Winter World (The Long Winter #1)(55)

The debate about our next move is surprisingly short. We’ve sent the scout drone back to the Janus fleet. It will give the intervention drone the go-ahead to fire the rail guns at Beta. We’ve decided to take a larger sample of the artifact, almost twenty feet square, assuming it breaks as we anticipate. The transport drone that will take the sample back to Earth launched yesterday. In the bubble, during the launch, it occurred to me that the sample would be the first known alien artifact to ever be brought back to Earth: a piece of what we believe to be an enemy, possibly an invader, recovered with the sole purpose of studying it so that we can be ready to kill it and defend ourselves.

I’ve thought a lot about the artifact since I saw the video. Its outer material is clearly pliable, or at least broken into segments small enough to bend into the shape we saw. Countless times during this mission, the crew has debated what exactly the artifacts are. Could they be living creatures? A hive of creatures floating through space? A machine, perhaps a drone similar to the ones we’re launching? Or perhaps it’s a spaceship crewed by beings far smaller than us. All are possibilities. I have no clues that might reveal the truth.

But I will soon.

The mood on the Pax has changed. We’re less talkative. People smile less. We speak in shorter conversations. There’s an urgency, and a tension in the air. This must be how it felt in Pearl Harbor and across America after the attack. We have a sense of foreboding. We know a battle lies ahead. And we know that though it’s one we could never prepare for, it’s a fight we must take up, for our loved ones and for our entire species.

I know Emma felt betrayed that I didn’t tell her what I suspected earlier. I hope she understands now. The burden of it was just too great—is too great. Now that it’s out in the open, the weight of our decisions is crushing us out here. And Emma is already carrying the weight of the deaths of her crew from the ISS. I know it’s eating at her, though she won’t admit it to me. Or maybe even to herself.

I also know that Emma’s worried about her sister and her family. She recorded a video message to them that we sent in the comm brick to Earth (there was plenty of room for data). In fact, all of the crew recorded messages home. I don’t know what most of them said—they were spoken in Chinese, Japanese, German, and Russian—but the messages from Emma, Harry, and Charlotte to their loved ones followed the same pattern: get to safety, hunker down, and I love you.

I’m the only crewmember who didn’t send a message. I considered sending one to my brother, but I doubt he’d even view it. He doesn’t want to hear from me. If this is the end, I have to honor his wishes and leave him in peace.

I’d desperately like to contact my only friend, Oscar, but I can’t give away his location. That would be another kind of betrayal.





We gather in the bubble for the launch of the Midway fleet. The ship vibrates and shakes as the rail launcher discharges. The drones zoom into the black of space, faster than we can see on the screen. We simply watch the launcher status to make sure all systems are functioning.

The drones will travel away from the sun, looking for the mother ship that sent out the artifacts. If there is one. That means the launch vector is behind us, so unlike with the Janus fleet launch, the rail gun recoil is actually propelling us forward. As such, Grigory has poured more energy into the launches. In fact, he’s using too much energy—too much for the Pax to ever make it back to Earth. We might have enough power left to get one escape module back to Earth, but I’m not even certain about that. Using the reactor power is a decision we never debate, one we’ve made automatically. We all know the truth: we have to stay out here. We’re at war. We have to figure out how large our enemy is. Where they are. Our lives are less important than that.

Somehow, I think we all knew this was a one-way trip when we left. There’s no doubt now.

We’re not going home.





Lina is brilliant. She’s devised a compression algorithm for the comm patches that will allow them to send images of the artifact. Her breakthrough was that we don’t need high resolution to know what’s going on—in large part because almost everything in space is black. So her solution is for the drones to take a full image first, but to not store the black pixels or nearly black pixels. They won’t record the sun, either; the drone will simply note the sun’s position, and the software will then fill in the sun and stars in the background. Even better, once an initial image is established, all the drone really needs to relay is what Lina calls “delta caps”: partial images that record how the original image has changed.

The best part is that we’ll be able to see the “images” in real-time. We’re aligning all of the scout drones at our disposal to make a data relay link. Even though we’ll be out of line of sight and far away from the artifact, we’ll see exactly what happens.

The artifacts are killing our world. Soon we’ll strike back. And we’ll be able to witness it.





We’ve been taking our meals at random times, whenever someone gets hungry. Eating smaller, more frequent meals helps us stretch our energy and work longer periods of time. We see each other in passing, in the bubble and in the corridors, but for the most part, everyone is head-down over his or her work. It feels as though we’re pulling apart, like planets that were in a tight orbit around a star that has gone supernova, blasting them away, burned and broken.