“Alright, now hold still, please,” Ghia said, softly. “This will be over before you know it.”

Coraline gritted her teeth as robotic arms slid into place on either side of her, tipped with spray syringes. They took up positions at her shoulders, her elbows, her hips, her knees. She was never prepared. They moved in unison, pressing the syringes to her skin. She closed her eyes, and fought the urge to squirm.

The injections were the worst. They always made her joints sore. She ached like a woman twice her age, and still had two rounds to go. Twice each day, the ship’s medics would shoot growth hormones into her muscles. Her arms, her legs. They introduced it directly into her bloodstream. It felt like growth spurts, and the effect was similar. She slept a lot. She was irritable, snapping at the slightest annoyance. But there was no avoiding it. Not if she wanted to be able to walk on her new home planet.

For nearly a year, the ECV Al Mouakket had been traveling through interstellar space. Usually, the crew would be kept in cold storage for such a long journey. But their target world was unlike any other habitable planet. That meant the crew and passengers had to be breathing, as the colonists were physically prepared for the harsh conditions they would face.

Coraline Wu had spent most of the past nine months training, or lying on a medical bed as doctors rebuilt her body. The first five months had been mostly gene therapy: xenobots had been introduced into her body, rewriting her genetic code and building up her musculature, strengthening her cardiovascular system. Now, her bone density had increased by forty percent. Her muscle mass had increased by fifty-eight percent. And she stood a full ten centimeters taller.

At six months, the injections began: high doses of growth hormones to further augment her musculature, strengthen her heart and lungs, and improve healing. It had been an arduous, often excruciating process. She’d stopped eating breakfast most days, as she spent her late mornings throwing up. Her diet made skipping meals risky, but tempting: high doses of protein, in the form of condensed soy fortified with calcium. Afternoons of intense exercise led to further waves of vomiting before dinner.

After eight months, she hardly recognized herself anymore. Her biceps bulged below shoulders that had broadened. Her brow had become more pronounced, her jawline had widened, which would have been easier to notice had the doctors not realigned her teeth. Her thighs looked like tree trunks. Her feet had broadened. Each morning when she looked in the mirror, she found a stranger staring back at her.

But as her body had changed, her exercises grew easier. She could leap hurdles like an Olympian, and bench press like one, too. After six months, she could walk though the ship’s gravity wheel wearing a full EMU. She seldom tired; her lung capacity had increased by almost forty percent, the expansion of her lungs aided by the flaring of her ribcage. And after the xeno treatments increased the efficiency of her alveoli, she found she could hold her breath for almost eight minutes. Even after all that, she was told, it would take two months living on the surface before she could walk for more than thirty minutes without a gravity suit.

As the arms pulled back, she exhaled sharply, looking over at Ghia. He gave her the same warm smile as always, reaching over and squeezing her hand.

“Two more to go,” he said, softly. “You can do this.”

She gave him a staccato nod, wanting to believe him. “You sure we can’t skip the last ones?” she pleaded. “I mean, how much of this stuff do I need?”

Ghia sighed softly, rising from his seat. “We’ve been over this, Cora,” he began, wearily. “This regimen was devised for a reason. Planners spent years working it out.”

She sat up, wincing at the pain in her knees, then rose to her feet. When she’d first began her treatments, she had to look up at Doctor Avinash Ghia. Now, she stood eye-to-eye with him. When she first met him, she liked him. He had a warm smile, gentle eyes. After her treatments, part of her resented him, though she knew that was unfair.

Two days passed, with two more rounds of injections. Then, at last, the Al Mouakket dropped out of FTL. There was a brief jolt as the ship returned to normal space, and Coraline joined her fellow colonists in front of the latticed windows of the gravity wheel. All of them were now as tall and muscular as she was; they reminded her of super soldiers from old sci-fi movies. And indeed conquest was their goal. She peered out the windows at an enormous planet. She’d seen images, but was still unprepared for its sheer scale; it was nearly as large as Neptune. Its largest continent was nearly the size of Earth. Dark clouds wrapped around it; towering masses of storms.

Less than an hour later, she was sealed into a gravity suit. Once her helmet was in place, the suit was filled with perfluorohexane. It was a strange sensation, breathing liquid. At first she was afraid she’d drown, and held her breath. Sealed into her suits, she and the other colonists piled into a transfer vehicle, and enjoyed their last moments of weightlessness. The craft ferried them to one of several orbital service vehicles: drab, ugly spacecraft, sharply pointed like the tips of pencils, their ends scarred by repeated liftoffs and re-entries. Each was over two hundred meters tall. Nothing smaller could touch down on the surface and return.

As the craft entered the atmosphere, it shook violently. Bright flares of plasma shot up around the windows as the vehicle plummeted through the planet’s thick atmosphere. As they descended, Coraline found it harder to move. Her fingertips, wrapped around the edge of her armrest, felt like they were gripping the edge of a cliff. It was hard to move her arms. And even as the ship bucked, her legs remained firmly against her seat. It felt like she was made of concrete.

As they approached the surface, banks of thermal rockets fired beneath them, slowing their descent. Even with all that thrust, the landing was jarring. Safely on the surface, Coraline released her restraints, and tried to stand. It took effort; she gritted her teeth, pushing with her arms until she was standing. She hunched over in the planet’s oppressive gravity. Her companions seemed to fare no better, groaning and stumbling as they shuffled toward the egress ramp.

As she emerged, she looked up, her neck straining under the exertion. She craned her neck slowly, so as to avoid whiplash. Above, the sky was a murky gray. The clouds spun and roiled, coursing with lightning. High above, she could see brief flashes from the electrolasers that protected the planet, vaporizing meteoroids. As she gawked, a voice called out to her.

“Doctor Wu!” the man shouted, walking briskly toward her. Unlike her and her companions, he wasn’t wearing a gravity suit. That meant he’d been here for a while.

She nodded, very slowly. The fluid in her suit made speech difficult.

“I’m Chris. Chris Delgado,” he said, stopping in front of her. “Feeling the gravity?”

She nodded again, glumly.

“Welcome to Tau Ceti,” he said. “Specifically, welcome to Baldr.” He paused. “And welcome to hell.”