Colonization (2 page)

The speaker babbled on about the many accomplishments in Great-grandma Tiff’s life as my attention wandered. I stared off into the space panel above our heads. The stars blew by, strands of diamonds streaking through a sea of darkness. I imagined soaring above the congregation like a bird from Old Earth. Space wasn’t a dark, vacuous void, but a warm and glimmering night sky with a mild breeze buoying me up. The illusion comforted me from the harsh truth. We lived in a pocket of recycled air with nothing all around, waiting to suck us out.

The ceremony ended and I ran my hand along the white nanofiber plastic of her closed coffin, the only material we could afford to discard. The lid felt cool and slick to my touch, and I wondered if her body was cold as well. Deep space, as I’d been told, was three degrees above absolute zero, the temperature at which molecules stopped moving. Repressing a shiver, I let go as Mom pulled me away.

With the push of a button, the operations supervisor ejected her casket into space. I watched the rectangular box grow smaller and smaller until I squinted my eyes and nothing remained. I imagined my great-grandma’s body floating for eternity into the vast unknown, and the hairs rose on the back of my neck. I turned to Mom. “Why couldn’t we bring her with us to Paradise 21?”

Mom’s mouth set in a grim line and her eyes told me not to ask such questions in public. “The ceremony is a tradition. It’s been this way ever since the
New Dawn
left Old Earth.”

“She would have wanted to come.”

Mom ignored my comment and kissed my cheek. “I’m going to cut through the crowd to talk to your grandpapa. Please stay out of trouble.”

“Okay.” She might as well have told me to find something better to do for the rest of the day. The line of people surrounding my grandpapa’s hoverchair was as long as the line of people waiting to get off the ship. He was, after all, the commander, and the most important person alive.

At three hundred fifty-seven, my grandpapa had seen more years than anyone on board and was the only man old enough to have known the previous commander, who knew the very first lifers on the
New Dawn
. The two of them spanned eight generations altogether. Sometimes grandpapa’s importance worked in my favor, because our family had all the luxuries the ship could offer, but today it just made life worse. Everyone paid attention to us, and I had to make sure to behave as the commander’s granddaughter should.

“Sorry, Annie.”

I turned. Sirius’s intense brown eyes flustered me, making me feel as if we were the only two people in the room. He put his hand on my shoulder and the warmth of his skin burned through my white uniform. I wanted to press myself against him like I’d seen lifemates do, but we weren’t supposed to have favorites.

I stared at his hand touching me and glanced back at him, raising an eyebrow. His cheeks flushed and he pulled away. I shrugged his apology off. “She wasn’t supposed to live that long, anyway. You know they only kept her alive because of my grandpapa.”

Sirius flared his eyes to warn me to stop, but the whole day had frayed at my nerves. I couldn’t help all the feelings rushing out. My world was changing around me and all I wanted was for it to stay the same. Tears blurred my vision and I turned away, embarrassed.

“Come on. Follow me.”

Sirius put a gentle hand on my shoulder and led me out of the room into the quiet corridor. He put his arm around me and pulled me close against his hard chest. I smelled the soap he’d used that morning mingling with his own heady scent.

“I’ll take you back to your room, okay?”

“That’s not necessary.” Dad ruined the moment, as if the funeral couldn’t ruin the day enough.

He must have followed us into the corridor. Were my forbidden feelings that easy to see?

Dad smiled at Sirius, but his mouth tightened in the corners. “I’m going back to work, and I have to stop by our family unit to get my tools.”

“Yes, sir.” Sirius nodded and stepped away, letting me go. His hand lingered on the curve of my back before he turned to my father. “Sorry for your loss.”

Dad’s voice was cold. “Thank you, son.” With a nod, he dismissed Sirius and turned to me. “Come now, Andromeda. You have studying to do for your colonization testing.”

I allowed myself one backward glance at the blank window of space where my great-grandma’s casket drifted off, before following him down the corridor. I hoped he’d leave me alone, but Dad was in a lecturing mood.

“These exams are the most important tests you’ll take over the course of your life. They’ll determine your future job assignment in the colony. Whether you’ll be a housekeeper, a planter, or even a systems operator. It would behoove you to do well.”

Dad only pushed me because he cared, but I couldn’t bring myself to take the tests seriously. They forced me to accept the reality of Paradise 21, and I wasn’t ready to grow up. The tests had seemed so far away, but all of a sudden they hung over my head. I couldn’t cram in all I’d missed during the years I’d slacked off.

I told him what he wanted to hear. “Yes, Dad. I’ll try.”

He opened his mouth, probably to lecture me more, when the ship lurched, slamming us into the wall. I banged my elbow against the chrome, sending a sting up my arm. As Dad helped me stand, the lights flickered off and dim-red emergency ones flashed on. The familiar chug of the generators underneath my feet stopped, and the ship felt oddly motionless. An alarm wailed.

“It’s the engines.” Dad grabbed my arm and pulled me forward. “I have to get to the lower decks.”

We reached our family unit and he threw his electrolytic capacitor into a plastic container. “Stay here.” His voice sounded authoritative, but a glimmer of fear crossed his eyes.

I nodded and watched him sprint down the corridor until the portal re-materialized, static particles solidifying, leaving me alone in my family unit.

What if the engines failed before we reached Paradise 21? Part of me relished the idea. We’d live on the ship our whole lives, like our ancestors before us. We wouldn’t have to worry about atmospheric conditions, threatening species, or building cities on the foamy stuff they called turf. Then I realized we’d be adrift in space with Great-grandma Tiff. We’d lose power and our resources would dwindle even further. We’d run out of food. What if the heat stopped working and we froze to death?

That thought scared me more than living on Paradise 21. I had to do something. Hefting my backpack, I pressed the portal panel and jumped up and down until the particles dematerialized. I’d never been as low as the engine decks, but I had an idea where Dad worked. Following in his footsteps, I wiggled my way through people rushing down the corridor, and pressed the elevator panel.

“Annie, where are you going?”

Sirius caught me red-handed. With my pack on my back and my hand on the elevator panel, I looked like crazy Aries Ryder heading for the escape pods.

“I was just…going to…” I stammered and looked down until I remembered he wasn’t where he should be either. “Why are you here?”

“I came to check on you. After you left, Commander Barliss lost consciousness. One minute he was talking to all the people onboard, and the next his eyes were shut.”

My heart fluttered at the same pace as the flashing lights. Too many things were going wrong all in one day. My world was disintegrating before my eyes. “Is he going to be all right?”

“I heard the medics talking as they took him to the hospital deck. The ship is faltering without his mind to steer it forward. The engines are sputtering out.”

The elevator portal dematerialized and I rushed in. Sirius slid in next to me, and the platform took off down to the lower decks.

“Where’s the elevator headed?”

I flicked my eyes up, daring him to stop me. “The engine room. I want to help.”

He slammed his fist on the portal jam button and the elevator stopped between decks, jerking us both. I fell against him, and he held me in his arms. “You can’t do anything down there. It’s dangerous, and you might get hurt.”

I squirmed away and stared him straight in the eyes, pleading. “I have to do
something
.”

“Let’s go to the hospital deck and see your grandpapa. He’s the key to saving the ship. If he dies, we’re all lost.” Sirius put an encouraging hand on my arm. He apparently had more faith in me than I had in myself, and his unwavering esteem unnerved me. Emotions I shouldn’t feel welled up inside me, threatening to break past my lips. I wanted to tell him how much he meant to me, how much I wanted us to be together, but Sirius saved me from confessing. “If anyone can save him, you can.”

“I’ll try.”

He pressed the panel for the upper decks, and the elevator took off in the opposite direction. I hoped Dad was safe in the engine room. Many lifers died in accidents caused by the combustion chambers.

Dizziness overtook me, and an invisible force detached my feet from the floor. I clutched Sirius’s arm. “What’s happening?”

“I bet the gravity rings are failing.”

My stomach heaved and I swallowed a lump in my throat. An eternity passed before the elevator portal dematerialized and we stood before the hospital deck. The dim glow of the emergency lights lit our path as we ran to the medical bay, my feet bouncing high in the light gravity. Colonists guarded the portal, but they recognized me and let us through without questions. As Commander Barliss’s great-granddaughter, I was accustomed to getting my way.

My grandpapa lay in a real bed, one of those platforms raised up from the floor with paper-thin sheets like in the pictures from Old Earth. If they were going to use real fabric to comfort him, then it had to be bad. The numerous wires running from his arms and input devices in his head didn’t faze me. Those were normal. The scurrying nurses made me nervous.

“What’s wrong with him?” I walked over to his bed and took his veiny hand in my own. His bones were light as laser sticks and his skin felt so brittle and thin I feared it would flake off under my touch.

“The funeral put too much stress on his heart.” The head nurse appeared to be about my mother’s age, with gray streaks of hair. “He’s lost consciousness and none of our stimulants have been effective.”

I turned to Sirius, and he nodded as if I knew what to do. “Just talk to him, say something to cheer him up.” Around us, small glass vials floated in the air as the gravity rings cycled down. I gripped the metal bed handles to keep from floating away. At least they’d strapped my grandpapa down.

“Can you hear me?” I tried to block out my surroundings, the shouting from the corridor, the emergency wail, the floating utensils, even Sirius’s proximity, and focused on my grandpapa. His skin sagged into sunken cheeks and his bones looked fragile compared to the sturdy metal wires connecting him to the mainframe.

I don’t know where the idea came from, but I opened my mouth and began to sing a song Great-grandma Tiff taught me, a song she’d learned from her mom and her mom before her—a song from Old Earth. My voice felt weak in my throat, and I broke the melody to take a deeper breath and support my stomach muscles. My singing ability was nothing special, but at least the swell of the melody came through.

I lost myself in the song, closing my eyes and picturing the words as places on Old Earth—city skyscrapers, radiant sun, tickling grass, and blue oceans—before overpopulation and wars over resources ruined everything. I reached back through time, borrowing images of the past. I wanted him to see something other than the inside of the ship. I wanted to give him hope.

Glass crashed around me. Cringing, I stopped singing and opened my eyes. Gravity had pulled the vials to the floor. The lights flashed on, and the emergency wail trailed off into silence.

“Tiff? Is that you?”

I looked down, and my grandpapa peered up at me with watery eyes. “No, Grandpapa. It’s Andromeda.”

He blinked twice and then seemed to focus and regain awareness of the room and the ship. “Oh, yes. I’m sorry. You resemble her, right down to the freckles on your nose. I seem to have lost it for a moment.”

“Are you okay?” I leaned in. His skin was so pale I could see the thin blue veins underneath.

“Yes, yes, I’m fine.” He sat up, and the tubes and wires pulled taut. “Get my hoverchair. I’ve got a lot of work left to do.”

The nurses flooded around him and pushed me back. As always, my time with him was short. He was too important to bother with minor things. I slouched down. My arms were weights, pulling me to the floor. The song had drained all my energy.

Sirius took my hand in his. His skin warmed my cold fingertips as he wrapped his strong fingers around my small, pale hand.

“That was amazing, Annie.”

I shrugged, embarrassed he had heard me sing. “I didn’t know what else to do.”

“What you did was perfect.”

A woman cleared her throat and I whipped around. Some of the nurses stared at us, and I felt naked standing there holding Sirius’s hand. I dropped it faster than a hot-energy capacitor. “Come on, we don’t want to be in the way.”

“Of course.”

Even though we left my granddad alive and well, the truth burdened my heart. He wouldn’t live forever, and soon enough we’d have to leave him on the
New Dawn
.

As we approached the elevator, Sirius whispered under his breath, “Why doesn’t he appoint someone else to take his place? It seems dangerous to have an old man in charge of the entire ship.”

“He doesn’t want another person to be connected to the
New Dawn
.” I pressed the panel and the elevator portal dematerialized, allowing us to step in. Chaos had cluttered the deck moments before, but now people walked about, doing their daily business, the red glow of the emergency lights just a memory.
How easily they forget.

“Why not?” Sirius jammed his hands inside the pockets in his uniform. I thought of how he’d held my hand only moments ago, and the feeling of his fingers wrapping around mine. I wanted to grab one of his hands and see if the same rush of emotion came back again, but I turned and entered the elevator instead.

“Because whoever is connected can’t join us on Paradise 21. He’d be stuck to the mainframe for the rest of his life. My grandpapa doesn’t want anyone to have to share his fate, especially when we’re this close. It would be a waste of a life. We’ll need all of the young colonists to explore and build up the outpost.”