Shades of Earth

“I did.”

“I didn’t know things would get this messed up. This is not the mission I expected. And I had no idea you’d wake up early like that. I wish you hadn’t. Maybe then you could see that the shipborns—”

“Don’t even start,” I say. “The ‘shipborns’ aren’t a part of this argument.”

“They hate you.” Dad stares at me, daring me to break eye contact. “I see the way they flinch away from us, the way they look at us as if we’re freaks—even you.”

“Elder doesn’t hate me,” I say. I know this more than I know anything.

Dad barks with laughter. “Elder is a teenage boy. He doesn’t hate anything with breasts!”

I step back as if Dad’s slapped me.

“Amy, you can’t trust him. And you can’t—don’t—I don’t want you getting in over your head with this boy. I think you’ve let those three months you were on the ship before we landed cancel out the years you were on Earth. You’re one of us. You’re mine. You’re my little girl.”

“Not anymore,” I say cruelly, sidestepping him and storming toward the building.

Dad grabs me and yanks me back. I think for one terrifying instant that he’s going to hit me, but he doesn’t. He wraps me in a hug so tight I can barely breathe. “I’m not letting you go away mad at me, Amy,” he says softly into my hair. “We can fight, and we can disagree, but I’m never going to let you walk away from me thinking I don’t love you.”

He loosens his grip on me, and I step back, stunned by his words. Dad is not the mushy type. “This world is dangerous, Amy,” he says. “I don’t know what’s going to happen. I can’t let you walk away from me mad. I love you too much for that.”

He holds his pinky up, waiting for me to wrap mine around his.

The ice inside me melts. “I love you too,” I say, making a pinky promise just like we used to do when I was a kid. “I promise.”

And I mean it: I love him.

I’m just not sure I can trust him.

32: ELDER

My eyes shoot open the next morning when I hear loud footsteps clambering up the staircase leading to my building. I stretch, my neck cracking. I used a pile of clothes as an impromptu bed, but I’m going to have to find something better—especially for the pregnant women, who must be hurting more than me.

“Elder!” Amy calls, breathless, as she runs into my room.

A loopy grin slides across my face; I don’t mind being woken up this early in the morning if Amy’s my alarm clock.

Then I see her face. “What’s wrong?” I ask, jumping up and grabbing a tunic from the pile of clothes, pulling it over my head. The air’s already humid and sticky, despite how early it is.

“Kit,” Amy says, still panting from her run up to my building. “Come on.”

I stagger after her, pulling on my moccasins as I go. “What happened?” I ask, my heart sinking. Other than Amy, Kit is one of the few people on this planet I actually trust—and one of my few friends. If something’s wrong . . .

“I don’t know,” Amy says. Her eyes dart to the bottom of the hill, where Colonel Martin is giving directions to Emma and Chris, pointing out something in the distance.

“What do you mean?” I ask. “Is she all right?”

“I don’t know,” Amy repeats, grabbing my hand and dragging me down the stairs toward Colonel Martin. “This morning, Dad tried to find her, to go over that list she made detailing what everyone’s skills are. He was going to start making permanent work assignments. But she’s missing.”

“Missing?” I feel stupid. It’s barely morning; the suns have just risen.

“Dad thinks that she’s just wandered off or something, that she’ll turn up soon.”

“Kit wouldn’t do that,” I say.

She spares a glance at me. “I know.”

Colonel Martin turns as we run up to him. “Amy,” he says, admonishment in his voice. “I told you not to trouble Elder with this.”

“Dad, Kit wouldn’t just go. If she’s missing, that means something is wrong.”

I glance at Amy. We both know if she’s missing, it’s probably already too late.

“I’ve already volunteered to go looking for her,” Emma says. She scowls.

“And I’ve already said it’s nothing,” Colonel Martin says firmly. “I’ve sent some soldiers ahead to the shuttle to see if Kit went there.”

“She wouldn’t,” I say.

“We don’t have time to just stop all operations because one woman wandered off—against my orders, I might add.”

“Dad,” Amy says so forcefully that he looks a little surprised. “Kit would not just wander off alone. That’s not like her.”

Colonel Martin considers what she’s said.

Chris steps up beside him. I want to knock him aside; I don’t need one more person saying that Kit’s just carelessly gotten lost. “Maybe she’s in the latrines,” he says.

“She’s not; I checked,” Amy says. “We need to go looking for her.”

“Let’s wait for the men I sent to get back,” Colonel Martin says, but his voice isn’t as commanding as before. “She might have gone back for more supplies from the shuttle . . . ”

“She wouldn’t,” I insist. “Kit is one of my people, and I know her. There’s no way she’d leave the colony without letting me know. I’m telling you—if she’s gone, something is seriously wrong.” I watch as doubt crosses Colonel Martin’s face. He doesn’t want Kit to have been taken; he doesn’t want it to be his fault. His guard hasn’t protected her. But I don’t have time to assuage Colonel Martin’s hurt feelings. “If you’re not going to do something, I will,” I say. “I’ll get together search parties now.”

“I’ll help,” Amy says immediately.

“And so will I.” Emma shoots Colonel Martin and Chris a disgusted look.

We work quickly. As soon as word spreads that Kit has disappeared, people start volunteering for the search party—more than a hundred in less than an hour.

Colonel Martin casts an eye over the group assembling in the meadow. There’s a grim sort of determination to the search party, and they carry tools—shovels, scythes, even, in a few cases, just a large tree branch, smoothed down on one end for a handle on a makeshift club.

“They don’t need weapons. My men have guns,” Colonel Martin tells me. My people, armed as they are, make him nervous. I file this information away in my mind.

“Guns didn’t save Kit,” I say. “Or Lorin. Or Juliana Robertson, or that Earthborn doctor.”

I track down the last person who saw her—Willow, a pregnant woman who had come to her in the middle of the night with stomach cramps.

“After she gave me a med patch, she left,” Willow tells me.

“Did you see anyone else?”

“There was one of them on patrol.” Willow means one of the Earthborn military. She points at Chris, who’s standing on the edge of the gathering crowd, looking worried. “That one.”

I stride over to him and confront him with this information.

“I remember seeing her,” Chris tells me, his hands already up as if defending himself from the accusation in my voice. “It was right before my shift ended.”

“Did you make sure she got back to her building safely?” I demand.

Chris blanches. “I . . . no. I just assumed . . . ”

“That’s when she was taken,” I say, convinced of it now. I glare at Chris. It was his job to protect the colony, and he let one of my people pay the price for his carelessness.

The question is—who took her, and why?

33: AMY

As Elder starts sending groups off in search of Kit, Dad grabs my arm. “You’re not going,” he says.

I stare at him, too shocked by the order to protest.

“You can help in other ways. I’m not letting you go off with them.”

“I can help,” I say angrily. “Kit’s my friend.”

Dad looks at me as if he doesn’t believe his daughter could truly be friends with a shipborn. It’s the same look he gives me when he sees me with Elder.

My hands curl into fists. “Dad!” I growl. “You can’t just let Kit be lost because she’s not one of your people.”

“That has nothing to do with it.” His voice is filled with emotion I don’t understand—it sounds almost like regret, but that doesn’t make any sense. He leans in closer to me. “I’ve already seen you wounded once, Amy. When Elder brought you to me, after you were knocked out by that purple flower. I’m not going to see you get hurt again.” He hugs me tight, squeezing the air from me. “Go to the lab with your mother. Chris will stay with you two.” Dad glances up at Mom as she approaches. “Got to protect my girls.”

I look behind me. The search parties have already begun to disperse. With a sigh, I follow Mom back up to the building we’re sharing as she gets ready for a day at the lab. I wonder briefly if Dad’s going to the compound Elder and I discovered last night, if there’s something there that will help find Kit. I hope so. I don’t care that Dad’s kept it secret, not if it helps to find Kit and bring her safely back to us.

“Okay,” Mom says. “Let me just check with the geologists and see the results of the tests they ran last night. Amy?” she adds. “Want to come with me?”

I shake my head.

“I’ll go with you, Dr. Martin,” Chris says, standing up. I’m glad he’s here to protect Mom, but it feels weird that our guard is just a few years older than me.

Almost as soon as they’re gone, Emma steps into the building. “Alone?” she asks in her lilting accent. I nod.

Emma crosses the room in three long strides and presses something into my hands. A glass cube, about the size of my palm. “I want you to have this,” she tells me. “Hide it.”

“Why—?” I ask, peering at it. While the cube looks as if it’s made of glass, it’s filled with bright flecks of gold. It glitters in the sunlight, creating an entrancing swirl of sparkles.

“I’ve been watching you and that Elder.” Emma glances at the door. “I know you lot are not going to just blindly accept what someone says is truth. And I figure maybe that’s what’s needed more than anything right now.”

“Is this about . . . ” I hesitate, not sure if I do want to know the truth. “Is this about Dad?”

“Your dad’s a good soldier,” Emma says. “He’s following the mission guidelines.”

My fingers curl around the glass cube. What does this have to do with the mission guidelines?

“I have been to many countries,” Emma says, changing topics abruptly. “And now to a whole new world. But I have never felt dépaysement.”