"Rabbits in space," Lira Salonga said, laughing and running a hand through her newly chin-length hair.

Her mother had convinced her it would be easier to maintain during the six-month journey to Mars if it was shorter. A knot of homesickness bulged in her throat, and they hadn't even lifted off yet. She wouldn't think about her mom. Not right now, or she'd get off the shuttle and never look back.

No, better to think about the bunnies. Safer.

There were forty-eight of them, the first live animals to join the colony already growing and thriving on Mars. Well, that was if you didn't count the crickets, of which there were millions providing the bulk of the protein in the colonists' diets, or the humans, of which there would be close to a thousand by the time Lira and her crewmates arrived.

Launch was in just a few hours, and Lira's last job before reporting to the crew compartment was to make sure all the furry passengers were properly secured and sedated for liftoff. "Please be sure your water bottles are in their upright and locked positions," she murmured as she walked along the rows of stacked cages.

Each one had chew-resistant padding and a gel-based water dispenser that Lira and her exobiologist partner, Dr. Uchenna Bello, had spent the past few weeks training the rabbits to use. They didn't love it. Sort of had to chew it, their chubby little cheeks ruminating while their big round eyes asked their keepers, why are you doing this to me? There were a lot of things they'd have to get used to on the long journey to the red planet – humans and rabbits alike.

The rehydrated food that only tangentially resembled its Earth equivalent.

The AI-driven task assignment system that would dictate Lira’s day once she got to Mars.

The high likelihood that she would never see green grass, touch terra firma beneath her bare feet, hug her mother again…

And where the heck was her coworker?

Dr. Bello should have been here an hour ago while Lira was administering the sedatives that would help the rabbits tolerate the multiple-G liftoff. She'd been perfectly reliable and punctual all through training, if a little humorless. Hopefully she hadn't gotten cold feet. Lira didn't even know what would become of her warren if one half of the team dedicated to keeping them alive flaked out.

"Don't worry, I'm told the launches are a lot less stressful now than they were in those old tin cans we used to fly," she told the rabbits. "We'll be in orbit in no time."

The words were to reassure them, of course.

Not herself.

She wasn't nervous.

She was a veterinarian traveling sixty million kilometers to set up an exotics practice in outer space, whose partner – responsible for making sure rabbits could still do stuff like, oh, eat on Mars – was missing in action… Why would she be nervous?

An alarm started going off somewhere on the wall of cages. Lira's heart rate cranked up.

Each cage was a polycarbonate box about thirty centimeters square, arranged in a grid eight tall and six across and embedded in the wall. They contained a single rabbit each to prevent fighting… not to mention other behavior that would be undesirable during the trip. None of the rabbits was altered, their ability to reproduce a vital part of their long-term survival in the colony. They'd all been selected for the optimal mix of health and genetic diversity so that once they arrived on Mars, the warren could expand to up to two hundred and fifty to provide not only companionship but wool, compost material, research fodder, and additional protein sources.

Lira wasn't totally sure how she felt about that last use, but life on an inhospitable planet was not easy. She had six months to come to terms with the necessity of getting nutrients wherever one could.

She used her shiny new retinal implant to pull up the overlay that gave her vitals on each cage, looking for the culprit. There were forty-seven wobbly, loopy or sleeping rabbits, and–

There, the overlay for cage thirty-five near the bottom right corner had a red indicator light blinking in time with the alarm. Lira did a quick up-and-down swiping gesture of her eyes to reset the alarm, then crouched down.

"What's going on, buddy?"

Inside was a jet-black juvenile rex struggling against its sedation and digging in the back corner. Lira checked the sticker on the outside of the cage – blue. There were many more stats on each rabbit loaded into the overlay, but she and Dr. Bello had agreed that being able to tell their sexes at a glance would be necessary if they intended to arrive on Mars with the same number of rabbits they had when they left Earth. They could not afford the resources, nor dedicate the space, to have any litters right now.

Lira checked her watch – still about thirty minutes before she had to be in the crew compartment, and still no sign of her colleague. She opened cage thirty-five and slowly reached her hand in.

"What's the matter, buddy?"

The rabbit whipped around and thumped at the intrusion, and Lira saw the reason for the alarm. A thin white wire protruded from the sensor equipment mounted in the back corner of the cage, snipped cleanly in half. A rabbit's favorite human-environment snack was spicy hay, and Lira had told the habitat engineer back on Earth that that placement would be a problem, but he'd told her it was too late to make the change.

His solution had been to coat the wires in polymer insulation, but it turned out to be no match for a determined rabbit. Great.

Lira lifted the little black rex out by his belly and carried him over to a fold-down exam table a few paces away. He didn't appear to have been shocked, but she couldn't spend the next six months listening to sensor alarms and replacing wires. Her first order of business once they were docked with the Exodus would be talking to one of the engineers onboard to find a solution.

For now, she gave the rex an additional dose of isoflurane, then found some thick PVC medical tubing in the supply drawers to cover the wire. As she carried the rabbit back to his cage, she stroked her forefinger over his velvet-soft fur. "I think you just earned your name. How do you feel about Buzz?"

She and Dr. Bello had named a handful of them for the traits they'd shown during mission prep. There was Houdini – no explanation needed – and Trouble, Flash, and Zen. Lira had chosen most of the names. Dr. Bello seemed content to focus on the data and her checklists.

After she got Buzz back into his cage, she verified there would be no more wire-chewing – mostly because his eyelids were drooping and he’d settled into a sleepy loaf – then retrieved a piece of fabric tape and a Sharpie. She was just finishing Buzz's nametag when a voice spoke in her head.

"Dr. Salonga to the crew compartment," the voice ordered. It was the mission commander, Bart Abrams. "We are preparing for launch."

A tingle crept up the back of Lira’s neck. She’d had her implant for six weeks now but she still wasn’t used to people invading her head like that. She made the diagonal glance to bring up her comms and answered, "Heard, I’ll be right there."

Lira turned off her comms and smoothed the tape over the front of Buzz's cage. 

"Okay, everybunny, this is it. See you in space."