Shades of Earth (21 page)

38:
ELDER

I wake before dawn
and watch the morning light creep across my ceiling. There is so much that must be done, but all I can think about is Kit. I used to be envious of the way Eldest could always rely on Doc, but somehow I didn't notice how Kit had become so important to me. To all of us. I don't know how we're going to operate without her.

But we'll have to. Somehow.

I head first to the shuttle. I need to inspect what medical supplies Kit had in reserve. I'd rather use our own stuff than rely on the Earthborn doctors. My mood grows darker as I follow the path to the shuttle. Thinking about med patches reminds me of the black ones Bartie intends to use as a last resort before the engine on
Godspeed
completely fails.

I pause when I reach the bridge. The door is cracked open, and through it, I can hear shouting.

I hesitate.

Then I hear Amy's voice, practically screaming with rage.

I throw the door open and barrel inside. It's still too early for many people to be working, but the thought gives me no comfort. I race toward the gen lab, where the voices are coming from.

“Do you want to cause a panic?” Colonel Martin bellows.

“They
need
to know!” Amy yells. I pick up my pace, my footsteps clattering on the metal of the cryo room floor.

The gen lab door is open. Colonel Martin turns at the sound of my approach and rolls his eyes. “Great,” he says, just loud enough for me to hear.

“What's going on?” I ask, panting.

Colonel Martin moves aside.

And I see Emma Bledsoe's body. I'm breathless from my panicked run, but I stop short at the sight of her. Emma was kind. She was the one Earthborn I trusted.

Well, besides Amy.

“What happened?” I ask hollowly. Emma looks as if she's merely sleeping.

“We're still determining cause of death,” Amy's mother says, but my eyes shoot to Amy. Without saying anything, I give her a look that I hope sends her my real question: was Phydus involved? She shrugs, glancing at the machine we used last night. I can hear its motor grinding; no results yet.

“Emma was on patrol,” Colonel Martin says gruffly. “She must have run afoul of something that we don't know about. That is why this world is dangerous, why no one should go anywhere alone.”

“It's not like she just accidentally died!” Amy exclaims, frustrated. “Dad, there were purple flower strings on her clothing. Someone knocked her out.”

“And murdered her?” Colonel Martin's voice is incredulous.

“She
knew
not to mess with the purple flowers; she saw what they did to me!”

“You're hysterical,” Colonel Martin says, waving his hand at Amy as if to dismiss her.

She grabs his wrist, stopping the motion. “You need to listen to us,” she says coldly.

Her eyes question me. I nod. It's all or nothing now. “Emma knew something,” Amy continues. “She warned me to be careful who to trust. I thought she was talking about you. Maybe she wasn't.”

Colonel Martin doesn't look any more convinced—if anything, the expression he wears now seems to indicate that he thinks either Amy is exaggerating or flat-out lying.

“She gave me a cube made of glass,” Amy continues, and this, finally, makes Colonel Martin pay attention. The room is silent now, tension rising as Amy explains that she knows the cube glows, that she's linked the glass cube to the exploding bullets that killed Kit.

“There are aliens on this planet, aren't there?” I finally say, breaking in when Amy stops talking. “Sentient aliens, who have figured out how to make weapons we can't compete with.”

“You don't know what you're talking about,” Colonel Martin says.

“Damn it, Bob!” Amy's mother says, rage in her voice. “This is not the time for secrets! What do you know? What have you been keeping from us—from all of us?”

Colonel Martin looks cornered, trapped. When he doesn't speak, I answer for him. “I saw the compound. The biometric lock on the door to the communication room only opens for humans. That means there's something that
isn't
human out there.”

“You can't expect me to stand here and listen to this,” Colonel Martin interjects, but the attempt is halfhearted, and I quickly cut him off.

“I can and I will because these things—whatever they are—are picking us off, one by one.” I list the names of the people who have died so far, ending with Emma, drawing her name out and watching the guilt that shadows his eyes. “And I think you know the reason why.”

“Is this true?” Amy's mother asks. “Are you
protecting
these creatures?” she asks, disgusted.

Colonel Martin shakes his head in protest. “I am
not
protecting them!” he roars. “There is no
them!
I don't know any more about what kind of aliens are on this planet than you do!” And then he seems to register what I've just said about the compound. “You know about the communication room?” he asks. “You've been there?”

I don't bother denying it.

“Then you know we haven't been able to contact Earth.”

Amy's mother gasps. “But you said—”

“We
thought
we had,” Colonel Martin says. “But the message I heard was pre-recorded.”

“And you haven't been able to reach Sol-Earth since then.” It's more a statement than a question.

Colonel Martin nods.

“What did Emma know?” Amy asks. “Why was she scared?”

Colonel Martin opens his hands wide. “I don't know,” he says. He sounds defeated. “I don't know why she's dead now either. Maybe she figured out something that I didn't. But she didn't tell me, and she can't tell any of us now.”

39:
AMY

When Dad leaves,
Elder follows him. I know Elder won't let go of the questions he really wants to ask, and I viciously revel in that knowledge. It's time we had some answers.

Mom, on the other hand, doesn't look happy at all about what she's learned. Or maybe she's sad to be doing another autopsy, to be prying apart another friend.

She covers Emma's body with a sheet.

“I can't do this,” she says. “Not now. Every time I look at her, I think about you.”

“Me?” I ask, surprised.

She nods. “When Elder brought you to us, after you passed out from those purple flowers.” Her eyes are sparkling now, and I'm afraid she's about to cry. “I thought we'd lost you then. And now . . . we've had a death a day since we landed.” She swallows. “We knew this world would be dangerous,” she says. “But we had no idea it would actively try to kill us.”

She steps away from the autopsy table and toward me, wrapping me in a hug, clutching me with something I can only describe as desperation.

“I'm starting to wish we'd never come,” she says.

Her words throw me off so much that I can barely think of what to say. “But you never wanted anything more than to go on this mission!” I exclaim. “You were working on this project before I was even born!”

Mom's grin twitches up despite herself. “I know. But that's the point: it was before you were born. Once you were born . . . how could I ask you to give up Earth? It was my dream, but never yours.”

Now I really don't know what to say. I wonder if Mom knows that Dad gave me a choice to hold on to Earth, to give them up instead.

Mom leans over and wraps one arm around my shoulders. “I'm glad you're here,” she says quietly, and I can feel my eyes burning and my face growing hot, so I just smile and nod and bury my face into her shoulder.

And then I know what I need to say. I pull away from her and look right in her eyes. “I'm glad I'm here too,” I tell her. And I mean it. Despite the fear, despite the deaths—I'm glad I'm here. My eyes slide to the white sheet covering Emma's body. I think about what she said—the last thing she said to me. And I know it was the truth.

 

When Mom and I finally break apart, she seems stronger. More determined. And because she is, I can be too.

She turns back to the autopsy she doesn't want to perform. And I turn back to test the sample of Emma's blood against Phydus. I am not surprised when it comes back positive.

40:
ELDER

Colonel Martin doesn't want to talk.
He makes that much clear straightaway—but I don't care. I stay at his heels as we leave the shuttle.

Finally he turns to face me. “You want to know what I know? Then follow me.” And whatever it is that I expected him to do, this is not it.

Colonel Martin cuts through the forest, and although there's no path and he's leading me away from the colony, I have no doubt that he knows where he's going.

To the compound.

We don't talk as we march—almost run. The tree branches whip past us; vines snag our clothing, but neither of us slows. When we reach the compound, there's only one guard on duty, Chris. He snaps to attention as we approach.

“What are you doing in the hot sun?” Colonel Martin asks, then corrects himself. “Suns.”

“I was hoping . . . ” Chris's eyes turn to me, confused. “I was hoping for word on Emma.”

“Dead.” Colonel Martin's voice is gruff. “Open up the communication room.”

Chris shoots me a questioning glance, clearly surprised that Colonel Martin has brought me here. “After you,” he says, taking a step back as Colonel Martin strides forward, pressing his thumb over the scanner. The way Chris watches me makes me wonder if he only let Colonel Martin go first so he had a chance to size me up as I walk past him. I push the sweaty hair from my face and ignore him.

Chris hesitates before following us inside, but Colonel Martin's gaze softens when he sees him. “You too, son,” he says, and Chris shuts the door after he enters.

“Young Elder here found the compound,” Colonel Martin tells Chris. “And he found out that the first message, the one we got on the shuttle, was pre-recorded, a hack job.”

Chris stands back, trying to look impassive, but I can't help but notice the way his eyes examine me, judging my reaction.

“Here's what we know,” Colonel Martin says, turning to me. “We know that there was a colony before us. And we know that it made the ruins we currently live in and that it built this compound.” His shoulders slump as if he's carrying the weight of the world—maybe both worlds—on him. “And we also know that they are all dead.”

I grip the edge of the communication bay. I want to ask, “How?” But I cannot seem to form that simple word. Nevertheless, Colonel Martin answers.

“We found these recordings. Or, Chris here found them.” He nods to Chris, and I'm surprised to see sympathy in his look.

Colonel Martin turns on the touch screen in the communication bay, but rather than scrolling through the menus like Amy and I did, he opens a cabinet to the right of the control panel and withdraws a thin, black piece of plastic about the same length as my thumb. It reminds me eerily of the black med patches Bartie has on
Godspeed
, and the thought twists my stomach. Colonel Martin presses the plastic into a slot near the touch screen, and it's only then that I realize the material is similar to the mem cards we had on
Godspeed
, used to store information.

“This is what we know,” Amy's father says, punching up the screen. An image of a glass cube similar to the one Emma gave Amy appears. “Something in the soil means that any glass made here, using a specific process, will be able to easily and effectively store solar energy. The first colony discovered this, and for several years, they manufactured solar glass and shipped it back to Earth. The compound we're currently standing in was used as a transportation center. They'd ship the glass from here to an automated space station in orbit around the planet and from there to Earth.”

“A space station!” I exclaim. “We didn't see anything like that when we landed.”

Colonel Martin arches an eyebrow at me. “This world
is
rather big, you know.” He swipes the screen, and it fades to black.

“What happened to them?” I ask. “The first colony? You said they're all dead?”

Colonel Martin looks at Chris. I get the feeling that they're both trying to decide how much to tell me. I'm very nearly at the point of demanding answers when Colonel Martin moves over to the other side of the control panel, where the audio communication is. He turns a dial labeled
ANSIBLE
, and static fills the air.

But—not static. Not just. Words break through, words I can almost not understand.

“ . . . the danger too great . . . have received indication . . . human life once more on . . .
Godspeed
 . . . survive the . . . help coming . . . ”

I strain to make out the words. Through the static and the accent of the speaker it's hard to understand.

“It's on a loop,” Colonel Martin says as the message starts over again.

“Sol-Earth?” I ask.

Colonel Martin nods. “It's not the same as true communication, but it's an indication that they know we've landed. And they're sending help.”

I snort. “We can't wait another three hundred years for help to get here.”

“We won't have to, not if we can amplify the signal enough to get a response from Earth.” Colonel Martin turns back to the touch screen and swipes his fingers over it. “I don't fully understand the technology being used, but Chris here has been able to explain it to me enough that I get the basic idea. Tesseracts and wormholes and some such. Means travel is so much faster now, way beyond what we had when
Godspeed
was built.”

“How much faster?” I ask, barely daring to breathe. We might just have a chance after all.

“A week, or maybe less. Once we manage to get a message back, I'd expect help to arrive at the station—it's currently unmanned—within just a few days, and they'll be able to travel to the planet from there.”

“And then we begin evacuation,” Chris says. I've fallen so deep into my own thoughts that I nearly forgot he was in the room with us.

Colonel Martin taps his fingers against the edge of the communication bay. I get the impression that if the room wasn't so small, he'd start pacing. After a moment, he looks at Chris darkly. “No,” he says. “Then we wage war.”

“What?” I say. My eyes dart to Chris—he's just as surprised as I am.

“Whatever alien being wiped out the first humans on this planet, they are, as Elder says, sentient. They are singling out my people and attacking. This isn't random assault—they're not defending their home or trying to find a peaceful answer to our presence. They are
murdering
my people. And yours, Elder.”

I think about Lorin, about Kit's dead, empty eyes, the gaping hole in her chest where her heart should be.

“Whatever is killing my people, I will kill it first,” Colonel Martin says fiercely. He looks right at Chris. “I will avenge humanity.” His words are a threat and a promise, all wrapped in one.