Aya said nothing. Her mother was sure she was thinking of bulkheads and damaged hulls.

Sawyer

Everybody had a home, and nobody went hungry.

That was one of the foundational ideas that had first drawn Sawyer in when he’d started reading about the Fleet. Everybody had a home, and nobody went hungry. There was a practical necessity in that, he knew. A ship full of people fighting over food and space wouldn’t last long. But there was compassion, too, a commitment to basic decency. Too many people back on Earth had been hungry and cold. It was one of the copious problems the first Exodans had vowed not to take with them.

Sawyer stood in a home now – one of the empties left behind by a family that had gone planetside, now opened to travellers like himself. The grass was always greener, he supposed, but he couldn’t understand why anyone would travel in the opposite direction he had. Colonies had hungry people. They had people without homes. He’d seen both plenty of times back in Central space – sapients picking through trash or carrying everything they owned. The GC tried, they really did, but planets were big and settlements were vast and taking care of everyone was hard. Things were better in sovereign territories, but in neutral colonies like Mushtullo, where trade was the primary drive and nobody could agree on whose rules they should follow . . . well, it was easy for people to fall through the cracks. Sawyer had been mugged twice in the past standard, once by some messed-up woman with a badly installed headjack, then again by someone he never even saw. Just a pistol in his back and a hand he couldn’t identify twisting his arm around to scan his patch and drain his credits. The bank got the creds back, but that wasn’t the point. Someone had been willing to kill for the sake of . . . what? Some new clothes? A few tendays of groceries? That had been the last straw for Sawyer. That had been the moment he decided he was leaving.

He set his bag on the floor and looked around. An entry-and-storage room, a common room, a bathing room, and four more bedrooms, all the same size and shape as the others, all windowless, all spread out around the circular hatch that led down to the family cupola. The home was tidy and filled with basic furniture, all signs of previous ownership erased by cleanerbots. There were tables and chairs, a couple of couches. Cupboards for food and belongings. Empty planters waiting for seedlings and a guiding hand. It looked like a package home, like something that popped out of a box. There was no sign that anyone else had ever lived there – except one. Sawyer walked with reverence toward the wall in the common room, the one the cleanerbots had known to leave alone. It was covered with handprints, pressed in paint of every colour. Big handprints, little handprints, smudged infant feet. Belkin, someone had painted above it – the name of the first family that had lived here, and the name that every other family who lived there after had taken, regardless of genetics. This was one of the many Exodan customs he admired. When born, you took your parents’ name. When you grew up and started a family of your own, you took the name of the home you settled in. In a lot of cases, your name didn’t change at all, not if you kept living with your parents and grandparents and so on. If you settled in the home of your partner, you took your partner’s family name. If you both decided to live in a separate home entirely, apart from both of your families, you’d both get the name of whoever’d taken care of that home before you. Sawyer liked that.

He looked up at the bold, painted letters above his head. He wasn’t a Belkin. It wasn’t his custom yet, and this placement was temporary. He ran his hand along where others had been. ‘Wow,’ he whispered. He didn’t need to count the prints to know that there were at least nine generations represented here, all the way back to the first. He crouched down, looking toward where the wall joined the floor. The prints there were faded, and covered with others, but their shapes were clear as day: six adults, three children, one baby. He tried to imagine what they must have felt, watching their planet fade away through a window in the floor, pressing painted hands to an empty wall with the hope that one day the wall would be full.

Sawyer put his hand over the tiny footprint. That kid had grown up never having known the ground. That kid had grown old and died in this ship, and all xyr kids besides. The enormity of it almost made him dizzy.

He straightened back up and looked around the room. The wall was full, but the home was empty. So empty. It was a space meant to house three generations at least, where kids could run around and adults could relax and everyone would be together. But right then, it held only him. Just him in a big room full of ghosts. There were families outside, in the homes the Belkins had shared a hex with. Sawyer knew the kitchen was for his use as well, and the digestive punishment of Jojo’s ninth day special had faded enough for him to be hungry again. But he wasn’t sure about going out there. When he’d gone to the housing office, he’d hoped to be put in a home with another family – a spare room, like he’d read about. When he’d gone to the hex number he’d been given, he’d hoped for a big welcome, with shaken hands and big smiles, introductions all around. Granted, he’d gotten his hand shook and a few names and nods, but the smiles had been hit or miss and mostly confused, and everybody seemed too busy for him. There were kids to chase, vegetables to chop. They all looked at him, though, with questioning eyes and words whispered out of earshot. He got it. He was a stranger, the new neighbour, the guy who’d just moved in. They had their own days to get about, and ice-breaking would come soon enough. And truth be told, Sawyer was tired. It had been a long haul, and a long day. One adventure at a time.