Page 150 of The Last Hope

Our parents sacrificed their lives for Earth and for us, but they also left us on a foreign planet without giving us a choice and I know their guilt must’ve been insurmountable.

Tears sting.

The baby lets out a soft cry.

“Shh,” I whisper—like a blink, the baby vanishes with the drawer. She was only next to me for a few minutes anyway. She must have teleported back to Court.

“Can’t sleep?” Stork asks, quietly walking into the wheelhouse. Eyes still bloodshot and swollen. He takes a seat, and leans back, the co-captain’s chair squeaking. “It’s not like the weight of a literal world isn’t on your shoulders at all.” He sports a halfhearted smile.

“It’s on your shoulders too,” I sling back.

“Must be why I’m awake with you.” His smile softens, and we share a tender silence with so much less strain.

Stork would’ve been in pain no matter if he broke or kept the admirals’ dying wish. But letting us share in his burden has lessened a brutal tension. And he was finally able to tell me exactly why the admirals never referred to him as their son. He said that Moura, Hull, and Voss each had a child, ones they left to die. He was something else to them. Not something more or less. Just different.

We hold each other’s gaze for a long beat, and he asks, “Do you wish I never told you about Prinslo?”

“No,” I say strongly. “No.I’m so glad you did.” I blink back tears.

“Do you really think Court is right?” Stork asks.

During the vote, Court had one final remark. He stood up and said that he had given up on people, after his country imprisoned him.

He wouldn’t risk his life for anyone’s cause, and then he told us, “But I’m here. I’m on a Saltare planet, and it’s not for me. I’ve been here for you.” He looked to me with no trace of anger or self-hatred.

I felt him, and it was as though he accepted that he could be the person he longed to be, and that slowly, without really realizing, it was already happening.

“I want to be here for them,” Court professed. “We have the chance to save people. Thousands of people, and this time, it will mean something when we do.”

He’s not all cold and dead inside. So much of Court is very, very alive.

In the wheelhouse, I keep my eyes locked on Stork.Do I think Court is right?“I think you’re both right in your own way.”

While Court voted to save Earth, Stork voted to find the baby’s parents.

I think at the start of this, we’d all predict the opposite vote. Even Court and Stork would too.

Stork bends farther back on the chair, his eyes swimming softly against mine. “I can’t repeat history.”

I know.

He said as much. I still remember what he told everyone before he voted. “I had a good life on Earth. I was loved, and I know she will be there, but I look back in time… and I wasstolenfrom my mom’s arms. A mom who died giving life to me… and what good did it do? What good did dropping you three on a foreign planet actually do?”

I don’t want to make the same mistakes as our parents.

I don’t want to botch it as badly as they did.

And I was torn between both choices. I still am, even afterdeciding. Maybe I always will be, and I wonder if our parents had the choice, if they’d do it all differently again.

Keeping a hand on the wheel, I turn my body more toward him. “Really, how big is the chance that we find the baby’s parents and they let us take her to Earth?”

He tilts his head. “Big enough for me.”

It was big enough for Padgett, Gem, and Zimmer.

Mykal and Kinden voted with Court to just leave now, and I was left to choose Stork and the baby or to choose Earth with my lifebloods.

Thunk.