Shades of Earth (23 page)

44:
ELDER

By the time I'm dressed
and racing down the steps after them, I can barely see Chris and Amy entering the forest on the other side of the meadow. They must be going to the shuttle. Amy had an idea for another test or something. That's it. That has to be it.

I don't follow. They would see me in the meadow, and it's not safe anyway. Following them, unarmed, alone, is quite possibly the stupidest thing I could do right now.

And yet I almost have the chutz to do it anyway.

Instead, I slink back to the colony. I tell myself that all I'm doing is checking in on my people, but the truth of the matter is that I'm waiting for Amy to return. And trying not to think about what Amy and Chris are doing. Alone. In the dark.
Together.

I skip the buildings filled with snoring Earthborns, but there's at least one of my people awake at every building I visit. I find Heller, one of the former Feeders, perched on the stoop outside his building, staring up at the sky. Behind him, I can see the sleeping forms of nearly two dozen people. It's not comfortable, but we've done the best we can, using clothes and blankets to create beds and covers.

“I can't quit thinking about her,” Heller tells me in a low voice as I pass by.

I very much doubt he's thinking about the same girl I can't get out of my mind, so I ask, “Who?”

“Lorin.” The first girl killed on the planet, the first casualty from an alien threat we cannot identify.“She was a good person. She didn't deserve to die.”

“I don't think it works that way,” I say.

Heller shakes his head. He keeps staring up at the night sky, and I wonder if he's looking for
Godspeed
and wishing he'd never come here in the first place.

After I make my rounds, I sneak back to the front of the colony and the first building, where Amy lives with her parents. I peek into the window of Amy's room, but she's not back yet. How long have they been out there? Has something gone wrong? I don't know what fills me with more dread—the thought that something's happened to them or the thought that they're just enjoying each other so much that they can't be bothered to return.

Something glows on the other side of Amy's house. I duck back down, sneaking to a window that will give me a clearer view of what's happening.

“I'm sick of lies,” Amy's mother, Dr. Martin, says. I couldn't possibly agree more. I stand on my tiptoes, trying to get a better view of their conversation.

“No more lies.” Colonel Martin's voice sounds sincere. “I've only been trying to follow my orders.”

“You and your orders.” Although exasperated, Dr. Martin sounds as if she understands her husband. “So this is what it's all about?”

The lights inside the building shift, and I see something small and flat that seems to glitter despite the darkness. . . . I gasp aloud, then clap my hands over my mouth.
The scale.
This is the thin, flat scale I found in the tunnels, just before Chris pulled me out.

“Who would have thought something like this would be so valuable?” Amy's mom says, marveling at it.

“I think—” Colonel Martin pauses abruptly. “What was that?”

I strain my ears and hear what made Colonel Martin stop. Footsteps, from the other side of the building.

“Probably just Amy coming back,” Dr. Martin says. The glowing light goes dark as Colonel Martin covers up the scale.

I rush as quietly as possible around the building. I'm just in time to see Chris and Amy turn to face each other. I slink back into the shadows.

“Thanks for walking with me,” Amy says. “And, you know. Earlier.”

Earlier?
Earlier?
What happened earlier?

“Don't mention it. And . . . er . . . ” Chris shifts uncomfortably.

And then—

—he bends his head down toward Amy—

—shuts his eyes, leaning in close—

My fingers curl into fists as I see red. I'm going to rip that frexing guy's head off—

Amy steps back, gracefully dodging Chris's attempt. “Friends, remember?” she says gently.

My hands go slack. I've been such a chutz.

Half of Chris's lips twitch up in a grin. “Yeah,” he says, “friends.” He watches as she disappears into the building. But I can tell by the way he stares after her that he would do anything to make Amy redefine the word
friends
.

45:
AMY

I wake up well before dawn the next morning.
The floor is hard and cold, but that's not why I couldn't sleep. I don't need my sleeping bag. I need Elder. My memories of last night bring an immediate, silly smile to my face.

I pull back the curtain of my tent wall when I hear low voices.

“Morning, sunshine,” Mom says softly when she and Dad notice me. “Want coffee?”

I nod, yawning as I make my way over to the table. Mom dips a metal collapsible mug into a bucket of cold water, then mixes in a pouch of instant powder.

“Almost like home,” Dad says, clinking his own collapsible mug against mine and taking a swig of the “coffee.” He makes a face I can't help but giggle at.

Breakfast is dehydrated rations in FRX-marked packs. Powdered eggs mixed with water and biscuits that are more like crackers. I wonder how many dehydrated packs we have. The Earthborns have used them sparingly—and out of sight of the shipborns, who've shared their rations of wall food.

Dad dunks his “biscuit” in his “coffee,” something he always did at breakfasts back on Earth.

“Well,” Mom says, wiping crumbs from her shirt, “I'm heading to the lab.”

At the mention of this, I think about what I discovered last night, with Chris. The words are on the tip of my tongue, but at the last moment, I bite them back. I'm not ready to tell them this. Not yet. I want to tell Elder first.

Dad peers outside, then calls back to Mom, “Chris isn't here. I'll escort you to the lab. Amy, are you going?”

I'm not—but I follow them outside to say goodbye just as the suns start to rise. Around us, we can hear signs of others waking, soft chatter and shuffling as people greet the new day. It's amazing to me how quickly we've fallen into this role of colonists. How quickly we've made this our home.

I smile.

And then the forest explodes.

Dad acts first—he throws Mom and me to the ground, covering our heads with his massive, strong hands. The air burns white hot over the forest, and the ground beneath our feet—solid stone, sturdy—rumbles and shakes. I can hear screams and shouts of panic, sounds echoed by my own heart as I whip my head around, wondering where Elder is. A high-pitched ringing pierces my eardrums, and I don't know if it's coming from the explosion or if this is a sign that my eardrums have ruptured.

A cloud billows over the forest, blotting out the suns and casting a dark shadow over the whole colony. Chunks of stone and whole trees fall from the sky like hail. The big pieces rain down in the forest, but even here, in the colony, dirt and charred remains of trees clatter down on the stone path.

“What the hell just happened?” Dad roars. The military starts to assemble around him just as another, smaller explosion erupts like an aftershock, shaking the remaining treetops.

I cannot rip my eyes away from it. The big, black, scarred earth.

Right where the shuttle used to be.

46:
ELDER

The military tries to stop me,
but—short of shooting me or tying me up and leaving me behind—they can't. As soon as the explosion goes off and I realize what's happened, I race out of the colony and toward the shuttle. Amy's been at the lab with her mother every morning. Every frexing morning. If she was there
this
morning—my heart bangs against my ribcage, and my eyes burn. She can't have been.

I catch up with Colonel Martin and his task force before they reach the forest.

“Where's Amy?” I ask, panicked and breathless.

Colonel Martin stares at me as if he doesn't understand my words. “Amy?”

“Yeah, is she okay?”

“Amy's fine. She's not here.”

My knees go weak at his words.
Thank the stars!
Colonel Martin shoves past me, not bothering to waste the time it would take to send me back to the colony, and I get a hold of myself enough to follow him toward the site of the explosion. We move forward, the acrid smell of smoke burning our noses and blurring our eyes.

We continue as a tight group, me in the center. Everyone except me has a gun out, and they use the guns like eyes, always pointed forward.

When we reach the blast zone, the smoke billows around us, making it almost impossible to see. My eyes water as we creep forward, and I've never been more grateful for wind than when a breeze dilutes the smoke, making the world visible again. The trees are nothing but charred, blackened sticks in the ground. The ground itself is lumpy, like freshly plowed soil, but scorched and marred.

We stop when we see the shuttle.

The elegant, smooth lines of the shuttle have been ripped into three sections. The bridge is the farthest away but least damaged, as if a child snapped it off and tossed it into the trees. The rest of the shuttle is split in half longwise, the roof blown apart like a blossoming flower made of burnt, smoking metal.

“Spread out. Look for casualties. Look for perpetrators. Look for evidence,” Colonel Martin orders.

The ground directly under the shuttle—the blackened, burnt sand that was turned into glass by the rockets of the shuttle landing—is cracked open and shattered, little beads of charred glass no longer with a trace of the suns' light in them. I wonder if the explosion made the glass break or if the aliens used the glass already here to set off the explosion.

I avoid the empty shell of the shuttle. It is ragged metal edges and burning aftermath. The cryo chambers are all blown apart, the glass boxes shattered and strewn everywhere. The gen lab is split nearly evenly in half. The embryos of animals from Sol-Earth are gone. I can see the heavy cylinders cracked open, leaking yellow goop and little beans of fetuses on the burning ground. The incubators—the scientists had started making horses and dogs—are burnt to a crisp.

Most of our food supplies were there. Irreplaceable equipment. And—the realization hits me like a punch in the gut—Harley's last painting, the one he made for Amy. Amy had brought it with her but kept it in the shuttle. For safety. Nothing but ash now.

I stumble and nearly fall over a heavy metal plaque. A double-winged eagle and the word
Godspeed
engraved on one side. The nameplate of the shuttle. Scorch marks along one side, making it illegible.

It wasn't much, but the shuttle was my last tie to
Godspeed
. It was the last piece of the ship I had. The last remnant of the place I called home.

And now it's gone.

I flip the nameplate over with my foot. Under it is a perfectly curved piece of glass.

I pick up the glass carefully. Once it's out of the debris, I can see that it's a globe. I don't remember anything on the shuttle in this spherical shape.

The light catches it just right, and I see the swirling liquid gold inside. The solar energy.

Shite.

“Colonel Martin?” I call nervously.

One of the other military men looks up at me. When he sees what's in my hand, he shouts for Colonel Martin and races to fetch him.

The ball of glass in my hand is about the same size as my head, but I can tell that it's made of thinner glass than the cube Amy has. I have no doubt in my mind that it will break—it's a miracle it hasn't broken already.

“Son of a—” Colonel Martin curses when he sees me. “Why did you pick that up?”

“I didn't know what it was . . . ” I say. My hands are slick with sweat, making the glass ball even harder to hold.

“Put it down . . . gently . . . gently . . . ” Colonel Martin says. “Back up, everyone.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I see everyone else nervously moving back, looking for cover. I bend at my knees, bringing the glass ball down as carefully as possible. An inch above the ground, I hesitate. My face is less than a foot away from a glass bomb, the same kind that must have been used to blow up the entire shuttle.

“Careful,” Colonel Martin calls.

“I
know
,” I snap.

The glass ball makes a soft
clink!
when it touches the ground.

I step back. It rolls a few inches. Everyone gasps, but the ball stops as soon as it reaches level ground.

Once I'm behind a tree, Colonel Martin takes his handgun out of its holster and points it at the ball. He pulls the trigger.

The glass ball blows apart like a punctured balloon, the energy inside it bursting forth in an explosion that momentarily blinds me. Blinking, I look at the damage.

A two-foot crater is all that remains.

Colonel Martin strides forward, scowling at the debris. He swears, long and loud.

“Right, men,” he commands. “Now you see what we're up against. Keep looking, and be careful.”

They disperse.

Colonel Martin moves over to me.

“That proves it,” I say. “This is the work of the aliens.”

He doesn't answer.

“Do we have any weapons that would match something like that?”

He turns to the remains of shuttle. “If we did, they're gone now.”

Frex. He's right. The shuttle housed the armory. The only weapons we have left are the ones the men are carrying.

“Good thing this happened so early in the day,” Colonel Martin says. “There could have been massive casualties otherwise.”

Amy. Amy had spent nearly every day in the gen lab, with her mother. I shut my eyes, and I see her in the explosion, just as I did the second the bombs went off—her caught in the middle of the ship as it's torn apart, her burnt beyond recognition.

“We have to do something,” I say, emotion making my voice as ragged as the edges of the shuttle.

Colonel Martin looks me right in the eyes. “I know.”

I used to think that Orion's warning about us becoming slaves was the greater possibility, but I'm starting to believe Colonel Martin's determined to turn us into soldiers instead.