Shades of Earth

“There’s more than just pteros out here,” I say, thinking of the mysterious animal tracks I found near the shuttle and the crystal scale Colonel Martin took from me.



“There was gen mod material in Dr. Gupta’s blood,” Amy says. “Maybe the first colony somehow used the formula here on Centauri-Earth. Maybe that’s where pteros came from. Maybe they engineered their own destruction.” She makes a strangled noise, and I realize she’s holding back tears. “We’re alone,” she says in almost a whisper. “The colony that came before—whatever happened, they died out. Just like we’re going to.”



“We won’t—”



“We will!” The words rip from her throat. She whirls around to face me, and I see the raw panic in her eyes.



“Amy,” I say, waiting for her to meet my eyes. “I would never—never—let something happen to you. You know that, right?”



She hesitates before she nods.



She looks so fragile in this moment that it breaks my heart. We both know that I won’t be able to protect her from everything.



But I’ll do all I can, no matter what the cost.



“Amy,” I say, searching her eyes. “I lo—”



She slams her lips against mine, cutting my words off. I try to put the words she won’t let me say into my kiss. Her arms snake around my neck, pulling me closer to her. There’s a sort of desperation to our kiss, a hunger, one that neither of us may ever be able to satiate.



I’m not stupid.



Even as my thoughts evaporate in the flames of our kiss, I am aware that she wouldn’t let me say the words I meant to say and that she has yet to say them in return.



But I don’t care.



Because we can say them or not; it doesn’t matter. What is in our hearts is real whether we name it or let it exist only in darkness and silence.



* * *



A long time later, we break apart. Color has returned to Amy’s cheeks, and her hands aren’t trembling anymore.



“We’re going to make it,” I say, hoping my words reaffirm the idea within her.



She clenches her jaw and nods.



I inspect the control panel under the plaque with the double-winged symbol of the FRX. “This is definitely a communication bay,” I say. “It isn’t that different from the com links we used on Godspeed.”



Of course it isn’t. They were both developed by the FRX.



Amy follows my gaze. “Do you think we could contact the ship? Maybe we can get someone to help us figure out the Little Prince clue.”



I shake my head. Even if there were a way to hail Godspeed, I’d have to tap directly into the wi-coms—any other type of communication system was destroyed with the Bridge. I glance at Amy. Her eyes are shiny, as if reaching the ship is her last hope. I turn back to the com bay; it isn’t that different from the ship’s . . . it wouldn’t hurt to try.



I pull up a hard, straight-backed chair standing against the wall and sit in front of the control panel, trying to figure out what the controls are and how they’re used. I recognize some—this dial searches for a signal, this one adjusts the output. But there are others—a knob labeled ANSIBLE, a gauge with a rapidly moving needle—that mean nothing to me.



Amy sits down beside me. A touch screen lights up in front of her, displaying a menu of options. Maybe the old technology is mixed with the new. Amy slides her finger over the screen, then pauses, hovering over one word.



Intercepted.



She glances at me. This doesn’t bode well.



Amy presses the word, and the screen goes black with only a small red line labeled frequency visualizer on the top and a yellow line labeled volume visualizer on the bottom. As sound fills the communication room, the lines bounce up and down in a graphic sequencing of the words. In the center, typed words transcribe the audio message.



Congratulations, Godspeed! You have safely arrived at your final destination, the planet circling the binary Centauri system.



“I know what this is,” I say, my stomach sinking.



“We’re communicating with Earth!” Amy cries, excited, leaning forward as the message continues.



We are excited to inform you that the probes sent prior to the ship’s landing have indicated not only a habitable world, but profitable environmental resources as well!



Amy turns to me, eyes gleaming with excitement.



Until she sees the look on my face.



At the time of your landing, a signal was relayed directly to the Financial Resource Exchange. Rest assured that even now, the FRX is preparing a shuttle filled with aid and supplies for your colony.



“Earth is coming!” Amy insists, still clinging to her newfound hope. “Earth will come help us out!”



“No, it’s not.”



“What are you talking about? They just said—”



“Amy, what was this message labeled as?” I ask.



She frowns. “Intercepted.”



My finger slides across the touch screen, and the message starts over again.



Congratulations, Godspeed! You have safely arrived at your final destination, the planet circling the binary Centauri system.



“But . . . ” Amy says.



“It’s a recorded message.” I feel sick. I heard this message when Colonel Martin typed in his authorization code on the control panel on the bridge. We both thought it was a live communication from Earth that had just gotten cut off. But it was nothing but a recording—a copy of a message being sent to us from here.



I scan forward in the message. In the recording Colonel Martin and I heard, the words were cut off before any details about whatever is threatening our existence were told. This message cuts off too, at exactly the same spot it crackled and died before.



I wonder if this even came from Sol-Earth originally or if it is all a part of some elaborate ruse.



“Who would do this?” Amy asks, disgusted. Her eyes widen. “Not . . . not Dad?”



I shake my head. I saw Colonel Martin’s face when we heard the message on the bridge. “That message came moments after he woke up,” I add. “He couldn’t possibly have coordinated this.”



I flick the touch screen back to the list of messages. Intercepted has only the message from Sol-Earth. Others are marked Trade Negotiations, Labor Details, Manufacturing Specifications, Surveillance—and each of these has several messages listed under each label, all marked by a series of numbers that I can’t find any sort of pattern to.



I flick the touch screen back again and see a label marked Live Feed. I nudge Amy and point to the label. “Live feed of what?” she asks.



“Maybe the people who made this compound?”



I press down on the label. A submenu pops up showing a list of random topics: agricultural, medical, community, maintenance, engine, control.



Amy looks at me quizzically. These labels don’t make sense. I touch the last one: control. The screen turns black, flashes ERROR, and then returns to the submenu. I shrug and touch the first label, agricultural.



This time the screen doesn’t fade to black. Instead, it shows a rolling landscape. Perfectly even, structured grassy hills. Measured fields of grain, corn, beans. A manufactured agricultural landscape dotted with genetically engineered cows and sheep, all under a metal sky painted blue.



I touch the screen, and the image disappears, replaced by the submenu.



“Elder, that was—” Amy can’t say the word.



Godspeed.



That was Godspeed. The labels on the submenu make sense now. I tap them quickly. Medical shows the Hospital from the outside, a camera angled near the statue of the Plague Eldest. Community is the City. Maintenance is the Shipper Level; engine shows the lead-cooled fast reactor that fueled Godspeed. Control is nothing but a blank screen because it must have been a live video feed of the Bridge, and there is no more Bridge. Doc blew it up.



“They were watching us,” I say, horror creeping into my voice. “They were watching us all along.”



“Who was watching us?” Amy asks.



I don’t know. Whoever built this compound. The first colony—or whatever it is that wiped out the first colony, the thing that is not human, that the biometric lock on this building intended to keep out.



I click back on community. The City is not how I remembered it. The streets are crowded, dirty. The people—my people, the ones I left behind, the ones who stayed with Bartie—have a sort of desperation clinging to them. Some of them move too fast, rushing from one place to another as if their lives depended on it. Others don’t move at all. They slump against the buildings. They have given up.



“Something’s wrong,” I say. I want to reach through the screen and help them, but as soon as my fingers touch the glass, the screen fades back to the submenu.



Amy puts a hand on my arm. I think she wants to pull me away from the monitor. After all, what can I do? I’m here, and they’re far above me, orbiting around the planet. I can’t reach them. I can’t save them.



I have failed them.



I touch the maintenance label to see the Shipper Level. The doors to all the different offices and labs are open, but no one’s there. Is it night? No, it can’t be . . . the City was lit by the solar lamp. Why are there no Shippers on this level? I go back and touch engine. The engine room is empty as well. The camera angle is positioned so that I can see both the engine and, behind it, the massive seal-lock doors that hide the remains of the Bridge. The doors are locked. I try to look at the small screens on the control panel behind the engine—from what I can see, everything seems to be operational.



Why is no one on this level, though?



Then I see the flashing red light on the engine itself. It’s massive, but the camera angle blocks most of the red glow. My mouth goes dry. I know what that glow means. The entire Shipper Level must be engulfed in a deafening alarm.



Warning us that the engine is going into meltdown.



I look closer. I can’t zoom in, but I strain my eyes to see through the pixels, to understand what’s happened. Amy leans forward too, her red hair sweeping across the screen before she brushes it back over her shoulder.



When Doc blew up the Bridge, the engine was exposed to space and the rapid decompression made by the vacuum sucking everything through the hole where the Bridge had been. The engine was built to last, but it was already old. It would have been easy for it to be damaged then—especially since, immediately after the Bridge’s explosion, I left with the shuttle. No one did work in those days, no one bothered to check on the engine. It could have been quietly malfunctioning the entire time. Some of the Shippers inspected the engine before I left, but how thorough were they? What if they missed something?



If the engine dies, Godspeed dies.



It’s as simple as that.



I move to close the screen. I don’t want to see this; I don’t want to live with this guilt.



I left my people to die.



The thought makes my hand twitch and, by accident, I bring up the video feed of the Hospital. I move to turn it off, but Amy grabs my hand. “Wait,” she says, staring at the screen.



I turn away from it. I don’t need the concrete face of the original Eldest mocking me.



“A robe of stars . . . ” Amy whispers. She tugs on my arm. “What’s the man in the statue wearing?” she asks.