Colonization (18 page)

“We’re going to have to walk from here.” Corvus didn’t sound angry, but I was still embarrassed.

Galactic fail.

I wiggled out of my restraints and stepped out on wobbly legs. “I ruined it, didn’t I?”

“Nah, these things are built sturdy as rocks.” Corvus tapped the dented metal on the front casing. “You parked it just in time.”

We both knew that was the greatest understatement of the day. Despite the circumstances, I broke out into hysterical laughter, the panic washing away.

“The Landrover can’t go any farther.” He winked. “We, on the other hand, can use our good old-fashioned feet.”

Chapter Twenty-One

Prize

The landscape glistened, reminding me of broken glass. We picked our way through the crystal field, careful not to cut our legs on the shards. Some of the surfaces were murky as frosted glass, while others showed our images clearly. Corvus came up behind me, and his blue eyes reflected a pale amethyst. I had my first glimpse of what we’d look like as a couple.

“Annie, what are you looking at?”

My face grew hot. “Nothing.”

Corvus leaned in beside me and glanced down at the amethyst’s surface. “Pretty, aren’t they?”

I pulled away, stepping over fingers of amazonite. “Yeah, if they weren’t so uber-dangerous to people driving Landrovers.”

Corvus laughed. He always found me so amusing. “Still don’t like Paradise 21?”

The crystals crunched under my boots. “Let’s just say it’s not growing on me.”

“I hope it doesn’t.” Corvus’s eyes roamed over me. “You’d look pretty silly with vines all over you. Not to mention how hard it would be to walk around.”

“Ha. Ha.” I faked laughter, but his goofiness lightened the mood. I tried not to worry about the absence of any signs of the ship. My emotions sank with every step we took. Maybe Sirius hadn’t listened to me. Maybe Lieutenant Crophaven was right.

“The ship’s not here.”

Corvus shrugged. “Don’t give up yet. There’s still a lot of ground to cover. You did want to investigate behind the ridge, right?”

I looked warily toward the ridge towering over us. Chills ran down my back as we stepped into its shadow.

“Yeah, I’m just afraid of what we’ll find.”

“Better to know what we’re dealing with.” Corvus squinted his eyes at the ridge as if it were his enemy as well. The sky rumbled above our heads as though the heavens argued with us. Thick bruise-colored clouds moved in, churning in the wind.

“It’s going to pour.” He quickened his pace. “We should find shelter before we get drenched.”

“Oh, yeah.” I’d forgotten about the evening downpours. Thinking I’d be in the Landrover the whole trip, I hadn’t brought any plastic tarps or tents to shield me—us—from the rain. I scanned the crystal field around us. I felt so naked, so vulnerable. My uniform rustled in the breeze like paper against my legs.

“Come on, Annie.” Corvus tugged me ahead. “Our best chance is the ridge.”

Lightning struck the sky and we ran, each step chancing a slice into our legs. The rain came next in a wave, and I stumbled forward.

“I can’t see a thing.”

“Hold my hand and I’ll guide you.”

I grasped his hand and he pulled me forward. My boots slipped on the wet crystals and I struggled to keep my balance.

“Hand me your backpack.”

“I can manage.” But with me hauling it around, we weren’t covering much ground. As much as I wanted to hold my own, I’d have to give in this time.

I shrugged off the shoulder straps and tossed the pack to Corvus. He shouldered both his and mine and pulled us ahead. Thank the Guide one of us was built like an ox. It was much easier to balance without it.

The rain fell in relentless tides, pounding on my head and shoulders like it wanted to melt me into the turf. I fought against the pelting waves and held onto Corvus, hoping each step took me closer to someplace dry and warm. My legs ached and my hands grew so numb and wrinkled I thought they’d shrivel up.

He stopped as we approached the ridge. “There’s nowhere to go.”

His chest heaved, and I could tell the weight of both packs exhausted him. The rain puddled red on the crystal underneath us. “Corvus, your leg.”

“Just a scrape.” He collapsed on his knees. I fell beside him and examined the cut. The blood made my stomach tighten. I helped him pull the backpacks off and searched for my spare uniform shirt at the bottom. I pulled it out, and the dry cloth against my cold wet skin felt so good. I ripped off the arm and tied it around the gash in his leg as tightly as I could, wincing as I pulled the fabric against the cut. My fingers shook as I tied a knot.

“That should stop the bleeding for now.” I stiffened up, sniffing rain up my nose. He’d brought us this far. He couldn’t do it all alone. I blinked back tears and scanned the cliff side.

“I’m going to find shelter. I’ll be right back.”

Corvus’s voice was weak. “Don’t go alone.”

“I’ll be fine.”

Leaving Corvus with both backpacks, I trudged forward, falling against crystals when my feet slipped on the slick surface. The rain started to puddle in between the outcroppings, and I slipped down an incline into a lake up to my chest. My arms flailed as I tried to get a grip on something and pull myself up. My water-logged boots weighted down my feet. The water moved and I screamed, thinking some sea monster reached out for me.

Something hard brushed my leg, and I scrambled up the incline, only to slip back down again. A green limb tangled around my arm. The vines! It was only vines. A particularly wide vine hung over the opposite side. I waded through the water and grabbed on, climbing up hand over hand.

My head crested the top of a hill. A strange white obelisk poked out of the crystals to my right. I pulled myself over the edge and crawled toward it. Was it a different form of crystal?

I smoothed my hand over the glistening surface, smooth and unblemished as porcelain. It reminded me of the alien towers Corvus showed me at the dig site. I stood up, taking in the circumference of something that curved, unnaturally smooth.

The hill was a spaceship.

I couldn’t believe it. Why were the buildings so deep within the earth, and this spaceship right on top? My heart sped up as I wondered if some of the aliens had just crashed, but then I noticed the way the crystal had formed on top of it, bending around the structure. No, this ship had been here for a while.

No jungle turf formed on this crystal bed, so the ship, unlike the colony, was still exposed. I rounded the hull and found a crevice in the porcelain, a line stretching from the middle of the curve up to the top. Standing on my toes, I traced the line with my fingernail, reaching way up over my head.

The porcelain pulsed blue light and I stumbled back, surprised the ship would respond to my touch after being dormant for so many years. The crevice in the porcelain parted, and a hatch lifted. Stunned, I stared forever before deciding to check out what was inside. I crawled onto a smooth platform. The walls were lined with hieroglyphs: strange patterns with geometric shapes like intersecting triangles and concentric circles.

I’d had to trace the crevice to open the ship, so I figured I’d trace another pattern to get the platform to work. Holding my breath, I scratched my fingernail against a trapezoid with a circle inside it.

The platform lowered and fear sped through me as I realized I might have locked myself in the ship with Corvus still out there in the rain. The platform brought me down to a corridor with a faint pulsing light. I had no time to explore further. I wanted out of the ship so I could help Corvus.

Jumping on the platform, I scrambled to climb my way back up, but the walls were slick with no handholds. I was so far down only a sliver of light shone from the outside. The pattering of rain whispered in the distance. What had I done?

Trying not to hyperventilate, I slowed down my racing thoughts. What did I do to get down here? How did I open the ship in the first place?

The patterns looked so complex, there was no way I could figure out their strange language in a rush. Running my fingers along the walls, I found the pattern I initially traced and traced it again, risking being brought down further into the ship.

Come on, come on, come on.

The white walls responded to my touch, and the platform rose back up, taking me to the surface.

Breathing in relief, I jumped down to the crystals and took off to find Corvus. I’d left him for too long.

Where had I come from? I had to skirt around the ship and the lake, so I slogged my way back in an arc, hoping he had enough sense to stay put.

Every crystal looked the same, and I cursed myself for abandoning him. I’d brought him all the way out here and left him wounded and alone.
Some lifemate you are.
I yelled his name over and over again until my throat grew raw. I stumbled, helplessness and loneliness threatening to swallow me whole.

I remembered my locator. Jamming my hand into my pocket, I brought out the battery and stuffed it back on, waiting for a signal.

Nothing.

I stomped my boot and shook my arm, wishing it would somehow turn on. Maybe the battery had gotten too wet, or maybe the crystals interfered, but the screen remained blank.

“Damn it!” All my life I’d tried to avoid my locator, and the one time I wanted it to work, it failed. Irony laughed in my face, and I wanted to crumple and cry my eyes out.

Instead, I wandered with no clear direction. An hour passed before I saw a blur of white against the purple crystal. Corvus lay on his stomach. My heart pumped faster. “Corvus!”

I ran toward him, not caring if my legs were cut or if I fell on my face. I just wanted to make sure he was all right. Every second tore at me. When I reached him, I turned him over and cupped his face in my hands. His eyes were closed. I brought my cheek to his face and shuddered with relief when he exhaled and inhaled again.

I shook him gently. “Corvus, wake up.”

He opened his eyes and smiled. Everything that had gone wrong that day dissolved.

“Annie?”

“I found us a shelter. Come on.”

I hoisted him up, bracing him against me. The rain had lessened, and I could see in front of me without having to squint. The white shaft of the ship poked out from the crystals on the horizon. If I hadn’t seen it up close, it would have looked like another crystal, but now I recognized the shape as something alien-made and not naturally occurring.

We made our way toward the ship, stumbling with each step. He must have weighed twice as much as me, and I struggled to support him. I knew he hated putting any of his weight on me, but every time he tried to hold his own, he wobbled. I feared he’d fall and cut something else.

“Come on, Corvus. We’re almost there.”

We skirted the lake and the ship came into view. Corvus looked up with wide eyes as we approached the hatch. “Holy mother of a black hole.”

“You’re going to have to climb up. I can’t lift you.”

“An alien ship? Are you sure about this, Annie?”

I shrugged. “I rode the platform down to one of the floors, and it seemed okay. At least it’s dry.” He paused and I laughed despite being soaked in the middle of nowhere. “The aliens are long gone. And I’m not going to try and fly it.”

“I know. I’m just still trying to believe it.”

I climbed up and gave him my hand. “Trust me.”

He took my hand and climbed in after me. We lay together on the platform, catching our breaths. If it never rained again, I wouldn’t miss it.

I sat up and found the familiar pattern of the trapezoid and the circle. “Are you ready?”

“You mean we’re going down?”

I nodded. I felt tied to these strange winged creatures. They had come to me in the first place, and I wanted to know more about them. I traced the pattern, and the platform brought us down to the same corridor as before.

I helped Corvus stand and we walked into the belly of the ship, the pulsing blue light illuminating our path.

Corvus shook his head in disbelief. “How can it still work after all these years? You’d think their energy cells would have died out.”

“Don’t know.” I thought about how the white hull glistened in the light. “Maybe it uses solar power?”

“If it does, it’s much more advanced than the
New Dawn
.”

We found a room to the right and sat down on the cool floor. I dug in my backpack for the skin regenerator I’d lifted from Mom’s personal tools. “Let me see your leg.”

Corvus dragged his leg over to me and untied the makeshift bandage. I tried not to wince at the blood and the gash.

“I don’t think a tiny laser kit can help this.”

“This one’s got a turbo-charged skin graph. I’ve seen my mom fix all kinds of cuts from the farming machinery in the biodome with this.” In fact, she probably missed it as we spoke, but I didn’t mention it. I swallowed back a vision of Mom’s worried face and turned the laser on.

Nothing happened as the laser warmed up and the smell of blood grew thick in the air. I wondered if I’d made a mistake. Then the light brightened, forming a warm red projection on the cut. The skin thickened, forming quickly. “Does it hurt?”

“Nah, it’s just warm.”

When I finished, his skin didn’t look quite as smooth as before. There’d probably be a scar, which would have to be taken care of in the emergency bay when we got back, but at least it stopped the bleeding.

“Does it feel better?”

“Much better. Thank you.” Corvus hunched back against the crystal wall. I put the laser back, mindful to take good care of it, but my fingers fumbled with the case. It felt so strange to be in a ship that wasn’t the
New Dawn
, and I wondered again what happened to them.

Corvus looked at me. “You sure these aliens aren’t going to come back and find us in their ship?”

I nodded, knowing I’d have to come clean and explain everything, even if he thought I was crazy. “I see their ghosts, Corvus.”

He blinked as if he misheard me. “What do you mean?”

“I have this psychic power my great-grandmother passed down to me. Her mother before her used to tell fortunes to the space pirates on Alpha Omega. Now I have it as well. It has to do with the crystals’ energy. They allow me to see ghosts. The creature I saw in the jungle was a ghost. You discovered their fossils.”