The Last Hour of Gann by R. Lee Smith

says—”
    “Who the hell is Sabrina now?”
    Nicci looked surprised. She raised her hand to discreetly point, lowering her voice to a whisper. “Over there, with Lani and Rachel, see?”
    Amber looked, but saw only a loose knot of people—Manifestors, indiscriminate to her eyes—sitting on the concrete bags to keep off the wet ground. “Which one? The redhead?”
    “No, the…” Nicci hunched and whispered, “The black lady,” before nervously looking to see if she’d been overheard.
    “I think she knows she’s black by now, don’t you?” Amber asked, smiling.
    Far from returning it, Nicci recoiled with a look of embarrassed horror. And what had she expected, really? Neither of them had much of a sense of humor, at least not around each other. They were sisters; they loved each other, and nothing made Amber feel better than to know she was taking care of her sister, just as nothing made her feel worse when she couldn’t. Amber had fed her little sister breakfasts and dinners, washed her clothes, walked her to school, but they didn’t talk very much and they didn’t joke around even when they did.
    “Okay, so who else am I looking at?” Amber asked, pretending to care as she looked back at the other people where ‘Sa brina’ sat with ‘Lani’ and ‘Rachel’. “Do you know them all?”
    “I think so.” Nicci hesitated a few glances that way, her eyes darting from face to face. “There aren’t that many.”
    “I guess not.” But there was no guessing about it. Forty-eight people was nothing. It was less people than had shared a classroom with her in school, less than half of the number that worked with her at the factory, less than a quarter of those who had lived at the apartment complex. There was nothing amazing in Nicci’s knowing everyone’s name; it was, come to think of it, a little disturbing that Amber didn’t.
    The wind blew. Nicci sat and rocked beside her, hugging herself and rubbing at her sleeves. The ship burned.
    “Do you think they found anybody?” Nicci asked. “You know…alive?”
    “I don’t know.” Amber’s gaze drifted up to the men’s dorm mods, still burning high and hot. “I kind of hope not. We may not have a doctor or a medico or anyone like that, so if someone’s hurt…and they’d have to be hurt…what could anyone do about it?”
    Nicci ducked her head and rubbed her arms some more. “What’s going to happen to us?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Do you think they’ll find the beacons?”
    Amber glanced at the burning ship and away again. The sky was now completely black, but the Pioneer gave them more than enough light to see each other by, even at this distance. If there were animals, either they’d stay well away or they’d probably go investigate there instead of here. She wondered if Jonah was prepared for that. She thought he probably was.
    “Amber?”
    “Nicci, you were sitting right there when Jonah and I talked about this. You know what I think.”
    Nicci ’s arm bumped hers. She’d started crying again, quietly this time. Amber watched Scott move around the camp—inspecting his troops, improving morale, being a dick—amazed that her sister could still have any tears left after all the crying she’d already done. They said catastrophe stripped away the masks. A person could be almost anything with enough time to prepare for the part, but it took a disaster to show the world who you really were. Maybe even to find out for yourself. And she sure didn’t need the ship to crash to know Nicci was a crybaby.
    ‘And I’m a bitch,’ she thought disgustedly, and held out her arm in a silent invitation for Nicci to come in under it. “We’re going to be okay,” she said as they huddled together in the grass. “I don’t know what’s going to happen, but we’ll be fine. I’ll take care of you, you know that.”
    “I don’t believe you!” Nicci sobbed.
    “Oh come on,” said Amber, smiling to hide how deeply those surely