“It’s my birthday.”
Juniper looked through the thick, slightly warped glass of the docking corridor into space. She was fifteen today. Back home, she’d be awake by this time. She would have said her prayers while preparing the lamb and spices for the laal maas, a dish her elders enjoyed a lot more than she did. Thinking about it gave her stomach cramps. Lambs were for leopards. Space was for the gods. She’d come a long way from Rajasthan, and she knew it. About as far as a person could go in a month. A lot further than a village girl was meant to go. How wrong the world could be. The jump from stone age to space age had been as intense as the short flight and long docking procedure. Chartreuse had piloted the aircraft along its preprogrammed flight path, ignored repeated warnings and requ
