Shades of Earth

I reach Lorin last—she keeps trying to dodge out of my reach, but as the alarm announces the last minute, I tackle her and slap a patch on her hand. Her eyes glaze over. I yank her up, dragging her behind me as I race to the door.

“Thirty seconds to lockdown,” the computer says cheerfully. “Twenty-nine . . . twenty-eight . . . ”

I run to the door, more desperate than I’d ever been in any race or sprint in high school, pulling Lorin’s limp form along. I will not be trapped inside this godforsaken shuttle.

Elder stands in the door to the bridge. “Hurry!” he shouts.

The computer continues counting down. “Ten . . . nine . . . eight . . . ”

I shove Lorin ahead of me through the door—she falls, but she’s made it to the other side.

“ . . . four . . . three . . . ”

I dive through.

The door seals shut behind me.

The alarm stops, but my ears are still ringing with the sound of it. “You okay?” Elder asks, dragging me to my feet. Kit, panting, helps Lorin stand.

“Yeah,” I say, rubbing my elbow. I must have slammed it against the metal floor.

“How long is this damn door going to be sealed?” Dad asks, glaring at it as if it’s a personal affront.

“I told you,” Elder says just as angrily, “I don’t know.”

Dad glowers. He’s not happy about this at all, but there’s nothing he can do. My eyes dart between the two of them. It’s not fair of Dad to blame Elder . . . but at the same time, I wish Elder knew a little more about how to reverse the lockdown.

Dad sends Emma to gather up the military, then asks Elder to group his people together. Kit follows Elder down the ramp, leading Lorin by the hand.

Dad drops a hand on my shoulder, holding me back. “Don’t do that again,” he says.

“Do what?” I ask, still rubbing my elbow.

“Don’t put yourself in a position where you sacrifice yourself for those people. If a few got stuck inside, that would have been their fault. If you’d gotten stuck inside . . . ”

“We all got out in the end,” I say, narrowing my eyes at him.

“Take this.” Dad presses something cold and hard in my hand. A gun—a double-action .38 in a canvas holster. “Remember what I taught you,” he says. “Just pull the trigger. Don’t cock it. Use both hands when you aim.”

“I know,” I say, thinking about when I fired a gun at Doc. The bullet blew through his knee. This gun is cold and dormant, but the memory of that time tricks my nose into smelling gunpowder and blood, making my stomach churn.

“Stay near Chris,” he adds in an undertone. “I trust him more than any of those shipborns.”

“They’re not bad,” I say. “They’re just people.”

“They’re not our people.”

14: ELDER

Colonel Martin stands on top of the exposed bridge as we regroup. Everyone wears a glazed, shocked expression. My people spent their first day here crashing into the planet and the second day being thrust outside by an alarm.

I glare at Kit, at the green patches that are stuck to the arms and necks and hands of the last people to leave the shuttle. In my mind, I know this was the only way to get the stragglers out into the open, that if they had not been forced out, some of these people might never have left. Just because they had the courage to get on the shuttle doesn’t mean they had the courage to leave it.

I swallow back the bitter taste in my mouth. The patches are temporary, I tell myself. They’re just for now, just because they were truly needed. I turn, looking for Amy, painfully aware of how much I want her to confirm my resolution. But she’s standing on top of the bridge, between her mother and Chris. She leans over and says something in a low voice to Chris, something that makes him smile.

I jerk my head away from them.

“Thank you all for helping us by leaving the shuttle quickly and smoothly,” Colonel Martin shouts over the crowd, his earlier frustration with my people masked by his public military face. “For now, the best thing we can do is find a permanent home for the entire colony. We do not know how long the shuttle will remain sealed off and thus cannot rely on it for long-term shelter. As such, we need to find an area that has natural defenses and easy access to fresh water.”

Nervous excitement fills the area. There are so many of us out here that we’re pressed against the trees of the forest we landed in. I never thought I could feel claustrophobic off the ship, but the sheer number of people crowded together in one spot makes me uncomfortable.

“There is safety in numbers,” Colonel Martin calls. “We are a large group, and it is my hope that any creature that might attack one of us individually will be scared off by our sheer size.”

Around me, my people start to grumble. They’ve noticed Colonel Martin’s choice of words—his hope for safety—and they are not comforted by it. Several of them turn to me, and I, like a coward, don’t take my eyes off Colonel Martin. Eventually, the others follow suit.

“We’re going to head in this direction”—he points ahead, slightly to the right—“as the probe indicated fresh water could be found nearby. Military: rank one in the lead with me, rank two at the tail, rank three circling remaining perimeter, rank four scout ahead.”

The military immediately divides itself while the scientists stay clustered with my people in the middle of the sandy clearing near the ship. A small group of soldiers disappear into the trees, ostensibly to scout out the danger ahead. Colonel Martin starts leading the group forward, but none of my people move. On the ship, every square inch was perfectly measured. Even the hills were perfectly spaced, symmetrical rows of measured bumps in the ground. This land is nothing like that. It slopes forward randomly. Rocks and pebbles and bushes and even giant trees are scattered around with no apparent rhyme or reason.

“Excuse me,” Lieutenant Colonel Bledsoe calls. “I’m sorry, could you please not wander away?”

One of the Feeders, Tiernan, stares at Bledsoe for a moment, confusion in his eyes, and then continues wandering closer to the edge of the forest. He’s curious but hesitant, lingering in the shadows cast by the tree trunks that twist like knotted rope.

Bledsoe growls in frustration and starts striding toward Tiernan. Before she reaches him, I intercept. “He can’t understand you,” I say.

“Why not?” she snaps. “I’m speaking English, aren’t I?”

“Yes. But—your accent.” It’s even stronger than Amy’s, with a rush and lilt to the words that makes them hard to understand.

“I’m South African,” Emma says, and I struggle to recall the battered globe in the Learning Center. “I spent most of my childhood in southern France, though. My ma’s British. Oh,” she adds, surprised. “She was British; my father was Libyan.” She says the words in past tense as if they are bitter on her tongue.

“I see,” I reply. I don’t want her knowing that I hardly remember the names of Sol-Earth’s major countries, let alone the fact that its inhabitants could speak the same language and still manage to sound different.

She nods and resumes shepherding Godspeed’s former passengers along, her rate of speech only marginally slower than it was before.

I sigh. At least she’s trying.

I grab Tiernan, drag him back to the group, and have my people start passing on the word: stay on the path, keep up, let no one get left behind.

I make sure that everyone in the crowd is ready to go. Kit stays in the back with those on Phydus, the only people in the group who are not wide-eyed and fascinated by this new world. I wonder how much of this they will remember or if, when Kit takes their Phydus patches off, they will recall only the terror and panic they felt when the drug was first pressed into their skin.

A dark-skinned man with black hair approaches Kit. “I am Dr. Gupta, one of the medical officers on the mission,” he says formally in an odd accent, extending his hand. Kit shakes it, surprise evident on her face. “I understand you’re a medical professional as well?” he asks.

I watch the two of them as we all make our ways into the tangle of trees. Kit’s shy at first, but soon she’s happily discussing the differences in medical technologies. Dr. Gupta is fascinated by the Phydus patches, and Kit is eager to compare notes with another doctor—her apprenticeship with Doc had barely begun when she left him to come to Centauri-Earth.

I can’t keep the smile off my face—seeing the two of them talk makes me hope that the people from Sol-Earth and my people might soon find some sort of common ground.

“These trees look so familiar.” I slip through the crowd, following the sounds of Amy’s voice. “But yet, somehow, different.”

“They are,” a deep male voice answers her.

I pause, trailing a few people behind Amy and the young military man, Chris. When Kit was talking with the Earthborn doctor, I was happy, but seeing Amy and Chris together twists me up inside.

“I have to admit—I’m surprised,” Amy continues.

The trees seem unusual to me—but I’ve never seen a Sol-Earth tree to compare these to, at least not outside of pics and vids.

“They’re like banyan trees,” Amy says. “You know, the way that they look like a bunch of small trees all knotted together.”

I don’t know what banyan trees are, but Chris nods in agreement.

“Different, though,” she says again. “Everything reminds me of Earth, but not quite. Like this.” She pulls down a clump of straggly, string-like moss that wafts between the leaves of the trees, dangling in our way. “It’s like Spanish moss, but purple and sticky rather than dry and gray.”

Chris plucks the sticky strings from Amy’s hand. “This stuff is getting everywhere,” he says, making a big show of almost getting it in Amy’s face.

“Ew, get it away!” Amy says, batting at the purple strings playfully.

“Why? Don’t you like it?” Chris teases, dangling it closer to her.

I want to snatch the purple stringy moss from Chris’s hands and shove it down his throat, but I don’t. I hang back, glowering, and even though I know I’m being loons, I can’t help but to keep listening to their conversation.

“I wonder what kind of animals are on this planet,” she continues, blithely ignoring the look of adoration on Chris’s face.

“You mean other than large, reptilian birds that try to eat people?” Chris asks, his voice still flirting and playful. I roll my eyes.

“Yeah.” Amy looks up and around at the treetops. “There should be other birds. Animals. Something to eat that purple stuff, nests within the limbs of the trees. Squirrels and snakes, deer and rabbits.”

“This isn’t Sol-Earth, Amy,” Chris reminds her gently.

“Oh, I know,” Amy says. “But it just seems like . . . something’s missing.”

“I’m sure there are other creatures,” Chris says, and he really does sound positive of it. “But Colonel Martin was right: most animals would hide when nearly two thousand people go tromping through the forest. And besides, those reptilian birds would have needed something to eat before all of us tasty people got here!”