Prologue

Hina Johnson only felt truly free in outer space. In microgravity, the fourteen-year-old mission specialist was free to move how she wanted, where she wanted. But that wasn’t the biggest reason outer space was so liberating.

In space, she was surrounded by cute girls, with no pesky adults in sight to tell her what to do—or what not to do.

Shame that they put a radio in her helmet to try anyway. Exactly what did they think they were going to accomplish? They were stuck on an island 250 miles below. She was the one hanging off the side of the station. No matter how you looked at it, the mission was in her hands, but as a man’s voice crackled in her ear, she decided to play along.

“Hina, how does it look from your perspective?”

Ten meters away, the station’s robotic arm was rotating the Harmony module to the proper orientation to berth with the station. It was playing out exactly like in the simulations.

“Rotation looks good from my position. No issues observed.”

“Proceed with rotation at 0.2 degrees per second.” The man’s response was as superfluous as he was.

Oh, really? We should continue as planned? Hina thought to herself. We should do the thing we’ve been training for months to do? Glad you told us; otherwise I might have thought you wanted us to chuck the module into the sun.

She had barely finished her sarcastic monologue when Harmony started floating away from the robotic arm.

Her radio crackled back to life. This time it was mission specialist Suzu Rodriguez. “Uncommanded release of Harmony! We’ve lost control!” Hina could hear alarms in the background.

“Confirmed,” Hina said, engaging her thrusters on her Manned Maneuvering Unit to move closer to the module. “Harmony is drifting and starting to spin. Looks like 0.5 degrees a second on the pitch axis.”

Suzu’s voice grew more frantic. “I can’t reestablish control of Canadarm2. Harmony’s moving too fast to re-grapple anyway.”

Susu’s flustered voice is kinda cute, Hina thought to herself, but I can’t let myself get distracted. As she programmed a flight path into her maneuvering unit, she spoke in a calm, reassuring voice. “I’m proceeding to intercept and stabilize Harmony. Just focus on—”

The stern voice of Commander Tsumugi Lefebvre broke over the radio. “Negative, Hina. It’s too dangerous. Break off and return to the ISS.”

Ignoring her commander’s orders, Hina waited for one of Harmony’s handrails to pass in front of her and pressed the button to begin her preprogrammed maneuvers. “Negative. We won’t get a better chance to stabilize the module. I can do it.”

“It’s spinning too fast. We never trained for this.”

“Maybe you didn’t, but I’ve spent more time in the sim than anyone. I’ll have this done before breakfast.” Approaching the handrail, Hina reached out and grabbed it.

“If you make a mistake, you could end up increasing the spin and pushing yourself out of range for a rescue.”

“Doesn’t sound like something I’d do.”

“Ground control, Hina’s ignoring my orders. Back me up here.”

Hina silently mimicked Tsumugi, mouthing, “Hina’s ignoring my orders” as she attached her first tether to the handrail. She didn’t have to be a prodigy to predict how ground control would respond. There were plenty of other girls to take her place, but Harmony would be difficult and expensive to replace.

“Hina, are you sure you can do it?” the man asked.

“Never been more sure of anything in my life. This is gonna be fun.”

Only a few seconds passed before she got permission. “You’re cleared for stabilization. Watch your propellant levels.”

“Initiating counter-thrust to stop rotation on the pitch axis.”

If Tsumugi was still skeptical, she at least had the good judgment to remain quiet and let Hina concentrate.

One hand on the rail and the other on her controls, Hina engaged the thrusters, slowly at first, to make sure the tethers would hold. She kept an eye on her propellant levels, but she wasn’t too concerned. Even if her spacesuit was built using blueprints thousands of years old, technology had advanced in the millennia since ancient NASA had installed the original Harmony module. She should easily have enough fuel to correct the spin and make it back.

After a few seconds, Hina cut the thrusters. “Pitch axis stabilized. Readjusting for yaw.”

“Confirmed,” Suzu said. “That was amazing. How did you calculate the thrust needed so quickly?”

“Suzu, focus on your own job,” Tsumugi ordered. “Is Canadarm2 back under control?”

“It’s coming back online,” Suzu reported. “Hina, watch out! It’s moving right for you.”

Hina craned her neck to look at the giant mechanical arm. It was far away, but sure enough, it was drifting toward her.

“Emergency stop!” Tsumugi shouted.

“R—Right, emergency stop,” Suzu replied. “Where’s that button again?”

“It’s the big red button at the bottom.”

While those two yelled at each other, Hina wasted no time pulling the emergency release latches on her tethers. She unhooked from Harmony and dodged to the side. The mechanical arm rushed past her head, missing her by mere centimeters, but the arm’s movements were erratic, and it swung sideways as if targeting her specifically. She spun herself to clear the arm, appearing almost as if she was pole vaulting over it, and then sped away.

“Did you see that?” she cackled. “I love the MMU! NASA was crazy to retire it. SAFER? More like BORINGER, am I—”

Her outburst was interrupted when her spacesuit’s alarms blared and her helmet-mounted display informed her that her suit was losing pressure. Canadarm2 must have just nicked her. The air loss was slow, but she couldn’t see any tears in her suit.

All of a sudden, space didn’t feel fun anymore. The thought that she might die chilled her to her very core.

Or maybe that was the suit’s temperature plunging.

“Mayay. My suit’s leaking. I’m returning to the airlock.”

Pushing her MMU as fast as it would go, she zoomed into the airlock, slamming against the inner door and bouncing off it. Grabbing the outer door, she pulled it shut and pressed the button to start emergency pressurization.

Breathe, she told herself, realizing she’d been holding her breath for almost a minute. You’re not safe yet. If you can’t find the leak, just start patching the areas you think it might be.

With Suzu and Tsumugi’s voices chattering away in the background, Hina pulled a roll of duct tape from the wall and started slathering it all over her suit. When Suzu opened the inner door ten minutes later, Hina was pulling herself out of a spacesuit half covered in tape.

But the tape barely registered in Suzu’s mind. She was too busy burning the image of Hina’s heaving, panting form into her retinas. This was a privilege for her alone. Hina’s liquid cooling and ventilation garment clung tightly to her, revealing the contours of her lean, muscular physique. As she pulled off the hood, her wavy orange hair burst forth like fire igniting. She looked every bit the demigod that Suzu worshipped her as, emerging exhausted but victorious after pushing a star across the sky.

Their eyes met, and had they not been floating in microgravity, Suzu’s knees would have buckled under the intensity of Hina’s gaze. Her emerald eyes looked Suzu up and down as she floated toward the shorter girl—eyes that Suzu had nearly rendered dull and lifeless through her own negligence.

The guilt was too much for Suzu, and she turned away. “Hina, I’m so—Eep!” The heat of Hina’s breath next to her ear caused Suzu to flinch, and she froze completely as Hina wrapped her arms around her torso from behind.

“Have I ever told you how cute you are, Suzu?”

“C—C—Cute?”

“Mm-hmm. I’ve always thought so.”

“I bet you say that to a lot of girls.”

A sigh escaped Hina’s lips, but to Suzu, it sounded like a contented sigh, not a sad one. “Only when it’s true, and right now, you’re the cutest girl in the universe to me.”

It wasn’t a lie. Even Suzu’s short twintails—a hairstyle Hina wasn’t fond of—were adorable in the moment. Having just survived a near-death experience, minor details like that seemed unimportant.

“But I’m not. Canadarm2 wasn’t a malfunction. I—”

“Shhhhhh. That’s all in the past. I’m more interested in the present. Right now, I just want to hug you. Is that OK?”

“You’re already hugging me. If anyone sees us, we’ll be in trouble.” Suzu wiggled uncomfortably, but if Hina noticed, she didn’t show it.

“That’s so fake. We’re up here and they’re down there. There’s no one to tell us what not to do anymore.”

“What about Commander Tsumugi?”

“She’s cute too, but you’re much—”

“No, I mean, she tells us what to do.”

That gave Hina pause, and she loosened her hold, but when Suzu’s shoulders slumped and she didn’t try to escape, it rekindled Hina’s determination. “Let her try. It’ll be her word against mine, and everyone will think she’s holding a grudge against me for ignoring her order.”

“The adults might fall for that, but Sachiko’s not easy to fool. Maybe you don’t realize this because you’re her favorite, but the girls who cross her are never seen or heard from again.”

“Of course I know that, but she wouldn’t go that far over a hug. That’s all I want, Suzu, just a hug. Normal girls hug each other all the time. Why can’t we?”

“Because we’re not normal girls: We’re hoshinauts.”

“Well, I don’t care anymore. I almost died out there, and you know what I realized? We have to live our lives to the fullest while we still can. I want to flirt and fall in love and experience all the other fun things girls our age do. Please, Suzu, help me feel alive, just this once.”

“I…” Suzu’s heart beat faster at the thought of returning Hina’s embrace. Maybe it would lead to a deeper relationship between them—Furtive glances, secret hand-holding when no one was looking, and when they were older, maybe… She blushed just thinking about it. On the other hand, the thought of getting caught made her sick to her stomach.

Before she could make her decision, Tsumugi poked her head into the airlock. “What are you two doing?”

Suzu resumed her struggle, holding her arm out toward Tsumugi. “Commander, help! She grabbed me out of nowhere and won’t let go.”

Hina’s heart sank, but she released Suzu, who pushed herself away and floated behind Tsumugi. Taking a deep breath, she locked eyes with the commander. “I just needed to calm myself. It’s not like I have any feelings for Suzu.” Despite putting on an indifferent front, bitterness dripped from her words. She looked past Tsumugi at Suzu, who now wore a hurt expression on her face, and despite floating in microgravity, her twintails seemed to droop. Unable to stand looking at her anymore, Hina turned away.

It was just a spur-of-the-moment hug. I don’t even like Suzu that much. So why does getting rejected by her make my chest ache? Why does this always happen?

“You can tell that to the adults.” Tsumugi’s words cut through Hina’s thoughts. “For now, let’s get back to the ship. My job is to get us home safely. Whatever happens to you after that isn’t my problem.”

As Hina followed them to the Shuttle, a sense of dread hung over her. If the adults’ stifling rules extended into space, then the freedom she felt was just an illusion.