For the Good of the World

Chapter One

Via Astralis knew she shouldn't stare at the sun. Trappist-1E's crimson star didn't blaze like the distant golden sun her ancestors had walked beneath, but it still burned. Yet a girl named "Way Revealed by the Stars" could hardly see the sun for the first time without looking, right?

For once, stupidity worked in her favor. As she gawked, fire--invisible to the naked eye but not her nanite-augmented vision--unfurled from the star.

Solar flare.

"Crap." Heart in her throat, she glanced down. A golden amulet rested in her palm, shaped like two clasped hands. She'd planned to place her bulla in the day-side sunlight, say the traditional prayers, and leave the protective necklace--and childhood--behind. So much for that. "How long do I have?"

Holding her breath, she glanced over her shoulder. Beneath an ivory spore tower, her lander glittered like a ruby in the snow. The vessel's crystalline nanite lattice would block the radiation... if she could reach it.

Her mind flew through the calculations at a speed only other Navigators could match. 2.7 million miles from the sun... Flares move 0.19 million miles a second... I've got 15 seconds. "Crap."

Via shoved the amulet in her pocket and ran.

Around her, the sun-kissed snow writhed, spewing forth fuzzy blue creatures. Xenos. She braced for an attack, panting as she coaxed her internal nanites to pump more oxygen to her muscles.

Thank the Eternal Radiance, the xenos ignored her. Boiling up from their burrows by the millions, they took flight at speeds rivaling a lander's lift-off and rose to meet the flare like moths to a flame.

Three minutes later, as she watched a rosy aurora caress the sky from the safety of her lander, three chimes rang between her ears.

She turned her attention to them, and a familiar sense of maternal warmth and regal authority washed over her. Smiling, Via accepted the nanite communique with a mental nudge. "Hello, Mater."

A woman's bronze face, paler than Via's mahogany complexion but with the same dark-brown eyes, filled her mind. Around Patria Astralis's collarbones, the crimson laurel she and Via shared--where hereditary Navigator nanites pooled just under the skin--glowed.

"Oh, thank the Eternal Radiance." Her mother's fading worry lapped against Via's awareness. "Several Terraformers sensed that flare. They say it's a nasty one. I'm so glad you're okay. Were you able to finish the rite before it hit?"

Via's fingers found the amulet in her pocket. She withheld the sensation from her mother, focusing instead on the xenos blocking the sun in a massive bluish-white swarm. Now and then, dead creatures fell from the sky like teardrops, yet most flew on, unaffected by the radiation. "Yes, but barely," she lied. "I could practically feel the gamma rays on my back as I left my bulla in the sunlight. I barely got back to the lander in time."

Embarrassment prickled. She hadn't actually been in as much danger as she'd first believed. Trappist-1E's atmosphere, thickened by the native xenos lifeforms in ways she didn't understand, had blocked most of the flare's energy.

She frowned at the flying creatures, which drifted high in the atmosphere, filling it with a purple haze of released spores. How did the mindless creatures always seem to sense the star's fiery belches and respond so fast? She'd have to ask her grandmother.