Shades of Earth

“They’re dead,” I say.



His eyes snap down to me, and for a moment, I don’t recognize him. He’s never looked at me this way before. He’s never looked at me like he was a colonel instead of my father.



“What’s going on?” he orders.



“D-dad,” I stutter over the name. “There was . . . I mean, the ship . . . It’s not like what we thought it would be. These people were born on the ship,” I say, waving my arm toward Kit and the others. I watch his face, carefully waiting for the moment when he finally notices that everyone from Godspeed looks the same. His eyes narrow in a calculating gaze. “You don’t understand. A lot of stuff has happened. And we just got the shuttle to land. It—sort of crashed. And there are a lot of people injured, and we do have a leader, but—”



My father’s eyes soften as I try to stutter through an explanation. He pulls me closer, wrapping his strength around me, and I feel safe for the first time in more than three centuries.



“I want to know more,” he tells me in a low voice. “We’ll talk later.” Over the top of my head, he barks, “Bledsoe!”



A woman a few rows away stands at attention. I gasp—I know her. She’s the woman Orion nearly killed, the one Elder and I saved while Theo Kennedy drowned in his cryo box. My mind goes back to the chart I made three months ago. Emma Bledsoe, thirty-four years old, a US Marine originally from South Africa.



“Sir,” Bledsoe calls back to my father.



“Operation Genesis in effect,” he says.



I don’t know what Operation Genesis is, but Emma Bledsoe obviously does: she immediately begins calling out to individuals—the other military personnel who’d been frozen—and instructs them to line up in the space between those from Godspeed and those from Earth.



I glance over the heads of the military people and catch Kit’s eyes. She’s struggling to keep her nurses working on the remaining injured, but there’s real fear in the way she holds her stiff body, the way she won’t fully turn her back to us. Fear of my people—fear of my father.



“Dad,” I say, “there are a lot of injured people. The crash was—”



“Sir!” Bledsoe calls back, interrupting me before I have a chance to mention Elder’s theory that the pterodactyl-looking things caused the crash. Her voice is loud and clear, but she has an odd accent—British, maybe, or Australian. “There are three casualties among the shipborn.” She moves to stand over the bodies of the people who didn’t survive the landing.



“What happened?” My father ignores me as he moves through the crowd to inspect the bodies. “This woman looks as if she was choked.” In the crowd, I can see the dead woman’s friend quietly sobbing as my father roughly tilts the woman’s head to look at the marking around her throat.



I notice Lorin, the woman whose shoulder I stitched, standing to the side, staring down at one of the dead men. She shuffles nervously back as Bledsoe and my father draw closer to me, too afraid to try to move past them. Her panicked eyes meet mine, and I shoot her a sympathetic smile.



“What happened?” Dad barks again.



“We had to use tethers to secure the people during the landing,” Kit says, trying to keep the quaking out of her voice. “It slipped around his neck, and—”



“Why didn’t you use the magnetic harnesses?” Dad snaps.



“Magnetic . . . harnesses?” Kit asks.



Dad stomps over to the wall—Lorin squeaks in terror and darts out of the way—and he bends down at the floor. His fingers feel along the tiled metal, and he does something—a flick of his wrist, a push of a button—and the metal panel lifts up. Reaching inside, he withdraws a handful of canvas straps with big, black buckles. “There are three thousand harnesses in storage here just so that you can secure your people to the floors and walls in the event of an emergency shuttle landing. Why didn’t you use them?” His voice is angry, accusing.



“We . . . we didn’t know they were there,” Kit says meekly, her eyes wide with shock.



I can’t rip my gaze from the dead. What a stupid, stupid way to die. Killed just because we didn’t know about the damn harnesses.



“The captain should have known about the proper procedures for emergency shuttle launch,” Dad says. He exudes frustration and anger, and even though he’s wearing a silly green medical gown that opens in the back, he still carries with him more authority than I’ve ever seen from him before, and everyone—people from Godspeed and those from Earth—is listening to his every word.



“It’s not like that,” I say. “You don’t understand, Dad, things—”



He cuts me off with a glance, and I shut up. “This is a mess,” he growls. “Bledsoe, where are the medical personnel?”



“Here, sir,” Bledsoe says, drawing aside five people—three men and two women.



“Dr. Gupta,” Dad says, addressing one of the men. “Have your team aid with the injured,” Dad commands.



The medical professionals step forward, but I can already see this won’t work. If the people from Godspeed worried about me with my pale skin and red hair, at least they’ve had three months to see I wasn’t a threat. I can see these people through their eyes, and while I know it’s silly, I understand why they flinch away from the Indian man, why they don’t understand the woman with the Southern accent, why they rush to Kit instead of allowing the black man to wrap their wounds. I want to stay and help—but what good could I do?



“Let’s suit up,” my father tells Bledsoe. In shifts, the people from the cryo chambers go to the trunks on the far wall and begin dressing in the clothes they brought with them from Earth. My father and the rest of the military dress in fatigues.



Their clothes, so different from the homespun tunics and trousers made by the residents of Godspeed, do nothing but separate everyone even more. Synthetic fibers and bright colors pop up like blemishes among the browns and blacks worn by most of the crew from the ship.



The people from Godspeed are more than ten times the number of people from Earth, but they’re cramped together all along one wall. The room is sticky and hot, and the air stinks of sweat and fear. And anger.



I open my mouth to call my father aside—if he can’t prove that he’s there to help, that he’s not the threat Orion said he was, he’s going to be labeled an enemy. But then he turns to Bledsoe and says, “Let’s inspect the armory.”



It’s bad enough that suddenly ninety-seven people from Earth have woken up and are taking charge, but adding guns to this mix will not end well.



The door to the armory is shut and locked, and it doesn’t open when Dad punches the code into the keypad.



“What’s wrong, sir?” Bledsoe asks.



Dad shakes his head and punches the code in again. It still doesn’t work. And why should it? Orion reprogrammed it long ago.



“Dad, I need to talk to you,” I say, trying to emulate the authority in his voice.



“Not now, Amy.”



I’ve waited three months that felt like a lifetime for him to say my name, but I did not think he would preface it with those words.



“Now,” I insist.



“Amy,” Dad says, turning away from the control panel to face me, “I don’t think you understand. We’re on a mission. This is work. We need to ascertain the situation, confer with the shipborns’ leader, and take control of the outlying area.”



“But Dad, I—”



“Amy, I would love to stop everything and talk to you. I would love to be your daddy right now. But this is a crucial situation, and what I really need to do is figure out why this code has been changed and talk to the leader of the shipborns.”



“Well,” Elder says as he pushes open the door of the armory, “then it’s a good thing I’m here.”



8: ELDER



The first thing I notice is the doubt etched on the man’s face.



“Dad,” Amy tells him, “I want you to meet the leader of Godspeed. Elder.” She stares at me hard, and it takes me a moment to realize that she’s analyzing my wounds. I tug on the clean tunic, careful not to wince when the skin made raw from the beast’s claws rubs against the rough cloth. “Elder,” Amy continues, “this is my father, Colonel Robert Martin. He’s—after the deaths of the other two frozens, he’s in charge of the military from Sol-Earth.” Her voice catches over her introduction of her father. I can tell that she hadn’t realized he would be next in line to command the frozens.



I step forward, my mind racing, trying to remember the proper way to formally greet someone from Sol-Earth military. I shouldn’t bow, should I? That seems so archaic—but then again, so is he.



Before I can do anything, though, the man turns to Amy. “I don’t have time for your games,” he says. “Where’s the real captain?”



Amy glares at him, her shoulders rolling back and her eyes flashing. “Elder is the leader,” she says again, a steely edge to her voice.



Colonel Robert Martin casts me one disdainful look. “He’s a kid.”



“Sir,” I say, my voice dripping with derision, “I am the leader of Godspeed, and if you want to get past any of the locked doors on this shuttle, including the one to the armory you’re trying to get into right now, you’re going to have to show me a little more respect.”



One of the colonel’s eyebrows shoots up, but he doesn’t argue. “I need access to the shuttle computer,” he demands.



Of frexing course he does.



I explain the situation: how the glass windows opened up to create the ramp, how there’s no protection from the massive, reptilian bird that wanted to eat my face off, how the computer is outside on the now-exposed bridge.



“I understand,” Colonel Martin says in a voice that makes it seem as if he’s bored with my assessment of the monsters, “and we will be armed—but it is essential that I have access to the computer.”



I step out of the way of the armory door, letting Colonel Martin and the woman with him select weapons. Amy shoots me a questioning look. “Let me handle this,” I whisper, hoping my eyes communicate my need for her to let me meet her father on my own terms. If Colonel Martin wants to talk to a leader, I don’t want him reminded that I’m younger than his daughter.



Amy doesn’t look happy about this, but she nods and returns to the cryo room. When Colonel Martin and the woman finish arming themselves, I lead them down the hall to the bridge door.



Amy’s father strides forward onto the bridge, one hand resting almost casually on the gun strapped around his waist. The woman with him, a tall, slender woman with darker skin than I knew was possible, follows him without even glancing at me. I close the door to the bridge, trying to ignore how vulnerable to the dangers that lurk in the skies we now are.



I can tell immediately that Colonel Martin and the woman with him are unimpressed by the world spread out before them. When the honeycombed glass dropped away from the bridge earlier, I was so overwhelmed by the boundless sense of freedom that I longed to rush into it, relishing every single thing I discovered. They are ambivalent at best. A warm breeze floats past us, and I want to close my eyes and savor the scent of plants and earth it carries, but neither of them even notices.