Excerpt from Alone Out Here by Riley Redgate, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

They're why the doors were open, why the lights were on like a welcoming home's.

Commander Jefferson scans me sneakers to ponytail. If she recognizes me from TV or the press, she makes no sign.

She rounds back to the dashboard and says, "We have people aboard. Fifty-four of them." She points to a screen that shows live video of the hull door, which is now sealed shut. "We've been counting."

"But the crew is still—"

"The crew knows we have to save who we can. The aftershocks are already starting. Every second on the ground is a risk we can't afford."

Speechless, I watch the pilot's hands play over the controls. I thought the countdown was the work of some terrified kid, throwing away hundreds of lives out of fear. This is different, a calculated risk assessment, a matter of protocol. But it feels just as brutal.

"Eli, get her a suit." The commander aims a finger toward the bunks set into the wall. "Then both of you strap in."

Eli throws open a cabinet and tosses me a packet of white fabric. T-minus two minutes, says the voice overhead as I tear the pressure suit out of the package.

A hiss makes me glance over. Eli has hit the vacuum seal on her suit, making its exoskeleton constrict her silhouette. As her visor slides into place, I meet my own eyes in the translucent mirror of its surface and see my face layered over hers.

"Suit up," Eli says. She swings into a bunk and draws the straps into place, moving as efficiently as a dancer or a boxer. It all looks practiced, as if she knew, but—of course—she lives on this complex. For this girl, every waking second would have been colored by the fact that, soon enough, it would be time to go.

The commander's voice blares over the PA and rings down the halls behind us: Attention, passengers. Pressure suits are stored beneath your bunks. Put them on over your clothes, press the vacuum seal at your left shoulder, and strap in as shown by the instruction card at your bedside. The orders translate themselves into Mandarin, then Spanish, as the commander springs from her seat toward the last bunk.

Halfway there, she goes still. She's paled to the color of the moon. Her lips move fractionally as the PA repeats her words in Hindi, French, Arabic, Swahili.

She breaks for the exit. By the time she reaches the stairs, she's in a full-out sprint.

"Mom?" Eli yells after her, but the commander has already reached the bridge's upper level. She's flying down the hall, a splash of golden hair disappearing.

The voice overhead says, T-minus one minute. I look down at my pressure suit, knowing it's time to strap in. I have my orders. But faces are flashing through my mind. The younger kids paralyzed with fear, clinging to their bunks, and the soldiers trying to urge them forward. The engineers and technicians and astronauts on their way, not knowing that we're about to abandon them.

I could force the ship to wait. After years of wishing I could do anything to help anyone, I could do this one thing.

The pressure suit falls from my hands. I go for the dashboard. "Hey," says Eli. "Stop!" I hear her struggling against her harness, bucking against the straps like a restrained animal. The belts are locked. "Get away from that!" she yells. "What are you doing?"

Truthfully, I have no idea. My fingers skim grids of buttons that clatter gently in their frames. There are hundreds upon hundreds, acronyms printed on every surface. A heading that reads pil separation has dozens of keys grouped beneath it, divided into inscrutable combinations of letters and numbers. I scan them, hunting for a kill switch.

As the voice says Thirty, my eyes land on the screen where the commander was typing. The launch sequencer is playing through its final checks. Vent valves locked, it reads. Positron shuttling fields active. Orbital frame aligned. And there, in the corner, above a list of override codes, is a button pulsing red: abort launch?

Excerpted from Alone Out Here by Riley Redgate. Copyright © 2022 by Riley Redgate. Excerpted by permission of Disney-Hyperion. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.