"Gods, Liam, what's up with you?" Riley asked her father. "You haven't said a word since suit check." Work sessions on the Mars surface had always been their special time, and she'd been looking forward to this all week. But her dad was unusually silent today.
       The lift shuddered to a halt, and they emerged onto the surface. All she heard was the sound of her breath in her helmet, mingling with Liam's via her audio input.
       Liam turned his helmet toward her so she could see his face. "Here's an idea," he said, with his musical Irish lilt. "Call me Dad."
       "I'm almost sixteen. I'll call you whatever I please."
       "Sixteen Earth years. Not quite nine, Martian. A mere babe."
       Riley flicked gloved fingers at him, their colony's universal gesture for "Stuff it."
       At least he was lightening up.
       She spun around, savoring the shades of red, brown, and umber in the low hummocks of the Phlegra Montes, hunched over the striated rock of their little valley. Phobos and Deimos sketched irregular, fuzzy spheres in the yellow sky. Tomorrow, the haze would give way to sheets of dust as one of the planet's infrequent but often intense dust storms moved into the area.
       She bounded to catch up to Liam on the path to the solar panel farm, her gait natural, at home in the one-third gravity she'd always known. In the confines of their valley, the vast array looked closer than it was.
       "Sorry you never got a decent suit, Riles," he said.
       "Ah, but I'm grand," she said, mocking his accent.
       "Mars tries to kill us a thousand ways, yeah? An old suit makes it easier."
        "You are a ray of sunshine today. Anyway, I bet the transport brought suits." Riley put her gloves together in mock prayer. "Gods, I hope the Consortium sent chocolate."
       She stuck her tongue out as they passed the colony's single remaining shuttle. The next day it would ferry a large group of their fellow Martians to the Consortium transport in close orbit. The transport would take the settlers to Earth while the shuttle returned with much-needed supplies.
       Riley's older sister, Jade, would be on the shuttle, heading Earthside to live with Liam's mother in Dublin. She ought to feel sad about that, she knew, but the truth was she thought Jade was a shallow airhead, and Jade considered Riley a boring nerd. Riley was too honest with herself to pretend she would miss her sister.
       "I don't know why so many people are going," Riley grumbled. "I'm not leaving Mars till they drag me out in a stasis pod."
       "Can't blame 'em," Liam said. "After the shipment we're collecting tomorrow, the Consortium's done with us, heading off to screw up mining the asteroids just like they screwed up Mars. This is the best deal they're going to offer: free transport, on-board geehab, resettlement stipend."
        "Who needs the stupid Consortium? You guys keep saying it's only a matter of time before we get new investors. Or those ESA science contracts."
       Liam didn't answer. He seemed distracted. Riley frowned in frustration. Liam was the guy who kept their crumbling infrastructure going; once they returned downside, she would have to get in line with all the other people competing for his time.
       After a few minutes, they arrived at a metal column with a bent, dirt-covered control box at the corner of the solar array. Liam opened the cover of the box, and they got to work.
       "I'll trade out the dead fuel cells. You crank," he said.
       Riley began moving the rows of panels from angled to vertical, a kluge Liam's team had fixed up to keep the sticky dust from accumulating during a storm. While she worked, her gaze travelled over the landscape of her childhood, littered with the debris of the Consortium's failures.
       Although their teachers liked to talk about the science work that went on in the colony, the kids weren't dummies. They knew that the Consortium had created their home to make money off the planet's minerals and water ice. Now everyone had been forced to face up to reality: the investors had never made even a fraction of the fortune they'd anticipated.
       The giant conglomerate had begun to withdraw its resources a few years earlier, making vague promises about repurposing the colony's operations. Only recently had it become clear that they considered Riley's home a permanent liability.
       She'd listened to her parents talk. She knew the Consortium had only offered passage to Earth to avoid bad publicity. Those who chose to stay, the investors had made clear, were on their own. But Riley wasn't worried. The people who were staying were smart. They would find a way to keep going.
       As she cranked the last few rows of panels vertical, her gaze swept past the aging chemical refueling tower that stood sentinel over the valley. It was meant to service the heavily laden barges the investors thought they would be sending to Earth. In fact, only a few trawlers had made that journey.
       Near the tower crouched a silent mech army, weathered to a dull reddish-brown, their outsized arms hanging at their sides. In the early years of the colony, the borebots had scooped out the underground habitat and planted conduit under the surface to extract the water and minerals.
       Riley blew them a kiss, smiling to herself about the secret she would share with Liam later that day.
       "You know those are junk, right?" Liam said.
       "But they work in dust."
       "We don't muck about on the surface during storms, do we? And we never found another use for the dear old things."
       The Consortium engineers had used old-school radar for the borebots' location and positioning. Radar was less accurate than optical systems but also less hampered by the tiny dust particles that blanketed the planet on a regular basis. The borebots were able to work straight through storms during the crucial early phases of building.
       Just past the borebots, an out-of-commission rover listed to one side, treads long gone. The colony kept its airlock and life support working on minimal power as an emergency shelter.
       A year ago, Riley's sister and her friends had disabled their suit trackers so they could sneak out to the rover. The day after one of their forays, a geologist had popped into the old vehicle to patch a leak in her suit. The woman had returned to the colony fuming: the rover's life support had been so depleted that she'd barely had time to make the repair. Jade had taken a lot of crap for that stunt.
       It was a short, bumpy trek from the solar array to their small nuclear reactors, cached behind a wall of thick rock. The colony farmed most of their power from solar to prolong the life of their remaining nukes, but they would need the reactors to get through the storm.
       "Do you know if your mother checked the nukes?" Liam asked. Riley and Jade's mom ran the computer center. She kept a close remote eye on the nukes, a vital resource that they would have difficulty replacing.
       Riley shook her head. "I didn't see her this morning."
       "She likely did, with the storm on the way. I'll just double-check, then." Liam spoke into the headset snugged into his helmet. "Nan-Shing, do you read?"
       They waited a beat, then another.
       "Riles, you try."
       "Mom? Surface to Mom, do you read?" Riley said. Riley's mom had squelched her attempt to call her "Nan-Shing" with one stern look.
       Nothing.
       "Shite," Liam said. "Surface comms are off again outside a few meters. We'll have to fix that up after the dust, first thing. I'll run the check, then."
       The nukes were good. Liam squinted at the horizon. "T'was grand to get topside once more, wasn't it?"
       "What's the big deal?" Riley asked. "Mom says this storm will be fierce but short. And Mom is always right. We'll be back up in a couple of days."
       He put a gloved hand on her shoulder. "I guess. Time to head on."
       The lift descended 300 meters to the airlock. When they'd cleaned and stowed their suits, they headed through the narrow tunnels toward the maintenance shop. As they passed the commissary, Riley brushed her fingers over the murals painted by the First Landers across much of the interior tunnel walls. The colors of the words and images that once blazed over the commissary arch had faded almost to the dun hue of the pressure liner. Amid scenes from the planet surface, the early settlers had inscribed a warning:
       Mars tries to kill us a thousand ways.
       When she was small, she'd asked Liam what the other nine hundred seventy-seven ways were.
       "What, now?" he'd said, scratching his head.
       "It says a thousand ways on the arch. But I could only think of twenty-three ways Mars tries to kill us."
       He'd let out a belly laugh. "It's not literal, like, Riles. It's the poetry of it. Humans can live without a lot of things, but we can't live without poetry."
       Just beyond the commissary, the murals depicted a set of faded schematics for the elaborate surface habitat the Consortium had intended to build. But twenty Earth years later, the colonists still lived deep beneath the surface. It didn't bother Riley. She had never known another home. And they were protected from radiation. Cold. Lack of air pressure and oxygen. All the thousand ways.
       Riley bounced in anticipation as they entered Liam's maintenance shop. They picked their way through the haphazard piles of parts, tools, and electronics and settled into seats facing the wall monitor. Before Liam could tell his headset to start up the display, Riley put two fingers in her mouth and gave a light whistle. A fantastical device whirred out from behind a pile of giant spools, moving smoothly on four jointed legs.
       "Liam, meet Ruckus," she said. "My Robot Wars entry, courtesy of the borebots. You know, the junk topside. Which still works, more or less."
       A few months earlier, she'd noticed that the mottled silver and rust of the borebots' titanium alloy shielding was a dead match for the fur of a certain Earth dog she'd seen in old vids. In addition to filching the borebot's shielding, she'd tucked its radio antenna into a mock collar with a name lasered on it in big letters. Her bot's location sensors shone like liquid brown eyes. She'd pillaged its radar positioning module and some of its working parts too, but those weren't visible on first look.
       Liam cracked up. "Jaysis. You rigged your bot to look like my old pup. I can't believe you remember those vids."
       "I even remember why her name was Ruckus."
       "Right, my da used to yell--"
       She finished: "--'Why must that mutt always make such a feckin' ruckus?'"
       Liam narrowed his eyes. "But isn't it kind of. . .cute for a battlebot?"
       "She isn't an it, Liam. She's a she. And that's her defense system. Who'd slice up a nice little doggie like Ruckus?" She gave him a wicked grin. "Then her rock-smasher blades and rammers come out."
       Liam whistled in admiration. "Fair play to you, young one."
       Her grin widened. "There's another reason I used the borebot's module. You know how someone's been jamming signals in the arena?"
       Liam nodded.
       "Whoever it is will be targeting optical, not radar. They won't be able to stop Ruckus, and they won't know why." She waited for his reaction, but Liam's eyes had lost focus as he fielded a ping.
       "Sorry, kid. I gotta go," he said, regret heavy in this voice.
       "No worries," she said cheerfully. "You'll be downside, right? I'll come help in a few." There'd be plenty of time to show Ruckus off after things quieted down.
       Hearing her friend Cyril's voice outside in the tunnel, she sent her bot back behind the pile of spools. No sneak previews for him. Cyril slouched into the shop, and she fixed him with a stern eye.
       "Dude, how many times do I have to tell you that you can't design your bot on my Dad's CAD system? And by the way, I know it's you jamming signals. How else could you have won two meets in a row with your sorry tech?"
       She waited for him to taunt her back, but his mind was elsewhere.
       "Riley, Jade won't talk to me," he said.
       She peered at him in the dim light, reduced to conserve power. His eyes were red; his face, framed in wild dreadlocks, radiated misery. She blew out a breath. Before her sister had plucked him from their tiny dating pool, Riley'd hoped she and Cyril would be more than friends. The last thing she wanted was to get involved in their drama.
       "So you'll be on different planets. Get over it."
       "I can't," he said, his voice breaking. He grabbed her hand. "I need to see her one more time. Will you ask her to meet me? She just has to say where and when."
       She snatched her hand away, skin tingling. "Whatever. Now get out so I can build a robot to whup your robot's ass."
       "Thanks. And, Riles? I'm glad you're staying. We'll be okay, in spite of what those bastards did."
       "Wait. Which bastards? What did they do?"
       But he'd already crept out, taking his angsty cloud with him.
       Riley needed to grab a quick lunch, then go help Liam and his crew prepare for the coming storm. She took a moment to say goodbye to Ruckus, loving the fact that she'd given a lonely, inanimate borebot new life. And it didn't matter if she and Cyril were the last two Robot Warriors left on Mars. His puny bot wasn't going to know what hit it.

       Riley navigated the narrow tunnel to their family's home, giving a sad smile to everyone she passed who would be leaving on the transport the next day. She knew she hadn't yet begun to process what the exodus meant to her small, tight-knit community. For that, she would wait until they were really, truly gone.
       Inside the flat, she tried to creep quietly to the tiny kitchen nook. Her sister stood in her way, bent over the small evac case she's been issued.
       "You better not take any of my stuff," Riley said.
       Jade tossed her long black hair over her shoulder. She pulled a rose-colored metallic top out of the case and threw it on a heap of similar items. "Don't screw with me, Riley. I am furious."
       "What now?"
       "Cyril won't come to Earth."
       "Huh?"
       "I want him to come to Dublin and live at Gran's with me." Jade pushed the green-and-gold bracelet that Mom had given her up her slender arm. Riley felt a familiar pang of jealousy. It was the only keepsake Mom had brought from China, and now it was going back to Earth.
       "You're nuts," Riley said. "Gran can't squeeze another teenager into her flat." They'd gotten a vid tour through their grandmother's tiny apartment, dizzily high up in a concrete building among clusters of identical towers. "Besides, Dublin is ugly and crowded." She knew her best friend well. Cyril would hate it there as much as she would.
       Jade gave a dismissive snort. "Have you noticed we live in a cave? Dublin is fabulous. You can breathe there without a big plex bubble on your head. There's a river. And trees."
       "What trees?" Riley said. "And that river is so polluted, if you stick your feet into it, they'd probably fall off. But the point," she said with more heat, "is that Winston needs Cyril more than you do."
       Four years ago, a rockslide had killed Cyril's mother and crippled his father. Winston nurtured the microbes that counteracted the Martian soil's toxicity; there were few people more essential to the colonists' survival. Cyril helped his dad maneuver his airchair through the crowded tunnels. In an emergency, he'd help him into a suit and get to a bubble.
       Riley knew neither Winston nor Cyril was going anywhere. But as usual, Jade was making it all about her. With a twinge of annoyance, Riley remembered her promise.
       "Listen, Cyril wants you to meet him. You're supposed to tell him where and when. I don't give a crap if you go; I just said I'd pass along the message."
       "Well. I know how to make him see things my way." Jade smiled slyly.
       "You could leave me your bracelet," Riley said hopefully. "One less thing to pack."
       "Dream on, nerd."
       The door opened, and their parents came into the flat.
       "Riley, honey. Sit down," Liam said.
       "Oh no. What did I do?"
       Mom held out a small case, a twin to Jade's. "You're going to Earth."
       "Geez, Nan-Shing, rip the bandage right off, why don't you," Liam said.
       Mom glared at him. "She's not a child, Liam."
       Riley had stopped breathing. "What?"
       Liam sighed. "The Consortium sent an empty transport. There's nothing for the shuttle to bring back tomorrow. No medical supplies. No seeds. No 3-D printer."
       Cyril's parting comment came back to Riley: ". . .in spite of what those bastards did." Her heart pounded. "But you can't stay here either."
       Her parents exchanged a glance. "We can't just give up everything we've built," Mom said.
       Liam said, "A group of us are going try to make it work. We've got some ideas. Don't worry, girls. We're putting together a shipment of Consortium leftovers we can trade for passage out if it comes to that."
        "So why can't I stay too?" Riley fought her tears. "You said it yourself, Mom. I'm not a child. I'm old enough to make up my own mind."
       Mom shook her head. "We need to see this through. But we can't let you take the risk with us."
       Riley turned to Liam. "And the fewer people here, the longer everything will last," she said bitterly. "You knew this morning, didn't you? That's why you were so quiet topside."
       "Riles," he said, his own voice breaking. "You're my right-hand woman. I'll miss you more than I can say. But it's for the best. A thousand ways, young one."
       Riley took a shaky breath. "I can come home, though? When there're new investors and shipments start back up?"
       "Of course," Liam said quickly. "We'll be together again as soon as we can."
       "You're not answering my question," Riley said, the tears coming for real now. "Where will we be together?"
        She expected a caustic comment from her sister, but Jade had slipped out.

       Riley paced the tunnels. She was leaving her home to live with a grandmother she only knew from vids, in a vast concrete city, where every step in full g would feel like wading through regolith--after geehab.
       An alert sounded. Listlessly she swung her attention to the message scrolling on a wallscreen, accompanied by Mom's calm voice.
       THE STORM HAS BEGUN EARLIER THAN EXPECTED. PLEASE STAY DOWNSIDE. THE COLONY IS FULLY PREPARED. THIS DOES NOT AFFECT SHUTTLE LIFT-OFF AT 1100 HOURS MARS STANDARD TIME TOMORROW. CONTINUE EVAC PREP.
       In a corner of the screen, a feed displayed dense clouds of reddish-brown dust whipping across the planet surface. Riley stared in surprise. Not just early. Heavy, too.
       At 1500 hours, her headset chimed with Mom's tritone.
       "What."
       "Have you seen Jade or Cyril?" Mom asked. "They're not answering pings."
       "Did you check with Winston?"
       "He hasn't seen Cyril since this morning."
       Riley remembered the message she'd delivered. "Don't worry. They're having a moment. They just turned off their comms, is all." Leave it to Jade to make a hard time even harder.
       "Ping me if you see them. I assume you saw the message about the storm." Mom closed the connection.
       Riley snorted. I'm just peachy, Mother dear. Thanks for asking.
       Riley went to the commissary and made a cup of tea, all thoughts of helping Liam and the maintenance crew gone. Apparently, Liam figured they could get along just fine without her; they might as well start now.
       At 1530 hours, the wallscreen lit up again. Mom spoke one terse sentence this time:
       IF YOU SEE JADE OR CYRIL, CONTACT NAN-SHING IMMEDIATELY.
       Riley couldn't remember ever hearing her mother sound so nervous. She bounced to her feet and went into the tunnels, checking the places where she'd heard kids went to make out: under Liam's still in the back of the food lab. The daycare nap alcove. The maintenance closets.
       No luck.
       As she passed the surface vidfeeds, an uneasy thought began to prickle. Even Jade couldn't be that stupid, could she?
       She definitely could.
       Liam answered her ping immediately. "I get that you're upset, Riley, but I've got two missing teens."
       Riley's anger at her parents had dissolved in her fear for Jade and Cyril. "I think I know where they went."
       She was half suited when Liam got to the lift. "The old rover?" he said skeptically. But he took his suit off the rack.
       "I know how it sounds," she said. "But I also know how Jade's mind works."
       "We're not picking up any trackers topside."
       "They disable their trackers when they go up to the rover."
       Liam smacked his forehead. "That's right. And the surface comms are banjaxed. We've searched the habitat three times over, so I'm going with your instincts here."
       He finished pulling on his suit and rubbed a hand roughly over his face. "What are we thinking, trying to make a go of this godforsaken place? Everything is old and shitty, and we can't get, or make, the parts to fix it. But we should have at least minded the broken surface comms. No excuse for that. Maybe those two eejits would be tucked up downside with a nice cuppa if we had."
       He put on his helmet and started Riley's suit check. Her heart ached for him.
       "Don't worry. . .Dad," she said, laying her glove on his shoulder. "We'll find them."
       As they stepped into the airlock, Ruckus trundled out of a corner. Liam stopped. "What's it doing here?"
       "She's Plan B. Let's get up to the Beast, and I'll explain."
       As soon as they emerged from the lift hatch, the red dust coated them head to foot. They made their way toward the massive maintenance truck. Although it was parked less than 15 meters from the lift hatch, they moved slowly, more by feel than sight.
       Inside the Beast, they wiped their faceplates, peering into zero visibility. Liam cranked up the autodrive and set their destination on the topo display. The Beast rumbled to life.
       "If they're in the old rover, they should have just enough oxygen between it and their suits," Liam said. "But I don't know what we'll do if they're dustwalking. No one's ever gone out in a storm without a tether, never mind with surface comms down. And the optical locater is worth shite in a storm."
       "Ruckus can find them," Riley said. "Radar works in dust, remember?" She wished she felt as confident as she sounded.
       The Beast rumbled to a halt. Through the rippling curtains of red dust, Riley caught fleeting glimpses of the disabled rover, crouched in the deluge like a monster in an Earther fairy tale.
       "Still not answering their pings," Liam said grimly. "I'd've thought comms would work this close."
       "Assuming their comms are on," said Riley skeptically. "Let's go."
       "Unh-unh," he said. "One in the Beast, one out on tether. You know that."
       "I'll go," she said.
       "Like hell, you will." His expression softened. "I need you in the command post."
       Liam grabbed a retractable tether and slid open the door, covering them with another layer of powder. He hooked one end of the tether to the outside of the truck and the other end to the carabiner at the waist of his suit. When he jumped out, Riley could barely see his thumbs-up. She hit the button to slide the heavy door shut and flopped into a seat, drumming her boot on the floor of the Beast. Liam wouldn't bother with his suit cam in the storm, but she was close enough to catch staticky bits of voice transmission.
       "Riles. . .copy?"
       "Sort of, Liam."
       "Can't see anything. . .windshield," she heard. "Entering airlock."
       "I read you."
       It was so long before he spoke again that Riley wondered if the comms were gone for good. She was just about to head out to find him when his voice crackled in her helmet.
       "They're not here. But the life support is near-empty."
       "That doesn't mean it was them," Riley said.
       Liam's voice got stronger as he got closer.
       "I found Jade's bracelet."

       Riley barely gave Liam time to clean his faceplate before she grabbed the bracelet from his glove. The hope she'd held in her heart when they'd headed topside came alive like a small bird fluttering in her chest. "She was wearing it this morning."
       "I thought so." He sighed heavily. "We're well screwed now. They're topside, but we don't know where."
       "No footprints?"
       "The dust wipes'em."
       "Time for Plan B." She hoped her voice didn't sound as small and unsure to Liam as it did in her own ears. Using Ruckus to find Jade and Cyril had sounded like a fine plan when she was safe and sound downside. Now she wondered if she could pull it off. . .and if it had any chance of working.
       Liam looked at her warily. "Can we send the bot out by itself? I've already got one daughter on dustwalk. I don't think I can handle two."
       "Ruckus and I are a team. She's synced to my headset. And I'll be tethered, Liam," she added.
       He sighed. "What's your plan, then?"
       "I figure even those two would know to walk toward the lift hatch. I've programmed Ruckus with a search grid starting at the rover and heading toward the hatch. She'll use her radar to locate things that might be them. When she gets close, she can scan for heat signatures. C'mon. We don't have time to screw around."
       They didn't have to say what they were both thinking. By now, Jade's and Cyril's suit air would be running low. And dust trapped radiation, making it even more deadly: a thousand ways on steroids.
       "Fair played," Liam said. He sounded sad. "Take your bot for a walk, then." He shook his finger at her. "But the minute there's trouble--"
       "--Follow the tether back. Of course. Do you think I'm daft, old man?"
       As Liam hit the button to slide open the heavy door, Riley felt a ripple of excitement. He reattached the tether to the Beast and then to Riley's suit, fussing till she pushed him away.
       "Should I tether the bot?" he asked.
       "No need. She'll stay in range of my headset and come back when she reaches the limit of a grid section. And she'll ping me, so I'll know where she is."
       "You've thought of everything, then. Come back safe, and bring your sister with you." He hugged her hard.

       Riley took a deep breath, pausing on the Beast's wide running board before hopping into the nightmare that had taken over her planet. On her command, Ruckus sprang smoothly onto the regolith, pneumatic joints easily absorbing the light impact. The sound of the door clanging, even muffled in the low pressure, was enough to make Riley jump.
       She brought the funnel-shaped search area up in her helmet display and told Ruckus to start combing the first 15-square-meter grid section. The area she'd defined extended out toward the glowing dot that indicated the position of the hatch. Riley stayed at the apex of the funnel. There was no point in trailing after Ruckus, tangling her tether.
       Riley hadn't been topside in a storm for more than a couple of minutes and never this far from the lift. Panic crept in as she was blinded by waves of tiny, sticky particles, like taking a shower in some viscous, oily substance. The Beast and Ruckus were out of sight; winds fiercer than she'd ever felt in the calm Mars atmosphere pummeled her with surprising force. The tether that connected her to Liam felt light and insubstantial.
       She scanned her display anxiously for Ruckus' pings. Even if Jade and Cyril turned up safe downside, what if Ruckus was lost in the storm? She would crumble away on the surface with the other bots. Riley would not be there to retrieve her, and Liam would be too busy to worry about it.
       She let out a yelp of joy as a blue blip began moving across her display.
       "Liam, do you read?" she said. "I've got Ruckus in my sights."
       "I read," came the staticky reply.
       Twice her bot reached the end of a grid section and returned to Riley. Twice Riley sent her back out. The bot's camera was functioning, but the images were hazy and indistinct, limited by the old-school tech and obscured by dust. At first, Riley had Ruckus take infrared readings of every find, but after five or six false alarms, she stopped, hoping for a better visual.
       On Ruckus' third foray, the bot sent Riley an image of two more lumps covered in dust.
       "No, Ruckus," Riley said, half in despair. "Those are just more rocks." But she checked the infrared anyway.
       Heat sigs.
       "Liam, I may have something," she said as she slogged to the bot's position, letting her tether out as she went. But she was already too far from the Beast for the patchy surface comms to work.
       Ruckus' bright eyelights drew her the last few steps. Riley's boot hit something solid, and in her helmet beam, she saw two red clay statues crouching in the dirt. She tapped one hard. "Jade?"
       "It's about time." Jade sounded close to tears. She lurched to her feet and brushed off her faceplate, her labored breathing sweet in Riley's ears.
       Riley bent and wiped off the faceplate of the other lump. Behind the snot and tears coating the inside of his visor, she could see that Cyril was okay. She helped him up and checked their gauges. A shudder rippled through her. They would have had ten minutes, tops, before they were in trouble.
       Riley pushed back her anger at the two of them. They'd put her and Liam in danger and caused no end of worry to Mom and Winston. But she'd have months on the transport to think up some payback for her clueless sister. "Let's go," she said tightly. "Jade, keep your hand on my shoulder. Cyril, keep your hand on Jade's. And for the gods' sakes, don't puke in your helmets."
       "Thank you, Riles," said a fuzzy voice. For a moment, she thought her sister had morphed into a human, but the faceplate turned toward hers was Cyril's.

       Mom was at the lift base clutching Winston's shoulder, eyebrows pulled together in a fierce line. Winston, an older version of Cyril with tawny skin and graying dreadlocks, slumped in his airchair, eyes closed and face drawn.
       Mom opened her mouth, but Liam beat her to it. He'd been silent on the ride back, no doubt concentrating on getting everyone safely home.
       "Topside in a dust storm?" he said, his voice barely controlled. "What were you thinking?"
       "Cyril said the storm wouldn't start until tomorrow," Jade sniffed, unsealing her caked suit.
       "Oh, so it was Cyril's fault," Riley said. She pictured her friend's faceplate smeared with snot, his face scrunched up like a terrified child's. Between that image and his inability to argue with Jade's very bad choices, one thing was for sure: she was totally cured of her crush.
       "Shut up, Riley," Jade said. "By the time we realized it was getting bad, the oxygen was running out in the rover. So we suited up and started walking."
        Cyril's face was even grayer than it had been in the shop. "I'm sorry, Dad," he told Winston. He turned to Riley's parents. "We turned our trackers on, but since we couldn't ping, I wasn't surprised you didn't pick them up."
       "Why didn't you keep walking toward the lift, son?" Winston asked.
       "We could see the hatch on our displays, but we couldn't get a read on our own positions," Cyril said. "We got kind of turned around."
       "The satellites are space junk," Mom said. "You kids should know that."
       Jade chimed back in. "We figured the best thing to do was stay put, and you guys would come find us. And you did, right?"
       Riley stopped running the cleanbot over her suit. She straightened up and glared. "So you thought it was cool to just chill out and wait for the rescue team? You've got to be kidding me."
       "Shut up, Riley," Jade said again, sharper this time.
       "She's earned the right, Jade," Mom said. "Riley saved your lives."
       They finished cleaning and stowing their suits and straggled into the passageway. Winston and Cyril split off into the side tunnel that led to their place while Riley and her family walked the short distance to their own flat.
       "Sorry, guys," Jade said meekly as they flopped into chairs. "I promise I won't do anything so stupid once I get to Earth."
       "Or on the ship," Liam said.
       "Or on the ship." Jade looked up through her lashes.
       "Well, despite your stunning lapse in judgement, we've got to send you off tomorrow, Jade," Mom said brusquely. "Luckily, everyone on that ship knows has known you all your life. They'll keep an eye on you."
       "Don't forget I'll have a babysitter." Jade tipped her head toward Riley.
       Their parents traded another coded glance.
       "No," Liam said, taking a breath. "You won't. Riley, we need you here. You proved that many times over today."
       Riley could hardly believe it. "I can stay?" she asked cautiously. "And help figure out what we do next?"
       "Yes, young one," Liam said. "That's what we're saying." He came over and hugged her, his eyes wet.
       Mom nodded confirmation. In a burst of pure joy, Riley flung her arms around her mother, who was not usually a hugger. This time, Riley received a tight embrace that meant more to her than any bracelet ever could.
       "I'm knackered," Liam said, his voice regaining some of its normal cheer. "Last family dinner. Then the three of us go back to work." He pointed his finger at Jade. "You, young lady, are grounded."
       Jade lowered her eyes again. "Not for long, old man," she murmured, just loud enough for Riley to hear. But her voice shook like it had on the surface.
       Oh. Jade is scared.
       Riley dug in her pocket and handed the bracelet to her sister. After a beat, Jade hugged her as hard as Mom had.

       After Liam and Riley checked the power in the food lab and the infirmary, they settled into the shop to monitor the grid. Ruckus crouched at their feet. Riley was too proud of her invention to hide her anymore. Ruckus was more than a plaything; she was a vital tool their community could use, just as Riley was no longer a child but someone who would contribute to the colony's future.
       Liam grunted as he sank into his chair.
       "You'd better stay sharp, old man," Riley said. "A thousand ways."
       "Aye, but things are going to change around here. No more absentee landlords and one-off contracts. Self-sufficiency is the name of the game. An asset we can barter or sell."
       "Like what?" Riley asked doubtfully.
       Liam's tired face lit up with a smile. "Like servicing the new Gold Rush, yeah? The Consortium isn't the only bunch heading to the asteroids. We've been making plans, talking to people. We're going to strip down the old fueling station and the storage tanks, move it all up to Phobos on the shuttle. Rebuild it on the moon so ships can refuel without coming down the gravity well."
       "But the big ships are nuclear."
       "A lot of prospecting ships are old school. Like her." He nudged Ruckus with his toe. "They need the liquid."
       Riley felt a twinge of excitement.
       "The oxygenator pulls plenty of CO2 out of the atmosphere," Liam said. "There's our methane. But we need a shit-ton more oxygen. When I saw what you'd done with Ruckus here, I remembered that the Consortium meant to expand the subsurface water conduit." He grinned. "Once we clean up your borebots and drill, we'll be swimming in rocket fuel."
       Riley raised an eyebrow. "That's it? That's the whole plan?"
       "We need to work out a few details."
       She snorted. "Gods, you do need me." She laid her hand on Ruckus' smooth metal haunch. "By the way, one of those borebots might be missing a radar module, an antenna, and some sensors. And a wee bit of shielding." She hammed up her imitation of Liam's melodic cadence. "The poor thing'll never know, but its parts went for a good cause, yeah? Not to mention, it helped us raise one massive feckin' ruckus."