Shades of Earth - Page 9/54

But if I can’t see the new world yet, at least I can make sure he can’t either.

10: ELDER

I let myself have one moment of fresh air before sealing the bridge door shut behind the ten soldiers off to face the new planet. I don’t know how long I stand there, my forehead pressed against the cool metal.

It’s already begun.

I can feel what little control I had over the situation slipping through my fingers.

I shut my eyes, exhale loudly. I can’t let myself think this way. I can’t let myself live in Orion’s fears.

Noise swells from the cryo room, interrupting my dark thoughts. At first I think it’s just the natural volume of fifteen hundred people cramped together in one giant room, but then a voice screams in fury over the sound of all the others. I jerk up and race to the cryo room.

“What happened?” a woman’s voice shouts as I push my way through the crowd gathered around the last row of cryo chambers.

Amy stands in front of a tall Earthborn woman with long, thin arms and a giant head of bushy hair. The woman’s voice is muted by thick, snotty, gasping sobs as she wails again, “What ha-happened?”

Amy throws up both her hands and tries to take a step back, but she’s trapped by the rows of cryo chambers. The frozens are clustered around her, and my people are staring at them with nervous wariness in their eyes.

Amy says something in a voice too low for me to catch, but the woman’s answer is pitched so high everyone in the cryo room can hear: “He was murdered?!”

Oh, frex.

I pick up my pace, shoving aside the people in my way as I head toward Amy and the woman. When I reach her, Amy jerks her head at the screaming lady and whispers, “That’s Juliana Robertson.”

Robertson—same last name as one of the frozens Orion unplugged.

“My husband!” Juliana screeches, one hand pressed against the closed door to cryo chamber 100.

Then her hand turns into a fist. She whirls around, grabbing Amy by her tunic and yanking her close. “What happened?” she says fiercely. “Tell me what son of a bitch killed my husband!”

Amy’s eyes are wide with fear. “It was—” She pauses. I know she was going to say “it was an accident,” but she can’t speak the lie.

“Who?!” Juliana Robertson roars in Amy’s face. Amy flinches, and I push Juliana aside, pulling Amy close. She loses interest in us and whips around to face the crowd of people from the ship gathering around her. “Which one of you freaks did it?” she screams, and I am momentarily caught up in the irony that she thinks we are freaks for looking similar when that’s the same word people used to apply to Amy for being different. “What coward killed my poor husband while he slept? Show yourself!” She is all fury, all raging hate.

My people don’t know how to respond to her. To them, the frozens are dangerous. Many of them agree with Orion and his actions. And Juliana wears the same green-and-brown clothes as the rest of the military—she is a soldier, even more dangerous for her training.

Their eyes turn to me—I am the one who is supposed to protect them.

Juliana follows their gaze to me, but she doesn’t see what it means. She thinks their look is accusatory, akin to a confession of her husband’s murder.

She lunges at me, screaming, and before I have a chance to react, her fist connects with my left cheekbone, making my head snap back. I stagger away, raising both my hands in defense.

“Don’t touch Elder!” one of the shipborns—a man named Heller, a former rancher on the Feeder Level—shouts as she jumps forward, grabbing Juliana’s arm as she rears it back to swing at me again.

“No, wait—” I try to say.

“Don’t hurt her!” another of the former frozens shouts as she jumps into the fray.

And just like that: chaos.

The people from Earth may be fiercer, but my people outnumber them fifteen to one. As the fighting escalates, the pack of frozens retreats until their backs are against the cryo chambers. Screams and shouts drown out every other sound. A woman who I take to be Amy’s mother—they have the same green eyes—grabs her wrist, dragging her away from the growing mob. I swallow a lump in my throat. It’s my fault the shuttle’s degrading into fighting, just like Godspeed did. It’s me who can’t keep Amy safe. I jab my finger against my wi-com—uselessly; it doesn’t work here.

I climb up on the nearest table, shouting, “Stop! STOP!”

But it does no good.

This is a fight born of rage and fear.

Fists slam against flesh; blood pours from new wounds. A chair is thrown into the crowd, then swung against a cryo chamber with a deafening crash. Juliana Robertson, her wild hair flying, screams as she lunges toward me but is caught by one of my people slamming her against a cryo chamber. I scramble off the table, throwing myself between fighting bodies and being beaten for my effort.

“ENOUGH!” Colonel Martin roars from the doorway. The people nearest him pause, but the fight rages. “I SAID ENOUGH!” he shouts again, walking straight through the middle of the mob. “STAND DOWN!”

And they do.

The military people who’d been left inside with us stop fighting. Even Juliana Robertson. Blood streams down both nostrils and her eyes are red, but her fists uncurl, and she steps back silently.

“What the hell is going on?” Colonel Martin rages. His eyes bounce between me and Juliana and back again. Behind him, the ten men and women he took with him to the probe spread out as the fighting dies.

“My husband,” Juliana says through clenched teeth. “He was killed, sir.”

Colonel Martin dips his head. “I know.”

Juliana’s eyes flash.

“You are dismissed. Go to the storage area and cool down.”

“Sir, he was my husband.”

“I know,” Colonel Martin says. “And my friend. You are dismissed.”

“They killed him.”

“Dismissed.” Colonel Martin’s voice bodes no allowance, and Juliana spins on her heel, storming to the room where the trunks had been stored. Several other members of the military follow.

My people glance at me, and I jerk my head to the other side of the cryo room. They head back, but I notice the way their backs are still stiff, their jaws still tensed. They remain ready for a fight. It’s not over, just paused.

Colonel Martin strides over to me, fury in his eyes. “This is what you call leadership?” he growls in an undertone. “This is what you call control?”

“No.” I bite off the word, then add, “Sir.”

Amy and her mother draw closer now that the fight’s over. Something in Colonel Martin’s face softens when he sees them.

Colonel Martin strides forward, drawing attention. “Everyone—shipborn and Earthborn alike—I have news. But first, a warning: if we don’t work together, we’ll never be able to survive this planet.”

His words are loud and firm, but he doesn’t shout. Still, I watch as the fight leaves my people, and they let go of their anger in order to listen.

“We did find the probe, less than a mile away, at the edge of the forest we landed in. We were unable to communicate with Earth, but I am hopeful that we’ll be able to contact our mother planet soon.”

He takes a deep breath. Every eye is on him.

“Further, we did glimpse the creatures that you’ve been able to hear from inside the shuttle. They are large, reptilian birds, and they do look predatory and possibly carnivorous.”

At his words, a chill rushes across the entire crowd. This is every nightmare they’ve ever had about the planet made real.

“We must constantly be aware of the danger this planet holds. And we must fight that, not each other.”

Colonel Martin looks around him at the chaos the fight caused—overturned tables and chairs, blood splatter, ripped clothing.

“It is clear that we will not be able to stay inside the confines of the shuttle indefinitely, despite the protection it affords us. To that end, our first missions will be aimed at survival: finding food, water, and shelter. Everyone will need to contribute to this task. Work will begin tomorrow.”

He shoots me a disgusted look. “Don’t kill each other in the meantime.”

11: AMY

Dad pulls me aside soon after he breaks up the disastrous fight. “Is there somewhere we can talk?” he asks gravely.

“The gen lab,” I say, jerking my head toward it. Briefly, Elder’s eyes meet mine from across the crowded, tense room. If we could only have one moment to ourselves, maybe we could start to make sense of this world. But Elder has nearly fifteen hundred people who need him to answer their questions right now. And I have one.

Dad follows me to the other side of the cryo room and doesn’t comment, even when the biometric scanner by the door recognizes my genetic signature. He waits for the door to seal shut behind us before saying anything.

“Who is that?” he asks, approaching the cryo chamber. Orion is caught mid-action, his hands clawing at the glass, his eyes bulging under ice.

“That’s the man who killed Juliana Robertson’s husband. And he tried to kill you too.”

Dad turns to me. “There’s a lot that happened while I was asleep. I need you to fill me in.”

I don’t have to ask why he’s asking me and not Elder. Still, I almost hesitate to speak. Am I undermining Elder’s position by telling my father what I know rather than insisting he talk to Elder directly?

No . . . no. My father needs to know the truth about Orion, and I know Elder would hesitate to explain all his faults. Dad doesn’t need excuses—he needs to know exactly why Orion’s dangerous. I explain, as best I can, who Orion is and why he thought murdering the frozens in the military might save his own people. I don’t tell him that Elder’s plan is for Dad and the rest of the frozens to judge and punish Orion. I make it sound as if Orion’s punishment is being frozen—I don’t want him awake, not even for judgment. I want him to live for centuries trapped in ice, just as I had to.

Dad shakes his head, trying to understand why Orion would let his friends melt to death. He reaches forward, tucking a stray lock of my red hair behind my ear. “You’ve been through so much,” he says, his voice cracking with regret.

My right hand goes unconsciously to my left wrist, rubbing it, retracing the area that was once, three months ago, bruised from being forced down to the ground, pinned between the dirt and a man who reveled in the evil he committed.

Dad wraps his arm around me. “The shipborns,” he begins gently, “they’re different from what I expected.”

“They’re different from what I expected too.”

“Anything that can help me understand them . . . ”

I release my wrist and swallow the words I want to say.

Dad starts pacing—a habit that I picked up from him. “Those people,” he says, “they all look the same, and they have some kid as their leader, and there are fewer of them than we expected by this time.” He reminds me of a caged animal, turning sharply at each wall and stomping to the next. “And if the probe records are right, the journey here didn’t take three hundred years . . . the probe indicates that more than half a millennia has passed.”