Tundra 37 (7 page)

Why had it seemed so impossible when she pressed the delete key?

What was she afraid of?

Staring out the sight panel at the white sky, the alternative proved much worse.

“Prepare for touchdown.”

The Seers’ chanted warnings haunted her. Gemme knew too well from her ship schematics class how astrophysicists designed the
Expedition
to land in water. Not on ice. Mountain peaks poked their way into her sight panel. White flakes obscured the landscape. She hoped loose snow cushioned the
Expedition
’s descent.

A jolt racked her body, driving pain up her spine. Her harness pulled against her chest and she bit her tongue, tasting salty blood in her mouth. What if the landing paralyzed her and they hooked her up to the computer alongside the Seers?

Dammit, stop it!

Gemme wiggled her toes, and every digit still moved. The Seers would have to wait for another friend. A series of bumps came next, jostling her until her brain felt like mush. Her fingers throbbed from clutching the seat restraints, yet she gripped harder, digging her fingernails in the plastic.

The main lights flickered out. Warnings blinked around her, illuminating everything for a second, and plunging her into darkness in the next heartbeat. Gemme reached down and pulled a flashlight from her pocket. At least she’d strapped herself in prepared.

Alarms wailed in the corridor. The sound of metal grating and crunching echoed behind her. Gemme clicked off the flashlight, smelling burnt plastic. If her cell caved in, she didn’t want to see the walls or the ceiling coming down at her. She closed her eyes and tried to weed out all of her regrets.

I should have gone to Ferris’s awards ceremony.

I should have accepted my mom’s old badge on my uniform.

I shouldn’t have pressed the delete key.

The shaking subsided and the ship ground to a halt. Gemme gasped in a long breath of air. Was it over? She clicked on the flashlight and shone the golden beam across the room. The DNA model sat on the floor, still in one piece. No illumination came from the sight panel. She turned the flashlight toward the glass. A mound of white blotted out any vision of the planet. The Seers must have submerged the ship in a snowdrift.

She released the harness and fell on her hands and knees. The floor felt oddly motionless. The familiar chug of the engines no longer surged underneath her. Ever since it launched, the
Expedition
had moved in a singular path, hurtling through space. Now, for the first time, the ship rested in a final, icy grave.

Her stomach hurt where the seat restraints had pinned her down. She examined her skin, wondering if she bled internally. The metallic taste of blood filled her mouth from when she bit her tongue, and she swallowed it down, waiting for the Seers’ instructions.

The intercom remained silent. What if they didn’t survive the landing? What if she was the only one alive? Gemme scrambled up to the portal and slapped the panel. The particles dematerialized to reveal more blinking lights and smoke.

“Hello?” Her voice resonated against the chrome in between shrieks of the emergency alarm. “Is anyone there?”

She coughed and ducked under the smoke, using the wall to guide her down the corridor.

Please, someone be alive.

Maybe she could send a message to Ferris. She checked her locator. The screen showed no signal. The landing must have damaged the remaining control towers. She had no way of knowing who survived.

A portal dematerialized down the corridor and a middle-aged man stumbled out holding a woman in his arms. Relief flooded Gemme at the sight of other people.

“Help us.” He dragged the woman toward her. A white bandage blossoming red had been wound around her head.

At least Gemme wasn’t the only one alive. She stumbled down to reach them, making sure to duck beneath the smoke.

“Is she all right?” Gemme examined the woman’s head. She didn’t respond to outside stimuli, but her breathing remained steady.

“She hit her head on the wall.” The man struggled to hoist her limp body.

Gemme put her arm under the woman’s shoulder. Protocol dictated any wounded passengers be taken to the nearest emergency sick bay, but she wasn’t certain if any sick bays still existed. “Where should we take her?”

“I don’t know.” With flighty eyes full of fear, the man looked more lost than she felt. “The Seers have everything under control, right?”

Not.

Gemme’s faith in the Seers had plunged farther than their ship. But the crew of the
Expedition
was still alive, whether by the Seers’ hand or not. Looking into the man’s desperate eyes, she wasn’t about to tell him her misgivings, so she changed the subject. “I’m not sure we should move her.”

The man jerked his finger up at the smoke. “I’m not keeping her here.”

The intercom buzzed on and they both froze, gazing up to the speakers on the side of the wall.

“Everyone remain calm.”

Gemme knew the voice better than her own. The sound filled her with relief.

“This is Lieutenant Brentwood. Communications are patchy at the moment, but I’m working on reestablishing contact with the Seers. Until then stay in your personal cells unless you need medical attention. All wounded seek attention on Deck Six, Bay Four. I repeat, wounded must report to Deck Six, Bay Four.”

The intercom sizzled off. Gemme hung on to his last words, her spirits revitalized. Brentwood had survived. Not only that, but the ship may be repairable because he was working on it as they stumbled around helpless. Just those two small facts brought her a rush of hope.

“Come on, let’s take her to Bay Four.”

They shuffled down the corridor to an emergency stairway. Although twenty decks separated them from Bay Four, Gemme didn’t see the point in trying the elevators. The man wrapped his arms around the woman’s shoulders and Gemme took her ankles, heading down backward. She gritted her teeth, wishing she’d used the workout decks more often. Her calves burned with each awkward step. The man’s jitters didn’t help. He kept pushing faster, and Gemme struggled to keep his pace. Maybe conversation would calm him.

“What’s your name?”

“Ben Harvey. This is my wife, Isabelle.”

Oh yes, I remember: Son is Robert Harvey matched to Britt Stone.

Gemme had completed Robert’s pairing three months ago. The computers had calculated an instantaneous match, both candidates demonstrating excellent skills in bioengineering and aerodynamics.

Where was their son now? Gemme knew not to ask. Chances are Ben Harvey wondered the same thing. A wave of nausea swept through her. Had her own family survived? The claustrophobic stairway felt surreal, as if she’d trapped herself in a nightmare and couldn’t wake up. Gemme shook her head against dizziness. No, this was her reality now, and they had ten more decks to go.

“What’s your name?”

“Gemme Reiner.”

Ben Harvey’s eyes widened as he registered the infamous name. “So, you’re the Matchmaker?”

“Yeah, that’s me.” She expected any number of bad jokes or accusations of mismatched pairings.

“You selected a good match for our Robby. Britt’s given him such joy. I’m eternally grateful.”

Maybe she
was
stuck in a dream. Gemme couldn’t believe his words. “Uh
—
you’re welcome?”

Ben Harvey smiled for the first time, revealing perfect white teeth. “But I bet you hear that all the time.” He winked and she decided she liked him more than her initial impression. “Five decks to go.”

Numbness plagued her fingers. She moved the position of her hand on his wife’s ankle and pins pricked her palm. Her lower back muscles throbbed, so she counted steps to get her mind off the pain.

One hundred and thirty-four.

One hundred and thirty-five.

Why did she always seek solace in numbers?

They huffed down the remainder of the stairs until the number six shone through the smoke in emergency red light. Gemme had never been so happy to see it. With a heave, she elbowed the portal panel to the deck.

Clean air flowed in and Gemme’s lungs soaked in the draft. “That’s a promising sign.”

People shuffled down the corridor in front of them. Some of them hobbled with minor cuts and bruises, but others wheeled their loved ones on make shift stretchers made out of tables and rolling chairs, wearing their own haphazard bandages. Gemme focused on her ward. The red splotches had spread through Isabelle’s bandages.

Medics stood outside Bay Four, assessing a line of patients as they waited for admittance. A younger woman brought them a wheelchair, and Gemme helped Ben lower Isabelle into a comfortable position.

“You’ve done so much for me, thank you.” He sounded as if he said good-bye.

“You don’t want me to stay?”

He waved her away and she noticed a bruise on his balding head. “It’s unnecessary.”

Gemme paused. She’d spent so long helping him with one single purpose in mind she didn’t know where to go.

“You must have your own family to attend to.”

Gemme hadn’t allowed her thoughts to wander to Ferris and her parents. She swallowed a lump in her throat. “I do, yes.”

Ben squeezed her hand. “Take care.”

“I’ll try.” As more wounded flooded into the emergency bay, Gemme fought against the tide with her heart racing. She had ten decks to climb to find her parent’s cell. Dreading what she’d find, it took every ounce of courage to jog up the first flight of stairs and confront her fears.

Brentwood’s lapel pin lay as silent as deep space. He pressed the button on and off until his fingertips hurt. Frustration boiled up inside his chest. The Seers had no right to ignore him during a disaster.

Unless their old, deteriorated bodies hadn’t survived the crash.

His chest tightened. The
Expedition
didn’t have a plan B that he knew of. When no others had been born with their talents, the scientists secured the Seers to the ship, thinking they’d last well into the arrival of Paradise 18. They didn’t factor in comets pummeling the hull.

“Hello?”

Nothing. He might as well be talking to a cleaning droid.

“Damn.” He kicked a dent in the metal wall. As much as he hated the crypt-like main control deck, he had to check on them. Most systems on the ship couldn’t run without their mind control, and they needed heat not only for themselves, but to keep the biodome running. He doubted Tundra 37 had a sufficient food source underneath all those layers of ice.

“Lieutenant.”

A tense voice nagged him out of his thoughts. The head nurse, a woman in her early fifties, jogged up beside him.

“Yes?”

“We’re having trouble with the life support systems.”

He exhaled slowly, allowing his frustration to seep away with his breath. So many problems to fix. He’d have to tackle one at a time, and to make matters worse, the other three lieutenants weren’t responding to his pages. “What do you mean?”

“The energy supply to Bay Four is patchy at best. The skin regenerators are malfunctioning, and the heart monitors aren’t steady. We need a sufficient supply of energy to attend to those with critical needs.”

He nodded and spoke with authority in his voice to calm her. “I’ll check on it.”

“Thank you, sir People are starting to panic.”

“There’s no need for panic.” He gave her a steady look. “I’ll get everything under control. Just see to the wounded, make sure they get the care they need.”

“Yes, sir.” His reassurance seemed to calm her. She gave him a weak smile and jogged back to the emergency bay.

As much as the life support systems needed energy, they’d all freeze to death without the Seers at the helm. He’d check on the fusion core, but first he’d check on the two people who were supposed to be in charge.

Brentwood sprinted to the main artery connecting the control deck to the belly of the ship. The floor pitched up, and his muscles strained as he climbed the ramp. He’d been on duty for two shifts going on three. The crash provided a never-ending slew of problems keeping him busy. Like his father always said, “You’ll have enough time to rest in your coffin, floating for eternity in the vast unknown.”

Yeah, Dad, reassuring as always.

Hoping his parents had survived the crash, he took a turn and halted in mid stride Part of the ceiling had caved in, and debris clogged the corridor. Wires sparked at his feet, sending him sprawling backward.

“Damn it again!”

Brentwood waited until the cables settled, counted to three, and jumped forward, grabbing onto a pipe in the ceiling. He dangled for a second over broken glass before swinging back and forth like a pendulum. When he swung forward again, he let go and landed in a rolling ball on the other side of the debris pile.

The lights flickered above him, threatening to engulf him in total darkness, and he scrambled up, closing the last few meters between him and the Seers’ portal.

He paused at the panel, smoothing his hands through his hair to keep it out of his eyes.

Oh, heck, it’s not like they’re running around naked in there
. He slammed his fist into the panel and the particles spun like crazed dust motes as they dematerialized.

Wires rained down in a curtain of jellyfish tentacles. Sparks flew from all directions, sizzling around him like ill-tended fireworks. Brentwood swiped them away. “Hello? Is everything all right?”

He scanned the debris littering the floor. Old star charts, broken computer screens, and a tuft of gray hair.

Brentwood’s heart jumped and stuck in his throat. He kicked through the rubble, fell on his knees and dug out a shoulder and a balding, wispy-haired head.

She was the one with the good eye, the one who’d addressed him at their last meeting. Now the dark eye stared at nothing, or whatever awaited her in the beyond.

“No.” He scrambled, running his hands over her thin skin to feel her forehead. She felt like wax and brittle bones. “You will not leave us like this.”