Shades of Earth (6 page)

 

In the time since the interstellar ark ship, Godspeed, departed Earth, we've continued with advancements in long-term space travel. A remote space station is already set in orbit around the planet you are currently occupying, which will aid in quicker satellite communication between the planets. Additionally, your first task is to locate one of the probes sent from the ship—the probes are equipped with advanced technology and will aid in our communication.

 

Colonel Martin's entire attention is focused on the screen, but I just wish the speaker would be quiet long enough that we can ask some questions.

 

At the time of your landing, a signal was relayed directly to the Financial Resource Exchange. Rest assured that even now, the FRX is preparing a shuttle filled with aid and supplies for your colony. Advanced technology means that this shuttle should reach your location very soon.

 

I gape at the computer screen. Soon? What does that mean? It took three centuries for
Godspeed
to reach the planet.

I glance at Colonel Martin. His hands twitch near the controls. He's torn—do we interrupt and ask for clarification or wait for the end of the speech?

The voice turns grave as it continues.

 

Additionally, it's essential that we inform you of what dangers exist on the planet. First we would like to remind you that both the escape shuttle and Godspeed proper are equipped with lock-down capabilities, and should the need arise, do not hesitate to seal yourselves inside until our aid reaches you.

 

Static interrupts the message momentarily. Colonel Martin scans the controls but isn't sure what to touch.

 

It is essential that you resume communication with us via the probe as soon as possible so that we may more accurately relay the information we have gathered about the current population of threatening—

 

There's a
pop!
and some more crackling sounds, and then suddenly the voice cuts out, drowned out by static. A high-pitched whistling sound rings in my ears as the screen goes black. The air is eerily silent, our communication with Sol-Earth severed once again.

“What happened?” I ask as Colonel Martin bends over the computer.

“I'm not sure. . . . ” He types on the screen, but it goes black. “Maybe the communication systems were damaged when you almost crashed my shuttle.”

Before I can comment on his claiming ownership of
my
shuttle, gunshots boom behind us, so unexpected that I jump. Bledsoe crouches on the floor of the bridge, using the wall to steady her arm as she takes careful aim. I follow her gaze and see the—the
thing
—soaring above us, its talons outstretched, already eager to rip us to shreds. Another gunshot cracks out, followed by a piercing cry. The bird-thing changes direction but isn't hit.

“What the hell is that?” Colonel Martin says. His own gun is already in his hand, his knuckles white around the grip.

“That's the same kind of creature I saw earlier,” I say, trying to keep my voice calm. “Amy said that it looked like a”—I try to remember the word she used—“like a dinosaur, a, um . . . a terro . . . ?”

“I know what it looks like, damn it, but what is it?”

I hide my smirk. So we've finally encountered something that's capable of breaking Colonel Martin's cool exterior. “Before we landed, we were warned about . . . ” I pause. It sounds silly to say, but there's no other word for it. “Monsters.”

Colonel Martin squints up at the creature soaring overhead. It's huge—even this far away, it blots out some of the suns' light.

Bledsoe takes one last shot, but it's clear the monster has flown too far away.

“Maybe I did crash-land the shuttle,” I say, “but I think maybe one of those things knocked us off course.”

“Don't waste ammunition,” Colonel Martin barks at Bledsoe. She doesn't lower her gun, but I see her finger slide off the trigger. “We should get inside; it isn't safe here. I want to find out more about this damn ‘population of threatening' whatever,” he continues, turning to me. “Bledsoe and I will go out with a group of eight more men. If we find one of the probes, we should be able to establish a secure, consistent communication link with Earth and get a better idea of what we're facing.”

Colonel Martin heads to the door. Bledsoe backs up slowly, her hand still on the gun. “Elder, I need you to keep your people calm.” Colonel Martin says this as a command, not a request.

“I'm going with you,” I say.

Colonel Martin pauses, his hand on the door. “No civilians.”

“My people need to see that we're equal. They need to know that I'm involved, and I have a right to know what you say to Earth.”

“Of course,” Colonel Martin agrees. “But in this moment, the important thing is for them to have someone to turn to. You need to be the strong core, the rock they can depend on.”

“I—”

Colonel Martin opens the door and herds me inside, Emma Bledsoe close behind. She slams the door shut and locks it. The air inside the shuttle tastes bitter and metallic compared to the warm, fresh breeze we've just left behind.

“I need you
here
, Elder,” Colonel Martin says. “I need someone I can trust to protect the shuttle.”

“But—”

“I'm leaving you with precious cargo: our people.
Your
people. Are you up to the task?”

“Yes,” I say, “but—”

“Good, good, glad to see you agree,” he says before heading to the armory.

I can't help but think I've just become the pawn Orion feared I was all along.

9:
AMY

I slam into Emma as I round the hallway.
“What happened?” I gasp. When I heard the gunshots and the cry of another one of those pterodactyl things, I broke away from my mother and raced to the bridge.

She looks surprised. “Nothing,” she says. She walks past me and starts barking orders at the military men and women gathered by the cryo chambers.

I don't think my heart starts beating again until I see Elder and Dad in the armory, safe. Dad is focused entirely on selecting weapons. Elder looks resigned, almost petulant, but he shoots me a smile that makes my heart stutter all over again.

“What's going on?” I ask, still breathless. I notice that the door to the bridge is locked.

“Amy, everything's fine. Go back to your mother,” Dad says.

I ignore him and turn to Elder.

“We saw one of the m—” Elder starts to say “monsters,” but cuts himself off. “We saw another creature. But it didn't come close to us.”

I eye the .44 in Dad's hand. “Are you going to hunt it?”

Dad looks surprised. “We're just protecting ourselves. Ten of us are going to find the probe and attempt to re-establish communication with Earth.”

“Wait,
re
-establish?” I whip around to Elder. His eyes tell me everything I need to know. “You talked with Earth?!” I squeal. “That's—whoa! That's amazing! What did they say? What's Earth like now? What are they going to do?”

“The com link died,” Elder says. “But they're going to send help. They think . . . ” He frowns. “They think they can get help to us.”

My mouth drops open.
“Really?!”

Elder nods, but he's nowhere near as excited as I am. Earth! After all this time,
Earth
is talking to us again!

“Amy, I need to work. Go back to your mother.” Dad holsters the .44 and starts going through the supply of grenades and bombs on another shelf.

“I'm coming with you!” I say, stepping farther into the armory. Elder shoots me a dark look, but I ignore him. “Dad, let me come too! I
need
to go outside. The planet is right there and I haven't even seen it yet, not really!”

“No,” Dad says without looking up.

I flinch as if his single word was a slap across my face. “Dad,” I say urgently. “Let me come with you. I won't be in the way. I'll take a gun—I can help. Just let me come.”

Dad looks up at me, and for a moment all he does is stare into my pleading eyes. “No,” he says finally.

“But—!”

“No. Go back to your mother.”

“Dad!”

Elder gives a tiny shake of his head, telling me to drop it. My eyes narrow. I can tell Dad's forbidden him from going too—but he just went out. He's seen the world. He didn't even want it, but he's seen it.

I spin on my heel and leave the armory. I
know
I'm being childish. I know I'm being unreasonable and immature and ridiculous. But I can't help it. Before I was just focused on saving Elder, but now I want to see Centauri-Earth for myself.

I
need
to.

I pause at the doorway to the cryo room and take a deep breath. I force myself to really see what's going on. The cryo room is crowded, but unevenly divided. The nearly fifteen hundred people from the ship gather against one wall, as far away from the cryo chambers as possible. The people from Earth are occupying themselves with menial tasks—unpacking their storage crates, setting up scientific equipment on tables made from their cryo trays, talking with each other. There is nervous energy from both sides of the room, but fear too. There is always fear for the unknown.

Emma strides past me with eight other members of the military, each with a serious expression on his or her face. The soldiers are fully uniformed now and armed to the teeth. I remember the screeching cry of the flying creatures, and an unbidden shiver races up my spine. Centauri-Earth isn't there for my amusement. I know my father was right to forbid me going with him, no matter how much I dislike it.

Still, when I unfroze him, I didn't think he'd keep me locked up in the shuttle. The cryo chambers are all empty now, like forgotten shells washed up on a beach.

All except one. Orion's.

My eyes drift to the door to the genetics laboratory on the far side of the cryo room. I slip easily through the crowd of formerly frozen people as I drift toward the gen lab. As soon as I reach the door, I type in the entry code and roll my thumb over the biometric scanner. Few people have access to this room, but Elder made sure that I could enter whenever I wanted.

Once I'm inside, the door zips shut behind me.

I am alone now with my thoughts and relative silence.

And Orion.

I stride forward, to his cryo chamber. Unlike the ones my parents woke from, this chamber is a self-contained unit. It stands upright, and a little circular window shows the man inside the ice.

My steps slow as I grow closer to him.

I don't want to admit it, but I am starting to see Orion in Elder's features. My gaze flicks to the large cylinder on the other side of the room, where dozens of tiny fetuses could be plucked from golden goo and turned into another clone of Elder.

Not another Elder . . . just another person with the same body. Elder's mind is nothing like Orion's.

I could never love Orion.

When Elder pulled me from my cryo chamber, he didn't realize that he would wake me up and I'd never be able to be frozen again. But Orion knew. And he knew when he pulled Robertson and Kennedy out of their chambers that they would die choking on the tubes and cryo liquid in their throats, their eyes bulging and their hands clawing at the glass.

He knew.

I glance down at the timer under Orion's face. 05:23:34 . . . 33 . . . 32 . . . 31 . . .

I bend over and quickly punch in the numbers to bring the timer back up to 24:00:00.

Twenty-four more hours of being frozen. Elder was able to program it to count down more time, but the timer is finicky. I check it every day now.

I force myself to stare into his frozen face, his iced-over eyes. I don't want him to be here at all, separated from the new planet by nothing but ice.

But if I can't see the new world yet, at least I can make sure he can't either.

10:
ELDER

I let myself have one moment
of fresh air before sealing the bridge door shut behind the ten soldiers off to face the new planet. I don't know how long I stand there, my forehead pressed against the cool metal.

It's already begun.

I can feel what little control I had over the situation slipping through my fingers.

I shut my eyes, exhale loudly. I can't let myself think this way. I can't let myself live in Orion's fears.

Noise swells from the cryo room, interrupting my dark thoughts. At first I think it's just the natural volume of fifteen hundred people cramped together in one giant room, but then a voice screams in fury over the sound of all the others. I jerk up and race to the cryo room.

“What happened?” a woman's voice shouts as I push my way through the crowd gathered around the last row of cryo chambers.

Amy stands in front of a tall Earthborn woman with long, thin arms and a giant head of bushy hair. The woman's voice is muted by thick, snotty, gasping sobs as she wails again, “What
ha-happened
?”

Amy throws up both her hands and tries to take a step back, but she's trapped by the rows of cryo chambers. The frozens are clustered around her, and my people are staring at them with nervous wariness in their eyes.

Amy says something in a voice too low for me to catch, but the woman's answer is pitched so high everyone in the cryo room can hear: “He was
murdered
?!”

Oh,
frex
.

I pick up my pace, shoving aside the people in my way as I head toward Amy and the woman. When I reach her, Amy jerks her head at the screaming lady and whispers, “That's Juliana Robertson.”

Robertson—same last name as one of the frozens Orion unplugged.

“My husband!” Juliana screeches, one hand pressed against the closed door to cryo chamber 100.

Then her hand turns into a fist. She whirls around, grabbing Amy by her tunic and yanking her close. “What happened?” she says fiercely. “Tell me what son of a bitch
killed
my husband!”

Amy's eyes are wide with fear. “It was—” She pauses. I know she was going to say “it was an accident,” but she can't speak the lie.

“Who?!”
Juliana Robertson roars in Amy's face. Amy flinches, and I push Juliana aside, pulling Amy close. She loses interest in us and whips around to face the crowd of people from the ship gathering around her. “Which one of you freaks did it?” she screams, and I am momentarily caught up in the irony that she thinks we are freaks for looking similar when that's the same word people used to apply to Amy for being different. “What coward killed my poor husband while he slept? Show yourself!” She is all fury, all raging hate.

My people don't know how to respond to her. To them, the frozens are dangerous. Many of them agree with Orion and his actions. And Juliana wears the same green-and-brown clothes as the rest of the military—she is a soldier, even more dangerous for her training.

Their eyes turn to me—I am the one who is supposed to protect them.

Juliana follows their gaze to me, but she doesn't see what it means. She thinks their look is accusatory, akin to a confession of her husband's murder.

She lunges at me, screaming, and before I have a chance to react, her fist connects with my left cheekbone, making my head snap back. I stagger away, raising both my hands in defense.

“Don't touch Elder!” one of the shipborns—a man named Heller, a former rancher on the Feeder Level—shouts as she jumps forward, grabbing Juliana's arm as she rears it back to swing at me again.

“No, wait—” I try to say.

“Don't hurt her!” another of the former frozens shouts as she jumps into the fray.

And just like that: chaos.

The people from Earth may be fiercer, but my people outnumber them fifteen to one. As the fighting escalates, the pack of frozens retreats until their backs are against the cryo chambers. Screams and shouts drown out every other sound. A woman who I take to be Amy's mother—they have the same green eyes—grabs her wrist, dragging her away from the growing mob. I swallow a lump in my throat. It's my fault the shuttle's degrading into fighting, just like
Godspeed
did. It's me who can't keep Amy safe. I jab my finger against my wi-com—uselessly; it doesn't work here.

I climb up on the nearest table, shouting, “Stop! STOP!”

But it does no good.

This is a fight born of rage and fear.

Fists slam against flesh; blood pours from new wounds. A chair is thrown into the crowd, then swung against a cryo chamber with a deafening crash. Juliana Robertson, her wild hair flying, screams as she lunges toward me but is caught by one of my people slamming her against a cryo chamber. I scramble off the table, throwing myself between fighting bodies and being beaten for my effort.

“ENOUGH!” Colonel Martin roars from the doorway. The people nearest him pause, but the fight rages. “I SAID ENOUGH!” he shouts again, walking straight through the middle of the mob. “STAND DOWN!”

And they do.

The military people who'd been left inside with us stop fighting. Even Juliana Robertson. Blood streams down both nostrils and her eyes are red, but her fists uncurl, and she steps back silently.

“
What
the hell is going on?” Colonel Martin rages. His eyes bounce between me and Juliana and back again. Behind him, the ten men and women he took with him to the probe spread out as the fighting dies.

“My husband,” Juliana says through clenched teeth. “He was
killed
, sir.”

Colonel Martin dips his head. “I know.”

Juliana's eyes flash.

“You are dismissed. Go to the storage area and cool down.”

“Sir, he was my
husband
.”

“I know,” Colonel Martin says. “And my friend. You are dismissed.”

“They
killed
him.”

“Dismissed.”
Colonel Martin's voice bodes no allowance, and Juliana spins on her heel, storming to the room where the trunks had been stored. Several other members of the military follow.

My people glance at me, and I jerk my head to the other side of the cryo room. They head back, but I notice the way their backs are still stiff, their jaws still tensed. They remain ready for a fight. It's not over, just paused.

Colonel Martin strides over to me, fury in his eyes. “This is what you call leadership?” he growls in an undertone. “This is what you call
control?”

“No.” I bite off the word, then add, “Sir.”

Amy and her mother draw closer now that the fight's over. Something in Colonel Martin's face softens when he sees them.

Colonel Martin strides forward, drawing attention. “Everyone—shipborn and Earthborn alike—I have news. But first, a warning: if we don't work together, we'll never be able to survive this planet.”

His words are loud and firm, but he doesn't shout. Still, I watch as the fight leaves my people, and they let go of their anger in order to listen.

“We did find the probe, less than a mile away, at the edge of the forest we landed in. We were unable to communicate with Earth, but I am hopeful that we'll be able to contact our mother planet soon.”

He takes a deep breath. Every eye is on him.

“Further, we did glimpse the creatures that you've been able to hear from inside the shuttle. They are large, reptilian birds, and they do look predatory and possibly carnivorous.”

At his words, a chill rushes across the entire crowd. This is every nightmare they've ever had about the planet made real.

“We must constantly be aware of the danger this planet holds. And we must fight
that
, not each other.”

Colonel Martin looks around him at the chaos the fight caused—overturned tables and chairs, blood splatter, ripped clothing.

“It is clear that we will not be able to stay inside the confines of the shuttle indefinitely, despite the protection it affords us. To that end, our first missions will be aimed at survival: finding food, water, and shelter.
Everyone
will need to contribute to this task. Work will begin tomorrow.”

He shoots me a disgusted look. “Don't kill each other in the meantime.”