Colonization

Colonization:

Book One of Paradise Reclaimed

by

Aubrie Dionne

The characters and events in this book are fictitious.  Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, places, or events is coincidental and not intended by the author.

If you purchase this book without a cover you should be aware that this book may have been stolen property and reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher.  In such case the author has not received any payment for this “stripped book.”

Colonization: Book One of Paradise Reclaimed

Copyright © 2012 Aubrie Dionne

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 0985148373

ISBN-13 (print): 978-0-9851483-7-9

ISBN-13 (ebook): 978-0-9856562-0-1

Inkspell Publishing

18, Scott Court, C-4

Ridgefield Park

07660 NJ

Edited By Rie Langdon.

Cover art By Najla Qamber

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DEDICATION

To everyone out there looking for their home...

Chapter One

Predestined

“I’m telling you, Andromeda, you’re the one.” Great-grandma Tiff grinned from the halo of her sleep pod. Her eyes sparkled like two winking stars.

“I can’t even pass the colonization pretests.” I squirmed on the edge, about to fall on the floor. Whenever she alluded to her psychic powers and me as the savior of the colony, my stomach bubbled up acid and I thought I’d spew all over the wallscreen.

Luckily, I knew how to distract her. “Tell me again about the pirate space station and how you convinced Grandpapa to keep you on the
New Dawn
.”

She smiled softly and waved her hand at me, rustling the tubes connected to her arms.

“I didn’t convince him. He convinced me. Besides, being a space pirate isn’t what it’s cracked up to be. The space station stank worse than the filth oozing beneath the biodome. I slept against the generators to keep from shivering, with one eye open every night. There were no Guide-driven objectives, and lawlessness was everywhere.”

I closed my eyes and tried to imagine a world without the Guide, a world without rules. Fear rushed in, followed by enough curiosity to keep me listening. “And?”

Tiff cleared her throat. “When I left, the whole place was in ruins, and I couldn’t imagine eating more of that recycled food.”

I wrinkled my nose. Recycled food sounded nasty.

“You were lucky to be born on the ship, my dear, and even luckier to be the generation reaching the paradise planet.”

“I don’t want to leave the
New Dawn
.” Embarrassed by the edge in my voice, I bit my lip, offering an apologetic smile. “We have everything here we could ever need.”

“Change is the only constant in our lives. It shapes us as much as it tears us down. You’re destined for wonderful things, Andromeda, and you can either fight the rising tide or ride it out to sea.”

Thinking of the future reminded me of swimming in the deeper end of the aerobics pool on accelerated mode: constantly struggling and never getting anywhere. “Can’t we talk about something else?”

Tiff sighed, her shaky fingers drumming on the plastic rim of the sleep pod. She couldn’t move much else, and I wondered if she sometimes felt imprisoned in her own body. I couldn’t imagine living for over three hundred years.

“That’s enough for now, my dear. Besides, there’s a boy waiting to see you at the portal.”

“I don’t see anyone hailing the wallscreen.”

She settled back into her sleep pod and pressed a button on the side. The lid descended slowly and I ducked out of the way. “Don’t stay out too late or your mother will worry.”

“I’m not going anywhere. I have too much studying to do.”

Her crackly voice echoed within the plastic cocoon. “Someday you’ll believe me.”

As the lid sealed, the wallscreen beeped and displayed the one face I could stare at all day.

“Sirius, what are you doing here? It’s almost curfew.” I stepped around the gurgling machine that kept Great-grandma Tiff alive, careful not to tangle my legs in the wires and tubes.

He smiled, a devilish grin teasing me and luring me in at the same time. My logical mind disintegrated into irrational cravings. “Come on. I have something I know you’ll want to see.”

I pressed the button on the front panel and the portal dematerialized between us in a million swirling specks. He leaned against the chrome wall, half his face covered by his wavy black-as-deep-space hair. Eagerness tingled inside me and I squashed it down, trying to look annoyed.

“What is it?”

He brushed a lock of hair from his face and his dark eyes gleamed. “It’s a surprise.”

I pretended to consider staying. “I’ve got a lot of work to do.”

“Trust me. You’ll be glad you came with me.”

“Oh, all right. As long as I’m back by curfew.”

He grabbed my hand, and electricity sizzled between us. His voice turned low and velvety. “You may not want to be back at all.”

I followed him down the corridor, wondering how my lanky best friend had turned into an out-of-this-galaxy hottie. I couldn’t pinpoint the day my feelings had changed. They’d rushed up whenever we spent time together and I had to swallow them down because we’d reached our seventeenth year.

He spoke over his shoulder as he led me to the elevator. “I overheard the bioteam talking today.”

“We’re not going to the biodome, are we?”

“Yup. Don’t worry. It’s not the part your mom works in. We’re breaking into the livestock cells.”

The thought of smelly goats and cows drove my romantic thoughts away. “Why, in all the vastness of space, are we going there?”

The elevator beeped, and the door dematerialized. He raised an eyebrow, teasing me with his pouty, kissable lips. “You’ll see.”

We seemed too old for these adventures, but I couldn’t turn him down.

As we stepped onto the biodome level, the musky scent of fur and animal droppings hung heavy in the air. “I’m not walking through the goat pen.”

He laughed and squeezed my hand. “You won’t have to.”

We crouched beneath the glass panels, making sure all of the biologists had left for the night. I squinted in the dim light. As they sensed our presence, the bleats of animals echoed from the cells beside us.

Sirius led me past the livestock to the exotic animals in the back. He positioned himself in front of a cell with a warning sign blinking across it.

“The desert cows from Sahara 354? Are you crazy?”

He held up a thin card, looking way too amused. “I stole the key.”

“I’m not going in there. They could stomp us to death.”

Before I could grab his arm, he’d already swiped the card and slipped into the cell.

“Sirius, wait!”

I cringed as I entered the darkness, preparing for a foot the size of a table to squash me or a trunk to smack me against the wall. All was quiet.

“Annie, come closer.”

A small lump crept out of the shadows, and my heart melted. A tiny three-trunked calf waddled over to Sirius. He crouched down and pulled miniature carrots from his pockets.

I fell to my knees beside the animal. “What a cutie!”

“It was born this morning. They’ve segregated the newborn to keep it safe from the others.”

I ran my hand over the soft newly-formed hide. Pity panged inside me. It was cruel to keep it here, down in a dark cell in the emptiness of deep space. The calf should be enjoying the vast desert of Sahara 354, basking in real sunlight with sand under its toes and the breeze on its back.

“They should have left the desert cows alone. They’re not even from Old Earth.”

A trunk swung at his head, and Sirius ducked. He fed the calf another carrot. “From what I’ve researched, Sahara 354 had two suns, one of them about to go supernova. This was the only chance they had.” He handed me the rest of the carrots. “Go on. You try.”

Bending down, I pulled a carrot from the bunch and offered it to the newborn. The calf approached me hesitantly, nibbling on the end. Innocence and fear shone in its black eye. “So they’re like us, refugees from a dying planet.”

Sirius shrugged my concern away. “Guess so.”

“I wonder how they survived three generations on the ship, away from their home?”

“Don’t you remember the section on genetics?”

I thought back, but all my classes ran together. I must have been daydreaming again. “Remind me.”

“Sure. You’ll have to review it before the tests.”

“Like I have any time to study with you parading me around.”

“Sheesh, Annie. Next time I’ll go alone.”

Sirius sat down and crossed his legs. The calf crooned like a child watching its parents fight. I placed my hand on the animal’s head to comfort it, thinking of a way to apologize to Sirius. It wasn’t his fault I wasn’t prepared for the tests, and I loved going out with him any chance I got.

“No, Sirius. I’m sorry, okay? I’m enjoying myself. I really am. It’s just the tests are coming up and I’ve been such a slacker.”

He sighed, throwing a piece of hay over his shoulder. “You’ll do fine.”

His voice sounded so sure of it, I wondered if he thought my relationship to the commander would sway the results. A current of anger rose up and I exhaled, calming myself.
No, Sirius wouldn’t think of me as a cheat.
Surely the tests were fair.

“So how
did
these animals survive?”

Sirius reached over to pet the calf and his hand brushed mine, igniting heat that traveled from my fingers to my chest.
Does he feel it, too?
If so, his face remained impassive, reminding me of Ms. Hoodcroft spouting from her miniscreen text.

“The biologists took the strongest ones to start a population. They controlled their breeding mates to ensure each generation had optimal genes and no inbreeding, to avoid recessive or deleterious traits.”

Realization hit me and I whispered, “Just like us.”

“Yup.”

I dropped the rest of the carrots on the floor and the calf knelt to gobble them up.

Sirius turned to me. “Annie, what’s wrong?”

The question came from nowhere and everywhere. It had hung between us for as long as I could remember, becoming the one unknown dominating my life. I finally asked what I’d been wondering, hoping. “Do you think we’ll be paired together?”

Sirius’s eyes were dark oceans of mystery. He blinked and shrugged. “We’ll worry about that when the time comes. For now, let’s enjoy ourselves.”

Sirius’s locator beeped and panic zapped through me. “What time is it?”

He gave me a charming, apologetic smile. “Past curfew.”

“Damn.” My fingers fumbled as I reinserted the energy cell. Ten messages. I was
so
dead. Like, sucked-into-a-black-hole dead.

I raised my arm and my mother’s face stared back at me, crinkled up in anger. “Andromeda! Where are you? Your locator’s turned off.”

I winced, making sure Sirius and the baby calf didn’t show on the screen. “I took a break from studying. I’ll be home soon.”

“You’d better.” Her voice changed from furious to vulnerable in two words. “Great-grandma Tiff is gone.”

Chapter Two

Lullaby

The funeral came days before the speck of Paradise 21 glimmered on the horizon. I stood next to Mom and Dad in front of Great-grandma Tiff’s casket, wondering why she couldn’t have lived just a few more days to see our new home planet for herself. But Tiff didn’t do anything she didn’t want to do. Maybe she hadn’t wanted to see it.

“Andromeda, stop sniffling and keep your head up.” Mom tugged on my arm and handed me a microfiber cloth from her pocket. She didn’t want me making a scene in front of the congregation.

A speaker took the platform, silencing any sort of smart reply I had stored up for her nitpicking.

“We’re gathered here today to honor the memory of Tiffany Barliss.”

Ten words in, and the man had already infuriated me. No one called her Tiffany. Her name was Great-grandma Tiff. He spoke of how my great-grandma came to the
New Dawn
with the space pirates, the same year the legendary Aries Ryder went crazy and gave the pirates the location of the ship’s trajectory. Great-grandma Tiff’s ship came to capture Aries, and she ended up staying in her place.