was important. And Jade, well Jade was always just Jade, easy-going and practical. She could be a little slow to react sometimes but she never panicked. Athena was a wild card, maybe more so than Odessa had thought. Odessa knew what Athena was like serving drinks behind a bar, but how was she going to handle space? What if she panicked once they were up there?

  Odessa pushed the worries to the back of her mind. Stella had made that call. Stella knew what she was doing, right?

  But the memory of the worried look on Stella’s face lingered in the back of Odessa’s mind.

  She took her seat in the back row beside Carmen and Athena. Dash was the pilot so he was up front. Jade was backup pilot. And Carmen was in charge of comms, navigation, and monitoring of other flight instrument data. Odessa monitored life support data.

  Odessa pulled her straps tight and then double checked them again. Finally, after getting as comfortable as she could, she checked them a third time. Then they waited in silence.

  Eventually Stella’s voice came over the comms. “Commencing final pre-launch checks. Astronauts confirm ready? Carmen?”

  “Check.”

  “Odessa?”

  “Check.”

  “Jade?”

  “Check.”

  “Athena?”

  “Check.”

  “Dash?”

  “Check.”

  “All structural and vehicle checks complete. Fuel loaded. Can I get a weather report?” Stella asked.

  “Clear as freshly polished bonnet.” Cat’s hard-edge voice carried down the line. “Dragon still circling but he hasn’t come any closer.” She was probably up on the roof.

  “Telekinetics and slide crew?”

  “Ready,” reported Sirius.

  “Burn control?”

  “Ready,” said Amanda.

  They all sounded so serious, except Cat, who sounded a strange mix of both excited and bored, like she’d been waiting all day for this moment to happen. Odessa wouldn’t have been surprised if Cat had popcorn in her hands. It was a weirdly comforting thought. She probably didn’t but the imagery stuck and Odessa grasped the idea of something silly as a lifeline.

  “Systems check?”

  “Yep, mostly good,” Indi reported.

  There was a moment of silence.

  “Come again?” Stella queried.

  “Oh uh, yep, all good. Everything’s fine. Ready to go!” Odessa had long since learned that Indi was almost incapable of any level of seriousness and there were few who could achieve her natural levels of enthusiasm.

  There was some more silence, likely while Stella confirmed some things on the ground, then the checklist continued.

  “Payloads secure. Engine check complete. Life support good. Switching to internal power now.”

  They waited as all external cables were disconnected. Then another round of checks were done, mostly internal systems checks this time as well as one last astronaut check. This was the last chance to abort without sacrificing the rocket and shuttle. Odessa reminded herself to breathe.

  “Recheck on that dragon position?”

  “Still holding,” reported Cat, sounding far more serious now.

  “Raise the door.”

  Inside the shuttle, the astronauts could see nothing but glimpses of blue sky through the shuttle’s windows and the hangar’s glass ceiling. Other than the sound coming over the comms, they had no way to know what was happening on the ground.

  “Ice the ramp.”

  “Ramp iced. Profile checked. Good to slide,” reported Sirius.

  “Commencing countdown to locks release. 10... 9... 8...

  3... 2... 1...

  “Release the locks and drop the shields.”

  Silence. Not a peep of sound from in that shuttle for several agonising seconds. Then, very slowly, the whole shuttle started moving sideways.

  It was an uncanny feeling moving sideways in something that was supposed to go up. The initial movement was subtle, not felt so much as seen through the window and the glass panes of the hangar roof began to shift. But slowly they picked up speed. The movement became more obvious. Vibrations jostled them. The sky opened up as they left the hangar building. It felt wrong somehow and without a horizon line and only a narrow line of sight to the front windows, Odessa felt like most of her senses had been cut off. It made her realise just how much she relied on sight.

  The air in front of her had a metallic tang to it and a dryness that made her want to swallow often.

  She could swear that with every microshift and creaking jolt that the whole thing was going to topple.

  “Dragon inbound.” There was not a hint of fear in Cat’s voice when it sounded over the comms. Instead she sounded sturdy, decisive, and deadly serious.

  Unable to see what they all could, Odessa imagined it. She closed her eyes and she was back in her van, stupidly driving through the Dragon Mountains. She remembered what it sounded like to hear claws tearing through metal.

  Odessa often kept her nails trim by biting them but there had been a few weeks back during her university days that she had let them grow much longer than she normally would, and then she had gone rock-climbing at the uni gym. The sound her chalked up nails had made on that fake rock as she’d scrambled her way upward had been something truly awful. But even that was nothing compared to the horrifying sound of dragon claws ripping a car apart.

  It was coming for them now.

  Odessa reminded herself that in less than three minutes they’d be out of dragon range and on the way to the moon. It was shaping up to be the longest three minutes of her life.

  Then came an even more terrifying statement.

  “We’ve got a crack in the ice,” came Sirius’s voice, far too calm to match the words he was saying.

  Odessa imagined them tipping, falling, a spark igniting...

  Her forecast of destruction was cut off by Amanda.

  “On it.”

  And then nothing for several seconds as Odessa waited for an explosion that never came. What had Amanda done to fix it? Melted the ice back together with her fire?

  It was possible. Amanda was more skilled with fire than any witch had any right to be.

  “30 seconds until lockdown,” came the update. That meant 30 seconds until launch.

  “Dragon still inbound.”

  But how far away was it? Maybe they should have set up decoys after all? Amanda hadn’t thought it would work though. A big rocket like this was just too juicy.

  Every nerve in Odessa’s body screamed at her to do something, fight, flee, prepare, but all she could do was sit there.

  There was still time to abort.

  But the crack in the ice hadn’t delayed anything. If she bailed out now she’d never forgive herself.

  Beside her sat four others so silent that they could have been dead.

  “Launchpad reached. Locks engaged. Launch sequence countdown commencing.”

  At this point not even Stella had control anymore. The ignition was automated from the moment the ground locks connected to the rocket cradle.

  10...

  Last chance to quit.

  9...

  Okay now is really the last chance to quit.

  8...

  Really really last chance.

  7...

  I should think about something else.

  6...

  Something cool.

  5...

  I wonder how close the dragon is now?

  4...

  Can they measure it?

  3...

  Oh gods.

  2...

  Yeah, it’s too late to quit.

  1...

  Odessa felt a sudden sense of calm. It was all out of her hands now. At least for this bit. They were just passengers.