Life as a caretaker was her fate. Crashing on an alien world and being given an ultimatum gave her something she didn’t expect, a lover who had her back. She takes a chance and is swept away.

Nan has spent her life making a place for herself by taking care of those around her. Holding onto the controls of a falling shuttle with the unconscious pilot next to her, she began to regret some of her impulses.

After the asteroid, she had gathered up close to two dozen kids who had been touring the same national park that she had, and she had tried to bring them home. When their city was found to be a collapsed crater filled with water, she has to take them on the road and try and keep them alive until she can find a settlement to take them.

Eventually, the call came out for the evacuation under the contract circumstances. The kids were exempt from the contract, and as caretaker, so was Nan. That exemption holds until they are on their way to the world Abix. There is a meteor shower, a wounded pilot, and Nan manages to take the controls, leaving a scar on the landscape in a restricted area. She feels bad, but when the overseer of Abix comes in through the shuttle front screen and gives her an ultimatum, she feels nervous and a weird tension. If they make it out of the restricted area in time, everything will just resume the normal plan.

There is one thing about the overseer. When he sets a timeline, he cheats. She has no chance.