Shades of Earth (32 page)

“The pain will pass,” Chris says to me softly. Sympathetically. His gun lowers as the other man steps back.

I dry heave. It's the idea of my body being
changed
irrevocably
.
I can't bear it. And I can't bear the way Chris looks at me now, as if I'm already
one of them
.

“Amy!” Dad shouts. It's taking two of the men to hold him back.

“She'll be fine,” the rogue leader says. Their voices sound metallic, too loud. I clutch my hair, pulling my head down, rocking. I can't bear this, I can't bear this. “This compound only has the gen modifiers in it, not the Phydus. She'll have all the genetic modifications but none of the mind-altering control.”

“You bastards,” Dad snarls. “How dare you! My daughter!”

“Sit
down
, Colonel Martin,” the rogue leader orders. “Or I will make you.”

I slide to the floor. Chris says something, I can't understand what. My bleary eyes can barely blink, but I can't help but notice that the rogue hybrids all wear the same kind of boot, ones with metal grippers, three long, sharp pieces curving over the toes of their shoes. Ones that would make the same footprints we found outside the shuttle. Elder was right all along. They've been watching us since the very first day.

It
hurts
. My body's DNA is rearranging itself to become some mutated hybrid, and I'm not even sure what's happening, I just know it's not
human
. It's painful, as if there is a fire inside, burning up my blood. I try to open my eyes. Dad's fighting against the hybrids while I'm becoming one.

Dad knocks aside the rogue leader, sending him crashing against the communication bay.

I think for one wild moment that he's coming for me. He will pick me up and carry me away and make the hurting stop.

But he's not coming for me. He lunges at Chris, grabbing for the .38 in his hand.

 

The gun goes off.

 

Dad lands with a thump on the ground, his eyes open and staring, inches away from my face but already out of reach.

66:
ELDER

I try to re-establish the communication link
, but it's gone. All I heard was glass shattering and loud thumps and bangs, and then I was disconnected.

It's not too late,
I tell myself.
Amy's not dead.

I tell myself this, and I force myself to believe it.

I rush out of the bridge and back up to
Godspeed
. Bartie's standing near the hatch, looking happy. “I don't think it will take that long to load up the auto-shuttle,” he says, grinning at me.

“Now,” I gasp.

“What?”

“Now,”
I say. “We have to go now. They have Amy, they've taken over the whole frexing colony.”

“What are you talking about, Elder?” Bartie asks, grabbing my shoulders. “Calm down.”

I shake him off. “You don't understand! I heard it over the com system—Bartie, they have Amy. They've taken the colony.”

“Who?”

“The hybrids!” I throw up my hands. “The aliens! Whatever you want to call them! The
monsters
we've been fighting, the ones that have been attacking us! They have our people!”

A line of worry mars Bartie's brow. “What can we do?”

“We have to go
now
. Get the people out. Whatever they can carry. But we have to go now.”

To his credit, Bartie does the all-call. Some people are already crossing the fields, heading toward the hatch, and I see them pick up their pace, running closer.

“But what can we do?” Bartie asks me. “Even if we left in the auto-shuttle right this second, what could we possibly do?”

“Come with me,” I say.

Bartie has to run to keep up with me as I tear back down through the hatch, running to the control panel on the bridge. “Here are the controls,” I tell him. “This is how you can fly the auto-shuttle back.”

“Me?” Bartie steps away. “
You're
going to be flying the auto-shuttle!”

“No,” I tell him. “No, I'm not. You are. Now pay attention.”

I show him everything as people from
Godspeed
start to load up the shuttle. I show him how to operate the controls and the communication system. It's really simple—the auto-shuttle was
designed
to function without human operations. Once I'm sure he knows what to do, I race out of the bridge, past the crowd that's already gathering at the transport boxes, and down a flight of stairs.

The escape rocket Chris told me about is smaller than it seemed from the ground. I have to shimmy through a hatch opening that drops me straight into the seat. The controls are the same here as on the auto-shuttle but more compressed and with an additional “manual maneuvering” control that looks like a joystick. I'm not comforted by the simplistic controls, but they'll have to be enough.

I flip on the communication system and hail Bartie, just above me in the bridge.

“Yes?” his voice says immediately. He sounds anxious.

“Just checking,” I say. “I wanted to be sure that the controls worked.”

“Elder, this is insane,” he says. His voice sounds a little tinny over the intercom, but I can understand him loud and clear.

“Yeah,” I say. “It probably is. But it's my only chance of saving Amy.” I can go to the space station, and I can detonate the weapons there myself. I will protect Amy, no matter what the cost.

I turn off the communication link with Bartie and flip it to the compound's system. A red light blinks several times as the communication link with the compound on the planet is established.

“Don't break this communication link,” I say quickly once the controls tell me I've connected.

“And why not?” a voice I don't recognize drawls.

“I am currently in the escape rocket. I will head straight to the space station. I will dock. And I will set off the biological bomb myself.”

“Elder, don't!” a voice screams. Amy.

“Amy, what's going on?”

“They've injected me too,” she says, then her voice is muffled. It sounds as if she's being dragged away.

“What do you mean?” No answer. “What the frex is going on?”

“Amy has been injected with the hybrid compound. She will be susceptible to the biological weapon. We tried to negotiate with the other leader, Colonel Martin. We are done negotiating.”

“Let me talk to Colonel Martin,” I say.

“He's dead!” Amy's voice cries out over the intercom. Her voice sounds rougher than I remember, perhaps a bit deeper. “They've killed him!”

More muffled sounds. I have no doubt now that they're trying to silence Amy, drag her away from the intercom. But I also have no doubt that Colonel Martin's dead. Amy would never say that—not with that much anguish in her voice—unless it was true.

My hands are shaking. I have never been more scared.

 

There's only one thing I can do.

 

“Here's the deal,” I say. I hope I sound convincing. We don't have much to hold over the hybrids, but we do have one bargaining chip. “We have the plans for the Inhibitor medicine. Chris can tell you that
Godspeed
had Phydus too, and you'll just have to trust me when I tell you we have an antidote that fights the drug's effects.”

No one answers me when I pause, so I just plow through. “My friend Bartie is going to land the auto-shuttle. He carries the plans for the Inhibitor drug with him. Shoot the auto-shuttle down—kill my people as they land—and you'll lose the formula.”

This time, a voice answers. “We will not destroy the auto-shuttle.”

“I'm in the escape rocket right now,” I say. “I'm going to disable the biological bomb. If I do that, you let Amy and the rest go.”

The sound of the man's laughter over the intercom chills me to the bone. “It's not just the bomb we fear,” he says. “The FRX is coming, and now the one man who might have been able to call them off is dead. If the FRX arrives, it will be war for all. They'll
decimate
this entire planet.”

“We'll com them!” I say desperately. “We'll tell them not to come!” I don't know if the FRX will listen to my pleas, but I'll try. I'll do anything; just let Amy be okay.

“It's not enough,” the man says. “The only thing that could stop them is if the entire space station is destroyed. The tesseract-based high-speed travel requires the signal from the space station for it to work. If the station is gone, the FRX can't reach us, not for decades. But I don't think you have any weapons on that ship of yours, do you?”

There's a lump in my throat, and I can't speak for a moment.

Then I say: “What if I can?”

“What if you can what?” the man barks into the intercom.

“What if I can destroy the space station? If I do that—I'll take out the threat of the FRX being able to reach us, and I'll eliminate the biological bomb. If I do that, will you agree to leave my people alone?”

“If you do
that
,” the man says, “I'll write the peace treaty myself.”

I don't reply immediately. I sit in the cockpit of the escape rocket, and I think about what I'll be sacrificing to make peace between us. I stare at the stars, and I silently say goodbye.

Amy will never forgive me for what I'm about to do, but
Godspeed
is dead. Just floating here. All it needs is a little nudge. I can use the escape rocket to get behind the ship, then push it to the space station. Inertia will take care of most of it—
Godspeed
will crash into the space station, then the station—and its weapons—will be destroyed, Sol-Earth's military won't be able to come here and frex things up.

“Just give me a little time,” I say into the intercom. “And let me speak to Amy.”

67:
AMY

Chris grabs me by the arm
and drags me to the communication bay. I can feel the pressure of each of his individual fingers gripping my skin. Colors swim before my eyes; scents I don't recognize fill my nose. I stumble and Chris jerks me up as I realize with horror that I'm sniffing the air like an animal on the scent—because that's what I am now. Not human. Animal.

It feels as if ice is shooting through my muscles, ripping apart my flesh. When I yank away from Chris's grasp, I'm surprised to realize that I'm strong enough to do it—he has to use all his strength to keep pulling me forward.

We have to step over my father's body to reach the communication bay, and I nearly break then. My new eyes don't let me miss any detail: the sweat still clinging to the bridge of his nose, the flatness of his face against the floor, the pinky finger curled on his left hand, as if waiting for me to wrap my own pinky around it and whisper promises that I'll never be able to keep. Not now that he's dead.

“Elder?” I say, my voice cracking, unfamiliar even to my ears . . . my ears that are suddenly picking up more sound than they ever have before.

“Amy.”
There's relief in his voice, something else I can't recognize.

“What are you going to do?” I ask. An ominous dread flows through my veins, poisoning me.

“I'm going to crash
Godspeed
into the space station.”

Chris slides his hand on the touch screen near me. The rogue leader looks over my shoulder as a map of the satellites in orbit around the planet lights up the communication bay. The screen fades in and out, updating every few seconds. The auto-shuttle is right next to
Godspeed
, their dots so close together that their labels overlap. I imagine the evacuation as people scramble from the ship into the auto-shuttle.

Nearby, only the space of four inches or so on the map, is another dot, labeled
Interplanetary Preparation Station
.

“You still there?” Elder asks, his voice small and scared.

“I'm here,” I say.

“I have to tell you—” he says, then stops. I inspect the screen under the intercom. There's nothing wrong with the communication system; Elder's struggling to find the words he wants to say. Finally, he speaks.

“I'm sorry,” he says.

The line goes dead.

“What happened?” I ask. I want to slam my fists into the controls, make Elder's voice come back to me, but I don't know how.

Chris looks at the controls. “Nothing,” he says. “Elder must have disconnected the communication link. He's not answering my calls now.”

I look up at the rogue hybrid leader, who's watching me intently. And my stomach twists as I see the pity in his eyes.

 

 

 

 

68:
ELDER

It takes time to load up the auto-shuttle,
and the delay makes me anxious. Now that I've decided what I have to do, I just want to
do
it. The waiting is miserable.

Before Bartie gets everyone and everything strapped down, I get inside the escape rocket and detach from the auto-shuttle. Using the manual controls, I maneuver the escape rocket directly behind
Godspeed
. The map on my screen shows a line of dots: me, then
Godspeed
, then the space station. I just have to move the dot in the middle until it crashes against the other dot.

Simple.

Bartie coms me from the auto-shuttle. “We're loaded and ready,” he says. His voice sounds worried. “Are you sure about this?”

“Very sure,” I say.

“I'm departing now,” he says.

“Bartie?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks for everything.”

“I'll see you on the ground, right, buddy?”

I don't answer him. I disconnect the com link and watch as the auto-shuttle breaks from
Godspeed
and shoots away, a stream of rocket fire blasting out as it heads for the planet.

* * *

Godspeed
floats before me, hanging impossibly in the black sky. It looks broken, the jagged bottom lacking the shuttle, the Bridge blown out so that it looks like twisted scrap metal. And even though I cannot see through the metal to the emptiness I know lies inside the ship, it
seems
hollow in the same way a dead body looks soulless.

Godspeed
is dead.

But it has one last task, one last service for the people it lived to protect.

And so do I.

 

It was not an official part of the studies Eldest taught me while I lived on the Keeper Level with him, but Orion once slipped me a book about the
Titanic
, an old ship on Sol-Earth that sank and killed many of its passengers. Looking back, I wonder if Orion had some deeper meaning in giving me the book, perhaps something about the different classes or that those stuck in the bowels of
Titanic
were frozen. Or maybe just that we were all destined to die, like the people on board.

But the thing that really stayed with me was the way the captain went down with the ship.

 

This escape rocket seems tiny compared to the hulking mass of
Godspeed
, but I know, from that same book that Orion gave me, that a tiny tugboat can move a massive ship.
Godspeed
needs only a push from me.

I go slowly, very slowly, until I'm only a few meters away from
Godspeed
. I don't want to crash into the side; I need to push the giant ship toward the space station. I take a deep breath and check my seat belt. Fortunately, the bottom of the escape rocket extends farther out than the cockpit, but it'll still be a near thing, especially if I have too much speed.

Adjusting the output of the orbital maneuvering rockets, I nudge the escape rocket forward.

Even though I expect the impact, it still knocks me breathless and rattles me to my bones. My eyes search the seams of the cockpit window frantically, looking for any crack in the heavy glass.

Impact detected,
a computerized voice says. Red lights flash all along the dashboard.

The computerized voice continues:
Warning: external damage. Warning: external damage
. It repeats this message over and over, and I have no idea how to silence it.

“You're going to get a lot more damage before this is done,” I say, and I increase the outputs on the orbital maneuvering rockets. The blinking dots on the screen that represent me and
Godspeed
jolt to life, moving closer and closer to the station.

It's not long before I can see it, my view obscured by the husk of
Godspeed
. The station is large, but no bigger than the ship. It reminds me very much of the Sol-Earth insects called dragonflies. The center is long and cylindrical, with mechanical arms and circular hatches dotting the top, clearly intended to connect to the tube from the auto-shuttle. The central area is large enough for people to live there comfortably, but no one is there now. Maybe the FRX once thought it would be a place for peaceful communication between humans and hybrids, but I don't think that's a possibility anymore.

The space station itself doesn't just store the goods of Centauri-Earth, it also operates the communication link between the planets, and the flat “wings” extending out on either side of the station are lined with satellites and relay receivers. Somewhere inside its metal body is the tesseract-relay device, the thing that enables high-speed travel between planets. Destroying it will isolate Centauri-Earth from communication and eliminate any chance of visitation from Sol-Earth for decades, if not longer.

Underneath the space station, aimed directly for Centauri-Earth, is a massive missile. The biological bomb, the one that will kill every single hybrid.

Including Amy.

I have one shot at this.

Godspeed
careens toward the station.

* * *

I imagine it all in slow motion, each cause-and-effect scenario playing through my mind.
Godspeed
will crash into the station. The station will rip apart, fall in on itself.

Possibly the missile will go off without launching at the planet, setting off an explosion bigger than I can imagine.

Or maybe the ship's engine, a lead-cooled fast reactor fueled by recycled uranium, will explode first.

And there will be me, in my tiny rocket, swallowed whole.

 

“I'm sorry, Amy,” I whisper, despite the fact that I've cut off all communication. I know she won't hear me, but I also know one day she might forgive me for breaking my promise to her.

I'm not going to come back from this one.