Shades of Earth

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.



69: AMY



I don’t think I really understood why Elder cut the communication link until I see the dots on the electronic map start to fly toward each other. The escape rocket and Godspeed, on a crash course toward the space station.



And then I realize: he didn’t want me to hear him die.



I shut my eyes and cover my ears, trying to hold in the scream that is rising from within me.



I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I’m going to be sick.



“Look,” Chris says, pointing as the map flickers and dies, showing nothing but a black screen.



I rush to the door of the communication room and throw it open. The hybrids don’t bother trying to stop me. I suppose it’s because I’m one of them now, or maybe they just know there’s nowhere for me to run. A blast of cool air hits me, making my hair swirl in front of my face. I swipe it away and run to the center of the compound, where the auto-shuttle stood not too long ago, before Elder boarded it.