Shades of Earth

BOOM! The statue crashes into the grav tube base and explodes. Gray dust and chunks of chalky concrete fly everywhere, and Bartie and I both duck behind the cart as gravel rains down. Before the air is clear, I jump up, racing to the debris.



Amid the cracked concrete and broken grav tube, I can just make out a shiny silver box. I reach for it, gray dust sticking to the sweat on the back of my hand.



“What is it?” Bartie asks. His voice is low and breathless.



I lift the latch on the box, and the lid creaks open.



Inside is an old vid recorder and AV display, the kind they used before floppies. It’s about the size of both my hands put together and is nearly an inch thick and heavy. Underneath it is a small book bound in brown leather. The pages are yellowed with age, but the writing inside is clear. A formula of some kind and detailed scientific notes.



“I haven’t seen one of these in ages,” Bartie says, picking up the AV display. “I think there are a few old ones in the Recorder Hall.”



Bartie’s right. No one’s used this tech in a long time. Maybe not since the Plague Eldest.



The recording is labeled, a white note with handwritten information in black ink:



These are the original recordings collected by Captain Albert Davis, the first Eldest of Godspeed, as he established Eldest rule. Additional copies will be passed down to each successive Eldest, and this will be preserved, hidden in the event of mutiny.



Orion must have known two things when he left the clue for me in The Little Prince. First, that copy intended for the Eldests was gone. Second, that the original was kept here—probably another Eldest secret that never made it to my ears. I guess the Plague Eldest figured that if people ever revolted against the Eldest system, they would destroy his statue and discover the truth he hid behind his concrete heart.



I load up the AV display and hold it in my lap so Bartie can see.



A man’s face fills the screen. It’s a face that looks mostly like mine, but lined with age and worry. He’s somewhere between Orion’s age and Eldest’s, maybe fifty or so, but he has a scar on one cheek that makes the left side of his lip hang down in a perpetual frown. His fading hair is peppered with strands of black, and he wears it cut short, but I can trace the angles of his face and know they match my own.



He is the Plague Eldest. The first of us. The original, from which I, Orion, Eldest, and all the others are just cloned copies. He might have “improved” on us over time, adding gen modifiers to our DNA to make us better, stronger, more monoethnic in appearance, more charismatic in personality. But I can still see myself in him.



“I’m afraid,” the Plague Eldest says in a deeper voice than mine, “that this is the end.”



63: AMY



“—lo?” Elder’s voice crackles over the radio from the auto-shuttle. Chris and I both lunge toward it.



“Hello? Hello?” I say anxiously, my heart sinking as I envision every worst-case-scenario possible.



“Amy, is that you?”



“Yes!” I nearly cry with joy. “Elder, you’re alive! I was so worried.”



His laugh comes to me from miles away, but it’s still his laugh. “Of course, I’m alive. What did you think happened?”



I can’t even put those fears into words.



“Amy, I have to tell you—” Elder’s voice pauses, and for a heart-stopping moment, I think our communication link has been severed. “I’ve found the last clue,” he says.



I blink, surprised. He doesn’t sound very happy about this. “You did?”



“Yes, and you’re . . . you’re not going to like it.”



“What is it?” I ask. My mouth is so close to the intercom that I can taste the metal cover of the microphone. Chris moves behind me, and I nearly jump in surprise. Once I heard Elder’s voice, I forgot he was even in the room.



“I think . . . I think I can show it to you. Give me a second.”



Chris touches the screen on the control panel. “He must have a video he can show us,” he says. “I might be able to help him load it from here.” He swipes the screen, bringing up a menu.



“Are you okay?” I ask Elder.



“Yeah.” He sounds distracted. After a moment he adds, “Why? Are you guys okay?”



I glance at Chris, who shakes his head slightly. We shouldn’t tell Elder about the attack now, not when he can’t do anything about it. Past Chris, I can see the trees of the forest and beyond that, a trail of smoke. Not from our smoke screen—something much larger is burning at the colony.



“Got it,” Chris says, tapping on the touch screen as a video feed loads.



“Did it load?” Elder asks.



“Yeah,” I say.



“You guys watch that; I’m going to go back and help with the packing. Everyone from Godspeed is coming down with me, and we’re bringing supplies for everyone.”



I look at the smoke again. There might not be anyone to give supplies to.



The intercom cuts out, and Chris moves aside, letting me have the chair in front of the touch screen. He stands behind me. He picks his rifle back up, casting a nervous look outside the window.



A man’s face fills the screen. “That must be the Plague Eldest,” I say aloud. I glance behind me at Chris. “He’s the last captain of Godspeed, the one who decided not to land the ship when they arrived at the planet.”



“I’m afraid,” the man says, “that this is the end.”



I lean forward, listening as hard as I can.



“My name is Albert Davis, and I am the captain of Godspeed. This is what happened.”



The camera immediately shifts images. This footage was filmed in the Bridge. The image wobbles a bit as the camera is stabilized on the control panel. It sweeps the Bridge, showing everyone standing inside. This is before monoethnicity. The crew gathered on the Bridge are of several different races—and religions too, judging by the Hebrew star one of them wears as a pendant around her neck. My fingers go up to my own cross pendant, a small smile on my lips. It makes me happy to know that once, Godspeed wasn’t as messed up as it became.



Everyone is chatting, but it’s too soft to understand individual words. They seem excited or, perhaps, nervous. The camera swivels back into place, facing the planet.



Godspeed is in orbit now, hanging over the blue-green-white of Centauri-Earth.



“There it is!” a woman’s voice says from behind the camera. A moment later, I see it too—a sleek silver shuttle, zooming over the horizon toward Godspeed.



The camera cuts to black, and I gasp in recognition as a new image fills the screen: the hatch where Harley died.



The camera is pressed against the porthole window, and the hatch is open, showing blackness.



“A little history,” Captain Albert Davis says from behind the camera. His voice sounds bitter. “Twenty years before we were due to land, we sent a probe to Centauri-Earth. The plan was that we’d get an idea of the environment, adjust our studies so we’d be ready for the planet when we landed. Instead, Sol-Earth discovered that there were some valuable resources on the planet. And they figured out a way to make transportation there even faster. They landed first. They built a colony.”



Something metallic lowers over the hatch. Not the door, but something cylindrical that locks onto the side of Godspeed. It’s the bridge between the ship and shuttle that was shown earlier.



Captain Davis laughs bitterly. “And now they have to figure out what to do with us.”



A tall, slender woman with jet-black hair and cheekbones sharp enough to cut glass steps out of the shuttle bridge and into the hatch, adjusting her tight pinstripe skirt. Captain Davis opens the hatch door after checking the pressure, and the woman steps out, smiling. Behind her, several men carrying thermal crates emerge from the shuttle. Captain Davis frowns at the crates.



“I would prefer our conversations be off the record,” the woman says. Her voice is kind, but even I can tell this is an order, not a request.



After a moment of blackness, the camera switches back on. It’s higher up now and stable—mounted somewhere, and, from the way the others ignore it, I suspect that the woman from the shuttle doesn’t know it’s there. Captain Davis has set up a meeting with her in the navigation room on the Keeper Level of the ship. Above them, light bulbs map the stars. A table is in the middle of the room, and Captain Davis sits opposite the woman.



“The original colony proved . . . difficult,” the woman says.



“In what way?” Captain Davis leans forward. He is clearly someone used to having authority, but I can tell that the woman intimidates him. I notice a flash of silver on her lapel—a small double-winged eagle pin. She’s the representative from the FRX.



“The solar glass this planet can produce has provided us with nearly unlimited pollution-less energy. It’s revolutionized the way Earth produces and consumes energy; it’s the answer to the prayer we’ve been saying since fossil fuels ran out.”



Captain Davis nods solemnly. The woman has yet to answer his question.



“The problem,” she says, sighing dramatically, “is that the original colony limits the type of production it’s sending to us. We need more.”



“More solar glass for energy,” Captain Davis says, “or more for weapons?”



The woman’s eyes narrow, but she laughs genially and waves her hand, dismissing the question. “I know you’re opposed to the weapons manufacturing we’ve implemented, but rest assured that your people will not be asked to produce weapons. Just energy cubes, as we discussed before.”



Captain Davis looks skeptical, but he doesn’t comment again.



“As I’ve said, the problem is the production rate. Our people—the original colony and, when you land, all of your people—are having problems with solar radiation. Too much sun; it makes people sick.”



My jaw clenches. This isn’t true. We’ve been on Centauri-Earth nearly a week, and none of us have gotten sick from sun exposure.



The woman waves her hand, and the men who came with her from the shuttle appear, carrying the thermal crates. They open one of them and hand the woman a syringe filled with golden liquid.



“This is a genetic modification vaccination. I assume you’re aware of gen mod material?” the woman asks.



Captain Davis nods. “The livestock were modified to better adapt to life in the bio-dome of the ship. We’ve used it sparingly on some crops throughout the years.”



The woman smiles. “Gen mod material has been enormously helpful in this situation,” she says. “We grafted a vaccination to solar radiation onto gen mod material. We simply inject a person with this vaccination . . . ” She reaches for Captain Davis’s arm, but he snatches it away. The woman laughs as if this were all a joke, but it is clear neither of them trusts the other. “Once someone is injected with the vaccine, it grafts to the person’s genetic code, ensuring that not only will that person be vaccinated against solar radiation for the rest of his or her life, but all of their descendants will be born immune as well. One shot, and every generation that lives on the new planet will never have to worry about solar radiation again!”