Colonization (6 page)

This time he didn’t disconnect from the ship, and I wondered if he was too weak to survive on his own for even a few minutes. His sacrifice pained my heart. But I didn’t think of him as a saint. He was a flawed man with the same weaknesses I had, seeking his own path to redemption.

He’d asked me to forgive him and, in that moment, I did. I wanted to run to him and throw my arms around his neck.
Yeah, that would look really good in front of Nova and Sirius.

Instead, I folded my hands in my lap and promised myself I’d get another chance to talk to him before he disappeared like Great-grandma Tiff.

When Grandpapa spoke, his voice was weak despite the amplification of his throat mic. “This is a momentous event in the history of mankind, a goal achieved throughout eight generations of steadfast work and perseverance. Because the space pirates severed communication with the other communal transport ships, we may be the last hope of humanity. Let us make our ancestors proud.”

His arms rose feebly, but the surge of applause roared louder than anything I’d experienced in my life. Goose bumps prickled my neck as I pondered his words and watched the colonists around me celebrate their exhilaration.

Grandpapa gestured toward the emergency exit panel on the far side of the auditorium. “Preliminary atmospheric readings are compatible. Go now and take the first steps into a new future.”

Chapter Seven

Apparition

As the emergency portal dematerialized, a wash of humid air seeped in and I breathed in the heady scent of Paradise 21. The muggy tang of vegetation was heavy and sweet to the point of syrupy delirium. My nose tickled as if I’d stuck it right into the middle of a peach blossom and sniffed the pollen up to irritate my sinuses. I sneezed, then breathed again, trying to discern the complex fragrances mingling with the brine of the sea.

Dad led the way, stepping onto the plastic dock suspended three feet above the cresting waves. He gestured for me to follow, and I put a tentative foot on the platform. The grooves on the bottom of my space boots kept me from sliding. Mom followed behind. We were a trail of ants in a vast new place.
This world could swallow us whole.

“Honey, make sure you hold onto the railing.” The nervous edge to Mom’s voice heightened my fears. Had I stumbled into a dream? I wished to wake up in the safety of my sleep pod, cocooned in the silence of space.

A shifting wind hit me, and the hairs on my bare arms rose with goose bumps. This world was all too real. I followed Dad, stepping above the deep, churning waters. The wind increased, whipping my hair, and I pulled the wisps behind my ears only to have them blown in my face again. Clumps of foamy bubbles dotted the water, with spiraling vines thrusting up to clutch onto the platform. I stepped in the middle of the dock and prepared myself to kick any sort of vegetation away if it so much as brushed my leg.

“They’re only seapods. They won’t hurt you,” Mom whispered to the back of my head as if she read my mind. The image of her slipping the knife in her pocket came back to me, and I wondered if she said it more to calm herself.

“I’m okay.”

I jumped off the end of the dock and my feet sank into the black rock crystals. The gravity was stronger here than on the
New Dawn
and it pulled on my legs. My muscles screamed as I fought against it. The air was so full of oxygen it made me dizzy. My eyes watered, and the coastline smeared into a blotch of effervescence. Mom held my arm to steady me, but she wobbled too and we ended up clutching each other to stay standing.

The other colonists spoke in hushed tones as they spread out on the beach, their pristine white uniforms contrasting with the black sand and the emerald tangle of jungle hugging the coastline. Sirius jumped off the ramp and I broke away from my parents, heading toward him. The crowd blocked me, and Nova got there first, joining him at his side.

A fist squeezed my heart until it bled, and I froze in my stumbling tracks, gaping. Colonists walked by me, recording readings on their locators, and I thought I saw Sirius and Nova join hands in the glimpses I caught between the roving science team. When I looked again, they stood separately, Nova’s hands resting on her curvy hips.

I resisted the urge to collapse in defeat on the black sand. Here I was on another world and all I thought about was being lovesick. Tearing my eyes away from them, I lurched toward the perimeter of the dense jungle. Bell-shaped flowers the size of my head drooped on large stems, shedding glittery spores on the black crystals of the beach. I crouched down and traced my fingertips along the glimmerdust, staining my skin with indigo and vermilion swirls.

“Beautiful, aren’t they?”

I turned my head. Corvus towered over me.

I wanted to ask him what he was doing beside me, but I already knew the answer and it would seem rude. “I wish I remembered what they were called. I should have paid more attention in class.”

“Yeah, me too.” He smiled and crouched beside me, straining his eyes as if he tried to see what I saw in the black sand. Perhaps we’d failed equally miserably on the tests and that was why we were paired together. I gritted my teeth. Why had I been so lazy?

He touched the sand beside me, his large fingers clumsily brushing back the dark crystals and breaking the trails of glimmerdust in the sand.

I studied his broad forehead and wide-bridged nose, but his face gave no hint of emotion. He must’ve read the lifemate assignments by now, but if he had he didn’t mention it.

I wanted to ask him what he thought about the whole pairing thing and how he felt about me, but my tongue stuck numb and heavy in my mouth. I could only crouch on the alien beach with him in awkward silence. What did it matter, anyway? I wasn’t interested in him.

He reached out and his red-tinted fingers covered mine. He curled his fingers around my hand in the shade of the bell flowers. His hands were rough with calluses from constructing the Corsairs Sirius’s deft hands would fly.

My fingers tensed and I shot him a sideways glance, arching my eyebrow. We stayed that way for a long time, my question unanswered and his eyes watching me.

“Corvus, we need you.” The older man’s voice startled me, and I almost fell backward on my butt. Corvus had already removed his hand from mine.

“Yes, sir.”

I whipped my head around, braid flying. A higher officer stood above us, impatiently shifting his eyes from our crouching position on the black beach to the ship. He pointed to a team of burly men unloaded monitoring equipment.

“See you later, Andromeda.” Corvus bowed his head once and followed the officer to the ship, leaving me alone, teetering on the forest’s edge. I looked down the beach. Mom scooped samples of the black sand into her vials, and Dad talked with other men. No one paid attention to me.

As my eyes returned to the tangle of flowers and vines, a glimmer of pure white light glowing deep in the jungle drew my attention. The sheen of light differed from the ruddy purple rays of Paradise 21’s filtered sun, reminding me of the fluorescent lights inside the ship. I stepped from the beach onto the turf, the foamy membranes of interwoven plants.

The jungle floor squished under my boots, and I grabbed a vine the width of my hand to steady myself. Pin-sized insects with curling tails rose from the flowers around me and jittered off into the canopy of vines overhead. The heady scent of nectar intoxicated me, and I pulled up my uniform to cover my nose and mouth. Twirling stigmas and anthers splayed out of each blossom, reaching out to stain my white uniform with a rainbow of pollen. I remembered the bright hues of the man-eating giant we’d discussed in class, but I didn’t see any flowers resembling it so I pressed on.

As much as I feared this new world, I didn’t want to return to the ship and face my assignments. Both worlds collided and smashed me right in the middle. All I wanted was to get away.

The glow of light eluded me, drawing me farther into the jungle. The distant voices of the colonists faded into murmurs. I heard the buzz of tiny insects and the whisper of a faint breeze. The vines tangled around an outcropping of sharp stalagmites of crystal, gleaming like the inside of a geode in the purplish rays of the sun. A strange vibration shook the air, as if someone hit a tuning fork and let it ring. The light moved and I blinked, disbelieving. A gray silhouette emerged from the glow, and I fell backward into the flowers, the soft veiny petals brushing my skin.

The pollen released in my fall was so thick it obscured my vision, and I coughed, trying to clear my lungs and decide if I should run. The humanoid figure glided closer as if it floated above the turf. It had two bumps above each shoulder. At first I thought it was a backpack, but then I wondered if the lumps were folded wings.

Was it an angel? Had I died in the jungle? Been poisoned by some unidentified species or pulled into the stomach of a man-eating flower I couldn’t even name? Trillium something. My mind whirled as the being moved toward me and came into focus. It wasn’t an angel at all.

It was an alien.

I scrambled backward, but thorny vines clutched my feet. It stared at me through glassy pearls with no pupils, the eyes popping out of a slick opal-skinned face longer than it was wide. A beak-shaped nose below the eyes inhaled as it parted two plastic-looking lips.

I screamed and kicked until the vines bled a green, inky substance all over my white pants. Finally their hold loosened and I pulled myself up, sprinting through the dense vegetation. I didn’t check to see where I tumbled as I threw myself forward. I could have stepped right into the Trillium what’s-it-called monster flower’s tentacles and died on the very first day.

A break in the vines up ahead gave me hope. I increased my pace, hearing the now-familiar sound of the waves rushing to the shore. I broke free of the jungle, plunging onto the beach into a whimpering heap. A few women collecting samples at the jungle’s edge rushed to my side as I wheezed. A crowd gathered around me, everyone asking questions I couldn’t answer.

Mom’s voice cut through all of their gossip. “Annie, my goodness, what happened to you?”

She put her arm around me and I propped myself up on my palms, the crystal beach cutting into my skin. “I saw something in the jungle.”

“Trillium Bisonate?” My mom pointed, and a couple of men with lasers ran in on the same path I came out on.

I gasped for air. “What?”

“The flower that eats people alive.”

“No.” I shook my head and swallowed.
Might as well come clean.
“An alien!”

Protests filled the air around me.

I stared at a member of the science team. “Check your life-form locator. Scan the surrounding perimeter ten meters into the jungle.”

The man’s fingers flicked over the keys. He shook his head. “Nothing…nothing but plants and insects.”

Mom checked my forehead for a fever. “Are you sure you didn’t mistake a flower? Or a shadow?”

Annoyed, I raised my voice. “It was humanoid. I’m sure of it.”

Both men emerged from the jungle, shrugging and shaking their heads. Mom gave me a sympathetic look that only irritated me more. “You’ve had too many stimuli today. You need to rest.” She turned to the nearest lifers. “Let’s get her to the medical deck.”

As they carried me to the ship, I checked the jungle line over my shoulder, expecting the alien to emerge and attack the colonists taking samples. Vines and blossoms stretched as far as my eye could see with no speck of otherworldly light. Maybe they were right. I did have pollen in my eyes, and all of the stress of the landing and seeing Sirius with Nova may have caused me to hallucinate.

But even when I closed my eyes, the creature’s pale face stared at me, beckoning.

Chapter Eight

Specimens

I woke up in the same hospital bed Grandpapa had lain in. Sirius’s face hung over me.

“Annie, are you okay?”

For a blissful moment I forgot about the alien, the tests, and the life assignments. Sirius and I were together again. I gazed into his silky brown eyes and lost myself.

“Annie?”

“I’m glad you’re here.” I reached up to brush his cheek with my index finger and he drew his face away, settling back in his seat beside my bed.

“I heard something happened in the jungle and I came to check on you.”

It all came rushing back. Like it or not, my world had changed and there was no revisiting the past. I wanted to hide my head under my pillow and forget about it.

“They said you saw a creature.”

The image of the pale alien face flashed in my memory and I winced. In the bright light of the emergency bay, the encounter seemed more and more hallucinatory. In any case, I wasn’t ready to talk about it so I confronted him about something else. “How did you get into my room? Only family can—”

Sirius put up a hand to silence me. “Annie, they all knew that we—”

“That we what?” Were friends? Were going to be matched up except for my stupid test scores? Although I knew a number of reasons, I still threw it back in his face with a glare.

His jaw tightened and he looked away. “Listen, I’ve got to go. I just had to make sure you were all right.”

I wanted to grab his arm and make him stay, but I’d ruined the moment. There was nothing else to say. “Goodbye, Sirius.”

He stormed off without another word, and guilt surged up because I’d sent him away.

Luckily, I had no time to dwell on it. The nurse came in and detached the tubes from my arms. She scanned a regenerator over the puncture holes and my flesh closed up with no scars. “Your father is here. You can go home.”

“Great.” I didn’t sound very excited as I smoothed my fingers over the newly grown skin.

Dad waited by the portal to my medical cell. I cringed inside with embarrassment.

“Sorry, Dad.”

His usually serious face broke into a small smile. “There’s nothing to be sorry about. Your mom and I are just glad you’re all right.”

“I embarrassed you both.”