Maroon

Welcome back, Meg Elison, we are so excited to take this journey to the stars with you! What could possibly go wrong?

~ Julian and Fran, August 17, 2025

In August, Sunday Morning Transport authors Naomi Kanakia, Jim Kelly, Meg Elison, and Elizabeth Bear share stories from far and wide. As always, the first story of the month is free to read.

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Maroon

by Meg Elison

The Pinkeen set out precisely on time at 0400, as specified by the coordinators of the Ad Astra agency. At the prices these people were paying, the expectations were: precision, professionalism, and perfection.

Captain Skip had done this run past Luna and out to the moons of Jupiter more than anyone else in the AA. He had logged more hours in space than any other person who didn’t live off-planet, and he had made his reputation as the man you wanted when things went bad. White-haired in his fifties, he gave off fatherly but competent energy in his blue flight suit.

First mate Gillian O’Leary was brand-new, sitting beside Skip in her red, beaming at her first AA flight. She had been trained by Ad Astra’s West Coast competitor, StarSailor.

“I wanted to be closer to my mom,” she had said in her job interview. “I could work in space tourism in any major city in the world. But now that my mom is sick, I want my base to be within driving distance of Boca.”

The AA recruiter had been overjoyed to land a new hire like Gillian. She was going to look great, a woman of color plastered across their website and in their videos. Media had been all over him to bring aboard someone—anyone—who was not another nerdy white man. Gillian had fallen into their laps.

As usual, the Pinkeen was loaded with rich white people for this tour. Once the Saudis and Hong Kong had developed their own space tourism agency, AA saw mostly Americans and Europeans up out of the blue and into the black.

During final checks, O’Leary had gone through the roll call one last time.

“Lyle Anker,” she read out.

The billionaire had not smiled. He had barely looked up before confirming verbally, as he had been instructed to do. “Yes.” The seat beside Anker was empty, but Gillian had been instructed not to mention the absence of Anker’s wife. The seat was paid for; she had simply chosen not to show up.

The next row of two plush black seats also only held a single occupant: Marina Rupert. One of the most famous faces on Earth was moisturized but made-under for this morning’s launch. Gillian was struck by the woman’s beauty every time they saw each other. Marina had high cheekbones and wide amber-colored eyes. Her voluminous glossy auburn hair had been pulled back and subdued before the actress had gotten into her formfitting black flight suit. Gillian had thought maybe she’d had the standard uniform altered. No one else’s clung to them that way, but maybe that was the charm of the body underneath it. Rupert’s curves were compelling, even in the black-on-black nothingness as she sat in her chair.

Marina smiled when Gillian called her name. Gillian fought her knees when they buckled.

Last row was the only one to carry two passengers: Dr. Victor Devlin, a big-name physicist who had wanted to go up with NASA but had never made the cut. Instead he had become a professor and author at that big university—you know the one. With the huge endowment and the hangars for housing excess ego. Beside him, his grad student Carla Humphrey. Strange that at this moment, costing so much and risking everything, Devlin had brought along a would-be PhD mentee and not his wife of fourteen years. But Gillian just worked here. She called the professor’s name first.