Citadel: First Colony (16 page)

Mitch shook his head, smiled, let the humor return to him. Whatever Thomas was hiding, so far it hadn’t brought them harm. Or it seemed so at any rate. Time might say something different, but for now he’d proven himself a friend and a colleague, and a decent leader too. “ok,” Mitch said. “ok, I can let it go. I’ve let it go. Let’s see if we can get this bird to fly like an eagle instead of like a turkey.”

The
shuttle settled down close to the wreckage.
The first chunk of wreckage, anyway. This was the section of the module that was festooned with atmospheric propulsion systems. Each thruster was controlled by its very own independent system, a redundancy that was meant to compensate for damage or failure of any one unit. The sudden entry into the atmosphere coupled with the collision with the Citadel module had rendered these redundancies useless, however, and the whole thing had spun out of control until it had plowed up miles of topsoil and foliage and rocks on the surface of an alien planet.

Thomas felt uneasy about the scene. He had never before seen a vessel of this size splayed open and spread out in a wake of destruction, but that didn’t seem to stop him from associating it with another starship from a distant past—one that had not crashed to a planet’s surface but had instead exploded with the force of a star, with enough power and energy to vaporize everyone and everything close by. The vision of peeled metal and fire damage that Thomas looked at now could not have existed in the explosion that had changed his life all those years ago, but that couldn’t keep his mind from connecting the two.

“Thomas,” Mitch said from beside him. “You ok?”

Thomas finally broke out of his reverie. Mitch, Alan, Reilly, and the girl, Penny, were all standing beside the shuttle, and all eyes were on him. He realized that he’d been standing with his back to them for some time, staring intently at the wreckage, and he must have missed something someone had asked him. “I’m sorry,” Thomas said, trying to force a smile. “I guess ... well, it’s just that this is a lot of destruction.”

Mitch nodded, but still stared at him for a moment.

Mitch and Alan got to work on salvaging what systems they needed to bring the shuttle back to 100 percent.
Or at least 90 percent
, Thomas thought. Mitch had explained that they would be able to get full flight capability back, which would mean no more short hops with long cool-down periods. Getting the atmospheric controls back in shape would take longer, and it wasn’t a priority right now. They’d deal with getting back into space once they’d reclaimed as many of the colonists as possible.

While the two Blue Collar engineers did their thing, though, Thomas found that he was suddenly useless. As were Reilly and Penny. After giving it a great deal of thought, he made his decision. “We’re going on a little hike,” he told the two ladies.

“What do you have in mind?” Reilly asked.

“What do you mean, a hike?” Penny snapped.

“There may be other pods in the wreckage. We’re going to see if we can find them. If any are in trouble, like you were Penny,” he said pointedly, “then we’ll get them out. Timing could be crucial.”

Reilly nodded, as expected. She would do her duty.

But to his surprised Penny was also nodding. “Do you think we might find my mother and father?”

Thomas had expected her to snap again, to demand that he and Reilly do it on their own while she rested in the shuttle or something. At once, he felt a little ashamed at his harsh judgment of her. At the same time, though, he couldn’t help but note that her interest in finding the pods was strictly personal. “There’s a chance,” he said quietly. It seemed to be enough.

And so, once again, Thomas found himself donning a backpack and canteen and trudging out on foot. This wasn’t exactly how he and his fellows had always envisioned the colonization of alien worlds. In his dreams, there had been sophisticated computer systems handling all of the colony’s needs, and there had been dozens of vehicles for transport. One hobbled shuttle wasn’t really cutting it. Then again, the point of the current system was to arrive on a world, break down the colony module for parts and materials, and build everything else they would need, vehicles included. It was, on the whole, a much more efficient means of colonization than he had ever really envisioned. Nothing was wasted.

Still, even though he’d kept in decent enough shape in his previous life, over the past couple of days he’d done an awful lot of hiking, climbing, and carrying of heavy objects. His muscles were starting to rebel even as he forced himself to press on.

Reilly seemed a little beaten by the experience as well. She had grown up entirely in an environment where gravity had little to no hold on her most of the time. Artificial gravity was still relatively new throughout the human colony fleet—a gift from the Esool—and part of her lifetime had been spent floating among bulkheads and through corridors. Now that she was confronted with the real thing on a grand, planetary scale, it was kicking her butt. Or so he imagined. She seemed winded after a very short period and lagged a bit as they walked. Thomas slowed the pace enough for her to more easily keep up.

It was Penny that was the biggest surprise, though. She seemed to have no limitations. She was in good shape, despite the obviously pampered lifestyle she’d had. The designer clothes, the manicured nails, the perfect hair and skin—these things gave her away as one who had money and could afford to spend it on frivolous and luxurious things. But she had the movement and strength of someone who was used to being physical. She must have loved being outdoors, Thomas figured. And since she had no other responsibilities to distract her, she was outdoors a lot. Rock climbing, hiking, maybe some sports, and all in real gravity. Penny might be spoiled, but she hadn’t sat idle.

Thomas found that his opinion of the girl was shifting slightly. He still wasn’t thrilled at her frequent displays of childishness and selfishness. But he had to admire her grace, her strength. No wonder Alan seemed to be infatuated with her.

Penny kept moving ahead of them and then pausing to let them catch up. She was obviously annoyed. “I thought we were in a hurry here,” she said.

Reilly, huffing and obviously tired, said, “I’m sorry. I’m not used to real G.”

“Real G?” Thomas said. He, too, was huffing a little, though it was probably due more to the fact that he’d already had a lengthy hike recently and his physical limits were closing in.

“Real Gravity,” Penny sneered. “What else would she mean? Are you seriously an engineer? Because you don’t seem to know anything.”

“I know nothing at all,” Thomas said, forcing a smile. “That’s why they put me in charge.”

Penny huffed her annoyance and stormed off in the direction they’d been moving.

“She’s a snot, but she’s right about one thing, you do seem to be a little out of the loop at times. No offense,” Reilly said.

“I’ve been ... away. For a long time,” Thomas replied.

“Away? Like on another colony? Or ... wait, are you a sleeper?”

When Thomas only blinked in reply she went on. “A sleeper is someone who goes into cryo and only comes out at certain times. I’ve met a few here and there, mostly they’re specialists who are taking long voyages.”

Thomas nodded, “That’s as good a name as any. I was in cryo freeze for a very long time. I woke up about a month before the Citadel mission was launched.”

Reilly regarded him for a moment, weighed what he was saying, apparently did some sort of side-by-side comparison in her head, sizing him up based on other people she had known. “That explains it,” she said finally. “You tend to get most of everything right and then miss out on some saying or expression or something. So, what are you specialized in?”

“Computers,” he said. “I used to design and build computer systems for spacecraft and for the colonies.”

“For the colonies? But, those systems haven’t changed much in about a hundred years. I thought they had all been designed long ago. You couldn’t have been asleep that long.”

To Thomas’s relief, she laughed at the very idea, and he smiled and said, “No, I guess I couldn’t. But I was under for a long time. When I went into suspension, they were still designing and refining some of the systems that you use now. They may not have changed much to the naked eye, but there’s always some adjustment or something that you have to make. I’m not quite extinct yet.”

She smiled and as they started hiking again, trying to catch up to Penny, she said, “I’ve never done anything other than fly ships. My whole life I’ve been part of a crew.”

“That’s what I hear. Did you ever think about doing something else? Did you always want to be a pilot?”

She smiled, “Well, no. I used to want to be an engineer. A White Collar, actually. Living in a house on some planet. Working in a building that’s rooted to the ground. Clean. Well,” she said, slightly embarrassed, “you know. You’re a White Collar. You have money.”

He laughed out loud, and when he saw her face, he immediately felt bad. “Sorry,” he said. “But I’m not exactly Rockefeller.”

“Who?”

He sighed. “It means I’m not rich. There was a family on Earth named Rockefeller, a long time ago, that was very rich at one time. They might still be, I’m not sure. But way back in the stone age when I was working on computers, we had that saying.”

“Ah,” she said. “Still, you were free to travel if you wanted, right? And you were free to settle somewhere. White Collars can choose a colony and stay there. Blues just have to keep flying.”

“So why’d you give up your dream? Or have you? Do you still want to be a White Collar engineer?”

She was quiet for a moment, and Thomas wondered if he had somehow offended her. He waited until she finally answered. “I passed a bunch of tests. Did really well, in fact. But a few of my friends, Blue Collars, people I had grown up with and pretty much thought of as family, they made it clear that they wouldn’t have anything to do with me anymore. If I left, I’d have to start all over. I don’t have any other family, so, you know.”

“That’s terrible,” Thomas said. “They’d cut you off because you’re trying to better yourself?”

“Hey, I wouldn’t be better than them, ok?” she said, sounding a little angry. “Just ... never mind. It kind of freaks me out to be planet-side anyway. It’s not a big deal.”

“I didn’t mean to offend you, Reilly. I’m sorry. You’re right, you wouldn’t be better than them. You’d just be
improving
yourself. You’d be doing something for you. I think it’s selfish of them to shun you for it.”

She shrugged. “That’s the way it is,” she said.

Thomas could see that it was. Before they’d left Citadel, things seemed to be getting tense between the Blue Collars and the White Collars. It was almost like some sort of caste distinction. The White Collars were seen as a kind of elite class. Not as rich and powerful as the wealthy colonists, but close. Close enough, in fact, to be considered “other,” to be considered the
outsider
. The Blue Collars seemed to play the social role of serfs, or the working class. They were the grease in the wheels of society, and they knew it. Apparently, they resented it, but they had developed a sense of pride and elitism themselves about the fact of their social status. They saw themselves as better than the White Collars because they, at least, weren’t afraid to get their hands dirty, to work hard and risk their lives in the service of others.

This sense of identity, Thomas knew, was important. It allowed them to make sense of their lives, thousands of days spent in the cold and dark of space with little more than each other to depend on. They became family, and just like any family, they held to their members fiercely. So when someone left, as Reilly had dreamt of doing, they were shunned. They were cast out and set loose.

Thomas had seen this kind of thing in his day, too. Weren’t the Amish like this? The unbelievers, the ones who refused to join the church, weren’t they shunned and cast out, never allowed to return? Before he’d gone to sleep, putting himself voluntarily in cryo suspension, there had been plenty of street gangs around, and hadn’t they had similar rules? When you joined a gang, you became part of a family, and if you tried to “better” yourself, you were showing disrespect to that family. You were cast out, sometimes violently, and never allowed to return.

It happened with poverty groups, too. There was this culture of poverty in which families and friends clung to their lifestyle and situation and saw anyone who tried to get out as turning their backs on their roots. It was a concept that Thomas had always found strange, this idea that the pursuit of an education could be seen as a statement that you are ashamed of where you came from. Nevertheless, he knew that it happened, and it had obviously played a part in shaping this girl’s life.

“Are you two going to camp here or something? Come on!” Penny shouted.

They had been walking at a somewhat leisurely pace. “I hate to say it, but she’s right,” Reilly said. “If we’re doing this, we need to get a leg up.”

“Agreed,” Thomas said, and the two of them practically ran to catch up to Penny as she trudged on to the next chunk of wreckage.

J
ack
had a tight feeling in the pit of his stomach
, in the nape of his neck, in his shoulders. He had a sick pressure in his head, a pounding that made it nearly impossible to think straight. He saw the world in red, through a veil of rage. And it all came from one inescapable fact—

The alien was a threat.

Jack and his crew knew it, but it seemed like most people were just ignoring the fact. Especially the damned White Collars. They seemed perfectly willing to ignore all the evidence, to forget that they were stranded on a world with an alien that had tried to kill them all.

He had no proof. But who needed proof? Who needed anything more than to look around and see the wreckage, the injuries, the bodies of the dead? Who needed to see anything more than that green-tinted freak who called himself a Captain?

Mitch Garrison had all but surrendered to the alien with his talk about the “chain of command.” He had convinced some of the Blue Collars to accept this thing as their leader, but Jack never would. And neither would his crew.