Kepi couldn't sleep. She, Eamon, Mew, and the rest of the senate were aboard the lead cruiser. Ship one of five hundred in pod one of one hundred, in group one of one hundred and twenty-seven.
She had helped design every step of the planned exodus. Each group of five hundred ships was broken down into pods of five ships. There were one hundred pods per group and one hundred and twenty-seven groups. The staging area for entrance into the slip was over fifteen miles long. They had worked out a staggered pod spacing to give each ship as much space as possible. With an estimated launch cycle of seven minutes per five hundred ships it would take just shy of seventeen hours to get every ship into the stream. And that was if everything went perfectly.
It was going to be a long day and Kepi couldn't sleep. It bothered her that she had seen every phase of this plan through from the beginning but now she would at the last and most important minute, when everything could go wrong, be on the first ship out.
She couldn't shake the feeling that she was running away from her responsibilities.
The logical part of her mind reminded her that her next responsibility was on the other end of the slip. Some unknowable time and distance away and into the future. She was among those who would be expected to pave the way for the colony's arrival, if they even lived long enough to get there, if there was even a 'there' to get to.
Fear gripped her stomach by the throat and flipped it violently. She shot out of her bunk and into the bathroom.
